Pilgrims Way

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  Daud went into the kitchen, hoping that Karta would switch the TV on, but Karta followed him. He stood at the door watching Daud warm his soup.

  ‘Especially English ones,’ Karta said after a moment, speaking with bitterness. ‘Let me warn you, young man, they are snakes.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It’s this kind of stuff that makes you sound like your mind’s full of shit,’ Daud said with sudden anger. ‘What do you mean two-faced? Who do you think you are, the dude from the Chicago ghetto? The greasy chief of Bongoland quoting the wisdom of Naanam?’

  ‘What!’ Karta said, reeling a little from this unexpected assault. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying it sounds bad when you talk about women as if they were snakes and lizards. It makes you sound ignorant. Like the baboon laughing at the other baboons’ red arses, not realising that his own’s a whopper.’

  Karta stepped aside to let Daud walk past with his saucepan of soup. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Keep your pants on. You’ll remember what I said one day and you’ll say to yourself Uncle Karta was right after all. And you shouldn’t make these kinds of racial slurs. What’s the Chicago ghetto remark meant to mean?’

  Daud sipped his soup from the pan, glancing up to watch Karta from under lowered eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you going to put that soup in a bowl?’ Karta asked, swallowing as he watched Daud’s spoon travel from pan to mouth.

  ‘You didn’t mind the greasy chief of Bongoland?’ Daud asked.

  ‘Not so much,’ Karta said, speaking haughtily. ‘Bongoland is near the Futa Djallon, just down the road from Freetown. I don’t understand about Chicago, though.’

  ‘Because you were talking like a zoot-suited pimp from the ghetto.’

  ‘I mind that,’ Karta said and sucked his teeth. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t talking about women, I was talking about English women. Let me tell you something, that’s a completely different matter.’

  ‘What do you know about English women?’ Daud asked, relishing his soup all the more because he knew he would offer Karta some.

  ‘More than you think, boy,’ Karta said, wagging a finger. He took the pan without protest, without thanks, and drained it. ‘They are snakes. You wouldn’t argue with that, would you? Look what’s happened to you! When I came round here the other day you were all lovey-dovey, so bad that I felt I’d better get out of the way. This is romance, I said to myself. Now look at you! Bundled out and dumped for some smart guy with a sports car.’

  ‘Never mind what’s happened to me,’ Daud said, ignoring the sports car. ‘What do you know about English women?’ Karta sat down at the table, and after a moment dropped his eyes and laughed. Daud was alert now. He had sensed that something was wrong with Karta. ‘I know about English women because I fuck one of my tutors. Four weeks ago it started. It’s disgusting,’ he said, his voice as small as his wounded ego.

  Daud waited for him to continue. ‘Is that it?’ he asked, smiling to see his friend’s revolted face. ‘Where’s the tragedy? It’s been known to happen before.’

  ‘Not to me! I like to respect my teachers. She’d been making signals a long time but I ignored her. Funny thing is that sometimes I thought she disliked me. She makes cold, unfriendly remarks . . . the way they do when they think you can’t answer back. A few weeks ago I asked her for some advice, about the exams. I suppose I was being a good boy, trying to flatter her. She knew. But I thought it wouldn’t matter, she’d still be flattered. It’s not that you think about these things, you just do them. She invited me to her house. Sunday morning, eleven o’clock. She smiled like that . . . I mean she knew what she was doing. I just never thought.’

  ‘You should be so lucky! So? Why do you . . . feel bad?’ Daud asked.

  ‘She cuts her hair short, and she’s old. She just started talking and playing music, and making lunch. And she knew what she was doing. I could see the smile in her eyes.’

  ‘You must have wanted her too, otherwise you’d just have said no and walked out.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ Karta cried.

  ‘She tied your legs to the chair and then leapt on you, did she?’ Daud asked. ‘And you screamed and screamed but nobody heard you.’

  ‘The exams! She could’ve failed me.’

  ‘Uhuh,’ Daud nodded, unconvinced. ‘Anyway, I still don’t see the tragedy. You slept with her, so what? Did she steal your brains while you were sleeping?’

