Whiteman

by Tony D'Souza

  The gbaka driver jumped out and ran into the trees as the soldiers hopped down off the jeep, ran toward us on the road. Then there were guns in all the windows, banging them open, soldiers passing before the windshield in the rain, all around us. “S’il vous plaît! S’il vous plaît!” the old functionary beside me was yelling. “Déscendez! Déscendez!” a soldier outside yelled. He slid open the door, pointed his rifle at me. I put up my hands.

  “Who said you could leave the city!”

  “No one!”

  “Who said you could leave!”

  “No one! No one!”

  Another soldier came up, pushed down the barrel of the first gently with his hand. Despite everything, he grinned. He said, “Jacques! Wie geht es? Wo gehen Sie alles?”

  I looked at him. I tried to understand who he was and what he was saying. The soldier laughed, slapped my knee. He shook his head and said, “You spoke good German yesterday, didn’t you? But not today.”

  He shut the door on us; the soldiers gathered to talk. They went to the roadside, called the driver out of the trees, and when he came out with his hands in the air, one of them booted him in his seat back toward the gbaka. The German-speaking soldier leaned in the driver’s window, smiled, and said an amount, and we rummaged in our pockets and met it. Then he said a second amount. We met that, too. Then they hooked a cable to the rear axle of the logging truck, winched it back just enough for the minivan to get through. The driver hit the gas. No one said anything to him about running away. After we drove through the gap, the soldiers pushed the truck back across the bridge, closing Séguéla behind us. They didn’t know, as we also didn’t, that Séguéla was falling at that moment.

  We negotiated a half dozen more checkpoints over the next hours, all less severe, and four miles north of Vavoua, the first Christian city south, the driver ordered us out onto the roadside and drove his vehicle onto a narrow track through the forest to someplace safe that was known to him. We waited a while as though he’d come back, and then we began to walk. Refugees came out of the forest to walk with us, their households in ponderous bundles on their heads. One man was carrying a sewing machine, another man a crate of chickens. No matter how much I blinked, I couldn’t clear my eyes of the rain. The dog stayed close to my leg, often looking behind her the way Jane had when I’d first brought her to Tégéso.

  At midday, we crested a hill and came to the edge of Vavoua. There was another bridge here, another river. There was an immense pile of wood blocking the bridge. It looked as though every household of the city had carried chairs, tables, bedframes, firewood, wall planks, boards, pallets, fencing, and piled them there. At the pile’s core were enormous felled trees, twice as wide as I was tall. No vehicle could have passed through that; a tank could not have passed through that. People looked like ants beside it. It was the annunciation of the souths fear of the north.

  To get around it, we had to hold on to the railing and step along the half inch of bridge that hung over the rushing water below. The water was frothing and brown, and I held the dog under my arm. For the football-field length that I danced us over that plunge, she didn’t squirm once. When I climbed back over the railing and set her down, she shook out her coat, wagged her tail, and sneezed.

  After a seven-hour journey, we had crossed the war zone. There were many men with guns here, many, many refugees sitting on the highway in the rain. The men with guns wore street clothes. They were soldiers who’d chucked their uniforms in case the rebels breached their defense. They barred the highway with tires and studded boards, were searching one by one the long lines of people waiting to get through. We waited our turn. When we got to the head of our line, they dumped out our bags, asked us if we were spies. They kept their submachine guns pointed at our bellies, were nervous, yelling. One by one, we paid them bribes and got through.

  Then it was my turn with the dog.

  “Vaccination papers? Title of ownership?” the man asked me. He had a paunch, wouldn’t look me in the eye. His white T-shirt clung to him for the rain. I shook my head, looked down. “Dog doesn’t come through,” he said.

  Another man came over, tall, thick with muscles. He said, “We can issue those papers here.”

  “I don’t have any more money.”

  “There is always more money, whiteman,” the second man shouted at me. He stepped closer to me, like trying to crowd me in. “White people are the richest in the world. Therefore, when there is a whiteman, there is always more money.”

  “No more money,” I said and shook my head.

  He jerked the leash from me, pulled the dog to him. “No money, no dog. Hey,” he said to the one with the paunch. “Shoot this dog.”

  The other man raised his machine gun, aimed at the dog’s face. She was looking at me, straining at the rope that bound her. She was soaked from the rain, looked even smaller than she was. The others were far ahead now, moving away among the refugees for Vavoua. Only Melissa waited. I pulled the leash back, picked up the dog. “Shoot me,” I said.

