Author: Russell Banks
Category: Literature
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At the sight of the food and drink, Woodrow’s father’s expression had changed from unreadable impassivity to obvious delight, and he reached across Woodrow and with one hand grabbed a Coke bottle and with the other picked up his leaf and snatched a piece of the meat from the basket. He took a mouthful of the wine, mumbled what I took to be a quick prayer, and spat a bit of it onto the ground before him, then swallowed, smacking his lips with pleasure. He tore off a large piece of the meat with his teeth and, almost without chewing, swallowed it—his eyes closed in bliss—and then a second large mouthful, and a third, by which time the others had joined him, and the hut filled with the sounds of chewing, slurping, swallowing.
The young woman on the mat opposite me lay back and ate in a leisurely, luxurious way, as if at a Roman banquet, nursing her baby at the same time. She glanced over at me, smiled to herself through half-closed eyes, casually passed a Coke bottle to me, then returned to eating. Woodrow’s sister? His father’s youngest wife? Or Woodrow’s village wife and baby? I didn’t know how to ask and was afraid of the answer. Flies buzzed in the darkness, cutting against the thick, muffled noise of the drums and singing outside. I took a small sip of the wine and as the others had done spat half into the dirt before swallowing. With leaf in hand I plucked a small piece of the pork from the basket.
I glanced around and realized that everyone had ceased chewing and was watching me with friendly but inexplicable eagerness. And then, of course, it came to me. This was bush meat. The skinned beasts roasting on the fire were adult chimpanzees, their heads and hands and feet removed and boiled with their innards for stew, their cooked haunches, shoulders, ribs, and thickly muscled upper arms and legs cut into steaks and chops. It was bush meat—a profoundly satisfying, probably intoxicating, delicacy to be savored in celebration of the return of Fuama’s favorite son and the foreign woman who had agreed to become his wife.
I slowly returned the chunk of meat to the basket, wiped my hand on my dress, and stood up. “Woodrow,I… I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t.” His face froze. The others simply stared at me, uncomprehending, confused, as if they and not I had made the terrible mistake. I knew that it was an insult to them, an unforgivable breach of decorum, and Woodrow was being humiliated before his people. But I could no more eat the flesh of that animal than if it had been human flesh. I’m not in the slightest fastidious about what I eat, and have devoured the bodies of animals all my life without a tinge of guilt or revulsion. I’ve eaten snakes and insects, badgers, woodchucks, bison, and ostrich. I could have eaten dog or cat or rat, even, if that were traditional and were expected of me as a way of honoring the hospitality of family and tribe. But not chimpanzee. Not an animal so close to human as to expect from it mother-love and grief, pride and shame, fear of abandonment and betrayal, even speech and song.
I turned and left the hut and made my way back through the crowd to the gate, where I retraced the path back to the palisade, where Albert had first found me. No one tried to stop me from leaving the village, and no one followed me. I was alone again, and familiar to myself again. My thoughts were mine again—safe, known, fixed.
From the palisade I slowly, carefully, walked back along the path through the jungle to the riverbank, where down by the river Satterthwaite leaned against the hood of the Mercedes, smoking a cigarette and chatting with a teenaged boy, one of the crew that had pulled the car across on the raft. The raft, I saw, was halfway across the river, empty, on its way back or over, I couldn’t tell. Satterthwaite looked up and smiled pleasantly, as if he’d known I’d arrive like this, a woman alone and angry and frightened and glad to be back at the car, and he knew exactly how to make me feel better.
“You finish, Miz Hannah?” he said.
“Give me a hand,” I said and started down the steep embankment towards him. He came forward and, just as I was about to slip and fall, grabbed my arm, righting and easing me to level ground, reeling me in like a kite. “Thanks.”
“No trouble,” he said and flipped his cigarette into the brown river water and swung open the rear door of the car. As I passed him, he placed one hand over his crotch, looked down at it, then at me. I stopped, halfway into the car, halfway out, and returned his look. He said, “Anyt’ing I can do to make you a little more comf’table? Gonna take a while before Mr. Sundiata turn up. Be dark soon, y’ know.” His smooth, dry, hairless face was close to mine, and his breath smelled strongly of palm wine. I’d never been this close to him before and saw for the first time that he was a very young man, much younger than I’d thought, probably not yet twenty, and reckless and naive and dangerously curious. Dangerous to me, possibly, but definitely dangerous to himself.
