by Gayl Jones
I say nothing. I watch her through the mirror. I brush. I don’t dig you, she say, On her dresser there’s a paperback book of Freud’s. I think it’s got something to do with sex, but it ain’t. It’s got something to do with wit. I mean the title of that book says something about wit not sex. I didn’t know that Freud wrote about wit. Seem like whenever people talk about Freud, they talking about sex. I thought the only thing he wrote about was sex. Sex and dreams and even dreams of sex. Maybe that book got to do with the wit of sex or the sexualization of wit.
I thought Freud only wrote about sex, I say. Sex and dreams. I didn’t know Freud wrote about wit.
That’s the Freud of the popular imagination, she says.
You mean of the sexual imagination, I say.
She don’t say nothing, then I think she going to start saying something about catching me with her ex. Her sweet ex. I’m always thinking she’s going to say something about that, even when there ain’t any mention of sex. When I seen that Freud, I’m thinking she signifying about me and her ex. But it ain’t a book about sex, it’s a book about wit. I don’t know what sort of degenerate game you were playing in my house. That’s my house. That’s what I imagine her saying. Or calling me a self-indulgent little bitch, or some shit, I keep thinking she’s going to say something like that. ’Cause that sounds like Joan. She’s even got a song about a self-indulgent little bitch, except she wrote it before she met me. Or maybe it’s a song about herself. Maybe it’s her idea of herself when she wrote that song. But she don’t say nothing about that, about me and her ex. She just look at me through the mirror.
I apologize, I say.
What? For Christsakes, girl, you still thinking about that? You still chewing on that old chestnut. How the hell was I to know? I wouldn’t have opened the fucking door if I’d known you two were bumping boody like a couple of bonobo monkies or some shit. . . .
What do you want? I ask. Do you want me to leave? What’s a bonobo monkey?
It’s you still chewing on that old chestnut, not me, she say, thumbing through that book of Freud’s. When I want to fire you, I’ll fire you. You’re a good manager. In matters of love, you might be a fool. . . .
I pull at the tangles in her hair, knots and pieces that look like fishnet. I massage her hairline. This shit is really destroying your hair, I say.
She pull at a piece of fishnet.
What’s a bonobo monkey?
You. Well, I suppose even you’ve got more morals than them. Do you think animals have codes of morality? I don’t just mean sexual morality, I mean. . . . well, the higher codes of morality. Do you think animals have a higher moral nature?
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
May I borrow your phone? I ask. We’re on the veranda. Beers and pizza. My treat, He said he’d never had pizza. Unbelievable. I start to say something about them Germans and Italians during the war. Lotta Americans think of that pizza as American food as much as they do Italian. But he say he ain’t never had none of that pizza. So I’d ordered us some. Eating his he said he knew why he’d never had pizza. And then I know he mean he ain’t never had that American pizza. He say he had the true Italian pizza that got a taste that distinctive from American pizza or Italian-American pizza. He say he like the true Italian pizza better than American pizza. I’ll reverse the charges, I say.
Go ahead, says Josef, sipping his Budweiser. And no need to reverse the charges.
I start to tell him that ain’t the way you drink Budweiser. He drinking his Budweiser like he think it supposed to be champagne. Course maybe that’s better than them people that drink champagne like they think it Budweiser. What’s this new contraption? I ask, picking up the phone from the table just inside the glass doors.
The same odd honeycombed device attached to the receiver as at the hotel.
If the red light goes on it means our privacy’s been invaded, he says.
On the table are some papers. Some look like contracts, but they’s all in German. And there’s a few handwritten letters, also in German. Maybe there’re from that wife he’s spoken about, but he ain’t got no photographs of her, at least none that’s visible.
Oh, yeah? I dial.
The red light does not go on, but Joan’s voice says sleepily from the other end of the receiver, Hello?
This is Harlan. Are you set for tomorrow? We’re supposed to meet the Schacter people.
Where the hell are you? Do you know anyone named Norvelle? Anyway, someone named Norvelle called you from Africa. Zanzibar, I think. Ain’t that in Africa? Norvelle? At first he thought I was you. A message? No. Ain’t that that new promoter you were telling me about? You were talking about some African promoter for my music. Zanzibar? Ain’t rock ’n’ roll against the law in Zanzibar? Oh, that Norvelle. Yeah, your ex-husband, you told me about him, but you didn’t exactly tell me his name, Norvelle. Is that his name, Norvelle? I don’t know how he got this number. Maybe he put a private detective on your ass. He told me where he was staying over there in Zanzibar. He thought I’d already written the name of the hotel and I asked him the name of the hotel again, but he already hung up. So I didn’t get the name of the hotel. Naw, I didn’t get his phone number. I thought it was that promoter you were talking about, I thought you already had his phone number. Girl, if he anything like his voice, you a fool.
