The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Read online

  Entering a back room, Kwame encountered a screen of mammy cloths hanging from a rope. Pushing these aside, he discovered a lone chair and a metal cot. On it rested a thin mattress covered with bedclothes; they were rumpled and spotted with semen. Boldly across one wall were scratched the words: “The horror! The horror!” Kwame smiled. Mason had a sense of humor. He’d like to meet the dude.

  Kwame examined the books that Mason had stacked against the wall: Lawrence of Arabia’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom about his World War I exploits leading an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire; biographies of Gordon of Khartoum and Lord Lugard, the great colonizer of Nigeria; a reprint edition of Henry Morton Stanley’s In Darkest Africa; Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King, and even two titles in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan series. Interesting, Kwame thought. Opening the cover of the Stanley reprint Kwame found this inscription: “To Kent. Superior men create the world. Dad.”

  On the floor beside the cot lay a reading lamp. Kwame turned it on; at least it worked. Beside it were an ashtray, a half-smoked, hand-rolled cigarette, an envelope of tobacco, and a box of cigarette papers. Kwame sniffed the tobacco: a strong scent, hemp probably, African marijuana. Beside the tobacco lay girlie magazines with pictures of nudes, a surfing magazine, and a copy of A Burnt-Out Case, Graham Greene’s novel set in colonial Mbandaka, then called Coquilhatville.

  When Kwame picked up the novel, photos fell out of it. They showed African girls. None of them wore clothes, yet none were nude. All were artlessly naked, standing matter-of-factly as children might, devoid of allure. Another photo showed a grinning white man, late twenties, in shorts and an orange sport shirt sprinkled with blue asterisks. Was this Mason? Kwame studied the man. He was good-looking.

  The final photo was a portrait of a young African woman, beautiful and dignified, a woman, not a girl. Mason’s taste in women had obviously improved. The young woman posed wearing a mammy-cloth bodice with a cloth of a different pattern wrapped about her hips. Kwame gazed at the photo. How lovely she was! She gazed at the camera from a world it could not penetrate.

  Tata Anatole shuffled into the room. Kwame showed him the man’s photo. “Ce type,” he asked. “C’est Mason?”

  The tata nodded.

  “When did he go off?”

  The tata shrugged. “A week ago. Maybe two.”

  Two weeks! Where the hell had he gone? And why hadn’t he informed Kinshasa? Or had he tried? Maybe communications really were so crude out here that Mason was basically out of contact with Kinshasa.

  Kwame tossed the photos and the novel onto the chair. He went outside and walked about the town, heading past the market square devoid of the hubbub of trade for this was not a market day. A few women sat on stools, wares laid out on cloths, babies tied to their backs. Boys dribbled a soccer ball in one corner of the square; old men in ancient, wide-brimmed hats watched while gossiping and smoking. Moving toward the Onatra docks, Kwame smelled fresh-baked bread and saw a line of customers buying loaves at the bakery’s kiosk window. The dock gates were shut and padlocked; the place seemed closed even though a riverboat was moored to the dock. Kwame returned to the town center, noticed young boys climbing on each other’s shoulders to harvest a papaya and drifted by stores with goods on display outside.

  By the time he returned to the center, Kwame felt extraordinarily alone. Black, but not African. He was used to living in the world of white men. Used to their culture. Used to manipulating that culture to his advantage. Could he function without white men to measure himself against? To hide from in protective coloration? He had not seen a single white person during his walk about the town. He had a strange feeling of being disconnected, even from himself. These people were not his black people. It shook him to feel so out of place.

  Why had he let Judkins send him here without confirmation from Mason? Or had Judkins suspected that Mason might not be here? Kwame recalled Judkins’s strange hesitancy just before he told him that he was being sent to Mbandaka. Calm down, he told himself. What could Judkins have suspected? You’re getting paranoid.

