TWO DAYS later a broadcast reported United Nations officers claiming to have found the bodies of slain refugees in Zaire. It suggested that the Kabilistes were murderers. But news came the next day that several army commanders had gone over to the rebels; this suggested that the rebels were seen as winners. Tombolo the hotelier confided to Kwame a rumor that the local army commander, who was from Shaba province where the rebels were already entrenched, would declare at the appropriate time—whatever that meant—for Kabila.
Moreover, residents of Mbandaka not native to the Equateur were continuing to abandon it for their home territories. When Kwame went to the residence to make an appointment to see the governor, he discovered that the governor, his chef du cabinet and his chef du protocol, all of them BaKongo, had returned to the Kongo heartland.
The governor was not alone in leaving Mbandaka. Moulaert came to the center one afternoon while Kwame was shelving returned books. “My wife and I are returning to Belgium,” he said.
“What about the job?”
“At a time like this,” Moulaert asked, “what can a school inspector accomplish?”
“And Adriaan?”
Moulaert sat down at a library table and put his head in his hands. “We are frantic. Every night my wife cries herself to sleep.” The Belgian’s voice grew thick with emotion. “I don’t want to leave,” he said. “But it’s dangerous here now. We have our other son to consider.”
“Can I do anything to help you?” Kwame asked.
“If you hear anything of Adriaan, let us know.” Moulaert pushed a card toward him. It contained an address.
“You’ve heard nothing?”
“Not a word.” Moulaert turned his body away from Kwame and began to weep. Kwame went to him, patted his shoulder, and stared into the tangle of red hair that crowned his head. Kwame returned to shelving books; that seemed the kindest thing to do. Finally Moulaert got himself under control.
He turned back, his large, raw-boned hands still holding his head. He stared off across the room. “You’ve always thought me a fool, haven’t you?” Kwame turned toward him and shrugged, paying him the compliment of not mouthing social lies. “Odejimi thought I was a fool. He poisoned the opinions of everyone he met. Probably I was a fool to say I was on an erotic quest,” he admitted. “I understand now that it was a quest for myself.”
“Maybe we are all on quests for ourselves,” Kwame said.
“May I give you some advice?” Moulaert asked. “Is it possible for you to take the advice of a fool?”
“Why not?”
“If you are happy with Madame Van,” he counseled, “marry her.”
They did not speak for a moment. “I’ve considered that,” Kwame said, making an admission he would not have expected to utter aloud, certainly not to Moulaert. “But it’s impossible.”
“I’ll tell you what’s impossible,” Moulaert said. “To bear the loss of a woman you love. To know that, during most of the time you have been together, you have treated her like a whore. Like something you can throw away.”
“What happens when I leave here?”
“Take her with you.”
“Impossible. She wouldn’t be happy.”
“Would you be happy without her?”
Kwame looked at the red-haired, red-faced, and now red-eyed man. Moulaert really was a fool, he thought. Now he was in emotional anguish and it was hard, even in his presence, not to laugh at him.
“If you can’t take her with you, then stay here.”
Kwame tried not to smile and shook his head. “Impossible,” he said.
“Why?” the relentless Moulaert persisted. “I am trying to prevent you from making the mistakes I made. My father instructed me that, to be happy, I must marry a woman of the same religion, the same ethnicity, the same social class. I did as he told me and my wife is a horror. It was Marike who showed me the way to happiness.”
Kwame said nothing. How could he tell Moulaert that what Marike had given him—whatever that was—was not the stuff of happiness?
“Why is it impossible? Because you come from a superior civilization?”
Kwame felt annoyed with him. Finally he said, “That’s one reason.”
“Because you are rational and she is filled with superstition?”
Kwame shrugged. Another reason.
“Because your civilization is rich and hers is poor? Because your civilization—if we can call it that—is rich and gives you the comforts of gadgets and entertainments—”
“I’m not uncomfortable here,” Kwame said.
“Then it must be that you do not love her,” Moulaert said. “That like Odejimi you are only using her body.”
