Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 17 (1)

Alex had been living in Gabon for nearly a year before he met her. Most of the engineers whose families were back in Italy, either had affairs with their colleagues' wives or with any VSO, CUSO, Peace Corps, or whoever they could find. White women were scarce and even ugly ones who came on contract usually stayed on because of all the attention they got. Expatriates were afraid of VD, terrified of AIDS which was rampant among the local women. The word was, if she was under a certain price, don't go with her.

Falmata was different. For Alex to spend time with her was a pleasant change from the monotony of work and the discos they held at the camp every Saturday night. He'd pick her up in town and she'd duck down when they drove into the camp. Mostly, she stayed in the bedroom, naked and natural and in good humour all the time. He hated the superficiality and hypocritical back-biting and gossiping of the Italian wives who had nothing else to do at the Saturday night parties.

Alex started spending more time with her. Sometimes she'd stay in his house for two or three days at a stretch. No one had an inkling of what he was up to. He would just say he was not feeling well or had some work to do. He'd just send the houseboy off to the city for a couple of days to pick up some special food items or to get some carvings or something.

The others started to get the feeling Alex was being anti-social so he always dropped by the clubhouse in the afternoon for a drink just to allay suspicion and cover his tracks. Even though his wife was in England, he still had to survive and live with these people, and also keep his job of course.

They'd been working on the road for over a year after the camp was set up. Life in the bush was hard to take because of the isolation, malaria, dysentery, and the headaches of trying to get the job done. It was hard to get money out of the government and delays due to lack of spare parts of asphalt or diesel fuel were frustrating.

Some people couldn't take it, even though they flew you home on leave every six months. Some didn't complete their two-year contracts but others got used to it and there were even guys who'd been working in Africa ten or twenty years. But it was always dangerous, always unstable with the food or religious or tribal riots, massacres and coups, the guerillas, border clashes and civil wars. Those who stuck it out adapted in various ways, each method peculiar to the person. There were a lot of strange characters, expatriates with various idiosyncrasies, all trying in one way or another to make the best of it, enjoy life and to maintain their sanity in the process.

Stirling Estalda had road building projects all over Africa. It was a big company and there were permanent camps set up wherever they had contracts for a number of roads. Because of the conditions, it could take two years to survey and pave just 70 kilometres of highway.

Usually, after completing a couple of stretches, because of the rain and sun, the un-monitored heavy truck loads and because the Ministry of roads didn't do any maintenance at all, they'd have to re-surface other roads in the vicinity also. Because they had the equipment and facilities, as long as there wasn't trouble and as long as contracts came through and they were getting paid intermittently, they'd work out of a permanent camp site for possibly up to ten years or more. That all depended.

Alex found, as he was spending more time with her, he started to dislike his co-workers more. It had an inversely proportional effect. He started finding all their attitudes distasteful, although he didn't say anything about it. The jokes about how stupid and lazy the Africans were left a wry taste in his throat.

Alex did his work and kept up appearances, but when Falmata was staying in his house he was happiest, relaxed and content. After all, she was a woman. She was shrouded with a special unpolished naturalness and raw naive aura of light-heartedness and gaiety. There was a lack of anxiety and a freedom in her that relieved the pressures and frustration that engulfed him during the day.

Finally, he dismissed the houseboy. Falmata collected her prize collection of photos and few other things and Alex slipped her into the compound to stay in his house. She was happy. She went about the house in her bright loosely-tied menagerie of wrappers, while she bathed and rubbed her skin with cream so the taut muscled body shone. She went about the bedroom naked, her movements flowing in the relaxed and rhythmic manner that was completely uninhibited in her.

He even let down his own prim conventional guard and started going about the house with one of her wrappers tucked around his waist. It was easier, more practical and far cooler in the muggy, tropical heat.

Alex gradually became more of a recluse. Months went by. Falmata did his laundry and cooked native food for him. Sometimes he helped her with her reading. She had only completed one year of Ecole Secondaire, so she amused him with her studies. She was keen and he was patient so her questions and his explanations were like a game, mutually entertaining. They enjoyed each other's company and their exclusive togetherness. The intimacy was like a home, a world far removed from external threat or provocation, a protected sanctuary.

What a contrast to Elizabeth! He read her letters and the underlying overbearing tone strained his nerves. Her ordering and instructions and frank properness bore down on him like a jailor. The thought of her tongue lashing out like the whip of a Gestapo man made him cringe. Now, he had more fear of her than love. What if she found out? He thought of Anna. And, if it were not for Elizabeth's strictness and discipline he would still be drifting. She held reins over him but now as his urge to break free emerged, he felt her power like a ball and chain, which weighed and threatened, and dared him to make one move out of line.

