The Uttermost Parts of the Earth

by Frederic Hunter

  That afternoon Kwame helped Kalima move her belongings from Dr. Odejimi’s room into his.

  KALIMA PROVED to be a very different sort of companion than Livie had been. With Livie Kwame discussed everything: books, movies, sex, life intentions, American foreign policy, domestic politics, social problems, and on and on. He talked with Kalima, but they rarely had probing discussions. While he enjoyed having an intellectual companion with whom he could bat ideas around, Livie’s opinions, her intellectual pretensions, often annoyed him. He would feel that she was stuck in the perspectives of her privileged background and tell her so. She would reply that he was mocking her, not because of the strength of his ideas, but out of macho defensiveness, out of an expectation that because he was older, male, a doctor of philosophy, and could claim a background of deprivation, his opinions had more validity than hers. When things got rough, she would call him a WASP dressed in blackface, an Oreo, white at the core, a professional Black Man.

  He would call her a privileged and pretentious twerp. She would retreat to their bedroom and lock the door. He would leave their apartment and walk around Sea Point until his temper cooled. When he returned, they usually made love. The arguments became a sexual/intellectual game that both intrigued and fatigued him.

  With Kalima, Kwame felt a strange contentedness, a glow of satisfaction that he had never known with a woman. She exuded a kind of harmony. It gave him pleasure to be in her presence, to inhale her fragrance, to feel the warmth of her body in the chair next to his, to let his eyes rest on the symmetry of her features, on the rich dark glow of her skin. There was mystery about her. Livie tried to grasp everything intellectually, to define and categorize all aspects of their relationship. Kalima simply existed.

  During the first days Kalima was with him, Kwame’s pleasure in her company, in his closeness to her, in their rapport, deepened to the extent that, had he been in America, he might have acknowledged that he had fallen in love. But he was in Africa—and there only temporarily. The value of everything was not in permanence. He would enjoy Kalima now and let the future take care of itself.

  AS THE day of his wife’s arrival approached, Moulaert’s robust health gave way to panic attacks, sleeplessness, and depression. Dark circles appeared under his eyes. Worry assailed him. “What will I do about Marike?” he asked Kwame in private meetings at the center. “I can’t send her away. I know it sounds foolish, but I love her. She’s my wife.”

  “Can’t she stay at another hotel in town?” Kwame wondered.

  “She must stay at the Afrique. I can’t get through the day if I don’t see her.”

  “Get her a room by herself,” Kwame suggested. “Your wife isn’t planning to stay, is she?”

  “If I do that,” Moulaert pointed out, “that rascal Tombolo will be after her the minute I turn my back.” Kwame nodded that this was undoubtedly true. “You know African women,” Moulaert went on. “Socialized to believe that they must oblige any man who asks.”

  “Could you put her under the protection of the doctor?” Kwame asked.

  “Not that damn Nigerian!” Moulaert declared. “I’ve seen him gazing at her. He thinks she’s a papaya ready to be plucked.” He leaned across Kwame’s desk, a look of desperation on his face. “Copain,” he said, “you are the only man I can trust. I know that Madame Van is your special friend and I would do nothing to interfere. But I’m in a terrible kerfuffle. May I put my beloved Marike under your protection?”

  “In my room?” Kwame asked, incredulous.

  “Oh, I would be so grateful, my friend.”

  “You know I am living now with Madame Van,” Kwame said. He rarely referred to her as Kalima, not wanting to share that persona with others. “How can I have Marike sharing a room with us?”

  “It would only be while they are here,” Moulaert said. “I implore you! I am going out of my mind.”

  Kwame was too flabbergasted to reply.

  “Just let her stay in the room. She can sleep on the extra bed. My wife must think she’s somebody’s woman.”

  “Wouldn’t it be best to come clean to your wife?”

  “Impossible!” Moulaert assured him. “My family lives in a small town in Flanders. My wife’s a village woman, pious but provincial. She must never know about Marike. And my boys—They’re teenagers. They don’t yet know what it is to need a woman. They’ve always looked up to me. Please! You’re the only person I trust.”

  Kwame did not know how to respond. “I don’t see how this can work. Perhaps she could stay at the center.”

