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Their Barabaig host had promised to look for hyenas in the morning. In the daylight, there was no reason to fear hyenas. He had killed bigger, more dangerous animals. But would George and Helen be disappointed if he found only baboons?

The interpreter, Ezekiel, had not clarified how many wives the Barabaig man possessed. Jeremiah Chiza, who had seen to every detail of George and Helen’s trip to Africa, including the hiring of Ezekiel, had explained that he and other educated, progressive Tanzanians—indeed, even those Tanzanians who might be neither educated nor progressive but who belonged to the country’s other one hundred and twenty tribes, none as primitive as the Barabaig—agreed that Barabaig men were able to possess so many wives, because Barabaig women were happy to open their legs for any man. Chiza had grinned at Helen and given her what he called a friendly warning: she would be wise to keep an eye on her husband when he was among the Barabaig women. Chiza had waited for Helen to use the toilet before advising George that his wife would only need to turn her back, since any Barabaig woman would be ready at a moment’s notice.

As far as George and Helen could tell, their Barabaig host had an old wife and a young wife. The young one had worked harder to prepare dinner, and she performed other tasks while the old one sat and ate, showing herself to be as curious about the white visitors as they were curious about the Barabaig. She asked George what crops he grew at home. He lied and said maize and beans, because he thought that explaining the truth would be complicated. He quickly changed the subject and asked whether the Barabaig ever saw big wild animals like lions or elephants. She said the lions and elephants seemed to understand that they were safer in the national parks. Now they lived in the parks, and this made her sad. George asked if she was sad because she missed their beauty, and she looked at him as if he were a fool. In the old days, a single adult elephant would feed many Barabaig for weeks after they had killed it with poisoned arrows. Another question the old wife asked George was why he’d brought only one wife. He was able to answer truthfully. He said he had brought his favorite wife.

Helen felt sorry for the old wife. She’d brought dark chocolate from California, so she gave one bar to the old wife, whose name sounded like Han-jeet. Han-jeet made a face and spat the chocolate out. She had craned her neck forward so that the chocolate wouldn’t spatter her goatskin skirt.

On this night, the old wife took her turn with the man. It was she who shared his pleasure in the wind-up flashlight.

On top of the mountain in Tanzania, outside the tent in which his own wife lay sleeping, George was pleased by the first signs of day. With the blackness of the night gone and with the assurance by their Barabaig host that there was no reason to fear hyenas in the daylight, he felt good about being in Africa.

Chiza had arranged for George and Helen’s Africa trip to begin with a “cultural tourism” visit to a remote village called Wajuwatinga. Among the residents who noticed that George and Helen were shocked by the poverty was Simon, headmaster of the crumbling secondary school that the government had declined to save. Simon came from a city. Getting wind of the Ministry of Education’s intention to relegate him to the bush, he’d tried to avoid opening the Ministry’s letter once it reached his father’s home. The father had been unsympathetic. Whenever he was unsympathetic, he would refer to something in the Bible to explain why.

“You know that man Jonah,” Simon’s father said to him, “who tried to hide from God to avoid going to a place where he didn’t want to go? Poor chap, he ended up in the belly of a whale. Common sense told him this was punishment. But something besides common sense was at work. Jonah would see this once the whale had saved his life and revealed his whereabouts to God.”

One warm afternoon when Wajuwatinga smelled of gardenias, Simon, now devoted to the village, had taken George’s hand and said that he and Helen must return.

 “You must rebuild the school. And there are other needs. . .”

When Simon looked into George’s pale eyes with his own eyes of dark liquid, Helen wept and was unable to speak. Later, when she had recovered her power of speech, she told her husband that this was what they were supposed to do. This was what they were called to do. George said nothing, because to him her language sounded religious and he didn’t understand, or he pretended not to understand. George nevertheless knew that they would go back to Wajuwatinga.

The sunrise had turned bird-of-paradise orange by the time George went back in the tent. For Helen’s birthday, just before the trip, he’d given her a bird of paradise. She said that its orange was the orange of a tiger. She added that she looked forward to the realization of her dream of Africa, even though she wished there would be tigers.

In the tent, George left no space between himself and Helen and her auburn hair, flecked with gray. The fluid athleticism that evoked his favorite animal, the giraffe, was somehow discernible even while she slept. He hoped he would still be awake when there was more light so that the first opening of her turquoise eyes would startle him, as it startled him anew every time.

George thought of Simon telling him that he and Helen must return.

“The people wish to entrust their needs to you and not our corrupt government,” Simon had said on that warm afternoon when George was intoxicated by the smell of gardenias. “They think your souls are clean, like your white skin.”

This embarrassed George and Helen. Did the villagers really believe this about white people? Maybe Simon was joking.

They decided not to worry about it one way or the other. They promised themselves to try to behave toward the villagers as if their own souls were, indeed, clean.

In the tent, George hoped that Helen would wake up soon. He wanted her awake for a little while—five minutes would be enough—before the first stirrings of the Barabaig couple or of the interpreter in his tent on the far side of their mud hut.

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