Three tables were occupied: one by a fat American and his fat wife; one by Francesca and her husband, Carlo, and daughter, Delilah; the other by four boisterous Brits: sunburned men whose appraising eyes often slid over to Delilah. A white man and a black woman perched on stools at the bar. The man, slovenly shaggy, black bearded, round shouldered—and already drunk—sat leaning against the black woman and mumbling nonsense across the bar to Farrah, who ignored him.

Delilah was saying, “It stinks and the food is bad and there’s nothing to do. Nothing. I knew it would be like this.”

Carlo gazed at the black water of the bay, pretending that he did not understand.

“Except for you, of course—when men are around, you always have something to do.” She began naming her other grievances, but it was clear she was just going through the motions.

The old man spoke to Francesca in Italian. “I think the food will be better here.” He looked around approvingly. “It is apparent that this is a white man’s establishment. Look, even the sand is smooth and clean. And the waiters have clean clothing. And I noticed that the tables and chairs are all wiped free of dust.”

The young woman rolled her eyes. “We are marooned—maybe forever, who knows—and he thinks it is wonderful that the tables are not dusty.”

Francesca ignored her daughter, who was still a child and therefore understood little of anything—except her own needs and appetites, of course; those she understood very well. And Carlo ignored his daughter also, mainly because he did not like her, had never liked her, and saw no reason to like her, but also because he just plain refused to relinquish the pleasant mood he had enjoyed since he woke from his nap a hour before—the only pleasure he’d experienced since the plane touched down at Lungi. Francesca buttered a piece of bread, placed it on her plate, cut it in two pieces, one of which she offered to him. He accepted, thanking her with a gentlemanly nod.

The waiter came with a plate of falafel. “Mistah Farrah de say, wid he compliment.”

Francesca looked toward the bar, saw Farrah standing with crossed arms, looking at her.

Carlo shot a look at the bar, then at Francesca. His face clouded.

“How do you know him?” Delilah asked incredulously.

“Chi `e lui?” Carlo asked.

“Il proprietario,” she said.

“When were you here? You didn’t say you came here.”

That morning, to get away from her daughter and husband, she had taken her bag and gone for a walk. At the roundabout she had come to an open place that allowed her to view the entire bay, a pond of mirror-flat water, sandybeached all around except at the rocky opening to the sea. She’d seen a low structure gleaming white under a canopy of coconut palms and mango trees a few hundred meters around the perimeter of the bay and had walked along the beach to reach it.

The restaurant had been deserted: stools up on the bar, sand raked smooth, cabinets behind the bar closed and locked. She’d found a folding chair leaning against the bar and took it to a shaded table and sat and opened her bag and got her diary and her book. She’d opened the diary and began writing.

“We’re not open,” he’d said, and she’d looked up at a big man in shorts and T-shirt standing in the shadowy passageway, a cigarette drooping from the center of his lips. His T-shirt, which was stained with grease and food, rode up a little, exposing a patch of hairy belly. “What are you doing?” The cigarette bounced around when he spoke.

She’d told him she had seen the restaurant from across the bay and thought it was open.

“You can see it’s closed.”

She closed her diary and reached down for her bag.

“But you can stay if you want.” He came out of the passage, walked across the sand to her table. “What are you writing? Are you a journalist?”

“No.”

“Sometimes a journalist comes. Once a woman from Berlin. She lived with me for a month while she wrote her articles. And many came for the OAU meetings, and of course they came to see Momoh when the Old Pa picked him. They always come to Farrah’s. They like it here.”

She didn’t say anything.

“So what are you are writing about?”

“Personal things. And things about Freetown—”

“Freetown is not interesting. How Salone used to be and how the jungle bunnies ruined it—that is interesting. That is what I tell the journalists to write.”

“Jungle bunnies—?”

“Niggers. Jungle bunnies, niggers. Same thing.”

“Ah—”

“Well—not exactly the same. The bad ones are niggers. They are the leaders. They eat the jungle bunnies, who are not bad, just lazy and stupid; they are the people. You can write that down.”

“Is that what the whites say?”

“I say it. You can write in your book that Farrah says it. It’s what I tell the journalists. But they never write it down.”

“No, I mean—”

“I know what you mean. They never write about how the blacks kill and eat one another. But if I say the whites do the killing, they always write that down. It’s a big lie, but it is today’s lie, so they write it down. You are like the journalists. You won’t write it down. But I could care fucking less. I am only making conversation.”

“How do you know I won’t?”

“You are white—and it is not the lie that whites are believing now.”

“You don’t believe it and you are white.”

“I am Sierra Leonean. Born in Freetown, as was my father. But I can’t talk any more, I have a job to do, which is to repair a gas oven that a stupid fucking jungle bunny spoiled.”

