Foreign Land Read Online Free
Author: Jonathan Raban
dead dogs, rotten fruit, kerosene, wood smoke, sweat, mintballs and sewage. It was extravagant, travel stained, African air; meaty stuff, that George chewed on as he walked.
An albino youth pointed at his squash racket. “Ilie Nastase—okay!” He made a thumbs up sign.
“Okay,” George said. It was like the smells of the trade wind: by the time they reached Bom Porto, all cultural messages got scrambled.
Dr Ferraz was promenading stiffly past the bandstand: George ducked his head low and dodged into the crowd. Ferraz had told him to knock off the weekly squash sessions with Teddy—had burbled on about dicky valves, as if George was a defective wireless. Well, Emanuel Ferraz, who took noexercise more strenuous than his evening hobble to the bar of the Hotel Lisbào, looked pretty bloody sickly himself. His long-faced warnings were typical symptoms of old man’s envy: he wanted George to join him in the geriatric set and wasn’t above inventing imaginary diseases to scare his patients into premature old age. Even so, George took good care to hide his squash racket from the doctor. He hove-to in the lee of a bearded palm tree until Ferraz was gone.
At the end of the square, he turned left into a street of one room cottages built of loose rocks. Their windows were empty of glass, and they were lit by paraffin lamps that threw the shadows of their inhabitants out into the street. George trampled through moving silhouettes. A yellow dog with swollen tits emerged from a pile of rubbish and fell in alongside.
“Go on,” George said. “Home, dog. Home.” He raised the squash racket. The dog howled and showed her teeth. At the end of the street she was still there, limping hopefully in his wake., He waved the shopping bag at her: “Shoo!” She stared at him, her eyes ripe with incomprehension and mistrust. George reached down into the dirt and pretended to pick up a stone. The dog fled into the dark, the bald sore on her rump bobbing like a rabbit’s scut.
George crossed a sloping no man’s land of thin red shale and reached the waterfront. The Atlantic tide here on the Bight was too feeble to scour the harbour clean, and the sea was wrinkled, oily and malodorous. The last of the tuna skiffs were being hauled up onto the beach, and men and boys were carrying out dead’fish as big as silver aero engines.
Nearly a mile across the water, the bunkering station lit the whole bay with a hard white blaze. Beyond the perimeter fence with its elevated look-out posts (George had christened it the Berlin Wall), the gas and diesel silos formed a magnificent illuminated castle of fat towers and slender aluminium battlements. Along with its other burdens, the wind carried the sound of the electric generators: George heard them humming and throbbing in his back teeth. The bunkering station was thebiggest thing in Bom Porto and the finest landmark on the 600 miles of coast between Dakar and Freetown. When George had seen it first, there had been two derelict coal chutes, a rusting diesel tank and a shack marked OFFICE where Miller used to lie on his plastic sofa reading his month old copies of the
Hull Daily Mail
. Now it was such a glory that the army kept it permanently defended with four gun emplacements, two Churchill tanks and a mobile rocket launcher.
The Curaçaoan tanker
St Willebrordus
was still on discharge in Number One. George could see the insect swarm of stevedores on the quay, and he felt widowed by the sight. But Raymond Luis had to learn to handle things on his own. There were five weeks left. George saw them as one might view the dismal, far too brief remission of an illness: he dreaded this reckoning with the small pains and indignities that went with letting go. He still hadn’t faced up to it, even though it had been nearly a year since the President had smilingly picked up his stone. Home, George.
He turned into the courtyard of the Club Nautico. Teddy, already in his squash kit, was waiting for
An albino youth pointed at his squash racket. “Ilie Nastase—okay!” He made a thumbs up sign.
“Okay,” George said. It was like the smells of the trade wind: by the time they reached Bom Porto, all cultural messages got scrambled.
Dr Ferraz was promenading stiffly past the bandstand: George ducked his head low and dodged into the crowd. Ferraz had told him to knock off the weekly squash sessions with Teddy—had burbled on about dicky valves, as if George was a defective wireless. Well, Emanuel Ferraz, who took noexercise more strenuous than his evening hobble to the bar of the Hotel Lisbào, looked pretty bloody sickly himself. His long-faced warnings were typical symptoms of old man’s envy: he wanted George to join him in the geriatric set and wasn’t above inventing imaginary diseases to scare his patients into premature old age. Even so, George took good care to hide his squash racket from the doctor. He hove-to in the lee of a bearded palm tree until Ferraz was gone.
At the end of the square, he turned left into a street of one room cottages built of loose rocks. Their windows were empty of glass, and they were lit by paraffin lamps that threw the shadows of their inhabitants out into the street. George trampled through moving silhouettes. A yellow dog with swollen tits emerged from a pile of rubbish and fell in alongside.
“Go on,” George said. “Home, dog. Home.” He raised the squash racket. The dog howled and showed her teeth. At the end of the street she was still there, limping hopefully in his wake., He waved the shopping bag at her: “Shoo!” She stared at him, her eyes ripe with incomprehension and mistrust. George reached down into the dirt and pretended to pick up a stone. The dog fled into the dark, the bald sore on her rump bobbing like a rabbit’s scut.
George crossed a sloping no man’s land of thin red shale and reached the waterfront. The Atlantic tide here on the Bight was too feeble to scour the harbour clean, and the sea was wrinkled, oily and malodorous. The last of the tuna skiffs were being hauled up onto the beach, and men and boys were carrying out dead’fish as big as silver aero engines.
Nearly a mile across the water, the bunkering station lit the whole bay with a hard white blaze. Beyond the perimeter fence with its elevated look-out posts (George had christened it the Berlin Wall), the gas and diesel silos formed a magnificent illuminated castle of fat towers and slender aluminium battlements. Along with its other burdens, the wind carried the sound of the electric generators: George heard them humming and throbbing in his back teeth. The bunkering station was thebiggest thing in Bom Porto and the finest landmark on the 600 miles of coast between Dakar and Freetown. When George had seen it first, there had been two derelict coal chutes, a rusting diesel tank and a shack marked OFFICE where Miller used to lie on his plastic sofa reading his month old copies of the
Hull Daily Mail
. Now it was such a glory that the army kept it permanently defended with four gun emplacements, two Churchill tanks and a mobile rocket launcher.
The Curaçaoan tanker
St Willebrordus
was still on discharge in Number One. George could see the insect swarm of stevedores on the quay, and he felt widowed by the sight. But Raymond Luis had to learn to handle things on his own. There were five weeks left. George saw them as one might view the dismal, far too brief remission of an illness: he dreaded this reckoning with the small pains and indignities that went with letting go. He still hadn’t faced up to it, even though it had been nearly a year since the President had smilingly picked up his stone. Home, George.
He turned into the courtyard of the Club Nautico. Teddy, already in his squash kit, was waiting for
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