“We could go to Kumasi,” Francesca said. “There’s a hotel where no one ever stays. It’s very green in Kumasi and a bit cooler. But what about those Africans you wanted to meet?”
“Where are they?”
“One lives in the next block of flats,” Francesca said. “He works for the government. He might have some stories for you. His name is Kofi. Everyone is named Kofi or Kwame. We can see him before we go.”
I was so eager to leave I immediately packed my bag, and began hurrying Francesca. But this made her dawdle all the more. At last she said there wasn’t time to see Kofi, and he was so boring what was the point?
“I have to see him,” I said.
He was a man in his late twenties, with the sort of protruding teeth that gave him an amiable expression. He laughed each time he spoke, and everything he said was a compliment. “You are so young. You are so handsome. When Francesca told me you were a professor I imagined an old man. But not a smartly dressed young lad—”
Was this what Francesca meant by boring? I found it worse than that. I wanted to tell him to shut up. I said, “What ministry are you with?”
“Ministry of Works.” He smiled. “It is all bribery and corruption. That is the African way. It is hopeless.”
“The roads are in rough shape in Accra.”
He laughed very hard in a mirthless way.
“In Accra they are good! You should see the rest of the country!” His laugh went ark-ark-ark like Francesca’s fan. “The minister steals money and gives it to his wives. He has four wives. He has a house in London. He is a devil.” He laughed again.
“You don’t sound angry.”
“Why be angry? Life is short. We say ‘Be happy—don’t worry.’ You are in Africa, my young friend. Have a drink. It is New Year’s Eve.”
He took a bottle of beer from a crate on the floor and opened it. He splashed some beer on the threshold. “That is a libation,” he said. “For the gods.”
“Which gods?”
“All of them.”
He filled three glasses.
All this time Francesca was sighing—a sort of audible boredom. We drank a little and Kofi emptied the last of the bottle of beer into my glass. It was very bad for the host to drink the last of the beer, he said.
“I thought they were out of beer in Accra. How did you get it?”
“Bribery and corruption,” he said. Ark-ark. “I will get you some crates. As many as you want. Leave it to me, my friend.”
There was a murmur in the next room. Kofi yapped in his own language, a sort of crow-squawk, and a woman appeared. She was about fifteen years old, and wrapped in a pink cloth; she was pregnant and perspiring.
“This is my lady wife, Mr. Endro,” Kofi said. “She doesn’t speak English. Just a simple village girl.”
She was barefoot, and breathless from the heat. She dabbed her face.
“When is the baby due?”
“One month or so,” Kofi said. “It will be our first child. You can be godparents. Or uncle and auntie.”
Francesca sighed again, but Kofi did not seem to mind. He was flattering, obtuse, full of promises and compliments. He never sat down. He walked up and down, laughing in his croaky way, urging us to drink more. He was much cheerier than the rather solemn-looking Ugandans I was used to. But he was repetitious, and I wondered whether he were drunk. He was scathing about the Ghana government. “They are like vultures,” he said. “There will be another coup, oh sure,” and he told me—laughing the whole time—how Nkrumah had misgoverned the country.
“I’d like to meet someone in the government,” I said.
“Sure. The minister? The perm sec? The deputy minister? I can arrange it for you. Have another cup of beer, please.”
Everything seemed so easy. An hour with a politician or civil servant was just what I needed. I could see someone at the American Embassy (“A western diplomatic source told me”), and talk to people at the market in Accra, or other friends of Francesca’s; and I would have my article about Ghana, which would be my air fare for this month of travel.
“Any of them,” I said. “All of them. I just want to ask a few questions. Listen, are you sure you can fix it up?”
“Leave it to me. I can fix it up.” He seemed to be trying out my words, making them his own. “When you come back from Kumasi give me a tinkle and I will fix it up.”
He uttered two crow-squawks at his wife, who stopped dabbing at her perspiring face and tramped heavily out of the room. She returned with two bottles of beer.
“I’ve had enough,” I said, and snatched my glass off the table.
“This is a present,” he said. “You take them with you. Happy New Year. African custom.”
“We don’t want it,” Francesca said, bluntly, snapping her jaws at him.
“But the young man wants the beer,” Kofi said, winking at me.
Francesca was annoyed, and it showed. But Kofi seemed not to notice, or perhaps he didn’t care.
“You are welcome here,” Kofi said. “We respect teachers in Ghana. They are like gods to us. We are thirsty for education.”
On the road to Kumasi, I said, “You weren’t very polite to him.”
“Kofi? He is like an Italian,” Francesca said. “He thinks only of himself.”
“If he gets me an interview with the minister I’ll forgive him for anything.”
After a long silence Francesca said, “Sometimes you say such stupid things.”
I was driving the Fiat now. The little car strained on the rising roads—but the road was better than I had expected. Contrary to what Kofi had said, as soon as we left Accra the road had improved. We entered a higher and more wooded region. But the foliage was messy and cluttered, a disorderly forest of broken and hanging trees and dense bamboo. The birds were frenzied, and every hundred yards or so there was a dead dog in the road, some of them plump and bleeding, but most of them old and as stiff as mats. The roadside huts matched the trees and had similarly shaggy roofs. What houses I could see—the more solid buildings—were stained and cracked.
