The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Page 3

  Kwame shrugged.

  “Americans have a lot to answer for in this country.”

  “And a lot of others.”

  “CIA destabilized the country about three months after its independence. Connived to chase the first premier—Patrice Lumumba—out of office. Then the Belgians and their minions in the Katanga had him killed.”

  “At least we didn’t do that.”

  “Our hands aren’t clean. We brought in Mobutu and paid him well to be our puppet all these years.” After a moment Pilar added, “It makes you wonder if a foreign policy designed solely to advance our own interests really serves our purposes. We were obsessed with the Cold War in those days. But a strong unitary country, which is what Lumumba was hoping to build—” She stopped, shrugged. “But that’s all water under the bridge.”

  Kwame looked intently at her. Since she was articulating what was on her mind, he would raise the questions that were on his. “You say you don’t know how Mason is doing up-country. Why is that? Can’t you contact him?”

  “The mail sometimes works. The phone and e-mail almost never.” Pilar gave a shamefaced smile. “Truth is communications with Mban are shit.”

  She took a cigarette from her pack and lit it with the one that was merely an ember in the ashtray. She took a deep draw and released the smoke so that it became a gray curtain before the upper half of her face.

  “What does Mason think about being up there?”

  “I’m sure he knows it’s great for his career,” Pilar said. “He’s very junior and he opens his own post.”

  Kwame studied the woman as she smoked. Why in the world, he wondered, was the embassy sending people for whom it was responsible into the out-of-reach emptiness of back-country Zaire? Into jungles that had reverted to a primeval state unknown since before the colonial era?

  “Fill me in on something.” Kwame spoke in a tone he would not have used with Judkins. “Why is the US government putting people into places where it can’t communicate with them? This is the last decade of the twentieth century. Has the embassy never heard of radios?”

  “If we were some big news organization,” Pilar began. “Say CNN. Or if this were still the Cold War when we had money for such things, we’d load up the guys we send into the bush with all kinds of electronic gadgetry. Hell, they could relay TV pictures of themselves every afternoon at five.” She smiled with the same resignation to bureaucracy that had put lines in Judkins’s face. “Unfortunately,” she continued, “we’re not a big outfit. We’re just the world’s only superpower. Whose citizens feel overtaxed. Africa is a part of the world that Congress doesn’t care about. So … No commo. Still, we’ve got a job to do. And we think putting officers into places like Mbandaka is the best way to do it.

  “It’s only a week.” She smiled, teasing him. “Unless the plane misses its regular run.”

  “Does that happen?”

  “Happened last week. The ambassador had to fly to Lusaka.” Kwame’s nervousness amused Pilar. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you back next week.”

  Kwame poured the last of the wine they shared into Pilar’s glass and asked the waiter for coffee. As soon as the waiter brought it, a man appeared out of the darkness. He was Kwame’s age, pleasant looking in shorts and a tank top, his arms and shoulders well muscled from moving on his hands. His deformed, matchstick legs were folded before him. He skittered to the table and tapped a finger on it, looking up at the diners. Pilar offered him a couple of her cigarettes. He placed them in a pouch worn about his neck and waited while she fished through her handbag for zaires. Kwame asked, “Should I give him some?”

  “No, no,” Pilar said, “I’ll take care of it. He’s an old friend.”

  “Merci, M’sieur-dame,” the man said. He moved off to other tables.

  “What happens to a guy sent off to a post like Mbandaka?” Kwame asked. “He get any special training?”

  “Some guys go crazy,” said Pilar, “feeling as half-whole as that beggar. Others go native. Some flee. But most just do their job and get on with it.”

  “Which kind is Mason?”

  “You tell us when you get back,” Pilar said. “He’ll have changed a bit. We sent him into a rundown part of this derelict country. Put him into a town where he knew no one. Poor guy has great confidence, but not great French. We rented a house for him, told him to live in it and open a post.” Pilar glanced over at the man to whom she’d given money. “Mbandaka’s a great professional opportunity. Also a helluva challenge.”

  Kwame noticed that, as the man wove his way through the tables, he harvested more money from Europeans than from Africans.

