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  Text originally published in 1933 under the same title.

  © Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  AN AMERICAN VISITOR

  BY

  JOYCE CARY

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

  CHAPTER 1 5

  CHAPTER 2 13

  CHAPTER 3 21

  CHAPTER 4 24

  CHAPTER 5 29

  CHAPTER 6 37

  CHAPTER 7 47

  CHAPTER 8 54

  CHAPTER 9 64

  CHAPTER 10 76

  CHAPTER 11 92

  CHAPTER 12 100

  CHAPTER 13 109

  CHAPTER 14 111

  CHAPTER 15 118

  CHAPTER 16 128

  CHAPTER 17 143

  CHAPTER 18 152

  CHAPTER 19 159

  CHAPTER 20 178

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 185

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘But what is Hasluck doing with the miners? What does she want if she isn’t a miner or a trader or a teacher or a missionary?’

  ‘Just walking.’

  ‘All the whites are like that—a homeless lot wandering about and never satisfied with anything.’ This was from a gloomy-looking horse-boy at the end of the line. He had been discharged for eating his horse’s rations.

  ‘And that is because they are damned,’ said an old brown gentleman in a turban. He was darning a green silk stocking with brown wool. ‘They do not know the peace of God because they are idolators and heathen. They have set their hearts on the vanities of this world-on wealth and power and indulgence,’ and he was about to give the assembly pious edification for the third time in half an hour when he was interrupted by a headman of carriers called Henry with a remark that everybody knew where Hasluck had placed her heart; and he added a suggestion so obscene and droll that even the old mallam laughed.

  Eight of the worst blackguards in Gwanki were sitting in a row waiting for the white woman to come out of her tent. Since two o’clock through the hottest hours of the day they had been calling every minute or two.

  ‘Mam, you wanta cook.’

  ‘You wanta boy, mam.’

  ‘Missy Mahrie, this is Henry who ask you—you my fader and mudder—tree pound a month.’

  Hasluck had no servants of her own. It was said among other scandals that she was too poor. She had travelled the five days’ journey from Kunama to the Niger bank with a party of three prospectors or rather with the youngest of them, Cottee, called Redhead because his hair was yellow. She was his friend. She fed with him, and his boy, Mallam Musa, waited upon her. Every day Redhead and she marched together and at night they passed among the boys’ huts arm in arm, strolling towards the forest. Sometimes they laughed so much that they appeared to be drunk. Sometimes they quarrelled and then the man behaved like a bridegroom, apologizing and paying compliments until the woman was once more laughing.

  It was agreed by everybody that Cottee loved and desired Hasluck, and as he was generous to his people all wished him well. It was considered that the woman would be lucky to get such a man, tall, handsome and young, powerful as a horse. But whether he had succeeded in the affair before the big quarrel of the night before was a question that had been debated all over Gwanki by dozens of carriers and servants. Gossip is the major pastime of Africa.

  ‘Of course he did,’ said Henry. ‘Missie Mah-rie is a good-for-nothing like all these white women. Why, she slept in the same hut with Red-head every night. And that’s why he quarrelled with her. She didn’t suit him.’

  This raised another laugh.

  Henry was just out of gaol for robbing carriers’ women. He was a miserable-looking object, not much more than the dirty framework of a negro hung with the rags of an old khaki shirt whose flaps in front and behind dangled in ribbons over the greasy legs of a pair of dress trousers. His hat was bright green felt shaped like a pudding basin; a lady’s hat begged from Hasluck.

  Henry had travelled with the party as a headman, and that was why he claimed authority to give the woman the worst of characters.

  But he was contradicted by the Mallam whose authority was better because he was Cottee’s servant, and because he was the only man of substance, the only honest man in the gathering. ‘It was because Cottee desired her and she would not admit him.’

  Nobody wished to believe this. But nobody could deny the superior probity of the witness; and truth was desired, it was interesting as truth, even though it would be useless to retail. They turned to the Mallam.

  ‘I was there on my mat among the loads not three paces away and they knew I was there. But they did not mind.’

  ‘They have no shame, these whites.’

  ‘Because they think of us as dogs,’ said the gloomy horse-boy.

  ‘Pardon, my scissors have fallen. Thank you with God’s blessing.’

  ‘Did she scratch him?’

  ‘No, they talked most shamelessly. She said, another day perhaps and he answered, Why not now, and she said, because she must think.’

  Henry laughed and spat. ‘Ah! These girls are all the same—they all talk like that.’

  ‘And then he said that she was making play with him. She’d been with other men before. But she answered that those were secrets she had told him as a friend, but she was sorry for that foolishness more than all the rest. Then they quarrelled.’

  ‘So that’s what she is,’ said a huge Yoruba, a fellow ponce with Henry, and he called out in a laughing voice, ‘Mam, you wanta good boy. I big strong boy fit to do you good.’

  ‘Mam, you wanta cook.’

