A Murder of Crows

by David Rotenberg

  Yslan punched up the last video they had of Viola Tripping. It was from a month and a half ago. The girl/woman was wearing a summer dress with no bra—with her early pubescent breasts she hardly needed one—no stockings or shoes as she entered what looked like a revival tent. It was somewhere in Florida. But she wasn’t there to preach. She was not a eulogist. No. Viola Tripping’s gift had nothing to do with preaching. She was a speaker for the dead. The tent had been erected over a specific patch of ground where the deceased had taken his last breath.

  Viola Tripping stepped forward carefully, took several moments to adjust her feet, to find the exact spot, then she opened her arms and began to spin slowly. As she did she recounted, word for word, the last thoughts of the deceased person.

  Yslan knew that sometimes Viola Tripping went back just a few moments before death. Other times she went back several minutes—in one case, almost two hours.

  Yslan watched the eleven minutes of recitation then turned off the video and did her best to collect herself.

  Twenty minutes later she ordered the marine to unlock the heavy metal door that kept Viola Tripping in the windowless room.

  When the door opened Yslan was assaulted by the smell of human urine and feces. Viola Tripping had soiled herself, but she was not ashamed. She stared with her milky eyes straight at Yslan.

  “Good evening, Special Agent Hicks.”

  Viola’s voice was so soft and breathy that at first Yslan wasn’t sure that the girl/woman had actually spoken.

  Then the girl/woman spoke a little louder: “I’ve made a poopoo.”

  28

  A MÉLANGE OF THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS—T MINUS 8 DAYS

  WALTER NURSED HIS ’84 COROLLA CAREFULLY UP THE HILL THEN under the expressway that separated Ancaster College from his basement apartment in Stoney River.

  His car radio was tuned to a call-in show that only periodically broke the stream of anti-Muslim rants with news updates from the “scene of the attack.” Each update seemed sillier to Walter than the last. Sunnis, Shiites, Persians—what the hell were Persians?—then experts talking about each group and their gripes against America.

  As Walter parked his car on the street outside his dingy apartment he wondered if he even lived in the America that the “terrorists had targeted.” He doubted it.

  Then he remembered his brief interrogation by the woman with the strange eyes and said aloud, “America ain’t safe if that’s as good as they can do—interrogation-wise.”

  He opened the door and stepped into his two-room apartment and said, “Bomb this—please!”

  * * *

  Back in her room, Yslan found herself surrounded by the sweet smells of Viola Tripping and somehow swimming in the very fact of her. She climbed into the shower and turned on the water—hot, hard—but the smell of the girl/woman, like a baby’s sweet odour, refused to leave her.

  When she finally left the shower she found it, on her bed—a plane ticket and two words in Harrison’s strangely prissy scrawl: GET DECKER.

  29

  A GLORY OF TRAVELS IN NAMIBIA—T MINUS 21 DAYS TO T MINUS 7 DAYS

  AFRICA REQUIRES PATIENCE—AND DECKER WAS LEARNING TO BE patient. Learning slowly.

  He and Inshakha travelled from place to place, moving whenever they sensed they were being watched. Some of the places still attracted the heavyset old Dutch who used to rule this world. They’d strut into elegant dining rooms in their short pants, huge bellies straining belts and buttons and shouting the word “nigger” whenever possible. But Inshakha took no notice. “They are the dispossessed now. Soon they will not be able to afford to even eat in a place like this, let alone order around its staff.” And it was true. Already this part of the world was getting too expensive for those who used to rule it with a cruel fist.

  He and Inshakha travelled as husband and wife, but at night they disrobed facing away from each other before crawling beneath the covers. But even in the cold of the desert nights they never touched. Decker knew better than to think he could sleep with his muse—for that was what he thought Inshakha was.

  One night in his sleep he put an arm across her; she stiffened and moved it away.

  Both knew—neither mentioned it.

  And on they drove, ignoring the passing of the days.