  The big one took out his sidearm, pointed it at my face. I could see that he was angry. I didn’t care. I held the dog, felt the rain on my face. He pointed the gun at me a long moment. Then he grabbed my shoulder and pushed me through. I dropped the dog and we ran up to Melissa and the others.

  In Vavoua, there was no gasoline to get south. We were across the lines, but there was simply no gas. We still had money: Of course we still had money. After long negotiations, a car was arranged and we rode in it an hour. There were checkpoints everywhere, tires burning, black smoke pouring off them into the raining afternoon. They stopped us, searched us; mile by mile we moved along. At Daloa, the great market had been burned. Blocks and blocks simply gone. A gang of young toughs followed us to the bus station. We kept a tight group, and they kept another close behind us. The guards at the station let us through, shut the great gates on the growing mob. Again there was no gas. Again we made up the necessary sum, along with the wealthy Ivorians on the bus eager to get out. Finally, the bus shuddered to life. We left Daloa with hordes of young men running alongside, beating the bus with their fists. There were checkpoints after checkpoints. We piled our bags on the dog to keep her hidden. The soldiers made us all get off again and again. The dog lay still and they didn’t find her.

  In the early evening, we came to Yamoussoukro. We could see the American helicopters circling the tall dome of the basilica. The driver announced over the PA, “We are safe now.” Nobody cheered.

  At the bus station, I called Abidjan from a phone kiosk. “We’re here,” I told Judith. “We’re all here at the bus station in Yama.”

  “Don’t move.”

  A bus rolled up fifteen minutes later, flanked by U.S. jeeps. The bus was crowded with white people, the first we’d seen. Marines encircled us, shoved away the shoe-shine boys who had gathered to gawk so that some of them fell down. A Marine grabbed my arm, pulled me close. “We got you now. You’re safe,” he said in English.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said, and yanked myself free.

  I was the last to board the bus. A Marine grabbed the dog’s leash. “No dogs,” he said.

  I picked up the dog, got on the bus. They shook their heads and shut the door. Then we set off in the night in a convoy for Abidjan.

  There were chocolates on our pillows that night, psychologists to talk to if we needed it, handshakes from the Washington people, food and drink coupons. We were put up in the Hotel Ivoire, the finest hotel in West Africa. From my ninth-story room, I had a view across the Ebrie Lagoon, and the rain had cleared, and the lagoon glittered with stars. They’d take us in convoys to Ghana in the morning, and mobs protesting the American and French military presence in their country would rush us, pelt our vehicles with stones and bottles. After three more weeks in the Hotel La Palm in Accra, we’d be given our walking papers, and while most everyone went home, I wandered another half year around the far reaches of the continent. I tried, and mostly succeeded, to enter every wa
r-torn nation there was: Burundi, Angola, Congo, Zimbabwe. Whatever I was looking for, I didn’t find it, and I finally came home.

  The desk clerks at the Hotel Ivoire that last night hadn’t wanted to let the dog in, and she pissed in the elevator on the way up to our room, as though to let them know what she thought of it all. I petted her a long time as I stared at the stars on the Ebrie, missing Africa already, wondering what was happening to my village, my friends. Then I took her up to Nancy, whom she was very excited to see.

  The dog lives in San Diego now. She likes to sit on the couch, and Nancy lets her. Nancy called me where I was staying at my mother’s in Florida soon after I returned. “Jack?” she said. “Someone’s been waiting to talk to you.”

  “Who is it?” I said into the phone.

  “It’s your friend. It’s Africa.”

  Acknowledgments

  First thanks to Barry Spacks, whose artistic advice released this book from my despair.

  Thanks to Joel Dunsany.

  Thanks and love to Merle Rubine.

  Deepest gratitude to my agent, Liz Darhansoff; to Kristin Lang, Michele Mortimer, and everyone at Darhansoff, Verrill, Feldman; to my editor, Tina Pohlman; to Becky Saletan, Stacia Decker, Jennifer Gilmore, Jodie Hockensmith, Lynn Pierce, and everyone at Harcourt.

  In memory of my chief; in concern for my friends.

  Thanks to Cathy Martin, Jack Rolls, Brian Spillane.

  Thanks to Bill, Tim, Perm, Sandra, Helen, Mary Ann.

  Thanks, Sokung.

  Thanks, Suzanne.

  Love to Mom, Alyson, and Irene. Thanks to my teachers.

  Finally, to Armin: for loyalty beyond reason.

  Dunsmuir, California, July—November 2004.

  About the Author

  TONY D’SOUZA’s fiction has been published in the New Yorker, Playboy, Tin House, the Literary Review, Stand, Black Warrior Review, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and lives in Sarasota, Florida.