Another Kind of Madness

by Ed Pavlić

  The soldiers looked relaxed enough, as if they’d been marooned on an island with no hope of rescue. The road at the edge of the parking lot was clogged with vehicles of wildly divergent shapes, sizes, and conditions. Tour buses with neon names like Serena Beach Resort and Spa, Mombasa Beach Hotel, and Nyali Beach Holiday Resort stood triple-parked beyond a wooden barrier. Behind them it looked as if a fleet of taxis had been rolled like a handful of dice into an impossible configuration. Men stood on top of all the buses. Other men handed them luggage that was then stacked and strapped onto metal cages welded into the roofs. Shame looked back at the soldiers. Their image wavered in the heat. The soldiers hadn’t moved.

  The heat must have been hovering somewhere near him. Shame hadn’t felt it since stepping off of the train. Handing Godar’s phone back to him with thanks and vague promises to visit the tantric arts compound, Shame’s hand swung to his side. His now-phoneless hand reminded him that he wasn’t wheeling the suitcase. When he looked back he found the platform perfectly empty and as still as the sea of empty asphalt surrounding the stranded, recumbent soldiers. The heat and sweat arrived in an instant. He didn’t know what appeared first, the rivers of sweat or the waves of heat. He thanked Godar again and turned back. The open vacancy of the space that had been dense with chaos a few moments ago felt like a tide pushing and pulsing against his legs as he walked. He could see plainly that the suitcase was no longer standing where it had been but it felt, just then, necessary to stand in the precise position where he’d left it.

  The sweat appeared again. Stupidity, he then thought, was all around him, within and without him, was a continuous substance with no regard for the silly membrane of porous tissue that marked the borders of his body. Leaving the bag wasn’t a mystical occurrence nor, really, a very important one. He hadn’t thought about the hundred hundred-dollar bills he’d stashed in one of the five Danish puzzle boxes in the suitcase. It hadn’t crossed his mind. The situation was formal, a discrete and disturbing matter. He hadn’t put his hand back on the handle. That was it. Therefore he hadn’t pulled the bag along with him while he was talking. This was the second it. Two very simple actions among many hundreds of conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary actions going on at the time, in space and time, one of which hadn’t happened to be his placing his hand on the handle and so the other hadn’t happened to be, either, his pulling the bag along.

  Neither was this a historical matter; three minutes hadn’t passed. The visual residue of the past hadn’t completely dispersed. When he looked at the spot, he could almost still see the bag sitting there where he’d left it. Standing in that exact location, he could still almost see the throng of people on the platform. But the bag wasn’t there and the platform was now empty. The bag had been a fact. It still was. Somewhere. The difference between where the bag had been and where it was now was also a fact. The sweat running down Shame’s back and legs, collecting at his wrists, came from his body’s awakening to its unconquerable availability to the effects and consequences of stupidity and to the near-absolute unavailability of simple facts that were, geographically speaking, actually very, very nearby.

  Shame’s possession of the bag, on the other hand, had never been a fact. That was all flimsy theory. Maybe this was part of the heat too. A moment’s physical nuance in behavior could instantaneously, possibly irrevocably, alter his relationship to very simple facts surrounding him. Just as quickly as that, the route back to the previous place before the event vanished. The current pushing at him from all directions was fear, but he didn’t feel scared. He felt heavy and wet and awake. His pores were open. Something that seemed to replace the sky exploded into being above and all around him. It was like that for exactly the same reason that a fever breaks. A contagion had been overcome: let’s call the contagion innocence. In a way that wasn’t about planes and trains, he had just then left one place and arrived somewhere else.

  ■

  Shame disturbed what he wrongly perceived as the copious leisure of two uniformed men at the information and assistance office located on the arrival platform at the Mombasa station.

  –Have a seat. How may we help you?

  –I seem to have left my suitcase behind and now it’s lost.

  With this, the first man drew himself upright in his chair and put on his officer’s hat. The second finished his bottle of Coca-Cola and then, deliberately, as if this action involved a series of intricate decisions, also put on his hat.