  One brilliantly sunny morning they drove around one of the few wide-sweeping curves of highway in Namibia and Decker was surprised to see several scarecrow-like human forms lined up along the side of the road.

  “Stop here,” Inshakha told him.

  He pulled the car over and watched as Inshakha slowly, reverentially approached the four figures. Decker saw that the figures—three women and a child—were made from bits of wood and tatters of cloth. One of the women had a piece of leather cleverly folded over her stick arm to make a kind of handbag.

  The figures were positioned so that they were looking away from the road up toward the corrugated iron shack in which, no doubt, their maker and her family lived.

  Three faceless women and a faceless child.

  Inshakha took some money from her pocket and put it in the faux purse, then turned back to Decker. It took him a moment to understand that it was his turn. He approached the figures and found that in spite of himself he was walking slowly, as if up the aisle of a great cathedral. When he reached the figures he had an overwhelming desire to kneel.

  Inshakha saw it and said, “No. You must not. Just put a coin in the woman’s purse.”

  Decker fumbled in his wallet and pulled out a few bills, which he held out to her.

  Inshakha shook her head. “You must do it.”

  Decker reached forward and touched the arm of the nearest woman. It immediately moved and he leapt back. The thing turned—it was on a pivot of some sort. He looked to Inshakha, who said nothing but continued to stare at him. He approached a second time and put the money into the purse, which to his surprise felt cool and damp—two things you never felt in Namibia.

  * * *

  Many kilometres later he turned to Inshakha and said, “Tell me about those figures.”

  Inshakha looked straight ahead and said simply, “This is a place that believes, Mr. Roberts. It is what you would call a spiritual place. It has been that way for thousands of years. Well before your man in the mosque or your man on the cross or that other old religion. All of those beliefs are in their infancy compared to the depth of belief in this place.”

  When he asked her for more specifics she ignored him.

  * * *

  Twice more in the next week they stopped in front of what Decker now knew were called Hindi figures. Each time Inshakha approached first and Decker found himself oddly reverential. The feeling of damp and cold was again present each time he put the money into the makeshift purse or basket.

  Eventually they arrived at Wolwedans, where the sun comes up so fast on the east slope of the Losberg that there is no need for a morning wake-up call. It pierces the dawn gloom and brings the high sage and mountain contours to glorious light.

  The weaverbirds sing as the dance of the high desert begins.

  The cloudless April sky presents its ocean of blue to the land while in the mountains the leopards cover their eyes with their paws as the oryx and zebra and springbok are grateful to have made it through another dangerous night.

  You see no old or sick oryx or zebra or springbok—the leopards see to that—nor are there any bits of kill left to fester, as the bat-eared foxes and omnipresent spotted hyenas go about their work with quiet efficiency.

  The high red-tinted desert feels orderly. Things are in their place—as somehow they were meant to be.

  Hot water is brought to the tent and Decker makes tea—he likes tea here in Africa, although he hates it back in the Junction. He dunks the rock-hard rusks that are so treasured in this part of the world into the hot liquid and savours their earthy flavour.

  The walk to the base camp is about an hour. There is an Internet connection there, but he’s unsure that he really
wants to contact the outside world. He knows he doesn’t want them to contact him.

  For a brief moment he wonders if he could live here. A hard four-hour drive to Windhoek to get the flight to Jo’burg and then from there to anywhere his truth-telling business took him. And he could use the Internet connection to supply the research for his CBC documentary, At the Junction. He wondered—and the moment stretched out.

  Is he prepared to live as a foreigner in a country that clearly does not belong to him?

  Or him to it?

  But the Junction? Does that belong to him? Is that home?

  Or is home just a sentimental idea? One that he should have long ago outgrown?

  He thinks of Seth as a young boy. Those are his only real memories of him. Waking up each day with a smile on his face and announcing, “Pretty day, Daddy. Pretty day.” It was only later that Seth learned that “pretty day, Daddy” didn’t mean “good morning.” Too bad. “Pretty day, Daddy” was a far better way of greeting the day—and it was Seth’s alone.

