Tongues of Fire

by Peter Abrahams

  My paddle’s keen and bright

  Flashing with silver

  Follow the wild goose flight

  Dip dip and swing.

  Isaac Rehv walked all day. He sang. He talked to himself. “Okay. Muglad. Muglad. First, buy some trading goods. Get the trading goods. Then, then. What? Get a room. Cheap. That’s it. Trading goods. Cheap room. Railroad bridge.” He counted them off on his fingers. Once he laughed and started running. He laughed and ran, laughed and ran, his jubba flapping around his legs. He stopped when he felt how hard his heart was pounding. Even after he stopped, it pounded in his ears for a long time. He sat down beside a dusty bush and drank from the canteen. He lay down. He put his ear to the ground, like an Indian. If the earth had a heart beating under its skin he couldn’t hear it.

  He jumped up. He had done it. He had done it.

  Oh, God. The boy.

  But the boy wanted it.

  He had made him want it.

  Had he?

  He stopped jumping and walked. The sun pressed down on the top of his head like a heavy weight. At first the dusty sky was yellow ochre. It turned to red ochre as the sun sank toward the horizon. Miles above, a plane scratched a pink line through the redness pointing west. To Lac du Loup. It kept pointing long after the plane had disappeared.

  A week from last night. Was that six nights or seven?

  The boy.

  Dip dip and scream: “Muglad. Muglad.”

  He reached Muglad as the sun went down. It was narrow dirt streets filled with sweating people, overloaded donkeys, goats, chickens, and dung. The houses were mud. The stores were shacks; the fancy ones had tin roofs. A man with no legs swung his muscular trunk onto a board with tea-wagon-sized wheels underneath and rolled off through the dirt, pushing himself along with his hands. A woman had a baby with no arms. A man had a face with no nose. They all wanted money. Rehv hurried on.

  “Muglad. Trading goods. A room.” But he was tired. The trading goods could wait. He needed a room. Sleep. He would ask at the railway station.

  The railway station was a small red clay building. It stood beside a red clay mosque that was even smaller. A man slept on the ground by the door. Rehv walked around him and went inside.

  It was dark and empty. There were no windows, and the door that led to the platform was closed. In one corner a small office had been walled off with unfinished plywood boards. Electric light glowed around the edges of the door. Rehv crossed the room and raised his hand to knock on it. He heard people talking inside. He didn’t knock: They were speaking English.

  A man said: “I wouldn’t know about that, love.” He had an English accent.

  A woman said: “What about El Fasher?” She had an American accent.

  The man said: “Can’t get there. Too much shooting.”

  The woman said: “South then?”

  The man said: “Not so good. The drought’s hit hard. Not so much the drought, though, as the way it’s been overstocked all these years. Typical.”

  Another man said: “I don’t care about that. Can we still get through?” He too had an American accent, but it was not that alone which made Rehv feel cold the moment he heard the man’s voice.

  The first man said: “Oh yes. Track’s clear, all right.”

  The second man said: “Good.” A chair squeaked.

  Rehv backed slowly away across the dark room, his eyes on the glowing outline of the office door. He was cold, but he was sweating more than he had in the crowded train or walking all day under the sun. The voices faded. Rehv turned and ran outside.

  Night was falling fast. The sleeping man was turning into a shadow. Rehv crossed the street and sat down with his back against a low mud wall. He bowed his head and pulled the cloth of his robe up over it. He was another sleeping man.

  After a few minutes he saw three people come out of the railway station, two men and a woman. He could just make out their faces in the fading light. The woman was young and fair. She wore a kerchief around her head and a camera around her neck. He had never seen her before. The first man wore a short-sleeved white shirt. He was the engineer who read the Daily Telegraph. The second man he had seen before, long ago. He had put on weight, and lost his hair, and no longer wore glasses, but his thick dark eyebrows were still the same. He was Major Kay.

  Rehv sat motionless, barely breathing. Across the street the three people stood talking in low voices. They took no more notice of him than they did of the shadow sleeping at their feet. The engineer said, “Right then” in a loud, cheerful voice, turned, and started walking down the street. Major Kay and the woman went the other way. Rehv waited until he could no longer see that their skins were white before he rose and followed them.

