The Immanence of God in the Tropics

by George Rosen

  Gichuru and I tried to cheer our team on in Kigeli and English. But every smooth steal and stroke of the Chorumbe team brought a roar from MacIntyre’s bus-brought claque, a whistle-blast of confidence. All we could muster were murmurs, faint rumblings like rumors in a tyranny.

  Mugambi, though, had none of our despondency. He squatted on the sidelines, laughing and patting his kneecaps. In the last minutes of the half we were down two goals. Mugambi looked up to Gichuru. “You will need me now. This is proper.” Gichuru nodded. Both moved downfield to where Muriuki was watching. They huddled with him while I kept yelling vain commands to our players, all of us enmired in Mac’s excellence.

  Halftime came, and Gichuru and I passed around towels and oranges to our team. On the Chorumbe side of the field Mac snapped his fingers and two team managers went around with plastic-spouted water bottles dosing out some sweet, special liquid while the boys cleaned their cleats. There would be a forty-five minute break with a show by local primary-school children. Muriuki invited us all in for tea. He didn’t like the taste of coffee.

  “You are an artisan these days, Mr. MacIntyre? I have heard of your skill.”

  A pigtailed girl poured milk and sugar into our cups. “Yes, I like to make things. carving, furniture, scrollwork. It passes the time.”

  “And you shrink heads?”

  Mac’s windpipe bubbled.

  “Excuse me, isn’t this true? I had heard that they were quite wonderful.”

  “You mean the apples, Mr. Muriuki. I don’t shrink heads. I shape them. I work with the fruit. One can carve features into the fruit and then as they dry and wither they begin to take on expressions. Joyful, sad, the whole range. When it achieves just the look you want, you seal it with clear varnish, and it is preserved precisely.”

  I had seen them in Mac’s office. They were horrible. Little grimace-ridden fruitheads. They were the only things he was ever willing to give anybody.

  Muriuki persisted. “Have you seen our samba wood? The old Kigeli men made stools from it. Here . . .” He reached to the mantel and drew down a small polished stool about a foot high.

  I had never seen one before, at Muriuki’s house or anywhere else. It was a smooth round seat on three small graceful legs, each leg carved in the shape of a human figure—a warrior with a spear, a woman carrying a water-gourd, and a tribal elder sitting in judgment. The wood was dark and rich. Like a silk carpet it seemed to change color in different light—now black, now brown, but always above a fire red that leapt out where the wood had been worn smoothest and that underlay the whole.

  “With these figures an old man tending cattle would have the whole of the tribe with him. He could sit there comfortably in the sun, his spear on the ground beside him, quiet among the animals of his clan, and content. It is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”

  MacIntyre rubbed his palm across the smoothness of the seat. He traced the figures with his fingers. He was about to smile. “It’s a fine piece. I’ve never . . .”

  “They are not made anymore. Or not with the same skill.”

  “This is called ‘samba’?” Mac was holding the stool as if it were a bird.

  “Yes. The wood’s still around though there are only a few groves. One of them is here.” Muriuki’s grin was as wide as one of the Olympic heroes’. “Five minutes away in the forest. I have a power saw you could use.”

  “But the game . . .”

  We all agreed there was still time. The field was dancing with primary school children singing the national anthem in Swahili and “I’m a Little Teapot” in English.

  “Mugambi here knows the path. He can show you the way and you’ll be back quickly with your arms full of samba. Consider it a gift of welcome to my house.”

  Mac still had the stool cupped between his hands. He put it back on the mantel and nodded his head. Muriuki told Mugambi where to get the saw and some rope, and the watchman dashed out the door.

  The sun was turned off instantly, like a lamp, when the two of them entered the forest. Mugambi went in front, holding the saw by a thick leather strap. The tool swung by his side in rhythm with his walk, the teeth slimly missing his bare leg with each swing. Mac kept watching it at the instant it swayed nearest the curly hairs on Mugambi’s leg. Each time the cutting edges passed clear, the white man freed his gaze. He looked up at the creeper-ridden canopy of the woods, the thick-leaved vines twisting among the evergreens and palms. High at the tops he could see a colobus monkey following them, jumping from tree to tree. Then at a signal from the ticking in Mac’s mind, his eyes went down again toward the body of the man in front of him as the teeth of the saw dipped along the bunched muscles of Mugambi’s calf, about to cut and draw blood, but always missing.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  Mugambi stopped and the saw swung out in a semicircle towards Mac.

