In the Belly of the Elephant

by Susan Corbett

  I sat back, sipped the smooth chardonnay, and eyed the group. The more wine I sipped, the more interesting the Larry guy looked. He sat with his long legs folded Indian style, quiet, yet attentive. Now and then, he quipped an offhand comment that produced laughter from the group. I caught him watching me a couple of times and pretended indifference. The games we play.

  When the prince reached Abena’s house he asked her parents if he could see her. She came out reluctantly, but when she saw the handsome prince her face changed. She came towards him looking radiant and, without even waiting to be asked, she told her parents that this was the man she wished to marry.

  An unhindered view of the water and jungle surrounded us. The air, nearly body temperature, drifted off the water and brushed its velvet against my cheek. The sky filled with stars and the tip of a full moon rose out of the depths of the river.

  Larry pulled out a guitar and strummed a quiet song. He closed his eyes in concentration, plucking the strings with slender fingers. Though I had never really seen one, I decided he looked like a Cossack. The kind in the old movies who, grasping their women around the waist, rode away into the desert night to the music of violins.

  Tom opened the fourth bottle of wine and poured all around. “Tough life, eh?” He winked at me. I liked his smile, his playing-in-the-backyard-after-school look, such a contrast to the mysterious darkness of Larry.

  The moon rose bright orange with a tail of yellow light that rippled off the water. I stood and walked to the bow of the boat and leaned out over the rail. Stretching my arms wide, I splayed my fingers to catch the light from the moon. The river misted my face. Soft footsteps creaked on the deck boards behind me. It was him, the Cossack, robes flowing in the lunar wind. I placed my hands in the angle of a salute just below my eyes.

  “What are you doing?” he said, his voice as soft as the air off the river.

  “If you place your hands just so and lean out over the rail”—I demonstrated, not looking at him—“the boat disappears and you see only the river. You can imagine you’re flying.”

  Silence. After a moment I turned and found him staring at me, his brows drawn together. I couldn’t tell if he was confused or alarmed.

  I turned back to face the river. Soon, the sounds of his guitar indicated he’d decided it was safer back with the group. So much for Cossacks.

  Rejected again. How strange it was that part of me burned to find someone upon whom I could unleash my passion, yet another part stood rigid, frozen with fear. Thank you, Rob. He was married now. Somebody else was becoming the woman in the Vermont parking lot with her baby and dog.

  I imagined Rob out in the river in the jaws of a crocodile, sinking beneath the dark water. I breathed in the thick spices of the jungle. The gossamer path of moonlight rose up from the river and surrounded me with golden threads.

  “If only I could make love to this river, this moon,” I whispered. The stuff that myths are made of.

  Heading straight into that velvet wind, enough moonlight to see the banks, the bush, and the palms, I flew out over the water, a lone figure following the path of the river, as if in a dream.

  After a while, I rejoined the group and accepted several more glasses of wine from Tom. The night passed in a dreamy haze of fermented grape. The group talked and laughed in several languages until the last wine bottle lay empty. By midnight, Larry had his arm around the German girl, and at 2 am they left together. The air cooled, and the shrunken moon sighed from high in the night sky.

  When the wedding was over the prince asked Abena’s parents to collect much food for the long journey to his palace. So the parents called some thirty young girls to help carry the loads and the party was soon on its way with many sheep and goats, plantain and yams. Along the way, the prince grew hungry and ate four pigs, five sheep, three goats, all the bananas and yams, and all the young girls. When the prince and Abena arrived at a hole near the river, the prince turned back into a python.

  The next morning, with sunglasses and a hat to cut the painful glare, I leaned over the rails of the upper deck, watching a troop of hippopotami. Their snouts rose just above the water line, shooting jets of water toward the boat.

  “Cup of coffee?” Tom arrived, holding a cup in each hand.

  I gratefully accepted with as little movement of my head as possible. “Thanks. Look!” I pointed. “Hippos.” We agreed there was nothing cooler than seeing wild animals in their natural habitat.

  “Where’s your sister?” Tom asked.

  “Still in bed. Where’s your sidekick?”

