The Uttermost Parts of the Earth

by Frederic Hunter

  “America’s creating a civilization where most of us will spend our lives in artificial, acclimatized environments. We’ll work at computers, relax watching movies or TV. We’ll exercise our bodies on the machines in the gyms we’ll have in our homes. And we’ll cut ourselves off completely from the natural rhythms of the physical world, from the flow of the seasons. That’s a kind of folly. A kind of hubris.”

  “Kwame, most of us really are trying to live useful, productive lives.”

  “I sometimes wonder if the earth doesn’t rebel against that hubris,” Kwame said. Livie looked at him as if he were babbling nonsense. “With earthquakes, for instance. And fires, natural disasters, changing weather patterns. The earth is saying: ‘I am still here. You cannot escape me.’”

  Livie gazed at him. “Swami,” she said, “you can’t believe that. It’s preliterate, prescientific babble.” She grinned at him as if to say, “Gotcha!” But watching him, the grin faded. “You aren’t coming back with me, are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “How can you stay? You’re regressing to—” She did not finish the thought.

  Kwame asked, “It isn’t possible that I’ve found something?” Livie shook her head. He took her hand affectionately. “That’s one thing you have to love about Americans,” he said. “They’re unshakably convinced that their way is best.” She smiled and bit her lip. “I guess I’ll stay out here in Africa.”

  “With the refugees and all we talked about today?”

  He shrugged, knowing that he had made the right decision. He had loved her once, but he did not love her now. He watched her eyes fill with tears. “You mustn’t cry,” he said.

  “Let me tell you something,” Livie replied. She looked at him a long moment, trying to find words for her thoughts, and fiercely held his hand. “I understand the attraction of this place, I really do. But you’re going to become ever more isolated. Is that what you want?” Kwame shrugged again. “Mobutu isn’t the problem.”

  “Just a symptom.”

  Livie nodded. “Do you think this Kabila’s really going to change anything?”

  “Probably not.”

  “So what happens? It gets even worse than it is now?”

  “Some places, yes. But not here. This really is the uttermost part of the earth. There’s a kind of safety in that.”

  Livie shook her head, her expression contorted with horror and dismay.

  “Embassy people,” Kwame said, “the optimistic Americans, want to think the rebels will offer opportunities for ‘new beginnings.’ But how can that be? There’s no foundation for that.” He threw up his hands. “Kabila’s moment is likely to be a prelude to—”

  “Anarchy?”

  “Possibly. There seem to be almost as many guns here as there are in the States. But it needn’t be anarchy.”

  “Please don’t stay,” she implored. “I’m so afraid for you.”

  “Don’t be. I’m in tune with things here. I don’t want to live as fast as technology can push me. I don’t want to think and live the way Mike has been trained to.”

  “It’s so dangerous here.”

  “No more dangerous than New York or Los Angeles.”

  “Look what happened at the roadblock.” Kwame smiled at her. “I’m afraid you’ll get sick,” she said. He shook his head. “Or that something dreadful will happen to you. These people can be so cruel.”

  “People get sick at home. The difference is they don’t think they ever have to die. They think they can live five different lifetimes in fifty years. And never once know who they are. I want what is here, Livie.”

  She looked up at the stars. “Poor Mike,” she said. “He knows I want to kiss you. He didn’t want to see me do that.”

  Kwame leaned close to her chair and pressed his lips against hers. The taste of her made him think suddenly of all the things he would be abandoning when he married Kalima. He knew that now and then he would miss them.

  Livie broke off the kiss and pulled her wallet from her jeans. She opened it and withdrew a photo from its plastic envelope. “This is for your wife,” she said. “I’ve always loved it.” She slid the photo across the table. It showed Kwame congratulating African voters in Cape Town.

  They gazed at the photo, then at one another. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I hope you’re happy wherever you are.”

  They kissed again. Livie said, “You too.”

