I was fully awake now, and yet I didn’t push him off me and primly inform him I wasn’t that kind of girl, the way I’d done with Lane. Instead here I was, clawing his back, tangling my legs around his, arching against him.
The door was unlocked. I could hear people conversing outside, in the courtyard, less than twenty feet away. Something about celebrating with a drink. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. That is, until I heard my name. Robert’s voice, saying, “Fiona should join us. Where is she?”
“I’ll go check our room,” I heard Carmen reply.
Christophe had heard, too. He half-rose as we regarded each other, frozen. Fury replaced the alarm on his face. I gave him a push and scrambled to my feet, where I buttoned my blouse with trembling fingers. I readjusted my skirt, smoothed back my hair, and hurried to the door. Glancing back at Christophe, I saw his clothes were all tucked in, his manner composed, leaving me to feel as if I’d dreamt the whole thing.
I eased open the door. The hallway, to my relief, was empty. Christophe came up behind me, but made no move to leave. “There’s a post opening in Mouila, where I live,” he murmured against my neck. “I can see that you get it.”
A dozen arguments and caveats flooded my mind. The thought of seeing him, living close to him, filled me with dizzying euphoria. And yet, what about Diana? I turned and searched Christophe’s face for clues, but found none.
“Think about it,” he said as he stepped into the hallway. “I’ll contact you in Libreville.” Without another word, he strolled down the hall, casually greeting an approaching Carmen and leaving me to deal with the aftershocks.
Chapter 5
Darkness had fallen, an inky blackness studded with millions of stars. The music began: a percussive clatter of sticks, drums, rattling gourds and the high, strident voices of singing women. The blaze of the bonfire cast shadows behind the villagers as they danced around a man, a bwiti initiate who swayed in a daze. He wore a red pagne—a swathe of fabric—tied around his waist. Red paint had been smeared like a giant cross from his forehead down to his waist and across his shoulders. Two men, bwiti elders, stood close by for support, streaks of chalky white paint punctuating their faces. Around their necks and the necks of the other initiators, hung necklaces composed of feathers, shells and ominous-looking bones I couldn’t categorize.
The bwiti ceremony mesmerized and baffled me in equal parts. It made me uneasy in ways I couldn’t explain, even to myself, as if some energy I’d never before considered had been stirred and now swirled around me like smoke in an enclosed room.
My fellow trainee Joshua and I had spent the past three days in this village, hosted by the community health volunteer who lived here. The trip had been filled with hand-shaking and lots of confused smiling, wandering from house to house to shake more hands, sit and listen to the others talk, usually in Fang, the local tribal language here in the Woleu Ntem province. In addition to Regab, we’d drunk palm wine, a thin, sour, fermented beverage. Meals had been daunting: rice or baton de manioc topped with a fiery-hot red sauce, sometimes with meat, sometimes not. Manioc, an indigenous tuber, contained cyanide, which meant it had to be soaked in the river or a pond for several days before it was dried, peeled, washed again, then pounded to a pale mush. This was rolled in a banana leaf—the Handi-wrap of Gabon—to form a baton, which got boiled once again. When cut into slices, it looked (and tasted) like those translucent erasers I’d used in grade school. I ate it; it was amazing what you’d eat when you were hungry enough.
Tonight there was feuille de manioc too, the tuber’s chopped leaves, mixed with palm oil, onion, chilies and bits of smoked fish. There was more palm wine, in abundance, during this, the culminating ceremony of our visit.
Bwiti, I’d gleaned, was a local animist religion that utilized the root bark of iboga, a local shrub, to aid in paranormal communication. Joshua, a slim, mild-mannered Seattle native, appeared to know a lot about the ceremony.
“It’s a big deal, a multi-day event. The bwiti elders were probably up with the initiate all last night,” he murmured to me. “I’ll bet they started giving him doses of iboga at dawn, continuing on through the whole day. Look at the way the initiate’s having trouble standing. He is so out of it. Any minute now, they’ll take him into the hut where he’ll lie on a mat and slip into his spiritual journey.”
