Men (21 page)

The Admiral was scarcely more than a child. When she looked back at him he turned away, serious, his eyes fixed on the riverbank. Thousands of yellow butterflies fluttered, weightless, over the river. Kouhouesso was smoking, leaning on a Castrol tank, and she had another flashback, this time from when she was a little girl, of her father: such beauty, such strength, such total shutting down of oneself.

It was a cable ferry (at first she heard
clamp
).
Cable
,
the pilot corrected her, opening his mouth wide on the
a. Clunk clunk
all around them, a hullabaloo from hell, how old was this thing? From the Germans, for sure, the pilot reckoned: with an engine like that it had to be Prussian. He had inherited it from his father. In the very beginning there were elephants to crash through the forest and make elephantine tracks with their huge bodies. Behind them plunged duikers, antelopes, white-bellied hedgehogs, wild pigs, anteaters, bushbucks. And after them came the Pygmies, and after them the Bantu, and after them the white people: Germans, English, French. From his ferry, the pilot had seen elephants twice. Never any gorillas. What frightened him most were water buffalo, who stood their ground instead of fleeing. Once, he had seen a lion. In Douala, at the zoo.

She daydreamed about circus elephants. One walked past, with a red bellboy hat, straight out of her long-ago childhood, far from the jungles. But it was too late to go back to the past. To go back there, like going back to another country, was no longer possible: she was too far away, too embedded; nothing connected her to herself any longer, apart from this man, Kouhouesso.

He went back with the ferry; they had to do seven trips all up, for the seven cars and the whole crew. A thin line of mist veiled the middle of the river; Kouhouesso's silhouette turned grey, translucid. The ferry was silent in that direction, carried by the current or by something smooth and strange that she couldn't fathom. The
clackety-clack clackety-clack
only started up on the return trip, grew louder; the second Toyota arrived; everyone was wet; it was raining on the other shore. Then Kouhouesso set off again. Favour was in the final convoy. The four-wheel drive moved forwards on the water, the motor cut, as if carried by time itself. From afar, Solange saw Kouhouesso hold the door open and Favour climb out gracefully, her thin black arm raised to her mouth as he lit her cigarette. A puff of smoke. Only then came the
wham
of the door, only then the noise carried, reached her, three hundred metres a second, she calculated, three hundred metres a second if I screamed, if I called out his name, Kouhouesso.

Later, they drove along by a grove of oil palms, the sky aligned between the trunks. They reached the first cliffs. There was, unbelievably, a sort of car park. Baka women under a lean-to made of palm leaves were selling grilled fish. They were big fish, more like catfish, served whole in palm leaves, as takeaway. Further down there was a branch in the river where a man was fishing, using Ivory soap. The fish were crazy about it—whether it was the particular smell or animal fat, no one knew. She took a few photos. She watched M'Bali and Freeboy: they peeled off the skin with their thumbs; there were no scales. Crackled black skin over a layer of slimy fat; underneath it was good, yellow and juicy. She had removed her gardening gloves and little bees kept landing on her fingers—she let out a scream. It wasn't a sting, there was no stinger. Perhaps she had touched—what was
the name of it—one of the antennae or whiskers of the fish.

‘Those
soussous
,' said Freeboy, ‘they stay alive when they're dead,
yikes!
When it's stuck on a spear it keeps moving for much longer-longer.'

Her thumb was swelling up. Trust her to get stung by a dead fish, a typical
moundélé.
³
She had brought antihistamine cream, but her luggage was stashed somewhere in the Toyota.

They climbed on foot towards the caves. Between the trees, they could glimpse, not sky, but more trees, slopes full of them, at different heights. Freeboy pointed out huge round holes in the ground, elephant tracks, the clear imprint of their nails. M'Bali chopped off a double creeper and they tasted pure vegetable water. George's agent was the only one who refused it.

Occasionally, from behind, on the bends of the ascent, she glimpsed Kouhouesso at the head of the procession. They were moving fast. The path was clear, hardly any machete work needed. Since he'd been in the lead for so long, Kouhouesso was way ahead. Freeboy was running behind him and Kouhouesso seemed gigantic in contrast. Patricien brought up the rear; otherwise everyone was between her and Kouhouesso: Favour, Hilaire, Germain, Vincent, and George and George's agent, and Thadée, Idriss and Saint-Omer, and Kouhouesso, and Olga, M'Bali and Tumelo, Welcome, Archange and Pamphile, and Gbètoyeénonmon
the Benin chef, whom everyone called Glueboy, and Freeboy, whom everyone knew by that name, which was probably his real name, and the MAS-36-carrying armoured guard, and others whose names she had forgotten. All these black people in single file, carrying things on their heads; it was all very well knowing it was for a film, that touch of déjà vu was still there. She and Favour were the only ones not lugging something along; even George and Vincent had backpacks.

