"Don't mind him," I said, "He can be weird sometimes."
Alessandro smiled, closed in on me, and took my hands in his, without prior permission which I thought he would seek only if he had forgotten the night we had together at the club, but no, it's still stored in his mind.
"Be my guest." He offered.
"Or rather, your guide, because I'm sure you can't speak French, neither can you communicate with the locals who don't speak either French or English itself," I said.
"Okay, just be both." He closed the haggling, a smooth way to win.
We walked away from the initial spot, and we did meet them, a whole lot of men out there, white and native, all strolling around with women, then, we saw it, a brothel with the name Madam Niger.
There were a couple of ladies in skimpy dresses there, and to cap the whole thing, the lady who called herself a witch was there, too, chatting with a man with portly stature, whose gown masked his stature a bit.
I didn't wave, no one should know I ever had a conversation with a harlot, a harlot who claimed to be a witch, a harlot who was able to read my mind and tell me what I was up for.
"He was right, they probably pay to have it all here." He said with a smile.
I found it weird for him to speak in a way that sounded like he was outrightly making a complement of what those men do with the harlots at the brothel. For that reason, my fingers hardened around his, because we were nearing a couple of them, harlots who were ready to drag whichever man cast a glance at them.
"You are a doctor, you are far more informed than they are, so, you should do the good of advising them against such a lifestyle, else, they might end up with one silly disease or the other," I suggested.
He chuckled, but his chuckle never counted, what counted was we passed those harlots and he didn't take a glance at them, maybe because I was overtly misbehaving.
"Look, a rock, let's sit there." I pointed out.
"Not when you could have a snake curled around a corner of it, or do you think strolling out with a doctor would save for if you get bitten in a very sensitive place." He asked.
I took a deep breath. All he wanted was to stroll, but as for me, I was growing tired of strolling because we'd already seen what the manager didn't want us to see, and I didn't think any of them was good.
"So, tell me something about yourself, Sita," he said, "I heard you are a politician."
"Not the kind of politician you know, Alessandro," I said before he could finish, "I kind of inherited that from my mother. She is a big politician, so, she put me in the line, but in truth, I'm more of a philanthropist harnessing a second career which is politics."
Too many words I thought even as I spoke to him, too many details. Maybe if I were to write of myself in books, readers might get freaked out with too many details.
"Interesting." He stopped beside a big tree. Maybe for him, it's safe standing by a tree at night is safer than sitting on a rock at night. a snake could crawl down the tree and bite him, or give him straight bite from one of the branches if we should talk of snakes.
"What about you?" I asked, though I already knew he was a medical doctor and he would likely tell me the very same thing I know of him.
"Just an orthopedist like you know, nothing more," he said.
I scuffed and nodded. I don't know what else to ask him, but with time, words will come, I know that for sure, it will come.
***
Silence, we observe d it like we do when someone is pronounced dead and the living is asked to rise and observe just a minute of silence for the dead. I kept wondering if a minute was enough respect for life either well spent or wasted, but the thing here was, the silence had lasted for more than a minute.
It was running into the thirtieth minute.
"How long have you been in Africa?" I asked.
"A month and a week," he said, "Not long enough."
I made faces, the wry ones. "A month and a week are long enough, or, how long do you deem long?"
"A year, two years, or even five." He replied.
"Oh, I see." I smiled. "But you've stayed long though you don't think it's long."
"How do you say it's long?" he asked.
"I can't stay that long in London during winter, plus the life over there is kind of super boring to my kind of person," I uttered. I've been to the United Kingdom a couple of times, and not one bit of them was fun for me, because of the weather and the lifestyle over there.
Everyone seems to be busy with a lot, the people there don't give a damn about their neighbors, just as though everyone is one funny quarantined being out there.
"Your context is different," he said, "Speaking of it, a month and a week isn't enough for me to master the French language and the core way of life in Cote D'Ivoire."
"Ivory Coast for better pronunciation," I said because he pronounced Cote D'Ivoire like he swallowed a frog. "Think it's getting cold already, maybe we should return to the hotel, and, I don't mind showing you, my room."
He nodded me a yes, but not the kind of yes, I could have taken. He was not fed up with the natural breeze out here, he still wanted to stay, maybe to know what those men were doing by the brothel, but I wouldn't allow that. I just didn't know why but I would never let it happen.
***