They held each other a long time. Finally each went to the bathroom and came back to the bed to help the other undress. They kissed and caressed without hurry. They made love quietly, slowly, and Kwame was aware less about the sensations in his groin than about the woman in his arms. Before they slept, Kwame whispered, “I have never known anything like this.”
“I loove oo, Kwa-mee,” Kalima said. Kwame kissed her, pleased that she had attempted English, even if not with complete success.
The next morning when they were still in bed, some thirty people from Bolobe appeared at the guesthouse where they lodged. Their songs of greeting made Kalima rush from the building in a frenzy of delight. She shook hands with every person who walked over. Not wanting to emphasize the difference between him and her people, Kalima advised Kwame to dress casually. When he appeared in shorts, a tee shirt, sunglasses, and sandals, the visitors grew quiet, inspecting him with a mixture of curiosity and respect. Kalima introduced him to each of the visitors. He said, “Mbote,” the local greeting, but understood little of what they answered. When he offered his hand, many of them took it in both of theirs and bowed to him with deference.
There was not equipment enough for everyone to carry, but Kwame spread the gear as widely as possible. Most of the villagers lofted the loads onto their heads, whether they were single video cassettes or the gasoline generator which Kwame himself could not imagine carrying on his cranium. As they walked, they sang.
They arrived in Bolobe about noon. The village was a long string of huts, mud-and-wattle walls with banana frond roofs, on two sides of a rutted and unpaved road leading to Lake Tumba. There large pirogues had been pulled up onto the beach. It was clear when Kalima introduced Kwame to her father that she admired and respected him. In Bolobe Bonanga had great mpifo, prestige, as the village’s primary teller of stories. He struck Kwame as a man of great presence and dignity. If he was not one who possessed the charisma and theatricality that Kwame assumed might attach to a storyteller, he sensed that Bonanga expected a certain deference. He seemed very aware of his position as an elder.
“I hope to hear you talk about your people and your village,” Kwame told him. When Kalima translated his words, Kwame detected only the slightest flicker of reaction across his eyes. Bonanga measured him with a sadness that stemmed, Kwame assumed, from his disappointment with Kalima’s failure to choose men whose ways he understood. Kwame also met Bonanga’s two wives. Kalima claimed both women as mothers, an assertion which Kwame realized he must accept until the time came to get it straightened out.
He was presented to Bolobe’s leading citizen, a small-time politician who represented both Mobutu and his political party, the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution. This dignitary and Bonanga walked Kwame around the village. A train of young men followed them, carefully deferential to their elders. They watched Kwame as if he were an alien prince. Together he, Bonanga, and the dignitary selected the site for the film showing. No one in the village seemed to speak French; everyone who had mastered that language had moved beyond Bolobe. Kwame found that he could offer greetings in Lingala, the lingua franca of the area, but could not make himself understood otherwise.
He spent the early part of the afternoon sitting on a stool outside the dignitary’s hut. With this host, Bonanga, and several younger men, Kwame drank the Primus beer he had brought with him. He listened to the music of the talk, which sometimes fell into silence.
Occasionally Bonanga or the dignitary would send one of the young men off on an errand. This person unfailingly jumped up at the slightest request, performed it speedily, and seemed honored to be in the elders’ presence. Kwame could not help thinking how different was the African reverence for elders from the casual disregard of young Americans for theirs. Now and then he would see Kalima; she was preparing dinner with her birth mother. Sometimes he would catch the sound of her voice. He did not feel entirely comfortable. But for reasons he did not understand neither did he feel ill at ease; in America he would have been antsy, wanting to flee.
Late in the afternoon two young men took the duffels and led Kwame a mile or so from the village to a house overlooking the lake. Apparently once a European’s home, it had a floor of concrete and walls of cement. Once it had possessed a roof of corrugated iron, most sheets of which had now been hauled away. It was devoid of furniture except for a large bed and a mattress stuffed with local fibers.
