Hello to the Cannibals

by Richard Bausch

  —No, she says. I’ll be fine.

  —Can I bring you anything else?

  —You’ve been most kind.

  In the room she lies down, without undressing, and falls into a dismal, aching sleep. She wakes in a sweat, moisture gathering uncomfortably in the hollow of her neck. At her bedside is a washbasin with cool water standing in it. She sits up, and with a tremor in her hands soaks a rag, which she wrings out, and then uses to wipe her forehead and face, her neck and upper chest. The light at the window is blinding. The sun seems too close, burning just beyond the parched branches of the palms.

  She dresses and makes her way downstairs, out to the shade of the porch, where she finds Kemp, sitting in the same chair he occupied the night before. The rocker that he helped her to last evening is free, but is the first chair from the door, and is rocking slightly. She has the feeling that he’s just this second switched to the other. He’s fanning himself and drinking tea out of a calabash, and he glances at her with what appears to be studied casualness.

  —Miss Kingsley, he says. You’re better, I trust?

  She takes the rocker, and the seat is warm. He’s watching for her reaction. She glides back a little and swings forward, rocking.

  —I thought you should have the rocker.

  —I make no claim to it, she says, and gives him a slight nod. She feels the blood running to her face, and looks away. This absurd shyness has come over her; it has all but robbed her of speech.

  —I have been sitting here thinking about you, he says.

  —I do feel much better, she tells him.

  —I was imagining what life will be for you when you get back to England.

  She lets this go by.

  He goes on to talk about England, and how much he misses it. He likes Africa, but is often homesick; he wonders if she ever feels the same.

  —I only felt it when I was in England, she says.

  —You mean to say, don’t you, that you’ve only ever felt it for Africa.

  —Yes.

  —We are very different, then, aren’t we?

  This doesn’t seem to require an answer.

  —Still, I believe we are both here with the intent of helping these people raise themselves.

  —I’m not entirely sure they need raising. In some very important instances, I think they most require us to leave them alone.

  —They’ll take you to task for that kind of thinking in England.

  —No one will notice me in England.

  They spend the rest of the afternoon talking in a slow, desultory way, with long, somehow restful-seeming pauses, about the country and its customs and people. Her earlier nervousness is gone. She begins to feel confident of him, sensing that he isn’t holding back, and isn’t making any judgments about her, either. He knows a little about the secret societies, and the part the societies play in perpetuating aspects of belief in witchcraft, spells, and magic. He believes these are problems that must be worked through in order to bring Christianity to the area; and of course in his eyes there can be no doubt about the importance of that. She disagrees with him on almost everything, and yet she finds that he’s reachable when she explains things clearly enough. At least he’s willing to make the effort of understanding.

  —If there is going to be conversion, she tells him, I believe the Muslim religion is more suited to their way of life. I believe the transition would be less difficult.

  —Is difficulty to be the only measure?

  —I mean less bloody.

  —Still, the question remains. Is that to be the only measure?

  —As it is not in the rest of European society, I suppose it can’t be the only measure ’ere, either.

  —Quite so. I take your point.

  They dine together with several other members of the mission—a young doctor whose sallow features give him the look of long ill-health, a Europeanized Fjort with a missing front tooth and a bad scar across the center of his mouth where he was struck by a sword in a fight with a German sailor, ten years ago, and two older men, ordained ministers who have been in Africa since the late eighties, and seem rather hardened to it. The talk has been about the various failures and the few successes in the administration of the country, particularly the cruelty and repression in the Belgian Congo. One of the ministers, a tall, freckled, rather heroically handsome gentleman in his mid-forties, whose cleric’s collar is loose on his thin neck, uses the word nigger to describe the Africans, and Kemp gently corrects him. Later, the man utters a remark about someone belonging to the mission congregation, who hasn’t attended services on recent Sundays, and was seen only this morning with a charm tied to his wrist, a leather pouch with some grisly thing in it.

