Amateur Barbarians

by Robert Cohen

  “Well, where I’m from, the guest chooses for himself.”

  “Yes, you do as you like,” Yohannes said, still angry. “This we all know about the Americans. You honor your own ways above others.”

  Here we go again with the insults, Teddy thought. Indignant, he strode off across the courtyard on his own, determined to make his own mistakes, find his own friends. The children at least were happy to see him. They crowded in close, grabbing at the camera, admiring their reflections in the lens. Their breath ruffled the hairs on his arms; their fingers entwined themselves in his. It had been a long time since children had wanted to touch him, had done so voluntarily. Now he waded through their ranks like a man in a flood. They surged forward, bestowing unto him their odd, complicated names. Mesfin. Abebe. Tamrat. Ruweni. His own name in comparison sounded paltry and bland even to him. Made-up. His face was hot. He felt a pressure in his chest. Birds twitched and twittered in the juniper trees. Danielle, in accordance with her new policy of abandoning him whenever she could, was nowhere in sight. He appeared to have lost Yohannes too. There was no one to mediate or translate for him; no one to steer or instruct him in how to behave. He was happy about this and also a little panicked. He looked down to find two small boys hanging upside down on his pant legs, clinging like pandas to the trunks. “Okay,” he roared. “Off.”

  They giggled and shook their heads. His mock-rage, if that was what it was, delighted them.

  “So that’s how it is, huh? You want to live dangerously, do you?”

  He gathered them in his arms and flung them high in the air, spun them like pizzas overhead. Everyone cheered. Why shouldn’t they? They were just kids. How natural it felt to play the old roughhouse games with them. The Ogre on the loose again. On some level, he’d never stopped being the Ogre, never given up being that shaggy, maniacal monster who bellowed and roared and chased kids around the yard, threw them over his broad shoulders like potato sacks, and dangled them upside down until they whimpered for mercy. Say what you would about the Ogre, for all his faults he wasn’t boring. He knew how to put on a show.

  “Daddy!”

  Another one, he thought. He was accumulating quite a crowd. All these awestruck children begging to be carried away.

  “What are you doing?” Danielle said. “Are you out of your freaking mind? Put those children down before someone gets hurt!”

  “Now let’s not get excited.” It seemed an unfair and lamentable trick of fate that his daughter, when appalled by something he’d done, sounded so very much like his wife. “I was just playing around a little.”

  “Well, stop. These are children. They’re not your personal toys.”

  “Fine.” In truth her righteous indignation bored him. What was all her travel for, if she was going to insist on the same old proprieties?

  “You think this is why I brought you here? To terrify these poor kids with a sicko game like Ogre? God, I always hated that game too.”

  “Untrue.” He shook his head. “Untrue and unfair.” And, he was tempted to add, unkind.

  “Okay, maybe not always. But it got old, getting chased around all the time. My friends stopped coming over. Mimi’s too. We used to hide in our rooms after dinner sometimes, just to avoid you and that stupid game. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Now you’re being spiteful.” The sun swam in his eyes. “You’re mad at me now so you’re trying to hurt me.”

  “Face it, Daddy. You were the one who liked that game. Not us.”

  “Face it, Daddy!” the children jeered. “Face it, Daddy!”

  The tables had been turned: now it was the Ogre’s turn to be rendered vulnerable, to teeter from his great height, a giant encircled by flies, under the assault of all the many things he must face. He looked around the courtyard as if in a dream. His shirt was soaked in sweat, and like any old monster he’d begun to stink. “Okay,” he said to the kids on his back, “party’s over. Off.”

  He bent low, like some faltering Atlas, so they could climb down off his shoulders. He couldn’t see their faces and so had no way of knowing if it was disappointment, or relief, that impelled them to disperse as quickly as they did.

