by Mario Bolduc
Roselyn was more than surprised. At home, even if he never showed his anger, Albert sometimes criticized the prison authorities. He claimed they knew nothing about how difficult his job was, especially since the workload had increased dramatically after the year 2000. For a time, the Walls Unit chalked up forty executions a year.
Yet Albert never took the opportunity to change his working life. When retirement age dawned, he was still the head of the tie-down team, though several of his predecessors had climbed the ladder of the hierarchy when the chance came. Grimly, he stuck to his position.
“He called me last week or the week before,” Glenn said. “I don’t remember exactly. He wanted me to go with him to visit Norah’s grave.”
In honour of her birthday, Roselyn thought.
Glenn smiled sadly. “He needed my car now that he’d gotten rid of his. He didn’t want to be driven around by those happy-go-lucky volunteers at the residence.”
Roselyn had always hated the old Dodge her husband had driven into the ground, a rolling ruin he refused to let go of. It had taken weeks of negotiation for Roselyn to convince him to send the wreck to the scrapyard.
The two men went together to North Side Cemetery. Glenn walked Albert to Norah’s grave, stopping several times along the way to let him catch his breath. Albert stood silently in concentration in front of the stone, and Glenn moved off, not wanting to disturb his meditations.
Then, according to Glenn, a strange thing happened. He heard Albert whisper, “I’ll do it for you, Norah. Just for you.”
Roselyn didn’t follow. “You’re sure he said that?”
“In any case, that’s what I understood.”
“What was he talking about?”
“No idea. And I didn’t ask him, either.”
After the cemetery, Albert became indifferent to everything. To shake him out of his lethargy, Glenn invited him to Los Pericos, the restaurant they used to go to when they were guards. Sitting in front of their enchiladas, all the two men could muster was small talk. Glenn might as well have been talking to himself. Albert’s eyes roamed the restaurant, settling on nothing.
“I drove him back to Stanford Hill. We promised to get together again soon. And that was that. I’m his best friend, or at least I was for years. I can’t imagine how he acts with other people. And with people he doesn’t like.”
“He just ignores them.”
“That’s right. But he isn’t violent.”
“An executioner who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“But maybe a few deer now and then.”
Glenn burst into hearty laughter that transformed him into a younger man for a moment. He was still a handsome fellow. Then he turned serious. “I hope nothing happened to him.”
“Me, too.”
I’ll do it for you, Norah. Just for you.
Now what did that mean?
Instead of going to see Peter, her son-in-law, who had offered his hospitality as always, Roselyn went past Stanford Hill Residence and kept going, ending up at North Side Cemetery. It had once been out in the country, but little by little the suburbs had swallowed it up, surrounding it with bungalows, two-car garages, and swimming pools shaped like swordfish.
Roselyn felt some vague guilt at not visiting her daughter’s grave more often. As she’d listened to Glenn’s tale, she’d realized she’d hardly ever gone here with Albert. She’d thought he hadn’t been to the grave since his return to Huntsville, but now knew from Glenn that her husband had visited regularly and never asked her to come along, as he did with Glenn — another surprise, almost an insult, really, that complicated the picture.
It had taken her years to understand she wasn’t the woman he needed. Norah was all that kept them together. When their daughter died, nothing and no one united them.
Roselyn walked to the grave, hemmed in by two enormous elms. What was she looking for? Did she think she might come upon Albert, as if he were living in the cemetery now?
There was nobody, of course.
Roselyn stood in silence in front of the stone, trying not to think of the final moments of Norah’s life, her endless hospitalization. For weeks, every day, Albert and Peter had held a hand that grew bonier, thinner, more fleshless, life seeping out of it. Doing the best she could to retain her tears, Roselyn stayed away, looking after her grandson, unable to watch her daughter waste away. Her death was liberation, as much for Norah as for her family after weeks of suffering attenuated only by morphine that slowly lost its effectiveness. Adrian was as shaken as Albert, and Peter had to use all his wisdom and care to keep his child on an even keel.
