Occasionally, they still felt the bitter remnants of that trial like shards of broken glass beneath their bare feet. After all, it was because of Mahmoud’s pursuit that Dawit had accidentally killed his mortal daughter, trying to protect her from harm. And worse, since Dawit’s return to the colony, Mahmoud had often muttered that he wished Dawit’s wife and unborn child had died, too. Mahmoud could never curb his tongue, even to keep peace between them.
But when all the colony had treated Dawit as a pariah (except for that madman Teferi, whose fellowship grieved Dawit more than it comforted him), Mahmoud had visited Dawit’s chamber whether Dawit welcomed him or not. Mahmoud never apologized for his role in destroying Dawit’s family, but he always made it clear that he had acted on the will of Khaldun, to uphold the Covenant. In time, Dawit had realized he was at fault for what had happened, not Mahmoud. His friend had only been sent to try to salvage the mess Dawit had made.
So, over the past year, they had slowly come to forgive each other, slipping back into the friendship they had always known, even as it continued to change because of Mahmoud’s growing attention to his spiritual Path. Of all the witnesses to the burning, Mahmoud was the only brother who had tried to put a stop to it, appealing to Kaleb’s sense of brotherhood. And only Mahmoud had dressed Dawit’s horrific injuries after his flesh had begun its reconstruction, when Dawit awoke from the fire’s sleep in an agony that defied description.
Dawit had no doubt that his brother loved him. That made his words all the more terrible.
“You would see me put to a final death?” Dawit said, his voice fractured.
“Before I would see the death of this colony, yes. I fear Kaleb can bring war, or even destroy us. I cannot put my love for you before my love for Khaldun. Not after what he has given me.”
“Nor would I.”
“But you have, Dawit,” Mahmoud said, his eyes misting. “You have done it time and again. You did it when you violated your blood. You did it again when you did not dissuade Khaldun from bringing your woman and child here. That child is a living testament to your disobedience!”
“I’ll confess my wrongs to you or anyone else who will hear me.” Dawit paused, allowing the searing sensation in his throat to calm. “But you are wrong, Mahmoud. I don’t have the influence over Khaldun you believe of me.”
“Then why else?” Mahmoud shouted. “If not out of love for you, then why else would Khaldun have them here?”
“I don’t know why. Believe me, brother, he has not done it for me. When he sent his visage to me, he spoke only his own mind, his own heart. He wanted this.”
Khaldun’s visage had appeared to Dawit soon before the Council vote, and Khaldun had not asked Dawit’s opinions. In fact, he had ignored Dawit’s apologies and vows to begin following his Path as though the Path were irrelevant.
You have made your own Path, Dawit. When you broke the Covenant and passed on the Life Gift to that mortal woman, you became the shepherd for that life just I have been shepherd to all of you. The responsibility, like the Gift itself, is for all of time. You are of them now, and they are of you. Just as you are all of me.
“You’re describing madness, and I will not believe that of Khaldun,” Mahmoud said, close to ranting again. “He asked us to pledge him our souls in obedience to his Covenant, Dawit. No one must know. No one must join. We are the Last. His own words! And then he allows this woman to distribute our sacred blood like candy among mortals, making the Searchers impotent to touch her! And worse yet, he escorts her into our very heart and shares our secrets! It is betrayal, Dawit. Worse for him than you, even!”
“Now you sound like Kaleb.”
Instead of looking angry, Mahmoud’s tears spilled freely. “Yes, I do. I loathe the suffering Kaleb brought you, but if you had been any other brother, I would have led the burning myself.”
“Then your faith is weak, Mahmoud.”
“Weaker every day,” Mahmoud said from behind gritted teeth, and there was a long hush between them. Dawit would never have believed Mahmoud could make such a confession.
Yes, the lines had been drawn, Dawit realized. For the first time in the colony’s existence, Khaldun’s authority was openly being questioned. Dawit could not fathom what that might mean.
Hoping to comfort his friend, Dawit spoke again. “He did it for the child, I think. That’s the best explanation I can give you, Mahmoud. He says she is Chosen.”
