Facing the Son, A Novel of Africa

by M L Rudolph

  After wolfing down another omelet with bread rolls and orange marmalade along with a prodigious amount of sugared coffee, Matt approached the concièrge to see about his transport to the embassy.

  “I’ve arranged for you to go shopping,” Jean-Louis Djédji told Matt. “I thought you would prefer to buy some clothes first. But if not…?” he let the question hang for Matt to respond.

  A groundsman passed by outside the tall windows, generously spraying water on the narrow strip of succulent plants along the horseshoe drive where an orange taxi waited at the ready.

  “I’ve arranged for my niece to accompany you. She can help with the shopkeepers—get the best deals. She is very bright, much brighter than me,” he said with a wink, “and she speaks English quite well.”

  Two businessmen, each in a light well-pressed suit, each carrying a thin leather briefcase, greeted the concièrge as they walked by.

  “Messieurs,” the concièrge responded with a friendly uptick of his head.

  “I’m sorry.” He returned to Matt. “Your passport. I’m afraid I cannot help you. That is for your embassy, this afternoon.”

  Outside, the businessmen piled into the waiting orange taxi. The driver flipped a cigarette into the moist earth around the decorative shrubs and drove down the driveway into the crowded city street.

  Behind him, Matt heard a breathless, Suis là, Ti-Jean. He turned to see the pretty girl from yesterday. She wore jeans and a tight tee with Woodstock Nation emblazoned across a leafy peace sign. Fresh of face and full of energy, she raised her chin and looked up at Matt with dark intelligent eyes.

  “Monsieur Reiser,” Jean-Louis said. “My niece, Sally.”

  She sized up the foreigner. “I thought it would be you.” Then turned to her uncle, and said in French, —Where do I take him?

  Jean-Louis handed her a note with a list of shops. —These. He lost everything. Get him a set of clothes and supplies, whatever he wants. And Sally?

  She’d already turned toward the entrance. –What?

  “Be back for lunch.” The concièrge switched to English for Matt’s benefit. “He has an appointment at the US Embassy at three o’clock.”

  Sally shoved the note down the back pocket of her jeans. –Sure, she said, and rolled her eyes in an expression of bored annoyance, making it evident she didn’t need directions, and she certainly didn’t like being told when to be back.

  —And one more thing, her uncle said, waiting until she looked back to meet his glance. —Try to enjoy yourself.

  She scoffed playfully at her uncle and strutted out the entrance.

  The concièrge watched his niece with bemused pride. “Please do not be put off. She is a little rushed today. She is preparing for her first year exams at university,” he said. “She works for me two days a week, to pay for things like those American blue jeans.”

  The introduction to Jean-Louis’s niece happened so fast Matt wasn’t sure what to do next. “So? Should I follow her? Or…?”

  “She’ll be right back. She’s going to bring the car.”

  “I appreciate the car, uh, Mr.…” Matt read the name tag again. “How do I say it? Djeh-djee?”

  “That is right, but call me Jean-Louis. Everyone does.”

  “Okay. Jean-Louis then. I appreciate the offer, but frankly, if she needs to study, that’s not a problem. The car and driver should be enough, shouldn’t it? You don’t need to send your niece.”

  “No disrespect, Monsieur Reiser. But you could use the help. Yesterday didn’t exactly go so well for you.”

  Despite the boost from breakfast, Matt still felt raw from jetlag, and he suspected the mickey was still in his system. Plus this sensory overload, this foreign immersion, every little act—like making a phone call—requiring such effort, such concentration. It was all so disorienting, so fatiguing. Of course he could use help. He just didn’t like to depend on strangers.

  “And shopping,” Jean-Louis continued, “it’s a woman’s game in Abidjan. Sally knows the markets, she knows how to bargain. She’s only nineteen, but she’s tough and you can trust her. Plus, she’ll get local prices.”

  Matt felt for the envelope with Jean-Louis’s loan of CFA notes. “I need to ask you something.”

  “I am listening, monsieur.”

  “I gave a phone number to the operator, but I’m not sure what happens next.”

  “Ah, yes. The operator will order the call through the international exchange, then he will contact you when it goes through.”

