Mukurob

by André Costa

  David and Jack stood up at the same time as Andreas but went in the opposite direction. The mission leader was going to talk to witnesses of the abduction. Marie and Edward were left behind, but not ignored.

  “Poor boy, I hope he’s alright,” sighed Jack. “Damn hunters!”

  “Do you think she’s going to help Benjamin?” asked David, surprisingly changing the course of concerns.

  “Marie? Honestly, no. I’m afraid she might have actually welcomed Benjamin’s fate… In a way, it smoothed things over for her.”

  “So, you think she wanted to stay with Edward rather than Benjamin?”

  “God, no. I don’t think that. But I swear she’ll find a replacement soon enough. This double life gives her the illusion that the sun rises twice on the same day.”

  “You must know Dr. Steensen very well”.

  “I just don’t know her in bed, David, because I’m gay. But contrary to how it may seem, sex is not her strongest skill.”

  Both revelations surprised David. Jack had revealed his homosexuality as casually as if he’d been talking about the weather; and his comment about Marie’s sexual performance, a confidence between friends, was equally a matter-of-fact. For a moment, David thought of bringing up Ireland’s debate about legalizing homosexual marriage but decided against it so as not to detract from the present trajectory of the conversation. Instead, he cautiously ventured further into the subject of Marie’s sexuality. It was none of his business, but the images and noises of her and Benjamin’s passionate lovemaking the night before had not left his mind.

  “Is she not fully satisfied as a woman?”

  This time it was Jack who was surprised. David’s sudden interest in Marie’s sex-life was unusual for a priest. They looked at each other and put the question to rest by consensus.

  In the shortage of words which followed, they both continued to discreetly observe the caresses exchanged between Marie and Edward. In David’s eyes, Dr. Freeman’s arms and face transfigured in color and texture. It was not long before a much more libidinous thought invaded his mind, turning curves and silhouettes into an orgiastic trio, a Renaissance painting of hell’s hallway. He gave his head an almost imperceptible shake, trying to excommunicate the disconcerting vision from his mind.

  “Imagination is indeed a demonic instrument, Jack. We would all do better not to abuse it.”

  The statement did nothing to drive the dialogue from that point on, so David decided to retire for the evening. Inside the tent, once again sleep did not come quickly, and tossing and turning from side to side did not bring any relief. He thought about getting up to help himself to a glass of hot milk, but the plan was too laborious. He finally decided to bury his head under his pillow like an ostrich. It worked.

  Sometime later, David woke to the sound of wind whipping over his tent. Yet it was another sound that made him sit up: the whisper of barely audible and overlapping voices. Looking to the side to find Jack’s cot empty, he decided to crawl out of the tent to find out what was happening. He did not see or hear anything unusual. No wind, no people talking, just the usual silence of the night in the Kalahari. He concluded that he had been dreaming when, out of nowhere, something flew over his head like a thunderbolt.

  It was a dark, misshapen stain that cheered the wind in its trajectory. The figure started circling the camp, forming a whirlwind in its path. The loud noise returned. On the creature’s second round, David was able to identify its black-skinned dorsum. On the following lap, its face was revealed. It was Benjamin, who, looking directly into David’s eyes, let out a horrifying laugh, displaying teeth as white as the full moon. David answered with a loud cry, jumping back into the tent quickly, only to find Jack at his side.

  “What was that?” asked Jack, equally frightened.

  “I don’t know. An Omuroi, maybe… but I was dreaming,” answered David.

  “What? Omuroi? No, you were not; I also heard it.”

  “Did you?”

  Suddenly, a desperate female scream flooded their ears. “It’s Marie!” they shouted together in horror, darting from the tent to come to her aid. They found her kneeling next to the ashes of the fire, Andreas already beside her. Before them, Edward’s body lay face down in a pool of blood with a dagger implanted in his back.

  “He’s dead!” said Andreas.

