Kouhouesso strode purposefully through the forest: the trees were going to follow him as one, all in a row, directed at last. Machetes, secateurs, chainsaws and bulldozers: they were carving out corridors for the camera, otherwise the horizon loomed thirty metres away and the landscape closed in. The very idea of a film in that forest was a paradox that made Kouhouesso joyful and defiant.
THE NIGHT OF THE PANGOLIN
Favour was thinner and the size of her breasts had perhaps been enhanced. Draped in striped cotton fabric, her silhouette a slender S, she was batting her painted eyelids slowly. As if it was too much of an effort to bestow a glance on those who were not royalty. ‘Brass leggings to the knees’, gilded gauntlets to the elbow, two crimson spots painted on her cheeks—Olga and the hairdresser were fussing around her. Kouhouesso had bought, from a passing Bamileke man, a Gabonese Punu mask with a three-tiered hairstyle, and Welcome, the hairdresser, who was not Punu, or anything for that matter, was struggling to reproduce it in all its splendour on Favour’s impatient head. Everyone was happy except her. There was the question of a wig.
That mask—almond-shaped eyes, long nose, imposing forehead—it was her, Favour. Kou had an eye for it; it was unsettling. When she appeared on the riverbank, wearing ‘the value of several elephant tusks’ (plastic), all that junk, cheap tat, all those jumbled elements finally came together in a framed image, and it was stunning; it embodied something like the Big Idea, Favour raising her bewitching arms to the heavens.
The only ones Kouhouesso wasn’t happy with were the men laying the rails: you would have thought they were French. The foreman was even a union member. They had huge problems uprooting stumps: deep holes had to be dug, then filled in with gravel transported from Douala. If they didn’t uproot the stumps, suckers grew back within the hour, the river poured in, and the embankment collapsed; rails had been seen floating away. It was as if, at night, some indomitable force destroyed the day’s work. It shook the earth, pulled up the sleepers. There was grumbling. Brows furrowed, eyes darkened at this curse on the deforested earth—naked and as if stripped. You didn’t have to be a witch to hear rumblings reverberating around Kouhouesso, waves of sound around the centre of a gong.
All he could talk about was Godard’s Weekend: the longest tracking shot in the history of cinema. He wanted his tracking shot to be subdued and smooth, as fluid as the river itself, stealthy, creeping along like the boat. He described the scene to the whole crew: the tracking shot would end with Favour raising her arms to the heavens. In the novel, her role stopped there, but there were rumours that she had wangled an appearance with George in the caves.
As for her, she could never find the right moment to speak to him about the Intended’s scenes. She counted in days, like in Los Angeles: six days since they had slept together. The location scouting was dragging on; they were finalising Cassel’s schedule first: they would fit in the minor scenes when they could. That’s what the assistant director had told her.
An anteater. Sleepers in the water, disturbed soil: an anteater. They hung it by the tail at the entrance to Siphindile’s. At one hundred and thirty centimetres and forty kilos, it was a good-sized anteater, the size of a ten-year-old child. Solange stayed on the verandah with the animal, which experts came to admire. They haggled. Its strange mouth, round and toothless, seemed to be sucking at the yellow dust. Solange was acquainted with moles, even big ones, from her mother’s garden, but she had never seen anything like this.
Freeboy wanted someone to buy the whole animal. He had spoken to it as he was killing it, to ask permission; he would not let it be chopped up like a common porcupine. Patricien was the one who ended up with it, whole, for his wife’s birthday in Kribi.
Fifty guests under a canopy of leaves, jerrycans of palm wine, musicians. The scales were the most difficult thing to deal with on the plate. Patricien said that anteaters were becoming extinct, that their scales were thought to be magic. One of the few non-human mammals to walk on its back legs, using its tail for support. Strictly nocturnal. Digs burrows, eats termites—its huge claws rip apart their towers, crack. Apart from that, it tastes a bit like duck, done with a peanut sauce confit.
Kribi was a pretty town. Patricien lived in a white wooden house, mouldy but nice. He was no longer poor, but he was not rich: no guard in front of what he called his ‘residence’. Not far from there was the cathedral, the so-called French quarter, two or three colonial houses, a sort of casino and a rustic hospital, and then, of course, the inevitable huts, shacks and whatever. Patricien’s wife had studied in Yaoundé. The hospital dated back to the nineteenth century, in every sense. There were interesting places to see. Perhaps things would be all right here for the Intended.
