You Shall Know Our Velocity (8 page)

“I could do that,” I said.

“Liar,” Hand said.

“For a few years I could fish.”

“I give you six months.”

It was warm. We wanted to swim but we would have to find a beach. And we needed to move. We had a plan.

First, drive south along the coast to the Siné-Saloum Delta to see mangroves and crocodiles, then

Slip into The Gambia, visas be damned, then

Follow the River Gambja up to Georgetown, then

Swing back up, into southern Senegal and

Back in time for a late-evening flight to, ideally, Moscow. Easy.

When we got back to the hotel lobby the car was still missing. Hand asked the rental-car clerk, who he’d been joking with and was now our friend, how many wives he had.

“One,” the clerk said.

“Only one?” said Hand.

“Soon, though, more. Soon, two.” He held up a chubby finger for each wife. “Then three and four,” he said, his grin growing with each wife-finger. They both laughed. I gave him a courtesy chuckle. I’d had no idea this was that kind of country.

We watched the lobby’s clientele of white businessmen and wealthy Senegalese, watched the men who served them at the check-in desk, all in grey suits and with identical glasses. We’d been waiting an hour and a half. We wanted to be in a car and driving. To a beach, then swimming, then to a national park stocked with monkeys and crocodiles, then onward and back here by night to catch the flight out. Along the way, today, we planned the giving of about $2,000 to passersby.

Finally the car pulled up and as we got in two boys offered to wash our windows. We declined; they said they’d watch the car when we parked it. We pointed out that we were leaving, not parking. They laughed. We all laughed.

“Do we give some to them?” Hand asked.

“Let’s just move first,” I said. “Out of the city first.”

“I’ll drive.”

“No, I better first.”

We were moving, finally. It felt good to be driving. Around the square we circled four times before deciding which of the road’s twelve or so offshoots to take. Hand found an American-music station on the radio and we left the center and looked for a highway. In minutes we were lost in Dakar’s crowded narrow orange streets. The light was a dry white light. Seconds later we were driving the wrong way on a three-lane, one-way street, with dozens of crossing pedestrians in their unblemished long dashikis waving us back—back, idiots!—and then the car stalling, me with speedy elbows and much grunting executing a three-point turn in the middle of the road, a woman in front of us, an enormous tub balanced on her head, so many women with such things riding their skulls, all staring at us with amusement and disdain, then stall-start-lurch, stall-start-lurch, the honking ceaseless—

And then we were off again—away!—the highway in view ahead—so close! All of Senegal and beyond attainable, Senegal!—and with Huey Lewis on the local radio, coming through with stunning clarity: “Do You Believe in Love?”

Minutes later we were girding for death. What was this cop doing in our car? Or was he a soldier? He was taking us to the place where tourists were killed. If nuns could be killed in Colombia, we could be killed in Africa. Even in Senegal, which hadn’t been billed as particularly dangerous, at least according to the few minutes of web research we’d done at the hotel. But what did we really know? Nothing. We knew they had an airport. We were fools and now we were driving to our deaths in a rental car. Janet Jackson was tinkling from the speakers, asking what we had done for her as of late.

The cop was sitting in the backseat, leaning forward between us, directing our turnings. He was tall, about forty-five, thin, wearing a tan uniform and what looked like Foster Grants. He had been standing in the road directing traffic when he told us to stop. We did, pulled over, and through my open window Hand’s French hadn’t worked at all. Hand had tried to discern our crime, but the man could not get it through Hand’s head. Exasperated, finally he just opened the back door and got in.

Now he was directing us through alleys near the center of Dakar. One of us was going to be dragged around by his penis.

Hand and I needed to put together some sort of plan and were speaking in very speedy English, in case the man knew any, which we were fairly sure he didn’t.

“Thisiswhentheydragyouaroundbyyourpenis,” I said.

“Notfunny. Shouldwetrytobribehimnow?”

“Nonotyetwaitasec.”

This guy, he was one of the bad cops. In Senegal you weren’t supposed to trust the police.
Were you?
Or maybe that was Peru—

“Areyouwatchinghimclosely? Shouldweworryabouthimandthe bags?”

