Pilgrims Way

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  Karta turned up on the Thursday evening. He looked depressed when Daud opened the door to him, and a little shame-faced. He patted Daud’s arm perfunctorily as he walked past, a contrast with the brazen embraces he had taken to performing in recent weeks. Daud sensed Karta’s disappointment that Catherine was there, it was something about the length of time it took for him to greet her. And then he stared at her, as if rather than say hello he would have preferred to make a pass at her. She was on her hands and knees scrubbing the living room lino, where Daud too had been before he rose to let Karta in. Daud’s arms were wet with water and suds, and he rolled his shirt-sleeves up both to draw attention to his working state and to clown a threat for Karta to watch his manners. Karta smiled knowingly and exchanged a look with Daud. The English have got you, his look said.

  ‘We’re nearly finished,’ Daud said, dropping down beside her. He did not enjoy the ostentatious, silent way that Karta convulsed with laughter. Karta leant against the wall for a while, his eyes constantly returning to the figure of Catherine on the floor. In the end, growing tired of standing, he attempted to leap over the wet patches to reach the chairs stacked in a corner.

  ‘Get your filthy boots off the floor,’ Daud screamed.

  Karta stepped back, startled. He shook his head sadly at his friend’s deterioration. ‘Well, I’ll see you sometime then. I’m going to France for a few days . . . with a friend,’ he said. Daud guessed that the friend was the tutor, and that Karta had come to talk.

  ‘We’re nearly finished,’ he said in a more conciliatory tone.

  It was too late, and Karta left, muttering his misery. Daud could not suppress a chuckle. She too looked up and grinned. You were a bit off with him, I thought, she said. He dropped his rag and rushed towards her, calling Catherine Catherine. She squealed with surprise but was not quick enough to escape his grasping hands. She fell into the soapy mess on the floor, shrieking as the cold water soaked her shirt. You fucking idiot, she said, trying to hit him with bunched fists. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and stole a passionate kiss. They abandoned the mess on the floor and struggled up the narrow stairway, throwing shirts off on the way.

  In the evenings they went for slow strolls through the town or to the pub. They explored the medieval alleyways and the quiet, faded streets. One afternoon they hired a boat and drifted lazily under the old arches and bridges. He showed her an orchard which came down to the water’s edge and was surrounded on three sides with high walls. He told her the story of the woman who had lived there, a daughter of a rich landowner who fell in love with a vagrant boy whom her father had taken in out of pity. He was a difficult boy, moody and violent. The servants used to beat him for his dark looks. The master regretted his kindness and constantly spoke of casting the boy out. The daughter was the only one who treated him with kindness. The parents warned her, in the end threatened her, but she would not stop. There was talk of bewitchment and black magic. To save himself the youth turned vagrant again and ran, but first he lured the daughter into the orchard and slaughtered her, mutilating her sex to show his contempt for her. Years later, his body was found there on the river bank, where he had returned to die. She asked him to explain what the story meant, but he said he did not know.

  They tied up their boat beneath an overhanging oak and had their picnic. An old man came out of one of the riverside houses and shuffled to the outside toilet. He glanced at them and then turned to look again. As if he did not trust his eyes, he returned to the house for his spectacles and came to look again. Catherine blew him a kiss.

  At first she railed against the second glances they sometimes got, making abusive gestures at people who stopped to look at them. She turned on a man who had walked past them and muttered The beauty and the beast, calling him a fuck-head. The man got very angry and turned to Daud for explanation and apology. You shouldn’t have called her a beast, Daud said.

  On the Sunday evening she went to a call box to ring her mother. She had arranged to go home for a few days and wanted to check the details with her. She came running back after a few minutes saying a man had tried to force his way into the booth. He had managed to get an arm in and kept trying to reach her, saying I want to fuck you, I want to fuck you. When she threatened to call the police he blew a raspberry at her and wandered away. Daud went back to the call box with her, sitting on a concrete plant tub while she made her call. He postulated a class of derangement that could be called the telephone box syndrome. He had been spat at, threatened, pissed on for being in a call box. He had assumed that his assailants were simply made envious, turned mad, by his dark good looks, but perhaps the matter was more complex than that. Catherine looked stern and affronted as she spoke to her mother, but he knew from his own experience that she would be quivering inside.