  —I must say, they do slide back if you let them, he says, given half the chance. These nigger practices are so deeply ingrained.

  —What is the man’s name? Mary says.

  —I beg your pardon?

  —I asked for the man’s name, the man you’re telling us about. She looks across the table at him and waits.

  —I believe his Christian name is John.

  —And belonging to which tribe?

  —What did you say?

  —Do you know which tribe?

  —I beg your pardon? Tribe?

  —I wonder what tribe the man you speak of belongs to. Mendes? Mpongwes? Fjort? Fulani? Ajoumbas? Fang?

  He looks down the table at Kemp, and then back at Mary.

  —Well, I wouldn’t know. It would be presumptuous of me to guess. I mean, they’re all pretty much the same, aren’t they?

  —Since you are reluctant to presume, sir, would you do likewise over a German or a Dutchman, or a man from Yorkshire as opposed, say, to a man from Dublin? They’re all pretty much the same, too.

  The other looked at Kemp again.

  —See here, Kemp. What is the meaning of this?

  —Miss Kingsley is an advocate, says Kemp.

  —I don’t wish to offend you, Mary says to him. I only point out that truly aiding these people is not possible unless one comes to know them on their own ground, on their terms. At the very minimum that means seeing them first as people.

  —Oh, so I’m to be expected to go running about in the bush with them, is that it? Well, no thank you. No thank you indeed. I’m not of that school. And, if you’ll forgive me for putting it bluntly, neither has this mission been of that particular school. At least not until your arrival, young woman. And I will also add, if you’ll forgive me, that I do not like being spoken to in this lecturing way by someone from your, well, your class.

  —A commoner, then. I didn’t know I was speaking beyond my station.

  —I mean age, as well, madam.

  —Miss Kingsley’s experience gives her the authority to teach us, Kemp says. Don’t you agree, Martin?

  —I do not agree, says Martin. No, I do not. And there it is.

  —I meant no offense, Mary says.

  He stands and folds his napkin, and with great dignity pulls down the front of his vest.

  —Perhaps if you’ll excuse me.

  He crosses the room, stands for a moment at the large opening into the foyer that leads out to the veranda. He reaches into his coat pocket and retrieves a pipe and puts it into his mouth with a kind of emphasis, and then is gone.

  Everyone else is quiet for a moment.

  —You know, Kemp addresses Mary, he’s a good man, Martin. He truly is. Believe it or not, he’ll think long and hard on what you’ve said. And he’ll pray on it, too. But he won’t, in the end, change his mind.

  8

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, with her newly assembled crew, she begins the expedition to climb the east face of Mount Cameroon. The day is an unmitigated disaster. A cold rain besets them all the way on the road inland from Victoria to the first base camp, a place called Buana, which seems at the tag end of things, since the road ends here. It is a mission camp, run by two African gentlemen. She spends a sleepless night there, among a party of Africans and ot
hers who are taking part in a sort of traveling seminar on the Bible. She retreats to her room with another headache. There are tiny square paintings in the room, inspirational scenes, and on the table by her bed is a daguerreotype of a man and a woman, staring severely at her in the wavering light of the lantern.

  She turns the picture around.

  In the next dawn, the rain comes with a gray, misty force. They are late starting, but they make the next camp, a government station. The official there, a man named Liebert, asks her to stay in his house, an unfinished frame, with shutterless windows and a lot of propped boards against the walls. No real shelter in the sense that she can have no sort of privacy, here.

  The weather continues unabated, chilly and misty and miserable, and the day passes slowly, with Mary suffering still another migraine. Herr Liebert is kindly, and very curious, and he wants to talk. They speak slowly in German, and then he tries laboriously to get a few phrases of English out. She can see that it has meant much to him to have the conversation with her in his own language. But she doesn’t want to talk now, and she tells him, at last, quite gently but directly, that she must retire.

  —I have bored you, he says.

