The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Page 8

As the class began, Mme Badeka asked Kwame to tell the students why he enjoyed Camara Laye. He intended to speak briefly. But, in fact, he spent the entire class rhapsodizing first about L’Enfant noir. Then about Le Regard du roi. “After Heart of Darkness which we all read in America,” he said, “it’s refreshing to have Africans lead a European to a discovery of Africa!” Of Le Maître de la parole he noted, “It brings the history of this continent so vitally alive!” He realized that Mobutistes might find his opinions objectionable, but he plunged ahead. The class over, Kwame told Mme Badeka, “I proved I’m a scholar by talking too long.”

  “Please come again,” she said. “It made my students proud to think that an American knows so much about African writing.” She lowered her voice to confide, “I loved hearing things said that I can never say!”

  Théa Badeka was probably twenty-five years older than Kwame, but he found himself quite charmed by her. She reminded him of his mother; they were both women of the mind.

  IN THE afternoon Dr. Odejimi took Kwame to call on Jean-Luc and Joelle Berton. “I sent a note to Madame to let her know we were coming,” he said. “One has to do things à la française with Madame.” Kwame was amused to see the Nigerian so eager to engage in Western social customs. Mme Berton was obviously the only person in Mbandaka with whom this was possible.

  A servant led the two men through the house and onto a terrace overlooking the river. There they found Mme Berton sitting rather theatrically on a chaise à la Madame Recamier. She was thumbing through a copy of Paris-Match. Her tailored slacks and blouse, chic and expensive, were designed for the Cote d’Azur. Her face carried an inordinate freight of makeup and for someone who resided in the jungle her hair was over-dressed. Kwame understood immediately that the Bertons did not live in Zaire. Their furnishings, their clothes, their manner: all these were of Europe. The Bertons were the wealth of Mbandaka. They dealt with the town by denying that it existed.

  When she saw the two men, Mme Berton tossed her magazine aside and assumed a queenly posture. She measured Kwame. As she glanced at Odejimi, her cheeks assumed a blush that would please a peach.

  “Madame,” Odejimi began, “je voudrais presenter—”

  Mme Berton gave a flirtatious pout and covered her ears. “Non!” she cried. “For Monsieur l’Américain we speak Engleesh. And for le docteur du Nigeria.” She glanced at Ode jimi, coquettish, and gestured to chairs, patting one beside her. Odejimi took it just as the stocky, stolidly Teutonic Berton entered the room. The men shook hands.

  “Nice to see you again, Monsieur,” Kwame greeted the planter.

  Berton ignored him. He surveyed Odejimi with distrust. “We speak Engleesh,” Madame Berton declared to her husband. She turned to Kwame, all charm, and added, “Le Docteur Odejimi! Intelligent man, but he speak execrable français. Mon Dieu! It hurt our ears. So: Engleesh.” She smiled at Odejimi. Kwame noticed that it disturbed Berton to see his wife so flirtatious, so exhilarated by the Nigerian’s presence.

  “Américains always drink cocktail, no?” said Madame, flirting with Kwame. “Nigerian, too, I tink.” She sent her husband to prepare drinks. Once he was gone, she grinned conspiratorially at Odejimi. Kwame understood she and Odejimi had almost certainly been together when she raced the Peugeot through the airport parking lot the day he arrived. Odejimi had emerged from the same road only minutes later.

  Berton returned with cocktails. Madame presided over the foursome as if she were the patroness of a salon. “Zees Américains,” she chirped cheerily, speaking about Kwame, but casting eyes on Odejimi, “so reech! Why they come to our leetla corner of Afrique? We do not understand.”

  “To line their pockets,” her husband replied in French. It was clear that he would not ingratiate himself to an American, especially not an African American, by using his visitor’s language. “Who blames them?”

  When Kwame asked Madame about Mason, Berton turned to him, a testiness in his voice. “Why are you Americans here?” he asked.

  “Yes, why ees zees?” said Madame. “Tell us, please.”

  “To help these people build their country,” Kwame told Madame. Berton eyed him with open scorn. “The overdeveloped world and the underdeveloped world need to help each other,” Kwame offered lamely.

