The Expedition to the Baobab Tree Read Free Page B

around his face. He had left his food untouched, just tasted a dish of water. Poor creature inexorably gasping out a rich man’s life with the spectacle of so much abundance before him. Influence and power slipped out of mouth and nostrils. Stored-up memories played themselves out in his cloudy eyes when the eyelids, between the spells when he sat and dozed, opened a slit and he presumably observed his guests, his slave girl servants, his sons and daughters gathered in luxury and pride. And his emaciated fingers, what were they trying to catch? A butterfly? The salt breeze? A woman’s laugh?
    The talk grew dull. He asked to be carried to his room. I say asked, not commanded. He asked in a whisper.
    Left alone with him, I held him tight and soothed him, for he rebelled against his weakening and was far too fidgety; but then out of pity I let him be and by watching I understood what his hand was grasping for. He was trying to tear the fine web that death was spinning around him. When he jerked in spasms the web vibratedand shimmered slyly in anticipation. Tighter and tighter it was spun around him, so that the threat of sounds outside the room could not penetrate and the murmur of people with concern or concerns remained far outside the ring of his death stillness.
    I let the invalid nestle between my drawn-up knees with his head on my breast. In his language I whispered lewd stories which made him smile blissfully in my arms. Shrunken baby, what an easy delivery for me. I fed you with the deathsmilk of indifference, for it could do your dried-out body no more harm and perhaps it was your way out, this being set free of any charitableness. Any pity would only delay your departure painfully.
    One morning I climbed up to the highest terrace on the roof of my owner’s house to breathe in the morning freshness and look out over the city and the sea, at the skiffs lying drawn up on the sand, several of them belonging to him whom I had just said farewell to forever, that would probably now, like me, be disposed of. My future and the future of my fellow slaves, women and men, as well as that of the skiffs over there in the rosy daybreak, as well as that of the stores of elephant tusks and ambergris and iron, and that of the great house now at last plunged into mourning, and that of his fragrant garden down below me, had been allotted a precarious fate. Only those who have, have security as well. For me there was only insecurity. I waited, expecting to sigh. I waited for my feelings to well up. It was now the time for that.
    I who come from the heart of the country bear the murmur of waters subliminally with me, a water knowledge preserved in mytears and saliva, in the blood of my veins, in all the juices of my body. I who knew how to extinguish attacks of fever with my water being, I found myself crying uncontrollably here in the morning stillness about so many things all at once that I would try to sob my tangle of thoughts to death rather than seek an interpretation that would amount to mourning but also a feeling of relief, anxiety about the future but also plain happiness about the purity of the morning after the oppressiveness of days and days in a sickroom.
    With a corner of my robe I dried my eyes and cheeks and climbed back down to the garden. I had to find out what was going on. I walked down to the beach and from there – for my call to the solitary dhow in the bay remained unanswered – from there I walked through the neglected waterfront area, hoping that no one would notice my absence in the bustle and diminished supervision that follow such an important death. And even if they did notice it, what did I care. I was dumbfounded with grief, but more, with longing, and did not care who saw it. My longing was a hard little nut hidden deep within me. I did not care who knew of it now. Now, after my benefactor’s decease, this feeling was my only certainty, and it helped me forget my fear of what lay ahead. Frivolous,