  He looked forward to the week on his own, relishing her return. He planned several surprises for her, but as he considered them in detail, they appeared less attractive, and rather too much work. When Karta came round on Thursday evening, fresh from his French tour, Daud was pleased to see him. He had found himself missing her, wishing she was here or he was there. Karta looked round the room with a friendly, mocking grin.

  ‘So how has it been down here in Verona?’ he asked. ‘I assume that Juliet is not with you . . . You take my word for it, you’re going to marry that one. Remember that when you’ve lost your freedom! Uncle Karta warned you! As for me . . . That smells good, my bro. What are you cooking?’

  Daud shrugged. ‘I’ve eaten,’ he said. ‘There’s some left. Go and help yourself if you want.’

  ‘As for me, I maintain my philosophy,’ Karta continued when he had loaded his plate and returned to the living room. ‘Don’t trust a woman! Fuck her and leave her! You know I went to France with Helen. She paid for everything, man. Everything. I’ve been living with her these last two weeks, and she can’t get enough. But . . . she’ll have to get used to it. The time’s almost here, my bro, and then I’m away from this fucking place.’

  ‘What happened to the man she used to live with?’ Daud asked.

  ‘That pathetic man? I tell you this country’s fucked and gone. He has left to spend two weeks with his mother in Scotland. You think I’d leave my woman on her own to go and stay with my mother. He’s coming back tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, I see, so while he’s been away you’ve been . . .’

  ‘Yeah!’ Karta said, grinning at Daud.

  ‘Do you like her?’ Daud asked and saw Karta cringe a little before he laughed.

  ‘I’m telling you she’s just a two-faced white bitch I’m screwing until it’s time for me to go home. If it wasn’t me she’d find herself another student to do it with. You know this man she lives with, this potter or painter or whatever, she talks about him all the time. I think that’s sick! She can’t even be loyal enough to him not to . . . reveal everything about him.’

  ‘Maybe she feels guilty,’ Daud said.

  Karta scoffed. ‘They’re just dirty people. They don’t know the limits of decency. When he comes back she’ll probably tell him all about me. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about her.’ His mood had changed from the cockiness of his first entry when he had seemed pleased with himself. Now he was agitated, shaking his head a little as if evading a pain.

  ‘So they’re all waiting for you at home. Everything set up for the returning hero, eh?’ Daud said. ‘I confess I feel bitter with envy.’

  Karta laughed. ‘It’s fantastic! I’ve already been offered a job.’

  ‘What job?’ Daud asked.

  Karta shrugged, opening his arms to demonstrate his ignorance and his indifference. ‘Government department . . . I don’t know what kind of work. I don’t have the kind of expertise that’s needed out there. They sent me here to do some shit-arse course whose only function is to keep a couple of lecturers in jobs . . . and other things. The British Council pays for it, so who cares?’

  ‘Don’t you care?’

  ‘The Ministry of Trade and Co
mmerce will suit me,’ Karta said and then laughed to see the face that Daud made. ‘You get more benefits in a department like that.’

  ‘You mean bribes?’

  ‘I surely do,’ said Karta, grinning. ‘I’ve got to get something for this year. And anyway, dash is part of our culture. What do you think I am? A crusader?’

  Daud sighed heavily, suddenly and involuntarily, making Karta wait expectantly. He shook his head, telling Karta that he had nothing to say.

  ‘You don’t think I’m serious, do you? Actually, it’ll probably be a job at the Education Ministry,’ Karta said, smiling at his friend. ‘There are no big bribes there, that’s for true. But I get a house, a car loan and a big salary . . . and the esteem and gratitude of my community.’

  ‘You sound like you’re turning religious,’ Daud said, not quite believing him.

