4

Outside, the sight of the street itself raised thoughts of the reproach of loved ones, coming in silent sounds that ate into the mind in wiry spirals and stayed there circling in tightening rings, never letting go. There was no hurry. At the other end there was only home, the land of the loved ones, and there it was only the heroes of the gleam who did not feel that they were strangers. And he had not the kind of hardness that the gleam required. Walking with the slowness of those whose desire has nowhere to go, the man moved up the road, past the lines of evening people under the waning lamps selling green and yellow oranges and bloated bread polished with leftover oil, and little tins and packets of things no one was in any hurry to buy. Under a dying lamp a child is disturbed by a long cough coming from somewhere deep in the center of the infant body. At the end of it his mother calmly puts her mouth to the wet congested nostrils and sucks them free. The mess she lets fall gently by the roadside and with her bare foot she rubs it softly into the earth. Up at the top a bus ar¬ rives and makes the turn for the journey back. The man does not hurry. Let it go. From the other side of the road there is the indiscreet hiss of a nightwalker also suffering through her Passion Week. At other times the hiss is meant only for the heroes, but now it comes clearly over. In the space between weak lamps opposite can be seen the fragile shine of some ornament on her. There are many of the walking dead, many

42 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

so much worse off. The shine disappears then comes again, closer, somewhere near the middle of the road. Incredible. In a moment the air is filled with the sharp sweetness of arm- pit powder hot and moist, and the keenness of perfume trapped in creases of prematurely tired skin. At rapid intervals comes the vapor of a well-used wig. Horse or human? Alive or dead ? And how long departed ?

"Ssssssss." The appeal is not directed anywhere beyond the man. The incredible comes true at times like this. The man looks up and sees beneath the mass of the wig the bright circle of an earring. The walker does not see, or chooses not to see, the lukewarm apologetic smile.

"Five." The voice is not a used one. It is almost like a shy child's. The man shakes his head. How anyhow at a time like this ?

"Three." Abrupt drop, this. So many desperate needs.

"Sister, I have nothing at all." No response. Light glinting on swirled earring. The walker steps back into the ambiguous shadow between the lights, waiting with a strange voice for strange faces in the dark. More sellers under more faint lights, selling more of the same inconsequential things. From the rise ahead an object made of power and darkness and gleaming light comes shimmering in a potent moving stream, and it stops in front of a half-asleep seller close to the man. Above the cool murmur of the engine the voice of a female rises from within, thin as long wire stabbing into open eyes.

"Driver, get some oranges."

"How much, Auntie?"

"Oh, two dozen."

The driver steps out and swings the door shut with the sat¬ isfied thud of newness. The wire voice within seems to wail something more, and from the back seat of the limousine a

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born 43

man dressed in a black suit comes out and makes straight for a little covered box with bread in it. The young girl behind the box hurries to open it and to hold out a large wrapped loaf. The man takes it and says, "One more."

The girl pulls out another. Glint of a fifty-pesewa coin. The man turns and walks confidently back to the car. The girl runs after him with his change, but he does not want it and the girl returns to her box. Next to the girl another, older seller wakes to her missed chance and begins to call out, "Big man, I have fine bread."

"I have bought some already." The voice of the suited man had something unexpected about it, like a fisherman's voice with the sand and the salt hoarsening it forcing itself into un¬ accustomed English rhythms. Why was this necessary? A very Ghanaian voice.

"My lord," comes the woman again, "my big lord, this bread is real bread."

Inside the big car the pointed female voice springs and coils around, complaining of fridges too full to contain any¬ thing more and of too much bread already bought. Outside, the seller sweetens her tones.

"My own lord, my master, oh, my white man, come. Come and take my bread. It is all yours, my white man, all yours."

The car door opens and the suited man emerges and strides slowly toward the praise-singing seller. The sharp voice in¬ side the car makes one more sound of impatience, then sub¬ sides, waiting. The suit stops in front of the seller, and the voice that comes out of it is playful, patronizing.

"Mammy, I can't eat all of that."

"So buy for your wife," the seller sings back.

"She has enough."

"Your girl friends. Young, beautiful girls, no ?"

44

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born "I have no girl friends."

"Ho, my white man, don't make me laugh. Have you ever seen a big man without girls ? Even the old ones," the seller laughs, "even the old men."

