The Outcasts (13 page)

Morrison bowed, and the old man bowed. Then from a fold of his diaper he drew a knife.

It was a jackknife, well cared for, with three blades: the knife-blade, a nail-file and bottle-opener, and a corkscrew. Morrison was at ease now and feeling rather superior to these interesting folk, so he thought of Malani as the sommelier.

“Good knife,” he said.

“Knife,” Bawi said happily, remembering, and repeated it to Dulani.

Malani nodded, as if in relief: “Knife,” he said.

“What is a knife in your talk?”

“Urka,” Bawi said. Or Ruka. R'ka. He made a strange click deep in his throat and belched forth an
r
.

“What is water in your talk?”

“La.”

La. How right. La.

“Why does Malani keep the knife? Why not Bawi?”

Bawi smiled, this time gently and with admiration. “Malani make pig, make dog, make—” He squatted again and grimaced, waved, chittered, picked at his armpits. The villagers chuckled and giggled.

“Monkey,” Morrison said.

“Mon-key.”

They all practiced, in a general murmur.

“You show me.”

They turned away, but Morrison remembered his manners. “Tell Dulani thank you.”

Dulani nodded again without interest. Bawi spoke and they moved off, cortege and all.

Malani's hut was at the riverbank. Some of the children left them to slide and plunge, like otters playing. Bawi and Morrison squatted again while Malani puttered in the shade. The sun was higher; another brazen day.

Malani ranged three pieces before them: a pig and a dog and a monkey, in grainy gray wood. They were badly proportioned and static, just a pig and a dog and a monkey, not doing anything, not rooting or sniffing or scratching, but recognizable.

Bawi beamed. Malani was properly withdrawn; indifferent; preoccupied.

“They're beautiful,” Morrison said. “Very good-looking.”

Bawi rattled the compliment to Malani, who bowed, cast his eyes down, and smirked slightly in the manner of the lionized artist, so perfect in his condescending thanks to a negligible critic that Morrison had to repress a bray.

“Tell Malani thank you.”

Bawi did so, and they took gracious leave of the master.

“What do you give the Portagee?”

Bawi did not understand.

“The Portagee gives you knife. What do you give him?”

Still unclear, Bawi offered, “Eat. Drink. Plenny bint.”

Bint again. So bint was food and drink.

“Eat, drink now,” Bawi said. “You come.”

Morrison turned to inspect their following, twenty or so, braving the sun for him. Three were men, impassive. Half were children, who tittered trying to hide behind one another. The old women shushed them. Four or five were young women, and it was difficult not to stare. There was much to stare at, and it was somehow handsomer than he had ever seen, stronger, healthier, directed frankly at him, not pale and imprisoned and gouged by straps. Overpowering. The faces were open black faces, clear eyes and wide nostrils, small ears, the hair only a frizz. They stared back at him. He wanted momentarily to take them and go to a dark place; but he could be of no use to them, and they were not born for dark places. He was perturbed, assaulted, made small; they called to him and shamed him.

Bawi grinned. He knew. “Bint,” he said.

“Let's go,” Morrison said, and turned away.

Dulani was a sick man. Morrison saw that in his lethargy, his dim sight, his indifference. When he needed a gourd, or a broad leaf, he spoke, and one of his women placed it directly before him, and in reaching he groped. Morrison wondered how much of Bawi's translation was truth and how much fiction; how much Dulani and how much Bawi.

“What you want here?” Bawi asked again.

They were drinking water from gourds and eating breadfruit. Their bowls were gourds; leaves their plates. The same young woman served Morrison, kneeling to place the gourd before him, and the sunny, musky smell of her breasts was an ache inside him.

“I wanted to know the men on this side.”

Bawi understood, and was pleased. He made the announcement, and a murmur answered. “What you make?” He gestured loosely toward the gorge.

Morrison sipped at the water, and rushed in: “A new bridge.”

Bawi shook his head.

“To cross.” With his hands Morrison outlined a gorge, deep, deep, with one finger arched a bridge across the top. Then he drew it in the dust.

“Ah.” With alarm; Bawi was alert now. “You talk what?”

“Bridge,” Morrison said again. “Big bridge. Good bridge. Walk on like this.” With the flat of his hand he pounded the earth. “Many men walk together, same time.” He showed Bawi the fingers of both hands and pointed to many of the villagers. “All on bridge. Big bridge.”

