Through the parties Didier took me to, and the discos at the Kilimanjaro Hotel in Dar, I met young European aid volunteers and had the odd experience of being treated as if I too was a young visitor to Africa. I dressed the same way as they did, failed to practice the same religion, enjoyed the same food and drink. My English was usually better than theirs and their Swahili often better than mine. I was shy at first, watching carefully and wondering if there might be something, after all, to the puzzling assertion of Mrs F that we Goans were really Europeans in disguise. I saw that these young people ordered themselves in ways that were unfamiliar to me, according to the usefulness of their work and their education. Though Didier had more money than the others, he was not the most respected. There was something back in Europe that held more meaning, and the volunteers expected to be something better there than employees of a car manufacturer. They were only dipping into Africa, these Europeans, and their real lives were elsewhere. I came to want a real life too. If I could have thought clearly lying in my sweaty Zanzibar bed, I would have recognised that this was to blame for my predicament, not Didier.
Every now and then a new, dear friend would leave for good, to resume his or her life in Denmark, Germany or Holland. I went to the airport for the hugs, kisses and tears, and it was always, “Marcella, when you come to Europe, you must visit me.” I smiled my big, silly smile and was too ashamed to tell them that I did not even have a passport.
When Didier was recalled by Peugeot at short notice, it was tears again—mine this time, though I was far from being in love. I feared I was losing the world. “When I’m settled,” said Didier, “I’ll send you an air ticket.” Then he added, “Why not?” a mysterious question that I took to be a Frenchman’s version of “No problem.” The next day I went to apply for a passport and found that, like Joseph and Mary, I had to go back to the place of my birth for the paperwork. And instead of finding a new world, I found myself returned to the one I’d set myself to leave.
I SLEEP WELL HERE. THE WOODEN HOUSE THE COLLEGE has given me turns out to be so old that they do not know its age, at least a hundred years, perhaps two hundred, far older than my Victorian flat in Bayswater that I once loved so much, and where I loved Benji so much, the only home I’ve ever owned. When I first caught sight of the house and took in its wooden walls, I thought it was a summer cottage, something temporary and seasonal, not serious. I am not used to wood houses. In London everything was brick; wood was for garden sheds. And in Zanzibar City there was the stone, so impressive that the jealous British called the city Stone Town, just to steal away its grandeur. That I have a wood fire in my wood house seems wonderfully perverse. I am taking pleasure in accommodating myself to a home made pleasant by the use of others, putting wilfulness aside, domesticating it like a cat.
In the months since I arrived, straight from the airport, to become Marcella D’Souza, Assistant Professor of Multi-cultural Studies—such a joke—at Moore College, I have neither added to nor subtracted from the furnishings. The furniture is solid, wooden and worn, but it was made well and everything works perfectly. The drawers draw, the heavy doors close with neat clicks, the plentiful lamps all light. When I cook I find all the pots and pans I need, which aren’t that many. This is unexpected, that America could turn out to be quiet, old and made to last.
They are awfully discreet, my colleagues. There are only twenty-five of them and the village we live in is hardly more than the buildings of Moore College, the homes of the professors, a white wooden church with a little white spire, and a white village meeting house. One shop. Amongst all this quiet and whiteness, I am the only foreigner and the only one, apart from four or five students, with a brown skin. If this excites their interest they are careful not to show it.
I have not encouraged them. Only twice have I accepted invitations to dinner parties and the most curiosity I have encountered was from my neighbour at one of these. A bearded colleague from the English Department asked, in a voice that included the whole table, “Marcella, your name, D’Souza, would that be Spanish?”
“Portuguese.” And I gave him my famous smile but no elaboration, so that he nodded and hesitated before daring to venture further, wondering perhaps if the Portuguese were generally as dark.
“And ... you lived in Portugal?”
He wanted more, this man. There was a glint of interest behind the spectacles, a shard of manliness. I gave him a closer look: maybe late thirties like me, a bit heavy, a bit ugly with the small nose, big glasses and beard, unironed clothes like all the other men. I only liked that his expression was intent and that he had the cheek to press me—even as I weighed up
