by Jim Harrison
“Did you slap her face? You said you were going to.”
“Of course not. It was a delight to see a latino, woman and talk in Spanish. She's my stepmother, and I love her very much.” She sat down at the kitchen table, which was covered by the paraphernalia of my work. “I won't bother you. I'll cook and help you write poems,”
“I don't write poems anymore.” I served her drink.
“Oh, this is too strong. Arc you trying to fuck me again? My teacher in Florida said that when a writer stops writing poems, at least in secret, he is dead as a doorknob.”
“A doornail, is how it goes. Pour the drink out and don't pull any of that prick-tease nonsense, please.”
“I'm sorry. I listened to the African story from the kitchen. It was very exciting. I only tease you because you react so strongly. I love to tease, and it is impossible to tease him.”
“Is Strang your father?”
“Oh, no. He always supported me since I was seven. Then he adopted me so I could go to college in Florida, but it was a kindness. Allegria is my aunt, and they fell in love a long time ago. He was in Costa Rica to help build a dam, and she was an expensive courtesan, what you refer to as a call girl. She got sick of it finally and wrote and told him in Brazil that she was pregnant, so he sent her money every month. Then he appears again and says, Where is this son Roberto I have heard so much about? Allegria was back in Puntarenas at the time, working in the hospital and having affairs with the doctors. So she weeps and admits her deception. He somehow thought this was funny, to our surprise, because we all knew about it. So they go for a drive and come to our house, which is not much more than a hut, and Allegria paid for that after my father disappeared. There is just me and my brother, my mother, and that dog I told you about that was so nice during thunderstorms. Well, he liked us and where we lived. We went out on a fishing boat with our cousin in the Pacific. We went for long hikes. My mother was quite sick and always depressed about my father running away. About a year later she took her life, which is so rare in my country. Then Strang came back and said to Allegria—I heard them out in the yard from my bedroom—he said, please let me help these children. I love you, and we have no children, so they can be our children. My brother and I had been frightened because we didn't want to live at the Catholic orphanage. Next day, we moved into a nice little house near the sea and near a school. Allegria found an old maid cousin to be with us, but she was there much of the time. We only saw him every year or so. Our relatives used to argue about whether Strang was a fool or not, but one uncle who was religious said, ‘The man makes good money and takes no time to spend it! He loves Allegria, and he loves children.’ Perhaps that's true, or still true. He married Allegria so she could travel to the States easily and to make our life more dignified. Then when I was fourteen she moved in with a wealthy politician in the capital, but Strang continued to take care of us. He took my brother and me up to Los Angeles for a vacation without Allegria even being there.”
She had finished her drink and insisted I take her to the town beach for a swim. There was the disturbing memory of Eulia and Strang in bed in a Miami hotel after he got out of the hospital. Was I being troubled by categories again? A few days back I had asked Strang if he thought of himself as a Christian. This genuinely puzzled him to such an extent that I tried to withdraw the question. “What I think I am doesn't really matter, does it?” he finally answered.
On our way into town Eulia's mood wavered between somberness and gaiety. She had been waiting to see if she were accepted into a ballet and folk dance troupe in San José, the capital of Costa Rica.
“Many of our relatives thought Strang was a ridiculous cuckold, but they were envious of our good luck. Allegria just couldn't stay with him because he wasn't around enough. Some women need what you call proximity, some don't. When he took us to Los Angeles, my brother asked why he spent so much money on us. That upset him a lot. He said he loved us, and he hoped we liked him, and we were part of each other's families. Also he made a joke for us about coming into the world bare-assed, and he wouldn't be needing a wallet when he went out. We thought this was heroic. Are you rich?”
“Not at all. I spend everything, which is a lot, or lose it on investments because I'm a fuck-up, you know, not good at business.” I pulled into the post office, and Eulia went off to make a phone call to I don't know whom.
