Discretion (8 page)

No, I reminded myself when I discarded Catherine’s letter, when I decided not to answer it, it was the Europeans who destroyed
each other for the love of a woman. I thought of the ten years of war between Greece and Troy over the love Paris had for Helen; how Sampson let his people be devastated because of his obsession with Delilah. My people went to war over land, over disputes about patrimony. They traded goods when one of their own was humiliated by a woman from another tribe: thirty virgins for the one that betrayed their countryman. A hundred pounds of yam to compensate for the one who could not produce a son.

It would be war I would be entering into if I spoke to John as Catherine wanted me to do. I knew John. I had witnessed him plot revenge against a person who harmed him. There was no one I knew whose heart was more full of malice than John’s. John did not try to get even with those who crossed him. He tried to destroy them, and, more often than not, he succeeded. And he would have tried to destroy me—rightly so—had I, a colleague, a friend in his public life, intruded into that space that belonged to his private self.

More than that, I knew Catherine did not have a chance against him. I knew that John would call in every favor that he had extended to anyone, he would use every iota of influence he had, to get his way. He would consort with thieves and murderers, if that became necessary. I had divined his character. I had always wondered why Catherine had not seen what I had. Why a woman otherwise so intelligent had missed what was clearly so obvious to the men I knew who knew John.

Emotions got in Catherine’s way. She allowed herself to be ruled by her heart, as most women did. As my mother did. As I once did with Mulenga before I taught myself to confine such passion to the prison of my dreams.

There should be a bell that goes off in our heads when we lie to ourselves. Some noise to jar us awake when we allow ourselves to toy with reason so that it bends to our commands. I wanted Marguerite. I needed to find a way to see Marguerite. But I did not want to be disturbed by pangs of conscience. I did not want to feel guilty that I had used Catherine as I would an airline ticket, to get
from one place to another. So I convinced myself this at least I could do for her: I could tell a friend of the trouble she was in. Perhaps there was something Marguerite could do. Someone she knew who had political influence. I disregarded Catherine’s words that Marguerite could be of no help to her. I used a self-serving logic to suppress objective reason, reason that told me that Catherine was also my friend and I should try to help her, that perhaps there was a chance that I could penetrate John’s conscience. I could move him by the very love he had for Eric and Eric for him. I could make him see that his son’s happiness lay not only in having his father’s love, but his mother’s love, too.

Instead, I told myself that such an effort on my part would have been futile. Even if I were willing to do the unmanly thing, even if John were to admit me into his private space, I would have lost. For John was also a cunning man. He would have known how to ensnare me with his existential arguments. He would have asked me to define “mother.” He would have pointed out that biology was no determinant for who was the best caretaker for a child. He would have said that he could offer his son opportunities that Catherine could not. His son would travel, go to the best schools, meet the world’s most influential people. And as for love, he had enough love for Eric to make up for Catherine’s absence. His new girlfriend loved Eric and was devoted to him. And, finally, he would have made a defense I could not rebut. He would have reminded me that Catherine was a closet alcoholic. Didn’t I see her get drunk at one too many cocktail parties? She suffered from bouts of depression. Didn’t I see her cry in public? He could not expose his child to such danger and unhappiness. So it was I concluded that it would have been useless, and perhaps not wise, for me to try to persuade John to do as Catherine wanted.

It would be this, my calculated analysis of the dangers in ceding to Catherine’s pleas for my help, that would lead Catherine to say to Marguerite that if I were Adam there would be no sin in the world. Yet because I tried to be a kind man, because I did not want to be a callous man, I decided that I would speak to Marguerite. I would offer Catherine the consolation of her best friend’s love.

But even as I came to this conclusion, I knew I was lying to myself again. I knew that it was for my sake I wanted to call Marguerite. That ever since that first time when Catherine mentioned her name, I longed to see my dream incarnate, my fantasies made flesh. For in spite of what Catherine had concluded, I was indeed the son of Adam. I, too, could not resist the forbidden fruit.

I
called Marguerite the very day I received Catherine’s letter, obsessed with my dark desire to see her, afraid that if I waited one more day, reason would overrule me, return me to that safe, secure place where my world was in order, where things were in place, where my life was peaceful, calm, unruffled. Where I believed I was happy. Where I lived in my cocoon with Nerida and our son.

Marguerite answered the phone on the first ring.

“Hello?”

I had to reach deep in my throat to find my voice.

“Marguerite? This is Oufoula Sindede. Catherine’s friend. Catherine Simpson’s friend.”

“Wait,” she said. “Wait a minute.”

I waited, and while I waited I let myself be sucked downwards into the vortex of the forbidden. I shut my eyes and let it all come back to me—those days and nights locked in my room in the mission school when Mulenga had deceived me, made me a cuckold with her lust.

I saw Marguerite through those eyes, the eyes of my former self, myself before Nerida. I saw her naked, her body dripping wet from the shower. I saw her put down the phone, race across the room for
a towel. I saw her breasts, two ripe mangoes plump and firm, their nipples brown and erect, shifting with her movements, her skin the color of butterscotch, curving around a small waist, rounded hips, parting at that triangle above her thighs, and I sucked in my breath with my desire for her, my years of longing for her.

“Hello? Hello?” She was calling to me again, but I had lost my voice winding through the dark caverns of my fantasies.

“Hello? Are you there?”

I coughed.

“God, I hope it’s not the flu.” Her voice was not the voice I expected, the voice I had waited to hear. It was a sweet voice, a caring voice, a sympathetic voice.

“No,” I said quickly. “No, not the flu.”

