Santa Claus In The Jungle

On The Day before Christmas--this was just a few years ago--in a dusty little dorp in upcountry Malawi, which is in Central Africa, a young man sloped down the main road, alone. The dorp's name was Rumpi and the young man's, Calvin Mullet. He was from Hudson, Massachusetts. The quaint raffia suitcase he lugged could have passed for a picnic hamper, but he was no picnicker.

He had been dropped at the boma by a banana truck. The truck's dust cloud hung for a moment in the air, then was gathered into a murmuring (continued on page 134) Santa Claus in The Jungle (continued from page 129) whirlwind and hurried off the empty road and into the scraggy jungle, leaving behind a strong odor of fragrant patchouli. Rare patchouli grew wild in those parts.

Latterly divorced, Calvin was suffering the effects of paying alimony. He sold insurance (Homemakers' Mutual, Boston and New York, with 56 branches around the world), but all his goods and chattels, so-called, and half his salary, had been awarded to his wife. He roomed in a whorehouse in the capital, Blantyre, and hitchhiked to his several accounts: thus, the banana truck. He had sold his car. The marriage had been brief, unfriendly and faintly squalid, like the hunched-over gust of brown wind that had a moment before swept whispering past him. The divorce was a relief but something to regret.

He stopped walking. He wiped his face with a bunched hanky and read, Drink Lion--You Will Injoy. Under that sign slumped a larger-than-usual native hut that gave the appearance of being supported by some six or seven Africans who leaned against it for shade. Their heads were stuck under the eaves of the overhanging brooms of roof thatch. In front, there was a smaller but more professional sign, Guinness for Power--Big Drum Bar, bearing the motif of a black fist punching jagged cartoon lightning; a small scrawl on a pasted label warned, "No hawking."

Ropes of hanging beads were strung over the doorway. Calvin pushed through them, dropped his creaking suitcase and, after ordering a beer, fanned himself with his hat--once a fairly good panama, now a wreck, with grubby crown and bitten brim (it was turned down front and back like a spy's, but very dirty). The bar was dark. When Calvin's eyes grew accustomed to the deep gloom, he saw a row of Africans staring at him. Ragged and with unsteady heads, the Africans squatted on the dirt floor. They had wide machetes across their knees; each man balanced a pint of Lion on his blade. Calvin smiled at them. They nodded back, dark hellos.

Strangely, there was no picture of Dr. Hastings Osbong in the bar. He was the president of Malawi. It was against the law not to have his picture in a conspicuous place in every building in the country. Calvin had one in his office. Apparently, one had hung here; a nail and a rectangle of cobwebs remained.

The bar floor gave off a ripe stable smell and was spread with looping rosaries of black ants. Almost immediately, some ants located Calvin's suitcase. They swarmed into the mesh of the raffia, violating the contents. Calvin put his hat down. He was gasping for breath, trickles of sweat were running down the sides of his face, meeting at his chin and dripping onto his smudged shirt front. A drop of sweat made its way like an insect down his breastbone to nest in his navel.

The temperature was in the mid-80s, but there was no sun: It had risen and, once off the ground, disappeared into shapeless gray haze. A dull sky made the day throb with sunless heat, a kind of cookery worse than sunshine. The steamy air was a sickness; there was no fan in the bar, no electricity in the dorp.

A dusty bottle of beer was brought and opened, so warm it spewed suds. The bartender--wearing a paper party hat with a sweat-diluted Lion slogan on it--slipped a soda straw into the bottle.

"A glass, please."

"No want straw?"

"No want," said Calvin. Straws gave him gas.

The bartender lifted out the straw and emptied it of beer by blowing through it hard. He replaced it in the cardboard box. Pouring Calvin a glass of beer, he said, "Happy Christmas, bwana."

"Somehow," said Calvin, "it doesn't feel like Christmas. No offense intended."

Propped on the counter, a new ad from the Lion breweries showed a comical lion in a red stocking cap and white Saint Nick whiskers; the ad was edged in plastic holly. A small tinsel Christmas tree dangled from a twist of yellow flypaper in the center of the room. Dabs of cotton had been carefully glued onto the smeared mirror at the back of the bar: snowflakes. Calvin wiped the creeks of sweat from his face with his hanky. Snowflakes!

He tipped his glass and drank. He enjoyed drinking; he liked the bitter sting of warm beer on his tongue, the small bubbles needling his gullet, the taste of pickled nuts, a wash of foam, and so on to yeasty fullness; four pints was a square meal. He wasn't an alcoholic; he believed beer drinkers never were. But he was almost certainly a drunkard. It was his choice, not an affliction; it gave pleasure.

"How far to Lilongwe?" He smacked his lips.

The dozing bartender stirred. "Lilongwe. Three, four days on bicycle."

"How many miles?"

"Two hundred-so." The African shrugged. "You going that side?"

"Today, I hope. I want to get the night bus to Blantyre." Calvin sipped his beer. "This is my first trip north."

"You like?"

"Very nice," said Calvin. "You got a nice place here."

