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More reviews by William May
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Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux
Somewhere at night en route from Cairo to Cape Town, choosing the hinterland over cities, Paul Theroux began an erotic story set in Sicily about a young man, an older German woman and her doctor that was to develop by journey's end a few months later into a 100 page novella, yet to be published:
- In that somber starry light was a specter handing me a wine glass, and still she wore her lace gloves. I drank and touched her hand and was surprised by the warmth of the lace, how her flesh had heated her gloves, and when I reached to touch her breasts I was surprised by the way in which her body had heated her silk chemise, her gown, her sleeves…
This nocturnal escape into fantasy was understandable. By day Thoreaux's senses were assaulted by what he saw, heard and ate.
Hostage to Fortune
Thoreaux was warned about Africa ("It all went tits up") but he went anyway and nearly lost his life, notably on the Marsabit road in northern Kenya when he was shot at by shifta, an appropriate name even in English for roaming bandits: "They do not want your life, bwana. They want your shoes."
Why did Theroux risk his life and endure hours of boredom with enforced delays waiting for visas or repairs?
Partly he hoped for a sentimental journey. Thirty-four years before, then twenty-five years old, he taught English in Malawi and Uganda. Imagine his shock and disappointment when he found his old school library, once the heart of one of the best schools in East Africa, was without light bulbs and its shelves had been plundered.
Also, Thoreaux wanted to get away, to perform a kind of vanishing act, and what he, the celebrated novelist and prolific travel writer, saw as revenge on the instant communication of the internet and mobile phones. The Swahili word "safari", he explains, means to be out of touch, incommunicado. Nowhere better to live a life off the map than to be lost on what soon feels like another planet, the failed dark star of Africa.
Strangely for a person who wanted to be alone, Theroux was rarely without company. He shared taxis, cattle trucks, trains, a river cruiser, a dugout canoe, a plane, a rented car, even a helicopter. More than one companion, I predict, is likely to show up in his next comedic novel, possibly in the novella. .
But which one? The Canadian backpacker with a crazed smile who welcomed him daily on one leg of his journey with "Yeah, this is a good day to die."? The Bible-thumping missionary from Ohio who debates Leviticus with him? The Ethiopian political prisoner who translated Gone With The Wind on 3000 sheets of cigarette foil? Or Ursula from Finland who unsuccessfully tried to show an anti-AIDS film to villagers in Zambia and was then propositioned a few minutes later by the same villagers to have sex with them?
His Heart of Darkness
Though well-connected and able to gain easy access to consuls, Thoreaux was not a consumer traveler in a designer safari suit and pith helmet dining from hampers of gourmet food in a gated park.
Dressed in hand-me-downs bought in village markets, Thoreaux has the eye of a novelist and what Hemingway, a writer and big-game hunter he loathes, called an "in-built crap detector". Notebook in hand, Thoreaux is a wonderful observer of the Bush that he obviously loves and at his best his descriptions flow in rhapsodic, almost Churchillian sentences.
But how often does his reportage blur with fiction? "I saw it, you didn't, therefore I am licensed to exaggerate," he confesses.
He reserves his most acerbic social commentary for the high-and-mighty "agents of virtue" who traverse Africa in their white Land Rovers and never give him a lift. The irony will not be lost on those readers who have followed Thoreaux's career. He was once a do-gooder himself and worked for the Peace Corps in the 60s. Now, he sees every outside agency, every donor, banker and relief worker, as a contributor to the status quo and underdevelopment:
- …some governments in Africa depended on underdevelopment to survive -- bad schools, poor communications, a feeble press and ragged people. They needed poverty to obtain foreign aid, and they needed ignorance and uneducated and passive people to keep themselves in office for decades.
In one dramatic moment Thoreaux expresses his anger and frustration with "ancient, changeless Africa" when a beggar flaps his arms and demands money because he is hungry and Thoreaux steps over him and says "No!"
There and Back
At a party held in his honour in Johannesburg, the Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer introduces Theroux with the rousing cheer, "He came from Cairo -- on the bus!"
Not true, but Thoreaux's journey was still an impressive feat for a sexugarian and, though the route he took is not recommended even for the young and hearty, the memoire of his journey into darkness is a grand entertainment full of keen observations, historical asides and literary references.
William May
22/10/2002
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William May has just finished his first novel. He is principal of an international school in Hong Kong. |
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