“Child!” Mahmoud spat. “A mutant is a more apt term, from what I’ve heard.”
“I’m only telling you his words to me. If your faith in Khaldun means anything to you, why can’t you believe he might know the truth, Mahmoud? Maybe there’s something about this girl . . .”
“Do you believe that?” Mahmoud asked, red-eyed. Dawit had never seen his friend so stricken, even after his sister had died in childbirth with Dawit’s first, lost child hundreds of years ago.
Dawit’s throat blistered, but he spoke nonetheless. “I don’t know, brother.”
Mahmoud sighed and nodded. Slowly, he walked back toward the chamber entryway, looking thoughtful. Watching him, Dawit felt a sudden, stinging premonition that his friend would never visit his chamber again. Perhaps he had finally lost Mahmoud, after all.
“Heal quickly, brother,” Mahmoud said, gazing back at him with a weak smile. “You’ll need all of your strength in the time to come, I fear.”
Dawit nodded. “I don’t doubt it, brother.”
Mahmoud cocked his head suddenly, curious. “I have to ask you . . . do you love them?”
This time, the stinging in Dawit’s throat had nothing to do with his injuries. At last, Mahmoud had asked him a question about his family that wasn’t entirely born of ridicule, treating him as something other than an utter madman! Perhaps Mahmoud did remember, then. Perhaps the mortal man in him was not dead. Dawit was so grateful for Mahmoud’s question that it took him a few seconds to realize that no ready answer was on his tongue.
He believed a part of his imagination must still live in the house he and Jessica had shared, because in his lucid dreams he often directed himself to wander that house’s hallways, enter those familiar rooms, enveloped in those sights and smells. He could hear his soles’ slow steps across the wooden floors of the downstairs living room. He could see unwashed dishes in the aluminum kitchen sink and even smell Jessica’s favorite corn-bread recipe baking in the oven. He saw the faded mildew spots on their shower stall, where he and Jessica had embraced while hot water pelted their nakedness. And worst of all, he could see the tangle of dolls and books scattered across the faded Oriental rug in Kira’s room.
He dared not show himself their faces in his dreams. But his soul still dwelled in that house, and for a long time after Jessica had turned him away, he’d had no choice but to weep. For too long.
But then his weeping had stopped. And perhaps he had become a new man.
There was a time when Jessica’s visit would have brought him unequaled joy. But he did not feel joy now, only an odd barrenness. The opposite of love, Dawit told himself, was not hatred, as he had always believed; it was only a lack of joy. Dawit found himself wishing Jessica had not decided to come—all of this chaos could have been avoided, at least—and he chided himself for that wish. After all, he had once nearly begged her to do this very thing! The wish, nonetheless, remained firm in his heart. She should not have come.
But he knew his wishes no longer mattered, just as they hadn’t mattered when he’d first lost his family. As Khaldun had told him, his wishes meant nothing.
“Well, as for the child, she is a stranger . . . no different from scores of other children we never knew, Mahmoud,” Dawit said. “I’d heard nothing about this child until I returned here, when Teferi told me what he’d heard about her from the Searchers. Imagine my humiliation to hear it from him. And Jessica . . .” Dawit faltered.
What did he feel for Jessica? He’d rushed to her side when she’d fainted in the ceremonial hall, taken her hand. Yes,
it had felt good to speak her name again, to smell the scent of her hair, but so strange and awkward in these surroundings. Was it love he felt, after so much turmoil? After Jessica had robbed him of his opportunity to love a new child so soon after their first had died, at a time when that love might have brought soul-saving light to his world?
Whatever Dawit felt, he knew he couldn’t bear to have Jessica see him as he was. He had winced away from her hand as she’d reached up for him, perhaps only because of his disfigurement, but perhaps for reasons his cooled heart was hiding. Dawit truly did not know.
