The Garden of Burning Sand

by Corban Addison

  “Zoe!” Sister Anica said. “You chose a good day to visit. The doctor is about to test Kuyeya again.”

  “Has it been six weeks already?” Zoe asked, waving at Joy.

  “Almost to the day,” Dr. Chulu replied, shaking her hand and Joseph’s.

  Sister Anica led them through the breezeway and across the sunbaked courtyard to the garden. In the distance, Zoe saw Sister Irina kneeling on a patch of turned earth with children in a circle around her. Kuyeya had the privileged position on the nun’s left, but she seemed as much a part of the group as the other children.

  “I was telling Joy and Dr. Chulu that she started running again last week,” Sister Anica said. “Her injuries appear to have healed. And she’s making good progress with Dr. Mbao. She’s started to talk about her mother.”

  “What does she say?” Zoe asked.

  “Her mother told her stories. That’s what she seems to remember most. Stories about animals and village people.”

  “Has she said anything more about the incident?”

  Sister Anica shook her head. “Dr. Mbao says she needs more time.”

  They approached Sister Irina and the group of children. Zoe sat in the dirt beside Kuyeya, deciding not to worry about her office clothes. Joy took a seat on the other side.

  Kuyeya looked at Zoe and made the balloon sound. “Hi, Zoe,” she said.

  Zoe smiled. “How are you today?”

  “Good,” the girl replied. “I like your music.” She began to hum rhythmically.

  Listening, Zoe discerned a familiar tune. “‘I Walk the Line,’” she said, nudging Kuyeya’s shoulder. “That’s one of my favorites.”

  “I like Johnny,” Kuyeya said.

  Dr. Chulu knelt down next to Zoe. “Hi, Kuyeya. I’m Manny, your doctor.”

  At the sound of his voice, Kuyeya clutched her monkey. She turned away from the doctor and began to rock back and forth, her eyes on her lap.

  “Why don’t we get the clinic ready?” Sister Anica said, looking at Dr. Chulu and then at Joy and Joseph. “Zoe can bring her in a minute.”

  “Good idea,” replied the doctor with obvious relief.

  As soon as they left, Zoe sang the chorus to ‘I Walk the Line,’ and Kuyeya began to hum again. Then she spoke the last line. “‘Because you’re mine, I walk the line.’”

  Zoe laughed and regarded Sister Irina. “Where is the iPod?”

  “In the playroom,” said the nun.

  Zoe touched Kuyeya’s hand. “Let’s go get some music.”

  She helped Kuyeya to her feet and led her out of the garden at a leisurely pace. Kuyeya’s stride was much stronger now, and her limp was barely detectable. She accompanied Zoe easily, swinging her monkey by the arm.

  After collecting the iPod, they entered the clinic. Zoe put the earphones over Kuyeya’s ears and led her to a chair beside the sink. The girl sat obediently, paying no attention to Dr. Chulu or the others. She kept her eyes on the floor and rocked in time with the music.

  “Sister Anica is a nurse,” Dr. Chulu said quietly. “She’s going to take the sample.”

  The nun took Kuyeya’s left hand and cleaned her middle finger. Squeezing the fingertip, she pricked the skin with a lancet and collected a sample of blood in a vial. Kuyeya moaned in protest and pressed down on the headphones with her free hand. Dr. Chulu took the vial and ran the rapid test. Zoe looked over the doctor’s shoulder and held her breath.

  “Non-reactive,” he said, showing her the result window.

  The relief Zoe felt was overwhelming. She watched as Sister Anica bandaged the girl’s finger and gave her a sweet. Kuyeya held her injured hand and savored the confection. Joy asked the nun a question about Kuyeya’s relationship to the other children, and they began to chat. Dr. Chulu motioned for Zoe and Joseph to join him outside.

  “I heard about Flexon Mubita’s decision,” he said, standing in the breezeway. “He’s an honorable man.”

  “How long will it take the DNA lab to do the analysis?” she asked.

  “A few weeks. They’re very careful.”

  “Will they need to send an expert to testify at trial?”

