Victoria Falls

by James Hornor

  He wondered if, at that very moment, she was being abused or tortured. It also occurred to him that she might already be dead. Tomorrow morning he would have to find a way to get in touch with his father in Vancouver. He would be talking to him for the first time and he would be calling to tell him that his son had been found, but that his daughter, the love of his life, was now lost.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HAVING NOW SURVIVED MY EXTENDED GOODBYE TO Teresa, I headed to the other end of the platform, where Melissa was already engaged in a lively conversation with two porters.

  “They are saying that the two-berth cabins won’t be available for an hour, so they are inviting us to sit in the first-class lounge car for the first part of the trip.”

  She seemed mildly annoyed that our accommodation was not yet ready, and I assured her that the first class-lounge would undoubtedly be even more comfortable than our cabin. As it turned out, the lounge car was almost empty, and the porter suggested that we sit on the south-facing side to be able to see the exotic wildlife as we passed through Hwange National Park. We each ended up having a full bench to ourselves, and we were facing one another. Exotic wildlife to my right and a full view of Melissa—I thought about how I might convince her to stay here for more than an hour.

  Perhaps aware that Melissa had been somewhat annoyed about the delay of our cabin, the porter assigned to our car brought us blankets and hot tea and even gave us a brochure explaining what wildlife we might expect to see at the western end of Hwange. All in all it was very civilized, and despite what I considered to be the slow speed of the train—we were only going forty-five mph—our speed would be perfect for viewing the park’s wildlife. One of the legacies of British colonial rule is the excellent rail system in Zimbabwe, and it looks and runs much as it did when the British departed fourteen years ago in 1980.

  In the early days of RR (Rhodesia Railways) you could take the train all the way from Victoria Falls to the Indian Ocean. What is now Mozambique had once been Portuguese East Africa, and Portuguese explorers in the sixteenth century may have navigated their way from where the Zambezi reaches the Indian Ocean all the way back upstream to Victoria Falls—a distance of over one thousand miles. Even though David Livingstone is credited with being the first European to see the falls in 1855, Portuguese explorers may well have preceded him by three centuries.

  Melissa sat across from me sipping tea and reading a copy of Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. I now surmised that the weight of her suitcase was due to at least ten books, which she faithfully carried with her wherever she went. Just that she read philosophy elevated my estimation of her basic goodness immeasurably and perpetuated my theory of her as somewhat of a goddess as evidenced by her apotheosis at the Devil’s Pool and her quiet recitation of an ancient Hebrew liturgy as she slept last evening in my bed. She embodied a sacred beauty that I had longed for all of my life, and now I was about to spend thirteen hours with her on an overnight train to Bulawayo.

  As the porter was replenishing our tea and informing us of the additional wait time for our cabin, I noticed a large herd of springbok seemingly running to keep up with the train. The vastness of the plain in this part of the park was a little overwhelming and the sun was already casting long shadows over the veld that made the distance of the herd from the train tracks difficult to calculate. I could not fully see the part of the herd still trailing behind, but there must have been thousands of springbok in the distance.

  Melissa glanced out at them off and on, but her current fixation was on Nietzsche. She had removed her shoes and tucked her legs up under her so that her skirt, which was mid-calf length, was drawn up to almost her knees. At one point she stretched out both of her legs and placed them between my own. As the train occasionally jostled back and forth, the nylon of her stockings gently touched my legs. I pretended to be fully engrossed in the spectacle of wildlife to my right, but my true fascination was with the casual flirtation occurring just inches away. Could it be possible that she was unaware of the electrifying effect she was having on me? As if to answer my unspoken question, she pulled both of her legs back to their tucked position and carefully placed a bookmark in Nietzsche.

  “Where’s the porter? Our cabin must be ready by now.”

  The porter was not in the lounge car, so I embarked on what turned out to be a three-car search for the man who had originally promised only a one-hour delay. When I finally found him, he could see in my eyes that I was becoming impatient.

  “Your cabin is ready, sir. Because of your wait, we gave you the best two-berth cabin on the train. Your water is hot and your beds are already made.”

  I went back to retrieve Melissa. We followed the porter through several sleeper cars and finally arrived at our two-berth cabin. As promised, it was nicer than we had expected.

  “This is one of the 1952 wood-paneled cabins built in Gloucester, England. Best on the train.”

  Even though we had waited nearly two hours, I tipped him generously for giving us what was essentially an upgrade, and he promised to return later on to prepare the cabin for the night.

  “Why did you tip him?” Melissa’s question took me off guard.

  “I always tip porters on a train.”

  “Then you tipped him for his inefficiency.”

  “It wasn’t his fault our cabin wasn’t ready.”

  “It was someone’s fault. He said one hour and it was really two hours.”

  I couldn’t believe that Melissa was still arguing about the tip.

  “We weren’t exactly roughing it in the lounge car.”

  “I’m just saying that if you tip people for their inefficiency, they will do the same thing tomorrow.”

  “Maybe you’ve been reading too much Nietzsche.”

