I

The road north from Tulear was even worse than Rebecca remembered. It was just about acceptable for the first twenty kilometres or so, but then it disintegrated into a track of sand, rock and rutted mud that eventually petered out into nothing a little north of Eden. Even making allowances for its wretched state, however, Zanahary drove like a flustered nun, inching across the occasional hazards like they were unexploded ordnance. It grew too much for Rebecca to bear. ‘Let me drive,’ she said.

Zanahary shook his head. ‘Insurance,’ he said.

‘Then let’s at least take a break,’ she said. ‘I need to stretch my legs.’

He pulled over gladly, reaching for his cigarettes even as he threw open his door. She waited till he was out then slid across into his seat, locked the door from the inside, turned on the ignition and pulled away. There were tears in his eyes when she slowed enough for him to catch up and clamber in the passenger side. He stamped on invisible brakes as she sped away along the track, twisting in his seat and muffling shrieks. Perversely, his fear only made Rebecca all the more rash. She came too fast upon an archipelago of rocks, hit one hard with her front right, bounced clear into the air. She cursed out loud; that was an axle gone for sure. It was a nightmare breaking down on these roads; you could wait forever for another vehicle. But somehow they landed between two hummocks and then bounded on to safe, soft sand. It was a dreadful, reckless piece of driving; it braced her and made her careful. But on Zanahary it had the opposite effect. ‘You drive like my brother,’ he said, as though fear was now pointless. ‘He mad too.’

There were cassette tapes on the dashboard. She pushed one into the player. The percussive Malagasy music took her back years. She turned the volume up, nodded to its beat. The wheel felt good in her hand, the driving position gratifyingly high. Navigating these tracks was all about anticipation, about trusting your hands and feet. The forest fell away to their left to reveal the sea, tall wading birds prowling the shallows, sea-grasses painting dark patterns in it, like God’s handwriting. The cassette finished. Silence embraced them. Huge butterflies drifted like perfume across her windscreen. A crested coua fled down the track ahead, swerving aside at the last possible moment. The track bumped and wound through settlement after settlement. Fitsitika. Fiserenamasay. Tsifota. Tsiandamba. The tiny hamlets of her childhood had grown up into villages of thatch huts and tin roofs held down by fifty-kilo sacks of rice refilled with leaking sand.

‘What that song?’

Rebecca glanced sideways at Zanahary. ‘How do you mean?’

‘That song you sing. What song?’

‘I wasn’t singing,’ Rebecca told him, for she couldn’t remember the last time she’d sung in anyone else’s presence. Yet now that he’d mentioned it, she could hear one of her mother’s old lullabies echoing in her mind, and it left her feeling a little uncertain of herself, so she took another cassette from the dashboard, and put it in to play.