Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  “You’ll look stupid in that,” say the fairies. “Mary, hairy Mary, hairy Mary,” they sing.

  It’s been two days since she’s seen them. Mary thinks they’re avoiding her, worried about the upcoming trip.

  “Might come in handy,” says Mary. “And what looks more stupid than being unprepared?”

  “Smart Mary,” says the clever fairy. “Spinster Mary,” she says, lisping it out in the nastiest way. “Spinster Mary says things like that, clever things like,” and here in falsetto, “‘What looks more stupid than being unprepared?”

  There’s a chorus of giggles and snickers and more richly insulting laughter.

  Mary wonders where the fairies learned such a word. From Charley, no doubt. Charley, with his false sympathy, who said, just yesterday, as the last of Günther’s jars arrived—threatened, he was, by Mary’s sense of purpose—“Don’t worry, Mary. It’s not easy being a spinster, but whatever happens, you’ll always have a place with me.” And Mary read the “whatever happens” to include the following possibilities: Charley’s never leaving the house, Charley’s marrying some incompetent woman who needs Mary as her servant, Charley’s falling ill, paralyzed, incontinent, or bored. This need on Charley’s part will always justify her existence, as does an aunt developing the flu, as does anything that needs doing that no one else wants to do. London runs on an army of spinsters administering to everyone’s needs: silent, solicitous, free of charge, and bitter.

  “Are you finished?” she says, addressing the top of the wardrobe, where the fairies crowd a corner, sitting like gargoyles.

  “Spinster,” says the clever one.

  “You don’t even know what a spinster is,” says Mary. They can stay if they want. She doesn’t need them, not in Africa, where the land is alive and the air so full with the clack-song of frogs, crash and howl of monkeys, high-pitched whining insects, the succulent drip and drip of the jungle moving upward, outward, tearing at whatever England or Europe or Christianity tries to put there. “Stay then,” says Mary, and she slams the trunk lid shut.

  IV.

  “The poor man arrives at the settlement and of course he expects to be met by the agent, who is the only other white man for a hundred miles. He waits at the pier for some time, and then finds a native with a little French to take him up to the agent’s house. When he gets there, the servants are milling about in the most awkward way. And the subagent doesn’t know what to make of it. His first time to Africa.” Lady MacDonald takes her parasol and, with one well-delivered smack, kills a cockroach crawling on the wall. “He waits on the verandah for almost an hour and no one so much as offers him a glass of water—”

  “Probably a good thing, Lady MacDonald,” says Cowper.

  “Might have been,” she says. “All the while, there’s this horrible smell coming from somewhere in the agent’s house.” Here Lady MacDonald raises an eyebrow and sets her chin in a knowing way. “He manages to get one of the servants to take him in, following the smell and a curious buzzing sound through the corridors, further and further, and all the while terrified of what he might find. He reaches the bedroom.” Here Lady Mac Donald pauses. She rests one gloved hand upon the other, leaning onto her parasol, now balanced on the deck. “And there is the agent, or what’s left of him, menaced by several rats and black with flies. Lord knows how long he’d been lying there. And the poor subagent, well, it takes him a while to recover.”

  “I heard he killed himself,” says Cowper, a subagent himself.

  “Nonsense,” says Lady MacDonald. “Back to England he went, back to the countryside, but his mind was never right.”

  “I heard,” says Cowper, “he’d never even been to London before that trip out to the Bights.”

  “That may be true, sir,” says Lady MacDonald.

  “Horrible place, that, Miss Kingsley,” says Cowper. “The Bights of Benin. I’d stay away.”

  “Too late for that,” says Mary. “I’ve already been there.”

  “And written a book about it,” adds Lady MacDonald.

  “Quite accomplished, aren’t you?” says Cowper.

  It sounds like an insult.

  Cowper gets up to light his pipe, leaning casually on the rail. “There’s Calabar, ladies,” he says.

  “Really?” says Lady MacDonald. “I can’t make it out at all.”

  “But can’t you feel it?” says Mary. “I can feel the land. It’s as if the sea is giving up on you.” There’s an awkward silence.

  Cowper lifts his hat in some sort of farewell gesture, as if he’s given up on them.