  “Still in somebody’s bed. He’s a snake.”

  “So I gathered.”

  Back in Liberia, I had picked up a piece of newsprint from the corner of my sitting room one afternoon and uncovered a large snake. I did exactly as Peace Corps instructed: ran out of my house and yelled, “Snake!” Several of my students quickly converged, rendering the snake very dead. This happened at least three times in the two years I was there.

  Too bad a similar alarm system didn’t exist for the kind of snake with two legs and a penis.

  Tom pointed to the riverbank where several colobus monkeys ran, squealing and throwing clods of dirt into the water. A family of dog-faced baboons sat on shore, their heads following the boat as it passed. Tom and I smiled at each other, sharing the thrill.

  We sipped our coffee, chatting. He was from North Carolina, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, and would soon be going to Cameroon on another assignment. I wondered why I was never attracted to nice, uncomplicated guys like Tom; why I ran away from guys like Steve.

  Around noon, Tricia shuffled up to join us. We lounged in the shade, under the overhang of the second-story deck. Tom left for a few minutes and returned with a loaf of bread, cheese, and some mangoes. The day hung hot and humid, and the jungle shimmered under a butter-yellow sun.

  Ju Ju, one of the boat men, called our attention to a large, mossy looking log on the river bank. As we stared, the log raised itself up on squat legs and slipped into the water. I almost peed my pants.

  “A crocodile!” Tricia’s excited voice brought several more people to the railing.

  “Today is a special day!” Ju Ju said in lilting English. “It is long since the people on the boat have seen so many animals. You are lucky!”

  Yes, I thought. I was lucky to be there, steaming up the Gambia River. I was lucky to have family and friends. True, I didn’t have a man or a baby. But hey, I had a dog. And something rang clear in my overheated, hungover brain—if you go looking for the prince charming of myths, be prepared to trip over a python or two.

  Chapter 16

  Gorée’s Dungeon

  April/Jumada-al-Ula

  I moved through a dank cell of moss-covered stone. Ghosts huddled together in the center—women with their arms wrapped around each other, afraid of the rat-infested corners and the puddles of black water that never dried from lack of sun. Fear still thrived in the darkness. I breathed through my nose, not wanting the stink of decay to enter my mouth.

  I stopped in the middle of the cave-like room and became one of them—chained, waiting to be priced, branded, and thrown onto a ship, into a darker, deeper hole. Torn from my home, my village, all I had ever known, and sent away to an unknown place and an unknown fate, forced into a world of unimaginable cruelty.

  Rancid water dripped from the ceiling in an incessant staccato. I ran my hand along the rough rock of the wall, tracing the rage and despair of other hands. I swallowed. Guilt tasted sour; guilt for having white skin, for carrying the same blood as the European slavers who piled these stones into a prison.

  Was I like them? Was I a modern-day slaver, selling out the Africans to the CIA just by being here? The way the missionaries had paved the way for the colonial armies?

  I was so tired of feeling guilty. I had taken Philip’s advice to say “fuck it” to the rest of the world and get on with my own business. But you couldn’t get away from who you were and where you came from. A pe
rson ended up saying, “Fuck it,” every other sentence. If you say something enough, that’s what you become. Philip had become arrogant and cynical.

  Maybe I should go home, I thought. Before I ended up like Philip. But the idea of going home wrapped around me like a chain. I hurried out of the dungeon’s shadows.

  Other tourists stood outside in the sun, laughing, adjusting wide brimmed hats, and walking on high-heeled sandals. Squinting into the brightness, I found Tricia reading the guidebook aloud to Peggy, a grad-school friend. Peggy had joined the Peace Corps for her internship and was training health educators in Dakar.

  “La Maison des Esclaves, House of Slaves,” Tricia read. “Built by the Dutch and French, this was the last place captured Africans were imprisoned before they were shipped to the New World.”

  Gorée Island had been the busiest slave port in West Africa for a hundred years.