  Seth had been a willful but sensitive little boy who cried at films, but that sensitivity hardened into granite-like anger after his mother’s death from ALS, when he saw the look of relief on Decker’s face—and knew exactly what that was.

  That was when the hatred had begun—and it had grown exponentially since.

  Fourteen months ago, when Decker learned of his son’s bladder cancer in his confrontation with the pharma CEO Henry-Clay Yolles, he immediately recognized it as the price of the gift the boy had inherited from him. Seth had the gift in its purest form. Unlike Decker, who could never tell if someone he cared about was telling the truth or not, Seth had no such restrictions. His gift was without boundaries; hence Decker assumed that’s why the price was so high.

  Decker remembered Seth removing his hand from his at the funeral. “You’re glad Mommy’s gone,” he’d accused.

  “No, Seth, I’m not.”

  Seth hadn’t needed to put his head up into the pure jet stream. The boy lived in the jet stream. He didn’t need to close his eyes to read his retinal screen and had simply said, “That’s not true.” And had begun his withdrawal.

  Since then he had gone to Eddie when he needed advice or counsel. He came to Decker when he needed money.

  And now he was twenty-one and living somewhere in western Canada and refusing to communicate in any fashion with his father.

  It was when Decker went to log off that he saw it—news of the terrorist attack at Ancaster College—and knew his life was about to change. Again.

  30

  A SOLITAIRE OF MOOSE—T MINUS 7 DAYS

  THE BIG MAN MOVED SLOWLY IN THE MORNING HEAT. HE WAS A fat white man in a thin black man’s world.

  No one remembered his coming—or a time when he wasn’t there. That was just as well. Even rumours of his real age would have caused distress in the local population and no doubt parades of visiting Western scientists. But now people came to his kingdom, which consisted of a petrol station, a gift shop and of course his bakery for his apple pies. That was fame enough for the fat white man who called himself Moose.

  He looked around himself but did not see what others saw. Where they saw a petrol station he saw a vestry. Where they saw a gift shop he saw a transept. Where they saw his bakery he saw an altar. And of course where they saw a stack of hubcaps he saw the boy dangling from the end of a rope.

  It was the hung boy that had drawn the fat white man to this place 196 years ago.

  Moose used the garage’s compressed air hose to blow the dust from his hands and feet and entered his bakery. Instantly he was surrounded by the intense sweetness of apples and preserves, and he smiled. His church was ready for another day preparing for the arrival of the man from the Junction.

  Moose thought for a moment of Inshakha and her admonition that the man from the Junction was being prepared.

  He’d been sensing the change caused by the man from the Junction’s approach for almost five months.

  Awakening to the ostrich staring in the window of his tiny bedroom behind the bakery was the first of the signs.

  The man from the Junction’s approach confused the animals; so that packs of wild dogs could be seen at high noon and elephants drank from the foul end of the watering hole. Moose assumed that the man’s approach was changing things as his world and this world tried to align.

  Moose used the ancient can opener to cut around the rim of the large tin of preserved apple slices. The two-holed metal key bit into his pudgy fingers but he didn’t care.

  He was preparing himself to teach the one who approached.

  He tilted the large tin can forward and allowed the sweet juice into a waiting jar. This was Africa, where nothing goes to waste, where human beings first stood and marvelled at the light, where one of the earth’s divine portals is defended by a fat white man named Moose who made and sold deep-dish apple pies in a place called Solitaire, Namibia.

  31

  A HILL OF ANTS—T MINUS 7 DAYS

  DECKER WAS WATCHING THE ANTS OF ETOSHA NATIONAL PARK do their level best to unmake what man had so arduously made.

  They teemed from cracks in the interlocked bricks on the patio of the immaculate grass-roofed cottage Inshakha had rented for them. Only twenty yards away a watering hole drew thousands of animals every day—and allowed the roar of lions almost every night to echo and re-echo through the desert air.

  On some secret signal the ants all changed direction and headed abruptly for Decker’s bare foot. As they did he heard a vehicle grind to a stop, then the slamming of doors.