  “Right you are, Miss,” he says. “I’ll see you at the pier.”

  Lady MacDonald smiles. Mary can tell she’s waiting for Cowper to leave. “We won’t see him at the pier,” she whispers. “He’ll be off with some native girls before we’ve even found porters.”

  Lady MacDonald has been Mary’s traveling companion ever since she boarded the Batanga in Liverpool several weeks ago. Sir Claude MacDonald is governing the Niger Coast Protectorate and as such is an important ally for Mary, not only in this part of the world but back in London. And Mary and Lady MacDonald have become great friends.

  “I don’t mean to alarm you, Mary. I know how you feel about parties, but there will be some sort of to-do when we arrive.”

  “Oh, I hope I’m not so fragile as all that,” says Mary, the nervousness plain in her voice.

  “Gird yourself, Mary,” says Lady MacDonald. “You might find a couple people of interest.”

  Mary takes particular care with her appearance. She makes sure that her hair is as severely parted as possible, that her dress has the highest collar, the plainest wool, although she’s heard from friends—her friends know everything—that there are certain elements who find such a strident appearance appealing, as if her conservative dress might be stripped off to reveal a tender center. As if she were a nut. Yes, she was innocent once, but no more. She has heard men with women, seen their naked bodies, smelled an occasional earthy odor—animal scent, but human nonetheless—that must exist in England, although well hidden. Not like in fleshy Africa, where abomination abounds, or is accepted: where abomination is not even abomination. She knows the men who end up in Calabar: agents, subagents, missionaries, traders, and criminals. She knows that there are women even less appealing than she: older, uglier, fatter, more religious, less humorous, eager. She must not indulge in any immoral behavior—not that she cares at all, she doesn’t even have Christianity to blame for her blamelessness—to avoid attracting negative attention to herself that might limit her freedom. Although the prospect of meeting some handsome trader or sea captain does have an unmistakable attractiveness, however unlikely.

  “Straight to the wine, Mary,” she advises herself in the mirror, “then off to a corner with some dull lady who won’t notice if you’re talking nonsense.”

  That is her intention, but instead of the dull lady, she finds herself seated next to an Irishman of civil nature, formerly of Stanley’s Volunteers, and Sir Claude MacDonald’s trusted employee whom, to use Sir Claude’s wording, he is “devastated to lose to some odd sort of consular appointment in Lourenço Marques.”

  The Irishman is appreciative of this display of admiration, but withholding.

  Sir Claude says, “Roddie, I still don’t know why you’re going.”

  To which the man, who was introduced to Mary as Mr. Casement, replies, “It is government business, the precise nature of which will be determined when I arrive in Portuguese West Africa.”

  Mary raises an eyebrow. Holds his cards close to his chest, this one does. She wonders what Mr. Casement is hiding. His manners, unlike many at Sir Claude’s table, are impeccable. Although she’s not sure where the conversation’s gone: agents, subagents, traders, King Leopold, Niger to the north, Cape Town to the south, and Rhodes all over the place, making some very rich, and others—like Mr. Casement and Sir Claude—uneasy. But she’s lost at this point and hopes no one asks her opinion. After
four glasses of wine, Mary is feeling somewhat foggy. She sits in a cloud of addled self-consciousness wishing to be invisible, or miraculously transported up to her room.

  “You’re very quiet, Mary,” says Lady MacDonald.

  “Tired is all,” she says. “Bit of fresh air would perk me right up.”

  Dinner has, thankfully, ended, and people are drifting out onto the wide verandahs where a stiff, heart-lifting wind comes off the sea. For a moment Mary stands there alone. She has some ideas of how she will spend her time, going where no one else has been, she thinks, up the Ogowé, across Fang lands, down the Rembwe. Of course people, even natives, are telling her that it can’t be done, but failing in the attempt, won’t that be worthy knowledge? She imagines her obituary. “They said it couldn’t be done and they were right!”

  “The intrepid explorer,” says Mr. Casement. He stands a polite distance away and lights a cigarette.

  “Well, I don’t know if I’ve earned the title.” Mary smiles. “I’m lost half the time.”

  “That’s what explorers do,” says Mr. Casement.

  Mary finds herself staring at the cigarette burning seductively in his hand.

