Looking for the Heart oif Saturday Night: Chapter 3

I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me, and walked back to the entrance of Alpha Bar, thinking about everything he had said. There was so much to think about ' mainly the fact that Cee and Peto had so obviously got together somewhere else before they got to Alpha ' the story that they had been drawn together by the fight was not holding water any more in the way that I had been told it, though of course it was probably the fight that was the catalyst for turning an evening out together back into a full relationship. I knew that they were probably worried about me ' if they were thinking about me at all ' I had been outside talking to Mwale for over an hour, but I wanted some time to think, so I leant against the railings and thought about what he had told me. The girl ' he called her a working girl, but that is just a euphemism, and quite a nice one ' the prostitute, Gertrude ' I thought then that she was the one I had to talk to. If Mwale was right and Peto, the Rastaman, and the English guy were all her regular clients, and they were all there, in the club, on the night of the fight, then that would have been a potential spark, something that could have kicked the whole thing off. And then there was Peto arriving with Celianne, and Gertrude already there, waiting inside the club: another flashpoint, another reason for there being trouble. In trying to work out what had happened that night and where the tension and trouble started, who started the fight, I realised as I finished my cigarette, I would have to first understand the country and the culture. I mean: for a start, this girl Gertrude ' if that really was her name ' I mean, what was Peto doing with her? Why does she do what she does? What was she doing with the Rastaman and the English guy? And after he had been with her, did Cellianne, my Cee from so long ago, really want to be with him? But then ' and this was a difficult question, a question that had started nagging at me while I listened to Mwale, and was becoming more insistent as I smoked ' did I really know Cee? Did I know or even start to understand her ' or anyone in this country ' after all this time?
Though Mwale had told me something of what happened that night, from a total outsiders point of view ' he only knew, first hand, what happened out on the street ' talking to him had made me realise how totally lost I was in this city ' in this country. I had thought that because I knew Cee and she lived here I would understand the country. Whatever. I really was lost, standing there smoking my cigarette on the patio, on my first night there, on my first trip outside of Europe, lost and confused. I threw the butt over the railings and went back into Alpha ' to find Peto and Cellianne, to talk to Phiri the barman, and to try and find Gertrude the ' the working girl.
As I went back into the club I was bombarded with offers ' large breasts, big backsides, skinny bodies, cute eyes. I ' I don't know how to say this without telling the truth, and that's hard. I haven't been with many women. No ' that's not clear enough. I haven't had sex with anyone for a few years ' there have only been a couple of others apart from Cee, and having all these girls paying me so much attention as I walked through the club turned my head for a moment, so that I nearly lost sight of my purpose, my reason for being there. My obsession. Somehow I managed to push them away and got to the bar on my own; I found Peto and Cee there. Both of them were drunk, and they wanted to get drunker; it was quite a party. Some of their friends who had been in packers earlier ' Fred and Trixie, Jammo and Fatso ' had joined them, and it seemed that Phiri was going to be our personal barman, as mush a part of the party as anyone else, only on the other side of the bar ' they introduced me to him. Made everything much easier. No one mentioned that I had been away for over an hour, even if they had noticed, and we just stood at the bar and drank, rounds of beer and whiskey, the way we had started the evening.
And then, all of a sudden, the music stopped and the bar was closed. Peto and Cee were taking the day off, originally organised to spend with me, but now, after drinking all night, all they wanted to do was to sleep, and there was no way I was going to get in a car driven by either one of them. I had some beer left ' I have always been a slow drinker ' and I was still sober enough to talk to Phiri, the next link in my obsessional chain. They left for Peto's place, and I chatted with the barman, finally getting him to agree to talk, and while I listened to his story of that Saturday night, I thought about all the ideas, the thoughts and confusions that were running around in my head.