Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  M’bo is walking up to her, smiling. She smiles back. “So how are these Fang? What do they have?”

  “Rubber,” he says. He shrugs. “A little ivory.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Tobacco,” he says. “A little gin.” M’bo has maybe thirty words in English, but in this conversation, oft-repeated, he achieves an almost casual fluency.

  “You know the drill,” says Mary. “We hold back on the gin and push the tobacco.”

  “The gin is heavy, sar,” he says.

  “Yes, but the tobacco gets moldy, and if we have it much longer, I might smoke it all myself.”

  M’bo laughs. “Very good.”

  “I’ll go,” says Mary. “You wait with the things. How’s the food?”

  “Oh, delicious,” he says. “Many flavors, all fine.”

  “I can tell you’re lying,” Mary says. “I can tell, and I don’t care.”

  She’s happy here, among the Fang. She finds them beautiful, their bodies hairless, smooth and muscled. She knows her appearance here is anomalous in the extreme. Once, with Helen, she attended a traveling magic show. At some point there was an explosion onstage—an effect of gunpowder laced over with red dust—and from it stepped a man in a wizard costume, Merlin himself, he claimed. Of course, Mary believed it. For all she knows, it was Merlin. Stranger things have happened, are happening, and she’s taken to entering the various villages by stating, “Here’s Mary,” something her mother would say when she appeared at the bedroom door, and Helen, when she showed up hungry in the kitchen. Here’s Mary! Here I am! Don’t go to any bother on my account. Oh, horribly funny. She likes the Fang villagers’ startled faces, the blind grasping for a spear that won’t, as is soon revealed, be necessary. Here she’s looked at all the time, unlike in London, where she disappears into sofas, wallpaper, wainscoting, drapery, like some sort of spinster chameleon. Here’s Mary, she thinks, here I am, as if she has been waiting for herself in the jungle all these years—waiting to be found, her spirit flitting through the endless twilight of the forest, the pounding rain, here and there through the mangrove swamps where the trees look like so many women lifting their skirts from the water (head cocked to the left) or the arched fingers of a skilled pianist about to run the length of the keys (head cocked to the right), darting back and forth across the water, watching the crocodiles break the surface—their musky smell rising first. Here I am, she thinks. Pleased to make my acquaintance.

  Falling asleep in her hut of bark and dried vines, the tiny embers of the bush lights gleaming like fiery eyes at the perimeter and the whole washed over in a gauzy haze by the chintz curtain of her mosquito bar, anything seems possible, everything impossible, nothing the same at all. The rattling rage of the jungle night sounds loud, louder still; it’s like being trapped in a witch doctor’s drum. Yet she’s peaceful. Mary finds the constant threat of death a comfort, the comfort of life waiting for her in England a torment. Time for the belt of Madeira. Time to break into the stores of tobacco. Take time while it’s still yours.

  V.

  Tell it funny, she reminds herself, although it wasn’t funny at all at the time. The swamp stretched out as far as she could see and the hopelessness that engulfed her—nothing romantic about it—can still produce a chill. She writes, “It stretched away in all directions, a great sheet of filthy water . . .” But the plants were pretty, prettier still for insisting themselves into this great sewer—“out of which sprang gorgeous marsh plants, in islands, great banks of screw pine . . . with their lovely fronds reflected back by the still, mirror-like water.” There’s something for the English public. Never mind that the screw pine looses its spiked tendrils beneath the surface, ready to snare you as you pass. She knows the women will gasp at her “courage,” which they “admire.” Hah, she says, remembering the reaction of one dowager. Not yet in print, the story was extracted from her at a gathering for women of a certain class, where she’d been trotted out, a novelty, for entertainment. And of course they wanted to know what she wore. Was this their one question? One goes to the opera: What did you wear? One goes to the jungle: What did you wear?

  “I see no reason to dress differently in Africa than I would here. Indeed, I was once saved by my dress.”