Our backpacks were both open on the backseat, and the cop was sitting between them. I glanced back to see his whole large hand resting disinterestedly inside my bag.

We passed small walled fortresses with driveways flanked by armed guards.

“Youthinkwe’regoingtothepolicestation?”

“Ihavenoidea.”

Hand was periodically turning to the man and trying more French, grasping at some explanation for this, or a plan for the future. I prayed that Hand wouldn’t blather anything stupid, though I’d never know what he was saying anyway, so I threw that worry to the wind. The man barked orders, with his big dry hand,
the one not in my bag, near my ear, pointing left or right at every turn. We seemed to be circling. It was arbitrary.

“Maybethisissomekindofgame?”

He signaled for us to pull over. I did, behind a taxi, in front of a bar. The cop pointed to a street sign, just in front of the bar. This was, we quickly realized, exactly where he had stopped us in the first place. We’d made some kind of elaborate and misshapen loop to get back here. The sign was a blue circle, bordered in red, indicating that the road prohibited the traveling on it of anything but buses and taxis.

Ah. Hand and I made exaggerated sounds of understanding and approval. “Aaaahhhh!” Hand said, again and again. We were happy to be alive. We had broken a law and that’s … oooh-kay! Now we’d pay a fine and be off. We all smiled and laughed. He had directed us around the city for twenty minutes only to bring us to the point of our crime, to demonstrate our misdeed. We laughed and nodded our heads. Stupid us! I wanted to hug the man but didn’t know local custom.

We would live.

On the road, though, the one that prohibited non-buses and taxis, were dozens of non-buses and taxis. We tried to make this point but then saw no reason to bother. We would pay a fine and move on. But no. Now he told us to go again. He hadn’t gotten out of the car. Hand started driving. And now we were scared. Now we would die.

“Nowhekillsus?”

“Whywouldhebotherwiththetrafficsignifhewasgoingtokillus?”

We drove on through five or six more turns. The roads were so narrow. Pedestrians wondered why this man was in the car with two white tourists, one with a face like a skidmark.

And suddenly we were in front of our hotel. We had told him at some point where we were staying and he was simply showing us the way.

“Merci,” we said.

We were thankful. Our hotel. That was nice.

Then he asked for money. We offered him 10,000 francs, about ten dollars. He shook his head. We offered 20,000. No, no, he said. He finally took a 1,000 franc note from our drink-holder and smiled and got out. 1,000 francs was enough. It was about a dollar-fifty. That was, apparently, the going rate. He waved good-bye and walked in the direction of where we found him.

The car stalled. The car would not start. In the center of the city center, in the dead-middle of all Dakar’s traffic, the car died. Hand jumped into the driver’s seat to start it. Nothing. The honking was first insane and soon symphonic. We pushed the car the fifty feet to the hotel. Our rental man met us in the half-circle driveway, and we parked it next to the Japanese pickup truck covered in mud.

“I am so sorry,” the rental man said. “I knew this might happen, but I hoped it would not be so soon.”

He had known the car would die. Just not in his neighborhood. Hand finished the negotiations while I stood, unmoving, staring through a third-story window where two young white girls stood, looking out, watching us. They saw me watching them watch us and they ducked, disappearing.

In the hotel room, waiting for a new car, we both fell asleep and woke at five.

“Fuck!”

“What a waste.”

“We’ve done nothing.”

No delta, no mangroves, no Gambia.

We were hungry.

We ran into the Chilean-American tennis man in the lobby—

“What’s his name again?” I whispered.

“Raymond.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey Raymond!” I said.

“Hello my friends!”

—and had a taxi take us all the six blocks to the Italian place he liked. The streets were narrow and dark. We opened the windows and the warm air touched us with coarse hands. The buildings looked like buildings I’d seen before—they had straight lines and neat corners and windows in between—but they seemed closer to something imagined and built by architects of another world. We flew beneath their roofs and I grinned to the wind, because we’d at least come this far and that meant we’d won.

The cabbie asked for the equivalent of fifty cents and I gave him ten dollars; he said thank you thank you, and that he’d wait until we were done to take us back, or anywhere else, anytime, while we stayed in his country, you friends!