  The judge, Gore, called the Stork because of his long thin legs, his long neck and long face and long beak, came up and said, ‘Clear out.’ They scattered before him laughing, to gather again five minutes later, a yard or two closer to the tent, as soon as he had hurried away to stop another fight at the water’s edge.

  Gore had been sent up river to Gwanki to meet a pagan deputation of Birri chiefs and take them home by steamer. His district officer, Bewsher, had described the trip as a nice little holiday for a good boy, and he had in fact expected three or four days such as he loved, stretched in a long chair on the decks of steamers or under a tree in the bush, smoking cigarettes and reading the last batch of The Times and knowing that he was miles from a telegraph office, messengers, typewriters, clerks and fellow officials.

  Gwanki was the loneliest port on the Niger. It consisted of a broken piece of gaspipe rail and two old palm planks rotting at the edge of a mud bank. Its liveliest inhabitants for three hundred and sixty days in a year were a couple of baboons scratching themselves in a human manner and barking at a distant fisherman; or two crocodiles half awash in steaming ooze.

  But the opening of a new section of the Birri reserve which brought the prospectors and the Yan
kee journalist had coincided with an unexpected fall in the river, threatening an early end of the steamer transport; every trader for fifty miles round had hurried to the shore. There were two hundred blacks and six whites on the bank: fifty families each with its babies, loads, yams, pots and invalids festering in the sun, and already there was no food to be had for money.

  So that the young man, far from enjoying a holiday, had spent one of the most exhausting and miserable days in his life trying to prevent a riot which was obviously inevitable, a task so depressing to him that even some of the natives, in the midst of their own troubles, were amused by his lugubrious perspiring features, as he pushed here and there among them.

  And Gore, on his part, as he climbed the bank for the fiftieth time after holding court of pie powder between three screaming women armed with each other’s faggots, thought he had never seen so many miserable, worried people together, not even in the largest and richest capitals.

  Even the whites were miserable. Here at the top of the slope old Jukes was still scuttling about like a scalded rat hunting for a lost load, and Cottee, lounging with his hands in his pockets, wore a condescending expression which was in him a mark of extreme disgust.

  Jukes was the senior partner of the firm; a little yellow old man with gold spectacles and a thin beard. He resembled a last century don even in his voice and polite nervous manners.

  Jukes was in a panic about his whole expedition. It was known that he had children at school and it was said that he was on the edge of bankruptcy, so that he could not well avoid being worried. He had committed himself.

  But God knows what was wrong with Cottee who had no responsibilities and everything he could want.

  The moment they set eyes on Gore they came towards him; but he, who had been avoiding them and their worries all day (on the last meeting Cottee had told him that the Yankee woman had no money and what was he going to do about it) at once changed direction. He made a vague gesture as if to say, ‘I’m busy.’

  He was in fact busy, for though this work was futile, it had to be done. He had sat down already twenty times and each time some new outbreak had made him jump up again. Even now a shriek from the unseen slope behind him was pulling him that way, and over beyond Jukes he could see a new family party just emerging from the bush path; two men with enormous loads of cloth, two women with nets of hardware, one carrying a baby, three weary children of various ages and an old crone shuffling and wheezing fifteen yards behind in terror of being abandoned. Not one of them had the least chance of a place on the boat.

  The prospectors had caught him. They burst into speech together. It appeared that they were still arguing about what Cottee called the American crisis—whether or not the American woman, invited by Cottee as a guest, but now at loggerheads with him, had any right to expect them to pay her fare to Birri and perhaps keep her there; whether indeed it was possible to make her such an offer.

  ‘I say, Gore, about Mah-rie, if I gave her anything she’d throw it at me—’

  ‘Mr. Gore,’ panted Jukes, ‘I hope you understand that it was not on my responsibility—’

  Gore stared at them with wide eyes affecting complete preoccupation. He didn’t want to have anything to do with this ticklish problem.

  ‘Excuse me, just a moment,’ he said, politely inclining his head like a shopwalker called away, and he stretched his long legs towards the hardware dealers.

  ‘This is a bad place you’ve come to, friends. The boat cannot have room for you and there are many bad people about. You will be robbed here. Go back to a village before it is dark.’

  The men stared at him from under the dark roof of their overhanging loads. Their eyes expressed both the stupidity usual to carriers with loads on their heads, as if their brains were actually made dense by compression, and the profound suspicion of stupid people confronted by an official. The women looked if possible more stupid, but also more hostile and obstinate. The three children aged perhaps between eight and twelve, exhausted, covered with sweat and dirt, stood in a row, the two elder holding the young one by the hands. His naked protruding stomach showed a large umbilical hernia. With open eyes and mouths they gazed in terror at this white man. Go back! What a cruel thing!

  ‘If you’re too tired, you’d much better camp in the bush. You’ll only get robbed here in the crowd.’