  Karta laughed. ‘You must come and visit, come for a holiday. I’ll introduce you to some hot Freetown belles . . . Talking of which, where’s your beautiful damsel? I hope she’ll be back in time for my farewell party,’ Karta said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Only the best are invited. We’ll slaughter a goat and cook some jolof. None of your baboon meat and carrots . . . And talking of baboons, have you seen anything of that English monkey? He won’t forget Uncle Karta too soon I shouldn’t think. Did you hear what that swine was saying that night?’ He sucked his teeth and flicked some ash on his dirty plate.

  They went out for a drink, Karta doing all the buying because Daud had run out of money. Karta talked about his journey, about the homecoming he expected and the presents he had bought. He asked Daud if he would come and help him on the day of the party, just to get the place ready and that kind of thing. They parted outside the pub. Karta laid a hand on Daud’s shoulder, and there was a heaviness about it as if this was their last meeting. ‘It was good to see you again, bro,’ Karta said. ‘You’re looking good. Give her my love. Tell her she’s good for you, and that Uncle Karta is always free when she gets tired of you.’

  She won’t get tired of me.

  When she came on Sunday she was carrying a suitcase and a bag of supplies. ‘I told them all about you,’ she said, pleased with herself. ‘I told myself to keep quiet, but I couldn’t. They were a bit rattled at first. We argued and fought, and in the end sulked at each other. But every time they thought we had finished I started again. It was almost funny, but I wasn’t going to give up. You were on my mind all the time, and whenever I opened my mouth your name came out. In the end they groaned every time I mentioned you. I even got the atlas out to show them where you came from. Soon they’ll want to meet you. Just give them time.’

  ‘What about the doctor? Didn’t they ask about him?’

  She shrugged. ‘They asked. Daddy thought I was mad giving up a doctor for a floor cleaner, but I told him you weren’t any ordinary floor cleaner.’

  ‘Was he convinced?’ he asked.

  She shrugged again. ‘And at night, when I was in bed I tried to imagine that you were there beside me. I wanted to hurry here, to be with you, to make you smile and tell you all the things I’d been thinking about.’

  He smiled, drinking in her words as if they were the sweetest poetry. He took her case up to his room while she unpacked the supplies her parents had pressed on her. He envied her the happiness she found in her parents, the way she could win them round with warmth.

  19

  The university accommodation officer had described the tall, narrow tenement that Karta lived in as a period terrace, which had meant nothing to Karta, who would have accepted almost anything to escape the hall of residence. At the back of the house was the beginning of the university wood and Karta claimed that he sometimes heard scratching and cracking noises coming from the wood. Perhaps a tribe of Englishmen live in there, Daud suggested.

  Daud had agreed to go there in the afternoon to help move the furniture and get the place ready for the party. It was the Saturday of the Oval Test Match, and Michael Holding would be ripping the innards out of the England team, God willing. He resented missing the match to go and help move a couple of pieces of furniture that Karta could quite easily have moved by himself, but he guessed that he was being tested. He tried a few opening flourishes on the beauty of Holding’s athletic lope but Karta cringed and grimaced with such loathing and disgust that Daud felt shame for having exposed the cricketer to so much indignity.

  It seemed to Daud that there were scores of students living in the house. Karta complained about them constantly, but Daud was filled with curiosity. They looked grubby and unconcerned, as if their thoughts were elsewhere, on higher things. He could not resist associating their superior indifference with an intellectual contempt for petty details. He was ashamed of his naivety and did not tell Karta how glamorous their student lives seemed to him.

  For his party, Karta had taken over the living room where the television held pride of place. ‘You see this television,’ Karta told him as they manhandled it out of the room. ‘I have fought bitter battles over this damned thing. Whenever I want to watch anything the rest of them groan and complain. They find my tastes somewhat plebeian. Do you understand what that word means? All they ever want to see are serious programmes about the starving millions of India. Sometimes the word goes round that some smug American shit-face, or some inarticulate Italian, is going to predict the end of the world. You should see the turds. They all crowd in with their friends and sit waiting for some overfed monkey to tell them how the world is running out of food or water or something. They sit smoking their stupid joints, listening to these half-baked theories and feeling that they’re really getting to grips with the problems that face mankind. I tell them that I pay my blasted share of the rental and I’m going to get my share of viewing.’