  Marie screamed and cried in denial. So loud was her melancholy that every member of the San tribe woke and came to stand as if paralyzed around her. First-aid rites were only administered to try and calm Marie’s lament, since the deceased had no plans to resurrect. Despite having no doubt about Edward’s condition, David improvised the sacrament of extreme unction—through which the Catholics believe that Christ himself guides the sick into heaven, washing away their sins—late and without oil.

  When the attempts proved useless, bordering on the edge of the absurd, David asked everyone to form a circle of faith and said a Hail Mary, using the full strength of his voice. Edward had been a Christian, and indeed, wherever he was at that moment, would not object to Catholic rites, thought the young priest. Marie also did not resist and held David’s hand firmly as she wept copiously. Behind them, the shaman stood with a haughty, serene, and ecumenical expression on his face.

  After the tragedy, the rest of the night was awake with tears and many questions, while Edward’s body was left untouched to preserve the pieces of evidence for the further police investigation.

  “I left him to get a cup of coffee; I didn’t take more than a minute or two,” Marie cried. “Someone must have been hiding close by and observing us.”

  After one round of questions, Andreas concluded that all the spirits present in all things and beings—except the humans—had witnessed the murder.

  Chapter XII

  As the night progresses and while they watched over the deceased, with Marie’s ears equally dead, Jack tells David the story about Mukurob, the iconic Namibian sandstone structure which fell in 1988.

  An indigenous’s prophecy linking the end of the white people’s rule to the day the rock would collapse—and considering that the country had its independence from the South African apartheid´s regime soon after it actually fell—captured David’s attention completely.

  “That’s a fabulous story, Jack. You certainly don’t believe in coincidences, do you?”

  “All I know is that such a unique geological formation should have survived the politics of man. I only got to see it in photos,” smiled Jack.

  “Interesting! And what does Mukurob mean?”

  “It is said to somehow relate to The Finger of God.”

  “So, it refers to a biblical image…”

  “Sure! ‘The Finger of God’ inscribed the Ten Commandments onto the stone tablets carried by Moses,” Jack recalled.

  “And yet I can only think of it as pictured in the fresco painting by Michelangelo,” said David.

  “The one on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling?”

  “Exactly: ‘The Creation of Adam.’”

  “But why?” Jack was surprised.

  “Well, it has always intrigued me that, in the painting, God’s and Adam’s fingers don’t touch each other. The image of the near-touching fingers must have embodied a more encompassing meaning than that of the creation of the first man, don’t you think?”

  “Like what?”

  “God’s finger is trying to reach Adam’s when he is already alive. He’s lying down comfortably and does not seem to make much effort to complete the action. So, Jack, it is as if God wished to grant him with something other than life.”

  “you mean…”

  “Imagination, perhaps…”

  David uttered the last sentence as his eyes landed slowly on the ground. The reality that awaited them was much too painful. “How was Marie when you left her?”

  “She fell asleep in my arms. I tipt
oed out… You think it was Benjamin, don’t you?”

  “It’s hard to believe…he didn’t seem capable of such a cruel act,” pondered David.

  “Well, I’m certain it wasn’t him.”

  Jack’s statement was so decisive that it drew David’s attention to his demeanor. The former seminarian looked disheartened, but his eyes were as firm as his tone of voice.

  As the first rays of sunlight announced a new day, David and Jack’s bodies gave in to fatigue. They fell into a deep sleep, only to wake a few hours later to the campsite bustling like a St. Patrick’s Day.

  Standing near the entrance to his tent, David watched the arrival of a procession of police, press and U.S. diplomatic corps vehicles. Most of the occupants spilling from the cars into the bright sun tried to disguise the tiredness resulting from a journey evidently started before dawn. Others yawned unashamedly as if they were attending a trivial event.