Albert had visited the cemetery on Norah’s birthday. It had rained that day, Roselyn remembered. Glenn had said as much: It was raining and I helped Albert get back into the car and I kept him dry with my umbrella.
Why had Albert picked that stormy day to meditate upon his daughter’s grave? It was her birthday, that was true, but why this absolute need to go on that particular day?
And to speak those enigmatic words?
He was intending to do something, Roselyn realized. A long journey, perhaps he had planned it, perhaps it had something to do with Norah’s death.
9
It happened during Max’s third or fourth visit to Bukoba, a few months after he met Valéria. Early one morning, before dawn, the two of them were awakened by banging on the bedroom door. Sophie was in a nervous state, close to a breakdown. She had just gotten off the phone with an officer from the Kagera Regional Police. A shallow grave had been discovered in Minziro near the Ugandan border. It was all that remained of what would later be known as the “Zeru Night.” Over the past few weeks, an ever-growing number of parents had come asking for Valéria’s help. It was clear the traffickers were back on the hunt again, but no one could find them or their victims. The massacre had taken place at nightfall, away from prying eyes, turning defenceless little beings into ghosts. In Swahili, albinos were called zerus — spirits or spectres.
Sophie didn’t have the strength to travel to the site, but Valéria couldn’t escape her duty. A number of her clients’ children were surely among the victims. Max decided to go with her, despite her warnings. What they would look upon would be horrible, and would haunt Max for years to come.
There was almost no traffic until Kyaka, so the first part of the journey was easy. But once they crossed the Kagera River, the road turned into a wide track used by the local villagers during daylight, coming and going from the markets with heavy burdens on their heads, or on bicycles they pushed in front of them through the lengthening shadows.
Two hours later Minziro came into view: a hamlet of no consequence in a forest preserve that extended onto the other side of the border with Uganda. The officer had informed Sophie that he and his men were gathered north of the village in a clearing that could be reached after several kilometres on a muddy trail used mostly by poachers.
After a while, a police vehicle with a Tanzanian flag blocked the way. A sleepy policeman with puffy eyes let them through without bothering to check Valéria’s papers, or those of her passenger.
She turned to Max a minute later. “There’s still time to go back. I’ll catch up to you afterward.”
“No, I’ll be all right.”
Some distance on, they saw a four-by-four, and next to it, Sergeant Masanja. He was the one who had called Sophie. Max and Valéria followed him along an overgrown path that seemed to lead to another clearing a little farther on. They encountered more policemen who were clearly disturbed by what they’d witnessed.
Max had readied himself for the worst, but worst couldn’t describe what came into view. Blood everywhere. A swamp of blood soaked the sandy ground. Masanja’s men waded through this marsh, picking up pieces of clothing bare-handed. Another group was busy piling them up in separate heaps, an improvised mausoleum of bloody cloth, all that remained of the victims’ short time on the earth.
“Farmers tipped us off,” Masanja explained. “The killing h
appened here two nights ago. They were in a hurry. They didn’t have time to burn the clothes.” He turned to Valéria, who was clearly shaken. “They took every part of these poor people. We won’t find a single fingernail or an eyelash.”
The traffickers had stolen them from their families, in their very houses, grabbing them as they’d slept, small white heads in the heart of the deepest darkness.
According to Masanja, the guilty parties were long gone. From where they stood, they could see the border with Uganda. The albinos had probably been killed the night they were kidnapped. At dawn their bodies had been piled in a truck heading for Uganda. A smuggler had gotten the vehicle across to the next country. Medicine men and witch doctors were already inquiring about how to buy the limbs of the victims, which they would dry and cut into ever smaller pieces, selling them off one by one.
“How much do they get?” Max asked.
“For an albino? As high as seventy-five thousand dollars, sometimes more.”