"Not like south," said the African. "No Osbong here."

"You mean no money?" Coins the value of a shilling were called osbongs, after the head they bore.

"I am meaning," said the African, "no Dr. Osbong bastard." He said it like the bird, "bustard."

Calvin went silent. He didn't talk politics, not there.

The African was staring at Calvin's glasses. "Good goggles," he said. "You buying here?"

"No, I got them from the States."

"American?"

"Yup."

"We hate Americans," said the African calmly. "They kill black Negroes. Start trouble. Spy on us. Hate us too much. Just big gangsters and cowboys up to now. That their badness. Dr. Osbong say it good to trust Yankees. Myself, I don't trust at all. Osbong is"--the African squinted--"how you say fisi in English?"

"Hyena," said Calvin. He put down a ten-osbong note. "Have a beer."

"Eh!" the African kecked gratefully. "Happy Christmas, bwana. You with those soldiers?"

"Which soldiers?"

"In the trees," the African said.

"I'm an American," said Calvin. "I sell insurance--or, as you say in this neck of the woods, assurance."

"God," said the African, "made everyone the same. I take Guinness." He got himself a brown bottle and inserted a straw and, slurping, his lower lip rolled down, showing bright pink, added, "For power, ha-ha."

"It's a good brew," said Calvin. He watched the African empty the bottle.

"Good goggles," said the African.

"Thanks."

He had six pairs altogether, the five others in his suitcase being trodden upon by ants. Calvin dreaded losing them, breaking the pair he was wearing and not having an extra. Being in Africa heightened his fear; he had bought three pairs since arriving in Malawi a year previous (Don, the Hudson oculist, said it thrilled him to send the specs all that way). But the glasses were all he had bought. The tan wash-and-wear suit he had picked up cheap in Filene's basement; a year of dust and sun, rain and mildew had not been kind to it. It was wrinkled, it sagged, the cuff stitches had given way, the right elbow of the jacket was torn, the knees were swollen and the knee backs creased like accordions. The seat was dark and dead with wear, mainly the friction of sliding in and out of rides he thumbed. He wore suede shoes because they didn't need polishing; they collected stains like blotters. Calvin had a habit, when drunk, of pissing on his toes. He had worn the suit on his trip north, because he thought he might get a lift more easily; but the vehicles were few, the banana truck from the frontier to Rumpi was a stroke of luck. In his panama hat and grimy suit, he looked like a stricken preacher. He was, of a sort: His belief was life insurance. He was pale and tall, a string bean.

"Merry Christmas."

He turned. An African at the far end (continued on page 296) Santa Claus in the Jungle (continued from page 134) of the bar smiled a white mouthful of greetings. The African nodded pleasantly, revealing at his side the small head of a woman, and she was smiling, too. Their clothes made Calvin feel faintly ashamed of his own. The man's shirt was clean, his collar stiff, the creases in his sleeves sharp. He wore glasses, but Calvin could tell they were fakes, the plain flat window-glass ones that were sold for five osbongs at market stalls. The young woman wore a pink dress, with ribbons and lacy borders. Man and woman crouched on stools, elbows on the bar, faces level with the straws that sprouted from their bottles: roosting postures of alcoholic unease.

Calvin smiled back, finished his beer, and then began brushing ants from his suitcase, preparatory to leaving. The bartender appeared before him with a pint of Lion. "Bwana? That bwana and dona saying Happy Christmas to you."

The African at the end of the bar shyly twiddled his straw and said, "Cheers."

Calvin walked over to him and said, "Look, Merry Christmas to you, pal, but I've got to get to Lilongwe. I'm hitching. The night bus leaves at--"

"African custom," said the man, waving Calvin to a stool. "Drink. Be happy. No worry."

The smile left Calvin's face. He looked straight into the lenses of the man's toy spectacles and said softly, "Friend, do you ever ask yourself, 'Where am I going to be in ten years or so?' "

"No," said the man.

"But I'll bet there are plenty of times when you wake up at night and ask, 'What the heck am I going to do for ready cash when I'm too old to work?' "

"No work," said the man. "After ten years pass, I still here, drinking, enjoying. Why not, eh?" He smiled at the woman. She nodded.

"Let me put it another way," said Calvin. Rephrasing had to be the insurance agent's forte. "How would you like to have a lot of money--about, say, five hundred pounds?"

"I like," said the man.

"You like," said Calvin. "Good. Now, look at this bottle of beer. It costs two osbongs. For four osbongs a week, the price of two of these bottles"--Calvin flicked the beer bottle twice with his finger--"you can take out an insurance policy that will guarantee you hundreds of pounds after ten years. Stick it out for twenty and you get five hundred, cash on the barrelhead. If nothing happens to you in the meantime. What do you say?"

"I get couple hundred quid," mused the man. "I have to work?"

"Absolutely not."

The man smiled, his lips stretching slowly, opening to reveal a set of hard clean teeth in a perfect row.

