Some Great Thing

  “You know, good sir,” said Boubacar Fotso, “that you bear the name of a great man.”

  “Ah yes, the name but not the fame,” Mahatma said, provoking a round of laughter.

  “But how did you get that name? Why was it given to you? There must have been a reason. I have met many North Americans, but never anybody with the name ‘Mahatma.’”

  “It means ‘Great Soul’ in Hindi,” Mahatma said.

  “A difficult name to live up to.”

  “It must have been an error. It would have been easier to go with ‘Great Appetite.’”

  The Cameroonians laughed.

  “You have an odd pigmentation,” the mayor of Bafoussam declared. “Your father, is he a black man?”

  “Yes.”

  “So your mother, she is a white woman?”

  “My mother passed away when I was a child. But she was black too.”

  “Impossible!” declared the mayor of Bafoussam.

  “Why?” John Novak asked. “She was black and his father is black, but lighter toned than you.”

  “You know his family?” asked His Excellency of Yaoundé, pouring Beaujolais into his guests’ glasses.

  “Yes. I know his father well.”

  The Yaoundé mayor asked, “Is Mahatma’s father a journalist too?”

  “No. He worked on the railroad. He had a labourer’s job. He and his fellow workers were all black. It was practically the only work they could get. This was in the late 1930s and ’40s. They had horrible working conditions. One of their colleagues, a fine man commonly called the Rabbi, died needlessly in a fire. The railroad tried to cover it up. Mahatma’s father risked his job by coming to me. I was a young lawyer, anxious to make my reputation. We raised an awful stink.”

  “But,” the mayor of Bafoussam exclaimed excitedly, “you must tell us more about this! A black Rabbi on the railroad!”

  Mahatma told that story.

  The Cameroonians countered with a few of their own. They told of the misfortunes of foreigners who had cut down sacred baobab trees. And they told of the newly arrived Canadian foreign aid worker who, just last week, had to bribe four people to get a visa problem straightened out. By the time the aid worker got around to his fourth bribe, he had no pocket money left. The man with the visa stamp actually sent the aid worker off to the bank. And the Canadian actually said “thank you” after he came back, made his payment and got his problem fixed.

  After the talk and the many courses, came the dancing. It had a great deal to do with the pelvis and very little to do with conversation.

  Bob and Susan met Mahatma and Sandra beside the dance floor.

  “I feel like such an idiot, not speaking French!” Susan said. “All these officials speak English, French and two or three other languages, and all I speak is English. But what a feast! I ate enough for a week!”

  “Think we can go back soon?” Bob said. “I’m beat.”

  “I feel like dancing!” Susan said. “Listen to that music!”

  Makossa music blasted from stereo speakers. It was such earthy, happy music that Susan felt she had known it all her life. A man swept her onto the dance floor. She moved happily, swaying and thrusting her hips like any relaxed Canadian would do. Hardly moving his feet, the Cameroonian ground his pelvis rhythmically. His arms were bent at the elbow, held just above his hips, with the hands turned out slightly; quite unlike Susan, who brought her arms up high, even above her shoulders.

  Somebody pulled Sandra onto the dance floor. She disappeared in the crowd. Mahatma watched the dancing, loving the music, thinking of the good food he had eaten, but thinking also of filing a story about the street children outside.

  Mahatma chatted with a crowd of men for fifteen minutes, then moved on. He came upon Sandra and Susan, standing in a corner, fending off invitations to dance.

  “Some guy just put his hand right on my tit!” Susan said. “You should have seen it, Hat. He put his hand right here! And he pulled me against him. I swear, that guy had a boner as big as a horse!”

  Sandra laughed nervously. She, too, had been grabbed during a few slow dances.

  Bob joined them. Susan pulled him onto the dance floor.

  Mahatma touched Sandra’s elbow. “May I?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  They played three slow dances, back to back. Mahatma and Sandra stayed on the floor for all of them.