I slipped past him and sat down in the welcoming shade of the leather-upholstered interior. I reached out and touched his wrist with my fingertips and said, “Can you find me something to drink? Beer would be nice. Or some of that palm wine you’ve been drinking. And some fruit to eat?”
He smiled broadly—beautiful teeth, I noticed, also for the first time. “Not a problem,” he said and went to the boy, spoke quietly to him, and handed him some coins. The boy ran along a riverside path I’d not known was there, in seconds disappearing from sight and taking the path with him. Satterthwaite strolled back to the car and said, “Want the air-conditioner? Can turn it on if you like. We got plenty of gasoline still.”
“Yes, that would be nice,” I said and closed the car door. He slid into the front, turned on the engine and the air-conditioner, then slung his arm over the seat back and looked at me with—oh my, yes—a handsome, elegantly formed, young man’s look of lust. The dark, leathery interior of the car smelled like ripe peaches. I leaned back in the seat and let the cooled air flow over me. It pleased the skin of my face and neck, my bare arms, a breath from the arctic blowing across my legs, and I drew my mud-spattered dress up a few inches to my knees and closed my eyes.
“When the boy come back wit’ the wine and fruits, I can make him go ’way.” He spoke in a voice that was barely more than a whisper, as if reluctant to wake me from my reverie.
“Fine,” I said. And after a few seconds, “When do you think Mr. Sundiata will come back?”
“Oh … not till long time. If him not come before dark, then not till mornin’.”
We both spoke very slowly, as if under water. “He won’t come looking for me?”
“Naw. He gots him a heap of fam’ly bus’ness to settle first.”
“All right, then. I can wait.”
“Me, too. Us two can wait together.” He extended his pack of cigarettes, I took one, and he lighted it with a flip of his heavy, chromium Zippo.
I cleansed my mouth with smoke, and thought, So this is how it’s going to be, married to Woodrow.
A SHARP WHISTLE woke me. I pried open my eyes and peered from the car. It was blue outside, dawn’s first light. A pale exhalation of thin mist floated above the river. Hands on hips, feet apart, Woodrow, in his explorer’s outfit, stood at the water’s edge, peeing into the river. Doctor Sundiata, I presume. He zipped up, whistled a second time, and waved impatiently at the figures of the three men and a boy sprawled sleeping on the raft drawn up on the opposite bank. They sat slowly, stood, stretched, and made ready to bring the raft over.
Satterthwaite’s first name was Richard—I’d learned it during the night. He lay snoring like a gigantic rag doll flung across the front seat of the Mercedes. I was in back, alone now, and a good thing, too. I felt poisoned—the raw palm wine we’d drunk, which had tasted so fine going down, was hammering nails into my brain, and my mouth, which last night had been so warm and wet and open, felt sewn shut and dry as parchment. The car was rank with stale cigarette smoke and vinegary fermentation—or else it would have stunk of sex. A pair of empty, cork-stoppered Coke bottles lay scattered over the floor in back. I shoved them into a far corner of the seat, then quickly buttoned and straightened my clothing, finger-combed my hair, and licked my fingertips and wet my eyelids.
Woodrow pulled open the door beside Richard and shook him awake. “Hey-hey, Satterthwaite! C’mon, wake up, boy! Time t’ leave,” he said in a rough voice. “You better not been runnin’ that air-conditioner all night long, usin’ up all the gasoline.”
“Naw, Boss, don’ worry none ’bout dat,” Richard said and started the engine. “We got plenty-plenty still!” he declared, a little too loudly. He seemed suddenly foolish, a boy in fact.
Then Woodrow was beside me in the dank interior of the car. He removed his ridiculous hat and placed it carefully on the floor, leaned his head back on the seat, and took off his eyeglasses. He closed his eyes and yawned. And said not a word.
