“It’s the end of summer and you’re terribly pale,” she said. “Poor dear, it isn’t right. Especially with your wonderful olive complexion. Why, I bet you are as dark and regal as a Negro when you put in the time.”
Ed wasn’t sure what to say to this, but he understood he was supposed to flirt with her, that this was what she wanted. And she was easy to flirt with, decades ahead of him and nobody’s fool in an orange caftan, with tits still saying hello.
“Come,” said Sarah, taking his arm and leading him out toward the back of the house. Through the screen door he saw figures in shadow against the bright sun, figures that, when Sarah opened the door, came to life in a dizzying array of mostly young people in various states of summer undress, playing badminton and croquet, or mixing themselves drinks, waving away barbecue smoke while puffing on cigarettes. And there on line for the barbecue, waiting patiently with an empty paper plate, was a girl he knew. There was Polly—Polly from Ordway Keller!—so out of context that at first glance he thought she was someone from Dorchester. She evoked that same familiar response before he realized it was a new and still-mysterious familiarity, because all he knew was what she ate for lunch and how she answered the phone with the slightest of accents that told him only that she wasn’t from New York or New England. “Polly,” he cried out, “hey, Polly,” and Sarah looked delighted.
“You know each other!” cried his host, and immediately glided away, calling out gaily to someone named Armande.
“Mr. Cantowitz,” said Polly, blushing all the way down to her chest, which was—bikini top!—on full display.
“Ed,” he said. “Please, call me Ed. I mean, take a look around you.”
“Okay, then,” she said. “Ed.”
“Some party, huh?”
“They’re very social,” she said, before blushing again. “I mean, obviously.” She smiled.
They stood together in silence, in grill smoke, and when it was Polly’s turn at the grill she chose a frankfurter, and Ed had one, too. Her nose was upturned and seemed permanently sunburned, which was actually very pretty and made her look like a kid. He hadn’t noticed this at the office, and he wondered if she covered it with powder. They drank spiked lemonade and ate frankfurters and told each other knock-knock jokes. At the beach they rode waves, and when Ed wanted to get out, Polly stayed in and swam some more. He watched her. The sun was just warm enough on his salty skin; the spiked lemonade had taken the edge off the previous night.
“You’re some swimmer,” said Ed, handing her a towel. She shook water from her ear.
“I grew up in Florida.” She shrugged. “Not much else to do.”
“That sounds like the life.”
“It’s all right. I like it better here; there’s more going on.” She sat down beside him. “How about you?” she asked, running her hands over her hair. It was such an unexpectedly confident gesture. Her back was strong; as she lifted her arms, he saw the small muscles moving. He also thought of Helen on Fishers Island and wondered if he’d ever get over that dream of his, the dream that began something inside him that was, in fact, terrible. Though he’d been living with that feeling for longer, it was far less recognizable than this, right now, by the sea. He felt as if he should touch Polly, and he did; he could.
“I like you,” he said.
Which might have changed his life for the better, might have brought him to Florida during the winters to eat fried-fish sandwiches, to drink fresh orange juice, to tour, along with her beloved father and brothers, the local military base—all of which Polly had described to him over the course of this lovely day. But: During the evidently annual viewing of Dick and Sarah’s travel footage, projected on the white shingle of their farmhouse, Polly had leaned over, smelling of melted butter, and whispered rather sheepishly, “I’m staying with a girlfriend’s parents.”
“Oh.” He watched their hosts on safari, doing a lot of pointing. Elephants crossed a muddy river; hippos meandered like cows.
“They’re, um, expecting me back before eleven tonight.”
“Sure,” said Ed, suppressing a scowl. “Of course.”
“But I can give you a ride to the train station.”
“Thanks,” said Ed. Ira had one-upped him by scoring an invitation to stay with a girl in the Springs. “Yeah, that would be swell.”
A wildebeest stared straight ahead in Africa on Long Island. Ed kept expecting Hugh to wander into the frame.
He may or may not have ended up with a better life if Polly had been an easier sort that night or if (as he’d briefly considered) he’d slept on the beach, alone. But instead, when he finally arrived back in the city, when he exited the subway after an epic ride on the Long Island Railroad and an A train that stalled twice in the tunnel, when he stood on the pavement and faced the sirens and the heat (which was so much hotter, even after dark, than it had been all day), and when he climbed the stairs to his rented room in the dingy hallway, with the broken overhead bulb and yellowing brown-striped paper, he saw something he’d never thought possible, and that was Helen sitting outside his door. Helen with her legs akimbo, with her head thrown back as if she’d been sitting for hours, as if she’d been waiting. For him. For hours.
“What happened,” he found himself whispering. He was already on the floor with her, relieved that in the deepest chamber of his secret heart, he was, in fact, miserable at the thought of Hugh dead.
