The Uttermost Parts of the Earth

by Frederic Hunter

  “Il n’etait pas méchant,” Tombolo said. “Not a bad guy.”

  Both men drank from their glasses and stared before them.

  Finally Tombolo said, “He never intended that Kalima, as you call her, should be more than his companion while he was here.” Kwame nodded. “In a time of SIDA a man needs a companion who is faithful to him.”

  “Dr. Odejimi always talked as if he passed her around to his friends.”

  “That Odejimi,” Tombolo said. “He was the one who passed her around. When she was with Van, Odejimi kept trying to seduce her. When Van was about to leave, he allowed it to happen.” Tombolo gazed for a moment at Kwame. “Don’t hate me for saying this. She was agreeable that it should happen. They saw that Odejimi would take care of her. That was what they both wanted. Il n’etait pas méchant, Van.”

  Kwame stared into his drink for a time. Well, what else was Kalima to do? She could not return to Bolobe unmarried.

  At last Kwame asked Tombolo if he could stay the night. Tombolo regarded him strangely, but said the room where he had first lodged was free. “My prospective father-in-law is staying at my house,” Kwame explained. “I don’t want to see him.”

  As he registered for the room, the child-woman Tombolo was now calling La Petite sidled up to Kwame and offered herself. “Practically a virgin,” Tombolo assured him, recommending her services. “I guarantee you she is clean.”

  THE ROOM was unchanged since Kwame had first lodged in it. He could have sworn that the same sheets remained, unchanged, on the beds. He went out onto the balcony overlooking the river and thought of Dr. Odejimi and Kent Mason. Poor Mason, sent where he should never have been posted. As Kwame stood there, all of that seemed very far away, truly in a different life.

  Kwame did not sleep well. He rose grouchy, missing the scent, sight, and presence of Kalima, her laughter, her voice humming, the pleasure of knowing that she was there. He slept best now with Kalima warm beside him. The rise and fall of her breathing animated the breath of life for him.

  Kwame hung around the hotel most of the day, giving Kalima and her parents time to leave without seeing him. He thought of her constantly, his grouchiness increasing. When he went out on the balcony for a last look at the river, he told himself: You’re in bad shape. You better get married.

  SEVENTEEN

  Kwame’s grouchiness continued. He realized that Kalima mellowed him, brought sweetness and harmony to his life. To occupy himself he began to pay attention to the Centre Culturel Américain. He arrived early, looked through the accumulated mail, thought about answering it although he did not actually do that, and concocted fictional numbers for reports that were overdue.

  One morning when he arrived early, he discovered Tata Anatole sitting on the front stoop, waiting for him with the patience that took everything as it came. He rose as soon as Kwame’s film truck appeared. As Kwame left the truck, he saw not patience on the tata’s face, but alarm. The old man led him into the center and pointed to a crumpled figure asleep on cushions in a corner. A white man. “He arrived in the night,” the tata said.

  As Kwame approached the figure, he caught the scent of dirt, dried sweat, and exhaustion. He heard short, troubled intakes of breath; they sounded like sobs. He noticed boots that had gone through at the soles, torn jeans, and bloodied scratches on the young man’s arms, clumps of blondish hair that had not seen a comb in weeks, a stubble of red whiskers on his chin. As he knelt down, he recognized the young man as Adriaan Moulaert. Kwame and the tata carried him to the film truck. He was so thin that he seemed almost weightless. He stirred, opened his eyes without seeing, and submitted to being carried.

  At the house Kwame and Buta carried him inside. They stripped off his clothes, noticing the rib cage prominent under his skin, the stomach flattened against vertebrae, and put him into the bed that Kalima’s parents had used. Kwame covered his shivering body with blankets and left him to sleep. Buta made soup and washed those of his clothes that had survived his journey. Kwame looked through his belongings and Berton’s for trousers and shirts the young man could wear. He laid them in the room.