  David looked carefully at a young woman with long fingers, who had stepped out of the back of one of the diplomatic vehicles. She spoke and gestured more than everyone else combined, even questioning the police officers, who, at the time, knew nothing more than the victim’s name. With index finger pointed, she demanded impossible explanations and rolled her eyes whenever her subjects hesitated to respond.

  Andreas realized that this symphony needed a conductor and started organizing the horde of outsiders. The work of the detectives and coroners would be given precedence, the diplomatic representatives would be heard next, and, finally, the press would have their turn.

  In practice, however, everything ran simultaneously and conflictingly until the senior policeman in charge of the mission decided to end the chaos by exercising his authority. Only then did the press fall silent and the American diplomats step away, initiating a parallel investigation.

  David observed as the long-fingered woman approached the San family. Her officious manner frightened them at first, but her tactic eventually worked. Two young boys told her that they had not been able to sleep because of their parents’ snoring and had decided to leave the tent to get some water. On their way, they saw the black man who had recently been fired by the scientists walking behind the tents. They lost sight of him, and seconds later heard a terrifying woman’s scream. Frightened, they dropped the water jug they had been carrying and ran back to their tent, pretending to never have left at all.

  The boys’ statement had a devastating effect on Marie. Her knees buckled, and David’s shoulders failed as a sound refuge this time. She crumpled to the ground. Andreas and Thomas picked her up and escorted her, dusty and disheveled, back to her tent.

  In less than half an hour, the police pieced together the boys’ testimony and the circumstantial evidence of Benjamin’s dismissal over his disagreement with Edward to formally pronounce the first suspect. “A puzzle fit for a child,” one of the policemen said. Satisfied with their speedy investigation, they soon forgot about the initial tension and became exceedingly friendly towards the emissaries from the U.S. embassy, particularly a military officer, whom they treated with pats on the back and complicit smiles. The press, however, was not placated, sensing in Marie’s dramatic reaction the beginning of a much more seductive story for their readers.

  Andreas was equally disdainful of the rapid progression of the investigative process. He gave the detectives a detailed account of the conflict with the Chinese hunters and of how Edward had risked his life to rescue the San boy. “The Chinese left the camp in a rage, shouting words in Mandarin that we could not understand, but that certainly sounded like threats.”

  Just as Andreas was wrapping up his explanation of the episode, Thomas approached breathlessly, adding the news of !Soh’s disappearance the night before, and thus fueling a different focus on the investigation. Although Andreas’s theory about who murdered Edward became all the more plausible and alarming, the Americans were restless. They were afraid that a second line of inquiry would hold back police action in hunting down the Herero and, most of all, in solving this crime against a North American citizen. Yankee pressure then proved effective, and the police officers put away their notepads. They loaded the victim’s body ensconced in a body bag into a van and headed back, leaving a single policeman behind to guard the crime scene.

  As if propelled by so much hustle and bustle, the day quickly came to a close. By sundown, David found himself inside his tent once again, seeking silence to soothe his shaken spirit and to pray, pray, pray. The amount of prayer was proportional to the tragedy of the event. However, peace eluded him as Andreas’s voice called the team for an emergency meeting.

  “I know it might seem too early for such a drastic decision, one with so many implications, but I spoke to Marie, and we have concluded that we must, at least for the time being, cancel our project.”

  Marie had no words to follow her partner‘s harsh statement. Instead, she kept her head down and her lifeless arms thrown on her knees.

  “Without Edward, I’ll have to go back to our sponsors with a revised project proposal,” continued Dr. Ecklund. “I don’t know how much time we’ll need, but I can’t keep you here waiting for an answer… Father Callaghan, I’m sure Jack will find a new project where your voluntary work will be more than welcome and appreciated.”

  Andreas extracted a folded piece of paper from the front pocket in his shorts and handed it to David.

  “Take that with you. I had written down my thoughts about our conversations before the tragic event.”

  “What about you, Marie? Will you go back to Europe with Andreas?” Jack asked.

  “Yes. I’ll help Andreas revise the parameters of the project,” she muttered,“but I’ll need some time first.”

