me. I do not need confirmation that people like me or admire me. I know that I am liked. My wife, Nerida, loves me.
Perhaps initially I was useful to my president in the diplomatic service because of my skills in English and French. But I have long ceased to be an interpreter or a trainer of interpreters. Now I am called upon by my country and by other countries in Africa as well to negotiate agreements and to settle disputes. I am told I inspire confidence in others and put people at ease. But there are many who dislike me (Bala Keye, my wife’s uncle, foremost among them), still not enough to make me so insecure that I fear rejection. Yet this talent I have for making people like me was in its incipient stage, undeveloped when I met Marguerite, and I was afraid she would reject me, that she would not like me. And I wanted her to like me.
Long after I met Marguerite, she told me that it was not insecurity but rather my natural propensity for caution that made me take such care about when and how I would meet her for the first time. I am a man, she said, who calculates the risk he would take. Catherinehad told her that if I were Adam I would never have taken the apple Eve offered to me. I would have looked around Eden and calculated what I would have lost.
“Catherine said you could have been the savior of mankind,” Marguerite said bitterly. “There would be no original sin in the world. No need for God to sacrifice His only son.”
But Catherine had not known me well enough, though she knew me well enough to be right when she commented, after I told her how I met my wife, that I took no risk when I married Nerida. I took no chance on love. Like my mother, I married the person who was offered to me, the woman who would secure my future.
But my mother did not marry her husband willingly, and when she did marry, she paid with her life for her obedience to tradition, her loyalty to family. I, too, like my mother, was in love with someone else—Mulenga—but I married Nerida willingly. I did not die for the woman I loved. Instead, in time, I grew to love the woman who was given to me to be my wife. I grew to love Nerida.
Perhaps, though, Catherine knew me better than I knew myself in those early days in Geneva when I was beginning my career in the diplomatic service. Perhaps I am a natural-born diplomat. I have avoided making decisions. I have allowed decisions to be made for me. I had not always done so.
I had chosen Mulenga in spite of the fact that none of my friends approved of her. I declared my love for her openly and withstood the ridicule of those who disliked me. It is to her I am indebted for the invaluable lesson I learned of keeping my own counsel, of not committing myself to any act, deed, or word until I was certain of the results I wanted.
The decision I made to marry Mulenga when I was a young man and in love was the last I made without some assurance of a positive outcome. It was the last time I made a commitment to anyone or anything that had not been presented to me, the facts laid out beforehand. I had not sought out Nerida. I had not pursued a career in the diplomatic service. Both had been presented to me.
If I feared meeting Marguerite for the first time by myself, it was because I feared she could change all that, that she could awakenin me a passion I had long since suppressed when I cried like a woman, not because I had been betrayed, but because in spite of my betrayal I longed for the woman who had made a cuckold of me before my friends. Then, like Ulysses, I needed someone—something to lash me to stillness from desire.
I feared being alone with Marguerite when I met her for the first time, it was because in spite of the schooling I gave myself, I needed Margarete to live and grow in my imagination, to feed my fantasies. This fictive woman, the lascivious fantastications I had spun from her innocence and forced surrender, protected me (so I thought) from the passion that could ruin me.
Perhaps initially I was useful to my president in the diplomatic service because of my skills in English and French. But I have long ceased to be an interpreter or a trainer of interpreters. Now I am called upon by my country and by other countries in Africa as well to negotiate agreements and to settle disputes. I am told I inspire confidence in others and put people at ease. But there are many who dislike me (Bala Keye, my wife’s uncle, foremost among them), still not enough to make me so insecure that I fear rejection. Yet this talent I have for making people like me was in its incipient stage, undeveloped when I met Marguerite, and I was afraid she would reject me, that she would not like me. And I wanted her to like me.
Long after I met Marguerite, she told me that it was not insecurity but rather my natural propensity for caution that made me take such care about when and how I would meet her for the first time. I am a man, she said, who calculates the risk he would take. Catherinehad told her that if I were Adam I would never have taken the apple Eve offered to me. I would have looked around Eden and calculated what I would have lost.
“Catherine said you could have been the savior of mankind,” Marguerite said bitterly. “There would be no original sin in the world. No need for God to sacrifice His only son.”
But Catherine had not known me well enough, though she knew me well enough to be right when she commented, after I told her how I met my wife, that I took no risk when I married Nerida. I took no chance on love. Like my mother, I married the person who was offered to me, the woman who would secure my future.
But my mother did not marry her husband willingly, and when she did marry, she paid with her life for her obedience to tradition, her loyalty to family. I, too, like my mother, was in love with someone else—Mulenga—but I married Nerida willingly. I did not die for the woman I loved. Instead, in time, I grew to love the woman who was given to me to be my wife. I grew to love Nerida.
Perhaps, though, Catherine knew me better than I knew myself in those early days in Geneva when I was beginning my career in the diplomatic service. Perhaps I am a natural-born diplomat. I have avoided making decisions. I have allowed decisions to be made for me. I had not always done so.
I had chosen Mulenga in spite of the fact that none of my friends approved of her. I declared my love for her openly and withstood the ridicule of those who disliked me. It is to her I am indebted for the invaluable lesson I learned of keeping my own counsel, of not committing myself to any act, deed, or word until I was certain of the results I wanted.
The decision I made to marry Mulenga when I was a young man and in love was the last I made without some assurance of a positive outcome. It was the last time I made a commitment to anyone or anything that had not been presented to me, the facts laid out beforehand. I had not sought out Nerida. I had not pursued a career in the diplomatic service. Both had been presented to me.
If I feared meeting Marguerite for the first time by myself, it was because I feared she could change all that, that she could awakenin me a passion I had long since suppressed when I cried like a woman, not because I had been betrayed, but because in spite of my betrayal I longed for the woman who had made a cuckold of me before my friends. Then, like Ulysses, I needed someone—something to lash me to stillness from desire.
I feared being alone with Marguerite when I met her for the first time, it was because in spite of the schooling I gave myself, I needed Margarete to live and grow in my imagination, to feed my fantasies. This fictive woman, the lascivious fantastications I had spun from her innocence and forced surrender, protected me (so I thought) from the passion that could ruin me.
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