CAMEO

Those words he had said to her. ‘See, it’s not working.’ He had turned to her at the end of the last take. She felt as if the words had made their way into her forever, as if she would hear them over and over in the silence. See, it’s not working.

And yet the scene was beautiful. She was standing straight, ghostly, soulful. But he said that he didn’t believe in it. That Kurtz’s final thoughts were not about the Intended. That all Kurtz wanted was to ‘exterminate all the brutes’.

They made love. Let’s call it love. At first it seemed like he didn’t want to. But as soon as he touched her…Perhaps, also, he was astonished, confused, mystified. They were radiant, intoxicated, in awe. They both plunged beneath their skin. One shudder after another. Stripping back, layer after layer, a little more, a little further, until they reached the skeleton, the universal whiteness of bone, in the universal blackness of flesh.

He was so tired. George was flying back tomorrow. All the close-up shots were in the can, but for the end of the film, well, Kouhonesso would use a mannequin or a body double to set up the scenes where Kurtz’s corpse is carried on board the boat. He was talking to himself. His hands were moving like moths. He might as well take the role himself, a Hitchcock appearance, a cameo. He would appear, then disappear, dead, stiff, a cadaver; they could whiten his hands and substitute George’s head in the editing. Cinema language was all he used now: these were becoming his everyday words. She wondered if he was taking amphetamines or something. Words of love were the words she was speaking, softly, her head in his neck, in that nocturnal, salty hollow. Was he annoyed by her feelings for him? Why would he be annoyed…She mouthed I love you, breathed I love you.

Words. The substitution. The editing. The Intended. She saw strange bodies. Creatures from films. Ancient monsters, Blemmyes, whose heads were in their torso and who were said to be cannibals, the Nubians seen by the first white explorers. See, it’s not working. She saw the child on the ground, in the witch’s hollow tree. She felt her forehead burning but she was cold: two climates had a hold over her, a chronic malaria and a drowsiness that was all her own. He was taking the time to explain the film to her again, even though time was running out for everything.

But he did not know on the last night. He did not know himself that it was their last night. She was certain of that: now the film was finished, he was not making any plans. She herself did not know; no one knew that was it, their last night.

That was the end of the film shoot. There was a party for the men at the Kribi casino. The next day he was not to be seen. Perhaps he was not even in his hut; she couldn’t hear the fan. And the guard had left, disappeared, gone back to the forest.

Perhaps she knew. Of course she knew. That there would be no more nights. It was obvious from the fact that she went walking on the beach the following day. Poco-Beach—the name is meaningless. The local name is Mohombo. Paradise, coconut palms and smooth sea, a potholed road. He had told her that he would take her there, but he had stayed on the river; no one could get him to leave that boat. There was a spot for her in one of the pick-up trucks with Welcome and Olga, and Hilaire and his family, Germain and his sisters, and M’Bali, his wives and his children, but not Tumelo, who could not be found. It was all being dismantled, already. Welcome and Olga could no longer stand each other. But Welcome was not even calling her ‘Miss Chinese’ anymore; he looked depressed. Bits of the set turned up, they were taken to pieces, sent away, resold, stolen, shared around. It was all coming to an end; the different orbits were set in motion again: Olga off to another film, Vincent to Singapore, the Africans staying put. She was heading in the direction of Kouhouesso. Welcome was returning to Lagos, to the Nollywood studios, where he would find work. As for the others, who could tell? The fate of a homosexual make-up artist in black West Africa—who could tell?

Equatorial Guinea was a green line under the rain. The river was wide here, shimmering, and the rain was a speck over there. The Ntem River was nicknamed the Little-Congo. Still, it was not the Congo. A motorised canoe, loaded fit to sink, was carrying a pyramid of fuel barrels. A single shot from Guinea and the guy would disintegrate, for the equivalent of—she mused, her head empty—what must be the cost of the perfume she had given her mother for Christmas. The film crew got their supplies through him. Otherwise there was nothing, nothing at all. The mangroves seemed to have been coated halfway up their roots in some white pesticide mixture. At the low-tide area, the silt beach was cleared beneath the sentry box of the customs official who spent his days here, alone. It designated the centre of Poco-Beach, as it were. The central business district, let’s say. He liked to chat, understandably. He had not been paid for two years, and did a bit of wheeling and dealing in butane on the side.

The sea was in the shape of a wave, beneath the horizon, at the point where the green receded. A grey-white rip current. The mouth of the river, the Earth opening up, the whole expanse extraordinarily wide and flat, spreading, held back from non-existence by a few suspended molecules. On this side, the encampment of Nigerian fishermen. On the other side, the sea, shacks, the silt turned to sand, the mangroves turned to coconut palms. She stirred up spider crabs and sand fleas with every step.

The rain was moving in, the rain from the equator. There was a rainbow like a whale’s spurt, forming a bridge over to Guinea. One day, a long time ago, she had given a book to her son, at her mother’s place, a book about a little travelling rainbow. He had never wanted her to read it to him. Her mother had told her that it was a bit childish for a ten-year-old boy. Here the sun rose every day at 6.18 a.m. precisely, and set exactly twelve hours later, at 6.18 p.m. Nights as long as days. An eternal equinox. It would drive you crazy, she thinks.

Poco-Beach, on the side with the shacks, was a scrap left over from the Africa of the film shoot: three bungalows that were almost elegant, a canteen on stilts, almost-western toilets, an isolated beach. There was a bit of money left, for a small party; the luxury four-wheel drives would be returned tomorrow in Douala; the more valuable material would be loaded into containers for Hollywood, via Panama. Jessie had left ages ago. The big shindig was over. Now it was time for the Africans to party.