  ‘She’s ugly! She’s ugly and old, my bro. It’s disgusting,’ Karta said, a look of deep revulsion on his face. Daud watched with astonishment as Karta tried to bring himself under control. Ugly people, he had heard Karta claim, made him physically sick. Sometimes they had been forced to leave a pub because he had seen someone who made him feel ill. Daud had never quite believed this aversion to be real, taking it for another Karta affectation. Then one day they had travelled up to London, to go to Regent’s Park Zoo. Karta had been amused and excited by the animals, until they reached the apes. He had stopped laughing and insisted that they leave at once, saying he could not stand how ugly they looked. ‘And it’s still going on,’ Karta said, bringing himself under control. ‘She won’t stop.’

  ‘Can’t you stop?’ Daud asked.

  ‘I guess I’m bored. I’ve got nothing to do now the exams are over.’

  ‘Don’t you like being with her at all?’ Karta had made such a virtue of his rejection of English women, the fat scrubbers, that Daud could understand his resistance to feeling anything for one of them now.

  ‘She lives with somebody, you know. I tell her she must stop but she won’t listen. She rings me when he’s not there and I go round. I can’t help it, I’m a man. I like women but this makes me sick. When she sees me, when I turn up at her door, she smiles with this kind of look. Like a snake. Afterwards . . . when we’ve finished, I think to myself what am I doing here? I don’t think the black man was meant to have anything to do with these white women.’

  ‘It hasn’t bothered you before. What can they do to you? Crush your gonads? They have poison ducts in their cheeks so when they kiss you they steal your will power and turn you into a furry teddy?’

  Karta laughed and slapped his friend’s thigh. ‘Cut out the crap, bro. You know what really makes me angry? That I’m so nearly ready to leave, and I go and become involved in this. Three more weeks and then I’m gone. Back to the land of the living. You can laugh as much as you like but I don’t know how to deal with this woman. I don’t trust her. She’s just using me.’

  ‘So leave her!’

  ‘There’s no point now,’ Karta said. ‘Just a few more weeks and then I’ll be gone. It’s just that I can’t stand being used like this.’

  Daud waited to see if Karta would hear the self-indictment in his own words and then rose to make some tea. In the kitchen, he chuckled to himself at the thought of Karta getting a bit of his own medicine.

  ‘Do you know?’ Karta said, following him to the kitchen. ‘The first time I slept with her . . . she was dry. That’s never happened to me before.’

  ‘Dry?’ Daud said, feeling the beginnings of distaste for the conversation.

  ‘Dry as a bone,’ Karta replied, nodding to confirm the incredible. ‘I’ve never had that before. It’s English women, isn’t it? They’re cold inside. She’s all right now that I’ve lubricated her with the natural oils of a black man. Made her feed on the green plasma of the living world. But that’s the way it always has to be.’ Karta saw the incredulous look on Daud’s face and grinned. ‘That’s why I’m saying that a black man was not meant to have anything to do with these white women. It’s not natural. We give them vitality and strength. They give us nothing. They take their pleasure and give us nothing. They just use us. I mean, look at you. Look what happened to you.’

  They drank tea in front of the television. After a short while, Daud began to feel pangs of hunger but was deterred from setting any food out for fear of Karta’s bottomless maw. There was not much left and it had to last another four
days. When his stomach started to grumble for more food, he rose to go to bed. In any case, he was feeling inexplicably tired. ‘You carry on watching if you want,’ he told Karta. ‘Just remember to switch it off before you go.’

  Karta looked up from the TV and blew Daud a kiss.

  14

  Look at me, he said to himself after searching in vain for Catherine in the dining room. The room had been full of clamouring harpies, all secretly pining for his natural oils, but there had been no sign of his chosen incubus. He wondered if he should call on her again on his way home, but he doubted if it would be the right thing to do. She had, after all, been out with her boyfriend. If she was bothered she would have sent him word when she found out he had been round. He could be forgiving and magnanimous when called upon, just let her try him. For the moment he would thank God for small mercies and bide his time.

