Orphan of Creation

by Roger MacBride Allen

  His people might have lived over the next hill, or two thousand miles from here. But none of that mattered. He was home. The stewardess went through her spiel about overhead luggage racks in French and then in English. Livingston pulled out his carry-on bag and lined up behind Rupert and Barbara as they shuffled down the narrow aisle toward the door.

  The full force of the equatorial sun and heat was a shock when Livingston stepped out onto the platform of the mobile stairs. He had to pause for a moment and blink his eyes into adjustment with the brightness of it all. He stood there and looked around him as he dug his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket, vaguely disappointed to see nothing more than an modest-sized airport-shaped airport, not much more than the little field at Natchez, near Gowrie. He wondered what he had been expecting. Lions and zebra wandering around on the runway?

  Once inside the chaos of the customs building, a big quonset hut attached to one end of the main terminal building, he felt a little better. Hundreds of people in African and Western dress were swarming this way and that, mobbing the baggage carts and shouting in languages he didn’t understand. Maybe it wasn’t exactly exotic, but at least it was different. He retrieved his bag and got in line for passport control, slowly becoming aware of the sweat that was gradually adhering his light cotton shirt to his skin.

  The small band of customs inspectors phlegmatically ignored the shouting, the pushing, the masses of people, and calmly went through each passport and visa, each piece of luggage. Livingston got through in fairly good order, quickly followed by Barbara—but then it was Rupert’s turn.

  Rupert, it appeared, was the quintessential over-packer. Very few of the things that bulged from his backpack and carry-on bag were clothes, however. Cameras, lenses, his portable computer, a two-way radio set, batteries, binoculars, a machete, pens, notebooks, a rock hammer, a lead-lined bag full of film—endless gadgets, each packed carefully away. Inevitably, the customs inspector’s suspicions were aroused by all the mysterious bits of hardware.

  Instantly, Rupert and the inspector were engaged in a spirited shouting match in French—and to Livingston’s monolingual ears, it was soon clear that Rupert’s French was communicated more by shouting and gestures than clear syntax. It struck even a neophyte traveler like Livingston that it was a mistake to antagonize a customs inspector. Sure enough, the inspector insisted that each item be unpacked and thoroughly examined.

  The shouting continued, along with a great deal of passport waving and general commotion. Finally, the inspector had had enough and rather firmly escorted Rupert through a door into some sort of office.

  Barbara, seeing what was happening from the other side of the barrier, moaned out loud. “Hell’s bells, Rupert’s going to be there all day.” She dragged her duffel bag over to a bench along the side wall and sat down. “Might as well settle in for the long haul, Liv. It looks like we could be here a while.”

  Livingston looked longingly toward the far end of the quonset hut and the swinging doors that were the entrance to the terminal proper. He sighed, dropped his duffel bag, and sat down on it next to his cousin. Every time anyone was cleared through customs, he or she would hurry through those doors, and Livingston would get a glimpse of hustle and bustle, brightly-clothed people carrying huge loads on their heads, cab drivers shouting for passengers, people selling all sorts of things. A whole new country, a whole continent just outside that pair of swinging doors, and he had to sit here while Rupert Maxwell unpacked his luggage.

  The crowds of people coming off the plane gradually melted away, and the stifling-hot customs-shed terminal grew more and more quiet.

  Suddenly there was a bustle at the entrance to the main terminal. A short, paunchy white man in a baggy suit, a straggly necktie, and a strange, decrepit-looking snap-brimmed straw hat came bursting through the swinging doors. He stopped just inside the entrance and looked about for a moment at the people still in the customs hut. Then he shrugged and shouted out “Marchando Party! Calling for the Marchando party!”

  Barbara was on her feet in a moment. “Here!” she shouted back.

  The paunchy man hurried over to them, moving faster than it looked like he could. He put out his hand and took off his hat. “Dr. Marchando. How do you do. I’m Clark White, from the Embassy.” His voice was a bit reedy and winded, quite in contrast to the shout he had offered up a moment before.

  “Mr. Clark, it’s very kind of you to meet us,” Barbara said.

