We shopped ourselves blind. It is never heart-lifting to concentrate on garbage cans, pillow slips, knives, forks, etc., but there were compensations. Between the bath-towel store and the frying-pan emporium, one passed on the Mombasa streets a whole exotic world: Sikhs with their beards in hair nets; Indian ladies wearing saris, caste marks and octagonal glasses; Muslim African women, enormous and coy, hidden except for their eyes in black rayon sheets; tattooed tribesmen loading vegetable trucks; memsahibs driving neat cars filled with groceries and blond children; bwanas in white shirts and shorts and long white socks, hurrying to their offices. Hand cars held up Mercedes-Benzes. Bicycles zoomed like flies. Little African girls, with proper black mantillas and clutched rosaries, jived gently outside the cathedral gate. And it is less dispiriting to hunt for an electric iron if you discover surprise mosques and Hindu temples on the way.
“What a tin can,” said Carmen—this being a Spanish expression which means bore, mess, imbecility—"to spend so much money on things the Señora will only want for a year!”
“It's worth it,” I said, “to live in Africa. Besides, we've finished. No more shopping. All we have to do now is unpack.”
“Will these people be out there at our house?” Milagro asked.
“What people?”
“These people with black skins. Who are they?”
“They are Africans. This is their country.”
“You never told me they had black skins.”
“I find them noble,” Carmen said. “They are poor but polite.”
“Consider that they may think your white skin as strange as you think their black skin, Milagro.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Followed by a truck bearing 13 pieces of luggage and a mountain of bundles and boxes, we drove four miles north of the city to our new residence. The agent, the departing tenant and I were to check the inventory, and then at last we would be at home in Africa.
The air was soft as feathers; the sky went up forever, water-blue and bright. The northern hemisphere would be entering autumn with the threat of winter to come. We reveled in late spring, and summer lay ahead. We were soaked with sun and hope; dreams were about to come true.
We left the paved road, bumped through a patch of high brush and saw our gateway, worn stone pillars with bougainvillea arching over them. The drive rapidly turned into a dry creek bed, rutted and strewn with boulders. A romantic wilderness spread around us; purple, scarlet and pink blossoms, tropical trees—doum palm, wild almond, Mbambakafi, Uganda flame, cork—and high tawny grass. The drive ended at a cluster of white buildings: a shed garage with a corrugated tin roof, a guesthouse like a child's overgrown playhouse; the main bungalow, small, with odd pillars, a wide stone-paved porch, a red-tiled roof; and an oblong box of a house for African servants. Surrounding this congeries was what had once been a lawn, now a desert of sand and weed, ornamented with an old bicycle tire and rusted cans.
The two Englishmen and I attacked the inventory. The outgoing tenant watched my face with amusement; I was past speech. “Four wrought-iron bedsteads,” the agent read from his list. The previous tenant indicated four ancient black army cots. “Eight feather pillows,” said the agent, and eight mildewed dirty lumpy objects were produced. “One silk dressing-table cover” after some search and discussion we unearthed a faded, stained piece of rayon, formerly blue and patterned with revolting birds. “Six rugs,” said the agent, and we examined a weird assortment of unrelated but equally nasty old spotted carpets and mats.
The furniture was scarred dull-brown wood of a style suitable to country railroad stations or abandoned government offices. The walls had been painted long ago in pastel shades, different on every wall. Lamp brackets and chandeliers of dingy iron lent an extra touch of squalor. And over all there was a fur of dirt, or a faint gloss, as of grease.
The agent read briskly through his list, behaving as if this were a normal house to rent for a high price to an innocent stranger. In explanation or excuse, the outgoing tenant remarked that he was on his last post in Africa, and had lived here for only a few months. “The swimming pool?” I asked. We walked across the non-lawn and looked down at a scabrous cement pit from which green water was slowly oozing. Several frogs were contented there, but many crabs had died in it.
The men said good-bye and drove away. Carmen and Milagro and I stood silent on the porch, three Ruths in ghastly alien corn.
