The Miss Malawi Contest

In the last week of April, on a Saturday night in Blantyre, the Miss Malawi Contest was held. Sponsored by Ambi Creams, Ltd., a Rhodesian skin-lightener manufacturer, it was an annual affair: Every year, Miss Malawi won a cash prize and several cases of Ambi and was flown to London in June to compete against Miss Gambia, Miss Pakistan and the others for the Miss Commonwealth crown. There was always the possibility of being sent later to the Miss Universe Contest in Miami. But that eventuality was so remote it was not spoken about, and locally the contest was seen as a political struggle. It was invested with all the authority of folk tradition: "What will happen when the old man goes?" was answered with, "Who was Miss Malawi last year?" Before anyone had heard of Hastings Osbong, the girl who was crowned Miss Nyasaland Protectorate was seen being squired around Blantyre by a talkative little man with a facial tic and always in a natty suit. The white settlers took, no notice; they had their own beauty queens, elected at the sports clubs and agricultural shows, Miss Rugger and Miss Groundnut. But most Africans guessed that, at independence, Dr. Osbong, the homburg-wearing companion of Miss Nyasaland Protectorate, would be the first president. This augury confirmed, a tradition was born and many of the cabinet ministers used the Miss Malawi competition to test their influence. Entering their girlfriends in it was regarded as something like fighting a by-election in a stubbornly mute constituency.

That was the talk. It was what Major Beaglehole, the retired British army officer, told Calvin Mullet. Major Beaglehole went on to say that three former Miss Malawis worked at the eating house. To look at them was to be certain the contest was rigged. But Calvin was bored by the thought of beauty contests; Homemaker's Mutual, the insurance company he served in this remote land, had had one at its annual outing at Nantasket Beach, and calvin told Beaglehole, "I didn't come nine thousand miles to watch a beauty contest." He would have ignored the Miss Malawi Contest altogether, had Mira, his wife, not brought him an application form and asked him to fill it out for her.

"Come off it," said Calvin. "What do you want to enter that thing for?"

"Miss Malawi," Mira pouted.

It was wrong. There was not the faintest bit of African culture in it. It was a reversal, offensive to Calvin. Africans were a proud race: Why should they let themselves get involved in the publicity gimmick of a Rhodesian skin-lightener company?

"What's the point? African countries shouldn't have beauty contests. It's not right. It's not"--not traditional, he thought. She didn't know the word. He said, "No good."

"Is good," said Mira.

"No," said Calvin. "You don't want to be Miss Malawi."

"Do," said Mira.

"Mullet, you're talking like a black," said Major Beaglehole. "Of course, it's a fiddle, everyone knows that. Osbong's tarty little chit won it back in Sixty-three. It's always the same, but that's no reason to talk like a black."

"I'll talk the way I want," said Calvin.

"I won't have my wife entering any beauty contests, and that's that."

"Don't you listen to him," said Bailey to Mira. "I always say, just having them up there with their bums showing in their cute little frocks is good for trade." Bailey was the manageress of the combined boardinghouse-whorehouse where they lived.

"It's a waste of time," said Calvin.

"You're a fine one to talk about wasting time," said Bailey. "Stop nattering and fill up the form. There's a love."

Grumbling, Calvin filled in the application and pinned a 50-osbong note to it as a deposit. Only then, delaying and snapping the bill, did he notice that the dark face in the watermark was Osbong's.

Calvin was angry, because in spite of what everyone said about the contest, he was sure Mira could win. The winners of beauty contests were driven foolish and they always seemed to end badly, as whorish starlets or hostesses in night clubs. In Malawi, their pictures were used on the Ambi posters.

Mira received the application with a smile. She flung her arms around Calvin's neck and kissed him. She was wearing one of her flowered head scarves and a toga of a silken sari drawn close to her body. One arm jangled with a whole sleeve of gold bracelets. In her, jungle genes were threaded on black necklaces of Central African chromosomes. She was hard and slim, her mouse ears were slightly larger than most women's ears, or perhaps seemed so because they were not hidden by hair. She had a long graceful neck and hooded slanting eyes; she was not black but a deep brown. From the waist up, she was gently molded, like the handle of a dagger; her breasts were small. Her legs were long for her size and straight as two stiletto blades. She was Calvin's blackbird, his cat; she had sharp little teeth.