  “Mbandaka’s not dangerous,” Pilar said. “The challenge is boredom, not violence.” Her eyes held Kwame’s as she drew again on her cigarette. “The sky, the river, the jungle: that’s all that’s there. Boredom can be a killer. Don’t think it can’t.”

  Kwame nodded.

  Pilar said, “I just hope he doesn’t say, ‘Fuck it!’ and take off.”

  Sitting now on the airport tarmac, Kwame wondered if Mason had done just that.

  AFTER A while—he was not sure how long—he saw figures emerging from the jungle. Four young men appeared out of the heat shimmer that rose from the tarmac. They wore khaki shorts, tattered and patched, and plastic sandals. Pangas—long, sharp-edged machetes—dangled from their hands. They had been watching him, Kwame realized, just as Kelly had said, and they were watching him now. They halted ten yards off and stared. Kwame rose. “Bonjour, mes amis,” he tried, realizing that he must learn Lingala greetings. He felt sweat pouring off him. He nodded. They stared.

  He saw other figures emerging along a road that led out of the jungle, half a dozen African women moving through the haze of heat. They were barefoot, cloths wrapped about their bodies and tucked in at the armpits. Some carried on their backs loads of kindling so heavy they staggered under the weight of them, their legs moving forward as if in labored dance. Other women walked erect, large logs balanced on their heads. Seeing Kwame, the women did not break the pace of their march. Despite the weight of their loads, they all stared at him.

  Kwame stared back. He spotted a teenage girl, her upraised arms holding a log positioned on her head. A cloth was wrapped about her hips, swaying as she moved. Her torso was naked, her breasts firm. The girl locked eyes with Kwame. They stared at one another. He gazed at her body: her grace, those breasts, the rolling hips.

  “What a pretty girl you are,” said a voice in his head. It was the voice of Mister Johnson, Joyce Cary’s outrageous Nigerian clerk, praising Bamu at the ferry over Fada River on the first page of the novel that bore his name. It was a novel that Africans generally loathed, but Kwame rather liked. “What pretty breasts,” Johnson’s voice continued. “God bless you with them.”

  Kwame smiled at himself, the literature professor, his head still in books. Suddenly he heard a motor. It revved, shattering the distant music. His brain stopped indulging professortype ideas. Instead it spun, dizzied by the jungle’s silence, the humidity, the heat, the afternoon sun on his skin, the dryness in his throat. He swallowed at the sights before his eyes: the procession of women bearing wood, the quartet of men still staring at him, the girl’s nakedness. Again the motor. The sound came from the road the women had used. Kwame forgot the men staring at him. He hoisted the duffels to his shoulders and hurried toward the sound.

  A Peugeot sedan appeared out of the vegetation. Kwame ran across the parking lot toward it, flailing his arms despite the duffels. The driver was white, a woman. A white woman? Here? He ran toward her car. Startled, fearful, she swerved to miss him. She sped across the parking area and raced onto the road that led toward town.

  Kwame dropped his duffels and watched the Peugeot disappear. Sweat poured off his body. He wiped his neck. Silence. Heat glistened off the jungle. A white woman. USIS had rented a house to serve both as Mason’s dwelling and the cultural center. The landlord was the only white man in town, Pilar had said, a man
named Berton who owned small-scale rubber holdings south of town. The woman must be his wife. Kwame looked in the direction her car had taken.

  There seemed only one thing to do. Kwame picked up the duffels and started in the direction the Peugeot had taken, moving toward town. He had hardly left the airport when behind him he heard the sound of another vehicle. He turned to see a Land Cruiser approaching. He tossed down his duffels and ran into the vehicle’s path. The Land Cruiser stopped. A tall, large-boned African in an agbada and woven cap climbed down from the driver’s seat. He grinned behind dark Ray-Bans with lenses that were lighter than his black, lustrous skin. He said, “An American, right?”

  “Yes, I’m Kwame Johnson.” Kwame offered his hand.

  Erect, but nonchalant, the man stood taller than Kwame. He had broad shoulders, large hands, and enormous feet shoved into sandals that stuck out below the yellow trousers that matched his agbada. The bright yellow of that garment, undoubtedly chosen with care, contrasted perfectly with the darkness of his skin. The garment immediately identified him not only as Nigerian, but as both a professional and a man with a developed sense of self-possession.

