The Weather in Africa

by Martha Gellhorn

  The idea came to me that I could make a life like this, not all the time naturally, but as something to look forward to. Every year, I could do this. Go away to some unknown place and stop being me, lose my life, live by looking. It would be a way out, or part of a way out. I must have been mad, grabbing at hope after two weeks of feeling peaceful and half an hour on an African road.

  On both sides of the road were fields growing great cactus plants of some kind, like giant cabbages, with spikes that looked murderous. The ground was dry as brown cement. The cactuses grew in long straight rows. How could anyone get near those dangerous spikes to cultivate them or cut them or whatever they did? Anyway there was no sign of people. The cactus fields ended in a band of trees, very thick, tangled, a piece of jungle which scared me into thinking of poison snakes and spiders and malaria. The monsoon does not reach this burned earth, the handsome European hotels on the coast have nothing to do with what belongs here. I hoped the something Club would show up soon and began to have more natural emotions, natural to me: no cars, no people, no houses, the immense silent sunstruck land, I shouldn’t pretend to be adventurous and sure of myself, an experienced traveller.

  It was foolish to be alarmed by the dark trees because they were a patch not a forest and the road went straight on between flat unused ground; long yellowish grass, stubby greyish bushes, unused, unlived in, much of Africa must be like this, not desert but no water, you couldn’t say it’s ugly but miles and miles of such emptiness would be sinister. I wasn’t thinking, or telling myself hopeful stories about future journeys, I was just driving in my usual way, eyes on the road, when suddenly. From nowhere, up from the ground, suddenly, suddenly, suddenly a child leapt running. Directly in front of me, directly in front across the road, running. A second. One second. I saw his face, his profile, running …

  A sound wrenched out of her, not from her throat, from deep inside, loud, a long rasped groan, a sound like ‘NO’ but not clearly a word. Mrs Jamieson did not hear it. She pressed her hands over her eyes, grinding out a picture she must not see. There were flashes of red and yellow under the pressing hands. The pain in her head that never stopped flared into defined points on the temples and at the base of her skull. She lay on the bed, rigid, watching the lights behind her eyelids, the pain numbing her mind. Then she walked to the bathroom, unsteadily, and turned on the cold shower.

  She stood under the spray, holding up her long hair, gabbling to herself about the water: that’s nice, nice cold water, that’s nice, that’s better. She dried herself, gabbling now about the thick green towels which matched the green tiles and walls of the bathroom. You’d never expect such a perfect bathroom in Africa. You’d never expect such a lovely room. Think about the room. One wall of glass, opening to the balcony. Long yellow curtains like the bedspread. White leather chairs or whatever looks like leather. Marble floor or whatever looks like marble. Big built-in cupboards, big built-in dressing table. Good lamps with plain white shades. White walls. So cool and clean and light and pretty. One painting, local work obviously, tacked on to show you where you are, an African maiden with a collar of silver rings giving her a giraffe neck, and bare breasts. All right now. Breathe quietly. Two aspirins. Ice from the thermos.

  Ice cubes in a hand towel made a wet cold bag which she held against the bluish lump on her right temple, then against the unbruised left temple where the pain was worse. Raising her hair, she passed the melting ice bag across the back of her neck. The condition of her head was a fact to be ignored. The cavity inside her skull felt filled with a single hot stone, too large for the encircling bone. When the regular pain altered into pulsing jabs she sweated and was rocked by nausea so she handled this inconvenience with aspirin and ice. It did not concern her.

  The mirror over the wash basin covered the wall. Another long mirror covered the bathroom door. She could not avoid seeing all of herself. She looked at her face which was unchanged except for the coloured swelling on her temple. She couldn’t remember when she had stopped caring about her face. Probably when she knew she was old. Long ago. Being old did not depend on your looks or on a number of years, it was a truth you knew about yourself. Forty-three last week; she had forgotten her birthday here in those timeless days which seemed long ago too.

