Everywhere he goes, Dawit looks only for Enrico in the crowd, but there is no sign of him. Perhaps he has left town. He never calls Dawit or leaves a message on the answering machine, and Dawit does not dare to call him. He hunts for him in the streets, thinking again and again that he has caught a glimpse of him disappearing down the street. He presumes the family lives somewhere nearby. He searches for the name in the telephone book but doesn’t find it. He attends party after party, hoping to find him there. He is increasingly mobbed by Roman society. Everyone wants to know him, to say they have met him, to shake his hand. They want to know about M. What does he think? Where might she be? Might she have taken her life, or is she just hiding out somewhere like Salinger? Or might she actually have been murdered? Their eyes brighten with the thrill of the thought.
He is obliged to stand in crowded, ancient rooms, glass in hand, and talk about M. Everyone wants to know about her life, her habits, what his relationship was with her. Obviously they assume he was her lover. Forced to talk about her, he makes up a story as he goes along. He sings her praises, says he considers her a great writer, as indeed he once did. He says he is certain that her new book will stun them all. It is the best thing she has ever done, he maintains, echoing Gustave’s words. He is sure she is somewhere, perhaps even back in Africa where she grew up, enjoying the landscape she loved. He is certain she must be amused by all the interest in her disappearance, her new book. Indeed, he does feel she is close to him, watching him, not so amused.
While he talks he thinks of her lying in the Bay of Foxes, something no living soul knows and probably will never know. He has two lives: one surrounded by an increasingly large and enthusiastic public and filled with falsehood, and another life running like an underground stream in secret. Everything that he really cares about—M.’s death, Enrico, his friends in Paris, his dead parents—all this he never speaks of, keeps hidden from others. He is cloaked in lies and begins to see others in the same light, thinking that they, too, must hide what is real.
He stands among the elegant people in the great, high-ceilinged halls of the Roman villas, looking out French windows at the cypress trees in the gardens, the moonlit stone paths. He thinks of his home and longs for his family. He feels more alone than he has ever done in his life.
As the autumn days go by, he is convinced that Enrico must indeed have confirmed his alibi, as the police have left him alone. This act of generosity saddens him further. He has underestimated his friend, who has stood by him gallantly. Why had he not gone to him immediately when M. had thrown him out? Would Enrico have been able to help him to find work, papers, enough money to support himself?
His allowance continues to be transferred to his account, and as he pays no rent and is invited for most of his meals, he has no financial worries. Even his tourist visa is easily extended with the help of his new and influential acquaintances. He lingers on, still hoping Enrico will come to him.
He continues to rise early and run barefoot in the streets of Rome. He runs around the Circus Maximus. Then he takes up his pen, the one M. had given him, and writes the story of his own life: about his childhood, Solo, the escapades in the hills around Harar. He writes about the Emperor, the revolution, his days in prison. He awaits a word from Enrico but it does not come.
XXXVIII
IN NOVEMBER, THE POLICE TELEPHONE TO TELL HIM HE IS FREE to leave when he wishes. They have not turned up any trace of M. As so often happens with missing persons, there are no clues to her whereabouts, the inspector tells him. Dawit says nothing, thinking of the body lying silently in the depths of the sea. The Bay of Foxes has kept his secrets for him. He is free to go on with his life, to leave Rome, Italy, behind.
He phones Gustave, who is delighted with the good news and promises to send a ticket. “You might as well stay in M.’s apartment on the Rue Guynemer,” he says. He tells him the apartment is empty, that it will take years before anyone can lay a claim to it. Dawit hesitates, thinking of those empty rooms he knows so well.
“Do you have the keys?” Gustave asks.
“I do, but….” Dawit says. He is reluctant to walk back into his past but does not know how to say this to him. Finally, he says nothing. Instead he tells him he has written his story. His book is finished.
“Wonderful news! Bring it with you. I can’t wait to read it,” Gustave says.
Dawit wonders what the editor will think when he does. “I’ll be there in a few days and I’ll bring you the book,” he says.
On the day he leaves Rome, he packs his bag, tidies the flat, leaving things exactly as he had found them. He sits at the small fold-down desk against the wall, trying to compose a note for Enrico. “I owe you my life, which no longer has any meaning without you,” he finally writes. He puts the note in a closed envelope and props it up on the counter by the telephone. He hopes Enrico will find it and read it, and perhaps one day respond. He takes a last look out the window at the Spanish Steps, then closes it, wipes off the counter in the kitchen, and leaves, putting the key under the mat as Enrico had asked him to do.
Gustave has sent him a business-class ticket on Air France and told him to take a taxi and charge it to the publishing house. Dawit looks out the window of the car at the streets of Rome that Enrico had promised to show him. They had never walked together to visit his favorite places, the parks and monuments, the Forum. Dawit feels grateful for the welcome the Italians gave him, grateful for the beauty and abundance of this country, and grateful to the couple in Sardinia, who must have spoken well of him to the police. He senses he will never return, that he is definitively saying good-bye to Enrico and to M.
