The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Read online

  “I like it with you,” she said. “I like our bodies joined into one body.”

  When they had first been together in Cape Town, they would sometimes come together inside the doorway when he first got home, she naked under her hoisted-up skirt, his trousers flung down, him pressing her against the dining table. Sometimes in the kitchen on weekend mornings she would sit on the counter, her legs wrapped about him, while they ate cereal from bowls, feeding it to one another.

  He thought of how needy he’d felt. He wondered: Can she have any idea what this is like for me? But he could not tell her. Especially not in letters.

  She had turned toward him in the night. “Do you like it with all girls? Or just me?” He had not answered. “I guess it’s different for men,” she said. He stared at the ceiling he could not see. “What’s going to happen out there?” she asked finally. He said nothing. “You can take care of it yourself, you know.”

  “You think that’s the answer, do you?” She said nothing. “What about you?”

  “I don’t want it with anyone but you. Ever again.”

  He knew that wasn’t true. Or wouldn’t be once he was gone.

  “Be good, Kwame,” Livie whispered. “For me. For the kids we’re going to have.”

  For her and the kids they would have. He stared at the river. After the rain the air was so clear he could see the opposite bank. He paced. Fuck, he thought, she’s got the same problem. He could not bear to think of her with other men. He vowed not to think about Madame Van. What had happened in that rain had been an aberration.

  SEVEN

  Although Kwame possessed little talent for writing letters, he had a bureaucrat’s facility with reports. The morning after the storm he crafted a memorandum to his bosses in Kinshasa. He reported no progress on Mason. He was, however, forging ahead with preparations for the cultural center. He asked for advice about opening it. Should he hire staff—a librarian and possibly a projectionist—and open as soon as feasible? Or should the official opening be the job of his permanent replacement? He awaited instructions.

  In the box at the post office he found an envelope from Livie. He opened it on the post office steps. She was now in Boston, but she knew no better than he how to write a letter. She sent a collection of e-mail-style messages, little snapshots of where her head was at the moment of writing. But no exposition about her law classes or how she was readjusting to law school or how she liked Boston or her new apartment. And nothing to say that she missed him. Perhaps the messages themselves were supposed to prove that. But they gave Kwame no sense of being with her.

  He returned to the center to find Anatole sitting on the front stoop, studying the clouds. The tata seemed to live completely in the present. And to do everything in slow motion. A watchman he certainly was. He always watched, stared: without self-consciousness, without speaking, perhaps even without curiosity. Now as Kwame returned, Anatole got to his feet and deferentially said, “Bonjour, patron.” Then he simply stared. Kwame felt self-conscious. He had to discipline himself not to react.

  “Tata” was a term of respect conferred on a man of years. But how old was Anatole? Kwame had no idea. What hair Anatole had was gray; his unhurried pace suggested age. But he was still producing children. His figure comprised a series of interlocking circles: the nearly bald head, the eyes behind round lenses, the cheeks that smiled shyly when Kwame greeted him, the globes of his buttocks, his stomach hanging over the waistband of his trousers. He was certainly forty. Was he sixty?

  Inside his office Kwame asked himself: How could Anatole sit for hours staring into space? At times he seemed as rooted as a plant. Was this what it was to be African? Was this the mantle of wisdom? A state of nature? Self-awareness? Serenity? Should he admire it? Even try to emulate it, he whose culture told him activity was everything?

  Kwame tried to answer Livie’s bundle of messages, to write her the sort of letter he would like to receive. He started on his laptop. But the writing went poorly. Words refused to flow. He closed the laptop and began to write longhand. He had hardly started when he stopped. He would write Livie a real letter that evening.

  He went back to the Afrique, got some lunch, and found Madame Van on the balcony adjacent to his own. She regarded him without emotion. With the memory of her body still very strong on him, he felt awkward. “Bonjour, Madame,” he said.

  “M’sieur.”

  “Enchanté de te revoir.” (“Happy to see you again.”) They both laughed because his voice was like a recitation from one’s first French class. “Il fait beau, n’est-ce pas?” (“Nice day today, yes?”) They laughed again. That observation came from the same lesson.