  Major Kay and the woman walked along a narrow street that smelled of cinnamon, and into a large square. A little boy in shorts was running across the square, rolling an old bicycle tire rim that he controlled with a stick. The rim got away from him, veered toward Major Kay, wobbled, and fell at his feet. Major Kay stopped and picked it up. Rehv stepped back into the shadows of the narrow street. Major Kay rolled the rim back to the boy. The boy let it go by without making any attempt to reach for it. He stood staring at Major Kay.

  “What the hell is that all about?” Rehv heard Major Kay say as he and the woman continued across the square. The woman’s answer was too faint to hear.

  On the far side of the square was a two-story wooden building with a covered jeep parked in front. Major Kay and the woman paused beside the jeep. Rehv heard keys tinkle. Major Kay opened the door of the jeep and took out a small dark package. Then he and the woman went inside the two-story building. The little boy picked up the bicycle rim and ran off, rolling it along with the stick.

  Rehv watched the building across the square, and waited. Soon a light went on in a window on the second floor, and then another beside it. A woman entered the square from a street on the other side, a large earthenware bowl balanced on her head. As she came closer he saw that she wore a veil. She did not appear to see him at all. When she was quite near she looked around, lifted her robe, and crouched beside a small tree. Rehv could hear the sound of her urine falling on the sand. She stood up, tugged at her robe, and walked away. The bowl had stayed steady on her head; she hadn’t touched it once.

  The earth turned the curve of its back on the last rays of light. The square grew quiet. Rehv kept his eyes on the lights in the windows. Shades were drawn over both. From time to time he saw a single silhouette move behind one or the other. Later, the light went off behind one and two silhouettes moved in the same window.

  He sat down. Inside his brain the singing had died away, and the screaming too. He thought about Major Kay, and the boy naked and tied to a chair, and pointed copper wire. He began to wish he had drowned in the sea with Sergeant Levy. He stopped himself from thinking about that because he didn’t want to go where it led. He watched the window. The silhouettes moved back, forward, to the side. They raised their arms and lowered them. He sat down, resting his back against the small tree. His back hurt. A big brown bird flew down out of the darkness and circled over his head. Heavy wings beat the air. The bird landed on a branch at the top of the tree. The silhouettes moved behind the shade. Rehv fell asleep.

  He dreamed of a picnic. He was a boy. He ate apples and cheese in the shade of an olive tree. Then he went swimming in a pool in the rocks. He dove into the cool water and swam down, down toward the bottom. On the bottom was a human leg. It wore a big black boot. He kicked away from it and struggled toward the surface. Then he looked up and saw how far it was. He would never get there.

  Rehv awoke, lying on the ground beside the tree. The light still shone in the window of the two-story building. He knew he could wait no longer. The fat yellow moon had risen. The square was quiet and empty. He got to his feet and started walking across it.

  The jeep was very new—no scratches, no dents, no rust. In the moonlight he read the words on the door: Food Relief. It was locked.

/>   Over the door of the two-story building hung a small sign he had not been able to read from the other side of the square. Victoria Hotel it said in English. In Arabic was written Hotel of the Faithful. Rehv opened the door and went inside.

  He was in a narrow hall with a small reception desk on one side, two stained couches on the other, and a flight of stairs leading up from the far end. A naked bulb shone from the ceiling. The clerk was a barefoot young man who wore a wool cap and a T-shirt with the words Hey Baby! written on the front. He was sleeping on the couch by the entrance, but opened his eyes when he heard the door close.

  “Good night,” he said in English, sitting up. “How to serve you?”

  “A room please,” Rehv said in Arabic.

  “None left,” the clerk said in Arabic, and lay down again.

  Rehv looked at the key rack behind the desk. There were four hooks. The keys for one and two were gone, but keys hung on hooks three and four. “What about rooms three and four?” Rehv asked.

  “All taken.”