Kwame said nothing.
“Or perhaps you love her and cannot admit it to yourself,” Moulaert suggested. “That makes you an even bigger fool than me.”
Kwame remained silent
“We are fools, you know,” Moulaert said. “To think that we are serving Africans when we are really pursuing the interests of our own countries. Of our own kind. To think that we are helping Africans by trying to turn them into replicas of ourselves. We are trained in rationality,” Moulaert said. “But is that rational?”
Kwame nodded. It occurred to him that Moulaert, however lovesick he might be, was less of a fool than he thought. Or that Odejimi, whose advice he had so scrupulously followed, was more of one than he had realized.
“You’ll be the only white man left now, won’t you?” Moulaert said, rising from the table.
“I will keep an ear open for news of Adriaan,” Kwame promised.
“Thank you,” Moulaert said. He came to Kwame and gave him a hug. At the door he turned and said, “Marry her.”
Kwame never saw him again.
SIXTEEN
One noontime when Kwame came from the school to have lunch at le snack, he found Kalima paying extraordinary attention to patrons she would ordinarily ignore. The couple were tatas, obviously rural people. The bustle of Mbandaka unnerved them, the occasional passing car. The ceremony of a midday meal at a restaurant baffled them. But Kalima had placed them in the shade of a palm frond canopy at le snack’s best table; they sat on chairs brought from the center. Kalima hurried up to him. “My parents are here,” she told him. “Come sit with them.”
Kwame suppressed his knowledge of her father’s disapproval. He hid his perplexity: Why had they come? Travel was not easy from Lake Tumba. He approached with deference and gave them a Lonkundo greeting, although he still knew very few words in Kalima’s mother tongue. He sat with them. They ate together, lacking a common language, stumbling along for a time in Lingala, saying little except when Kalima joined them.
“My parents will stay with us for a few days,” Kalima explained in their presence. “I will put them in our room,” she continued. “We can sleep downstairs.” If there had been a rupture between Kalima and her parents, her pregnancy had harmonized it. The parents had apparently come to Mbandaka to verify that a pregnancy had occurred and to rejoice with Kalima about it. Kwame smiled as if their presence were his dearest wish. Perhaps the parents were now reconciled to him.
After lunch Kwame returned to the house with Buta, who had finished cooking at le snack. Together they broke open the locked doors of second story bedrooms. Sheer perversity, Kwame felt, had caused the Bertons to lock the rooms. They contained little of value except clothes and linens that the couple was never likely to use again.
In the smaller bedroom stood a desk. How curious, Kwame thought, for Berton to lock a desk drawer he would probably never return to open. Animated by a perversity of his own, Kwame determined to open it. Since he had broken the locks of the bedroom doors, it was no challenge to force the one on the desk. As if he were taking a small act of revenge on Berton, he took pleasure in rendering the drawer unusable.
In it he found legal papers, keys, scissors, staples, and a pair of eyeglasses. At the back of it lay a leather wallet. Why a wallet? No matter, Kwame thought. He would ha
ve Buta toss it with the rest of the contents into the trash.
Together he and Buta prepared the master bedroom for Kalima’s parents. While Buta finished up, Kwame took the desk drawer downstairs. As he pushed the contents into a trash bin, he examined the wallet. Strange. It had an American look. Then he saw the initials. Depressed into the leather were the letters KM. Kwame set the drawer onto the kitchen counter. He stepped backward and stared at the wallet as if it were an evil fetish, as if it might move.
At last he lifted it from the drawer. It felt almost hot in his hand. Kwame inspected its contents. The money it once carried had been removed. In one pocket was an expired Visa card. In a second Kwame found a California driver’s license, the expiration date now passed. He recognized the photo on it. It showed the man who, in another photo, had worn the orange sport shirt he had bought in the market so many months before. In the plastic photo holder were an Automobile Club card, a mini calendar, a small portrait of a middle-aged couple and a photo of Mason, clowning in a tuxedo, bussing the cheek of a bride. Kwame thought: Stephanie.