When he arrives in Paris, it is after nine o’clock at night. The lights that flash by him outside the taxi window sadden him, but he reminds himself he will be able to call Asfa now, and that he will have a place to offer him where he might be able to stay with his family, at least for a while.
When he arrives at the elegant sandstone building in the Latin Quarter, he presses the brass bell as he did the first time. As poor and hungry as he was that day, his heart was lighter and more hopeful than it feels now, for all his elegant clothes.
He knocks on the concierge’s glass door, though he has the key. Maria greets him effusively, in her narrow loge, the smells of stew cooking in the air. She tells him she’s so glad he has come back. “What news from madame?” she asks. He shakes his head and says he has none. “You must see my baby,” she says in response and goes into her bedroom, brings out a bundle of white blankets, where a small dark face peeks out at him. “A boy,” she says proudly. The child, wrapped up tightly in a thick blanket, is, to his surprise, dark-skinned, the hair a dark fuzz on the top of his head. “His father came from Africa,” Maria explains, smiling at Dawit and putting the baby in his arms. He kisses the baby on both his plump cheeks. “He is beautiful, beautiful!” Dawit tells Maria, though the baby is quite plain as far as he can see. “Where is his father?” he asks with the child in his arms. She shakes her head, shrugs, and says sadly she doesn’t know. Dawit sighs and holds the warm little body against his own. How well nature does its work, he thinks, feeling the child’s warmth. It takes only a moment to fall in love with a baby, he thinks as he gives him back to Maria and takes out his wallet and pulls out all the money he has in it to give to her. She protests, “Non, non, monsieur!” He tells her to buy something nice for the baby. She says, “I’m so glad you are back. Will you stay with us for a while, monsieur?”
“Perhaps not very long, I’m afraid, and you must call me Dawit,” he says.
Then Maria warns him that there is someone upstairs waiting for him. For a moment he is startled, afraid M. will materialize as she did on that first day, with her distant expression, her blue jeans, the blue scarf tied prophetically around the long, arrogant neck. “Who is it?” he asks.
“A surprise,” Maria says and smiles at him mysteriously. He presumes it must be Gustave. He will have to give him his book tonight. There will be no dela
y.
He takes the small caged elevator upstairs to delay his entrance, at least, and stands before the door, as he did that first day. He hesitates to use his key and decides to ring the bell instead. The door opens quickly, as though he were expected, and to his surprise it is not Gustave at all, but his wife, Simone. She is laughing and smiling as she welcomes him back, her white, even teeth glistening. She kisses him warmly on both cheeks. “Welcome! I’m so glad you are back,” she murmurs. She wears a low-cut pink dress with frills on the shoulders and smells of a pungent perfume. Seeing his surprise as he enters the hall, she says she and Gustave thought he might prefer a little company on his first night back here in the empty apartment. What can he tell the poor woman? He says nothing, just looking around the elegant hall, the living room, with the low lamps lit.
“I have had the concierge tidy up and put some flowers in the vases for you,” she says brightly, her cheerful French voice grating to his ears. He doesn’t know how to respond. Trying to be polite, he tells her it was kind of them both to think of him. All he wants is for her to leave him alone. He strides away from her, murmuring something about the bathroom, going once again through the large rooms, the salon with its fireplace, where Simone has had a fire laid, the study with all M.’s books, where he worked so hard for her. He goes down the corridor to his little bedroom at the end. Simone follows him like a shadow, as he once followed M. through this apartment. She stops at the door to his bedroom and watches him throw his suitcase onto the bed.
“You could sleep in the big bedroom now,” she says, smiling suggestively.
“That’s not necessary,” he says, looking at her. “This is quite enough space for one.”
She leans against the jamb of the door and asks him if his voyage was good. She says she has some dinner waiting for him. She will wait for him in the salon, while he freshens up. He listens to the click-clack of her high heels as she goes down the corridor. He is tempted just to throw himself down on the bed and sleep as he did that first day he came here, but he feels obliged to say something to Simone. She is waiting for him. He relieves himself, washes his hands, and gulps down a glass of water from the small basin in the corridor.
When he returns to the salon, Simone sits before the fire, her legs crossed, her sling-backed shoe dangling from her toes, sipping a glass of white wine. She looks up and says, “Ah, there you are, darling, do come and sit beside me, will you? Have some wine,” and she pats the sofa at her side. But he stands at the French windows, looking out into the gardens, surveying the scene. At this season the trees have lost their leaves, and he can see the Panthéon through the dark tangle of branches, visible across the park, lit up in the dim light.
“You have had an anxious time, I hear. I do hope you will be happy again here,” Simone says, getting up and coming over to him. She stands beside him, smiling, and puts her hand gently on his arm. She has prepared a little supper for them, she says, and if he does not mind she will share it with him.
He looks down at her and hesitates. He remembers that moment when M. had asked him to share a meal with her on his first night in her home. What would have happened if he had refused? This time he does just that. He tells Simone he is not feeling very well. He doesn’t think he can eat. He needs to lie down. Indeed, he does not feel well. He is giddy, as though he is standing on a ship, the floor tilting under him. “So many terrible things have happened,” he says, looking at her.
