WOMEN ARE IN THE FOREST

It was the silence of immense weariness. Silence around the caves. As for her, she was almost happy. Patricien looked worried. He was staring at the treetops—no, he was staring at Freeboy, who was staring at the treetops. Freeboy’s lips were moving. They all knew that they should have got there before night-time, otherwise Freeboy and M’Bali and Tumelo, all the Pygmies, would refuse to go any further. Freeboy said the trees were talking. Patricien was translating. You could not see the demons, but they were there, and at night they came closer to the humans, at night they were unbelievably daring. Favour looked up at the sky. The demons got into people’s mouths and made them utter prophetic, doom-laden declarations. They got into people’s bodies and did the work of the devil.

‘The trees are our source of information and advice,’ said Freeboy. ‘The trees are on the side of wisdom. The caves are sacred.’

Kouhouesso threw down his cigarette and announced that they were leaving. She was shocked: could they not wait and listen to what Freeboy was saying, what Patricien was translating and what the trees were saying?

Kouhouesso repeated, ‘On y go. On y Johnnie, là.’⁴

Freeboy shook his head. ‘The forest is bwi.⁵ The secrets have been exposed. The trees are suffering. Every tree chopped down exposes the tree left behind. Panthers break into the villages. The whole world falls ill.’ But the main thing Freeboy was upset about—he was choking on his words; he seemed to be stammering, even if it was tricky for her to discern a stammer in a language she didn’t speak—was that women were in the forest.

It’s not just me, she wanted to object. Favour and Olga are here, too. Perhaps Favour and Olga are bwi, too?

‘You’re not Gabonese, are you, buddy?’ asked Kouhouesso. ‘The only people more superstitious than the Gabonese are the Corsicans. Come on, buddy, let’s get going, otherwise the demons will be whistling in your ears.’

They set off, clambering over fallen trunks, holding on to each other’s hands to get through the rocks. M’Bali and Tumelo got their machetes out again for the branches along the path. It was a long way. There had been storms; they hadn’t thought to bring the chainsaw. Freeboy was sulking in the middle of the line. Soon there was nothing but a dazzling milky sky above their heads. The ground was drying out; the going was easier. They felt as if they had finally got the upper hand. The forest was laid flat, dominated; it was almost cultivated forest now. They could look down onto the trees, the wretched canopy, fleecy swathes of giant broccoli, the stalks poking through, along with the tops of artichoke and clusters of parsley. In the emptiness of her head, she found a scrap of herself to slip back on like an old hat.

She could stand straight, stretch, look around. But they had to keep climbing. She was trying to think of something to wish for, something for herself, other than Kouhouesso. Something that would remind her of wide open spaces, train stations and airports, solid ground, streets, fields. A childhood memory from where she could rewind herself. The afternoons in Clèves, summer, boredom. The carnivals and the elephants, yes, the elephants were there, too. Knocking their heads against the planks of their stalls, one night at the circus, her first kiss. Back in that past from which she was cut off by the forest. Time had been shoved into the trees and held there, in the forest. Time chopped into planks of wood for white people.

They reached a granite plateau. A last kapok tree, like a hand plunged into the rock. The sky was red. The men leaned against the deep furrows in the tree. Wings, curtains, between which they could lie. Kouhouesso had gone on ahead again, to the caves, to assess the location. M’Bali and Tumelo took off their backpacks and got out a flask of palm wine. Germain put down the generator he had been carrying on his head since morning, which had made him look like some kind of weird robot. Freeboy was biting into a whisky flask. The so-called white crew followed suit. A packet of Marlboro was passed round. Tents began to spring up. Hilaire got them collecting wood. Glueboy and Thadée lit a fire, ever so traditionally, with a cigarette lighter. George, Vincent, George’s agent and Patricien were playing poker on a tree stump. Welcome was trying out some lipstick on Favour, who was attempting to dissuade him from whitening her skin. Olga was already asleep, her head against her costume trunk. They looked like a travelling circus that had got seriously lost.

