I shrugged, feeling uneasy.
“I don’t really have an opinion. I mean, I can see your point but…”
I sighed, as if begging him to leave me out of his rage.
“I don’t think I know enough.”
“It’s all right. You don’t need to have an opinion about everything,” he said curtly. “I guess one doesn’t have to take responsibility for every single issue.”
“Good. Because I can’t.” My voice had hardened.
“Right.”
He took a another swig from his glass and looked somewhere past my head.
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
———
Later that afternoon I lay in the sun watching the children play with bows and arrows. I was exhausted by the constant sensation of Hunter’s body around me, as if an internal radar kept measuring its distance from mine. I flattened my head in the grass, seeking refuge in the minute business of insects lulled by their laborious buzzing.
Peter’s voice shook me.
“Like this, Toby, try to keep it straight, yes, that’s it!”
He was showing little Toby how to string a bow. They were deeply absorbed in the experiment, crouching on the grass, their heads close together. I watched the two of them for a while. They looked so similar—same colours, same seriousness, like two children of very different sizes.
“There you go, Tobes! Excellent job!”
Toby ran to show the other children his new toy. Peter caught my glance and came to sit next to me on the lawn.
“Are you all right here all by yourself?” he asked.
“Yes. I was just enjoying the sun.”
He stared at me.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Why?” I asked defensively.
“I don’t know. You seemed a bit sad at the table.”
“Oh…no…I was just feeling…”—I suddenly blushed— “quiet, I guess.”
His attention made me uneasy. Paranoia seized me. Could Nena have told him she suspected something was up between me and Hunter? Women usually could tell these things.
“Yes, I’ve noticed how you can be very quiet at times,” he said in a friendly tone, lowering his voice.
Heather came running towards us.
“Come on, I’m taking a group photograph on the verandah, everyone get ready. We can’t miss this light!”
We all stood obediently in the five-thirty light, like extras on a set, while Heather shuffled us into different positions.
“There, Peter, you take Natasha on your lap, like that. Adam, come over here, you sit down, yes, perfect. Esmé, come forward a bit, I can hardly see you. Gosh, you are gaunt, my dear! Don’t smile, everybody, I want you to look serious, this is a Victorian portrait.”
Hunter’s shoulder touched mine. Then, as the camera clicked, I felt his fingers pressing hard, angrily, low on my spine.
“Good. So now our duplicity is on record,” I heard him whisper as we all moved away from the camera.
“Why do you hate me?” I stormed into his house the next day.
“What are you talking about?” He was sitting at his desk, his index fingers flying across the keys of his laptop. He hardly raised his eyes to look at me.
“You were so hostile. It kills me.”
“I would never have come if I’d known you’d be there with Adam.”
“We can’t really avoid it, can we? This is such a small place, we’re bound to stumble into each other a lot.”
“Still, it bothers me.”
“You knew this would happen when we started.”
“That’s especially why it bothers me.”
“Can you stop writing for a second?”
“Not really, I’ve got lots to do.”
“Please.”
He continued typing.
“All right then, I’ll go,” I said.
“Esmé.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t go. Come here. Sit down.”
“Why are you like this?”
“Because I live here, because this is my home. And you’re making it impossible for me to go anywhere without feeling illegal.”
“I think you have started to resent me.”
“I do, sometimes.”
It infuriated me to hear him say that. As if it was only my fault, and I had ruined his life.
“Let’s stop seeing each other, then,” I said. “This just isn’t going anywhere.”
“No. Nowhere at all.”
There was a long silence.
I wonder now why we always made the whole thing sound so impossible. We seemed to enjoy the feeling of being stuck in a situation with no exit. It was like being prisoners and discovering that the jailer had drowned with the key. I guess we did it because we believed we’d passed the point where being rational was possible, and now all we could do was try to keep alive, no matter what it took. It felt like total liberation in a way, because there were no longer any rules.
“Come here,” he said.
Once you eliminate all the rational possibilities of escape within your mind, all you are left to escape with is your body.
I closed my eyes as I felt my dress slip off. His hands caressing my spine. His mouth.
Only when we stopped talking could we get close again. We would find our way back into each other through the silent language of sex.
It was the language we invariably started to speak whenever we came to the end of our options.
What’s the point of remembering? When something is lost forever, its memory only makes you feel lonelier.
Even though I had promised myself to avoid doing so, since Claire has arrived in Nairobi (only yesterday morning!), I haven’t been able to resist the temptation to take every piece of the story out of its box and look at it once again.
Now I know why I wanted to go and pick her up.
I needed to make her real. I wanted to smell her skin and hair, to see what her mouth, her legs, her breasts were like. So that her realness would finally hit me like a blow and force me to bury everything for good.
So that I can finally have this little funeral.
———
Meanwhile, I’m faking it pretty well: Nicole, Kevin Steinberg and I have just had a delicious Thai dinner in Westlands and I think I’ve managed to conceal my angst rather successfully. We’ve drunk a few tequilas at the Mayfair Casino bar, watching rich Asians lose fortunes at blackjack and roulette, and now we’re having a few more at the bar of the Mud Club. Tonight it’s packed with Kenya cowboys and young Sikhs on ecstasy, drunken Hillcrest School girls, a few Rastas on ganja, all dancing to techno music.
