Pilgrims Way

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘Fifty million black people, fifty million Africans were kidnapped from their homes,’ he raged at Lloyd. ‘Although the exact million is still being argued over by rigorous academics who don’t want to get the odd million wrong. God knows how many others were slaughtered because they were too old or too young or too thin or too fat. Can you grasp that, you arrogant imbecile? Can you even begin to understand what you left behind you? You took only the best and the healthiest. You didn’t want any weakling to cut your cane and pick your cotton, and produce your bastards. Can you imagine the havoc your little business left behind? Why should you? It was you who discovered us anyway, wasn’t it? We didn’t exist before you Christian bastards with your religion of life after death came and discovered us. You brought God to us. You saved us from eternal damnation. You brought light into our heathen darkness and led us from our barbarous natures. I know what I’m talking about. My father is a lay preacher. You forbade us human sacrifice, taught us the true meaning of compassion, taught us restraint in government, and opened our eyes to our pitifully primitive condition. You taught us how ugly we were, how we smell and how we are lazy and stupid. You even changed our names for us. You made monkeys out of us! And now you laugh as our Casely-Hayfords and Jean-Louis and Benson-Hylens strut and preen for your approval. It’s not us who are depraved, it’s you! You and your fathers and grandfathers and your allotted and self-besotted kith and kin and clan. One of these days, my ugly Englishman, we’re going to rise and chop every one of you, and rape your daughters and boil your vicars and slaughter you in your beds. As you’ve always wanted us to!’

  And Lloyd swallowed and trembled and, Daud was sure, an inner foundation shook. ‘What a load of codswallop!’ he said. ‘What a load of rubbish! What has all that to do with me?’ Every Friday, without further invitation, he turned up at the pub, loathing Karta even as he feared him. Karta abused him endlessly but Lloyd always returned. He fought back with a tenacity that Daud found hard to understand. What for? Why did he not just go away?

  He was sure they would come to blows sooner or later, and suspected that both men were looking forward to that day. He had tried to persuade Karta to leave Lloyd alone. What are you trying to do? Educate him? Punish him? Let him alone. Karta had shivered with a loathing that Daud had found shocking. I’ll kill that bastard one day, he said. Daud tried to discourage Lloyd from coming to the pub but did not know how to say the words that would drive him away. With each day he understood that Lloyd had nowhere else to go, and came to him with the unerring sense of someone who had already suffered many rejections. It was all Daud could do to keep refusing invitations to tea with Lloyd’s parents.

  5

  When Daud returned to day-duty, he found that Catherine Mason had left theatres and had been sent to another ward. He conceded a sense of disappointment, but in his mind he shrugged her departure off. She would not have wished to do more than talk to him now and then anyway. Some days later he met her in one of the hospital corridors. She was amid a large and noisy groups of students, whose striped uniforms looked to him at that moment aggressive and hostile, like the intimidating abdomens of fierce hornets. In his embarrassment he smiled distantly at her. He may even have seemed cold to her, he admitted, although he was only thinking to pre-empt a rebuff. He had imagined he would run into her, and had planned a smooth, sophisticated smile, accompanied by a nonchalant piece of wit, but he had been too surprised to think of all that when he met her. Her smile was even more limp than his, and they passed each other without exchanging a word. As the days went by, he became angry with himself when he remembered the freedom with which he had spoken to her on that night. It was no wonder that she ignored him. It would not do for her friends to think she was showing interest in a coloured ancillary. Next time he met her, he vowed, he would invite her to plant a smacker on his right royal black arse.

  He ran into her again in the dark and decrepit pre-fab hall where non-nursing staff took their lunch-time cup of tea. The hall was cavernous, large enough to be the venue of the hospital amateur dramatics productions. Daud had seen an ambitious performance of Peer Gynt there once, and had applauded for so long at the end of the play, to make up for the tardiness of the rest of the sparse audience, as he saw it, that the producer refused to speak to him for several weeks, assuming that he was mocking them.

