Knots (28 page)

All is well when all is revealed early!

No sooner has Cambara sat in the shade and located the page where she left off in her thriller than she sees the driver waving to her in greeting. She is about to acknowledge it when, turning, she spots a young boy who draws her attention away from everyone and everything else. She wonders to herself if she is hallucinating or seeing apparitions, because a boy, until then nameless and definitely not known to her and yet seemingly familiar as he reminds her of her own son, Dalmar, is suddenly there. It is as though he has materialized out of nowhere, with the air around him thickening with mystery the longer she looks at him.

The waiter has by chance returned to the café to wipe the tables with a wet cloth and then lay them for the lunch seating. She calls him over and asks him, “Do you happen to know the boy or what his name is?”

“Gacal is his name.”

“Whose son is he?”

“He is no one's son,” replies the waiter.

“No one's son?”

“That's right. He is nobody's son.” The waiter speaks with the straight face of someone who does not quite realize the pithy quality of his remarks. He is not even remotely aware how fired up Cambara is as she repeats his utterance to herself, relishing its inspired nature.

“He is no one's son,” he says again.

Now that is a new one, she thinks. She finds the observation most becoming, out of the ordinary: a boy, not quite ten by her reckoning, who displays a developed-enough personality and qualifies as no one's son. More like a mythical persona: no parents like Adam; no known biological father like Jesus. Will this Gacal accomplish heroic feats like Krishna's? Is there a shadow side to him, and if so what is it? Does Gacal share any of the traits of Sundiata, who, in Mandingo myth, was born not through a woman's vagina, because of its associations with all manner of discharges, but through a finger, undefiled?

Apparently, the boy has come much closer, self-conscious of the rags he has on. It is as though he is on a performance trip, the way he poses; maybe, in a younger life, he was used to being photographed with alarming frequency, a loving mother cuddling him and his dad near and adoring. Look at how he blinks his eyes. Is he remembering the flash of the camera blinding him, the sun in his eyes dimmed? What manner of a poseur is he? Gacal has the sort of flair you associate with the well-born. He carries himself with élan. It does not require much imagination to sense that he is of a different class, physically aware of where he is in relation to where others are. Not only does he surround himself with much space, but he is also mindful not to encroach on yours. Does his behavior point to a middle-class upbringing in his past? Nor does he have shoes on. What's more, she observes, he has the habit of raising himself on the tip of his toes, craning his neck, as if standing in a crowd between people taller than he is, watching a street revue.

Now that he is here, what is she to do? How is she to deal with the boy's presence or just cope with things, preoccupied as she is with the family house and what will have become of it, if it is empty of Jiijo? Is she to welcome him,
dolce far niente,
without any need of explanation or justification?

Grinning, Gacal stands at a little distance to her right, quiet, his hands seemingly deferential in that they are clasped behind his back, his face grimy, and his rags grubby. His mouth curves upward, as if in a smile, at the same time as he smirks impishly, defiantly waiting for Cambara to read his bearing, interpret it any way she likes. Cambara gives herself time enough to weigh her options, contrasting the possible advantages of not committing herself one way or the other to taking the indulgent position of a mother figure. She assumes that Gacal has not been in the company of either of his parents or that of a caring adult for a long while. What is his story? The question she dares not ask is whether he knows SilkHair, and, if he does, whether the two of them been in communication with each other about this soft woman, whom anyone can touch and who will come up with gestures of kindness no child in Mogadiscio has ever known. Beware of the sense of paranoia taking over your thinking, Cambara tells herself, and then takes a fresh interest in Gacal.

He has been in a brawl. That much is obvious. In fact, there is enough evidence to warrant the supposition that he has been in a very savage fight: the blood on his forehead and lower lip that is now dry; a few chin-bound, down-facing abrasions crossing others that are upward-bound, one of them ending close to the right eye; lacerations on his arms and neck; gashes on his chest. Moreover, he has lost the sleeve of the shirt, the zipper on his trousers is ripped off, and his skin is liberally grazed here and there. In addition, he looks hungry, and she feels sure that he has not slept a wink for the last twenty-four hours and that, by the look of it, eating and having a lie down may bring his color back to his cheeks and put a smile on his parched lips. Maybe it is not the time to badger him with questions. That can wait until she has had him fed and has organized a place for him to lie down.

