Capítulo 20: Chapter 20
"Look at you. You might even pass for human." Bates greeted her. He sat himself down beside her.
"Upright on my hind legs and everything." Mary graves said, watching the cargo bed. They were outside, under the sun-screen by the communal tent. "We ought to get some hands to unload."
"Didn't we get these only a week ago?"
"We didn't have the governor with us, then."
"Three weeks." He laughed. "Three goddamn weeks. And they do it in a goddamm day."
"I took the liberty of ordering you some konyagi as well."
"I'd kiss you if the other half still wasn't around." Bates quipped. "Hell confusing with two Dr Graves's around."
"Then go with Hutchinson."
"I dislike that one— hell, you dislike that one."
She nodded at the opened bottle of konyagi beside her; it was clear and thick and sickly sweet. "I was curious," she spoke, voice hoarse and quiet. "I took a sip."
"And?"
"I spit it into here," she showed him her glass and regarded him, "but I like how it makes me think less. How's the pain?"
Bates grunted. "What do you know about opium?"
"Never tried it."
"I'm thinking of becoming an addict."
"My…"
"Like Dickens or Keats."
"Oh, you mean a writer."
"No, just an addict. No needles though, that's for jazz musicians."
"Well— it's good to have goals."
"I'm getting old. Time to look for a way to manifest my existential despair."
"You're plenty cynical already."
"I think I can do better."
"Smoking's better than opium." Mary decided half-heartedly and regarded the bivouac. A sense of unease and foreboding settled in the back of the mouth and low beneath her sternum.
Bates's voice came, distantly, as through a sound-wall: "You want company?"
"No." Mary said.
"No good going alone, Graves. You know."
"I know."
"When's she expecting you?"
Mary checked her watch. "Ten minutes."
Bates clicked his tongue and ground the foot of his cane into the earth. "I'll go."
"No." Mary looked away and swallowed and ground her jaw. "No sense to it."
"Alright." Bates shook his head and tsked at the crates. "A goddamn day," and then he was walking off, the tap of the cane now a familiar feature of his tread, calling for Jackson and Silva to get up and make themselves useful.
❧
The bivouac was a centre of activity and organised chaos. Mary stood waiting, misplaced, between it all. The horizon was a jagged line of paling mountain ranges. And, on a clear day as this one, Mary imagined she could see Uganda. Then, turning south, she imagined Lake Victoria stretching between Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Once one followed the road passing the mountains and went farther south, one came upon Kisumu, and then further on to the border, where one came upon the Serengeti reserve, and where Charles and Mary had once watched the yearly migration of wildebeest from the back of an all-terrain.
"Where Stanley met Livingstone." A sophisticated, feminine voice spoke.
Mary turned.
Agathe W. Denham-Moore, nobility of the bar, founder of the White Bridge Union, and 22th governor of The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya was stood before the setting of two chairs beneath an awning made up of a white cloth sunscreen; the woman stood tall, controlled, and utterly at ease. She looked out at the world with cold assurance; calmness, and sincerity.
"Governor." Mary inclined her head.
"Take a seat, Dr Graves." The woman ordered, indicating the chair left of her and invited Mary to look out upon the camp and the dam and the wadis stretching out along them, "It is always a pleasure to see people take an interest in this country, do you not agree, Doctor?"
"Evidently." Mary spoke.
"Certainly where it concerns your work— what was the age of the man you found, last season?"
"Fifteen thousand," Mary said. "Governor," she added.
"Fifteen thousand. And to think the landscape he looked upon would not have differed much from today—" and here she let her eyes wander, "— if we had not come, it might have been another fifteen thousand before any change." A modest, victorious, satisfaction seeped into her gaze: "We educated a continent, Dr Graves."
Mary Graves stared out.
The sound of a sergeant hurling the rapid tempo of a drill made its way over. A satisfied air came imperceptibly over the governor, and she spoke:
"Men of war. We have a need for them as well, don't we? I have always held a certain— regard for a man of Grigg's efficiency."
"Yes, governor." Mary said.
"Authority in this colony has always depended on the sacredness of English life —and once that authority is undermined— well, if four million natives, unprovoked, take it into their head to start killing settlers…"
"Unprovoked?"