  “Nietzsche would say that we all should aspire to greatness, and pity will dissipate that desire.”

  “I don’t think of my tip as an act of pity.”

  “All I’m saying is that if we enable weakness, there will be no growth.”

  I thought of those passengers who could not afford a sleeper car and who would attempt to sleep upright in their seats for the entire night, but I also sensed that we were moving to that point in the argument where we were arguing over words more than ideas. Instead of prolonging it, I chose to simply acquiesce.

  “You have a point. We don’t want to encourage inefficiency.”

  Melissa knew that I was slightly mocking her earlier point, but she too decided it had gone far enough. Months later I would look back on this conversation and realize that it had an import that I could only fully appreciate in retrospect.

  Our small disagreement had the potential to ruin (or at least dampen) the eleven hours remaining on the journey, but I was so infatuated with the idea that my lifelong quest for a union of the sacred and the beautiful had finally been realized, that I began working to get back to that earlier revelation. I knew that we had moved one step away from the perfection I had perceived in her even an hour before, but I was not ready to admit that she was something less than a goddess.

  Dinner would be pivotal. Somehow in the enjoyment of good food and wine in the dining car, I hoped we would reconnect on the same wavelength we had enjoyed at The Victoria Falls Hotel. Melissa insisted at dinner that I review with her the names of those who would attend the Wednesday reception in Harare. I did so willingly, knowing that she would be buoyed by the array of local celebrities and dignitaries.

  “Who will be there from the French consulate in Harare?”

  She was particularly interested in any French diplomats and journalists, since (as was later confirmed at the reception) she spoke fluent French.

  “The most colorful French diplomat I know is Pierre Jonquin. He worked for the French Consulate-General in Cairo, and he has held several posts in sub-Saharan countries, including Kenya and Zimbabwe. He knows almost every French national in the region. He will probably know some of your buddies from the French Embassy in Sydney.”


  I knew that the more I talked about Wednesday evening, the more relaxed Melissa would become. She had sacrificed quite a bit to be on this trip, but the payoff in her mind would be the diplomatic reception. I sensed that she knew that she only needed a few hours at a diplomatic cocktail party and she could land a job. I was happy to provide that venue, but in the interim I wanted our relationship to progress from friendship to something more.

  At dessert I began to anticipate how we might handle the close quarters of a double berth cabin, and as we were talking over coffee, our porter appeared to tell us he had opened our screen and that there were fresh sheets on the bed. I thought about tipping him, but I didn’t want to return to the tipping conversation just as we were beginning to enjoy the normalcy of our friendship.

  Melissa took my hand and we made our way past five or six sleeping cars until we reached our cabin. The porter had left the light on over the sink, and as we entered, Melissa reached up and pulled the small chain, leaving the room almost in complete darkness. I sat down on the bed and she quietly exited to use the small bathroom down the corridor.

  When she returned, she locked the door and began to undress. I was still fully dressed, but in the small space, I was reclined and facing her. She removed her skirt and blouse and carefully folded them and placed them on the small table next to the sink. She slipped off her bracelet and earrings, put them in her shoe, and then pulled back the sheet and small blanket on her side. It was then that I noticed the hairbrush in her left hand.

  As she sat up, she pulled the sheet up to her waist and carefully removed her bra and placed it on the small shelf next to her. She was now almost completely naked, and to increase the sheer sensuality of the moment, she began to brush out her hair. In the darkened cabin, the static electricity from her hair created small sparks of light and added to the mystery that she had first awakened in me when she flashed a smile in my direction at the Devil’s Pool.

  Without any further hesitation, I found my way to the cabin door, slipped out into the corridor and found the bathroom. When I returned to the cabin, I found Melissa still sitting up in bed, brushing her hair.

  Not bothering to be nearly as fastidious as she had been, I took off my clothes and slipped into bed beside her.

  “Will you brush my hair?”

  Her question was a very quiet one, and as she handed me the brush, I felt like I was entering a place of sacred mystery. The whole mood of the room was accentuated by the slight swaying back and forth of the car and the hypnotic sound of the wheels crossing the seams in the tracks.

  We were on the eastern end of Hwange National Park and somewhere in the darkness just south of the train’s trajectory were zebra, elephant, giraffe, and even lion, and I imagined both their beauty and their instinct for survival which haunted the veld under the cover of night.

  Melissa’s hair was long, and it had curls at the ends. Through some experimenting, I discovered that if I used my left hand to hold up a section of hair while brushing with my right, it allowed me to actually brush her hair instead of simply pulling at it. Using this same method I was able to begin at her neckline and I allowed the soft bristles to lightly touch her neck as I brushed up and underneath the thickness of her curls.

  She swung her body around so that she was seated cross-legged and facing away from me. She then extended both arms behind her so that her neck was extended back while her hair fell right in front of me. I supported her neck with one hand and with the other continued the brushing technique I had perfected just a moment before.