  “Saved?” asked the chorus of powdery, lavender faces, the rose-water reek wafting over the smell of perspiration smothered in wool.

  “Yes. We had marched up the Ogowé and were crossing uncharted lands before reaching the Rembwe. I was leading my men through the jungle and there was a clearing, and I stepped into it, and all of a sudden the earth gives out beneath me. And I’m stuck in a hunting pit, stretched out over nine ebony spears. The only thing that saved me was my skirt. Had I been dressed like a man, I would not have fared so well. One of my men asked, ‘You kill?’ and I said, ‘Not much.’ And that, as far as I’m concerned, ends the discussion of my attire.”

  Oh, it was a good story and gave rise to much laughter and surprise, but also questions. Who, after all, had fished her out of the pit? Black hands are always rescuing her, dragging her from the water, righting her as she navigates a native two-trunk bridge. Black bodies are always falling against her in canoes, heaving in sleep beside the fire (beside Mary!) when the day’s march has ended. She wonders how they’re faring now, freed from her service, M’bo, and the other Igalwa, and the Fang who joined them, whose names she never learned: Flannel Shirt, Pagan, Silent. As long as they stay in the Congo Française, they should be fine, but the traditional rubber-collecting paths all pass through the Belgian Congo, a place to which she swears she will never return because of the treatment of the natives. Although she was there for two days, she cannot remember the look of Leopoldville, just the smell of blood and refuse coming from a column of workers, chained, who were sitting in the blazing heat when it would have been just as easy to give them shade. There were flies crawling over the lips of one man, who, although alive, did not seem to notice.

  In the Congo Française, her men might be picked off by a leopard or crocodile, flattened by a hippo or elephant. One man says he witnessed his uncle’s brains bashed out by a gorilla that was swinging him by the ankles into a tree. A parasite might swim into some tender orifice and eat its way out. Her natives might be stolen by a neighboring tribe while out gathering rubber, have their rubber taken, and then be eaten in retribution for some cousin who was eaten in retribution for some uncle who was eaten in retribution for someone’s father, all picked off while gathering rubber. Despite all that—minor, traditional dangers—the Congo Française is safety itself compared to what King Leopold of the Belgians has to offer: a little “civilization” just to the south.

  But enough procrastination.

  Mary looks back to the page. How to tell of the swamp and make it funny?

  It’s not one of those times when she thought she might die: those at least get the pulse going and blood hot. The swamp had overwhelmed with enervation. The sheer stillness and gloom infected her, reduced her will, made her forget why she wanted to get across and what had driven her there in the first place. Already exhausted, Mary stood at the edge of the slick surface of the swamp. The vegetal smell was enough to lay low one’s spirits. “Like something out of Dante, this,” she said. And there was, “Yes, sar,” all around. They may not have read the Divine Comedy, but they knew what she was talking about, and they felt it too.

  In went one of her men, just to see how deep it was. There were his head and shoulders—then he vanished. Then he was dragging himself out. Was it possible to cross? The plants themselves seemed to cling to the surface of the water, wandering in the currents. Mary wondered what sort of things lived in the sludge at the bottom, what creatures moved beneath on powerful legs, scenting through the muck for the weak and foolish. Looking at it, the swamp itself offered only Mary back, although an aged version. She almost felt sorry for her companions for having to look at her. There, she thought, a little humor. Maybe she hadn’t given up.

  �
�Does anyone have any ideas?” she said. She poked M’bo a couple of times and gave him an encouraging nod so that he knew to translate.

  M’bo translated. There was a moment of silence, followed by a deluge of native clack-clack, as she thought of it. She understood, “return to village,” and “crocodile,” and, a few times, “other side,” before she realized Flannel Shirt wanted to know “what is on the other side” that was so important that they reach. It was a valid question.

  “What we do?” asked M’bo.

  “I don’t know,” said Mary.

  “What you like, sar?”

  “You really want to know? I want you to lead for a while. I got us into this mess and I’d like for you to get us out of it.”

