African Silences Read Online Free PDF Page B

described a complete circle in the process. He was shouting angrily, and Jacob, translating, began to laugh: “Here I am talking to Big Man,
White
Man, and you come around here with your dirty food trying to spoil my business!” But even China Balm could not have soothed us in the series of mishaps that continued to befall us throughout our sojourn in the former Bad People’s Coast. When the train appeared, it was quite clear that the
wagons-lit
were full, beyond all hope of argument or bribe, and the first-class seats to which we were entitled had been sadly overbooked; only quick action secured us stiff chairs in the dining car, which we would defend for the next fourteen hours.
    The train moved fitfully toward the north into the heavy equatorial darkness. To blur the night ahead, we drank, and the early evening passed in a pleasant manner. A decent supper came and went as warm, sweet jungle air poured through the window, and afterward, staring outward at the forest, deep black against that other black of the night sky, I saw under the stars and moon an enormous burning tree of the doomed African forest.
    Later on the air grew cold, and as we stopped at station after station—Dimbokro, Bouaké, Katiola—the dining car grew very crowded, until desperate travelers began to enter through the windows. Two of these were cadaverous young Frenchmen kitted out with rucksacks and guitars, who established themselves at a table of Africans and began to inveigh against the tourists who were starting to spoil this former land of French West Africa. The Ivoiriens, nonplussed, listened politely, but after a while, one man said quietly, “
Et
vous,
Messieurs? Vous êtes quelle sorte de touriste?
” Clutching his guitar, one youth said lamely, “
Nous sommes des touristes de la musique!
” No one laughed, and a merciful silence followed until dawn.
    Daybreak came early to a broken country of low savanna woodlands, sudden hills. I had not slept, and my headache and increasing fever were intensified by transistor radios, a howling baby, and the exertions of a hungry man who was hammering coconuts on the car floor. In search of a breakfast chair for a rich old Muslim, the steward, put off by my grim expression, singled out the most defenseless among those who had filled the seats during the night, a confused peasant with young wife and infant who looked as if he might not know his rights. In the confusion, the infant urinated on the floor, in a sad puddle that rolled across the aisle as the train swayed; the mother rose, bent over forward, and laid the baby on her back, which it clasped unaided like a tree frog, its little seat supported by her own protruding rump, until she had bound it tight in her
katanga.
In my feverish state, it seemed to me that I had hit upon an explanation for the development of the African posterior, where the infant rides as an appendage of the mother: in early days when
katangas
were unavailable and a child was affixed precariously with a frond, this sturdy shelf on which it rode while its mother walked or worked her field would surely have been an evolutionary advantage.

    At Ferkessédougou, where the Chemin-de-Fer-Abidjan-Niger arrived four hours late, we were met by a very small red auto. Originally our plan had been to drive ourselves, dispensing with a guide; but though the car had been leased to us by the tour agent in Korhogo, its driver turned out to be its owner and would not be left behind, being determined to keep an eye on his possession. And so, in the great heart of midmorning, our band of four set out rather cross and crowded on the fifty-mile trip east over rough dirt roads to the Parc de la Komoé, which lies in the northeast corner of the country. By this time I was so feverish that I scarcely noticed the Malinke villages, nor minded much when, after noon, the car limped to a halt with a flat tire; I stood like a victim of cataclysm on the dusty road edge. By the time we reached the park