“Those sticks and roots there are really considered sacred wood?” I pointed to what looked like spring-cleanup yard clippings you’d find in any Omaha backyard.
“Very much so. The root bark is only a stimulant in small amounts, but a hallucinogen in bigger doses. You need a super-big dose for the spiritual journey. I read that the elders give the initiate near-toxic levels, to get him to that place where life hovers close to death.”
I stared at his calm face. “God, that sounds too creepy. What’s the point—why do people do this?”
“Lots of reasons. Communicate with the ancestors; address infertility issues; maybe discover the answer to some haunting question. Or some of us are just spiritual seekers at heart.”
A man approached and ceremoniously offered us flakes of the iboga. Following Joshua’s lead, I took a piece. It tasted awful, like a wood shaving sprayed with something you might use to kill roaches. I gagged at the terrible bitterness. When no one was looking, I spit it back into my hand.
A sharp sting on my back made me bolt upright. One of my many bug bites was bothering me again. I had over two dozen of the itchy welts on my body. Nor had I been able to shower for three days. Being au village was a lot like camping. “Ready to head back to Libreville?” I asked Joshua.
“I guess so. But actually, I like this environment a lot more than I’d expected. I think I might request a more isolated post.”
Most education volunteers were posted in large towns or provincial capitals, which meant running water, electricity and populations over 4000. That sounded good to me: a provincial capital post. Like Mouila.
By late the following afternoon, Joshua and I were back in Libreville. My initial impression of the city when we’d flown into Gabon, eleven weeks previous, had been of a scraggly backwater capital with an excess of dirt, cars, people and dated architecture. After two months in Lambaréné and our trip au village, however, it was the uplifting energy of a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural metropolis I noticed. French and Belgian expatriates and Africans from all over the continent mingled on the crowded sidewalks. On paved, four-lane highways, Peugeot sedans, battered Renault taxis and BMWs shared the road with dusty pickups. The city was a hodgepodge of affluence, growth and tropical decay. Glossy skyscrapers, shanties of makeshift housing and government palaces all stood within blocks of each other. At the half-built hotel that housed the trainees, on the cusp of swearing in as volunteers, guests entered a reception area decorated with glass, polished wood counters and marble floors. A few steps down the hall, however, the amenities disappeared, replaced by roofless cinder-block walls and poured concrete floors. Ladders, paint cans and bags of cement lined the corridor. The guestroom doors were flimsy particle board, but once inside, luxury reappeared: solid beds, plush bedding, the muted hiss of air-conditioning, tiled bathrooms with hot running water and sit-down toilets.
Libreville had one more great perk: the Atlantic Ocean bordered the city. Through the window of the Peace Corps van that had brought us in from Lambaréné twelve days earlier, I’d watched the azure waves sparkle and crash against a long stretch of palm-fringed beach, with a landlocked Midwesterner’s reverence. “This feels more like Southern California than Africa,” Daniel, a fellow trainee who’d come from Los Angeles, had commented. I’d needed no further incentive. Within two hours, I’d found my way to a beach. I’d swum daily until we went out to our site visits.
The morning following Joshua’s and my return, I headed right back. Tossing my towel onto the sand, I splashed into the warm water, ducking under the waves until I was out past the breakers. As I dove and darted through the salty water, my tight muscles loosened a
nd my buoyant spirits rose even higher. Swimming, I decided, was like dancing, but without the constraints of gravity. My slow-motion leaps produced the feeling of suspension every dancer craved, that magic moment of being airborne and ethereal. In the water, I could be the ballerina of my dreams. I swam, bobbed and leapt until my muscles burned. I lay on my towel afterwards, spent but happy, soaking in the warm sun. It felt like a Hawaiian vacation.
“You’ve been swimming again, haven’t you?” Carmen greeted me with a hug at the Peace Corps office an hour later. She shook her head. “Didn’t I warn you that raw sewage is pumped straight into the estuary?”
“I always use the beach north of town. It’s ocean, not estuary.”
