She still had four hours but she retraced her steps. Her suitcase was there, covered in bees and water droplets. At the edge of the highway, she bought a fizzy grapefruit drink. It was all they had on the little stall called Moments of Glory. They didn’t have it in ‘lite’. Four hundred CFA francs: something like half a euro. Without change, she left a five-hundred-franc note. Traffic jams. Heading to the airport, the traffic was fine. A taxi was two thousand francs (still no change). ‘You’re on Cameroon Airlines?’ The driver laughed. ‘Here we call them Maybe Airways. You haven’t reached the end of your journey yet.’
In the haze, night fell in a colourless sky. There was a sea of sorts, flat and metallic, a distillery, lovers sitting on rocks. No beach, a coast without a seaside, a muddle of vegetable fibre and water. It was not clear where the land began and where the water ended or which bit was the river. At the Cameroon Airlines counter the stewardess told her that the flight had been brought forward: they were waiting for the white passenger. She had to slip through the luggage airlock, behind the counter, quickly, with ten other latecomers rushing along. The little green, orange and yellow plane, the colours of a parrot, was sitting on the runway; she and the others ran towards it.
She had handled things like a pro. She would tell Kouhouesso all about it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would see him. She mused on the fact that she had only thought about him occasionally: the exotic is a distraction.
THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW
Yaoundé, the Hilton, waiting for the car. The trip was ridiculous, but it was the assistant producer who had organised everything: as seen from Hollywood, Douala, Yaoundé and Kribi must have seemed like a game of Scrabble spread out on a table. She had already made enough of a fuss to come early; she kept her geographical reflections to herself.
Kouhouesso wasn’t answering. Perhaps there was no network in the forest. The driver booked by the assistant producer was on his way from town. How did we manage before mobile phones? The four-wheel drive smelled of Landes pine fragrance; the air conditioner was on full. The town levelled out as the trees got taller, fewer and fewer houses and more and more trees, until there were only trees. You couldn’t really call it a landscape. There was nothing to see beyond the edge of the road, beyond that first row of trees, like a sort of huge hedge. The word ‘forest’ itself was inadequate. This forest and the Landes forest were as different one from the other as, say, the Atlantic and Lake Como. It was a whole other concept, completely different raw materials: as much green as you could wish for, but fleshy, bulging. And the path was rough. There was no more asphalt; there were holes, bumps, ditches in the middle of the road. To her mind, this was not a road but a trench, a gorge. With plank bridges.
Nevertheless, whatever, whatever, bit by bit she was getting closer to him. She was undertaking the final section along the arc that still separated them.
The driver’s name was Patricia; no, Patricien. He was half-Baka, right…The song on the radio, ‘We’ve come up with the question, we haven’t come up with the solution’, had a Congolese beat to it. She was hungry, so they stopped. The village (ten huts, an antenna and a handwritten sign) was called Washington. A street seller in the blazing sun offered them Nokias and cassava. Patricien showed her—pardon, Madame Solange—how to peel the stick of cassava to remove the sickly sweet, white paste, which was downright disgusting. That’s how typhoid epidemics started. So he told her. It was better to eat fried plantain banana. But, guess what, they didn’t have any there.
She rubbed her hands with antiseptic gel and would have liked to clean her teeth. A fierce stinging in her arm. It was a mout-mout sandfly. ‘It doesn’t actually sting you,’ said Patricien, hedging, ‘it eats into you.’ She sprayed herself with Special Tropical Insect Screen. Wouldn’t the Special Equator version have been better? Her mobile rang: Kouhouesso? No, her mother, calling from Clèves. Was everything going well? At the sound of the village church bells—it was midday there, too—her belly clenched. Was Jessie right after all? Perhaps it really was physically intolerable to be in two places at the same time; was the planet taking revenge, as it rotated, for being split in two like that?
Going to the toilet was actually a problem. They found a hole in a hut. She still had a stomach-ache, half from nerves, half from cassava. She swallowed two capsules of Imodium with a warm fizzy drink. According to Patricien, they still had about four hours of driving. The idea was to go as far as the river, leave the four-wheel drive with a guard at Big-Poco, cross in dugout canoes with the cargo: fifty kilos of rice, a sack of salt and a big sack of yams—two days of supplies for the local crew—as well as twenty packs of mineral water for what was known as the white crew. Then they’d take another four-wheel drive, known as a ‘bridge’, waiting on the other side, to do the transhipment, and keep driving to Little-Poco.
