THE FREEDOM OF THE SAVANNAH

It was a stifling December. Jessie was by the pool the whole time. By his pool. Alma was there, too. Otherwise, no one really knew where she lived. Inside her phone, apparently. Jessie told her off. It was a long-term educational undertaking: ‘It’s really bad manners to be on your phone when you’re with someone. If you were a man, you’d be a jerk. Which person are you prioritising? Think about it: the one who is absent, or the one who is physically present? Can you really count the time you spend on the phone as quality time? Do you consider that you are with the person to whom you are speaking at a distance? Do you really consider that you can call it time spent together when it’s on the phone?’

In Solange’s opinion, he overused the interrogative. And when he kept going, making quotation mark signs with his fingers, she screwed up her eyes in pain. ‘Don’t you think the physical presence is the most important part? You don’t speak to someone in the same way when their body is absent as you do when their body is present. Haven’t you ever felt the difference? I mean, physically? Politeness is not just words, politeness is what you owe to the physical presence of the other: you respect your own body, so when you’re on the phone it’s the same thing. Your priority should be the person who is present, in the full meaning of the word…’ He was a real proselytiser, and taught her, among other things, the meaning of the word proselytiser. The problem was that there was no pool without Jessie. For the moment, one went with the other. He was between shoots.

The Mexican gardeners were busy spreading fresh bark mulch around the flowerbeds. Hummingbirds flitted from flower to flower, magically suspended in the air here and there. The rose bushes had all reflowered, in the middle of December, like an early or very late spring—no one knew anymore. They spoke about the weather; they spoke about the fact that they no longer spoke in the same way about the climate. They spoke about the end of the world, not scheduled by the Mayans but by our own irresponsible behaviour. The maid brought them grapefruit-vodka cocktails. Alma sent hers back, some temperature issue. Kouhouesso was still asleep. Or else he’d had his coffee but he had to be left alone. No sound came from upstairs. She wondered if he was correcting Wikipedia entries.

They had learnt the day before that the key producer, who had signed on because of George’s name alone, had pulled out after reading the script. Coppola had done immense damage to Conrad: a legendary film, certainly, but above all a budgetary apocalypse. And no one wanted to insure George in the Congo. No one could imagine Jessie in the Congo. And no one wanted to do sound engineering in the Congo. In fact, no one wanted to hear the word Congo. That’s what Hollywood was there for, to reinvent the Congo—in the studio. As well as the boat. The BBC was said to be interested, but the idea of a real boat made them back off; they could already see Kouhouesso as Werner Herzog, drowning in a river of pounds sterling. And there was no news from Sean Penn. And Anne Hathaway was overbooked.

Everything was foundering, like a steamboat without wood for fuel, a vessel that was all set up, designed, constructed, the river ahead and the enormous forest around, but whose crew, only just put together, had disappeared into thin air. Kouhouesso’s phone didn’t ring anymore. George was the only one encouraging him to refine his script while he had free time. It’s the freedom of the savannah, said Kouhouesso. I’m not free of anything.

The only area in which he could still do something was in the casting. Marlow was on hold, nothing was being said about the Intended, but for the black actress he had a series of meetings with African-American women, Nigerian women from Hollywood, Caribbean women, and even the Surinamese woman from George’s party.

‘What Surinamese woman?’

‘The Surinamese woman from George’s party.’

‘Lola? The one who was in Lost? She’s not black.’

‘Of course she’s black.’

Lola Behn. On her Wikipedia entry she was 71% European, 26% African, and 3% Orinico Delta Warao Indian from Venezuela. She had been part of the Roots DNA testing program. Twenty-six per cent, according to Kouhouesso, made her clearly a black person: ‘For white people, if you’re not completely white, you are black; for mixed-race people, that’s never the case.’

She felt as if she was hearing the famous old stand-up joke on TV about washing powders that wash ‘whiter than white’ and ‘less white than white’. Didn’t he know it?

No. He never spoke about his childhood. It was clear from his lack of connection with the others, from the signs of non-recognition, that he had not danced to Kim Wilde in his adolescence, not drunk Malibu pineapple cocktails, never had a skateboard or a Walkman, never watched MTV, and had no idea about the pop singers and TV hosts who were the idols of her youth.

As soon as he left, he disappeared again. Two days, six days, ten days. She waited for him. And he came back. He always came back.

She didn’t like the idea that he had meetings with all those black girls, each one more beautiful and younger than the one before.

She had asked him for one word of certainty. But he wasn’t at a point in his life when he could commit. Because of the film. ‘Solange, the only commitments I know are the ones from people in this profession.’ One of the stories that made him laugh was the way Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson all pussyfooted around Coppola: by saying neither yes nor no when he was casting Apocalypse Now, they had driven him crazy.

Solange. He had said her name: ‘Solange, the only commitments I know are the ones from people in this profession.’ Proper pronunciation, with the nasal –ange. It was the first time. When he wasn’t using ‘hey’ he called her ‘Sugar’ or ‘Babe’, cute, cheeky names, always in English. But: Solange. It was proof, if not of love, at least of affection. And he had kissed her, smack.

Every night he went back to his script, not in order to de-Congolise it, but so that on the first day of shooting all his energy would be available for any unexpected events caused by the forest. And by Jessie, she wanted to add.

The freedom of the savannah (she learned on the Internet) was what a slave was granted informally, without emancipation papers.