  It strikes her that she’s tired of the company of men, and then she realizes that it is simply that she is tired. Tired and sick, and the rigors of the day have so drained her that she knows she won’t sleep. She asks him if he has any liquor.

  —Wine, he tells her, looking doubtful.

  —I would like some, if you can spare it.

  —Ja, of course. Yes.

  It is a variety of French wine he has had shipped to him from friends. He opens the bottle and pours liberally from it, and apparently considers that this means more talk. His features betray a kind of endearing relief: he hasn’t bored her after all. She wonders if in the society from which he comes, back in Europe, he has worried about this as well. The fact is, she hasn’t really found him to be so dull. He has been perfectly agreeable and thoughtful. She sips the wine without tasting it, quite, drinks the glass down a little faster than she would if she were in London, and asks for another. He pours it, looking at the glass and then at her and then at the glass again. She drinks that, and he talks. Mostly now, he wishes to delineate the qualities of the wine, and he makes up long phrases in his language to do so. She holds her glass up and nods, and asks for more, speaking in her own cockney, and with a thicker flavor in it, that she is only partly aware of.

  —’ere, let’s ’ave sum more a’ that, shall we, Cap’n?

  So he pours more of it. And she clinks her glass against his, and holds the rim of her own against her upper lip. Africa is setting up its racket all around and the rain keeps coming, a steady, cold drenching, and she’s warm inside at last, even in her damp and muddy clothes. At length, she rises, and can feel the effects of the wine.

  —Good night, Cap’n, she says.

  She can feel his eyes on her as she crosses to the entrance of the house and leans for a moment on the door frame—not from the wine, but from the exhaustion she feels. She looks back at him.

  —Gute Nacht, he says.

  In her open-windowed room, alone, she sits on the bed and emits one loud hiccup. This makes her laugh. She lies down, brings her booted feet up onto the bed, listening to the drumming of the rain. In only a moment, she’s deeply asleep.

  9

  IN THE MORNING, she discovers that several of her original party, including Thomas, have gone in the night back to Victoria. Only two, another Fulani named Kefalla, and the headman, remain. The headman is a Fjort, named Bum. Herr Liebert is anxious to help, and he commissions three men who work for him at the station to accompany her—a Liberian named Xenia, a Europeanized Mpongwes named Sasu, and a man she calls Tomorrow, whose tribe is uncertain, and whose language is unrecognizable. Herr Liebert also gives her a foldable camp bed, an ingenious gadget invented for the military by a friend of his from Düsseldorf, who assumed that Liebert would be sleeping outside in Africa. It takes some ingeniousness getting it into her portmanteau along with her books and other supplies. The whole process and the hours she spent with Herr Liebert begin to seem comical to her. She has to strain to keep from laughing. He’s so earnest, so eager to help, and so obviously worried about her, too. And his gallantry takes the form of a kind of ramrod-stiff politeness, tinged with discouragement.

  They are late getting started, and Kefalla troubles himself to remind her that it is Sunday. She knows from his tone that he wishes her to mark this and take the day to rest. She ignores the tone, and replies that she understands what day it is.

  The rain continues, and progress is slow. They reach the timberline of the mountain in early evening, and set up camp. Mary goes on a little, into the hour before dark, to gain some sense of the rock face ahead of them. She’s gone only a few minutes—but by the time she returns, the men are half drunk on the rum she packed for medicinal purposes, and for all of them to be able to warm themselves against the cold. Only Kefalla has refrained from having any, and he’s remonstrating with the others. The weather worsens by the minute; there is nothing anyone can do to keep dry.

  —We want to go down, ma, Kefalla says.

  She has learned by now that he always uses the imperial we when speaking of what he wants. In his bearing he is much like Thomas was, and she has to work to individuate the two men.

  —We will go down after we have reached the summit, she tells him.

  —We don’t see the land, too much rain one time, sabe?

  —I sabe, she says. Good night, Kefalla.

  He turns from her with a frustrated shake of the head, and begins opening a tin of pork fat, muttering to himself.