When she was dressed in smooth silk, the soft fabric slipping over her curves, Calvin desired her. He tantalized himself by sliding his hand under the silk sheath and caressing the flesh of her gloriously firm edges, so many angles and surprises. It verged on the perverse. She obliged Calving by dressing this way, baited him by draping her bareness, which, masked, provoked him, drove him wild. He groped up her thigh. She showed her teeth and helped his hand.

She was pretty, and though he had not married her for that (he would have settled for the company of her simple presence), it was welcome. She had her secrets, but her loveliness was unhidden. Of this, Calvin was positive. A week after their marriage, they had had a little quarrel about washing. She washed a great deal; Calvin did not. He had washed and shaved for the wedding and had glued his hair down, but after that, he lost interest. He was not trying to impress anyone. He said that like an African, he was happy dirty: Filth relaxed him. There was something cozy and familiar in an undershirt that had been worn for a week or two. Mira told him to keep clean; she gave him soap. Calvin was hurt. And scared: Obsessive washing reminded him unpleasantly of his first wife. Now Mira, black Mira, whom he had brought from a little dorp in Central Africa, was starting the same business. Calvin said it was stupid to spend so much time under a dripping barrel suspended in the air while Jarvis Moore lugged buckets of hot water up a ladder, attempting to keep the punctured barrel filled. Mira caught at the word stupid and cried. But this was not the end of it. That night, she lay flat on the bed; Calvin bent over and spread his hands on her, one hand on the full boneless dumpling of a breast, the other fishing in the fuzzy nave of her thighs. He was first a blind man lightly translating the body's braille; then, with desire, an organist feeling for chords. Calvin crouched to pick her open with a kiss.

"Peeg!"

She jackknifed and slapped his face.

Calvin fled from the room, tumescent, and walked the streets, searching for a girl to pick up. The eating-house bar was empty. Calvin walked down St. Andrews Street to Osbong, where he found the bars closed and shuttered. A girl in an alley off Henderson Street clicked her teeth at him. Calvin stopped and went closer to her. She was drunk, she held his sleeve and pursed her lips, trying to kiss. Calvin pulled away and ran up to Victoria Street, where at Barclay's Bank and Kandodo Supermarket, night watchmen huddled around fires or were slung in charpoys in the doorways with bedclothes of newspapers. Two blocks up Victoria, a pack of Youth Wingers appeared, armed with truncheons and knobkerries, and started toward Calvin. Calvin ducked down Fotheringham Road and saw several girls dispersing. He followed one, then another, back down to Osbong, avoiding the Youth Wingers, and had almost reached Agnello's building and the junction when he saw a figure he first took to be a lithe, young Sikh boy in a sarong. It was a girl. Calvin followed, led on by the busy bobbing of her likely bum. In Chinyanja, there was a specific word of eight thumping syllables for the rotating movement of a woman's bottom when she walked. The girl moved swiftly, 16 syllables to a step, and had almost reached the clock tower when Calvin, drawing close to her and on the point of making a kissing sound--the way one calls a cat: All the girls responded to it--and saying muli bwanji, saw the girl's face in the helpful blaze of a watchman's fire: Mira, yes.

So pretty, even from the back, in the dark, late at night, as a stranger. They hugged and brushed lips; jungle lovers. Mira plunged her hand down the top of his trousers and held his quickening shaft. She steered him back to the boardinghouse and, much later, she bathed him, soaping him by lantern light in Beaglehole's claw-foot bathtub.

• • •

"Lays and german!" called the master of ceremonies on the stage of the Rainbow Theater, in a slurring attempt at an American accent. "Wid yer permission, lays and german, lemme interduce dese luffly, luffly chicks!"

They were under the Ambi banner Look Lovelier, Look Lighter--AMBI is for you. The Ismailian brothel had sent a very thin one; the Groundnut Marketing Board had sent two; the Malawi News, one of its girl reporters; the League of Malawi Women, one; and two each from the Good-morning Panwallah, the Zambesi Bar, the New Safari Drink House, the Victoria Club and the High Life. There were three (Grace, Abby, Ameena) from Auntie Zeeba's Eating House. Five in special finery (feathered hats, trim dresses and long white gloves) were unsponsored: These were assumed to be the cabinet ministers' girlfriends. There was Mira in silk. And there was another.