A pirogue lay pulled up to the shore. The young men took Kwame for a paddle on the lake. Out on the water the stillness possessed an almost tangible weight; Kwame could feel it pressing against his skin. The air was clear, free of pollutants. The sky began to turn yellow, then orange. As they walked back to the village, the orange darkened into red.
Kalima had prepared a dinner of goat meat and manioc greens. She served it to Bonanga and Kwame with great pride and deferential bowing. While they ate, young people danced in a circle, clapping their hands and following the steps designated by a leader. Meanwhile villagers gathered for the films, men carrying lanterns, women approaching with infants tied to their backs.
After praising Kalima’s cuisine, Kwame showed USIS informational films. In preparing for the trip, he had decided that it would be impractical to take to Bolobe the projection equipment required for showing the Hollywood entertainment videos he screened at the showings he hosted outside the center. Hollywood products—romantic comedies or action movies, full of gunfire and car chases—might prove more incomprehensible to villagers than the usual USIS fare. What he was really offering the villagers was not movie narratives so much as the opportunity to witness light show technology they had never seen before. The audience applauded and whistled at the conclusion of each selection. Youngsters danced excitedly, flailing their arms and throwing their hips. When the show ended, young people, not yet initiated, formed a circle again; drummers provided music. This time they danced excitedly, with a kind of frenzy.
After a time a cry arose. It was started by men of what would have once been the warrior class, then taken up in a slow, rhythmic clapping, by women. Young men who had undergone initiation built and lit a fire. Kwame watched Kalima clap, a grin on her face. “We are calling for my father to tell a story,” she explained. Kwame mimicked the clapping, as if asking her permission. She nodded and he joined the villagers.
Beginning his performance Bonanga shuffled out before the fire, moving like an ancient although he was clearly in the prime of life. The villagers settled around the fire. Bonanga hobbled toward children clustered at his feet. He reached out to take their hands. He spoke to them in a quavering voice. Kwame looked to Kalima for a translation. “I have already forgotten more than you have seen in your life,” she translated, a look of delight on her face.
Now Bonanga, very much portraying an old man, hushed his listeners as if to begin his story. Then he looked around, as if perplexed. He peered into the fire. He searched among the listeners, delighting the elders among them. One of his wives passed something to Kalima. She ran out to him and passed him a pipe. He took a fiber, leaned into the fire to light it, and then brought it to the bowl of the pipe. He puffed on it; the tobacco caught.
Suddenly as if transformed, Bonanga became a young man, strutting around the fire. The children watched him with awe. He produced the sounds of animals and birds, began to fashion snares and traps out of thin air. He caught an animal in a trap, then another and another. Kalima put an arm around Kwame’s back, drew his ear close to her mouth and explained, “This is the story of our forefather, Nkundo. He invented snares before our people ever had them.”
“Nkundo?” Kwame asked. “He gave his name to your language?”
Kalima nodded that the words were the same.
Bonanga feigned sleep, then suddenly woke, beholding something magical. Kalima explained. “He dreams that he catches the sun in his snare.” Then in the way Bonanga moved, both as Nkundo and his prey, Kwame understood that the snare had caught a beautiful woman. “Ilánkaka,” Kalima whis
pered to him, “the daughter of a king. He takes her to his village—”
“And they live happily ever after,” Kwame said.
“This is not the story of a European,” Kalima whispered. “Attends!”
Kwame watched Bonanga start out again on other journeys, but lost the thread of the story. Was he hunting? He seemed to capture four animals. Then went out with Ilánkaka and brought more. Kwame released the plot line of the story and simply wondered at the artistry of Bonanga. He captured the audience and held them fast, as if his voice, gestures, and movement were snares too.
AS KALIMA led Kwame through the warm darkness to their house, he reviewed their time together: the sweet closeness they’d felt, shedding their old identities and becoming new people to one another, Kalima and Kwame; that closeness given physical expression the night before; the walk to Bolobe, her village people carrying his movie projection gear; his long afternoon with the men … His review faltered there. He had wanted to feel welcome, but had not. Nor entirely comfortable. That was a contrast to the comfort Kalima had so obviously felt, back among the people from whom she’d sprung. Had her comfort with them pulled her away from him?