  Mary sank onto her ankles and rested her elbows on her knees, her fingers intertwined. Perhaps she should have felt grandly despairing, but she didn’t. She knew she was tired, and ill-prepared, and itching in places where it was impolite—and therefore impossible—to scratch. She squatted like that, hoping she looked deep in thought, when in truth she was napping with her eyes open. Perhaps they should all turn into fish and swim across. She imagined this transformation—her legs lost, her pale eyes swiveling at the sides of her rapidly flattening head, the soothing liquid murk—until finally stirred by a minor commotion: Flannel Shirt and Pagan had seen something. She looked in the direction that had so animated them and saw nothing, just the swamp asserting itself into forever, much like the night sky. Then, in the distance, Mary saw some sort of bobbing creature making its way across the surface of the water: a crocodile, maybe, or a snake.

  “M’bo, what is that?”

  “That rubber, sar.”

  Rubber? Sure enough, he was telling the truth. The bobbing creature was a file of rubber workers, their loads balanced on their heads, making their way through the water on some sort of subterranean bridge. All members, men and women, were submerged from the neck down.

  “Blimey,” said Mary. She watched their rhythmic progress, their shared grace. But this was no time for spectating. She set her hand on M’bo’s shoulder. “Go to them. Bring ’em back here. There’s gin in it for them if they get us across.”

  M’bo said something to Flannel Shirt, who ran out along the muddied edge and called out. The column stopped. He called out again, a pleading in his voice that she hoped these people—maybe kinsmen—would not refuse. They listened and the snaking procession began to loop around. Words flew back and forth. The rubber workers stared at her nervously and then with concern. Finally, one of the men smiled at her. Mary stood up. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, each and every one of you.” And then, in Fang, “You and I are friends. You are welcome in my village.”

  The rubber workers were all naked, their clothes carried in bundles on their heads. Her little band started to remove their clothes, everyone except for Mary, that is, who entered the water in her woolen skirts, every undergarment, stay, and stocking another weight to bear. She marched like this for two hours. Once, she faltered—her boots did not grip like feet, did not sense the sliding, subaqueous stuff that the path was made of—and she was under! No sense of what was up and what not, the world suddenly awash and blurred in deep green. Then those hands again, pulling her up, setting her straight.

  M’bo: “You kill?”

  Mary: “Not much.”

  She fell twice more before they made it to the opposite side, which meant the bank of the Rembwe was not far off and was even reachable that evening, but she was so dizzied by loss of blood—the swamp was thick with leeches—that she could not quite appreciate her accomplishment. Out came the stock of trade salt and they shook it liberally on each other. The leeches slowly loosed their hold.

  Mary wonders if this is funny. Is a black man shaking salt upon your skin humorous or scandalous? How can she make the nightmare of that swamp an invigorating, appropriate story?

  She writes: “One and all, we got horribly infested with leeches, having a frill of them round our necks like astrachan collars . . .”

  “What does it say?” ask the fairies. “Please, Mary.”

  “You’re bothering me. I’ll lose my train of thought.”

  “If you tell us,” says the clever one, “we’ll go away.”

  So Mary reads to them about the swamp and the leeches.

  “That’s a horrible story, Mary,” they all say. “Write a better one.”

  “Thanks for your support,” she says. “But I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  As she’s locking the front door behind her, she hears the fairies’ gossip drift from the parlor. “She’s lying, it’s all lies, no one will believe her, and if they do, they’ll know she’s lost her mind.”