In the middle of the meal, she received a text message: ‘Start without me.’ He had finished with K, although he usually never signed off. How could there be any ambiguity? K, as if she could have been waiting for another man.
She drank yellow, frothy cucumber juice, ate fermented cassava, and the lump in her throat, the stupid knot in her stomach that she’d had since the days of waiting in Los Angeles, began to dissolve a bit. The sun was throwing confetti through the roof of leaves, and she could see herself from above, from the sky, from the satellites, a tiny dot among the other dots, drunk and a bit nauseated, in this little lagoon in front of the Ntem River, on the edge of the forest, deep in the Gulf of Guinea. Right in the crook of Africa. Far from the crook where she was born, the Bay of Biscay, the familiar right angle, smaller, more of an alcove, that she had left back in her own South-West.
Sitting here at this birthday meal, eating plantain banana and dead anteater, as if she’d been doing it her whole life. Kouhouesso had coloured her. He had turned her a little bit black. And the others knew it. She was becoming impregnated with their melodious accent, like in Clèves when she got used to men without education, women without careers, children without a future; but here she stayed vigilant because she was surprised by the responses. She thought hard. She made them repeat what they had said. She laughed belatedly at jokes and they found her charming. She was Africanising herself clumsily, but they forgave her. They were polite because they forgot that she was white. And she forgot, too. And she forgot K, a little. During the anteater party her mind was not preoccupied with him; he was everywhere but nowhere. She smiled at everyone. Wanting to be loved by everyone rather than by a single person was almost a relief.
JUNGLE FEVER
The set designers had done a good job: you could have been in Europe. The ‘mahogany door on the first floor’ had not been at all difficult to track down: ngollan was not expensive here. For the marble chimney of a ‘monumental whiteness’ and for the grand piano ‘like a sombre and polished sarcophagus’, the set designer had, by default, opted for a sepulchral look. A side table, a patched armchair, the existing curtains, an imported rug: filming the Intended’s scenes in the old casino in Kribi cost less than anywhere else. Very European, yes, except for the heat. She and Vincent tried to laugh about it, he in his suit and tie, she in her dress buttoned up to the neck.
She was overwhelmed with nerves. Not because of Cassel: she’d already worked with big names like him. It was Kouhouesso. That connection they had. She had always avoided affairs with directors. She had a pain in her gut. She was taking Imodium every day, as well as quinine infusions. Welcome and Olga were fighting. Welcome was irritable; the colours were running. If things dragged on, they’d have to start the whole thing again—they should have invested in air conditioning. And yet, acting out the cold was possible, like acting out Europe, or acting out sadness.
Olga seemed exhausted. And everyone called her ‘The Chinese Girl’, which infuriated her. The dress and the three-piece suit had never made it to Kribi. Perhaps they were floating in the middle of the Atlantic like debris from a shipwreck. The customs office at Douala operated like a filter, from where indispensable objects reappeared, or not. Olga had had to make another dress, find the appropriate material
, dye it, starch it, get some little mother-of-pearl-like buttons made as fast as possible, dig up some lace from somewhere, cobble together a corset, and cut out a frock coat for Cassel from a fireman’s suit.
And the light. The room was facing north, but there was flaring and the lighting engineers were having trouble. While he waited, Kouhouesso filmed small sections of the Intended’s scene with a lightweight camera. He filmed her hands, resting on her knees that were draped in black. She saw them through his eyes: bare hands, pure white, bright blue veins. Welcome had given her a quick manicure… She surrendered her hands to him, the camera moved over them, it was gentle, it was good. Kouhouesso, all for her…
He was looking at her. He was filming her eyes. She stared deep into the lens. Bodies and shadows passed by at the edge of her vision. Welcome. Vincent. Lighting assistants. Set-design assistants, the assistant cinematographer. Kouhouesso was moving back, pulling away from her, and her eyes followed him, the light. The room was spinning, floating…Diaphanous blonde, halo of ash blonde. Lights. She was perfect for the role, it was made for her…Camera. Oh, she felt beautiful, and sad, and desolate. Her clear, smooth forehead illuminated by belief and love…‘No one knew him so well as I…I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best…’
‘Cut,’ said Kouhouesso. ‘We can’t hear you.’