As they walked, each carried a lantern. The whisperings of crickets and cicadas accompanied them. As they passed, frogs croaked in their pools. Owls hooted in the darkness. “I liked seeing you so happy,” Kwame said. He could tell that brought a smile to her face. “Your father’s an extraordinary storyteller.” He placed his hand on the back of her neck and gently caressed it. He hesitated before asking the question plaguing him. Then he inquired, “What did your parents think of me? I couldn’t tell.”
Kalima said nothing as if she had not heard the question. Oh-oh, Kwame thought. We have a problem. They walked a bit farther. He raised his lantern and glanced at her. “I take it they didn’t like me. Is my skin too white?”
Kalima kept walking. She pulled so far ahead of him so that his hand dropped from her neck.
Kwame decided to play it lightly, to charm her if he could. “A nice guy in town. Not so good in a village? Is that it?” Frogs sang at them. “The wildlife likes him: croak, croak.” Kalima walked on as if she did not hear him. Kwame raised his voice just a bit. “Not such a bad fellow. Gave your father beer. Showed films. Applauded your papa’s story.” Then: “Loves his daughter. Treats her well.”
Kalima did not respond. She led him along the path, saying nothing. They did not speak for several minutes. Kwame felt very alone. If she were still Madame Van, he could have asked her what went wrong. But she was now Kalima. Whatever was wrong was much more serious.
Finally he said, “Your father’s so amazing. I got a lot of his story without understanding the words.”
That made them friends again. Kalima said, “Bolobe is so proud of him.”
Carefully they chatted about her father’s story. “What exactly was Nkundo doing at the end?” Kwame asked. “I got lost.”
Kalima turned toward him and walked backward. “You expected him to be Prince Charming, didn’t you?” she said, suddenly scornful, dismissive. “Like in a white man’s story.”
Careful, Kwame thought. He asked, “Didn’t he marry the daughter of a king?”
“You wanted Ilánkaka to be Cinderella, didn’t you?” The same tone of voice.
“Ilánkaka?” Kwame repeated. “Can I call her Caca for short?” Kwame doubted that she would get his little joke. That was just as well. He hid his amusement.
“ILÁNkaka,” she emphasized, aware that he was joking. “Our ancestor, a real person.” She turned to walk forward again.
Kwame thought it charming that Kalima supposed the king’s daughter, looking like a sun goddess, might get caught in a snare, that she might be an actual ancestor.
“They are happy for a time,” Kalima explained. “Then Ilánkaka wants Nkundo to take his proper role. That means finding more wives.”
“First he was hunting animals. Then he was hunting wives?”
“He brought home four wives and Ilánkaka said, ‘That’s not enough. Get one hundred.’”
Kwame laughed. “Wow! Some ambitious wife!”
Kalima’s tone became impatient again. Kwame realized he would not reconnect with her unless he took the ancestor story seriously. “She wants people to respect her husband,” Kalima said. “To see that he is a man rich enough to have many wives. Each of them will give him children.”
Kwame recalled such stories in anthropology readings. In most of the African fiction he had read, however, women were distressed about husbands wanting multiple wives. Kwame could see how a man might want a mistress. But several wives—to say nothing of one hundred—all living in the same compound? Impossible.
“You understand that those wives will do Ilánkaka’s bidding,” continued Kalima. “So she also becomes very rich.”
“She doesn’t care that he sleeps with the other wives?”
“How else will they give him children?”
“Doesn’t he miss sleeping with her? If it were me—” He stopped her walking, turned her to face him, and kissed her. “I don’t want to sleep with anyone but you.”
“I’m not even giving you children,” she said.
“What would I do with children?”
They walked on in silence. Finally Kwame asked, “Your parents didn’t like me because I don’t give you children? Is that it?”
A sapling had fallen across the path. Kalima stopped. Kwame came up behind her, put an arm about her neck, and kissed the side of her head. “Is that it?” he repeated.
She shook his arm away and pulled the sapling off the path. “My father, he says: ‘Why always a white man?’”