Bawi explained that. Silence followed. Morrison saw the pot of hot water again.

“Tami come?”

“No. No more Tami. Man like Bawi come. Black man.”

“Come do what?”

Morrison shook his head. “Come do nothing. Come give knife. Many things.”

He shut up then, chilled suddenly by the sharp wind of untruth. In this village were no lies, he believed, and he could not know what the bridge would bring.

Bawi said gloomily, “Hut here.” His arm swept a half circle. “All time hut here. Bawi pop hut here. Pop pop. Pop pop
pop.”

“All time pop.”

“No, no. Ol' ol' pop come here.” He pointed. “You come. Same you come.”

“What for ol' ol' pop come here?” The talk seemed natural now. He would some day tell Devoe, “Make bridge all done. You give Moe much money.”

“Mmmmm.” Bawi's search for words was agonizing. His mind strained back twenty-two years. He waved again toward the gorge, the country itself, the capital. “Tami come. Too much Tami. Bad Tami. Ol' ol' pop come here. All pop come. No bad Tami here.”

Dulani spoke.

Bawi said, “Good here. La. Waw-da. No, mmm, gun. No Tami. Much cassawa. Much pig. No want much man here.”

“Bawi.” Morrison too struggled with the vocabulary. “This side good man. Black man like Bawi. Portagee side maybe bad man. Maybe bad man come here. Take all. No good. Then good man come help Bawi push 'em back.” He gestured violently.

“Portagee man not bad,” Bawi said flatly.

“One rain, two rain, ten rain,” all Morrison's fingers fanlike, “maybe Portagee man bad.”

Bawi was obviously unimpressed. After a moment he said, “Bad. Bad. Bad.”

There were no mass farewells. By noon, when Morrison started back to the gorge, most of the village was bathing in the stream; a formal and customary respite, he gathered. Men, and women, and children bathed in separate groups. They rubbed themselves with sand. The children ducked and spouted. Morrison was about to ask if this was a ceremony for Sundays, but remembered that there were no Sundays.

He pointed. “All time?”

“Sun here,” Bawi's arm vertical, “come wawda.”

“Every day.”

Bawi smiled as memory blossomed. “Ever' day, sun here, come wawda.”

“Me too,” Morrison said.

“You want come wawda now?”

“No. I'll go on now.”

“You come back?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Bawi said, and they set out for the gorge.

Along this same trail, twenty-two years before, had come Old Tommy, Lance Corporal Anonymous, fabled in song and story as the Unknown Deserter, pride and idol of millions; he had
had
this bloody war and would no longer be a number. Or even a name. From the dim artificial light of a Birmingham slum and a sluggish troopship and a sweat-stinking barracks he had passed this way to the black incandescence of a border village, and on then to the world, born again. Morrison saw a short, tough street rat, dropping aitches, joking indecently, taking charge. The magic cigarette lighter. A stolen pistol. Now owning a saloon in Rio de Janeiro or Lourenço Marques or Singapore. I am that I am. Old Tommy. Dead and resurrected. Twice-born. Hail!

“This Old Tommy,” he said.

Bawi paused.

“Old Tommy have another name? You call him another word?”

“No no. Ol' Tami, him.”

Lost. There would be records. Sir: We are searching for a lance corporal last seen snipping the equator with a stolen pair of government-issue wire-cutters. He has come into a small legacy. Please advise.
TOMMY: COME BACK. ALL IS FORGIVEN. UNCLE MALANI NEEDS YOU IN THE BUSINESS.
No questions asked.

No. Old Tommy would not like that. It was odd to think that any Englishman over forty—a clerk in a bowler in Cheapside, or the drunken beachcomber of New Providence—might be Old Tommy. He might even have gone back to Birmingham, and be a factory hand right now, this moment. Keeping the wogs out of the union. Or—

“Old Tommy white man or black man?”

Bawi grinned that sunrise grin and laughed aloud. “Whi' man. No Tami black man. No Tami black man.” His laughter melted to a giggle, and Morrison saw by his eyes that he was composing the anecdote. He will tell them at the sunset meal, Morrison thought, and it will go down to the sons and the sons' sons. “With the white man I was walking, where the grass turns yellow at the great red hill, and he was talking, and he talked of
black soldiers.”
How they would laugh and shout! And the story would never fail. On dull evenings one man would nudge another and say, “Let's see if we can get Bawi to tell that story about the crazy white man and the black soldiers.”