  “There is no danger here. I know the forest.”

  “Not the forest, damn it, the saw. Hold it firmly or you’re going to slice yourself open.”

  “Do not mind, sir. These woods are like my home. I fought very near here.”

  “With the Home Guard?”

  Mac had been an officer himself.

  “Yes. The Home Guard. They were our enemy. You need not be afraid of the saw, sir, or snakes, leopards, or anything. I will guide you. The place we are going is quite close here.”

  Mugambi was back in full stride. The saw kept swinging and Mac kept watching it, holding his wonder at the forest inside the tick-tock of imagined bloodletting. The path disappeared but Mugambi continued with his neverminds. They ducked under branches and stumbled over fallen logs alive with white slugs and mushrooms big as moons. The watchman, still letting the saw dangle free, paused more often now. Once or twice he backtracked. They were in constant twilight.

  Mugambi stopped and blinked very quickly. He brought the fingertips of his free hand to his mouth and looked about in a slow mechanical circle. Everywhere the same dark greens and browns closed over their heads and they were centered in a bubble inside the twining.

  “We are lost,” he said, crossing his legs to sit down, and then he started yelping in pain.

  At the field the primary-school children had sung all their songs. Muriuki, as the official host, decided that the schedule should be followed and the game continued, with or without MacIntyre. The Chorumbe captain’s sense of natural authority was confused (as was unavoidable with Mac’s students), but he had a solid textbook conception of responsibility. He was a tall, stiff adolescent who moved like a pair of scissors, but had soft, wise eyes that were always near terror. He called a brief huddle, asked his players not to let their courage flag, and reminded them that they were ahead two goals. They clasped hands, cheered, and the game resumed.

  But there were no sudden sweeps this time, no Apache charges. The field was clotted, thick, the players slamming into scrums that looked like street-cleaning machines, their upper bodies stuck together and their several feet kicking frantically. There were injuries and outcries, Muriuki running into the clashes to adjudicate. He would blow his whistle, a boy would limp to the sidelines, and a fresh body would dash to the game. Amid the flesh-bumping the buffalo boy began to emerge again. Sometimes he broke out—shaking opponents off and kneeing toward the open field. And sometimes he seemed passive—the boy and ball expelled from the heap, spit out like a bounced drunk and his hat. Once in blue sky and open air, the whole confused crowd of players chasing after him, he leaned forward, gritted his face, every muscle squeezed tight except the dead center, the tip of his nose, and smashed out the same long, mean, pointless kicks as before—which our goalie scooped up or bounced off or headed down until he shook and resounded like an abused bell.

  There was no Mac to yank the buffalo boy now. The Chorumbe captain knew what he ought to do. But he was afraid, not of any malevolence on the part of his oak-thighed teammate, but of the buffalo boy’s fierce crazy oblivion to anything other than shattering worlds with his foot. Mac m
ight handle that, but nobody sixteen years old and forty pounds lighter could.

  So our team started playing to the big man, waiting for the sure turnover. Then they would kick the ball among themselves, juggling it like one of the hearth coals they used to carry as children, each boy more surprised than the last at the possibility of a score, until they sent it on to the Chorumbe goalie—who in the first half could have been comatose. He strained and scrapped at the ball but one, two—now the tie—and three times let it dribble past him.

  And so we won. Though the Chorumbe captain called vainly for timeouts and Mac’s team in their starch and stripes kept looking to the forest for succor, no one appeared at the threshold. Strain as they might for the flash of his eyes, the shine of his head, there was nothing to see, a deep black hole.

  Until the game was over. Muriuki, who during the play had waved away the anxiety of the Chorumbe schoolboys, praising Mugambi’s knowledge of the woods, finally relented and called a station worker to send after Mac and our watchman.

