“Always closing up, like a snail in its shell. One minute I feel you so close, it’s incredible, and the next you look like you’re dying to get rid of me.”
“The only thing I have been dying to do is make love to you,” he said quickly, matter-of-factly.
I almost couldn’t bear to hear him say the words. He never seemed afraid of what he said. Unlike me, enervated by my own waiting and postponing. The time had come for me to give in.
“Then do.”
———
It kills me to think of that afternoon. As if it couldn’t possibly have been me, the same person I am now.
Now that I am left without a trace of it, with no claim to it, it seems incredible that once—not long ago—I felt so much love and passion coming from Hunter.
We were so greedy for each other that first time. As we held and touched and kissed and felt each other’s body, it seemed impossible that we had waited so long, that we’d managed to sleep and eat, and talk and laugh with other people, and yet repressed that desire. I knew instantly that from now on that desire would be impossible to ignore.
I kissed him again and again: how foreign he was, what a stranger, once his face was that close to me. His lean body had surprised me: it spoke the language of small imperfections, it had the uniqueness of flaws. I was stunned by its newness.
Yet there was no barrier between us after we had made love: it had crumbled forever and I could touch him at last without fear. So I pressed my fingers to his eyes, his nose, his lips, his neck, like a blind person. I needed to memorise him, to make him intelligible, to make him familiar. I needed to imprint him in my hands, as completely as possible. I ached already at the thought of having to leave him.
We made love, desperately, intensely, always looking at each other. But we kept silent, never pronouncing the dangerous words lovers whisper in the dark. Words which bind you and smash everything that existed before, words which lift you and thrash you into the waves where any minute you can drown.
If the first time I made love to Adam I felt like I had finally reached somewhere—had come home into his arms—as soon as Hunter touched me I felt forever ripped apart from where I thought I belonged. He tore me away from all that preexisted, even from the simple concept of time. I saw from the start that from now on there would be only waiting, nostalgia for his potential absence, endless days filled with longing.
I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.
“You are so beautiful,” Hunter whispered, his hand sliding over my hip, slowly discovering me, taking me in. There was none of that fear in him. He was fullfilled, content.
I remained mute, drugged by his physical presence, unable to speak. I watched his body relax, until he fell asleep next to me. I hated seeing him slip into another world, so far away from me, while I was cast into this new darkness, which I knew nothing about. I felt jealous of his ability to dream, to breathe like a child. Angry—furious—to see him sink into sleep and drift so far away.
We will never be together. The phrase flashed through my mind as I watched him sleep. It hurt to admit it—we would never, not even when we were closest, not even when we were making love.
But, maybe the recognition of that painful truth was what lured and tempted me. One had to learn to live without that illusion. No one ever became one with another. There was no coming home. There were no roots, no tree to hold on to.
One had to learn to love without feeling safe and secured to the ground, to accept being cast into the darkness, where no one knew what it was going to be like, at that dangerous place where the winds meet.
CHAPTER FOUR
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
T.S. ELIOT
The shadows are lengthening under the trees; it must be getting late.
I must have slept: I know I have dreamt again. My sleep is filled with such rage, I actually need to wake up in order to give my mind a rest.
I walk around the empty house, smelling the sticky scent of my own sleep, as the wood boards creak softly under my bare feet.
Wilson must have gone for his nap in the “servants’ quarters.” Don’t you hate the expression? How ludicrous, how Doctor-Livingstone-I-presume.
After all, it’s the weekend, and nothing is expected to happen. It does feel like a Sunday Bloody Sunday. Same suicidal instinct. Except here one can’t even look at the paper and choose a good movie. Or buy good drugs and veg out zapping channels. Or see a show at the National Museum, go skating, go out for pizza. Or just walk down the streets of a city mingling with the more-suicidal-than-you weekend crowd, or disguise your anguish in the subway.
Here, in a place where people have “servants’ quarters” on their compounds, the alienation of a lone human being is not even contemplated. Here you are supposed to be a family, a unit, an association of some sort. Everyone is a pioneer here, and pioneers have no time for existential brooding. How I hate the ferociously optimistic attitude of the white tribe of East Africa, their idiotic pragmatism, their absolute lack of self-deprecation! How I wish I could call up Ferdinando and have a chat with him instead. Wouldn’t he have loved to hear how nauseated and unhappy I felt on this weekend below the equator! He would have laughed at my little-house-on-the-prairie, my blind faith in the healing power of nature, my attraction to the primal. He would have found it so utterly naive. So girlish.
Instead I get into my car and go to see Nicole, the only person I can bear to show myself to. A single woman in Africa. One of a kind.
She’s on the verandah, cleaning her brushes, wearing only a tattered old Indonesian sarong wrapped around her tiny waist and a very short pale green jersey. There’s tea and cake on the table. I can’t help thinking that Nicole’s afternoon looks far more acceptable than mine.
I envy her ability to spend so much time on her own. I think that’s possible only if you have a passion like the one she has. A goal, I should say, something through which she’ll always be able to feel fullfilled and self-realised without the need of others. I’ve never had that: my kind of passions, if anything, have only managed to make me feel lonelier and totally useless.
