Homesickness Read Online Free Page A

Reinhardt’s black. And from the dining room they could see over the wall large silhouettes, evidence of new constructions, capital, and a hidden flashing light. There was no muffled racket from there now; no distant sibilance of wheels, not even the last truck or a bicycle bell. It was late but the window-wall also possessed pleasant editing properties. The entire continent felt empty.
    â€˜There aren’t many lights,’ Hofmann reflected as he folded his serviette, breaker of silences.
    Does he mean neon?
    â€˜This is Africa,’ Whitehead reminded him, almost rudely, looking down at his cup.
    The Museum of Handicrafts: MUSEUM spelt MUSEU . Of handicrafts, arts’n local artifacts perhaps. These people were known for their woven baskets and the painted gourd; grass bags; jewellery as strapped to the forehead: and so on. Fabrics, but to a lesser extent.
    Many other groups after sitting down to the English breakfast must have strolled the same three or four blocks to the Museum, for although they took up the full width of the footpath, talking and pointing things out to each other, often pausing for photographs, little notice was taken of them by the locals, the natives preferring the road. Doug Cathcart had a pair of powerful binoculars and now and then stopped, his bow-legged wife alongside, as he focused on a distant cyclist or a woman breastfeeding. The morning was clear and pleasant. Except for his shuffle and the way he leaned to hear his wife, Kaddok looked no different from anyone else. Most of the others wore special sunglasses too. As they turned into the square and saw the building, someone—it was Gerald Whitehead—let out a low whistle of disapproval.
    Facing them the Museum dominated, overwhelmed the square. It was para-Palladian, ambitious in scope, hoping to gain kudos from one of the previous high points in Western civilisation. It had the grey steps, the portentous columns, porticos and mock balconies; while the square in the foreground had been set aside as a piazza, concave à la Siena. Such was the Museum’s presence (pressure) the roofs of the ramshackle shops lining the square had splintered upwards. On the short left side a collapsing lazaretto and a basket factory had trees and shafts of grass growing out of the cracks.
    There were other things wrong. Gerald stood making sounds of unbelievability with his tongue.
    1) Look, that proposed ‘piazza’ in the foreground was a dustbowl. It was paved with mud bricks but crowded with squatting apothecaries and vegetable dealers; skinny men flogged aphrodisiacs (displayed on folded blankets); outdoor butchers there to one side, a Club; rhythmic Malevich knife-grinder next cranking a large stone with one foot; what looked like rows of Medicine Men (their arcane jars, powders, animal skins); an elderly ocularist; Sirdarjis and drifting Somalis; the inevitable tellers of fortunes—at least two dozen of them under torn umbrellas; and there were canvas awnings, an acrobat suspended between nasal monotonous hawking. The function of the ‘piazza’ was neatly eclipsed.
    2) The museum itself. Somehow its ratios were out. It was ungainly, oppressively so. Through an oversight or to fit into the square it had been made squat. A good case of the Golden Rectangle ignored or misunderstood. Architects should sign their names on buildings, as they do in Argentina.
    Gerald kept shaking his head, muttering. Was anyone else so aghast?
    3) On the roof to one side had been grafted a cupola. Quite incongruous. It was pink, a huge Moscow breast, pierced by a tilting television aerial.
    4) And flanking the entrance, two rusting pedestals held a half-ton pair of vulgar terrestrial condors—or were they crows?—cast in concrete. These were visible from a great distance. Dr North told Sheila they were African vultures.
    They had climbed the steps and were approaching the main doors. From behind the pillars figures stirred. A