  But there was no need. The blackness at the edge of the forest suddenly filled and there was Mac, naked to the waist. Cradled under his left arm was a log of dark samba that must have weighed a hundred pounds. Over his right shoulder he pulled a length of rope, the end of which dragged Mugambi riding on a lashed mass of branches and twigs. The watchman was rubbing his ankle with one hand and holding the saw steady with the other. He was singing something very low and growly with an infinity of syllables.

  “The man’s an absolute fool,” Mac said. “But I’ve taken care of him nonetheless. He at least had the good sense to sprain his ankle not ten feet from the samba trees. As you see, I found the wood on my own, strapped his foot, jerrybuilt this sledge, and found our way out. Quite good, I think, like the dogs pull among the Eskimo or your Western Indians with their ponies.”

  Mac’s team did not greet him. They huddled close around their captain.

  “I trust the game has not been unduly delayed?”

  Mac dropped the pullrope to Mugambi’s sledge, keeping the samba log under his arm, and began to move toward us. Suddenly the Chorumbe captain ran to him out of the circle and began to explain, shoulders back, arms at his side—a terrified classroom declamation. Mac dropped the log.

  Gichuru came to him smiling. Madly, he started shaking Mac’s hand over and over as if electricity were gluing them together. He was congratulating Mac on his team’s play. Mac’s white skin went even paler—into a clear glaze that seemed to show the swing and pulse of blood underneath, the striping of the tensed muscles—the transparent man and the black man still shaking hands.

  “You are responsible for this,” Mac said.

  “The decision to resume play was made by the host official. Those are the rules.”

  Muriuki nodded.

  “Then you’re both responsible.”

  “We did what was proper. I am not ashamed.”

  Mugambi meanwhile was inching himself off the sledge. He raised himself to his feet, leaned in both directions, then made a small circle. Satisfied with his progress he tried some tentative jumps, both feet together, and then like a crazy sunflower burst into ecstatic hopping. “I am fine now,” he said, bouncing past the disputation, “I am better. This is better,” and pogo-sticked over to the Land Rover already stuffed with our team.

  MacIntyre spoke in a soft dead voice. “You are an insult to me, Gichuru. I was your teacher.” He wrenched free of the handshake and raised his huge hand up in the air.

  Gichuru did not move at all. He spoke from his handsome mask. “Do not strike me, Mr. MacIntyre. I know that you are a hard man.” Mac dropped his hand. The two of them backed away from each other, both retreating as one would from a king.

  Some of our boys in the Land Rover began to whistle, but Gichuru cut them off and stood quiet. MacIntyre called his schoolboys together and told them to gather their things. The captain with the wise eyes attended Mac, tilting toward him to catch his wishes. He stumbled as he tried to keep up with MacIntyre’s long strides toward the bright bus. When the Chorumbe team had gone, Gichuru let the boys hoot and whistle all they wanted. Mac left the log of samba wood on the field.

  Since the game Muriuki has returned to his science and coffee beans while Gichuru and I are busy preparing our students for the national examinations. Gichuru is more animated than ever before and shows signs of ambition. He speaks of becoming a politician someday, although on what side of the issues he does not yet know. We still haven’t heard from Mac, although I’ve spoken with Sally. She is worried that he will take the whole business out on his own students—some sort of reign of terror. She says the only lesson he seems to have learned is that there is danger in pity. As for Mugambi, he stays at the old job, running Gichuru’s errands and keeping watch at night. He bought a goat with the extra money he earned. It is a large fat creature, and someday soon it will make a feast for us all.

  New England, 1991

  The Sauna After Ted’s Funeral

  In the sauna after the burial service, Alden dipped into the wrong barrel and poured scalding water on his foot. “Gesummaria,” said Squillace, a pile of boulders sagging down the wooden bench, “that’ll screw you every time.” He shook his head in despair. Willi muttered something in Finnish and drained a bucket from the cold tub over Alden’s leg. “Now keep it in the water,” he commanded. Obedient, Alden thrust his right foot into one of the cold pails and slid his buttocks around to the lower bench. He wriggled his toes. His foot glowed.

