curiously cold in that French intellectual way, but helpful, of course, encouraging and helpful, and it had been quite a lark, our affair, something to dine out on for years to come. I recall saying just this in a light tone, with many an amusing anecdote, to Louis Nearing, a fellow anthropologist I dated for a couple of months in Chicago. I was in Chicago on a teaching contract, the year after Columbia gave me my doctorate. Anthro 101 and two veg. The bloom had gone off anthropology to an extent, but one must do something. Lou was a big, solid, open guy, a football player from Notre Dame, a Catholic, a year younger than me, sweet-natured and transparent as his collection of beer bottles; yes, just about as far as one could get from Marcel Vierchau. He was incredibly impressed, as were the other faculty, that I had been with Marcel for all those years, and knew all the great stars of the field, and had seen the remarkable Chenka in Siberia. In response I had developed this pathetic ironic set piece, especially to the what’s-he-really-like opening. I had been well trained in this sort of dissembling at home. Getting along by not seeing or mentioning things was the prime value chez Doe.
Lou was not significant enough to be a rebound from Marcel, and I think he knew it. I suppose I went out with him to demonstrate that I was still a regular person, that I could still have a regular life. If I had been more skillful at the lessons Mom tried to teach me, I would have married him and I’d now be living in a four-bedroom in Bloomingdale or Wheaton, teaching at the U., with a couple of kids, a retriever, and a Volvo. But I met my husband instead.
Poor Lou! I hadn’t thought about Lou Nearing in years. He’s gained a little weight, but that is certainly, undeniably, him walking toward me down a corridor at Jackson, me having just picked up a cart full of records at the ER. He’s deep in conversation with a small brown middle-aged man dressed entirely in white, an obvious santero. I recall now what Lou was interested in. Medical anthropology. In another age he might have been a missionary priest, but he became a medical anthropologist.
He glances up and looks into my face as I glide by. I look back at him for an eyeblink, willing the recognition from my eyes, keeping my progress steady, not breaking into a mad run, as I wish to do. The problem is that I have forgotten my slump. Aside from the face, there is nothing so recognizable as the walking posture. I see his eyes change. The small brown man looks at me, too. His glance is bland, merely social for an instant, and then his eyes change.
Now I am past them, slumping for all I am worth. “Jane?” Lou actually introduced me to my husband! But the next moment I am through the swinging door and then I start to run.
ELEVEN
9/16 Lagos
Things are not right. I say, it’s Africa, give him time to adjust. Everyone says it. We all work hard, getting the various operations together. We lost all the ciggies, rum, much tape wrecked by being exposed to the weather, we’ve prob. enough, but barely. Fucking country, big, fertile, full of intelligent amp; creative people, large educated class, sea of oil, run into ground by criminals in power.
No, real problem’s not fucking country but fucking husband. If he was present, all this supplies horseshit would be a joke, something to tell stories about back in NY. It’s unbelievably embarrassing. He’s acting like the kind of man he used to parody, the big, stupid, domineering black stud. I keep waiting for him to grin and tell me it’s all an elaborate, ill-considered joke. I want to blame Ola Soronmu. It’s what they call Afro-pessimism. Big on revival of African traditional politics, means male head of family gets to make all decisions, beat up on women, fuck whomever he wants, and party a lot. And traditional religion, too, white man imposed his religions, Islam and Christianity, on the black man, these represent evil as black. They say, worship like us and you will be white as us, but this is a lie. A new black god needed to rescue Africa from the whites, from neocolonialism, from corruption, from self-contempt. Will require bloodletting, all the rotten fruit must be cut off. He uses this phrase with glee, moving his arm like a man with a machete. Chop-chop. The bloodthirsty intellectual, curse of the century …
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
