Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd Page B

had settled here and a ribbon of shanties, made from the recycled cabanas, lurked in the scrub behind the littoral’s tree line. With them had come rubbish dumps and livestock of all kinds. Goats and hens scrounged amongst the palm trees, stray dogs loped along the sand, sniffing curiously at whatever the waves had brought ashore.
    One or two of the beach houses were still in good repair. The general manager of the bauxite mines had one, and a few Lebanese and Syrian merchants had clubbed together to keep others functioning. But whatever their efforts, the mood of this stretch of shoreline was inescapably sad, a morose memory of former glories.
    I saw Usman standing waist-high in the sea, his torso canted into the green and foamy breakers that rolled powerfully in, smashing and buffeting his body. With particularly large waves he would dive beneath them, hurling himself into their sheer, tight throats just before they crested, and emerge, spitting and delighted, on the other side.
    â€œUsman!” I called and he waved back at me. I sat down on his mat, took off my shoes and lit a cigarette. Behind me, four men played volleyball outside one of the refurbished beach huts. They were brown—Lebanese, I guessed—wore very small swimming trunks and played with histrionic abandon, making unnecessary dives for very gettable balls.
    Usman came out of the sea, shaking his head like a dog. He had put on more weight since my last visit and there was a soft overhang of flesh at the waistband of his swimming trunks. He sat down beside me and with delicate, wet fingers helped himself to one of my cigarettes.
    â€œGoing to swim?” he said.
    â€œI’m frightened of the undertow, you know that.”
    â€œAh, Hope. That sounds like an epitaph to me—‘Hope Clearwater, she was frightened of the undertow.’”
    Usman was Egyptian and in his early forties, I guessed. He wouldn’t tell me his exact age.
    â€œYou’re getting fat,” I said.
    â€œYou’re getting too thin.”
    He spoke very good English, but with quite a heavy accent. He had a strong face which would have looked better if he were less heavy. All his features—nose, eyebrows, lips, chin—appeared to have extra emphasis. His brown torso was quite hairless. His nipples were small and neat, like a boy’s.
    A fly settled on his leg and he watched it for a while, letting it taste the salt water, before he waved it away. There was a milky haze covering the sun and a breeze off the ocean. I felt warm but not too hot. I lay back on his mat and shut my eyes, listening to the rumble and hiss of the breakers. Grosso Arvore, my chimpanzees and Mallabar seemed very far away.
    â€œI should have brought my swimsuit,” I said. “Not to swim. To get brown.”
    â€œNo, no. Stay white. I like you white. All the European women here are too brown. Be different.”
    â€œI hate being so white.”
    â€œOK. Get brown, I don’t care that much.”
    I laughed at him. He made me laugh, Usman, but I couldn’t really say why. I sensed him lying down on the mat beside me. We were silent for a while. Then I felt his fingers gently touch my face. Then they were in my hair, brushing it back from my forehead.
    â€œStay white, Hope,” he whispered dramatically in my ear. “Stay white for your brown man.”
    I laughed at him again. “No.”
    I felt dulled by the warmth and the smoothing motion of his fingers on my head.
    â€œHey. What’s this?” Both sets of fingers were in my hair now, parting the strands to expose my skull. I kept my eyes closed.
    â€œMy port-wine mark.”
    â€œWhat do you call it?”
    I explained. I had a port-wine mark, a sizable spill, a raggedtwo inches across, above my left ear, a dark prelate’s purple. My hair was so thick you had to search hard to spot it. No pictures exist of me as a bald baby. My parents waited until my hair had fully