This remark surprised Kwame. He laughed. “I am not a white man.”
“A white man does not have to have white skin,” Kalima said.
“My ancestors were African,” Kwame replied.
“My mother says: ‘Where are your babies? At your age you should have babies. Why are you with these men who do not give you babies?’”
Kwame said nothing. Kalima’s parents did not approve of him; that was distressing. “I thought you couldn’t have babies.” Kalima gave a shrug. “I will not be a real woman until I have them. It seems I don’t have them with white men.”
They walked on in silence. Finally Kalima said, “There is a man in Bikoro that my parents want me to marry. He wants a wife with education.”
Kwame wondered: Who was this guy? Was he real? Village Africans didn’t wait around for women with education. Or would she be his second wife? “Will he give you babies?”
“My parents think so.”
WHEN THEY reached the house by the lake, Kwame began to shed his clothes. “Don’t,” Kalima said.
“Let’s go in the lake. Cool off. Wash off the day.” Kwame had already kicked off his shorts and sandals and was standing in the lake in his briefs. Kalima seemed distressed that he had shed his shorts. It was as if someone were watching them.
“I’m going back to the village,” Kalima said.
Kwame walked out of the water and came to her. “Why is that? I’ll come with you.” He put his shorts back on.
She shook her head and glanced down the path they had crossed.
“We’re here together,” Kwame said. He put his arms about her. “Last night was so—”
Kalima pushed him away. She continued to shake her head.
“What’s happened?” Kwame asked.
“My father says it’s finished for me in Mbandaka.”
Kwame was astonished. “That’s not his right,” he said. “You live there. Your life is there. I’m there.”
Kalima shook her head.
“Stop shaking your head!”
“My father says I belong in Bolobe. My mother is sure the man from Bikoro will give me babies.”
“Don’t let them run your life!” Kwame exclaimed, as if she were an American girl from western Massachusetts. “You’re not a child. You left them for the convent. You left them for Vanden
broucke. You don’t belong in a village.”
“My parents disapprove of my life in Mban.” Again she glanced toward the path. “They say I must come back here, marry, and have children.”
“I’m not going to let this happen!”
“It doesn’t concern you.”
Kwame felt the words, “I love you,” clamoring up his throat. But even if she did not know what they meant, he was not going to say the words. The relationship was not there yet. Finally he asked, “Are you just going to do what they tell you?”
“In Africa we do what our elders tell us.”
“Even when they sell you to Vandenbroucke?” He went to her, tried to take her hands in his. One was still holding a lantern. She thrust the other angrily behind her back. He looked deeply into her eyes. Quietly he said, “You’re your own person. You have your own identity, your own destiny.”
Kalima shook her head.
“Let me walk you back. You can’t go alone. I’ll talk to your father.”
“He will walk me back. He’s waiting for me down the path.”
What? Kwame felt betrayed. Had Bonanga followed them from Bolobe? He moved to embrace Kalima. She moved away. “No!” It was as if her father must not see them embrace. She hurried down the path. Kwame started after her. Suddenly Bonanga appeared, holding a lantern. His expression brooked no opposition. Kalima moved past him. Bonanga watched Kwame as Kalima disappeared. Then he turned and followed her into the darkness.
KWAME SLEPT badly. He woke in the night, wondering if he’d lost her, Kalima. But what had he really lost: a woman he shared with another man. He could understand her father’s concern. Shortly before dawn he left the lonely bed, grumbled at his fate, and went outside to piss. He stood naked, the cool air of the morning clothing him. Despite his sadness, he watched the light change, the clouds turn orange against the scarlet sky. The way things had turned out, he wished he had followed Odejimi’s advice and brought hemp and whiskey. They would have helped him get through the night.
On the ground beside the back door he found a gourd and a piece of soap. The water was cool. Kwame waded in above his knees, then squatted into the water, soaped himself, then ladled water into the gourd and over him. By the time he dressed, young men from Bolobe appeared, carrying the film equipment he had left at the village. He packed the duffels and verified that all the film equipment was accounted for.
The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Page 17