  10

  KEFALLA PROVES RIGHT about the view from the top of the mountain.

  She climbs to it alone, in a snowy, freezing mist, and, reaching the pinnacle, turns in a circle and looks at nothing but whiteness, the raw elements themselves, as if she has come upon them in their primal, continual argument with each other. She has left the two remaining members of her party—Kefalla and Xenia—behind at the last base camp. The expedition, from the start, was plagued by delays and disagreements and desertions. Twice she had to send down to Herr Liebert for more supplies. The men grew sullen and quick to temper; there were several near fights. Through it all, she commanded their reluctant obedience, but in the end, after one gloriously sunny day of climbing in which she paused several times and saw tremendous vistas of the coast from the three-quarters height of the mountain, the weather closed in again, forcing things. Kefalla and Xenia went on with her to the last base camp, and from there refused to go farther, forcing her to press on in the driving rain and snow, alone to the top.

  The one sunny day gave her the sunburn that she suffers from now, staggering in the bad weather at the peak, alone.

  Alone.

  This young woman. Alone at the pinnacle of one of the highest mountains on the continent of Africa. She. Mary Henrietta Kingsley, a bookish, once-reclusive English spinster with no formal education, just thirty-two years old, from Highgate, Cambridge and Addison Road, London. Having traveled here by way of the African river tribes, through unmapped country and among people no white man or woman has ever seen, in the bush, and at river’s edge. And here she is.

  Well.

  And she admits to herself that she expected to feel something more than what she does feel: there is exhilaration, yes, but it’s mingled with disappointment, too, a simultaneous draining out of emotion; there is an emptiness at the heart of it, a sense of its lack of utility in her life: she can’t use it for anything, this arduous ascent to a barren mountaintop.

  She leaves a small paper card, her calling card. She can only spend a minute or two looking around; it’s too cold to stay very long. There are other artifacts on the ground, left by other Europeans, but by no other woman. Her face is so badly sunburned, the wind stings her cheeks—how odd to feel the heat of sun in this cold—her lips cracked and bleeding and dry, her left cheek a
braded from a blister that got pulled away in the night when her sleeping bag stuck to it.

  She knows the little calling card will dissolve in the wet and sifting cold, and she can’t bring herself to care. After one last revolution in the blinding cold and snow, she starts the slow descent.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  1

  PROLOGUE

  Scene: The Royal Colonial Office of the British Empire. The walls are only suggested by frames. A map on the left, a globe downstage. A desk at stage right, flanked by flags, under a portrait of Queen Victoria. Across from the desk is a single ladderback chair, in which Mary Kingsley is seated. Behind the desk is the colonial secretary, Lord Chamberlain. He looks exactly as one would expect the colonial secretary to look.

  LORD CHAMBERLAIN

  I am one of the many who have read your book, Miss Kingsley. I very much admired it. I found it marvelously entertaining and instructive. I’m not unaware of your influence. I even attended a lecture you gave at the Women’s Geological Society. That’s why I sent for you, of course. I’m hoping you’ll listen to reason.

  MARY

  I’ve been entertaining the same ’opes about you, sir.

  Pause.

  Excuse me. H-hopes.

  LORD CHAMBERLAIN

  Are you quite comfortable?

  MARY

  Shifts slightly, looking around her.

  Quite. This is a pleasant office.

  LORD CHAMBERLAIN

  Well, I rather like to consider that this is like the center of the web, Miss Kingsley, and I’m the spider who only waits for others to come to him.

  MARY

  I shall try diligently to keep that in mind, sir.

  LORD CHAMBERLAIN

  Clearing his throat, all business now.

  As you no doubt know, Miss Kingsley, for some time now the crown has not been realizing enough revenues from West Africa. The protectorate is in disarray, the trade wars have made everything worse. There is precedent in all English law for the use of taxes to raise revenue. It was felt that a tax on each hut in the protectorate would raise the necessary revenue to aid in bringing some benefit to the very people you wish to help.