  TOMBOLO WAS at the bar. Kwame took a stool beside him and ordered a beer. Tombolo mumbled a greeting. He had watched the three Americans at dinner. He knew that Kwame had spent the previous two nights with the golden-haired white woman. He knew that she had just left the terrace headed toward the room where the other white man waited. When Kwame’s beer came, Tombolo scrutinized him curiously, carefully. But he said nothing; Americans were a species he would never understand.

  “What’s going on down at Ingende?” Kwame asked.

  Tombolo shrugged. He would find out what Kwame knew first.

  “Soldiers have closed the road,” Kwame told him. “We almost got shot this afternoon.”

  Tombolo nodded. He said, “Stay away from there.”

  After a moment Mike appeared and slid onto the stool next to Kwame. “May I join you?” he asked. Kwame nodded his assent. Tombolo moved off. Mike ordered a beer. When the beer came, Mike said, “I need to thank you for saving my ass. That got pretty hairy out there.”

  Kwame agreed, “Those guys start drinking, watch out.”

  This was a good way for them to talk, Kwame thought. Sitting side by side they need not look at one another. But they could do that in the bar mirror.

  For a moment they were silent. Then Mike said, “I had two days to kill in Kinshasa. So I talked to some people. Including the economics counselor at the embassy. I mentioned I was flying up here to see you.”

  Kwame smiled ruefully. “Did he know where Mban was?”

  “He said, ‘Mbandaka? We brought that guy out of there weeks ago.’ ” Kwame looked surprised. Mike watched him. “I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ With that shitass State Department arrogance he said, ‘I’m sure we did. We aren’t leaving officers in places like that.’ ” Mike shook his head. “The embassy is in such panic about the Battle of Kinshasa that they can’t keep track of their people.”

  Kwame did not know how to react. Was it really possible that the embassy had lost track of him?

  Mike watched him in the mirror. “Mobutu returned to Kin last week. From Europe.” Kwame nodded. “He’d had an operation for prostate cancer. He looked like a skeleton. He can hardly walk.”

  Kwame stared at the beer in his glass. Mike studied him in the mirror, then leaned close and said very quietly. “You saved my ass today. So let me save yours.” Mike fixed his eyes on Kwame. “Don’t get caught here. Let me repeat: Do not get caught here.”

  Kwame considered the advice.

  “Mobutu’s Zaire is not a country,” Mike said. “It’s a criminal conspiracy. Fed by money and violence. With the Cold War over, the money’s gone. The US, Britain, France: they’ve all pulled the plug on aid. The IMF flushed Zaire. Violence is all that’s left. Mobutu kills his own people, sometimes one by one; if they’re ministers who’ve defied him, sometimes he sends the ANC on a killing spree.

  “Across the country Kabilistes and Tutsi soldiers are chasing Hutus through the eastern jungles. They’re massacring tens of thousands. Tens of thousands.” Mike spoke slowly to let the words percolate inward. “Journalists can’t find the bodies, but that doesn’t mean those people aren’t dead. Moreover those killers are coming here.”

  Kwame listened without speaking.

  “So get out of here,” Mike advised. “If there are people who are important to you”—Livie must have told him about Kalima—“take them with you. But get out. Because you’re on your own here.”

  Kwame took a sip of beer, careful not to look at Mike.

  “There’s no government in Zaire,” Mike said. “No law. Wit
hout government, people need families. You have no family here. Without family nobody gives a shit about you. When the chaos comes, nobody’ll look out for you. Chaos is marching toward you right now.”

  Kwame said, “You must be glad to be getting out of here.”

  “Livie and I leave tomorrow night. That can’t come quick enough. No offense.”

  Mike put his hand on Kwame’s arm. The two men looked at one another. “You did good at the roadblock. I don’t want you getting killed. So get out.” They shook hands. Mike disappeared into the night.

  Kwame drank his beer slowly and studied his image in the mirror. He and Kalima were about to create a family. But if trouble came, they would need more family than just the two of them. Would the Badekas be his family? Would Bonanga? Maybe it would not be possible for him and his family to stay the full five years in the Equateur.

