The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Page 15

  “You’re a marvel,” she said. “Want to make that a permanent assignment?”

  “You sound more relaxed,” Kwame hazarded.

  “There’s been terrible fighting around Goma,” she reported in a voice that was oddly lilting. “The humanitarian catastrophe we’ve all been dreading may be in the making.”

  “Are we involved?” Kwame asked. The shortwave radio reports he had heard did not make it clear exactly what the American role was. A puzzled silence came from the other end of the line. “The Americans,” Kwame repeated, “are we in—”

  “Oh, you haven’t heard,” exclaimed Pilar. “We’re off the hook. Our guys aren’t coming in after all. We’re all so relieved.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m on my way out. There’s an embassy cocktail celebrating our release. I’ll send you a report of what happened.” Pilar signed off.

  The promised report never arrived.

  ELEVEN

  Kwame found Madame Van and Odejimi, Moulaert, and his Marike on the Afrique terrace. “I’ve just done the impossible,” he boasted to his friends. “Talked to Kinshasa by telephone.” A cry of astonishment greeted this news. “Of course, I had to threaten and cajole—”

  “And bribe!” added the doctor.

  “And bribe,” agreed Kwame. “All day long to do it. I announced to Kinshasa that the American library is now open. I hope you will all come borrow books.” The friends applauded this news. Kwame turned to Marike, the newcomer to the group. She sat primly in a European woman’s jeans and top. “I hope you will borrow a book, Mademoiselle. I’m sure we have one that would please you.” Marike smiled shyly at Kwame.

  “I will look for her,” said Moulaert.

  “Bring her along,” Kwame urged. He turned again to Marike. “Please tell your school friends that the library is open.”

  “What news from Kin?” asked Moulaert to shift attention away from the possession he intended to share with no one.

  “Terrible fighting around Goma,” Kwame said.

  “I heard the news at noon,” said the doctor. “Tutsi soldiers and irregulars invaded the refugee camps. The innocents are returning to Rwanda. The génocidaires are fleeing into Zairean jungles. And good riddance to them!”

  “The Tutsis did this?” asked Moulaert.

  “Yes, Tutsis!” exulted Odejimi. “Africans did this! Not Canadians. Not Americans!”

  “What happens to the people who flee to the jungle?” asked Madame Van.

  “They die,” said Odejimi.

  “Women and children too?” she asked.

  “The génocidaires have this choice, Madame,” Kwame explained. “They can go back to Rwanda—”

  “Where they will be killed,” interrupted Odejimi.

  “Or they can take their chances in the jungles.”

  “But many who flee to the jungle were never killers,” she protested.

  Kwame looked at the doctor. “Are you sure there were no outside troops? No Americans?”

  “Tutsis did it,” said the doctor. “And hats off to them!”

  If this was true, Kwame thought, no wonder the embassy staffers were so exhilarated. They dreaded the prospect of American involvement at the Lakes. Kwame himself felt ashamed that Americans, with all their power and protestations of goodwill, had done nothing to right the wrongs of the Rwandan massacres.

  ONE AFTERNOON Kwame beat Madame Van at mankala. When Odejimi heard this news, he did not believe it. Kwame insisted it was true. “She let you win,” Odejimi said. When Kwame began to win consistently, Odejimi warned, “Be careful, my friend. She gave you a charm for who knows what purpose. Now she is submitting to you. You will never escape from her.”

  How ridiculous, Kwame thought. All he had done was to win a few mankala games. Fair and square. How could Madame entrap him? He did not believe in charms. It was true that his victories over her, so long in coming, flattered his masculine vanity. They meant that she preferred him to Odejimi. That idea pleased him.

  But at the same time fearing that Odejimi might be right, that he could not escape from her now, Kwame began to avoid mankala.

  WHEN KWAME’S friends gathered again to watch videos at the center’s library, they sat around afterward, drinking whiskey and beer, and discussed the situation at the Lakes. Madame Van once again bemoaned the plight of innocent Hutu refugees, moving without food or shelter ever deeper into jungle. “What will become of them?” she asked.

