A Guest of Honour (16 page)

To get to the fishing communities farther up the lake he left his car at the fish—freezing plant at the southern tip and went by water,
hitch-hiking, more or less, on the cumbersome, home—made boats of the independent fishermen. Some of them were traders rather than fishermen, really; they went where the
kapenta
were running, and then sold them by the eighty—pound sack wherever on the lake they were scarce. Boundaries were ignored by these boats; they put in wherever there was a likely village, and the men aboard spoke Swahili as well as Gala—Swahili had come down, hundreds of years ago, from the East Coast and was the
lingua franca
of the lake, even though the inland people, so far south, did not speak it. Locked in the middle of the continent, the lake villagers had something of the natural worldliness of seaport inhabitants, and the sense of individualistic independence of those whose range takes in the tilting, glittering horizon forever receding before the boat. They laughed and joked and talked fish prices around Bray; his Gala was so good again, now that he was speaking it every day, that he could take part in the talk and even pick up the Swahilisms that crept into it. Hour after hour he sat on his berth of sacks of dried
kapenta,
exchanging his Karel l's for their pipe tobacco, the boat dipping and lifting over the immense glare of the lake. His English face turned stiff and red and then, as if some secretion of pigment, that had ceased functioning in the years he had been away, began to be produced by his body again, his arms and hands and face became richly burnished and the face in the shaving mirror was a holiday face. No matter how animated the talk was, the voices were lost out on the lake as completely as a dropped coin ingested by the waters. To him the scape—radiance of water and sky, a kind of explosion of the two elements in an endless flash—was beautiful, with the strange grip of sensuosity of place, of something he had never expected to see again.
This
was it. One couldn't remember anything so physical. It couldn't be recaptured by cerebration; it had to be experienced afresh. The fish eagles gave their banshee whistles, a sound from the dark side of the sun. Now and then the water boiled with the tails of churning shoals, rock—bream feeding on
kapenta,
tiger fish snapping at rock—bream, fish eagles and gulls hovering, swooping and snatching. To his companions, the place was a condition—weather, luck (with the fish), distance to the next objective. His mind idled; did this add another meaning to the theory of aesthetics that held that beauty was an incidental product of function? Beauty could also be another way of
reading circumstances in which a function—in this case fishing for a living—took place. One of the men put a finger to the right side of his nose and cleared the left with a sharp snort, into the lake. The water that same exquisite pale element through which the fish shone, bore the snot flushed efficiently away.

On shore, there were whole communities of several thousand people where the children didn't go to school, just as (Aleke complained when Bray got back to Gala) the men didn't pay taxes. “While you're about it, up there, perhaps you could think of something we can do about that.” Aleke spoke in the dreamy humour of a man slightly dazed with problems. “The government tells me that after the miners, those fellows are the biggest money—earners in the country, but they don't want to know about income tax. All you can get out of them is that they've always paid hut tax. Income tax is something for white men to pay. Must they become white men just because we've got our own government? Good God, man, what sort of thing is this independence!” Thinking of the fishermen, Bray laughed rather admiringly. “Well, they're self—employed, illiterate, and extremely shrewd—quite a combination for an administration to beat.” “I mean, how can you assess their earnings? It's not a matter of keeping two sets of books. It's all in here”—Aleke poked a finger at his temple— “what auditor can get at that?” “Organize them in cooperatives,” Bray said, still amused.

“Well, there is the big trawler company.”

“Yes, but that's a foreign company, the men who work on the trawlers are just employees. I mean the people who fish and trade for themselves. Oh, it'll come, I suppose.”

“Those people? They don't want to hear from us what's good for them!”

“Never mind, Aleke, the president favours free enterprise.” They both smiled; this was the way in which Mweta gave poker—faced reassurance to the mining companies, without offering direct affront to members of the government who feared economic colonialism.

“D'you bring any fish?” Aleke asked, shoving papers into drawers; Bray had walked in as he was going home for lunch.