  The doctor shook his head. “I’m qualified to do it. All I need is the report.”

  “How secure are the samples?” Joseph inquired.

  “They’re locked in a cabinet in the library. I check it every evening before I leave.”

  “How many keys are there to the cabinet?”

  The doctor frowned. “I have the only one.”

  Joseph nodded. “As soon as you get Darious’s blood, I’ll take the samples to Jo’burg myself. I don’t want to take any chances.”

  Chapter 17

  On the drive into the city, Zoe asked Joseph if he wanted to go out for dinner, but he declined, citing an obligation to a cousin. She gave him a hard time about it until she realized that he was serious. The cousin had traveled from Southern Province for a job interview and needed a ride home. Joseph was the nearest family member with an automobile.

  “Will you stay the night in Choma?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’ll be back by midnight.”

  You could come over then, she almost said. “Will you be at the braai tomorrow?”

  He smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  She dropped him off at the CILA office beside his truck. The road was empty except for a blue sedan parked some distance away.

  She took her usual route home: Independence to Nyerere Road, past the homes of ministers and ambassadors to Los Angeles Boulevard, and along the Lusaka Golf Club into Kabulonga. When she negotiated the roundabout at Chila Road, she checked her mirror and saw a blue sedan three car-lengths back. She recognized it with a start: it was the one she had seen near the office. She focused on the driver’s face and felt a sharp pang of dread.

  It was the man in sunglasses.

  Gripping the steering wheel, she intentionally missed the turn to her apartment and drove around the military airport. When she approached Kalingalinga, pedestrians began to crowd the roadway, and she had to slow to avoid an old woman who crossed the street without looking. She turned into the compound and made a random series of turns, skirting smoldering piles of trash and children scampering through the streets. The sedan followed her unerringly.

  She navigated toward the exit onto Kamloops Road, keeping an eye on the car in her side mirror. I have to find a way to lose him. I don’t want him to know where I live. An idea came to her, but it would require a bit of luck to work. She glanced down the side lanes, watching for an opportunity. Just then, a flatbed delivery truck nosed into the lane behind her, forming a barricade between her Land Rover and the blue sedan. It was the opening she needed.

  She floored the accelerator and sped toward the intersection at Kamloops Road, praying she wouldn’t hit anyone. Rounding a bend, she saw two women walking in the middle of the lane, carrying baskets on their heads. She honked loudly and the women leapt to the side in fright, sending papayas rolling across the road.

  “Sorry!” she exclaimed, as the Land Rover rolled over the fruit.

  She peered into the cloud of dust behind her. She saw the nose of the delivery truck, but no blue sedan. She took the turn onto Kamloops Road without slowing. The top-heavy Land Rover canted to the side, but its tires never lost traction. She raced along the tarmac, weaving around slower-moving cars. Then, without warning, she threw a hard right onto a rutted lane that led back into the warren of Kalingalinga.

  She made two quick turns and braked to a stop, her heart pulsing with adrenaline. Around her people gestured and stared. Children knocked on her window and opened their palms. Ignoring them, she conjured the face of her pursuer. Why is he following me?

  After a few minutes had passed without sign of the blue sedan, she started to breathe again. She drove east toward Mutendere, her eyes glued to her mirrors. It took her ten minutes to escape the compound and another five to reach Kabulonga. She turned onto Sable Road and focused on her apartment c
omplex. She felt a stab of fear.

  The blue sedan was parked a short distance from the gate.

  She accelerated up the street, her mind struggling to process the implications. She squealed to a halt outside her complex and honked urgently. For a distressing moment, the gate didn’t move. Then it opened with a creak, and the guard let her in.

  She parked outside her flat and scanned the ten-foot walls that surrounded the property, taking comfort in the shards of glass and quintuple strands of electrified wire. She found her iPhone and called Joseph. He answered on the first ring.

  “Are you still in Lusaka?” she asked, a bit breathless.

  “I’m on the road. What happened?”

  “The guy with the sunglasses followed me home.”

  Joseph took a measured breath. “I was afraid this might happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The DNA decision. They’re escalating the threat.”