BOOK
TWO
CHAPTER
TWELVE
When my husband started following around that Masai medicine woman, I told him I was going back to the States. I’d followed him all over Africa while he recorded the medical lore of various tribal doctors. He said that there was a lot of traditional African medical lore that had never been recorded or collected. For him it was exciting, but I was exhausted. Let him follow the native doctors from Korogwe to Morogoro, from the Rufiji River to the Great Ruaha, from the Uluguru Mountains to Meru, in the Eastern Rift Valley. Actually, I found the African cities—Nairobi, Lumbumbachi, Kampala, and Douala—more interesting than the little villages or the African bush. On television and in the movies you always saw the little African villages and the African bush, or the people on safari, or the native African medicine men and women, but you never saw the cities with their modern buildings and the bustle and automobiles and rumble and bicycles and mixtures of type and dress. My husband referred to these city Africans as “detribalized.” But I liked them, the African businessmen I saw in the hotels, the market women, the college students, and I liked the tastes and sights and sounds and smells of the cities, but especially the islands off the coast of Africa, the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba.
Although Norvelle, my husband, had books on modern, urban Africa and the detribalized African he still behaved himself as if Africa was all bush or highland village or damp river valley. And the minute we got to the tourist hotel, before I could rest up from the previous expedition to meet some new African medicine man or woman, he’d rent a jeep or a Land-Rover or a van and head toward the next wilderness. I used to wonder what women did when they got trapped in the wilds without their tampons or SNs. Did they use leaves? I didn’t have to find out, though, because after the first expedition I developed amenorrhea.
Still, near Lake Eyasi when we watched one famous medicine woman perform, it was no magic hokum-pokum like I’d expected. It resembled some intricate surgical procedure, but a makeshift one. Like when she pushed the reed into the man’s belly and sucked out gallstones.
Why ain’t the man showing any pain? I whispered.
Because he trusts her, said Norvelle, standing beside me with his notebook in which he scribbled notes and drew sketches. It looked like those naturalist’s notebook you see in the library, except he’s what’s called a medical anthropologist. To show pain would be a sign of disrespect, he explained.
But he feels it? I asked.
Yes, but she’s given him. . . . he gave the name of some natural herb, though I don’t remember the name of it. Anyway, when she finished making the man well, she s
pit on him behind the ears. Norvelle explained it was another sign of goodwill and respect. But while Norvelle stood talking with her in Masai, or whatever the language, some Bantu language, I contemplated her bald head, brass earrings, and bare hanging ashy breasts. She smiled at the man she’d just cured, then she spat behind his ears again. A lot of respect, I mumbled, wondering if she could cure my amenorrhea. But just as well. Ignoring me, Norvelle and the woman continued talking.
Ain’t we going to what’s its place? I asked, back at the hotel. Ain’t we supposed to go to some Gamba village?
And he had also promised to take me to some volcanic crater, the Ngorongoro, and he had planned to meet a highlander medicine man near Tabora. And afterwards he’d promised we could return to Zanzibar or Pemba, not to collect any lore, but to have a real honeymoon, to eat coconuts and lie on a beach or go to the markets not to query where such and such a medicine man or woman could be found, but to buy ornaments of coral or ebony. Not ivory, Norvelle said, because of the elephants.
He wanted to stay with her, he said, the Masai medicine woman. He wanted to go to the next village she decided to go to. He’d learned more lore from her than any of the others, so he’d already arranged to meet her the next morning. So I told him he could follow her to Kingdom Come, but I was going back to the States. I was still hot and funky from the last expedition, and even my Extra Power deodorant stick hadn’t been made with the African bush in mind. I went and took a shower.
In the morning I boarded my plane. I ain’t the kind of woman who’d follow a man anywhere, I decided that a long time ago. I’ll follow a man just so far and then. . . . Well, you ain’t heard my grandmother Jaboti’s story yet. She claimed that she followed a man so far that she turned into a human being. Me, if I wasn’t a human being yet, I wouldn’t follow a man so far, even if his intention was to turn me into one. Or if that was his conceit, that by following him I’d turn into a full human woman. But that’s another story, and most people think that she’s a crackpot anyhow. But like all little girls, you hear how the older women, mothers and grandmothers, handle their questions of romance and love, and you make your own resolutions, mostly what you won’t do. Listening to their tales is as close to a initiation ritual as you get in the New World.
Anyway, so when I look back on it now, of course it was jealousy, plain and simple. jealousy, I guess, That Masai medicine woman with all her charms hanging out, and all his looks of admiration for her knowledge. And me dragging along behind, carrying the Nikon camera, and fighting mosquitoes and dragonflies and tsetse flies and funkiness and the heat and not knowing which way was up. . . . Pd have preferred to have been in one of the nightclubs in the city drinking palm wine. And do you suppose, though, if I’d been the anthropologist and told him I’d planned to follow some medicine man that he’d have come along carrying the Nikon? I think not.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t like that Masai woman, Thaka, I think he called her. A small, round woman, round head, round body, beautiful by the standards of her tribe. I liked her, but following him following her? No thank you. But once she’d surprised me by speaking English. And I found out that she’d actually studied European medicine, that she’d been a top student in one of the mission schools and had won a scholarship to study in London, and when she returned to the Rift Valley, she’d worked as a sort of medical liaison and interpreter between the Tanzanian villages and some international medical organization, Doctors Without Walls or Sans Frontiers or one of those organizations. She herself, though she knew the European medicines, used traditional medicine because the people themselves whom she worked with responded more favorably to that. Sometimes the traditional medicine worked where the modern, European drug didn’t. And when there were parallel medicines, where a certain herb or root for instance contained the exact same chemical compounds one found in a synthetic European pill, she’d use the traditional herb or root. In fact, Norvelle said many European medicines had and have herbal beginnings, such as the malaria cure. When she used European medicine, it was introduced within the African context. Least that’s what Norvelle said about her in a article he wrote on the subject. Actually, Norvelle published a series of papers on her in a medical anthropology journal, and then collected them into a book on traditional Masai medicine.
