Captain did not like him. He asked me if the new bwana was a Yehudi. I hated having to answer but the answer was no in any case.
Rockwell could only speak to Captain through me. “Tell him I hate hard-boiled eggs,” “Tell him not to inner my room,” “Tell him—”
“Look,” I said. “Captain works for me. Don’t keep giving him orders. If you don’t like it here, find another place.”
“It’s okay here,” Rockwell said. “But I sometimes wonder if that guy washes.”
“He’s a muslim. He washes more often than you do.”
“Yeah,” he said doubtfully.
“Five times a day.”
This impressed Rockwell. “Bodily hygiene is real important.”
He washed his own floor, he scrubbed his own clothes, he disinfected the bathroom every day, he hung a container of chemicals in the cistern that turned the toilet water blue. Sometimes he did not talk to me for several days, and then he would talk nonstop, often incomprehensibly, about a mail-order business he wanted to start in California. And he talked about our chimbuzi. He took that very seriously. He dug test holes, drainage ditches, and laid some of the foundation stones. “It’s the basics and the insides that really count. It’s like your body. You’ve got to be clean inside, get all the poisons out—”
A parcel was delivered in a Land-Rover from the Nyasaland Trading Company. It weighed ten pounds and even well-wrapped its odor made my eyes sting.
Rockwell was delighted when I gave it to him.
“It’s urinal candy,” he said. “For our new sanitary facility.”
He was very methodical, which made him heavy going in conversation, because he talked the way he worked. His political conservatism seemed like another aspect of his toilet-talk, and he had stories to support his theories. One revolting one was about some Africans in Sierra Leone who refused to flush toilet paper down the hopper.
“See? You can’t teach these people anything.”
“Not true. The Peace Corps brought oral sex to Nyasaland.”
“That turns my stomach,” he said, and looked genuinely wretched. “Think of the germs.”
But I had wanted to upset him. The only way I could live in the same house was to disagree with everything he said. It was a way of doing battle. I discovered that doing that, disagreeing on principle, meant I was wrong a great deal of the time and often made a fool of myself.
Rockwell did not usually answer back. If I hurt his feelings he sulked. He wouldn’t fight. He said, “Words! Words!” and ran to his room. But after his silences he opened up: bodily hygiene, what happens to food in your intestines, the new sanitary facility — and sometimes it was Africa and the Peace Corps.
“When I go back I’m going to write a book. I’m going to call it The Big Lie.”
“I thought you were going to start a mail-order business.”
“The mail-order business will give me the free time to write,” he said. “By the way, I notice you write. Always whacking away at your typewriter. What is it?”
It was my other secret; but so dark was the riddle of writing that even though I did it every day I was afraid to think about my ambition, and never said a word to anyone else about it. Rockwell had heard me typing, that was all. It was a source of pride to me that no one in the world had ever seen me write a word of fiction.
“Letters home,” I said. “Anyway, what kind of mail-order business?”
“You promise you won’t steal my ideas?”
“I promise. That’s a performatory utterance, you know.”
“Words.” He was grinning. “Words are neat.”
This was late one night in front of the fire. The fire always gave him frightening features, and his eagerness tonight combined with the jumping flames on his face made him seem much crazier than usual.
“Do you know how on labels it says, ‘Keep in a cool dry place’? All sorts of bottles say it — alcohol, shoe polish, you name it, thousands of them. But what is a cool dry place? Most people don’t really have one. So that’s going to be one of my main items.”
This was insane, and his friendliness only made it worse. What was he talking about? I decided not to alarm him by asking, but simply said it was a tremendous idea.
“Think so? I do too! I figure it’ll be a kind of really neat box. Sort of lid, lined inside, little chambers”—he was shaping and hacking with his hands—“and on the outside it’ll say The Cool Dry Placer.”
“Sounds terrific,” I said, and wondered whether he would guess what I really thought if I excused myself and went to bed. I said mail order had great possibilities.
“But Ward Rockwell’s going to have thousands of stock items. Ever notice how bottles of polish and stuff like that has directions saying, ‘Wipe with a clean soft cloth’? And you can never find one when you need it?”
“You’re going to sell them.”
“Right. In a little see-through pouch. I’m going to call it The Clean Soft Cloth.” He looked very pleased with himself. He said, “In the same line I’m going to have that other essential product. Guess what?”
“Can’t guess,” I said. I could have but I knew it would be a mistake.
“The Damp Rag. Ever see the label that advises you to apply whatever it is with a damp rag? I’m going to sell them. In hermetically sealed envelopes, pre-dampened rags. See, the thing about rags”—his voice was cracking—“rags are filthy. But my rags—”
I wanted him to stop. He went on. He told me of his elaborate system of shelves for directions that said “Keep out of the reach of children” and his specially engineered coin for “Pry up with a coin.”
At last I went to bed. I assumed that his nutty ideas were a result of fatigue and isolation. He was tiring himself in the building of the chimbuzi. I decided to break a vow I had made and introduce him to the Beautiful Bamboo. He was a slow steady drinker, and beer made him even more monotonous. When he was drunk he was solemn. He sat in the noise and music, ignoring the girls. He drank and sweated and sulked. And then he went home, putting one foot ahead of the other.
“Guess what I hate about that place.”
“Tell me.”
“You can’t talk there,” he said. It was very dark on the road. “The thing is, Andy, I feel I can really talk to you.”
That alarmed me. I said, “You know, those girls are friendly. All you have to do is say the word and they’d go home with you.”
He made an exasperated noise and then said, “The word is germs.”
I had arranged for Gladys to meet me at the house, because I wanted to keep my secret safe from Rockwell. But his attitude affected me. It was more than disapproval — it was horror. I could not perform. It was his fault. Gladys just laughed and squeezed the useless thing. It seemed to me the worst fate on earth to be impotent.
The next night was a Monday. Rockwell had worked all day on the latrine — I could tell by his glazed eyes. I hoped that he would go to his room and calm himself by polishing something, but instead he joined me in front of the fire. I had wanted to sit there and brood about my impotence.
“Words,” he said. “Words like ‘bored housewife.’ That turns me on.”
He had been thinking.
“Words are real funny. Words can be neat. ‘Semi-naked bored housewife.’ ”