  The ward she was working in was near the dining room, and he considered calling in to make his presence felt. Hello there, Cath, everything cool in here? Who was he to play the wounded knight? What good would it do him anyway? He did not want her to escape his clutches on such a feeble excuse as his shattered ego. What a nonsense! He would call and see her, or ring her from theatres. When all was mended, she would lean fondly towards him and comfort him. They would laugh at the stupid misunderstandings that had almost come between them, and he would promise never to let his house get dirty again. Who was this boyfriend? What did he know? Daud wanted to make her laugh, talk to her and have her listen to him while he told her about the places he had left behind. He needed her beside him while they walked the lanes as those old pilgrims had done, sure of salvation. But in the end he came back to the thought that if she was bothered about dissuading him from anxiety she would have sent him word.

  Look at me, he told himself. I should be plotting, intriguing, laying traps to ensnare the boyfriend into error so I could sneak in and steal the picnic basket. I could send him a brochure about a holiday in Tunisia. Who could resist that? Then while he’s there he could catch a tummy bug and perish painfully when he returned to his country estate.

  He passed a woman in the long tunnel to the new wing. She was wearing ordinary clothes, and although he glanced at her, he passed her by without recognising her at once. It was the eyes that he remembered first, heavy and a little puffy, as if short of sleep. There was something peculiar about the mouth too, as if she was sucking a large sweet.

  ‘Paula!’ he cried, turning on his heel.

  She seemed pleased to see him. ‘You remember my name!’ she said. ‘I thought you didn’t recognise me. So you work here. I knew I’d seen you somewhere when you came round the other day.’

  ‘You look different,’ he said, grinning for all he was worth.

  ‘I should think so.’ She coloured a little and gave him a slight smile. ‘I think those Sisters’ uniforms are positively dreadful.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, although I thought you carried yours off pretty well when I saw you the other night. How’s Catherine?’ he put in quickly, before she wanted to know where he worked, or where his car was parked. Or what he was doing tonight. He assumed from her flirtatious smile that she took him for something honourable, a physiotherapist at least, or a doctor. Some doctors walked around in rags. Daud had seen them.

  ‘Catherine? I haven’t seen her for a couple of days. You know, I’m on night-duty this week and she’s on late duty most of the week. She’s nice, isn’t she?’

  ‘Have you seen her since I called round for her?’ Daud asked, suddenly twitching with an excess of hope. Answer me, you dopy cow! Speak, in the name of your God who is Great! But he restrained himself from grabbing the lapels of her jacket and shaking her.

  ‘No,’ she said, her mouth dropping slightly at first but then opening into a knowing smile.

  ‘So she doesn’t know I came?’ he asked.

  She frowned. ‘I asked you if you wanted me to tell her,’ she said.

  ‘Could you tell her now?’ he said, grinning triumphantly.

  ‘All right,’ she said, looking amused as she understood something of the situation. ‘You’d better tell me your name this time.’

  It came to him later in the afternoon, when he had calmed himself down, that Catherine’s ignorance of his visit need not mean anything. She probably would still prefer the boyfriend’s blue sports car to his smelly slum. He would give her a day or two, and if he had not heard, he would call on her and work some juju. At the sight of his strength and vitality, which she secretly relished, all her resistance would crumble.

  When he got home, he strolled round his grubby rooms to see if there was anything he could do to improve their appearance, something swift and fundamental that would brighten his existence. How could she resist such wholesale conversion? He wrote ideas down on a piece of paper, but they seemed feeble whichever way he looked at them. Finally he settled for a less ambitious transformation and sat down at the table to work out the colours he would re-paint the walls. His heart leapt up at the knock on the door, but he knew it could not be her. And when he heard the letter box being rattled he knew it could only be Karta. He wondered what he had ever liked about him.

  ‘What’s on television?’ Karta asked as he settled himself down.