* * *
TAPE 6 : Continuation: Oh, my god, but my brain is burned. The beach started out well: I finally heard from Karl, who said he hadn't answered mail from me or Corve because he was “somewhat embarrassed” to find himself back in prison. In any event, he was a trustee so we could visit him any day we chose. Hearing from Karl excited me and put me in a fine mood. It was also funny watching the local young men stare at Eulia's half-ounce idea of what a bathing suit was. The same little dog appeared, and I fed him some splendid Usinger's liverwurst from the cooler. He wriggled and rolled with pleasure in the sand. When we got back to the cabin, I planned a nice dinner for Eulia and offered a silent prayer that she would be thirsty enough to become pliant. The bathing suit had also done a very specific job on me. I couldn't remember when I had been so excited. I began to do the preliminary chopping for a Hunanese hot and crispy fish when she announced she wasn't hungry and might she borrow my auto for a “while"? Of course, I said, flustered and feeling the first indications of a wave of disappointment. Off she went, dressed rather too neatly, I thought, for a short errand.
Well, I was so depressed I nearly didn't eat dinner. Then I drank too much and botched the recipe, adding so much hot pepper that I drenched myself in sweat. In the mirror I looked like a marathoner. Then I slept on the couch until twilight, around ten o'clock. She had left at four, and I became alarmed. Had there been an accident and did she lay in some muddy ditch with algae-tinged water creeping up her legs? I had more whiskey with my coffee, lapsing back and forth between worry and anger until I heard the car. In she came as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Where have you been?” I shouted so loud I nearly frightened myself.
I might have known better than to get in an emotional duke-out with this girl. It was as if she had been waiting in the wings for years for a chance to let go against every wrong that had been committed against her.
“Where have I been? I've been in a motel in Seney fucking Bobby. I called him while you were in the post office. He wasn't there, so I called Emmeline and said, have Bobby meet me in the motel in Seney at five o'clock in the afternoon. She said, oh boy. I knew he wanted me very bad, and we had a wonderful time. He's a big, grief-stricken baby. He's not like you. He has no sophistication. He doesn't have fashionable clothes, bright comments, he didn't make me a strong drink. All you people are alike. You pretend that you don't want anyone, and now you're hysterical because I went to somebody who does want someone. Well, fuck you, big shot. Fuck all you people. I was a poor girl. What do I need with men who think it's smart to pretend they don't need me? Fuck you smart-ass men. Go fuck a mirror. Go make your jokes in a mirror.”
That's a fair rendition. It was the mental equivalent of hitting a bridge abutment at seventy. It was time to call in a helicopter, to be frank. I gathered the remnants of myself together and went to the bar. In short, I fled.
CONTINUATION OF TAPE : Awoke at midmorning with a sense there had been a fly in my snoring mouth, tracking out a secret on my tongue. The window was closed and the sun shone hot on my legs. From the living room I heard David Bowie, the androgynous hero, singing “China Girl,” a song my stepdaughter played until I was witless. “O Jesu, joy of man's desiring,” sang monks in cool, soundproof monasteries. I began to stumble out when she put up her hand, came in with coffee and juice and opened the window. At first there was the air of the self-righteous. Her leotard was damp with her dance routine, and she said she hoped she hadn't awakened me.
“It's an inch better than the 6 A.M. garbage truck on Lexington and Seventy-fourth.”
“Should I g
o after I was so impolite? I drove you from your cabin and made you get drunk.”
“Don't go now, my heart might stop.’ Actually I was near tears. A truly kind word would have made me break down completely. Her criticism of the night before had stung me deeply, and I would have given anything to be elsewhere. She sat down on the edge of the bed, then stood up and stripped off her leotard. She never said a thing, but she made me eternally grateful, sensing as she did that my soul was wounded and she might do something to help. There's certainly no making a graph or theorem of our passion. I can't think of a single clear statement I've ever read on the subject. One moment you hate someone to the point of tears, and the next moment you're clutched together, writhing in some abbatoir glue, absolutely happy burrowing your face in her hind end and yelping when you come off, as if you've either fractured your leg or made love. I'm sure that Eulia made a practice of saving her soul by giving it up. I studied the fine hairs of her lower spine while she slept. We are all monkeys, I thought, quite happily.