Denham-Moore watched her closely, and Mary remained still. "It may surprise you, Dr Graves, but I do not enjoy my present role. I am not by temperament an adventurous sort. Or a harsh one. I have become a military woman only because the times demand it. This is my country, you understand. People like myself had the ambition, the energy, and the ability to come here and make this country into something…"
"Indeed." Mary spoke. "It can never be said that it was not in use." Her tone was better described as contempt than sarcasm, rather trenchancy than ridicule, and was leaning towards mordancy.
Denham-Moore only regarded Mary with the same alien consideration used by those most vicious carnivores of the depths as they pondered the merits of rending potential prey to gristle.
"You understand, Dr Graves: they had it for centuries and did nothing with it. It isn't a question of empire, you see. It is our home: the right to bring up our children with culture and grace, a bit of music after dinner and a glass of decent wine; the right to watch the sun sink down our beautiful horizon—" here she looked off with a surge of appreciation, "and it is a beautiful horizon, is it not? We wish others no ill. But—" said simply, matter-of-factly, her point confirmed: "—it is our home, Dr Graves."
"Yes, governor." Mary spoke.
And once Denham-Moore saw that Mary Graves had not moved, had not a thing to add, but sat staring at the horizon with a strained resolution, Denham-Moore seemed at once amused, then dissatisfied, and, at last, bored. Then, with a gesture, relaying patience and insistence all at once, indicated for drinks to be served. But Mary Graves, as a person, had never been described as restrained, and so once Mary took up her drink, Denham-Moore saw, against the other woman's own will or intent, a sliver of contempt within her face, as a scab cracking through the careful expressionless facade.
Satisfaction made itself known within the woman.
And she smiled.
"I am not a very complicated person," the woman now said. A vulture regarding the lost traveller in the desert tiring; tripping up; falling down to never get up again; a wait coming to its end. "I believe that people are what they do. And they — they have not earned the right to criticise yet."
"Pray tell— why not?" Mary spoke without herself being conscious of it. The fizzing itch beneath her skin was an old companion. That trapped feeling when her circling thoughts began to tighten like a noose. Resentment and constraint warred within her for dominance, and nausea took them both and won, as Denham-Moore watched Mary Graves in silence for another moment, her gaze fixed upon the other woman. She revelled in something. Then the governor turned her head, and, with the unpleasantness of the taloned bird before its meal, eyed the men working not ten yards from them.
"Dr Graves, I'd like you to see this." The governor told her. "There is a reason we do things the way we do here. Obuya, step over here please." A man, with a face aged before his time, and a thickset, proud figure, hesitated. "Lively now!"
The man hastened to the governor's side.
"Gavana." He spoke.
Denham-Moore studied him. "How is everything, Obuya?"
"Everything just fine, Gavana."
"And your brother? He is called Paul, now, isn't he?"
"Just fine, Gavana."
"'Just fine,' is it?"
"Yes, Gavana."
"No complaints then, Obuya?"
Mary Graves, colour washing over her face, stiffened in her seat to a faultless straight posture. She ventured to fix a searching look on the governor and to say, in a tone of voice that was still profoundly respectful: — "Governor, I really don't see—"
"You shall see, Dr Graves. Nothing in Africa is quite as it seems. Obuya and I understand this—do we not, Obuya?" The man, horribly, smiled. "I like the African. I simply know the proper relationship. I am devoted to the blacks who work for me and whom I have helped to civilize. There are no more loyal people. Is that not so, Obuya?"
Mary's voice was a whisper. "Governor— for goodness' sake!"
Obuya did not make eye contact with either of them. He stood, staring at a point on the horizon. "Yes, Gavana."
"Obuya is a part of— Africa— that you must not forget in times like these. There is a relationship here, something natural and fine. Obuya's children will have something more because of it… Have I spoken fairly, Obuya?"
"Yes, Gavana."
Denham-Moore's eyes did not leave Mary's profile as she addressed the man. "Tell us."
"De young boys—dey read de books … dey go to de city … dey tinks dey want be white men in black skins. Without de white man—de jungle close on Africa again. De huts be empty of God and de water turn to dust and de tsetse fly rule de savannah again."
"When you hold your prejudices, Dr Graves, I trust you will also bear Obuya in mind. Thank you, Obuya," Denham-Moore continued as the man started off: "and my love to your wife."
Mary did not move.
Denham-Moore smiled. "Good man, Obuya. His brother became a pastor at Mombasa."
"I see, governor."
"Have I shocked you?"
"No, governor."
Denham-Moore studied her in silent contemplation; a predator regarding its prey with only distant, and now fleeting, curiosity.
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