She watches it move, blown by a wind she doesn’t feel.
—A storm? she says.
—Aye, the likes of which you’ve never seen. And no one else here has, either. There hasn’t been one here in a generation, and you’ve arrived just in time for it. There might even be some who will think you brought it with you.
She looks back at the cloud, and realizes, with a jolt at her heart, that it is made of insects. The first scattered ones are arriving—big, awfully buzzing wings, and long legs. Locusts, a swarm as big as the tornado she saw earlier. She steps with Captain Murray back into the courtyard, and they rush to the office, where Demby has already begun trying to close up the windows. Nothing works to keep them out. The swarm comes over the town and turns the sky black, and the noise of it, the deafening roar of the millions of wings, the appalling aggregate minute hectic agitation of the cloud itself—crawling insects on every surface, in every corner and quarter, every inch of ground and building, every branch of every tree, every leaf—is enough to make her fear for her sanity. She wants to run mad, and she looks at the two men, who are bending in it all, flailing, without sound. They seem as bewildered and helpless as she feels, but they are moving toward another door, the entrance to Demby’s private rooms. Demby is staggering toward there and Murray is following. She tries to follow, too. The locusts are in her dress and her hair, and while she swings her arms through them, they manage to settle on her flesh. They do not sting, but their legs are a terrible irritant, and she is frightened that they will get into her mouth and choke her. They’re on her face. She strikes them from her face and neck, and finally moves to the base of the wall, where she pulls her dress over her head. She notices that they retreat in the dark of the folded cloth; they throng around her, and then away. The roaring goes on. She thinks of the sandstorm in Gran Canaria, and gradually comes to realize that this is something to be weathered, like that. So she waits it all out, and after what seems a very long time, the whole cloud moves off, toward the sea.
All around her are dead and dying insects, and the few left behind are drunkenly lobbing themselves at walls and window.
Demby is against the opposite wall, with his coat held over his head. He looks out from it, at her, and smiles.
—Quite a welcome, mum.
She stands, slapping the insects from her front, and removing several from her collar, and from inside her blouse.
—I thought we were done for, Demby says.
Captain Murray stands from his shelter, under the table by the entrance to Demby’s rooms. He removes one of the insects from his hair and drops it with a look of disgust and exasperation.
—I’ve seen these swarms twice now. Damned bloody awful business. Makes you want to go mad.
—I thought I might, Mary tells him.
He seems pleased by the confidence. He straightens, tugs at his waistcoat, and says:
—No harm done. They don’t sting, thank God.
—Almost all of the insects of Africa sting, Demby says. A good three quarters of them anyway. And the rest of them either bite, or fix onto you in some way that you’d rather they didn’t. These locusts belong to the last category.
—Well, miss, Captain Murray says. Have you had enough of Africa yet?
6
THEY RETURN to The Lagos in the late afternoon. Mary has gotten her bills of health and the letters she will need to travel in the country. Captain Murray keeps a respectful silence all the way back. The locusts have gone, leaving a blue sky with pile upon pile of smudged clouds, a spectacular billowing mass, with sun breaking through the crevasses in its sides. Onboard The Lagos, there’s a delegation from Freetown already present. Captain Murray finds his first mate, Conklin, and Deerforth arguing with four Hausa policemen and a large black woman in a bright print wrap, whose hair is arranged in coils at the very top of her head. The woman turns to Murray when he steps onboard and, with arms folded across her massive chest, announces, in a deep alto voice full of outrage and pride and righteous indignation, that she is William Shakespeare, laundress.
—Forgive me, says Captain Murray. I didn’t quite understand you.
—I be William Shakespeare, laundress, she says, as if he could not be more obtuse.
Mary steps forward and in Kru English tries to ascertain what the lady wants, believing that it might be something requiring some delicacy, woman to woman. The four policemen simply stand there, as though waiting for some command from Shakespeare while hoping there will be none. Mary thinks there is something faintly reluctant about them; they keep exchanging glances while Shakespeare vents her anger. What she is seeking is the redress of an old grievance. She wants to arrest the ship’s second mate, who left Freetown last year without paying his laundry bill.