CHAPTER XIV
* * *
Sing ho for the life of the bear. The following dawn I dragged Eulia out of bed and loaded her into the car. It was time to go back to work, having been put through paces better suited to someone half my age. Or less. I wondered if I had safely made it through latina undergraduate school, but I doubted it.
Allegria was sitting at a table on the porch looking at clothing catalogs. She was going to the Merchandise Mart in Chicago to buy clothes for a boutique in Costa Rica, then return to see Strang again in August. Her appearance startled me, not that I had a right to expect anything different. She was an attractive matron in her early forties, very calm and self-possessed, the sort of wealthy woman you see in Miami airport returning home laden with packages. She presented an impenetrable veneer of composure and affability. Eulia, at least that day, softened somewhat around her stepmother, became girlish and deferential. It has been difficult for me to go through life giving as much credence as I do to people's moods. I handed the ladies my car keys with a reasonable self-assurance that they weren't going off to fuck that lumbering lout Bobby.
* * *
I hope I can continue telling you stories. I seem to be short-circuiting somewhat, to the point that I waken in the night and think I'm someplace else, not necessarily a place I've already been. The sensation is interesting rather than comforting. Once I had dinner with Marshall and a group of his high-roller friends down in Florida. Most of these men were retired and obviously wealthy. I was just in from Uganda via Brazil, and it was a pleasure to listen to them for a while, but then by midevening I thought, my god, we're not living on the same earth. They were colonialists, of all things, and seemed to love each other for that. It occurred to me they were as simpleminded about life as my father, but a great deal less kind and genuine. One of these guys became a little irritated with me, though still polite, I'm sure, because I was Marshall's houseguest.
“You don't believe a damn thing we're saying, do you? Why?”
“No, sir. You're talking about the world that used to be, or the world you want, but not the world I see in my work.” Marshall thought this was wonderfully funny and redirected the conversation to thoroughbred horses. You see, I had been checking out a French hydroelectric project in Uganda to see if some equipment they had devised was applicable in Brazil. The backwater of a cofferdam was full of bloated, decapitated bodies, political enemies of Amin who had come to power. The crocodiles couldn't begin to keep up with the generous, new food supply. Cod, how it stunk! You couldn't help but retch. Some of the French engineers had quit, and the explanation was that they could no longer eat lunch. Food is the largest morale item at a construction site, just as it is in a prison. What I was thinking was this: I'm sitting here telling you my story, and the story is basically over, though the fact doesn't seem to diminish our interest. I certainly don't want us to become like those men at Marshall's dinner party. After I went to bed, it occurred to me these men held a minimal interest in the world other than that part that immediately touched them. If you think about it long enough, you'll find that the most exhausting part about human behavior is lack of curiosity.
That's what gave Sharon a great deal of her charm. Not a bug or bird escaped her notice. She couldn't bear to play dead, and that's why the Reverend drove her nuts. It was a little like Violet the way we read and discussed books. This was only a year after the Mau-Mau troubles, and our mission wasn't very busy. The poor Reverend lacked dynamism for understandable reasons: He was burned out after thirty years in the field, losing a wife and one of three children to disease in the process. When he returned from his Kampala conference, he was glad to see me, but foremost on his mind was a committee position he had lost. I sat through endless bone-numbing after-dinner conversations with him. His central concern in life was purely theological, the nature of predestination: If God knows what's going to happen, how can we change it? That sort of tautological nightmare. It had something to do with the death of his daughter years ago, though I never got the complete story. She died at the mission at age seven, and I wondered why she hadn't been taken to the good hospital in Nairobi. She was, no doubt, a victim of his theological waffling, and now her spirit was still there, taking its toll.
Sharon had some odd habits that placed her a bit before her time. For one, she smoked “bangi,” the local marijuana favored by the natives, in the evenings after the dispensary was closed. She would shower, eat her dinner—she wouldn't eat with the Reverend—then roll this herb up in a cigarette wrapper and puff on it while she read, or we talked or made love. She would become very relaxed and silly and loved to have me just lie there and eat her out by the hour, a chore I relished. Cod, but what pleasure we took in each other. I've never discovered anything since about love that she hadn't already taught me.