  What would he do here for a week? He had always functioned in urban environments, mainly academic ones. Face it, he thought, in elitist environments. Mbandaka was a mere speck of a town, remote, isolated, unconnected. Without an academic infrastructure. Were there elites to connect with? Maybe a teacher or two? Where would he find them? Would they welcome him? Since Americans supported Mobutu and Mobutu had ruined the country, would people want to embrace an American? Had Mason said, “Fuck it!” and taken off? Kwame paced across the library, past that haunt of cockroaches, the bathroom, through the bedroom with its semen-stained bedsheets, its books about superior men and its frantic heart-cry on the wall: “The horror! The horror!”

  Kwame did not want to ask himself again: What am I doing here? Often he had escaped into books. Could he do that here for a week? Could he prepare another of the French language talks he was to give at universities? Would he go a little crazy? This was not the heart of darkness. It was too banal and somnolent for that. Even so, he had to admit he felt ill at ease.

  A YOUNG Zairean, no older than twenty-five, strode into the reception from the terrace. He wore a business suit, pointed shoes, rather scuffed, and a shirt open at the neck, also steel-rimmed glasses and a scraggling goatee. He was the hotelier. He introduced himself merely as Tombolo and immediately recognized Kwame. “Monsieur iss de new américain, n’est-ce pas?” he asked with an unctuous grin, proud of his English. “Le Docteur Odejimi say you come. I have magnifique chamber for you, M’sieur. With bath—for de américain.”

  When Kwame had written his name on the ledger, Tombolo handed him a room key. “Upstairs,” he said. “End of passage. You want I send La Petite?” The hotelier gestured toward the African girl sitting nearby. She lifted her skirt; she was not burdened with underwear. “She has no SIDA. At other hotels in Mban you find SIDA, but here jamais.” Tombolo snapped his fingers. The girl hurried from her seat to stand beside Kwame.

  “Just the room for now, thanks,” Kwame said, speaking French. He took his duffel so that the girl would not take it and set off.

  THREE

  Carrying his duffel and a tall, brown bottle of Primus beer bought at the hotel bar, Kwame found his way to the corner room at the far end of the open-air passageway on the second floor. He entered a large room, darkened by dust-spotted curtains drawn to keep out the light. He found two beds with mosquito nets hanging bundled above them and a sitting area with a table and two chairs of dark, heavy wood, Belgian-style furniture from the colonial era. Corkboards adorned the walls. Stuck to them were photos, cut from magazines and newspapers, of Zairean entertainers in performance. Kwame yanked off his shirt and used it to wipe sweat from his chest. Crossing the room he pulled open a floor-length curtain. Behind it stood a glass door that opened onto a balcony overlooking the river. He gazed at the moving water, speckled with floating islands of water hyacinths. He turned on the air conditioner. It coughed into action and began the rattling that accompanied its operation.

  In the bathroom he snatched a hand towel from the rack. He wet it in water that ran red-brown from the basin tap, washed away his sweat, and wiped himself dry with a second towel. He found a glass and washed it. He opened the bottle of beer, poured out liquid that ran golden from the bottle and rewashed the glass. He poured beer into the glass, now almost clean, and drank it down. Warm, but not bad. He refilled the glass.

  He opened the duffel and, almost as if performing a ceremony, removed a large padded envelope. From it he withdrew a framed photo of Livie—Olivia Carlyle—whom he expected to marry at Christmas. He gazed at her longingly. Christmas was four months away. An eternity. He set the photo on the bedside table.

  In midsummer Kwame had left Cape Town where he had served for two years as a cultural diplomat. He and Livie, who was there with him, assumed they were leaving the continent for good. Kwame expected to resume teaching at Boston University.

  Returning to the
States excited them both. When their plane landed at JFK, Livie was wild with joy. She began chattering nonstop to her father, Jack, as soon as he greeted them.

