Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (20 page)

“Is sick?” Kwendo spits the words in my face.

“Well …”

“I don’t know,” Richard says. “She does not want to know. Probably she is. And the baby as well. But that’s the tradition. And she’ll give it to him and he’ll give it to his other wives and so it goes.” He spits on the floor, his anger and frustration landing on the red dirt next to my judgment. “Any other questions?”

Probably, but if I’m stupid enough to ask, I don’t remember.

This is what I remember of the rest of that night: that goat tastes better than I ever imagined it could; that Oma dances with me to drum music that seems to come from nowhere and then everywhere, one hut at a time; that I drink toast after toast of waragi with Kwendo and Richard; that I develop a taste for it by the time I reach the bottom of my first bottle; that I have never smelled anything like Oma’s skin—grassy, nutty, pungent, sweet, and dusty with sage and the red dirt floors of her house. And that I tell her she doesn’t have to marry her brother-in-law.

“If I do not,” she says, “I will be thrown out of the family and the community and they will take all my property from me. I will be homeless.”

And after finishing the second bottle of waragi I lie down next to her on the old stained mattress out back behind her house, listening to the drumming, smelling the dirt, feeling so foreign that none of the rules apply.

“Do you have a condom?” she asks.

“No, but I’ll just run down to the 7-Eleven.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says.

“I’m not stupid,” I say, sliding my hand up her dress and into her panties. “I’m reckless.”

“You have choices,” she says, her breath catching, beginning to speed up, keeping time with the movement of my fingers. “I don’t.”

“I am giving you a choice, and,” I add, stopping what I am doing and withdrawing my hand, “you don’t even have to sleep with me.”

She groans audibly, lifts her dress, and slides down her underwear. Then she turns and kisses me. “Some people don’t believe in AIDS,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Some people believe it is witchcraft. That those who get sick have been cursed.”

“What do you believe?” I ask her, slowly positioning myself behind her, slowly remembering how to fuck a pregnant woman.

“That it doesn’t matter,” she gasps as I slide into her. “That either way the funeral is the same.”

I surprise Kwendo, which I did not think was possible, when I tell him I am staying on here for a few days. He is in no hurry and is more than a little suspicious of the white man who is far too comfortable being taken advantage of.

This is not exactly what he had planned. Especially when, on the third day, I announce my intention to marry his sister. Which I do—in broad daylight, so as to avoid the evil spirits that come to weddings held after dark.

Tradition. Family. Free will. And now, on top of all that, evil spirits to answer to as well.

And so I get a tour of the real Uganda and part of Kenya. And instead of a mask or drum or some other tourist trinket, I get a wife. Which in Kenya means a lot and not very much at the same time. I make promises but I don’t take her with me. It’s the promises that count and the rest that doesn’t mean very much.

Back in Kampala, Nikudi, the hotel concierge, helps me arrange for a real house in Kisumu city center for Oma and her children, and for a bank account that will support her and pay the children’s school fees and her medical costs when she gets sick. The total cost is the equivalent of a new Honda. I add a little for emergencies.

The bank manager, a young, balding Brit, fills out the paperwork haltingly. He examines and reexamines the wedding license. He is sweating through his seersucker jacket. I make Nikudi a cosignatory on the account and entrust him with making sure Oma gets her check every month. Nikudi, the hotel concierge whom I have known for only a few weeks. But what choice do I have? Am I really going to oversee this responsibility myself? A ridiculous notion. And if some of the money makes its way into a different “charity,” it’s still doing more good here, in this place, than it would be in my pocket. Promising to take care of Oma was a good idea. I’ve worked it out to the best of my abilities under the circumstances. I simply can’t worry about the details after I leave.

I am checking out of the hotel. Nikudi hails a taxi and then stares at me, shaking his head.

“What?”

“When I say I could not guarantee your safety, this is not what I …”

“You just make sure Oma gets her check on the first of every month,” I say.

He nods, shakes his head solemnly again. “For as long as she lives …”

“And after that, all those kids.”