"Look at that," Major Beaglehole said. "A ruddy Hottentot."

She was a fat black woman with streaks of red ocher on her face. She wore a leopardskin, a necklace of yellow lion fangs and a civet-cat peruke. Strings of little bells were tied around her ankles and wrists. She stamped and made swimming movements with her arms, sounding these bells. She was armed, a quiver of arrows at her back, a bow slung over her shoulder. In her hand was a limber spear, a trident, popular with the lakeshore tribes. A carving knife with a beaded handle and a stone hatchet were crammed into her belt. She was introduced as Zanama.

Each girl, on being presented by the master of ceremonies, had winked or salaciously adjusted her dress. Mira had smiled toward Calvin. Zanama had called out in a coarse village voice; a whole section of the audience had replied. Encouraged, Zanama hopped to the center of the stage, shook her bells and waved her spear. Calvin thought she might nock an arrow and zing it into the audience: He slumped down in his seat. But no arrow was shot. The master of ceremonies persuaded Zanama to return to her place in line. She did so, scowling.

Only Mira and Zanama appeared to be their natural color; Mira was chocolate, Zanama, molasses. The rest, rubbed with Ambi, were shiny-faced in hues of glowing blue, the difference in shade due to the strength of lightening cream each had used--Ambi-Regular, Ambi-Extra or Ambi-Special. All the girls' arms were brown and all their mouths were clowny with lipstick.

"Les give da judges time to look dese luffly chicks over and pick da nex Miss Malawi," said the master of ceremonies.

"Now a little music to brighten things up!"

A penny-whistle band from Johannesburg, led by a man named Spokes (a short tsotsi in a porkpie hat), played two numbers. Spokes danced an extravagant kwela.

Elvis Masooka followed with Jailhouse Rock and Oobie Doobie, accompanying himself on a cracked guitar.

Jim Malinki sang a pious rendition of This World Is Not My Home.

The girls' choir from the Stella Maris Mission harmonized, to the tune of Santa Lucia, the Hastings Osbong song; they finished up with Zonse Zimene Za H. K. Osbong--Everything Belongs to H. K. Osbong. Dr. O's picture was right above the Ambi sign and tinted blue, giving credence to Jarvis Moore's charge that the president used it.

A judge in a white smock went among the girls at the back of the stage with a tape measure. He shouted numbers to a serious-faced judge, who jotted them clown in a notebook. Another judge examined the girls with a magnifying glass (upstaging the girls' choir) when the measuring judge was finished.

Calvin sat between Major Beaglehole and Bailey. Jack Mavity had also come along; he sat next to Bailey with two of his children. Mavity said, "You see that magnifying glass? Well, the Africans like shiny objects like that."

Major Beaglehole looked at Zanama and said, "Makes me think of a rogue elephant." Bailey coughed and ate from a parcel in her lap, and coughed. Calvin chain-smoked. He was embarrassed on behalf of every performer and contestant; he tried to avert his eyes. There was something unnatural about it. It was wrong: He had known that as soon as Mira had shown him the application headed Ambi Beauty Search. He felt discomfort; he wanted to leave.

One perception held him. It dawned on him that he was watching a minstrel show in reverse, a negative rather than a photograph. Instead of Al Jolson in blackface, popping his eyes and crooning. "Mandy, is there a minister handy?," black people wearing skin lightener were cavorting around, lampooning bwanas, memsahibs and white showgirls. They weren't making asses of themselves: They were reacting against years of mockery and insult. Calvin had never seen Al Jolson, but he had seen the Hudson Baptist Men's Club dressed as darkies--that was their word, darkies--balling the jack in 1951 at a church gala. It made his flesh creep to recall that sorry decade, when dreary people tried to strut and middleaged men in striped golliwogg jackets tipped paper derbies and said, "Hello, Mistah Bones! Who was dat lady I seen you wid last night?"