  Absorbed in the gloom, we left the prison grounds and walked the sandy alleyways of the island of Gorée, a few kilometers across the water from Dakar. The dismal atmosphere of the prison dissolved in the bright flavor of the town. Palm trees and alleyways wound around orange- and red-painted two-story houses with wrought-iron balconies. Flower boxes dripped with pink bougainvillea, and bold blue shutters framed every window.

  We strolled, dressed in ankle-length smocks, straw hats from Mali, and sandals from Togo with leather strips that circled our big toes. Drinking in the quiet, I dawdled. Tricia and Peggy walked ahead, pointing fingers at a painting on a wall or an open window above a riot of bougainvillea. The soft tones of their conversation drifted back to me.

  We rounded a corner. The clear piano notes of a Chopin nocturne spilled from an upper-level window into the arms of midmorning. The melody combined the pain and darkness of the prison with the soothing beauty of the town. I breathed in the music and smelled tropical flowers and salt air. My fingers itched to touch the smooth keys of a piano, to play a Bach prelude or a Mozart sonata.

  How different this place was from the parched and dying land of Upper Volta. With the music came a sudden desire to leave Dori behind and stay on Gorée, a place on the edge between Africa and home, where I could speak French and tell people I was Dutch or Canadian.

  I lifted my face to the sun. God, let me live here in a small room on a second floor with flowers in my window, looking out to the ocean. Let me play music and become part of the windy days of sea water, sand, and quiet, just for a little while.

  At the end of the street, across the water, lay the high-rise buildings and traffic noise of Dakar, a world away.

  Later in the afternoon, we went to the beach and spread a picnic of dried figs, mangoes, pineapple, French bread, and goat cheese onto a cloth. Bare legs stretched across the hot sand, I peeled a mango in the shade of a beached fishing boat. European beauties with bronzed bodies paraded along the water’s edge in topless suits.

  “That prison was a nightmare.” I shivered in the sun.

  Peggy bit into a chunk of pineapple, its gold color matching the blonde in her fuzzy hair. Juice dribbled down her chin. “In a place where so much bad has been done to so many people, it kind of sticks in your throat to see a bunch of half-naked tourists having such a good time.”

  I sliced off a piece of mango and passed it to Peggy. “I wonder where Africa would be if the white man had never come. If we had all stayed away.”

  Tricia held out her hand for a slice. “It wasn’t just white people who sold Africans into slavery.” She popped the mango into her mouth, licked her fingers, and opened the guidebook to a dog-eared page. “‘Africans and Arabs kidnapped people in the interior and sold them to Europeans on the coast over 600 years ago.’”

  “But what if Europeans hadn’t been here to buy them?”

  “Slavery has been an institution everywhere in the world for millennia.” Peggy wiped her mouth with a corner of her beach towel. “You can’t blame it on one race.”

  “Still,” I said, breaking off a piece of bread. “Given the white man’s track record, it’s hard not to feel guilty about it. Look at what we did to the American Indian.” I turned to Trish, who was opening the cheese. “Remember the stories Aunt Ethel used to tell us about bands of starving Bannock Indians camping on the ridge above their homestead? How Grandma Annie would hide the kids in the closet when the Indians came to the door, begging for bread?” I looked at the bread in my hand. “How do you not feel guilty about that? Our own family took their land.”

  “The government took their land.”

  “Yeah, OUR government, and we settled it. What’s the difference?” I picked at the bread and threw crumbs to a seagull.

  “I always figured you were here because of guilt,” Tricia said. “Guilt over the Indians, guilt over slavery—something people who happened to have your skin color did to people who’ve been dead for 200 years.”

  “There’s not a person on the planet who isn’t guilty about something.” Peggy bit into a fig. “But, so what if we do it out of guilt? The white man has a lot to make up for. Years of exploitation by the Dutch, French, British—”she flipped a wrist—“name a country. Slaves, gold, oil, diamonds, wood, whatever they could kidnap, dig up, or steal.”

  Out on the water, a cormorant dived, disappearing beneath the shimmering surface.

  I threw the rest of the bread to the seagulls. “I hate feeling guilty.”

  “Oh, my God,” Tricia said. “You’re Catholic, OK? It’s a given. Now, will you just quit whining?”

