Echoes From a Distant Land (9 page)

The man at the bar mumbled a disparaging grunt.

‘More,' the woman said. Her voice was threatening, but she had a pleasant face and when he glanced up at her, she smiled. He finished the drink, and warmth spread from his belly through his whole body.

‘You are off the
Madura
,' she stated.

‘Yes.'

‘Looking for a room?'

His eyes roamed around the hotel, from the stained timber glasses cabinet above the black marble bar to the half-dozen circular tables to the carpeted staircase. It hadn't occurred to him until that moment, but here was a perfect haven from his torture on the ship. Here he could find his feet. Here he could perhaps finally get some sleep.

‘A room?' he said.

‘
Oui
. I have a nice room for you. Two francs.'

The
Madura
could sail without him. He had long ago lost his enthusiasm for New York. In fact, he detested the name. New York and his dreams of adventure and education had been the cause of his interminable suffering.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘A room.'

‘Come, I show you,' she said, and led the way to the stairs.

She glanced back and found Sam still fixed to his seat.

‘Come. You can get your things later.'

Sam's legs were leaden and he leaned on the table while he got to his feet. His heart thumped and his face burned as he followed the woman's shapely bottom up the stairs.

On the landing, the threadbare carpet under his feet began to rise and fall in great waves like someone had hold of the end and was shaking loose the dust.

He heard the woman say, ‘
Quelle?
' just before his head hit the floor.

 

Sam awoke in a small but pleasant room lit by the yellow light of a paraffin lantern on the bedside table. His head ached and the cramps that had pinched his gut for many days were worse, but he had none of the last weeks' debilitating nausea. As the fogginess of sleep cleared, he realised his bunk was steady; and with a sigh of relief he remembered that he was no longer on board ship.

The door to his room opened and the woman from the bar peeped in.

‘Ah,' she said, entering. ‘You wake up.'

Sam noticed the woman had an armful of clothes, and at the same time realised he was naked under the sheet and light blanket. The clothes she carried were his. She noticed his expression and smiled.

‘All clean now,' she said and then made a face. ‘Pooh! How you stink. Do you think I would let you sleep in one of my beds when you stink like a donkey? No. Now you are all clean. How do the English say it? From top to toe.'

A number of questions flew into Sam's head, most of which he thought it best not to ask, but one of them was important. ‘What happened to me?'

‘Maybe I should have given you the bouillabaisse before the absinthe, yes?'

‘I fell …?'

‘Boof!' she said, making a gesture with her arm. ‘Like a tree. You are very heavy. Joel, he helped me, but he is useless after four absinthes.' She shrugged. ‘Don't worry, he didn't see your pee-pee.'

She laughed at his expression, then disappeared with a promise to return with the bouillabaisse.

Her name was Paulette, and Sam guessed she was about forty, though as she was white it was hard to tell. She told him that she and her absent husband, Aubin, owned the bar, but that she managed it because he was at sea for ten months of the year and in any case, she was the one with the bar-keeping experience.

She was a full-figured woman, with short hair, wide hips and a dimple in each cheek when she smiled, which was often. She could chat for an hour about the characters who came through the hotel door; and she was not the least embarrassed to reveal some of the amorous exploits of her years working in London's pubs when a young woman, fresh from school with only a smattering of English.

Within days Sam was feeling much better, thanks to the bouillabaisse and the pleasure he found between Paulette's ample white thighs. She was full of vigour and laughter in bed, not to mention endlessly fascinated by Sam's body, which she insisted he place close to the lamp so that she could study his veins and the tight springs of his pubic hair. She would lick him and tease him until he was ready to explode, but on the occasion when his lust drove him to a quick climax she patiently tutored him on the ways that a woman preferred to be bedded.

She was exuberantly vocal each time she neared her climax, especially while sitting astride him, her hands grasping his knees behind her for better purchase and her heavy breasts swinging. Sam wondered if the men in the bar below, or indeed the passers-by in the street, could hear her. She said the English were far better at
bedroom words than the squeamish French. She used the word
fuck
with gusto.