“Yes, right. All them kids.” Nikudi rolls his eyes. As if just the thought of Oma’s inevitable orphans is exhausting. “You one crazy motherfucker. You got a death wish—you know that, right?” he whispers, checking to make sure we are out of earshot of the other hotel staff.

“That’s really no way to speak to a hotel guest …” I pull the name tag pinned to his uniform close to my face. “Nikudi.”

“No, sir. Sorry, sir,” he says with false sobriety. Then he cracks up. “Well, maybe if you are lucky you’ll get knifed to death in Nairobi before you have a chance to die of AIDS.”

“I’m not generally a lucky guy.” I shake his hand. “Thank you for an extraordinary stay.”

As he puts me into a taxi headed for the airport, I press a hundred dollars into his palm and he makes a gesture of refusing it. “You have done enough,” he says. But we both know a hundred dollars will go a long way here, so when I stuff it in his pocket he doesn’t resist. “May God bless you,” he says instead.

He stands there waving as I drive off. When he is out of sight, I slide the gold band off my ring finger and deposit it in the taxi’s ashtray. I have done enough.

Nairobi is big, ugly, dusty, and above all, crime-ridden—making it the perfect and logical next step in my descent into hell. But hell comes in many shapes and colors, some very tempting. And so I choose the Norfolk, the oldest, most colonial hotel in Nairobi. More than likely built on the broken backs of black Africans, I think as I ascend the steps into its grand lobby, passing the ranks of uniformed bellboys. It’s hard to convince myself I am not on a soundstage of some Hollywood studio where some sweeping romantic period epic is shooting. Easier to believe that than to buy that all this could be real. The cool stone courtyards and shady gardens block out the dirt, the reality, the hostility of the street—of the real Nairobi.

I arrive at dusk, settle in, and head immediately to the outdoor bar overlooking the spectacular gardens. I imagine ninety years ago, when the place first opened, you could probably see the beggars at the gates from here. Now there are twenty-foot-high shrubs strategically planted to keep out such unpleasantness.

Though I am in the mood for something harder, I order a Tusker beer—a tribute to the brewery’s famous founder who was killed while hunting elephant. When in Nairobi, I think, raising my chilled glass to him. For most Westerners, Nairobi is a stopover on the way to or coming back from safari. But I don’t feel like moving. I certainly don’t feel up to chasing lions or elephants. Like Lord Tusker. So I stay in Nairobi. And watch as things begin to happen.

I am becoming my own safari. My own hunt. Some days I am predator; some days I am prey. And then I begin to get confused. Because some days I am both. The space between inhale and exhale disappears. Time stops. I forget how to breathe. Just for a moment. But it’s happening more and more. So I have another beer. Tusker. And another. Tusker Tusker.

I think I am growing them. Tusks. No one else has noticed. I shave them off every morning. Pressing the razor hard into my face where they are sprouting, making deep cuts, covering them with Band-Aids I have sent up from the front desk. So no one has noticed. Maybe if I switch to another beer. Avoid the elephants.

The hotel people—which is to say, the people in the hotel—they are looking at me. The Band-Aids, the tusks, I don’t know. So I go out on the street. The street is loud. I go to the markets where black women in white skirts sit on mats in parking lots, weaving baskets and selling baskets. But I don’t want baskets. I want quiet.

The day I stumble into Comtewa Stationers, a tiny antiquarian bookstore, I find what I am looking for. Metal utility shelves crammed with everything from military history to maps to mysticism, religion, archeology, local authors, and Western favorites like Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steel create aisles so narrow it is impossible for one customer to pass another.

I spend most of my time with the older hardcover editions—old enough to preclude me from attaching my own egocentric imprint to their publication dates. The more esoteric the better. It doesn’t matter that most of those books are written in a language I cannot read. I like to stand in the narrow aisles, pulling them from the shelves, smelling the ink and the dust. Something about the way the pages smell—ink, paper, bindings.

Once I discover Comtewa, I am on a mission. I visit every bookshop in Nairobi. It doesn’t take long. There aren’t more than a handful and at least half of those carry crap catering to tourists—old dime-store paperbacks bought in American or European airports and discarded in local hotels, obviously purchased for a shilling or two by booksellers from the hotel maids and bellboys who find them in vacated rooms.