Over dinner Kevin has become progressively convinced that Iris would make great Hollywood material.
“We need a contemporary heroine. Period movies are expensive, and then after Out of Africa, I mean, what do you do? Forget it. It’s like trying to do another great film about the South after Gone With the Wind. You can’t beat that.”
Nicole and I nod sympathetically.
“Yes, that’s the irony, isn’t it?” Nicole says. “That whites in this country should need another movie to feel real again.”
Kevin laughs and looks at Nicole. It’s obvious he’s mad about her. She must look so different to him than any other woman he’s met. So unconceivable that a girl like that should live here, all alone in the middle of nowhere, in a country which doesn’t add up except as a movie set. She defeats him, and for a split second I catch him looking at her in awe. Then he regains his confidence.
“Only she can’t possibly die in a car crash in the middle of town. We need something a bit more epic than that. Another round?”
We nod and he signals the bartender for more tequilas. I see why Nicole finds him attractive. Thin lines around his eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, well-exercised body, self-confidence and wit oozing from him. But there’s also a softness in him which I didn’t see last night at Nena’s, busy hating everyone in sight and feeling sorry for
myself as I was.
“Don’t forget the lemon, girls,” Kevin warns.
We lick the salt and bite the lemon slice before tilting our heads back and gulping the shot.
And all of a sudden I think How incredible: how much life is actually going on outside of here, people, deals, ideas, conversations. My brain has become anorexic, it has shrunk into this tiny uninteresting thing. Wouldn’t it be a dream to sit inside a dark movie theatre, take in someone else’s vision and let it fill me up slowly till I was satiated and full to the brim with tears and emotions which would have—for once!—nothing to do with me? Wouldn’t it be heaven to be inspired by someone else’s intuitions rather than obsessed by someone else’s body? The brutality of my mere sensual life has hardened me like arid soil.
“Look who’s here,” says Nicole, as we lean against the bar. Miles is dancing with Linda and Claire. We wave, nonchalantly.
Another card combination: Miles and the girls.
It’s taken them only twenty-four hours to become this silly trio. We are always striking alliances of some sort, just in case we can profit from it. Us and the Hollywood Screenwriter, he and the Blonde Babes. Petty manoeuvres of a small small town.
“See”—I point out to Kevin a series of bodies leaning against the walls or dancing in the dark—“that’s Jason, the director I work with sometimes; that one in the red is my hairdresser, she cut my hair this morning; the African girl with the braids waxed my legs last week; and the man in the red turban talking to the girl in the green, that’s Doctor Singh, my gynecologist. Between the four of them they could win a quiz game on the subject of my body surfaces.”
“You can’t get away much in this town, can you?” he says.
“No, we’re stuck in this deadly proximity. Relentlessly mixing our juices. And that girl in black, Claire, the one dancing with Miles, you met her last night at Nena’s, she’s now sleeping with the man I’m madly in love with.”
I’m so drunk now, I feel like I could say or do anything. I must look menacing and wild. But Kevin Steinberg is smiling at me. Slightly incredulous.
“So nice to hear the words.”
“Which?”
“Madly in love.”
“Why?”
“Nobody says that anymore.”
“Madly. I swear to God. So mad about him, it’s absurd.”
“Does he know?”
“Not really. It’s too late now anyway. I totally blew it.”
Kevin hands me another tequila and a pinch of salt. He shakes his head and looks over at Nicole, who’s talking to Miles in a dark corner.
“You girls are lucky. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you were at a party in London or New York. You probably wouldn’t be mad about much there. I kind of envy that.”
I follow Kevin’s gaze in in Nicole’s direction. We watch her as she gesticulates animatedly; it’s an intense conversation she and Miles are having, and it looks pretty final.
“Take her home,” I say to Kevin. “Don’t wait around. Just tell her you’re mad about her.”
Kevin grins.
“I’d like to do that, actually.”
“You should. She’s the best.” I take another swig. “Just go for it, will you?”
He looks at me defiantly and steps down from the bar stool, with the amused, concentrated expression of a child performing a task in a game. He moves swiftly through the crowd, crosses the dance floor and lands gracefully next to Nicole. He’s smiling, and is feeling totally sure of himself. Miles looks up at this handsome older man, slightly annoyed by his intrusion. I watch Kevin as he gently taps Nicole’s elbow and whispers something in her ear, I intercept the surprise on her face and the smile. They’re off. It’s taken only thirty seconds.
This is one of the many ways you can change your life.
If you want to.
Miles walks slowly over to me. He hops onto the stool beside me with a smile.
“I’m afraid you’ve lost your ride home tonight.”
“I’ll get another one.”
“Shall I take you home?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You already have a car full of groupies.”
“Esmé, listen. I know what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“That I’m unsensitive, vain, hopelessly panting after every new girl just to satisfy my ego.”
