Orphan of Creation (21 page)

The crowds of people coming off the plane gradually melted away, and the stifling-hot customs-shed terminal grew more and more quiet.

Suddenly there was a bustle at the entrance to the main terminal. A short, paunchy white man in a baggy suit, a straggly necktie, and a strange, decrepit-looking snap-brimmed straw hat came bursting through the swinging doors. He stopped just inside the entrance and looked about for a moment at the people still in the customs hut. Then he shrugged and shouted out “Marchando Party! Calling for the Marchando party!”

Barbara was on her feet in a moment. “Here!” she shouted back.

The paunchy man hurried over to them, moving faster than it looked like he could. He put out his hand and took off his hat. “Dr. Marchando. How do you do. I’m Clark White, from the Embassy.” His voice was a bit reedy and winded, quite in contrast to the shout he had offered up a moment before.

“Mr. Clark, it’s very kind of you to meet us,” Barbara said.

“Quite all right. It’s a pleasant break from the routine. As a matter of fact, your researches sounded so fascinating I did something I’ve never done before—I invited myself along, if that’s all right.”

Barbara smiled happily. “It certainly is! We need someone who knows the country. We’d be delighted to have you along.”

“Excellent. In that case, I’ll really have the chance to get out of the office.” White turned to Liv and offered his hand. “And Livingston Jones, I presume,” he said—and then hesitated, obviously concerned that he had given offense. “Oh, dear. Forgive my extremely small joke,” he said, awkwardly putting his hat back on his head.

“It’s okay,” Liv said easily. “I’ve been getting Stanley and Livingstone jokes ever since I was a kid. Worse since I announced I was going to Africa.”

“That’s most kind of you. But what has happened to Dr. Maxwell? Wasn’t he to travel with you?”

Barbara hooked a thumb at the customs inspector’s office, where a threatening silence had replaced the loud voices. “I’m afraid he’s already having trouble with the natives. Some difficulty about his luggage.”

White sighed. “Oh Rupert, Rupert, Rupert. Some things never change. If you could wait here a moment, I’ll see what I can do.”

White marched up to the customs barrier, waving his credentials at the inspector, who let him through into the office area. The previous shouting resumed for a moment before settling down to calmer tones, led by White’s reedy, smooth-voiced French. Finally, the voices quieted down enough that Barbara and Livingston couldn’t hear them anymore, and a few minutes later White, Rupert, and a gaggle of customs workers popped out of the inner office, if not in good spirits, at least calmed down a bit.

Clark hustled Rupert and his baggage through the gate, gestured to Barbara and Livingston to follow, and hurried them all through the entrance to the main terminal. “That’s done with,” he said happily. “I wanted to get you clear of there before Rupert and his friends could think of anything else to argue about.” White turned and looked up at Rupert, who stood a full head taller. “That last thing, the pith helmet. That was the limit, that’s what really got them mad, you know. What the devil are you doing with a
pith
helmet, for God’s sake?”

Rupert, still rather angry, glared back down at the diplomat. “They’re very practical in this climate. Keep your head cool and protected, and your sweat doesn’t come pouring down your back.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Didn’t it ever occur to you that a pith helmet is a symbol of something here—the great white hunter, colonialism, native bearers, all the stereotypes. When you went to visit Barbara’s family in Mississippi, did you bring watermelon as a visitor’s gift?”

Barbara laughed out loud. “No, Mr. White, we talked him out of it. Come on, I want to see more of Africa than an airport.”

White shook his head and peered owlishly up at Rupert. “Pith helmet. Well, come on, let’s see if there’s a decent taxi left. The passengers on your flight who came out a half hour ago like regular people probably cleaned them out.”

<>

Livingston was feeling disappointed again. The train banked a bit to round a sharp curve, then settled back to its smooth progress, swaying back and forth just as it streaked over the smooth rail. They had left the capital of Libreville on the coast a few hours before, and were about halfway to the inland city of Booué. Liv had imagined their trip inland on a chugging steam launch, like Humphrey Bogart’s boat in
The African Queen
. He had seen it all in his mind’s eye—the doughty little craft heading up the endless, winding reaches of a mysterious jungle river, crocodiles sunning themselves, hippos diving out of sight, weird noises from the jungle as they surged up-stream ...