A few shops, though, become my friends—Estriol, Prestige, the little shop without a name behind the Stanley Hotel. These small storefront bookstores provide hours of calm in the Nairobi storm. Because every day when I wake up, the clouds gather, a little darker each day, and I feel less and less equipped to do anything about them. To go anywhere. To make a change. To speak more than the occasional sentence. So I go to the bookstores.

I do not want to speak and I do not want to be spoken to. I find it hurts my ears. My head. My skin. And people are quiet in bookstores. I like the anonymous, mute companionship of my fellow browsers.

I am at Comtewa, my favorite bookstore, when the incident occurs. I can’t say I remember very much, only that I have been feeling increasingly restless and agitated. For days. Weeks? I have lost track of how long I have been here.

Either things are moving too slow or I am in a panic to keep up. Sometimes I don’t know which; often the sensations seem to coexist. Everyone around me is in my way all the time. The bookstore clerk, a young man with long, graceful fingers whose pink fingernails stand out against his dark-brown skin, is having an endless conversation with a large-breasted woman who holds two dingy, worn books in her hands.

I can’t understand what they are saying, but it is fairly obvious. She raises one book and then the other, weighing their respective merits and asking him endless questions. And he, knowing I’ve been standing there for-fucking-ever, not only patiently but enthusiastically continues to carry on this third-world literary salon.

I really and truly don’t remember the rest. From what I understand, I verbalized my impatience and offered to buy both books for the lady. But not in those words. And apparently, in my frustration, I pushed over a bookcase. Or two. Apparently there was a sort of domino effect. The police came and I was arrested. That part I remember. I couldn’t think of much to say in my defense. So I resisted. And was quickly introduced to the policeman’s nightstick. A single efficient blow that brought me to my knees. The U.S. Embassy was called but there was only so much they could or would do. I was a tourist who had without provocation vandalized a local business and assaulted one of its customers, who, it turns out, happened to work for the Kenyan Ministry of Education. The books were first editions by beloved African poets.

On the advice of the embassy’s legal department, I did what I could to make amends. I supplied the funds to renovate the bookstore, donated livestock to the district of Subukia, tried to convince the injured parties that my behavior was an anomaly. But I had the feeling I was lying.

I decide to leave Nairobi and return to Kampala, vaguely remembering things were better there. Thinking I knew people there and they knew me. Not remembering who. Hoping familiar surroundings will restore a sense of equilibrium. But knowing I am probably wrong.

After three weeks in Kampala I am becoming a superhero. Except I haven’t done anything heroic. Nor do I intend to. But recently I have started developing superpowers. Supersensitive smelling capabilities and ultrabright-light sight receptors. But my most super powerful sense is my souped-up hearing. I hear everything. All the time. The sound of bus exhaust. Ringing telephones and telephones that have not yet rung. The gears of the hotel’s elevators moving between floors and cockroach feet tap-dancing over bathtub porcelain and the scratch of waiters’ pens on their pads and all the music playing on all the Walkmans in every pedestrian’s headphones within a square mile of Me Central.

All of it.

All at once.

And everywhere, always the growling, grinding, wheezing of all the air conditioners and ceiling fans in Kampala desperately, hopelessly, uselessly trying to take Africa down a degree or two.

In the beginning, I was fascinated by my powers. And for a while I was obviously pretty fucking fascinating too. If you can judge that kind of thing by the ease with which genuinely excellent pussy seemed to fall from the sky and land on my dick with very little effort on my part. That was fun. While it lasted.

But it didn’t.

It never does.

And now,
it
—all of it—is too much. Too hot. Too bright to hear. Too loud to see. And with no way to turn it down, there is no sleep, nothing to stop the onslaught.

Now I am sitting at my favorite little round stone table in the lovely garden bar of my international hotel, surrounded by voices that, in their foreignness, all sound the same—shrill, irritating, grating. I want another vodka. Another ’nother vodka, I guess.

Across the lawn, half a football field away, a hotel gardener wielding a power saw trims the towering, well-groomed wall of hedge that protects the paying guests from what’s
out there
.