  When she was a child her parents must have told her, or let her understand, that she was pretty so she took her face for granted but there was something wrong with it now. It was frightening. Her forehead. The dark blonde hair grew in a central point and on the sides the hair grew closely as if glued to the skin: a broad low forehead. And it was completely unlined. Nothing had happened to her forehead, nothing showed. It looked blind or worse: insane. As if it were detached from her, from life, existing alone untouched by all events, any feeling. She was wearing somebody else’s forehead.

  The ice had melted and there was no more in the thermos jug. She drank thirstily the last of the cold water. Food? When had she eaten? Dial 4 for room service. Ice water, iced tea, chicken sandwiches. No, the effort of speaking was too great. And she would have to find her dressing gown. Her body must be hidden from questions. Like curious sleeves, purple yellow and green bruises from shoulders to elbows; like a splotchy belt, bruises across the pelvis and back; like torn dark stockings, the discolorations on her legs. Unimportant. She put on her nightgown and went to lie on the bed.

  Two days now? Three? Some day she would leave this room. It didn’t matter. Time was different again. Not what she had known for so long, a ceaseless chore to attend to every day. Not like the magical drifting time of those two weeks. Time had no shape at all and she was not responsible for it. It went on, it was no business of hers.

  She could tell the hours by the light flowing through the balcony window, from the silver shades of early morning to the straight white glare of noon through a slowly cooling gold to the sudden sunset. Late afternoon now, still hot on the beach. The first day here she discovered a sunset rite. A flock of green birds, miniature parrots, green with red trimmings, flew together, disorderly and playful and loud. They were evidently coming home. Home was a tree taller than the hotel, rising above her room on the top floor, to the right of her balcony. The trunk and branches were yellow, the leaves like ferns. She asked the name of the tree from the young Englishman at the front desk, an assistant manager keeping his eye on things. Fever tree, he said. She thought the name was disagreeable for the home of the sunset parrots.

  Craning over the balcony she had seen the afterglow of the sun, orange and pink and streaks of pale green. Not the actual sunset, out of sight behind the hotel in a distant part of Africa far from this marvellous coast where tourists like herself were safe and snug in a tourists’ Africa. By day, according to the tide, the sea looked like a map, areas of green jade and aquamarine and sapphire, a jewel map. As the sun went down, the sea darkened to purple, then to pewter while the sky briefly glowed into deep blue, glass with light behind it. You had to be quick to grasp this moment before the white line of the reef vanished and it was soft black night, but shining and crowded with stars.

  These wonders continued. She had only to walk a few steps from bed to balcony to see them again but they were meaningless to her now. She must lie here and get it straight. That was all she had to do.

  Begin at the beginning. It was November but already the Christmas frenzy was in the air. The year had been endless yet suddenly Christmas came round again. All my life Christmas was us together on the farm at Derry Bridge, my parents and I, then Richard after we married, and finally our son, our own private world, a special time when we had nothing to do except be happy, loving each other. The last Christmas at Derry Bridge there was only Richard and me and it doesn’t count, it wasn’t Christmas, bleak days while Richard talked, droned on and on, and I listened or didn’t bother to listen.

  He said that he had always been in third place, coming after my parents, and then definitely in fourth place since I loved Andy more than anyone in the world. I had never thought of it like this,
I thought one loved different people differently, but when he said that, I agreed he must be right because I had no love left in me, not for Richard or myself or anything. He had waited through the months of my depression and hoped I’d recover and adjust – his voice droning that odious word – but he felt he was living in a cemetery, I was tending graves, and he couldn’t stand it. He loved his son with his whole heart, but one had to accept what couldn’t be changed, and he was not ready to die at forty-five, he meant to go on, he had to, and how was he supposed to make a life with a woman who had turned into a ghost, or a sleepwalker, who wasn’t really here. I didn’t care, that was all I felt. I remember his voice almost crying and almost shouting at me. Don’t you think it’s terrible to declare bankruptcy after eighteen years of marriage? No. The most terrible had happened, the death of an eight-year-old boy from leukaemia. What else was terrible after that?