  “But there are the keys,” Rehv said, pointing. He noticed a billy club hanging on the wall by the key rack.

  The clerk didn’t bother looking. “All taken.” He closed his eyes.

  “I’ll pay you one pound to sleep on the other couch.”

  “Three,” the clerk said without opening his eyes.

  He settled for two. Rehv handed him the money. He tucked it inside his T-shirt and rolled over. “I can’t sleep with the light on,” Rehv said.

  The clerk shrugged.

  “Twenty-five piasters.”

  “Seventy-five.”

  Rehv gave him fifty, switched off the light, and lay down on the couch near the stairs. He waited. The clerk’s breathing soon became slow, quiet, and even. A bedspring squeaked somewhere above. The clerk muttered something and sighed; and went on breathing slowly, quietly, evenly. Rehv sat up. Enough moonlight came through the window in the front door for him to see the clerk huddled on the couch with his hands tucked between his knees, and the billy club hanging on the wall. He slipped off his sandals and stood up.

  The clerk did not stir. Rehv walked softly across the hall and went behind the desk. He took the billy club off the hook, glanced at the sleeping clerk, and very slowly started up the stairs. With each stair he left the moonlight farther behind; when he reached the top he was in almost total darkness. He paused there, waiting for his pupils to expand. After a minute or two he could see a corridor leading away into blackness. Several doors opened off the corridor. Under one of them a little light leaked out and formed a pool on the floor. Crouching down on his hands and knees, he crept closer.

  On the other side of the door he heard the woman say, “No, really. That’s all for me.”

  Major Kay said: “Come on, Jill. A nightcap. There are a few things we should go over.”

  The woman said: “All right. But please, it’s Gillian.”

  Major Kay said: “Whatever you say.”

  Glass clinked against glass. Liquid gurgled. After a pause the woman said: “What did you want to go over?”

  In a voice that was suddenly low and throaty, Major Kay said: “This.”

  The woman said: “Don’t do that.”

  Major Kay said: “Why not? Got a boyfriend some place?”

  The woman said: “It’s not that. I just don’t know you very well yet.”

  Major Kay said: “Can you think of a better way?”

  The woman said: “And also I’m not sure it’s very professional.”

  Major Kay said: “What are you talking about? I’ve seen your reports. I know how you get information.”

  The woman began to get angry: “That’s different and you know it. You’re my boss—that makes it unprofessional.”

  Major Kay’s voice turned cold. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I said.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you threatening me about my career?”

  “Who said anything about your career?”

  “But you’ll be writing a report about me when you go back.”

  “I write reports about a lot of people.”

  “You see? You are threatening me.”

  “You’re starting to bore me, Jill. Why don’t you go back to your own room?”

  A floorboard creaked. Quickly Rehv moved away into the darkness. The door opened, and the woman came out. She was fully dressed in jeans and a shirt cut like a man’s, but she no longer wore the kerchief around her head. She turned back toward the room, and in the light that shone from within Rehv saw her thick chestnut hair, streaked yellow in places by the sun, and her strong profile, which might not always look as angry as it did now. “It’s not sex I object to, Mr. Krebs,” she said. “It’s you.”

  The woman slammed the door and entered the next room. Rehv heard a key turn in the lock. Then he heard a key turn in the lock of Major Kay’s room. The pool of light vanished. He stood in the darkness and listened.

  For a while the woman paced back and forth in her room. Then he heard her shoes fall to the floor. After that she was silent. From Major Kay’s room he heard nothing.

  He waited a long time. It was very quiet. In the shadows behind him a small animal ran across the floor. Rehv began to worry about the clerk waking up.

  When he had worried enough he walked to Major Kay’s door and knocked on it very lightly. He turned his ear against the door and listened; he heard nothing. He knocked again, a little louder. He heard a sound that might have been a foot brushing the floor; the key turned in the lock; he felt hot stale air touch his face as the door opened; he smelled gin. He could see nothing.

  “Changed your mind?” said Major Kay in the blackness.