“Didn't think about it! But I'll remember next time. What does your wife like? I saw a magnificent perch.”

“Oh she's from town, she wouldn't touch anything out of the lake.
But I won't have the kids the same. I told her, they must eat the food that's available, there where they live. So she says what's wrong with meat from the supermarket?”

“I'll bring you a perch, next time.”

“Yes, a nice fish stew, with peppers, I like that.” He had taken up a nailfile and was running the point under the pale nails of his black hands as if he were paring a fruit. “I'm full of carbon. I have to do my own stencils, even. I shouldn't really go home to eat today, the work's up over my head, man. Honestly, I just feel like driving all the way and kidnapping a decent secretary from the Ministry.” Grumbling relaxedly, he left the offices with Bray; one of his small sons had come down on a tricycle to meet him and was waiting outside, nursing a toe that had sprung a bright teardrop of blood: while they examined the hurt the drop rolled off the dusty little foot like a bead of mercury. The boy had ridden against the low box—hedge of Christ—thorn that neatly bordered the
bomas
entrance. All
bomas
in the territory had Christ—thorn hedges, just as they had a morris chair to each office and a standard issue of inkpots. “Look at that,” Aleke said in Gala. “It's gone deep. What a plant.”

“Why not have it dug out, get rid of it,” said Bray.

Aleke looked uncertain a moment, as if he could not remember why this was unlikely. Then he came to himself and said in English, “You're damned right. I want this place cleared.”

“You could have mesembryanthemums—ice-plant,” Bray said. But Aleke had the tricycle, hanging by a handlebar, in his one hand, and was holding his child under the armpit with the other, urging him along while he hopped exaggeratedly, “Ow, ow!”

You had only to leave a place once and return to it for it to become home. At the house Bray came through the kitchen and asked Mahlope to fetch his things from the car; Mahlope had a friend sitting there who rose at once. Bray acknowledged the greeting and then was suddenly aware of some extraordinary tension behind him. His passage had caused a sensation; he made an involuntary checking movement, as if there were something shocking pinned on his back. The face was staring at him, blindly expectant, flinching from anticlimax. The anticlimax hung by a hair; then it was knocked aside: “Kalimo!” The man started to laugh and gasp, saved by his name. The face was one from another life, Bray's cook of the old time, in the
D.C.'s house. The salutations went on for several minutes, and then Kalimo was in perfect possession of the occasion. He said in English, “I'm here today, yesterday, three day. No, the boy say
Mukwayi
go Tuesday, come back Friday. I'm ready.” Bray's eyes followed into the labyrinth of past commonplace the strings of Kalimo's apron, tied twice under his arms, in the way he had always affected. “How did you find me?”

“Festus he send me. He send me say, Colonel he coming back, one month, two month, then go to Gala. I'm greet my wife, I'm greet my sons. They say where you go? No, I'm go to Gala. Colonel him back. No, I go. I must go.”

They began to talk in Gala, which was not Kalimo's mother tongue—since he came from the South where he had first begun to work for the Brays many years ago—but which, like Bray, he had learned when he moved with the Brays to Gala. They exchanged family news; Bray fetched the picture of Venetia's baby. The pleasurable excitement of reunion hung over his solitary lunch, with Kalimo bringing in the food and being detained to talk.

But later in the afternoon, when he had sat for an hour or two writing up his notes on the lake communities, he came to the problem of Mahlope: what was to be done about Mahlope? Kalimo had taken over the household as of right; Bray felt the old fear of wounding someone whom circumstances put in his power. It was out of the question that he should send Kalimo away. He belonged to Kalimo; Kalimo had come more than a thousand miles, out of retirement in his village, to claim him. The thought appalled him: to cook and clean for him as if his were the definitive claim on Kalimo's life.

He went into the kitchen where Kalimo, hearing him begin to move about, was making tea. Bray had seen Mahlope through the living-room window—put out to grass, literally: swinging at it with a home—honed scythe made of a bit of iron fencing. “Kalimo, did you talk to Mahlope about the job?” He spoke in Gala.
“Mukwayi?'
” I took on Mahlope to look after the house, you see.”

