Rules of the Wild

by Francesca Marciano

  It’s the epitome of small-town suburban life, but with a twist: the echoes of Karen Blixen and the colonial architecture of the stone buildings give a romantic aura to the hopeless triviality of our activities. Right here, at the foot of the Ngong hills, is where it all began: Baroness Blixen has become Nairobi’s Statue of Liberty.

  “Habari, mama.”The guy smiles at me as I give him the keys and he starts filling up the tank. “Wapi Adam?”

  “Alienda safari. Atarudi weeki ingine.” I am who I am to them because I belong to Adam. This is definitely a man’s society.

  “Where have you girls been all day?” Suddenly Nena appears at the car window, biting a green apple. “I’ve left messages everywhere.”

  She’s wearing an old secondhand dress tied tightly at her waist with an old Turkana beaded belt. Her long dark hair is tied up in a knot with a pencil stuck into it. She holds Natasha, her four-year-old, in her arms.

  “Hi darling.”

  “We’ve been cruising around.” I stroke Natasha’s hair. “Hi baby.”

  “Listen, I’m having a dinner party tonight,” she says.

  “Great.”

  “I love your necklace,” she says to Nicole.

  “Thank you. What time?”

  “Nine-ish. I thought I’d ask Hunter’s girlfriend as well—didn’t she come in today?”

  There is an almost imperceptible pause.

  “Yeah. Esmé picked her up at the airport,” says Nicole nonchalantly.

  I feel Nena’s inquisitive eyes on me as I fiddle busily with the cigarette pack. I’ve never known whether she knows. I guess she does, because everyone here always knows.

  “Don’t you think she’d like to meet some people? Hunter told us to take care of her until he comes back from Kampala.”

  “Absolutely.” I smile efficiently. “I’ll call her up and give her a lift in my car.”

  Nena throws the gnawed apple over her shoulder.

  “What’s she like? Claire, right?”

  “Yes. Claire. She seems sweet,” I say, “blond. You know, kind of pretty.”

  “Oh, okay.” Nena is disappointed by the lack of interesting details. “I’ve got to run to pick up Toby at school. I’ll see you later, then.”

  I drive Nicole home without saying another word.

  I am thinking that maybe I will have to go away again soon, go back to Europe and really try to get used to it this time.

  “Are you all right?” Nicole is watching me closely.

  “No. But I will be.”

  “For God’s sake, I wish you’d stop trying so hard to be in control.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that if it’s ripping you apart the way it seems to be, stop pretending that you can bear it. Call him up now, tell him you are going to die, tell him you can’t live without him. Fight for it, it’s your fucking life!”

  “I will not die without him. That’s the whole point. He knows that too well.”

  “Aw Gawd”—Nicole lights a cigarette—“this is such a bad soap opera.”

  I drop her home. Her verandah looks so peaceful, her canvases piled against the wall, the brushes resting neatly in the jar, the smell of turpentine floating in the air. I am so jealous that she comes home to something she cares about.

  “Do you want to borrow my green dress for tonight?” she asks cheerfully as she steps into the house.

  “No, thanks. Another time.”

  “Do you care for another line?”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you sure you want to go and pick her up? Why don’t you just leave her behind? We don’t need to—”

  “I hope everyone hates her. I hope you hate her.”

  “Of course I will. Don’t you worry about that.”

  I drive home in the golden five-thirty light. The magic hour. It’s your moment of peace, when the clouds clear the sky just before sunset.

  The Masai askaris walk along the side of the road, going to work wrapped in their red blankets. The Kikuyu maids are on their way to catch the matatu which will take them home, away from the idyllic silence of this white neighbourhood, into the smoky and crowded confusion of Ongata Rongai, reggae blasting from the hoteli’s windows, kerosene lamps shining in the dark, deep into the husky and festive noise of the African town.

  I stop by the side of the road before honking at my gate and meticulously begin to remove the price tags from the espresso cups, the carafe and the South African wine. The money I have spent on these items equals the monthly salary of both Wilson the cook and Alice the maid. I don’t know which makes me feel more guilty: when I forget to perform this operation and I catch a glimpse of Wilson’s and Alice’s expression while they empty the shopping bags in the kitchen—it’s not resentment nor spite, more like a sort of reverential terror towards an object so inexplicably expensive—or when I remember to do it and find myself crawling in the back of the car, frantically ripping off tags like a thief about to be caught.

  ———

  On the equator there is no light after sunset, night falls over you like the shadow of a giant.

  Inside the house Alice is lighting the fire, and the candles on the mantelpiece. All of a sudden I feel cold.

  I sit by the telephone. You never know whether it’s going to work. I lift the receiver. It does. It may not tomorrow.

  He’s only ten digits away.

  I can’t. I can’t dial, ask for his name, wait until they put him through, breathe, say Hunter it’s me, I love you, please let’s stop this killing game, let’s just be together can’t you see we’re meant for each other please send her away this is crazy I will make you happy I just want to love you.

  I never could and now it’s too late. We have squandered the time we were given, too busy fencing each other off. Now our time is up. We made it too nasty.