  Rehv swung the billy club at where he thought Major Kay’s head should be. It cracked something hard. A heavy body slumped against him: warm skin, slightly damp. He pushed the body into the room, laid it on the floor, and closed the door behind him. Kneeling, he rested his hand on the bare chest and felt Major Kay’s beating heart, strong and regular.

  Rehv stood up and ran his hands over the walls until he found the light switch. He turned it on. There was blood on Major Kay’s forehead, just over his left eyebrow; and swelling beneath the blood. But his chest rose and fell as though he were in a deep tranquil sleep.

  Rehv searched the room. All of Major Kay’s possessions were in a small vinyl suitcase at the foot of the bed. Rehv found lightweight clothing, a black case containing powerful binoculars, a book called Great Moments in Cartoon History, car keys, 2,500 American dollars, most of it in hundreds, 1,463 Sudanese pounds, and a British passport in the name of George Provin with a photograph of Major Kay inside. Rehv tucked the keys and the money into the leather pouch he wore around his neck.

  Stepping over the naked man, he opened the door, switched off the light, and dragged him into the hall. Then he bent his knees, set his shoulder against Major Kay’s waist, and hoisted him off the floor. It hurt his back so much that he could not keep in a little cry. He stood motionless in the dark corridor with Major Kay on his shoulder, listening. No one jumped out of bed, or ran up the stairs, or opened a door, or shouted. He carried Major Kay down the corridor. He was very heavy. The floor creaked with every step. So did the stairs. He came down into the moonlight. The clerk was just the way he had been. Very slowly Rehv walked past him and out the door.

  He laid Major Kay on the hood of the jeep and went back to close the door of the hotel, gently. Then he unlocked the jeep, shoved Major Kay into the passenger seat, and sat down behind the wheel. He found the ignition, turned the key. The engine caught immediately: The noise of gasoline exploding drop by drop and steel whirling and pounding filled the night. Quickly Rehv drove across the square and into a narrow street, which grew into a wider street and became the southern road out of town. For a few miles he followed it, until he saw a small track leading west across the plain. He turned onto it; and drove by the light of the moon.


  At first there were villages here and there along the track: some of them no more than a few huts beside a tree, others much larger, protected by low walls of mud and straw. All of them were dark and silent, asleep under the fat yellow moon. Once a dog barked; that was all.

  After a while there were no more villages. In all directions the plain stretched away, flat and unbroken except for a few clusters of trees that seemed to be moving away from him very quickly, like galaxies in an expanding universe.

  Major Kay moaned. Rehv glanced at him. He had slipped off the seat and lay curled on the floor with his head resting against the base of the gear shift. Turning off the track, Rehv drove toward the nearest cluster of trees. Low brittle bushes that he had not noticed before grew on the plain. They tore at the underside of the jeep. Major Kay moaned again.

  The trees stopped trying to run away, grew bigger, loomed in front of him. Rehv parked in their shadow. There wasn’t a sound except a soft rumble in Major Kay’s throat as he breathed. Rehv climbed out and opened the back door of the jeep. Inside he found two large cans of gasoline, a spare tire, tools, and a coil of nylon rope. He slipped the rope over his shoulder, pulled Major Kay out of the jeep, and dragged him to the foot of a small acacia tree. It had a straight narrow trunk. Major Kay moaned, and mumbled something incoherent.

  He went back to the jeep and searched through the tools until he came upon a pair of wire cutters. He cut three short lengths from the coil of rope. One of these he tied around Major Kay’s ankles; another around his knees. He knew nothing special about knots or how to bind a man: He just drew the ropes very tightly around Major Kay’s legs and doubled all the knots. He sat Major Kay against the tree and tied his wrists together behind the trunk. After looking at him for a few moments Rehv cut two more pieces of rope. One he wrapped around Major Kay’s chest and upper arms and knotted behind the tree; the other he tied around his waist. As he pulled it tight he felt it sink into the soft flesh of his stomach until it met the hard muscle underneath.

  Then Rehv placed the wire cutters on the ground in front of Major Kay, and beside them a screwdriver and a tire iron. He waited.