Tours of the Black Clock

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EVERY AFTERNOON DANIA LEAVES her hotel and goes down to the shore of the island to see if her son is returning. Sometimes she spots him lying face down, staring into the water from the edge of the boat captained by a man to whom she no longer speaks. Rejected in this way, she returns to town. After a week and a half, she goes to the cemetery.

The huge nameless man still hangs in the tree. Birds sit on his fingers and the top of his head, staring out toward the river. Each day several of the townspeople come by to hear if the man has yet cried out his name; each day the tree sags a little more beneath him. Dania holds her arms together with determination, as though she’s waiting as well. She studies him each day. The Chinese quiz her constantly. She tells them she’s never seen him before; she doesn’t understand why they won’t believe her.

By the tenth day she’s begun to feel harassed. Also, the body’s become an unhappy sight. She stands in the sunlight watching him awhile before she finally says, “His name was Banning Jainlight.”

The Chinese who are present run into town to get the others. The others return and she says, still watching him, “His name was Banning Jainlight.”

You’re lying, someone says. Like you did many years ago about the woman you called Consuelo Garcia, you’re making it up.

She says, turning, “Let him rot up there then.” They call out after her as she walks back toward town. She shrugs, “Do what you want with him.”

They cut down Banning Jainlight and bury him in the marsh.