"All you have to do," Calvin went on, "is pay four osbongs a week. Now, let's suppose that instead of buying this beer for me, you had put two osbongs here. Go ahead, put two down."

The man pressed two coins onto the counter next to the bottle. Each showed the president, Dr. Osbong, in profile, with a laurel-branch collar.

"All right, watch me. I'm putting an osbong down next to yours. You see?" Calvin stacked the coins. "That's the way we operate. For every two osbongs you put in, we give you one. You can't lose. We help you, just like I'm doing here. It's creative saving, and the surrender value of the policy is high. Plus full protection. Are you interested?"

"In what?"

Calvin took the man hard by the upper arm and said, "Are you interested in getting hundreds of pounds at the end of ten years, yes or no?"

"Yes," said the man eagerly.

"OK," said Calvin, "now you're talking. Put your John Hancock right here." He took a punched card out of his inside pocket and, indicating the dotted line with an X, passed the card and a ballpoint to the man.

The man adjusted his glasses deftly, a precise but pointless gesture. He studied the card and then signed with a flourish, a large spiral, then a squiggle, several strokes and numerous dots above and below the squiggle. He underscored it boldly. It was a handsome signature.

"Now your address. There, right underneath."

The African's face went slack. He handed the pen back to Calvin. "Cannot."

"What do you mean? You've got an address, haven't you?"

"Got an address, sure." He told Calvin his box number at the dorp's post office.

"P. O. Rumpi," said Calvin. "Here's the pen. Write it down."

"Cannot write."

"Well, what the hell," Calvin tapped the signature, "is that?"

"My name," said the man.

"That," the woman spoke up. She was very pretty, very young, with a small round head and cap of short hair. She wrinkled her nose and smiled and continued, "That not name. That just--" She lifted long fingers and fluttered them to signify aimless writing. "It look like name. But," she smiled and dropped her eyes, "it not name. It signature."

"I see, I see, I see," said Calvin. He filled in the man's address and printed the man's name in block letters, Ogilvie Nirenda. He grinned at his client, Ogilvie. "Now, you leave everything to me. I'll send you envelopes, reminders and the whole policy. But, for God's sake, remember," Calvin preached, "instead of buying that beer or that pack of cigarettes, or that new tie or whatever, put those osbongs aside. You'll be a rich man if you do. If you find yourself wanting a beer--resist! resist!" Calvin grasped the man's hand and shook it twice. "Welcome to Homemakers'," he said. Calvin was pleased; and it wasn't the thought of the commish.

"Have a beer," said the African.

It was ungracious to refuse the drink. It was dangerous not to buy the man a drink in return; people were killed for less. The man insisted on filling Calvin's glass. Calvin, the man reminded him, was a guest, not in the bar but in the country. Dr. Osbong was a socialist and socialism was sharing beer. "So," Ogilvie smiled gently, "don't go away. Buy me a drink."

•••

Drink was traded for drink. The African had begun it, only the African could end it. Calvin was a guest. In the evening, in smoky lantern light, Calvin became uneasy, and his unease, his impatience and panic, made him rude. Ogilvie was talking to him, blah-blah-blah, but Calvin wasn't listening and wasn't even looking at the fellow or his wife. He drank desperately, quickly, looking into his glass and at his watch and into the little cotton blizzard on the mirror at the back of the bar, his tired and drunkenly lip-smacking face showing through the phony cotton flakes like a sick phantom perspiring in a snowstorm. He missed his turn buying the beers, Ogilvie paid twice in a row; and then, in what was simple panic, he turned his back on Ogilvie, threw the bead strings aside and looked out the bar door.

He felt woe deeper than dread.

He saw blackness, pure jungly blackness, thick and woolly. It did not stop after a mile or two. It extended for 200 miles, where it was pierced by a few lamps in Lilongwe; it continued for another 100 to Blantyre and a few more lamps; and it wasn't interrupted by light again until somewhere in Mozambique or Swaziland. Night had fallen while they had been drinking. The darkness was a net, flung over willing victims. Somewhere nearby, the dark night was being celebrated with a thumpy-thumpy of drums. But no one bothered to disperse it with a bulb. There was no juice.

And there was no place to stay in thedorp. It was Calvin's second night on the road. The first he had spent on the frontier, which was a burned-out shambles, not a soul in sight. He had slept under a table, wrapped in a big canvas wall map, and had shivered until dawn. Calvin still stood with his back to his hosts, peering into the darkness. There were huts beyond the road, he knew. There always were. He knew those huts: windowless, stuffed with urchins and slinking of wood smoke, old food and damp clothes, worm turds and dog hairs littering the earthen hut floor between the sleeping places. In a country filled with sun in the daytime and cool air in (he evening, people crawled into huts and decrepit little bars, curling up in the dirt. It was not a recent impulse. These places were cool, but that was not the point. It was resignation; they were uninsured.