  “Find Yohannes,” he heard Danielle say to someone. She was already moving on to other business. She’d taken possession of one of the babies from a staff assistant and was now looking him over worriedly. “And then let’s call Doctor Dave.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. A touch of fever. No biggie.” With casual authority she cradled the baby high on her shoulder. “Listen, Daddy, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings just now. I know you mean well, but these aren’t your children. You have to remember that. You can’t just plunge in without thinking and expect everyone to go along.” She touched her lips to the baby’s forehead, frowning. “Where’s Yohannes? We need someone to go on a meds run.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “You’ll never find the place. Let Yohannes do it. Mind fetching him for me? He’s probably out back as usual, shooting hoops.”

  Teddy hurried off, determined to make amends. The kids had gone back to their games. The soccer ball the boys were using was flat. He made a mental note to buy them a new one. The girls were less focused on playing hopscotch, he noticed, than they were on the intricacies of braiding each other’s hair. But they could probably use some more chalk. From the kitchen he smelled charcoal fires, some peppery stew. He rushed through the courtyard, looking for Yohannes. The children had to swerve to avoid him. They knew an Ogre when they saw one, all right.

  “You must take my picture, Mr. Tony. So you will not forget.”

  Mekas again. The boy, with his shaved head and his sly listless expression, had arisen before him suddenly like a vision.

  “Here, kid,” Teddy said, all but forcing the Leica into his hand. “Knock yourself out.”

  Behind the courtyard, on the laundry lines strung over the alleys, T-shirts dangled like pennants. Every T-shirt on the planet, it seemed, was born in China, emigrated to America for a better life, and then was sent here to Africa to die. America was only a way station, Teddy thought, a middleman. It bought things cheap, then got bored, stuffed them into trash bags, and donated them at church.

  He remembered the woman on the plane. Trying is almost doing. Then he remembered himself, wasting long afternoons on the sofa, worrying about a disease he didn’t have. His fingers idling dreamily on the remote, the world a flat pixelated screen on the other side of the room. Killing time. When really it was the other way around. Yes, death was a contagious disease, he saw that now. Philip had got sick and died. But what he, the survivor, had done with his vigor and capabilities, he who could rewire a radio and program a computer and construct enormous pieces of furniture with his own hands—what was the word for that?

  He’d stepped into the coffin like a fool, and the box had refused to sink. His life bobbed up and down on the surface, stubborn and witless as a cork.

  “Ah now, Mr. Teddy. You wish to play?”

  Yohannes stood at the top of the key, smiling wolfishly, showing off his crossover dribble. Only there was no key. The court wasn’t much of a court, either. The ball had no tread. The hoop was a bent, rusted, oblong thing nailed on planks against the wall.

  “No way.”

  “Come now, one game. I give you the best guys. What do you say?” A predatory smile flicked across Yohannes’s face. There was not much respect for elders in it.

  “I just got off a plane. I’d never keep up. Besides, you’re wanted in the office.”

  “One game only.”

  “Anyway I can’t play in these loafers.”

  “Please now, look here.” Yohannes pointed to his own open-heeled sandals. The rest of the boys wore flip-flops, not that it appeared to slow them down any. Slim-hipped and coltish, they flung themselves around the court like kamikazes. At their age—thirteen, fourteen—adoption was less likely. He supposed they had to channel their energies somehow. “You are a strong man I think, Mr.
Teddy. I believe you have some game in you yet. Maybe you school me, eh?”

  Just what the world needs, he thought, another trash-talker. He stripped down to his T-shirt. The great mound of his belly swelled against the fabric. “Okay,” he said. “You’re on.”

  The game itself went as games, in Teddy’s experience, often did: he huffed and heaved and threw his weight around in the paint like a bully, and in the end he both enjoyed himself enormously and lost when he might just as well have won. That he was playing against boys half his own height did nothing to restrain either his enthusiasm or his aggressiveness. After all, he too had been hammered on by grown men in his youth. He too had been pushed around the court by a hulking, hairy-backed butcher with love handles and bad breath. That was the male drill, the timeless rite of initiation. To mix it up out in the driveway, in the failing light, with the hot juices flowing, the gnats swarming your hair like a halo, the sneakers squealing and the mowers roaring like big sullen animals down the street…to feel an old man’s slick, foul-smelling torso grappling against you, hear his harsh grunts in your ear, the sound of a man fighting for breath in a constricted space, as if breath and space were privileges to be earned…this was a good thing, he believed, a thing to be craved and pursued like a birthright. So he went all out. It was what he did best.