  Bob heard Mahatma and Sandra laughing. The noise kept him awake. Much later, he heard Sandra moaning. Was she ill? Crying? Maybe she needed help. Bob rose from his bed, opened his door, then slammed it shut. Suddenly he understood what kind of moaning it was!

  In the morning, he was awakened. Swish, swish. Like water being tossed over rocks. It was impossible to sleep in this country. People made too much noise. And what was it now? It was coming from outside.

  Bob opened his window and leaned out on the sill. He saw a stone hurtling toward a huge mango tree. It swished through the leaves and a mango fell into the hands of a shoeless boy. He and several friends had a pile of fruit at their feet.

  Bob looked to his left and saw Mahatma and Sandra standing side by side, shoulders touching, elbows propped the same way on the window sill, leaning out and looking down at the boys. He went back to bed.

  Someone pounded on Mahatma’s door. He rinsed the suds off his body, tied a towel around his waist and opened the door.

  “I’m starving!” Bob said. “Want to get some breakfast?”

  They walked up the hill and found a food stand in the shade of a baobab tree. Men clustered around it, drinking coffee and tea and eating scrambled eggs sandwiched in baguettes. The cook called out to Mahatma and Bob, “Messieurs! Voulez-vous un petit déjeuner camerounais?”

  “And why not,” Mahatma replied in French, “your eggs look good.”

  “Monsieur!” the cook said. “These eggs are more than good. They will make your mouth water. Your stomach smile. Your entire being, Monsieur, will be at peace with these eggs.”

  “In which case,” Mahatma said, “I’ll have one order of eggs à la baguette. With fried tomato and onion. And if those eggs are as good as you say, I shall spread the word throughout my country.”

  “And which country is that, Monsieur?”

  “Canada.”

  “Ah! Canada!” The cook twirled his spatula, broke two large eggs on the side of the frying pan and addressed a young African man eating next to Mahatma. “You, lazy student,” the cook jested, “why don’t you speak to Monsieur le Canadien? Is it because you know nothing of his country?”

  “Bah! I know about Canada.”

  “Then tell Monsieur le Canadien something about his country!”

  The student put his baguette down. He stood tall, chin up, chest out, and began: “Canada is a great country! It has the second largest surface area in the world. It shares a southern border with the United States of America. It has been led until recently by Prime Minister Trudeau.”

  “Pof!” the cook snorted. “You, a university student, and that is all you know?”

  “No,” the student replied, “I know more. Much more. Canada has a great sprawling city with an extremely low population density, and this city is called Vinn-ee-peg. There is a famous poor man there. A poor white man. His name is Corbeil. Jacques Corbeil. So there! You see! I do know about Canada. And I know more. A delegation of Canadians is visiting our city right now. His Excellency the Mayor of Vinnee-peg is visiting! And journalists.”

  “And you, my friend,” the cook asked Mahatma, “what is your name?”

  “Mahatma.”

  “I thought so,” cried the student. “Mahatma Grafton! The famous journalist! We know all about you. Humble cook, open the newspaper!”

  The cook shook open a newspaper. Its front page carried a picture of Mahatma at the airport with the mayors of Yaoundé and Winnipeg.

  “Humble cook, crack open more eggs for this man, and feed his shy friend!” The student shook Mahatma’s hand vigorously.
“Two breakfasts for the Canadians, on me! Welcome to Cameroon!”

  Mahatma had a busy day. He interviewed a Canadian diplomat about trade relations between Cameroon and Canada, and talked to another official about Cameroon’s economy. He wrote one story based on those notes and arranged to visit a rural hospital developed with Canadian funds. Then he booked an appointment to interview Mayor Fotso. The mayor’s secretary told Mahatma to call The Herald immediately.

  Betts answered the phone. Mahatma asked about his stories.

  “They came out just fine. But why didn’t you get that scoop on the Bloodbath in the Tropics?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Betts described the story and provided the name of Ibrahim Somo, assistant superintendent of the Yaoundé police force. “Match Slade’s story! Find a new angle. Dig into the white slave trade.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Mahatma preferred not to fight on the telephone. He would be calling Betts every day; the man could make Mahatma’s job impossible.

