Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

The sea was not smooth, the ride was thunderous, as if the boat had been thrown and was skipping along the surface. Tick-tick-tick- whap! When the boat jumped and its flat bottom struck the hard water, my spine compressed, briefly, between expectations of flight and the boat's great desire to come down and pound the surface, to slap it like you slap a shoe on a summit table – WHACK! - - and it rose and struck again, and the water blurred by and I saw it all, the white beaches, the small cottages along the shore, the miles of rocky beach, and then I knew that all I wanted evermore was whap! whap! The boat was skipping and then there would be a larger wave, or we would hit a regular wave a certain way, and the pause between when we became airborne

and WHACK! when we landed we landed like a cannon and I clenched my teeth – BAMBAMBAM - - for the aftershocks and I looked to Hand and the old man for a commiserative glance – what the fu-fu-fuck? - but no one wanted to share. They were busy, devoting their attentions to traveling, to watching the progress of the boat-instrumental in traveling is the participation in it, the belief in progress, the witnessing of passage. And I was traveling, too, I was serious about it. In a low hard motorboat one had to be serious. Whap! There was urgency about a boat like this, riding the coast, banging against the surface-three little waves coming: BAPPITY! We were going somewhere. And not just moving, but moving quickly – past things that were moving slowly or not moving at all. WHAP! The only motion I knew was relative motion, the only speed that truly felt like speed was when I was speeding past things. WHAP! WHAP! A sudden veering of the boat.

– Hand you've saved me today, but what about later?

– I will continue to move us.

– What about tomorrow?

– I'll move us tomorrow.

We sped through the savannah and suburbs – we'd tipped the boat man and boat boy like kings – and made it to the airport by eleven. We dropped the car in front of the rental office, gave the keys and a $50 tip to the attendant, and ran into the airport. At the Air Afrique desk, the three stunning queens, again splendid in blue and yellow and green, wanted $400, in cash, for each of the tickets to Casablanca, so I put my name on more travelers checks at the money-change desk – me! me! swoop! swoop! - and came back and presented the money, two inches thick, to the eldest of the three.

"Ah, so you the big boss?" she asked.

"The what?" I said.

"The big boss! You!" she repeated.

"Yes, the big boss, this one!" said another of the women.

"But it was you who wanted of the cash," I said, in Handspeak. I was confused. I didn't want to be the big boss.

"Some man hit the big boss," said the third, gesturing at her face with loose fists.

Then they all laughed. For a long time.

Two hours in the air. I was in one row and Hand was across the way. We were both in the exit row, which he'd requested. "Extra legroom," he'd said to me and the queens, "and if anything big happens, we're right where the action is." My row was empty but Hand was sitting next to a young couple, maybe Senegalese. I had the idea that I'd try to sleep – with the ambient sounds of the cabin I figured I had a chance of rest with some kind of peace – and so set my head back and closed my eyes. But Hand was in an inquisitive mood and I couldn't avoid hearing the whole thing.

"You speak the English?" he asked.

"I do," the woman next to him said.

I opened my eyes briefly to take a look. She looked like royalty, as did her companion, who might have been her brother. They both looked like models, skin like polished teak. I closed my eyes.

"Where're you going?" Hand asked.

"Marrakesh. For medical school."

A flight attendant offered me a dinner but I declined. Hand and his new friends took theirs. As they unwrapped their meals, I almost dozed off, thinking of swimming with small biting fish.

"Is there something wrong with the food?" the woman asked Hand. She sounded confrontational, as if she'd cooked it herself.

"I'm just not that hungry. You want it?"

"Hmm. No thank you," she said, and there was a long pause. "You are American."

"Yes," Hand said.

I opened my eyes again and turned toward them.

"So you hate us," she continued, "because of our skin?" She pinched her forearm and held some of her perfectly maintained arm toward him. She sounded curious now. She really wanted to know.

"No," said Hand, laughing. You could tell he wanted to make a small joke, but decided against it.

"It is because we hear that Americans hate black people," she said. I still wondered if she was kidding. She should be kidding. I wanted her to be kidding.

"No," said Hand, "maybe a few people do, I guess. Extremists, half-wits. Like, people who breed with animals." Hand did a faint sex-with-animals gesture, as if he were holding the backside of a horse or goat. I was aghast. "You know people like this?"

She laughed. "Yes. I do."

"But no actual people. Do you hate us because of our skin?" He pulled a tent from the skin on his arm, too, which I thought was maybe overdoing it.

"No. No, no," she said, smiling.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"Kinshasa Congo. You know where this is?"

"Of course," he said. I forgot he always said this. If you asked him if he knew something, he said Of course, when regular people would just say Yes.

The woman was still smiling. Her teeth were startlingly white and without flaws or gaps. I hoped Hand wouldn't comment on them but -

"Your teeth," he said, "they are remarkable."

She thanked him.

"Did you ever hear," he continued, "about Mobuto, how he wanted to export an 'all-natural toothpaste' because the Congolese teeth were so superior to the rest of the world?"

She smiled again but shook her head. I decided the companion was her brother, because she and Hand were flirting, and the companion was staring straight ahead, saying nothing, with the air of someone who was used to her antics and stoically tolerating them. I faced forward again and closed my eyes.

"Are you married?" she asked.

Hand laughed. "No."

"So you could take an African wife?"

He exhaled in a burst. "Uh, sure. So you -"

Did he just get engaged? I had the feeling she might be messing with him. But she'd been so brutally direct that she was more likely very serious.

"I have a girlfriend," he added.

"Oh," she said, disappointed.

– You should come with us.

– I would like that.

– But it seems so complicated.

– It does.

– I want to have traveled with you and your brother, but I don't want to take the risk that we'll dislike you. I want it to have turned out well, without risking a day with you.

– That's exactly counter to your mission.

– I know. I know. But to risk a day! How can we risk a day?

"So," Hand said, changing the subject, "there is a lot of trouble there since Mobutu is dead?"

At this point I understood Hand's reasons for his fake-clumsy English, but couldn't understand why he turned it on and off. A minute ago he'd been speaking like an actual person.

"No," she said. "Not where we live."

I glanced over to her. Her brother still wasn't paying attention.

"It will be better now without Mobutu?" Hand asked.

"No, no. I don't think so. Mobuto was a [making a pounding fist gesture] strong man." Her brother now nodded in agreement. It was the first indication he'd made that he was listening. "He kept the people to behave," she said.

"So you liked Mobuto!" Hand was aghast.

"Yes," she said. "It is sad he is gone."