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“Ah, the natives are restless.”
“They are indeed. Do you think you might extinguish that barbaric cacophony” – we had been listening to a Miles Davis record – “and put on something tribal?”
I made sure Mi
“Native girl dance for you, Bwana Evan.” Her white eyes rolled in her dark face. “Native girl make you hot with passion, wild with lust. Native girl turn you on, baby. You better believe it.”
I don’t know whether or not her dance was an authentic example of Kenyan tribal folk-dancing. I rather think not. It seemed a combination of African dance and current American styles, with the limbs loose, the hips shaking, the buttocks twitching, and the whole body transfigured by an endless chaotic rhythm. And through it all Tuppence’s lips showed a smile of eternal female knowledge, and her huge eyes twinkled in calculated abandon.
She was a striking girl. She was the wrong color to win a Miss America contest, the shade of good, well-rubbed walnut. She was tall and long-legged, with a high, protruding bottom and a flat stomach and full breasts. Her face was long, oval in shape, with a high, broad forehead and a cap of tight, kinky black curls.
So she danced, and we looked at each other, and something that had started building at the PAUL meeting clicked neatly and finally into place, and we both knew that the evening was going to end properly. Because the special magic was there. It is not often present, and without it there is really no reason on earth why a man and woman should bother having anything to do with one another. But when it is there, it is a very welcome thing indeed. It was there now, for both of us, and we both knew it and we both seemed happy.
“This step shows that the villagers are rejoicing that the great father has sent down rain.”
“The record jacket says it’s a war chant.”
“You may believe what you wish, Bwana.”
“You’re a fraud, Tuppence.”
The record went on, and Tuppence went on dancing, and I moved around the room turning off lights until only the shallow glow of one small lamp illuminated the room. My couch is one of those clever contrivances that turns into a bed when the occasion demands it. The occasion demanded it, so I pulled the proper levers and effected the desired metamorphosis. Then Miss T’pani Ngawa changed the leitmotif of the dance slightly, incorporating within the structure of basic African tribal rhythms certain dance patterns generally associated in times past with Union City, New Jersey.
Which is to say that she took off all her clothes.
“Bwana approve?”
“Bwana approve.”
“Ah! What Bwana doing?”
“Bwana going to integrate you,” I said.
“Oh, wow-”
Her skin was black velvet. I stroked her and she purred. “We are about to miscegenate,” I explained.
“Oh, groovy,” she said “Oh, like, wow. Bwana sure do know how to miscegenate. Oooo-”
Mi
“I’m glad you’re going to live with us,” she told Tuppence gravely. “Evan says that a child needs both a mother and a father. Can you cook?”
“Not very well.”
“I suppose you can learn, though. Where are you from?”
“ Kenya.”
“That’s in Africa,” Mi
“You’ll start school in the fall,” I said.
She ignored me. “This is a good place to live,” she told Tuppence. “I’m sure you’ll like it here. Can’t you cook anything?”
“Just human flesh.”
“Human flesh?”
“That’s all we eat in Africa. Human flesh.”
“I think,” Mi
Tuppence laughed.
“ Central Park is only a few blocks from here,” Mi
“Oh.”
“They can only go,” she said, “if they are accompanied by a child. If you’d like, Tuppence, I could accompany you. I mean, I’ve been to the zoo before, of course, but since you can’t go without a child, I would be willing to accompany you.”
“Why, that’s very sweet of you, Mi
“Just let me comb my hair.” Mi
“Never.”
“You’re lucky,” Mi
Tuppence did not live with us, of course. She had an apartment of her own and a job of her own and a life of her own, and we both felt it would be best to keep it that way. Her quartet got a three-week engagement at a downtown club, and sometimes I would pick her up after work and bring her back to 107th Street, and sometimes she would drop up during the day, generally getting trapped into taking Mi
“A State Department tour,” she said. “Deluxe treatment all the way. Manila, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Bangkok. This chick is going a long way from Nairobi, baby.”
“It sounds good. When do you leave?”
“Four days from tomorrow. Got to get a few dozen shots. Plague and cholera and all those good things. They threaten to make like a pincushion out of me, man. Then we get on a jet and fly. Big bird go over great water. Bangkok – do you believe it? It sounds dirty.”
“You have an obscene mind.”
“I’m hip, and don’t you love it? We’re supposed to have a command performance for the King of Thailand. The word is that he’s a swinger. He plays the clarinet or some such. Can you feature the king himself sitting in and wailing, and this little girl vocalizing? A long long way from Nairobi. Wow!”