seance on a wet afternoon (standard:romance, 1015 words)
Author: DAVID TUMUSIIME	Added: Jan 11 2003	Views/Reads: 3876/2519	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
the story is about two people being unfaithful to their partners with each other.

SÉANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON 

I am in my lover's room. Iam alone. Iam waiting for him. It's afternoon
but the room is almost completely submerged in darkness. He likes the 
dark. If only for that he will come. 

It's raining outside very heavily. From time to time the roof groans and
sighs. It's a windy rain. The room is filled with a sound as if many 
thirsty women are loudly, hoarsely whispering. Iam not afraid. He will 
have to come back. 

I sit on his bed. His bed is unmade. The faded white nylon bedsheets are
crumpled in whorls and piles of uneasy sleep. The thickly threaded soft 
black sisal blanket dangles from the left side of the bed, tip of the 
blanket just suspended above the smooth very cold grey cement floor. 
It's a large strong roughly built wooden bed. It covers one side of the 
room. He made it himself. 

In the corner opposite me, I can make out the huddling shape of a bunch
of matooke. The two aluminium saucepans cupped in each other glint in 
the darkness like silent silver cat eyes. Next to them is the one chair 
in the room. It's an old sofa chair with some of the sponge sticking 
out where the red leather is worn. We bought this chair together. We 
bought it on a very hot Sunday afternoon. We bought it in an auction 
outside a rich minister's gate who had been declared bankrupt. I did 
not want him to buy it. 

I kneel on the bed, my toes hardly sinking in the mattress and look
through the glass paned window. His window does not have the thin steel 
bars to keep out buglers. I can hardly see anything outside. The wind 
and the rain have made a grey mist with many tiny silver rivulets on 
the glass pane. Outside, dimly, I can see mud, mud, and a black running 
figure! 

I fling the windows open and the wind and the rain rushes in for a cold,
for an icy prickliness, for a happy engulfing embrace. He's on the door 
pounding, shouting at me to open. And then he is in. 

He runs the short distance in his room from the door, slams his shoulder
against the wall, then his back, his foot smashing into the saucepans. 
He is cursing. Cursing. He kicks the saucepans away. They glide across 
the cement floor screaming to the door. 

He shakes himself, holding his blue shirt away from his body between his
fingers. Tiny droplets of rainwater fly away from him in all directions 
like little sparks. 

His black face is pale, his eyes closed tightly, it's almost as if he
were dead. I move to him. Droplets are sliding from his kinky, 
charcoal-black hair. His teeth are chattering slightly. He is cold. I 
wipe his forehead, the back of his neck, his throat, around his nose 
and cheeks, his eyes. He opens his eyes. 

“You're wet” he says, annoyed, pushing me away. 

I make his bed quickly, as well as I can. He is undressing. 

He is impatient. He fumbles with his shirt buttons. Almost tears the zip
of his black trouser. He is breathing hard from bending and 
straightening very fast too much. 

Iam on the bed. Iam against the wall, cross-legged. He stands before me,
self-absorbed bewilderment on his face. He has on the red underwear. It 
is too small for a man and looks funny on him. 

Suddenly he on his knees, bends forward, and drags from under the bed a
large cardboard suitcase. His spine, in his arched back, in the 
lightening darkness, is a black-beaded necklace. 

He is sifting through his home clothes. Shirts,
trousers,t-shirts,shirts,jackets.They are all colours.He never arranges 
them.He chooses from this confusion what he wants to wear. 

The rain outside has settled. The room is now filled with a low hum of
raindrops on the roof. The glass panes in the window have begun to 


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