He stayed in Marseille for four weeks, sending Ira three letters to defer his arrival another week, but finally he had to move on: Paulette's husband had sent word that he was homeward bound.

She gave him detailed instructions on how to find his way across France to Calais, and where to go in London to book his passage to New York. She told him that her husband said the best way to avoid the seasickness was to drink plain water with dry crackers whenever he could stand them. He should stay in the centre of the ship and, at all costs, avoid the bow or stern while crossing the Atlantic as it was well known among sailors that the rollers coming over the bow from the west would give any landlubber the worst seasickness imaginable.

Paulette held him in her arms for a long moment when he came to say goodbye. She made a joke about how his body had filled out thanks to her mothering and gave him a slap on the buttocks to send him off.

At the doorway he thanked her and she gave him a wink that sent a small tear rolling down her round, pink cheek.

Paulette's plain water and crackers had not proven to be the complete success he'd hoped, but Sam was well enough to stand at the railing as his ship sailed through the early-morning mists of New York's harbour.

The bleak face of enormous buildings arose through the gloom like the Rift Valley's eastern escarpment clothed in haze.

The deep booming call of the ship's foghorn cast a pall over his excitement. The harbour, the buildings, the weather — everything suddenly felt threatening. Sam wondered how he could survive in this alien world.

Looking down at the upturned faces on the New York dock, Sam realised he had no chance of finding Ira in that seething mass. But his friend, beaming as always, was at the bottom of the gangway as Sam came down, carrying his single small suitcase. They embraced. Ira held Sam tight and appeared genuinely moved as he stood back to admire him.

‘Look at you,' he said. ‘So healthy. After such a terrible journey to Marseille — you look wonderful.'

Sam shrugged. ‘Maybe I am becoming a sailor after all.'

Ira laughed, but tears welled in his eyes as he stared at Sam for a long moment.

‘OK, let's go,' he said finally, clapping his palms on Sam's upper arms. ‘I have a driver waiting for us out the back.'

The car was a black Cadillac Brougham with white-walled tyres. The driver opened the rear door for them; Sam sat and ran his hand over the fine seat covers of dark blue as the driver steered the car effortlessly through a press of vehicles. It seemed amazing that he avoided collisions at intersections where cars lined up like platoons of well-trained members of the King's African Rifles marching in procession.

Ira commented on the various points of interest they passed on their journey through the teeming city. He interspersed this with details of the plans he'd made for Sam.

‘I've set up someone to help you with your language skills. Your English is fine, but it'll do no harm to get some help with your elocution and vocabulary. With some of his tips, you'll be drawling like a Yankee in no time.'

Sam heard only part of Ira's monologue as he swung his head from side to side, craning his neck at the window to peer into the soaring heights of passing buildings. In department store windows were lifelike male and female mannequins wearing fine clothes. A large picture of something called a hamburger dominated an awning over one store; and street vendors stood over smoking braziers selling a variety of food items to the passers-by.

‘Where are we?' Sam asked when they alighted beside a set of stairs leading to a two-storey stone building.

‘This is the place I've been telling you about,' Ira replied.

Sam looked puzzled.

‘You haven't heard a thing I've been saying, have you?' his benefactor said, smiling. ‘I fancy it's all a bit much for you. Come, I'll show you to your room.'

At the top of the stone steps Ira took a key from his pocket and opened the door. A short corridor led to a flight of stairs.

‘My bedroom is up there,' he said, nodding to the stairs. ‘But this is your room until you get established at NYU.' He swung the door open. ‘I hope you like it.'

The room had a desk under a curtained window that looked over a small courtyard to a similar courtyard and window of the building at the rear. A narrow bed sat against the far wall and beside it was a low table with a lampshade made of something like parchment. It had a beaded fringe and a ship painted faintly on it. The other wall held a painting of red and yellow flowers bending their black-centred heads over the rim of a blue vase.

Ira was smiling apprehensively when Sam completed his inspection.