A big, unfinished portrait of a girl sits on the easel. It looks strangely hyperrealistic, as if it has been painted from a photograph.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Do you hate it?”
“No, I don’t hate it. But it’s not my favourite.”
She sighs and looks at it, biting her lower lip.
“Oh, it’s so hideous, I can’t bear to look at it. You know, I have had a commission to paint the whole De Vere dynasty. This terribly rich family who lives in a ranch near Nanyuki. This is one of the daughters”—she makes a face—“Edwina.”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“The mother is loaded, I mean loaded, an American. She married De Vere in the sixties when William Holden was here and it was very Hollywood to live in Kenya.”
“How many portraits did they commission?”
“Five so far. Mother, father and three daughters.”
She falls into a chair and lights a cigarette.
“Edwina, Imogen and Venetia. How ludicrous is that?” She sighs and shakes her head. “But they’re paying me a fortune.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“They want to look good. Royal. They want me to paint them exactly the way they aspire to look. Like these gorgeous blond princesses. I have the mother on the phone every day, directing me long-distance. If she lived here she would be on my verandah personally mixing the colours. She thinks I’m the family’s makeup artist. It’s unbelievable.”
She imitates a slow nasal drawl:
“Darling, please be careful with Venetia’s nose, it gets kinda puffy around
her nostrils, see if you can do something about it. She speaks of her own daughters like a vet speaks of horses.
“Would you like some tea?”
“No thank you, I’m fine.”
I look again at the portrait. It’s dull, empty. It says nothing. So different than Nicole’s other paintings.
She pulls out a small square canvas from a pile leaning against the wall. It’s a painting of a very thin girl sitting cross-legged on a Turkish carpet. She wears a sleeveless dress in black and orange stripes, against a bright apple-green background. Her hair is pulled back, revealing her long neck. On the carpet there is a small plate with a cigarette burning. The thin bluish smoke is the only moving element in the stillness of the painting. The girl looks morbid, mysterious, almost frightening.
“This is Imogen,” says Nicole, “or at least, this is how I painted her.”
“Oh yes! This is beautiful!”
“The mother loathed it and sent it back in a flash. She had a fit when she saw it.” Nicole giggles. “I nearly lost the job because of poor Imogen.”
“She looks like one of those skinny prostitutes in Vienna, you know, more like an Egon Schiele model, rather than an heiress in Nanyuki.”
“Absolutely. But that’s exactly the point! Imogen is completely fucked up. She is on smack, has a very decadent Indian boyfriend, but she told me she actually likes girls. She’s beautiful, much more interesting than the other two, but she is suicidal. I promise you.”
Nicole looks at the painting and smiles.
“It’s very good, isn’t it? I really like it. Look at those thin arms. The arms of a junkie, so white, frail, so abused.”
She places it on top of her work table, leaning it against the wall so that we can both see it better.
“Can you believe that the mother now wants me to repaint her, wearing jodhpurs and a denim shirt, with a view of acacias in the background? She even decides wardrobe now. Some people’s arrogance is amazing: they actually assume reality can be painted over to match their will, just because they have money to pay for it.”
We are silent. The sun has disappeared behind the Ngongs, it will be dark very soon. I can sense someone inside the house placing logs in the fireplace.
“Come,” says Nicole, “let’s sit inside and have a drink.”
Her house is small and cosy, smelling of wood wax and incense. She goes to mix two vodka tonics by her drinks tray.
“You know, Esmé”—she has her back to me now—“after Iris died I decided I was going to start doing portraits of white people who lived here. But my idea was…”
She hands me the drink and crouches on the sofa, shivering.
“…my idea was that I was going to paint only people who had been hurt. Whites who had been bruised or wounded. You know how everyone here is always getting cut, slashed or hit? People are either crashing their cars, getting into motorcycle accidents, knifed by bandits, trampled by wild animals. My concept was, white people in Africa constantly get physically hurt. Does this make any sense to you?”
“Yes, of course it does, completely. Wounded whites.”
“What this idiotic woman doesn’t understand when she calls me up screaming that I should make her daughters more beautiful, is that the only real possible beauty in Africa is the beauty of destruction. Any other beauty here is false, petit bourgeois, frumpy. A white man’s lie.”
We fall silent, watching the fire.
“You should go back to Europe, Nicole,”I say.
She stiffens. I know she hates to hear this.
“You’re so wasted here.”
“I’m not good enough for Europe.”
“Yes you are.”
“Well, even if I was, there are too many good painters there, I would have to join such a long queue.” She shakes the ice in her drink impatiently. “I’m too spoiled.”
“But what’s the point of working like this? Nobody wants to hear about ‘the beauty of destruction’ here. They want to hang portraits over the mantelpiece and pretend they live in castles. You’ll become the court painter of Kenya ranchers.”
Nicole laughs.
“Court painter of Kenya ranchers, my God! That really sounds final and hopeless.”
