“What’s a listening group?”
“We used to have tutors all over the country, but the government cut our budget. So I organized groups in outlying villages and gave each group a radio. We broadcast lessons to them over Radio Uganda — English, political science, African history, whatever. Every few months I visit the groups to see whether any problems have arisen.”
“Where do you go?”
“Everywhere.”
The morning Jenny and I left Kampala was one of the happiest in my life. It was sunny, and we raced under a blue sky, going west towards Kabale, past the rivers and the swamps that were choked with feathery papyrus, and the smoky villages that lay under scarred baobab trees, and the plains of Ankole where there were giraffes and gazelles. We stopped in Mbarara for lunch at the little hotel. As we ate, a Land-Rover drew up — some tourists and guides in safari clothes, hacking jackets and broad-brimmed hats and big boots; they were hunters, and very excited to be in this apparent wilderness. After lunch we sped off again towards Kigezi District, where the road twisted around the low hills and volcanoes.
I had never traveled these roads with another person. I had always gone alone. It was wonderful to be with this woman. We talked about books we liked. We took turns quoting poetry we had memorized. She recited Wordsworth and T. S. Eliot; I did Baudelaire and Robert Frost. We chanted “Ozymandias.” We sang folk songs, and when it grew dark in the winding roads of Kisoro, we sang Christmas carols.
It came upon the midnight clear
That glorious song of old …
We arrived at the government rest house at ten o’clock after a twelve-hour drive, and took turns in the bathroom. The dining room was empty. The African waiter brought us steamed bananas and stew, and bottles of Primus Beer smuggled from the Congo — the border was nearer than Kampala. The insects were loud. We sat on the veranda, where it was cool enough to wear a sweater. I could see the lamplights in the huts through the trees and could smell the smoke of the cooking fires.
“God, I love this place.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Jenny said.
I loved the smell of woodsmoke, the clayey odor of the dirt road, the racket of insects, the sound of a jangling bike and its feeble bell, the fragrance of the jacaranda after rain, and the way the giraffes loped when they hurried, the great hot distances of the day and even the simpler evocative smells of the rest house, the varnish and floor wax and cooking bananas.
“Maybe we should turn in,” I said. “We have to drive again tomorrow.”
In our room there were two single beds. Jenny had thrown some clothes on one, and I had done the same with the other — so we had each staked a claim.
But after I turned the light out I said, “Can I get into bed with you?”
She was silent. Was she asleep so soon?
“I promise to behave myself,” I said. “I just want to snuggle next to you.”
“Okay,” she said. I could tell from the way she said it that she was smiling.
Her skin felt damp and warm in her cotton nightgown. She was perspiring slightly. She went to sleep and began to breathe softly in a dreamy way. I could not sleep. My heart was pounding. I was awake, with wide-open eyes.
I touched her, and this woke her. She drew away.
She said, “You promised not to.”
As I kissed her and lifted her legs and parted them she said “No,” but the sound she made when I entered her was a sigh like a yes.
* * *
I saw my class, and then we set off. It seemed an empty land. There were few people in between the towns — no villages, only animals. We drove in the darkness of the high forest and then broke through to the plains. In one place there was a herd of elephants. We tried to count them, but got to sixty and lost count, distracted by the crested cranes and the wildebeest nearer the road. We said nothing about last night.
“Did you know a wildebeest is a gnu?” Jenny said.
She also knew Grant’s gazelle from Thomson’s gazelle, and the names of the various thorn trees. She told me that elephants grieved when one in a herd died — they actually mourned and trumpeted and sometimes tried to bury the carcass.
We continued north to my listening group at Katwe, where there was a salt lake, and to Lake Edward, which was full of hippos, some up to their nostrils in water and others grazing and snorting and shitting — whirring the lumps with their tails, like shit hitting a fan. We went past the copper mine and the deserted railway station at Kilembe, and we entered the region of tea estates — still there were no people, only the lovely dense tea bushes. It was sundown when we reached Fort Portal. We stayed at The Mountains of the Moon Hotel and made love again.
We crossed the mountains on a narrow road through the Ituri Forest. It was shadowy and damp in the forest and we were pestered by pygmies when we stopped to rest. These people were smaller than the ferns and they hid and threw stones at the car when we refused to take their picture. When I blew the car horn they vanished, thinking I was going to drive into them. I was glad to have Jenny with me, in this forest. I realized that I could carry on for a long time — as long as we were together I had no reason to go back. We slept in each other’s arms in a narrow bed at Bundibugyo, and a few days later we drove north to Gulu, where she had asked to go. The road turned from mud to sand, zebras watched us change a tire, and we were stopped at a roadblock by toothless Acholi soldiers with shiny faces and wicked-looking rifles. They asked for bribes; I paid up — and Jenny was chastened by the casual menace of those men. Gulu was hot, and its only sound was that of locusts howling. The thin trees were penetrated by the sun, so there was no shade. Hawks hovered over grass fires, occasionally dropping on mice and snakes that were put to flight by the flames.
It was only ten days of travel, but at the end of it we knew each other well — so well that when we arrived back in Kampala I kissed her and said, “I love you.”
I had always felt that love was a word that had been worn smooth by overuse, and yet she seemed slightly shocked when I said it.
8
She did not say that she loved me. Instead she used fond and oblique expressions that tantalized me. If she had been American I would have known what she meant — if she had been African it would have been much plainer to me. But she was English, and the language could be as maddening and ungraspable as smoke. I meant a lot to her, she said. She was as happy as she had ever been with anyone, she said. The trip had been tremendous fun, she said. She had been desolated by having to come back to town, she said. She would miss me enormously …
I wanted more. There was no more. She was going away. Within a few weeks she passed her exams and had her diploma. She delightedly told me that she had been posted to a bush school in the highlands of Kenya. Wasn’t it absolutely super?
I said yes, because she seemed so pleased. But I was sick at the thought of it.
“How could the Ugandan Ministry of Education send you to Kenya?”
“I was sent by the British Ministry of Overseas Development,” she said. “It’s a three-year scheme.”
It was the first I had heard of it. She was part of a high-powered economic aid program; but she had never mentioned it. It was partly that she never boasted and seldom talked about herself; and also that I had done most of the talking.
“I know the white highlands,” I said, and she winced. But that was how they were known even with Jomo Kenyatta as president. “It could have been worse, I guess. They might have sent you to Zanzibar.”
“I’d love to go to Zanzibar,” she said.