  What he did not do best alas was shoot or pass or dribble. Consistency in these skill areas was not his strength. Yet the boys on his team kept passing him the ball anyway, as if it amused them to watch this fat slob stumbling and cursing around the court, flinging up his wild erratic shots. His lungs were boiling. His glasses had completely fogged over. Eventually he sank a ten-footer from the baseline and the adrenaline began to flow. Then a fifteen-footer, falling away. A finger roll. Yohannes had been lying low, letting his young teammates do all the shooting. Now his eyes flashed, his brows locked together over his fine Abyssinian nose. “You are in the zone, Mr. Teddy.”

  “Bah.” Teddy shrugged. “Law of averages.”

  “Perhaps the law now will change.”

  The two of them began going at it for real, throwing forearms and elbows, jostling for position under the basket. Teddy could hear his heart down in his chest, thundering like hooves. It seemed a good sound. He felt jubilant and strong. True, he was going to be sore tomorrow, but it would be a good soreness, the soreness that comes from exerting yourself too much. He knew about the other kind.

  Unfortunately Yohannes, sensing introspection under way, chose that moment to pivot hard and drive right. Teddy was caught flat-footed; he had to resort to middle-aged hacker’s default mode and grab the guy’s shirt. For a moment they stood there locked in a bear hug, in the center of what would have been the paint had the court been painted or had any other features in common with a basketball court. Meanwhile the ball went bounding away down the baseline and across the alley.

  Teddy chased after it, joyously, recklessly, in the grip of some heroic delirium. What was it about chasing balls that excited the instincts so? At bottom it seemed he was just another old dog with a pendulous belly, running back and forth for no reason and calling it a life.

  Eventually the ball found its way to Yared, one of the boys on Teddy’s team, a short, droopy-eyed fellow with a measles-like rash around his mouth. Yared lifted the ball in his hands with a calm, impeccable solemnity, as if Mr. Spalding himself had entrusted him with it. Then he banked in a shot. Tie score.

  Yohannes laughed. “What you say, Mr. Teddy? Shall we stop now, or is it joyable for you to finish our game?”

  “You must be kidding.” To fly six thousand miles across the ocean only to end all tied up on this rutty joke of a basketball court—it would be worse than losing.

  “Okay, so.” Yohannes took a step back and lazily popped a long-range jumper; it shot through the hoop like a pellet. “The school meets.”

  “We’ll see.” Teddy bulled his way down the lane and threw in a hook. Yohannes answered from the baseline. Then each sank a long jumper. It went on that way for a while, back and forth, until Yohannes appeared to tire. He grew casual with his dribble, the ball left exposed. Teddy drew up tight, waiting for an opening. When it came, he lunged. The ball wasn’t there. Instantly he knew he’d been snookered, caught out of position far from the basket, overplaying his man. And if in retrospect he should have just conceded the head-fake and easy jumper that followed, this seemed only the latest in a series of bad mental, physical, and temperamental mistakes both on the court and off. Indeed, it seemed only fitting that his shaggy high-domed head—the source of these mistakes—should go on at this point to collide with Yohannes’s elbow and suffer a sharp, sickening crunch.

  The day went dark. His glasses sailed off onto the asphalt; his eyes, exposed, filled with tears. His last sight before hitting the ground was of Yohannes polishing one final web gem, laying in, with a feathery touch, the winning basket. From somewhere nearby he heard splintering glass. It was a sound he had come to recognize.

  “I trust you are not hurt, my friend?” The driver bent over him, looking worried, solicitous.

  “Just. A bit. Winded.”

  “Yes, I am very tired too.” In truth Yohannes was not out of breath in the slightest. “Come, we will go see Danny in the office. She will care for you like a mother.”

