There was nothing to do.
Di, with her arm slung lazily around Meg’s shoulder, walked in front; the Trevelyan twins, arms around one another’s waists, followed. Then came Ann, walking beside Mary and Sheila and Pamela, with Ann sucking on the end of a piece of grass and holding forth about the dangers of polio and the risks of contagion in our school. Lizzie, pale and alone, her hair tied back neatly in a ponytail, walked behind; and, coming last, picking her way with her soft-soled feet and her odd, catlike walk and complaining, Fuzzie, saying she had a terrible headache and was particularly hot because of the vest her dead mother had told her to wear at all times and because the mosquitoes were attacking her.
From time to time thunder struck in the distance. Fuzzie limped and called out, “I wish it would rain.”
“It will never rain again,” Sheila predicted, turning her head and speaking over her shoulder.
None of us could think clearly because of the heat and our hangovers and the muffled boom of thunder. Our minds were blank in the glare.
We inched forward slowly, sweating in the silence and the heat, drawn by a strange sort of curiosity toward the rock where Fiamma lay in the shade of the wattles and the willows that leaned down over the water. From that distance she was a blur of white and pink. “Do you think she might tell on Miss G?” Meg asked Ann.
“If she is given a chance, in all probability she will,” Ann said.
What we were thinking on the bank of the river
Meg was still feeling sick from all the sweet peaches swimming in syrup and the sardines floating in oil. As she walked in the shadows of the wattles along the bank of the river toward Fiamma, she remembered the afternoon when she had told Miss G about her father beating her and her sisters, when Miss G had responded by touching her knee, making everything swing around her.
Di walked by the bank of the river and remembered a game she and her sister had played when they were very young. They rolled down the bank with their hands over their heads and their eyes shut, rolling over and over down the bank, helplessly.
Sheila wanted something exciting to happen, at that moment. She imagined someone might drown accidentally, or be struck by lightning, just to relieve the boredom of the afternoon.
Fuzzie walked along the bank and remembered the voices she had heard as a lonely child. She was afraid she might hear them again. She felt as though her heart had escaped her; she could feel it beating steadily, but it felt like someone else’s heart, not hers.
Fiamma among the wattles
We all advanced toward Fiamma in silence, a compact group, our shadows mingling. We saw things obscurely through the tremble of the heat and the steamy air. There was little sign of the approaching storm now, apart from the continuous growl of thunder. The riverbanks were swept clean, like scoured blades; the trees cast somber shadows. Reflected in the surface of the water were the heavy sky, the clouds, the occasional swallows, dipping down around us.
Fiamma was still stretched out on the gray rock in the shade of the wattles. We were moving toward her slowly. Wild white irises grew nearby, and bright butterflies danced around one another over her head. Her legs looked very pale and slim. She seemed asleep or, at least, content and calm. The only thing moving was the hem of her dress, fluttered by a faint breeze.
When she felt us draw near, she sat up and looked at us. She put her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun.
We all stood there in the silence by the river.
She said, “What are you all staring at, anyway?”
It was then that we got the idea: “Let’s play the game of truth!”
Di Radfield and Miss G
Miss G strode through the wattles, snapping the twigs beneath the soles of her boots. Her impeccably ironed jumpsuit rustled, and her round glasses glinted once again. “Come with me, Radfield,” she called out imperiously.
Miss G offered her a cigarette. They went off for a smoke all on their own. We watched them go together, whispering. Miss G had never allowed anyone to smoke with her before. She had always forbidden it. For years afterward Di could remember the taste of that cigarette.
They sat under the wattles, smoking and watching the dragonflies skim over the water. Di did not really like it; it made her feel sick, particularly because she was already feeling so, but after that day she took it up: she kept reaching for another.
They dipped their hands into the water. Miss G had often told her, before Fiamma’s arrival, that she was the best swimmer on the team, the strongest, the most enduring, but that day, while they were smoking, Miss G told her that she should know the truth. Di already knew what she was going to say, which was that Fiamma was a much better swimmer than Di would ever be, that Fiamma would always beat her in the end, that what Di had was simply endurance, but that Fiamma had it all.
“She’s the real thing,” Miss G told Di, while the sun beat down on the gray water, and Di learned to pull hard on a cigarette and then stub it out beneath the heel of her shoe.