  The awkwardness vanished. They smiled at one another. Because Africans did not kiss the way Europeans did, Madame did not expect Kwame to bestow on her mouth a kiss of thanks for their rain dance.

  “I’m glad I found you. I need some help with shopping.”

  They drove together to an African market. As they walked about the stalls, Kwame addressed Madame in English, testing her fluency. She regarded him flirtatiously, recognizing the words, but unwilling to bother decoding the sentence. He tested her twice more. She shook off the English, as she might a mosquito, and demanded, “Parlez francais!” So that was settled. They would communicate in French.

  “D’accord,” he said.

  With Madame’s help he palavered for a broom, paint, and, failing to find any brushes, a sponge to apply it. As they were leaving, Madame took him to a section where ancient women sold items spread out on faded cloths. She began to bargain with them. Kwame could identify none of their wares. As he examined the objects, Madame pulled curls of hair from his skull. “Ouch!” he exclaimed. “What’s happening?” Madame gave him an enigmatic grin and continued her bargaining. He realized suddenly that the women were selling magic ingredients. He took Madame by the wrist and demanded, “What’re you doing?”

  She held the hairs in her opposite hand, well out of his reach. “I will make you a charm,” she said.

  “Merci beaucoup, but I don’t want a charm.”

  “It will protect you. You will not end up like Mason.”

  They looked at each other a long moment. Kwame did not want a charm from her; that suggested a relationship. “How did Mason end up?”

  She smiled, shyly at first, then more boldly. “If you tempt the spirits,” she said, “they make you disappear.”

  He wondered: Was that a proverb? Or something concocted to sound like one? “Do you really believe that?” he asked. She looked at him for such a long moment that it was almost as if, behind her forehead, he could see her pondering: What does he want to hear? What am I supposed to say? Finally she said, “When the spirits cause someone to disappear, do not ask questions.”

  Another proverb, Kwame thought. Were they true proverbs? Or did she make them up as she went along? “You believe the spirits made him disappear?” he repeated. She did not have to consider that; she nodded. Yes, she did believe it. Kwame shook his head, baffled, and released her wrist.

  She bought the ingredients for the charm and placed them and Kwame’s hairs into a woven bag she carried. As they left the market, Kwame said, “I owe you a drink for helping me so much.”

  “D’accord,” she said. Okay.

  WHEN MADAME Van joined Kwame on the Afrique terrace, she arrived carrying her mankala board and the seeds. She announced, “Odejimi is coming down. He’s received some bad news so he won’t play mankala. That means I can teach you.” While waiting for their drinks, she prepared the board. After receiving their beers, she explained the game, watching Kwame with eyes that lacked expression, yet sent across the small table between them a soothing sense of her presence. That presence so engulfed him that he hardly concentrated on the rudiments of the game. She easily won the round they played.

  “You’re too good for me,” Kwame said. “I’ll never beat you.”

  “You will beat me,” she said simply. “The doctor won’t, but you will beat me.
” She said the words as if telling his fortune.

  Dr. Odejimi joined them at sunset. “Will it depress you to listen to the news?” he asked. He made room on the table for a Grundig shortwave radio. “I stopped when I first arrived. Who needs news in a place like this?” He poured whiskey from a bottle he had brought with him. “We’re totally cut off from the world here. We’re asleep in an island of tranquility, and that’s the way I like it.”

  The doctor turned on the radio and tuned to a station. “But now and then we’re shaken awake. I just heard from a Nigerian friend doing humanitarian work in Goma,” he reported. “Across the border from Rwanda. We can be glad we’re in this pisshole instead of where I used to live in Gisenyi, in Rwanda.”

  “You’ve moved around,” commented Kwame.

  “In Gisenyi I lived in a house overlooking Lake Kivu. A gloriously beautiful place. But so tragic.”

  “Pourqoi tragique?” asked Madame Van.

  The doctor did not reply. He peered across the river as if staring at Lake Kivu from Gisenyi.

  They listened to the BBC’s Africa Service. It reported continuing tensions at the refugee camps around Goma. “Continuing tensions,” scoffed Odejimi. “That’s British understatement for you.” Odejimi turned off the radio.