One night she told me a wonderful story about this bush hospital outside Mombasa. Early one morning a boy came to her door screaming. She followed him down the road to where a big group of villagers were gathered near the ditch. There was a man lying there with his left leg swallowed up to the crotch by a huge python. No one could figure out what to do. They all tried pulling on the snake, but they were thrashed around by it and feared further injuring the man. Finally the chief split the snake down the side and freed the man, who hopped around with a leg that had just a few abrasions and looked like it had been soaked in a bubble bath for weeks. This man had been up at a festival at Kaloleni and drank too much “mnazi,” which is a fermented coconut drink. Jesus, think of waking up in a culvert with a python an inch from your nuts! Sharon cleansed the guy's leg, then went off with the villagers to a big meal where they cooked the snake. This girl couldn't be stopped, particularly on that night she told me the story. The generator was off, but we had lit an oil lamp. She went crawling around the room and bed on her hands and knees, pretending she was the snake and I was the drunken victim. It was a little scary at first, but I got into it. She swallowed most of my cock, I suppose because my leg was a trifle ambitious. Then she switched around and placed her butt on my face so I could get into the snake business, letting loose with a bloodcurdling scream. Woooeee! This was fine until the Reverend ran in the room with his flashlight. He said something like “My goodness” and ran right back out. Strange, but he never mentioned it to me. I can still see his sunburned, pink face through the crevice of Sharon's buttocks.
During the days I worked as hard as I have before or since. The tropics have long dawns and short sunsets, so I was always up in the cool of daylight. I'd walk around the compound and look for any animal tracks, then go to work. Once I found the pad marks of a leopard in the petunia bed outside the Reverend's house. I didn't say anything, because he was mortally afraid he wouldn't get to retire to Kansas. I wasn't much afraid of dying myself ever since the encyclopedia seemed to doom me to an early death. Come to think of it, I was pretty much following that program Karl outlined for me when I was a youngster.
I was up in Narok one day
to pick up some odd supplies and see if I got any mail. It was a Monday, I remember now, because Sharon had gone off on Saturday with her doctor and hadn't gotten back until Sunday evening. I was feeling pretty raw to the extent I had a couple of beers with an English construction worker I ran into. He worked up in the Sudan and was taking a vacation, driving all over Kenya and Tanzania. He was amazed I had worked on the Mackinac Bridge and wanted to hear all about it. Naturally, with the aid of the beer, I made myself a little more important than I was, but that's in the nature of the trade. When I got up to leave, he gave me his card with the number and address of his firm's Nairobi office. If I wanted a job when I finished at the mission, all I had to do was to let him know. The money was good, and there were few places that he, Martin was his name, hadn't been on earth. I was a bit puffed up with this job offer when I left the bar. I had got back in the mission truck when I noticed a well-drilling rig parked down the road at the gas station.
The upshot was that I begged this man, an Irish Catholic from the United States, and his two crew members to come out to the mission and drive us a well. They were en route out to Kissi, but when I offered half the money I brought to Africa, the Irish Catholic changed his mind. In the end he wouldn't accept any money. He told me that driving around in that old truck drilling freshwater wells for the poor was his mission in life. Years later this man became famous for his African well drilling. At the time, the simplicity of his charity dumbfounded me. So much disease and suffering can be wiped out by the availability of fresh water alone.
When I got back to the mission with the well-driving rig in tow, the Reverend wasn't pleased. He had heard about this water missionary and thought it might be the devil's work. I said I didn't care if the guy was a Russian communist, my contract said I had to provide clean water for the dispensary, therefore it was under my authority. Of course, this was a fib, but it sedated the Reverend enough so that he returned to his house without so much as shaking the hand of our Catholic. I apologized, but the man laughed and said he was drilling wells for God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the natives. Sharon had told me that the Reverend had applied for a new well three years before. It would take months or years to go through government or the U.N. field service, but this man showed up and did the job in twenty-four hours. He struck me as a true Christian.