"That was no bloody lady--that was my wife!" was the reply by Spokes, 15 years later on the stage of the Rainbow Theater in Blantyre, Malawi, Central Africa. Time had stood still. There were the Ambi-whitened girls instead of the burnt-cork-blackened men; there were Elvis Masooka, Jim Malinki and even his own wife, and it was still the Fifties. That other era sputtered back in gray haphazard recollection like an old TV warming up: the Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Julius La Rosa, Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town," Dave Garroway, all the cool hepcats in Hudson, Massachusetts, barfing on a six-pack of Carlings and listening to Symphony Sid. It was the Miss Malawi Contest in Blantyre; but it was also the Sunday-afternoon variety show on a Boston TV: Community Opticians, with your genial host, Gene Jones, singing, "Star of the day, who will it be...." Talent time in snow flurries on a 12-inch Muntz.

Fond memories at the age of 30, effortless reminiscences. Africa permitted such insights. No one could be nostalgic in America; the country was not designed for it: With gusto, the past was erased. But here in Malawi, the world had not turned. Here for Calvin were ghostly voices and signature tunes: The Green Hornet; Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons; Mr. and Mrs. North; The Shadow, Lamont Cranston; The Quiz Kids; 20 Mule Team Borax; Quaker Oats Shot from Guns; Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy; Tonto; the Goldbergs; and The Great Gildersleeve. For 12 cents at the Hudson Roxy, you could see Jane Russell (a torn blouse, a haystack) in The Outlaw, Edmond O'Brien in The Barefoot Contessa, Jane Wyman (whatever happened to her?); Lex Barker was Tarzan. Those queer gray years, you were a liberal if you had seen The Jackie Robinson Story, and there were minstrel shows, millions and millions of ("Toot-Toot-Tootsie, Goodbye ...") minstrel shows.

"Here is another musical sandwich to munch on. So gird up your loins and let this squeeze box knock you off your feet!"

Onstage, out of the Rainbow wings, came a nervous accordionist, a gangling man with a bad haircut. His black face was neutralized with Ambi-Extra. On Community Opticians, he would have said, "I'm a bus boy at the Chelsea Waldorf, Gene--been playing this here thing since I was ten-eleven years old--I guess you might say I'm waiting for my big break." But the gangling man with the bad haircut, when asked, "What are you gonna play for us?," said nothing in reply. He shook his bulky instrument, felt for the keys and chords and, swaying in the way all the accordionists used to, played--My God! thought Calvin, am I dreaming this?--Lady of Spain.

Singing Old Black Joe and Swanee (continued on page 206) Miss Malawi Contest (continued from page 112) River, the Hudson Baptist Men's Club must have known how ludicrous a spectacle they were, and so, probably, had Amos 'n' Andy known: "Let's unlax, Brother Andy. Get dose feet up on de desk and unlax yo'self till Kingfish come from de Mystic Knights of de Sea Lodge." But did they know, up on the Rainbow stage--Elvis, Jim, the Ambi girls, the Lady of Spain accordion player, his wife ... his wife? For their sakes, and his own peace of mind, Calvin fervently hoped they did and that theirs was mockery in the same manner, getting even with their white-faced minstrel show, a form of revolt. It was awful to consider that other thought, that if they believed in the mimicry of their names and masks, it was a sad, terrible dereliction.

A dereliction, that is, for everyone except Zanama. She had no business there. She stuck out like a sore thumb. She was not trying to be white, she was not mocking: Her black integrity did not permit her to play along with the others. If she had a counterpart at home in Hudson, it was the white soprano from the church choir who every year sang In My Sweet Little Alice Blue Gown and reminded those present that there existed under all that war paint a Jewless master race. But what about Zanama?

The music stopped.

"What in bloody hell is going on up there?" grumbled Mavity.

The judges were at a small table, doing arithmetic and comparing sums. Most of the girls smiled through running Ambi. Zanama beetled her ocher brows and looked fierce.

"Will they announce the winner right here?" Calvin ask d.

"Always do," said Bailey. She ate from the parcel in her lap, licked her fingers and said, "But they take their time about it."

"I don't know why I came here," said Major Beaglehole.

"You could have stayed back at the bar," said Calvin. "No one forced you to come."

"What's that?" Major Beaglehole squinted at Calvin.

Calvin allowed his lips to be read.

"I meant to Alrica," said Major Beaglehole.