  Nutbrown, freshly stripped, walked in from the changing room. He bowed his head and marched silently to the top bench. There, with great formality, like a justice about to pronounce sentence of death, he dipped a washcloth in the cold water and placed the square on his head. The terrycloth’s front corner dripped a rivulet of cool down his forehead to the tip of his nose. On the sauna’s upper and lower benches, the four naked mourners sat themselves in two pairs, bellies looming through the mist.

  “You know,” said Willi, “together we’re more than three hundred years old.”

  “Just the four of us?”

  “Well, maybe two-fifty.” He leaned forward and ladled a copper dipper of water onto the layer of rocks that lined the top of the wood stove. A cloud of steam rose. Slowing their breath to avoid the new moisture’s burn, stopping movement, the others calculated out Willi’s comment. They observed the flaccid muscles of their calves, their piebald reddening skin. The men on top stared at the skulls of the two on the bench below. The tips of their ears burned, and the skin of their napes where the points of hot, wet hair brushed. In the once cold pail, Alden’s foot stopped throbbing as the water heated to a soothing lukewarm.

  “When I was younger, in Mexico,” he said, the heat and cold reminding him, “I loved to swim. I was working for United Shoe in Leon, building a factory. They were using those damn bamboo scaffolds. We would lose a man every week because no one knew what they were doing. Falls and sheer stupidity. Once I saw two workers with paint buckets just trying to be polite. The one leaned out too far, making this Alphonse-and-Gaston gesture, and his bucket caught on a pole and he went right over, blue paint with him. His ribs were broken and they punctured his lung.” Alden paused. The air in the wooden cabin was too hot for speaking. He closed his eyes, then began again more softly, more slowly. “The guy who sent us the workers had connections with the CTM, the government union. He was always trying to get me to meet his sister.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m serious. I’m not talking about Tijuana. This was a sad story. She was a widow with a kid. They wouldn’t talk about the husband. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Gray eyes, a coppery-brown cast to her hair, fair skin. And beautiful arms”—for some seconds, Alden thought—“like a diver’s.”

  “Dark and exotic?” said Squillace, suspicious.

  “No, I don’t mean that. She didn’t look . . .”

  “Mexican?”

  “No, she didn’t. A l
ot of Mexicans don’t. She looked like an American woman. But I had never really spoken with her. She and her little boy would just come with the brother to the site office sometimes. The brother was a real hustler but he liked to give the impression that he was in a leisure class, that his work was just an extension of his family life. Actually, Alma—the sister—was going to a secretarial school, and I had a sense that their financial situation was pretty precarious. But if you’d asked him what his profession was, I think he would have laughed and said he was a labor contractor and a part-time chaperone. They had drawing-room manners which went completely over my head, but he didn’t know that.”

  Alden took a new breath of the heavy air and rubbed his hands over his chest. He dug a thumb into the sore muscles just below his collar bone and felt a whisper of heartache. The loosening of flesh with its intimation of mortality disturbed him. Relaxation was not necessarily a friend. He was beginning to fear that the weekly sessions in the moist heat were becoming irrevocable.

  Next to him, Squillace moved a loofah in circles over the old skin of his knees. “So the brother wanted you to marry this woman?”

  “He was interested. There were five of us from the company and I was the only bachelor. And he knew I was an engineer. That’s a bigger deal in Latin countries; it’s a certificate, a title like duke or doctor. But I think he really liked me. I don’t think he appreciated how genuinely ordinary I was.”

  “They worship Americans,” pronounced Nutbrown from above, his eyes closed in bliss.

  “No. They worship money like everybody else. He was a man who made a living off the people he knew and, down there, Americans are always good to know. I enjoyed the respect. Anyway, he invited me to a picnic with Alma and the boy, on a Sunday afternoon. There was a small lake outside the city, behind an earthen dam, a presa, that had only been built the year before. The hills around were maguey fields, the plant they make tequila from, and rope, too, at that time. Big plants with rings of thick green leaves. They look like giant artichokes, as big as a man, and from the center, at the right time of year, grow these trunks seven or eight feet high with branches emerging at perfect right angles. We used to call them toothbrush trees, but they’re really immense reproductive stalks, coated with bristles.”