Some Great Thing (25 page)

Having finished his work, Mahatma chatted with Jean-Paul Gribi, the building janitor, until it was time to go to the bank and the telecommunications building. Speaking to Yoyo as he left the dormitory area, Mahatma expressed surprise that Gribi had such a wide range of interests. In a ten-minute exchange, Gribi had wanted to discuss Castro’s revolution in Cuba, problems facing Canadian wheat farmers and Sino-Soviet relations.

Yoyo asked, “Does he have a transistor radio?”

“Yes! He was holding one while we talked.”

“Then he has been listening to Radio Yaoundé. It has explored all those themes lately.”

Yoyo hailed a taxi and the reporters crowded in. Mahatma, who sat up front with Yoyo, looked out at the women grilling fish and corn cobs over roadside fires. They passed a woman in a
pagne
of red cotton swinging an axe into a log held by her bare foot. They passed a man repairing sandals under a sign proclaiming him a shoe doctor. The driver, who avoided potholes with great care, grew excited when Mahatma told him they were Canadians.

“So you know the great Canadian, Jacques Corbeil?”

Yoyo tapped his friend on the shoulder. “He means Jake Corbett.”

“Yes, of course,” Mahatma responded in French, “I know him well.”

“Tell us what you know of him,” Yoyo told the driver.

For the rest of the trip to the mayor’s office, the cab driver recited facts about Jacques Corbeil.

They got out at the bank. Yoyo helped them change their money. Then he took them to the phone building, where they filed stories to Winnipeg. Later, they went to meet his Excellency the Mayor. The reporters were greeted there by the mayor’s deputy executive assistant. This gentleman—a tall, thin fellow wearing a jacket and tie and leather sandals—introduced himself as Pierre somebody. He quickly began, in French, on the rules of protocol. Edward Slade cut him off. “Can’t you do this in English?”

The executive assistant spoke no English. Mahatma translated for him, laying down the rules: His Excellency would entertain questions about friendship between Winnipeg and Yaoundé; he would answer questions about how the two cities intended to deepen ties in the future; and he would accept statistical and historical questions about his country. He would
not
tolerate questions about his political ideology. And one other thing. The journalists were to write down all their questions now. The mayor would review them, answering as he saw fit.

Bob began writing hurriedly. So did Susan. And Mahatma followed suit. He hoped to get on the agenda and then slip in some extra questions once the mayor loosened up.

Slade growled, “This is bullshit.”

The two mayors entered the room holding hands. His Excellency Boubacar Fotso wore a magnificent African
boubou
. “Honourable and Esteemed Canadian Journalists,” he began, reading in English from a prepared script. It lasted ten minutes and contained no facts or promises.

Now it was John Novak’s turn. He said he hoped to renew ties with a visit to Winnipeg by Yaoundé’s mayor next spring or summer. He outlined a proposed student exchange program. Slade cut him off.

“Mayor Fotso, will communism solve poverty in Africa?”

The mayor of Yaoundé conferred with his assistant, who spoke to Sandra, who translated for Slade. “You are requested,” she said, “to accord His Excellency due respect.”

“I’m a journalist! I don’t have to kowtow to anybody.”

The mayor of Yaoundé passed another message to Sandra, who said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Slade, but you are asked to leave the premises immediately and not return.”

Slade blanched and walked out silently.

A taxi left him at the Yaoundé police headquarters. He wandered inside, met a uniformed man in the first office and explained what he wanted. The officer said, “Have a seat. My name is Ibrahim Somo. I am the assistant superintendent of police. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Slade fired away, “What sort of crime do you get around here?” He scribbled the answer at a furious pace. Thirty-seven voodoo murders had eluded homicide detectives for years. Also, a lucrative white-slave-trade market involved the kidnapping of foreign diplomats and tourists and, in particular, journalists. The victims were routinely enslaved for five years and then beheaded. And there was more barbarity…

Slade filled half a notebook. What a scoop! What a story! But the assistant superintendent could only spare fifteen minutes.

Slade phoned in his story and decided to follow it up with several more articles under the theme Bloodbath in the Tropics. In one story he could examine the penal system, in another, African techniques of murder detection, and so on.

