‘Turn on the radio,’ another person suggests.

There are so many faces in the bar, so many bodies pressed together – men and women and children; one of them, I am sure, is an angel. I look at their hands to see if I can detect the tell-tale ends of flight feathers retracted in disguise. There must be something in the eyes surely to suggest…

‘It is a coup!’ the barman shouts, raising his hand for silence. The words pass from mouth to mouth round the room. Everyone falls silent, pressing closer to the radio on the counter. Martial music wafts out of the box to hover on the air above the sweating faces. After the martial music, a parade-ground-voiced general makes a lengthy announcement in which only the words ‘dusk-to-dawn curfew’ make any visible impact on the room. Suddenly everyone is scurrying out of the bar into the light rain outside.

Soon the streets will be taken over by military tanks and jeeps. People will lock their doors and turn off their lights and peer fearfully through chinks in their windows at the rain-washed, post-coup d’état streets.

Now I am the only one left in the bar. There is still an hour before the curfew begins. I notice the barman staring at me as he flicks a rag aimlessly up and down the counter. He stares at the clock above the door, then out at the deserted street.

‘I will wait for an hour,’ I say to myself. Perhaps this is not the place appointed. But I felt so sure watching the thief doing his danse macabre.

The barman comes over. ‘Oga, I want to close.’ He avoids my eyes. He is elderly. He has a soup stain on his right sleeve.

‘I am waiting for a friend. I gave him this address,’ I reply.

‘Maybe he won’t come, because of the curfew,’ the barman says.

But just then the door is kicked open. We turn and stare as two soldiers enter, dripping wet from the rain, guns slung over their shoulders. The barman leaves me and rushes over to them, bowing obsequiously. I feel a strange tingling all over my body, as if an electric shock has passed through me. I look at the soldiers, trying to determine which of them is here for me. One is short and fair, the other is tall and dark; but angels can assume any form they want. The barman hurries to the bar to bring them drinks. I keep staring at them, guessing.

‘Hey!’ the short one shouts at me, ‘go home. There’s a curfew on.’

‘It is not six yet,’ I reply, glancing at the clock. The soldiers look surprised at my bold response; they whisper together, then the short one stands up and swaggers to my table. His gun is unslung, the barrel points casually in my direction.

‘Get out,’ he says.

An ugly birthmark covers the left side of his face.