  Daud liked the hall for its hugeness, and the gloom of its distant corners. At one end was a tiny cubby-hole, across which ran a counter. Two tired-looking old ladies lounged behind it, stirring now and then to pour tea for the occasional ancillary that appeared. Half a dozen tables were generously scattered over an area the size of two tennis courts. It was not surprising then that he saw Catherine as soon as he entered. She was leaning forward over a book and took no notice as he slid into the chair opposite her. He saw a frown pass across her lowered brow. He was sure she had already seen him in the time it had taken the old ladies to pour him a cup of tea. After a second or two, although it seemed longer, he asked her what she was reading. She looked up sharply and stared dumbly at him as if she had no idea who he was. He smiled to encourage her recollection. She returned a polite, non-committal smile and pushed the book towards him, grudging and unfriendly. It turned out to be a book he knew, and he said something. She made a knowing face and he assumed that his conversation was too obvious as well as unwanted. He admired this stiffness, he told himself, and much preferred the resentment to a hypocritical show of friendship. He persisted, and although she was reluctant at first, sighing with impatience as she listened to him, gradually she joined in and began to talk. In the end her eyes sparkled with pleasure again, and gave him new courage.

  ‘I really enjoyed that night,’ he said at last, when the time to return to the infernal regions was fast approaching. ‘When we were on night-duty together.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling, her smooth skin filling up and turning dark. ‘It was good. I talked too much though, didn’t I? Like a kid! And all that coffee didn’t do my stomach any good either.’

  ‘It must have been a lot better going back on days, then,’ he said.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ she said, grinning. ‘It was too busy.’

  She rushed off back to work, glancing at the watch pinned to her bodice. He thought it would be easy after that, and he passed happy hours contemplating and planning his best approaches. In the midst of his euphoria, he had many moments of sinking despair. These occurred after he had seen her. He saw her several times but she was always with other people and he could not bring himself to detach her from the group. Or they were hurrying in different directions. Or it was the wrong time of the week when the coffers were empty. For God’s sake, he ranted at himself. Why can’t you just ask her? It’s humbling to sit here, nursing little fears and worries about inviting a woman out, when others with the power to change the world are brooding in some bat-infested cave, waiting their moment with steadfast will.

  The more he saw her, the more his desire and his loneliness seemed like self-mortification, like something he did to himself. Eventually he saw her in the dining room one lunch-time, and he was determined that this was the day. She was ahead of him in the line, and he hid himself carefully between heads and bodies of the nurses in the queue. From there he could watch her without being seen. He pretended that he was stalking her, and that if she saw him she would dart into the safety of another group, as if all the time she had been hiding from his intense courtship.

  The line moved slowly towards the counter. Another line worked its way back. Steam rose from the trays of food and from over-heated bodies, mixing into a fug that was thick with the smell of stewed meat. She had her back to him, and he saw how the snugly fitting bodice followed the contours of her shoulders and hips. A strand of hair had strayed on her brow and she pushed it away absent-mindedly before bringing her arms together again across her chest.

  The women behind the counter were all dressed in white, starched and stiff and wretched in the heat. He wondered again wh
y it was that so many of the people who did menial jobs in hospitals had that wasted, worn-out look. The older women looked unkempt and prematurely grey. The younger men had moustaches and a victimised appearance. The older men were always lounging against linen bags, scowling at passers-by, having developed the conviction through long practice that their duties consisted of resisting all efforts to make them do anything. Do I look like that, he wondered? The nurses did not, but they were different.

  He saw Catherine pick up her tray and turn to squeeze past the queue that was waiting behind her. Her eyes went straight to his face. It was difficult to miss him as he was the only man in the whole line. She paused beside him, smiling with what was unmistakably pleasure and surprise. He grinned back, unable to think of anything suave to say. She glanced beyond the line and then nodded, and he hoped that meant that she would keep a place for him. He had no time to dwell on this happy prospect as ahead of him loomed the domestic supervisor. In her dark-blue uniform and lace-fringed cap, she looked the very picture of Victorian respectability. People spoke of her as a kindly lady but he was not fooled. He could see her strutting and parading in the Crimean concentration camps, holding Florence Nightingale’s lamp and barking words of cheer to the starving and the wounded. She was ample and wide, the epitome of the mindless maternal shape, he thought, except for the diminutive heart.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling. ‘From St Nicholas, are you?’

