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church bells began to ring, Aza rocked me to the rhythm of
the independence anthem which Emperor Dom Pedro I had
once composed for her country: “... and freedom dawns on
the horizon of Brazil,
já raiou a liberdade no horizonte do
Brasil”
. Just then, her left rubber thong, now free from her
toes, fell five stories down into the bushes of the narrow
strip of garden skirting the hospital. It glowed like a fat
flower among the dark leaves of an elderberry bush, and
Aza was still holding me in outstretched arms, now weak
and trembling with the effort. Starlings chirruped,
somewhere a dog was barking, footsteps echoed in the
street; Nurse Marianne stood in the doorway and her shriek
tumbled down, down, down, sounding all the way to the
street. Then my mother made her decision.
I fell, following in the wake of the yellow thong. I, too, was
a little yellow, around my nose. Since I had no past I
couldn’t have seen my life flash before my eyes, but what I
could glimpse for a second was the future: the lush green of
late summer chestnut leaves fading out to become a jungle
thicket, a darker, blurry, unfathomable tangle of tropical
forest, and I had a whiff of orchids that smelled like
elderflower as a large pair of warm hands pulled me out of
the air into a wide arc, slowing me down like a pendulum
and rocking me, as gently as they could, to rest.
Fergus, the recently arrived rugby player from Greenwich,
pressed me tight to his chest and fell to his knees. He began
to tremble. That was better than any up-and-under he’d