  “They better not be headed here,” Mme Berton said.

  “Keep the thugs out of the Equateur!” agreed her husband.

  “It’s a thousand-kilometer walk,” said Odejimi. “If they come this far, their feet will be sore.”

  They began to debate the dangers posed by those among the refugees who were militants. “Do they kill people for food?” Marike asked.

  “Probably,” said Badeka. “Most of them are armed.”

  “And desperate!” added his wife.

  “Poor Zaire!” Moulaert said. “Nothing but troubles these past forty years.”

  “The Americans were going to do something,” said Badeka. “Is that finished?”

  “What is there to do?” Odejimi asked.

  “The Americans are so rich,” said Théa Badeka, “but they help only themselves.”

  “Americans want to help Africa,” Kwame said. He paused. Should he try to explain how his countrymen thought? He plunged ahead. “Most Americans honestly believe that—with goodwill, hard work, and money—practically every problem can be solved.” This assertion produced looks of perplexity. His listeners glanced at one another.

  “Even the massacres?” asked Madame Van.

  “Most Americans—many of them anyway—think that life is fair,” Kwame continued. “That generally bad things do not happen to good people.”

  The others snickered, as if Kwame had said something preposterous. He felt conspicuous and tongue-tied.

  “It’s your job to tell us that,” Odejimi challenged. “Do you believe it?”

  “Americans are well-meaning people,” Kwame went on. “Most of them work very hard. But they are fortunate and comfortable and life has been good to them.” He shrugged. “They want to help—but not if it hurts them.”

  The others glanced at one another again. “Do you believe that life is fair?” Odejimi asked a second time.

  “How could I?” Kwame asked. “I’m a black man.”

  “But you are rich,” said Madame Van.

  “No, I am not rich.”

  “But, of course, you are,” insisted Badeka.

  “Things are getting better,” Kwame admitted. “Especially for those who work hard.” He realized in saying this he sounded very American. “It is not so much a white man’s country anymore. And really—I am not rich, not in America.” The Badekas and Madame Van stared at him with genuine surprise. They glanced at Odejimi who had studied in America. He nodded, confirming the truth of what Kwame said. “I’m not poor either,” Kwame added. “And I’ve had good jobs, the jobs I wanted.”

  “Have you ever had a white girlfriend?” Badeka asked.

  “Of course,” Kwame said.

  “Could you marry this white girlfriend?” Madame Van asked.

  “Of course,” Kwame repeated. “We lived together for two years. That’s not marriage. But we were a couple. We are a couple.”

  “Do you have a photo of her?” inquired Madame Van.

  Kwame withdrew his wallet. He removed a photo taken in New York of Livie and him, arms about one another, and passed it around. The Africans examined it carefully. When Madame Van took it, Kwame sensed that she was comparing herself to Livie feature by feature. “She has no breasts,” Madame Van remarked.

  “I can assure you,” Kwame said. “She is not a boy.”

  “American women starve themselves to be thin,” said Odejimi. “Impossible to sleep with them. Their bones keep you awake.”

  “And you could marry her?” Madame Van asked again.


  “Of course. You married a white person. So could I.” Madame folded her arms across her chest. “And I could divorce her. And have all the problems and unhappiness that stem from that.” The others watched him; America seemed inexplicable to them. “It is mainly white people who think that life is fair,” he tried to explain. “That all problems can be solved. Life has been good to them.”

  LATER THAT night Kwame sat alone on his balcony, annoyed that he had been so inarticulate about Americans. He was also distressed about the refugees, about frightened people plunging ever closer to the privation that awaited them in the jungles. He heard Madame Van enter the room. She came out onto the balcony and took the chair beside him. At last she asked, “Will you marry this white woman?”

  Kwame shrugged.

  “Does she believe that all problems can be solved?”

  “Probably,” he said.

  “And you?”

  They were quiet for a moment, both of them staring at a river they could not see. Finally he replied, “Americans are by nature optimistic. And everything changes over time.”