  –OK. Don’t worry. Nothing can get lost in Mombasa.

  Shame smiled and suppressed a laugh. The first officer pronounced a stern phrase in Kiswahili and the second, who upon standing up appeared very young and much too thin for his uniform, went into the small shed and reappeared with a pen and a form on a clipboard.

  –Please fill out this form and we’ll look into the matter at hand.

  The younger man then ceremoniously handed Shame a wrinkled and yellowed form many, many generations of copies away from the original. The words were blurred and faded so that they looked like the shadow of words from a language long extinct.

  –Was your passport in the suitcase?

  –No, I have it here.

  –OK. Put the passport number at the top.

  A third man, the size of a child, arrived dressed in a blue suit jacket and worn slacks. He greeted the two officers and introduced himself to Shame.

  –Hello. Su sent me. Is there a problem?

  –I lost a suitcase.

  –Oh. No worries. Nothing can get lost in Mombasa. I’m Benson Kazungu. Your driver.

  Shame looked at the older officer who’d just said those exact words. Nothing on his face registered a coincidence. Benson said something to the officers and they nodded at Shame as if what the driver had told them was obvious. At the bottom of the form was a box to list the contents of a lost bag. The puzzle box now glared up at Shame from the empty space. The faded form made the box in his backpack seem as if it was broadcasting its location. The collision between possibilities that, one, the bag was gone and, two, it would be found and searched, made Shame feel momentarily cold. Then he felt the thin fingers of Benson’s tiny, birdlike hand on his shoulder.

  –Don’t worry. People in Mombasa are honest. Nothing can get lost in Mombasa.

  This time the sentence sounded more like a taunt or a curse than a reassurance.

  –I’m sure your bag was mistakenly taken by a porter to one of the hotel vans. The porters are very, very good, very efficient. They are eager to serve mzungus.

  Benson’s voice was calm. His English was excellent. Something—Shame thought it was a deliberate quality—made his voice different from the officers’, whose English was far more labored. In truth the difference in their voices had nothing to do with English. Still less had it anything to do with their personalities. None of the men had very much in the way of personality in English. In English they dealt with a duty. That was it. Their voices depicted only the nature of the transaction their duty required. Whoever these men were was nowhere near the way their voices came ashore in the historical and political ocean of duties to be endured in English.

  Benson had been hired by Su to take Shame to her house in Nyali. Thirty minutes. Now, in his hand, he had a note from the officers on which they’d written the names of hotels whose vans had met the morning train. They were located north of the city, past Nyali, and also to the south, all the way to Diani and beyond. In other words, Benson had just walked into his biggest fare of the week, maybe of the month. This was the deliberate care Shame noted in Benson’s voice. Had Shame known this he’d have thought Benson was acting and he may have been suspicious. In fact, it wasn’t an act at all. It was a very real thing, far more real than the shifty chemistry of any personality. In the US, calibrations in and behind personalities were considered duplicitous by people whose lives were served by them. So the fantasy persisted that economic transactions contained something personal. In the States, where much of this occurred at
op an internecine war between idioms within one language, maybe they did contain something personal, at least sometimes. Maybe always. Here, as concerned Shame Luther and Benson Kazungu, they did not.

  Benson led Shame to a gray hatchback Toyota Tercel. Shame caught himself and went to the left side. When Benson got in and popped the lock, Shame climbed in the front seat and placed his backpack between his feet on the floor. Shame’s black pants collected and stored heat from the air. He was drenched. Benson started the car, washed the windshield, turned off the wipers, and the two drove fifty yards in order to queue in a tangle of cars and Piaggio three-wheeled carts—Benson called them tuk-tuks—inching their way up a wide boulevard. Motionless air and clouds of exhaust in the street replaced the moment of breeze. An almost physical beam of sunlight fell through the window into Shame’s lap.