  Wilson creeps into the room and asks me in a whisper if I am eating at home.

  “No, I’m going to mama Nena, thank you Wilson.”

  I’ll run a bath and forget about it.

  Claire has also had a bath and her long hair is still wet.

  “Ready to go?” I dangle the car keys from my fingertips.

  “Yes. Do you think I’ll need a sweater?”

  “Probably.”

  I watch her while she goes to the closet. She is wearing a wide-pleated skirt that makes her look like a schoolgirl. She is sexy in that mysterious English way, as only blond girls with a good family background and an aptitude for outdoor activities can be, fresh as a rose yet hard as a nail. I feel so different, dark and wounded like Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows. I’m surprised no blood is seeping through my dress.

  The phone rings and she leaps to pick it up on the second ring.

  He’s calling from that hotel room in Kampala where only an hour ago I had set my imaginary scene, my failed love declaration. He’s lying on the bed, fluorescent lights full on, sipping a Coke, just as I had pictured him earlier, except he’s talking to her.

  Claire whispers, her body curled around the receiver like a snail.

  “Well … just fine … going out … Nena … Jonathan Hart called for you … ”

  She doesn’t mention my name, as if I’m not even in the room.

  “…will go to town…when do you think…coming back…fine…me too…yes, me too.”

  I am sitting in the red armchair, my back to their conversation.

  Nothing could be worse than this.

  I actually pronounce these words, very slowly, whispering so that she can’t hear me talking to myself.

  I am an impostor in this house, I shouldn’t even be here.

  She comes back towards me with a smile.

  “That was Hunter; he may come back the day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  We walk outside in the dark, the askari flashing the torch to the car. We drive in silence; I am too drained to make any effort at conversation. The car lights flash on the wild hares jumping in the grass, stars are s
hining in the cold sky.

  She smells of coconut body lotion. What a silly scent to wear.

  I know I will never heal from Ferdinando’s loss. In fact I miss him more and more: when he was around I was able to look at things through the lens of his intelligence. I was always allowed to borrow it, like a child is allowed to play with his father’s glasses, and every time I did, things people said or did somehow stopped frightening or confusing me. He had a way of putting things back in their place. It was like having our own private observation point. He was the one in charge of the focus; I just had the privilege of making use of it. Ferdinando saw through people, nobody could fool him. He often ridiculed them to the point that they were forever destroyed even in your memory. Often I felt that he acted like a child whose favourite game was ripping my dolls to pieces. But in the end, once he had performed his wild open-heart surgery, I was forced to admit that there was nothing inside but plastic.

  I guess that this was his only means of protecting me and my brother: he never seemed to have the inclination to take care of us in any other way. His observation point was the safest place we had.

  Now, without him, I’m back in the blur, I am no longer capable of redefining the contours. I guess I’m back to mistaking plastic for gold.

  I had never felt so passive as after that first time Adam and I made love.

  For one thing, I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to stay awake, lying next to him, in order to study his proximity, his smell. I wanted to absorb it, to get to know it quickly. I watched his body breathing slowly next to mine, his ribcage rising rhythmically, I inhaled the warmth of his nakedness without fear. Nothing about him felt foreign or intimidating. I wished I could stop the clock and never have to get up again, say anything, make any decisions. I just wanted to lie still in the dark next to him and hear him breathe.

  I watched the sky lighten slowly through the tent netting, listened to the first birds waking in the trees. Against the white light Adam was silhouetted in profile, still wrapped in his quiet dreams. I watched the colours come alive in slow motion, greens and blues superimposed on the black-and-white of night, the pink light of dawn glazing the sheets. Once the tent had turned into a faded watercolour Adam opened his eyes without a stir. I looked at him expectantly and saw the same expression in his eyes as the night before. His sleep hadn’t washed it out. The expression, I believe, was of total happiness.

  Later we sat very quietly next to the smouldering coals of the last night’s fire and drank hot tea.

  He then said simply, “Are you going to stay?”

  It wasn’t clear what he meant: that day, that week or beyond.

  “I’m not planning to go anywhere. I hope you don’t mind,” I said, trying to sound just as Sphinxlike.

  “Great. So we can relax.”

  It sounded like a good plan. I just didn’t know whether I was ready to relax.

  The mad surfer in me was still ready to kill in order to survive. Since the death of my father I had been intoxicated with pain, feeding off fear and rage. Now, for the first time, I was desperate to get rid of them. I felt like one of those characters in an adventure movie, aboard a ship in the southern seas wracked by a typhoon at night—waves smashing the ship to pieces, masts cracking and falling, screams, bodies being thrown overboard, lightning and wind tearing the sails—then cut to the next morning, dead calm, blue sky, our heroine is beached on a sandy shore fringed with coconut palms, and is rescued by natives with flowers in their hair.

  I have always felt grateful to Adam for the way he welcomed me in his life. I never had to ask, to push, to knock. He was this big open door right from the start.

  I had never thought of myself as a good person. Too twisted, too unhappy to be good. But now I wanted to be tamed. I needed to revive my integrity. I knew I could be a better person than the one I had been lately.