  “What happened in Gisenyi?” Madame Van asked in French.

  Odejimi watched a pirogue move across the surface of the river. “Gisenyi is set on the very backbone of Africa,” he said, speaking as if to himself, but in her language. “With Rift Valley escarpments all around. The town stretches along Lake Kivu. Luckily I had a friend, a Belgian woman, a very generous person. She took pity on a doctor who found it inconvenient just then to return to his home country.” The doctor spoke without looking at either of his listeners, as if in a trance, reminiscing of the generous Belgian woman. “She was a widow. Her dead husband had had pyrethrum plantations in the back-country. She gave me a room in her house.” He paused, as if thinking of that room.

  “For generations there had been what the BBC calls ‘continuing tensions’ between the two main tribes, the Tutsis who were the traditional rulers and the Hutus. Now and then you heard Hutus say that they were going to get the Tutsis. Hutu radio broadcast virulent anti-Tutsi talk. The widow and I took comfort with each other. We were outside of this tension—although, of course, we felt it. Sometimes we spent the night together. Then the Hutu president was assassinated. His plane was shot down.

  “We learned about this from the houseboy. He’d been with my friend for years, a Hutu, a Christian, married to a Christian Tutsi. They had three children. When he told us this news, he warned us that trouble was coming. He was afraid of what might happen.”

  Kwame and Madame Van glanced at one another. Odejimi who so often monitored their glances seemed totally oblivious of them.

  “The next day,” he went on, “there were soldiers in the streets. People were hurrying to cross the border into Goma. Into the Congo. The border’s just outside town. People at the hospital didn’t show up. Nurses pulled me aside to whisper that Tutsis were being murdered. People I knew were being killed.”

  Odejimi stopped talking. He reached over to grasp Madame Van’s forearm in order to anchor himself in Mbandaka and prevent a drift back to Gisenyi. “You’ve stopped playing mankala,” he said.

  “Don’t stop your story,” Kwame said.

  “I shouldn’t have read the letter. I shouldn’t have brought the radio. What’s so wonderful about Mban is that nothing happens here.”

  “In Gisenyi,” Madame Van said. “What happened?”

  “Gangs of Hutus were killing Tutsis. Any way they could. We could smell blood in the air. Tutsis would take refuge in churches and Hutu priests would set their own churches on fire. They would kill Hutus sympathetic to Tutsis.”

  Odejimi sipped his whiskey and stared at the river. “The Hutu servant came running to us that very afternoon. ‘You must leave,’ he cried. My friend had a boat. The servant begged her to take his family. She told him to fetch them. We would leave immediately, meet them on the boat. We packed. Went to the boat—” Odejimi looked off again and stopped speaking. Madame Van and Kwame glanced again at one another. Madame Van put her hand on the doctor’s shoulder. Odejimi put his hands to his face. He rubbed his eyelids with his fingertips. The eyelids were wet with tears.

  “I tell you,” he scoffed, putting on his man-of-the-world persona. “You can see vicious stuff on this continent.”

  Madame Van pushed her chair beside the doctor’s. She reached her arm around his shoulders and laid her head against his. The doctor pushed her away, as if to demonstrate that he had not lost control of himself.

  “From the boat we saw Hutu thugs chasing the servant and his family as they came racing into the yard. They hurried toward the boat, running as fast as they could. They were carrying cloths filled with belongings. Hutu thugs got into the yard. The parents dropped the cloths and picked up the children. As she ran, the wife stumbled. Dropped to the ground. The thugs fell on her with pangas. Cracked open her head. Severed her neck. Whacked the child almost in half. Oh! The wails! The blood on those pangas. On the grass. The jubilation of the thugs.

  “The husband, the Hutu, he looked back. Stopped for a moment. The thugs came after him and the two kids he carried. Oh!”

  After a long pause he went on. “The widow and I were on the boat. When I saw what was happening, I put my hand over her mouth and pushed her to the deck. I lay on top of her. I whispered, ‘Don’t make a sound! Not a sound!’

