Night. He’s not home yet, prob. out at one of the dives Ola takes him to, where can be found the real Africa. The others look at me with expressions varying from sympathy to satisfaction. Mrs. Bassey sympathetic, invited me to church (!) w/ her tomorrow. I’m going.
9/17 Lagos
The service at St. Mark’s Anglican, ultra-high church. In procession everyone?priest, deacons, and altar boys (no girls here)?wearing a white gown amp; pointy bishop’s miters. The text John 9, healing the man born blind, sermon was about miracles, priest was a skeletal man with the look of a saint in a Coptic mural. Apparently up north 163 churches had been burnt out last year by Muslim mobs. The congregations decided to hold services anyway in ruins, in rainy season. But on Sunday the sun shone. It then rained continuously for the next six days, amp; the sun came out again on Sunday, a pattern repeated for the next fourteen Sundays, by which time the congregations had rebuilt roofing. Muslims left them alone now. True story? Maybe. It’s Africa.
The saints all blackfaced here and crude, statue of St. Mark looked like a lawn jockey, w/ actual stuffed lion, decrepit, some Brit’s idea of joke?
The marvelous sculptural tradition of the Yoruba has not made jump to Christian iconography, sad.
Afterwards, tea w/ Mrs. B. in her private apartment at Lary’s, amp; we let down our hair a little, cozy, her room a near-replica of one at Bournemouth amp; I wished I was a Brit, and could suck the last minim of cozy out of it, am starting to suffer from weird.
Cozy = antidote for weird? Dress for dinner in jungle, O those Brits!
Tried to detect the signs of deracination, or phoniness or subtle obsequiousness that Forster and Waugh have told us is fate of the native who apes the whites, but I couldn’t find any. Mrs. B. = fine Christian lady, pure cultural choice. Real intimacy possible? I am nervous with older women, easier with older men. No surprise there!! Elements of shame, me being actually comforted by this peculiar woman, in her absurd, hideous apartment, here in heart of Africa. I almost wrote heart of darkness, too.
Lyttel and Washington mock her behind her back, see her as phony, a reminder of colonialism. Excused by youth, by their American negritude? W. can’t stand her, mimics her cruelly to the others. His perfect ear.
She doesn’t care for him either. Over tea and cream buns (how can she do cream buns in Lagos? But very good cream buns!) she broaches this. No secret in the house that we are not getting along. What embarrassment, but I spill, not the whole story, but all about his recent behavior amp; the business with the stolen gear. I said he was unbalanced in Africa, said I loved him, said it was my fault.
She gave me a pitying look, said a man like that my girl is no good, here is not in the bush you know, you don’t have no bride price paid for you, you are a Christian girl and you have your own money. She made a gesture, a grasping. Show him the door! Is what I would do in your place, is what I did do in your place, and I didn’t have none of your wealth either, no.
Heard the whole story of Mr. B., his laziness, his drinking, his cronies, his stealing from the hotel. When he started ripping off the guests, he got the boot. The fate of the strong black woman not Made in America. Strong woman, what’s black to do with it? Pop sociology?
We embraced, me hard put not to blubber like a girl.
Later we had Sunday dinner. We always have some guests. Tonight’s a guy named Bryan Banners and his wife, Melanie, he’s an art historian, she’s an anthropologist. Midwesterners both, both large and pink and blond. Banners had bought a little statue in the market. He had it with him and showed it around. It was an Ogun ax, a thin spindle of three figures, in ebony, with a triangular ax blade of iron attached to the head of the topmost. Greer looked it over and said it was a nice piece amp; Banners asked if it was authentic. Greer said that depended on what he meant by authentic, said it was an Ekite carving from the Kwara region, but what Banners probably meant was, “was it old or recent?” Greer said it wasn’t appropriate question to ask about African art. Age = European fetish. I could see that Banners hadn’t ever thought that Europeans had fetishes amp; he said that he only meant did it come from a tribe with an intact tradition, or was it tourist trade? Greer said that wasn’t the right question either, because you could ask also if Robert Motherwell was in an intact tradition or making stuff for the trade when he sold a painting to his New York gallery.
Greer said the reason why the Africans don’t fetishize antiquity is that nothing organic lasts in Africa. Old masks and statues are routinely buried and new ones are made by clans of carvers. It’s the spirit, the ashe, in the thing that counts, and this particular thing is full of ashe, so it doesn’t matter if it was made a hundred years ago or last Wednesday. There is a lot of junk, of course, you have to discriminate, as the locals do. Like in New York.
Then we got into Geertz’s theories about art as a cultural system, and semiotics, and the deeper zones of modern anthro, which is home base to me, and I jumped in and we talked and talked, technical stuff, the four-color flat painting of the Abelam people of New Guinea, comparisons with Yoruba art, the unity of form and content, comparison to the Euro. Renaissance output; Moroccan poetry, its function as an indicator of social status and prestige, the relation of this to what West African griots do, praise singing in general, the Iliad, the modern epic poets of the Balkans, which way the influence traveled through these cultures, that, or an independent creation satisfying an instinctive human need, the possibility of a reliable semiotics of art.
Glanced over from time to time at W. to see how he was enjoying this, he was the artist here, he should be eating this up, plus I thought the discussion was better than most jabber in salons of New York, but he had a sour, bored expression on his face, and five empty lager bottles in front of him. Fact = W. can’t drink. I thought, I should be like Melanie, I should go over and make nice and then I thought I was having a good time, brain was coming alive, like when I was with M., and I turned away.
The next time I looked it was because he was laughing with Soronmu, loud, and everyone stopped their conversation amp; waited for the other people to explain the joke. The joke was white folks trying to understand Africa, W. explained to Soronmu what an Oreo was. I looked at Greer, saw that his jovial host persona was wearing thin. He made some genial comment, inviting them to join the discussion, and W. said no, boss, us niggers’ll be happier down the street, all this high-tone shit be over our heads. And the two of them staggered out, cackling.
He’s still gone and it’s after two. I don’t know what to do now. I know he loves me. I can’t be wrong about that.
TWELVE
Can we talk?” Paz asked. “I could come back later or meet you someplace, if you’re busy now.”
“Now is fine,” said Dr. Salazar, “but not here.” Something in her tone and look reminded Paz of the characteristic wariness of the fugitive, what you saw in a snitch. Dr. Salazar, he thought, was on the lam.