Nor did I. Until nearly an hour had passed, and we were coming down onto the plateau, passing into the region of rubber plantations and small farm villages. As we approached one of the larger roadside settlements, Woodrow instructed Richard to pull over and find us some breakfast. Richard parked the car beside a tiny, windowless, mud-walled shop, and got out. When he disappeared inside, I turned to face Woodrow for the first time since our departure from Fuama.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said to him. “I really am. But I didn’t know what to do. Why did you ignore me for so long? And then, when I needed your help, you wouldn’t help me. You and the others. Your people.”
“I might ask you the same question.”
“What do you mean? What did I do wrong? I know I refused their… hospitality, I guess. But bush meat! Really, Woodrow! I just wasn’t ready—”
He interrupted with a long-suffering sigh. “Hannah, there’s too much to explain. Too much … difference.”
“Between you and me? No, I don’t believe that, Woodrow.”
“Not between you and me. Not that.” He paused and rubbed his jiggling knees. His face was clenched like a fist. “Too much difference … between me in the city, the person you know already … and the me back there,” he said and pointed behind us, towards his home. His origins. His ancestors. “I made a mistake, Hannah. I shouldn’t have taken you to Fuama with me, I should have come alone this time. You weren’t ready. I wasn’t ready,” he quickly added. He shook his head from side to side, sad and puzzled, and studied his hands as if seeking a solution there. “Maybe later it will be all right, but not now. I don’t know how to explain certain things. It’s very difficult to … what can I call it? It’s hard to integrate things. To mix the worlds together. I have Monrovia, the city world, and my position in the government. I have my education and my travels and all the different kinds of people I know and do business with. All that. And I have the world of Fuama, too. Both worlds are very strong inside me, Hannah. But you know nothing of Fuama, and I know everything. It’s not like that with your people. I know much of them. Remember, I have lived in your country and gone to a college there with American boys and girls. White people. No,” he said, “you did nothing wrong, Hannah darling. I did. Even before we got to Fuama, back on the road, I saw that it wouldn’t work, and I became angry with myself. But you,” he said, “no, you did precisely the right thing.”
“I did?”
“Yes. You went back to the car and patiently waited for me to return. And when I returned, you didn’t press me to explain. Until now, when we’re nearly back in our world and can speak in private again. We’re back in the world we share. I thank you for that,” he said and reached across and took me in his arms and self-consciously kissed me, as if he thought we were being photographed.
Over his shoulder I saw Richard approach from the shop, carrying meat patties and what looked like bottles of Fanta. I pulled away and said, “Come, Woodrow, let’s have something to eat. I’m starved.” I opened the car door and stepped into the blinding bright sunshine, then leaned back in and said to him, “It’s all right. And thank you for explaining. We don’t have to go back there, Woodrow. Not until after we’re married. And not even then, if that’s what you want.”
He followed me into the sunshine, a broad smile of gratitude spreading across his face. It said, Married! We’re going to be married!
WE FOUND STOOLS beneath a cotton tree and settled there to eat and drink, the three of us. I noticed a group of idle villagers a short distance away who were watching us and said to Woodrow, “Back in Fuama, when the people first met us at the river, all the mothers tried to keep their babies from looking at me. They kept covering the little ones’ eyes. Except for that young woman in the hut, the one with the baby. Did you notice that, Woodrow?”
He shook his head no and went on eating.
“Who was she, Woodrow?”
“Who?”
“The woman in the hut.”
“Just a woman from the family,” he said. “Her name is Marleena.”
“Who is the father of her baby?”
He didn’t look up from his food. “She didn’t say. The father is probably away from the village. Must be working in the mines or some place like that. The young men from Fuama, they stay at the mines and come back only once in a while.”
“Why didn’t she cover her baby’s eyes, like the other mothers did?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “Why you asking so many questions anyhow! Eat your food. You said you were hungry, didn’t you?”
I gave up and did as instructed. But it didn’t matter; I knew the answers to my questions.
For a while we three ate in silence, and then Richard spoke. “You know ’bout Mammi Watta, Miz Hannah?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Mammi Watta. She the spirit of the river an’ all that.”
Woodrow said, “It’s nothing. A story. A bush people pickney story is all.”
“The peoples use it to scare the picknies when they bad and for makin’ them do good,” Richard said.