"Ain't it beastly," said Bailey.

"They wear bandages on their legs," said Mavity. "And there ain't a thing-wrong with them."

"The sods." said Bailey. She coughed.

"I'm the one who should wear bandages," said Mavity.

"This place," Major Beaglehole looked around and winced, "ponks."

"Like a bleeding rubbish dump," said Bailey.

"It?" Calvin looked at Bailey.

"Stinks," said Bailey.

The doors of the theater were shut, there were no fans, every seat was taken. The body odor was overpowering, an acidic old fruit smell, which, taken in a whiff, groped into the nose and burned; humid and dark, the noxious air sat on them. But Calvin was sure that it was the fact that he was sitting between Bailey and Beaglehole that occasioned the comment. He knew he smelled worse than anyone in the place.

"Then you shouldn't have come," said Calvin. He meant to Africa.

The audience was in milling disarray. People had left their seats. There was a general hubbub, some were singing Oobie Doobie; others, This World Is Not My Home. At Calvin's feet, a woman in a knitted stocking cap suckled a kicking infant; other babies, bound up and slung like haversacks on their mothers, yowled. Groups of angry boys slouched around the theater, blowing through paper cones.

"Lays----"

The drone of voices, the shuffling of feet, the yip-yip of laughter, the stray shouts, all these mob noises drowned out the master of ceremonies.

"Lays and german----"

The woman huddled on the floor at Calvin's feet stopped suckling her child, turned him over her knee and clapped him on the back.

"Your attention, please."

But most of the attention was focused on Zanama, who, mumbling aboriginal static, a rising and falling "Wah-wah-wah," rocked on her heels, swelling forward and back. Calvin expected a war whoop, some kind of scream. But hers was a sullen menace and all the more scary for the suspense it created. At first, Calvin had thought she was smiling; now he knew it was a snarl, it had never been anything else.

"Great pleasure to announce da winner of dis year's Miss Malawi Contest----"

The master of ceremonies glanced down at the piece of paper in his hand. His expression was that of the man who, after blowing his nose, examines the wadded contents of his hanky before folding it and putting it into his pocket--satisfied but slightly apprehensive. He took a breath and spoke. The name was not heard.

An arrow thwacked a roof beam. Another. Another.

With the first arrow, half a dozen girls fled on wobbly heels, and the second sent Elvis Masooka and the accordion player scurrying for their instruments. Others pushed toward the exit. The third arrow stopped the master of ceremonies.

Zanama threw down her bow and, with her spear tip jabbing at the m.c.'s bow tie, snatched the hand mike from him and cried, "Black! Black! Black! I am the winner!"

Calvin gnawed his thumbs.

"Call the police," said Bailey, gathering up her parcel of fried potatoes. "Get a constable!"

"It's the Hottentot," muttered Major Beaglehole. Even with the plug of his hearing aid torn out, he heard the moan of the mob tickling the dead drums in his ears. He winced.

"Why doesn't Mira----" Calvin began. He was drowned out by Zanama shouting into the mike.

"Bloody nonsense! This is all lubbish! I am an African. I am fat and strong! I have spaces between my teeth! I am black, black!"

For seconds, while Zanama shouted, Calvin was on her side. It was only right. She was black, she should win. He had been wrong about the others. They weren't mocking; they believed in Ambi and Elvis and pale hourglass loveliness with ironed hair and big boobs. They needed to be prodded into sense with a spear. Calvin would have sat in his seat, except that Zanama was beginning to terrorize the contestants, one of whom was his wife. Zanama slashed with her knife.

Calvin vaulted onto the stage and took Mira's hand and led her out of the theater. At the same time, Mavity passed one of his yellow children to Major Beaglehole and, holding the other in his arms like a football, retreated through the crowd with his head down.

The rest of the contestants, the master of ceremonies and all the performers left. Zanama had the stage to herself. She continued speaking. She proclaimed herself winner in the name of Brother Jaja and all that was black. She said, in a loud voice, that Africans were here to stay. The disruption was enjoyed by everyone, as if, after being deprived of such pleasure for so long, at last they were allowed it, the quaint activity of furious hollerings. It went on much longer than anyone expected. The police, it turned out, were somewhere else.