He set the wallet on the counter and held his head in his hands. Why this now? Kent Mason had not tiptoed through his head for weeks. Kwame had hoped that Mason had vanished in a trek to get back to the States, back to Stephanie and the life that refused to follow him to the Congo. Now he knew that Mason was dead. Poor Mason, Kwame thought. Somehow he had gotten involved with Mme Berton. How lonely he must have been!
Before Buta came downstairs, Kwame threw the wallet and the drawer into the trash. He would not tell Kalima or anyone else what he had found. Mason’s fate would remain a mystery.
KWAME AND Kalima did not talk privately until after everyone had gone to bed. If she had not been focused on her parents, she would have sensed that something was bothering him. But instead, while undressing, she said, “They are pleased about the baby. They knew, but now they see. At last I am a woman for my parents.”
Kwame saw that airing his grievance against her father would only lead to dissension. They went to bed without further talk, lying side by side in the darkness. Finally Kwame asked, “Why are they here?”
“To see that the baby is really on its way. They are so pleased.”
Kwame pushed behind him his grievance and the thought of Mason’s wallet. He realized that the baby was not merely his and Kalima’s. It was her parents’ baby too. Its umbilical cord tied them all together. That cord bound Kalima more strongly to her parents. Although she had spent years away, the baby was already bringing her back to them. Kwame had not expected any of this to happen. An American mother might come for a week or so after a baby’s birth, but the maternal grandparents did not move into their daughter’s home.
Kalima sensed that something bothered Kwame. He seemed baffled, perhaps disapproving. “Also, they have heard stories of the rebellion,” she said, reinforcing reasons for the visit. “Of fighting, people killed. They have heard of strangers coming into the Equateur.” She took his hand. “They want me to come home.”
The darkness fell into heavy silence. Kwame waited for Kalima’s assurance that she had no intention of leaving him. But she said nothing. “You aren’t thinking of going,” he declared finally. Her silence persisted. In the darkness it possessed a kind of physical presence. It surrounded them, had weight. Kwame reached over and turned on the light. “You live here,” he reminded her. “You have a house here, a man, a business. The last time you were in Bolobe, they tried to keep you there.”
At last she said, “But now I am carrying a child. My father claims it is not safe here. Rebellions are always fought in cities.”
Kwame sat up in bed and stared at her. “In cities like Kinshasa. Not in Mbandaka.”
“This is difficult for me,” Kalima said. “I cannot ignore my father’s advice.”
“Of course you can. You left Bolobe to live with me.”
“He wants me to come home. He says the baby should be born among its own people.”
“I am its own people,” Kwame said. “They know it’s my child?” She nodded. “The baby is with its people. You are here. I am here.”
“You are here,” she said. “But for how long?”
That was the problem, Kwame thought. Vandenbroucke had left her. Mason. Odejimi. Kalima and Bonanga, her father, were both sure that he would also leave her.
“I have no plans to leave you. Or the baby.” She said nothing. “We are the baby’s parents—together, its family. And you’re a woman, not a child. You left your village long ago. Your father knows that.”
“You talk to me as if I were American.”
“No, I’m talking to you as if you were”—he emphasized the words—“an adult. You decide what you want to do.”
“I want to do what my father asks.”
“No!” Kwame said. “I don’t agree to this!” He rose from the bed and began to pace. He found a pagne, a cloth, and tied it around his waist like a sarong. “I am your man now. Not your father.” He waited for her to acknowledge this. But she said nothing. He continued to pace, feeling humiliated. She would not acknowledge that if any man had authority over her, it was he.
“Will you go?” he asked finally.
She said nothing.
“Will they take you back to Bolobe and marry you to the man in Bikoro?”
Silence.
“You defied your father once and refused this man. Why are you suddenly the obedient little girl again?”
Still nothing. He was sure that her parents had been at her, insisting that he would leave.