"Mammy, I am different." The suited man pays the seller. She takes the money and holds on to the man's hand, looking intently into his face now.

"You are a politician," she says at last, "a big man."

"Who told you?"

"It's true, is it not?" she asks. "I have seen your picture some¬ where."

"I see." The suited man looks around him. Even in the faint light his smile is easy to see. It forms a strange pattern of pale light with the material of his shirt, which in the space between the darknesses of his suit seems designed to point down somewhere between the invisible thighs.

"Hell-low," says the smile to the invisible man of the shad¬ ows, "what are you doing here ? I almost didn't see you."

"Going home from work. At first I wasn't sure."

A pale cuff flashes, and the suited man looks at his watch and just murmurs something to himself, very low. "By the way," he says, "we'll be over to see you soon, Estie and myself." "Hmmm."

"No. This time I mean it. Let's see. Today is Wednesday. Let's make it Satur . . . no, Sunday evening."

"What time?"

"Nine I'll be free, I think."

The car horn splits the air with its new, irritated sound, and the suited man spins instinctively around, then recovers and says, "Estie is in the car. Come and greet her."

The man walks behind the suit up to the car. The voice within starts scolding in an abrasive tone, but the suit cuts it short. "Estie, I found a stranger."

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born 45

The woman's wire voice changes a little in tone. "Aaaa, ei look. I didn't see anybody." Out through the window she holds out a hand and something glitters in the night light. The man takes the hand. Moist like lubricated flesh. It is withdrawn as quickly as if contact were a well-known calamity, and the woman inside seems plainly to have forgotten about the man outside. Another sound of a door softly closing. "Well, Sun¬ day, then. Nine."

"Fine."

A voice from the car, an afterthought as the engine turns impatiently. "Oh, by the way, we are not going back. Atlantic- Caprice, and we are late. Otherwise . . ."

"Don't worry your soul," the man hollers after the fluid movement of the limousine. "Don't worry your soul . . ." he repeats the words in a whisper to himself, and turns his look away from the gleam above the hill.

The waiting period is a time of comforting emptiness. Thoughts that do not necessarily have to have anything to do with the sickness of despair come and go leaving nothing pain¬ ful behind them. How many hands passing over the long bar of the bench at the bus stop since it was first put there ? What do three lit windows mean in the dark dark Post Office at night? What have the others waiting been doing? With a wholly unnecessary burst of noise a bus comes and stops with its entrance door a yard beyond the bus stop opening. The wait¬ ing people slide toward it, but the conductor walks away down the road. In a few moments the waiters can hear the sound of his urine hitting the clean-your-city can. He must be aiming high. Everyone relaxes visibly. The poor are rich in patience. The driver in his turn jumps down and follows the conductor to the heap. His sound is much more feeble. For a long time they stand by the heap laughing and talking. Joking about what has just been going on? Comparing what? The driver

46 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

wanders back, climbs in and goes to sleep over the wheel. The conductor is aiming to go down in the direction of the sellers. A few, fed up with waiting, climb in anyhow and put their heads to rest against the remaining panes. Someone coughs, but the noise gives place to an abrupt silence. Those still wait¬ ing outside drape their bodies over the long rails of the bus stop shelter, and the lights of passing vehicles play upon their shapes in strange, desolate patterns. When the conductor re¬ turns he is eating a shiny loaf of bread by hollowing it out, and the food handled in this way in the darkness looks inter¬ mittently like something resentful and alive. With a full mouth the conductor shouts at those who have climbed in¬ side; a morsel shoots out from his jaws and drops in a pale arc by the bus.

"Get down! Get down! Have you paid and you are sitting inside?"

As if they have been expecting this all along, the people in¬ side climb meekly down and hold out their money to the con¬ ductor. He is too angry to accept it, and sends them back to the end of the line. Nothing serious. The line is not long. The conductor mumbles insults aimed at no particular person as he snaps out the tickets. No one seems to need change, so things go rapidly, except when the conductor takes his time to say aloud some deeply felt insult.