Are you a medical anthropologist, too? she’d asked, her accent British. I tried to picture her out of her traditional Masai clothes and in European, but I couldn’t. Norvelle was making a sketch of her, and she’d glanced at me and asked that.
No, I said. I didn’t even know what medical anthropology was until I met Norvelle.
You’re just with him? she asked, sounding like I was some sort of groupie or hanger-on.
Yes, I said.
Norvelle kept sketching her and I took photographs.
So when I said I didn’t want to follow him following her anymore, he drove me to the airport in the van. He kept looking as if he thought I’d change my mind, you know, but I didn’t. And his own pride, I suppose, kept him from asking me to stay. Or did he feel relief? Did he want to be free to be with her? Not just to study her, but to be with her? But he said he’d stay at the hotel until I arrived in London, before transferring planes, in case I changed my mind and gave him a call. But when I arrived in London, I merely transferred planes. If I’d called him, would he have kept his promise to be at the hotel, or would he already be with her?
At first he sent me postcards on which he scribbled bits and pieces of new medical lore he’d picked up. He sent translations of songs and chants he’d collected, because he thought I’d like them, or just to fill in the empty spaces. He even sent me some love magic chants from a Kikuyu medicine man, and told me about a special tree they have called the Mote wa Ombani. Mothaiga wa rwenda, he said it was called. Love magic. Just to fill in the empty spaces. He didn’t speak of Thaka, the Masai woman, in any of his postcards, but I knew he still followed her. Then the postcards came fewer, then stopped. I went about for a while feeling as if I’d made a mistake, that I shoulda stayed with him in Africa, but I’d thought and acted for myself. I don’t know how much was fatigue and and how much jealousy. Or how much was simply wanting to be my own woman. Anyway, I kept saying to myself, if it was a mistake, then it was my own. And I acted like the woman I imagined I’d become, not like the woman that perhaps Norvelle or any other man imagined for me.
Still, there was times I thought of going back to Tanzania to hunt up that Masai woman, for I figured finding her would find where Norvelle was. If he kept writing articles about her, then she knew where he was. The journal he wrote articles for claimed not to know his whereabouts. So I went to Saratoga and bet on a horse, and to my own surprise, I won.
When I got back to Louisville, Grandmother Jaboti told me, He been here.
Who was here?
Norvelle.
Didn’t you tell him where I was?
I tried to. But he jumped to his own conclusions. You know how mens is. Thought you was off with some lover. I give him your address, but he didn’t want to catch you with some lover.
So, did he say where he was going?
Couldn’t get no word outa him edgewise after he thought he had done got your story. He think he know you, don’t he? He brought me some palm wine. I never had it before, but I likes the taste of it. And a can of zebra stew. Now you know I wouldn’t eat stew made from no zebra. And dressed up looking just like a African. And braids in his hair. I wouldn’ta recognized him if I didn’t already know him.
I said nothing. I climbed onto a wooden stool and started cleaning brushes.
Maybe he be back, Grandmother Jaboti said. If he know you as much as he think he do.
I just cleaned brushes.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
And no, there weren’t any lovers, not at first, not till Josef, The first time, though, I spent with someone else it was this old jockey. We just talked and talked. I didn’t meet him at the racetrack, though, but on the porch of a lit
tle hotel I was staying at. We both had racing forms. I collected old racing forms, so the one I was reading was one I’d just purchased, an old Saratoga race. He made a joke of that old racing form, then I told him I was a collector of them. So first off we started talking about horses and racing, then we started talking about anything and everything. We spent the whole summer talking and talking and then when it was time for me to leave he got all strange-sounding, like it had been more than talk for him. Like he thought he’d been courting me or something. So I went to bed with him. It was stupid. I told him I didn’t want it to happen again, though. Then it won’t happen again, he said. Then I told him about Norvelle and the Masai woman, and showed him some of the articles that Norvelle had written about her. He said nothing. He just looked at me, I don’t know what he was thinking. He had long eyelashes for a man and this made him look exotic, but he still looked very masculine, a little man, you know how jockeys are, but still very masculine, and them long eyelashes made me call him Bird of Paradise or simply Paradise. But his name’s Nathaniel. From West Virginia, He’d grown a little pounchy around the middle, he said, but the rest of him was still as trim and solid as when he won his first race.