—They want Corliss, Mary says, trying not to laugh.
—Yes, says Captain Murray, I understood it.
He steps forward and explains that this second mate is not the one who served on The Lagos last year, and as he speaks, Conklin brings Corliss to them, having gone to fetch him as the woman raged about what she wanted. Captain Murray takes Corliss by the arm and indicates him to Shakespeare.
—All time this be second mate now.
The woman stares at Corliss, and then fixes her stern gaze on each of the others in turn. Mary is impressed with her brilliant black eyes, the fearsome cast of her face. The expression remains outraged and furious. She looks Corliss up and down, and then with a harrumph that in its tone might be that of a London lady displeased with service at a country inn, turns and makes her way to the gunwale and down the ladder to the dinghy she came out on. From the dinghy, she shouts at the four policemen, who shout back at her in a language Mary doesn’t understand.
—They’re going to stay and have some whiskey, says Captain Murray. With the crew.
The policemen move off, toward the other end of the deck, while Shakespeare’s oaths come at them from the water.
—Well, Captain Murray says. You’ve had your first day in Africa. What do you think?
—I hope every day will not be so eventful, Mary tells him. But she is exhilarated and it’s clear that he knows this. His eyes are amused, and he smiles, taking out his long pipe and his tobacco.
—Care for a smoke? he says.
It is like a joke between them. She watches him stuff the pipe and light it, and puff with great satisfaction on it, blowing smoke.
—I think you enjoy tobacco almost as much as my father did, she tells him.
Now he seems serious.
—Would you care for some?
—Do you have cigars? she asks.
Without taking his eyes from her, he leans slightly to one side and calls Corliss to him. Corliss steps up, looking sharp, evidently still relieved over the fact that he is not the man William Shakespeare was after.
—Go to my cabin and bring me my box of cigars. We’ll all have one.
Corliss glances at Mary, but doesn’t speak. He hurries away. Mary and the captain wait, listening to the talk among the Hausa policemen and the crew while they drink their whiskey.
—I don’t suppose you’d like a whiskey, too, says the captain. I dare say you’ve earned one.
—And what did you do to earn yours? she says, smiling warmly.
—Ah, I stand where I have been put, he says. In my place.
Corliss returns with the box, and Murray takes it from him and opens it, offering first to Corliss, who takes one, and then to Mary. When Mary takes hers, Corliss glowers disapprovingly. The captain closes the cigar box and hands it to Corliss, lights both Corliss’s and Mary’s cigars, then takes the box back and tucks it under his arm, puffing on his pipe and gazing at them as if he has just created them through an act of imagination. Mary takes in a little of the smoke, and blows it out with some force. She feels the urge to cough, but holds it back. The flavor of the cigar is not nearly as good as the smell of it, but she says nothing. She has breathed enough cigar smoke in her young life not to be entirely overwhelme
d by it, and so for a time the three of them stand there smoking. Other passengers walk by, including the Dutch trader, who seems rather sullen not to have been offered a smoke. So Captain Murray offers him one, which he refuses, with a kind of dour shrug, as if to say that it is too late now to spare his feelings. He walks on, his big hands thrust deep in the pockets of his trousers.
Corliss keeps glowering at Mary.
—My father smoked them, she says.
—And he let yeh smoke them?
—I didn’t say that.
He bites down on the end of his, and leans on the gunwale, looking out at Freetown. The sun is on the other side of The Lagos now, and it is brilliant in the strands of his red hair, with its gray streaks. Captain Murray says:
—And your mother?
—No, she says.
For several minutes, they do not speak. The sun sets behind them, and casts the long shadow of the ship on the harbor.