Finally he asked, “What if we got married?” A woman was supposed to look flattered, even excited, Kwame thought, when a man spoke to her of marriage. But Kalima only looked sullen. “In my society a man does not tell a woman what to do. But generally she attends to her husband’s wishes.”
“You forget. I have been married to a white man—”
“I am not a white man.”
“But you will leave.”
“I will take you with me.”
The silence persisted, pressing down on him.
“Perhaps I won’t leave,” he said.
“You will leave,” she said quietly.
Kwame mused that this was why ultimately it had been unthinkable to marry Livie: Because he knew the marriage would end in divorce, in their leaving one another. If they married, would he leave Kalima? Finally he said, “I talked to Badeka about our marrying. He said it was impossible.”
“When was this?”
“Why is it impossible if we both want to do it?” He untied the pagne and lay beside her again. He realized that he should phrase the question differently. “I would like to marry you,” he said. “Will you marry me?” She made no reply. “You would rather be married to the man in Bikoro?”
“No,” she said. “But I am Mongo and he is Mongo. I am African and he is African.”
“And before long you will tell everyone that my child—our child—is his.”
“If he raises the child, it is his child.”
Kwame sat up again, irked at her. She said nothing and stared at the ceiling. “Fuck you!” he said in English. He left the bed and headed for the door.
Kalima jumped from the bed and grabbed his arm. “Don’t go!”
“I’ll sleep downstairs.”
“Wear something!”
“I’ll do what I want in my own house.”
“My parents are here!” she whispered. “If they see you naked, it is a great insult. They will be insulted and you should be too!”
“Fuck them,” he said, again in English. “You can all go back to Bolobe.” Kalima did not release his arm. He pushed her away, took the pagne, and left the room with it over his shoulder.
As he descended the stairs, he wrapped the pagne about him. He lay down on the couch, but he was too upset to sleep. He went outside, paced up and down the terrace, then went back upstairs, snatching the pagne from around his waist, and reentered their room. He threw the pagne onto the floor,
put on jeans, a tee shirt, and sandals and started out again. “Where are you going?” Kalima asked. He did not reply.
THE BADEKAS were surprised to see him at the door. “I must talk to you,” Kwame told them.
Badeka said, “With strangers infiltrating into town it is not a good idea to pay visits at midnight.”
AFTER THEY talked, Kwame spent the night on cushions on the Badekas’ floor. In the morning he made a stop at the center, taking money from the footlocker he kept hidden, and returned to the house with Badeka. Kalima heard the film truck arrive in the driveway. She met the two men at the door, an expression of concern on her face. “Are you all right?” she asked Kwame.
Badeka stepped forward, greeting her with a strange formality. “I come as Kwame’s father,” he said. He offered her two presents, placing them on the dining table. The first was an envelope; they all understood that it contained money. The second was a necklace that Kalima had once admired. Théa Badeka had presented it to Kwame the night before when she discovered his intentions and had been unable to dissuade him from them.
Kalima stared at the gifts resting on the table. She looked at Kwame, almost apprehensively. They began to move with unusual formality. They seemed to have entered a ceremonial mode. Kalima examined Kwame, as if wanting to be certain he understood what was happening. Kwame bowed to her slightly and tried to smile.
But he was so overcome with apprehension that she would reject the envelope that he could not manage the smile. She stared at the envelope for a long moment. At last she picked it up. “Excuse me,” she whispered. “I will give this to my father.”
Kwame and Badeka waited without speaking. Kwame paced back and forth. Finally Badeka said, “You did understand what I explained last night, didn’t you? An African marriage is a union of families.” Kwame nodded, feeling more nervous. “You understand that usually before the process goes forward, families send out—If you will, call them spies. They check out the person seeking a connection to the family.” Kwame nodded again, realizing that the scrutiny he was about to encounter was much tougher than the one he faced for his doctoral exams or the Foreign Service orals. He needed to piss. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? “It’s fine for us to say that in this matter I am your father. But I know nothing about you.”
The Uttermost Parts of the Earth Page 24