Mahmoud stared at Dawit, waiting for his answer. Finally, convinced that Dawit was capable of nothing more than silence, Mahmoud shook his head. “Do you remember when you first told me of your love for her, with the war-fire of Ogun in your eyes? That love meant more to you than this brotherhood, more than your own breath,” Mahmoud said gravely. “Brother, if this wreckage is not for love, then it is for nothing at all. That makes me sadder still.”
With that, the truest friend Dawit had ever known turned and walked away.
21
Gaborone, Botswana
On Thursday afternoon, Stephen Shabalala did the smartest thing he’d ever done: He decided to trust his instincts, and instinct told him he was being followed.
Stephen’s instincts had been nattering at him so badly in the past few days that he had a migraine, so he was swallowing down Extra-Strength Tylenol every morning along with his daily dose of HerbaVyte tablets. He hadn’t had a head cold in five years, and he credited the HerbaVytes for that. He hadn’t had a migraine in fifteen years, and the Tylenol wasn’t much help.
Stephen thought it was a bad sign that he was having migraines again. Last time, when he was seventeen, the headaches had dogged him after he had started sneaking off to Durban for meetings with the young ANC students, fancying himself a revolutionary—mostly to spite his father, and partially to impress a girl, Laura, who revered Steven Biko and Nelson Mandela. He’d nearly let his mouth ruin him. All of his friends knew what he was up to, including at least one who’d proven he couldn’t keep a secret. Still, Stephen hadn’t expected to find himself accused of spying. Spying! As far as he’d been concerned, the only thing worse than going to jail would have been to end up with a tire necklace, burned alive for betraying the cause. He’d been so scared, waiting for a reprisal, that he’d had a migraine for nearly a week. Despite his mother’s wailing and tears, he’d been relieved it was only the police who came pounding at his family’s door in the middle of the night. Better jail than fire, he thought.
At first, anyway.
During the six months he spent in detention, Stephen had had plenty of time to grow up and realize how he’d brought his own bad luck because he hadn’t followed his instincts. He hadn’t kept quiet the way the more experienced activists had advised. He hadn’t been careful. The only thing he felt proud of was that he hadn’t told what he knew of the ANC’s plans, even in agonizing moments when the police doused him with water and then touched his testicles with electric prods, when he heard himself screaming in Zulu for his mother. Still, he hadn’t talked. After that, the rumors that he’d been a spy were put to rest.
This time, Stephen was trying to do better at keeping himself out of trouble. He chose his customers carefully, after all. And his latest customer was the godsend, the biggest catch of all!
He was Nigel Buckingham, a Cape Town real estate developer Stephen had heard about but never met, a rich man afraid of getting sick. In their very first telephone conversation, Nigel had offered Stephen 7 million rand for a single vial of the blood—a million American dollars, and more money than Stephen would have dared ask. Nigel had sounded a bit nervous on the telephone, asking Stephen to repeat his instructions once too often for his comfort, but Nigel was Alan’s cousin, after all, and Alan’s family would not lead him astray. Not after all Stephen had done for them!
Seven million rand. Then, it would all be over.
He’d taken precautions besides. He’d come to Gaborone to hire a bakkie to drive to the clinic, a long distance that would delay him, simply so he could better judge if he was being followed. And he hated Gaborone! Boredom settled across his spirit every time he set foot in the place; the traffic was tedious, the construction projects were endless, and it was a beast built of high-rises and cinder-block neighborhoods, with none of the charm of Durban’s oceanfront. He had just strolled along the pedestrian mall, watching the blur of vendors selling cheap crafts to tourists under tents and umbrellas, and the coquettish clusters of schoolgirls wearing yellow school skirts that flared against their dark legs as they walked. All so he could judge if he was truly alone.
But some part of Stephen knew with anxious certainty that he hadn’t done enough. There had been something too easy, too convenient, about his introduction to Nigel. Why would a healthy young man be willing to pay so much money for this blood? And why had Nigel sounded so curt and nervous in their last conversation, almost as if . . .
As if he knew someone else was listening on the telephone.
The smartest part of Stephen knew he should fly back to South Africa and forget about the blood and the money altogether. He couldn’t help thinking of that old saying Do not sell your sister for an ox. Because if someone was following him to get to the blood, he wasn’t endangering only himself this time. Something might happen to Sarah.