  “How long does that usually take?”

  “How long? That is not so easy to say, monsieur. Sometimes a call can go through quite quickly, say in an hour or two. But other times, it may take a day or more.”

  “To make a call?”

  “I am told, monsieur, that Côte d’Ivoire has low priority access to the underwater cables. We have to wait our turn.”

  Matt winced. The concept of less than immediate access was new to him, and it intensified his sense of distance from home and from Melanie.

  “What if I’m not here when it goes through?”

  “When the connection is made, monsieur, the operator will put the call through to your room. If you are not there, he will leave a note at reception so you know you missed the call.”

  “So my call could have come through while I was having breakfast? I wish he would have told me that.”

  “Ah, yes. But now you know.”

  Matt returned to reception and next to his room key found a folded message which he took back to the concièrge.

  “Shall I reorder the call for you?” Jean-Louis offered after he read Matt’s note.

  At that moment a shiny black Mercedes with tinted windows pulled up the drive and Sally hopped out, signaling for the frustrated American to join her.

  Chapter 4

  “Bad choice,” Sally said, referring to the sport coat Matt wore. Hand on hip, she struck a pose behind the triptych of Matt’s reflection in a narrow men’s shop in the upscale Plateau section of Abidjan.

  Matt wore a navy blazer. He tugged at the sleeves, checked his reflection in the three-way mirror, and hunched to test the coat’s fit. It lay down nicely across his shoulders.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  The junior salesman, one of several working the busy shop, stood aside in snug cream silk shirt and beltless Hagar dress slacks. The guy was more interested in the shape of Sally’s tee than the cut of Matt’s coat.

  “Where do you plan to wear it?” Sally said.

  “Everywhere. It’s an all-purpose coat.”

  Through the shop mirror, Matt caught sight of the salesman devouring Sally’s bosomy figure.

  “You look like a banker or something like that. I thought you were looking for your son.”

  “I am.”

  “And he works for the Peace Corps in Mali?”

  “We think so, yes.”

  The salesman stroked his chin and stepped to one side to get a better view of Sally’s profile.

  “But you think he’s somewhere in the region or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I do.”

  “So if he’s still in Mali, he’s probably working either in Bamako or out in the villages.”

  Matt turned away from his reflection to confront the clerk. The rake smiled as if the two of them shared a secret. “What the hell are you looking at?” Matt said, insulted by the guy’s leering disrespect for Sally.

  The salesman shrugged off the foreigner’s fiery question.

  When Sally turned to look, the clerk had his attention on Matt. “Probably the same thing I am,” she said, unaware of the reason for Matt’s outburst. “He sees a man going to the country who’s buying clothes for the city. Do you wear banker’s clothes when you work on farms in America?” Her face betrayed befuddlement at this American so ill-suited for his journey.

  Sally faced the salesman; he stepped up close and gave her his full attention.

  —He needs sturdier clothes than thes
e. Do you have anything else or should I take him across the street?

  The clerk remained in flirtation mode. —I know something. He spoke as if on intimate terms. —Keep him here. I’ll be right back.

  The clerk nodded at Matt and signaled for him to wait, then walked to the back of the shop, past racks of suits and coats and slacks, past shirts in a rainbow of colors stacked on shelves down the center of the shop.

  “We’ll see what he brings. If it’s stupid, we go across the street. This place is too formal for you anyway.” She pulled her uncle’s note from her rear pocket and reread it. “These shops. I don’t like any of them.” She wadded up the paper and looked around for a waste basket. “If you’re going to spend your time in limos and hotels, eating in three-star restaurants and drinking imported French wine with our government elite….” She found a bin behind one panel of the mirror and threw in her uncle’s crumpled note. “The rains will come soon. Do you really want to dress so stiff?”

  Matt laughed at the thought of dining with the government elite, whoever that might be. “More of a beer and whiskey guy myself.…”

  “Voilà.” She’d got her point across. Maybe this hopeless American could understand what she was saying after all.

