‘Now let me see,’ I said, ‘it must be about the size of Texas and Oregon put together.’
‘What’s that?’ someone leaned over to hear better.
‘He says Nigeria is as large as Texas and Oregon put together.’
The gentleman leaning over whistled softly to himself. ‘It must be a very large city,’ he said.
‘Not a city but a whole country,’ I said pushing back my chair. I was beginning to get tired and hot.
‘And what is the population, do you know?’ my host followed on.
‘About one-fifth that of the US,’ I said.
‘Wow,’ they all leaned forward together, nearly bumping their heads in the process, ‘the place must be overcrowded!’
Such ignorance of the outside world or rather the total assumption by Americans that the world ends with the United States, with Europe perhaps as a mere historical extension, and the first of those old holes that the US for her own safety has to seal off from the red rats, provided for me a rude concrete barrier against which I bruised my shins again and again. And it was not confined to just the wealthy and white who could very well afford to live, thrive and die in their individual cocoons completely insulated from the rest of the world. I once took out a black girl in search of fun in New York City. Black, by the way, was just the one adjective to make her fingernails rear for some flesh to tear to pieces. Our first meeting had been at that AMSAC banquet for African Ambassadors to the United Nations. She was no black or Afro-anything but a Negro she had told me in no uncertain terms, and a Negro, she gave a clear definition, was a combination of the strains of all the peoples in the world. And when I asked whether any one of these strains could prove dominant, she replied that the combination made her a new distinct whole. ‘How spirited you are! This is the first time I have had my own fire turned back on me,’ I confessed to her.
‘Is it so?’ she smiled, and moved over to my table shawl and handbag. ‘I might as well,’ she added, ‘my escort is no great shakes. See him there dancing with someone else? But you Africans are different. You sure can talk!’
‘And act too!’ I added, calling her a drink.
Marlene was an actress with great ambition and hopes, who had appeared last on The Blacks when that show opened in New York to offer white liberals and masochists and penitents the one therapeutic treatment they had long been after; but that was almost six months ago, and since then pretty, vivacious Marlene had been a good-humoured guest of her parents far out in Brooklyn as well as of the Social Security people. And there I turn up, a real playwright! Would I please write her a part? Of course, yes, I promised. As a matter of fact, she might well fit into the plans just then taking shape for a production.
And so in the meantime Marlene and I went out in search of excitement, a quest that landed us in the exotic lap of The Village Gate in Greenwich Village. Cat, Israel and their friend Naomi with whom I became quite close made up the company. Music literally poured in from all sides that night, from the magnificent voice of the blues and folksong queen Odetta, for whom the microphone will always be superfluous, from the combo drums and brass of Herbie Mann, who had not forgotten the beat he picked up in Africa, and from the harmonica of the ingenious Adler who ranges from jazz to Bach.’We must go out more,’ Israel suggested, himself a good musician on the ‘cello. ‘Cat’s father, you remember, is a first violinist in the New York Philharmonic. We all should go and hear them sometime.’
‘Wouldn’t that be great!’ I agreed.
‘Sorry we haven’t taken you to see more of the city,’ Cat joined in.
‘Oh, I should love to see the Zoo.’ I jumped at their offer. ‘I missed it in London coming out.’
The sandwich Marlene was eating stopped half-way to her luscious wide mouth, and her eyes, unusually bright in the dim light, bore straight into me.
‘What do you want to go to the Zoo for?’ she asked in a sharp voice.
‘Why, to see the inmates there,’ I explained. ‘I’m dying to see those lions, elephants, tigers and all my other wild cousins in there.’
‘You miss them?’ Marlene looked real scared.
‘Haven’t seen any of them before in all my life,’ I disclosed.
‘No, are you kidding? Don’t those creatures crawl your village like automobiles here?’
I gave her a light smack on the shoulder, accompanied with a loud yell and laugh.
‘Now you are laughing at me!’ she pouted in her spirited way. ‘All my life I have been taught Africans live on tree-tops among those animals. How should I know you’d be coming to New York to see lions for the first time?’ It took a couple more beers and sandwiches, Naomi and Cat joining in the latter, to wash out the sick taste now on every tongue.
The point was often made, and conceded sometimes by me, that America is actually a continent and not just an ordinary country. To know her in all her amplitude and fifty odd sprawling states must therefore require specialist interest and knowledge. Of course, lots of Americans I knew, and they were not necessarily privileged or belonging to the exclusive jet set, did quite some travelling in and out of the Union. Thus in the course of the holiday season lots of the New Yorkers would flock to places like Cape Cod or Miami and beyond. But for the majority it seems the Union centres around their individual states and cities, which is good patriotism, except that it is not uncommon to run into perfectly literate and sophisticated Americans, like one young lady friend of mine from New York, asking me at Princeton in New Jersey to look her up in the city on my way to Washington, DC, way down South at the other end as the plane flies. ‘I come from California,’ had been her excuse.
For a candidate, however, for ever seeking election as the champion of what the slogan calls the free world in opposition to the flaming red devil and dragon, such an excuse would be lame indeed and holding up no real shield. Even in ordinary local politics, the candidate has first to tour his constituency and make himself familiar with the faces and facts of life of those he aspires to represent and lead. Maybe this is asking too much. Today, any candidate can handshake, buss and bribe his way to the heart of the most remote and difficult electorate, and this is the path that Americans, being a practical people and government, have chosen to tread. One danger, however, with all straight and short roads is that they often are the death of the antelope.