Calvin sensed his panic leave; the bird that had been flapping on his shoulder took wing. He felt eased, lighter, unwor-ried all of a sudden. His nerves had been rinsed by the warm suds of the beer. He was fully drunk now (lie tottered in the doorway): Reason left his hands and feet, they felt like large turnips. Now he was out of the bar, swaying in the middleof the main street of the dorp, under the stars, pissing on his toes. He did not have the foggiest idea of what was going to happen next and, plastered, he did not care. He went inside, then thought. parted the bead strings and spat. He was happy. He loved being in a place where you could spit where you pleased and piss by the door.

With silly vigor, he clinked Ogilvie's bottle with his glass, hitting unnecessarily hard and shouting Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, much too loudly and finally smashing his glass. He stood there in the half gloom of the bar, sweating booze, holding only the bottom half of his glass, a little crazy cup of upturned teeth, while all the beer ran down into his sleeve and collected in a slurpy puddle inside the elbow of his jacket.

"Oh, my God, I'm sorry," said Calvin, so drunk and so polite that he sounded like someone new to English and so extremely attentive to his slow apology that in his contrition, he stepped on Ogilvie's foot and knocked the lady's bottle into her lap.

"Christ almighty, look what I've done to your wife!"

Ogilvie insisted it was nothing and signaled to the bartender to bring another bottle.

Abjectly, Calvin put his finger into his mouth and bit down hard, all the while uttering hurried apologies through the finger, as if through a flute. This calmed him and he said, "I'm sorry about this, Ogilvie, but I'm drunk as a skunk. I should have been out of here hours ago." He picked up his suitcase and began dragging it to the door. "Don't worry about a tiling. I'll be sending you reminders about your premiums, and so forth. Tell your wife I'm sorry. I couldn't look her in the eye after what I've just done to her, really I couldn't--"

"Please," said Ogilvie, "wait."

Calvin gently fought him off with his free hand, but it was no good. He was outside in the road and Ogilvie was still with him, hugging him and being dragged along, bumping against the raffia suitcase. Calvin tried to run; it was like struggling under water.

"Get off, sir," said Calvin, hitting Ogilvie gingerly on the shoulder with the flat of his hand. "You got your insurance. You're all set. I'm going now--goodbye and good luck."

"You cannot," said Ogilvie. "You have to stay. Lilongwe-side too far, and listen," he said earnestly, snatching at Calvin's hand, "that lady not my dona. That my sister, same mother, same father, and--"

"Yes?" Calvin stopped. He saw that he had gained only ten feet with Ogilvie attached to his leg.

"She like you, sir."

"She does?" Calvin put down his suitcase and turned his back on the jungle.

"Oh, yes, too much! She want you come home with her, enjoy and what not. You like, sir?"

Calvin looked up. She was standing there in the doorway, holding the bead strings open. The lantern in back of her, just that feeble light, shone through what could only have been a very thin dress, for Calvin could see the girl's dark uncluttered shape sharply defined, with a light frock thrown around it. One hand was on her hip, which was slung side-ways in a pose of impatience, and her feet were apart.

•••

Calvin stepped on a soft pillow-shaped thing. It let out a little squawk of protest and shifted sideways. The girl said it was her brother and that there were more in the room. She did not say how many more. But Calvin discovered there were three little boys sleeping on the floor of the room: After a short time, one asked in the darkness why his sister was making so much noise and if she was all right. And when the sister, at that question, became quiet--held her breath, in fact--one boy struck a match. He held it, his eyes goggling, in Calvin's white face even alter his sister screamed forhim to blow it out.

In the morning, when Calvin awoke, the little boys were gone. There were three stained flour sacks where they had been.The girl snored beside him on the narrow cot, curled up, sleeping with her arms folded across her breasts, her legs poisedlike a cyclist's. The room, half the hut, was a low oven of musty odors, crammed with broken crates and poor blankets and misshapen clothes. A small prison window that was not square had been cut high on one wall; a rag was tacked over it. Calvin shifted himself to a sitting position. The girl groaned, stopped snoring, but did not wake. On the far wall was a calendar, a year out of date, with a highly colored picture of a little blonde girl in a party dress playing with a fluffy kitten in a studio garden. The calendar advertised Jaganathy's Madras Bazaar and listed provisions.

That calendar picture on the mud wall of the hut annoyed Calvin. He felt pity for the Africans, the little black boys crouching on their flour sacks in the hut looking up at it, probably envying her and her fat pet. He pitied them all in their huts, snoring on their dusty beds, crawling tediously through a rubble of damp rags in a little jungle slum. Only the thought of insurance kept him from despair, as it would keep them.

He swung his legs over the side of the cot and looked for his trousers and shoes. It was only a little after eight, but already he had broken out into a heavy mucky sweat. His neck ached, his ankles were stung with mosquito bites. When he stood, the girl woke up. She looked sleepily at him, then shook her head and said fiercely, "Where you going?"

"Outside," said Calvin, picking his undershirt from his sticky skin. "What's wrong with that?"

The girl shouted something to the door. There was a knock. The door creaked open and one of the small boys entered on his knees. Drawing the sheet across her nakedness, the girl spoke to the kneeling boy in a bark, incomprehensible to Calvin. He knew a few words of Chinyanja, the language used in the south: mostly greetings and the words for money, food and beer. The girl said to Calvin, "Go him."