  I asked Richard to sell the farm as I would never come here again, and attend to all the other arrangements. Of course he should live, he is a successful lawyer absorbed in his work. I’ll find something to do, I said, but all I want for now is to be left alone.

  People say such crazy things, intended as comfort. You have the happy years to remember, they say. No one would urge a starving man to remember the fine big meals he’d had in the past. I don’t understand what is expected of me. It’s as if there was a fixed ration of grief and when you’ve used that up, you are obliged to be cheerful and act as if nothing had happened, life is back to normal again. If you grieve too much, they call in the doctors and there’s the hospital, grief is a sickness, you must be cured. The funny part was all the anxious consoling words about our divorce. I was permitted an extra ration of grief when I felt nothing.

  Like everyone else, Marian was distressed by the divorce. My college room-mate, always a kind bossy girl who knew exactly what to do next. She married a young English barrister about the same time I married Richard, and by now her husband is important in politics and Marian is gloriously active in London and Wiltshire being the perfect wife for a British M.P. Last spring, Marian wrote that a change would do me good. Why not move to London for a while? Why not? Anyway my departure relieved poor Richard who had a bad conscience for no reason. It’s not his fault, nor even mine, if I’m queer and can’t forget the face of my little boy, if I can’t stop longing for my father and mother just because they’re dead.

  Marian took over my life, she’s an organizer, a planner, she believes there’s an answer to everything. She found a pleasant furnished flat and introduced me to her friends and to charity jobs, looking after lonely poor old women three afternoons a week and shoving a book trolley through hospital wards two afternoons a week. Marian thinks it noble of me to give up all my afternoons, not knowing that I’m a fraud, I have nothing to give.

  Marian’s answer to everything is to keep busy and no doubt she’s right. If you’re busy busy busy you haven’t much room to think of the past and the future. My future is time, years of it, like this. I don’t know any answers so I accepted Marian’s: all you have to do is fill fourteen hours a day and never wonder why. When I felt sick of acting like a nice cheerful woman, I hid in my flat and doped myself on reading and the TV and nobody asked questions, I was left alone. I was getting on pretty well, I was managing, but I couldn’t face Christmas.

  It’s just a day, it has to pass, the loudspeaker carols don’t blare on forever, besides I must get used to living through Christmas. Instead I walked around London in the winter darkness thinking: there’s no place to go. No one. Then I heard myself saying it out loud. A woman with an armload of parcels in Christmas wrappings stared at me. I began to run.

  Soon it will be the blue hour that doesn’t last an hour. Time to switch on the lamp by my bed. It would be stupid to lie in the dark trying to get it all straight. I woke last night in the dark, when the sleeping pills wore off, and was terrified, not knowing where I was or how or why. Absurd that even turning on the light, the smallest decision, requires will. Oh God why am I so thirsty? Tired. From what? Lying on a bed. I have no right to be tired.

  The hotel called a doctor. I had a confused impression that my room was full of peering people, maids, waiters, the doctor, a woman who turned out to be the housekeeper. The doctor had cool hands and prodded me everywhere and took my head in his hands, twisting it. He kept asking, does this hurt? He studied my eyes with a pencil torch. He said a very serious shock, you’re incredibly lucky not to, complete rest, aspirin, valium and sleeping pills. I didn’t feel dazed, only exhausted. I needed to ask him something. The people seemed to crowd and stare. I said I wanted to see him alone. He said ‘What?’ and leaned closer so I realized I was whispering. I didn’t have any voice which was peculiar and silly, why should my voice fail? He waved the people out and I asked him what I had to know. He frowned, looking annoyed or puzzled, and said, ‘Yes, of course.’ As if it was an absurd question. After that, the housekeeper, Miss Grant, came in several times.

  She is stocky with short stiff grey hair and tense eyes. She must be worried, harassed, so much to remember and supervise in this large hotel. The African waiters and maids are young, with laughing faces. Towels and ashtrays and wastebaskets can’t be vital matters to them so Miss Grant has to remember. She is very kind. ‘Are you all right, dear? Is there anything you want?’ She ordered food that I didn’t want and cold drinks, fruit juices and iced tea and thermos ice jugs that I did. She opened the door with her key and let in the waiter, she told the maid to be quick and not make any noise to disturb me.