  “Mister. Johnson,” the man said. The tone was satiric, challenging.

  “You know Mister Johnson?”

  “Do you know it?” the man asked.

  Kwame shrugged.

  “That execrable tract. Had to read it in school. Author seemed to think that all Nigerians are twits.” He added, “I’m a Nigerian.”

  “I hope you won’t hold that name against me,” Kwame replied as they shook hands.

  “Not at all,” said the Nigerian. “I’ve been to the States. I know that one black in every five is called Johnson. But rarely Kwame Johnson.”

  “My distinction.”

  “I’m the witch doctor, old man,” said the Nigerian. “That’s my distinction. Olatubusun Odejimi at your service.”

  The doctor spoke an English so impeccable and with a voice so beguiling that Kwame grinned. “Could you give me a lift to town?” he asked. “Kent Mason was supposed to fetch me, but I guess he’s been delayed.”

  Odejimi cocked his head. “Does he expect you?” he asked. “Or did you drop out of the sky? I heard a plane.”

  “He was supposed to meet the plane. Have you seen him around?”

  “Not for a few days. Or his vehicle. I expect he’s in the bush.”

  AS THEY drove into town, Kwame watched the frond-thatched huts at the roadside. Some had walls of woven sticks; others were made of scrap metal. Outside the huts old men sat chatting on carved wooden chairs. Boys played with toys bent out of wire. Women worked at mortars; they yakked to one another, pounding manioc tubers into powder, babies tied to their backs.

  “How do you like this place?” Kwame asked the doctor.

  “Better than some places, worse than others.” He laughed with a musical voice. “Not so nice as Los Angeles, but so much easier to park.”

  Kwame laughed. “How did they deal with your first name in LA?” he asked. “What is it again?”

  “Olatubusun,” the doctor said. “What could be easier than that?”

  “Yoruba?”

  “It means ‘wealth increases.’ You know, another son. Not that it mattered. I was my mother’s first son. But she was my father’s third wife.”

  Odejimi was not handsome in any conventional way, Kwame felt, but he was undeniably attractive. His manner offered good-humored acknowledgment of that fact. His eyes gleamed with joyfulness, even when shaded by sunglasses. His laughter boomed from his mouth. His wit pricked in a way that was both wicked and so soft that it gave no offense.

  “They called me ‘Jimmy’ in LA,” the doctor said. “But I never felt like Jimmy. How is it that you’re Kwame?”

  “My parents went to Ghana before I was born and never got over it,” Kwame explained. “If they’d gone to Ibadan, I might have had your name.”

  “And everyone would call you ‘Johnny,’” the doctor said. “Johnny-Boy Johnson.” The doctor’s voice spilled out in a full-throated, musical laugh.

  The Land Cruiser passed an open-air market. Kwame noticed women selling merchandise from cloths laid out on the ground, haggling with their patrons. Some of them were huge with rolling shoulders, breasts, and buttocks and a laughing joyfulness. Beyond the market, mud-and-wattle huts gave way to neighborhoods the long-ago colonials had built for workers. “The ‘cités indigènes,’” Odejimi noted. “Where our friends, the Belgians, put their ‘boys.’” Kwame nodded as they passed dilapidated two-room cement-block houses standing in rows. By the roadside children played in the picked-clean hulk of a 1960s Peugeot.

  “You accomplishing great things here?” Kwame asked.

  “If you mean: Am I spearheading a health care revolution in this part of Africa, the answer is no.” Odejimi beamed a great grin on Kwame. “But I am surviving. Some might call it ‘hiding out.’ My government does not want me in Nigeria; our dictator is even worse than this one. So surviving is no mean accomplishment.”

  They passed the larger, better-built homes originally designed for Belgian colonials. Inhabited by Africans now, they had become rundown. Chairs had been set outside. Washing was spread over bushes to dry. Chickens pecked in the yards.

  The Land Cruiser arrived at an intersection of two streets, the town center. Young men loitered around the badly maintained government buildings on three of the corners. Some slept on the steps of the post office. Beyond these buildings lay a stretch of open ground, the colonials’ town place, now a market square.