Calvin found his trousers knotted at the foot of the cot, where he had leaped out of them; and under them, his shoes. One sock was missing. He felt too sweaty to grovel around looking for it. He slipped on his suedes without socks but with great care: Once, in a hut, he had found mice nesting in his shoes. And there were stories of scorpions.

The little boy beckoned him outside and led him to a narrow stall of bamboo secured with bits of string. Calvin entered; the little boy stood outside. The smell in the latrine was so powerful that in the blast of early-morning sun. Calvin felt faint. He slapped at the large flies that, strafing the rocky floor, were making a buzz as loud as an electric shaver. Calvin left with his bladder still full and he headed for a clump of high grass. Again, the little boy stood guard, his back to Calvin.

When Calvin finished, he said, "Do you speak English?"

"Yes, bwana."

"Don't call me bwana."

"Yes, master."

"How are you?" Calvin spoke slowly.

"And I am quite well, sir, and hoping you," said the little boy in a hoarse nervous voice.

"I don't believe you know English," said Calvin.

"I do know and speak," said the lit tie boy.

"All right, then, what's your name?"

"My name," said the little boy, "is Richard."

"And what's your sister's name?"

"My sister name Mira."

Calvin repeated the name; he had found out what lie wanted, the name of the girl he had made love to.

Later, he was brought an enamel bowl with a cake of yellow soap in it. He tried the name: it was not challenged. Mira poured tepid water from a pitcher while Calvin splashed his face. It was ritual washing: The water was brown, the process turned grit into slime. Calvin felt filthy when he was done. He wiped his face with his shirt and. without preliminaries, asked, "Why did you tell your brother to follow me?"

"Bad people here," said Mira.

"So what?"

"My English not--" She smiled and called Ogilvie.

"Bad people here?" Calvin asked Ogilvie.

"In the trees," said Ogilvie with authority. "It not good walking here alone. Make trouble and noonsense."

"Soldiers?"

"Some soldiers. With bunduki, pistoli, what not. They are saving us," said Ogilvie.

"What are they saving you from?"

Ogilvie did not know.

"They kill people?"

"Sometimes," said Ogilvie.

"Their leader," said Calvin, "he's an African?"

Ogilvie smiled and winked through his fake glasses. He wore a striped sarong, which lie adjusted as he spoke, and an undershirt and plastic sandals. "He is a white man, like you. Tough. Eats fruit from the bush and small animals and sleeps just under trees or anywhere. But he can go with no eating food or sleeping. Bullets do this, pung!" Ogilvie slappedhis chest, imitating a bullet bouncing off. "He is going to kill Osbong. People say. He will kill you, too, anybody."

"Well, that's too bad," said Calvin, "because I'm leaving here."

"And me," said Ogilvie, "I am leaving here. It is a nice place to leave."

"Not live," said Calvin, "leave. I'm going."

"No go," said Ogilvie, becoming truculent. "You stay. It Christmas."

"I know it's Christmas," said Calvin. But he hadn't until Ogilvie reminded him. He said angrily, "Merry Christmas."

"Give us Christmas present," said Ogilvie.

Calvin was being watched. The three little boys, another, taller, goofy-looking one standing at the side and taking licks at a dish, and an old woman who seemed to be wearing two or three long dresses, one over the other. All their heads were shaved. They stared at Calvin.

Calvin took out his wallet. That was a mistake, but it was too late to conceal it. They watched him flick off a beetle; they watched him part it to reveal folded bills. Calvin attempted to extract a single bill without disturbing die others; they seemed to understand. Calvin tugged impatiently to get it over with. But too hard: All the bills came loose and fluttered to the ground at the feet of the Africans like the dead petals from a large blossom. The dish licker dropped his dish. The boy called Richard knelt, gathered them up and, still kneeling before Calvin, crumpled them into a ball and handed the ball to Calvin.

They settled for one apiece, although Mira and Ogilvie thought they should get more. Calvin tried to be firm; Ogilvie insisted on more; Calvin promised him another gift in the afternoon. The whole operation cost four pounds, ten osbongs, or roughly (Calvin figured rapidly) 13 bucks. He had never spent that much on his wife on either of the two Christmases they were together. That thought pleased him: It was a charitable way of getting even with her.

And they gave Calvin a present: a fur hat, much like the one Dr. Osbong wore in his pictures, but with fewer rattails (the number denoted rank). Calvin wore it for their Christmas drink, a yellow quart-sized Shell Oil can brim full of local beer. They passed it from mouth 10 mouth. The beer was thick, soupy, very bitter, an alcoholic porridge that could have been consumed with a fork. Calvin was allowed to finish it, after everyone had a swig. He did so with a leaden feeling in his feet. Then had another.