  Kwame had met Jack Carlyle when he visited the couple in Cape Town. He had come through for two days on his way somewhere else. Jack had never made Kwame feel that he disapproved of his daughter’s living with an African American, especially not one who had survived the Foreign Service exams. Since Kwame and Livie were together, Jack wanted to approve of Kwame. Jack gave him every indication, not only of liking him, but of seeking his regard, even his friendship. Kwame, of course, applied protective coloration, masked his wariness. Livie did not sense how uncertain he felt. Protective coloration also provided him with a means to give Jack the pleasure of self-esteem for now he had a good black friend. At JFK the two men greeted each other warmly although Kwame understood that the warmth meant different things to each of them.

  As Jack drove the couple into Manhattan, Livie told him that South Africa had fascinated her; the country was so diverse and cruelly beautiful. It had been intriguing to watch the final dismantling of apartheid, to be present for the long-awaited elections that saw patient Africans standing in seemingly endless queues to exercise a right many of them had thought they would never possess: the vote. “Kwame felt exalted for days,” she told Jack. “He was so moved that he went along the lines, congratulating people. Didn’t you?” she demanded. Kwame acknowledged that he had walked among the newly enfranchised citizens, shaking their hands. “I’ve got a photo of him doing it,” Livie said. “He was really emotional. I carry it in my wallet.”

  Kwame was amused to see Livie’s exhilaration, to hear her chatter. He was also pleased to be home. If the collapse of apartheid and all its structures of oppression provided a burst of freedom, that burst also involved a dark side. Crime rose. Burglaries soared in the Sea Point section of Cape Town where Kwame and Livie had their apartment. Carjackings became frequent. As Africans felt free to wander the city, the disparities between the way elites and the majority of blacks lived became more apparent. Livie often felt unsafe. Whites who had silently tolerated the sight of a tall, blonde American girl of rather patrician beauty paired with a black man now began to mutter obscenities when they passed the couple in the streets.

  These incidents occurred even though Kwame did not look Bantu. He had a pointed nose, thin lips, and an educated man’s demeanor and confidence. His movements possessed an athlete’s grace; his carriage suggested quiet, unassuming self-possession of a kind that few South African Bantu had achieved in a society that sought to destroy their self-respect. Kwame looked white men straight in the eye. He wore clothes reflecting educated taste, so recognizably expensive that any Afrikaner rooinek could tell in a glance that he was American, that he belonged in South Africa by virtue of achievement.

  “We are through with Africa!” Livie exclaimed to Jack and his third wife, Amanda, when they arrived at their apartment on Sutton Place. “Kwame will teach again and I’m going to law school.” Kwame was not at all sure how her plan for them would work out. It envisioned him as a black man who would make a success of living in white culture. Was that such a bad fate: an attractive and affectionate woman, her supportive father, a tenure-track position at an important American university, the respect of colleagues for his experiences overseas? He would have to play certain roles, but everyone had to do that. He would be a black white man only if he chose to regard himself as one. He would not fall into that trap; he’d be grateful for what had come his way.

  When they were alone together in the apartment, Jack asked Kwame, “And you? Are you through with Africa?”

  “I suppose I am,” Kwame said. “But Livie can be through with Africa in a way that I never can,” he observed. “Can I?” He smiled wryly, held out his hand, and looked at the hue of its skin. “I have to deal with it at a different level than she does.”

  “But not necessarily there.”

  “No,” Kwame acknowledged. “Not there. I carry it with me.”

  An attorney, Jack specialized in securities law; Amanda described herself as an “arts advocate,” doing volunteer work in arts education. “It is so wonderful to be back in a real city!” Livie kept saying. “So exciting! Cape Town is lovely—as beautiful as San Francisco. Truly. But there are no real cities in Africa. There’s urban crime, but no urban life. Believe me, this place never looked so good!” Jack Carlyle smiled at this news. Kwame saw that he wanted his daughter living nearby.

  Kwame and Livie had met in a modern African literature class he taught. He had been twenty-seven then. With a newly accorded doctorate—his dissertation examined emerging indigenous voices in French and British colonial Africa after World War II—he was in his third year of teaching. Livie was twenty-one, an international relations major. In her final term of college she considered reading novels about an improbable part of the world a fitting way to declare her readiness to be done with schooling.