He had gone back into the passage and a minute later a young black had come out with a warm Coke, which he’d put on the table in front of her. After that she’d written the things he said into her diary, and when she tired of writing, opened her book. From time to time she heard distant voices and things clinking and banging. Later she had gone to the open kitchen door and looked in. Only the young black was there, cleaning a big fish that was laid out on a table.

“That’s why we came here tonight, isn’t it,” Delilah said. “Because you met that man here.”

“We came here because I am weary of hearing you complain about the hotel.”

“Oh, we came here for me. But it is quite convenient for you. Look, your new man is coming.”

A full moon had risen out of the mountains, lighting the terrain so well they could have driven without lights, simply followed the white ribbon of gravel. They crested the hill and headed down the seaward side past the Bintomani Hotel, toward Man-O-War Bay. Max talked all the way, complaining about a day spent trying to repair the damage caused by Neggie’s Thanksgiving Day speech.

Robert wasn’t listening. He was thinking about what he would say to Marie. He had driven out to Juba to kill time—he would not try to call again until after ten o’clock—and he had stopped to see Max, without really wanting to see him, intending to stay for only a few minutes. Max had talked him into going to Farrah’s for a beer.

The driver turned the Cadillac into the graveled parking lot behind Farrah’s, coasting to a stop beside a Land Rover. The parking lot was nearly empty. They walked through the passageway to the bar, which was lit by lanterns hanging from the thatch roof. Robert recognized the fat couple at the nearest table: a Methodist missionary and his wife. The missionary nodded at Robert, his mouth full and his jaw pumping. Robert returned his greeting and turned to the bar. Molai was opening a Star Beer and placing it in front of Hans. The black woman looked around Hans’ shoulder at Robert. One cloudy eye looked off to the side.

“Hello Isatu, hello Hans,” Robert said.

“Evening, Robert,” she said. Hans grunted at his beer.

Robert climbed up on a stool, raised his left foot, removed the sandal, examined the bandage.

Molai snapped the caps off two bottles and put them on the bar.

“I want a cold beer,” Max said. “This isn’t cold.”

“We no get cold beer, sah, we no get ‘lectricity.”

“No cold beers. Molai, we are witnessing it. The end of civilization.”

“Yessah.”

The young waiter brought plates of food. Carlo, who sat with his chair turned away from the table, glanced disdainfully at the plate, then looked back at the black water. Francesca picked up her fork and looked down at the grilled barracuda and the chips and a few gray peas. Farrah lit another cigarette, blew smoke into the air over their heads.

Francesca tried the fish. “Delicious,” she murmured.

“The fish is good, the rest is shit. Until the market has fresh vegetables everything but the fish comes out of tins.”

Delilah made a face and shoved the plate away.

Farrah continued. “So, if you want to see a little of Freetown you can go with me to the bakery and the market. I go every morning.”

“I know what you want, you’re going to take my mother to some—” Delilah began, then stopped. Her voice became sweetly soft. “Mother, Robert is there at the bar. You remember Robert—the one you tried to pick up two days ago? Or was it yesterday?”

Francesca speared a piece of fish, stuck it in her mouth.

Delilah pushed her chair back, but the legs had sunk into the sand. The chair fell over behind her. She stepped around it and walked past the Brits, who stopped talking and watched her pass their table.

“Robert, how nice to see you again,” she called, so loudly that everyone looked at her. Everyone but her father, who faced the bay.

Robert saw the skirt and blouse swaying out of the darkness, looked beyond her, saw Farrah in the shadows turning in his chair, and across the table from him the woman from the beach baffa.

“I was hoping to meet you again,” she said to Robert. “I enjoyed our conversation very much.”

“My name is Max Bush.”

She eyed Max for a second, then said, “I am Delilah Giuliani.”

“Yes, you are delightful,” Max said.

She looked pleased. “Delilah, not delightful.”

“Delilah yes, but delightful—oh yes!”

“Max—calm down,” Robert said.

“Sorry—I get carried away in the presence of beauty.”

“May I join you? My mother and father are at the table with the owner and I do not want to sit with him. He is a disgusting man.”

“I don’t like him either.” Max said edging into the space between Robert and Delilah. “Molai, bring this lady a beer.”

“Do you work with Robert?”

“No—I’m a diplomatist.”

“Diplomatist? What the hell’s that?” Robert said.

“A diplomat?” Delilah asked.

“Deputy Chief of Mission. American Embassy.”

“Really!”

“Clerk.” Robert said. “He gets a fancy title instead of money.”

Max smiled modestly. “Robert is right. The only time I’m Ambassador is when the real Ambassador’s gone. About half the time, I guess.” He got a stool, which he planted in the sand. “You can sit here beside me.”

