The Uttermost Parts of the Earth

by Frederic Hunter

  Kwame told her what he had arranged. “You knew that sometime we would go to America,” he told her. She nodded. “But not so soon.”

  “We must go there,” Kalima said. “My parents would not want their grandchild born in this place of death.”

  Kwame assured her that they would figure things out in Bangui. Perhaps he would extricate himself from his present job and return to university teaching. They might live in a university community where her being Congolese would be a matter of interest, even fascination, to many of the people they met. “As for Bolobe—”

  Kalima sighed, “There is no going back to Bolobe. After what I have seen today, I will go wherever you take me.” She smiled at him. “Even on an airplane!”

  KWAME WOKE in the night, his back warmed by Kalima’s body. He sat on the side of the bed, the air cool on his back. He had been married less than a week. But in that time everything in his world had changed. While he was transferring bridewealth to Bonanga, Tutsi soldiers from Rwanda, and possibly Zairean soldiers from Mbandaka, were slaughtering refugees at the Mbandaka port. Impossible to believe! He could not conceive that it had happened and nothing would be done. He had listened to shortwave news. There were no reports of the mas sacres. Could a thousand people be slaughtered in Mbandaka and no one even know? No one ever care?

  Across the room Kwame saw his mother. She was standing in her kitchen, leaning against the counter, her arms folded across her body. They had not spoken in a very long time. Appraising him, she began to talk. She asked, as she always did, “What are you taking from this experience, son? What are you learning from it?” He did not know how to answer.

  “At the university,” she reminded him, “you used to claim that America and white education had captured your head. You remember that? But your heart, soul, and body, they were black, you said, were African.” Although he did not remember ever saying such things, he did not deny that he might have spouted off that way. “Was studying African literature a way to make your head African?” He smiled at that; perhaps she understood him better than he understood himself. “Going to the uttermost parts of the earth, was that your attempt to become African?”

  Had he ever really played with such an idea? Becoming African? No! He didn’t think so.

  “The uttermost parts of the earth.” Kwame smiled. His mother saw them as a trial of fire that he had chosen to walk through. He entered those uttermost parts as a young man she loved and admired and respected. But how would he come out? Would he come out at all? What would his experience there be?

  Mason had gotten lost in the uttermost parts. That’s what his mother would conclude. Mason could send extravagant fulminations to Dad and yet write tender letters to Stephanie, letters he never sent. He yearned for his wife, but chased teen tail and got lured into Mme Berton’s trap.

  Had Odejimi lost himself as well? In sex and drugs, whiskey and tobacco? Kwame thought of the occasion when he and Odejimi and Madame Van, as she had been then, had played sex all day, the two men competing, sating their bodies in hers, fueling their excess with whiskey and the breakfast of champions.

  “You almost lost yourself there,” his mother told him.

  “I truly came to love her,” he replied. “I hope you’ll meet her soon.”

  “You almost got lost,” his mother repeated. “Your father and I were so worried. But now you have married her and have a child on the way. You came as close to becoming African as it is possible to come. Getting lost entirely was a very close thing.”

  “Don’t badger the boy,” his father said. Kwame smiled. He had not seen his father in the kitchen shadows.

  “You’ve got hostages to fortune,” his mother reminded him. “Get them safely out of Zaire.”

  EARLY THE next morning Kwame drove to the post office. He engaged a soldier sitting out front to guard the vehicle, promising him zaires. Inside he tried to place a call to the American Embassy in Kinshasa. The operator shook his head. No calls were getting through to Kinshasa. A battle was in progress there.

  Kwame made a call to the American Embassy in Bangui. That took an hour, but he got through. He explained to the duty officer who he was and mentioned the massacres that had occurred in Mbandaka. The officer had heard rumors of them. Kwame explained that he and his wife would be arriving by plane in the early afternoon. He requested that an American officer meet them. His wife who was pregnant would be traveling without a passport. The duty officer assured him that someone would greet them in Bangui.

  THE BADEKAS took Kwame and Kalima to the airport. Kwame gave Badeka the film truck.

  Before going to the plane, he walked alone to the fence that edged the tarmac. He stared off across the runway at the walls of trees he had watched when he first arrived in Mbandaka. He thought of that day, of the four men who had walked out of the jungle, carrying pangas; they stood before him, staring. He thought of the teenage girl, naked to the waist, carrying the log on her head. He thought of Odejimi, driving out of the jungle after a rendezvous with Mme Berton. “Mister Johnson,” he had grumbled. “That execrable tract. Had to read it in school.” Kwame smiled, remembering that. He had been scheduled to remain in Mbandaka only a week. He thought of first beholding Madame Van, so full of mystery, of her becoming Kalima, of his falling in love with her so genuinely that he sent Olivia Carlyle back to America and committed himself to Kalima and their child.

  The plane was called. Kwame and Kalima embraced the Badekas. What friends they had been! Teaching their students had been Kwame’s best experience in Mbandaka. He and Kalima stood in line to move out onto the tarmac. Good to his word, the chef de service supervised Kalima’s boarding the plane. Kwame started across the tarmac. Ascending the stairway to the plane, he gazed at the tall clouds floating over the dense vegetation of the jungle. He had a deep affection for Africa. As things turned out, he was taking it with him in a young African wife who would soon present him a child.