Russell Banks - The Darling

I turned and left the hut and made my way back through the crowd to the gate, where I retraced the path back to the palisade, where Albert had first found me. No one tried to stop me from leaving the village, and no one followed me. I was alone again, and familiar to myself again. My thoughts were mine again — safe, known, fixed.

From the palisade I slowly, carefully, walked back along the path through the jungle to the riverbank, where down by the river Satterthwaite leaned against the hood of the Mercedes, smoking a cigarette and chatting with a teenaged boy, one of the crew that had pulled the car across on the raft. The raft, I saw, was halfway across the river, empty, on its way back or over, I couldn’t tell. Satterthwaite looked up and smiled pleasantly, as if he’d known I’d arrive like this, a woman alone and angry and frightened and glad to be back at the car, and he knew exactly how to make me feel better.

“You finish, Miz Hannah?” he said.

“Give me a hand,” I said and started down the steep embankment towards him. He came forward and, just as I was about to slip and fall, grabbed my arm, righting and easing me to level ground, reeling me in like a kite. “Thanks.”

“No trouble,” he said and flipped his cigarette into the brown river water and swung open the rear door of the car. As I passed him, he placed one hand over his crotch, looked down at it, then at me. I stopped, halfway into the car, halfway out, and returned his look. He said, “Anyt’ing I can do to make you a little more comf’table? Gonna take a while before Mr. Sundiata turn up. Be dark soon, y’ know.” His smooth, dry, hairless face was close to mine, and his breath smelled strongly of palm wine. I’d never been this close to him before and saw for the first time that he was a very young man, much younger than I’d thought, probably not yet twenty, and reckless and naive and dangerously curious. Dangerous to me, possibly, but definitely dangerous to himself.

I slipped past him and sat down in the welcoming shade of the leather-upholstered interior. I reached out and touched his wrist with my fingertips and said, “Can you find me something to drink? Beer would be nice. Or some of that palm wine you’ve been drinking. And some fruit to eat?”

He smiled broadly — beautiful teeth, I noticed, also for the first time. “Not a problem,” he said and went to the boy, spoke quietly to him, and handed him some coins. The boy ran along a riverside path I’d not known was there, in seconds disappearing from sight and taking the path with him. Satterthwaite strolled back to the car and said, “Want the air-conditioner? Can turn it on if you like. We got plenty of gasoline still.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” I said and closed the car door. He slid into the front, turned on the engine and the air-conditioner, then slung his arm over the seat back and looked at me with — oh my, yes — a handsome, elegantly formed, young man’s look of lust. The dark, leathery interior of the car smelled like ripe peaches. I leaned back in the seat and let the cooled air flow over me. It pleased the skin of my face and neck, my bare arms, a breath from the arctic blowing across my legs, and I drew my mud-spattered dress up a few inches to my knees and closed my eyes.

“When the boy come back wit’ the wine and fruits, I can make him go ’way.” He spoke in a voice that was barely more than a whisper, as if reluctant to wake me from my reverie.

“Fine,” I said. And after a few seconds, “When do you think Mr. Sundiata will come back?”

“Oh … not till long time. If him not come before dark, then not till mornin’.”

We both spoke very slowly, as if under water. “He won’t come looking for me?”

“Naw. He gots him a heap of fam’ly bus’ness to settle first.”

“All right, then. I can wait.”

“Me, too. Us two can wait together.” He extended his pack of cigarettes, I took one, and he lighted it with a flip of his heavy, chromium Zippo.

I cleansed my mouth with smoke, and thought, So this is how it’s going to be, married to Woodrow .

A SHARP WHISTLE woke me. I pried open my eyes and peered from the car. It was blue outside, dawn’s first light. A pale exhalation of thin mist floated above the river. Hands on hips, feet apart, Woodrow, in his explorer’s outfit, stood at the water’s edge, peeing into the river. Doctor Sundiata, I presume . He zipped up, whistled a second time, and waved impatiently at the figures of the three men and a boy sprawled sleeping on the raft drawn up on the opposite bank. They sat slowly, stood, stretched, and made ready to bring the raft over.

Satterthwaite’s first name was Richard — I’d learned it during the night. He lay snoring like a gigantic rag doll flung across the front seat of the Mercedes. I was in back, alone now, and a good thing, too. I felt poisoned — the raw palm wine we’d drunk, which had tasted so fine going down, was hammering nails into my brain, and my mouth, which last night had been so warm and wet and open, felt sewn shut and dry as parchment. The car was rank with stale cigarette smoke and vinegary fermentation — or else it would have stunk of sex. A pair of empty, cork-stoppered Coke bottles lay scattered over the floor in back. I shoved them into a far corner of the seat, then quickly buttoned and straightened my clothing, finger-combed my hair, and licked my fingertips and wet my eyelids.

Woodrow pulled open the door beside Richard and shook him awake. “Hey-hey, Satterthwaite! C’mon, wake up, boy! Time t’ leave,” he said in a rough voice. “You better not been runnin’ that air-conditioner all night long, usin’ up all the gasoline.”

“Naw, Boss, don’ worry none ’bout dat,” Richard said and started the engine. “We got plenty-plenty still!” he declared, a little too loudly. He seemed suddenly foolish, a boy in fact.

Then Woodrow was beside me in the dank interior of the car. He removed his ridiculous hat and placed it carefully on the floor, leaned his head back on the seat, and took off his eyeglasses. He closed his eyes and yawned. And said not a word.

Nor did I. Until nearly an hour had passed, and we were coming down onto the plateau, passing into the region of rubber plantations and small farm villages. As we approached one of the larger roadside settlements, Woodrow instructed Richard to pull over and find us some breakfast. Richard parked the car beside a tiny, windowless, mud-walled shop, and got out. When he disappeared inside, I turned to face Woodrow for the first time since our departure from Fuama.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said to him. “I really am. But I didn’t know what to do. Why did you ignore me for so long? And then, when I needed your help, you wouldn’t help me. You and the others. Your people.”

“I might ask you the same question.”

“What do you mean? What did I do wrong? I know I refused their… hospitality, I guess. But bush meat! Really, Woodrow! I just wasn’t ready—”

He interrupted with a long-suffering sigh. “Hannah, there’s too much to explain. Too much … difference.”

“Between you and me? No, I don’t believe that, Woodrow.”

“Not between you and me. Not that.” He paused and rubbed his jiggling knees. His face was clenched like a fist. “Too much difference … between me in the city, the person you know already … and the me back there,” he said and pointed behind us, towards his home. His origins. His ancestors. “I made a mistake, Hannah. I shouldn’t have taken you to Fuama with me, I should have come alone this time. You weren’t ready. I wasn’t ready,” he quickly added. He shook his head from side to side, sad and puzzled, and studied his hands as if seeking a solution there. “Maybe later it will be all right, but not now. I don’t know how to explain certain things. It’s very difficult to … what can I call it? It’s hard to integrate things. To mix the worlds together. I have Monrovia, the city world, and my position in the government. I have my education and my travels and all the different kinds of people I know and do business with. All that. And I have the world of Fuama, too. Both worlds are very strong inside me, Hannah. But you know nothing of Fuama, and I know everything. It’s not like that with your people. I know much of them. Remember, I have lived in your country and gone to a college there with American boys and girls. White people. No,” he said, “you did nothing wrong, Hannah darling. I did. Even before we got to Fuama, back on the road, I saw that it wouldn’t work, and I became angry with myself. But you,” he said, “no, you did precisely the right thing.”