She saw her mother approaching, slipped back against the bar between Robert’s shoulder and Hans’ back. “No, I want to stand with my friend Robert.” She slipped her arm over Robert’s shoulder and moved her body against his.

Robert looked up at her, surprised. And then a hand shot past his nose, grabbed the girl’s free arm. He caught a glimpse of Francesca’s red face and bulging eyes and then there was grunting and cursing and Delilah was yelling right in his ear. The stool tilted and before he could recover, Robert was on his face in the sand, with the girl, now screaming, on top of him. And then he was screaming: “My foot! Get the fuck off my fucking foot!”

Robert and Delilah heard Max curse. They were waist deep in the low surf, and he was trying to kiss her, and she was—not quite, but almost—letting him. They drew apart and watched Max crawl out of the water, fight his way to his feet, sway for a moment, then lurch—an absurd naked whiteness ghosting drunkenly over white sand—up the beach toward the Cadillac, which gleamed in the moonlight beneath a pair of coconut palms at the road edge. They heard him shout something at Alimamy, who got out of the car and opened the door. Max pushed Alimamy out of the way and leaned into the car and came out with an arm load of clothing, which he threw up into the air, then reached into the car again and with his arms raked clothes and shoes and knapsack out onto the sand. Then—still bare-assed—he climbed onto the backseat and slammed the door.

The driver looked down at the pile of clothing and shoes and then at Robert and Delilah, both of whom now suspected Max’s intent and were wading out of the water. Alimamy heard his master bellow something unintelligible, whereupon he walked with slow dignity around the car and got in. By then Robert was limping up the beach as fast as he could move. The car lurched up onto the blacktop and accelerated away.

“Where is he going?” she asked anxiously.

With his arms full of clothes Robert straightened and looked at her. He had not seen much of her when they undressed. They had done it rapidly—she with embarrassed haste—and he had only glimpsed the triangular whiteness of her back and the dancing globes of her buttocks as she ran into the water. Now, standing in moonlight so bright you had to squint, mysteries only hinted at were revealed: the small dark nipples that seemed to demand the touch of fingers, a breathtaking complexity of curve where belly and hip and thigh came together at that sweeping shadowy delta—the only unrevealed place—and the surprising muscularity of her swimmer’s rounded belly above that void, and the pucker lines around the indent of her navel, and—and his unrepentant dick awoke to its unrepentant purpose and began to prepare itself. He dropped the clothing in a heap and approached her and her worried look changed immediately to anger and she pushed him away.

She was right. And his dick knew it. The three of them were three miles from the hotels and two miles from Max’s house; on a deserted beach, which they both knew was enemy territory at night. He bent over the pile of clothing and began sorting through it while she stood with her arms crossed over her breasts and gazed uneasily across the road into the black tangle of the mangroves. They dressed and found that they had clothing left over; Max had thrown his own clothing out of the car with theirs.

She wanted to go north along the beach, to the hotels. He said no, he wanted his motorcycle, and began limping southward along the road edge. She followed, pleading.

He struggled along in clumsy sidewise steps. The pain and the warm squishiness soon forced him to stop and deal with his foot. He sat in the sand and with his knife he cut away the bandage, which was black with blood, then cut the back out of Max’s shirt and tore it into strips, which he wrapped round his foot.

They followed the road away from the beach, out of the moonlight into the darkness beneath the mango and breadfruit trees lining the road. A dog barked in the distance, another took it up, and another, and then a dozen dogs were exchanging volleys that echoed across the valley. Beyond the trees on both sides of the road the walled expatriate compounds were dark and quiet. An hour and a half later they stood at the iron gate before Max’s house. Tinka came yawning and stretching out of the tiny guard shack, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for Robert to limp bloody-footed up the driveway in the early morning with a young woman, looking for his motorcycle. He opened the gate and watched as Robert got the motorcycle started and drove it out onto the road. He accelerated and she grabbed his waist.

The motorcycle headlamp lit the street for blocks. Here and there the yellow of a candle flickered in a window or a flashlight beam jerked about in the distance. They passed the Chinese restaurant, with its wide, long porch, which in the early evening was always warmly lit by candles inside a multitude of paper lanterns, and then the houses along the road became more closely crowded together, and they were in Congo Town. Then they came to the curve where Wilkerson Road forked, the left road a gravelly track curving down the hill to the Cockle Bay Bridge and the Cape, where the girl’s mother waited. Robert slowed and entered the curve, his headlamp sweeping over the ruin of a petrol station on one side of the gravel road. He steered across the road and into a parking lot. A hand-painted sign on the wall identified the building as the Kit Kat Klub. He pushed the kickstand down.

“Get off,” he said over his shoulder. “We’re gonna have a beer.”

