What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin Read Free Book Online Page A

quoi?’
    â€˜Garçon.’
    â€˜Et ce n‘est pas beau,’ she said, definitely.
    â€˜Did she ask you?’ asked the Chinese.
    â€˜For what?’
    â€˜Sexuality.’
    â€˜Not yet.’
    â€˜Don’t touch her.’ He clawed at my sleeve. ‘I touch girl twice in life. Never touch girl again.’
    â€˜I won’t touch her,’ I said. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’
    Â 
    It was equally hot at breakfast, although the fans in the restaurant were ruffling the grimy white curtains. The Chinese came in, smiled nervously and asked if he could sit at my table. He had on a freshly laundered shirt. His hair was slicked across his forehead. He put the attaché case on a free chair and ordered coffee and fried eggs.
    He was tired, he said. He had worked all night on his order book. He was a travelling salesman from Hong Kong. Selling poplins was his family business and now it was bad business, because Hong Kong poplins were undercut by cheaper poplins from Colombia, North Korea, Poland and China.
    â€˜Bad situation,’ he said. ‘My poplin ten pence yard fortyeight inch wide and black man want pay seven half pence only. Not possible continue.’
    He blinked through his horn-rimmed spectacles at the waiter who brought the eggs.
    â€˜Cameroonian people,’ he whispered. ‘Bad! All want is money. Money and not work. Black man not like yellow man.’
    He reached for the tomato sauce bottle and unscrewed the lid. His hand was shaking.
    â€˜Yellow man not like black man,’ he went on. ‘Cameroon bad, but no so bad. Nigeria very bad! Bad trouble with customs. Customs officer make me pay on samples only and keep money for self.’
    And it was sad and lonely, he said, alone in Africa, away from his family, so long away on the world tour. Married one year only, the wife and the mother living together, and the baby boy born two days before he left.
    â€˜She kill me,’ he said.
    He was close to tears. He held onto the sauce bottle. He had not poured from it and the eggs were going cold.
    â€˜My wife kill me if she find out.’
    â€˜Kill you?’
    â€˜I cannot return until my blood is pure. I not go with girls again. Not never. One emission only. One half minute only!’
    â€˜How long ago?’
    â€˜Five week.’
    â€˜In Douala?’
    â€˜In Fleetown. I have one friend in Fleetown. Nepalese. Also merchant. He giving drink. He getting girls. I write him what he has done.’
    I asked for clinical details and, assuming a cheerful manner, assured him that syphilis in its primary stage was a complaint that well-travelled men, such as himself, took in their stride. A blood-test, a course of injections, another blood-test. The cure, I said, was final. No reason for his wife to find out. No reason why he shouldn’t father lots more baby boys.
    â€˜All I want is certificate of pure blood.’
    â€˜You want a cure,’ I said. ‘A certificate is paper and syphilis is syphilis. You have been to a doctor?’
    â€˜He gave me paper of pure blood but the wound not go.’
    â€˜Who recommended him?’
    â€˜Confidence Trading Company. Give me no confidence at all! No confidence in African doctor. He take the money and the wound not go.’
    â€˜Some African doctors are excellent,’ I said, ‘but there are different kinds of doctor. I hope he gave you an injection?’
    â€˜He gave me remedies. Please, Sir! You come with me! You explain doctor. Speak French with him.’
    We went out into the street. It was grey with the sky overcast. There were shabby concrete buildings, some limpleaved trees coated with dust, tangles of electric wires and kite-hawks hovering over the refuse dumps. There were ash-grey puddles, iridescent at the edges, and pot-bellied children with green mucus round their noses. There were men going in and out of bars, and old women shuffling round shacks that had