“The view is lovely,” I said, though I could not raise my voice above a whisper. And it is, more South Seas than African, the shining sea, layered sapphire and aquamarine, the pencil line of surf over the reef, the white sand glimpsed through palms.
“Yes, Señora.”
“The weather is lovely.”
“Yes, Señora.”
“We'll have to fix it up,” I said desperately. “There isn't anything else to do.”
“It is not a serpent,” I said. “It is a sort of caterpillar.” To prove the point, I picked the thing up and threw it out the window. It was caterpillar shape, about 10 inches long, covered in gleaming black armor, with a thousand soft coral pink feet that waved as if moved by wind.
“The Señora is brave,” said Milagro.
“Nonsense,” I said, highly pleased with myself. By now I was somewhat confused in mind and not at all sure who I was. I was playing a mixed role, part pioneer woman in a covered wagon, part the boy who stood on the burning deck, and part Simon Legree. The Simon Legree angle came out during the day when I harried the seven painters, the four citizens with pickaxes who were churning up the non-lawn, the Indian carpenters, and any other stray experts who arrived to repair our house. The pioneer woman took over when it was a question of local wild life, notably the creeping, crawling, flying varieties. As for the boy who stood on the burning deck, I feared I would soon get a bulldog jaw from that heroic pretense. It occurred to me that I might add Pharaoh, building his pyramid, to my other fake personalities.
Milagro and Carmen were not acting at all; they were plainly overcome with horror at our establishment and Africa in general. They looked the way they did nowadays, haggard, never seen without a broom or mop or scrub brush or dust cloth. I looked the way I did, wild-eyed, wearing an expression of semi-controlled hysteria, grasping a shopping list and a tape measure, with a pencil and glasses somehow latched in my hair.
“There is no stove,” Carmen announced. “It belonged to those who have left. They sent for it.”
“I'll get one tomorrow. Milagro, do hold the end of the tape.” I was measuring the scruffy black floor. It seemed too optimistic to believe that we would ever have clean white walls and something to cover this foul cement.
“There is no hot water in the kitchen. Has the Señora noticed?”
“Nor in the laundry either,” Milagro said, kneeling over the tape measure. “Shoo!” she suddenly shouted.
Carmen and I jumped; we were all fairly jumpy anyhow. I was prepared for a black mamba, but it appeared Milagro was addressing two lizards who were hunting on the wall beside her.
“Filthy beasts,” she said with hatred. “Have you ever before lived in a house without ceilings, Señora? What sort of country is this? Those filthy beasts and their vile little oily sausages everywhere.”
“They are good beasts, they eat insects,” I said distractedly. “Did the plumber come?”
“No.”
“The electrician?”
‘No.”
“If only we had a telephone,” I said. “It might go faster.”
“If only we had ceilings,” Milagro said. “If only we had a stove,” Carmen said.
“Cheer up. Let's eat sandwiches on the porch and look at the stars.”
So we sat in a row on the steps because the chipped porch furniture was being repainted. And munched and contemplated the heavens, which are of an inconceivable size, brilliance and grandeur. I began to feel no bigger than an ant, and happy. Though life definitely reached a nadir about every 45 minutes,
if we could survive each day, the night sky was reward and consolation.
“That's Jupiter,” I said, on the off-chance. “And that's Orion's Belt and that's the Southern Cross.”
What did it matter? There they were in all their glory, millions of blazing lights in the smooth black night. It was bliss to have eyes to see them.
“But where is Mr. Shaafi?” And who is he? I thought. The Scarlet Pimpernel amongst Africans. Every day I drove to this gasoline station to find Mr. Shaafi. In vain.
“He come early, he going now. You want petrol, Memsaab?”
“No, no. I want Mr. Shaafi. Did you tell him I needed twenty tons of black earth to make my lawn?”
“I tell him.”
“What did he say?”
“He no say nothing.”
“This place is infested with monkeys,” Carmen said.
“Really? Where? I love monkeys.”
“Everywhere. They sit and watch. They are very dangerous.”
“Oh, no, they're not. You couldn't catch one if you tried. Besides, I haven't seen any.”