“It’s been going around.”

I coughed again.

“Take two Tylenol,” she said. “Not aspirin. They could upset your stomach.”

A white heat burned through me. I fought against her. The woman I created when Mulenga deceived me would not have cared, would not have said,
Not aspirin
. She would not have noticed my cough. I did not want to surface to the present where this woman was, to the real, to the mundane where she wanted me to be.

“It’s not the flu,” I said. “It’s a dry throat.”

She must have detected the irritation in my voice. “Hmm,” she said, and nothing more. Then, just as I was beginning to think I should apologize (I did not want to lose her), she said my name and my world became right again.

“Oufoula.”

My name never sounded so dark, so seductive, so rich with possibilities.

“Oufoula. Yes, I know who you are. Catherine Simpson’s friend.”

Was all well with her friend? she wanted to know.

She did not speak again of my throat, the flu, or a remedy for the flu.

“Yes,” I said, “but I have a message from her to you.”

“A message? It’s not serious?”

“No,” I said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It would be better if I told you in person.”

I was cunning. But had Catherine not wanted me to meet her?

“Then it is serious.”

“Serious, not devastating.”

“How soon can we meet?”

I told her I would be in New York the next day. I had not planned it. I did not know when I picked up the phone to call her that that was what I would do, but I knew it then. I knew that one more day was all I could wait to see her.

“I’ll make dinner.”

“No.” I almost shouted the word at her.

“It won’t be any trouble.”

“No. Not in your apartment.”

In the daylight. In a place where there are people
.

She stumbled over her words. “I mean … I thought …”

I had embarrassed her. This was not how I expected Marguerite to be. When I caught Mulenga on top of her lover, she did not blink an eye. She looked directly at me. She held my eyes. “Oh, Oufoula,” she said, as if she were chiding a child. “But it’s not your day. It’s Wednesday today.” She had no remorse.

“I don’t want to bother you with cooking for me.” I softened my tone.

“I thought it would be more convenient,” she said. “In my apartment.”

“Yes. That was kind. But is there a restaurant close to you?”

A place where I would be surrounded by people
.

She lived in the Village, she said. There were many restaurants close to her. I asked her to choose one, and she gave me the address. We could meet for lunch, I said.

“Twelve-thirty?”

I agreed. I did not consult my appointment book. I said twelve-thirty was a good time for me. I did not dare say more. I did not dare risk my good luck. She had said yes. I would meet her tomorrow.
Tomorrow was not a long time away. Tomorrow was an afternoon, a night’s sleep. Tomorrow was hours away.

There are times we wish for things we should not have: another man’s wife, another man’s job, another man’s power. But when we wish for those things, we know that we will do nothing to actually get them. We will not steal, we will not murder. We will not betray the ones we love. We know these things we wish for are the stuff of our imaginings. Safe in the privacy of our illusionary world, we are free to make what we will of these things as if we had them. We make love to the other man’s wife, we sit in the other’s man castle, we drive the other man’s Rolls-Royce, we use the other man’s influence and power.

We do this in dreams, and we are not culpable. Behavior, we know, is what counts. We cannot control how we feel. Temptation, the devil’s lethal weapon, comes to us in many forms—feelings and yearnings, the most persuasive. But we do not surrender to them, not always for fear of the loss of paradise in the next world, but for fear of the loss of the paradise we have in this world, the present world in which we live.

I had paradise in the present world, paradise that it would shatter me to lose: Nerida, my son, another child to be born in four months, a job with prestige and influence. I believed I was happy. Yet when I said good-bye to Nerida that morning before I took the shuttle from Washington to New York, it was another paradise I was thinking of—not of the next world, or of the present conscious world, but of the subconscious world, the world where I had lived in secret when the first woman I loved so devastated me, I was forced to shield what was left of my heart with a lie that consoled me.

Nerida saw the glaze in my eyes when I said to her that something had come up unexpectedly that morning and I had to go to New York.

“Why didn’t they call you last night?” she asked me.

I blamed the diplomatic bureaucracy.

“They had probably given the message to someone who thought someone else had already telephoned me.”

“Oh,” she said. She did not take her eyes off me.

“I’ll be back early,” I promised. “I’ll take the six o’clock flight.”

“So you will have dinner at home?”

I knew she was pressing for a commitment from me.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll wait for you.”

She said it as if she meant she would wait longer than the hours it would take for me to get back to Washington from a day’s trip to New York. But women have this prescience. When they sense danger approaching them, they send out signals. Warnings. I’ll wait for you, they say. A promissory note. They make you sign it. They throw out the rope to you that could save them. Catch it, they tell you. Reel me back into the boat with you, they say.

I wish it were so with men. We keep our fears silent, our dreams secret. We know emotions can erode our manhood. I could have said to Nerida, Reel me back in. But I did not, though I was afraid. For though I was afraid, I was not so afraid as I was desperate, desperate to see the woman of my dreams.

This is where women prove themselves more levelheaded than men. They know there is a fine line between truth and illusion. They speak their desires, their fears. They know that the unspoken world is the dangerous world. They bring the unspoken world into the open, into the daylight. They talk and talk. I see them revealing this and that to each other. I do not know exactly what they say, but I know they tell all.

We men say nothing, nothing about what touches the heart or lies in our dreams. Perhaps this is how women protect themselves from suffocating from a lifetime of fantasies. They know that if they do not give wings to the secret desires that intrude in the silent spaces of their minds, they risk pushing themselves too near that line where the vision blurs. Where they could cross over. Where they could make that fatal mistake and find themselves in a place where the unreal becomes the real.