I compared what I saw here with what I knew in Uganda and Malawi. My Africans seemed more sensible and quieter, and the woods and forests more orderly, the roads in better repair. I could put that in the article.
I was so intent on thinking of the article and driving the car that I did not speak for a long time, and then I started talking, and as I did—asking questions and answering them myself—I realized that Francesca had not said a word for half an hour. Her face was averted.
“Are you sulking?”
“No,” she said. “But I wish I hadn’t taken you to see Kofi.”
“Why? Because he ignored you?”
“He didn’t ignore me,” she said quickly. “But did you see how he treated his wife?” She mimicked someone spitting. “They’re all like that.”
I drove on. Ramshackle forest. Goats. Men on bikes. Mammy wagons.
She said, “I didn’t realize until I saw you two together how much I disliked him.”
“And how much you like me?” I said, intending to tease her.
“I do like you, Andre. You know that. Sometimes I think the feeling is stronger than liking you.” She frowned and turned away.
I put my hand on her knee. “You know I love you.”
“Don’t joke about it,” she said. “It’s bad for me to like you so much.” She faced me and said crossly, “I want more than this!”
“So do I.” I meant it, and I said it with such force that she turned to me again and touched my face tenderly and let me kiss her hand. She snuggled closer and let my fingers drift between her thighs.
“This is the bush.”
“I like the bush,” I said.
The shaggy roadside woods were a preparation for shaggy Kumasi. It was a green town with sloping streets and small shops and municipal buildings plastered with red dust. Its trees were shapeless, like gigantic weeds on long stalks, though there were prettier ones, like tall fe
athers. We arrived as it was growing dark, and found the Royal Hotel where we registered as man and wife. There was no beer available at the hotel, so we drank the bottles that Kofi had given us.
The hotel smelled of dampness and dead insects. The wood squares of the parquet floors had worked loose. We ate mutton and boiled vegetables in the empty dining room.
The waiter said in a reproachful way, “It is New Year’s Eve. The people are all at the parties in the bars and nightclubs.”
We heard the shouts and the music from down the street.
“What shall we do?”
Francesca said, “Come upstairs and I’ll show you.”
I had never known her so amorous. We did not leave the bedroom until after midnight. Drunken men were staggering and singing in the street. We went back to the room and made love again, and then slept until noon.
That day we drove to the palace. I said, “It doesn’t look like a palace.” We went to the museum. It was shut. So was the market. Without people, the streets and shops looked dirty and ugly.
In bed that night Francesca said, “I thought Africa would be darker. More dangerous and mysterious. Sometimes I want to leave–just go away before I start to hate them.”
She held me tightly. I wondered what it would be like to travel with her. When she was amorous she was like a child. I liked that—having a lover, a daughter, a wife: one woman. And I liked the thought that she was strong, that I could depend on her.
“Happy New Year,” I said. That I was with her on this day—surely that was significant? “We’ll have to get used to saying nineteen sixty-eight.”
Francesca hugged me and said, “I’m happy, Andre.”
It was just dawn the next morning when I sat up, thinking I wanted to take a piss. I felt a familiar itch—a thread of irritation—inside my penis. I squeezed it, holding it like a toothpaste tube, and a gob of thick yellowish fluid collected on its tip. I rolled over and cursed.
Francesca threw her arm around me.
“Don’t,” I said, and shrugged. “I have some kind of infection.”
We found a Ghanaian doctor in Kumasi. He sat me down and put on plastic gloves and examined me. He asked me some simple questions.
“It is gonorrhea,” he said. “Don’t worry”—-he was writing a prescription—“this will clear it up. Are you married?”
“No,” I said.
Francesca had waited in the car. I got in and said, “He says I’ve got VD.”
She crossed her legs, but said nothing.
“I know where I got it,” I said, trying to control my voice. “What I want to know is where did you get it?”
She began to cry. And then I knew, and I saw him clearly, his buck teeth, his bulging eyes. I remembered all his promises, and how she had said nothing.
I put the car into gear—it was such a little car. We tottered towards the coast.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” I said.
4.
“You must drink,” the African man next to me said. We were on the flight from Accra to Lagos. Bottles of beer were being handed out to the passengers. “You must have one or two.”
The doctor in Kumasi had told me not to—alcohol reduced the effectiveness of the penicillin.
“I can’t,” I said. I still itched.
“Can’t drink?” He grinned at me in contempt, showing all his front teeth.
“I’m an alcoholic,” I said. “If I have one drink I’ll want to have another. And then I’ll get drunk and totally screwed up.”
“Yes! Yes!” he said eagerly, laughing hard, and pushing a bottle at me. “Go on!”
“And then I’ll vomit,” I said.
He was wearing a new suit. His hand went to his lapels, which he smoothed, as he laughed again, but in a discouraged way. “I understand,” he said.