Don Betts studied the words forming on the computer screen as Mahatma Grafton dictated his stories by telephone to a reporter in
The Herald
newsroom. So a thousand people sing at the airport! And who wanted to read background on Cameroon? Betts watched Grafton’s second story come onto the screen. Jake Corbett, famous in Africa? Betts waited until Grafton had completed his dictation, then flattened the tape recording suction cup against the earphone of the receiver and picked up the telephone.

“Hi, Hat, Betts here!…Great stuff…First rate…So tell me, what’s going on over there? What kind of place are you staying in?…A run-down university residence? Really! And the mayor’s in a three-star hotel? And the city, what’s it like? God, I wish I could see it!…Pretty, magnificent trees, potholed roads? Potholed roads, huh? You see a lot of poverty in the streets?…Women cooking fish right on the roadside? Really!…Selling to passers-by! Anybody buying?…No kidding!”

Betts didn’t tell Mahatma he was rewriting his copy. He didn’t say he killed the story about Corbett’s fame in Cameroon. He stayed pleasant on the phone. But he exploded the next morning when he saw Slade’s Bloodbath in the Tropics
scoop. He left a message at the Yaoundé mayor’s office for Grafton to match Slade’s story immediately.

The previous night, the Canadian contingent—minus Edward Slade—had been invited to a feast at the home of the Yaoundé mayor. Children crowded outside a locked gate to the three-storey residence, staring at the white guests and the perfumed Africans. One lighter-skinned boy latched onto Bob’s leg. “Papa, Papa!” he called out. Bob looked down at the kid hanging onto him. Shaven head. Shirtless. Shoeless. Whites of the eyes catching light from the door. “Papa, donnez-moi dix francs.”

“He wants ten francs,” Mahatma said.

“Ten francs?” Bob said. “What is that, about three cents?” He found a coin in his pocket and handed it down.

“D’ou êtes-vous?” one older boy, around twelve, asked the group. “Canada.”

“We know all about Canada,” the boy said. He and his friends went into a huddle, their animated voices ringing out in French and Bamileke. Then they burst apart and began clapping in unison and shouting out a roll call, led by the first boy: “Le Président, Pierre Trudeau. Son Excellence le maire, Monsieur Novaque. Et le grand héro canadien, Jacques Corbeil!!!”

His Excellency’s chauffeur ran to the scene, kicking the children.

“Hey, take it easy,” Susan shouted at the driver.

He ignored her. “Allez vous-en, foutez-nous la paix!” The youngsters scattered.

Inside, the Canadians were escorted up to a balcony overlooking a valley. Mahatma, the mayor and Sandra were placed at a table with the mayor of Yaoundé and the elder of his two wives. A visiting mayor from the city of Bafoussam joined them later at the table, shaking hands with Mahatma and asking if Sandra were his wife.

Mahatma, embarrassed, said no.

“Alors vous êtes des amants comme ça?” the Bafoussam mayor asked.

Sandra cleared her throat.

The mayor of Yaoundé corrected his colleague. “This is Sandra Paquette. She is Monsieur Novak’s assistant.”

They were given a feast of the likes that Mahatma had never seen. They started with braised fish fillets in an explosive chili sauce. The mayor of Bafoussam jokingly dubbed the spices “des piments de crocodile.” In an aside to Mahatma, he nodded suggestively downward and said that eating lots of them would give him strength “en-bas, vous comprenez, là où vous êtes un homme.” The mackerel was followed by plantains fried in palm oil and served up as hot chips, which were sweeter than bananas. After the plantains came chicken breasts served in peanut sauce, rice wrapped in vine leaves, cassava sticks, lettuce smothered by tomatoes and avocado. Finally, they had coffee, madeleines and liqueurs. The feast lasted three hours. Conversation flowed between each course; indeed, each mouthful. The Cameroonians expressed great interest in Mahatma.

“You know, good sir,” said Boubacar Fotso, “that you bear the name of a great man.”

“Ah yes, the name but not the fame,” Mahatma said, provoking a round of laughter.

“But how did you get that name? Why was it given to you? There must have been a reason. I have met many North Americans, but never anybody with the name ‘Mahatma.’”

“It means ‘Great Soul’ in Hindi,” Mahatma said.

“A difficult name to live up to.”

“It must have been an error. It would have been easier to go with ‘Great Appetite.’”

The Cameroonians laughed.

“You have an odd pigmentation,” the mayor of Bafoussam declared. “Your father, is he a black man?”

“Yes.”

“So your mother, she is a white woman?”