  “Is this bothering you?” he says, holding the cigarette up.

  Mary shakes her head vigorously.

  “Or perhaps . . .” He fishes into his pocket for his case. “You want one yourself.”

  “I do,” says Mary, “but I don’t think I should.”

  “Nonsense.” He extends his cigarette case.

  Mary takes the cigarette, holding it gingerly. “Keep an eye out for me,” she says. She takes a light. “I have to keep my nose clean, steer clear of suffragettes and trousers and the like.”

  “Yet you seek the company of cannibals?” says Mr. Casement, amused.

  “Girl’s got to have some fun.” A servant comes by with a tray of drinks and Mary takes one, as does Mr. Casement.

  “Cheers, sir, to us and to Africa.”

  “Cheers!” he says, and they clink glasses and drink.

  Mary regards him obliquely. “Mr. Casement.”

  “Miss Kingsley.”

  “Do you ever wonder how long you’ll live? I mean, how long do you think either of us will survive?”

  “Survive?” Mr. Casement thinks, shrugs. “Who knows? After all, shouldn’t both of us be dead already?”

  Mary is on a boat journeying to the island of Fernando Po with Lady MacDonald and Sir Claude, along with an unfortunate retinue of servants in stiff white linen, who appear at her elbow at odd junctures, startling her with their presence.

  “Lovely man, that Roger Casement,” says Lady MacDonald. “What were you talking about for so long?”

  “Books mostly,” says Mary. She’s lying, but any in-depth talk of native culture, Mary’s so-called fetish, makes Lady MacDonald’s eyes glaze over. “Although I haven’t read anything next to him. He likes modern people.”

  “Who does he read?”

  “He likes Conrad, he says he met him a couple of years back. I think the book has ‘folly’ in the title. Do you know it?”

  “No, can’t say I do.”

  “And he reads a whole lot of poetry, about which I know even less—if one can know less than nothing.”

  “Reserved, isn’t he?” poses Lady MacDonald. “Reserved, and rather handsome, don’t you think?”

  Mary hears a weird voice echo in her head. It says, “Handsome is as handsome does.” She does not know where she’s heard this and suppresses it, keeping the odd sentiment to herself, thinking of it as spoken by her inner spinster, another clever thing—an adage to keep real life at bay—just dying to come out and taint her with its worn and charmless wit.

  Months later, in the throws of a hallucination, she will hear this refrain echoing in her head. Handsome is as handsome does. Only now it is in the voice of the clever fairy, although the fairy is back in England, with all those other voices chorusing in her head—Charley’s, cousin Rose’s, Violet Roy’s, Arthur from downstairs, Günther, even Helen, who has been dead from tuberculosis these last ten years. And all of them are singing it together, their faces rising at the side of the canoe, then floating off, and coming back. Is she on the water? No. Then why is she rocking? She remembers in a shock of clarity that her fever’s back—malaria, no doubt—and that she’s being born upon the shoulders of her men. The jungle roof lies dense above her, the light splintering through: she remembers her near-drowning as a child, the surface receding, her hand reaching up, and so she reaches her hand up again. For one moment it is the hand of a baby, then a woman’s, and the difference between the two causes an ache of nostalgia—and what is she longing for? Perhaps she is a fish, swimming and swimming through the air that is not quite air, more liquid. She remembers her father talking of Venice—of all places—which he’d visited on the way back from somewhere more typical. And he’s speaking to her now, although he’s young—Mary’s age. “. . . as if the air was watery rather than gaseous and the swallows swooping and dipping seemed more minnows of the sky than birds. If I let my thoughts wander, it was possible to imagine the earth turned upside down, the water the air, the air the water, as if the act of diving into a canal would stun me into wakefulness, dispel the dreamy reality of being under the liquid spell of where I stood, feet placed upon a marble bridge. You could hypnotize yourself, Mary, into believing the opposite of what was true, and the shock that it had all been just a construct of your mind was sadness itself.” Then there is Helen kneading the bread, pushing her hair off her forehead, leaving flour on her nose. “You were four at the time, and your Uncle Henry asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up. First he asked your cousin Rose, and she said a lady. And then he asked you. And you know what you said? You said you wanted to be a fish!” Helen laughs and laughs—all that is left of her, as if she’s wasted in stages, from her original plumpness down to the tubercular wraith that Mary visited in the public hospital, and now to this: a sound. And then Lady MacDonald is there, as she was on the terrace of the house in Fernando Po. “Don’t mind me if I don’t join you, although a walk would do me good. Not that fear is something you know, Mary, but the natives here are absolutely harmless, not through some sort of virtue, because there’s little of that to be found on the island. But we Europeans benefit from a sort of disregard. The natives think we’re fish. That’s why we’re pale. That’s why we cover up. Fish, all of us, and queer fish at that.” Mary wants to swim and struggles to reach the water. Suddenly there’s a chorus of native tongue, too natural, almost unnatural. A pair of strong black hands pushes her back into the canoe and she feels her bier being lowered.