“Funny you should say that. It’s exactly what I think.”
Miles shakes his head and chuckles. I know I amuse him when I’m rude.
I catch a glimpse of Claire looking at me and Miles from across the dance floor. We stare at each other, perfectly still. I know she knows. And worst of all, I know she doesn’t fear me.
Miles follows my stare and sighs.
“Listen, I hate to sound annoying, but I think I know why you are so upset.”
I stiffen.
“It must be the best-kept secret in town, then,” I say bitterly.
“Stop being so proud.” He squeezes my arm. “I’m your friend, I do care about you, all right?”
“All right. Then get me a drink.”
He bolts happily to the cashier. I keep my eyes on Claire as she goes back on the dance floor. I watch her step under the lights, like an actor on stage. Performing for me.
She has no sense of rhythm, she’s too stiff, she doesn’t let go. Funny to lose Hunter to such an uninteresting woman. But she has something I’ve always lacked, a blind determination which tells her to hold on to the raft and never let go. She’s learned the lesson: Don’t make a fuss when you find someone else’s love letter inside a drawer, don’t ask, never doubt. The less you flounder, the less likely you are to drown. Just hold on.
I didn’t learn that lesson. I drowned a long time ago, my lungs full of water.
CHAPTER EIGHT
And I sing this
for the heart with no companion
for the soul without a king
for the prima ballerina who cannot dance to anything.
LEONARD COHEN
Then came Goma. Divine retribution.
Hunter had been there since day one and he hadn’t come back yet.
The truth was I couldn’t care less about the destiny of those people. I just wanted the whole Rwanda chapter to be over and done with so that I could spend a few days with him far away from all the bad news. I dreamt of escaping with him to the island of Lamu and waking up in a beautiful room overlooking the Indian Ocean. I dreamt of watching the dhow sails come back over the horizon at sunset, of making love to him without having to speak about war and death. I dreamt of being careless and selfish, like all lovers are.
I had these silly dreams. I just had no idea, of course.
Instead the swearing in of a new government in Kigali had pushed one million Hutu refugees into Goma, Zaire, in only thirty-six hours. After the genocide, now even the exodus of the killers had taken on a biblical scale, as if nothing about Rwanda could ever be less than apocalyptic. The human mass which had crashed into this dilapidated ex-Belgian colony lacked everything. The vegetation had vanished overnight because a million people needed firewood. There was no water, no food, no latrines, no clean water, no shelter. The cholera epidemic broke out almost immediately. After a week there were six hundred deaths a day and after two weeks three thousand.
Hunter was right: readers must have thought they definitely could never get these African names right when they saw the cover story on Newsweek. Weren’t the Hutus the bad guys?
What on earth was happening? How could the killers have turned into victims overnight?
The press loved it. It was such an unexpected twist, like a Kevin Steinberg’s stroke of genius at a Hollywood meeting. Newspapers and TV reporters had a field day in the midst of this new carnage. And when the volcano which had been dormant until then suddenly awoke and started spitting lava and the sky turned orange, they thought, great, what next? The Deluge? Nobody could have invented better headlines.
&
nbsp; As far as I was concerned I loathed reading their reports and kept thinking of history as my personal calendar, always weighing the chances that if the Hutus stopped dying so fast Hunter might come back sooner and we would have at least one more afternoon together.
Then out of the blue he was gone.
One evening, I think it was in November, I had come home after work to find him sitting on the sofa, a beer in his hand. He had been waiting for me. His bags were on the floor, he looked utterly worn out as if he had come from very far.
“Hunter. When did you get in?”
“Just an hour ago. I came straight here from the airport. I’ve got very little time.”
“You’re going out again?” I could feel something was up.
“No. I’m leaving.”
“Leaving what?”
“Africa. My job.” He almost sniggered. “You.”
I sat down across from him, my knees faint, my palms sweaty.
“What do you mean—when? What’s going on?”
“I resigned from the assignment. I just can’t deal with Goma, I had to get out. So they’re sending me to Afghanistan on Tuesday.”
“Afghanistan?”
“Yes. They figured I could cope with that.” He looked at me with a funny smile, like a child caught doing something wrong. “I’m flying to London tomorrow, and then out to Kabul.”
“But why?” I felt a lump in my throat. He couldn’t go. Please. Not just like that.
“Because I will not write another word about the Hutu refugees. What’s happening out there right now, all that fucking media craze, is plain disaster pornography. I won’t contribute to it. These people on the first page of every newspaper are the ones who have perpetrated a genocide, they are not these poor victims.”
“Yes, but…what do you do, you want them all to die like that?”
“Listen, you haven’t been there. You haven’t seen them at work. I did. Now that the killing is over it seems like it’s no longer the issue. Well, it is for me, and for a few others who were in Kigali three months back. I hate these people, I don’t want them to be saved, I don’t want to tell the world how they need to be fed. This is where I stop being a journalist, all right? I’m sick now, so sick of what I have seen, I have no pity left in me. I’m tired.”
Rules of the Wild Page 24