  St Nicholas was a nearby psychiatric hospital from where male Student Nurses came for general hospital practice. It was a loony bin. Daud knew, from the general rumour, that syphilis was rife there and reincarnated Nietzsches two-a-penny, and that abuse and self-abuse were the normal conditions of existence. The supervisor insisted, on every occasion she met him, on asking Daud if he came from St Nicholas, and in any case always spoke to him with that patient and accommodating tone of voice that suggested that perhaps he could be doing something other than working there. The first time, she had insisted on calling theatres to check his story, licking each syllable of his name before spitting it out. He had worried that she would call St Nicholas to see if there was a loony on the loose. Or that he would be refused a meal, and would be sent to eat in the lower dining room with the porters and the floor cleaners, and God knows what was in their stew. He called her The Lark of Bloemfontein, because he was sure she must have been there too during the Boer War, lecturing the starving women and children in the concentration camps on the wisdom of defeat and British rule.

  ‘Can I have a few more potatoes, please?’ he asked the grey-haired old lady bent over the vegetables, offering her the greasiest smile he could manage. In the background he heard the domestic supervisor tutting with distaste. The woman frowned and took a firmer grip of her spoon. He wondered how old she was. Did she look like the kind of person who could have given birth to sons that now roamed the globe killing and torturing people in World Wars? Had she herself manned the ramparts of some obscure battle to hold the line against howling dervishes and smelly wogs? Spoon held firmly in one hand, she covered the potatoes with the other, as if she expected him to lunge for them.

  He saw Catherine sitting at a table by the window. She did not look to be in a state to help him repel the blood-sucking ghouls of the old Empire. She seemed tired and dejected. Catherine dear, have no fear, he whispered. She looked up and smiled, and he felt his spirits rise. What could be denied a man like him, a man who dared so much? He had eaten hog meat when he was hungry, sinning against all the observances of his people. He had swallowed alcohol in defiance of his God. He had crawled on hands and knees in search of a living. He had taken on the Gorgons and the Cyclops of the empire and put them to flight. Would he now dare proposition one of that empire’s fairest maids?

  ‘Delightful,’ he said, pointing to the gristly stew on his plate.

  ‘It’s every bit as bad as it looks,’ she said unhappily.

  Sweat shone on her face, and her eyes seemed watering with exhaustion. His stomach grumbled insistently, coiling into painful knots and then flying open with a dramatic growl. He forced a forkful of watery potatoes into his mouth to keep it quiet. He sorted out pieces of meat and swooped them up towards his mouth in an act of blind courage, with his eyes shut. It was almost too much, and peristalsis briefly rebelled. Don’t get so worked up, he patted his stomach sympathetically.

  ‘I can’t eat any more of this,’ she said suddenly, looking at him angrily, as if it was something to do with him. ‘It’s disgusting. How can they expect us to eat this?’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more! That’s what I was trying to say,’ he replied, ignoring the howls of betrayal from his stomach. ‘What about the fruit salad? I don’t suppose that’s any good, is it?’

  ‘It’s too sweet. It’s awful,’ she said.

  ‘It’s always too sweet.’ He cast a mildly regretful look at it. ‘To be honest with you, I don’t think I can eat it either. How about a cup of coffee? We can get some downstairs.’

  ‘I don’t drink coffee in the middle of the day,’ she said.

  ‘Tea?’ he offered feebly, beginning to feel that he had picked the wrong day for his assault on the summit.