  “I’m not whining!” I threw a fig at her and she caught it.

  “You’ve been whining ever since I got here.” She drooped the corners of her mouth. “‘I’m so lonely. I hate the CIA. I don’t know where I belong. Boo hoo.’”

  Peggy grew still.

  “That’s rich coming from you, Trish.” I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything about her constant drama over her infertility.

  She squinted at me. “OK, I’m sorry. But, for crying out loud, Susan! You’ve lived in Dori for a year! You’re helping people grow food, become more self-sufficient. I’ve seen you with Nassuru, Adiza, and Fati. They love you!” She paused. “Except for maybe that Djelal guy. At the least, Laya has a good paying job and her kids get a square meal every day. And who would Hamidou have to laugh at if you weren’t there?”

  “Yeah, but what if they accept me just because I’m this weird white woman, crazy enough to be living in the middle of the desert by myself? They probably feel they need to take care of me.”

  “Well,” Tricia dropped her chin a little, “that may be true. But I can’t believe that’s the only reason.”

  “I thought you wanted me to come home.”

  “I do.” Tricia hesitated. “But if all the aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and peace keepers give up and go home, who’ll show the rest of the world that we’re not all ugly Americans?”

  I looked at Tricia. The humidity of the coast had turned her hair into a halo of friz. Peggy turned from Tricia to me and her lips lifted into a smile.

  Seemingly out of nowhere, an old man hobbled up to us, holding out a tin cup that caught and reflected a beam of sunlight across Tricia’s face and into my eyes.

  The Fulani of Senegal believed Kaidara, the god of gold and wisdom, was a beam of light from the sun god, Gueno. Kaidara, they said, often came to earth in the guise of an old beggar.

  I gathered all the loose centimes in my basket and dropped them into the old man’s cup. Peggy reached across and did the same. He smiled at us with a twinkle in his old eyes, then slowly made his way up the beach.

  With a shriek, a naked little girl ran and jumped into the surf. Out on the blue water, a small dot grew into a boat as it cut its way through the waves toward the island.

  Peggy shaded her eyes with her hand. “Here comes our ferry.”

  We pulled our dresses over our swimsuits and picked up the remains of the picnic. Tricia and Peggy hurried across the beach.

  I paused and turned for one last look.
The town glistened in the late afternoon sun like a bowl of ripe fruit.

  “Adieu, Gorée.” I sighed.

  Sunburned and covered with a thin layer of salt and sand, I slipped my feet into my sandals and followed Tricia and Peggy toward the dock and the ferry ride back to Dakar.

  Chapter 17

  The Streets of Dakar

  April/Jumada-al-Akhira

  I stood on the curb, Tricia and Peggy behind me. Cars, trucks, and motorbikes raced past, honking their horns in the universal language of big cities. For three days, we had shopped the European-style stores, explored the markets and crowded backstreets, and dined on buttery escargots, crevettes, and langoust in the French restaurants of Senegal’s capital city, Dakar.

  I stepped off the sidewalk. In a rush of honking and exhaust, I was jerked back out of the path of a taxi that sped by, inches from my face.

  “Attention!” The driver called with the hand signal of an upturned palm that said, “Idiot!” in every tongue.

  Time stopped. My life had nearly ended, just then, in an instant. Someone still grasped the back of my T-shirt. I turned to find Tricia, pale and round-eyed, holding onto my shirt with a white knuckled fist.

  Checking both directions, we crossed the street to a city park and sat on a bench perched a few yards in from a high cliff that overlooked the ocean. I took in gulps of air, trying to steady the trembling in my knees. The grass and bench quivered bright green and red in a sheen of heightened reality. Near the bench, a striped spider hung in the center of a web spun between two branches. How could you chase away death when you didn’t even see it coming?

  Tricia sat beside me, still pale beneath her tanned cheeks. “You were almost killed back there.”

  I nodded.

  “I have a terrible feeling I’ll never see you again.” In a few hours, Tricia would be on a plane, heading home to the States. She faced out to sea where the sun, settling closer to the horizon, expanded into a huge orange ball.