  “Quite all right. It’s a pleasant break from the routine. As a matter of fact, your researches sounded so fascinating I did something I’ve never done before—I invited myself along, if that’s all right.”

  Barbara smiled happily. “It certainly is! We need someone who knows the country. We’d be delighted to have you along.”

  “Excellent. In that case, I’ll really have the chance to get out of the office.” White turned to Liv and offered his hand. “And Livingston Jones, I presume,” he said—and then hesitated, obviously concerned that he had given offense. “Oh, dear. Forgive my extremely small joke,” he said, awkwardly putting his hat back on his head.

  “It’s okay,” Liv said easily. “I’ve been getting Stanley and Livingstone jokes ever since I was a kid. Worse since I announced I was going to Africa.”

  “That’s most kind of you. But what has happened to Dr. Maxwell? Wasn’t he to travel with you?”

  Barbara hooked a thumb at the customs inspector’s office, where a threatening silence had replaced the loud voices. “I’m afraid he’s already having trouble with the natives. Some difficulty about his luggage.”

  White sighed. “Oh Rupert, Rupert, Rupert. Some things never change. If you could wait here a moment, I’ll see what I can do.”

  White marched up to the customs barrier, waving his credentials at the inspector, who let him through into the office area. The previous shouting resumed for a moment before settling down to calmer tones, led by White’s reedy, smooth-voiced French. Finally, the voices quieted down enough that Barbara and Livingston couldn’t hear them anymore, and a few minutes later White, Rupert, and a gaggle of customs workers popped out of the inner office, if not in good spirits, at least calmed down a bit.

  Clark hustled Rupert and his baggage through the gate, gestured to Barbara and Livingston to follow, and hurried them all through the entrance to the main terminal. “That’s done with,” he said happily. “I wanted to get you clear of there before Rupert and his friends could think of anything else to argue about.” White turned and looked up at Rupert, who stood a full head taller. “That last thing, the pith helmet. That was the limit, that’s what really got them mad, you know. What the devil are you doing with a pith helmet, for God’s sake?”

  Rupert, still rather angry, glared back down at the diplomat. “They’re very practical in this climate. Keep your head cool and protected, and your sweat doesn’t come pouring down your back.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Didn’t it ever occur to you that a pith helmet is a symbol of something here—the great white hunter, colonialism, native bearers, all the stereotypes. When you went to visit Barbara’s family in Mississippi, did you bring watermelon as a visitor’s gift?”

  Barbara laughed out loud. “No, Mr. White, we talked him out of it. Come on, I want to see more of Africa than an airport.”

  White shook his head and peered owlishly up at Rupert. “Pith helmet. Well, come on, let’s see if there’s a decent taxi left. The passengers on your flight who came out a half hour ago like regular people probably cleaned them out.”

  <>

  Livingston was feeling disappointed again. The train banked a bit to round a sharp curve, then settled back to its smooth progress, swaying back and forth just as it streaked over the smooth rail. They had left the capital of Libreville on the coast a few hours before, and were about halfway to the inland city of Booué. Liv had imagined their trip inland on a chugging steam launch, like Humphrey Bogart’s boat in The African Queen. He had seen it all in his mind’s
eye—the doughty little craft heading up the endless, winding reaches of a mysterious jungle river, crocodiles sunning themselves, hippos diving out of sight, weird noises from the jungle as they surged up-stream ...

  Well, there was a river all right, the Ogooue. He could see it peeking through the trees every now and then as the rail line rolled alongside it. But he might as well be riding Amtrak for all the romance of it. He wasn’t really that clear on whether there were crocs or hippos in the river, but there certainly weren’t any on the train. Okay, the lady sitting on the other side of the compartment had a cage full of live—if scrofulous—chickens on her lap, but that was more smelly than colorful. And rather than anxiously watching for attacks from the shore, Rupert, Barb, and the guy from the Embassy, White, were all calmly reading paperbacks.