  “Oh, no! I need to see her. Please,” Moulaert implored. “Just let her have the extra bed. Let my wife see her at breakfast with you.” The desperate husband grinned sheepishly. “And if you don’t object, I might visit her sometimes. No more than half an hour. Would that be all right? I know you and Madame Van care for each other.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Kwame said, “but have Tombolo get her a room at the hotel.”

  Two days later in a panic at midafternoon Moulaert sought out Kwame in his room at the hotel. “I beg of you,” he implored. “Take my Marike. I’m on my way to the airport. My family arrives in half an hour.”

  Moulaert went out onto the passage and returned with Marike. She wore her school uniform and carried clothes over her arm. Moulaert looked at Kwame, nakedly beseeching. “You won’t touch her, will you? Eh, copain?” Kwame was nonplussed. “I’m the only man who’s ever been inside her. She and I want it to stay that way. I love her.”

  “Moulaert,” said Kwame, “she can’t stay here. It’s impossible.”

  Moulaert cried out with anguish. “Please help me! My wife and sons are due any moment.” With that he hurried from the room. Marike stood watching Kwame with a frank and appraising look. Moulaert reappeared, dragging a footlocker behind him. Then he scurried away. Marike closed the door, moving with the dignity of a queen. Kwame wished Kalima were with him.

  Like a child bereft of a loved parent, Marike went to the window to watch the road. Kwame heard Moulaert rev the motor of his Land Cruiser and listened to the vehicle move off down the road. Marike turned from the window and watched him, measuring him, her stance erect, challenging. She shed her sandals and slipped across the room to Kwame’s radio. She turned it on and dialed to music. Swaying to the rhythm, she undid the buttons of her schoolgirl’s blouse. Kwame raised his hands, gesturing her to stop. She removed her blouse.

  Kalima suddenly appeared. Seeing Marike naked to the waist, she strode into the room. Gathering Marike’s belongings, she hurled them outside the door. She returned, muttering in a tribal dialect, marched across the room, grabbed Marike by the front of the blouse she had now put back on, pulled her to the door, grumbling in Lonkundo, and shoved her into the passageway. She glared at Kwame. All he could say was, “Thank you! Thank you!”

  LATER, KWAME, Kalima, and Odejimi were together on the hotel terrace, waiting to witness the Moulaert family’s arrival. Suddenly Kalima left to make sure Marike moved into a room far from Kwame’s. As she crossed the terrace, Odejimi whispered to Kwame, “Did you get a chance with Marike?” Kwame shook his head. Odejimi shrugged. “Be grateful for blessings.” He cast his doctor’s eye at the departing Kalima, at the way she walked. Sighing with nostalgia, he observed, “Ah! What hips.”

  A Land Cruiser pulled up outside the hotel. Soon, looking henpecked, Moulaert appeared leading across the terrace a tall, large-breasted Flemish woman in an enormous sun hat. Two red-haired teenagers followed them, the older one almost a man. Moulaert nodded to his friends. They raised their hands in salute. Suddenly they all heard a greeting, shouted loudly, “Bienvenus, les visiteurs!” An attractive young Congolaise waved from the balcony of the room Tombolo had assigned her, the voluptuous and very naked Marike.

  Mme Moulaert cried out in astonished Flemish. She grabbed her sons and pushed them toward their lodgings. The young men resisted. Halting, laughing, they beheld the girl with obvious delight. “Merci, Mam’zelle,”
they called back. Their parents hustled them away.

  KWAME MET Mme Moulaert at one of the video evenings he hosted at the center. He learned that Moulaert had made peace with his African wife by giving her a bundle of zaire notes. He had told his Belgian wife that the pathetic young woman his family had seen the day of their arrival was a schoolgirl who had chosen to become a femme libre.

  Mme Moulaert was a thick-waisted woman with a ruddy complexion and decided views about everything. She had the squawk and the imperious waddle of a mother hen, her arms akimbo on her hips, her back arched, her breasts protruding, her head rocking back and forth, her red hair waggling like a cock’s comb. When she declared her opinions in a French roughened by her native Flemish, her tall, gangly sons regarded her with embarrassment. Mbandaka was a latrine, she asserted. The hotel was a brothel, run by a black putassier. Her sons were constantly accosted by whores. Zaireans were stupid. Educating them was noble, but pointless. Still, whoever undertook the task, especially Moulaert, deserved the highest admiration. She assured whoever would listen that her coming to visit her husband in this foul and immoral place and bringing her sons demonstrated the depth of her love for him. She railed against the young putain who stood morning and evening, displaying her naked body to hotel guests.