Cambara beckons to the waiter, into whose ear she whispers her request: that, in view of the lateness of the hour, might he marshal a meal, a clean towel, a shower, and a mat-under-a-tree to lie down on for Gacal. When he nods his head, she says, “I will pay the charge.”

As the waiter tiptoes away purposefully, the scene puts her in mind of a questionable collusion between her and Wardi in their early days when, notwithstanding her misgivings about the rightness of getting involved with him, the woman in her could not resist giving in to the dictates of her heart. Wardi took advantage of her, cashing in on her naiveté, in the end making a substantial killing. Look at where he is now: in Toronto, comfortable. Look at where she is now: in Mogadiscio and putting some kind of a life together. Look at the brittle mischief in Gacal's eyes, a sign that her interference is more likely than not to lead to a similar situation. There are two possible ways to deal with Gacal: have him follow the waiter, eat, sleep his exhaustion off, and then meet; or engage him in a desultory dialog right away and then finis! In any event, she invites him over. He makes as if to launch into an explanation, but she won't have it.

She raises her hand, silencing him. After a pause, she says to him, “Go after the waiter, and he will give you something to eat, a clean towel, and will show you where you can have a bucket shower.” But she does not tell him that, meanwhile, she will look for a pair of trousers and a T-shirt for him, since his are as soiled as the hind legs of a hyena or as torn as the gouged eye of a matador.

Gacal does as she tells him, turning away as petulant as a cat whose advances have not gotten her a place on her mistress's lap. As for Cambara, she goes forthwith to her rooms, not sure if she has the right to be pleased with the way she has handled him and wondering if Gacal will have learned where the boundaries of her tolerance will end and what the framework of their relationship is. Of course, she looks forward to having a long chat with him later.

For now, she rummages in the suitcase for clothes that once belonged to her son, Dalmar, trying to find a pair of cotton trousers and a T-shirt for Gacal. Finally, she lays her nervous hands on clothes that she hopes will be a perfect fit for him. Then she rings the reception, asking that one of the youths please collect the items she's chosen and give them to Gacal. She explains that the waiter will know where to find him.

It dawns belatedly that she is behaving like a fawner: a childless woman doing her utmost to pamper a parentless boy with affection to make him take a liking to her. By the time the waiter assigned to do her bidding turns up to fetch the clothes and hand them over to the boy after a shower, Cambara knows that she wants to bring
Pinocchio,
the videocassette, and Gacal along to Kiin's place for lunch.

Three-quarters of an hour later, Cambara is at her desk in the workroom. She has got down to serious work, studying the notes on her scratch pad and admiring the easy-to-carry miniature wooden masks that she hopes the boy playing the role of the eagle in the fable on which she has based her play will be wearing on his head. The one she is holding in her hand is a replica of the original sculptured for her on commission by an Igbo living in Toronto.

The mask in her clutch is beige, of soft wood, inspired by a nineteenth-century piece in ivory that can be traced to the Kingdom of Benin in Nigeria, a cola-nut vessel in the shape of an antelope's head, the horns scored with designs in darker hues and engraved with motifs, used for ceremonial purposes. Around the ears, to be precise, just below the right side of the head of the antelope, there is a fish bone, the fish eye bold in its prominence. She returns to her notes and thumbs though the photocopies she has made of the original sculpture. The beauty of the piece is so staggering that it astounds Cambara for a moment.

She runs her eyes over several other copies of some of the other masks that she intends Seamus to sculpt for her play. Among these, one piece stands out: a twentieth-century Senufo headdress carved out of a rectangular board and worn as a mask. This arrests her attention, for on it there are very abstract figures of animals that stand in two-dimensional profiles in four wide openings. In addition to the animal figures, several other difficult-to-identify forms are organized according to a systemic concept, with round contours of figures in the front and back of the board foregrounding the mask. There is a female figure in front of the head of the antelope, dominating it, and in the back or, rather, above the antelope head, there is a bird in the likeness of an eaglet, more abstract than the other figures in the front.

