by N. A. Hayes
(02/05/03)

Marie was absentmindedly reading a letter as she lit a cigarette. I spooned Nescafe into a cup and filled it with lukewarm water from the kettle. The letter was probably another from her father begging her, Marie, come home, he is just using you.

It was true, but not the way her father might have thought. Once we had married, I could not be forced to leave France, and I could go to university. She knew I was using her, but she was using me. I was exotic and gave drama to her bourgeois life. More importantly, I pissed off her father.

He would implore her in his letters to leave me before she was filled with half-breed babies. We would laugh. I had never done more than kiss her lips. I had never done more than that with any woman.

As I sat down, she slipped me the letter. Instead of her father's illegible scrawl, it was meticulous Ivoirian script. It was from Mr. N'zrama, a second cousin from my mother's village. I absentmindedly scanned through the Christian banalities, but found myself choked. N'guessan Koffi has died. The village rumor is he had AIDS, but the doctors have not confirmed it. I believe he wasted away from sorrow. I seized Marie's cigarette and deeply inhaled. She took my other hand sympathetically. I had always tested negative and taken care of myself, and him. How did this happen?

Three years in France and I had not often thought of Koffi. I had loved him best but he had no place in my life now.

I refolded the letter and started to slip it into the envelope. A dirty leather band adorned with a shell fell out. It had been three years but I remembered it.

The summer I first met him was nothing spectacular. My cousins from the village met me where the bush taxi stopped. Big smiles. Big hugs. I had brought some gin and wine for my uncles and cousins, and pagne cloth for my aunts. We drank and gorged ourselves on plantain foutou and peanut sauce.

They told me all the family news and village gossip, most of which had to do with the shopkeeper's nephew, Koffi. He was pleasant enough, they said, but preferred to be alone. As a result, rumors abounded. Solitude was a concept they did not understand. He never played foosball on the rickety table in the church courtyard, or asked to join the soccer game played each night outside the store. He never refused an invitation but while the others bragged and passed the calabash, he poured libations to the local gods, drank his palm wine, and said nothing. Eventually he was no longer invited. Everyone felt a mild discomfort with his silence, they said. I was intrigued.

When I finally ran into him, I was pleasantly surprised by the handsome stranger with his simple shell necklace. I bought two Fantas and offered one to him. We sat on the cement stoop in front of the store as a soccer game began. His uncle napped nearby on a plastic mat. He smiled sweetly as he sipped his drink. He was mostly silent, answering my questions as briefly as possible. This was endearing to me, not discomforting. In fact, it was attractive considering the bravado of most men. Soon, I found myself at the boutique quite a lot. I learned he, too, was an outsider. Koffi had come to this village from his own to take care of his uncle.

Now and then I would play football with the toned farm boys. Back at home, whenever I played football after school I would go home, wait until mom left for the night, and masturbate into old newsprint. The young men drove me crazy and I did not know what else to do. It would be another six months before I discovered Rue de Princess in Abidjan. There I would learn how to spot the other boys who were eager, and the Europeans willing to pay to get me off. In the village football games, I devoted my energies to driving the semi-deflated pink ball past the opposing team. My cousins cheered my ferocity, but after these games I felt empty and anxious.

Koffi would watch when I played and give me a Sprite or a Fanta if I came to visit afterwards. One day when his uncle had left to buy stock for the boutique, Koffi brought me a bottled Gin Tonic instead and asked if I wanted to have dinner with him. I smiled and he ushered me into the back of the store where he and his uncle lived.

I nursed the Gin Tonic as he made omelets on a rusty gas stove. Dinner was quiet except for the occasional squirt of vinegar on the eggs. He was more nervous than usual and could not look me in the eye. I asked what was wrong and moved my chair beside him.

"Don't know," he said, and kept looking down.

I followed his eyes and saw his erection. Emboldened by the booze, I reached into his pants and began to stroke. His breath was deep and sultry as I ran my hand over his silky cock. He came quickly and suddenly pressed his thick lips into mine. He looked into my eyes, and we realized we were the same.

Of course, he rarely spoke -- he had no language for it. Homosexuality was a hobgoblin of European decadence. It had no context in the village. Nothing changed between us after that night except that I realized we were bound together.

After I returned home to Abidjan, his uncle died. Koffi gave the boutique to the chief and asked for a plot of land. The village thought he was a fool, but Koffi was a creature of the earth. He started to farm and sacrificed to the fetish more often.

The next summer when I went back, I stayed with him, much to my family's confusion. The discomfort they felt around Koffi became reason to speculate about his witchcraft. However, it was easy for me to ignore my family since Koffi enjoyed learning all of the things I had learned by then on Rue de Princess.