  “But it’s a delightful body,” Odejimi told her at Kwame’s fête. “You have to admit that.”

  Mme Moulaert cocked an eyebrow.

  “Marike!” Odejimi called. “Is she here? Perhaps she will show it to us.”

  “Marike!” squawked Mme Moulaert. “Who gave her that beautiful Flemish name?”

  But Marike was not there.

  “Let’s ask your sons what they think,” suggested the Nigerian. “I’m sure they consider her body a work of art.”

  “The putain is disgusting!” said Mme Moulaert. “And a mere child. The man who exploits her should be run out of town.”

  “I agree,” declared Mme Berton, challenging Odejimi. She wore a striking white gown patterned on those of ancient Greece, her dark hair atop her head. It was unclear whether she was agreeing with the visiting matron or mocking her. “The men I respect have nothing to do with such women.” She raised a witty eyebrow and threw a glance at Odejimi that was half-condemnatory, half-flirtatious.

  Odejimi bowed slightly to her. “You are beautiful tonight, Madame,” he said. “An Aphrodite from Greece.”

  Mme Berton bowed in return, her eyes locked with Odejimi’s.

  “My dear Madame,” the doctor exaggeratedly implored Mme Berton, “please don’t belittle us. We are men without our families. I hope you would not let circumstances deprive us of both our families and the company of local women. We are not saints.”

  “No one mistook you for saints,” she replied, enjoying the game.

  From across the room Berton hurried to his wife’s side as if to protect her.

  “It is quite possible, is it not, Mother Belgium,” Odejimi asked Mme Moulaert, “that the young woman is exploiting our masculine weakness? She displays her body to drive us to distraction.”

  “That American should keep her under control,” said Mme Moulaert. She had decided that Kwame was responsible for Marike.

  Kwame stepped forward. “I am the only American in Mban,” he said. “Also your host. May I introduce myself? I’m Kwame Johnson.” Kwame bowed to her and offered his hand. Mme Moulaert spat toward his hand.

  The assembled partygoers gasped. Moulaert and his older son rushed to make sure that the woman’s outburst did not get out of control. Kwame bowed again. The woman had spat air, not saliva, and his hand had not been soiled.

  “You make our evenings lively, Madame!” Odejimi said. “For that we thank you. I want to say I admire your husband for his loyalty to his work here, for his love of Africans, and his devotion to his family. He’s an example for us all.” He turned to the Moulaert boys. “And, gentlemen,” he said, “what do you think of African womanhood?”

  The young men snickered and rolled their eyes. Their mother cuffed them. She advanced again on Kwame. “Your whore is a mere child.” Moulaert tried to calm her.

  “Madame,” said Kwame, “the child you’re talking about is a married woman.” Mme Moulaert seemed surprised to hear this. “The man she just married paid a footlocker of zaire notes for her.”

  “She is married, Madame,” Odejimi agreed.

  “Are you that man?” she demanded of Kwame.

  “No,” Kwame said. “But you have seen him. He lives at the hotel.”

  “This is enough, my sweet,” said Moulaert, gently touching her shoulders.

  “Don’t mock me!” the woman thundered. She jerked out of her husband’s grasp and stuck her face into Kwame’s. Her breasts touched his chest. She spewed Flemish invective at him. Having no idea what she was saying, Kwame nodded amiably. The Moulaert boys snickered at their mother. “Married or not, any man who would corrupt such a child is truly piteous,” Mme Moulaert declared. She threw the remainder of her beer into Kwame’s face. As Moulaert and his sons hurried her away, Kwame excused himself and washed up in the bathroom.

  THE NEXT morning Adriaan Moulaert, the older of the two sons, appeared at the center. Kwame found him browsing in the library and invited him into his office. “I’ve come to apologize for my mother,” the young man said. “She behaved badly last night.”