She looked at him, and he suddenly knew that Hugh was not dead but that they were going to kill him. They were going to kill him as he touched Helen’s smooth pale cheek, tentatively at first, and then not tentatively at all, as his hands—they were everywhere—her shoulders, her lips; he had to force himself to slow down as there was Helen’s head—silk hair, heavy skull—the full weight of it pressing down like an offering. They were killing him as he pushed down on the endless length of her, taller than he was and so much lighter, down into the linoleum of the hallway floor, right outside his door. In the hallway they killed him quickly at first, horrified at the intensity, the ugliness that was present, that had been there all along, pushing and pushing at both of them, making clear that if they didn’t get rid of it, get rid of it fast, it was going to kill them all. He picked her up off that floor and took her long thin fingers in his, gripping as tightly as he could, bringing her inside his room. As the door closed, he was up against it, as she gripped at his coarse and stubbly neck—fever-hot from all that sun.
He tried to look at her, to comprehend and to even stop himself from going any further, but when she looked right back at him he could do nothing but kiss her, and when he kissed her he knew he would never stop, not even for one moment.
“I couldn’t go,” she said; he could hear her breath. And that’s when she took off her clothes. She did it quickly, as if she’d been ordered to. He was too shocked by this, and by how much he wanted all of her, to do anything but stare. Then he got on his knees and took her hipbones in his hands. They fit there perfectly, two ivory-handled pistols. “I can’t go,” she said.
“I know.” But he didn’t, he hadn’t.
By the time he was aware of anything beyond her body, the light was seeping in through the dirty windowpane. He gripped her and she was still shaking, they both were. “Say yes to me,” Ed whispered. “Please say yes.”
“Yes to what?” she said. She was breathing in his ear. “Just yes,” he said.
“Just say it.”
And she did.
Part Two
1970–1983
Chapter Eight
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1970
When Hugh arrived for the third evening in a row at the New Africa Hotel, Bihlal and Patrick were on the roof and already laughing too hard. As they knocked back Kilimanjaros along with the journalists, the politicians and the would-be politicians, the gangsters, the priests, and the refugees, they looked out over the rooftops of the city; they tipped their faces to the dusky sky with its promise of accompanying breeze, and as Hugh approached
Bihlal and Patrick, as he inserted himself into this familiar tableau of men conspiring over alcohol, he hoped that Patrick would at least give him a hint of what was going into his goddamn assessment.
“Evening to you, monsieur,” said Patrick from Liverpool; he was in Dar es Salaam representing the British Christian charity that had been among the very first to take interest in Hugh’s fledgling clinic. This sounded official and fair, but there was nothing remotely official about Patrick. It was here at the New Africa that Patrick met Bihlal even before paying a visit to Hugh’s clinic, and everything that had transpired since—every meeting and quasi-meeting—had been dictated by Bihlal, who not only had the distinct advantage of being able to instruct Patrick (who valued a true African Perspective) where to eat and drink and (perhaps most usefully) use the bathroom, but was also profoundly charismatic—even Hugh couldn’t argue with that—someone of whom it could be said: He showed me a very good time.
This scene was not what Hugh had pictured when he met Michael Shannon at a French journalist’s dinner party nearly five years ago. Shannon was in possession of a dry wit, a bottle of malt liquor, and—significantly—a medical degree from Trinity College Dublin. What’s more, he already had a modest facility up and running. Within a month, Hugh had made a verbal commitment to Shannon, and within a year—between a combination of funds from Hugh’s trust and various loans (like the one that Patrick would or would not make sure was renewed during this visit)—Hugh had refurbished the clinic and had taken on every administrative duty, including (he hadn’t entirely thought this one through) fund-raising.
“Evening,” said Hugh, shaking their hands.
“We were not certain you were going to come,” said Bihlal.
If Bihlal was a fixer or a journalist or even a politician, his befriending Patrick would have fit in fine with Hugh’s agenda—would have even taken some of the pressure off—but Bihlal was from a village fifty kilometers outside the city, and he had his own fledgling clinic to fight for (or so he said—Hugh wasn’t convinced). He, too, wanted Patrick’s dollar, and these evenings were starting to feel more and more like a competition for Patrick’s attention, which, it should be said, was usually focused on Yvette, the stripper from Zanzibar whose nonstop smile seemed alternately sweet and sinister; she performed each night—more or less—at ten o’clock—give or take several hours.
Bihlal clapped his hands together before waving over someone from the bar. Hugh couldn’t see the bar—he’d intentionally sat with his back to the action—and when a girl approached and said hello, ostensibly to take Hugh’s order, Hugh looked up and caught his breath.
Her expression—almost imperceptibly—shifted from irritation to amusement.
“No.” Hugh looked away immediately and addressed Bihlal directly. “I know what you’re up to. Really, now. No.”
“Can’t you order a drink, mate?” said Patrick. “Any harm in doing that?”
Hugh’s face burned as he ordered a beer, but she didn’t walk away.
“Come on,” muttered Patrick. “You’ve done nothing all week but drink your beer and look mournful.”
“This is not true,” said Bihlal. “He also runs off to piss all the time like a German.”
“I run a clinic,” Hugh said to Patrick. “You are supposed to give me something to work with.”
“And we are giving you something to work with,” said Bihlal, as Patrick stifled an idiotic giggle. “Here is Aisha.”
