The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Read online

  “And the girl, she has found freedom,” added Madame Van.

  “He’s in for a ride!” said the doctor.

  When the girl’s eyes met Madame Van’s, the older woman nodded to her. “This is a girl who wants never to return to her village,” she said. “I think we will not see her again in that uniform. I would guess that Moulaert has bought her clothes.” Madame Van gave the girl an ironic look and left the terrace.

  Kwame watched her go.

  “That’s Van eight years ago,” said Odejimi. “A village girl thinks a white man’s attention makes her special.”

  “Did you ever meet Vandenbroucke?” Kwame asked.

  “Another Moulaert.” The doctor laughed. “Moulaert can thank his juju Van won’t sleep with him. He might wake up dead.” The doctor dragged on his cigarette and scrutinized Kwame. “A bee visiting many plants makes the honey sweet,” he said. “And causes flowers to bloom.” He grinned. “I’m glad you had her.”

  Kwame shrugged.

  “I speak to you as a doctor, a humanitarian.” He laughed. “Let Van help you out.” Kwame did not answer. “Or Joelle Berton. Or this girl of Moulaert’s. She’d rather have you than that Belgian.”

  “Perhaps,” said Kwame. “But why break Moulaert’s heart?”

  “Even if you marry at Christmas,” Odejimi said, “it’s not exploitation to sleep with Van.”

  Kwame wondered if the doctor had talked this way to Mason.

  “Sleep with her and you exalt her status. That’s not exploitation. And it’s important for your health.”

  “You sound like a pimp.”

  “That’s what you get trying to help a pal,” Odejimi remarked. “Relax. You’re in Mban. Poor Berton. Consumed by fears that someone’s cuckolding him. Afraid that if I’m alone with his wife, or you are, she’ll want to jig-jig.” He grinned. “Which she will.” He cocked an eyebrow. “She knows the secret: ‘Once they’ve had black, they never go back.’ ” Odejimi laughed. Kwame joined him. The two men played the game of mankala that Madame Van had set up. Odejimi won. They pushed the game aside to watch the sunset. Finally the doctor said, “The Americans will get drawn into that business in Rwanda. When that happens, will you go there?”

  EIGHT

  Kwame found that his days passed more quickly if he had a whiskey to sip at work. Odejimi helped him buy a supply. Sometimes in the evenings he would work late at the center. He would reread through the e-mail jottings Livie had sent him, many written on her laptop in classes she found boring. Since he had kept Mason’s tobacco and cigarette papers, he would roll a cigarette and smoke. The tobacco made him feel mellow. When he returned to the hotel, he would smoke another cigarette and have a nightcap. In the glow they created, it bothered him less—although he was still bothered—to hear the sounds of Odejimi and Madame Van making love in the next room. Or to know that across the courtyard Moulaert was enjoying the schoolgirl he had brought to the hotel.

  Sometimes at work he would both sip whiskey and smoke. When this happened, he moved through the workday in a haze. He accomplished little. In moments of clarity he realized that the haze was a negative. On the other hand, he felt less frustrated at being in Mbandaka; that was a positive. The haze seemed appropriate to this place seemingly outside of time, outside of connection to the forces and the people who had hitherto shaped his life.

  KWAME RETURNED to the center after dinner at the Mongo Restaurant. It could not have been later than eight o’clock. Walking across the dark center toward his office, he bumped into an obstruction on the library floor. It took him a moment to realize that he had stumbled over Anatole making love to a woman. Embarrassed, Kwame muttered, “Excuse me!” The tata was unruffled. In his deliberate way, he climbed to his feet, hoisting his trousers to his waist in his slow, methodical way. He bowed and gravely said: “Bonsoir, patron.” His woman grabbed a cloth and covered herself.

  “Excuse me, Anat,” Kwame repeated. He felt mortified. He did not want to fuck up anybody else’s fucking. He lurched into his office and closed the door. He leaned onto his table, laughing, his head in his hands. The odor of sex, that dangerous perfume, was in the air. Lucky Anatole! He fanned the air in front of his face. He did not emerge until he was certain the fortunate tata and his friend were gone.