  Adam and I ended up spending nearly two weeks in the bush. He broke camp and sent his truck with his guys back to Nairobi, and the two of us took off alone, wandering towards the north.

  What struck me immediately, as with no other man I had met before, was that Adam knew how to do everything: he was the most competent man I had ever seen. He never got lost, never looked at the map, he simply recognized the shape of mountains, rivers, junctions in the middle of nowhere. He remembered trees, boulders, springs. The landscape was imprinted on him, and it was obvious why: it had never really changed since he had been a child. I liked the way he owned it. It was his, he had been roaming it all his life. For me, on the other hand, the bush was such a foreign environment—I knew absolutely nothing about it—that I couldn’t even make up my mind whether I should be in a panic or not. I lay awake in the tent after Adam had fallen asleep and listened to the presence of animals around us. I heard branches creak, distant grunts, close growls, strange hisses. At times I could swear I felt the back of an animal brush the canvas along my side of the tent. I never knew which was what, but I could definitely smell them. I managed to lie perfectly still in a sort of frozen exhilaration, feeling the warmth of Adam’s sleeping body next to me, bewildered more by my own reaction than by the possibility of sleeping between a man’s body and a lion’s. The next morning Adam would spot their tracks on the sand around the tent. Hyenas, baboons, hippos, leopard, he would announce matter-of-factly, and in the daylight the marks of their hooves or paws seemed totally harmless. It didn’t seem possible that all that activity had taken place while we were inside the tent. At night he would point his torch in the river to reveal the shining yellow eyes of the crocodiles, or the smooth back of a hippo. He loved the feeling of being surrounded by game; he was actually disappointed when a camp felt too quiet. I was confused; I didn’t know how to behave and I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I never complained. I had no idea if what we were doing was mad or absolutely normal, but I trusted him totally and made it a point to like anything he seemed to enjoy. My secret experiment on that first safari was to keep testing my fear every half hour, pushing it a bit further each time and trying to keep its level comparatively low. It was like forcing a muscle: I had never tested how far it could go and I was proud to see it stretch that far.

  I remember one particular evening. We had just set up camp on top of a hill, and set off for a walk. Adam always walked ahead, in complete silence, scanning the hillside with binoculars for elephants or buffaloes. We knew they were there, having seen their fresh tracks, and by then I had developed enough of a sixth sense to feel they must be close, somewhere behind the trees. Adam sat in the tall grass on the ridge of the valley looking down at the forest below us. I was seized by fear. I had visions of furious buffaloes charging at us from every direction. My heart was pounding, every particle of my body was begging me to run for shelter. Feeling exposed and useless, I sat obediently next to Adam while he kept his eyes fixed on the thick of the forest and listened. We sat like that for a very long time and after a while my breathing subsided, my heartbeat adjusted to his. It was as if his calm had slowly poured into me like a blood transfusion. Our silence gave way to sounds I had not been aware of: the wind through the foliage, the chirping of distant birds and crickets. All the screaming particles of my body calmed down and sank like sand in the river. Now that everything inside me was quiet, I could feel the forest come alive and give out its fragrant breath of moss and fresh soil.

  Suddenly a bushbuck appeared in the clearing. Adam smiled and passed me the binoculars. It was such a perfect, beautiful animal. It didn’t move at first—it had seen us—but as it realized we were perfectly still and were not going to move, it started grazing timidly. That’s when I became aware of how everything had fallen into its right place: my fear had vanished, Adam, the bushbuck and I were breathing together with the forest, we had caught onto its pulse and heartbeat, and nothing bad was going to happen to us. Nothing was going to come storming out of the bush to kill us. Our own silence had made us one with the forest, and as long as we listened to it, we would be safe.

  Adam’s
silence taught me all I know about the bush; now it seems almost obvious. But at the time it struck me as a complete revelation, as something I would never forget.

  Everything he did always seemed simple: each night by the campfire he cooked and fed me incredibly good food. I watched speechless as he mixed water and flour and kneaded the dough which he put inside a blackened pan and covered with coals until it turned into fragrant bread. He winched the car out of the mud, patched the radiator, fixed the punctures, spoke Samburu. I probably would have been dead a hundred times without him.

  It soon became clear that Adam wasn’t the only reason I wanted to stay. As we drove into space, as Africa opened up and took me in, I felt that all my vertical fears—the traps, the holes I had been trying to avoid falling into—were now slowly stretching themselves flat on the ground. Everything was smoothing in space; even my breathing was slowing down.

  I wanted to learn to become competent enough to survive here, and Adam was obviously the perfect man to teach me. The key to open the door. It wasn’t just the beauty of Africa, it was its moral geography that I wanted to be part of. It suddenly became clear to me that this was where I had chosen to be myself again. Under the glare of that unclouded sunshine, where there was no shelter, no screen, no shade.

  “Esmé, you have the constitution of a mule,” he said to me one day, after we had had to push the car out of a sandbank in the midday sun. He shook his head and laughed. “Look at you.”