  “Finally it was over. After the thugs ran off hunting others, I went down to the yard. To see what I could do. They were all dead.” Odejimi poured himself whiskey and drank it. “My friend and I got out of that place as fast as we could.”

  For some moments they were all silent. Sunset reddened the sky and the river.

  LATER THAT afternoon while the trio still sat on the terrace, Moulaert appeared, escorting a girl in a school uniform. Kwame and Madame Van watched the pair move across the terrace. Odejimi did not notice them; he still stared at the river. The girl was slimly well-shaped and very pretty. Moulaert paid her elaborate attention. Following the Belgian’s instructions, Tombolo led her to a table removed from the others and took the order for refreshment, inspecting the girl carefully. “The erotic quest,” commented Madame Van. Only then did Odejimi examine the new arrivals. He watched the hotelier appraising the new morsel.

  “Tombolo wonders if she’s afemme libre,” Odejimi remarked, happy to anchor himself once more in Mbandaka. “If she is, he’ll want his cut. If not, he’ll want some of her himself.”

  When Moulaert glanced over, Odejimi saluted him. “Join us?”

  “Not today, thanks.”

  After a time Kwame asked the doctor, “When you and your friend left Gisenyi, where did you go?”

  “To Bukavu,” said the doctor. “At the south end of the lake. She had a sister-in-law there with a large house. Ten miles from the Rwanda border. One day refugees started pouring in. They huddled on open ground around the town. Three days later they were camping in our garden. Not just a few of them, dozens. You couldn’t tell them to push off. There was no place to go and more were coming.”

  Kwame tried to imagine the exodus.

  “They were wretched. Cold. Terrified. Starving. The women realized they couldn’t stay. Some of those people in their garden were murderers. They’d killed Tutsis in unthinkable ways. Who else might they kill?” Odejimi said nothing for a moment. Finally he added, “My friend and her sister-in-law were able to get out. I went to Goma. To be of assistance. I’d taken the Hippocratic oath, after all.

  “By that time Tutsis living in Uganda had formed an army, a real army. They invaded Rwanda. Hutus, whether they’d done any killing or not, assumed they’d be slaughtered. So they fled to Zaire. A refugee camp—500,000 people—suddenly appeared on an old lava flow just west of Goma. Soon there were outbreaks of dysentery and cholera. Bodies stacked up at the roadsides. Black flie
s so thick you could hardly drive through them. A stench that made you wretch.” Odejimi smiled sardonically. “There was plenty of work for a doctor.”

  He reached down to pinch Madame Van’s toes. “Don’t I wish you’d been there, my lovely!” he laughed. “Do you wish you’d been there?” She shook her head. “No curiosity about eastern Zaire?”

  “How long were you in Goma?” Kwame asked.

  “Too long. The Interahamwe, the Hutu thugs, the génocidaires, were no match for the Tutsis’ Patriotic Front. So they also fled to the refugee camps. They were the only group with any organization. They took over the camps. Demanded that all food be handled through them. All medical care. So they stopped being refugee camps. Became concentration camps.

  “Relief workers didn’t know what to do. Refuse to let the Interahamwe handle the food, you’d get killed and people would starve. I told myself I would not get involved. But being there involved you. I was threatened again and again. I was haunted by what I’d seen in the yard of the house in Gisenyi.” The doctor shrugged. “Then I heard the hospital in Mbandaka could use me. Voilà! Here I am.”

  For some minutes none of the threesome spoke. Odejimi took his bottle of whiskey and poured some into Madame Van’s glass and into Kwame’s. “After that story,” he said, “you need something stronger than beer.” Kwame swallowed his whiskey and was glad for the taste of something strong in his throat. Madame Van did not drink her whiskey. Instead she inspected the girl Moulaert was entertaining on the terrace. Kwame and Odejimi joined the inspection.

  The girl sat erectly, enjoying her moment on the Afrique terrace and the obvious effect she had on Moulaert. While he settled the bill, proud of himself and avoiding the eyes of his friends, the girl glanced around the terrace with a boldness that missed nothing.

  “Moulaert’s found love!” whispered Odejimi.