Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [8]
The turkey that had been roosting on the kitchen wall scuttled out into the garden gobbling her displeasure.
“Wood’s wet,” I explained.
K came over and crouched in front of the fire. He grasped a hot coil in his fingers and moved it, not quickly, but thoughtfully, as if arranging something artistically, to the front of the fire, then he pulled the branches to one side and blew gently over the wood. In a few moments a red-yellow flame lapped the bottom of the kettle.
“Wet wood’s not a problem,” said K. “Fire needs to breathe.”
“Right.”
“You can burn water grass if you just let the air in.”
Perhaps I didn’t look convinced because K said, “In Bangladesh, the curry munchers burn cowshit.”
“Do they?” I said.
I brought the tray into the shade of the tamarind and K followed me from the kitchen. We sat opposite each other on camp chairs and the dogs picked their targets and scrambled up onto our laps.
“They said you’d be rained out by now,” I said, pouring two cups of tea and handing one over to K.
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“At the lodge. We were there for a drink last night.”
K smiled and rubbed his lips together. “Ja, ja,” he said. “Well it’s bloody sticky, but I could get through.” He drank half the cup down and then sighed, as if the tea had fulfilled some thirst deeper than anything physical. Then he turned back to me and asked, “You don’t live here anymore, do you? Where do you live now?”
“America.”
K grunted, as if absorbing this information, then he said, “What do they call their munts over there?”
“You mean African Americans?”
“No, I mean your original munts.”
“Native Americans,” I said.
K laughed.
I frowned.
“But they still shot them in the back the first chance they got.”
“Who?”
“The wazungu. It doesn’t matter what they call them, they still shot them in the back and shoved them in compounds.”
“Reservations.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s complicated,” I agreed.
“No, it’s not.”
I lit a cigarette.
“They hide behind their bullshit by calling it something else, but bullshit still smells like bullshit to me.”
I scratched the crop of mosquito bites that was flourishing on my ankles.
“There’s bad malaria here,” K warned.
“I know.”
“You should eat dried pawpaw seeds. Works better than anything for most hu-hoos. Even malaria.”
“Really?” I said.
K blinked at me, then he suddenly leaned forward and, sweeping aside the formalities of small talk, seized my finger and led it to a place just under the sharp rise of his right cheekbone. “Feel that? Can you feel that?”
I couldn’t feel anything, but I thought it impolite not to say yes.
K tightened his grip on the end of my finger. In the humidity, K’s skin was slick with a light film of sweat. He had an organic, unadulterated smell, not at all unpleasant, but slightly acid-sweet, like salted tomatoes.
“Two years ago I started getting these moving, jumping lumps under my skin,” K continued, pressing my finger deeper into his flesh. “There. See?”
I nodded.
“What do you think that is?”
I shook my head and reclaimed my finger. “Putsis?” I ventured, thinking of the eggs laid under the skin by flies in the rainy season that emerge later as erupting maggots.
K shook his head and pressed his lips together victoriously. “No.”
“Worms?”
“Wrong again,” said K.
“Pimple,” I said. “I don’t know. Boil, welt, carbuncle, locust.”
K stared at me unsmiling, like a teacher waiting for an errant student to settle down before delivering the lesson of the day. He said, “It was a couple of years ago. I had just rescued this kitten—it was the rainy season and you know how these poor bloody kittens just wash up on the side of the road like drowned rats? Well, I found this kitten and brought it home and about a week later, these bumps start appearing everywhere. I thought I’d caught worms off the kitten, so I ate pawpaw seeds. No result. So I tried deworming pills Nothing. Except I got the trots. So then I soaked both of us in dog dip and I bloody nearly killed the poor kitten, but these lumps were still hassling me. They were here”—K pointed to his face