  “I have a story for you now,” Mahatma said.

  “Yeah, about what?”

  “Economic relations between Canada and Cameroon.”

  Betts said politely, “Okay. Let it roll.”

  Mahatma had no intention of following Slade’s story. But he wanted to know what Slade had written and how he had researched it. First, he spoke to Slade. “Hear you got a big scoop. Now that it’s out in Winnipeg, can you show it to me?” Slade unfolded the handwritten copy he had dictated by phone. Mahatma noted the details and ran to find a taxi. At the Yaoundé police station, Mahatma asked for the names of the two most senior officers. But neither the superintendent nor his assistant was named Ibrahim Somo. Nobody on the force had that name.

  Mahatma went to see the superintendent, who had heard of the arrival of the Canadian journalists and recognized Mahatma’s name.

  “Do you have anyone on staff named Ibrahim Somo?”

  “No.”

  “Was your assistant superintendent here yesterday?”

  “No. His child died on the weekend. He is in mourning.”

  Mahatma explained what had appeared in The Star.

  “Someone has made a fool of that journalist. We have no such crimes on record. They must have been conjured up by someone who knew your friend would like such a story.”

  Mahatma asked Slade how he had come across the source named Ibrahim Somo. Slade told him. Then Mahatma said what he had discovered.

  “That bastard!” Slade yelled. “And I believed him! He was in uniform and everything. You’re not going to write about this, are you? I hope you can keep this between us!”

  “Sorry.” Mahatma wrote down everything Slade had just said.

  Slade stared at him. Then he smiled, a little. “Fucking Mahatma Grafton. I underestimated you. Sucking me in like that. You’re just as slimy as me.”

  Mahatma’s story began:

  The Winnipeg Star published “complete falsehoods” about barbaric crimes in Cameroon after being spoofed by an imposter posing as a senior police official, says Yaoundé Police Superintendent Paul Beti.

  Mahatma raced back to the telecommunications office to phone in the story. Then he returned to relax at the dormitory. He felt like seeing Sandra. He wanted to tell her about the story he had just filed. He wanted to ask her what she had done today. Had she seen much of Yaoundé? Did she want to go for a stroll? Mahatma knocked on her door. No answer. He knocked again. She opened it. Her eyes were red. A hand was on her hip.

  “Look who,” she said. “And what’s up for tomorrow’s article, a detailed description of the mayor’s assistant?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She produced a piece of paper with five handwritten paragraphs. “This is the top of your page one story today.”

  Communist Mayor John Novak booked himself into a luxury hotel but checked his female aide into a bug-infested dormitory after arriving yesterday in Cameroon’s poverty-stricken capital.

  It went on and on. People living off roadside fish, potholed roads all over the city, the misery of communist Africa…Not a word about the twinning project. Not a serious word about Cameroon.

  “I didn’t write that. Not one word of it.”

  “Then how did they get details like that, three-star hotel, bug-infested hovel, mayor’s aide, potholed roads?”

  “I filed two stories, neither of which made any such references. I talked to Betts on the phone. He drew things out of me in conversation. He twisted them around.”

  “But how could you even mention things like that to him? How could you say ‘mayor takes luxury hotel and dumps his aide in hovel’ when you know there were no other rooms available? And why would you even mention such things?”

  “I didn’t say it at all like that. Betts sucked me into chatting about Yaoundé. I had no idea what he was up to. I mentioned my room had a lot of bugs and that you were staying with the journalists, and you can see how he used it. He asked how the roads were, I said okay, but there were a few potholes, and you can see how he used that.”

  “How disgusting!” Sandra said.

  Mahatma called The Herald from the mayor’s office. Helen Savoie answered the phone. “Good thing you called when I was here,” she said.

  “What’s going on with my stories?”

  “Betts has butchered them,” Helen said. “He’s gone wild. If I were you, I’d refuse to file another story from Africa.”

  “Let me talk to Van Wuyss.”

