Maiden Voyages (58 page)

Now I found myself standing before that statue from which the great Russian epic draws its name, with Peter astride his rearing horse, symbol of Russia itself, trampling a serpent representing the forces that tried to oppose his reforms. Peter, to cite Pushkin again, “by whose fateful will the city was founded by the sea, stands here aloft at the very brink of a precipice having reared up Russia with his iron curb.” I read the inscription, “To Peter the First from Catherine the Second 1782” and stood for a long time peering at the rising hooves of Peter’s horse which I felt could easily trample me if it desired.

Then I turned back into the maze of winding side streets. I made my way along the murky canals, across arching bridges, down the narrow alleyways. I told myself I should go back to the hotel and sleep, but I was being sucked in, amazed at how easily I’d fallen into step with this
city and its inhabitants. Like a Dostoyevskian hero, for this was his city as well, my emotions wound inside of me, a snail into itself, and I seemed to carry it all within, winding deeper and deeper, dragging it about.

I was like one obsessed, overcome, a fly in the radiant web. This was no linear, socially acceptably Tolstoyian world. There were no manners, no courtesies, no proprieties here. This seemed more like a city with a kind of perverse passion, a beautiful woman entrapped in vanity, the architectural equivalent of Narcissus: Leningrad staring at itself in its own canals, its beauty coming back to it over and over again.

I wandered its streets as one does through a museum, silently, with reverence. Or as you might after committing a crime, with stealth, yet feeling contemplative, planning your next move, your place to hide. I could imagine, as Pushkin had, the statue of Peter coming to life and stalking men along the ancient cobbles of this city. I walked as Raskolnikov might, plagued with guilt, or fearing you were about to meet your double—distracted, caught in your own thoughts. I saw how this could be a city to withstand a siege of nine hundred days, how it could withstand wars and progress and urban sprawl. It could just turn in on itself. It seemed I had walked into a Russian fairy tale and I could play any part—criminal, prostitute, destitute mother, coy mistress, woman alone—but not in some funky cardboard tourist attraction such as I’d done at the Ming tombs. This was all too real.

I have no idea how I came back to my hotel, but hours later I found myself there at about 6
A
.
M
., the sun still in the place where it was when I left, but I was now exhausted, spent. The desk clerk gave me a perfunctory nod that was not without a sneer, for what was I doing out on those canals at this hour? A gloomy hooker, shoes off, slumped in a chair, did not move her legs as I made my way to the elevator and I had to step over her.

I crept into my room, bones aching, and pulled down the shade. The light from the day which would not end filtered in. Then I made my way through the velvet curtains that led to the small sleeping alcove. The bed was of dark wood, with a white lace canopy. Beside the bed was a small bedstand with a light, but I didn’t even think to turn it on.
Instead, I lay down for the first time on my narrow bed and pulled the canopy around it.

I lay in the small alcove, in the small room, and on that narrow bed enclosed in lace, I felt the small body contained within my own. We lay there together for the first time, one inside the other, inside the bed, inside the alcove, the room, like those Russian dolls I carried with me as gifts, each one smaller and smaller, tucked inside the other.

(1951–)

from
TRAVELS WITH FORTUNE
:
AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE

I woke up. It was 7
A
.
M
., 4 August—the Great Day had arrived. Lesley and I drank beer with a huge breakfast, put our luggage in the car, filled the storage jar with fresh water, and went down to the dugout.

It certainly was a funny looking craft, but the patched holes hadn’t leaked overnight and the inside was dry. The dugout was twenty-five feet (including the pointed ends) by one foot six inches. The sundeck at the stern, which hid the polystyrene buoyancy packing, was five feet long and raised several inches above the curved floor of the dugout. An old iron bar which was attached to the wood plank rudder extended from the point of the stern to the back of the sundeck. The tin trunk
fitted neatly lengthwise in a less crooked part of the front end; we put the ropes and the anchor at the point of the prow and there was plenty of space in the middle for the water jar and our rucksacks. We didn’t dare admit that we had no idea how to paddle.

All the American team came to see us off. A bottle of champagne and glasses appeared, and we used the dregs to christen the dugout
La Pirogue
, meaning dugout in French. Champagne finished, farewells said, we picked up our short spear-shaped paddles, hopped aboard, waved frantically, and we were off. Although it was the middle of the rainy season, the morning was sunny and the river was calm. Lesley, acting as lookout and chief paddler, was up front perched on the old tin trunk. I was perfectly happy to find myself at the back, and was therefore in charge of the tiller, navigation, and a paddle. I sat on the sundeck with my legs outstretched; the dugout was just wide enough to fit into comfortably, and it rode so low in the water that its rim was only eight inches above the surface of the river.

Bangui disappeared from sight. Now we were on our own and I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. There was no going back, even if we wanted to we couldn’t paddle upstream against the strong current. We had left the security of Bangui and were now out in the big African world of giant trees with roots gone crazy and pale trunks against the black depths of the rain forest.

At this point the river was about a mile wide, with occasional long islands covered in forest but sandy at the ends. We paddled slowly past a fishing village set in a large clearing where men were repairing their nets and women were pounding corn outside their thatched huts. Everyone shouted greetings in French and a man in a dugout paddled over to throw some fish to us. The fish landed on the sundeck. I had considerable difficulty in holding the squirming wet fish while keeping a smiling face. I put them down by my feet and they lay still.

