by Claire North
“Thank you, Harbinger of Death,” she said politely, offering her right hand to shake, the handbag with the gun in it dangling from her wrist. “Thank you for everything.”
He shook her hand, eyes still fixed on Isabella’s face, then smiled and began to walk away.
He made it to the door, then stopped, and looked back.
“Miss Abayomi?”
Isabella didn’t look at him.
“You were very funny. I watched your show. It was really good. I enjoyed it. Thank you.”
Her eyes flickered up, met his, then turned away.
He took another step, then turned back and blurted, “Sometimes I come as a courtesy, sometimes a warning, and today … which one am I? Do you know?”
Now Isabella’s eyes flew to him, and there was rage again, burning fury, a thing without a name.
But Kemi smiled. “Oh,” she breathed. “By now? A courtesy, I expect. Maybe a warning? More likely a courtesy. Things being what they are.”
“You think Death is coming for you? That it is inevitable?”
“Yes. Probably. The man you saw today, the man who … His name is Jonah. His father is a judge. He is a millionaire. He owns other people’s lives, their businesses, their everything. He wanted to own us, but we … have each other. It is illegal, of course, for us to be together. It is a vile sin. If we are ever arrested—and Jonah will make sure we are, if he doesn’t simply kill us—we will be imprisoned. In the northern states, we could be stoned to death. These … postcards are very whimsical, but they do not change a thing. We are Nigerian. This is our home. We will quite possibly die for it, and each other. That is why you are here, Mr. Harbinger of Death. What you witnessed tonight … was not the first. There have been others, and there will be more to come, and one day, we will not be there for each other, and maybe, by your presence, that day is sooner than we thought. Don’t look so shocked—you cannot be as we are and not consider the possibility. If you kill a yansh babe, you do not kill a human being, not really.”
human human human rat rat human rat rat human
Charlie shook his head, a pounding against his ears, a drumbeat in his skull
human rat rat human rat
Kemi’s head tilted to one side. “You are … are you all right?”
“I … I’m fine, yes. Thank you. I mean … I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “We chose our life.”
“And tonight? Tonight doesn’t change it?”
“No. As I said: this is not the first.”
He looked past Kemi, to Isabella, silent behind the woman she loved, and wondered where was that wit now, where was her humour, her laughter that could infect others. No sign of it, away from the stage, but perhaps that was to be expected, perhaps laughter was just another part of the performance too.
He looked down.
He didn’t move.
They waited.
Then he looked up and said, “Is it safe for you to go home?”
They didn’t answer.
“I’m staying in a good hotel. Actually—I’m staying in an overpriced bad hotel, but it’s good enough.”
“We don’t need pity,” hissed Isabella. “Our lives are our own.”
“No,” he retorted, sharper than he’d meant. “Death is coming. I have seen him. I saw him on the ice, I saw him on the edge of the pit; I saw him in the street where the rich men drank champagne, I saw him by my father’s side. Death is coming for you, he’s coming and I came before. Now in the name of everything, for the sake of all that matters, please, just … just please. For one night only. Please let me do something good.”
The two women looked at each other.
Words, Yoruba, gentle, fast.
Then Isabella said, “Okay.”
Chapter 69
“I want to go to Africa.”
“What we like about him is he’s reduced his dependency on foreign aid by nearly seventy per cent. I know this will be his fifth term in office, but from a financial standpoint …”
“White people were slaves too, you know! Why do they have to make it such a big thing, like it was just so …”
“Tuareg, Zulu, Bantu, Masai, Ashante, Hutu, Tutsi, Shona, Hausa, Luba, Fula, Berber, Mande …”
“Where in Africa?”
“Coffee bananas pineapples oranges mango maize sugar mahogany ebony diamonds uranium …”
“Did you know that technically, Egypt is in Africa? I mean I always assumed …”
“What did the British ever do? I know that there were some massacres, but actually the bureaucracy we left behind …”
“They don’t want it. Well it’s not their culture. I know that that’s what they liked in Ethiopia, but thing is, Angola is five and a half thousand kilometres away …”
“The play is set in Greece. Yes I know it’s about recovery from war, but why does that automatically mean it needs to be …?”
“Do I look like a victim to you?”
“I just don’t understand why these places can’t be like everywhere else.”
Chapter 70
In the land of sun …
… in a land of oil …
… on the edge of a lagoon where the city grows …
Isabella and Kemi had to have two separate rooms, because that was how it worked.
Kemi snuck into Isabella’s room and held her tight, squeezed up close to her on the single bed. It will be a long time before Isabella feels safe again. The eyes of strangers are full of bullets now.
Charlie lay on his back, in his bedroom by the sea, and stared at the ceiling, and did not sleep.
Knock knock knock!
Knock knock knock!
Charlie opened his eyes, and perhaps he had slept after all, because the sun was high and the day was hot, and someone was knocking at his door. He pulled on the hotel’s complimentary dressing gown, thin-soled slippers. “Who is it?” he called, resting his aching, bruised back against the wall.
“Police!”