  In honor of the trip, Clark White had traded in his rather rumpled summer-weight suit for a very sensible-looking set of khakis that made him look a great deal more impressive and authoritative. He looked up from his book and seemed to read Livingston’s thoughts from a glance at his face. “Sorry we’re not more like the movies, Mr. Jones,” White told him. Barbara and Rupert looked up to listen. “But it can’t be helped.” He looked out the window and blinked happily at the westering sunshine streaming through the walls of the jungle. “A train ride might seem dull to you as opposed to a river trip, or bouncing around in a Land Rover, but the Transgabonais railroad is a dream come true for the people here, their ticket into the present. It’s binding the country together, making it a real nation instead of a bunch of isolated villages—just the way our railways did. For the locals, this is the romantic, exciting way to travel. Besides, we’ll get all the Land Rover bouncing you want a bit later on.” White and the others returned to their books.

  Livingston grunted, looked back out the window, and sighed. He heard the chickens’ fussing get louder for a moment. He glanced over and noticed that the woman holding them was giving him yet another sidelong glance. She realized he had caught her at it and shifted her attention to Barbara. The woman looked intently at Barbara’s hair and then reached up to pat her own kerchiefed head. She was clearly fascinated by Barb’s hair, her black woman’s hair, in a Western style.

  The chicken woman had scarcely even noticed Rupert or White, but had spent the entire trip staring at the two black Americans. That had been the pattern of the entire journey in Gabon so far. The porter at the hotel, the waiters at the restaurants, the taxi drivers, the railroad conductor, everyone seemed fascinated by the sight of this huge black man with his football player’s physique, his American clothes, and American-accented English. It didn’t take long for Liv to realize that everything about him—his mannerisms, his shoes, his haircut—tagged him as an outsider. And a black outsider, who looked like an African and acted like a European.

  Livingston had expected Africa to feel like a second home, like the land of his birth, and yet he had never felt more like a foreigner, a stranger, in his life—not even when he had first stepped onto the virtually lily-white campus of Ole Miss.

  He had expected to be a black man among black men, but instead he was a freak. And he wasn’t even the right shade of black. The locals were far darker-skinned than he was, jet black instead of chocolate brown. Was is that a lifetime of equatorial sun had baked their black skins blacker, or were they really blacker, more purely black, than he was? Livingston had always known that a lot of masters had lain with their slaves, but he had never really thought of it on a personal level. He knew, more or less, who most of his ancestors were for the last hundred years or so—but how many of their ancestors had been white?

  Uncomfortable questions, uncomfortable ideas. Instead of helping him get in contact with his roots, Africa was making him question them. He caught that damn woman with the chickens staring at him again. This time he decided to ignore her.

  <>

  They spent that night in a stiflingly hot hotel in Booué, sweating under mosquito netting in rooms where whole herds of cockroaches scuttled for cover when the lights went on. To Livingston, the jungle noises coming from outside the small town seemed as loud as any city traffic for the purposes of promoting insomnia. Maybe it was the noise, maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the last gasp of jet lag, but none of them slept well that night. Except Clark White, of course.

  Nothing ever seemed to bother him. Fat, old, and balding though he was, Clark was endlessly active and energetic, unfazed by the intemperate climate. When Livingston and Rupert staggered down to breakfast the next morning, they found Barbara in sole possession of the run-down hotel restaurant, with Clark nowhere to be seen. The hotel had seemed full of people the night before, but now it was deserted.

  A waiter who seemed to regard them all with some suspicion served them strong, bitter, black cafe noir without being asked. Rupert and Barbara had dealt with espresso before, but Livingston thought his tongue would blacken and fall out. He had never tasted anything as bitter or as strong.

  Rupert grinned when he saw the face Livingston was making. “Suffer through it, cowboy. No milk to be had, so you have to take it straight. But I guarantee it’ll get you awake.”

  Livingston shuddered. “Yuck. I can see why they serve it in such small cups. So what’s the plan? And where’s Clark?”

  “Up and out hours ago. He left a note saying he was heading out to make some sort of arrangements for the next leg of the trip,” Barbara said. She managed to catch the waiter’s eye and gestured him over. “Rupert, you’re the one who speaks French. Order us something shaped like breakfast.”

