Everfair (37 page)

She put her back to the curtained stage and stared boldly up at the rest of the theater. Lavish appointments—sumptuous, even: velvet hangings, sparkling chandeliers, gilded fronts to the boxes lining the upper half of the horseshoe-shaped hall. The seating capacity she estimated as around a thousand. She would recommend it to Matty.

Her neighbors took their places: both of them men. Come to notice there weren't that many women, at least not down here on the floor. One man pressed his knee against her leg. She hit him with her bag. After that, he didn't try anything more. The lights went down and the violins struck a high, excited note, then plunged into a slow, tense dance. The red curtains parted on the scene of a caf
é
, with bareheaded boys and feather-crowned girls seated at its tables. In glided a man wearing a silk top hat, cravat, long tails, and diamond-studded spats. He stopped center stage, twirled his cane, opened his mouth and sang—and it was a woman! By Marie Laveau! The woman tripped and tapped and span about while trilling away like a black-clad canary.

Rima knew a little Spanish. The words were simple, all about love. The dance—
I could do that,
she thought.
I could do that!
The boys bore the girls to front of the stage, still seated on their chairs, and left them there to tread intricate measures with the woman—well, who wouldn't! Just lightly touching fingertips, they twisted this way and that, humming in harmony while the girls tilted their shoulders back and forth and sang along on the chorus. The finish found them at their tables again, the woman in the man's suit standing on two chairs at once, triumphantly straddling the space between them. The curtains swished together and parted again almost immediately on a bicycle built for so many riders it was silly. Scenery moved unevenly behind the “riders.” It must have been a hand-cranked roll. Very soon, the woman reappeared, this time in shirtsleeves and a straw boater and a false mustache! And riding a unicycle as she sang!

The whole show went like that, one musical number following on the heels of another. As far as Rima could tell, there was no attempt to tie things together with a story or any kind of excuse for the songs. When an intermission suddenly cropped up, she stayed right where she was, examining her program. “The Blue Fox Revue”—a “revue” was a French concept borrowed by its star Carmen Delicias, probably
not
her real name—was booked to play here till next Friday.

Rima beat away the too-friendly hands of the second man seated next to her, then gave up for the night and left. It was rude. But, in the vestibule, she roused the ticket office and reserved a box for the rest of the Blue Fox Revue's engagement. At the hotel, she announced she'd be staying a while longer and asked the concierge to cancel her passage on
Compadre
. She got the address of a flower shop.

As soon as siesta ended the following afternoon, she went and bought everything: all the roses, all the orchids, lilies, iris, jasmine. A lot of money gone, but Rima called it an investment. She sent the delivery to the Pearl's best dressing room. That would have to be the right one.

It was. Two hours before curtain, Rima gained entrance to the backstage area. She knew immediately which door to knock on. Her tribute, in makeshift vases, had overflowed Delicias's room with scent and color, spilling into the corridor. Inside, barred from the tabletop, which was covered with makeup containers, they commandeered the floor's corners, the high windowsill, the sink.

Delicias wore women's clothing. If you could call a pink negligee clothes. Her skin was half as dark as Rima's; her hair was slick and short, like a dog's coat just swimming out of a swamp.

She spoke some English. They understood each other well enough. When the show ended, they had supper in Rima's hotel room. A short while later they went to bed, and a long while later they slept.

Rima wished Carmen would talk more. She didn't volunteer her offstage name. Rima booked passage to New York for her, too, and they left right away once the revue closed.

Two markets it took to go fifteen hundred miles—eight days. Twice as long as it would have taken in Everfair. No wonder cruise ships and aeroplanes could compete. By the time
Clementine
moored in Constable Hook, Rima and Carmen were through with each other.

They stayed on good terms. Carmen helped Rima find her first apartment; half the people in Harlem were Porto Ricans, and they all knew the woman's mama, or were related somehow. Almost as bad as Eatonville. Except not as prejudiced—nobody said too much about Carmen's choice of company.