All she longed for was to take off her boots and have a shower—that was it. It was dusk and the mosquitoes were attacking. She hid her face, the last square centimetres of bare skin, in her gloves. Kouhouesso had come back, his deep voice so recognisable. Problems with the location. M’Bali and Tumelo wanted to renegotiate their pay: night rate was more. Freeboy was translated by Patricien, their voices blended with Kou’s voice. The rhythms of other languages. Bursts of laughter, then whispers. Off to sleep. Sounds all around her. Insects. The clatter of dishes on metal. Something banging on the ground. Poof as Quechua tents collapsed, laughter. Favour was calling out in English for something; then she was speaking in Yoruba on her personal Thuraya phone. Glueboy and Thadée were arguing in French: a bag of supplies was missing. The trees opened up and closed over. She could see Kouhouesso’s back, further away, still further. Slowly, she parted the drooping branches. Her feet were sinking, she was sliding into the mud, subsiding.

She was woken by a kiss. Just like the butterfly kisses her father used to give her. She rubbed her hand over her hood and her glove caught something. A small animal—no, it was an insect. She shook the glove. The thing wouldn’t come off. She decided to confront it. Kouhouesso would be proud of her. Round, bronze, multifaceted eyes. And perhaps two smaller eyes below. Four antennae, green and brown, the length of a long finger, thrumming. It stayed there, staring at her. Then it opened a sort of mouth and emitted a hhhhiissss, barely audible. With her two gloved hands she unhooked it and threw it as far as she could. Afterwards she shuddered for ages.

The negotiations had stopped. ‘Palaver’, he had explained to her one day, came from the Spanish: it was not an African word at all; it was a racist word. She thought of Lloyd in Hollywood, of his pitiless patience in business matters. In the meantime all the tents had been erected, even the big one with pegs. In a pale circle of light, Glueboy offered her something to eat. M’Bali had caught what looked like a furry child—a marmoset, Glueboy reassured her, as if it was more edible. She thought she could see hands in the pot. She sucked on a tube of concentrated milk. George brought her a tumbler of lukewarm coffee—it was the super-global brand for which he was the ambassador—‘black, intense, rich, sensual and delicate’. They laughed like kids, out of earshot of Kouhouesso. Crickets were screeching at the tops of their lungs, assuming they have lungs, and something was hooting every now and again: an owl? The air was buzzing; animals were calling out to each other. In the end, they never actually saw any animals. Or only when they were dead. Insects and stars were what they saw. How refreshing to see stars. To inhabit the same planet as all those living things that could see the stars that night.

She moved off a few paces. The guys from the crew had chosen trees along the path. Favour, too—although Favour was probably not subject to any laws of nature. Solange walked around the kapok tree, which took about ten minutes. Showers of fireflies exploded at her feet, illuminating the undergrowth for a moment. The soil was clear, covered only with leaves. She remembered a television documentary about women collecting what looked like balls of wool from under a tree—handfuls of big grey spiders, to fry…But hang on, those women were Asian. They wore Chinese-style hats. In the watchful silence her stream of urine made the leaves crackle. She wiped herself with some baby wipes. She hesitated, then dropped them, right there on the ground. A slap in the face of Mother Nature.

She sprayed Rambo insecticide all over her clothes. The fireflies blinked, hello, goodbye.

She found Kouhouesso’s tent. The flap was shut. She hesitated. She pulled on the zip gently and felt it slip out of her fingers: Kouhouesso, from inside, asked what she was up to, where had she been? She glimpsed his open arms in the darkness and cuddled up against him. She could not see him, which made it irresistible. He told her to take off her clothes: she stank of insecticide. The relief of bare skin. Yours, mine. He rolled on top of her; they breathed gently, trees and insects all around them, endless.

Afterwards, he talked. The structure supporting the central projector had been damaged in the storms and had to be reassessed before sunrise. And parts of the set were missing. Who would have thought light fittings and cables would be stolen? The guard posted at the caves had seen torches and heard singing; apparently he had left his post to have a closer look. Who would have thought fucking pilgrims would turn up in this forest? Later on, he called out in his sleep: could she stop moving? She was scratching herself. It was agony. Something had bitten or stung her on her buttocks and the tops of her thighs. She rummaged in her bag, trying to make as little noise as possible. At first the freshness of the baby wipes applied as bandages was a relief, then she wanted to howl, the burning pain was so bad.

All of a sudden, he sat up. His voice was harsh, like a tree thrusting down into the earth: he had to work tomorrow.

She lay still. The tormented hours before morning were like an abridged version of what she endured with him, yet another day of waiting, unbearable waiting.