But 7 million rand! How could he walk away from that much money?
Exasperated, Stephen tried to eat another bite of the vegetable samosa he’d ordered as an appetizer at Spice of India, the curry house he always visited in Gaborone. The owner, Bupendra, was a former schoolmate from the University of Sussex, and Stephen liked to catch up with him whenever he could. He was such a laugh! But Bupendra was visiting his sick grandfather in Calcutta, Stephen had been told, so there were no laughs to be had at Spice of India today. The dimly lighted restaurant was nearly empty, and the high-pitched woman’s voice singing from the speaker above his head was making him nervous.
Stephen had never intended to make the blood into a business, but he’d been pulled in accidentally. It had begun when his schoolmate Alan had gotten sick four years ago. Bupendra knew Alan well—the three of them had been nearly inseparable at university; one Indian, one black, one white, all of them South Africans by birth, enjoying a friendship abroad that would have been scorned at home—but much later, Alan told them he had AIDS. He’d had the HIV virus for years before he ever told Stephen he was sick, and by then he had already been a frequent visitor to a Cape Town hospital.
Stephen hadn’t been ready to lose one of his best friends. Sarah had just started working at the American women’s clinic then, and she’d confided to him that they were healing children with a new miracle remedy. He begged her for the remedy, with tears in his eyes. And she gave him a tiny vial of blood, making him vow he would not tell any doctors about it.
He’d never expected the blood to actually work, as sick as Alan was. But it had.
Stephen had kept his promise to Sarah; no doctor who’d known of Alan’s condition ever examined him again. And after Alan’s AIDS had been cured and he was healthy as ever, Alan’s mother paid Stephen one hundred thousand rand in gratitude. Stephen tried to refuse the money, but she insisted. A year later, Alan’s mother asked if he could bring her some blood, too, because she was stricken with Parkinson’s disease. This time, her offer was six hundred thousand rand. Stephen agreed. In truth, he would have brought her the blood without charge, but he had learned that people with money, like hosts offering tea, were insulted when it was refused.
Sarah gave Stephen more blood during his next visit, but she’d said it would be the last time. The American women would be angry with her if they knew, she said. He told her the blood was for sick friends—which wasn’t entirely a lie, since both Alan and his eccentric mother were dear to him—but he knew Sarah suspected he was selling it. And though Stephen begged Alan and his mother to keep the blood a secret, th
ey knew of other people in need who had money to spend. Stevie, she’s the most darling girl, a mother of three, and she’s had a recurrence of breast cancer. . . . Oh, Stephen, he’s a heroic man, his books were banned for twenty years, and now he’s afflicted with the most horrible heart disease . . .
This time, Stephen had three clients waiting for the blood. And Sarah would be difficult, he knew, but he had the perfect explanation: Their mother was sick. Her diabetes was worse all the time, and he hoped to convince her to take an injection of blood. As for the rest, he’d tell her he had other sick friends. Did she really need to know that two of those “friends” would pay him five hundred thousand rand apiece; and one, Alan’s wealthy cousin Nigel, had offered to pay 7 million? Sarah was too selfless to concern herself with money. Why shouldn’t the blood be available to paying patients, too?
There! Stephen felt it again, as if fingertips had brushed lightly against the back of his neck. Someone was watching him.
Coughing into his fist to shift the angle of his head, Stephen turned around to try to see whose eyes were on him. An old Indian woman sat alone, reading, at a table in the restaurant’s northwest corner, and the only other patrons were a young Tswana couple who seemed too absorbed in each other to be paying any attention to him. There was no one else . . .
But hold on. Outside the restaurant’s picture window, standing near the curb, a white man in a black leather jacket stood reading a newspaper. His back was toward the restaurant, and he seemed too far away to have a good view of Stephen, especially since it was so dark inside, but something about the man’s pose made Stephen’s instincts roar. He had an imposing build, he was probably a Boer, and he was trying too hard to look casual. He was the one. He had to be.
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