  “Such hypocrisy,” Berton declared. “Such cynicism.” He switched to English so that the two men could not mistake his meaning. “You Americans are here to steal the country once again, having made a mess of it the first time you did it at independence.”

  “I admire your blouse, Madame,” Kwame said, studiously avoiding her husband. “Is it from Paris?”

  “Madame always wears Paris couture,” Odejimi noted.

  Berton said, “I don’t imagine you will kill all these Zaireans the way you killed your Indians, but when Mobutu goes, you will steal their country.”

  Kwame said nothing, thinking that if he wanted to steal a country, he would not choose this one.

  “I do not think you are a Jesuit, Monsieur,” Berton said. “So you must be CIA. Of course, you deny it.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s happened to my predecessor, Mason?” Kwame asked Madame. “He’s disappeared.” Then he repeated in French, “L’américain Mason, il est disparu. Où est-il, savez-vous?”

  “Mais c’est pas possible!” said Madame. She glanced at her husband for an explanation. “Disappeared? We talked books.”

  “He’s off chasing girls,” Berton said.

  When the visitors rose to leave, Madame took Kwame’s hands in hers. “Notre pauvre Mason!” cried Madame. “At last a white man in Mbandaka and now he iss gone? No! It cannot be!”

  When the two men drove back along the river toward town, they were silent at first. Odejimi observed, “Joelle Berton does not have an enviable life out here. Théa Badeka takes pity on her now and then, but they are not really friends. How could they be? And who else can she talk to? If something’s happened to Mason, she really will miss him.”

  They drove on for a while in silence. The road along the river was not paved. Potholes dotted it, growing deeper with every rain. In some places Odejimi drove onto roadside vegetation in order to pass. When once again they hit pavement, Kwame asked, “What in the world are they doing out here?”

  “Their entire wealth is in his plantations,” Odejimi said. “Poor her. She has a good mind, but out here she’s got no way to use it. Except to flirt with black men to make her husband jealous.”

  “Does she have lovers?”

  “Find out for yourself.”

  “Does he?”

  “He must have women at his plantations.”

  When they parked before the hotel, Odejimi said, “Madame Van was asking about you last night.” Kwame looked at the doctor, uncertain what he meant. ”Il fuck, n’est-ce pas? I think that was her question.”

  Kwame looked surprised. “Bullshit.”

  “Maybe it was: ‘Fuck-t-il?’ I’m not sure which.”

  Kwame laughed. “You trying to get me killed? Just like Mason.”

  “She was never Mason’s woman.”

  “I don’t think I’ll play that game here,” Kwame said, laughing.

  “I tell you, my friend,” said Odejimi, “all the things your mother told you not to do—drink, drugs, sex—they’re the keys to survival out here. You don’t believe me now …” He paused for effect. “But when you’re climbing the walls, drink, sex, drugs, they’re your friends away from home.”

  Kwame wondered how soon he’d be climbing the walls. It occurred to him that the doctor was seeking friendship. Maybe men bonded at the Afrique by sharing toys.

  “You’ll want to taste the Equateur while you’re here,” commented the doctor.

  “Is there a lot of SIDA here?” Kwame asked.

  “Nothing like eastern Zaire. When I lived up there, I slept only with a white woman.”

  “It’s rampant there?”

  “A lot of men moving around: truck drivers, itinerant merchants. They’re in bars every
night looking for women. In this little godforsaken river town we don’t have that. There’s not even a road that goes through.” He looked carefully at Kwame and shrugged. “But there is some here. Van is clean. She’s careful too.”

  “I’m spoken for,” Kwame said. “Good thing.”

  “So am I,” said the doctor. “Two wives. That didn’t keep me from living with a Belgian woman in Gisenyi and a girl from Georgia at UCLA. Van is married too. But our spouses are far away. So is yours.”

  “My spouse is a fiancée.”

  “Ah,” Odejimi sighed. “Fiancées demand promises. That is a problem.”

  “All I’ve got to do is be a good boy till December.”

  “One day can be forever,” Odejimi remarked. “Especially in Mban. But women are very understanding.”

  “Not white women. My fiancée is white.”

  “She would be,” Odejimi said. “From one of the first families, I suppose.”