And Aisha, she only smiled. Her teeth were white and small.
Ridiculous, Ed would say, if Aisha were an actress playing the part of this waitress. In the dark, in the Brattle Theatre, he’d attempt to whisper: You think a girl who looked like that—I don’t care where, this is 1970—you think she wouldn’t have better opportunities?
Hugh smiled back at her. What Ed wouldn’t have understood was that there were plenty of girls in East Africa who were just as lovely as Aisha. He had ceased being surprised by the beauty; only the poverty continued to shock him. When he’d arrived in ’65, the country was still celebrating its recent independence, and the mood was buoyant. President Nyerere’s Ujamaa blended Soviet socialism with African rural life, and Nyerere’s faith in his people’s traditions was undeniably stirring. But, like so many promising ideas, President Nyerere’s Ujamaa didn’t seem to be working. His particular repudiation of capitalism was resulting in plummeting agricultural output and countrywide disillusionment, or—as Charlie Case liked to call it—the big fat LOS (Losing of Steam).
Sometimes Hugh would lie in bed at night in his rented house near Ocean Road, watching the shadows from the palms and banana trees play upon the mosquito netting, and he would try to imagine what the sleeping arrangements looked like inland, on the dirt-dust floors, under barely-held-together roofs of the African quarters, which were of course farthest from the ocean and its accompanying breeze. Unlike so many impoverished African villages created haphazardly (if ingeniously, with the most inconsistent of scavenged materials) on the outskirts of a city, these African neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam had a schematic appearance—almost insidiously so. The sand streets were straight, the housing Soviet-style, with at least one family to a tiny room, with eight or ten rooms to a cement block of a building. And while one could not exactly say the people had prospered, God knew they had found a way to multiply, and so, when he couldn’t sleep, he often tried to mentally diagram how so many people slept (and obviously screwed) under one roof. How anyone negotiated even the most basic of bodily functions.
We all have the same body: Hugh always came back to this.
The privileged pretended it wasn’t true, that human beings were accustomed to different circumstances and thus had different needs, but of course this was a lie. After everything he’d seen in the past several years, nothing was truer than the fact of the body and its needs. He’d realized soon after his limited foray into filmmaking that he was too overwhelmed by the corporeal to transcend it and make it artful. Focus on the physical, he’d reasoned again and again, and progress—relief—will certainly follow.
While walking through the slums, he would often step in sewage and think how children played in those waste-laced streets. He was still surprised by this. One of his first mornings in Kariakoo, when he was still a new face, he’d walked with the intention of gaining a modicum of trust in order to tell people about the clinic, and while he was walking, a woman thrust a baby into his arms. She hollered: Take him. Take him far away. Her eyes were feral, and before he’d come up with a response, several women came and took the baby and—muttering, scolding—led the wild-eyed woman back into her clay hovel.
“Aisha,” said Hugh. “That’s a lovely name.”
“Thank you, sir. A Kilimanjaro?” she asked. “Like your friends?”
He nodded and she set off for the bar; Patrick and Bihlal tracked her every move.
“Can you believe?” said Bihlal.
“Wow,” said Hugh, knowing his sarcasm would not be registered. “Patrick, listen, I’m afraid I have to just go ahead and ask you: Do you plan on doing any actual observing while you are here? You do have to write something, you know.”
“No one will read my assessment,” said Patrick, draining the last of his beer. “I will type it up—beautifully, to be sure—and it will sit on a shelf at the mission office and a copy will be sent to headquarters in London, and no one—I mean literally no one—will read it.”
“Well,” said Hugh. “Thanks for your honesty.”
“Right, then,” he said, swallowing a belch. He gestured to Bihlal.
“Patrick is coming to my clinic tomorrow,” said Bihlal, a slow smile spreading across his face.
“But you haven’t even spent a single day at this clinic, my clinic, the one you are actually here for.”
Patrick didn’t look up from rolling—with great precision—his next cigarette. “What are you so worried about?”
“How can you ask me that?”
“You needn’t worry,�
� said Patrick, with a dismissive jerk of his chin. “You and the Irish doctor are doing excellent work.”
“Well, yes,” Hugh said, trying not to sound indignant, “as it so happens the incidence of malaria is down more than ten percent this year. But don’t you want to see for yourself?”
“He is telling you that you will get your money,” said Bihlal. “I would not quarrel with this if I were you.”
“Hang on, then,” said Patrick, striking a match on the matchbook with only one hand. “Before I put anything in writing, I think Hugh should agree to go with the girl. Have you had a look at her, mate? What I mean is: Have you had yourself a really good look?”
Hugh shook his head. He asked, “Why don’t you?”
“Can’t,” said Patrick. “Not anymore, anyway,” he corrected. “But you, cowboy,” he said, stressing the word cowboy in an atrocious American accent, the way he often did with what he obviously saw as particularly American words. “You’re a young man.”
While certainly not wanting to contemplate it, he was unclear whether Patrick—in saying can’t—had been referring to fraternizing with local women or to the sexual act itself. Hugh was still shaking his head when Aisha returned to the table with his drink.
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