She draws herself up, purses her lips, and stares at him with her deep blue eyes. “So I have heard. As you prefer,” she says coldly.
“Before you go, though, you must take my book for Gustave,” he says and turns from her to fetch it. “I think he will find it interesting,” he says as he thrusts it into her hands.
“You want me to take this now?” she asks, looking down at his pages with some distaste. “Surely it could wait a day or two? There’s no rush, is there? You could, perhaps, bring it over one day next week yourself to the office?”
He hesitates for only a moment. “I think it’s better you take it now, so that I don’t change my mind,” he says with a smile. She looks at him for a moment, then shrugs her smooth shoulders in her pink dress. He leads her to the door, helps her into her soft cashmere coat, and almost thrusts her forth onto the landing with his book in her reluctant hands. “Give it to Gustave. I think he’ll be pleased,” he says to her back as she presses the button for the elevator.
Then he goes into the living room and picks up the phone. He calls Asfa at the hotel where he works and waits for someone to find him. He tells him he must come over tomorrow. He has space for him and his family, at least for a while. They must all come. He has written a book, and now, with the money, he is in a position to reciprocate.
“You wrote a book?” Asfa says. “That’s wonderful.”
“Yes, and you are in it. We are all in it, all the Africans, the French, and the Italians, too. It’s called The Bay of Foxes.”
Acknowledgments
Though this book is fiction and its characters fictional I would like to acknowledge the debt I owe these writers whose books were of great help to me:
Marguerite Duras and her biographers
Nega Mezlekia
Gaitachew Bekele
John H. Spencer
Kapuscinski
Haile Selassie
Dinaw Mengestu
And particularly Maaza Mengiste who was generous enough to read and comment on my text.
My thanks go to my colleagues at Bennington and Princeton for their support and encouragement and particularly Joyce Carol Oates, Edmund White, Amy Hempel, and Susanna Moore.
As always I thank my family: my three loving daughters, discerning readers and great generous hearts.
And my husband Bill for once again editing these pages with such diligence.
For the continuing support of my publisher at Penguin Books, Kathryn Court, I am most grateful.
A PENGUIN READERS GUIDE TO
THE BAY OF FOXES
Sheila Kohler
AN INTRODUCTION TO
The Bay of Foxes
The pampered son of Ethiopian aristocrats, Dawit is now an illegal immigrant living in Paris. Although he is finally safe from the revolutionaries who dethroned the emperor and killed both his parents, Dawit lives in poverty and constantly fears deportation. “He feels he has become invisible” (p. 7). Then a chance meeting offers him the opportunity to alter his destiny once more. While nursing a solitary espresso in a café, Dawit sees the famous author M. “With a thrill he recognizes the ethereal presence of a celebrity whom he sincerely admires” (p. 3). Much to his astonishment, Dawit realizes that M. is looking back at him.
As he already knows, the much older white woman also grew up in Africa, and many of her best-selling novels draw upon the events of her disreputable youth, including her passionate affair with a wealthy Somali landlord. Summoning Dawit to her table, M. tells him that he resembles this “lost lover” (p. 13). Even emaciated and in tattered clothes, Dawit is beautiful, and M. takes note of his elite education and courtly manners. They discuss Africa and their respective lives. “But he can see that she wants more from him than recollections of a shared past” (p. 13). At the end of their conversation, M. invites him to move into her apartment.
When the appointed day arrives, Dawit nervously sets off for his new patron’s luxurious apartment. He is relieved that she remembers her invitation. Yet he also “wonders who inhabited this room before him, and why she had asked him to come three days after they had met” (p. 31). The two fall into a happy routine. Dawit becomes M.’s secretary and the first reader of her new work. An excellent mimic, he also takes over her correspondence and telephone conversations. When they dine with her editor, she boasts, “Who would have guessed what a dark gem I found in a café? A brown diamond” (p. 59).
Dawit’s frail body begins to recover from the brutalities of his imprisonment and subsequent flight from Ethiopia. M. generously opens her elegant
wardrobe of Italian suits and silks to Dawit, whose height and build are identical to hers, calling him her “very young and dark double” (p. 41). As Dawit’s health returns, his gratitude toward M. grows peppered with contempt, until summer arrives and they travel to her Sardinian villa beside the Bay of Foxes. There, the glorious beauty of the Mediterranean renews his affection for M., but it also awakens his own long-buried sexuality—and his yearnings for freedom.
A stunning accomplishment by an internationally acclaimed author at the top of her game, Sheila Kohler’s The Bay of Foxes explores issues of race, colonialism, and sexual politics in a chilling tale that deftly intertwines the events of Dawit’s tragic past with his increasingly complicated present.
ABOUT SHEILA KOHLER
Sheila Kohler was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She later lived in Paris for fifteen years. In 1981, she moved to the United States and earned an MFA in writing at Columbia University. She currently teaches at Princeton University and Bennington College. The Bay of Foxes is her twelfth work of fiction. She has been published in nine countries and now resides in New York City.
A CONVERSATION WITH
SHEILA KOHLER
The Bay of Foxes: A Novel Page 16