  He thought again of the refugees. He supposed—how American of him!—that most of them were innocent of participating in the genocide. But not all of them. Genocide: that was a problem that did not solve itself over time. It disturbed him that embassy people in Kinshasa had cocktails to celebrate the fact that American troops had escaped duty in Zaire.

  Yet what could troops accomplish? If there was ever a quagmire, Rwanda was it. Still it unsettled him that American policy seemed always to seek only its own advantage, that Americans, besides being rich and fortunate, also had to be comfortable, that they were willing to help others only if no American got hurt. He knew, too, that most Americans did not see things his way. They would ask: “Why should Americans sacrifice their blood and treasure for an ungrateful world?”

  A VOICE woke Kwame during the night. He opened his eyes and listened. He lay naked, Madame’s back warm against his side, and stared at the ceiling.

  Then the voice spoke to him once more. “Get out of here!” it said. It was a man’s voice, one that Kwame did not recognize. Again it demanded, “Get out of this place!” Kwame suddenly understood: it was Mason’s voice. Mason, calling him from wherever he was, telling him to leave.

  But how could he leave? He had a job to do. Mason’s voice kept repeating the warning: “Get out of this place while you can!”

  Kwame turned his body toward Madame Van, his chest against her back. He caressed her hip, slid his hand up under her arm and cupped her breast. He took the nipple between his fingers; he pinched it until it became taut. The woman murmured. Kwame slid his hand down around her, turned her toward him. Only half-awake, she embraced him. He felt engulfed by her, safe. He no longer heard Mason’s voice, warning him.

  LATER LYING awake, grateful for Madame’s rescuing him, he could not help thinking that his relationship with her was contrary to nature. At least to his nature. He had grown very fond of her. He had come to want exclusive sexual rights to her. So how could he share her with Odejimi?

  He wondered if his desire that she be exclusively his stemmed from macho acquisitiveness. From ancient genetic programming that made men want to possess women as mere objects as he and Odejimi possessed her. If not, had he become trapped into thinking the way his mother did? Was his mother’s morality haunting him? After all, why object to sharing her? He and the doctor were both transients. They were pals, all of them friends. There could be no intellectual objection to the arrangement.

  Strangely he again wished that he could give Van a child. That would make her so happy. But how could he? She seemed unable to conceive. That relieved him from any annoying obligation to use contraceptives with her. Still this wishing disturbed him. It even frightened him a little. Where did it come from? Why did it keep popping into his head? Was it genetic too?

  He mentioned the recurring thought to the Nigerian doctor. “She gave you a charm, didn’t she?” Odejimi asked, laughing. Kwame admitted that she had. “Did she take hair from you?” Kwame acknowledged that she had. “And she has access to your semen.” Odejimi mocked him, shaking his head. “She has a charm working on you, old boy.”

  “I don’t believe in that kind of thing.”

  “Of course, you don’t. You’re an educated man.” Odejimi guffawed. “But you keep thinking about it.”

  “So what do I do?” Kwame asked.

  “Burn the charm.”

  Kwame nodded. He would do that.

  Odejimi scrutinized him. “Next you’ll tell me you want exclusive access to her.” Kwame shrugged. “In America, old sod, this is called ‘falling in love.’”

  “I’m not in love with her.”

  “You need to sleep with other women,” Odejimi said.

  “Is that a medical diagnosis?”

  “I didn’t have to go to medical school to know that,” said the doctor. “What about Marike? She’s ready.”

  “I don’t even much like Marike.”

  “You have to like them?” Odejimi laughed.

  “It helps. Van has such sweetness—”

  “Oh, blimey! You’re in—”

  “I am not!” Kwame insisted. Then he asked, “How could it possibly happen with Marike? He watches her.”

  “She might come to the center. Borrow a book. You have some place to do it there? Cushions or something?”

  Kwame shook his head. He would not turn the center into a site for assignations.

  “Marike’s not impossible,” Odejimi assured him. “I’ve had her.”

  Kwame burst out laughing. “You’ve had her? When?”

