The Man Who Cried I Am (46 page)

He took a room at the rear of the hotel. It overlooked the lagoon and channel through which the great ships passed slowly on their way to the harbor at the foot of the city. It was quieter in the back; here there were no chattering drivers waiting for fares from the hotel to fill their green and black cabs. Max stripped and showered. After, sitting in shorts (he hadn't turned the air-conditioner on yet), he made an appointment to see the house on Rumens Road and the office on Broad Street the next morning. Then he wrote a letter to Devoe in Nairobi. Max wasn't in a hurry to open the lines of communication; a letter would do for now. At dinnertime Max went downstairs to the spacious dining room and took a table on the open terrace. As usual, there were twenty white persons for every black person. The whites generally got better if not first service and Max felt the old irritation with Africa coming on. Patience, he told himself.
Cool
. When he had finished dinner, he returned to his room and pulled off his jacket and loaded his typewriter. He was half a hundred pages into a new book, but he had no publisher now; his previous one had dropped his option. Another publisher, however, had made Max an offer, but that had been quickly and mysteriously withdrawn. Then Max discovered that Marion Dawes had signed with that publisher and he understood. The publisher had his nigger now; nearly everybody had one. The season for that sort of thing. Max was quite determined that this would be his last book. There was a little money put aside, thanks to the really quite adequate soft cover book money in circulation. With it he could buy a little shack in New England, perhaps, and do nothing but hunt, read and walk the woods. But would Margrit like that kind of—

Max jumped up. He had to do something about this Margrit thing. It was one thing to sleep with white women, but quite another to marry them. He was too tired and much too wise to be put through the paces they set for you in such a marriage; he didn't need that at all. Something had to be done. A letter tomorrow. To Margrit. Max pulled on his jacket and walked quickly out to the elevator. Yeah, he knew what to do. He signaled a cab when he got downstairs and took it to the Kakadu Club in Yaba. There were always girls at the Kakadu, girls and white folks trying to do the High-Life. The High-Life was not an intricate dance; it was a shuffle, but you could improvise on it.

The place had its old smell of urine hanging in the humid air. Blue lights. Red lights. Green lights. Young men, their hard bodies in absurd, nonchalant postures, studied him as he paid the cab driver. Pimps and would-be pimps the world over were the same. The eyes, the feigning of the unmeltable cool, the rubbing of flesh the common denominator. One of the young men slithered out of a corner, his cool gone, his eyes pleading and demanding at once, and said, “Want embassy girl, boss?”

Max glanced at him without word or gesture and entered the club. Embassy girl? Just what does that mean? Then he was inside the club, or rather, inside the fence that circled the outdoor club. The band played under a canopy and some of the tables were protected from inclement weather. Most of them, however, were in the open. There were more white men than black. The band was playing a lazy High-Life and white men shuffled self-consciously around the circle with black girls, some of whom were wearing seam-bursting skirts and Kingsway wigs. Max took a rear table and ordered a beer. It would be warm, but it would be better than an iced drink at this point; in another day the pills would have his stomach in shape. A Fulani girl was sitting at the next table. Max and the girl eyed each other with mild interest. Just as Max was about to offer her a drink, an Englishman walked to her table. “Let's dawnce,” he said, looking away from her toward the floor, as if expecting her to bound up at the sound of his voice, which many girls would have done. “
Let's dawnce,
” he said in a louder, more commanding voice. The girl shook her head and withdrew from him. The Englishman stood in a state of shocked embarrassment.

“I no want dance wit' you,” the girl said and turned so that she was facing Max directly. The Englishman walked away, his face flushed. He wasn't used to
that
kind of treatment from Nigerians. No, things have changed, are changing.

Max extended a pack of cigarettes in the direction of the girl; and with, it seemed, a single movement, glancing behind her to see where the Englishman was, she was at his table.

“You didn't like the gentleman?” Max asked.

The girl pursed her lips and made a sound not unfamiliar to bathrooms.

“Drink?” Max asked.

She glanced at his beer and he said, “You can have anything you want. I happen to like beer.” She too, ordered a Star beer.

