Far-Flung Read online

  Kunda was full of Germans, cafes, elephants, and posters of blond women fellating bottles of Coca-Cola. Most of the buildings were made of mud; it was hard to believe that come the rains, they wouldn’t all wash away.

  We had wandered down through town all morning, from one terraced level to another, and noon found us on its grassy outskirts.

  “We could visit the fish caves,” said Tom, who was in possession of our tourist map.

  “What are the fish caves?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just on the map with a blue star. That means it’s a natural phenomenon.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Just a little bit out of town, going east.” He pointed down the road.

  “How far?”

  “You look. I say about a mile.”

  We started walking east out of town. Along the roadside, people were sitting beneath jerry-built tents, trying to sell the odd objects spread out before them: gourds, widowed shoes, and strange cuts of meat swaddled in leaves. One woman had dozens of cheeping sparrows in tiny cages woven from sticks. The cages were only barely bigger than the birds. Her sign read: PLEASE SET FREE THESE BIRDS YOU WILL BE HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS. We passed the woman and turned off the road at a sign that said FAMOUS FISH CAVES. Inside a spectacular wrought iron gate a beautiful woman was selling little bunches of what appeared to be salad. Each bunch was wrapped in colored wax paper. She held them in a tray projecting from her chest, like a New Age cigarette girl.

  “You buy some,” she told us.

  We declined her offer and walked down the path into the dry, scrubby woods. She followed us at a distance. We approached an enclave of massive boulders which surrounded a small pool of dark still water.

  The woman had caught up with us. “Fish cave,” she announced.

  We all stood and stared at the water. The air around us was surprisingly cool. “Where are the fish?” I finally asked.

  The woman indicated her colorful packages. “For food, they’ll come,” she said.

  “That’s fish food?” asked Tom.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It’s so pretty,” said Tom.

  “They are special fish,” she said. “You’ll see if you feed them.”

  “How much?”

  She told him, and he bought a package of greens. The care with which it had been assembled necessitated his unfolding it with reverence. Tom held a little bouquet of strange-shaped leaves and yellow clover-like flowers.

  “Feed them.” The beautiful woman was losing patience. She glanced back toward the gate, but we were still alone.

  “All at once?” Tom asked.

  She shrugged.

  Tom tossed the bouquet into the black water. It spun idly for a moment, and then the pool erupted with huge blue carp. They churned the water into froth, leaping at the weeds. When they had devoured Tom’s bouquet they loitered near the surface, swishing their tails, watching us.

  “More?” the beautiful woman asked.

  The ritual was repeated: the tossing, the feeding frenzy, followed by the blue-tinted, tail-flashing shallow lurk.

  “More?”

  I had the feeling we could be there forever, that those horrible fat fish would never be sated. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “O.K.,” said Tom. “No, thank you,” he said to the woman. She turned and walked back toward the gate.

  Tom and I remained at the fish cave. The fish sank lower as time passed, like something being erased, until the water returned to its primordial blankness. “That was something,” Tom finally said. “I’ve never seen fish like that.”

  “They were more like pigs,” I said.

  Tom squatted and dipped his hand into the water. “It’s freezing,” he announced. We both watched his hand float, palm up, just below the water’s dark skin. It made me nervous: The fishes’ appetite had seemed carnivorous. I had a feeling Tom not only sensed but enjoyed my unease, so I squatted beside him and dangled my fingers in the water. His hand swam toward mine. Our fingers touched, but the water was so cold I couldn’t feel it. I let my hand drift away.

  “It’s much cooler here than back in town,” Tom said. “It would be a nice place for a picnic.”

  “We don’t have anything to eat,” I said.

  “Let’s just sit down for a while,” said Tom. “Over there, by those trees.”

  I followed him to a grassy clearing in the flowering trees where the sun was haphazardly strewn across the ground. Bees buzzed around us.

  “This is beautiful,” said Tom. He was lying on his back, his head pillowed by his knapsack, his eyes closed. I stood against the tree and watched him. His hands were clasped behind his head, his face angled toward the sun. Tom loved the sun. I first saw him three years ago, on the beach at Edisto. It was very early in the morning, and the beach was empty. Tom had been lying alone in much the same position as he lay now. For a moment I thought he was dead but then I realized he was sleeping. I stood and watched him. Normally I would never stop and watch someone sleep on the beach but I was not acting normally when I met Tom, and that is how you fall in love: by not being yourself or being too much yourself or by letting go of yourself, and I did one, or perhaps all, of those things; I stood and waited for Tom to wake up and he woke up and I sat down beside him on the cool sand. And now, as I watched Tom lie in the sun here on the other side of the earth years later, I wondered if perhaps I did still love him. But what I felt was an awful staining fondness, not love.

  The beautiful woman was escorting two German couples toward the fish cave. Tom opened his eyes. We watched them disappear behind the rocks. “So,” said Tom. “Here we are.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Sit down,” said Tom.