  Adriaan woke in the evening. He cautiously descended the stairs, uncertain of where he was. He slowly surveyed the living room. When his gaze fell on a mirror, he peered at his own likeness, finally touching the mirror to verify that it was his own image that he was trying to apprehend. When his eyes fixed on Kwame, reading under a lamp, he stared as if he had never seen him before. He spoke words—Flemish words—which Kwame could not understand. Kwame answered him in French, “Do you know where you are?”

  “No,” said the young man in a voice that was hardly a whisper. “I was trying to get to Mbandaka. Did I make it?”

  “You probably need something to eat,” Kwame said.

  Adriaan nodded. He stared at his image in the mirror. He looked again at Kwame and pointed at the mirror. “Who is this?” he asked.

  Kwame suggested that while Buta was cooking, the young man might want to shower. He led Adriaan back upstairs. He took him to the bathroom, showed him the shower, gave him a new toothbrush, and set out his shaving equipment. Kwame collected the clean clothes he had laid out for Adriaan to wear. When he took them into the bathroom, he found the young man staring at the shower as if he could not remember ever seeing such equipment before. “You can wash in here,” Kwame said. He turned on the shower for Adriaan and left a towel on the counter.

  When the young man came back downstairs, shaved, his hair washed, and in fresh clothes, he still seemed uncertain of his surroundings. Although he had showered, his eyes peered out of deep blue hollows. He asked again where he was. When Kwame explained, he listened carefully, then asked, “And who are you? Have we met?”

  Kwame called Buta to bring dinner and promised to explain everything to Adriaan while they ate. Waiting for Buta, he reminded the young man that he was the American in charge of the cultural center. “You came there one day and we went out to a secondary school,” Kwame said. The young man nodded, but Kwame was not sure he remembered. Kwame told him that his parents had returned to Belgium after waiting for weeks hoping for word from him. Adriaan nodded. He ate a dish of soup very slowly. A look of queasiness, then panic, came over his face. He clenched his mouth shut, pulled up the polo shirt Kwame had laid out for him, and vomited into it. Kwame hurried around the table to help him. “I need more sleep,” Adriaan said.

  He slept around the clock. Kwame stayed close to the house the next day to be of whatever assistance was needed. When Adriaan reappeared late the next afternoon, he still seemed unsure of where he was. Over a dinner, eaten very slowly, Kwame once again explained who he was and why Adriaan was at his house. He also mentioned again that his parents had returned to Belgium fearing he might be lost forever.

  “Where have you been?” Kwame asked.

  What Adriaan told Kwame was not always coherent, not always entirely audible, many of the details blurred and beyond recall. He had walked from Kisangani, Adriaan said, a distance of 600 miles. He had needed to keep ahead of other refugees moving in the same direction. Many of them were Rwandan Hutus who had been walking and starving in the jungles for months. All of them were exhausted; many, especially children, were sick. When he first left Kisangani, walking with the refugees, he would see people every day who lay down at the sides of the road, unable to go on. They would look at him with hollow, imploring eyes and he knew that if he did not move on, he would join their ranks.

  Young men with guns threatened him. They would not allow him to beg for food. So he walked most of one night, determined to get out ahead of the refugees. This proved crucial because otherwise he would have had no hope of securing food. Some villagers were suspicious of him. Others were kind-hearted and hospitable, but they began to sense the hordes that were coming behind him. They gave to fellow Africans first.

  “Why are refugees coming here?” Kwame asked. The Equateur was poor; much of the area around Mbandaka was swamp.

  “It’s whe
re the road goes,” Adriaan replied.

  “The road ends here,” Kwame said. “They’ll be stuck here.”

  Adriaan shrugged and finished his food. When Kwame asked if he wanted more, he said he thought he should lie down again.

  After Adriaan went to bed the second night, Kwame wrote a letter to Johannes Moulaert informing him that Adriaan had returned. He drove to the post office, mailed the letter, and went on to the Badekas to report the likelihood that strangers would be flooding into Mbandaka. “Maybe it’s just as well we are getting out of here for a few days,” Badeka said.

  “Should we do something?” Kwame asked.

  “What can we do?” Badeka replied. “The governor and his people have already fled. This sort of thing is their responsibility.”

  “What about the army?”