He wrote Elizabeth promptly, from guilt, giving appropriate responses to her questions and writing in as normal a way as possible. He suspected she seldom took in anything he said anyway. His own feelings or worries were usually dismissed as non-important, like a bother or minor annoyance to her. Anyway, she was far away and there was a barricade of jungle to block her getting at him in this out of the way refuge. He thought he was going crazy doing this. But, for the moment anyway, he was free of her and tried to toughly and nonchalantly brush any haunting thoughts of Elizabeth and her world her away.

Here was his world, the reality of the moment. Maybe he would not write her. That had been done before he knew -- fake plane crashes, a man disappears into Africa never to be heard of again, leaving behind a wife and a couple of kids in Europe or America, out of sight, out of mind. Time erased the memories. He tried to break free of the echo of her voice and the hold it had on his consciousness like a some recurring dreaded nightmare.

If it were not for Elizabeth's continual her letters he might have succeeded. She wrote, following a diligent schedule that served to penetrate his new world, to remind him of some other reality and of the responsibility imposed upon him. Sometimes he left the letters unopened for days at a time, until something more powerful than his resistance compelled and forced him to open them. To ease the conflict, Alex succumbed to opening them. He answered them by habit, refusing to let the facade upset or worry him or ruin his days.

So the situation continued unabated. Falmata was living in his house, a fact he managed to hide from the rest of the camp. Let them talk. He even dismissed any worry of them finding out. His disdain for their double standards prevailed. There was the odd affair between wives and other husbands that he'd heard of and almost every one of them pursued any available female expatriate around, Casanova style, when his wife was back in Italy.

But just let it be an African girl, Alex thought. Then they'd hit the roof and totally isolate him socially, try to destroy him. There'd be an anonymous letter to Elizabeth, "I'm telling you this because I'm a friend and think you should know." But he'd already rejected them all. He didn't care any more.

She was there. She cooked special things for him, his favourite African dishes, the soups that she simmered all day, bean-cakes and dough dropped into pots of boiling palm or ground-nut oil. She cooked him cocoa yams and plantain and cassava and pounded yam. Falmata was at home, changing him, making him happy. That was her domain. She played and teased him, humoured him out of his introspective sullen moods and lay beside him at night, her body innocent and warm. When he had a touch of malaria she was there to soothe him, take care of him, with the touch of a woman who loves a man.

The night she told him she was pregnant, he rubbed her belly softly. It seemed purely natural. She was happy. Here was her home and here were her uncontrolled instincts.

It was when he was at work the next day, straining his eye through the transit to lay out the lines for the elevation of the road, that it sunk in. A child ran across the lens of the transit, blocking his view of the rod that one of the native assistants was holding. Here he was, an engineer making his calculations, building a road through the jungle, transposing the technology of a world far away, cutting into the landscape, slicing a path through the African continent. Why? Where was he?

His eye, still on the transit, was frozen. He was in Africa. How did he get here? What was he doing? He knew he was imposing on a simple world that should have been left alone. The world he was from was destroying itself suicidally and going to take everything else down with it. Now he was destroying the last vestige of nature, the last refuge of the world. A child. It would be half-white, half-black. Those were his genes implanted with hers. He had imposed his world upon hers, destroyed her natural reproduction.

Alex stepped aside the transit, wrote down some numbers in his book automatically from habit. His mind was churning. He was confused, trying to grasp something. He didn't understand what was going on. Why had she not taken the native medicine?

He was lost like a helpless puppy who's been separated from its mother while its eyes were still closed. He stared blankly now as if in shock, oblivious to everything. He was groping for something, some orientation in his mind.

His mind was snapped back, back to reality. He was standing there with the hot African sun beating down mercilessly on his back. He felt its heat. His surroundings attacked, easing slowly into his consciousness. He swatted a fly. He was back to the real world. He looked around. Everything was as it had been.

He was standing in mud. He felt the muggy air and the sweat dripping down his back, heard the familiar sound of a bull-dozer and the shouts of men at work. He folded the legs of the transit and carried it with him to the shade of a tree. He felt the life-giving cool water pass down his parched throat and in one motion wiped the sweat off his drenched forehead with his right arm's shirt sleeve, a gesture he didn't have to think about. His basic biological survival mechanisms were habitual automatic responses. They always functioned.

He rested for a moment. He looked at his watch. He had work to do that he would concentrate on. He had a job to do. He had lots of time to think things through later. His defense mechanism took over. He went back to work shouting orders, giving instructions, doing his job.

When they started back to the camp, he was O.K. again. His driver knew the road well. The Land Rover bounced along the gravel that they'd laid down, although it was hard to keep grading the ruts out. One day it would rain, then for the next week the sun would bake and dry out the ruts like bricks. Those were the extremes that made living and working there so close to the edge.