  “I hope she’s all right this morning,” Kwame said.

  “This whole trip has been very unsettling for her.”

  Adriaan was tall with blond-red hair that stood straight up on his head, strangely dark eyebrows and rangy muscles in a body that was beginning to fill out. Kwame admired the young man for offering the apology. He had thought the Moulaert boys tied to their mother’s apron strings. The apology made him reconsider. It was the action of a mature young man. Kwame decided that the sons, poor guys, were afflicted with too much Mama. Moulaert had escaped for his erotic knighterrantry; his sons had not yet been so fortunate.

  Kwame asked, “How have you found the trip?”

  Adriaan smiled. At first his eyes had avoided Kwame’s out of embarrassment over his mother’s behavior. Now he fixed Kwame with an alert, intelligent gaze. He declared how amazing he found Africa to be: the warmth of the African sun in a season that was winter in Belgium, the brilliance of the colors, the friendliness of the people, their gaiety despite poverty.

  “Would you like some whiskey?” Kwame asked.

  The young man was taken aback. “Morning whiskey?” he asked.

  “It moves the day along.” Kwame took two small glasses and a bottle from his desk drawer and poured a shallow bottom in each glass. After Kalima’s return he had reverted to occasional splashes of whiskey.

  “I’ve never drunk much whiskey,” Adriaan said, looking at the glass before him. “But Africa’s for doing things you haven’t done before, n’est-ce pas?” Kwame nodded. The young man drank down the whiskey, his eyes bulging slightly, his mouth open for a breath.

  “Would you be willing to do something for me?” Kwame asked. He poured Adriaan another splash of whiskey.

  “Sure. After last night I’m indebted to you.”

  Kwame proposed that Adriaan accompany him to Bomboko Congo. He was teaching a class later that morning and thought it might be useful for his students. “They’ve heard about colonials,” he explained, “and there’s a white man in town, but they’ve never seen a white person their own age. Maybe you can tell them about your life and ask them about theirs.”

  “There’s nothing interesting about my life,” Adriaan assured him. But he agreed to meet some students.

  Kwame took the young man to class. At first the students stared at him and he stared back. Under Kwame’s questioning he began to relax. Kwame had him demonstrate how he would greet a friend, complete with handshakes and gestures, in his native Flemish, then in French. He had African students do the same in their native tongues. In addition, he had them play a greeting on a two-tone “talking drum.” The drum fascinated Adri
aan and everyone relaxed. He was finishing school, Adriaan told the students. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next. University? Maybe not. Travel. That sounded good.

  He loved Africa, Adriaan assured the students. He loved the space, the enormity of the river. He’d like to take a boat all the way down to the mouth of the Congo. Kwame asked if any of his students would like to accompany Adriaan on the trip. Several raised their hands. When the class period ended, Adriaan decided to spend the afternoon at the school. He’d find his way back to the hotel on his own.

  “Your mother may never forgive me,” Kwame joked as they said good-bye.

  Adriaan exclaimed, “This is the best day of the trip so far.”

  A FEW nights later Kwame walked back across town with Kalima. They had gone dancing at a club. The night air was cool. Now and then they heard a wisp of Kinshasa cha-cha carried on the breeze from a bar and danced a step or two on the road. Kalima was singing. The two of them danced side by side along the passageway to Kwame’s room. He slid his key into the lock, looking more at his footwork than the lock. He guided Kalima into the room and closed the door to kiss her. Kalima’s body went rigid. She broke the kiss. Kwame sensed something amiss. He flicked on the overhead light.

  A gasp. A couple was entwined on Kwame’s bed, brown arms and legs wrapped about a long white body. A brown hand held a blond-red head against her dark one. Marike looked up at them with a blissful, uncaring smile. Adriaan slid off her body. Squinting against the light, he stared at them, his hands masking his tumescence.

  “Sorry,” said Kwame. “Wrong room.”

  He turned out the light and pulled Kalima outside with him. They held each other to muffle the sounds of their laugh ter. Kwame knocked on Odejimi’s door. When he opened it, Kwame said, “We need somewhere to sleep. The Great Quest, Part Two, is playing in our room.”