Her hand was hurting and her forehead was burning, but she was also in the grip of something icy—the forest, she thought, the forest had a hold on her. She concentrated in order to keep walking. She said to herself: if I focus hard enough on Kouhouesso, he will turn around. He will turn around at the top of the path. He will turn around and look at me and wait for me. His head, with its unfathomable expression, will turn around. The hollow of his neck, so soft. And he'll smile at me and urge me on. No, just turning around would be enough. She launched the telepathic thread up the path. Kouhouesso was disappearing, swallowed up by the giant grasses. She headed towards him, sending powerful thoughts his way: turn around, look at me. But the line of walkers was stretching out and something on the path was blocking the way, the path was not cooperating, the path was against her. It was blocked at Favour. The forest and Favour were against her.

Out of the blue, the word came down that they were stopping, right there. An enormous fern, well, some green
thing, a giant celery, had propagated to such an extent, via roots and new growth, that a platform had been created on the slope. Once they stopped, the little bees landed everywhere, bombarding wherever they could, as ferocious as flies. There was a flash: it was Favour nonchalantly throwing a sumptuous silvery stole over her shoulders. M'Bali wandered into the forest and came back with white worms he called ‘cockchafers'. Bottles of water went up and down the line. The little chlorine tablets leaped as they fizzed: it was as if she was watching herself zigzagging, trapped, subdividing, diminishing. And, out of the blue, Kouhouesso. What was he doing? He was coming down the path. Where was he going? Further and further down the line. Why? He stopped in front of her. She raised her eyes. ‘Are you all right, gorgeous?' She showed him her hand. He said it was nothing and squeezed it in his own hand. His lips shone. Had he eaten some cockchafers? Eat me, she thought. A prayer, a supplication to the cannibal. Eat me. Let's be done with it. Let him eat her forevermore.

WOMEN ARE IN THE FOREST

It was the silence of immense weariness. Silence around the caves. As for her, she was almost happy. Patricien looked worried. He was staring at the treetops—no, he was staring at Freeboy, who was staring at the treetops. Freeboy's lips were moving. They all knew that they should have got there before night-time, otherwise Freeboy and M'Bali and Tumelo, all the Pygmies, would refuse to go any further. Freeboy said the trees were talking. Patricien was translating. You could not see the demons, but they were there, and at night they came closer to the humans, at night they were unbelievably daring. Favour looked up at the sky. The demons got into people's mouths and made them utter prophetic, doom-laden declarations. They got into people's bodies and did the work of the devil.

‘The trees are our source of information and advice,' said Freeboy. ‘The trees are on the side of wisdom. The caves are sacred.'

Kouhouesso threw down his cigarette and announced that they were leaving. She was shocked: could they not wait and listen to what Freeboy was saying, what Patricien was translating and what the trees were saying?

Kouhouesso repeated, ‘
On y go. On y Johnnie, là
.'
⁴

Freeboy shook his head. ‘The forest is
bwi
.
⁵
The secrets have been exposed. The trees are suffering. Every tree chopped down exposes the tree left behind. Panthers break into the villages. The whole world falls ill.' But the main thing Freeboy was upset about—he was choking on his words; he seemed to be stammering, even if it was tricky for her to discern a stammer in a language she didn't speak—was that women were in the forest.

It's not just me, she wanted to object. Favour and Olga are here, too. Perhaps Favour and Olga are
bwi
, too?

‘You're not Gabonese, are you, buddy?' asked Kouhouesso. ‘The only people more superstitious than the Gabonese are the Corsicans. Come on, buddy, let's get going, otherwise the demons will be whistling in your ears.'