  Soon we both became exhausted in this position and she simply rested her head on my calf as I stroked her hair until she fell asleep. I became aware that this was the more intimate version of the Selene-Endymion narrative, and I was again happy to watch over her as she slept. I thought more about the role gender plays in establishing intimacy. I had learned that gender fluidity in relationships between men and women allows for greater creativity, as both sides yearn to fully express their love and care. As a man I was not afraid of this gender role-play, since it allowed me to more fully express my vulnerability. I am not effeminate, and I value my masculine identity, but true masculinity means you are secure enough to express a full range of sensuality and emotion, knowing that to do so allows your partner the freedom to do the same. I was attracted to Melissa because of her beauty and her athleticism, but more than that she was able to express divine mystery through a spirituality that was embedded in her subconscious. Some men might ignore this mysterious side of her; for me it was the nexus that drew me near.

  I must have briefly fallen asleep, because when I awakened, I was lying back and Melissa had shifted so that her body lay next to mine and her head was now resting on my shoulder. As she slept, I could feel her warm breath on my neck and her lovely tresses of hair lying across my chest. The movement of the train meant that our bodies moved together back and forth as we moved through the night. It was similar to sleeping close to someone at sea.

  Since my divorce I had experienced an undercurrent of restlessness that had become a subconscious nemesis to finding intimacy. It was as if my reserve of authentic emotion had been irrevocably depleted, so that I was often unable to feel anything. Some people mistook this for a manly stoicism—a barrier that successfully separated my head from my heart. Essentially, I had become a person longing for intimacy who was incapable of sustaining it for any length of time.

  I like my job as a researcher and economist for the Bank, but I liked it for the wrong reasons. Because I was assigned to sub-Saharan Africa, I was traveling almost six months out of the year. And travel matched my internal disposition on many different levels. Because of travel, I was often not in any one place long enough to form significant relationships. Instead, I fulfilled unrequited longings of other people—mostly women—who would shape me into their unfulfilled dream, even though I was not the person they may have fantasized me to be.

  Travel also allowed me to live continually in the future without overthinking the present. For example, even though we were still in Zimbabwe, I was already thinking ahead to next week’s trip to Nairobi—where I would stay, who I would have dinner with, etc.

  Lying next to Melissa, traveling through the night to Bulawayo, I focused on treasuring every moment, and so I allowed the intimacy of the two of us sleeping together to begin to dispel the restlessness, to become the sedative that would quiet my heart. Her soft breathing was an intoxication, a way for me to believe again that I was fully connected to the rest of humanity, that I was desirable and authentic and capable of love. I longed for that authenticity, for that identity that would allow me to define myself through small acts of kindness. A woman’s love and tenderness seemed to be the highest expression of that authenticity, but there were times when I wondered whether that might also be a trompe l’oeil, a deception designed to keep us from discovering a more authentic love than we could possibly imagine, one that was impervious to the vagaries of chance and misfortune—a love so real and intense that we might be lost in it forever.

  At around 6:00 A.M. the porter knocked on our door to deliver both coffee and tea. He must have become accustomed to being greeted by travelers who were just waking up, as he seemed unfazed when I opened the door wearing only boxers.

  With Melissa still asleep, I tipped him and he promised to return within thirty minutes with fried egg sandwiches. The view of the sunrise from our cabin window was spectacular, and as I sipped coffee and waited for Melissa to stir, I reviewed the AFREA paperwork that I had received by fax the day before at the hotel. I was scheduled to have lunch in Nairobi a week from Tuesday with a former government official from the Maharashtra State in India. I assumed it had to do with their request for Bank assistance with the road construction project already underway in Bombay. The Indian government always seemed to be mired in paperwork, so I wasn’t surprised that the negotiations were still going on five years after the initial proposal.

  When the porter arrived with our bre
akfast, Melissa stirred and made a low moan, indicating both her satisfaction with a good night’s sleep and her acknowledgement that her hunger for toast and coffee now obliged her to at least sit up in bed. She gathered the sheets around her and pulled back her hair behind both ears.

  “I think I fell asleep after that fabulous hair brushing session. You must have brushed women’s hair before. You’re somewhat of an expert.”

  I wondered if she was secretly curious as to why the hair brushing hadn’t led to even more intimate contact, but we both knew that prolonged anticipation in a relationship is not a bad thing, since the longing for consummation is often more emotionally intense than the event itself. I knew that there would be other opportunities—even that evening—to be intimate, and I continued to believe that there was a sanctity about her that I was anxious not to violate.

  Being next to her for most of the night was in perfect alignment with the trust factor that we all want to experience before giving ourselves over completely to another person. Otherwise, the physical act itself eclipses the emotional bonding that brings two people together in a union that is both timeless and sacrosanct. It had not been that way with Teresa, but in retrospect, despite the tawdry implications, there had been an innocence and an inevitability to that evening that affected both of us for decades to come.

  “When do we arrive in Bulawayo?”

  Melissa was already at the sink, still partially naked and giving herself a sponge bath. I thought about offering to help, but our moment for intimacy had already passed, and Melissa was readying herself for the day.

  “The porter said 8:00 A.M. I know you don’t trust him to keep his word, but he has little control over the speed of the train.”