She consults her file further and comes across yet another piece of breathtaking artistry said to have been found among Leo Frobenius's collection, bought in 1904 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is either a nineteenth-or an early-twentieth-century comb carved out of wood in the abstract shape of a human. Dominating the design are a protruding nose and a crested headdress, shapes that are worked with impressive artistry into the comb, its projection forming part of the small head. High-ranking men and young men participating in the festivities at the end of their initiation ceremony wore these combs as hair ornaments. Cambara hopes that Seamus will be able to sculpt pieces in the likeness of rods that the actors playing the characters and speaking their roles can easily manipulate.

Just then, she hears a tap at the door and gets to her feet with the speed of someone expecting a visitor. As she does so, she collides with the desk, knocking her thigh against its edge, the pain instant and atrocious, and her veins smarting. She limps to the door, wincing, and because she pulls the door open without asking who is there, wonders if she is being injudicious. After all, the knocker could be anyone: Gudcur or one of his militiamen come with the premeditation and motive to harm her; Zaak, arriving to vent his spleen, as malodorous as it is ill humored; or any other gun-toting youth, deranged enough to shoot without a care in the world.

“There you are,” she says to Gacal, who is standing there. She sounds genuinely happy, chuffed that he looks more elegant than she has imagined possible in the outfit she has sent down to him.

“I am here,” he says, his tone of voice that of a wooer manqué, come without a hat to tip to the woman he is courting. His thumb and index are poised, as if to raise a hat.

Cambara takes his measure, training her eyes on him, feeling more confident than ever in her choice and judging him right for the role she wants him to play. Pleased that he will serve her purposes, and content too that he is meeting her quick appraisal with a chutzpah in the form of a twinkle of a smile, she watches with amusement as he rubs his flat open palm over the creases in the trousers, smoothing them. She gives him an A-plus mark; he nods his head, maybe confirming her thoughts. She is debating whether to invite him into her room when she realizes that he is barefoot and remembers why even after she donated shoes to the Salvation Army in Toronto she felt the need to apologize to the officer receiving them. Dalmar would describe his feet as “funny,” because of the differences in their size, his left foot being the larger by nearly three sizes, a deformity that Wardi blamed her for, at one point ascribing it to what he called Cambara's degeneracy. She would order her son's footwear from a U.K.-based outfit, Sole Mates, which specializes in supplying people like Dalmar with shoes matching the varying sizes of their feet. She broods over the matter of shoes a little more and then invites Gacal into the room. She takes him by the hand before giving his feet a cursory assessment and deciding that for the time being he can use her open leather sandals, which she reckons are merely one size too big.

When she returns her gaze to concentrate on Gacal, she finds that he is focusing his full attention on the replica of a wooden mask that has been cut out of cardboard and painted a dark color. She is equally enthralled, watching him, spellbound. She is moved, her transport of joy knowing no limits. Elated, she walks back into the room, picking up the object of his fascination, and says, “Try it on.”

Gacal steps forward to receive the mask in the respectful self-possession of someone collecting a prize from royalty—reverentially and with both his hands. He behaves self-consciously, turning it this way and that admiringly. One might think that he has always known its great import, even though, from the awestruck way he is now holding it, Cambara is not sure if he has any idea what it is for.

To spare him blushes, she decides to help him out. She says, “See if it will fit your head.” When he stares back at her hesitantly, obviously confused and not knowing what to do, she says, “Here,” and she snatches it back from him, her manner gentle, her grin gushy. Then she places it on his head in much the same rigorous ritualism as a commoner chosen to put a crown on the head of a noble person, honoring him or her. That done, she moves back to confirm her decision to cast Gacal in the role of the eagle in the play as soon as she laid her eyes on him. She says, “There.”