“What’s wrong?” I asked the driver. “Your wife.”
I looked back. Ellen was waving. I got out.
“I want to hear your voice,” she said. “Say something.”
“I love you, Ellen.”
Ellen and I took our first trip together when we were sixteen. Years later, people couldn’t believe that we had met so long ago and had never been apart. Our first trip was a two-week school excursion to Trois-Pistoles, Quebec, in the spring of 1973. We were ostensibly there to learn French, but our real motivation was to get out on our own. People asked whether Ellen and I were going together. We weren’t. We just liked being together. We liked other people, too, but we enjoyed them most when we were together.
We were the same height, at the age of sixteen. “It’s nice for talking,” Ellen said. “You don’t have to look up or down.”
“Nice for other things, too,” I said.
“Like what?” “You know.” “Tell me.”
“Walking,” I said. Ellen leaned into my arm. She had a laugh that rang out like a bell.
One Friday in Trois-Pistoles, Ellen and I hitched a ride to Bic, a village on the St. Lawrence River just upstream from Rimouski. We tried to check into a hotel, but they turned us away for not being married. A bed-and-breakfast house took us, however. Our window, on the second floor, looked out over the wide river. It was cool outside, perhaps fifty-five degrees, and white caps slid on the river. Our room had an antique dresser, a rocking chair, and a miniature Jesus on a cross bleeding over the bed. Ellen lifted the crucifix off the hook and put it in the closet.
“There’s just one bed,” I said. “Are you sleeping in the bathtub?”
“I’m going to read a book,” she said, tumbling back on the mattress. “Why don’t you go for a walk?”
“What for?”
“To buy condoms.”
“But I don’t even know how to —”
“I’ll teach you,” she said. “I’ll be gentle and understanding. But I expect you to catch on quick.”
“I was trying to say that I don’t know how to say condom in French.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just tell the pharmacist what you want. Describe them. You know, something like un produit en caoutchouc, qui s’étire selon le besoin.”
“Is this the gentle teaching style you promised?” I said. Ellen burst out laughing. She leaned forward and kissed me.
“Do you remember the time we danced together?” she said.
“It was at Christmas.”
“I’ve been wanting you since then.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why didn’t you say you wanted to go out with me?”
“I don’t want to go out with you. I want to sleep with you.” “If we’re only sleeping, why bother with condoms?” “One of us might wake up with an irresistible urge.” “True enough. I always get up to pee at night.” “Why are you being so smart-assed?” Ellen said. “I’ve never done this before.” “I’m not exactly an old hand.”
“An old hen? I should say not. I think you’re beautiful.”
Ellen kissed me again. We sat on the bed. I molded my lips to hers. She took my kiss, and matched it, and we got hot, and then she stopped me.
“Close your eyes.” I obeyed. “Now stand up.” I did. “Point to where you think my left breast would be.” I pointed. “Point to my right breast.” I pointed. “Point to my navel.” I pointed, lower. “Point to my vagina.” I swallowed. A tremor went up my thigh. I pointed, as she instructed, and my finger slid into a warm, wet cavity. I opened my eyes. Ellen had slipped down on her knees and opened her mouth. I shook with desire. I got hard in an instant.
“Go get those condoms,” she said. “I don’t want a baby.”
“Never?”
“Not until I’m thirty.”
“I can’t imagine being that old.”
“Go get the condoms. And hurry back.”
In the village of Bupti, not long before the message came that my brother had been phoning the Canadian embassy, I had heard Dionne Warwick’s “I Say a Little Prayer for You” on a transistor radio at one in the morning. I got up off the straw mattress and stood at the door of my mud hut to catch the last strains of the song. I saw the back of a man disappearing in the night, and I saw six mules, long-faced, silver in the moonlight, looking at me with wide eyes and pointed ears.
