Nuruddin Farah - Knots

“My son died,” she says. “Drowned.”

“I am very sorry,” Seamus says, looking away.

“In my husband’s lover’s pool.”

He mouths the word “Sorry,” but issues not a sound. Again, he looks away and then at his fingernails, which, Cambara notices, either have been chewed down to the flesh or are long and dirty.

“You could say that I’ve come here to grieve.”

Seamus swallows as if he had a fish bone in his throat, which he clears. He is the image of a man who wants to help but does not know how, who wants to say something but has no idea what words will express what is on his mind.

Then after a long silence, when Cambara is at a loss for words, he says, “And while grieving, while mourning…”

“I’ve vowed to recover our family property.”

“Kiin has made no mention of that.”

“What has she spoken to you about?”

“Mourning, peace, and masks,” he says, brief in his choice of words, as if tapping out his thinking in Morse.

“I hope to be of some service to the community of women among whom I find myself,” Cambara explains. “I am thrilled Kiin has asked me to make my contribution in that regard.”

Seamus behaves as if he is ill prepared for what he is about to say, and so he frets, his beady eyes dwelling on his nails, which, biting, he has cut close to the flesh and are bleeding a little. In the disquiet that is of a piece with his absentmindedness, he puts his finger in his mouth and, tasting blood, frowns.

He says, “Put plainly, you need our help.”

“That’s right.”

As the waiter returns, this time with Seamus’s order of liver-and-pancake breakfast, Seamus smiles distractedly, then she sees his right hand going up and waving with enthusiasm to someone, she presumes. Cambara wants to know whom he is greeting, notwithstanding, and spots Kiin gesticulating and finally touching her open palm to her lips in a quick dispatch of kisses to both of them before moving away from the balcony of the upstairs of the outhouse.

Cambara asks Seamus, “How is Bile?”

Seamus replies, “He is a little unwell.”

“What’s ailing him? Is he depressed?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” agrees Seamus.

Then he beckons to the waiter who is standing close by, against the wall. In accented Somali he says he would like another espresso, no sugar, please.

“Tell me in plain language what it is you need help with,” Seamus says to Cambara, “and I will see what I can do and tell you whether or not I can.”

She speaks plainly and to the point, starting from the beginning, now that she is no longer nervous in his presence and need not try to impress him. She talks animatedly about her plans: how she will be grateful for any assistance he can offer her, especially in the carving of masks. Then she explains that she has already sketched everything herself and shares with him the pencil drawings she has done on her sketch pad.

“What about the text?” he says.

Cambara gives him a synopsis of the story on which she plans to base the play. She goes on, “The version of the play I have in mind to produce is inspired by an oral parable from Ghana, first committed to paper by one Kwegyir Aggrey, famously known as Aggrey of Africa.”

Seamus falls in love with the idea, promising to lend a hand, rally round, and help all he can. But he shakes his head, adding, “I do not know if I am the right person or, more appropriately, if I am capable of carving masks, having never had any training in the art or in theater for that matter.”

“I have brought the very thing you need: sketches upon sketches, models, and how-to books for beginners interested in learning the art of puppet theater.”

“Then we are in business,” he says, and, half rising, he stretches his hand out to her, his bare beer paunch and its hirsute features distracting Cambara for a second, and they shake hands on it.

“We will have a great deal of fun doing it,” he says when his rounded bottom hits his seat, “and it will be instructive to all concerned if we manage to stage it.”

She hands the sketches across to Seamus, who takes the pad and, studying them, turns the pages after he has looked at each of them, nodding with approval. Then they hear the gentle sound of a klaxon. Seamus looks away and then at the gate and watches one of the unarmed sentries putting his eye to the peephole. The sentry opens the gate, and a vehicle is driven in. Seamus recognizes the car, and, about to end his conversation, looks at his watch and nods as though his timing has worked to perfection. It is Cambara’s turn to recognize the driver, Dajaal, who comes out of the car and exchanges greetings with the armed and unarmed sentries staffing the gates, calling each of them by name.

Dajaal joins Cambara and Seamus, bows his head in acknowledgment of her warm greeting but stands apart, his body stiffening, a little too formal for her liking, distant. All the same, she points him to a chair, offers him his choice of tea, some coffee, a glass of water, perhaps, anything. Dajaal declines and taps on his wristwatch, indicating he has no time. He eyes Seamus with a knowing grin, and when the Irishman does not get up to go with him, Dajaal says to Seamus, in Italian, “Bile is waiting.”

Still, Seamus does not move.

“We must be on our way,” Dajaal says.

Cambara says to Seamus, “Take the sketch pad with you, and let’s meet and talk further in a couple of days, by which time I will have prepared a photocopy of the text of the play.”

“So long,” Seamus says.

Dajaal urges Seamus, taking hold of his elbow, as if helping him to get to his feet. Although he does not like what Dajaal is insinuating, Seamus humors him by not saying anything. She cannot for the life of her determine what it is about these three men, each of them charming and very likable in his own way, that makes similar movie personages come to mind when she thinks of them. Walter Matthau and his cohorts in the comedies, including Jack Lemmon and another whose name she cannot recall; and of course there are Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. You think of one, you think of the others.

Cambara says, “Greetings to Bile.”

She feels that the charmed part of her is going with them as they get into the car, which Dajaal starts energetically. She wishes she could join them. In fact, she is tempted to wave to Dajaal, shout to him to stop the vehicle, go back to her rooms, put together an overnight bag in which to carry her basics, this time including a makeup kit, and then hop in at the back for no other reason perhaps than to see Bile. Yet she can’t define the source of this keenness or point her finger precisely at the fount of this longing, having met the man only the one time and not under ideal circumstances.

Just then — what a spoiler — her memory brings up a horrid scene from one of her ugly encounters with Zaak on the first day of her arrival. Trust her to remember his admonition, spoken in his inimitably cruel tone of voice, saying “Woman, grow up.” No longer waving or grinning, her hand goes down with the speed of a punctured tire.

Cursing the day she met Zaak, she withdraws into herself, reaching deep down to where she knows she is strong; she retreats into the purposeful pensive mood of a woman determined to pull herself together. And even though she goes into her rooms to put on a touch of makeup before joining Kiin and her daughters for lunch, she is so restless that she cannot bear the thought of being alone in her rooms.

She sits in the café with a book in her hand, the mobile phone in her lap eerily silent. She watches the goings-on near the gate where the armed and unarmed guards have gathered, engaging in some friendly banter. Wandering, her thoughts lead her back to the conversation she has had with Seamus, to whom she has revealed more of her sad side than she imagined she would. Maybe it has been her intention to dispel any glamour-girl status that Bile may have; who better to leak this to than a third party, in this case Seamus, who is bound to share it with him. Why, Seamus too has let it slip that Bile is a depressive.