“My mother passed away when I was a child. But she was black too.”

“Impossible!” declared the mayor of Bafoussam.

“Why?” John Novak asked. “She was black and his father is black, but lighter toned than you.”

“You know his family?” asked His Excellency of Yaoundé, pouring Beaujolais into his guests’ glasses.

“Yes. I know his father well.”

The Yaoundé mayor asked, “Is Mahatma’s father a journalist too?”

“No. He worked on the railroad. He had a labourer’s job. He and his fellow workers were all black. It was practically the only work they could get. This was in the late 1930s and ’40s. They had horrible working conditions. One of their colleagues, a fine man commonly called the Rabbi, died needlessly in a fire. The railroad tried to cover it up. Mahatma’s father risked
his job by coming to me. I was a young lawyer, anxious to make my reputation. We raised an awful stink.”

“But,” the mayor of Bafoussam exclaimed excitedly, “you must tell us more about this! A black Rabbi on the railroad!”

Mahatma told that story.

The Cameroonians countered with a few of their own. They told of the misfortunes of foreigners who had cut down sacred baobab trees. And they told of the newly arrived Canadian foreign aid worker who, just last week, had to bribe four people to get a visa problem straightened out. By the time the aid worker got around to his fourth bribe, he had no pocket money left. The man with the visa stamp actually sent the aid worker off to the bank. And the Canadian actually said “thank you” after he came back, made his payment and got his problem fixed.

After the talk and the many courses, came the dancing. It had a great deal to do with the pelvis and very little to do with conversation.

Bob and Susan met Mahatma and Sandra beside the dance floor.

“I feel like such an idiot, not speaking French!” Susan said. “All these officials speak English, French and two or three other languages, and all I speak is English. But what a feast! I ate enough for a week!”

“Think we can go back soon?” Bob said. “I’m beat.”

“I feel like dancing!” Susan said. “Listen to that music!”

Makossa music blasted from stereo speakers. It was such earthy, happy music that Susan felt she had known it all her life. A man swept her onto the dance floor. She moved happily, swaying and thrusting her hips like any relaxed Canadian would do. Hardly moving his feet, the Cameroonian ground
his pelvis rhythmically. His arms were bent at the elbow, held just above his hips, with the hands turned out slightly; quite unlike Susan, who brought her arms up high, even above her shoulders.

Somebody pulled Sandra onto the dance floor. She disappeared in the crowd. Mahatma watched the dancing, loving the music, thinking of the good food he had eaten, but thinking also of filing a story about the street children outside.

Mahatma chatted with a crowd of men for fifteen minutes, then moved on. He came upon Sandra and Susan, standing in a corner, fending off invitations to dance.

“Some guy just put his hand right on my tit!” Susan said. “You should have seen it, Hat. He put his hand right here! And he pulled me against him. I swear, that guy had a boner as big as a horse!”

Sandra laughed nervously. She, too, had been grabbed during a few slow dances.

Bob joined them. Susan pulled him onto the dance floor.

Mahatma touched Sandra’s elbow. “May I?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

They played three slow dances, back to back. Mahatma and Sandra stayed on the floor for all of them.

Bob heard Mahatma and Sandra laughing. The noise kept him awake. Much later, he heard Sandra moaning. Was she ill? Crying? Maybe she needed help. Bob rose from his bed, opened his door, then slammed it shut. Suddenly he understood what kind of moaning it was!

In the morning, he was awakened. Swish, swish. Like water being tossed over rocks. It was impossible to sleep in this country. People made too much noise. And what was it now? It was coming from outside.

Bob opened his window and leaned out on the sill. He saw a stone hurtling toward a huge mango tree. It swished through the leaves and a mango fell into the hands of a shoeless boy. He and several friends had a pile of fruit at their feet.

Bob looked to his left and saw Mahatma and Sandra standing side by side, shoulders touching, elbows propped the same way on the window sill, leaning out and looking down at the boys. He went back to bed.

Someone pounded on Mahatma’s door. He rinsed the suds off his body, tied a towel around his waist and opened the door.

“I’m starving!” Bob said. “Want to get some breakfast?”

They walked up the hill and found a food stand in the shade of a baobab tree. Men clustered around it, drinking coffee and tea and eating scrambled eggs sandwiched in baguettes. The cook called out to Mahatma and Bob, “Messieurs! Voulez-vous un petit déjeuner camerounais?”