  NINETEEN

  On the day before the Bikoro market convened, Kwame and Kalima fulfilled one obligation of the agreement Badeka had negotiated: that a marriage take place according to a custom that Kwame and his people would regard as binding. The couple exchanged vows in a Christian ceremony in the chapel of the convent where Kalima had studied in Bikoro. The Badekas served as witnesses.

  The following morning, under the tutelage of Badeka, Kwame went to the market and bought a dozen goats in good health. They would be delivered in Bikoro. And so Bonanga came to Bikoro, accompanied by his wives and children, his brothers, their wives and children, and also by a number of Kalima’s friends.

  They arrived about midday and the ceremonies began. Kwame officially transferred his gifts of bridewealth, the goats and the first installment of cash, to Badeka. Badeka gave them to Kalima’s oldest friend. This woman presented the gifts to Kalima. She and four other friends made a ceremonial inspection of the livestock. They counted the cash. Kalima then returned the gifts to her friend. The friend, in turn, offered them to Bonanga. Once he accepted the gifts, Kwame and Kalima became married in a ceremony that Kalima and her people regarded as binding.

  The entire party walked back to Bolobe, the bride and groom strolling hand in hand, her mothers and the other women and the children singing, Bonanga and his friends driving the dozen goats.

  Kwame and Kalima spent their wedding night in the abandoned house by the lake. It had been swept and cleaned. Pock-marked sheets of corrugated metal had been placed on the roof to protect the house from rain. As the newlyweds held one another, Kwame whispered to Kalima: “I missed you.”

  “Is this true?” she asked. “I heard you had a white woman come from America to take care of you.”

  “You think I sent for her?” he inquired. “I didn’t even know she was coming. She was afraid she would lose me to Africa. She begged me to come home. I sent her away.” Kalima did not reply. “If you don’t believe me, ask Théa.”

  “Théa and I have already discussed these Americans,” Kalima said. “That poor woman!” She smiled, pleased that he had chosen her.

  “I love you,” Kwame told her. It seemed a declaration that a man should make to his bride, especially since it was true. Kalima tenderly touched his cheek, assuming that these words had special importance in his culture. She placed his hand on her stomach where he could feel their baby growing.

  At dawn Kwame bathed, using the gourd to rinse himself as he stood naked knee-deep in the lake. He had a strange feeling that it was different to rise in the morning a married man. What a curious thought! How could things possibly be different? When he returned chilled to his wife, he felt African and amorous. But that was not unusual. She smiled at him. Her love made her glow in the dim light of the house.

  Kwame felt fulfilled. His love for Kalima seemed enormous enough to fill all space. With the baby on the way, his place in Mbandaka and in Kalima’s family secure, his wife full of love for him, Kwame felt as happy as he had ever been.

  NOW WHEN Kwame awoke in the morning he knew without doubt that his existence had changed, but not in what ways. He had not changed; he assured himself of that. Even so, the world seemed a different place. He was now a family man; he had what his mother called “hostages to fortune.” He had never understood what that meant. Perhaps that was the change. He was now a family man; he had hostages to fortune. He had now committed himself to a project from which there would be no escape, even if there was a divorce. That of protecting, nurturing, and providing for Kalima and their child.

  It occurred to him that perhaps a family man should not walk around so often naked. Now when he and Kalima finished bathing together in the lake, he tied a cloth around his waist. “Why are you wearing a pagne?” Kalima asked him. “You are so beautiful without it.”

  He felt self-conscious. “A married man should not be displaying himself to the world.”

  “You can display yourself to your wife.”

  “Now that I am married, I will probably grow fat.”

  “I will see that you do.”

  “Don’t you get fat.”

  “You will see me get very fat. In the next few months. And all your doing.”

  Later in the house he asked Kalima, “Do you feel different now? I do.”

  “Of course, I do! People I have known all my life in Bolobe look at me differently. I am now a married woman. The child I carry in my belly I will soon carry on my back.” She gazed at him. “They look at you differently too. They think their eyes no longer deceive them.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Maybe you are a black man after all.”

