Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Natalie put the key in the ignition. “I don’t understand, Kees. If you agree with everyone else, with the majority, why do you need inner strength? Why is steel so important all of a sudden?”

He wiped the beads of sweat from his face with his small towel. “There’s nothing sudden about it. I’m in a much more … what’s the word?… a much more profound minority than you and I’ve been in that minority for years without daring to tell anyone. That’s why I admire you.” He stuffed his towel in the back pocket of his trousers. “I’m homosexual.”

Natalie said nothing at first. But for a moment she forgot the heat. She reached out and put her hand on Kees’s arm. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything because she couldn’t think of anything to say. She knew, at least in theory, that such a thing as homosexuality occurred but she was not aware of having met anyone before who was homosexual, or “queer,” as the unpleasant slang in Cambridge had it, though she was pretty sure some of the fellows at Jesus College were that way inclined. But until now the whole matter had been abstract, distant, for her, theoretical. She hadn’t really thought about homosexuality except in the most general, disinterested way.

“Why are you telling me this, Kees? And why now?”

“I … I thought it might give you some comfort … to know that I understand what you have been going through, that’s all. In some places in the world, homosexuality is illegal, people like me are jailed, the churches are against us, no one wants to know us.”

He wiped his lips with his hand. “You feel … you feel at times that you are all alone here in Kihara—I know, I’ve seen the way your face tightens, the way you look inside, the way the shine goes out of your eyes and they deaden. Like the other day, after you argued that Western ‘modern’ practices are as old as Maasai traditions, if not older. I should have said something before, I suppose, to comfort you. But I couldn’t … I couldn’t because it meant … it meant telling you what I’m telling you now and, with your background, with your father being what he is, doing what he does, in the church, I couldn’t be certain how you would react.”

“But now you’ve changed your mind?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been meaning to say something for days now, as the pressure on you has started to mount. But, as I say, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Now, here we are, just the two of us, with no one else around.” He wound down the window. “When you are homosexual, you can’t help but be sensitive. Remember when I snapped at Jonas, when he was talking about Amsterdam’s red-light district? Of course, he assumed I was heterosexual—and part of me hated that assumption. But I was too frightened to come clean—that’s what made me snap.” He rubbed his jaw. “I’m pretty sure that’s why Richard Sutton had such a temper—”

“You think Richard was homosexual?”

“I do, yes. I caught him looking at me in a certain way once or twice. I think he had his suspicions about me.” He smiled wryly. “Had we discovered each other, so to speak, then life here wouldn’t have been so … well, it would have been different. But then he was killed and that was that.”

Natalie turned the key in the ignition and the Land Rover’s engine sparked into life. She let out the clutch and the vehicle eased forward.

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone else what I’ve just told you, Natalie. Some of my friends back in Holland are beginning to go public—‘coming out,’ they call it—but I’m not ready, not yet.”

She nodded. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else.” She changed up and accelerated as they reached the rough track that led back to the camp. “But Kees, may I ask you a question?”

“Sure, fire away.”

“I know next to nothing about homosexuality but … could a man, can a man be both homosexual and married?”

He smiled. “Oh, yes. It’s much more common than you might think.” He drank some water from a bottle and passed it across to Natalie. “I share a flat in Amsterdam with an older man, the cello player I told you about. Hendrik is forty-nine and until five years ago he was married, with two children. But, he says now, he always knew, deep inside him, that he was … well, the way he was, is. And because of the way he was, sex with his wife tailed off, she had an affair—and what Hendrik felt most at that point was, he says, relief. Relief that he could, as he put it, escape. Of course, the children have suffered but, he says, for the first time in his life, he is content. He’s a wine merchant and didn’t want me to come on this dig, but I couldn’t turn it down.”

Kees took back the water bottle from Natalie. “So you see, I—we, Hendrik and me—know all about being in minorities, how tough it is, how you can hardly think about anything else. But at least with you it will all be over after the trial. With me it’s going to last a lifetime.”

Natalie nodded as she slowed the Land Rover, to negotiate a tiny dried stream bed. But she didn’t really hear what Kees was saying. She was thinking about when she had returned the Wellington boot to Mutevu Ndekei and found Richard Sutton standing close by, in the storeroom next to the kitchen.

“Jack! Jack? Are you there?” Natalie scarcely raised her voice. There was more than an hour to dinner, the sun was rapidly setting, and the color was beginning to go out of the day.

Jack appeared. He was holding a book. He smiled. “A visit from Lauren Bacall. This is a first. Things are looking up.”

“Yes,” she said. “Fair’s fair. You’ve been to my tent lots of times. I’ve come to see how you live. Is your tent as tidy as your plane?”

“Nowhere is as tidy as my plane,” he growled, grinning. “So no, you can’t come in. I’d be embarrassed and ashamed.”

She grinned. “That gives me an advantage immediately. As you say, things are looking up.”

She sat on one of his chairs and he sat on the other. “What’s the book?”

He showed her. “Lolita . For an hour before dinner, I like to break away from the gorge—”

“And read pornography?”

“This is great literature, Dr. Nelson. Sexy, yes, but beautifully written. Have you read it?”

She nodded.

“You think it’s pornographic?”

“I think it’s pornographic and great literature.”

“Can a book be both at the same time?”

“Another time, Jack. Why I really came here is to ask if there is any news yet on your press conference idea? Has your mother bitten the bullet?”

“No. Complete radio silence so far. Sorry.”

“Can’t you press it?”

He shook his head. “It would be counterproductive. We just wait.”

At that moment, however, there was a commotion.

“Jack! Jack!”

They both turned. Daniel was running towards them.

“Daniel, what is it?”

“Wildebeest drowning, the Mara River at Olpunyata.” He took a deep breath. “Thousands of them.”

“Oh no!” cried Jack, jumping to his feet. “Not again?”

Daniel turned on his heel, without saying any more, and ran off in the direction of the Land Rovers.

Jack threw his book into his tent.

“Jack? What’s going on?” Natalie had stood up too.

“Come with me. I’ll explain as we go. We must hurry. Leave everything, my mother will make sure all our tents are closed up. We may be some time. Come on!”

Natalie, perplexed, followed as Jack pursued Daniel towards the Land Rovers.

As they approached, she could see him throwing ropes into the backs of the vehicles, and loading large game lights, a primus stove, and several cardboard boxes.