They set off in the Scandinavian climate of the four-wheel drive. All of a sudden she received a text, the letters appeared as they bumped along the track. Kouhouesso. A text that had travelled via satellites to reach her here, in Washington, in this desolate backwater, to land on top of the towering antenna, taller than the trees, to form magic words, words addressed to her:
‘So, African girl?’
That was so like him. Nothing and then that; it was so like him.
She sent him a super smiley, with extra brackets, and crosses for kisses.
On second thought, she also sent a summary of her schedule, her arrival time, in four hours, at Little-Poco, did that suit him, where should they meet, was everything going well?
Trees were flashing past, yes, they were immensely tall trees flashing past. She had to lower her head to see the tops; the slit of sky above the track was like an upside-down river. But what did places and times matter; the world here and now was once again inhabited by one man alone.
Kouhouesso was not at the village. They got her a room at the Straight and Narrow hostel; she made a fuss: she wanted Kouhouesso’s room. Where was the ‘white’ crew? They were all at Big-Poco. Yes, on the river. Jessie, Favour, Mr Kou and his assistant, and the director of photography, and the cameraman, and the soundman, and all the production technicians, the Nigerians, the Cameroonians, and even Olga: everyone. It was better to sleep at the hostel: there would be no more ‘bridge’ vehicles at that time of day. As for Mr Kou’s room, he had taken the key.
She lay down on a bench covered in raffia, and someone brought her a foam mat and some sheets that smelled musty. There was no wifi. There was no running water. She did what she could for her upset stomach, using a bucket, even though she wasn’t sure it was there for that purpose. She rang Kouhouesso—she had reception, but did he? She unfolded her portable mosquito net, but where to hang it from? The plaster roof was rotten; a nail would not have stayed in. She shut her eyes. She tried to breathe in the incredible humidity and she held back her tears, because if she cried, there and then, that would be the end of her; if she cried she would melt away entirely; if she opened her eyes she would empty out all the water inside her and the only thing left, like baby Kouhouesso, would be a little pile of powder, white powder.
THE BOTTOM OF THE COOKING POT DOESN’T MIND THE HEAT
The manageress of the Straight and Narrow advised her not to go out alone. It was six in the evening. She had not noticed night falling—it was black. There were no street lights. At the end of the path she could make out the little red lamps of two bars across from each other, and somehow she could hear, through the humid air, muffled shouts and Congolese music, and everywhere there were insects, nocturnal birds, frogs and cane toads and God knows what other living creatures in the forest, screeching, whistling, pings, beeps, drings, like thousands of mobile phones ringing for no one among the dense trees.
She shared a warm beer with the manageress, Siphindile. A thousand francs, a second one, a third. She was bored, at seven o’clock in the black night, watching a French telemovie starring Mimie Mathy. Bored and anxious. So she told her everything: how Kouhouesso was never there, h
ow he was always silent, to which Siphindile replied that the bottom of the cooking pot doesn’t mind the heat. In short, the early morning fog never deters the pilgrim. Where’s there’s a will there’s away. So she wanted him? She just had to apply herself.
The electricity cut out. Ten or so fellows turned up, some in green uniforms, others armed with machetes. There were a few girls as well, who looked as if they were used to this. The electricity came back on. She relaxed a little. Warmer and warmer beers disappeared into 37-degree bodies. In this humid, organic air, it was like breathing yourself. The line between oneself and the world was blurred, the lungs opened directly out of the chest, skin dissolved. Or else it was the alcohol, or the people. They spoke dialect, but not all the same one, so they frequently reverted to French. She was penetrating the walls of Babel: they were not talking about her, they were not plotting anything, they all had real lives here, worries, jokes, none of which was any of her business; it was both strange and reassuring. The neon lights were swaying, there was a second of shadow, the insects fell silent. The blinking of a giant eyelid. The light returned, along with the vibration of the insects, a parallel current.
