Reading the Ceiling (17 page)

I have too many things to carry in, and Ndiarra walks up to help. He waits and watches me search my handbag, my briefcase, and finally head back to the car to extract my keys from the ignition. We dump the piles of paper inside the living room, which leads directly off the verandah. I switch the lights on as I walk through the house into the kitchen. There are two saucepans on the gas cooker. My househelp has grilled some lemon chicken and made some flavoured rice for my supper. Both are lukewarm, so I light the rings and watch the blue flames lick the thick aluminium bases. I fill a small milkpan with water and put that on a third ring, for tea.

I return to my living room and plump up cushions before settling back. The phone wakes me up, and at the same time I smell charred rice. I answer the phone with a ‘It's Ayodele, hold on,' then dash into the kitchen into a hearty melody of burnt smells and sizzling saucepans. I turn off all the rings. There is no water in the milkpan, I can see brown-tinged circles in the rice, and all the chicken pieces are stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.

Dealing with centimetre-thick bits of charred food would have been a lot more pleasant than a phone call from Frederick Adams, who I discover when I pick the handset up again is on the other end of the phone.

‘Ah, Ayodele, we are just passing through, on our way to the conference in Ougadougou.'

‘Fisheries, isn't it? But aren't you late?'

‘Yes, but you know, I only need to go these days to help with the wrap-up, heh heh heh.'

His laugh is a cross between loud donkey braying and self-satisfied chicken clucking.

‘I see.'

‘Your mother gave me a letter for you, you know how these old ladies hate to waste money on stamps, heh heh heh.'

‘Oh, how nice of you to bring it.'

‘But we leave tomorrow. We can bring it to your house now, as we've just finished dinner, but we'll need instructions. These dusty streets are not easy without proper street signs, are they? Next minute, we'll be well on our way to Timbuktu, heh heh heh.'

‘It'll probably be easier if I come to you then, to pick it up.'

‘We're at the Hotel Dogon.'

‘I'm a very lucky man to have such a dedicated secretary,' he says as he pats the knee of the slender lady sharing a two-seater couch in the hotel bar.

She simpers back and says, ‘I am luckee too, to 'ave zuch a nice boss.' She pats him back on his green-suiting-covered knee.

He is wearing a full Kaunda suit, in the old style. The jacket has a series of fabric-covered buttons extending from his neck downwards to an enlarged midriff. His beard, now peppered with black, covers a slightly slackened jaw.

She is his Guinean secretary and right-hand person. Without her, he could not operate in his very busy job.

‘A busy man needs a busy secretary, heh heh heh.'

She smiles again, her even teeth glaring past her burgundy-red lipstick. She has a smooth dark complexion and a thin face, the regular features that define a certain kind of beauty. Her head is fringed on either side with a mop of brown-tinged curls, falling to her shoulders – a wig. Her long black skirt has slits all the way past her knees; with one leg swinging over the knee of her other leg, she displays a strappy sandal with several inches to its heel.

I am having a beer, so is Mr Adams. Yolande has opted for a pink martini.

‘Remi sends her greetings,' says Frederick Adams. ‘Life as a married woman is busy, heh heh heh. That husband of hers will keep her on her toes.'

I stretch my mouth into a smile.

‘Now, where's that letter from your mother?'

He pats his top left pocket, and then his tummy as if the letter might have slid down while he wasn't looking.

‘Yolande, my dear, could you go up to the room and see if you can find it? It's a white envelope and I am sure I had it in my hand earlier.'

Her first step suffers from the Martini-and-heels effect. She sways. ‘Oh la la,' she says, and Mr Adams laughs heartily along with her.

‘You take it easy as you go up the stairs,' he says, sending her on her way, in tiny little steps, towards the stairwell. ‘She's a marvel. I really don't know how I could travel without her.'

When I return home, I find my reheated rice and chicken cold and congealed. I need to eat something so I take the only clean frying pan, spoon out brown-speckled rice and a piece of chicken with a black crust. I cover it up with a lid and stand there to watch over it while it warms.

