The Gloaming by Melanie Finn Page A

we must make sure it’s sunny.’
    In the street, he hailed a taxi and told the driver my address. As the door closed, as the car pulled away, he glanced through the glass and then raised his fingers as if to doff an invisible hat.
    Â 
Magulu, May 15
    I sit on the bed in the room that was Martin Martins.’ I look in the empty waste-paper basket, the empty drawer, the empty cupboard. I feel ridiculous. Did I think I would find a clue? To what? Anyway, Gladness has cleaned everything with her usual thoroughness. The room reeks of bleach; though, underneath, the smell of cigarettes lingers. I think back to every instance I saw Martin. What he was doing, what he was reading. Wasn’t it an old
Spiegel?
He drank beer, he slept in his room, he slept with a prostitute, he watched the TV in the restaurant, he smoked Roosters. This is the behavior of a man waiting for a spare part for his broken car.
    So why do I have this cold pit in my stomach? Martin’s lie about the fuel pump. His
I know you
.
    Too many coincidences, Kessy said.
    But who decides how many is too many? Who can see conspiracy in the random? I forgot to pay a phone bill.
MAHNUNG
! Mrs Gassner could not tie her laces. Tom brought me to Arnau because he’d met Elise by the lake. In proximity—the imposed proximity of chronology—these events clustered and swarmed, connected.
    But taken separately—
    Perhaps Martin lied about the fuel pump for some reason quite beyond me or Kessy or Dorothea. Perhaps he was waiting, or hiding. Perhaps Kessy is wrong and the fuel pump was broken.
    Why am I so ready to believe Martin Martins intended me harm? He called me princess. He saw my coldness, my vanity: the hard, little pea of my heart. He saw what I keep from others, and so I imbue him with special power. I give credence to his story of being a mercenary.
    Or have I fashioned a projection of unexamined guilt? What better tableau than a professional killer on which to display my moral dilemma—my inability to feel anything for three small, dead children. Martin Martins absorbs all light like an imploding star.
    I have taken lives, like a petty god. I have importance because of that. I am no longer Tom’s wife, no longer his ex-wife. I am a looming giant in the lives of the children’s parents, Godzilla, stamping and tramping, crushing and smashing. I am
Kindermörderin
. I am Martin.
    I note the shambling rustle of pink bougainvillea outside the window and the filament of a spider’s web. Beyond the bougainvillea lies the kitchen courtyard. I can see Gladness hanging up sheets on the line. Around her scatter ubiquitous chickens, and an emaciated kitten toys with a piece of colored wool. Gladness bends and plucks white pillowcases from the green laundry tub. I recall how she watched me when Martin told me his story. Suddenly I realize that she’s the one who slept with him, and she was worried I might fuck him for free. In the same matter-of-fact way she does everything here, she sleeps with the customers. It’s all money. Apart from Dorothea, with her commands and her talk of STDs, no women come near the place. But there are plenty of men.
    I go to my room, retrieve the box from the back of the cup board. I estimate its weight at six pounds. Hate does not diminish, I’m learning. It can shift atoms, congeal into matter. It takes shape in the material world.

Magulu—Butiama, May 16
    I do not say goodbye. This is force of habit: all the leavings in my life with Tom, associations with associates abandoned every two years. There were no parties, no one said goodbye. People left Dili or Lagos and the only evidence of their leaving, of their ever having been there at all, was the new people in their house. Tom taught me; leave quietly, don’t slam the door.
    As I pay the bill at the Goodnight, Gladness doesn’t ask where I’m going or why. Her job is to usher in and usher out. I give her a good tip.