  “But I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  Joseph was silent for a long moment.

  “What?” she asked. “What are you not telling me?”

  He sighed. “We got an identity from Interpol. His name is Dunstan Sisilu.”

  Zoe heard the gravity in his voice. “Who is he?”

  “He’s from Johannesburg. He was one of the ringleaders of the Pan Africanist Congress in the early nineties. The apartheid regime suspected him in a number of deadly attacks, but nothing was ever proven. When Mandela took office, he went underground. There were rumors he joined one of the Jo’burg gangs, but he’s never been linked with organized crime. Nobody knows what he’s been doing since then.”

  Her stomach began to churn. “Do you think you can tie him to the Nyambos?”

  “I doubt it. He’s clearly a professional.”

  She glanced at the walls again. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Tell the guard not to let him in. And don’t go out tonight. I’ll be there in the morning.”

  “Please come as soon as you can.”

  She went to the guardhouse and made her request, giving the guard a fifty-pin tip. Then she entered her flat and walked through each room, checking the locks on all doors and windows. Afterward, she ate a sandwich in the dining room, thinking about Dunstan Sisilu. He killed people in a war, she consoled herself. Even Mandela tolerated violence.

  When evening came, she watched a documentary on the financial collapse of 2008—an event her father had predicted four years before—and then immersed herself in Swann’s Way until she began to drift off. She checked the locks a second time and got ready for bed. After taking out her contact lenses, she turned off the light and slid under the covers, imagining what it would be like to wake up beside Joseph.

  Soon, she thought. Very soon.

  Sometime in the early hours of morning, she awoke with a start. She looked around the pitch-black room but saw nothing. She held her breath and listened instead, straining to hear the sound that had disturbed her sleep—a sharp crunch.

  Something moved in the doorway.

  She tried desperately to make out the shape in the dark. It was a lump at floor level, but the haze in her vision blurred its features. She heard quiet footsteps retreating down the hall, then the crunch again. Fear and adrenaline shot through her like an electrical surge.

  She threw off the mosquito net and found her glasses in the drawer at her bedside. She switched on the light and looked toward the doorway. The lump was a burlap sack, and it was moving. She shuddered. She had seen a sack like it before—in a snake charmer’s booth in Mombasa.

  Suddenly, a head emerged from the sack. What is it? she thought in terror. A puff adder? A viper? A cobra? Then she saw it—the grey color of the snake—and she knew.

  It was a black mamba.

  She watched, mesmerized, as the long snake uncoiled on the cement floor. At first it looked like it might head down the hallway, but then it tensed and raised its head, looking in her direction. It let out a long, low hiss. She stared at it, not daring to move a muscle. She had two choices: remain on the bed in hope that the snake would find a distraction, or find a way around it and out of the apartment—but not the way the intruder had gone. The dilemma was paralyzing. A black mamba was the fastest serpent on earth. It was also a natural climber.

  With glacial steadiness she reached out and retrieved her iPhone from the bedside table. The clock on the screen read 3:12 a.m. She called Joseph, praying he hadn’t silenced his mobile before turning in. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Zoe, what’s happening?” he asked groggily.

  She watched as the snake lowered its head and began to slither along the wall. “Someone broke into my flat,” she whispered urgently. “They left a black mamba in my room.”

  He cursed under his breath. “Are they still in your apartment?”

  She listened closely and heard nothing beyond the eerie susurration of the snake sliding across the floor. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so.”

  “Where is the snake?”

  “It’s moving toward my laundry basket.”

  He inhaled sharply. “It’s probably looking for warmth. The cement is cold. If it coils up, it will stay put. I don’t want you to leave the room until I’m at your door. Do you understand?”

  “What if it doesn’t coil up?”

  “Use your best judgment. Give me ten minutes.” He hung up the phone.

  She curled her legs beneath her and focused on the snake. It was nearly six feet long and an inch and a half in diameter. It probed the wicker cords of the laundry basket with its coffin-shaped head, its tongue spearing the air like a switchblade, before moving hesitantly into the pocket of air behind the basket. She let out the breath she was holding and glanced toward the doorway, training her ears on the apartment beyond.