  The vehicle passed the Mongo, the town’s bar-restaurant, and parked before an abandoned house, an unadorned, apparently uninhabited structure set in a yard of dirt and weeds. “Mason lives here,” Odejimi said. “Doesn’t look like he’s around.” Kwame studied the building. The Nigerian watched him. “Want some advice?” he asked. “Take a room at the Afrique. Other hotels are brothels.”

  Kwame gazed at the house. “I better check out this place first.”

  “I’m at the Afrique,” Odejimi said. “There’s a room available. The Air Zaire bloke who was renting it got transferred back to Kinshasa.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you over there,” Kwame said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  AS THE Land Cruiser drove off, Kwame heard a rhythmic pounding coming from the rear of the building. “Mason?” he called. “Hey, Mason, you’ve got a visitor.” The pounding stopped. “Mason?” he called again and waited for a reply. The pounding started again. Advancing uncertainly, duffels strapped over his shoulders, Kwame moved to investigate the sound.

  Behind the building stood one of the two-room cement-block houses Kwame had seen in the cités. Before it a woman, no longer young, stooped over a wooden mortar. Naked to the waist, she was pulverizing manioc tubers with a pestle. As she hurled the pestle into the mortar, using her hips as a fulcrum, her breasts, soon to be mere nippled flaps, swung to and fro. Kwame did not think: “What pretty breasts—God bless you with them.” He thought: This woman is that teenage girl in twenty years.

  Glancing farther into the yard, he heard a shriek. The woman had seen him. She stood frozen, the pestle motionless at a height above her shoulders. She cast it aside, covering herself with her cloth, and rushed inside the small house.

  Soon a man emerged from it, a gray-haired, benign-looking African. Kwame recognized him from the description Pilar had given him in Kinshasa: Tata Anatole. He carried a baby in his arms. A naked boy of perhaps three years followed at his feet, a thong and a charm tied around his waist.

  “Bonjour, M’sieur,” the tata said. He handed the baby to the child and offered his hand, bowing deferentially.

  “Monsieur Mason est là?” Kwame asked if Mason were around.

  The tata said not. Kwame introduced himself, explained he was from the center in Kinshasa and expected to stay a week. As Kwame shook the tata’s hand, the man brought a key from the pocket of his trousers.

  “Où est Monsieur Mason?” Kwame asked. “
Savez-vous?”

  The tata did not know where Mason was. He had gone with the vehicle some days before. The man was not certain just how many days. Kwame nodded that he would enter the house. The tata took a duffel, mounted the steps of the rear porch, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

  The house that the embassy expected Mason to convert into a cultural center had a large central room. Smaller rooms led off on either side, one to serve as Mason’s office, another as his bedroom. As Kwame entered the large room, a musty smell assailed his nostrils. Mason obviously intended this room to be the library. Tables, library chairs set atop them, had been pushed against the walls. On the dusty floor lay metal shelving, unopened crates of books and videos, and piles of circular cans, the beginning of a film collection. All were still boxed for shipping.

  Surveying the room, Kwame tried to imagine young Africans in the library. Some would sit at tables. Some would scan titles on the shelves while others lined up at a charge desk to be helped by an African employee not unlike themselves. That was how USIA, the parent agency of USIS in Washington, would describe the place when justifying its mission to Congress. “Our Cultural Center in Mbandaka is filled with eager Africans, hungry for education,” the report would chirp. “USIS Mbandaka is giving them the chance they’ve never had before to learn about the world.” Kwame knew that in the short time Mason would be here none of this would be realized. Mobutu would die or be assassinated and whatever followed would occur.

  In a smaller room that overlooked the barren front yard, Kwame found a table and chair of local manufacture that Mason had bought before the library furniture arrived. Unopened mail sat on the table. Files spilled off the table onto the floor. Others had been stored in boxes against the wall. Kwame blew onto the table, raising a thick cloud of the dust. He wondered how long Mason had been gone.

  In the bathroom, soap film clothed the tub. A used bar of pink soap lay on its edge. A broken lid covered the toilet; above and behind it stood a cistern emptied by pulling a metal chain. On the windowsill beside an accordion strip of condoms lay a toothbrush. A cockroach napped on its bristles.