  “I don’t know what to say…” David stammered, breaking a long silence. “Saying that I regret the whole miserable episode is certainly not enough. All I know is that I’m grateful to have shared a bit of my life with all of you, however briefly.”

  Jack was then delivering some kind words about David’s presence and what it had meant to the mission when, suddenly, every head turned in shock as !Soh, accompanied by the two child witnesses, burst into the scene with no sense of protocol.

  “Oh my God! It’s !Soh!” Marie shouted, vocalizing the surprise on everyone’s face.

  “Sir, I’ve come from the Chinese camp,” the San boy told Andreas. “They caught me last night, but I was able to escape a little after sunrise.”

  “Were the hunters here last night?” Andreas asked.

  “Yes, sure. That was when they caught me. I was sleeping when they put the rifle barrel to my throat.”

  “So, it really wasn’t Ben!” Marie blurted out. “They’ve kidnapped !Soh and killed Edward. Did you see them do it?” she asked the San boy.

  “Easy, Marie!” Andreas said, grabbing her by the arm. “We need to calmly establish what exactly happened.”

  “The boys told me about it, ma’am, but I didn’t see anything. Sorry…” the San boy said, lowering his head.

  “No, Andreas!” Marie wrenched her arm free from his grip. “I’m sure that Ben… how could I ever have doubted? He would never commit such a cowardly murder. How long have we known him, huh? Five years? We know his code of honor, Andreas. He would never kill a person by stabbing him in the back... you know that!”

  “What’s your opinion, Jack?” Andreas asked.

  “Well, I heard the coroner say the blow was dealt with great precision, the work of a professional, surgically slashing the aorta from the back...”

  Marie let out a great sob and hid her face behind her hands, rendering Jack unable to finish his description.

  “What I’m trying to say is that, yes, I agree with Marie. I don’t believe that Benjamin would commit such an atrocity.”

  “Sir,” !Soh started. “They kidnapped the black man, too. We tried to run away together, but they caught him again. He was shot
here…” !Soh pointed at his right leg, “…and fell. I ran faster than a cheetah.”

  “Andreas, did you hear that? They caught him, and he’s probably badly wounded. We have to do something. I know what they want,” Marie said.

  “We’ve already lost Edward. The police are handling the case now,” Andreas said firmly, raising his voice. “German, inform the detectives of the new developments!”

  “And what should I do with the San families?” Thomas asked, not yet knowing what part he was to play in the unfolding tragedy.

  “Send them back to Grootfontein in the morning!” ordered Andreas. “They can use our office as temporary lodging since they have no other place to go. They can stay there for one or two months, maybe even three, who knows. But the San boy has to stay with you because the police will need to question him.”

  Although not all necessary logistics had been discussed, the meeting was aborted through consensus. Andreas and Thomas headed off to make arrangements for the imminent departure, while Marie and Jack sought seclusion in a quiet corner. David, however, not feeling invited to either of these, returned to his prayers.

  Night settled perfectly outside his tent. David felt though increasingly less drawn to the scenery of the Kalahari, too hostile for anyone who did not profess to the tenets of animism. Even during his prayers, memories of the last two nights haunted him. It dawned on him then that a good deal of time had gone by since he had heard any of the team members, the only audible voices talking in the San language. From their proximity, he could tell that they were lighting the night fire.

  David left his tent to watch as wood turned to color and light. He thought about the power that fire had given human beings—in truth fire had never spoken to animals but had always fascinated man. Most animals were scared of it and ran away from. Humans, even though initially frightened, would eventually run toward it. Something draws man to fire; then he takes hold of the object of his admiration and controls it. His thoughts and a glass of red wine kept David company. It was the first time he had alcohol in the desert, and the fermented grape juice had never been more generous in soothing his nerves. Looking at the bottle, he found the occasion more important than its South African origin. He poured himself another glass.