There wasn’t a spyhole in the door. He opened it on the chain. Two men, wearing scuffed white shirts and black trousers, stood in the corridor. One waved an ID at him through the narrow gap, said, “You are Mr. Harbinger of Death?”
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk to you about an incident last night.”
“Can you give me five minutes?”
“Yes. We’ll wait here.”
“Thank you.”
Charlie closed the door, and wondered if he had any clean pants.
They sat in the hotel bar. No one was serving alcohol, not at this time of day. Charlie ordered fruit and yoghurt. The two policemen ordered coffee. For a while the three of them sat, waiting for their orders, saying not a word, as if the ritual of conversation could not begin until bellies were full, caffeine flowing. Charlie made a show of checking his phone, and wondered how bruised his face was. In the rush to put clothes on, he hadn’t looked too closely in the mirror, and now his shirt was done up out of order, one rogue button sticking up at the top, nowhere to go; one loose eye hanging unloved at the bottom. His jaw, when he moved it, creaked. His stomach ached. His arm throbbed, and for a moment he wondered if the hospital should have discharged him.
Tsk tsk, muttered a junior doctor, owl-eyed, kicking up from his memories. Is this all that’s wrong with you? Don’t waste my time, there are people with real injuries to deal with, you know?
A bowl of yoghurt; a bowl of fruit. The yoghurt tasted metallic in his mouth; the fruit was the fruitiest, sweetest, richest thing he thought he’d ever eaten.
The policemen drank their coffee, watched him a while. At last the senior officer, a man with hair turning grey around the temples and a small constellation of dark moles beneath his right eye, said, “We want to talk to you about an incident last night, in which we are told you were involved.”
“You want to know about the attack?”
“The attack. Yes. Do you know this man?”
A picture, put on the
table in front of him. He recognised the face, the diamond-encrusted crucifix. “Yes. He attacked us.”
“Attacked … who?”
“Myself and Miss Abayomi.”
“The three of you were involved in a confrontation?”
“If you want to call it that.”
“Where was this?”
“Outside the comedy club where Miss Abayomi performed.”
“Why were you there?”
“I was … I was there on business.”
“What kind of business?”
Charlie hesitated, the spoon drooping in his hand, yoghurt dripping off it back into the bowl. “Well. I’m the Harbinger of Death. I was … I was there for that.”
“Whose death?”
“It … doesn’t work like that.”
“Doesn’t it? You arrive, and people die; that’s how it is, abi?”
“No, it’s … sometimes it’s that, but sometimes … I’m sent for an idea. In Greenland I was sent for a man, but I think I was sent also for the ice, because it was melting and the world will change, and in Syria the dead were dead already and I was sent for a poet who had become … Sometimes I am sent for an idea, as well as a person.”
“And what idea were you sent for this time?”
“I don’t know.” Even as he said the words, he stopped himself, stared down into his bowl, then blurted, “The world is ending.”
“What?”
“The world is ending. No—a world is ending. I think … I think I am sent for that.”
“That doesn’t make sense. What does it even mean?”
“I, uh … I … It’s a thing like …” The words trailed away. Charlie closed his eyes, tried to find words, the ice, the dust, the fire, the dead, the songs in the mountains, the …
Opened his eyes again, saw faces that he suddenly feared would never understand, saw for a moment the whole world staring at him from these policemen’s eyes, the human race peeking at an occluded, obscure star. He looked away. “I can’t explain.” Wished Emmi was by his side.
The policeman shrugged while his junior colleague made notes on a yellow pad, sucking in his lower lip as if displeased at the things he was now transcribing. “So here you are, at the club, harbingering away, and there is Miss Abayomi, and here is this man …” He tapped the picture of Jonah again with his index finger, twice. “How did the argument begin?”
“It wasn’t an argument. He stopped us as we were trying to leave. He threatened us.”
“He threatened you? What exactly did he say?”
“I … I don’t know, exactly, the words were … but he had two boys with him, two men, I can describe them, they were …”
“Boys like children?”
“No, like … like young men, and it was obvious that he was threatening us …”
“But you don’t know what he actually said.”
“No, but look, we … we ran, back to the club, tried to lock ourselves in, away from him, and one of his boys came over the wall and he … Look, he did this …”
Charlie pulled up his shirt, suddenly hot, panting for breath. The bruises across his belly and ribs were glorious purple and red, sweeps of yellow and brown—everything he could have hoped for as an impressive display.
The junior policeman stopped writing, raised his eyebrows, pen still poised to strike.
The senior sighed and shook his head, a tired old man who’d seen too many gloomy mornings after the weatherman promised sun, and said, “Cover up, Mr. Harbinger of Death, you’re in a public place.”
Charlie pulled his shirt back down, feeling suddenly ashamed.
“So these boys … they want to talk to you, and you say you feel threatened, but you’re not sure why, and at what point did Kemi Afolayan draw her gun?”
Charlie opened his mouth, and closed it again.
He sat back in his chair, and realised that this was perhaps how puppets felt, when their master let go of the strings. He licked his lips, tried to find some words, eventually mumbled, “That man … was going to … he was …”
“Yes, Mr. Harbinger? What was he?”