He wore the necklace the last time I made love to him. I was supposed to leave the next day. He asked me to stay one more night as I came inside him. I had to go to Abidjan. I was leaving for France in three days and wanted to see my mother before I left. He whispered in my ear, "I'll waste away without you. If you leave, I'll go to the fields in the morning when the spirits come out."

On the road the next morning, a pig stopped in the middle of the narrow path. Its hulk quivered but did not move when the green truck's driver honked the horn. The passengers around me in the bed yelled and hit the cabin's window. The driver swore.

I looked at my watch and saw that I would not make the bus to Abidjan. Koffi would be pleased. I took my bag and walked to the front of the cab. The driver reluctantly gave me back my money after I yelled at him in Jula. I would stay with Koffi, and catch the bus tomorrow morning.

Koffi sat on the stoop, dressed for the fields with his daba slung over his shoulder. The children filled the streets. School was starting. Five stopped to stare. They were always amazed to see me.

"Blofue," he said smiling. Blofue -- "The white." By now, the whole village called me this, but none with so much affection as Koffi. The local gossip was my mother had slept with a French soldier. She probably had, at some point. She had slept with many men since she moved to Abidjan. This was how she lived, paid for my schooling, and sent me back to her village during the summer.

Koffi made a mark in the dirt with his toe, and told the children to go to the boutique and get a Sprite and bottle of Val Pierre. I gave them the thousand franc note that the driver had returned to me. He effaced the mark with the daba. The children ran off and then came back with the Sprite and wine.

In the distance, the truck backfired and drove away. I took a chair from Mr. N'zrama's courtyard as Koffi rinsed out two stainless steel cups. He asked me if I had seen the waning fingernail moon last night. I smiled, and said "No." I had been busy with more important things. I mixed the thick Val Pierre and Sprite, as he held the cups.

I poured a libation from the wine bottle, as I knew he wanted me to. Two small puddles formed on the dry earth. "The spirits aren't thirsty," Koffi said.

In the evening, Mr. N'zrama sent his daughter to invite us to eat. We brought back his chair and also brought over some wine. He was sitting under his thatched happatom with his Bible in his lap. His wife brought boiled yams and tomato sauce. We chattered and gossiped as we ate. Koffi motioned with a piece of yam to his courtyard. A pregnant speckled goat was lapping at our libation. "The spirits aren't thirsty but the goats are." He launched the morsel in his hand at the goat. It hit her on the flank and she ran away, showering the yard with fecal marbles.

Mr. N'zrama wiped his hands on his shirt and placed a Bible on the table. "Have you ever read this?"

"Parts," I said diplomatically.

"You've learned so much, but not enough. You live in the city, and know many things. This is all we have, and still some don't know." He looked at me and continued. "Some even sacrifice at the fetish."

I feigned shock. I knew Koffi was upset. He lived in a world of spirits. Last night he had given a liter of palm wine to the fetish so I might have a good voyage. N'zrama just smiled and popped a piece of yam into his mouth.

After we went back to Koffi's house, I simply held him in bed. The warmth from his body filled me. I kissed the back of his neck, trailing the edge of the necklace with my fingers as I often did. I could not see the moon, but starlight trickled through the shutters. I studied Koffi in the faint light. It seemed like I could see our shared history in his deep face, but I knew we were too different to have any kind of future. I held him as tightly as I could.

Marie was sitting on the stairs to our apartment when I got back from class at the Femis. She was wearing Koffi's necklace.

She took a drag on her cigarette and let the smoke roll out as she spoke. "Are you going out tonight? They say the spirits come out on Fridays. We should stay in." The voice was still Marie's but something was different. I couldn't put my finger on it. She looked ashen, so I decided to stay. We walked up to our apartment and she said, "We should have a drink." Then I heard it, the strange but familiar accent. She brought a bottle of white from the kitchen and poured us two glasses. I started to speak but stopped short when she began to pour wine all over the floor.

"It is interesting, Blofue. Yes?"

"Koffi? Is it you?" I whispered.

"The ancestors are not even thirsty here." The wine pooled on the floor, with no ground to absorb it and no fetish to accept the offering. I downed my glass. Marie filled my mouth with hers. The dry white I had been drinking was replaced with the sickly sweet taste of palm wine. "Blofue, I missed you," she said in Koffi's voice, undoing my pants.

I kissed her neck. It smelled of sweat and fertile red soil. Marie took me in her arms. I could only feel Koffi.

When I awoke, Marie was laying beside me, smoking. "We must have had a lot to drink," she said. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was gaunt. "I don't know what we did but I hope in nine months it will make Papa mad." I moved to kiss her neck but the necklace had fallen off. I kissed her cheek instead.

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