The restaurant was empty but for four drunk and round Italians at the bar talking to the drunk Italian hostess.

“She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?” Raymond said. “That’s why I had to come back.”

Hand agreed. “She
is
nice. But I’m really starting to have a thing for Senegalese women.”

“You too?” said Raymond. “I know. They are superb.” Raymond raised his finger, about to make a point. “But,” he said, closing his eyes slowly and raising his chin, “they are all whores.”

“What do you mean?” Hand asked.

“You will see,” he said.

Hand and I stared at Raymond and blinked slowly. We were stuck with this man for a while, even though it was becoming obvious that he was not of our stripe. Friendships, even temporary ones like this, were based on proximity and chance, and so rarely made any sense at all. We knew, though, that we’d part with Raymond tonight and never likely see him again, so it made it bearable.

The music piped in was a short, ever-repeating loop of Dire
Straits, Pink Floyd, Eagles and
White Album
Beatles. We had fettuccine and Senegalese beer. We learned that Raymond worked in cellphones. Something involving GPS and cellphones and how, soon enough, everyone would know—for their own safety, he insisted, with a fist softly pounding the table, in a way he’d likely done a hundred times before—where everyone else in the world was, by tracking their cellphone. But again: for good not evil. For the children. For the children. For grandparents and wives.

It was the end of an epoch, and I didn’t want to be around to see it happen; we’d traded anonymity for access. I shuddered. Hand, of course, had goosebumps.

After dinner Hand asked the cabbie, who’d been waiting without radio or newspaper, to take us to see live music. “You know,” said Hand, “like Youssour N’Dour.” We’d read in the hotel lobby guidebook that Youssour N’Dour lived in Dakar and owned a club. The cabbie seemed to understand, began driving, and a few minutes later pulled up in front of an outdoor café.

“Here is the location of the music that is live?” asked Hand.

Raymond looked at Hand. Hand needed reining in.

“Yes, yes,” said the driver, waving us out of the car. “You like, you like.” We got out.

It looked fine, a French café sort of place, outdoor seating, inside warmly lit. But there was no music at all; just wrought-iron tables and a floor of white tile, a black slate bar with a bowl of Manet oranges. We walked in anyway. We’d get a drink and leave.

All eyes jumped to us. There were groups of men and groups of women. The men were tourists and the women were local. I went to the bathroom. In the cool small space, walls like a cave’s wet, and brown, I washed my hands with a small piece of round scallop-shaped soap that smelled of home.

I found Raymond and Hand at a table outside, with two women, lighter than most Senegalese, both with long braided hair. Raymond stood and gave me his chair and grabbed another for himself. The girls surveyed me briefly and looked away. I wanted to tear my face off.

There were drinks for everyone. I was introduced to the two, whose names I pretended to understand and whose limp hands I held momentarily and dropped. They looked about twenty, twenty-two. They were sisters and I felt again, as so many times with Hand and Jack, like deadweight, alone.

“They’re from Sierra Leone,” said Raymond.

“Refugees,” added Hand.

They were just short of glorious, with large dark eyes and crooked, oversized teeth. Raymond and Hand were trying to speak French with them.

“We speak little French,” the older one said. “Speak English. In Sierra Leone we speak English.”

“So you are liking it here in the Dakar?” Hand asked.

Raymond looked at him like he was nuts.

“What?” said the younger. The younger was taller.

“Dakar. Do you like it,” Raymond said, annoyed.

“Yes. It’s good.”

The older one nodded. Hand ordered more drinks and then leaned toward them. He was about to dig in.

“So what’s the situation like in Sierra Leone now? Is Charles Taylor still lurking around? I should know this, I guess, but it’s been a while since I read about it. Have you seen any of the violence around the diamond trade?”

They looked dumbfounded, turning to Raymond for reason, as if he might translate. Hand continued:

“What did you do for a living? Are you students? When did you guys leave? I mean, are your parents still there?”

The sisters looked at each other.

“What?” the older said, smiling.

“Your parents? In Sierra Leone?”

“Yes. Live there.”

“So how old are you two?” Raymond asked.

—Raymond, you’re callous and cheap.

—I’ve seen more than you.

—That means nothing.

—It means everything.