She tightened her arms around his waist. “I don’t want a beer, I want to go back to my hotel. Please, Robert, please.”

“It’s that way,” he said, pointing down the gravel road. “A couple of miles.” He waited for her to get off. When she didn’t move, he looked over his shoulder. “Get off.”

She followed him inside. Plank tables and benches surrounded a concrete dance floor, and booths lined three walls. Most of the tables and booths were empty. On every patch of wall, posters showed light-skinned Africans with white features leaning on Volvos and Porches, laughing and smoking Marlboro, Players, and Galois, and drinking Guinness and Becks and St. Pauli. Kerosene fumes stung the eye. A black man sat on a stool in the darkness behind the bar, watching them.

Robert limped across the dance floor and leaned on the bar.

“Star Beer,” Robert said.

“Stah done finish.”

“You get Beck’s?”

“No.”

“Guinness?”

“No, beer done finish.”

“I don’t want anything,” Delilah said. “Let’s go.”

“Sassman?” Robert said.

The black man nodded.

“Sassman and Coke.”

The barman brought a small plastic bottle of the cheap local gin and a bottle of Coca Cola and a glass.

Robert put a packet of two-leone notes on the bar. The barman picked up the packet and began counting them.

Robert poured the clear liquor into the glass, then topped it off with Coke. He stirred it with his finger and raised the glass.

“How long are we going to stay,” Delilah whispered nervously.

“Until he closes, I suppose.”

“Oh-h-h—please, Robert, after you have your drink, take me to the hotel. You can come back after that.”

“If you start crying I’ll leave you here.”

“I’m not crying, I just want to go to my hotel.”

“First you want to go to my hotel, then you want to go to yours.” Robert turned and spoke to the barman: “Na German man?” He pointed to the corner booth.

The barman nodded.

“Hans,” Robert said to Delilah. “Those people in the corner booth. It’s Hans and Isatu. Old friends from Bo. Hans used to work for Gunter, but poor Hans is a drunk, so Gunter fired him. Sad story.”

“I was only talking about going to your hotel, I didn’t really mean it. I want to go to my hotel. Please Robert—”

“I think we ought to say hello to Hans and Isatu.”

“Robert, I don’t want—”

“Of course you do, they’re old friends.” He was already limping across the concrete dance floor, which was littered with cigarette butts and gritty with sand. She hurried behind.

Isatu watched them approach. “Hello, Robert,” she called. Hans, his back to Robert, remained hunched over his beer.

Robert nodded and slid into the booth beside her.

“Move, let her sit,” Isatu said to Hans.

Hans managed to look annoyed as he pushed his beer over and moved behind it.

“You should not drink dat Sassman,” Isatu said to Robert. “Make you craze.”

“Bread is better,” Hans rumbled, not looking up. “Liquid bread.” He raised the bottle of beer to show Robert, then banged it down on the table.

Robert looked at Delilah. “Sit down.”

“How long are we going to stay?” she quavered, sitting on Hans’ side, as close to the edge as possible.

“What is your name?” Isatu asked.

Delilah told her.

Isatu nodded, smiling. “Bible name, notoso?”

Delilah smiled uneasily.

“You like Salone?”

“It’s very—umm, I came with my mother and father—and—”

“And she wants to go back to her mother,” Robert said. “But I am thinking that maybe I should take her before I take her—if you get my drift.”

Isatu frowned at Robert. “You should not talk so.”

“I can’t help it, Sassman makes you crazy.”

“You do not talk like Robert,” Isatu said. “You should not drink dat Sassman.”

Hans looked up from his beer, grinning lopsidedly. “Ve seen her. She vas at Farrah’s tonight wis her new American.” His eyes moved slyly toward Robert. “A gold miner. Very rich.”

Robert poured Sassman into his glass, splashed a little Coke over it, stirred it with his finger, raised the glass and drank.

Hans grinned triumphantly down at his bottle, his black hair falling over his eyes.

Robert glanced at Isatu.

“He is talking about Victoria,” Isatu said. “The sister of Josephine Garrison—the friend of your friend Mister Bush. She talked about you and him.”

“Oh. Right. Didn’t remember her name.”

Hans snorted derisively. “She hass clap, and now I sink you haf clap, too.” He slapped the table and laughed uproariously.

Isatu shook her head. “He is confused.”

“She says you luf her, and dat she gif you clap and now she gif ze new American clap. I sink she likes Americans.”

“It is not true, Robert, she was drunk and making a joke.”

Hans grinned at his bottle while Robert toyed with his drink and Isatu glared at Hans, and Delilah stared at Robert. Abruptly Robert drained his glass and rose.

“C’mon,” he said. “I’m taking you home to mamma.” He limped across the dance floor toward the door, calling behind him, “See you around, Isatu.”

Delilah scurried after him.