Rain
On the December day Fiamma disappeared, it rained for the first time in months. We could hardly remember the last time. It suddenly started raining hard while we were down by the river, and we had to take shelter in the picnic hut. It was because of the rain that we came to play the game of truth with Fiamma.
We heard it in the leaves before we felt it, a rustling, like the wind. Then everything came on very fast. The clouds opened, and a waterfall descended on us. The wind picked up so hard, it blew the water sideways. The big drops became hailstones that came down brutally, like grapeshot. Lightning forked across the sky, scattering us. Some ran, screaming, to shelter under the nearest trees; some rushed into the thatched picnic hut, which was set up below the graves by the side of the river with a few rickety wooden tables and benches and a beaten-earth floor.
The two privies, deep holes in the earth infested with flies, were at the back. Their stench was barely mitigated by the smell of lime, and when it rained, it became overpowering.
The hail continued to pound down steadily on the thatched roof, while we huddled at the tables. We listened and watched the red earth spatter, forming deep pools, and played the game of truth. We wanted Fiamma to tell us what had happened with Miss G the night before.
Where was Miss G?
No one was sure exactly where Miss G had gone after Di came back to us. She seemed to have vanished with the coming of rain. When Fuzzie asked after her, Meg said she had seen her go to the privy, that she must have been in there all the while, but we could not imagine how anyone could have shut herself up there for so long. Pamela said she thought she had fallen asleep at the back of the picnic hut, where she had heard heavy breathing. Fuzzie said she was certain that she had smelled smoke while we were playing. Afterward we thought she might very well have been sitting at the back, listening and watching, able to overhear the rude things Fiamma was saying.
Fiamma resisted playing the game with us, but not for the reason we had expected: she was not interested in keeping her secret; she wanted us to know what she had done for us, but she no longer thought of it as a game. Nothing obliged her to say what she did. Afterward we wondered what Miss G must have thought, if she had overheard us.
Fuzzie said, “Perhaps Fiamma had always wanted to play with us, and she was just doing her Princess act and waiting to be asked.”
The game of truth
It was Ann’s turn on the sidelines. It was she who caught Fiamma with her hand at the bottom of the pile. We held Fiamma’s hand down, so she would have to answer the question. Ann looked at Fiamma, and her small red eyes shimmered behind her glasses in the shadows of the picnic hut. We could hear the hail beating down on the thatched roof as Ann asked Fiamma, “What happened with Miss G last night? Why do you have pains? Are you bleeding?”
Fuzzie said, “You are only supposed to ask her one question.”
Fiamma said nothing. There was a long silence as we all stared at Fiamma and waited. We could hear her shallow, ragged breathing and saw her hand going to her pocket for her inhaler. Meg clutched the little camphor bag around her neck and asked, “Did you play St. Agnes’s Eve with Miss G?”
Bobby Joe put up her hands in prayer and made little kissing movements with her lips.
We all laughed.
Fiamma took out her inhaler and pumped.
The hail was coming down hard as stones, tearing at the wild irises that grew along the bank of the river, the low scrub, and the thatched roof of the picnic hut. We all gathered around Fiamma, listening to the hail and smelling the latrines and the wet earth and the faint odor of smoke. The red mud was running down the bank to the river, while we were laughing and making kissing noises and waiting for Fiamma’s reply. After a while Di said, “You have to answer,” and we all took it up, claping and chanting, “Answer, answer, answer. Give us the truth, Princess Fiamma! Princess Fiamma!” Fiamma sat in silence, looking stiff and bored and watching the hail fall.
Sheila asked, “Why did you faint in chapel this morning?”
Fiamma said, “I told you. I have pains,” and she got up and tried to walk out of the circle, but we were barring her way. We pulled at her tunic; we grabbed at her legs; Di got up and pushed on her shoulders; we made her sit down. Besides, there was nowhere to go in the rain. “Not so fast, Princess Fiamma. Sit down, sit down,” Di said. Fiamma sat. She crossed her arms. She scowled.
Di said, “You have to tell us what happened last night. It’s the rule of the game.”
Fiamma sat cross-legged, her head held high. She said, “What do you think happened?”
Ann said, “Did you do it with Miss G? Did you do it for real? Is that why you’re in pain?”
Di asked, “You’re not a virgin anymore?”
Meg said, “You actually did it with Miss G?” and pulled her mouth down in a grimace of disgust.
