But there was one thing I didn’t know, and for some strange reason I had made a point of not asking. I had no idea what he was going to look like. I didn’t want to know that he was attractive, and the thought he might be, annoyed me.
Adam was in Tanzania on safari with clients. In the last few months I had seen very little of him. His voice had become a distant crackle on the radio I’d hear at given times from the office in town. He’d come home between safaris for only a few days, always physically exhausted, worried about the next trip, sad to have to leave me again.
I felt almost like a soldier’s wife: there wasn’t much I could do about it; I could only train myself to accept it. The few friends I had made had become very precious.
One rainy night Nicole had invited me for dinner, Nena and Peter were there, and Miles showed up with Iris, which annoyed Nicole.
“I think they’ve been fucking,” she said while in the kitchen adjusting the salt in the potato and leek soup. “It drives me nuts.”
“Oh…” I was baffled. “I hadn’t realised you and Miles were…”
“Well, just slightly, you know. More like cuddling, really. But the minute Iris comes to town you always end up back in the kitchen wearing an apron, while she’s gulping down your tequila in the living room performing her ‘Once we were warriors’ routine for the boys. By the time you bring out coffee they are all dying to fuck her. She always makes me feel like such a housewife.”
Iris did look particularly sexy that night, in a short suede skirt which showed quite a bit of her golden brown legs, a belt made of cowrie shells tied around her waist, her long slick hair loose on her back. She was in top form, and every man in the room couldn’t help but respond to her flirting.
Just as we were about to sit at the table the door was flung open and Ruben walked in with a stranger.
“Sorry, Nicole, but we had a flat,” were his first words.
He wore heavy boots, a brown suede jacket, and was dripping wet. He looked thin and bony and his skin was very white against his long black hair. His hands were smeared with car grease, his fingernails bitten to the quick. I knew immediately this must be Hunter.
“So you are Esmé,” he said as we were being introduced. His dark eyes were just as I had imagined during that conversation we had had on the phone. Glittering blades, which pierced me right through. He smiled at me as if he thought it was amusing that I actually dared to exist and had a human shape. He patted his pocket and took out a pack of Roosters, the cheap brand of nonfilter cigarettes he was smoking, that only Africans buy. He lit up, exhaled the smoke in my face and smiled.
“I hear your father was a poet.”
“Yes.”
“You know, I think I may have read some of his poems.”
“I doubt it…he’s not very well known outside of Italy. He’s only just recently been published in America.”
“That’s it! A friend of mine, an American journalist, left one of your father’s books for me to read while we were in Somalia. Can’t remember what it was called. I read it about two months ago.”
“Did you really?”I tried to sound blasé, but I was impressed.
“I loved it.”
“That’s very bizarre.”
“That I read the book or that I loved it?”
“That of all places you should read my father’s poems in Mogadishu.”
“Things happen. Nothing happens by coincidence, as the Buddhists say.”
He stared at me with a smile, as if expecting a reaction which I didn’t give. I had no idea what that remark was supposed to mean, and I couldn’t make out why he was suddenly being so friendly or why he had decided to act as if our telephone conversation had never taken place.
Yes, I should have said it right away—Hunter Reed was very attractive. More attractive than I had been prepared for. His features were sharp. He looked like a creature who didn’t like to venture out in the sun, but woke up late, drank coffee and smoked cigarettes indoors until dawn. His beauty had a mercurial quality, his skinny body seemed to vibrate like a violin string. One could actually feel the electricity which enveloped him like an aura. The only softness in Hunter’s persona was his full lips.
We sat around the dinner table which Nicole had set with flowers and candles.
“So, Hunter,” said Peter, “I hear you’ve just been in London for a week; it must have been a good break after Somalia.”
“Not really. It’s actually very confusing, especially if I’m there for such a short time.”
“No fun parties? No babes?” Peter insisted.
Hunter fixed his eyes on me from across the table.
“No. To be honest I find London full of girls with very exciting lingerie and very boring lives.”
Everyone laughed. For no reason, I flushed as if his sexual innuendo had been directed at me.
Meanwhile Iris was on a mission, its target Miles. She was explaining how up in the North, while she was shooting the photos for her book, the Morans had given her a Samburu name. That was to be considered an honour. They only gave names to people who belonged to their tribe. Miles was impressed.
“And what does your name mean?” he asked.
“‘The Rich One.’”
Hunter sniggered.
“No doubt about that.”
“It means spiritually rich,” Iris said coldly.
“Oh, sure”—Hunter rolled his eyes—“and what would be the Samburu equivalent for ‘spiritually’? I am really dying to know how you got that bit of elucidation, Iris.”
“I happen to speak their language quite well, you know.”
“So I hear, and since none of us does, nobody can prove the contrary.” He turned to Miles. “She’s the Unquestionable Authority on Tribal Boys, don’t ever mess with her on that subject or she’ll be at your throat.”
Everyone except Iris laughed. I saw how she lacked a sense of humour when it came to herself.
“And Hunter is the Unquestionable Authority on Tribal Wars. Everyone here has his own African doctorate, I suppose. I happen to care about the destiny of these people; is there anything wrong with that? Or do you think nomadic tribes in East Africa have a lesser right to survive than Tutsi or Dinkas?”
