‘He was making a distinction,’ said Adrian. ‘At least that is how it seemed to me.’
Walking ahead of him, his shoes squeaking faintly on the floor, Salia had stopped and turned to face Adrian. For a few seconds he appeared to consider whether or not to answer Adrian, or perhaps was just weighing his answer.
When he spoke he said, ‘If a spirit possess you, you become another person, it is a bad thing. Only bad spirits possess the living. I am telling you what some people believe, you understand.’
‘Yes.’
‘But sometimes a person may be able to cross back and forth between this world and the spirit world. That is to say, a living person, a real person. And when they are in between the worlds, in neither world, then we say they are crossed. This woman is travelling between worlds. It is something that happens. When I was a small boy there was a woman who became crossed, she was my aunt, in fact. There were times she would move from one village to another, alone, even as far as Guinea and Liberia. People saw her, they said she did not recognise them. Her hair grew long. People believed she had special powers.’
‘Did you ever hear of anybody else like that?’
‘There were people, yes.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Women.’
‘All of them?’
Salia inclined his head. ‘All of them.’
In his mind’s eye Adrian sees the map on the wall of Ileana’s office, the coloured pins of Agnes’s destinations superimposed on the dark window.
The European fuguers one hundred years ago were all men.
Here they are women.
CHAPTER 17
Julius entered my office carrying a briefcase of whisky. His shirt was linen, short-sleeved with stitching upon the lapels, highly starched and only slightly wrinkled in the heat. Next to him I felt dull and rumpled. I was wearing a suit, one of the two I possessed, given to me by my father and shiny at the trouser seat and elbows. The other I should have collected from the cleaner’s on my way in, but had been diverted by a fracas involving a hustler, one of those men who approach you on the street, their illicit wares hidden inside their coats. This fellow had newspapers. They were no more than gossip sheets really, though they were theoretically banned. Their stock-in-trade comprised half-baked conspiracy theories, political scandals, murders served up with especially gruesome or bizarre details and often a graphic photograph, obtained from a police source for the price of a bribe. Once or twice I had found a copy of one of those papers in my office after Julius had been there. I might cast an eye over the front page before I tossed it into the bin.
I barely registered the vendor as he passed me. I noticed he tried to catch my eye. I shifted my gaze and he moved on. Moments later he was seized by three men who seemed to come out of nowhere. The vendor tried to make his escape, but today wasn’t his day. The place was full of plain-clothes police. A sweep of the whole street at rush hour when the vendors were busiest. They gave him a thrashing and tossed him in the back of a Land Rover.
That and the rain held the traffic up for hours. I passed the time in a barber’s shop. Some weeks before I had been persuaded by the owner to try a moustache. I sat back in the chair while he soaped my face and scraped at the stray hairs, shaping the line of hairs on my upper lip into a neat bar, divided by a parting. I faced myself in the mirror. I was pleased with the result.
And now here was Julius, stockpiling booty in my office, crates of soft drinks and mixers, bottles of spirits. He was planning a party for the moon landing, which threatened to overwhelm the event itself.
‘Hey, Cole!’
I was hot, damp and vaguely irritated to see him. He leaned over the desk, and I caught, mixed in with his own smell, a scent of Saffia.
It almost winded me.
I know how we looked. People couldn’t understand what he saw in me, I’m sure. For I had the same thought. I was, am, a careful man. Julius’s presumptuousness was breathtaking. He had no fear of life. It was there in his fluid attitude to the ownership of possessions, in the way he spent whatever money he had in his pocket. He possessed the ability to drink himself to incoherence and back to lucidity. He would go on, carrying you with him, until all the tiredness had gone. And when, with the new light stretched across the horizon, he would drive the two of us home though he was in no fit state to do so. He would bang the bonnet of the car. ‘No fear, Cole,’ he’d shout, ‘she knows the way home by now.’ Of religion he had no need. He believed in himself. A confidence that extended even to his singing, so that years later when he was remembered, it was as a musical man. Yet the only quality you could say his voice possessed was force. Yes, Julius believed in himself. He didn’t fear death — for death was too insignificant, too small, it resided below the level of his contempt. He had survived a serious childhood illness that killed many others. He drew power from the fact of it, as though it proved he was blessed.
He believed in his own destiny and he made others believe it too. He was a seducer. Of woman, man, child or dog. To him I was company, someone to be won over, simple as that. Plus, he was easily bored.
‘Give me five, Cole!’ Our palms slapped together and slid across each other, our thumbs and forefingers clicked. He hefted a buttock up on to the edge of my desk.
‘What’s up, my friend?’
‘Nothing.’
He bent over for a closer look at me, put out his hand and lifted my chin, his face a mere six inches away. I could feel his warm breath. He gave a low whistle.
‘Suits you, Cole.’
‘Thank you.’ I decided to respond as though he was serious.
He sat back and regarded me thoughtfully a moment. ‘What have you done with Vanessa? That was one fine-looking lady. You need a woman, Cole.’ For some reason he kept using my surname, an occasional habit of his.
I shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I’m serious, Cole. I may be a married man but I still know a few of the ladies.’ He winked at me.
I didn’t want to enquire too closely what he meant by that. I felt vaguely unwell.
‘I shall make sure I invite somebody to the party for you. Some fine woman.’
‘Not on my account, please.’
Julius laughed at that. ‘You know, among the Mende, Cole, there is a practice that when a stranger arrives in a village he is given a woman to keep him company at night, often a daughter of the chief himself. The Europeans made much of this custom, to them it proved what people of low morals we all were. But you know why the Mende had this custom, Cole?’
I shook my head.
‘Because they know full well a man needs a woman. It is in the nature of things. A single man is trouble, a hungry jackal. So the village provides a chicken. To me, Cole, this is surely the more civilised approach. And besides, by providing a chicken of their own choosing, now they had a spy in the jackal’s lair! And the European traders thought they were being generous. They kept on coming back. Beware chickens bearing gifts, my friend.’ His laughter rolled like applause around the room.
I swallowed and pasted the facsimile of a smile upon my face.
‘You need a woman, my friend, to cheer you up. Whose tumbu you can tickle with that new moustache of yours.’
Julius’s worry beads, the way I thought of them then. He often carried, in his pockets, some piece of metal, an engine part or piece of some structure, something used to demonstrate a principle to his students or perhaps just something picked up and pocketed in the course of the day. That afternoon it was a nut and bolt he spun on the surface of my desk. I watched his hands, spinning the bolt round and round. Fingers. Knuckles. Fingertips. Nails. The smooth brown surface of the desk. Smooth like skin. Julius’s fingers playing, grazing, stroking, touching. Saffia.