  BACK AT the hotel Kwame poured himself some whiskey and paced the room. I better get out of here, he thought. How will I ever make it to Christmas? A knock came at the door. When he opened it, Madame Van stood at the threshold, her hands behind her back. The way she gazed at him set off a tingling in his body. Time suddenly vanished. Whether he beheld her for seconds or minutes he did not know. He knew only that his mouth was suddenly dry.

  “You are not with the doctor tonight?”

  “Monsieur Berton has gone to Kin.” She smiled, rather shyly. Her smile gave him an overpowering impulse to touch her. He sensed himself as being outside of time. Whoa! he told himself. He thought of Livie. He consciously dragged himself back into the pull of minutes, hours. When neither of them spoke, Madame Van brought her hands before her body. They held a laptop computer. “For you,” she said.

  It was as if Mason had entered the room. Kwame’s body no longer tingled. Moisture returned to his throat. “Where did you get this?”

  “Mason give it to me,” she said.

  No, Mason would not give away his computer.

  “He gave it to me. I give it to you.”

  He watched her. How mysterious she was. How beautiful! Standing there, holding a computer she did not know how to use. She offered it to him with the same ceremony, the same solemnity, with which a girl might offer her virginity.

  “When the spirits offer presents,” she said, “take them.” “Thank you, Madame. What a gift!” She extended the computer. When he took it, touching her, a buzz sounded in his head. The tingling returned to his body, stronger now. He stepped back into the room, a little dizzy, thinking only that the room was mainly dark now, that Madame had shut the door and that she was close beside him. Blood pounded so strongly in his head that he could hardly see, hardly think, hardly—

  Suddenly he was holding her, kissing her, pulling away her cloth. Then they were beside his bed. Then together, holding each other fiercely. Then inside her, blood pounding in his head. They grasped one another, cried out together as convulsions shook them, as the end of the world might shake them. Time stopped. They hurtled through space, clinging to one another, going farther and farther until—

  They loosened their grips. Collapsed into one another. Laughed. “Oh!” whispered Kwame. He gazed at her, her eyes closed, light sweat on her upper lip as it curled in a smile. “What was that? An earthquake?” She opened her eyes. They seemed those of one dead until they came alive, watching him. Smiling, she groaned with pleasure. “Thank you for the laptop,” Kwame said. They laughed again.

  When their body heat subsided, Kwame covered them with a sheet and lay, holding her. He drifted in and out of sleep. He wondered, what’s become of me: adrift at work, smoking and drinking more than he ever had. And now this.

  He thought finally of Livie. Please understand, he told her. Then he slumbered. Van moved beside him. He woke. He thought of Odejimi. Would he discover what they’d done? Would Van report to him: L’américain et moi, nous avons fucké? Would he laugh? Would he care?

  Of course, he would care. A man might offer his woman to another man, but usually the offer was designed to produce their bonding. The man would expect to grant permission. The permission giver became a patron, the receiver a vassal. So that the relationship between the men was redefined, deepened, and the woman served merely as an agent in that deepening.

  But maybe Odejimi wouldn’t care, Kwame thought. He might be pleased. They lived side by side at the hotel; they drank together. Odejimi was his only friend in Mbandaka. Now they had become buddies, sharing the same toy, this woman.

  And what did Madame Van think? Did she care? Apparently not. Hadn’t they all conspired to have this happen? />
  Madame Van shifted her body toward him. They kissed. Their tongues touched. His hands caressed her. Suddenly she was astride him and he inside her. He thought: Are you crazy? Oh, this is good! What are you doing? Oh! He turned off his thinking. He wouldn’t think. Like the tata he would just be. Just be in his body. In her body.

  STANDING ON his hotel balcony the next morning in a tee shirt and boxers, smoking the first of the day’s cigarettes, Kwame watched the river pass below him. After a time he returned to the room, reached beneath his mattress and pulled out Kent Mason’s laptop. He beheld it for a time. He knew that, if Mason had left Zaire, he would have taken the laptop with him. Had he truly given it to Madame Van for safekeeping? Was that credible? It suggested more of a relationship there than he—Hunh.

  Finally Kwame opened it. Would it operate? He pushed several keys. The laptop greeted him with a tone that cheered him. It did work! A screen-saver image spread itself across the screen. A wedding party stood on the lawn of a country club somewhere in America.