  Livingston winced a little less over his second sip of cafe noir, and by the third was used to it. Rupert and the waiter spent a good five minutes discussing what on the menu was actually available. Finally some sort of negotiated settlement was reached, and the waiter shouted the order to the kitchen in what was presumably Fang, because it wasn’t French. Five minutes later, a slab of greasy ham and half a canned peach was set before each of them with an appropriate lack of ceremony, accompanied by rather frugal glasses of orange juice that had the taste of being in a can too long.

  The check appeared magically, with service complet scribbled in the corner and twenty percent added to the bill. Livingston remembered it was about three hundred Communité Financial Afrique francs to the dollar, converted in his head, and compared the price to the dinner they had had in Libreville. He decided they were being overcharged because they were foreigners, even if you accounted for their being in the backside of nowhere, but on the other hand, breakfast in a diner back home would have been cheap at the price. He shrugged and ate his ham, then helped Barbara and Rupert finish theirs.

  Clark came in just as they were finishing, carrying a rolled-up map. “Morning, all, morning. Congratulations on setting a record this morning. The desk clerk just told me he won a bet off a bellboy that you three got down to breakfast later than anyone else. All the other guests were up and out hours ago. The perils of jet lag.” He pulled out a chair, sat down and gestured for the waiter. “Garçon, cafe, s’il vous plait.” Clark glanced about at the remains of breakfast on their plates and chuckled. “I see they are giving you the royal treatment, though. Canned food. Nothing but the best for our European visitors.”

  “I couldn’t understand it,” Rupert said. “They didn’t seem to have anything fresh on the menu.”

  Clark laughed out loud. “Ah, but they were no doubt scandalized that you wanted fresh things. They have a very different point of view about such matters. Fresh things rot so fast around here, in this heat. Besides, everyone can afford them. No snob appeal. But canned stuff, preserved stuff that won’t rot if you leave it on the shelf for two days, that’s the height of modern, convenient luxury and elegance in these parts. Right now, freeze-dried stuff is all the rage. Incredibly expensive, but the height of sophistication.” The waiter appeared at Clark’s elbow with coffee, and he took it gladly.

  “Well,” he said, taking a sip. “It took me half the morning, but I tracked down
the fellow in town who hires out his Land Rover. He can drive us to Makokou, northeast of here. Here, clear away some of these things and I’ll show you where we are and where we’re going.”

  They cleared the dirty plates and the salt and pepper and so forth to an empty table—scandalizing the waiter anew in the process—and Clark unrolled his map, a large-scale chart of the region. “All right, this is where we are, in the sub-prefecture of Ogooue-Invido, as if that mattered to any of you.” He stabbed a plump finger down at the map. “Here’s where we are, Booué, and here—” he traced his finger along a prominent dotted line on the map “is the future route of the northeastern branch of the Transgabonais. They’ve already cleared a good piece of the right-of-way and laid some of the track, and we should be able to follow it most of the way to the next and final major town we’ll see, Makokou.”

  “Then what?” Barbara asked.

  “I don’t know,” Clark said cheerfully. “Your Smithsonian people and the reports I got from the locals both place a tribe called the Utaani, whom I assume are your Yewtani under a different spelling, as being somewhere in the vicinity of Makokou, without any further details. We have to ask about, find them somehow.”

  “How tough could that be?” Livingston asked.

  “Pretty tough,” Clark said. “They are semi-nomadic, slash-and-burn farmers. Slash-and-burners tend to move around fairly often, and most of the neighboring tribes seem to make it a point to have nothing to do with the Utaani. Also, they’re a small tribe, which should also make them a bit hard to find. But the interesting thing is that they are also the center of a lot of nasty stories and legends around Makokou—stuff about their dealing with goblins, black magic, lost souls, that sort of thing.

  “When a person vanishes, lost in the jungle somehow, they say the Utaani have taken him and turned him into one of their tranka. That is a word that translates badly, but it means something very like ‘goblin’ or ‘ghoul,’ and it got my attention. Think about it—what would one of your australo-whatchamacallits look like to a person if he stumbled across it in the jungle? Mothers use the Utaani and the tranka stories to scare their kids into being good. All very suggestive, no?” Clark asked with a sly little smile, his glasses hanging low on his fleshy nose. “Leaving folklore to one side, the Utaani are also supposed to be extremely secretive, strange, and unpleasant people.”