  I sat down, a little wary: Tom always initiated a troubling conversation by saying “So.” Whenever he said so, I heard beware.

  “It’s nice to lie here in the sun,” he said, “and think of everyone shivering back home. It gives me great pleasure.”

  “Good,” I said, and I meant it, as I was glad Tom was experiencing great pleasure. This was not something he often admitted.

  “Actually,” said Tom, “I’m not feeling great pleasure.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Actually, I’m feeling kind of desperate.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About this,” said Tom. “About us.”

  I said Oh again. Tom looked at me. “What are you feeling?” he asked.

  There is only one question I hate more than “What are you feeling?” and that is “What are you thinking?” I believe one should be at liberty to express one’s thoughts and feelings at one’s own pace; to be prompted in this way is, I think, rude. I know for a fact Tom thinks otherwise. He thinks he is doing me a favor by asking these questions, but it is dangerous and stupid of him, for the responses he elicits are seldom the responses he desires. In answer to his question, I said, “What am I feeling about what?”

  “Us,” he said.

  I shrugged. I heard the Germans exclaim over the appearance of the blue fish. I pretended to be distracted by their exclamations. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “I’m not feeling anything. I’m just glad, you know, that we’re together, that we’re friends, that we’re traveling together. I think it’s nice.”

  “Nice?” said Tom.

  “I think it is,” I said. “Don’t you?”

  Tom didn’t answer. He closed his eyes. His face was no longer in the sunlight; it was laced with shade. “It’s not obvious?” he asked.

  “What?” I said, although of course I knew. I had known from the very beginning, from the moment Tom had crossed the tarmac and entered THE MEETING AND GREETING AREA. I had not needed Albert to tell me.

  “I still love you,” he said. He opened his eyes.

  I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing. How pathetic the unloved are, I thought. How assiduously they suffer, how they cultivate their rejection, picking again and again at their scabs.

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nbsp; “I just thought I should tell you,” said Tom. “Although I guess I shouldn’t have.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I just thought, you know, that that was all over.”

  “I know,” said Tom. “So did I.”

  “It’s over for me,” I said.

  “I know,” said Tom. “I know that.” He stood up, and hoisted his knapsack to his shoulder. “Forget I said anything,” he said. “Let’s go.” He began to walk back toward the road. I followed him. On the way into town we stopped and liberated a bird. Tom tore the twig cage apart. The bird jumped out and sat by the side of the dusty road. I tried to make it fly by prodding it with a stick but it wouldn’t. It just sat there, stunned, it seemed, by its freedom.

  Albert was right: The border was hot. That morning insurgents had invaded a mountain village. We returned to find Kunda tense with outrage and excitement and plans for a nationalist rally in the public garden that evening.

  Tom and I observed from the refreshment tent, which was packed with curious, intoxicated tourists, including the two German couples from the fish cave. A marching band ringed the arid fountain, and on the grassy verges between the tree-lined paths different groups assembled. Schoolchildren, scrubbed and dressed in their blue uniforms, convened at one end of the park. They held placards—OUR BORDERS ARE SACRED—above their heads, while at the other end of the park the women milled, dressed in traditional costume, a little embarrassed by the hoopla, watching the more fervent, fist-waving men try to organize themselves into some sort of parade.

  And as we watched, a parade evolved: The band led the children out of the park, followed by the women, and finally the men. It circled the large square, but since it appeared that everyone in town was marching, the parade’s effect was curiously hollow. We tourists, by the very fact of our foreignness, could not even succeed as spectators. We observed in polite silence. After one revolution the marchers halted; the men hushed the band and murmured among themselves. The women and children stood about, abject and quiet. And then the men emerged from their huddle and announced their solution, which, as they reconvened, became obvious: This time the men would march and the women and children would line the streets.

  “Let’s go watch,” Tom said.

  “O.K.,” I said. I tried to find our waiter, but he had joined the protesters. I dropped some money on the table, and Tom and I followed the mass exodus of women and children from the park. We stood behind the throng and watched over their heads as the all-male parade approached. Everyone seemed liberated by this new configuration; even the band sounded less rinky-dink.

  The second parade was followed by a series of patriotic speeches, but as the evening waned the mood of the crowd mellowed: The schoolchildren were sent home to bed and the band began to play pop music. Couples danced on the plaza.

  Tom and I were sitting on a bench near the fountain, watching the dancing, drinking beer from cold gold bottles. It had gotten late and we were exhausted, but there was something pleasurably transporting about being in the park. One felt successfully and completely in a foreign country, that one could return home and say, “One night there was a political rally in the public gardens …”

  “I want to dance,” said Tom.

  “We can’t dance,” I said. “It’s not a good idea.”