“Nobody I know of is threatening their existence—”
“Of course they are! Their culture is about to disappear. This is probably the last generation who will undergo their initiation ceremonies. The schooling system is destroying their tribal identity, they will lose their traditional knowledge and become—”
“Oh, please don’t give me this bullshit, Iris,” Hunter interrupted with a sneer. “I can’t bear another minute of these clichés.”
“Really? Well then tell us, what’s so cliché about trying to preserve their identity?”
“I’ll tell you: the time has come to quit drinking blood and slicing their dicks, my darling! It’s time your beautiful Samburu peacocks leave their beads and spears behind, join the rest of the world and learn how to operate a computer if they don’t want to be seriously taken advantage of!”
Iris raised her voice.
“Who are you to know what’s better for them?”
Hunter could sense he had made her uncomfortable, and seemed to enjoy that.
“Right, and who are you to know, may I ask?”
“I grew up with them, Hunter.”
“Oh yeah? Well, a lot of us did. Maybe it’s time you grew out of them and started reading the Economist instead, if you care to have a larger picture of the future in the third world. Which I am sure is the last thing you’d want to do. Much more fun running around wearing beads with good-looking warriors and cashing in on their wild looks. One thing’s for sure: the minute they cut their hair and get a job, you are out of yours. So I’m not surprised you want them to stay where they are.”
Iris reddened with rage.
“And the minute they stop killing thousands in tribal wars you are out of a job. Give me one reason why it’s more ethical
to write about guerrillas in the bush armed with AK47s.”
Hunter smiled and lit a Rooster. He exhaled very slowly, studying the smoke which he blew upwards.
“I never even dreamed of making ethical comparisons here. I just wish you would stop inflicting your tales of stardom in the bush on us.” He turned to Miles. “We’ve had to listen to it for years.”
Nicole grinned at me across the table. She was enjoying the rampage. At last someone was putting Iris in her place.
“Come on, you two,” said Peter, “stop bickering.”
“Fine with me,” said Iris glacially and turned to Hunter. “What would you rather talk about? Wars? Viruses? Coups? Ecological disasters? Corruption? You’re such a big star on all these subjects.”
“Could we take a break?” said Nicole. “Will you stop ruining my dinner party, now?”
“Right. One last question, forgive me.” Hunter raised his glass towards Iris with a naughty smile. “One thing I’ve always meant to ask you is: do you actually get to fuck them, or—”
“Will you stop it?” said Iris, grinning at last, as if he had finally given her the cue. “God, Hunter, what’s wrong with you tonight?”
Now that the conversation had turned sexual, back up her alley, she was amused. Her little payoff.
Turning to Miles, she said with a radiant smile:
“I never have sex with my subjects. I just like to look.”
Hunter sat next to me on the sofa as we sipped coffee after dinner.
“You don’t talk much, Esmé.”
“Well…it depends.” He made me feel uncomfortable, on guard, as if he could start tearing me apart any minute, so I sat still in my corner ready to spring. One thing I knew for sure: I wasn’t going to be his next victim. But surprisingly, his eyes lit up and his voice became very soft.
“Your father’s poems are wonderful. There was one about birds…the green feathers of birds?”
“The green…? Oh yes, I think I know the one you mean.”
“Do you have a photograph of him by any chance?”
“What?…Yes, of course. Would you like to see it?”
“Very much. I always want to know what people look like when I like their thoughts. Do you look like him at all?”
I blushed like a teenager. The thought that he had read Ferdinando moved me immensely. For the first time in months someone here on Planet Mars had connected with my past. My father’s poems in Mogadishu. I just couldn’t get over it. And Hunter Reed of all people.
“Yes, I think, a bit. I’ll show you the photo.”
I didn’t say come around, I didn’t explain where I lived. I figured I’d let the universe handle these minor details. I just assumed that if he really wanted to see me, he would find me. Because now I knew that Hunter Reed wanted to see me, and the photograph was just a pretext. I just knew, the way people sometimes know about each other even before they meet in the flesh. You can smell the other coming your way, as if the physical attraction shows up before the body.
In retrospect I think we both knew this that time on the phone when everything went wrong.
But I didn’t admit to myself that night how much I wanted to see him again.
Adam came back the next day from Arusha, tanned, covered with dust and smelling of bush. I was relieved to see him and he was relieved to be home. The clients had been a nightmare and he couldn’t wait for the safari to be over.
We sat across each other in the hot bathtub, the room filled with steam, vapor dribbling down our backs.
“It’s horrible to be captive to people you loathe just because they’ve paid you to show what you love.”
“You talk about the bush as if it is your lover,” I said.
“It’s all one has when you grow up here. So in a way it’s all you can give to others.”
Yes. Trees, birds, tracks, rocks, rivers, elephants, buffaloes; smells, sounds in the night—these were Adam’s belongings. He had presented them to me like gifts when we first met, like wedding presents. I had taken them with gratitude because I believed his love for Africa was going to teach me how to save my life.