‘Sam, I am so happy you agreed to come.'

‘I'm happy I came too, Ira.'

‘You … you are very dear to me, Sam. If there is anything you need, if you have any problems at all, you will let me know. Agreed?'

Sam nodded.

Ira waited for him to comment, but Sam didn't know what more to add.

‘Oh,' Ira said, ‘that's a letter for you.' He pointed at the envelope on the desk. ‘It came a few days ago. I guess it's from home.' He laughed. ‘Where else?' he said, and shrugged. ‘I had a bathroom installed on the other side of the corridor for you. There's another upstairs … for me.' Ira's eyes roamed the room too. He went to the wall and made a slight adjustment to the flower painting. ‘I have a larger house out of town, but I thought this one would be better while you get settled.'

Sam looked around the room again.

‘If you don't like it, we can go to my place on Staten Island, you know. It's just that, well … we need to do some shopping for you, and I thought …'

Sam smiled an acknowledgement; nodded yet again.

‘So …' Ira said. ‘What do you think?'

‘About the room?'

‘Yes, the room, Sam.'

‘Ira, I think this is the most beautiful room I have ever seen.'

 

The letter, from Sister Rosalba, was written in formal English. He had never received a letter from her nor, now that he came to think of it, had he read anything she had written other than the cryptic comments she scrawled illegibly on the bottom of his lessons. He read the letter again, trying to see her face in the words, trying to recall the way she sounded in real life. But the words were sterile, making Sam feel even more remote from home.

Sam went to the window and stared across the adjoining courtyards to the other window. It was only lightly curtained, but he could see nothing beyond its reflective surface. Both courtyards were paved: nothing useful grew in either although he estimated that, properly planted, they could support a good number of maize plants — enough to feed the occupants of both houses.

He returned to the bed and sat beside his suitcase, Sister Rosalba's letter still in his hands. He ran his eyes around the interior of his room before settling on the picture of the vase of flowers. He briefly wondered if Ira had painted it, but discarded the thought. Then he wondered why anyone would bother painting a picture of a bowl of flowers when having the actual flowers would have been so much more appealing. It added to his confusion about everything American — from the towering statue of a woman holding a light in the harbour to images of giant hamburgers.

He flicked the switch of the bedside lamp. The ship sprang from obscurity into colourful life and the fringe of beads trembled in the light.

He studied Sister Rosalba's neat cursive script. It reflected her personality — the personality of a white woman who had foregone a life with family and friends in Italy to work with impoverished blacks in an obscure corner of a backward country. Until that moment, it had never occurred to him to ponder such a sacrifice.

Now, Sister Rosalba, Igobu, his parents and his life in Kenya had become distant and receding beacons of certainty in a world brimful of confusion.

 

Ira lay staring at the ceiling. He imagined he could smell the faint male odour that arose from Sam's warm body in the bedroom below; feel the smooth musculature of his firm flesh lying between the sheets; sense the vibrancy of his maleness.

He'd waited so long for him to arrive, but as always, his resolve to tell him how he felt had vanished as soon as he'd attempted to put it into words.

You are very dear to me
, was the best he could do while in his heart he wanted to say so much more.
Sam, I love you
.

How many times had he dreamed of this night? Now it had arrived, he knew damn well his cowardice would prevail: he wouldn't say any of the things he'd rehearsed almost every day while awaiting Sam's arrival.

He had tormented himself with the fantasy that Sam would one day feel the same urge that drove Ira into a lather of lust. No, not lust. It could never be lust when it came to Sam.

Ira had kept his desires hidden while married to his wife and only on a few brief occasions since their divorce had he allowed them to find expression. And when he had, it was with such self-disgust and mortification that he retreated again into his emotional cave. With Sam, such an embrace would be so much more, but in his heart he knew it would never happen. He was a coward and now he was running out of time. Sam would but briefly sleep under the same roof before taking up residence in the college dorm.

And time was running out for Ira in another way too. He had learned that asbestos fibres had taken root in his lungs and woven a deadly web. The mines and the money they brought could be forgotten, but the result of that poisonous place could not.