  ‘It stinks in here,’ she said. She stood up abruptly, picked up her tray, and waited for him to rise. He ignored the furious rumbling of his bowels and rose to follow her. The corridors were dark and silent. They passed a window which overlooked the back lawns of the hospital, stretching away to the white hedges that formed the boundary with the county cricket ground. He thought of calling her back to see the view but she seemed too tense. What was she so angry about? He assumed it must be work. She walked a little ahead of him, looking miserable. Her hair was streaked with white as light from the window flashed on her. The purple lines of her uniform striped across her shoulders, hugging her flesh. As he drew level, he stole a last look at her from the back, finding himself contemptible for this act of disrespect.

  ‘Do you really want a coffee?’ she asked as they descended the stairs.

  They walked down the avenue of chestnuts instead, sitting at last on one of the benches outside the nurses’ home. He saw that her tiredness had turned into something harder, irritation perhaps. He tried to think of something to say, but their silence had cast a grip on his mind. He watched her as she turned away from him. When she turned back, his eyes roved over her face with a hurried intensity, as if he was gorging himself with a last, full look before she left him. She laughed. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘You seem tired,’ he said.

  She coloured a little. ‘It’s nothing. The ward is getting me down. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.’

  Dear Catherine, he began. Here I sit, making a meal out of asking you to dinner. Do you not pity my fumbling clumsiness? You have to realise that asking you out has no cultural relevance to me whatsoever. I don’t really know how to do it. I don’t have an instinct for it. I think you understand me. To have cultural integrity, I would have to send my aunt to speak, discreetly, to your aunt, who would then speak to your mother, who would speak to my mother, who would speak to my father, who would speak to me and then approach your father, who would approach your mother, who would then, if all had gone well so far, approach you. Then vice versa.

  ‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he said.

  In the silence he heard the breath wheeze out of him. The light was gentle, the sun having disappeared behind a cloud. A sudden burst of bird song reached him across the glade. The sedge swayed along the margins of the lake. The sound of water rippling over rocks was hushed by the fragrant bushes that surrounded the pavilion: lavender and jasmine and sweet oleander. In the distance, he heard the sound of bells pealing the hours, joyous and lifting. She smiled at him, her lips flushed and parted, the vein in her neck fluttering with excitement. She lowered her eyes from his dark, implacable gaze and stared unseeingly at her fingers, knotted into each other in fear.

  He struggled to prevent a grin of triumph from breaking
across his face. He had swept her off her feet, that much was clear. He had breached and laid low all her defences. He could already see the acclaim his conquest would bring. His landlord would grin with the smug joy of the earnest liberal, and wait his moment before bringing in piano keyboards again. Do you see what you have given the world, W.E.B. Du Bois? Lloyd would probably bring him a whole bag of shopping and wait his chance to tell her his smelly wogs joke, to show her what a buddy he was. Karta would see it as a victory for black humanism. You are the slime and plasma of the green spring of the world, he would exult. But that will be nothing, he thought, compared to what the crowds will do. They will make offerings of magnificent opulence in recognition of his heroic stature, head and shoulders above Prometheus and Sir Gary Sobers. They will come to show their gratitude for all the lives he had been instrumental in saving, for all the rivers of blood he had staunched, for all the myths and taboos he would have made redundant by his ineluctable will. The men, draped in glittering splendour, none of your ostrich feathers and solar topees here, if you please, will precede the women, carrying sticks of jasmine and shards of sandalwood in glowing embers. In the rear, among the perpetual motion of gently vibrating naked flesh will come the eunuchs and the virgins. On their heads they will carry straw trays laden with fruits, cooked meats, cakes, jellies, and wriggling, steaming, dark-red halwa. Flanked by the chanters and the praise-singers, robed in cloth of copper and amber, he will stand silent, impassive, detached, erect. As they pass in homage before him, he will decree that all cripples, and other general eyesores, should be held, collected at one place and tossed into pyres lit with Kismayu ghi. Then all will be invited to a feast of tender goat meat, dripping with juices and saffron-soaked spices. They shall wash their mouths with juices of pineapples, and dig their teeth deep into the soft flesh of blood-red pawpaws, and sate themselves with the jellies and the halwa.