“He took his belt off. He … he was going to …”
“Ah, this is more of your being threatened without actually knowing why. Is it possible that you get frightened easily? Maybe you misunderstood the situation?”
“No, no, I was there, I …”
“The gun: when did Miss Afolayan draw it?”
“I … He was going to kill us.”
“Are you sure? Did he say so?”
“Of course he didn’t say so,” spat Charlie. “Of course he didn’t fucking say it. You know, I know, I’ve seen … Kemi saved my life.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard that she and Miss Abayomi verbally and physically threatened this man, that they threatened to kill him. The words were … What were the words?”
The junior policeman cleared his throat, and with the aplomb of a singer at the opera intoned, “You’re dead, you’re dead, we’re going to kill you, you’re dead.”
“I didn’t hear them say that, I heard him say that, I heard this man …”
“Have you ever seen Miss Abayomi and Miss Afolayan kiss?”
“What?”
“Have you ever seen them kiss? Touch each other in a sexual manner? Rub each other’s breasts? Lick each other’s necks, perhaps—something of this sort?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“But they are lesbian.”
“I … I wouldn’t know that.”
“Do you think they threatened this man because he knew?”
“No.”
“Do you think they threatened to kill him because they were afraid of being exposed?”
“No.”
“Do you think …”
“He was going to kill us!” Charlie’s voice rang round the room, a scream of fury and despair. “He was going to rape her and then he was going to kill us both!”
He was half out of his chair, resting on his fists, gasping for breath. The room turned to look, stared, waited, turned away. The two policemen sat, quiet and calm. The older had one leg folded over the other, hands resting on his knees. The younger held the pen tight in his right hand, a wading bird ready to strike.
Tick. Tick. Tick. An old-fashioned clock, eight minutes slow, tick tick tick on the wall.
“Please sit down, Mr. Harbinger,” sighed the policeman at last.
Charlie lowered himself back into his seat, shaking from ears to toes.
“You don’t know much about our country, do you?” breathed the older man, not unkindly. “That’s all right. Not many people do. They talk about this continent—Africa—as if it was one big place, as if your Scotland was the same as Greece. It’s Africa, they say, it’s just how Africa is. You have come here, perhaps, with certain preconceptions, with a certain sense of your own importance, of privilege. Privilege—an interesting word, privilege, you as somehow above it all, and from being above, perhaps able to judge? Height is the key, morally superior, intellectually superior, a white man come to a black city, yes? Mr. Harbinger of Death, don’t look so ashamed, it is very, very common amongst your kind.
“Let me explain: Lagos doesn’t give two fucks about you. Lagos doesn’t care what you saw, or what you think you saw, or what you’re going to say, or who you’re going to say it to. You could be the most important man in the world and who would care, not us, not here, the city … this city … we are ours, ourselves, we are the tellers of our own stories. There are certain parts of my job that require paperwork; that is all. And the paperwork will tell the story that the city needs to be told. Once I was angry about it, do you believe that? Once I thought it was some sort of injustice, this thing that happens, this way things are. I do not think that way now. I imagine that if this was New York, I would advise you to get out of town, but honestly, leave, stay, it’s all the same to me. I don’t care.”
So saying, he sto
od up, threw a few notes onto the table, smiled, and offered his hand to Charlie to shake.
Charlie sat dumb, and stared at the floor.
The policeman smiling, head on one side, then, thoughtful, pulling his lips in and rolling them between his teeth for a moment: “Mr. Harbinger … what is Death?”
“What?”
“What is Death? Do you think?”
“I … Death is Death is …”
“But—I have often wondered this—why do good men die? Is it luck? Is there destiny? If there is destiny, is there a God? What do people see when they die? Do they go somewhere else? Is Death kind? Is Death cruel? What is Death?”
Charlie shook his head, looked down at the polished hotel floor.
The policeman shrugged, and with a flick of his wrist to his partner to follow, walked away.
Chapter 71
Here: a story told.
Once, said the Harbinger of Death, I was sent to visit a dying man.
(Most of Charlie’s stories begin this way.)
This man, he lived in Belarus, and he had been Stalinist when it was a good idea to be Stalinist, an admirer of Khrushchev’s secret speech back when that was in vogue, a fan of Brezhnev, an ardent supporter of Yeltsin, an advocate for the EU and closer ties to Moscow and a big pal of Putin’s, all with equal commitment, all of the time.
And his name was …
… his name was really rather long, and besides, it’s not my business to talk about these things; there’s a certain … confidentiality, a certain respect that you should have for these matters, for the dead, so we’ll call him Rodion and leave it at that.
Rodion, through his stalwart commitment to pretty much anything, was a very rich man. When the USSR collapsed, he became even richer by buying up state enterprises—the road building, the hospitals, the schools, the factories, you name it—on the cheap and turning them into vast, profitable businesses. This was, in its way, an admirable thing. It was a less admirable thing when he entered politics and conducted this business by a) turning up on election day with free TVs for anyone who voted for him and b) shooting journalists. But these were the times, that was the fashion, what’s a guy to do?
