The Haven Hotel

Seed Growth and Photosynthesis

I shudder back into consciousness and immediately wish I hadn't. Both my shoulders feel as if they're on fire and my left arm still won't move. My throat is bone dry and I can feel the skin flaking off my lips when I try to moisten them with an equally dry tongue. Then I feel the cold, or rather, I feel the lack of heat that should be there when I'm buried under four blankets and still wrapped in several layers of winter clothing.

My teeth chatter and my bones rattle while I swing my body off the couch and take in my surroundings. It's dark; the only illumination is dim moonlight coming through a dusty window on my right. Still, though, I can see a flat screen television on the wall in front of me, and a metal coffee table between me and the wall. Behind me is a table with a desktop computer gathering dust on top of it. There's a closed door to my left, and through it I can hear Themba and Nadia talking in nearly jubilant tones as if nothing has happened.

Maybe nothing did happen. Maybe I was shot by a confused hunter and everything after that was a hallucination. I bring a hand to my right ear and find that the lobe has been replaced by gauze and bandages; I wasn't hallucinating. But surely whatever magic I saw Nadia doing wasn't real. The thought isn't even in my head for a second when I've dismissed the notion that I saw a child telekenetically shoving a woman through a brick wall.

I wipe a streak of dust off the window and observe the outside. This house has a wall around it; we've moved further into the city. The sky is clear now, having let all its water fall earlier, and the stars shine beside the half moon like a collection of celestial jewelry. Crickets chirp and night birds sing and somewhere in the distance dogs howl into the city air; the sounds of nature are beautiful after having been in a firefight. 

Before I can drink my fill of the world around me Nadia opens the door. "There's food." She says, then leaves the door only half closed behind her. I'm hungry. Of course I'm hungry; I haven't eaten since five in the morning. I look around the room and don't find my bag anywhere, and after some thought I check for my radio; both the speaker and the receiver are gone.

Themba and Nadia are sitting at a dining table with a candle between them when I walk into the kitchen. They're both eating with forks off of plates and drinking water from glasses and there are several cans and even a manual can opener on the table between them. 

"They have water here." Themba says while giving me the brightest and most sincere smile I've seen in weeks. He chuckles and shakes his head in amazement. "It's a bit stagnant but it's been so long since I've had any water that wasn't from the rain or a river. This is clean. It's amazing. I'll go get you some."

He stands up and I sit down on Nadia's left, instinctively facing the front door. The labels on each can are illegible in the dark but I can smell beans and some kind of pasta. Behind me Themba's washing a plate in the basin and next to me Nadia's eating in silence. She holds her fork with a closed fist and twirls it extravagantly each time she goes for a forkful of pasta. 

"Help yourself." Themba reaches around my shoulder and deposits a glass of water and a plate on the table. I try to drink the water as slowly as possible to avoid getting cramps, but my body overrides my mind and I pour the entire glass down my throat, then nearly vomit it back up. In an effort to suppress the water I empty a can of mushy beans and a can of soggy spaghetti on my plate and start eating. 

"When I was a child I grew a bean tree for a school project, something about photosynthesis and seed growth." Themba says. His plate isn't empty but it looks as if he's done eating. "At first it was in an ice cream tub about so big," he holds his hands a few centimeters apart, "then it grew too big for that so I put it in a pot, and then in the garden outside my grandmother's house because my mom and I lived in a flat. The project ended and I got full marks, so I kept the plant. It kept growing until eventually it made beans, as bean plants tend to do.