THE WOMAN IN THE WHEELCHAIR

He had gone to the island to die – or to

disappear. He would decide as the minutes,

the hours, days, weeks unfolded like a map.

He had chosen the month of August

assuming that, because of the tropical

heat, there would be fewer visitors then.

He had chosen to go to that island

in particular because it was where

his ancestors had been taken in chains.

 

Although the noisy air conditioning

in his room was on full power the air smelt

of damp and of plants. He switched the machine off,

opened the balcony doors, and stepped out

into the sunlight, and the heat. Before him,

perhaps no more than fifty feet away,

was what appeared to be pristine jungle.

He could smell the exotic vegetation.

To his left he could see the silvery beach,

and the Caribbean a shining turquoise –

to his right, on the next balcony,

a woman in a wheelchair. Though her face

was mostly obscured by an elegant hat,

he noticed her skin was the colour

of amber – and that, despite the heat,

she was wearing long white cotton gloves.

She seemed to be asleep. He withdrew quickly.

Naively he had not thought about neighbours.

 

The hotel was full of guests. On that island

in the month of August hotels catered

for conferences. The one next to his –

vast, modern, and gleaming with reflective glass –

was hosting Gospel Churches of the Delta.

Though some delegates were accommodated

in his hotel, sleeping and eating there,

morning, afternoon and most of the evening

the place was empty but for members of staff,

himself, and the woman in the wheelchair.

He had hoped therefore to find somewhere tranquil

to think through in detail the whys and wherefores,

the ways and means of his disappearance

or death, but the woman moved her wheelchair –

through dull corridors, across shabby lounges,

on worn pathways between the coconut palms –

like a Para-Olympic athlete,

with speed and precision, being able to stop

and turn on a dime. He understood the gloves

now, giving her extra thrust. She seemed

to wear a different colour every day: blue

yesterday, today red, white tomorrow?

Was she a patriot, or a joker,

in her own private circle of hell?

 

He studied the conference delegates

at breakfast. They did not seem particularly

blessed or enraptured – then suddenly realised

that it had been his obsession with

the minutiae of other people’s souls,

their internal lives, that had brought him here,

and that he was becoming obsessed with his

new neighbour, as he had started to think

of the woman in the wheelchair.

It was not the accumulation per se

of all the years of pettiness, pathos,

horror he had heard in the confessional

which had undone him, but the fact that if he,

only feet away from these suffering souls,

could do nothing to help except regurgitate

platitudes in that mega city, what chance

had an abstraction somewhere beyond.

 

In the early hours of the fourth morning

before the air conditioning was needed

to prevent his room becoming too warm,

using the hotel stationery he began

a mind map – in his precise almost

miniature calligraphy – of the ways

he might disappear or die, and realised

he could only effectively do

the former if he first did the latter.

Unsure how he felt about his choices

reduced by half, he showered, went to breakfast

taking the carefully folded map with him.

 

He decided that if he walked quickly

behind the woman in the wheelchair

she would always be more or less out of sight.

She must have changed direction at some point

because they met on one of the pathways

through the palms. ‘Coming through’, she called out

charmingly, and, smiling, ‘Thank you so much’,

as she passed him. He stood to one side,

like a retainer, unable to speak.

He noticed she was wearing the white gloves.

 

Eventually he found somewhere quiet

to contemplate his destiny. The hotel

was on the south east coast of the island

so faced the sun for much of day.

In the late afternoon, looking for shade,

he walked along the beach towards where the sand

and the jungle met. He found an ancient

baobab tree, took shelter in a vast cleft

in its trunk, and unfolded the mind map.

As he studied it, he remembered reading

that baobabs could live for a thousand,

two thousand years, that they had grown here

from seeds drifting across the Atlantic,

following the currents from West Africa,

on the base line of that triangular trade –

and realised his map took no account

of accidents, coincidents, irony.

He decided to bury it. As he dug

he looked up suddenly. A sting ray,

perhaps twenty feet across, had risen

from the sea barely fifty yards away,

on its giant wings of pectoral cartilage.

As it dived another rose, and another.

He got to his feet. He had to tell someone.

He would tell the woman in the wheelchair.