The message came the next day by way of a girl who had walked ten miles from the nearest village with a basket of fruit on her head. She appeared as the village men and I were crouched around a bowl of food, tearing meat from a bird that had been bled and plucked and cleaned and cooked in a tomato and peanut sauce that lit a pleasant burn in the throat. It was a burn I had grown accustomed to, a burn that I could manage, a burn that said, You’re among these people and becoming part of them. As I watched the girl lift the fruit basket off her head, I bit unsuspectingly into a hot pepper that flared like a match in my mouth. Suddenly, I heard the girl say toubab, the word for white man, which was the way Malians described me, although they knew I wasn’t really white, or not entirely so. Then I heard her say toubab ke ka so, wife of the white man.
The village men, who had been grunting and laughing and urging me to eat, ceased talking in an instant. They dropped their hands and stared at the young girl. I stared, too. Her eyes were as dark as her skin, her knees looked like knots on twigs, her fingers were callused well beyond her thirteen years, and her feet were lined and wrinkled and dusty. The men burst into a cacophony of questions. I understood that the girl had just walked the ten miles from Kinto. Youssouf, the village elder, asked her something. She answered with her eyes lowered. Again I heard toubab ke ka so. Everyone looked at me.
“She brings a message,” Youssouf said. “She says you must talk to your brother. About your wife.” The girl spoke again. Five men, all crouched with their behinds just off the earth and their elbows near their knees, again shouted questions at her.
Youssouf silenced them. “She says the message came by telephone to Bamako, and then someone called Sikasso, and then someone called the prefect in Segain, who sent a message to the chief of Kinto.”
“What was the message, exactly?”
Youssouf asked the question for me. The men groaned at the answer. They looked at me with long faces. No man touched his food.
“She says she doesn’t know.” “Where is the nearest phone?” I asked. “In the prefect’s office.” “How far is that?”
“A long walk. You must go to this girl’s village. From there you must take a car to the next village.”
“How long does the whole trip take?” I knew it was a stupid question. Youssouf and his people didn’t use watches. They used the sun, and the moon, and battery-powered flashlights. They used their arms to hoe and mules to take goods to market. They slept on straw mats in huts that stayed cool even in the heat of the day.
Youssouf said someone would take me there tomorrow.
“What about tonight?”
It would be dark soon, Youssouf said. I knew that. I knew it wasn’t safe to walk the trails at night. I knew about the potholes, and the scorpions, and that no phone would be available in the middle of the night.
I thanked the girl for coming, which shocked her, because she thought I spoke no Bambara at all. Then I told her Alla ka e deme, which was a blessing from Allah. The girl mumbled Amina, in thanks. She lowered her basket, hoping to sell the fruit, but Youssouf sent her out.
Georges pushed his share of meat my way. “Eat. You must walk a long way tomorrow.”
But I could not eat. I had gone off on this trip while my wife was pregnant. To make matters much, much worse, just a few nights ago, I had taken a village woman into my bed.
Light drained from the western skies. Branches of the baobab trees, which had been black against the setting sun, began to lose their details, their shape. A breeze rose as the heat slid out of the air. I went to see Djeneba, Youssouf’s third wife, who was scraping the pot in wh
ich our chicken had been cooked. She used sand and water and the palm of her hand. She rubbed hard, splashed the pot with water, checked for scum, and rubbed again. She worked in a windowless hut that had a cauldron of water over three burning sticks, a vat of cold well water, and other pots on the earth by her feet. The hut brimmed with smoke.
In i su, I said, good evening.
In i su o koro ke toubabuke, she said, good evening, white brother.
Djeneba was seated on the ground, rubbing the pot with the heel of her palm. The soles of her feet were painted the color of dried blood.
“Your brother has sent for you,” she said.
“I will talk to him tomorrow.”
“May Allah bless you,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“Bless your parents, your brothers, your children,” she said. “I have no children.” “But your wife …”
“Yes,” I said, sticking out my belly, rubbing it.
She laughed hard, shaking her whole shoulders, slapping the chicken pot. She had heard me say that my wife was pregnant, and she had joked with me about it, although she would never admit to such a thing about herself. It was considered bad luck to discuss pregnancy. A woman could go up to her eighth month denying that she was carrying another life.
“Bless your wife a thousand times.”
“Thank you. Djeneba, I need hot water to wash.”
“I know, toubabuke. The water is waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Djeneba.”