Corliss asks, with some hesitation, almost with shyness, about her parents, her home life. She talks a little about her father’s travels, and about having the refuge of his library, growing up with his books, especially the travel books. She finds herself telling them more than she has told anyone else, more even than she told Batty during her stay in the Canaries. She’s not confiding in them, really; it’s more as if she’s regaling them, as if she’s discovering, in the act of using it, a gift for reporting things: she embellishes and exaggerates and colors as she goes—talking of seeing the news article about the massacre at Little Big Horn only days after reading in a letter that her father was on his way to join General Custer, and the long wait for news of him; describing the explosion she caused in the backyard at Highgate; recounting the story of the cow in the lane, and the various difficulties she once faced raising gamecocks in a quiet neighborhood in Bexley Heath. She makes it all funny, and they are both laughing, Captain Murray sending his whooping laugh out over the water. Mary realizes that she’s in control; she has them both completely in thrall. It’s a palatable feeling. Finally she stops, and she has to resist the urge to apologize for going on for so long. Something tells her she should seek to make some excuse for her dominance of the conversation. But she faces them, smoking her cigar, and she marks their expressions of unmixed fascination.
Corliss smiles widely, and simply waits.
—Well, Mary says. Perhaps I’ll write it all down one day.
—On the contrary, says Captain Murray, I hope you’ll continue to talk about it. I don’t remember when I’ve been more pleasantly entertained.
Is there a note of condescension in his voice? She decides not to permit herself the thought, and with a slight bow she tosses her cigar overboard and turns to leave them.
—We’ll be under way in a few moments, he says.
The Lagos steams south again an hour later, after a pair of crewmen ferry the drunken Hausa policemen back to the harbor. Mary can’t get the taste of the cigar out of her mouth; it sickens her slightly.
It is still there in the morning when she awakens, and dresses, and makes her way out to the deck to look at what she can see of the coast they are gliding past: Banana Island, and Liberia’s “Grain Coast.” The sky drains of color, and once again The Lagos is shrouded in mist, a fog more damp than anything they have yet gone through.
—I can’t get the taste of that cigar out of my mouth, she tells Corliss.
—Nor I mine, he says, with an ameliorative smile. But he has another between his teeth, and he chomps down on it, blowing smoke.
—You are a good man, she says, with a small sense of wonder at having done so; she had not known this was coming.
—I am trying, indeed, he says.
—I don’t know your first name.
—David, he says.
She nods at this, and a moment passes. It is as if they are both mulling over the name. Then she looks at him and says:
—Thank you, David.
She passes the day in her cabin, writing in her journal, and writing letters, too, to far-flung friends, including an unknown someone she knows she will never live to see. At the evening meal, just after Withers says the grace, she is listening to Captain Murray talk about having to slaughter a horse in Montana when she realizes that the Dutch trader, Kurschstler, has been patiently waiting to pass her a plate of yams, holding them toward her without speaking, his bulbous dark eyes burning with displeasure. She glances beyond him at Withers, and sees the look of consternation on his face.
—I’m so sorry. ’ow long ’ave you been waiting for me to take those?
He says nothing, but shoves a forkful of meat in his mouth and chews, looking down at his plate.
Conklin sends a smirk her way, as if to explain that it is nothing new. She passes the plate and sits squarely around, so that she can see Kurschstler out of the corner of her eye. The others are all talking about the next stop, Liberia, which is where many of them will disembark. Conklin tells about a fever that killed eleven of thirteen white people in Bonny, where the oil rivers are, as they are called, the transport rivers for palm oil from the interior.
—Terrible country, Conklin says. Stagnant water and mangrove swamps, mile upon mile of it, breeding death. While they were burying one missionary, his clerk got stinking on rum and fell into the grave. Nobody saw him do it because they were preoccupied with the coffin, which they then lowered on him, and if the poor sod hadn’t waked up and screamed they’d’ve put the ground over him, too, no doubt.
Mary waits while more food is passed around, and she sees Corliss watching her. She frowns slightly, turning her head a little to one side as if to ask him what he wants, when abruptly, and with a kind of urgency, he nods. She smiles, nodding back, and when he nods again, she realizes that Kurschstler is once more waiting to pass her a plate, this time of biscuits. She takes it from him and says:
—Oh, yes, thank you, sir. Frightfully sorry.