“Has it got something to do with me?” I asked him.
“No. Nothing at all,” Woodrow said.
“Excep’ Mammi Watta a white woman an’ come from the river,” Richard said and gave a goofy little laugh.
“It’s just that you’re probably the first white woman those little picknies have ever seen, that’s all,” Woodrow continued. “And the mammis all know it’s impolite to stare at people, ’specially grownups.”
“Tell me the story,” I said.
“It changes all the time,” Woodrow said. “And there’s different ways of telling it in different villages. I mostly forget it anyhow.” He stood up and brushed the crumbs from his shirt, finished off his warm Fanta, and said, “All right, we better get moving. I got work to do. And so do you, Satterthwaite.” He looked pointedly at Richard, who quickly got up and headed for the car.
As we neared the car, Woodrow leaned down and in a low voice said, “That boy’s getting to be one uppity nigger. He’s my cousin’s son, but I frankly don’t know if I’ll keep him.”
“Oh, do!” I said. “He’s good at what he does. He’s just a little foolish sometimes, that’s all.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. He put his arm around me as we walked. “Thank you, my darling,” he said, “for being so understanding.”
“Oh, think nothing of it, Woodrow. We all have our little secrets. Especially women and men.”
“Yes!” he said. “Especially women and men!”
IT WAS PERHAPS a little odd and certainly not characteristic of me, but after returning from Fuama, as soon as I was alone, the first thing I wanted to do was write to my parents. Hundreds of times over the years, I’d wished that I could simply sit down and write them a letter, even a short note—any form of written communication would do, my voice on the page to their ears, calling their fading voices back to me. But I couldn’t. Mostly because it was too dangerous, but also because, as the silence between us stretched into months and then years, it grew nearly impossible for me to imagine what I would write to them. If I ever got the chance to communicate with my parents directly and freely again, where would I begin? Where would I end?
Dear Mother and Daddy,
This letter comes to you fro
m very far away, as you can see from the postmark and return address. All the way from Monrovia, in the African nation of Liberia! How I got here is a long, complicated story, and I hope someday I can tell it to you. But for now, just know that my being here is what lets me contact you directly for the first time in years. Even though it’s still possible that you’ll never receive this letter or if you do that it’ll arrive already opened and read and copied by the FBI. But you don’t have to worry about that (I think) as I’m more or less safe here in Liberia, and nothing I write to you will be in the slightest incriminating of you, or of me, for that matter. Although I do wish I had a good American lawyer, Kunstler or Ramsey Clark or one of your guys, Daddy, available here to check it out first. Anyhow the point is that for the first time in almost seven years, since my indictment in Chicago, actually, I’m not taking a risk or putting you at risk by writing to you.
When I was underground, a telephone call had been out of the question—too dangerous, unless it were prearranged and placed pay phone to pay phone. In those days, everyone I knew more than casually simply assumed that the FBI was tapping his or her phone. What could my parents and I have said to one another, anyhow, what intimacy could we have shared, knowing that it was being heard and tape-recorded by a pair of government agents eating jelly doughnuts and drinking coffee in a van outside the house? It wouldn’t have been my voice to my parents’ ears or theirs to mine—we’d be too circumspect, too self-conscious and coded. We were nearly that as it was, under the best of circumstances. Besides, in those years our need to communicate with one another directly never seemed quite desperate enough for us to be willing to go all clandestine, as if we were mobsters or Soviet spies. As a result, from the beginning until the end of my underground years, we resisted going through the elaborate dance of setting up calls between pay phones outside a convenience store, one for my parents in Emerson, Massachusetts, the other for me down the block from a safe house in Cleveland or New York or New Bedford. Daddy wasn’t the type to endure that. If it weren’t in response to a verifiable, life-threatening medical emergency, he would have regarded any such arrangement with contempt and as beneath his dignity, even if it meant depriving himself of his daughter’s voice. And Mother certainly wasn’t the type. If she’d been told by me or Daddy that every time she left the house she was followed by an FBI agent, she’d probably have had an old-fashioned nervous breakdown, a paranoiac seizure that would have paralyzed her and sent her to her bed for weeks. I exaggerate, I know, but not by much.