‘No one knew him…He needed me…’
He was staring at her, scrutinising her. She would have liked to have more precise direction, for him to explain this man and this woman to her. For him to tell her the story of their love, tell her again about their betrothal…He kept her in the dark. In the blazing light. And the cameras were not filming, after all. The sun was annoying everyone. Cassel sat down again. Welcome put more powder on him. They started from the top.
‘You knew him best…’ Cassel was Marlow and himself at the same time, just like people speak two languages and come, self-evidently, from two places. In his reply was a hint of cruel doubt, a whole Congo of haziness; she and he had not known the same Kurtz…She had the impression of waltzing, but it was a desperate waltz. The light was worsening, all the efforts of the staff would not prevent the sun from rising…Action, action, Solange: ‘I have been very happy—very fortunate—very proud…Too fortunate. Too happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for—for life…’ Tears filled her eyes, she was good, she was perfect, but Kouhouesso was not looking at her. Cut.
Instead of its usual grey, the sky flaunted blue depths and a parade of clouds. It flickered on the camera screen, like the light-and-shadow effect of Super 8. They could have been in the Île-de-France. Kouhouesso opened a window; the curtains blew; he inspected the sky as if waiting, from one rim to the other, for birds, omens, a gap in time that would last the length of the scene.
They were not there yet.
Around two o’clock, however, they were getting there, thanks to a big cumulus cloud that turned into a huge storm-filled sky, but which did not burst. They were running behind schedule; the convoy of four-wheel drives took them back in a whirl of dust—any pedestrian who did not get out of the way knew his fate, yikes! God’s pencil does not have an eraser. They stopped at Little-Poco: they were dropping her off, picking up Favour on the way and leaving to film the scenes on the river.
Why didn’t she go to Poco-Beach? She’d be much better off at Poco-Beach. They talked about it for five minutes out the front of Siphindile’s. The heat was appalling. In the shade of the verandah they were haggling over monkeys. The little hanging bodies were stiffening without getting cold. At Poco-Beach she could be eating lobster.
Everyone was looking at them, both standing in the grey full sunlight. She said she would go there straight after Kurtz’s death. Olga had made her yet another dress, a white one, for the scene in the caves. ‘George loves it,’ she assured him. Kouhouesso said nothing. He kissed her. For a long time, on the mouth. He held her gently by the waist and an electric current shot up the back of her neck. He left again in a four-wheel drive. For an instant, she stood there, stunned, her eyes seeing shadows where there were none.
The whole village had seen them kissing: it was official. Even if they had made headlines in the Hollywood Reporter her heart would not have been thumping this hard.
‘Jungle fever,’ said Siphindile. The girls starting laughing. It was a diagnosis: their saying for when a white woman wants a black man. And, sometimes, vice versa. The witch was at it, too: inoffensive laughter, as if none of it was too serious.
AND UNDER THE HUGE BLACK TREES
It had rained. The first downpours of the season. The track was so bad that they were all quiet, she at the back, clutching the doorhandle, anticipating the bumps and shivering, preoccupied by feeling cold in the brutal humidity. The winch cable broke the first time they got bogged. Like a rifle shot it sprang back, invisible, and left a long yellow gash in the trunk to which it was attached. The Toyota bounded forward, then stopped dead. She thought of the bulls from her childhood, of their final twitches on the ground.
Mud swallowed their boots. The Baka and Bagyelis guides, Freeboy, M’Bali and Tumelo, somehow managed to stay on the surface, wearing thongs. They all had amulets around their necks. Freeboy was constantly fiddling with his iPod and seemed to be murmuring prayers. Unless he was singing in his head. The forest was dripping, long cords of water; everything seemed vertical.
She felt dizzy. George gave her a bar of magnesium-enriched organic chocolate. George’s agent had insisted on being there, as a kind of bodyguard, and it was weird having two extra white guys. George fitted in everywhere, whether it was desert, intergalactic space, urban jungle or here; but his agent was something else, with his explorer’s jacket and his mosquito head net: all he needed was the helmet to look like Dr Livingstone.