Well, there was a river all right, the Ogooue. He could see it peeking through the trees every now and then as the rail line rolled alongside it. But he might as well be riding Amtrak for all the romance of it. He wasn’t really that clear on whether there were crocs or hippos in the river, but there certainly weren’t any on the train. Okay, the lady sitting on the other side of the compartment had a cage full of live—if scrofulous—chickens on her lap, but that was more smelly than colorful. And rather than anxiously watching for attacks from the shore, Rupert, Barb, and the guy from the Embassy, White, were all calmly reading paperbacks.

In honor of the trip, Clark White had traded in his rather rumpled summer-weight suit for a very sensible-looking set of khakis that made him look a great deal more impressive and authoritative. He looked up from his book and seemed to read Livingston’s thoughts from a glance at his face. “Sorry we’re not more like the movies, Mr. Jones,” White told him. Barbara and Rupert looked up to listen. “But it can’t be helped.” He looked out the window and blinked happily at the westering sunshine streaming through the walls of the jungle. “A train ride might seem dull to you as opposed to a river trip, or bouncing around in a Land Rover, but the Transgabonais railroad is a dream come true for the people here, their ticket into the present. It’s binding the country together, making it a real nation instead of a bunch of isolated villages—just the way our railways did. For the locals,
this
is the romantic, exciting way to travel. Besides, we’ll get all the Land Rover bouncing you want a bit later on.” White and the others returned to their books.

Livingston grunted, looked back out the window, and sighed. He heard the chickens’ fussing get louder for a moment. He glanced over and noticed that the woman holding them was giving him yet another sidelong glance. She realized he had caught her at it and shifted her attention to Barbara. The woman looked intently at Barbara’s hair and then reached up to pat her own kerchiefed head. She was clearly fascinated by Barb’s hair, her black woman’s hair, in a Western style.

The chicken woman had scarcely even noticed Rupert or White, but had spent the entire trip staring at the two black Americans. That had been the pattern of the entire journey in Gabon so far. The porter at the hotel, the waiters at the restaurants, the taxi drivers, the railroad conductor, everyone seemed fascinated by the sight of this huge black man with his football player’s physique, his American clothes, and American-accented English. It didn’t take long for Liv to realize that
everything
about him—his mannerisms, his shoes, his haircut—tagged him as an outsider. And a
black
outsider, who looked like an African and acted like a European.

Livingston had expected Africa to feel like a second home, like the land of his birth, and yet he had never felt more like a foreigner, a stranger, in his life—not even when he had first stepped onto the virtually lily-white campus of Ole Miss.

He had expected to be a black man among black men, but instead he was a freak. And he wasn’t even the right shade of black. The locals were far darker-skinned than he was, jet black instead of chocolate brown. Was is that a lifetime of equatorial sun had baked their black skins blacker, or were they
really
blacker, more purely black, than he was? Livingston had always known that a lot of masters had lain with their slaves, but he had never really thought of it on a personal level. He knew, more or less, who most of his ancestors were for the last hundred years or so—but how many of
their
ancestors had been white?

Uncomfortable questions, uncomfortable ideas. Instead of helping him get in contact with his roots, Africa was making him question them. He caught that damn woman with the chickens staring at him again. This time he decided to ignore her.

<>

They spent that night in a stiflingly hot hotel in Booué, sweating under mosquito netting in rooms where whole herds of cockroaches scuttled for cover when the lights went on. To Livingston, the jungle noises coming from outside the small town seemed as loud as any city traffic for the purposes of promoting insomnia. Maybe it was the noise, maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the last gasp of jet lag, but none of them slept well that night. Except Clark White, of course.