  Van Wuyss was out of town and had left Betts in charge.

  Mahatma’s article about Jake Corbett never ran. The piece he had filed about the Cameroonian economy and bilateral trade with Canada might never see the light of day. Mahatma sighed and dictated his story about Slade’s screw-up.

  Don Betts turned on his computer. This was something to write about. Far better than that no-news mush Mahatma Grafton kept trying to peddle on the phone. Betts had sources everywhere. He was friendly with some cops. He knew one or two well-placed politicians. He even knew the guy who ran the civic dog pound. And he had a contact with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Betts phoned his contacts monthly to see if something was stirring. He had checked in with his U.S. Immigration source two days before Mayor Novak was scheduled to fly back from Cameroon via New York.

  And this source had turned up gold.

  “Somebody in the Canadian group in Cameroon is not going to be permitted to enter the United States.”

  “Why?” Betts had asked.

  “Suspected communist sympathies.”

  “Fantastic!” Betts had howled. “Who?”

  “Draw your own conclusions,” the source had said.

  Betts had left several messages with the Yaoundé mayor’s office for Mahatma Grafton. But the reporter didn’t call back. He hadn’t called or filed a story for twenty-four hours.

  Betts got another reporter to call Novak’s office in Winnipeg. They put the message through to the mayor, got his response and fed it back to the reporter: “In response to The Herald’s query, Novak stated that he does not believe The Herald’s story, has no difficulty with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and will not change his plans to fly to Canada via Dakar and New York.”

  Betts bashed out the story:

  United States immigration officials will detain and deport Mayor John Novak if he lands in New York on the return flight from his visit with a leftist leader in Africa, The Herald has learned.

  A U.S. immigration official—who spoke on condition that he remain unnamed—implied that the mayor would be refused entry into the country because of “communist sympathies.”

  Novak, a long-time member of the Canadian Communist Party, has previously had his name in the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s lookout book. It contains thousands of names of foreigners barred for being terrorists, anarchists, homosexuals or communists.

  Novak used his political office to have his name struck from the list sever
al years ago. The source would not explain why it appears that the mayor has again become a persona non grata. He refused comment on Novak’s current visit with Boubacar Fotso, the left-wing, anti-American mayor of Yaoundé.

  In a statement released through his Winnipeg office, Novak told The Herald…

  Mahatma heard about the immigration story the morning it came out. Waging a silent strike, he hadn’t been in contact with his editors for thirty-six hours. But he spoke every day with Helen Savoie, who told him in whispered French what was going on. Mahatma thanked Helen, wound up the phone call, met Sandra and walked up the hill with her toward the omelette-maker who knew all about Canada.

  She said, “You’re going to get fired, Hat.”

  “I doubt it. Suspended, maybe. I wouldn’t mind a long suspension. Especially if you got one too. I wouldn’t mind staying here for a few months,” he said. “Mangoes. Makossa music.”

  “Boys throwing rocks through the fruit trees.”

  Mahatma asked if she wanted to know about Betts’ latest coup.

  “Shoot.”

  “He says the mayor’s going to be detained by U.S. immigration in New York.”

  “We know all about it. Betts had someone calling our Winnipeg office yesterday on that. We issued the standard denial.”

  “Is there any chance Betts could be right?” Mahatma asked.

  “No. We straightened all that out years ago.”

  It was a quiet afternoon. Susan and Bob had only had one story to file and they had already done that. Susan was resting in her room. Bob was bickering with Slade, who had nothing to do, having found himself cut off in Yaoundé. The problem was that he couldn’t speak French and most people in Yaoundé didn’t speak English. He, too, had gone thirty-six hours without filing a story. Mahatma Grafton had landed him in deep shit. The story about the Bloodbath screwup had run on page one of The Herald. Other papers had picked up the story. The Star’s managing editor had gotten on the phone with threats. That was thirty-six hours ago. Now Bob was giving him a hard time about it. “So you walked in there and just took that guy’s word for it and wrote all that stuff without—”