The traffickers had to have the means to back up their ambitions: bribes to pay, relations to maintain …
“Do the Ugandan police know about this?” Valéria asked.
“We informed them the first day,” answered Masanja. “But they’re as powerless as we are. We’ll be finding albino body parts for weeks, as far as Kampala and Nairobi. And on the stock exchange, too.”
He was referring to a recently arrested stockbroker who was using an albino thumb as a good-luck charm to help him pick the right stocks. And the travelling salesman whose suitcase was opened by Congolese police during a routine search. Inside was a shrunken albino head.
Masanja had interviewed all the mchawis — the witch doctors — in the region. Some of them had been arrested in the past for dealing in stolen albino limbs, but his questioning led to nothing concrete.
Valéria looked at Masanja. “What about Awadhi Zuberi?”
He’d been under surveillance since he left prison. If he was involved in something, they would soon know, Masanja said. But neither Max nor Valéria was reassured.
“Do you think Zuberi could be behind this carnage?” Max asked her, once they were out of Masanja’s earshot.
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
A tarp had been spread under an acacia tree at the edge of the clearing. A group of men were gathered there: the chief of police, investigators, and various specialists whom Masanja had managed to bring together.
Max caught up to Valéria. She was devastated by the scene. Coming closer, he saw she was crying bitterly. She fell into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. “I want to go home.”
In the night, Max awoke with a start. Valéria was gone. He found her in her office in a state of collapse, eyes red but dry. He held her close but didn’t speak. She hardly knew he was there, as if he’d ceased to exist for her. Clothing picked up by the police had been checked and identified. Some of it belonged to children whose parents had come to see Valéria. Tomorrow she would have to tell them that their sons or daughters hadn’t been found, that their bodies hadn’t been located, either. Only what the traffickers couldn’t sell. A pile of bloody clothes like worthless envelopes, the only thing their parents could have and hold.
The inhabitant of a strange, closed, and forbidden world, Valéria looked straight ahead and paid no attention to Max. She was shaken by what she’d seen, but he felt her pain had more distant sources, a time and place he couldn’t reach. Excluded from her past, all he could do was hold her in his arms, rock her the way he might a child, whispering comforting words.
He thought she’d fallen asleep, but suddenly she lifted her head. “I think of him every day.”
Max didn’t understand. He waited.
“Evans. My big brother.”
In her warm voice, with infinite sadness, Valéria told Max the story.
Evans and Valéria worked on the railway with Dickson, their father. Evans was the oldest of his eight sons, and the one he loved the most, or so Valéria said. One day, as they were coming back from work, she noticed Evans was in pain. He and Dickson were walking side by side on the little track that led to the village after the other workers had branched off toward Lulando beyond the hills. As they climbed Dew Hill, as the old folks called it, Evans felt a sharp pain in his left knee. At first Valéria thought he’d hurt himself during the day, since the Chinese had put him on cleaning detail, which meant he spent long hours bent over. He had probably leaned too much on one knee, which had now started to complain. But the pain didn’t let up. Evans sat on a rock at the edge of the road, put down his pack, and began massaging his knee.
Valéria and her father turned and looked at him.
“Are you all right?” Dickson asked.
“Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
Evans managed to make it back the village eventually. Valéria lived with her family in a modest house that over the years her father had expanded. The next day Evans’s leg still hurt. Dickson bent down and took his son’s face in his hands as if it were a precious jewel. He gazed at him, eyes brimming over with love, which embarrassed Evans.
Dickson’s wife, Maria, sent for the doctor in Kibau. He was a humourless man with thick glasses. “Show me your knee!” he ordered.
Evans gazed past the doctor at his family. Maria was posted by the door, arms crossed, next to Dickson. Valéria stood behind them. Evans raised his leg, an action that seemed to demand much effort and pain.
“Come here, child,” the doctor told Valéria.
She stepped forward and held on to her brother as the doctor palpated his leg and examined the knee. A minute later he took off his glasses, his face serious. The face he wears when he hands out bad news, Valéria thought.