“Men don’t thank their women here.” She said it again, to be sure I understood. “We feed them, and we wash their clothes, and we do the work, but men don’t thank us.”
“I will be leaving tomorrow.”
“We will all remember you,” she said.
“Good-bye, Djeneba,” I said.
“Don’t say good-bye until tomorrow. But tell me, are all Canadians like you?”
I asked what she meant.
“Would they all leave their rich country to come live with us?” “How do you know my country is rich?” I asked. She took hold of my wrist, turned it over, released it. “Your bones are thick.”
The bucket of hot water was waiting outside the bathing cubicle. I carried it into the walled enclosure, draping a towel outside the hardened mud to signal that the bath was occupied. I removed my clothing, except for my sandals, and squatted on a small mound, from which water would run. Overhead, birds flitted from branch to branch. Water, hot water, gave off steam from the pail. Using a ladle made from a calabash that had been split, gutted, and dried, I splashed warm water onto my face, neck, arms, and body, soaked my soap bar and washcloth, and scrubbed my face and neck. A breeze stirred in the trees, brushed across my face. I rinsed the soap away with more hot water. I washed my arms and legs and genitals and butt and used the remaining water to rinse myself.
I looked over the mud wall. In the compound, children ran after a mule, which they had harassed into a trot. Chickens picked over the bones of their brethren. One of Youssouf’s daughters swept the ground where we had eaten earlier, pushing bird bones and mango skins into a pile. Djeneba passed by with a pail of water on her head. Her feet made no sound. She seemed weightless. She held herself erect, chin high, back arched. Her biceps shone in the moonlight. Her breasts knocked about gently as she glided toward the kitchen. Ellen was in trouble. I was in Mali. And I had been unfaithful to her.
I stayed up late drinking tea with Youssouf. He was an old man, seventy-three, he believed, but he watched the world with a child’s curiosity. His legs could still go ten miles under the sun, and his hands, long-fingered and knuckle-swollen, were steadier than mine. Earlier in the day, I had watched Youssouf scrape his hunting knife across an iron block, scrape one side and then the other, until he could slice hemp so fast that the split ends jumped back. I watched as he tugged a stiff-legged goat to the killing ground. He rolled it on its side, bound its front legs with one rope and its hind legs with another. The animal quivered. Youssouf spoke to the animal, placing his hand on its neck. The goat settled down. Youssouf drew the knife hard from the goat’s ear to its windpipe and kept the goat still as its blood ran out fast. As Youssouf poured my fourth tea, I said he seemed to have known the animal. “What animal?” “The goat.”
“Knew the animal?” he repeated, laughing, and slapped his thigh. “We don’t know animals here in this country. We eat them, and we like them in our bellies, especially with tomatoes and gumbo.” Youssouf drank his last tea, the fourth being the sweetest, sighed, stood up, kicked away a mango peel, and wished me good night.
I walked to the hut I had occupied for two months, a square hut of mud walls with one door, no windows, a corrugated tin roof, and an earthen floor.
Georges, my roommate, sat on his bed of dried bamboo shoots, back to the wall, shining a flashlight on a sore on his leg. He slid a Sony Walkman and earphones toward my bed.
“Should I look at the cut?” I asked.
“Yes, I was hoping you would.”
Pus ran from the sore, so I gave him antibiotic cream.
“So, you bastard,” I said, so he wouldn’t feel he had to commiserate with me, “I see you were running down my Walkman batteries all night.”
Georges broke into baritone laughter that verged on the diabolical. “Salaud,” he cried out, “you have developed the African eye. You see too much now.”
He listened to the Walkman at all hours and had been seen carrying it into the toilet. He also had a habit of falling asleep with the thing wrapped around his ears. For now, however, Georges relinquished the Walkman. He took my hand, and told me that we were like brothers, and said that he was traveling to the capital city with me the next day. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. It meant, I knew, double the cost for bush taxis, and food, and hotels, and whatever else might come after my phone call to Canada. Georges had no money, but he knew that I had enough to take him with me.
“You need a translator. You need a friend.”
He had me there.