They set off, clambering over fallen trunks, holding on to each other's hands to get through the rocks. M'Bali and Tumelo got their machetes out again for the branches along
the path. It was a long way. There had been storms; they hadn't thought to bring the chainsaw. Freeboy was sulking in the middle of the line. Soon there was nothing but a dazzling milky sky above their heads. The ground was drying out; the going was easier. They felt as if they had finally got the upper hand. The forest was laid flat, dominated; it was almost cultivated forest now. They could look down onto the trees, the wretched canopy, fleecy swathes of giant broccoli, the stalks poking through, along with the tops of artichoke and clusters of parsley. In the emptiness of her head, she found a scrap of herself to slip back on like an old hat.

She could stand straight, stretch, look around. But they had to keep climbing. She was trying to think of something to wish for, something for herself, other than Kouhouesso. Something that would remind her of wide open spaces, train stations and airports, solid ground, streets, fields. A childhood memory from where she could rewind herself. The afternoons in Clèves, summer, boredom. The carnivals and the elephants, yes, the elephants were there, too. Knocking their heads against the planks of their stalls, one night at the circus, her first kiss. Back in that past from which she was cut off by the forest. Time had been shoved into the trees and held there, in the forest. Time chopped into planks of wood for white people.

They reached a granite plateau. A last kapok tree, like a hand plunged into the rock. The sky was red. The men leaned against the deep furrows in the tree. Wings, curtains,
between which they could lie. Kouhouesso had gone on ahead again, to the caves, to assess the location. M'Bali and Tumelo took off their backpacks and got out a flask of palm wine. Germain put down the generator he had been carrying on his head since morning, which had made him look like some kind of weird robot. Freeboy was biting into a whisky flask. The so-called white crew followed suit. A packet of Marlboro was passed round. Tents began to spring up. Hilaire got them collecting wood. Glueboy and Thadée lit a fire, ever so traditionally, with a cigarette lighter. George, Vincent, George's agent and Patricien were playing poker on a tree stump. Welcome was trying out some lipstick on Favour, who was attempting to dissuade him from whitening her skin. Olga was already asleep, her head against her costume trunk. They looked like a travelling circus that had got seriously lost.

All she longed for was to take off her boots and have a shower—that was it. It was dusk and the mosquitoes were attacking. She hid her face, the last square centimetres of bare skin, in her gloves. Kouhouesso had come back, his deep voice so recognisable. Problems with the location. M'Bali and Tumelo wanted to renegotiate their pay: night rate was more. Freeboy was translated by Patricien, their voices blended with Kou's voice. The rhythms of other languages. Bursts of laughter, then whispers. Off to sleep. Sounds all around her. Insects. The clatter of dishes on metal. Something banging on the ground.
Poof
as Quechua tents collapsed,
laughter. Favour was calling out in English for something; then she was speaking in Yoruba on her personal Thuraya phone. Glueboy and Thadée were arguing in French: a bag of supplies was missing. The trees opened up and closed over. She could see Kouhouesso's back, further away, still further. Slowly, she parted the drooping branches. Her feet were sinking, she was sliding into the mud, subsiding.

She was woken by a kiss. Just like the butterfly kisses her father used to give her. She rubbed her hand over her hood and her glove caught something. A small animal—no, it was an insect. She shook the glove. The thing wouldn't come off. She decided to confront it. Kouhouesso would be proud of her. Round, bronze, multifaceted eyes. And perhaps two smaller eyes below. Four antennae, green and brown, the length of a long finger, thrumming. It stayed there, staring at her. Then it opened a sort of mouth and emitted a
hhhhiissss
, barely audible. With her two gloved hands she unhooked it and threw it as far as she could. Afterwards she shuddered for ages.

The negotiations had stopped. ‘Palaver', he had explained to her one day, came from the Spanish: it was not an African word at all; it was a racist word. She thought of Lloyd in Hollywood, of his pitiless patience in business matters. In the meantime all the tents had been erected, even the big one with pegs. In a pale circle of light, Glueboy offered her something to eat. M'Bali had caught what looked like a furry child—a marmoset, Glueboy reassured her, as if it
was more edible. She thought she could see hands in the pot. She sucked on a tube of concentrated milk. George brought her a tumbler of lukewarm coffee—it was the super-global brand for which he was the ambassador—‘black, intense, rich, sensual and delicate'. They laughed like kids, out of earshot of Kouhouesso. Crickets were screeching at the tops of their lungs, assuming they have lungs, and something was hooting every now and again: an owl? The air was buzzing; animals were calling out to each other. In the end, they never actually saw any animals. Or only when they were dead. Insects and stars were what they saw. How refreshing to see stars. To inhabit the same planet as all those living things that could see the stars that night.