  No one spoke. Then the old woman arrived and began to scream. Here they were and here they’d stay. What had they done to be turned out? They were going to Alo, and no one should stop them. They were honest good people who had never done any wrong.

  She would not listen to the suggestion that the steamer could not hold any more passengers. She didn’t want to listen. She was showing her sons and daughters-in-law that she was still useful to them—she wasn’t yet quite worthless. She was fighting for her place in the scheme of things, no doubt the more valuable to her that it was nearly lost. Though she couldn’t carry a load or keep up even with the youngest grandchild, she had a voice still and she wasn’t afraid of anybody or anything. What could frighten her now? She lived every hour with terrors worse than death and suffering beyond physical pain. ‘Go back?’ she shrieked. ‘What have we done? Tell me that. Who are you? These men are good men, traders of repute.’ The small child, to the horror of his two brothers, began to cry. Luckily he did so in silence. Great tears poured down his cheeks and splashed on his swollen stomach.

  One of the men began to utter words. ‘Yes, baturé (white man) we’ve come—you see—sell cloth and potash—catch fire-boat here.’

  A chorus of yells from somewhere down the bank made Gore turn half round. Nothing could be done for these people. It wasn’t that they were too stupid to understand the position but that they didn’t want to. They weren’t even thinking about it. They were feeling.

  Still, that was true of everybody. It was what you had to reckon with.

  ‘Of course it’s not your fault,’ he said, trying another approach; and for a moment the parties stared at each other, the traders with wilder blanker stupidity, Gore with his head turned to one side, with the most insinuating polite air, and a large drop of sweat on the extreme end of his nose. The children gazed up at the sparkling drop with the faces of rapt cherubim.

  ‘I’m not blaming you for anything,’ he murmured. The drop fell and the children’s eyes suddenly became downcast as if in demure modesty.

  ‘What have we done?’ shrieked the old woman. ‘Tell me,’ and down the slope the yells sounded like murder.

  He turned hastily away. It was no good. One would have to begin further back. A long way further back. And as, carefully avoiding the agitated Jukes who appeared to be abusing Cottee, he made for the new scene of disturbance, he remembered with sardonic amusement the Yankee woman’s remark, almost the only one he had heard from her lips, that Gwanki reminded her of home, ‘everybody just worried to death.’ He liked that piece of cynicism from the worried little woman because it gave him a glimpse of feelings very like his own.

  The only contented people in Gwanki except Cottee’s Mallam were old White of Berua, a senior resident going on leave, who was reading his novel, probably Trollope, half-way down the slope, and the Birri chiefs sitting in the middle of the beach. The expressions of these naked warriors as they gazed upon the antics and miseries all about them, were like those of aristocratic travellers in barbarian parts or visitors to the Zoo monkey house. They watched with calm, interested faces as if from another and more distinguished state of being. Beside each man, his spear, standing point downwards and ready for instant use, guaranteed that distinction.

  But the Birri, besides enjoying a Victorian self-confidence and dignity founded on a complete idea of things, were sure of getting to their destination. If this steamer did not come for them another would be found. They had their servant Gore to take charge of them. Everyone else in Gwanki except the whites had a ten to one chance of being marooned on a mud flat twelve hours’ march from the nearest village. That was why women
with babies on their backs were fighting like polecats for two feet of cracked mud on the water’s edge, and why two convicts, three carriers, a runaway police servant and a horse-boy as well as the headman Henry, had applied for a cook’s post. It would give them a free passage to Birri. And if the Birri pagans made war against the government there would be rich pickings. In wartime everyone threw money about.

  As the evening wore on they pushed their faces almost through the tent fly. ‘Mam, you wanta clean boy do all ting you like.’

  They were insolent, and used double meanings because the humour of the thing appealed to them. There was no wilful cruelty in their pestering of the wretched woman who had last been seen flying for shelter with red eyes and her nose in the air; they did not insult and worry her because they disliked her, but because she was weak; because the restraint of fear had been removed from them. They were wandering men.

  The sun was going down. It was like a huge bonfire on the far side of the river where the bank grew thin in the distance; a hair line between the sky and the water. A tapering patch of crimson joined the red blaze with the flock of dugouts rocking against the shore just below, and against the red path could be seen the three prospectors, now as black as everyone else, playing cards at their crooked table, which was sinking in the mud.

  Mallam Musa finished his stocking and approached the fly. ‘Missy Mahrie,’ he said in English, ‘I finish you work.’

  ‘Come right in, father Musa.’

  Musa went in and they heard her say, ‘But this is beautiful work, Musa. Where did you learn to do woman’s work?’

  ‘Women could not do work like that, mam. It is too difficult for them.’

  ‘Women are no good at all, are they, baba? (father). What shall I do without you?’

  The Mallam did not trouble to agree with so obvious a truth. His thank-you was intoned as if to Allah rather than any human benefactor, as he salaamed himself out of the tent.