  Kwame bent close to the screen, surveyed the bridal party, and studied the groom. He shook his head, trying to clear the haze induced by the cigarette. Was that Mason? The bridegroom bore a striking resemblance to the man in the photo wearing the orange sport shirt with the blue asterisks. Was Mason married? No one had mentioned Mason being married.

  Kwame closed the laptop. He felt superstitious about trespassing on Mason’s life. Even people who disappeared had rights to privacy. And Madame Van? The feel of her was still on his body. She was still in his head. He slowly sipped the whiskey. Why not believe her story?

  WHEN HE arrived at the center, Tata Anatole shuffled into the building. “Bonjour, M’sieur.”

  “Bonjour, Anat,” Kwame replied. “I’m sorry to—” He found himself at a loss for words. “To have interrupted you, you two, last night.”

  “My bush wife,” the tata explained. He evinced not the slightest embarrassment.

  “You have two wives, eh?”

  “Oui. C’est bon, ça.” Anatole explained, “She’s here for me to give her a baby.”

  Kwame nodded. “Excuse me for disturbing you.” He turned back to the laptop. Anatole watched him, as if awaiting instructions. Kwame sent him to fetch the mail.

  LATE THAT afternoon Kwame watched the Berton Peugeot park before the center. Madame emerged, wearing dark glasses and a tennis outfit, a large fiber carry-all dangling from her arm. Her shirt, unbuttoned almost to the waist, showed the swell of breasts unrestrained by a bra. The tennis outfit displayed nicely tapered legs. Madame moved toward the entry on those good legs and flashed Kwame a smile.

  “Bonjour, Madame,” Kwame greeted her at the door. “I was just leaving for the day.”

  “No leave,” she commanded. The smile turned sultry. “Zees book.” She drew Kwame’s copy of Things Fall Apart from the carry-all. “We talk book, no?” She patted his cheek and brushed past him into the center.

  Kwame again made his excuses that he could offer no refreshments. “Zees center,” Madame said. She moved about, leaving a trail of perfume. “I hear so much about zees center.” She praised Kwame’s transforming her husband’s building into a palace of culture.

  In addressing Kwame she leaned forward in a way that caused her unbuttoned tennis shirt to reveal delightful glimpses of breasts.

  If she had come only a few days earlier, Kwame thought, he might have found her hard to resist. Her cleavage and perfume would have inflamed the liquor haze in which he moved. But Madame Van had taken possession of that haze.

  “You finished the book?” he asked.

  “Yes, I fineesh.” Madame observed him in a way that caused a silence and a tension to fall across the room. It seemed as if they were the only people in the world. His mind’s haziness vanished. A caution alarm sounded in his head. He gestured Madame to a library table and sat out of reach at the end of it. She took a seat next to him and placed the novel between them.

  “What did you think of Okonkwo?” Kwame hastily inquired. Okonkwo was the novel’s hero.

  “Difficult man,” Madame replied. “Terrible husband.” After a moment she added, “I know for difficult husband.”

  “Were you moved by the ending? How the mighty have fallen?”

  “The man is all impulse. No self-control. He did not please me.” She watched him as if maneuvering to entrap him.

  Kwame discussed the structure of the novel, noting that Chinua Achebe had consciously arranged his material to present a portrait of the traditional life of Nigeria’s Ibo people, their festivals, their marriage practices, their values. Madame never took her eyes off him. “An African view of African life,” Kwame expounded. “Did you find that interesting? There’s more to Ibo life than most Westerners realize.”

  Mme Berton gazed deeply into Kwame’s eyes and leaned closer. “It make me feel alive to talk book with you,” she said. Her knee slid against his. Kwame moved his leg.

  “Were you aware of the Ibo proverbs? I’ve always loved them.” Kwame began to thumb through the novel, looking for proverbs.

  “Mostly in this swamp-town I walk around dead. You understand me, Monsieur?” Madame placed her hand on his thigh.

  “Here’s one,” he said quickly. “Only a fool pours grain into a bag full of holes.”

  Her hand slid to his groin. “Meet me somewhere.”