  Badeka said nothing at first. They both knew that the army commander was thought to be sympathetic to the Kabilistes. He would not welcome Rwandan Hutu refugees into Mbandaka. “If the army is doing its job,” Badeka said, “the commander will have intelligence about refugees on the road. If they are not doing their job, we cannot do it for them.” He added, “You better get young Moulaert out of here while the airport is still open.”

  Kwame drove out to the military base and spoke with the duty officer. Because he was “the American,” he was finally taken to the quarters of the commander. He explained his business. After regarding him for a long moment, the commander said simply, “This is a Zairean matter. We will handle it in our own way.”

  “I would like to help,” Kwame said.

  “You Americans have already helped too much,” the commander said. “Or too little. You could have stopped this problem in the beginning.”

  Kwame persisted. “If tens of thousands of refugees enter this town—”

  “This is a Zairean matter,” the commander repeated. “We will take care of it in our way.” He added, “If you want to help us, go home. Solve the problems in your own country. We don’t want you here.”

  On his way back to the house Kwame stopped at the center. He took his footlocker of money from its hiding place, set aside sufficient funds for Kalima’s bridewealth, then took out enough cash to buy Adriaan Moulaert a plane ticket to Kinshasa. He counted what remained. The money from Odejimi’s bank account was almost depleted. It was a good thing Kalima’s father did not want the entire bridewealth at the time of the marriage.

  At dawn the next morning Kwame listened to news reports on the shortwave radio. Then he went downstairs to discover Adriaan eating whatever he could find in the kitchen. “Do you have any plans?” Kwame asked. The young man shook his head. “Do you want to go back to Belgium?” Adriaan shook his head more firmly. Kwame saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  “What about Marike?” Kwame asked, trying to be gentle. “Is she—” He did not finish. The question hung in the air.

  “We got separated,” Adriaan said, his voice thick with emotion. “During the rebel takeover of Kisangani, she went off in our vehicle. The rebels may have commandeered it.” He added, “I tried to find her. They probably—”

  Kwame nodded. It seemed probable to him that Marike, who had always wanted to advance herself, had become infatuated with the whole idea of rebellion. She had probably made contact with the rebels. Very likely she had delivered the vehicle and herself to them. probably by now she had become a “friend” of a rebel commander. Probably she had gone with the rebels on their journey, leaving Adriaan Moulaert, her white-man husband, to fend for himself.

  “What’s happened to the rebellion by now?” Adriaan asked.

  “I just listened to the news. Mobutu and Kabila met yesterday aboard a ship anchored off the Congo-Brazzaville port of Pointe Noire. Neither one gave an inch. Ten thousand Kabiliste troops are threatening Kinshasa. There could be a bloodbath.”

  Without hesitation Adriaan said, “I must get down there. Marike may be with them.”

  Kwame very deliberately poured himself coffee from the pot of it Buta had made. He wanted to put a brake on young Moulaert’s enthusiasm.

  “Can I get a plane to Kinshasa? Could you lend me the fare?”

  Kwame stirred his coffee and examined the young man. Despite the rest, he was still tired and very thin. “Stay here a few days. Kinshasa is dangerous right now.”

  “It can’t be worse than what I experienced coming from Kisangani. I hate to ask, but can you lend me the airfare?” When Kwame made no reply, Adriaan said, “I must find her. She’s my wife. Don’t tell me I’m not strong enough.”

  Kwame drank his coffee, feeling its warmth move down his throat and into his body. He wondered what, if anything, Marike had told Adriaan about her connection to his father. He wondered if it were possible that she felt some attachment to him. Neither seemed likely.

  “If you can’t give me the money,” Adriaan declared, “I’ll try to get there by road.”

  “I’ll buy you a ticket,” Kwame said at last. “But there are two things you must do for me. Take a letter to the American Embassy. And go to the Belgian Embassy. Tell them who you are, a Belgian citizen, and let your parents know you’re safe.”

  Adriaan stood, grinning, his fatigue erased by Kwame’s generosity.

  This transformation pleased Kwame. “You must promise to do those things for me first, before you start looking for Marike.”