They all drank. They drank for breakfast and lunch. They drank, they said, because Calvin had arrived and given them cash and it was Christmas. Calvin, sweating in his fur hat, remarked on the heat but said, "It's a dry kind of heat." They drank on that. They drank to make themselves sleepy, and slept. They awoke and drank to alert themselves. They sang and drank some more. Other villagers dropped by and drank out of nervousness for the white man who was quite drunk and pretty dirty, but friendly. They drank out of the common beer pot, drooling through their straws.

The local brew was gone in the afternoon and they switched to local gin, kachasu unrefined, which (poisonous, colorless, viscous) looked and tasted like witch hazel. It passed down Calvin's gullet like razor blades, leaving slashes inhis throat. Calvin's belly had been sourly filled by the beer; now it was on fire with the gin. Gulping the gin in tots from a tumbler, they praised drink, America and Dr. Osbong ("To Hastings!" Calvin said incautiously). There was an argument about Osbong and a fight. Two men rolled on the ground, kicking and punching wildly, but soon they rolled away and the drinking went on. Late in the afternoon, the drink was gone. Ogilvie appeared beside Calvin; he grinned and pulled the cork out of a bottle of crimson cough mixture.

"What I need," said Calvin, "is a couple of pints of Lion to fix me up." Mira and the old lady were sent to the Big Drum Bar. Drunkenly wagging his finger in their faces, Calvin said they should pay with his Christmas present. They hurried off with baskets.

Calvin faced Ogilvie and discovered himself speechless and slightly panicky. Without a drink, there was nothing lo say.Calvin felt as if someone had ripped out all his bones, leaving sick flesh. It would be dark soon, another day gone. The feelings of pity he had experienced in the confined hut, in the narrow cot, were being crowded by thoughts of flight. He felt captive and watched; they apparently did not want him lo leave. It could go on for days. His wallet was almost empty and he had few valuables. They thought he was rich. He had little more than his six pairs of glasses.

"I have a present for you, Ogilvie," Calvin slurred.

The raffia suitcase had been shoved under the cot. Calvin rummaged through it and found his darkest pair of prescription sunglasses. Perhaps suspecting a trick, Ogilvie lingered in the doorway. He grunted and sat heavily on the ground when Calvin leaned toward him.

"Merry Christmas," said Calvin, grinning. "Straight from the U. S. A. Here it is." He offered the glasses in an imitation-alligatorhide case, snapped shut. "Have a look, you lucky dog."

They were expensive ones, with French frames and dark lenses for the equatorial sun, and thick for Calvin's astigmatic eyes. The lenses had cost $30 alone, the frames with the wide bows, another $25.

"Nice goggles," said Ogilvie. He caressed them, donned them, stumbled.

"Look in the mirror," said Calvin.

Ogilvie entered the hut by the door on the right. Calvin sprang through the left-hand door, snatched up his panama and his jacket, grabbed his suitcase and dashed outside.

Ogilvie was also outside. Calvin had not counted on a portable mirror. But there it was, Ogilvie was holding it before his sightless eyes.

"Cannot see," he murmured.

"Hold it closer," said Calvin, tiptoeing to the edge of the clearing. Cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting, thinking it would make him sound near, he called, "Closer!"

The mirror was against his captor's nose.

Calvin ran, the suitcase banging against his legs. He charged headlong into dense bush, crashed against trees and lost his hat. He changed direction. He crossed a little bare patch, a compound with two tired huts and a dozing family. Their dog tore after him. The family awoke to see in the twilight a tall mzungu in a grubby suit and goggles flinging himself past their hut.

The bush thinned out. Calvin was certain the road was close and, with the road, a bus. a car, another banana truck. Or he could walk. He wanted only to be away and he knew that in a matter of minutes (his bejesused mind whirred), he could be. He found a path and followed it. Running became easier. He jogged, and all at once, his glasses steamed up.

He slapped to a halt, took them off and wiped them with his sleeve and his fingers. When he put diem back on, he saw through the streaks two figures standing before him on the path. One was Mira. She had a pint of Lion in her hand, which she raised. Calvin could not stop her; his arms were drunk and slow. He said no, loudly.

Mira was not tall. She could not reach the top of Calvin's skull. She slammed the bottle against the side, just in backof his ear, and he fell--sat, rather--on the path. The bottle didn't break, but it knocked his glasses off; Mira whispered, "We want you," and he was defeated.

•••

"Today," said Ogilvie, lowering his head through the doorway and peering over the top of his new sunglasses, "it BoxingDay."

"Who's fighting?" asked Calvin. He was groggy, barely awake; he felt the painful throb of his pulse in the bump behind his ear. He rolled over onto his side, nearly shaking the cot to pieces and squeezing the other sleeper--she who had raised the bump--against the mud-daubed wall.

"No one fighting," Ogilvie said.

Calvin looked up. Ogilvie's hand was out, palm upward, fingers scratching the air avariciously.

"Give him box," came a whisper from the wall.

"I'm leaving," said Calvin without feeling. "Have to get that bus." He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

"Boxing Day. No buses on Boxing Day," said Ogilvie. "Give me box, bwana."