Carmen and Daniel, whose friendship had recently budded into romance, had just returned from their village visit, twelve hours later than expected. They took turns recounting the adventure. “…So, after our driver decided he couldn’t fix the van,” Carmen finished, “we had to spend the night literally on the road until someone could help us the next morning.” She and Daniel laughed and exchanged long, meaningful glances, signaling the end of our three-way discussion. I turned and leafed through the basket reserved for incoming mail. When Daniel went to greet Robert, Carmen hoisted herself onto the counter next to me.
“No new letters here,” I announced. “Does this mean the postal strike is still going on?”
“It does, and it is.”
“Damn.”
It had been over two weeks since I’d received a letter from home. Letters, I’d quickly learned, were a marvelously diplomatic way of sharing my life here. I picked the right time to write them and kept them full of positive news. My parents, and even Alison, had responded with comforting frequency. Except during postal strikes.
“Here’s something to cheer you up.” Carmen grinned at me. “A certain Gabonese man came in fifteen minutes ago and gave me a message for you.”
My heart gave a wild leap. “Who?”
She ran her fingers through her hair by habit, but the spikey hairstyle had been replaced by domesticated chestnut waves. “Oh, who do you think? Christophe, of course.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me to tell you ‘it was all arranged’.”
“What was all arranged?” Robert called out as he and Daniel walked back over.
“Man, are you nosy,” Carmen gave him a lazy nudge with her foot. “None of your business.”
But Robert wasn’t done with the issue. After a trainee meeting, we all headed to Mont Bouet, Libreville’s main market. It was a city in itself with its blocks of bustling crowds. Car horns, conversations and stereos kept noise at a blaring constant. Every nook of space, from stalls, covered tents and shops to card tables and spread-out blankets, was used to sell. Cheap perfume emanating from hundreds of sweating bodies did little to disguise the pervasive body odor, which competed with the stench of trash, decaying produce and unrefrigerated meat. It was a smell I’d learned to accept, an unmistakable characteristic of urban Africa.
Robert and I stopped at a cramped stall that sold music recordings. “Man, I sure miss listening to my albums,” Robert said. “Had hundreds of ‘em. It was quite the hobby of mine.” I nodded as I riffled through cassettes on display. So, how about you?” he asked. “Keeping up with hobbies?” His voice sounded too casual.
“What, like ballet?”
“Sure. You seemed to really enjoy that back in Lambaréné. Every Saturday for a while, wasn’t it?”
I looked over at him and sighed. “Glad to know someone was keeping tabs on me.”
“Look, no offense, but you strike me as a little naïve.”
“Oh please. I can handle things on my own.”
“That’s good to hear. Which means you’ve discovered Christophe’s true nature.”
“Of course.” Something inside me clenched.
“So it won’t shock you to learn that he’s a notorious womanizer. American, Gabonese, French, Scandinavian—he’s a regular cross-cultural Romeo. But you knew all this.”
“You got it.” I congratulated myself on my calm voice, even as my thoughts darted around like seagulls behind a barge.
“You want to know what else I heard?”
“Not particularly.”
“That he’s living with Diana in Mouila.”
Robert wanted a reaction. I wasn’t going to give him one. “Thanks for that information,” I sang out, pushing his words away. What Robert was saying was impossible, of course. Christophe would have told me, back in Lambaréné. No one would fail to mention that important detail.
Would they?
The bug bites on my back, shoulders and arms were agony. Needle-like stabs of pain kept shooting through me during the day. Back at the hotel, I peered closer at them in the bathroom mirror. They didn’t look like mosquito bites after all, I decided, but more like pimples. I squeezed one on my forearm tentatively and then harder as I saw something pushing out of my skin. It popped out onto my finger and I recoiled in horror at the sight of a small white maggot that squirmed to escape.
“Ooh, Tumbu fly maggots,” Rachel, at the medical office, exclaimed when I went in to show them to her.
“How did I get these?” I asked.
She prodded a welt on the back of my arm. “Usually the female flies lay their eggs on damp fabric. Like clothes drying out in the fresh air, which is why it’s best to iron your clothes before wearing them.”