  “Something like that.”

  The Nigerian doctor gazed at Kwame and shook his head. “For an African American, my friend, you are very American.” He shrugged. “But it is hot here. Very boring. Not much to do. When you want Van, we’ll arrange for the test.”

  AFTER DINNER at the Mongo Restaurant Kwame returned to the center. He wrote Livie a letter. “It’s astonishing that I think these letters may really reach you. I miss you something crazy,” he wrote, using words he could hardly imagine himself using when he started writing the letters. “I’m losing weight, eating African fare three times a day. I feel okay—except for being completely out of touch with you. Have your classes started? How are they? Mason hasn’t reappeared. When I see you in Paris, I’ll be the most unshakable little lap dog. Won’t let you out of my sight.”

  Kwame could not believe he was writing such drivel. Livie might chuckle over it and think it sweet that he missed her so.

  While writing the letter Kwame kept thinking of Madame Van. He had a very strong urge to look at Mason’s photo of her. He resisted the urge. Livie was his ticket out of Mbandaka. He was getting married at Christmas. He would refuse to stay in Mbandaka beyond then. Even if Madame Van was the African woman he kept looking for in college, he understood that thinking of her now, looking at her photo, would only lead to trouble.

  When he finished the letter, he went into the library. He needed a book that would take him out of Mbandaka, a book that would put him back in America. But he couldn’t read for pleasure any longer. His education had destroyed that capacity. He found nothing he wanted to read.

  He walked back through town, past the fires of night guards whose dogs barked and challenged him and nipped at his heels, out along the river, whistling in the darkness, to the Afrique. He strode along the outside corridor to his room and felt the force field of Madame Van. She was living with Odejimi in the room next to his. Passing their door, he heard her voice. He wondered: would she ever come to his room? He pushed that notion from his head and thought, “Livie, Livie! How much I miss you!”

  WHEN THE embassy plane next arrived at Mbandaka, Kwame and Odejimi were on the tarmac in the doctor’s Land Cruiser. They watched Warren Judkins scramble out of the plane. Behind him came two men in short-sleeved white shirts, ties, and sunglasses; they carried small metal valises. Their ties, the valises, and the way they scanned their surroundings gave them a distinctive look. “CIA,” said Odejimi. Judkins introduced them only as Joe Gianni and Karl Pedersen, nothing more. The plane would return in four days.

  At the center Kwame showed the orange shirt and the photo of the man wearing it to Judkins and the CIA men. “That’s Mason,” confirmed Judkins. While Gianni and Pedersen studied the photo, Judkins pulled Kwame aside. “You surviving okay?” he asked. Kwame nodded that he was. “Looks like you been busy,” Judkins said, surveying the library. “Good work.”

  THREE DAYS later Kwame and Judkins had attached shelving to the walls in both the library and the storage room where the film equipment would be kept. Gianni and Pedersen had traced the center’s film truck to Ingende, a town with a ferry across the Ruki, and had repossessed it. The Zairean who claimed to own the truck insisted that he had bought it from a military officer. He could not remember the officer’s name and would not provide a description of him. Gianni and Pedersen assumed Mason’s laptop was somewhere in the military camp. Their report would officially list him as missing. They feared, however, that he was dead.

  “We assume army people, probably officers, arranged a rendezvous with Mason someplace where he’d take the truck,” said Pedersen. “They killed him there.”

  “We think they came back here for the clothes,” Gianni added. “The old tata probably let them in.”

  While Judkins and his two associates went off to see the commandant of the military camp, Kwame uncrated the last of the books. He began to order them by classification numbers already printed on their spines. His thoughts were not focused. He kept finding 800 books on the 400 shelf, 200 books on the 600 shelf.

  When Judkins returned, he told Kwame, “That was a crock of shit. Commandant said it couldn’t be his people. We’ll make representations in Kinshasa.” Kwame continued to put books on shelves. “You can be sure the ambassador will pursue the matter at the highest levels.”

  Kwame said nothing.

  “Not that anything will happen,” Judkins added. Kwame appreciated this candor. “Out in the bush these army commanders are kings. Even Mobutu won’t challenge them.”