  The dinner invitation arrives and Mary is inclined to beg off, to say she’s feeling poorly, or has to be somewhere else, but at the last moment decides she wants to see this Montagu’s house. She has a fascination with Jews and their appreciation of beautiful things. But she feels the pang that comes from lying to herself: it’s not their love of beautiful things, nor their “dreamy minds,” but rather an otherness that reminds her of Africa. Being in a Jew’s house is sort of like being overseas. Also, Jews and Arabs are very much alike, Mary’s read Tancred, and she’s also always had a fascination for anything Arab. Maybe she should just stay at home. She lacks worldliness and people expect it of her. An African jungle that has never known a European, other than herself, is possibly the least worldly place on earth. She is so terrible at drawing rooms, dining rooms, arranging hair, arranging conversation. She still moves like a ten-year-old and this charms and repulses at the same time. She imagines herself on one side of the dining table, her host on the other, their conversation a sort of chess game: Montagu’s is white and cosmopolitan, Mary’s black and exotic. Which piece should enter the board first—a pawn (what it’s like to live off native chop) or a knight (her ascent of Mount Cameroon) or something else all together?

  Or she could just sit through the chitchat in her normal, awkward way. The man who brought her into dinner is Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Nathan, the secretary of the Colonial Defense Committee. He’s handsome, Jewish, like her host, and has an easy gaze. He makes her nervous, as does her dress, some low-cut muslin thing deemed appropriate, although she can’t understand why: she feels half-naked, cold, and ridiculous wearing gloves inside, when fabric would make more sense elsewhere.

  She’s been silent through the soup (cream of asparagus) and fish (salmon asphyxiated in hollandaise), but at some point during the game (Pheasant Mandarin), she seems to have found her voice. She’s telling a story—although from the high pitch and strain of her speech it feels like lecturing—about the ascent of Mount Cameroon, spectacularly impressive on the page and fresh in her mind for having just committed it there. Mary’s climbed the slope in skirt and boots, lost her men, found them, been soaked to the bone, run into a singing witch doctor, slept exposed to the elements, although poorly, et cetera, et cetera, wild animal, weird native, perseverance, humor, a few unexpected turns, some minor injuries, and now finds herself in the Montagus’ dining room.

  “What was the biggest challenge for you?” asks Lieutenant Colonel Nathan. He bends his head toward her, ostensibly the better to hear, but also to accommodate the removal of the game plate and the introduction of the meat: it looks like veal with mushrooms.

  “One of two things,” says Mary. She looks at the remaining forks and grabs one that looks like it will do the job. “First, Mount Cameroon was completely bathed in mist so deep you couldn’t see a thing, and I had to keep reminding myself that I was on top of a mountain, because, truly, I could have been in this dining room for all I could see—nothing—so a challenging factor was the lack of visibility.” Which had demoralized her so. Was this what she had risked her life for—the life of her men? To stand bathed in this cold mist so thick that one’s hand disappeared into it. The mist had swallowed everything—the air, her companions, whatever view the mountain might have offered, her sense of purpos
e and accomplishment, the last of her money.

  “And the second challenge?” asks the Lieutenant Colonel.

  “Oh,” Mary smiles. “I had this jumper of the variety worn by sailors and while trying to pull it over my head I nearly pitched off the side of the mountain. I felt challenged! But I did win that one.”

  And everyone laughs, but Mary has not been invited to this dinner merely to add a female or some color. Lieutenant Colonel Nathan’s questions are coming quickly now, as are the dessert courses. Once manageable, Sierra Leone has become a hotbed of rebellion and unrest. This situation is due to the hut tax, and now her views on the hut tax are to be displayed, awkwardly, like her chest. She’s stuffed to the gills and feels the mousse au chocolat somewhere in her throat, the veal asserting itself against her stays. She has heard the rumors that Sir Frederick Cardew, governor of Sierra Leone, could well be recalled. And now she sees that Lieutenant Colonel Nathan could well be his successor.

  “The tax is not an unreasonable amount,” says Lieutenant Colonel Nathan. “I’ve seen the native persevere through far more difficult circumstances—”

  “By persevere you mean put up with, knuckle under. But you haven’t learned any native law. These people don’t understand the concept of tax. To them it means that their hut has been stolen from them: their hut, their land, their inheritance, their ability to gain a wife, and wives for their sons. This tax means they have lost it all, and that you are not a governing force but an invader, a pillager, cause for resistance at whatever cost.”