The girl could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, but already she had that proud Fulani posture, the way of flashing the eyes, the vocal inflections softly uttered that commanded as well. Max had seen these things even in the very young cow Fulani boys who walked from all the way north with herds of long, swept-horned cattle for the Lagos markets.

“You are from America.” She said it rather than asked.

“Yes.” If she hung out at the Kakadu often enough, she had to become familiar with the look of black Americans.

“T'at is far away.”

“Not far by plane. Where is your home?”

“I? Sokoto.”

“In the North. Very far north.”

She smiled and small, even teeth showed white. “You know Sokoto?”

Max shook his head. “I have only read about it. What are you called?”

“Florence.”

“Ah, Florence.” She was one of the new generation of Nigerians moving from farm, rain forest or desert to the hot pavement and reeking sewers of Lagos. One of the new generation excluded by the successors to the British from participating, sharing. One of the new generation forced by circumstances to meet the outside world, the Londoner, New Yorker, Parisian under the most basic circumstances. One of the new generation whose not having would be underlined by the contact from outside while the piddling little civil servants, the haves for the time being, wallowed in their security, their power. One of the new generation who would be eventually a part of the inevitable revolt which all have-nots must begin.

“What you do in Lagos and what
you
name?”

“I visit. My name is James.”

“James? James.
Jimmy!
”

“Yes.”

She did not wear a wig. Her skin was cocoa dark and her features were almost regular. Many Fulanis' features were strikingly different from other Nigerians.

“Are you married, Florence?”

“No. No more.”

“How many picken'?”

She smiled and held up two fingers. “Two picken'; boy and girl.”

“Tonight I will give you another picken'. A strong boy.”

Florence laughed and reached for another American cigarette.

The Portuguese and not the British brought the “dash” to Nigeria. It is bothersome, infuriating and degrading to the giver and ultimately to the receiver—but, if you wish to bring a girl to your room, you have only to slip a ten shilling or pound note to the desk clerk when he gives you your key, and it is done with. Dash does everything.

Florence's eyes swept the room at once. She went to the window and pulled open the curtain that covered it. A ship with riding lights on sat in the lagoon, awaiting its turn to sail into the harbor. Florence wheeled away from the window and touched the bed and laughed. Max liked it that she didn't wear Western dress; he liked the long, ankle-length skirt. He had become so entranced with her childlike movements and soft laughter that he almost dispensed with the ritual. Now he was sure that she was new at whatever she thought she was doing. He could see that she had never been in a place like the Federal Palace before. At five pounds a day, certainly not. Very few Nigerians could afford that price. No, the hotel was for white people, that was obvious, white people in black Africa. She whistled at the large, neat bathroom, made even more comforting by the presence of the big, soft white towels. Perhaps, Max thought, the ritual would not be so degrading. Casually, he sat on the edge of the tub, plugged it and turned on the water. “Would you like to take a bath?” he asked gently. Ordinarily, you simply ran the water and said, “Get in the tub,” and they obeyed without question.

“Yes!” she said.

It would be a lark for her. She took a towel and went to the outer room. Max took a small can of disinfectant and squeezed a few drops into the water. You used the disinfectant for everything, brushing teeth, bathing, even a bit in your drinking water. Max stepped into the outer room just as the twin balls of old newspaper fell out of Florence's brassiere. She looked abashed. She pulled the towel up around her. “My—” She touched her breasts. “—they not big ones.” She smiled and took his hand. “In my tribe, man, woman, go in water together.”

Max considered this momentarily. Why the hell not? He broke the rules and undressed. In the tub, Florence took the cloth and gently washed him from head to foot.

In bed she said, “You give me picken', I keep. I no give picken' away like some. I keep you picken', American picken'.”

“Yes,” Max murmured drowsily, considering delicately all the factors that had brought the girl from the torrid heat of the North where the edges of the Sahara crept inch by inch southward. Another child. Of course, she would have it, carry it on her butt tied behind her until it walked. It would be loved and cared for and not cast aside; it would be Florence's son or daughter. He wondered suddenly what Regina's children looked like, then he went to sleep. Later, the girl snoring softly at his side, he reached over and stroked the young, undernourished body into wakefulness, mounted it once more and in time withdrew from it. Sleep came again.