Georges worked for the national Ministry of Youth and Culture. When Malian government officials had finally agreed — after several refusals — to let me move into a remote village for two months, they sent Georges to serve as my translator and guide, and also, I suspect, to ensure that my behavior did not warrant deportation.
Spying on me would have been an easy task, but Georges spent much of his days drinking tea with the elders, listening to Radio Moscow on his shortwave transistor, and stalking an eighteen-year-old girl who had been taken as the fourth wife of a man three times older. The only time I could be sure to see Georges was at mealtime — particularly when they were killing an animal in my honor. Georges never missed a feast, and he ate everything he could.
“North Americans like to feel guilty,” Georges would say as he sank his teeth into meat. “It makes them feel good. But guilt changes nothing. Food — that changes something. I say, when there’s food around, eat it! You never know when you’ll see it again.”
Georges had traveled around the world. Japan. Europe. Canada. Elsewhere in West Africa. He had been sent by his government on learning missions paid for by host countries. He had been to Quebec and had eaten tarte au sucre and maple syrup. He wore a kimono at night and had brought an extra and was honored when I consented to wear it. He had a pack of cards featuring naked dancers from Le Moulin Rouge. But he had no money. His government frequently ran out of money and had to suspend salaries to civil servants. Georges had been without pay for two months when we met. “What can you do if your employer has no money? Les salauds — they will pay me after they steal from somebody else.” He shot off a cannon of laughter that seemed to echo from a cave.
Georges was snoring minutes later. He could sleep anywhere. Once, I had heard him snore in the back of a Peugeot.
I listened to Georges snore for a while. Then I looked out the door and saw two mules staring in at me. They made no move to enter the hut. They remained motionless for so long that I wo
ndered whether I was imagining them. But I wasn’t. I got out of bed and took one step, and they turned and ambled away.
We left before sunrise to avoid the heat. Georges strapped my belongings to a mule, but he urged me to walk. “Why sit on an animal that travels as slowly as you? You’ll end up hating it.”
It took us four hours to walk to the next village, and another five to find a car and arrange to be driven to a town with a phone. As soon as we got there, I called the operator. Within minutes, my brother was telling me about Ellen.
Sean didn’t swear. Didn’t say that I had been stupid and blind to run off to Africa while my wife was pregnant. He just said that Ellen, twenty weeks pregnant, had contracted food poisoning and lost her baby. It was a boy, Sean said.
I felt a mix of Novocain and adrenaline flood my veins. When, I whispered, when did she lose the baby? I knew the answer. The answer was predetermined. She lost the baby on Saturday afternoon, Sean said. He kept talking. I lost him for a moment. Saturday was the night that woman had come into my bed. We’d had a long hour of loving, that woman and I. I tried to tell myself that it was a one-nighter, unimportant to my relationship with Ellen. Langston. Langston. Are you still there? My brother was shouting into the phone. I told him I was there. He said Ellen was delirious and running a fever and wanted me to come home. I thought about the flight, every Wednesday, from Bamako to Paris. This was a Monday. It would take twenty-four hours to get to Bamako, and it could take days of haggling to get a seat. I told my brother I’d be there in a few days, if I was lucky. Lucky. What a funny word. My brother sighed. Langston, oh Langston, do what you can.
Georges stayed with me until the last minute, pushing through crowds for me. He had used my wad of francs to pay off the airport commissar, an airline ticket agent, the ticket agent’s manager, and a baggage handler to get me on the flight. When it came time to leave, Georges pressed a cassette into my hands and said listening to it would make me feel better.
The flight was supposed to leave Bamako at nine p.m., but we didn’t take off until midnight. I had a window seat. We finally taxied down the runway and pulled up into the air with the motors crescendoing, god-like, as if nothing could stop them from pulling human beings through the heavens. I peered down to think about Georges escorting me to the capital in a seven-hour bush taxi trip from the south of the country. I tried to see the Niger River, but I could see only headlights of cars crossing the long bridge into Bamako, and a fire burning in the city. A woman sat next to me in the airplane, but she averted her eyes. The interior lights dimmed. All around me I saw a morgue of bodies, travelers twisted and cramped, heads knocking and feet splayed in aisles. Everyone slept but the woman beside me, who remained immobile.