The man gets in, choosing a seat by a window. The window turns out to have no pane in it. No matter. It is hardly a cold night. When the bus starts the air that rushes in comes like a soft wave of lukewarm water. The man leans back against his seat and fingers recoil behind his head. He does not look back. It is possible, after so much time up and down the same way, it is possible to close the eyes and lay back the head and yet to know very clearly that one is at this moment passing by

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born 47

that particular place or the other one, because the air brings these places to the open nose. Even at night there is something hot and dusty about the wind that comes blowing over the grease of the loco yard, so that the combination raises in the mind pictures of thick short men in overalls thickened with grease that never will come off; blunt rusty bits of iron mixed up with filings in the sand; old water that has stopped flowing and confused itself with decaying oil from broken-down boil¬ ers; even the dead smell of carbide lamps and electric cutters. After the wall of the loco yard, the breeze blowing freely in from the sea, fresh in a special organic way that has in it traces of living things from their beginnings to their endings. Over the iron bridge the bus moves slowly. In gusts the heat rises from the market abandoned to the night and to the home¬ less, dust and perpetual mud covered over with crushed toma¬ toes and rotten vegetables, eddies from the open end of some fish head on a dump of refuse and curled-up scales with the hardening corpses of the afternoon's flies around. Another stretch of free sea line. More than halfway now, the world around the central rubbish heap is entered, and smells hit the senses like a strong wall, and even the eyes have something to register. It is so old it has become more than mere rubbish, that is why. It has fused with the earth underneath. In one or two places the eye that chooses to remain open can see the weird patterns made by thrown wrecks of upended bicycles and a prewar roller. Sounds arise and kill all smells as the bus pulls into the dormitory town. Past the big public lavatory the stench claws inward to the throat. Sometimes it is under¬ standable that people spit so much, when all around decaying things push inward and mix all the body's juices with the taste of rot. Sometimes it is understandable, the doomed attempt to purify the self by adding to the disease outside. Hot smell

48 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

of caked shit split by afternoon's baking sun, now touched by still evaporating dew. The nostrils, incredibly, are joined in a way that is most horrifyingly direct to the throat itself and to the entrails right through to their end. Across the aisle on the seat opposite, an old man is sleeping and his mouth is open to the air rushing in the night with how many particles of what ? So why should he play the fool and hold his breath? Sounds of moist fish frying in open pans of dark perennial oil so close to the public lavatory. It is very easy to get used to what is ter¬ rible. A different thing; the public bath, made for a purifica¬ tion that is not so offensive. Here there is only the stale soap¬ suds merging in grainy rotten dirt from everybody's scum, a reminder of armpits full of yellowed hair dripping sweat down arms raised casually in places of public intimacy. The bus whines up a hill and the journey is almost over. Here are waves of spice from late pots of familiar homes, spices to cover what strong meats ?

The man gets down and his hands find their own way deep into his pockets. The air around the spine at the base of his neck grows unaccountably cold. The puddle at the end of the gutter is widening so that it takes some effort to leap over it now. And it seems such a tiring thing to do, climbing up the four little stairs onto the veranda. There is light in the kitchen still, but everything is very quiet. Is that strange at this time of night ? It does not matter, really. Why should there not be silence, after all, why not?

Silence. No voices, no sounds in the night, just silence. The man walks into the hall, meeting the eyes of his waiting wife. These eyes are flat, the eyes of a person who has come to a de¬ cision not to say anything; eyes totally accepting and unques¬ tioning in the way only a thing from which nothing is ever expected can be accepted and not questioned. And it is true

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born 49

that because these eyes are there the air is filled with accusa¬ tion, but for even that the man feels a certain tired gratitude; he is thankful there are no words to lance the tension of the si¬ lence. The children begin to come out of the room within. They are not asleep, not even the third little one. It seems their eyes also are learning this flat look that is a defense against hope, as if their mother's message needs their confir¬ mation. It comes across very well. So well it fills the hall with an unbearable heaviness which must be broken at all costs. The table has food on it. The man moves forward and sits at it with his back to his guilt, resolving to break the heavy quiet.

"I saw Koomson on my way home," he says. The wife is slow about showing any interest.

"And Estella was with him, I suppose?" she asks at last.

"Uh-huh," he nods, turning to look at her. He sees instead the eyes of his children. O you loved ones, spare your beloved the silent agony of your eyes.

"Mmmmmmmm." The sound she makes should mean ap¬ proval or at the least acceptance, but it does not. Now it is a low cry full of resentment and disappointment. Then, "She has married well . . ." The man wishes he had learned to bear the weight of the silence before, but now going back is impos¬ sible.

