THE BOTTOM OF THE COOKING POT DOESN’T MIND THE HEAT

The manageress of the Straight and Narrow advised her not to go out alone. It was six in the evening. She had not noticed night falling—it was black. There were no street lights. At the end of the path she could make out the little red lamps of two bars across from each other, and somehow she could hear, through the humid air, muffled shouts and Congolese music, and everywhere there were insects, nocturnal birds, frogs and cane toads and God knows what other living creatures in the forest, screeching, whistling, pings, beeps, drings, like thousands of mobile phones ringing for no one among the dense trees.

She shared a warm beer with the manageress, Siphindile. A thousand francs, a second one, a third. She was bored, at seven o’clock in the black night, watching a French telemovie starring Mimie Mathy. Bored and anxious. So she told her everything: how Kouhouesso was never there, how he was always silent, to which Siphindile replied that the bottom of the cooking pot doesn’t mind the heat. In short, the early morning fog never deters the pilgrim. Where’s there’s a will there’s away. So she wanted him? She just had to apply herself.

The electricity cut out. Ten or so fellows turned up, some in green uniforms, others armed with machetes. There were a few girls as well, who looked as if they were used to this. The electricity came back on. She relaxed a little. Warmer and warmer beers disappeared into 37-degree bodies. In this humid, organic air, it was like breathing yourself. The line between oneself and the world was blurred, the lungs opened directly out of the chest, skin dissolved. Or else it was the alcohol, or the people. They spoke dialect, but not all the same one, so they frequently reverted to French. She was penetrating the walls of Babel: they were not talking about her, they were not plotting anything, they all had real lives here, worries, jokes, none of which was any of her business; it was both strange and reassuring. The neon lights were swaying, there was a second of shadow, the insects fell silent. The blinking of a giant eyelid. The light returned, along with the vibration of the insects, a parallel current.

She was hungry. Could someone tell her where there was a restaurant? By the light of a torch, Siphindile took her to a place where a woman had some fish. Everyone followed. Cooking in palm oil and chilli, the fish smelled good, all the fish—she had bought the whole basket. A plate? They gave her a plastic bag, thick enough to hold the juice if she made a little fold, like that. The others ate straight off the table. She didn’t dare disinfect her hands in front of everyone. Hooray: a poacher armed with a machete found her a fork. She ordered more beers, the last from the warm refrigerator. The air was completely still, the only light came from the TV and from a scrap of moon up high. A girl asked her if she could take the fish heads for her children. And for dessert? They produced papayas; she bought all the papayas. Slowly and steadily, she was becoming the manageress, with an ease that both disturbed and reassured her; since she was feeding the village, no one was going to eat her.

Nigeria versus Burkina on the TV and couples were starting to get together. She left to sweat off the beer on her foam mattress, in the hot air from the fan, which stopped and started as the electricity went on and off. In the intermittent blare of the soccer match, she woke and fell back asleep on her own on-off timer. Later, there was a knock on the door. It was Siphindile. It would cost one hundred thousand francs for Kouhouesso to get back. Fortunately she had brought an envelope full of notes. Siphindile cut off a lock of Solange’s hair and wrapped it in a scrap of rice bag. The deal would be done during the night. The electricity cut out for so long that the soccer fans headed off. It was only ten in the evening. There were shouts and the eerie crowing of roosters, cock-a-doodle-doo, in the middle of the night.

Later on, there was the sound of digging under her window. She looked through the louvres; it was daybreak. Siphindile and another woman were bent over what looked like a small grave. They had wrapped their heads in matching cloths and seemed to be praying: Millet’s The Angelus. In the morning there was just the trace of disturbed soil beneath the window. Siphindile had left her a basin of water; she threw in a few chlorine tablets and washed as well as she could. The ground absorbed the water straight away, black outlines, evaporating. A red lizard gazed at her. Two girls were asleep in a fake leather couch under the awning. She could hear the TV, live from France. The Price Is Right was about to start.

Weirdly, it was already midday. She wandered into the village. Siphindile had pointed out a place, in the ‘Paris-Soir’ neighbourhood, where she could recharge her phone. The stall holder had a small generator and a multi-socket adaptor, a hundred francs per recharge. She left her iPhone with him, uneasy about it. The forest began immediately, right there, behind the huts; yesterday she had assumed that black wall was the night. Trees, giant grasses, the occasional flower. She kept looking up, towards the treetops; she remembered the forest behind her house, when she was little, how everything seemed huge. And the fairytale about the princess: she had scarcely set foot in the forbidden forest when she was swallowed up. There were clicking sounds, fleeting bird calls. Elegant, black-edged white butterflies, whose head and body were like an Yves Saint Laurent logo. She was being bombarded by small hard objects—were little monkeys high above throwing turds? Kola nuts? That would be just great.

Her iPhone worked again, the stall holder was patting her phone with pride and awe, exactly the way her son had at Christmas. 2008. In the jungle. No messages.

All the Toyota vehicles were in the ‘Manhattan’ neighbourhood, parked crookedly in hollows and on mounds. Kouhouesso had come back. She got a lift to his hut. A guard under the palm-leaf verandah told her that Mr Kou was sleeping. He was there, on the other side of that bamboo-and-dried-mud wall, right there. She didn’t dare disturb him. Children were coming home from school, immaculate uniforms and thongs on their feet, holding large leaves like umbrellas over their heads; they looked like little trees in motion, heading in single file towards a forested future.

Even Olga wasn’t answering; she must have been sleeping in one of those huts. And Jessie? And where was Favour staying?

Back at Siphindile’s there was nothing to eat but sticks of cassava and tins of sardines, two thousand francs each; but if she would like, there was a magnificent fresh rooster, for thirty thousand, only its heart and genital organs missing. They could grill it for her on the spot. She declined.