“They’re not lake people?”
He looked surly. “They are from here. But they have got friends — there”—he stabbed a finger in the air— “in the factory in Gala, there in town — I know.”
“So there was a row,” Bray said.
“Trouble, trouble, at the meeting. Some of our people want to expel them from the union. Then there was fighting afterwards … trouble.”
“And you — do you want them expelled?”
He smiled under his ragged moustache at Bray, professionally. “PIP doesn’t have to be told to look after the workers here. They must change their ideas and see sense.”
Bray talked to him a little longer, getting some useful information about the origins of the trawler and factory workers; it turned out that Rubadiri himself had his wife and family not in the immediate area, but in one of the villages farther up the lake.
Bray knew that he had kept the girl sitting in the car nearly an hour, but when he made out the racks of drying fish looking like some agricultural crop stacked in the sun away over the far side of the jetty, he went up quickly to have a look. It was true that it was more like some local fishermen’s enterprise than part of a large, white company’s activities. Just a bit larger — not more elaborate — than any of the home — made fish — drying equipment you saw wherever there were huts, as you went up the lake shore. The usual racks made of reeds and bound with grass, on which split Nile perch and barbel were draped stiff as hides, yellowish, rimed with salt, and high — smelling. The ground was bare, the verge of the lake was awash with tins and litter, and certainly no one was working. But of course it was Saturday. Naked children and scavenging dogs were about; then he noticed that a series of derelict sheds under one rotting tin roof were not storage sheds at all, although they stank like them, but were inhabited. There were no windows, only the dark holes of doorways. Faces loomed in the darkness; now he saw that what he had taken for rubbish lying about were the household possessions of these people. There were no traditional utensils, of clay or wood; and no store — bought ones, either — only the same sort of detritus as scummed the edge of the lake, put into use, as if these people lived from the dirt cast off by a community that was already humble enough in itself, using the cheapest and shoddiest of the white man’s goods. There were no doors to the sheds. He felt ashamed to walk up and stare at the people but he walked rapidly past, a few feet away, in the peculiar awe that the sight of acquiescent degradation produces in the well — fed. The malarial old lay about on the ground outside, legs drawn up as if assuming an attitude for traditional burial. Vague grins of senility or malnutrition acknowledged him from those black holes of doorways, gaping like foul mouths. He saw that there were no possessions within, only humans, inert, supine, crawled in out of the sun. A girl with the lurch of a congenitally dislocated hip came out with the cripple’s angry look that comes from effort and not ill — temper, and put on a beggar’s anticipation. A crone looked up conversationally but found it too much effort to speak.
He went back round the freezing plant to the car and said to Rebecca, “Come here a minute. I want to show you something.”
They walked rapidly, she subdued yet curious, glancing at him. “Christ, what a smell—” They passed the racks. He took her by the arm and steered her along the line of sheds. His grip seemed to prevent her from speaking. She said, “But it’s horrible.” “I had to show you.” They spoke under their breath, not turning to each other. The crippled girl, the crone, the quiet children watched them go.
Back at the car she burst out. “Why doesn’t someone do something about them? Who are they?”
He nodded. “I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t somehow exaggerating. I mean, this is still a poor country. Life in the villages isn’t all that rosy.”
“But this! In tribal villages they may not have the things they have in town, but they do have their own things, you can see they are living. In that place they have nothing, Bray, nothing. No necessities for any kind of life.”
“Just what struck me. They’re somehow stripped.”
“How do they keep alive at all?”
“They’re fish — dryers.” He began to tell her the story while they drove away and left the place behind them.
At last he said, “Well — let’s find somewhere to eat,” and slowed down to consider. She gave a little shudder: “Somewhere beautiful.”
“Where we were the other day?”
“Oh, lovely.” But when he stopped along the lake shore track and prepared to settle, she looked uncertain.
“Isn’t this the place?”
She said, “I thought you meant the island—”
“All the way over to the island?”
“Never mind, this’s fine—”
“Well, if you’re in no hurry to get back, I’m certainly not. Waitlet’s see if I can find a boat—”
She kept protesting, but she couldn’t disguise her hope. There were two pirogues, much patched with tin, dragged up among the reeds. A fisherman was picking over a net. There was a short exchange of cheerful greetings in Gala and then they were given the choice of craft. They took the one that seemed to ship the least water, and they had two paddles this time. Their progress was erratic but she was determined to do her part, flushed and self — forgetful in a way that was unusual in an attractive woman. Once they were past fourteen they were never free of a nervous awareness of how they must be appearing; he had seen it in his daughters.
She was right. The island, the beach, were worth the trouble. She was proprietorial with pleasure. “Have you ever seen such perfect sand? And look — a back — rest, and you can face the water—” They had a swim first, undressing and dressing again without false modesty, each not looking the other’s way. Then Kalimo’s lunch was unpacked. “Have one of the eggs with little fishes in it, come on.” They ate greedily, and drank the warm red wine. She really was too fat — thighed for those old trousers, now that she had eaten they were drum — tight over the belly, as well. What did one mean by an “attractive” girl, then? Was her face pretty? It was a square, ruddy brown — skinned face, he did not like such broad jaws, when she became middle — aged she would be handsome and jowly. She had a good forehead, in profile, under the straight black hair — her hair was very black. And, of course, lovely eyes, those yellowy, lioness eyes. No, “attractive” meant just that — a drawing power that had nothing to do with the beauties and the blemishes, the disproportions and symmetries existing together in the one woman. She used no perfume but the warm look of the tiny cup formed by the bones at the base of her full neck made you want to bury your face there where the body seemed to breathe out, to smoke faintly with life.
They lay down on the sand, side by side; she had taken one of his cigars and was enjoying it. Every now and then, to ask a question or make a point, she raised herself sideways on one elbow, a hand thrust up into her untidy hair, the other hand half beneath her body, covering the falling together of her breasts in the neck of her shirt. Whatever she was, she was not a coquette.
“How long is your contract — with Aleke?”
“Eighteen months.”
“And after that — you’ll go back?”
“Where?” she said. He was thinking of the capital, it was a habit of mind for him to think in terms of some base. “I don’t know what it’ll be. Maybe we’ll go to South Africa. Because of Cabora Bassa.”
“It’s in Mozambique, miles from anywhere.”