I sit down at my dining table and start to eat, taking out my mother's letter to read as I do so.

My knees are very painful at times, and if it weren't for the fact that I have a bit more padding than most, I am sure they would be much worse. A doctor was visiting from Germany, and he said he wanted to see my case specially, as I sounded so unusual. He suggested that I get some special fluid injected into my knee joints. He comes here every six months or so, as a volunteer with the hospital, to help train these our young doctors.

 The letter repeats some of the news I've gleaned from Frederick Adams. As to be expected, she has added her own interpretations.

That Kojo Joiner, he's such a nice and stable boy. He's finished his master's in business studies and come back to manage a bank. There are so few well-trained people that he's bound to go far. Just the kind of boy Remi needed. Hope you are starting to get over things by now. It's sad when you lose someone, look at me and your dad. But life moves on. I hope you will find someone nice, like Remi has, soon.

Any sympathy I might have felt is burnt up by the rage building up in me. How dare she? How could she even dare start to compare what Yuan and I had with what she had with my father? He
deserted
her.

I push the plate away. The anger cannot sit for long beside a surge of grief that comes to gnaw at my insides, that convulses my stomach and eventually has me half running, half crouching, clutching my midriff on my way to my bathroom. I throw up in the corridor.

At work the next day, I plod through my reading. I have a go at writing an outline of my report, and slot in quotes and figures, jot down notes for my main points in each section, and a few recommendations. Sometimes it's easy to rail against a world where the prices are set to make the African cotton farmer unable to compete. Today though, the concepts of agricultural subsidies, redressing trade imbalances, and reducing protectionism all seem too grand, too opaque, too removed from me. I leave early, piling the documents back into the car, hoping to use the evening to gather my thoughts together and say something sensible.

I stop at the river on my way home, needing to feel a sunset. I park the car under a tree and get out. The water is brown with little circles of still right out towards the middle, where the wind and the current are in such perfect balance that they create holes of quiet in the water. Mostly the water's surface is the consistency of light pancake batter being churned through an egg beater, with movements in all directions. A few dugout canoes are pulled up at the edge and I notice two teenage boys tying them up, looping rope through a metal hook driven into the bark of the nearest tree.

The day is losing its heat as the sky is dyed red by a disappearing sun. The clouds are high, wispy fronds playing out a stately, slow dance. I find a damp coconut trunk to sit on near the dark river sand and stare out, watching the water move. I do not notice someone else has been watching me, until I feel a tug at the handbag I put down by my feet.

The two boys from the boat come dashing up when they hear me shout. They run after the thief and manage to trip him up. The boys find it hard to hold him down and snatch my bag back. When they finally succeed, he scrambles up and runs off. As the boys walk back towards me, they slap their palms together in a high five. One of them holds my bag out to me. ‘Here,
m'selle
.' 

‘Merci,
' I say.

To which they reply, in unison, ‘You're welcome,' and go back to their boat rope looping.

My boss Musa returns on Thursday with a lilt to his chubby step. His infectious chuckle wafts through to my desk as he does his ‘bonjour' tour around the office, starting with the receptionist. His aftershave precedes him into my office. His cheeks are gleaming and his eyes are alive with merriment.

‘First of all, my dear,
bonjour,
' he starts, bending to touch cheeks. Pulling up one trouser leg for ease, he perches on the edge of the table. He wants to hear how my report is going. When I'm done, he rises, rubbing his hands together. ‘Excellent. You must leave that on my desk by lunchtime so I can have a look. There's the other matter, too. Will you be ready to discuss it tomorrow?'b

The boys who rescued me are at the river when I get there today. This time I leave my bag at home. I walk down to where they are working on the pirogues. They are sorting through fishing lines and nets, disentangling them from the bits of hard packing foam that fishermen use as buoys.

We exchange greetings.

‘
Kaira be.
'

‘
Kaira dorong.
'

My accent mangles Mandingo words I picked up in my childhood; they use Malinke, a variant; to that, we add a smattering of French words, enough to make ourselves understood.

‘And your family?'

‘They are well, thank you.'

‘Are you catching many fish today?'