  She had not, however, anticipated the instructor’s effect on her. From the first class session, she felt a magnetic attraction to Kwame. And he was drawn to her—at least partly because he sensed that he intrigued her. At first he told himself that he responded to her because she listened more attentively than other students; an instructor always appreciated that. But when Livie visited his office in the seventh week of the term to discuss a paper she was writing, they both found it difficult to concentrate. The paper dealt with Wanja, the troubled but alluring prostitute heroine of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood. Livie saw Wanja as a metaphor for Kenyan society and its embrace of the West’s corrupting capitalism. She sought out Kwame ostensibly to test her interpretation. Was her notion, she asked him, a plausible reading of Ngũgĩ’s artistic intention? Kwame shrugged. He was interested in what she thought, he said, not what he thought. They looked at one another. Sexual tension filled the small office. The point of the paper, Kwame explained, was to argue an insight, her insight. She nodded. Silence engulfed them. Kwame felt his blood pounding and could not look at her. Instead he glanced at his watch. He stood, saying that he had forgotten an appointment and must leave.

  “Don’t be afraid of this,” Livie said.

  Kwame frowned at her—as if to signal that he could not believe what he had heard.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” she asked. “I’m not. Not since last winter.”

  “I look forward to reading your paper,” Kwame said. He turned away to stuff books into a backpack.

  When he tried to leave the office, she stood in the doorway blocking his path. “You do feel this,” she said. “I know you do. We don’t need to pursue it now.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kwame said primly. They looked at one another. He laughed, embarrassed, excited. “I’m an instructor; you’re a student. For the record I have no idea what you’re talking about. None.” Then he added, “And pursuing it is not a good idea.”

  Livie grinned at him. “We won’t pursue it till the term is over.” She cocked her head as if awaiting his agreement, still blocking the doorway, and he would not trust himself to touch her to get past. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “No. And I’m escaping this place immediately after exams.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” she told him.

  To his surprise Kwame felt jangled by the directness of this approach. A young lecturer hitting on a student was an excellent way to doom an academic career, particularly if the lecturer was a tenuously middle class black and the student a very patrician white. But the girl intrigued him; he had to admit to being fascinated by the prospect of mating with that blonde self-assurance. But no! He was off to Africa; he would not pursue it.

  By the end of high school Kwame had decided that circumstance had made his head American, educated by whites, while birth made his body African. At university and grad school he avoided African American women. They were seeking husbands. He’d had a relationship or two with white girls, but they drained away the essence of his
black manhood. He sought women from Africa. They empowered his body, deepened his essence. Leaving their beds, Kwame wondered what it would be like to become African.

  Some African women flirted charmingly. The sparkle in their eyes, the laughter in their voices, caused stirrings in Kwame’s groin. But moving forward with them in love-play proved disappointing. They did not know how to kiss. They brought no passion to foreplay. None of them screamed or bit him or scratched his back in climaxing. Still he felt empowered by touching something deeply African in them.

  After grad school he had concentrated on establishing himself at Boston University, especially since he wanted a two-year leave of absence to work in Africa. He had no time for women.

  Then Livie Carlyle returned to his office late the afternoon he filed his grades. He was emptying shelves, packing books into crates. He was disconcerted to see her. “Is this about the final?” he asked, dissembling.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, grinning. He went on packing books. “I came to take you to dinner.” She smiled mischievously. “Because … your course meant so much to me. Because … you made Africa come alive for me.” She began to laugh. He smiled. “Because … I think you are going to be one of those teachers I’ll always remember.”

  “And I’m not to be afraid of this.”

  “That’s right.” Then: “Why are you packing?”

  “I leave for Washington day after tomorrow. Then on to Africa.”

  “No!” She seemed genuinely distressed, but he nodded. “

  Then you really must come to dinner,” she said. “My place first for a drink. Then we’ll go out. My treat.”

  He examined her and shook his head. “We’ll meet and go Dutch.”

  She looked at him a long time. “You have been with a white girl before.”

  He nodded. She shrugged: So?

  “And you’ve been with black guys?”