  Kwame slipped from his chair and walked about the room, searching for more Ibo proverbs. “Here’s another,” he said. “Eneke the bird says that since men have learnt to shoot with-out missing, he has learned to fly without perching.”

  Mme Berton put her head in her hands and stared at the table. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “Forgive me for touching you the way une Congolaise would.” Kwame slid onto an adjacent table and regarded the woman with sympathy. “Not easy for me to come here. To beg. My husband … Difficile like Okonkwo.”

  Kwame put his hand on Mme Berton’s.

  “I want to stop being dead,” she whispered. “ Tu comprends? We could laugh together. I am charming companion.” She implored him with her gaze. “Forgive me. I move too quickly.”

  “Madame,” Kwame said, withdrawing his hand, “I would love to talk books with you. We may be the only people in this place who read. This other?” He shook his head. “I would never compromise a woman’s marriage.”

  “Boy scout!” She gave him a scornful smile. “You understand nothing yet, do you, about Mbandaka? There is no culture here. No sauce for the mind. The only thing that gives interest to my life is to walk in the moonlight with a man. Most men want companion. I know about love. Unlike African girl who merely open her legs.”

  Probably she would be an interesting companion, Kwame thought. “Madame,” he said, “I’m flattered that you—”

  “We could meet at house by the airport. Friend let me use it.” She examined him slowly from head to toe. “Without woman you cannot survive in Mbandaka.”

  “Madame, please.”

  “Or do you … Have I come too late? Tell me.”

  Kwame looked back at the novel. He thumbed through pages.

  “You have woman, isn’t it? I make fool of myself.” She inspected the table as if hunting for her dignity there. She glanced up at him. “If man of promise come to this town, woman must move fast.”

  “You are beautiful, Madame,” Kwame said. “And I am awkward. I’m engaged to be married. At Christmas. My fiancée and I agreed that—I am a boy scout.”

  For a long moment neither person spoke. Finally Kwame asked, “Would you like to take another book?” Madame sat staring at the table. He was sure she would not return. “You might like Une Si Longue Lettre. A Senegalese woman looks at her life.”

  Madame finally regained her dignity. She rose and stood erect. She went to the door. She turned back to him. “You have not been here very long, Monsieur,” she said. “If you change your mind, bring me another book. My husband does not object to my discussing book.”

  KWAME AND Odejimi sat
on the terrace together. Odejimi drank whiskey. Kwame was content with beer. Odejimi said, “Van tells me she gave you the computer.” Kwame nodded. “I hope you thanked her.”

  Kwame chuckled. “Yes, I did.”

  “She was keen on having the thanks.”

  “How did she get the computer?”

  “Took it from me.” Odejimi shrugged as if this theft were a matter of no concern. “I didn’t want it.”

  That wasn’t Madame Van’s story. Kwame wondered what to believe. “How did you get it?” he asked. “Mason wouldn’t have given it away.”

  The doctor sipped his whiskey. “Mason was going through a crisis, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t think Kinshasa knew.”

  “Who am I? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do?”

  “How American! Asking such questions.”

  Odejimi shook his head in bafflement. “Strange behavior. He’d pick up teenage girls and give them a ride in his truck. For that they’d take off their clothes and he’d photograph them.”

  “I’ve seen some of the photographs. Why did he take them?”

  “To send to friends in the States perhaps? You tell me.”

  “Did he fuck the girls? That would have been risky.”

  “I don’t know. He was careful about AIDS. In fact, he made an appointment to see me professionally. I wondered what it was about. When he didn’t turn up, first day, second, third, I went round to the center. The tata had no idea where he was. I sent him on an errand and took the computer. Before anyone else could.”

  “You open it?”

  “Oh, no. Afraid I’d jig it.”

  “This crisis. Think he took off somewhere?”

  “I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  THE SCHOOLGIRL moved into Moulaert’s room. Odejimi would tease him. “The ancients contended,” he would say, “that for any marriage to work one party must be a fool.” The Nigerian would laugh while Moulaert blushed as red as his beard. He seemed to think that naming the girl would bind her to him and so he called her Marike. He hoarded his treasure and would not share her with others. He did not even introduce her. Odejimi was amused. “Haven’t the ancients always said,” he asked, “that the best husband eats his wife completely and swallows her with alcohol?”