  Benson asked how he’d lost his bag. After hearing him out, he suggested that the first thing was to go to the Nokia store and see about Shame’s phone. “Always deal with the cause,” Benson advised. After a swift U-turn into likewise standstill traffic, Benson turned right into a side route with less traffic. They drove down a district street lined with small shops selling fabrics. Shame thought the proprietors of the small stores were Indian. They stood outside smoking thin cigarettes in short-sleeve dress shirts. Some sat in pairs at low tables set for tea. Benson suggested that Shame might buy some gifts for his family. Shame said he didn’t think so.

  –Well, if there’s anything, anything, you need, you tell me. I know Mombasa like my hands. Anything can be bought here.

  Benson’s eyes popped open slightly each time he said “anything.” Shame tried to read his smile but found only a blankness behind Benson’s expression, a closed door.

  In the Nokia store a young woman in hijab helped them in friendly and efficient tones. This was yet another idiom of transaction. She opened Shame’s phone like an oyster and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  –You bought this upcountry.

  This wasn’t a question.

  –Someone prepared it for me in Nairobi.

  At this she smiled a sneer, leaned back with her eyes on Benson. She either sighed, yawned, or said something to him and he laughed. Someone had installed the wrong battery for this model.

  –It’s a good phone. You can have email on this. M-Pesa. This takes the 1104 battery.

  She opened a drawer to her left and took out a wafer-like piece of plastic. 1000 Ksh for the new battery. Shame paid. The young woman snapped the new battery into place and replaced the shell of the phone.

  –Do you have credit on the phone?

  –I should, yes. I think so?

  She pushed a few buttons to check the credit. Suddenly her eyebrows disappeared under her hijab. She looked at Benson blankly as she handed Shame his phone.

  –You’ll be fine now.

  Shame couldn’t tell if she said that to him or the driver. And Shame totally missed the elegance with which the matter of what to do with the other phone battery never arose. He hadn’t even thought of it. Benson followed Shame outside.

  When they got back to the car Benson sat in the driver’s seat for a few moments as if Shame wasn’t there. Benson folded a few bills into his wallet, started the car and washed the window again. That was the third time he’d washed the windshield in thirty minutes. En route to the Nokia store, he’d turned off the car while stopped in traffic for about five minutes and had washed the windshield when he started the car then as well. Benson’s manner was retiring, very formal but not stiff. His eyes and smile were clearly, almost brazenly, painted on a blank slate but his face wasn’t hard or cold. It was simply that something was washed clean behind his face. One thing was for sure, Shame thought, “Brotherman sure loves him a clean windshield.”

  –We’ll check the hotels north of the island first. Don’t worry. People in Mombasa are very, very honest. Nothing can get lost here.

  At that moment, a tall woman fully covered in a black buibui with shiny black beads embroidered into the trim of her veil stopped at the corner. Two lanes of traffic were turning left. Benson paused so she could cross. Looking back to watch the merging lane, the driver of a black Mercedes SUV in the lane to their right kept going. Shame braced for impact. Only the woman’s eyes were visible. Under her arm, she held a sleek silver handbag. She stood unflinching in the path of the SUV. As if in slow motion, Shame watched as the woman, without turning her head, cut her eyes and aimed them into the windshield of the Mercedes. The driver turned to meet the side-gaze fixed at him and screeched to a halt as if a concrete wall had appeared in front of his car. The woman hadn’t moved her head nor altered her stance. Before the Benz had a beat to settle its momentum backward she’d returned her eyes to the path before her and took two more steps to where the nose of the vehicle interrupted her path. Facing forward, she stopped at the bumper. There was plenty of room to walk around but she stopped. The offending vehicle then backed up to clear her path and the covered woman walked on without another glance. Her first glance, however, had somehow remained where it was, midair, like a suspended steel beam.

  Shame didn’t know what to call what he’d just seen. If asked, he’d have said, “Power.” He didn’t know if he’d really seen what he’d seen. He looked at Benson who smiled and nodded diagonally. Shame thought he glimpsed something there behind Benson’s face for an instant, but it vanished before he was sure if he’d seen that either. They’d both seen this happen. But Benson clearly hadn’t seen what Shame saw.