"I gave you a Christmas present--two Christmas presents!"

"For Christmas. But today," Ogilvie smiled, "today Boxing Day. Give." His scratching fingers beckoned.

Calvin shook a pound out of his wallet and handed it, without rising from the cot, to Ogilvie, who saluted his thanks by touching a finger to the side of his sunglasses. Before he left, Ogilvie smacked Mira's ankle and said, "She pretty, eh? She like you too much. And me, I like English people."

"I'm not English."

"No? Too bad." Ogilvie's good humor was renewed by the money. He became helpful. "You want to pass water? I go with you to the latrine. You want?"

"Get out," said Calvin. "And close the door."

Ogilvie saluted again and was gone.

"Give me," said Mira, "give me."

With speed, his head rapping, Calvin turned Mira onto her back, lifted and parted her legs, cupped her cool bottom and entered her snugness in a single thrust. Mira arched; her slim arms reached in a praise gesture for his hair, as if she were making an offering to a hut spirit. Calvin took her by the wrists, rode her for seconds, until his loins sneezed and he fell. She had scarcely realized what was happening when Calvin handed her 20 osbongs and asked her quietly to go. She did so, dazed, wrapping herself in a long cloth and shutting the door after her.

Word got out that Calvin was distributing cash. The rest came and got theirs, the three little boys, the tall goofy-looking one, the old lady: They entered the hut on their knees and took their money, heads bowed, with two hands. Calvin told them to stand up. They wouldn't; each left shuffling backward awkwardly, still kneeling. Calvin bolted the door when the old lady left.

There was more knocking, villagers, relatives, perhaps, looking for presents. But Calvin had paid off the immediate family; he did not feel obliged to pay the whole village. He wanted desperately to leave. Before, he had assumed that to do so would have been impolite, offensive to their hospitality: They would be hurt. Now he knew it was dangerous; he would be hurt: They would savage him if he tried to leave.

He could stay. Lying on the cot, he had a vision of how it would be if he did stay a few more days. He would drink with them, learn a little bit of their language, settle into their life. After weeks passed in this way, his clothes would fall off his back and he would change those rags for a sarong, his suedes for plastic sandals. Mira would work in the fields. If the crops failed, they would force him to buy bags of mealies. He would father a few children, not as black as Mira nor as white as he but probably the color of Mister Bones, the minstrel, a browny glow. He would insure them all and set up an agency in Rumpi for Homemakers' Mutual. All the while, the whole family would be extracting money; but they would consult him on village decisions. He would die there, of drink or fever, and they would scrape a shallow hole under a tree, roll him in and heap up the mound with rocks and plant a little cross. Later, they would spin yarns about him, in their homely droning fashion, making that long visit a simplicity: Once, there was a white man who passed this way. And he gave us much money and fell in love with the beautiful Mira, who bore him three strong....

Or were they making him their slave?

He dressed, went outside and was accompanied by Ogilvie and Richard to the high grass. Then he drank, sitting with his fur hat on, in the place of honor, in the only chair (a stuffed but badly bruised settee), while the others squatted around him and sat at his feet. They stole for him: a glass from the Big Drum Bar, an umbrella from a neighboring hut (it rained at noon), a hen because he asked for something to eat and they had nothing. They found his panama hat and returned it. Mira had washed his shirt in a wifely way. She but toned it on him. Calvin, with the Shell Oil can full of beer in his hand, watched her fussing over him and decided it was cruel to stay. He would escape and leave no trace. It was enough to insure and go; he had done them some good; staying would undo it. He didn't want to be their chief.

With more drink, the mood that afternoon became by turns polite and threatening, one embarrassing, the other scary, for they made no bones about demanding money from him. They put their hands out and bulged their eyes at him in a belligerent way; and they began calling him nduna, chief. Twice during the afternoon of Boxing Day, Ogilvie promised Calvin bodily harm; once, he tried with a rusty dagger. He swished at the air blindly with the weapon, his sunglasses obscuring his vision. Calvin was terrified and ran to a tree. It was dangerous to go, he thought, but it was death to stay. He decided to duck out at nightfall.

"Wait!" Calvin called out from behind the tree. He fully intended to climb it if Ogilvie's aim improved. He forced a ghastly laugh. "I have an idea. Let's all celebrate--get back, Ogilvie, put your knife down--celebrate Boxing Day at the Big Drum. I'll buy some beer, we'll get some straws--"

Ogilvie dropped his dagger.

"Go Big Drum?"

"Why not?" said Calvin. He held his breath: his eyes asked for assurance.

"Why not, why not," said Ogilvie. He kicked off his sandals and ran into his side of the hut to change his clothes. Mira did likewise. Somewhere in the hut, mice and mildew did not reach. There, Ogilvie and Mira kept their Sunday best. Ogilvie's shirt was spotless, his collar stiff, his silk tie in a thick neat knot. Mira's dress was the same, the pink wrapper with lace that in sunlight gave glimpses of her body's angles. She wore a turban around her head, a gay one, with enough pink to match the dress. Her gold earrings were large gypsy hoops that jangled and promised pleasure. Calvin noticed her eyes were hooded, almost Chinese. She held her slim neck perfectly straight, her excellent posture--from a girlhood of carrying hefty objects on her head--in marked contrast to Ogilvie's. He had carried nothing, and slouched.