Fiamma looked at us with her blank stare. She looked very bored and tired, and she pulled at the end of her plait. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her breathing was fast and shallow. She said, “I did what you asked me to do.”
Meg said, “But we just asked you to be nice.”
Di, who had confessed to letting a boy put his finger up her winkie, said, “You were a lezzie with Miss G? Yuck. Disgusting,” and sounded as if she were going to be sick.
Fuzzie said, “You played Madeline and Porphyro for real with Miss G?”
Fiamma shrugged her shoulders and said in her low, slow voice, “Oh, grow up, all of you, can’t you?” She put her hand to her pocket again, searching for her inhaler, and said in a loud, firm voice, “Someone should report your Miss G to the authorities. Someone should close this prison down. I’m going to make sure my father hears about all of this.”
Di said, “But Miss G thinks you are the best.”
Fiamma looked around at us with her clear gaze. She pumped and said, “And I am the best.”
We were all gathered around by now, smelling blood. Everyone drew closer, elbowing Fuzzie out of the way. The hail stopped suddenly, or perhaps it had stopped earlier, and we had not noticed. The breeze had died, too. There was the strong scent of wet earth and wet grass and the rising stench from the latrines, the smell of smoke. It was very quiet again; all we could hear was Fiamma’s ragged breathing and the screaming of the cicadas. Fiamma looked down, and her face seemed to reflect the color of the beaten red earth. Then she looked up at us. She said, “Don’t you understand? Miss G doesn’t tell you the truth. She tells you what you want to hear, what is convenient for her. She’s not all that powerful. No one learned to swim or do anything else by desiring it. You either know how to, or you don’t. I happen to know how, and you don’t.”
Miss G’s reaction
Everything shimmered in the steamy air. The flies attacked us in droves as we ran up the bank to the graves. Miss G appeared again and told us to line up. It was getting late. It was time to go back.
She asked for Fiamma. When no one answered, she called her loudly, again and again, in her deep, mellow, man’s voice. Then she sent us all off the search along the bank of the river, where she had last seen her. Fiamma was no on the edge of the bank in the high, wet grass, under the trees, in the picnic area, or on the dark, shiny rocks.
We called her name and received in reply the buzz of the flies and the scream of the cicadas, the cry of the sparrow hawk. We slapped at our legs, cheeks, and arms. We wiped the sweat from our brows. Miss G removed and wiped her steel-rimmed sunglasses with trembling hands and told us to search farther down the riverbed. The cuffs of her khaki jumpsuit were stained green, and there was red mud on her boots and her hands. She was smoking one cigarette after the other and stamping out the butts. She was striding up and down along the edge of the river. She was scratching again. She looked wild; her face and dark hair were streaked with red earth.
We ran down into the river, the damp sand seeping between our toes. The brown water looked so still we felt we could walk on it. We waded in up to our waists, looking behind rocks and rotted tree trunks and ferns, calling for her. Finally, exhausted, our clothes wet and our faces smudged and burned and bitten, we straggled back to Miss G.
The sun was sinking as she blew her whistle and told us to line up. She marched the twelve of us in silence, double-file, back across the muddy veld.
The search
It started raining hard again after we got back. Following months of drought, the constant rain turned the veld to mud, washed away the thin topsoil, eroded the land, and swelled the rivers. It rained on and off for days, making the search for Fiamma increasingly difficult.
Search parties were sent out with bloodhounds, as Miss Nieven had informed us they would be; they combed the long, wet grass all along the banks. The next day the river was dragged. The police searched the area for miles around. An advertisement was placed in the local papers with a photo of Fiamma in her school uniform, her swimming team badge, and her panama hat with the brim turned down so that the shadow fell on her face. It mentioned something we had never noticed, a strawberry-shaped birthmarkon her shoulder. Someone reported hearing screams coming from the graves.
The detective questioned us again, this time as a group. We repeated what Di had already told him, that the last we saw of Fiamma was her lying very calmly in the shade of the frangipanis.
John Mazaboko, too, was questioned by the detective, because he knew the area where Fiamma had last been seen. It was he who tended the graves. We presumed he had not noticed anything unusual, or at any rate had not seen fit to say anything about it to the detective. But whether he had reported anything further to Miss Nieven, which she had felt it wiser not to pass on, we were never to find out.