  “Moulaert sent her for a test. So I tested her.” Odejimi howled with laughter and raised an eyebrow. “She needs variety. And she doesn’t like it that Moulaert wants her to do things Africans consider abominations.” He stared at Kwame. “You better do something there if you think you want a child with Van.”

  “She’s Moulaert’s plaything,” Kwame said.

  “You Puritan!” Odejimi laughed. “You could try La Petite. Be sure you wear a condom. Or two or three.”

  Kwame smiled. The idea was completely preposterous.

  “I hope you won’t ask Van to live with you.”

  Kwame shook his head.

  “Good. I’d get lonely.”

  AS CHRISTMAS approached, Kwame’s friends made plans to escape what Théa termed “the hubbub of Mbandaka.” The Badekas would leave town. Moulaert was driving Marike to her village. Dr. Odejimi invited Madame Van to accompany him to Kisangani where friends he had known in Gisenyi were working. That she had accepted the invitation distressed Kwame. It seemed certain that the Nigerian would gain ground in their unspoken competition for her favor.

  Kwame’s feelings for her had deepened. He thought of her frequently during the day, wondering what she was doing, whom she was with. The nights when she was with Odejimi Kwame did not sleep well. He mused, too, about what Livie would do for the holidays. Perhaps she would simply catch up on her law courses. And what would he do? Suffer Mbandaka without friends.

  Lying in bed one morning, watching reflected dawn light move across the ceiling, Kwame realized that he must get Madame Van something for Christmas, something very special for she, after all, had given him Mason’s laptop. She was leaving the next day for Kisangani. There she would surely be impressed with the large city, with Odejimi at ease in it, this place where he had friends. There Odejimi might begin to win at mankala.

  But what to get her?

  Unless he got her something striking, she would not think of him the entire time she was gone. His gift would need to signify that their relationship was different from the one she had with the doctor. She must know that, while she was a mere plaything to Odejimi, with him she had a deeper bond, even a kind of romance. Probably she did not see it that way; Africans seemed not to think in those terms. But he treated her with respect; their times together were sweeter. He was not fooling around, as Odejimi was, with Mme Bert
on. Madame Van was certainly aware of that dalliance.

  In midafternoon he drove to the communal market. He walked through aisles of offerings: plastic shoes, cheap mammy cloths, cheaper videos, throwaway trinkets, items for fashioning fetishes. He saw nothing that rose to the level of a gift fit for this special friend. He bought her a gold chain—which was probably not gold—because he had to give her something. But the chain did not satisfy him. It was something a man gave a woman whose body pleased him. Madame Van might like that, but he must get her something significant.

  At the edge of the market he came upon a curious display: carvings sculpted apparently from tree trunks about the width of his outstretched hand. The pieces exhibited rude artistry. Kwame found himself drawn particularly to the head of a woman, perhaps a foot tall. She had almond eyes, a flattened nose, full lips, and hair coiffed in tight rows, trimmed at the back of the neck. The wood was dark brown and lustrous like the skin of a woman. The wood’s grain was clearly visible on the forehead and cheeks. The head possessed an innate dignity. Although it did not resemble Madame Van, it made Kwame think of her.

  A gift of art! Not merely a merchant’s gift of gold. He doubted that any of the men she had known had given her such a thing. He hoped she would understand that the artist in him, the poet, was giving her something finer than gold.

  When he saw her later that afternoon on the hotel terrace, he asked her to accompany him away from the others. At the door of his room he said, “I have a Christmas gift for you.” He led her into his room. Standing on a table was the head. She beheld it and stood stock still.

  “That’s it? For me?”

  “Oui. Pour toi. Joyeux Noël.” She gazed at it, not knowing what to say. Kwame laughed. “It’s a gift of art,” he said.

  “Mais comment? What do I do with it?”

  “You admire it. As I admire you.” She glanced at him to see if he was joking. “You gaze at it and see a woman’s dignity, her quiet steadiness. Her mystery. That’s what I see when I look at you. You keep it forever and always think of me.”