She was hungry. Could someone tell her where there was a restaurant? By the light of a torch, Siphindile took her to a place where a woman had some fish. Everyone followed. Cooking in palm oil and chilli, the fish smelled good, all the fish—she had bought the whole basket. A plate? They gave her a plastic bag, thick enough to hold the juice if she made a little fold, like that. The others ate straight off the table. She didn’t dare disinfect her hands in front of everyone. Hooray: a poacher armed with a machete found her a fork. She ordered more beers, the last from the warm refrigerator. The air was completely still, the only light came from the TV and from a scrap of moon up high. A girl asked her if she could take the fish heads for her children. And for dessert? They produced papayas; she bought all the papayas. Slowly and steadily, she was becoming the manageress, with an ease that both disturbed and reassured her; since she was feeding the village, no one was going to eat her.
Nigeria versus Burkina on the TV and couples were starting to get together. She left to sweat off the beer on her foam mattress, in the hot air from the fan, which stopped and started as the electricity went on and off. In the intermittent blare of the soccer match, she woke and fell back asleep on her own on-off timer. Later, there was a knock on the door. It was Siphindile. It would cost one hundred thousand francs for Kouhouesso to get back. Fortunately she had brought an envelope full of notes. Siphindile cut off a lock of Solange’s hair and wrapped it in a scrap of rice bag. The deal would be done during the night. The electricity cut out for so long that the soccer fans headed off. It was only ten in the evening. There were shouts and the eerie crowing of roosters, cock-a-doodle-doo, in the middle of the night.
Later on, there was the sound of digging under her window. She looked through the louvres; it was daybreak. Siphindile and another woman were bent over what looked like a small grave. They had wrapped their heads in matching cloths and seemed to be praying: Millet’s The Angelus. In the morning there was just the trace of disturbed soil beneath the window. Siphindile had left her a basin of water; she threw in a few chlorine tablets and washed as well as she could. The ground absorbed the water straight away, black outlines, evaporating. A red lizard gazed at her. Two girls were asleep in a fake leather couch under the awning. She could hear the TV, live from France. The Price Is Right was about to start.
Weirdly, it was already midday. She wandered into the village. Siphindile had pointed out a place, in the ‘Paris-Soir’ neighbourhood, where she could recharge her phone. The stall holder had a small generator and a multi-socket adaptor, a hundred francs per recharge. She left her iPhone with him, uneasy about it. The forest began immediately, right there, behind the huts; yesterday she had assumed that black wall was the night. Trees, giant grasses, the occasional flower. She kept looking up, towards the treetops; she remembered the forest behind her house, when she was little, how everything seemed huge. And the fairytale about the princess: she had scarcely set foot in the forbidden forest when she was swallowed up. There were clicking sounds, fleeting bird calls. Elegant, black-edged white butterflies, whose head and body were like an Yves Saint Laurent logo. She was being bombarded by small hard objects—were little monkeys high above throwing turds? Kola nuts? That would be just great.
Her iPhone worked again, the stall holder was patting her phone with pride and awe, exactly the way her son had at Christmas. 2008. In the jungle. No messages.
All the Toyota vehicles were in the ‘Manhattan’ neighbourhood, parked crookedly in hollows and on mounds. Kouhouesso had come back. She got a lift to his hut. A guard under the palm-leaf verandah told her that Mr Kou was sleeping. He was there, on the other side of that bamboo-and-dried-mud wall, right there. She didn’t dare disturb him. Children were coming home from school, immaculate uniforms and thongs on their feet, holding large leaves like umbrellas over their heads; they looked like little trees in motion, heading in single file towards a forested future.
Even Olga wasn’t answering; she must have been sleeping in one of those huts. And Jessie? And where was Favour staying?
Back at Siphindile’s there was nothing to eat but sticks of cassava and tins of sardines, two thousand francs each; but if she would like, there was a magnificent fresh rooster, for thirty thousand, only its heart and genital organs missing. They could grill it for her on the spot. She declined.
INCREDIBLE IMAGES OF WORLDS WHERE THE FOREST WENT ON FOREVER
She had taken some care choosing her outfit, a Vanessa Bruno summer dress. But she was too hot in it; silk is suffocating. In the shade inside his hut, standing erect like a king from ancient times, Kouhouesso was lean, smouldering, his eyes blazing. He greeted her with a peck on the cheek. He no longer smelled of incense but of the same vegetable, sugary, slightly musty smell that she already detected on herself. He told her that he was coming out of a ‘little bout of malaria’. She was taking her Lariam, wasn’t she? Her naturopath in Bel Air had prescribed her some quinine essential oil, but she didn’t want to induce prophylaxis.