Kalimo made the deep hum with which matters were settled. He had got older; he drew out these sounds now, like an old man in the sun. “Mahlope will be for the garden, and to clean the car. I am your cook. And he has the washing to do. We always had a small boy for the outside work.”

“Yes, but I'm not the D.C. any more, you must remember. And I'm here on my own. This isn't the big house, with a whole family. I don't need more than one person to look after me.”

Kalimo swilled out the teapot with boiling water, measured the tea into it, poured on the water, and replaced the lid, carefully turning it so that the retaining lip was in the right place.

“One person to cook and wash and everything—just for me.”

“Does
Mukwayi
want cake with tea, or biscuit?”

Of course, Kalimo would have baked cakes, put the household on a proper footing, against his return. He made Bray feel the insolence of teaching a man his own business, of so much as bringing up the subject.

Kalimo carried the tray into the living-room. As he put it down he said, “I have always looked after you. Cooking, washing, outside—it's the same for me.”

Bray said, “You are not tired?”

He had sat down at his table. Kalimo looked down at him, and smiled. “And you?
You
are not tired.”

“All right. I'll explain to Mahlope. We'll keep him until we can find him another job. You can make use of him—the garden, whatever you think.”

After dinner he wrote to Olivia.
Well, you won't have any doubts about how I'm being looked after from now on; Kalimo has turned up. He heard through the grape—vine—took him a month to get here, by bus and on foot. I'm embarrassed but suppose I'm lucky. The bad old good days come back.

Shinza. Edward Shinza. Even the occurrence of Kalimo was a reminder. He ought to go and see him; it was easy to assume to himself that he thought of it often; he did not, in fact. The work he was doing, unchecked by distraction or interruption, filled his mind. In the capital, work would have been compressed into a few hours a day, jostled by other demands and the company of friends. But now although he was often conscious of being alone—alone at night, with a Christmas bee dinning at the light, and the bare furniture taking on the waiting—room watchfulness of a solitary's surroundings; alone in the garden, reading letters and papers at his table under the fig tree—the interviews, the paper—work, were a preoccupation that expanded to take up the days and long evenings. Dando had just written
again and asked among other things, whether he had seen Shinza—Dando's writing was so difficult to read and covered so closely the sheets of thin paper that his were the sort of letters one put aside to read more attentively another time. Roly would have gone off with a bottle to get drunk with Shinza long ago, by now. He throve on dissatisfactions, paradox and irony. He would have made himself welcome with a man at his own funeral, if that were a possible occasion for friendship and solidarity. Whenever Bray saw himself coming into Shinza's company once again, he felt suddenly that there would be nothing to say: he was brought back by Mweta, now he was working for Mweta. It was better to concentrate on such practical matters as the possibility of resuscitating the old woodworking and shoemaking workshop in the town and expanding it to become a sort of modest trades school. He discussed this with Malemba. The Education Department had abolished these rural workshops on the principle that everyone was to get a proper education now; the black man was no longer to be trained just sufficiently to do the white man's odd jobs for him. “But what about mechanics and plumbers, if you're going to raise the standard of living? And you're still going to need village carpenters and shoemakers for a long, long time in communities like this one where people haven't yet completely made the changeover to a money economy and buying their needs in the stores. If we can train people in crafts that will give them a living, we'll have
some
alternative to the drift to the towns. It's a better idea than labour camps, eh?” Malemba, Bray saw, would be glad to have the suggestion come from him; Malemba himself thought it unrealistic for the government rural workshops to have been closed, but did not wish it to be thought, in educational circles in the capital, that he was a backward provincial when it came to demanding higher education for the people. Malemba was not a sycophant but he needed a little stiffening of confidence; it was one of the small satisfactions that Bray had set himself to find worth while, to see that through their working together, Malemba was beginning to gain it.