  She heard nothing.

  The next ten minutes were the longest in Zoe’s life. The snake, once comfortable in the corner, did not stir again. Nor did she hear any sound of movement from the apartment. The mamba was clearly a warning, as was the break-in. They—whoever they were—meant to terrify her. But what did they hope to achieve? She was involved in the investigation of Darious, but she wasn’t the face of the prosecution. She was just an expat intern.

  She heard the trill of an incoming text and looked at the screen.

  “Outside,” Joseph wrote. “Guard with me. No cars outside gate. Intruder?”

  “No,” she typed back. “Snake is quiet, too.”

  “Can you get to front door?”

  “Going now. Send guard back. Come alone.”

  Taking a deep breath, she slipped her feet onto the chilly floor and glided stealthily to the doorway, watching the snake out of the corner of her eye. It didn’t budge. She pulled the door shut and turned to the darkened hallway, listening. She switched on the light and moved toward the entrance to the living room. She paused just beyond the threshold, wishing she had a weapon.

  At last she mustered the courage to round the corner. Her eyes darted around the living area, searching the shadows for a human silhouette. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she saw only the shapes of furniture. She looked toward the kitchen and saw a reflection, actually many reflections, in the moonlight on the floor. Shattered glass, she thought.

  At once she understood how the intruder had gotten in. The window over the sink had been replaced the week before, and its bars had been removed to aid the workmen. Her landlord had promised to replace them, but she hadn’t seen him in days.

  She turned on the light and unlocked the front door. Joseph was waiting on the porch, holding his rifle. He entered the flat with barely a glance at her and began to search the apartment. She followed him from room to room. The look in his eyes left no doubt: he was prepared to shoot.

  It took him less than a minute to satisfy himself that they were alone, but in that short span a fountain of emotion opened up in Zoe. The protection Joseph offered her was more than the product of his oath as a police offi
cer. It was personal. When he placed his gun on the couch, she went to him and lost herself in his arms.

  In time, he stepped back, his face betraying his anger. “How did they deliver the snake?”

  “In a sack. It’s in the hallway.”

  He went to the kitchen and returned with a wooden spoon. “I need you to get the sack.”

  He led her down the hallway to the bedroom and opened the door slowly. The mamba was still curled up in the corner. He moved toward the laundry basket on the soles of his feet, making no sound. He slowly pulled the basket away from the snake and set it aside. As the serpent began to move, he used the shaft of the spoon to draw its coiled body away from its head. The mamba displayed signs of alarm, but Joseph was prepared. With a flick of his wrist, he lifted the tail high off the ground and used the spoon to pin the snake’s head to the floor. The mamba writhed in his arms, and Zoe was afraid he would lose his grip. But Joseph held the serpent fast. Suddenly, he let go of the spoon and grasped the snake behind the head, lifting it off the ground.

  “The bag,” he said. “Hold it open at my feet.”

  Heart pounding, Zoe did as he asked.

  Joseph maneuvered the mamba into the bag until only the head and tail were outside. The snake thrashed about, but it couldn’t escape the burlap. Joseph dropped the serpent’s tail into the opening and wrapped his free hand around the neck of the bag like a vise, sliding it up until he was gripping the snake’s neck and the bag together. He took the cinch cord with his other hand and in a single motion dropped the bag and cinched it closed, swinging it around and around and twisting the cord until the serpent had no chance of escape.

  He regarded her with amusement. “All that and you could have charmed it with a dance.”

  She laughed, remembering that she was in her underwear. “Are you going to kill it?”

  “I don’t kill animals unless I have to. I’m going to take it on a drive.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said. “I can’t stay here alone.”

  They drove north into the plains and deposited the snake on a rocky swale beneath a sky awash with stars. They returned to Zoe’s flat a few minutes before five in the morning. As they approached the gate, Joseph pointed out where the security fence had been breached. Along a four-foot section of wall glass shards had been cleared and the bottom strand of electrified wire had been severed.