But Carmen was right. They must have been off on a visit; in any case they returned at dawn and leaped and gamboled over the roofs. They sound like elephants on the tiles. They swing merrily from the trees and sit on top of the garage, as on a grandstand, to enjoy the sights. We have rented a monkey playground, and that is the finest feature of our estate.
“But Mr. Johnson promised he'd have six bags of Portuguese grass here for me today.”
“He forgot maybe.”
“When will he be back?”
“I doan know. Tomorrow. Yesterday.”
“Oh Lord. Will you remind him about that grass? Please. I must get it planted before the rains.”
“I tell him if he coming. Maybe he forget some more.”
“Señora, Joseph has cut off his finger with his big knife!”
Joseph is the gardener; we are learning his trade together, the blind leading the blind. He had been whacking at the jungle around us (an anti-snake drive) with a panga, the huge knife that is an African's tool and weapon. Now Joseph appeared, tall, with a bony, sad, unmoving face. Blood dripped from his hand. He had cut his forefinger deeply, but not cut it off. I got iodine and bandages.
“Does it hurt, Joseph?”
Without batting an eyelid as I doused iodine on the wound, Joseph said, “Yes.”
I had a new role: the settler in the bush, practicing medicine on the trustful natives. Before breakfast every morning I changed Joseph's bandage, and the cut healed nicely, and Joseph treats me with the respect due a qualified doctor.
The noise that waked me in the night sounded like all the souls in hell, and I knew Carmen and Milagro would be in a panic. I was too tired for panic and also too stunned by these deafening wails. Lights flashed on in the main bungalow; I had moved to the guesthouse. The dreadful screaming sounds went on and on until I realized that we were now infested with bush babies. These big-eyed, nocturnal creatures are the size of a newborn kitten and have voices that would fit a rhino in pain. Using their monkeyish tails for security, they sit in the trees, drunk or neurotic, and howl their heads off harmlessly. Our cup was really running over. The delightful monkeys waked us at dawn and the delightful bush babies would keep us awake all night. If my hair had not been turning orange in the sun, it would have turned white.
“I am sick of them!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Sick of them all! What do they think they're doing?”
“The Señora never had such a bad temper in London,” Milagro said disapprovingly.
I was staring at my sumptuous new mosquito net, the size of a tent. It hung gracefully two feet off the floor.
“Three trips to Mombasa to order and collect these nets,” I thundered at Milagro. “And twice to get the frames. And once to bring the accursed carpenter here to hang them. Are they insane?”
“Mine lies all over the floor,” Milagro observed. “And Carmen's hangs half on the floor and half in the air.”
“Can't any African or any Indian or any European ever get one thing right, just once?”
“No,” said Milagro.
“I'm going swimming,” I announced, as one might say I am going to get sozzled. The sea is just down the steps past the non-pool and along a short sandy path. Sometimes there are fishermen on this part of the beach; usually it is empty. I waded into the satin sea and swam out where the water was cooler and floated with my eyes closed, and mosquito nets did not matter.
None of it mattered. I would take the afternoon off and at low tide go goggling on the hotel boat, a shabby flat-bottomed affair which put-puts out toward the reef and anchors over the coral cities. The hotel, large, comfy, completely English in style, is ten minutes’ walk down the beach from us; and one of its tourist attractions is this ancient tub which carries swimmers out to see the underwater world.
Yussuf, a wiry little African in a fez, knows the ocean floor as I now know all the hardware stores in Mombasa. We communicate by signs because my Swahili is limited to valuable phrases such as, “Burn that rubbish,” “No, no, plant the grass here,” “Do not paint that, paint this.” Yussuf swims like a barracuda and takes me always to my favorite mountain range of brain coral. I do not shoot fish nor dive down and muck about in their private territory. Live and let live is the rule. I swim quietly and watch the enthralling mysterious marine society, and the great landscapes of the sea; and for two hours there is no other life, and the mind is cleaned of the follies of every day.
“The Señora is very rare,” Milagro remarked. “Imagine being made so cheerful by fish.”