  “Of course it’s not a good idea,” said Tom. “Forget the idea. Come dance. Over there, where it’s dark.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Everyone’s drunk,” said Tom. “They won’t notice.” He stood up and pulled me from the bench. We pressed through the swoon of dancing couples; everyone did seem drunk and self-intent. We made it to the other side of the park, away from the lights and the band, but even there it was obviously too public. Tom crossed the street and walked down a dirt alley. I followed him behind the buildings into a small enclosed parking lot crowded with pickup trucks. We sidled between them until we came to a place in the center where we were surrounded on all sides by trucks. None of the trucks had wheels, I noticed. The music from the park was faint yet audible. We stood for a moment, facing each other.

  “Do you want to dance?” I asked.

  “No,” said Tom.

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tom.

  “Let’s go back,” I said.

  “Wait,” said Tom. He was picking rusted paint off the door of a truck. I stilled his hand with my own. I remembered them touching underwater at the fish cave. This time our hands were both hot, and I could feel his hand. I held it against the truck, but he pulled it away.

  “Do you love Albert?” he asked.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Just answer,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “But you’ve slept with him,” said Tom.

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “Irene told me,” said Tom.

  For a moment I had to think of who Irene was. And then I remembered the moment Tom and Irene reappeared on the veranda, how we had all stopped talking for a moment. I felt a little woozy so I sat down on the truck’s running board. It had been Albert’s idea to have Tom to dinner: He had told me not having dinner would have been childish, uncivilized.

  “She told me when we went upstairs,” Tom was saying. “While we were looking at her gold snuffboxes. At first I thought she was crazy. She thought I knew all about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “That I didn’t tell you myself. It’s just that, well, I didn’t tell you because it’s not a big deal.”

  “It’s not?” asked Tom.

  “No,” I said.

  “Is anything a big deal to you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

  “What?” asked Tom.

  I tried to think of what was a big deal, but nothing came to mind, so I didn’t answer. We were both quiet for a moment. The band seemed suddenly loud, but then I realized it wasn’t the band but a sort of rickety explosion. Fireworks, I thought. I actually looked up at the sky, watching for their bright and sudden unblossoming, but the noise continued and the sky remained dark. And then the noise stopped, and I could hear the people on the plaza screaming.

  As I entered my apartment the next afternoon the phone was ringing. I knew it would be Albert, and I let it ring, for I wanted to know how long Albert would wait. I stood and listened to it ring, not counting, just listening. It rang a very long time before I picked it up.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “You’re back,” said Albert. “Thank God. I was worried. I heard about the violence. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Were you at the rally? I heard there were a lot of foreigners there.”

  “We had just left. We were across the street, in a parking lot.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Nothing. Tom wanted to dance.”

  “He wanted to what?”

  “Dance,” I said. “Everyone was dancing.”

  “Not for long, poor things,” said Albert. “Well, thank God you’re safe. Are you heading south?”

  “No,” I said. “Tom’s gone back.”

  “Has he?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was difficult.”

  “It often is,” said Albert. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry. So you’re alone?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you going in to work?”

  “No.”

  “I could come over.”

  “No,” I said.

  “What about dinner?” asked Albert. “We could have a nice dinner.”

  “No,” I said.

  “My, what a lot of no’s,” said Albert. He paused. “Nothing’s changed, has it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You must be exhausted,” said Albert. “Have a stiff drink and go to bed. I’ll call you later.”

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sp; He hung up. So did I. I looked around the room. Tom’s dress shoes stood by the terrace doors. By departing so hurriedly, he had left some of his things behind. That morning we had flown from Kunda to the capital; Tom changed planes and flew directly home. We had said good-bye in THE MEETING AND GREETING AREA. In the country to which I had been posted, leaving, saying good-bye, hadn’t yet been officially sanctioned.

  PART III

  See, now we two together must bear

  piece-work and parts as though it were the whole.

  Helping you will be hard. Above all, do not

  Plant me in your heart. I should grow too fast.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus” (I, 16)

  THE HALF YOU DON’T KNOW

  MISS ALICE PAUL WAS IN a quandary. Ever since Rose had died, everything had gone wrong. And it wasn’t getting better—it had been a month already, but it was no better. It was worse, she thought: much worse. Right this minute, Rose’s grandson, a man named Knight, was up in the attic going through Rose’s things, and there was nothing she could do about it. She stood in the upstairs hall, clutching the folding stairs that had collapsed from the ceiling. She had tried to climb them, but she couldn’t. She had trouble enough getting up the regular stairs.

  The problem was, nobody was telling her anything. It looked like they were moving Rose’s stuff out of the house, or maybe Knight was moving in? Miss Alice Paul had lived in this house for about twenty years, ever since she met Rose at the Del Ray Luncheonette counter. They were both eating BLTs on white toast. It had made perfect sense for them to move in together—Rose was widowed and Miss Alice Paul was the tragic victim of a brief, annulled and (she hoped) forgotten marriage, but now that Rose was dead it turned out the house was really her daughter’s, and nobody was talking about what would become of her. It was just too awful for words.

  “Knight?” Alice Paul called up the stairs. He had a radio going up there. “Knight!” She shouted louder.

  He turned the radio down. Good. “Yes?” he said.

  “Are you sure I can’t help with that? What are you doing?”