  As it happened, when they hobbled into the common room, like soldiers back from a war, Danny was caring for other people like a mother—setting out tiny cups of juice and a platter of yellow, tasteless-looking cakes for the youngest children in the orphanage. Of course, it was Teddy who did most of the hobbling. His trousers were torn at the knee, his left leg seeping blood in two different places. He looked around for a place to sit, but all the chairs were tiny. They formed a dense, forbidding clot at the center of the room, like the terminal phase of some protracted Scrabble game. The walls were covered with maps of Europe and the United States. Curiously, there were no maps of Africa. But he supposed the children knew where Africa was.

  “Ah,” Danielle said, “the prodigals return.”

  “Sorry, it’s my fault,” Teddy said. “We were playing ball and the time got away.”

  “I love it when guys bond. It’s so…selfish.”

  “I already said I was sorry. Besides, you wanted us to be friends. Right, partner?”

  “Partner?”

  She flicked a little glare in Yohannes’s direction. He avoided her eyes. “You must tend to your father. He is in need of attention.”

  “How do you like that?” she said to Teddy. “Known you one day, and he’s already got your number.”

  “Very funny.” Wincing, Teddy worked at the geometrical problem of fitting his economy-size self into one of the dwarfish chairs. “I don’t suppose you have any Band-Aids around this place.”

  “You’ll have to wait. It’s snack time.”

  “Sure.” Blood was leaking through his pants, darkening the fabric. The smell of the juice and the cake reminded him that he’d had no lunch. “A couple of ibuprofen might be nice too.”

  “I’ll see what I can find.” She poured out more juice. “So how was the big game?”

  “Humiliating.”

  “Your father is very strong,” Yohannes said. “Like Shaq. He is a man with great will.”

  “Sounds like an epic struggle. Of course we’ve got a sick baby here desperate for antibiotics, but that can wait, right? The important thing is you two had a fun game.” She was silent for a moment, fuming. When she spoke again, she told Yohannes curtly, “You better get going now. Dr. Dave’s got a package waiting.”

  “Okay, my mother.”

  “Ask him to throw in some anti-inflammatories too. Shaq here looks like he’ll need them.”

  When Yohannes was gone, she blew a sigh toward the empty doorway. “Great, now he’s pissed too.”

  “Nonsense. He reveres you.”

  “No, he doesn’t like the way I spoke to you just now. He thinks a woman should never sound harsh.”

  “I don’t mind
a little harsh.”

  “I know. That’s what bothers me. I don’t either.” She put down the juice pitcher and wiped her hands on her shorts. Her little mouth was all bunched on one side, the lashes of her eyes darkly defined, like grass after a thaw. “I called Mom last night by the way. After I dropped you off. She was kind of in a mood.”

  “Oh?”

  “Imagine how stupid I felt. Here you’re like, ‘Oh, gee, everything’s fine at home, I’m just popping over to see how you’re doing.’ You guys should get your stories straight.”

  “We intend to. Soon.”

  “Meaning what? You’re telling me you don’t even know if you’re still together or not? That’s supposed to inspire confidence?”

  “Grow up, Danny. There are bigger things involved than your confidence.”

  She flushed, absorbing this. Now it was his turn to be harsh. With an automatic gesture she tried to toss back her hair, but it didn’t move—she’d secured it with a band. “Even so, you could have told me. How was I supposed to know you were getting separated?”

  “Look, Danny, nobody’s getting separated from anybody. We’ve been married a long time. We’re not going to throw it all away just because of a rough patch.”

  “A rough patch.” She went back to pouring out her little thimble-size cups of juice, like a nurse dispensing medicine. Her face was puffy with meditations and complaints, but her hands on the pitcher were as steady as you could want. Put this girl on a flag, he thought. Engrave her image on the prow of a ship.

  “What about you and Yohannes?” he said. “What’s up with that?”

  “None of your business. We’re friends. What’s up with you and Yohannes? If you’re thinking of investing in one of his quote-unquote movies, I should warn you, he has a rotten track record. Like as far as I know he’s never made one.”

  “What about this action thing he’s doing? That sounds promising.”

  “Oh, God, he told you about that? He and his brother, they sit around drinking beer all night watching Godfather movies and making notes. To give you an idea, they like the third one best.” She bent low, inspecting the bruise on his knee. “Hmm, looks like you’ve got a little gravel in there.”