They got the car started later. There were six of them in the large Toyota, which was now so steamed up that they couldn’t see the forest anymore, followed by a whole convoy. The track was a dark tunnel. Patricien turned on the headlights. Kouhouesso said nothing. Patricien made conversation and George cracked jokes. She had a sore throat. She was obsessed by thoughts of hot tea. Her body ended up accepting the bumps as part of the habitat, a local manifestation of gravity. She became supple, elastic. She fell asleep clutching the doorhandle, groggy from the lurching, wedged between George and Freeboy.
They reached the ferry on the River Dja. The mout-mout sandflies were on the attack. Once she had put on her balaclava and her gardening gloves, the ferry boy (called ‘the Admiral’ by the pilot) stared at her more intently than if she had been bare-headed. The pilot and the Admiral laid two planks in the clay of the riverbank. Kouhouesso drove the first four-wheel drive, which embarked gracefully in one go. The little ferry subsided, the cables strained and the posts bent towards the water. Patricien held out his hand to her, George’s agent made a point of holding George’s hand, and they all climbed aboard. All at once, everything was simple; it worked. Things were running smoothly, without interruption. At last, time consisted of the same substance as the river. She had a Paris flashback: she was in Rue du Bac on the corner of the boulevard. Where was she headed? Who was she going to see? Back in her country. In the country where things flowed white. The Admiral leaned all of his little body over the enormous steering wheel and managed to turn it, faster and faster; the ferry lurched for a second, then edged forward, as if it understood what was expected, like a donkey or a horse. She felt the movement in her body. Then there was sliding. The ferry turned until it was across the river. And she said to herself, right, now it will get stuck somewhere and tip over. But no, the current made it go faster, side-on, like a crab.
The Admiral was scarcely more than a child. When she looked back at him he turned away, serious, his eyes fixed on the riverbank. Thousands of yellow butterflies fluttered, weightless, over the river. Kouhouesso was smoking, leaning on a Castrol tank, and she had another flashback, this time from when she was a little girl, of her father: such beauty, such strength, such total sh
utting down of oneself.
It was a cable ferry (at first she heard clamp). Cable, the pilot corrected her, opening his mouth wide on the a. Clunk clunk all around them, a hullabaloo from hell, how old was this thing? From the Germans, for sure, the pilot reckoned: with an engine like that it had to be Prussian. He had inherited it from his father. In the very beginning there were elephants to crash through the forest and make elephantine tracks with their huge bodies. Behind them plunged duikers, antelopes, white-bellied hedgehogs, wild pigs, anteaters, bushbucks. And after them came the Pygmies, and after them the Bantu, and after them the white people: Germans, English, French. From his ferry, the pilot had seen elephants twice. Never any gorillas. What frightened him most were water buffalo, who stood their ground instead of fleeing. Once, he had seen a lion. In Douala, at the zoo.
She daydreamed about circus elephants. One walked past, with a red bellboy hat, straight out of her long-ago childhood, far from the jungles. But it was too late to go back to the past. To go back there, like going back to another country, was no longer possible: she was too far away, too embedded; nothing connected her to herself any longer, apart from this man, Kouhouesso.
He went back with the ferry; they had to do seven trips all up, for the seven cars and the whole crew. A thin line of mist veiled the middle of the river; Kouhouesso’s silhouette turned grey, translucid. The ferry was silent in that direction, carried by the current or by something smooth and strange that she couldn’t fathom. The clackety-clack clackety-clack only started up on the return trip, grew louder; the second Toyota arrived; everyone was wet; it was raining on the other shore. Then Kouhouesso set off again. Favour was in the final convoy. The four-wheel drive moved forwards on the water, the motor cut, as if carried by time itself. From afar, Solange saw Kouhouesso hold the door open and Favour climb out gracefully, her thin black arm raised to her mouth as he lit her cigarette. A puff of smoke. Only then came the wham of the door, only then the noise carried, reached her, three hundred metres a second, she calculated, three hundred metres a second if I screamed, if I called out his name, Kouhouesso.
Men Page 14