  ONE MORNING in Bikoro, moving through the market, Kalima stopped surveying goods and reached for Kwame’s arm. Glancing at her, he saw her staring at strangers. A dozen of them straggled into town from Kalamba where the main road went north to Mbandaka. Dirt clung to their bodies and in the coils of their hair. Their clothes hung on them, ragged, filthy, smelling. Rather than walk, they lurched, staggered, pulled themselves along with canes. Fear contorted their faces.

  In the days immediately after Kwame and Kalima were married, strangers like these infiltrated the town. Although few at first, they kept coming. They sat on the roadsides, wretched, exhausted. What was to be done with them? They needed food, clothes, toilets, places to sleep, to wash. They did not speak Lingala or Lonkundo and obviously they were starving. They begged for food; sometimes they snatched it from market vendors who failed to protect their goods. The vendors reported that the strangers were Hutus, hunted by Tutsi avengers. They had walked all the way from Rwanda. But, villagers asked, how was that possible? Wasn’t that a walk of a thousand miles? In whispers, they wondered, was it not possible that some of them had also killed in the Rwanda genocide.

  Kwame and Kalima realized that they must return quickly to Mbandaka. On the day they left, they rose at the first gray light of dawn. Half awake, Kwame stumbled outside, gooseflesh on his arms, and slogged into the lake. He gasped as the water rose to his waist, then ducked below its surface. Kalima joined him. “Invigorating!” he laughed.

  “Enjoy. It will be hot on the road.”

  Dressed, their gear packed, they walked to Bolobe to bid farewell to Kalima’s parents. Her mother said, “Maybe it is best for you to have your baby in Mbandaka.”

  “We know you’ll want us there when you have it,” remarked her father. “You have plenty of room and we are comfortable there.”

  Kwame picked up the basket of food Kalima’s mother had prepared. Kalima fixed a steadying cloth on her head, took the basket, and set it into position. “We must go,” she told them. “Or the sun will bake what you have given us to eat.”

  They left Bolobe, nodding and calling and waving to neighbors who rose early to watch them leave. Once they got onto the path toward Bikoro, Kalima told Kwame, “I don’t want my parents living with us.”

  “Good,” Kwame agreed with a laugh. “Neither do I.”

  “Perhaps it is best to keep my parents at a distance.”

  “You are beginning to sound like an américaine.”

  “You kno
w how my father bosses everyone. While I was with them, he wanted me to wait on him as I had done as a child.”

  “Did you?”

  “For my mother’s sake. So she wouldn’t have to.”

  Kwame was delighted that they had escaped Bolobe. Kalima seemed at last to see that she must resist her father’s domination.

  The day grew warm. Kwame felt the first rising of perspiration on his chest. As they walked on, Kalima said, “Even though my father took gifts from you, he tried to have me marry the man from Bikoro. Can you believe that?” She shook her head with irritation. “But because I was not willing, the man from Bikoro would not have me.”

  Kwame reached over to take her hand. They walked side by side. “When my parents come to Mbandaka,” Kalima said finally, “they act as if my house—”

  “Our house,” Kwame emphasized.

  She smiled. “You know I mean our house, the house you have so cleverly arranged for me. They act as if it was theirs. They don’t realize they are guests.”

  Kwame stopped and pulled Kalima toward him. When he kissed her, she raised her hands to steady the basket on her head. Kwame declared, “No guests until—When?”

  “Until the baby is born?”

  “Too soon.”

  “Until it walks?”

  “Too soon.” They laughed. Kwame felt a sense of joy in this day. With every step his wife was sending Bolobe into the past. “Until it starts school.”

  “Too soon,” said Kalima. She giggled. “Until it finishes university.”

  BECAUSE OF heavy traffic, the road north from Kalamba was in worse repair than when Kwame had crossed over it only a few days before, more dotted with potholes and pools of standing water. Ruts were deeper.

  Strangers plodded along. Many seemed hardly able to keep moving. They were marshaling their last resources of energy to hobble forward. Others sat or lay at the roadsides. They begged for rides, for food.

  Kwame and Kalima had been driving with the film truck’s windows lowered. “Better put up the windows,” Kwame advised. “Be sure your door is locked.”