Calvin's suit was in an advanced state of decay; on his sockless feet were mildewed suedes; the weaving raveled on the brim of his panama; his lenses were specked. He had not shaved for three days. His hands were clean, because he had eaten wet, rather abrasive food with them. In one trouser pocket, he had the price of three beers, no more; in the others, his remaining pairs of glasses, a toothbrush, five nicked anti-malaria tablets. His shirt was stuffed with insurance leaflets, some brochures and the details of another new account, whose quarterly premium had been extorted over the two holidays. He knew he could not flee encumbered. He left his raffia suitcase behind and, in it, a twisted tube of tooth paste, a hairy razor, one sock, some dirty laundry and a very dirty Michelin map of central and southern Africa.

There was trouble at the Big Drum when they arrived. A tall African, who had been standing outside under the eaves of the building, followed Calvin in and demanded a Boxing Day present. He put an empty glass in front of Calvin. He said, "Fill up."

"You no give him," said Mira.

Calvin wanted to calm the man. He started to fill the man's glass. Mira knocked the bottle away, spilling the beer down the front of Calvin's suit. She turned to the man and told him sharply in the vernacular to get stuffed.

And, "You noonsense," said Ogilvie to the man.

The man leaned over and spat into Mira's beer glass.

Calvin quickly exchanged glasses with Mira. He said, "He didn't mean it," hopefully.

The man growled.

"Hit him!" said Mira to Calvin. "He did spit! Beat him!"

"I couldn't do a thing like that," said Calvin. He tried to smile at the man, but his smile was that squinting grimace of a person swallowing hard: It threatened. He put his hand out in friendship. The man gripped himself about the stomach, where he guessed Calvin was going to land his punch, and he backed away and out of the bar.

"Tough guy," said Ogilvie.

Calvin nodded and then uttered the sentence he had been rehearsing since they left the little hut, "I have to pass water."

The sun was dropping. Every evening, just after sunset, there was an hour of complete darkness; it ended when the moon rose and the stars blinked on, but while it lasted, it was perfect and hid even the ground beneath one's feet. Calvin planned to flee into that darkness and hope for the best; he could crouch in it until the night bus passed. As long as he had an extra pair of glasses, he needed no busfare.

"OK," said Ogilvie. "I go with you."

Calvin could not look Ogilvie in the eye. His trick was a cheap one; Ogilvie was a sucker for theatrics. He looked instead at Mira, so lovely, here in a place where love was simple. What had he done to her? We want you, she had said; how was he to explain that it was not fair to them, that he had business?

"Listen. I am going to pass water," said Calvin. "Alone."

"Go him," said Mira to Ogilvie. It made Calvin uncomfortable to hear two foreigners speak to each other in poor English for his benefit.

"I'll be back soon," said Calvin, removing his jacket. He pointed through the beaded doorway to a black tangle of trees in which the last of the sunset was snared; an orange beam lingered. "And, to prove it, here's my jacket." He shook the jacket out and folded it on the bar. Then he took off his glasses. "And my glasses. I can't run away without glasses, ha-ha, can I?"

"Watch, too," said Ogilvie.

"Not the watch," said Calvin quickly. "But how about a nice toothbrush?" He placed that with his glasses on the jacket. He was glad to be rid of the toothbrush, a Portuguese one he had bought in Blantyre, pig's bristles set in yellow bone.

Ogilvie grunted.

"This is what we call security in the insurance game. You keep this stuff just to make sure I'm coming back. I have to come back to get it, see?" Calvin spoke, backing to the door. "And when I come back, you have to give them to me, right? So don't think you can keep them. Bartender, three more beers! I'll be right back!"

Calvin went outside and listened for the gasping sound of three bottletops being prized off. He walked to a corner of the building and turned to see if anyone had followed. None had: They trusted him. He ran. He was away, spry as Santa, pounding into black night.

He had not gone 50 feet when his full bladder began unmercifully to cramp his steps. He stopped, enclosed by darkness, to relieve himself on the road.

But when the spattering ended, the limp herring in his hand came alive, as eagerly as a dowsing rod and with all that mysterious object's conscienceless authority. It jerked him around and pointed at the little lights of the bar. And now he was marching toward the bar, stuffing the eccentric thing into his trousers; and now standing at the bar door, holding the bead strings open.

"Back!" he called. It was a shrill command, a voice that was not his own. "Get back to the village! We must rest before we feast."

"No feast," said Ogilvie, who looked surprised to see Calvin. He had put on Calvin's jacket and was smoothing the lapels with his palms. "Tomorrow it Tuesday."

"Tomorrow is Christmas," said Calvin, watching Mira begin to smile. "I speak as your chief. Now take my goddamned jacket off and hand it over."