‘You hold back your votes and we hold back our help,’ was more or less the frank and cordial message high executives at the USAID division told us Parvin Fellows during a session with the State Department in Washington. General Lucius Clay had then just issued his report to President Kennedy calling for a trimming of sails and a bailing of ballast out of a boat whose actual trouble was not any sea rougher than normal but a crew and perhaps captain who often showed nothing but awkwardness. ‘We have all the funds, equipment and experts to supply any country soliciting our help, yes, even communist countries, but we demand not simply a native hand willing to plan and work as we direct but also a heart that will for ever say thank-you to the American people.’
Later, at the various divisions serving the different member countries we held even more frank and cordial discussions with divisional heads. The man for West Africa had just returned from a working tour of his beat and had a lot of local news from Nigeria. ‘Was that country getting her fair share of USAID?’ I asked. ‘I ask because the US has as yet no military bases there, and the bogey of a communist takeover does not stalk her as in other places. As a result, it seems that much smaller states, and not just those satisfying the twin prior conditions above, are getting more aid, although it is a pity, reports say, that this often is frittered away, less by corrupt local politicians than by US experts ill-loaded with privileges and tax exemptions, most of whom have little or no sympathetic touch with the people and plan they are despatched out to serve.’ His Excellency listened to me patiently to the end and then in his soft purring voice, while his junior at his side sat spinning circles on his note-book, spoke confidingly of the just and fair principle of aid awards.
‘Oh yes, Nigeria gets her fair share,’ he assured me, and then with a twinkle in his eyes added: ‘Even now moneys and men are ready any minute for release to Nigeria, but your governments still have not asked for them.’
‘Is that part of the $80 million given a year ago before I left home?’
‘That’s right. With a federal set-up such as you have, it has not been very easy making allocations to the individual regions without appearing to favour one to the disadvantage of the others. But we are managing all right and we all expect great things of your country both on the continent of Africa and in the councils of the world as a whole.’
Americans, very true to their candidatural role, like being liked a lot by foreigners. The picture they cut is of a big shaggy dog charging up to the chance caller, in mixed feelings of welcome and defiance, and romping one moment up your front with its great weight, all in a plea to be fondled, and in the next breaking off the embrace to canter about you, head chasing after tail, and snout in the air, offering furious barks and bites. ‘Where you from?’ they breathe hot over the stranger to their shores. And before you have had time to reply, they are pumping and priming you more: ‘How do you like the US? Do you plan to go back to that country? Don’t you find it most free here? In Russia the individual is not free, you know, he cannot even worship God as he likes and make all the money he should.’ And from this torrential downpour of self-praise the American never allows the overwhelmed visitor any cover, actually expecting in return more praise and a complete instant endorsement. God save the brash impolitic stranger who does not!
That in a small way was my fate at the loving hands of a Baptist church in Trenton, the capital city of the State of New Jersey. A chapter of ladies, not exactly the Daughters of the Revolution, anxious to welcome graduate students from countries abroad, communist countries not included, asked those of us at Princeton to come over one Sunday afternoon for tea. The cards, or invites as they call them over there, were all conspicuously signed by a certain Miss Harriet who made it very clear that the girls were all most willing and anxious to make friends. So all of us who were invited, bachelors as well as grass widowers, trouped over to Trenton that Sunday in cars made available and driven by several kind ladies. I rode in a Cadillac, a mother’s loving gift to her daughter when she married more than ten years ago, and all this for me was a real pleasant surprise, the only one of the day, as it turned out.
First, it was not a tea party after all but a tepid punch affair, served liberally from bowls by two august women who with noses all crinkled up showed no obvious relish for the fare they were filling others with. Next, our dear Miss Harriet, the exact physical opposite of her namesake in Guy de Maupassant, had passed the age of discretion and had been safely beyond all desires a long, long time ago. At that moment, she was actually bowing her way out of the scene she had for years dominated. The third and final shock I personally could not bear and rose up against was a roll-call of guests, already invested with badges telling their names and countries of origin, and the request, it was more like a command, that each stand up before the full church hall announce to all there his name and nation, and recount for the gratification of his hosts how much he liked the United States of America. Which apparently everybody there did very much. Only a few, to the silent moral disapproval of all present, pleaded neutrality on grounds of their short stay so far in the United States. But, foolhardy fellow that I was, I threw all discretion and courtesy to the winds, and gave the great romping American dog a rather vicious kick on the backside, sending a terrible hush down and up the whole house.
Later, one or two sour-faced inmates sidled up to me: ‘This is freedom of speech as it can only be enjoyed in the United States,’ they drooled. And one middle-aged woman, something of a squatter in the place and sporting an Italian accent, stole a quick glance this way and that, and then hurried over to me to offer her surprised cheers: ‘Only you Africans from abroad can afford to tell them the plain truth. We can’t here, you know, having settled here for so long. But do you know, our children – my first boy is in the Army right now doing his national service and the girl after him is at college – they are all on the bandwagon, you know, and sometimes their father – he works in a garage – he and I kind of wonder if our children are not even louder at it than most.’
Having unburdened her bosom, she looked this way and that a second time, and scurried off, leaving me more exposed than ever, for nobody at that stage of development would be seen near me.
Nor was this the only punishment for my outrageous behaviour. Some weeks after, a letter came in the post for me from Trenton. I could not recall anybody there except the laundry people. Nor was I anywhere the wiser for opening that letter. It bore no address, no signature. All the kind correspondent had to say was this;
‘Dear Mr Clark,
Please bathe more frequently.’
Shadows of anger and amusement raced across my face in quick vivid succession. A mathematician from Chicago sharing the same entry with me calculated something was the matter, and on reading the letter, suggested I see the Princeton people or the pastor of the Baptist flock. But I thought better of it, particularly of the latter, having no mind at that time of day to get immersed in ablution matters, bath-wise or baptismal.