Max awoke with the sound of the bath running. Florence dressed hurriedly to be out before the tea and rolls came. He wondered how much money he should give her. A couple of pounds? But no. Five pounds. Yes, five pounds and if he ever went again to the Kakadu, she would remember him. Besides, there were the children; he didn't think she'd lied about that. And there were the balls of newspaper she was now stuffing into her bra. Perhaps now she could buy a pair of falsies from Kingsway.

“T'at for me? Is a lot, Jimmy.”

“Take it. When I come to Lagos again, I will look for you.”

“I look for you, too.”

She slipped out of the door and he had a vision of her getting off the elevator, walking quickly through the austere marble lobby with its fountain spraying water. She would pause in the front and a cab would speed up to her. Then she would take the drive back to Yaba, to a small room where her children had been watched through the night by her mother.

Max was thinking of Margrit as he showered, and he knew he would not write that letter. A letter, yes, but not
that
letter.

26

LAGOS—THE CONGO—AMSTERDAM

A month was galloping by, spurred on by the stinging, brooding sun, the heat-relieving, sudden gusts of wind over the fields of elephant grass and red earth when the tides changed; a few garden parties where the women, their red smiles fixed, felt the heels of their shoes sinking deeper and deeper into the ground while they held their gin and tonics; Saturday afternoons at the Island Club where the Nigerian upper class went to remind themselves that they were Nigerian and not British after all; hours stolen to take the lagoon crossing to Tarkwa Bay where the white people of the Lagos community outnumbered the black people ten to one.

But during that time Max had managed to hire a car with a driver from Calabar who looked down on the newly secured Ibo houseboy whose name, ironically, was Johnson, and the Yoruba girl for the office whose name, right out of a mission school, was Charity. The girl called Max “Mr. Reedick,” the driver (whose name was Jimmy) said “Sir,” and the Ibo called him “Mastuh.” “Mastuh,” then, was anyone who paid your salary whether black, white or red striped. There was no need for a night watch on Rumens Road; it wasn't far enough out of the city to worry about thieves and hungry people in search of fat cats or dogs to eat. Both Johnson and Charity had the usual overabundance of relatives or tribesmen nearby and from among them Max secured a host of messenger boys for the office, although there were few messages to be delivered.

All the U.S. agencies were well staffed with American Negroes. For many of them the advent of African independence came as an unexpected boon, releasing them from the narrow alleys and dead ends of their careers back home into the Foreign Service. Just like many whites in the Service, they'd never had it so good, with cooks, houseboys, gardeners and drivers.

Jaja Enzkwu had returned from Paris and at one of his garden parties Max met the newest Negro addition to the American Embassy, Alfonse Edwards, a political affairs officer. Edwards was a good mixer, tall, cool, with an intelligent, bright face, definitely American; there was no mistaking him for anything else with his over-twenty-five Ivy look. He slid without pause from the stilted conversational style of a government man with many secrets, to the vernacular of the bar at the Red Rooster in Harlem. Someone was telling Edwards about an American family. Max listened in.

The Curtises lived over in Porto-Novo, Dahomey. Curtis had been in a teaching program and during his year there had gained a reputation, well-known among the Americans, especially the women (for Curtis was very handsome), for chasing Dahomean girls. That was all right; he traveled a lot and kept his chases away from home. Then it was discovered that Mrs. Curtis, the mother of two children, also liked Dahomeans, the Hausa men. At first she had been given, by a friend close to the Embassy at Kaduna, what amounted to a warning. But she persisted in taking on Dahomeans wherever she could find them—behind the Great Mosque, in the Central Hotel, in the rooms upstairs over the Federal Club and even in her home when Mr. Curtis was on a trip. Eventually the Curtises were given five hours to leave the country on one of those Saturdays when the Americans from the tracking station were trying to round up enough men to play a game of baseball against the Japanese weavers the next day. Curtis was a heavy hitter and a good pitcher, and the Americans had counted on him to check the Japanese batters until they had solved the curves of the pitchers. However, at gametime the family Curtis, shunted aboard a Sabena jet the night before, was hunting temporary accommodations in Rome. It was suspected that the U.S. Ambassador and not the Dahomean Government, which let the blame fall on its shoulders, was responsible for the sudden departure of the Curtises.