Immediately I regret what I’ve just said. Who am I to preach what Nicole should do? Have I showed any more guts, done any relevant work, produced anything that contributed to something, since I’ve been here? Not really. Whereas Nicole has always been on her own, earning her living, she has never been helped by a man. She’s been much braver than I have.
“What have you done to Miles?” Nicole asks, changing subject and showing no resentment for my aggressive behaviour. She’s so good, that way. “He came around earlier and said you’d been throwing coffee mugs and chairs at him.”
“I did. I hope you didn’t give him the cooler.”
“Actually I did. Was I not supposed to?”
“He was going to take Claire and that American photographer for sundowners on the Ngongs. He was keen on showing off his safari skills and serving chilled drinks on the mountain.”
Nicole raises an eyebrow. I can tell Miles still has the power to annoy her.
“I mean, frankly…what a dickhead. He didn’t say what he needed it for.”
She stares for a second into her glass, then shakes her head and forces a bitter laugh.
“Sunset on the Ngongs! I’ve heard that line before. Don’t tell me he wants to seduce Linda now.”
“Of course he does. He would seduce Claire as well, only he can’t.”
“Oh please, what is this? Happy Valley? White Mischief? Does anyone ever give up instant sexual gratification in this country? Really”—she giggles—“I should have thrown more chairs at him, plus the teapot.”
The phone rings and she jumps up to get it. I shuffle through her CD collection and play an old Van Morrison song which reminds me of Hunter, just to check how unbearable it is to hear it again. I’m flooded by nostalgia. Thank God Nicole comes back and immediately lowers the volume. She looks elated.
“That was Kevin.”
“Kevin who?”
“Kevin Steinberg.”
I look at her blankly. She tries again, impatient:
“The screenwriter you met last night at Nena’s.”
“Oh God, yes. Unbearable.”
“Don’t be so fussy, Esmé.” Nicole smiles mischievously. “I rather liked him.”
“Really?”
It still amazes me the way people in this town keep popping up in different combinations, like reshuffled cards.
“Yes, I think he’s sexy, and I love his wit. I’m mad about it,” she adds.
Kevin Steinberg reappears as the King of Hearts.
“Anyway,” Nicole says with a shrug, “he’s taking us out for dinner tonight.”
“What do you mean, us?”
“I told him you were here and he said great, I’d love to see her, she’s so interesting, so smart. He obviously didn’t realise you found him unbearable, so please try to be charming. Unfortunately, he said he wants to eat African food.”
“African? But where?”
“God knows. It’s maddening when people come to town and want to go native. It’s like going to New York and begging people to take you to Harlem. There’s nothing good to eat in an African restaurant except for chips and goat stew. But one doesn’t want to sound so African-unfriendly with an American, does one? He may think we are one of those hideous right-wing colonialists.”
“So what? Do we have to go to some nyama choma place on Dagoretti Road?”
“Let’s, so that we don’t contradict him. He probably doesn’t eat meat and will be easily persuaded to take us somewhere else on his platinum card.”
“Let’s hope so. I’d love some Thai food.”
“What an excellent idea! I better get ready, then.” Nicole runs into the bathroom and lets the water run into the tub.
How I wish I could feel that light again, could be interested in new pe
ople. How I miss getting ready for an evening with a sense of expectation, flinging open the closet door, feeling that the outcome of the evening depends on the dress I wear. Now it seems impossible that this will ever happen again. That I will ever care to wear one dress rather than another.
Nicole reappears three songs later, perfectly groomed and made up, wearing the sleeveless orange-and-black-striped dress of Imogen’s painting. She must have lent it to her for the sitting. It’s so Nicole, in fact, something one would never dare to pick up in a flea market, but which looks perfect on her.
“I should warn you that Kevin is taking us out because he wants to do a little research work,” she says, pinning up her hair in front of a mirror.
“Does he ever stop researching, I wonder.”
“He’s just come across Iris’s books, and now he’s terribly excited. In fact he called me to ask if I happened to know her. He thinks she would make a terrific story for Hollywood.”
“Oh God, Nicole, I really don’t think we should be doing this.”
“Relax, okay? Let’s hear what he has in mind, first. Plus, if he wants to do it he’ll go ahead and do it, the books and the photos are out in the shops, it’s not as if we can keep him away from it.”
“I really don’t feel like discussing Iris as an Hollywood script, and I can’t believe you—”
“Esmé, you’ve become more sanctimonious and moralistic than Hunter Reed ever was. Just shut up, put on some lipstick and be quiet, will you?”
I obey without uttering a sound. I don’t know anymore what I should be thinking. I feel like I have lost the plot.
As I’m putting on one of Nicole’s darkest lipsticks, I hear her voice behind me. I can feel her eyes dancing.
“Iris as a Hollywood script. She worked all her life at it, it was such a perfectly rehearsed screenplay. Finally this successful writer comes along, happens to see a book of hers at the hotel shop, reads it and dreams of turning her into the Karen Blixen of the year two thousand, and you don’t want to help? She’s probably cursing you from Heaven, my dear.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I wanted everything for a little while.
Rules of the Wild Page 21