She stayed silent, feeling like the twenty-fifth wife, too little too late, coming to beg for an audience. Why didn’t he embrace her? Why, after more than three months, didn’t he jump all over her? He looked tired and was talking as if it were only yesterday that he had left her on the platform at the Gare Montparnasse in the cold fog of the Paris winter. The scenes in the forest were not working well. He had sacked the director of photography—Marco was no longer there?—and taken on the one Terrence Malick used; at least he’d know how to deal with the shadows and the green. Marco was threatening legal action, the producer in Hollywood was kicking up a fuss, and a camera had been stolen, as well as a video assist monitor and even some easy rigs—a little bit of everything had disappeared. They had found the camera in the Kribi TV shop; he’d had to buy it back at the American price. Why didn’t she go and wait for him at Poco-Beach: it would be much more peaceful, a beautiful spot. Jessie and the Americans were staying there, as well as Favour, in custom-built lodges, electricity, bathrooms, coconut palms. She would be much better off there than at Little-Poco.
She hadn’t come for the peace; she had come to see him. It would be difficult: he was working and moving around all the time, the boat still at Kribi, the sets in the forest, the sound production limping along. Water was a huge issue. Jessie had been sick, a catastrophe. She couldn’t care less about Jessie. She moved towards him. He lay down on top of her, pulled up her dress. His mattress was damp, too. She abandoned herself, but him, what about him? She put her arms around him, hugged him. Where was he? In which Africa? When she opened her eyes again, he was smiling at her kindly. It seemed more like politeness than love.
Out the front of the Straight and Narrow, a woman was waiting for her, the woman from the night before, the one who was digging under her window. ‘Five thousand,’ said the woman. She didn’t unders
tand. ‘Your bush husband back: five thousand.’ Solange walked around her in silence. The woman grabbed her by the arm; the contact was uncannily cold. ‘Five thousand.’ She had already paid, and he would have ended up coming back to the village anyway. The woman made a strange cutting gesture in the air; in another world, in another context, it might have been a backhand in tennis, or a box cutter across the throat.
She was hot in the dugout canoe. The paddle dipped into the water as if into oil; the birds themselves fell silent. This heat was senseless; she could not stop herself from opening her mouth, but the air outside was much hotter than the inside of her body. Kouhouesso shut his eyes as if they were louvre windows, and the bare-chested oarsman wouldn’t stop splashing himself with water. He paddled the heat, he stirred up the river and the sky, he liquefied in the mirages. The sheet of water was riffled by waves carrying the sound of voices, blasts, strange sounds coming from nowhere. The vibrations made their way into Solange’s body. She had visions of the house in Malibu, the Mediterranean shade, the white-tiled bathroom, the sea generating currents of fresh air. That was yesterday, that was before. She would have liked to contemplate the forest, have the wisdom of painters and ecologists, but this flickering green and orange Africa was just one more problem. Not a single one of these trees explained Kouhouesso. They just amounted to one more enigma pitted against her, impenetrable, dangerous, a non-human kingdom, the manifestation of a power that was reduced to sawdust elsewhere.
Far ahead they could glimpse the construction site. Bulldozers were preparing the ground beside the river bank. Workers were laying rails, their shoulders dripping with sweat in the blazing sun. Kouhouesso wanted a tracking shot of the arrival of the boat. The uprooted mangrove trees looked like giant dead spiders, their legs in the air. They were clearing them out: mangrove trees were no use. The kapok trees were chopped into pieces for making kapok fibre and plywood. The occasional mahogany trees were sold as logs. She was learning vocabulary. There were a lot of trees without names, growing far from the French language: the bibinga, said the oarsman as they skirted the monumental trees. The zoubé, the ekan, the alep, the okongbekui. The graft hadn’t taken: it was impossible to transplant French onto those fantastic forms, those voluminous roots, those magnificent verticals. Except for that one, tall and curved, bright green, luxuriant: rattan, neither a chair nor a table, but living rattan that thrust its palms into the water. Here they said nlông. And Freeboy, one of the Pygmy guides, used different syllables again for the same trees; it seemed as if there were as many names for a single tree as there were growth rings. The chainsaw sliced: tchick tchick. Then more slowly: ebony. It would end up in planks all the same. The Pygmies were the ones who stacked them.
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