White. Deni Ellis Bechard
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Название: White
Автор: Deni Ellis Bechard
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9781571319470
isbn:
“I guess there are moments in my life when I’ve involuntarily done that.”
“So there,” he said and laughed.
My fatigue was palpable, my legs leaden, and my ears rang with the reverb of strained nerves. My mind seemed to withdraw far behind my skull. The man across the aisle slumped forward, a magazine in his lap and his bald crown against the seatback in front of him.
“I was actually hoping to talk about Richmond Hew,” I told Oméga.
His posture became alert. “What business do you have with him?” he asked in a tense, quiet voice.
“I’m working on an exposé. I’ve heard that you’re not a fan.”
I instantly realized my mistake. This knowledge revealed that I’d known far more about Oméga than I’d let on at the conference—that someone else had fed me information about both him and Hew.
Without turning, he looked at me with an oblique movement of his eyes.
“All changes need to be made gently,” he said, his tone now more measured.
I’d taken his gregariousness to be a sign of trust and future complicity—a mistake I’d previously made in the Congo. By speaking so soon about what I wanted, I might actually have revealed my lack of judgment and discipline. Such missteps were generally forgiven in foreigners, though they caused unease.
“From the perspective of many American donors, Hew”—he pronounced his name Eww in French—“is a hero, even if they almost never speak of him in public.”
I cleared my throat and sipped from the water bottle I’d tucked into the seatback pouch. I took stock of what I could say without further betraying to Oméga how well I’d researched him—that I knew of his likely ministerial appointment.
“Hew has a colonial attitude,” I said. “He’s in the tradition of Leopold and Stanley. Sure, he’s made national parks and protected endangered species, but he’s done it for himself, so he can rule the rainforest like a king.”
Oméga still faced ahead, still watched me askance, his brow hiked with skepticism above the round eye he’d charged with evaluating me. I felt that I’d largely recovered my fumble, and though my references to colonial figures were heavy-handed, there was a tradition in the Congo of leveling such comparisons.
“I will consider this,” he said. “I haven’t been in politics recently. President Kabila is like his father in some ways, in others not. I have nostalgia for the early days of the war when all seemed possible. But they have passed, and God has called me. If He tells me to return to politics, or even to war, I will do it. I am his servant.”
LITERATURE CONNECTS US TO THE EARTH
When we landed, the sun was a smoldering meteor, already plummeting toward the horizon, the way it did in the lower latitudes.
At immigrations, as Oméga and I spoke, the white woman stood behind us and, having folded Le Monde into her purse, sighed impatiently. He went ahead, a roundness in how he walked, the fullness of presence or authority, as if he inhabited an orb that moved through space. He passed quickly, and I followed. In the baggage claim, I wondered if he would distance himself, but he waved me over. We stood at the conveyor belt, talking as coffin-sized packages wrapped in cellophane rode past.
Sola came into the room, walked up to us, and shook Oméga’s hand.
“Pastor Thomas Oméga.” He dipped his head.
“Sola,” she said. She couldn’t have been much older than her early thirties. She was of medium height, but with her poise and direct gaze, she had the sort of presence that made me think of spiritual and mental training, or perhaps concerted healing from trauma.
Oméga said a few words in Lingala, and she responded haltingly before they shifted to French—a language that she spoke fluently despite her slight accent, which had suddenly revealed itself more clearly.
“You are American?” he asked.
“I am,” she replied, and the pause that followed was brief—a terse silence.
“You’re here for work?”
“Yes. And you? Is this home or a visit?”
“Home,” he said, “though sometimes I wonder what that really means.”
She’d been observing him but now her eyes became more alert, lifting slightly to search into his. Though he hadn’t posed a direct question as I might have, his contemplative statement had quietly invited her to share her pedigree.
A gray, hard-bodied roller bag passed on the conveyor, and she caught it.
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you,” she told him and then smiled at me. She neared her hand to her cheek, signaling that she would call, before striding to the exit, beyond which someone was waiting for her—a thin, gaunt man in a pale suit motioning from the crowd seconds after the door swished open.
Oméga also watched her go.
“What leads to a man meeting a beautiful woman on a flight?” he asked. “You can say chance, but if that’s so, then how drab life is. I say the spirits or God’s design. Then we have a world that is fully alive.”
I caught myself midshrug and tried to make myself appear less dismissive.
“I think the design is in the story,” I replied.
“How so?”
“A man who is happily married might sit next to an attractive woman, and she will not fit into the story he tells himself about his life. But for a single man, especially the eternally single type, the opposite may be true.”
“Yes, but we must separate man’s illusions from the divine order.”
“Maybe the divine order is simply our grandest illusion. I know many people who believe that everything that happens is fated. They meet their spouses and say it was meant to be, but a few years later they divorce.”
Oméga laughed. “And then the story becomes one of trials and growth.”
He stepped away to pull a bulging suitcase off the conveyor belt, and then a second and a third.
“Come,” he told me. “I’ll drop you off at your hotel.”
Not long after, a bodyguard, it seemed—given the man’s girth and carriage—arrived with the driver and helped load Oméga’s luggage into a new, powerfully air-conditioned Land Rover. The two men sat in front, Oméga and I behind them, and we drove into the city, past Armageddon scenes of roadside fires and people running through the headlights of charging traffic. Their sudden silhouettes—impressions of fragility and endurance—stung my retina, awakening memories of СКАЧАТЬ