At this, Corliss begins to laugh. Everyone looks at him, though Kurschstler simply keeps on with his meal, chomping down on the biscuit he has taken from the plate. Corliss puts a handkerchief over his mouth, and continues to laugh.
—I would like to know what is so funny, Withers says.
His wife, with her sour look and gentle disposition, begins to laugh, too, now, though she says she hasn’t the slightest idea why.
—Africa does this to people, Conklin says to Mary. I’ve seen it. It’s the proximity of death.
—Oh, is it, Mary says.
Corliss goes on laughing all the harder, and soon others join him, including Captain Murray.
—Yes, Mary says to Conklin, the old coaster, I’m sure it is the proximity of death.
7
September 1893
This late afternoon, I am writing you from a clear day. Coming south, during the worst of the enveloping mists, I wondered why humans didn’t start specializing branchiae, as that would have been the proper breathing apparatus for such an atmosphere. For the first time, I have seen the African coast as it has always looked, untouched by Europe, or any other influence, the pure wild place itself that looks, upon first glimpse, as though it is one eternal sameness, and you can automatically believe that nothing else but this sort of world, past, present, or future, can ever have existed: and that cities and mountains are but the memories of dreams. I know night and day and seasons pass over these things, like reflections in a mirror, without altering the mirror frame; but nothing comes that ever stills the wildlife, or the thunder of the surf.
I had begun this journey with the sense that I should be very careful of the coasters, the traders, about whom the missionaries usually have something bad to say. But I have not found this to be so. I have been very glad of the company of men like Conklin and Deerforth, and Captain Murray, and I have found the Witherses, for all the kindnesses of Mrs. Withers, rather more difficult to be with. I think that may be temperamental on my part—God knows Father was always impatient with them, too. But the traders are trustworthy—at least these a
re. And I certainly found James Henley Batty to be so.
Today, we put in at Liberia, and at the sound of drums and a great upheaval I looked over the side of our little ship and saw hundreds of canoes freighted with black men, paddling toward us. Coastal tribes are familiar with Europeans, of course, and according to Captain Murray they are good and honest workers, too. But these were chanting some dire-sounding dirge as they came on, and it seemed for all the world to me as if this were a war party. I stepped back from the rail, and saw that Captain Murray and Conklin and Corliss stood quite calmly watching them all approach. This calmed me, though I still stood back. They came to us at the waterline and scaled up our sides and boarded us, so many and with so much noise I retreated to my cabin, where I found three of them looking through my portmanteau. I said, “Stop that.” And one of them smiled at me. A tall boy, really, with wide intelligent dark mischievous eyes, who said back to me: “Stop dat.” So I repeated it, and made signals for them to leave off going through my things. I saw their naked legs and upper thighs, their buttocks, and I admired the lovely shapes of their arms, their perfectly formed heads. They were all quite young. One of them actually had put an undergarment of mine on his head. He pulled the sides of his mouth aside and made a face at the others. They were speaking Kru English, I could tell, but at a rate too fast for me to be able to tell much. “Go away one time,” I said, loud. “Now go quick-quick.” The tallest one came toward me with a threatening motion, frowning deeply, one of my lace camisoles draped over his neck. He growled, meaning to frighten me, and I would be false to you if I said he was not entirely successful. So I picked up a broom in the corner and swung it at him, clouting him across the side of his head, just above the ear. He looked quite surprised and disheartened for a moment, and then dropped my camisole on the floor, no longer wanting anything that belonged to his sudden nemesis, who I am sure he now thought was a witch. He moved past me out onto the deck, holding his hands above his head and looking properly chastened. The others followed him, furtively peeking back at me, with something of the aghast expressions we give to people who exhibit primitive behaviors in polite society. There were several standing around Captain Murray, engaged in excited conversation—or what looked like that, until I realized that there was nothing at all being discussed. They were telling stories; they were all very glad to see each other.
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