  “It’s just the way I dress,” Matt continued. “I teach math to sixteen-year-olds. I wear a coat and tie to school every day. Always have. It’s the way everyone expects to see me. When I find my son.” This was the first time Matt verbalized this image. “That’s how I want him to see me.”

  From the moment he agreed to make the trip, he imagined himself dressed like he was going to school, walking up to Karl with Melanie’s letter. But now that he was here, and he put this image into words, his plan sounded all wrong. Worse. It sounded foolish. At Sally’s pained expression, he said, “What?”

  “I guess you know where he is then? And you’re going to take a limo. Pick him up? Take him out to dinner?”

  “I told you, I don’t know where….”

  “Exactement!” she said with a flourish. “Why buy a suit? If you don’t find him in Abidjan, monsieur, believe me, you’ll want better clothes than this. Not like those businessmen in their pretty suits. More like those backpackers who wander around the market in their big shoes. She looked down at his sorry flip flops.

  “Yes. Well, that’s another problem,” Matt said with a shrug. “Was there a shoe store on that list you threw out?”

  The clerk returned bearing an armful of coats and slacks. He draped them over a table of folded shirts then held up a serge safari vest.

  —Tell him how great this is and I’ll share my commission with you. On everything he buys.

  Sally threw the clerk a look. She surveyed the store. The other clerks were busy with shoppers. Behind her, she heard a man ask for a discount if he bought two suits. Matt was watching her for direction.

  —How much? Sally asked the clerk.

  “What’s he saying?” Matt asked.

  —I get fifteen percent. I’ll give you five, if you meet me for a drink tonight.

  —Only five? Sally said. Non-committal. Impossible to tell if she was interested.

  “He barters,” Sally said. “One instant.”

  —Yeah, five. And I’ll buy the drinks. The clerk held the vest by the shoulders and wiggled it toward Matt. Encouraging him to swap it for the blazer.

  —So you want to pay me to go out with you? Sally scowled.

  —No, no, no. The clerk clicked his tongue twice. —Not at all. I invite you. This, he nodded toward the interior activity of the shop. —It’s separate. It’s business. You help me sell. We share the commission. Then we go out and celebrate, he said with a crooked smile. —I pay.

  “Let’s go,” Sally said, turning to Matt.

  “What? Why? Shouldn’t we at least look at what he brought?”

  “He’s a snake.”

  The clerk still held the safari vest, waiting for Matt to put his arms through the sleeves.

  “I made a mistake. We should have started with the shoes. They don’t have them here.” She glared at the clerk, still holding the vest. —We’re leaving. She picked up Matt’s dirty sport coat. “I know a better place.” She edged her way past a man draping a bright silk tie over a shiny sleeve.

  —We could have a good time, the clerk said, loud enough for everyone to hear. He whistled through his teeth, drawing attention to his cocky leer. —She’s an angry one, that one, he said for the benefit of his fellow Lotharios.

  “What’s the matter?” Matt said, as he chased Sally down the narrow aisle between racks, awkward in his flip flops, colliding with a man popping his cuffs.

  Outside he caught up to her on the crowded sidewalk. She stood with her arms crossed. Stern. Looking for something. Her lips pressed somewhere between a pout and a frown. How did she manage to look even prettier when aggravated?

  “What happened back there?” Matt tried to get her to look at him but she kept peering into traffic.

  “Everybody always tries to get something extra. It makes me sick.” She took a few steps forward to get a view past the cars parked in front of the shop. “He was supposed to be right here.”

  “What did that guy do back there?”

  Up on her tiptoes, stretching her arm high. “There’s a certain type of boy that’s always looking for a good time—most of them really—that go to the clubs every night and can’t talk to a girl without trying to take her to bed.”

  Matt recalled her public spat the day before. “Like that boy in the lobby?”

  “You saw that? Robert is the worst. All the girls hate him. I hate him. He goes with prostitutes.” She bounced on the balls of her feet, waving to attract someone’s attention. “Robert would expect his woman to give him ten kids and pound millet all her life while he spent his money on whiskey and prostitutes. He is the worst.”

  Matt scoffed at the suggestion. “But you would never do that for any man.”