But something had happened while Adam and I had been apart: in the course of my private explorations I had begun to discover another face of Africa, one where I could see no wild animals, landscape, or sunsets, no trace of beauty or love. This face was harsher, uglier.
Nevertheless, though I didn’t know why, I was attracted to it.
Now, with Adam back at my side, I felt guilty for having secretly enjoyed Hunter’s cynical views of the future. Yet I couldn’t help thinking how his tirade against Iris had reminded me of the destructive game I had been so familiar with all my life: wasn’t it Ferdinando’s favourite pastime to destroy everyone’s hope?
We stepped out of the bath. Adam went to the kitchen and came back to our room with a drink. He asked me what I had been up to and I told him about Nicole’s dinner party.
“Hunter? I haven’t seen him in ages. How is he?”
“He seemed all right,” I said, “except…I don’t know…he was simply horrid to Iris. Is he always so aggressive?”
Adam grinned.
“Oh no, he just likes to get on her nerves; it’s his way of teasing her.”
“I don’t know about teasing. It was more like he was making fun of her in front of everybody, like she was some kind of moron.”
“Those two are always bickering. It’s one of those ex-lovers’ syndromes; they can’t help it.”
“They were lovers?” I was surprised at how much that news took me by surprise.
“Oh yes. For years. Long time ago.”
I suddenly felt irritated.
“My God…everyone seems to have slept with everyone else here.”
Adam pulled me close and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“Yes, there’s no way around that. It’s a big place with very few people. One has to get used to it.”
“I hate it. It’s too incestuous.”
He laughed. I tried to move away from him but he wouldn’t let me go. He whispered, teasing me:
“All we’re doing here is striving to keep up our population rate and reproduce our species in this very unfriendly environment. How can you blame us?”
We fell on the bed. I closed my eyes and smiled as I felt the slow pressure of his knee between my thighs. It felt good to have him back again.
That’s what Africa does to women: it puts us right back in the place we were trying to escape. In that position where women need to have men around or are bound to feel helpless.
No, I didn’t want to be a single woman in Africa and I was—surprisingly—totally ready to admit it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
What would I do to divert myself
if I had not language to play with?
JOHN BANVILLE
“It could be the solenoid switch or the pistons,” says Mr Kilonzo, head down under the hood. “Unless it’s the distributor cap.”
“We just changed that,” I say, sipping my tea.
I say “we” because by now Kilonzo and I feel like a team of surgeons who have tried unsuccessfully to revive a terminally ill patient through a long series of wildly imaginative operations. We’ve replaced every possible organ inside the ancient body of my car, but unfortunately our personal experiment keeps relapsing into a deep coma. At this stage we feel utterly discouraged.
It’s only eight thirty in the morning, the day after Nena’s dinner party: the car has just died again on me as I was driving home from her house after breakfast. All I wanted to do was to slip under my duvet at home and fight my hangover in the dark, but instead I had to flag down a truck in last night’s party dress and slingback shoes and ask the driver to tow me all the way into Kilonzo’s repair shop.
“If it’s the pistons then we’re in deep trouble, aren’t we?” I ask, trying to decipher his absorbed expression.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions and cry wolf,” says Kilonzo, who has a definite philo
sophy against making his clients unnecessarily depressed. “It may be just the points after all.”
“I wish, but frankly I doubt it.”
I’m sitting on a stool in the darkness of his shop under the neon light. As usual Kilonzo has offered me a cup of his strong masala tea and a cigarette. I enjoy sitting here in the shop, breathing car grease and oil and watching Kilonzo mend the crumbling organs of my car. It reminds me of when I was a small child and I used to sit in the kitchen in our house in Naples watching Silvia, our old housekeeper, iron clothes. She was a large woman who smelled of Vim powder. I remember inhaling the aroma of cleanliness that emanated from her body and the freshly ironed clothes. There was always a radio on in the background, just like in this shop. Silvia would make me a cup of hot chocolate and I would sit on top of the washing machine and watch her pile the crisp shirts, one on top of the other.
There is something soothing in watching people transform matter with their hands, as happens every day in every kitchen or repair shop in the world. It’s the job of the magician and of the healer to make inert matter go from lifeless to crisp, from broken to whole. But this morning I feel crumpled and broken, like an old rag Silvia would have ironed, or a rusty exhaust pipe Kilonzo would weld.
Kilonzo is a stocky Kamba man in his early fifties, who wears thick glasses and immaculate blue overalls. He’s an unusually well educated and humorous ex-cop, with strong ethical principles.
“You know, Mr Kilonzo,” I say, “you have become one of my best friends. I don’t think I spend as much time with anyone else in this town. The sight of you checking my engine has come to be familiar.”
Kilonzo laughs.
“Maybe you sabotage the car in order to come and spend time with me.”
“I enjoy your company immensely, but I couldn’t afford that. At this point it would cost me much less to take you out for dinner.”
Kilonzo chuckles and reemerges from the engine holding something small and greasy between his fingers, which he checks carefully by the neon light. He then screams something in Kikuyu to his spanner boy, who comes back with a tiny screwdriver.
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