  “Take me back to the water,” she says. And then, “L’eau. L’eau.” They give her a flask, not comprehending her wish.

  “Take me!” she says to one black face. Who is he? How does she know that his name is M’bo? “Go! Go!”

  M’bo consults with the others. “This place,” he says, which Mary knows to mean he intends for her to stay. His face gets a distracted look, as if someone is talking about him some distance off and he is trying to eavesdrop. This is politeness from these Igalwa natives. They would like to accommodate, but if that is not the order, they make it seem as though the discourtesy were an absentminded mistake. On the ground, Mary no longer wishes to swim in the water. She has remembered who she is, where she is. She must rest before the journey up the Ogowé continues. The natives all sit down, as if sensing this sudden harmony that now exists among them.

  In the night, her dreams are thick and tainted with reality. She remembers Monsieur Gacon’s warning: “Of course, we can find no Fang men to go with you into Fang territory. These are lower river Fang, and they know better than anyone that the upper river Fang would as soon make dinner of you as call you cousin. I have a couple of Igalwa men who don’t know any better, who know a few words of English, although more French, of course. And do not doubt that it is a great sacrifice, my sending them with you, because I’ll probably never get them ba
ck.”

  As M. Gacon stood by the edge of the river, the sending-off a protracted affair since the current was strong and progress slow, even with all four men struggling against it, she remembered the words of her old friend Captain Murray. “To know the mind of the African? Miss Kingsley, I think such a thing impossible. They are not only a mystery to the European, but to themselves. I have known an African to be laughing of an afternoon, and that evening to have hanged himself. Life means little to them, and the best advice that I can give to you is not to throw in your lot with a bunch of Africans. This too is suicide.” And M. Gacon’s concerned face still visible on the riverbank, as if her crew were rowing not only upriver, but against time itself, causing it to stall. It’s not too late to turn back, you silly woman, she told herself, and then, as if by miracle, they were past the current, and M. Gacon and the dregs of Europe were lost behind the bend as Mary was freed to the wilderness.

  The fever retreats, leaving Mary jittery, shocked at the constant stimulus of life—the ferocity of sensation. There is no reason to turn back. Her intention is to canoe up the Ogowé, traverse through Fang land that has never before been penetrated, and catch the current back down the Rembwe and into Gabon. She has told her supporters and detractors (these more numerous and vocal than the former) that it is all about fish: better fish here, rarer fish, than in other places. Such passionate adherence to the study of fish is almost stranger than having no purpose for her journey. Once this filled her with gloom—to be thought a fool—but now the glorious stupidity of it all has set in. She means to write a memoir, Log of a Light-Hearted Lunatic, about this trip, should she make it back. The very frogs seem to question her fate, pounding “she did, she didn’t, she did, she didn’t” into the night air; above it all the leaves, stirred by wind, whisper “suicide, suicide.” She was assured, farther downriver, that the inhabitants of this Fang village would doubtless eat them all. And again, she has survived, waving some tobacco in front of her as a talisman to ward off evil. Now, she is guarding the stores while her men, who have long outlived their life expectancy in Fang land, get some food, palm oil stew, which she can identify by smell. Tonight she will treat herself to a biscuit and a belt of Madeira to offset the discomfort of having to sleep in her boots. The day’s marching has caused her feet to swell and she knows, from experience, that should she remove her boots now, the effort of returning them to her feet tomorrow will be extreme and painful.