 

It took Sam a long time to find his feet in New York and his place in university life. There were times during the first year when he almost gave up. It was only his indebtedness to Ira's generosity that kept him going; and only Ira who tried to boost his confidence in the face of an increasingly difficult workload and poor grades.

It might be something specific in his course that confounded him to the point of rage. ‘Commercial law is crap,' he said at one stage, although he knew Ira disapproved of his use of the American vernacular. Sam said it was Ira's fault that he cursed because the elocution teacher he chose was from the Bronx and the bad language came packaged with the pronunciations.

Ira would speak calmly and offer to help him with his assignment. Together they would pore over the texts in Ira's large Staten Island house until the problem was resolved and Sam's desperate urge to abandon his studies and slink home to Africa was overcome.

As Sam's grades slowly improved, his confidence grew. In time he found the rigours of study much to his liking. He would arise each day from his bed in the male dormitory and take a dozen circuits of the athletics field or swim a mile in the pool, before joining his colleagues for breakfast. Then he would study until his first class. At the end of the day he would usually go to the library where he would consume reference material and write notes in preparation for the following day.

On weekends he continued to visit Ira on Staten Island, but as he became more involved with the student body and its activities, these trips became less frequent.

He found it easy to apply his rugby skills to the running game of American football. He made the senior team on his first tryout and quickly became a key position player.

To the young white women on campus, he was an exotic — and forbidden — flower and therefore all the more interesting to the nonconformist element among them. Sam couldn't resist and bedded several, but these affairs were short-lived. Most of the young women were only interested in having Sam as a trophy and, after a brief dalliance, would manufacture an excuse to ease themselves out of the liaison.

It was an arrangement that perfectly suited Sam's needs: since he appeared to be the aggrieved party, none of the women felt offended. He had no desire for intimacy, and no intentions of building a long-term relationship. He'd never forgotten Mothoni, his first great love, who had chosen his arch rival, Johnstone Kamau, to be her first official lover.

In the eyes of a few of his female admirers he sensed more than mere lust or the avarice of a trophy hunter. In these situations, he was careful to keep his distance.

Those close to him were aware of his popularity. His closest confidant was his coach, Jake Freemore, who became concerned that Sam was not only breaking one of the college's rather moralistic house rules about fraternisation, but was also in danger of attracting the attention of others with more malicious intentions than those of his female fans.

Freemore was a former running back for the Jacksonville Colts, and one of the first black men to coach a gridiron team in the USA. He realised his prize recruit needed a lesson in living as a black man in white America, so during the term break he invited Sam to his family home in Georgetown, South Carolina.

 

In Georgetown, a town with an overwhelming majority of black Americans, most of them quite poor, Sam felt immediately at ease. Freemore's parents still lived in the little house where he was born, and the Freemore family — mother, father and grandmother — made Sam feel very welcome.

Sam loved the easy pace of the south. He enjoyed the music, the spicy food, and a feeling very similar to being among his tribe.

A few days after arriving in Georgetown, Freemore told Sam he'd like to take him out for a hamburger to a small diner in the better part of the city.

A moment after they were seated, the white manager appeared at their table.

‘Ain't you Jake Freemore?'

‘That's me,' said Freemore.

‘Then hell, man, you should know better. You know I gotta kick your ass out of here.'

Freemore nodded. ‘You're right, sir. I should've remembered where I am.' He stood, indicating to Sam he should do likewise. ‘We won't be bothering you no more.'

‘See that you don't.'

Outside, Sam wanted to know what had happened.

‘You been living a sheltered life on campus, Sam,' he said. ‘You can find situations like that in New York,' he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the diner, ‘but they ain't usually that polite. I brought you here because I know the owner was a fan from my days with the Colts. Anywhere else, we might have been beaten up. Bad.' Freemore explained the basic rules of segregation to Sam, who had heard of segregation, but it hadn't occurred to him that it applied to Africans. In many ways, it hadn't.