It was all rather sad.

They made ceremonious farewells at the bridge, and Morrison crossed with no difficulty. The two black men lowered the bridge, and waved, and vanished into the bush. Morrison drove back to camp, and sat in the wawda a while, and slept naked in a hammock.

Philips found him there at about four.

“Welcome home,” Morrison said sleepily. “A good weekend?”

“The usual. Martha sends regards.”

“Thank you. I don't see any bruises.”

“It was really very quiet,” Philips said. “As I assume it was here.”

“It was. I pondered the words of Ramesh and found serenity.”

“Oh,” Philips said. “Your crane has arrived.”

7

The port was a marvel of disorder. For two miles the river was barely visible from the road, cut off by a string of warehouses and sheds. The road swarmed: trucks, donkeys, dockers, on the landward side shops and markets; thousands of men, women and children toting, shouting, buying, selling. A white man, mustachioed, in a pith helmet: Morrison stared unbelieving. Twice, grade crossings. They pushed along in low gear, declining manslaughter time and again; before them and behind them were trucks and wagons enduring the same slow pilgrimage. Their goal was government wharf number one, the last of the line and the deepest anchorage. The crowd thinned toward the end, and they drove the last half mile in second gear. Tall Boy was strangely courteous, gesturing in courtly fashion at pedestrians, clucking at menaced fowl, laughing with children. Just before the sea-wall they turned left, and there was the mouth of the muddy river, a hundred yards off, and when they had rounded the sheds and were on the waterfront itself, Morrison saw the straight line of railroad tracks, and freights and engines, running back the full two miles. And at that too he caught his breath: ten or a dozen freighters of all sizes, and the tracks and cars, and longshoremen shuttling and chanting, and the sheds of odd shapes, and trucks and jeeps, and the smell of the river, of oil, of wood, all that in the hot yellow morning light—why should that be less beautiful than a sunset, or mist at dawn on a mountain stream? It was not less beautiful. More beautiful, perhaps, because it was human. Men, accomplishing. Taking sun, wood, muscle, steel, human need, and making of them a manscape in dull browns and bright yellows and gleaming silver-whites.

The Xenophon rode low in the water before them, a small Liberian flag hanging limp astern. Her forward hatches were open and booms and cables strained; the air was thick with whirrings and groanings and clickings. A small, cocky, bright-red automobile hung high, swaying and then still, and began its descent. Two more like it stood shaded by a wooden overhang. Clean wooden crates filled a corner of the vast shed.

Tall Boy backed into the shade and they stepped out and stretched. “How long it take to get her off?”

“All day,” Morrison said. “So you take it easy. That's fifty tons, don't forget. Will there be a telephone here?”

“Oh yes. Telephones all up and down here.”

“Good. Stick around. I'll try to find Goray.”

Tall Boy squinted out at the light, and found a post to lean against. He cocked his fez and examined the scene carefully, his eyes shifting and his mind absorbing, and then he concentrated on the hoists and the man in a small box who was making them work. Morrison liked him. Morrison wanted to see that broad, open face when they gave him his crane.

Goray was in the dockmaster's office on the second floor of the shed. When Morrison came in, Goray grinned mischievously and roared welcome. His shirt was scarlet today, and a broad-brimmed Panama hat gave him an overseer's air. “Engineer Morrison! How delightful! This is Dockmaster Hartog. I am afraid we have no banana brandy.”

Morrison shook hands with Hartog, a skinny man all in white, and then with Goray. “I can still taste the last bottle.”

Goray heaved and rippled, laughing. The room was musty and cool.

“Everything is in order,” Hartog said.

“Yes,” Goray said. “This is quite a day. I cannot wait to see this machine.”

“Neither can I. Or to make it work. It's been a long trip, and things go wrong. How soon will they have it off?”

“You must ask the captain, or the master of cargo. But the clearance is here, thanks to Mister Hartog.” He waved a sheaf of papers, and slipped them into a folder as Hartog smiled. A cock crowed outside, close by, startling, and they all laughed.