‘A few.' One of them indicates the catch of Nile perch lying on the other side of the boat, further up the bank. ‘They'll sell well tonight.'

We break for a little silence while I watch them work.

‘I've wanted a ride in a pirogue ever since I got here,' I say next. ‘Can you take me?'

They nod. One of them points an index finger. ‘Get in that one over there.'

 

I climb in, but there is nowhere obvious to sit. I start to sit in the middle.

‘No, move up a little, nearer the front. You can sit on this.' He throws a pile of fishnet, still damp, into the inch of water lying on the bottom of the boat.

He lifts up a long pole which he tucks into the pirogue. The boys exchange a few words as they push the boat into the water. The back dips lower once it is free of the mud, and a bit of brown river water sloshes in.

My navigator clambers in and the boat tries to right itself. My arms lift of their own accord, trying to balance me. The boys laugh.

‘A short ride only. Maybe to that tree over there?'

I point to where I can see a gnarled neem tree further up the river bank, where the river starts a gentle loop.

He sticks the pole into the mud, pushing hard. His ebony-covered muscles strain with the effort.

‘We live quite close to here.' He nods in the general direction of the river as it flows down from Segou. ‘What about you?'

‘That way.' I point in the opposite direction, as the river flows towards Kayes and the border with Senegal. ‘My office is near there – I work to help governments sell the things we grow in West Africa at a good price abroad.'

‘Like cotton?'

‘Yes.'

‘You should have come when my father was alive.'

We both pause to watch a fish eagle swoop low and pluck a piece of wriggling silver from the river.

‘What did you do after he died?' I ask.

‘We came here, to our aunt in Bamako, after we used up all our maize. This was in the drought.'

‘Did your mother come with you?'

 

‘No, she stayed to look after the land.'

‘And after the drought was over . . .?'

He pauses. We are now where the river flows strong. He lays the pole down and picks up two paddles.

‘She harvests enough millet now to eat. We send her money to help look after our younger sisters. She manages.'

‘Is fishing good work around here?'

‘We are lucky, our aunt helps us sell the fish. We make a bit more than we need.'

He picks up a rhythm with the paddles, and with each stretch of arm the pirogue rocks to the side the paddle was dipped in. We are both quiet. Apart from a few shards of scattered conversation that float over in the wind, all I can hear are the sounds of the paddles slapping into the water and pushing it back, against the busy twitter of weaver birds flitting around, still gathering bits of grass to complete their nests.

When we reach the tree, we turn back. Nearer the bank he switches again to the pole as he guides us into shallower water.

I hug my knees close in to my chest. My decision is already filtering into my mind, and it concerns cotton, scratched out of the hard, unforgiving crust that smothers this country, planted with hope once a year by people who have few alternative ways of earning a living.

Back on solid ground, I give him some money.

‘For the boat ride,' I say. ‘I'm Ayodele, what's your name?'

‘Alasane. My brother is Salif.'

My boat guide walks over to their catch of fish. He picks up two medium-sized fish and says, ‘A gift for you.'

‘
A baraka
.' Thank you.

It
is
 worth it. To stay here to work, and continue to forget.

‘Just look at her. Bursting with bloody happiness.' Kainde sits next to me. The two of us are in the family
ashoibi
– yellow lightweight damask embossed with a peacock design. The tailor has embellished the hems of our skirts as well as the necklines of our matching tops with embroidered swirls of gold and brown threads. Our sister, Taiwo, chose the fabric for all close members of her family to wear. She also chose a different
ashoibi
for her friends and our more distant relatives, and we see several of them dotted around the hall in various outfits made from bright green and yellow Dutch wax fabric.

Kainde's comment is understandable in the context of the who-to and why of our being here. Taiwo is getting married today and has been twittering all week about the arrangements. Busier than a weaver bird. More fluttery than a sunbird. Our irritation has been griping at us all week. ‘Especially,' as Kainde had earlier put it, ‘considering
who
she's marrying.' We should be excited and supportive. We should be sisterly and blanket her with love and concern. But do consider the groom – Reuben.