  Orange light poured into the library, giving substance to motes of dust. Kwame continued to work, waiting for what he knew Judkins would say.

  “I know you’re here to do a specific cultural job,” Judkins began at last. “A job we really need done. But we also need someone up here. At least until we can find a person to man this post.” Kwame continued to shelve books. “Why don’t you come sit here with me?” Judkins invited.

  Kwame took a chair across the table from him. When he looked at him directly, Judkins averted his eyes, staring at his hands. “We’ve told the Congress this post is open. With an officer staffing it. We don’t lie to Congress.” Kwame heard a car go by outside. After a moment Judkins added, “I can’t order you to stay here. And I wouldn’t if I could.”

  Kwame smiled. That would make it tempting to refuse, he thought.

  “You’re a straight shooter,” Judkins told him. “I won’t say your country would appreciate it if you’d stay. Because that’s bullshit.”

  “My country doesn’t know anything about this place, does it?”

  Judkins shook his head. “I won’t tell you that it’ll be easy to find another officer to come here. Once word gets out that Mason’s gone missing, we won’t have a lot of sign-ups for Mbandaka.”

  Finally Kwame said, “You haven’t told me I’m in less danger here because I’m African American. Thank you for that.”

  “Am I doing something right here?” Judkins asked.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Kwame offered. “I’ll stay till Christmas. I’m getting married then. I’m not bringing my wife to this place and I’m not starting married life living alone.”

  “It’s a deal,” said Judkins. He stretched his hand across the table.

  “But …” Kwame said. “The first time anyone takes a shot at me? Or pushes me into the river? Or comes at me with a car? I’m outa here.”

  Judkins laughed. “Escape clause accepted.” The men shook hands. “You want my hunch?” Judkins asked. “Boredom’s your enemy. Much bigger challenge than a killer. Mason was dallying. Be smarter than he was. Don’t get into drinking, drugs, sex.”

  Kwame grinned. “You sound like my father.”

  THE NEXT afternoon after he put his visitors on the plane back to Kinshasa, Kwame found Odejimi and Madame Van on the Afrique terrace. Once again they were drinking whiskey as they played mankala. Kwame got a beer and joined them.

  “Your visitors gone?” asked Odejimi.

  “All gone.”

  “And you’re here?�
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  “I’m here.” Kwame shrugged, feeling relaxed, and poured himself some beer. He slid a chair before him and plopped his feet onto its seat. Madame Van was watching him as if she really did not see him. He saluted her with his beer.

  “What did your visitors conclude about Mason?” Odejimi asked.

  “It’s a real mystery,” Kwame said. He smiled at Madame Van and asked in French, “What happened to Mason, Madame?” He studied her. She glanced over at Odejimi. “Did he drown, do you think?”

  She shook her head as if she did not understand.

  The doctor pushed the mankala board toward Madame Van. She began to lay another game, dropping four seeds into each of the twelve cups. “You know what the real mystery is, my friend?” Odejimi asked. “Why Mason was here. Opening a library in the jungle? Showing films about America to villagers who’ve never seen a two-story building? Does this make sense?”

  “Does anything in this country make sense?” Kwame said. He took a sip of beer. “I mean: what are you doing here?”

  “Hiding from my government,” Odejimi replied, laughing. “And trying to have a good time doing it.” He and Madame Van started a new game.

  Kwame watched the river and kept tabs on how mankala was played, how gently and deftly the woman handled the seeds, picking them up and placing them in cups. When the doctor fumbled over them, spilling some onto the table and muttering curses when he did, Madame Van watched Kwame. He gazed at her. Odejimi noticed this byplay. He poured whiskey into his glass, took a sip, and rolled it on his tongue. “Take this, my friend,” he said, offering Kwame the bottle. “You’ll need it.”

  “Why’s that?” Kwame asked. He took the whiskey almost reluctantly. Was the doctor really helping him survive?

  “Why will he need it, Madame?” Odejimi asked.

  “To forget Mason,” she said. “Until he comes back.”

  Something about the way she said these words made Kwame understand that Mason would not come back. He shrugged and accepted the whiskey. “Thanks. We’ll have a party when he returns.”