  ‘And?’ Daud asked, feeling that he was required to prompt.

  ‘They outvote me, the bastards. I say to them that democracy is not in my culture, that they’re destroying my identity . . .’

  It was obvious that something was troubling Karta, and he gave Daud pensive looks as if he was considering saying something. At last he spoke, ‘I’ll tell you the truth, my bro. I have a big problem on my mind. You know that tutor, Helen? She’s coming tonight. I couldn’t very well not invite her, could I? What I need tonight is somebody like that Dutch Rosa. The word lust was invented for her! Sticky Dutch Rosa! A night with her would be one way of saying goodbye to this dump, don’t you say, my bro?’

  Karta had created a legend around Rosa, since the time he had taken her to a party in London, to show her off among some countrymen, only to discover later that she had knocked off the host in the bedroom during the course of the evening.

  ‘What I’d do for another night with Rosa, man. Instead . . . I invited the potter or whatever he is as well. She can’t have much to complain about, can she? I’ll be leaving here tomorrow afternoon and then I can shake her off for good. I’m just annoyed that it should spoil my party like this.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Daud asked, surprised at the complications Karta was clearly in the midst of. ‘I thought you were just having a sordid little affair with this woman. Has it become more serious than that?’

  ‘I don’t know how to stop her,’ Karta said, a hint of fear in his voice.

  A very plump girl appeared from the kitchen and stood watching them with a smile on her face. ‘I’ve done the sausages, Karta,’ she said, her cheeks glistening with goodwill. She had huge buttocks and large lumps on her chest, the kind of woman that bushmen like them were supposed to adore, Daud thought.

  ‘Angela, you’re an angel!’ Karta said, imitating her fawning manner. ‘I should take you back with me as my housemaid or something. There are some cheeses and bread in those bags if you’d like to put them out.’

  Angela looked pleased with these new instructions and grinned at Karta before returning to the kitchen. ‘She’s a shit,’ Karta said, dropping his voice. ‘Most of the time I’ve been here she’s been spying on me and spread
ing rumours. She says I steal her food from the fridge. I wouldn’t touch the noxious crap if you paid me. Then she does this . . . It doesn’t surprise me though. They like to put you in their debt by such kind gestures. Too much for their puny hearts to hate you without convincing themselves they’d been decent to you first.’

  They moved most of the furniture into the dining room and lifted the kitchen table, covered with a table-cloth that looked as if it was a bedsheet, into the living room. Angela was at their heels and suggested that they give the room a quick hoover. Karta succeeded in looking lost enough for her to offer to do it. After they had brought the hi-fi down from Karta’s room and stacked the records underneath the table, they wandered round the downstairs room, looking at their handiwork. Karta declared himself satisfied with the results.

  ‘I don’t know what to wear,’ he announced. Angela looked at him with a ready smile. More work for Angela, Daud thought, looking forward to catching an hour or so of the destruction of the Boer’s men. ‘I want to look stunning for my final appearance, don’t I? I have an all-white outfit . . .’

  ‘Great!’ Angela said, clapping her podgy hands. Karta gave her a warm smile, observing her bloated body with pity rather than with his usual disgust.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head and glancing at Daud for corroboration. ‘It would be too conspicuous. Some radical will read a deep psychological hang-up in my choice of colour and start quoting Fanon at me.’

  Daud left them debating velvet brown trousers and a white silk shirt. He declined the invitation to go upstairs and observe this costume in situ and rushed home to catch what was left of Saturday’s play. To his utter disgust, he found England still alive at 304 for 5. Amiss, his pipe clamped in his teeth, was still there at 176. He had hoped to find England abjectly hanging on to a wicket or two, instead they were flourishing. He knew this was because he had not been there to encourage and offer advice as the game progressed.