  He could picture Karta in a few years’ time, he thought. A technocrat in his government, running his department with style. He would buy pages of advertising for his government in international newspapers, and invite the world’s tourists to come and rejoice and revel in the new village a dozen miles down the coast from the squalor of the city. Built for the OAU ministerial conference, it can now be turned to beach-huts and chalets, to swell the wallets of the government’s loot-hungry owners. And in the meantime he could see him haranguing an indifferent world with mind-boggling rhetorical hypocrises while the people waited in vain for the sacks of aid rice to reach them.

  As he watched him, surprised by his own bitterness but feeling no remorse, Daud saw Karta cock a leg over the chair and lean back, pouting with irritation and bad temper. ‘You’d better warn this pink-skinned geriatric neighbour of yours not to stare at me whenever I come round here. I’m serious . . . that decrepit old cripple next door. Whenever I knock on the door he appears there at the window. And he needn’t think his age gives him any points with me. They don’t fool me one minute these old buggers. Fifty years ago he’d have shot me dead without a pang of conscience.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Daud asked, surprised by the anger even as he noted with satisfaction that Karta had at last seen the fearsome potential of the retired wog-slayers. ‘Have you been with your tutor again?’

  ‘No,’ he said, rising to switch on the television. ‘I’ve been stuck at home, bored to death.’

  Another knock on the door announced Lloyd’s arrival, and Daud knew that he may as well write the rest of his evening off. Lloyd grinned at him and patted him on the shoulder as he walked past. Daud followed him into the house, cursing both Karta and him, and knowing that in his present mood Karta would behave like a baby with a dirty nappy. Lloyd was standing by the table, laying on it a gift of a pound of apples.

  ‘Can you get your ugly English arse out of my sight?’ Karta demanded. ‘You’re distracting my viewing. I’m sitting in a chair watching a programme and you come and put your smelly behind in my face, farting your suet puddings and carrots at me. Come on, fuck off out of my way.’

  ‘So-rry,’ Lloyd said but none the less moved aside. ‘I see the Paramount Chief is in a bit of a sulk.’

  Karta stared at him with loathing, keeping his eyes on him until he turned four-square to face him. ‘If you don’t watch yourself, I’ll make your arse run tonight,’ Karta said, wagging a stiff forefinger at Lloyd.

  Lloyd bowed as if they had only been exchanging courtesies and turned his back on Karta. He fished a book out of his jacket pocket and put it down beside the bag of apples. He glanced at Daud to see if he had noticed his gift, and smiled to see he had done so. D
aud remained silent while Lloyd picked up the paper on which he had been writing his colour schemes and repairs.

  ‘What’s this?’ Lloyd asked, grinning as he waved the paper at Daud. ‘Kitchen: light blue walls. Ceiling: white. What’s this?’

  Daud felt Karta turn to look at him, and after a moment saw him rise and take the paper from Lloyd. ‘It’s the girl,’ he said, slapping his thigh with delight. ‘You’ve gone back to that girl, haven’t you? Let me tell you something. That one will get you to marry her! I can feel it!’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Daud said, looking calmly back at both of them but feeling an utter fool.

  ‘Who is it? Who’s doing this to you?’ Lloyd asked, laughing and snatching the paper back. ‘Wash clothes on Wednesday night. Twenty-five press-ups every morning. Clean the oven. What is this?’

  ‘Let me tell you,’ Karta continued, grinning and laughing, and leaning forward to leer in Daud’s face. ‘She’s got her hooks into you, young man. I bet she keeps her legs crossed until you pop the question. I can tell her type a mile off. Too clean! You’ll be keeping beer in cans soon, in the fridge door. No more pubbing, darling. You’ll have to stay in and do your accounts and work out your monthly budget.’

  ‘And planning baby!’ Lloyd added with high glee.

  Karta turned to him as if surprised that he was still there. In the sudden silence, their dislike of each other was like a charge in the air. Lloyd lifted his head, stiffening it with challenge. Karta ran disdainful eyes over him, and glared as Lloyd picked up an apple from the bag and held it in front of him like a talisman that would save him from evil. He bit noisily into it, belched, then took another bite, opposing Karta’s loathing with his own boorishness. Daud kept his head down.