Sunday morning, we hit the road early. The sky was clear, the RN7 deserted at that hour. Solo drove calmly, Tahina dozed in the front, Lala gazed at the landscape while humming an old Malagasy song. Ennemiah, beside me in the back, had rested her head on my shoulder and was sleeping deeply, a peaceful smile on her lips.
I hardly closed my eyes all night.
After what had happened – that night when every boundary had exploded –, sleep never came. When it all ended, in a chaos of short breaths and trembling bodies, we simply lay back down, exhausted, as if nothing extraordinary had taken place. Ennemiah kissed me softly on the mouth, Lala stroked my cheek whispering a barely audible “thank you”, Tahina turned the other way. And then silence, disturbed only by the crickets.
Me, I stayed awake until dawn, eyes wide open in the dark.
The return journey gave me all the time in the world to think. Too much, perhaps.
First, my wife. Her face kept coming back to me: her smile when she walked me to the airport, her calm voice during our evening calls. Twenty-five years of marriage, two children raised together, a stable, predictable, honest life. I still loved her, I knew that. But what I was living here was cracking everything. I found myself calculating the time difference to know whether I could call her without her sensing something in my voice. And at the same time, I dreaded that call, because I no longer knew what to say to her without lying even more.
Then, Ennemiah. This nineteen-year-old woman who had literally bewitched me. I loved her, yes, I had admitted it in the darkness of Ambatolampy. But what kind of love were we talking about? Was it her body, her vitality, the way she made me feel alive as I hadn’t in years? Or was it deeper? She had introduced me to her family, to her world, and I had taken a place in it that I should never have occupied. I paid for the taxi, her studies, small gifts. I played the role of protector, benefactor. And she, in return, gave me a passion I had never known.
But that night… that night changed everything.
I relived every moment on loop. Ennemiah’s mouth, then Lala on me, hot and welcoming. And then Tahina. That moment when I felt his cock against me, when he pushed gently, when my body opened despite myself. I wasn’t homosexual. I had never looked at a man with desire. Never fantasised about it. And yet… yet the pleasure had been there, intense, different, almost frightening in its magnitude. The feeling of being taken, invaded, dominated, at the same time as I possessed Lala and gave pleasure to Ennemiah. A mixture of sensations I didn’t understand.
Was it simply the extreme excitement of the situation? The absolute taboo? The fact that it all happened within this family that seemed to live intimacy without the barriers I had always known? Or was there something deeper in me that I was only discovering now, at 52?
I felt lost. Guilty. Fascinated. Terrified.
When we arrived in Antananarivo late morning, the taxi dropped us off in front of the house in Ankahistinika. I helped unload the bags, kissed Lala on the cheeks – she held my hand a little longer than usual, an understanding look in her eyes. Tahina gave me a friendly, almost complicit nod. Ennemiah walked me to the car waiting to take me back to the residence.
On the doorstep, she kissed me long and deep, arms around my neck.
“When are you coming back?” she asked simply.
I didn’t answer right away. I stroked her cheek, looked into her huge eyes.
“Soon,” I said.
But as I got into the car, finally alone, I wondered whether I would really come back.
Or whether I would find the strength to end it all before it destroyed me completely.
I didn’t know yet.
I no longer knew anything.