Before Rima signed her contracts with Matty's Broadway producer, she made sure that he planned to offer parts to her friend. That's all Carmen was anymore; in fact, she introduced Rima to the lover who replaced her, and a few more later on—even some men. Rima was picky but open-minded; and besides, none of them meant anything really, compared to Lisette. She knew she'd eventually go back to her, to Everfair. Someday. Some distant day.

 

Kisangani, Everfair, December 1916

Daisy put the letter back in Lisette's waiting hand without trying to touch her again. It was no use.

She reached out with words instead. “You think this means we'll be defeated within a year?”

“Yes.” Lisette folded the letter and tucked it into the bodice of her pleated shift. Her bare arms looked as plump and tanned as ever. “The Americans have everything in their favor: numbers, money … we should never have been drawn into this war.”

“True. But now that we
are
in—”

“We should get out.”

Daisy greeted the interruption with silence.

“But I suppose the Entente wouldn't let us,” Lisette admitted. “Or the Central Powers, for that matter?”

“Probably not. I'll do my best to argue we should, though.” She looked down at the wooden floor. Despite this amenity, Lisette's cottage reminded Daisy overwhelmingly of her primitive first home in Bookerville, where they had so briefly shared their love. Nostalgia filled every aching breath.

“The Grand Mote is coming soon. I suppose the representatives will need to be courted to our cause … Is there anything I can do?”

Kiss me.
Daisy's thought remained unspoken. “Meet me again tomorrow.” At least Daisy could ask for that much. “I'll have a new poem.”

“Of course.” Lisette stood. So Daisy had to as well. They went the short distance to the front door. Lisette opened it and waited expectantly.

“One other thing.” Daisy did her best not to sound desperate. “If this course doesn't prove fruitful—can you help me decide what to do next?” It was a reasonable request, though she'd come up with it rather at the last moment. Of course Lisette agreed.

Walking home through the lightest rain—mere drizzle—Daisy wrenched her mind aside from the insoluble mystery of how she'd offended her love. Over and over she'd asked herself what she'd said, what she'd done. Useless. As for asking Lisette, that was like interrogating one's aged and partially deaf aunt. One was uncertain one had been heard, yet it seemed impolite to press the point.

Rather than pick over the past, she steered her thoughts back to the present. The political situation was deteriorating rapidly. In Europe, stalemate was ending as the United States sent over its troops. Portugal might finally abandon its precious neutrality and do more than turn a blind eye to the military activities of Angola and Mo
ç
ambique. But its support wouldn't be enough.

She reached her flat and climbed the stairs. Za waved hello from the porch high across their shared court, the child's rain-wet brown cheeks fat and shining in the sudden noonday sun. Rosalie was out planting a new palm orchard and would be back for supper. Daisy dined alone on a gourd of leftover fufu and oil sauce, washed down with coco water. Then she set out again for the airfield, the dinner-done whistle clamoring up from the riverfront.

Mr. Beamond had assigned her to operate the mechanical mast. Daisy preferred to load and unload; brute labor gave her mind the necessary freedom to versify, but coordinating the three mooring lines and running the winch for them required too much thought. No doubt this was considered a safer assignment for a woman in her late fifties.

The drummers on the smallest, lowest platform had already started the winch engine before she left the field's roundhouse. It powered a lift. She'd looked forward to getting her exercise on the 150-foot-high spiral staircase. But Nenzima had booked a passage on the incoming aircanoe and was riding up in the lift, so Daisy decided to accompany her. She would try if she could to persuade this first Mote member with prose before composing a poem.

She shut the gate in the lift cage's low wooden parapet. Making sure the other woman had steadied herself, Daisy moved the lever that linked them to the power of the engine. Once she judged they were high enough above it that it was sufficiently quiet for her to be heard, she started talking, though she had no idea what to say. Something about the safety of the jungle, the crushing might of America, and how to escape its awful regard. Turn upon turn of the stairs encircling them opened overhead as they rose. Nenzima's dark face remained undisturbed despite the pessimistic picture Daisy tried to draw. “And if they do find us fighting them they'll mow us down, gas us in the trenches—we're only animals as far as they're concerned; to their minds we're no better than gorillas.”