Suddenly ten minutes later one leapt flapping onto my legs. I yelled and jumped, the dugout skewed sideways, hit a half-submerged tree, and Lesley fell off the tin trunk into the river. The dugout straightened up and sailed merrily on as I shouted, “Stop, stop.” I pointed the front towards the river bank, but it went even faster downstream and no closer to the shore. I paddled desperately towards a bush which grew over the
river, grabbed some branches and hung on grimly. They were full of red ants which ran down onto my hands and arms and bit me furiously. Lesley swam alongside, hauled herself aboard and I let go. We shot forwards and found ourselves hopelessly entangled in some reeds along the bank. It was going to be a long way to Brazzaville.

Keeping close to the shore was fraught with problems; the currents constantly pushed us around and we got caught in all the eddying pools with little power to choose our direction. We invariably ended up in the reeds. Many trees had fallen out across the water where the river had undermined the banks, and trying to dodge their sturdy far-reaching branches made me feel as though we were on an obstacle course.

By noon our muscles were aching and we were very hungry so we decided to stop and cook the fish. The shores were densely overgrown so we aimed for the sandy tip of an island. We paddled hard, but the river was stronger and we missed the island completely. Spurred on by our hunger we paddled more fiercely towards the next, but hit the shore at an angle and shipped a lot of water. While Lesley bailed it out I went to gather wood and started the fire. Two branches balanced on forked sticks made a good grill for roasting the fish. We ate a loaf of bread and four fish, which looked like perch, were very filling and tasty, but rather full of sand. Having eaten, we rested in the shade until a long black snake slid past us and into the river, swimming with its head above the water and a rat in its mouth. It was time to move on.

We spent the afternoon mid river, where the current was much stronger, though the only danger seemed to be from the clumps of water hyacinth which came spinning downstream. They wound themselves round the rudder making steering impossible. Legend said that the hyacinth was introduced at the source of the Congo by a Belgian missionary’s wife who thought it was such a pretty flower. It was also the fastest spreading weed in the world, and could not be destroyed or used. It grew and multiplied on the surface of the water, with hairy roots, strange bulbous stems, attractive diamond-shaped leaves and delightful purple flowers. I picked some of the flowers and arranged them in my bailing can.

As clumps of hyacinth went past us, we had the impression we were going backwards. Lesley’s clock had been soaked in one of the morning’s
accidents—it stopped working and we moved into a state of timelessness (I had sold my watch in Kano). When it was nearly sunset we found a parking space between overhanging trees alongside a low cliff of sand.

With blissful ignorance we set up camp, rigging our mosquito nets over the old tent poles in the central section of the dugout which was long enough for both of us to lie in comfortably. I lay down contentedly to listen to the night noises, but the only sound was a strange, loud humming, like mosquitoes. The noise was so loud that Lesley and I had to shout to make ourselves heard. I found some mosquitoes inside my net, and some more, so I assumed the net must be torn. I sat up and started looking for the tear, but couldn’t find it. I looked again, but there were more and more mosquitoes inside. Then I realised what was happening, and I stared with fascination and horror.

The outside of the net was thickly coated in small mosquitoes, small enough to simply fold back their wings and crawl through the netting. Within five minutes I counted over three hundred mosquitoes in my net, and the number kept growing. They bit viciously and repeatedly, even stinging through a layer of cloth, so I threw on more coverings, until they couldn’t bite that deep. I didn’t dare move a muscle in case the padding slipped. It was a hot equatorial night and I became slimy with sweat. There was not a breath of wind and inside the dugout the air was still and close. Underneath all my coverings I felt claustrophobic. I wanted to scream and scream and scream. The high pitched howling of the mosquitoes made me feel twisted with loathing; my stomach felt knotted; and my fists were clenched tight. I pleaded with the night to end quickly while the sweat continued to pour off me until my bedding was soaked. I wrapped a towel around my head and face, leaving only a tiny slit for breathing. The mosquitoes crept through the crack and stung my nose, lips, tongue and all round the inside of my mouth. In exhaustion I dozed off, but I woke up choking with my head under water. A torrential rainstorm. “Lesley,” I yelled. She leapt up sleepily, overbalanced, fell in the river and was swirled away. The cliff of sand beside our parking space became waterlogged and collapsed forwards onto the dugout, which started to sink. I sat down, put my head in my hands, and began to laugh.

Lesley somehow reappeared, and in the dark we bailed out the sand
and water while the mosquitoes feasted on us. All our clothes, everything we had was wringing wet. The night seemed interminable. We huddled silently together wrapped in a sodden sleeping bag, shivering, constantly looking up to the sky for any sign that the night was ending, and praying that dawn would come soon.

The sky lightened, and the blood red sun rose slowly above the forest horizon. The horror of the night faded quickly in the beauty of the day. The howling mosquitoes had gone. We heard instead the cries of monkeys, the splash of pied kingfishers diving for fish, and the whirring wings of flocks of red and grey parrots flying overhead.

Our reverie was interrupted as a cross current flung the dugout head first into the reeds. We pushed through them to the bank, it was a good opportunity to stop, find dry firewood, make coffee, and rummage in the tin trunk for the nivaquine pills. Over the past month we had been taking one pill every day, but because there were so many mosquitoes we doubled the dose to two pills daily. At the bottom of the tin trunk we found a lovely surprise. It was a bottle of whisky which the Americans had hidden there and marked: “For use on rainy days.” Next we re-erected the tent poles, strung a washing line from the front to the back of the dugout, and hung all our clothes and gear out to dry while we floated on down the middle of the river. We passed some local fishermen in a dugout. When they caught sight of us they stood up, their mouths hanging open and their eyes bulging. I suppose we must have made a strange picture: to them it would look like nothing on earth, to me we looked rather like a floating Chinese laundry.