Nothing ever seemed to bother him. Fat, old, and balding though he was, Clark was endlessly active and energetic, unfazed by the intemperate climate. When Livingston and Rupert staggered down to breakfast the next morning, they found Barbara in sole possession of the run-down hotel restaurant, with Clark nowhere to be seen. The hotel had seemed full of people the night before, but now it was deserted.

A waiter who seemed to regard them all with some suspicion served them strong, bitter, black
cafe noir
without being asked. Rupert and Barbara had dealt with espresso before, but Livingston thought his tongue would blacken and fall out. He had never tasted anything as bitter or as strong.

Rupert grinned when he saw the face Livingston was making. “Suffer through it, cowboy. No milk to be had, so you have to take it straight. But I guarantee it’ll get you awake.”

Livingston shuddered. “Yuck. I can see why they serve it in such small cups. So what’s the plan? And where’s Clark?”

“Up and out hours ago. He left a note saying he was heading out to make some sort of arrangements for the next leg of the trip,” Barbara said. She managed to catch the waiter’s eye and gestured him over. “Rupert, you’re the one who speaks French. Order us something shaped like breakfast.”

Livingston winced a little less over his second sip of
cafe noir
, and by the third was used to it. Rupert and the waiter spent a good five minutes discussing what on the menu was actually available. Finally some sort of negotiated settlement was reached, and the waiter shouted the order to the kitchen in what was presumably Fang, because it wasn’t French. Five minutes later, a slab of greasy ham and half a canned peach was set before each of them with an appropriate lack of ceremony, accompanied by rather frugal glasses of orange juice that had the taste of being in a can too long.

The check appeared magically, with
service complet
scribbled in the corner and twenty percent added to the bill. Livingston remembered it was about three hundred
Communité Financial Afrique
francs to the dollar, converted in his head, and compared the price to the dinner they had had in Libreville. He decided they were being overcharged because they were foreigners, even if you accounted for their being in the backside of nowhere, but on the other hand, breakfast in a diner back home would have been cheap at the price. He shrugged and ate his ham, then helped Barbara and Rupert finish theirs.

Clark came in just as they were finishing, carrying a rolled-up map. “Morning, all, morning. Congratulations on setting a record this morning. The desk clerk just told me he won a bet off a bellboy that you three got down to breakfast later than anyone else. All the other guests were up and out hours ago. The perils of jet lag.” He pulled out a chair, sat down and gestured for the waiter. “
Garçon, cafe, s’il vous plait
.” Clark glanced about at the remains of breakfast on their plates and chuckled. “I see they are giving you the royal treatment, though. Canned food. Nothing but the best for our European visitors.”

“I couldn’t understand it,” Rupert said. “They didn’t seem to have anything fresh on the menu.”

Clark laughed out loud. “Ah, but they were no doubt scandalized that you wanted fresh things. They have a very different point of view about such matters. Fresh things rot so fast around here, in this heat. Besides, everyone can afford them. No snob appeal. But canned stuff, preserved stuff that won’t rot if you leave it on the shelf for two days,
that’s
the height of modern, convenient luxury and elegance in these parts. Right now, freeze-dried stuff is all the rage. Incredibly expensive, but the height of sophistication.” The waiter appeared at Clark’s elbow with coffee, and he took it gladly.

“Well,” he said, taking a sip. “It took me half the morning, but I tracked down the fellow in town who hires out his Land Rover. He can drive us to Makokou, northeast of here. Here, clear away some of these things and I’ll show you where we are and where we’re going.”

They cleared the dirty plates and the salt and pepper and so forth to an empty table—scandalizing the waiter anew in the process—and Clark unrolled his map, a large-scale chart of the region. “All right, this is where we are, in the sub-prefecture of Ogooue-Invido, as if that mattered to any of you.” He stabbed a plump finger down at the map. “Here’s where we are, Booué, and here—” he traced his finger along a prominent dotted line on the map “is the future route of the northeastern branch of the Transgabonais. They’ve already cleared a good piece of the right-of-way and laid some of the track, and we should be able to follow it most of the way to the next and final major town we’ll see, Makokou.”