  And was sorry for me, constantly sorry for me. ‘You poor dear, so wretched for you on your holiday.’ As soon as I understood that sympathy, I couldn’t stand it. Aside from being wrong, I was afraid I might start feeling sorry for myself and then I’d hate myself and nothing would ever get straight in my mind. It would be wicked if I offended Miss Grant, though I put it as unnecessary to visit me any more since she has so much work and I am quite all right now, I’d ring for whatever I needed, but I really meant leave me alone, you’re a danger to me. She couldn’t have guessed that. No, she seemed relieved; of course she is overworked and I am another worrying responsibility. She said, ‘Are you sure, dear?’ I am trying to become sure, that is what I am doing.

  Let’s see. I can ring room service and wedge open the door with a book and cover myself with the sheet so I won’t have to find my dressing gown or stand around while the waiter is here. Room service? How prompt they are. Right away Madam. The book. All ready. I’ll close my eyes and rest until the waiter arrives.

  She slept instantly. All day, unaware, she slid into and out of these lapses of consciousness. She woke to see a tall young black waiter, tray in hand, by her bedside.

  ‘You better, Memsaab?’ A wide smile, uneasy.

  ‘Yes thank you.’

  But he couldn’t figure out what to do with the tray. She couldn’t figure out what to do with the tray. He stood there, holding it with one hand, looking at her flat on the bed while she looked at him. She thought: I don’t know what to do. I’m going to cry because I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell him, I can’t think. I’m going to cry over a tray, not knowing where to put it. I’m going to cry over a tray and I can’t stop. He must go. Tell him to go. Tell him to stop standing there. Don’t look at me. He must go. I can’t help it, I can’t stop, I can’t.

  The waiter turned and laid the tray on the long empty dressing table. He brought the square stool, padded in imitation white leather, to the bed. He deposited the tray on the stool and straightened up, beaming. A triumph of intelligence and competence. She was breathing with difficulty through a tight throat, against pressure in her chest.

  ‘I come later, Memsaab?’

  ‘No thank you. Tomorrow.’

  Her voice was a whisper again. Draught from the open balcony slammed the door hard behind the waiter. She lay, unmoving, and got her breath back, refusing to think of that insane panic over a tray. Iced tea filled a parched hollow, even inside
her head felt cooler. She munched small chicken sandwiches, determined to eat them all.

  I was hungry. I have hardly eaten these days. I must eat regularly and tomorrow I’ll get up and go on the beach. Lying here and not eating is ridiculous. My head is simply bruised and bruises take time to heal or evaporate or whatever bruises do. In a few days I’ll be quite all right and then I’ll leave. The fever tree assistant manager will fix everything. This is ridiculous, lying in bed, weak from hunger.

  That’s what I needed, just a little food. I’m much better, I’ll finish now, I’ll get it all clear. But what baffles me is the advertisements on the back page of The Times. Holiday in the Sunny Caribbean. A Villa on Glamorous Corfu. Ski in Andorra. Cruise to the Canary Islands. Cheap Flights to Johannesburg, Singapore, Hongkong. That page fascinated me from my very first day in London. Births and deaths on the left, then all the personal ads, people wanting to sell pianos or sending mysterious messages to each other, and even announcements about how much money the lately deceased had left behind and would their nearest kin apply to the Treasury. The right-hand columns are travel bargains.

  I read that page every morning, it was like a very odd fascinating gossip column, reading about unknown people being born and dying, and places I’d never been nor wanted to be. So why, one morning, did I get the idea of going on a trip alone, and staying in a hotel alone which I’ve never done, and on a continent I’ve never dreamed of seeing? What drove me to this lunatic scheme? I told myself that I was yearning for hot sun, I needed a change from the dismal wet grey London winter.