The doctor turned to the parents. “You must get him to Iringa, to the hospital.”
“You think I’m a rich city man who doesn’t know what to do with his money?”
“I’m serious, Dickson.” And then, in his gravest voice, he added, “I can’t be one hundred percent certain. Further examinations are necessary. And I don’t have the equipment in Kibau.”
“Is he very sick, Doctor?” Maria had come to her son’s side.
“As I said, I can’t be certain … he needs treatment.”
They stood there and studied Evans as if he were a wounded animal. The boy looked away. Valéria understood that he was humiliated by his weakness. She was angry with her mother for having invited the doctor, a stranger, into the house. She placed her hand on her brother’s face, and he covered her hand with his.
When the doctor left, her parents broke down. They were discouraged, devastated, at the end of their rope. Later that evening her father came and spoke to Valéria. “The other day, the worker from Mlimba came with his niece. I saw you talking with her under the acacia.”
Valéria stared at him. She didn’t understand.
“A zeru,” he added.
“Mlimba is a long way.”
“Your brother’s going to die.”
They walked for hours, stopping only to drink and rest their legs. They hadn’t thought of how they would separate the albino girl from her family. They didn’t talk about it, as if avoiding the details of what they were preparing to do. Faith and superstition guided them, a sort of mystical madness, Valéria later said, the belief that obstacles would disappear by themselves without them having to confront them. In fact, all their thoughts were on Evans. On the terrible loss his death would bring.
When they neared Mlimba, Dickson seemed to lose his confidence. He walked more slowly, dragged his feet, had trouble breathing. He was looking for a way to change his mind. Away from Evans, his eldest boy’s sickness seemed less serious, less urgent.
Valéria answered his unspoken question. “She’ll come with me. She won’t be afraid of me.”
The little girl lived in a hut at the edge of the village. Her family raised chickens. They had no trouble finding the place. Dickson wanted to wait until nightfall but that wasn’t practical. The girl would be sleeping with
her parents and harder to separate from the others. It would be easier during the day.
On the hill overlooking the village, Valéria and her father waited for the sun to set. They had nothing to say to each other, as if the gravity of what they were about to do had left them speechless.
Valéria felt her father’s will waver once again. “Think about Evans lying on his straw mat, wracked with pain,” she told her father, “and your courage and determination will return.”
He handed her his leather drinking gourd that he carried to work every day. His hand trembled. She looked away, embarrassed by his weakness. At that moment, she said later, she hated him. His son was going to die, and he was still hesitating over whether to save him. At eleven years old she was the strongest and most determined of the two.
From their spot on the hill, Valéria and Dickson saw the little girl return to the village with her father and a few other people. Children ran up to the girl and touched her head as if she were a good-luck charm. Valéria had seen that before on the work site. The girl’s father shooed away the children and guided his daughter toward their hut.
A few minutes later they were home. The albino girl came out to feed the chickens. It was now or never. Valéria and her father moved down the hillside without a sound and slipped behind the house.
Her feedbag in her hand, the little girl was surprised when Valéria appeared.
“Come here,” Valéria said. “I have something to show you.”
The girl hesitated.
“Don’t be afraid.”
The albino girl moved closer, still fearful, but reassured by Valéria’s smile. Then everything happened very fast. Dickson appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the girl by the arm, and began running, his hand over her mouth to keep her from crying out.
Into the forest, far from the village.
The albino girl fainted. She lay before Valéria and her father. They gazed upon her as they would a sacred image, a statue, an idol. Respect, yes, but also an incredible feeling of power. The little girl reminded Valéria of an insect caught in a trap, a fly stuck in a spider’s web. Her skin was pale with pink blotches because of the sun. Her hair stood straight up, a sickly white, unreal. During the kidnapping, she’d lost her little white shoes, and now her bare feet were in a patch of mud.