  “I give you my word.”

  Kwame wrote a letter to Pilar Cota for distribution at the embassy. He noted that he had received reports that starving Hutu refugees had entered the Equateur and were headed toward Mbandaka. He had tried to check the reports with local officials, including the military. He had received indications that they were probably accurate, but had been rebuffed by the military when he had offered American help. He pointed out that the road the refugees were traveling terminated in Mbandaka. The town did not possess sufficient resources to feed tens of thousands of starving, homeless people. If they actually arrived in Mbandaka, they would find themselves at the end of the line. Beyond the town lay only swamp and the river.

  As he wrote, it occurred to Kwame that his report might never be read. In fact, this letter might not reach the embassy before Kinshasa collapsed into chaos. Unquestionably all American Embassy officers were trying to forestall the possibility of unimaginable bloodshed. Meanwhile their families would be making arrangements to flee. In that confusion a memo from Mbandaka would almost certainly be overlooked.

  Even so, Kwame outlined his plans, noting that he intended to drive immediately to Ingende in hopes of confirming reports about the Hutu refugees. They would probably congregate across the Ruki from Ingende, waiting to be ferried across this tributary of the great river, in order to reach Mbandaka. He would report what he observed there without mentioning his immediate future plans.

  With Tata Anatole’s help, Kwame loaded the film truck with water cans and jerricans of gasoline and enough food for himself. Anatole said, “M’sieur, do not go to Ingende.” Kwame assured the tata that he would be all right. He wanted only to verify the rumors he had heard. Still he wondered about the dangers he was inviting. Some of the refugees would be armed. Was it not likely that they would want the food he was carrying? Would they try to commandeer the truck?

  At the airport Kwame stayed with Adriaan. The young man was still fragile. Shaking his hand as they said good-bye, Kwame wanted to advise him to return to Belgium. For one thing was certain: no matter how hard Adriaan looked, he would never find the Marike he cherished in his heart.

  As Adriaan walked out toward the plane, a final passenger debarked from the incoming flight. Blonde, tall, lithe, she seemed like a golden figure. Light shimmered around her as it might for some white goddess out of Rider Haggard. She was Olivia Carlyle.

  EIGHTEEN

  Kwame watched Livie walk hesitatingly across the tarmac, surveying the silent jungle and the decaying terminal with the same perplexity he himself experienced his first day in Mbandaka. He felt a stirring in his groin. As she came c
loser, he saw that she was thinner than when they were last together. Her face, always placid and unlined, wore an expression of strain. When she entered the building, he grinned at her. Their eyes met, but she looked away, not wanting to encourage the attentions of a Zairean hustler who hung around airports. Then she glanced back at him. He said in English, “Want a taxi, lady?” She screamed with surprised excitement, dropped her flight bags, and embraced him. She wore the same perfume she had always worn, a fragrance that swirled memories into his head. When he held her, he felt the bones of her ribs.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. “This place is about to explode.”

  “Look at you!” she said, laughing. “Scumbag!” Her grin and the pleasure of seeing him erased the strain from her face. They kissed. She tasted as she always had, a taste that now made him feel a little dizzy.

  “The embassy has commandos across the river in Brazzaville,” he told her. “They’re ready to evacuate American citizens from Kinshasa and you choose this time to visit.”

  “I came to Cape Town. So why not here?”

  They examined one another. “You look fantastic,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Swami, I read the news. I came to rescue you from the uttermost parts of the earth.”

  Kwame laughed, looked at her carefully, and saw that she meant it.

  AS THEY drove into town, Kwame told Livie, “Walking in from the plane you made me think of the title character in She. Rider Haggard hasn’t crossed my mind in months.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” she said, grinning.

  He asked, “Did you move in with that guy?”

  “Are you kidding? When I was finishing up my first semester of law school? I had exams for god’s sake.” She scrutinized him for a moment, not actually having denied that she was living with the man. “Are you jealous?”

  “Of course,” he said. He realized that he was also relieved. He did not want her living with another man. “But I’m a long way away.”