“How about fabric—like beach towels—that never quite gets dry?”
“That’ll do it. The larvae hatch after a few days and if they make contact with human skin, they’ll burrow in. After several weeks of growing, they come out on their own.”
I slumped in misery on her examining table. This, on top of the Christophe issue. I hadn’t been able to get Robert’s words out of my head.
“How many are there?”
She scanned my backside and counted. “Twenty-nine,” she announced. “A new record.”
I winced. “Can you get them out?”
“I can try to remove the bigger ones, but the smaller ones will just burrow deeper. We’ll have to give them a few more days.”
The following afternoon, Carmen, Robert and I took a taxi to a posh district to buy art supplies at a stationery shop. As we left with our purchases, Robert looked around at the French women in their silky dresses who passed on the sidewalks with a click-click of high heels, leaving us in a cloud of expensive perfume. “These French expatriates,” he sneered, “they only contribute to the uneven distribution of wealth here. Like that.” He pointed to a black Mercedes sedan that glided past. As he tried to flag a taxi to take us back to our hotel, another glossy Mercedes rolled to a silent halt just past us. Parking by the curb, the driver got out of the car and looked back at us. My next comment seized up in my throat. Christophe.
“Look,” I managed, and Robert and Carmen peered over to where I was pointing.
“Would you like a ride?” Christophe called out.
“Heck, yeah,” Carmen said, and hurried over. Robert and I followed more slowly behind. Carmen opened the back passenger door and stared pointedly at Robert. The front seat, clearly, was reserved for me.
Entering Christophe’s car was like returning to a long-forgotten world. Air-conditioning cooled the plush leather interior. The car smelled like money, security, privilege. When I shut my door, the noisy, stinky Africa disappeared. I studied Christophe out of the corner of my eye as he pulled back into traffic. If possible, he’d become even more attractive. I’d forgotten the creamy perfection of his face, his aura of glamour and the way his clothes—a crisp linen shirt and sleek navy trousers—fit him perfectly. His full lips were curled up in a smile.
The ten-minute ride to our hotel went by far too quickly. When Christophe pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, I stayed in my seat. Robert frowned at me.
“Remember, we’re meeting the others for dinner in forty-five minutes,” he said.
Christophe’s smil
e at Robert grew more forced as Carmen yanked Robert out of the car. I watched them disappear inside.
I’d dreamed about seeing Christophe again, touching him again. It was my last thought every night before drifting off to sleep. Now, however, I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“I don’t recognize this Fiona.” His words broke the silence first. “She hasn’t insulted me yet.”
This drew a chuckle from me. I raised my eyes to meet his. Christophe reached out and planted a warm hand on the back of my neck, stroking softly. “It’s good to see you again,” he murmured. A jolt of desire slammed into me.
I had to act fast before I got myself into trouble. I licked my lips. “I need to ask you something.”
“Speak.”
The words didn’t want to come out. Drawing a second breath, I plunged in. “I need to know if you’re living with Diana.”
Christophe’s hand stopped. “Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter. Is it true?”
He sighed. His hand dropped. “Yes, I’m living with Diana.”
There it was. The news settled in with a thud of sickening finality. I slid my hands under my legs to keep them from shaking. It was a moment before I could speak again. “And yet you’re suggesting I move out to Mouila. Why would you do that to me?” My words were slow and deliberate, outrage building beneath them. “To make me watch the two of you in your domestic bliss—did you ever stop to think how that might make me feel?”
Christophe hadn’t replied. When I looked over, he was shaking his head. “You Americans… you’re so obsessed with analyzing everything in advance. You’d rather think it than experience it, live your whole lives through your heads and not your bodies.”
This wasn’t the argument I’d expected. I didn’t know how to respond. Through the window I watched two men pass by, holding hands, the way adult males did here. How innocent the Gabonese could seem sometimes. How foolish of me to assume that made them easier to understand. Christophe was talking again, idly tracing an outline on my skirt with his finger.
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