  Two minutes later Special Agent Yslan Hicks was standing not five feet from him, her translucent blue eyes still beautiful, but now clearly tired from travel.

  A few steps behind her stood her partners in crime: Mr. T and Ted Knight.

  “Mr. Roberts,” she began.

  Decker held up his hand to stop her.

  “No. Damn it, this is important.”

  Decker pointed toward her feet.

  “We’re calling in our marker, Mr. Roberts.”

  She stepped forward, onto a red ant hill.

  Decker arched his eyebrows and once again pointed toward her feet.

  “What? You don’t think you owe us?”

  “No,” Decker finally spoke, “it’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Your foot is on a red ant hill. I do believe they’ve already crawled up your boot and now have—”

  She began to hop on one foot and swat at her pant leg.

  “—gotten to your leg.”

  Twenty minutes later Special Agent Yslan Hicks returned. She wore a different pair of pants and was more careful where she put her feet; Africa makes you watch where you step.

  Mr. T and Ted Knight had not moved from their posts.

  She looked over Decker’s shoulder into the cottage and said, “Who’s the whore?”

  Decker called, “Inshakha, come meet Special Agent Hicks.”

  Yslan was going to say something more but held her tongue as Inshakha stepped into the door frame. Her blue-black skin shone in the morning light and her long delicate features looked like a Modigliani painting—or rather Modigliani had done his best to paint the features that came naturally to the Herero tribe’s pride and joy, Inshakha. And right now her black irised eyes bore holes into Yslan.

  “I am no whore and I would suggest you watch your tongue. Words are important in Namibia—a curse once spoken cannot be rescinded.”

  “I meant no—”

  “That is not true, Special Agent Hicks. You intended slander and harm, but you have accomplished neither.”

  “Right. I apologise.”

  “Do not apologise to me, Special Agent Hicks. It was my man you insulted. Not me.”

  Under her breath Yslan hissed, “You want an apology, Roberts? Then get your ass in gear before I apologise you all the way to a jail cell in America.”

  “This is Namibia,” Decker said.

  “And
that should mean what to me?” Yslan demanded.

  “Namibia is not America.”

  “More than two hundred people died in a terrorist event at a college graduation. Such niceties as borders don’t mean all that much to me when all those people have been murdered.”

  Decker took a deep breath and said, “And you want my help.” It was not a question.

  “No,” Yslan said. “Like I said, I’m calling in my marker. You owe me, Mr. Roberts. You are going to assist me in this investigation or you are going to jail. It’s really that simple.”

  “Does Namibia have an extradition treaty with the United States of America?”

  Yslan smiled as she said, “Who fucking cares?”

  * * *

  Decker rolled the last of his shirts and put it into the side of his small duffel bag beside his copy of Love and Pain and the Dwarf in the Garden.

  Inshakha had been in the bathroom for a long time.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  No response.

  He asked again and slid the door open. Inshakha was sitting on the side of the tub, naked except for a cloth around her waist, her beautiful skin almost completely covered in red clay.

  She looked up at him.

  Their eyes locked as she reached into the tub, took a handful of the red clay and pressed it slowly into the skin of her face. As she did, the sophisticated, intellectual Inshakha disappeared behind a mask. Then she said the oddest thing. “Do you like apple pie?” And before he could answer she added, “Well, you will learn to—you will learn to.”

  For the briefest moment she smiled at him—or he thought she did. Then she was on her feet, an untouchable African woman striding out of his cabin—out of his life.

  * * *

  The drive in the Land Rover from Etosha to Windhoek took four hours, and neither Yslan nor Decker spoke a word that whole time. Nor did a word come from Mr. T or Ted Knight squished together in the backseat.

  Decker stared out the window and wondered if he’d ever see Africa again. Africa, where ancient aquamarine-coloured sinkholes dot the land and salt forms take advantage of the baking sun, where the simple topography is only periodically broken by mushroom explosions of rocks and humpback hills slanting west to east, brown whales on the desert ocean.