  –Yes. She’s very beautiful. If you want I can take you to have one. They’re all prostitutes.

  –No. That’s alright.

  –OK. If you need a woman. You tell me what kind you’d like, Hindu, Christian, Muslim. I’ll take you to have one. Mombasa is like my hands.

  As they made their left turn, the ocean appeared to the right in the distance. Shame noted that Benson discussed a new phone battery, a lost suitcase, and the purchase of any kind of woman with utterly the same inflection, or lack of it, in his voice. Mombasa, his hands. “According to Benson,” Shame thought, “anything can be bought here and nothing can be lost.”

  After checking at a second hotel to the north of Nyali, Benson’s phone rang as he opened his door. It was Sarah. Someone had found Shame’s bag. It was near Diani, south of the island. About thirty kilometers. With the ferry and traffic, maybe two hours. Maybe three. Shame nodded. And Benson:

  –Yes, Sarah, thank you. I know where that is. We’ll go now. Phone number?

  Benson wrote down the number on the back of a business card and thanked Sarah, instructing her to settle down and stop worrying. He handed the card to Shame, who stared at it for a few seconds:

  B.M. Taxi Service

  For Comfort Touring & Traveling

  Benson M. Kazungu

  Taxi Operator

  PO Box 37 Mariakani

  Mwembe Tayari     Cell: 0726 324 099

  Opp. Mash Booking Office   0735 608 899

  Benson hung up the phone.

  –Someone called Sarah to say that he has your bag. We’ll go to him now.

  Benson smiled blankly and blinked.

  –Sarah’s crying.

  Shame flipped the card over and noticed something strange about the number. Distractedly, he asked,

  –Did she say who it was or how they got my bag? Is it at a hotel?

  –Yes. The name is Godar. No, it is not a hotel. It’s at his residence to the south.

  –Of course.

  Shame nodded at the banal certainty of disbelief. Then he wondered what would happen if Godar had checked through his bag out of curiosity. The sweat dripped down his legs inside his pants. He decided to start caring about that when they got there, maybe.

  Benson started the car and washed the windshield. He turned off the wipers after three or four quick swishes whipped away the clear fluid. After multiple washings, the windshield, of course, had been spotless when they got in the car.


  –Benson, I have to say … you’ve got the cleanest windshield I’ve ever seen.

  –Oh, you like my clean windshield, do you?

  –Yes, I’ve noticed you wash it every time we get in the car.

  –Yes, I do. Watch this.

  Benson switched the ignition off and removed the key. Then he stared at Shame, put the key back in the ignition with his right hand and raised his left hand high, away from the controls between them. Benson held his gaze on Shame’s face, smiled, and turned the key. Nothing happened.

  –You see? What is it?

  –What? Nothing? I don’t know.

  –Yes. Nothing! Exactly.

  Shame stared at Benson, clueless. Over Benson’s shoulder, three gaunt guards, two with rifles and one with a mirror angled on a long broom handle, stood guard near a thatch-roofed hut at the hotel entrance gate. A gaggle of red-faced tourists disembarked from a van while three men in khaki shorts and white polo shirts worked on the roof removing belts that held a mountain of luggage in place.

  –Aha. Now, wait.

  Benson removed the key again, held it out for Shame’s inspection, and replaced it in the ignition. Then, exaggerating his gestures like a magician who was about to remove a huge clutch of flowers from his tuxedo sleeve, Benson lowered his left hand and grasped the wand attached to the steering column between the driver and passenger. Shame noticed just then that Benson’s right palm was creased and gathered around a thick scar that ran like a rift across his wrist and disappeared into the cuff of his sleeve. He instructed Shame to watch closely as his left thumb depressed the button at the very end of the control wand and held it down. Benson smiled again. Still, nothing happened. Shame had no idea where this demonstration was going.

  –Are you ready?

  –Sure.

  Benson then turned the key with his right hand and the car started, liquid shot onto the windshield and the wipers cleared it away.

  –OK. I see. So what is it? A short?