I found her enthusiasm very discouraging and wanted to say What about me?
“What if you got married?” I asked. “What would the ministry say?”
“It’s just for single people — couples aren’t as flexible. Anyway, I have no plans.”
Before she left we spent four days at Lake Nabugabo, where there was no bilharzia, and so we could swim. We lived like castaways in a cozy hut, cooking our meals on a wood fire and drawing water from a well. I paddled her in a dugout canoe to the leper colony on the island — we had brought them sheets to be made into bandages. We gathered wild flowers and pressed them into Jenny’s book. We made love. And driving back to Kampala she said it had all been tremendous fun.
She cried when she left for Nairobi. She took the overnight train. On the platform there were Indians, Africans, British, refugees, Greeks from the Congo, Belgians from Rwanda, people going only as far as Tororo or Jinja, or nine miles down the line; other people leaving for good, with everything they owned, and their servants watching them like orphans. Everyone was saying goodbye differently.
“Don’t be sad, honey.”
“I’m not sad,” she said. “I’m so excited to be starting I can’t control myself.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too”—but would she have said that if I hadn’t prodded her?
“I’ll write to you.”
She said, “I’m terrible about answering letters.”
I hated that.
“Can I visit you?”
“It’s so far!” she said, but in a surprised way, as though the thought had not occurred to her that I might want to visit her.
The whistle blew. A bell was rung on the platform. It was a steam train — noisy, drawing attention to itself, and it gathered speed slowly. No other vehicle on earth seemed to depart so reluctantly or with such self-importance.
I walked beside it, feeling forlorn, and when the train finally left it took a part of me with it. I felt physically incomplete, as if I’d suffered a stroke — part of my body wasn’t working. For the first time in my life I understood why lovers always talked about their heart. It seemed the most fragile part of me, and I could feel it squeezing below my throat.
I went back to my squawking parrot and sat among the books he had gnawed, feeling a paralyzing sadness.
I had always loved being alone, and so departures — no matter whose — left me feeling free, even happy. Parting from someone allowed me to go back to my life — my real life, which was always interesting to me because it was hidden. This secret life was usually peaceful and in my control. It was not a refuge or a hole I crawled into to be still and silent. It was an active thing with noisy habits, and it contained the engine of my writing.
It had been a succession of departures in my life that had made me feel bold — sometimes like a pilgrim and sometimes like an adventurer. I took pleasure in seeing myself as wolfish and slightly disgraceful. I had loved being with Rosamond in London, but I had felt liberated in going away; and the same with Francesca in Accra and Femi in Lagos. In Kampala I had always regarded the prospect of a night with Rashida as exciting, but the next morning I had never wanted her to stay longer, and those afternoons at the Botanical Gardens could be very long. I liked sleeping alone. It was only alone that I had good dreams. Sleeping with a woman often gave me nightmares. I never tried to explain it. It was only that in my life so far I had been happiest when I was alone and had elbow room. I liked to wake up in that same solitude.
But from the moment Jenny left, I missed her. Her train pulled out and I went home like a cripple. I saw Rashida on my way through Wandegeya. She was just leaving the Modern Beauty Hair Salon where she worked, and I recognized her white smock and pulled up next to her.
“Hello habibi. Are you a nurse?”
“Yes, bwana,” she said, without a missing a beat. “I have some dawa under here”—and she touched her smock. “It is good medicine. It will make you feel strong.”
That was the relationship: corny jokes. I felt friendly towards her but nothing more. She was a person I had once known.
I was too confused to write to Jenny, and when I did my letter was incoherent. It was an attempt to hide my jealousy, my sadness, my loneliness and fear. I simply said I missed her. And I told her how when I was writing it there was a scratching on the window above the bed. I had looked up and seen the big lemur eyes of the bush-baby. He seemed to be appealing to be let in. I gave him a piece of banana, keeping him outside. He seemed sorrowful. I wanted to take him into my arms, and I became tearful as I watched him. That story was true.
Love did not seem the right word to explain how I felt. I was physically sick, I felt weak. I missed Jenny, but I also missed myself — I missed that other person I had been when I was with her. I had not been a tease or a manipulator or a baboon wagging his prong at her. I had wanted to please her. She had made me kind and generous, she had made me patient. I liked myself better behaving that way, and because she had left I had lapsed back into being the other person. No, it was not love but rather a kind of grief — I missed her and this other self. She was the daylight that had showed me my secrets, and most of them weren’t worth keeping.
I never lost this grief, but along with it I was also angry that she had left me. Then the anger passed and self-pity replaced it. I sat in my room listening to the mutters of my parrot. In my office I went through the motions of working; and I hardly spoke, because all my sorrow was in my voice.
People said, “Are you all right?”
They knew I wasn’t.
When I said I was fine they knew I was lying, because of the sadness in my protest. I was sure that they talked about me all the time in the Staff Club.
They were too hearty with me. They made a great effort to be friendly. Their effort made me feel worse.
Crowbridge said, “Are you leaving?”
I shook my head. “What gave you that idea?”
“Someone mentioned the University of Papua-New Guinea the other day and you went all quiet.”
People in Uganda were always looking for a new place to go, permanent and pensionable jobs in the tropics — warm disorderly countries which offered good terms of service. This university in Port Moresby was the current one.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“Excellent,” Crowbridge said. “There’s a good chap.”
He bought me a drink. I drank slowly, sadly; I didn’t have the energy to get drunk. I simply grew sadder.
“How’s your Nubian?” Crowbridge said.
Then I felt much worse, and I left without saying anything, knowing that I had made myself conspicuous and pitiful.
At home I managed to make myself drunk and wrote a fifteen-page letter to Jenny, gasping as I scribbled and finally collapsing over it. When I read it the next morning I tore it up. It was a harangue. It contained phrases from a book I had been reading, Kafka’s Letters to Milena—morbid love letters. My own would have frightened her.
It would have been convenient, I thought, if we’d had a mutual friend to tell her about me: Andy loves you — He’s really suffering — He’s in terrible shape — He’s quite a good writer, you know — And he’s director of the Institute — only twenty-six! — But God, we’re worried about him — He’s never been like this — We hardly recognize him — He hasn’t been the same since you left.
I could not say such things myself. I didn’t want to excite her pity. I wanted her to love me in return and for us to talk about the future.
In my loneliness, feeling abandoned, I made plans for both of us — marrying Jenny, having children, getting a job in Hong Kong or Singapore. I wanted to get away from Africa, which now made me feel like a failure — and Africa was my rival for Jenny’s love. I also resented her, because she had destroyed my love of solitude, invaded my secret life; she had made me need her.