Finally, an eyebrow rose. “
All
of us?” Nenzima asked. “Whites, too?” The lift stopped. Without waiting for an answer, the African woman unlatched the gate and stepped out.

The passenger platform was only twenty feet in diameter. The mooring controls were right beside the lift at its center, but after sending the cage back to the tower's bottom, Daisy followed Nenzima to the platform's railing. The throb of the engine far below communicated itself through its wood, causing her hands to tingle as she clasped it. Lisette would have found this arousing—Daisy cut that thought off.

Nenzima maintained her silence. Daisy couldn't think how to pierce it. Ordinary words never seemed to work for her.

Straining her ears, Daisy caught the distant drone of
Okondo
's powerful Littlest Heater over the soft rumble of the winch. Clouds filled the sky, but soon the aircanoe's roofed gondola appeared close by, dangling from the mist-greyed bulk of the airbag. Lower, lower—lines were tossed to the ground crew so they could tug the aircanoe into alignment, and Daisy went to her post.

Guiding the telescopic arm in the tower's turret was a tricky enterprise. Drums conveyed to Daisy the disposition of the workers managing the aircanoe's side lines and their pulleys. The wind was negligible, so after only three attempts she threaded the eye on
Okondo
's bow with her hook. Then she retracted the arm till she heard and felt the gimbaled cup click into place over the bow. Next came the rasp and slap of the gangplank being pushed out of a port in the gondola's side and dropped onto the rail. Barrels of ammunition began rumbling sedately along its slight incline into the arms of the field's loaders. Daisy wished she could help.

Why couldn't she? The wind hardly blew, and the mooring cup would turn if necessary—but who else would translate the drummers' signals into shorter or longer side lines?

Impatiently, Daisy awaited the completion of the unloading. As soon as the noise stopped, Nenzima called a formal-sounding farewell. She would need help to mount the rail, but the aircanoe's sailors would manage that. There was no further excuse for Daisy to approach her. No further opportunity to change her mind.

A few dozen skins of palm wine had come up with them in the lift; these formed the bulk of Kisangani's freight to Kamina. In exchange, the mines at Kamina would furnish ores for Manono's manufactories.

Everything boiled down to alcohol and guns,
Daisy thought
.
This wasn't how she'd imagined matters proceeding when they first came here, twenty years ago—longer than that. And the situation was probably worse than she allowed herself to believe. Rumor said children worked in Manono's forges and Kamina's pits.

Tears of frustration welled up. She blinked rapidly to clear her eyes. She could travel and see for herself. Then what? Talking. Writing poetry. More talk. Wasn't there anything else to be done? If only Jackie had lived, whatever the state of their personal relations. If only the war would end.

The drums' steady rhythm proclaimed the status quo until a loud thump, followed by regular footsteps, cut through it. Chester Hunter crossed the platform to lean his folded arms on the benchtop where Daisy worked. His round face took on a confidential cast. “You're worried about the Americans?”

Word got around quickly. “They're in the war now, and they're going to win.” Not to put too fine a point on it. “We had better get out before we lose to them.”

“Good idea, if we could bring it off.” Another on her side! Chester had replaced his brother on the Grand Mote in last year's elections, the same that put Lisette in Mrs. Albin's seat. With Albert, that made four of eleven … not by any means a majority. But there was hope. As they talked, she obtained Chester's promise to have a discussion with Tink when
Okondo
reached Manono again. And George must, must see reason …

Of course if King Mwenda ignored the Mote, as Lisette had many times hinted he wished to do, and as he had indeed seemed often on the verge of doing, then there was no way of enforcing its decisions. The fighters were all loyal to him. Most were born Africans, besides.

Called back to
Okondo
's care, Chester disappeared for the remainder of the aircanoe's hour at dock. Daisy thought she saw his hand waving in reassurance from one of the receding gondola's portholes. But it could have been any black's.