Then the rains came. The air did not move all day and we gasped inside a hot steel box. When the skies opened, water poured through our roofs where the joyful monkeys had cracked the tiles. Insects spawned in their millions, different loathsome breeds each night. Carmen and Milagro would never switch on a lamp. After endurance had been stretched like a rubber band, and I thought we had best drift out to sea and drown or catch the next plane for Alaska, bats invaded us. We hardly spoke, but went grimly on with the endless job of housemaking, though none of us had any idea why we were doing it, and who cared whether there were curtains or whether they were the same length, or whether the new stove worked or exploded, or whether we lived or died. I kept saying, though with doubt, that this could not last, it was all a mistake, and would pass. Shining with sweat, for one streamed sweat like tears if one moved, Carmen and Milagro looked at me in silent accusation. I felt like a monster; I had led them here and we would obviously leave our whitened bones in this suburb.
Driven beyond herself by the weather and the swarming insects, Milagro cried out, ‘Where are we? We are alone in the middle of Africa!”
“We are not in the middle,” I said, in a furiously reasonable voice. “We are at the edge. There is the ocean. And if you would take courage and walk twenty yards from this house you would see lights through the trees. People live here. People have lived here for years.”
“They are mad,” Milagro said.
“Carmen! Milagro! The wind has come back!” I rushed for the compass which stays in my safari kit along with the tire gauge. We stood on the green beginnings of our lawn while I got the bearings of the wind. “Northeast,” I said. “It's the good monsoon. We'll be able to breathe again.”
And indeed we can. This beautiful unlikely country has now reverted to Eden. A cool breeze blows, it is hot in the sun, fresh in the shade, and the nights are like velvet if you wear the velvet side next to your skin. And the interminable idiot task is finished: out of a shambles we have made a home. It is comfortable and astonishingly pretty, all white with clear-colored cottons—lime green, yellow, cherry red—in the different rooms. We are sufficiently acclimatized to take defects in our stride; as people here never tire of saying, if you are a perfectionist in Africa you go crazy. Milagro has come to terms (hostile) with the lizards; Carmen still fights the wasps who build their nests even in curtains, but she fights them c
onfidently as though wrestling with inferiors; and Joseph and I are launched on tree pruning, a new passion. I am no great shakes with a panga as yet, but mean to get there. Suburb for suburb, I would not change this African one for any other. Milagro smiles, and Carmen has bought a bathing suit.
Spiral to a Gun
HARPER’S, October 1966
The St. Louis Municipal Courts Building was finished in 1911 and must have seemed the last word in Palaces of Justice at the time. Made of gray stone, it is three very high stories high, adorned with carved wreaths around impressive windows, a sweeping front stairway, slabs of Corinthian columns, and two large, handsome granite ladies, in 1900 hairdos and draperies, lounging on the roof beside an outsize flowerpot which sprouts granite flames. Except for Juvenile offenders and Federal offenses, all the law violation of the city—from parking tickets to murder—is brought to judgment inside this one building.
On weekday mornings, the wide corridors of the first floor resemble a bus station, strewn with candy wrappers, paper cups, and cigarette butts, and crowded with restless people. These are the clientele of the Police Courts (maximum punishment, three months in the workhouse and $500 fine) and the Courts of Criminal Correction (maximum punishment, one year in the City jail and $1,000 fine). On the third floor, in suitable quiet and decorum, the Circuit Courts handle felonies (punishment, from two years in the state penitentiary to death).
The personnel of the courts is an intimate, practically permanent group; Judges are addresed as Judge, everyone else by first names. It is pleasing to hear a Judge call a Special Assistant Circuit Attorney “Buster,” during a trial recess. No one can make a fortune here; driving ambition would be pointless; no one is worked to ulcers in this unhurried atmosphere; and no one is bored with his job. If you are on the right side of the law, the Municipal Courts Building is singularly agreeable. To an outsider, constant dealing with crime and punishment would seem melancholy and finally disgusting. It is not. Crime, here, has a face and a story, and human behavior is still the most fascinating subject on earth. Crime, like war, strips off everyday camouflage. In these courtrooms you get a full view of the basement of our society and the basement life that produces criminals. No one could be bored with that, though attitudes to the work vary.
The View from the Ground Page 30