He was an economist. Feeling I had nothing to write about Ghana, I pressed him for his views on Nigeria—he was a lecturer at the University of Ibadan. He was very precise in his figures, and mocking in his manner. When he told me how Nigeria financed its industrial projects he spoke in a voice that was both gloating and complaining.
“You want to know the terms of reference of this little exercise?” he said. He drank and wiped his mouth. “The company pays over the odds in order to establish itself. The minister concerned takes a twenty-percent cut—and he sends this money to London or New York. The company has an exclusive license, so it pushes its prices up. When the minister sees the profits he demands his share. That’s how it goes on. The companies and the politicians are conspiring against the people.” He smiled at this. “Neocolonialism is not just an empty term. It has an actual meaning. No matter how much money this country makes it will always be poor. Nothing will change. In financial terms we were better off under the British.”
“But in political terms Nigeria is freer, isn’t it?”
He laughed at this. “We have had two military coups!”
“I thought Nigeria was more unified now.”
“There is going to be a war here,” he said, dropping his voice. “In the east—Ibo land. Don’t go there. It’s not political, and it’s not about money. The Ibos are fighting for the most important thing—their lives.”
“How do you know this?”
“I am an Ibo,” he said. “And what do you do?”
“I’m a teacher,” I said. “In Uganda.”
“Are you on holiday?”
It was always foolish to mention writing or journalism in Africa, so I said, “Sort of. I’m also seeing a friend.”
“I thought all the foreigners left after the last coup.”
“My friend is a Nigerian,” I said.
“God help you!” he said, and he laughed so loudly that several people turned to stare at him.
And then the plane was descending, streaking past mud huts and junked cars and the scrappy rooftops of small shacks.
The economist hurried out of the plane. I thought: He’s not real. The next day, talking to other Nigerians—editors, a reporter, a publisher’s representative—and a U.S. Embassy official, I had the same thought, that they were not real either. They were acting. Their actual lives were hidden from me, but for my benefit they had cast themselves in the colorful role of writers or businessmen or teachers or tribesmen. In each public person was a smaller stranger person who bore no resemblance at all to the one I saw, and I was always on the point of demanding Who are you? or Who do you think you are? when I remembered, with a little shock, who I was.
I had not seen Femi for a year. I had never thought I would see her again. I did not want to startle her and so, instead of calling her, I called her brother George. This was after I saw the editors and officials, for the sake of my article.
George appeared at my hotel. He was so black and smooth he seemed to be wearing a second skin: he was like someone else within that slippery skin—but who?
“Come, we will have a drink!” He was hearty, expansive, energetic. He would not look me in the eye. We went to a noisy club five streets away. That was the strangeness of Lagos. From a fine, expensive hotel it was a short walk to a dangerous slum. There were prostitutes in the club—tall skinny girls in tight skirts, wearing orange and blonde wigs.
George shouted for two beers, and when they were brought and we touched glasses his eyes met mine and he lost his smile. “I am very sorry for what happened,” he said.
I could see this was going to be an impossible conversation. His mood was somber and apologetic, but the place was noisy—brass band, people dancing and flailing their arms, old women shrieking. I had to ask him to repeat that sentence, and the second time, shouting it so that I would hear it, he sounded insincere. But I knew he was not.
“The family is very ashamed!” he yelled.
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“We found the boy! We beat him! We took some money!”
“I can’t hear you,” I said, shaking my head. But I could, and I di
dn’t want to.
“Why are you not drinking your beer?”
“I’m sick!” The symptoms were gone but I was still taking the penicillin.
George smiled: he didn’t understand. He went on shouting.
I pretended I couldn’t hear him through the music and the noise, and at last he gave up.
Eventually he said, “Femi wants to see you.”
It was what I wanted to hear. I stood up, and George followed me outside.
As soon as we had left the noise of the club and were in the street, George changed. The apologies were over. He laughed at the heavy traffic and the horns. He told me he was planning to study engineering in Kaduna. He talked about his own life. And he seemed relieved to be talking about something other than Femi—that talk was lost and forgotten in the twanging music and the shadows of the club. He was no longer hearty. He looked depleted; he was quiet. After all that effort he had nothing more to say.
George had given me Femi’s address without telling me where it was. The taxi driver snorted when I told him, and he drove for an hour, never leaving the same ruined road. It was midday, and we went slowly in a line of contending cars, past low buildings and daubed signs. Did it look familiar to me because the whole of Lagos looked chaotically the same? It was an ugly place. Its noise and heat seemed like other aspects of the same disorder. That—the ruin—was real. Everything else was unreal. It was not a city, the money was worthless, the food was bad, the air stank, the poorest people were extravagantly dressed in bandannas and bright robes, with turbans and sashes and crisply folded togas.
It was the way Femi was clothed. Her turban matched her gownlike dress, the purple and white cloth shot through with gold thread; and there was something Egyptian in her bearing, the way she held herself, all that cloth wrapped neatly on her head, and even in her features, slanted and slightly hooded eyes and full lips and rising cheekbones—pharaonic. She was like a black cat wrapped in gold cloth.
That was how she looked when she shoved aside the rag that hung in place of a door. A chicken ran out from behind her, its head down, clucking madly.