“What about the text?” he says.
Cambara gives him a synopsis of the story on which she plans to base the play. She goes on, “The version of the play I have in mind to produce is inspired by an oral parable from Ghana, first committed to paper by one Kwegyir Aggrey, famously known as Aggrey of Africa.”
Seamus falls in love with the idea, promising to lend a hand, rally round, and help all he can. But he shakes his head, adding, “I do not know if I am the right person or, more appropriately, if I am capable of carving masks, having never had any training in the art or in theater for that matter.”
“I have brought the very thing you need: sketches upon sketches, models, and how-to books for beginners interested in learning the art of puppet theater.”
“Then we are in business,” he says, and, half rising, he stretches his hand out to her, his bare beer paunch and its hirsute features distracting Cambara for a second, and they shake hands on it.
“We will have a great deal of fun doing it,” he says when his rounded bottom hits his seat, “and it will be instructive to all concerned if we manage to stage it.”
She hands the sketches across to Seamus, who takes the pad and, studying them, turns the pages after he has looked at each of them, nodding with approval. Then they hear the gentle sound of a klaxon. Seamus looks away and then at the gate and watches one of the unarmed sentries putting his eye to the peephole. The sentry opens the gate, and a vehicle is driven in. Seamus recognizes the car, and, about to end his conversation, looks at his watch and nods as though his timing has worked to perfection. It is Cambara’s turn to recognize the driver, Dajaal, who comes out of the car and exchanges greetings with the armed and unarmed sentries staffing the gates, calling each of them by name.
Dajaal joins Cambara and Seamus, bows his head in acknowledgment of her warm greeting but stands apart, his body stiffening, a little too formal for her liking, distant. All the same, she points him to a chair, offers him his choice of tea, some coffee, a glass of water, perhaps, anything. Dajaal declines and taps on his wristwatch, indicating he has no time. He eyes Seamus with a knowing grin, and when the Irishman does not get up to go with him, Dajaal says to Seamus, in Italian, “Bile is waiting.”
Still, Seamus does not move.
“We must be on our way,” Dajaal says.
Cambara says to Seamus, “Take the sketch pad with you, and let’s meet and talk further in a couple of days, by which time I will have prepared a photocopy of the text of the play.”
“So long,” Seamus says.
Dajaal urges Seamus, taking hold of his elbow, as if helping him to get to his feet. Although he does not like what Dajaal is insinuating, Seamus humors him by not saying anything. She cannot for the life of her determine what it is about these three men, each of them charming and very likable in his own way, that makes similar movie personages come to mind when she thinks of them. Walter Matthau and his cohorts in the comedies, including Jack Lemmon and another whose name she cannot recall; and of course there are Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. You think of one, you think of the others.
Cambara says, “Greetings to Bile.”
She feels that the charmed part of her is going with them as they get into the car, which Dajaal starts energetically. She wishes she could join them. In fact, she is tempted to wave to Dajaal, shout to him to stop the vehicle, go back to her rooms, put together an overnight bag in which to carry her basics, this time including a makeup kit, and then hop in at the back for no other reason perhaps than to see Bile. Yet she can’t define the source of this keenness or point her finger precisely at the fount of this longing, having met the man only the one time and not under ideal circumstances.
Just then — what a spoiler — her memory brings up a horrid scene from one of her ugly encounters with Zaak on the first day of her arrival. Trust her to remember his admonition, spoken in his inimitably cruel tone of voice, saying “Woman, grow up.” No longer waving or grinning, her hand goes down with the speed of a punctured tire.
Cursing the day she met Zaak, she withdraws into herself, reaching deep down to where she knows she is strong; she retreats into the purposeful pensive mood of a woman determined to pull herself together. And even though she goes into her rooms to put on a touch of makeup before joining Kiin and her daughters for lunch, she is so restless that she cannot bear the thought of being alone in her rooms.
She sits in the café with a book in her hand, the mobile phone in her lap eerily silent. She watches the goings-on near the gate where the armed and unarmed guards have gathered, engaging in some friendly banter. Wandering, her thoughts lead her back to the conversation she has had with Seamus, to whom she has revealed more of her sad side than she imagined she would. Maybe it has been her intention to dispel any glamour-girl status that Bile may have; who better to leak this to than a third party, in this case Seamus, who is bound to share it with him. Why, Seamus too has let it slip that Bile is a depressive.
All is well when all is revealed early!
NINETEEN
No sooner has Cambara sat in the shade and located the page where she left off in her thriller than she sees the driver waving to her in greeting. She is about to acknowledge it when, turning, she spots a young boy who draws her attention away from everyone and everything else. She wonders to herself if she is hallucinating or seeing apparitions, because a boy, until then nameless and definitely not known to her and yet seemingly familiar as he reminds her of her own son, Dalmar, is suddenly there. It is as though he has materialized out of nowhere, with the air around him thickening with mystery the longer she looks at him.
The waiter has by chance returned to the café to wipe the tables with a wet cloth and then lay them for the lunch seating. She calls him over and asks him, “Do you happen to know the boy or what his name is?”
“Gacal is his name.”
“Whose son is he?”
“He is no one’s son,” replies the waiter.
“No one’s son?”
“That’s right. He is nobody’s son.” The waiter speaks with the straight face of someone who does not quite realize the pithy quality of his remarks. He is not even remotely aware how fired up Cambara is as she repeats his utterance to herself, relishing its inspired nature.
“He is no one’s son,” he says again.
Now that is a new one, she thinks. She finds the observation most becoming, out of the ordinary: a boy, not quite ten by her reckoning, who displays a developed-enough personality and qualifies as no one’s son. More like a mythical persona: no parents like Adam; no known biological father like Jesus. Will this Gacal accomplish heroic feats like Krishna’s? Is there a shadow side to him, and if so what is it? Does Gacal share any of the traits of Sundiata, who, in Mandingo myth, was born not through a woman’s vagina, because of its associations with all manner of discharges, but through a finger, undefiled?
Apparently, the boy has come much closer, self-conscious of the rags he has on. It is as though he is on a performance trip, the way he poses; maybe, in a younger life, he was used to being photographed with alarming frequency, a loving mother cuddling him and his dad near and adoring. Look at how he blinks his eyes. Is he remembering the flash of the camera blinding him, the sun in his eyes dimmed? What manner of a poseur is he? Gacal has the sort of flair you associate with the well-born. He carries himself with élan. It does not require much imagination to sense that he is of a different class, physically aware of where he is in relation to where others are. Not only does he surround himself with much space, but he is also mindful not to encroach on yours. Does his behavior point to a middle-class upbringing in his past? Nor does he have shoes on. What’s more, she observes, he has the habit of raising himself on the tip of his toes, craning his neck, as if standing in a crowd between people taller than he is, watching a street revue.