  “But that is expected here. You haven’t seen the villages.” She waved her arm back and forth as she spoke. “I met a woman doctor at my school when I was twelve. She said I could become a doctor too but I had to decide early and make the right choices. Most girls my age already have babies on their back. After one baby comes another then another with a man that goes out every night to the clubs and never stops looking for sex. No thank you. Not for me. I have already decided to be a doctor.”

  She jumped up; she spotted their car, the Mercedes, picking its way through traffic. “I have a better place to go.”

  Chapter 5

  Back at the hotel, Sally walked Matt to the concièrge station then disappeared through a side door.

  Jean-Louis couldn’t hide his surprise at Matt’s new khaki look – vest, shirt, and slacks – and he was quick to compliment the American. “You look, uh, acclimated,” he said, and offered to send his old clothes to be dry-cleaned. “The same car will take you to the Embassy at a quarter before three,” he reminded him.

  Matt carried his half dozen new shirts upstairs to his room and fell into a dreamless snooze. When the bedside phone ripped him awake, he felt as if he’d only just laid his head on the pillow. It took him a minute to remember where he was and reach for the handset.

  “Monsieur Reiser, your driver is in the lobby,” Jean-Louis said. “Shall I tell him to wait?” When Matt didn’t answer right away, he added, “It is time for your embassy appointment, monsieur.”

  Matt lay on his back with the phone to his ear and stared into the middle space to gather his wits. “Yes. Wait,” he answered heavily. It took him another moment to conform his drowsy thoughts to his plight, then he swung his heavy new boots off the bed, sat up, and ran a hand across his chin. He still needed a razor and toothbrush. And those malaria pills. Plus he had to call Melanie. A sense he lost control unnerved him.

  He’d lost a lot more than control.

  Once he agreed to go in search of Karl, Matt gradually shed his misgivings as he read the brochures and hotel literatur
e sent over by the travel agent. The five star Le Grande Hôtel in Abidjan might just be the most luxurious facility Matt would ever visit. It overlooked an exotic lagoon only minutes from the airport, boasted two award winning restaurants, on-site laundry and spa, first rate communications, concièrge service, and multilingual staff. If he had to start a trip somewhere in the middle of nowhere, this sounded like the place. Le Grande Hôtel offered the gold-standard sounding “European-level service” at a price Matt found expensive but affordable. Four nights in Abidjan, then three nights at an equally exotic hotel in Bamako on the banks of the Niger River.

  And despite their promises to one another not to let their hopes rise, Matt and Melanie fell victim to the optimism of brightening spring days. They grew excited at the prospect of finding Karl and when Matt’s first-ever passport arrived in the mail, Melanie produced a gift she’d been keeping for that moment: a thin leather pouch which reproduced the look of the American passport and contained inner pockets for the passport, plane tickets, inoculation booklet, and travelers cheques.

  “You know how scattered you can be,” she told him.

  He stuffed it with the postcard Karl sent from Bamako, with photos of Karl and Melanie, and of course with Melanie’s letter.

  All now in someone else’s dirty hands.

  Downstairs, Jean-Louis waved Matt over to the concièrge station by the entrance. “Are you ready, monsieur?”

  “I can’t believe the deep sleep I fell into.”

  “Very good, monsieur. The driver is here.”

  “Where? Should I go outside?”

  Jean-Louis looked over Matt’s shoulder. “No. He is here.”

  Matt turned. Startled at the sight of this morning’s driver directly behind him.

  “Jacques has a talent for sneaking up on people,” Jean-Louis said with a grin. “Like the leopard. You may remember my nephew from this morning?”

  “Nephew?”

  The driver smiled and nodded in greeting. He was taller than the concièrge, mid-twenties, wide face, strong jaw, and a full mustache; he wore a maroon T-shirt that hugged his muscular chest and shoulders. A small bleached animal bone, or tooth, hung from a leather cord around his neck. This morning, Matt only saw the back of the driver’s head. Sally did all the talking and gave directions in French. But here, standing eye-to-eye, Matt saw what in his world he might consider a powerful tight end with sharp eyes and big hands. Jacques spoke little English, but knew enough to lead Matt to the Mercedes parked one floor below in the garage.