"They were going to the Atlantic-Caprice." He raised the spoon to his mouth, and as he did so he caught the scent of per¬ fume still on his hand. "I shook hands with his wife, and I can smell her still. Her hand was wet with the stuff."

"Mmmmmm." This long sound again. "Life has treated her well."

"Koomson says he wants to come and see us. Sunday, nine."

"Mmmmmmm."

50 The Beautyjul Ones Are Not Yet Born

"That probably means your mother, not us. We should re¬ member to tell her when she comes."

The woman paused before answering. "It is not only for my mother that Koomson will come."

"What do you mean?" asked the man. His spoon drops and he ignores it.

"I mean if things go well, they will go well for all of us."

"Do you think so?" The man looks worriedly at his wife. She is irritated.

"Why are you trying to cut yourself apart from what goes for all of us?"

"I did not know," the man says very slowly, "I did not know that I had agreed to join anything."

"But you will be eating it with us when it is ripe?" The woman's defensive little smile does nothing to remove the sharp edge of the question. The man rises from the table and goes toward his wife. She is about to shrink back from him, but he is smiling sadly down at her and she relaxes.

"Where is Koomson getting all the money for this boat?" he asks.

"He is getting it." Flat finality.

"All right," says the man. "Let us say I am not in it."

The woman stares unbelieving at her husband, then whis¬ pers softly, "Chichidodooooo."

Knock on the door. Answer from the woman, and an old woman with her breasts barely covered by her cloth comes in holding a little chipped enamel bowl at the tips of her fingers.

"Good evening," she says. "Here I am again. Sugar. Would you be pleased to lend me a little sugar? Just for the children."

The wife answers, "We have just finished our last packet our¬ selves."

On the old woman's face appears a smile halfway between

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born 51

scepticism and triumphant belief. As she disappears through the doorway she looks back at the couple within and says, "Ah, this life!"

The man looks at his wife and finds her eyes fixed on his face. "What were you saying?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says. He grows silent.

"Somebody offered me a bribe today," he says after a while. "Mmmmmmm!"

"One of those timber contractors."

"Mmmmmmm. To do what ?"

"To get him an allocation."

"And like an Onward Christian Soldier you refused ?"

The sudden vehemence of the question takes the man com¬ pletely by surprise. "Like a what ?"

"On-ward Chris-tian Sooooooldier!

Maaarching as to Waaaaaaaaar With the Cross of Jeeeeeeesus Goooing on be-foooooore!"

The man took a long look at his wife's face. Then he said, "It wasn't even necessary."

"What were you afraid of then ?" the woman asked.

"But why should I take it?"

"And why not? When you shook Estella Koomson's hand, was not the perfume that stayed on yours a pleasing thing? Maybe you like this crawling that we do, but I am tired of it. I would like to have someone drive me where I want to go." "Like Estella Koomson?"

"Yes, like Estella. And why not? Is she more than I ?"

"We don't know how she got what she has," the man said. "And we don't care." The woman's voice had lost its ex¬ citement and reverted to its flatness. With a silent gesture she

52 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

sent the children back inside. "We don't care. Why pretend? Everybody is swimming toward what he wants. Who wants to remain on the beach asking the wind, 'How . . . How . . . How?"'

"Is that the way you see things now ?" he asked her.

"Have you found some other way ?"

"No."

"Would you refuse Koomson's car if it got given free to you?"

"No. It would depend . . ."

"Is there anything wrong with some entertainment now and then?"

"Of course not."

"Then why not?"

"Why not what ?" he asked.

The woman's mouth opened, but she let it close again. Then she said, "It is nice. It is clean, the life Estella is getting."

The man shrugged his shoulders. When he spoke, it was with deliberate laziness. "Some of that kind of cleanness has more rottenness in it than the slime at the bottom of a garbage dump."

"Mmmmmmm . . ." the woman almost sang. The sound might have been taken as a murmur of contentment. "You are the chichidodo itself."

"Now what do you mean by that?" The man's voice was not angry, just intrigued. Very calmly, the woman gave him her reply.

"Ah, you know, the chichidodo is a bird. The chichidodo hates excrement with all its soul. But the chichidodo only feeds on maggots, and you know the maggots grow best inside the lavatory. This is the chichidodo."

The woman was smiling.