Ahmed's Revenge

by Richard Wiley

  I sat up straighter in my chair, then chanced a look at Miro’s father sitting by my side. He was crying, shiny dark tear tracks ran all the way from his eyes to the corners of his mouth, but his face was such a picture of pure love and concentration that I couldn’t look away. Miro’s voice was not strictly soprano, I know it because she told me it leaned a little bit toward mezzo. She had a voice with body, a voice with depth and flavour, like a wine again, though Miro had also said it was ultimately the pure sopranos who got the best parts, the high voices that garnered the greatest fame.

  Miro was perfection, but otherwise Act One of the opera contained too much busy stage movement, people shouting and marching around. I had paid spotty attention and when the act ended I was surprised. Madam Butterfly’s uncle had disowned her, not so much for marrying a foreigner but for casting her religion aside in order to embrace the American’s, for taking her sense of everything from her husband, just as I had, including her sense of God. I could easily understand why it angered her uncle so. It angered me too. Why couldn’t she be herself with this man? Why couldn’t the American love her for what she was and leave all these alterations alone?

  The performance had two intermissions, and when the people near us started to stand, I stood too, looked around one time, and then quickly sat back down. I had glimpsed Mr Smith with his own sad father, sitting behind us and off to the side. Mr Smith hadn’t seen me, but his expression was nevertheless sallow and mean. It wasn’t a look of victory or defeat, but a public reflection of his soul.

  “There are drinks in the lobby,” said Ralph. “Shall we get you one? I could choose something for you and bring it back down.”

  “I want a cup of coffee,” I said.

  When Ralph asked Miro’s father the same question he said he would like coffee too, with hot milk. Miro’s father seemed a wonderful man, gentle and kind, but why were there so many men and so few women in the world I occupied? Had Miro’s mother, and Mr Smith’s too, died young, like my own, had they both departed life early, like Ralph’s wife and Dr Zir’s, leaving all these men to carry on? Was it the job of my generation to begin a change of emphasis, so that for the next thirty years only the women survived?

  I touched Miro’s father’s arm and said, “She really is marvellous. I knew she’d be good but I had no idea.”

  That was true enough. Miro had talked about succeeding as a singer in the outside world, about her father’s calling her back just as her reputation was starting to grow, but when she said those things I’d listened lightly, with barely half an ear. I, too, had wanted the outside world—that’s why I’d gone to Oxford—yet both Miro and I had come back home. Now, however, though I would surely stay, it seemed impossible that Miro would remain here, impossible that she would not be lifted onto the shoulders of the real opera world, wildly celebrated and swept away.

  “She is God’s gift,” Miro’s father told me, “her voice is God’s instrument for us to behold.”

  Ralph came back just as the lights dimmed once more. He was carrying three glasses of wine.

  “The coffee is finished,” he said. “Your father bought these and insisted I bring them to you with his compliments.”

  When the curtain came up on Act Two, the American sailor, now Madam Butterfly’s husband, had apparently been gone for quite some time, and Madam Butterfly was waiting on a hillside, gazing out to sea. Her maid sat with her, and Madam Butterfly listened while the maid sang her own sad song. The maid’s devotion to Madam Butterfly was clear, but she was forlorn, sure the American sailor would never return. Miro’s father had refused the wine, so while we watched I had two glasses in my hands. The maid was a pretty good singer too, better than either of the principal men, but when she finished her song and Miro leaned forward, about to admonish the maid for her lack of faith, Miro’s father leaned forward too. “I love this part,” he said. He wasn’t speaking to me, I realised, but was uttering a little prayer, and just then Miro’s voice came slowly up. Like a magnificent wind off the sea of Japan, a single note floated from the stage and, filling the theatre, lifted me out of my self.

  “Un bel dì, vedremo

  Levarsi un fil de fumo sull’estremo

  Con fin del mare,

  E poi la nave appare.”

  That a human voice could have such properties in the face of a crumbling world, that it could combine so with grief and longing and steadfastness of spirit, was suddenly enough to make me wild. I had followed the English libretto during the first act, but the wine in my hands and the music in the air made me forget it now. Miro’s father was crying again and I was too. It was 1904, it was Japan, and somehow my new and only friend had found a way to touch and heal me far more profoundly than the switching of the tusks had done. Miro’s voice was the one I’d been digging for, the one locked in my heart for so long.

  The rest of the second act was an unhappy affair. It was clear to everyone but Madam Butterfly that the American sailor would never return. He had no steadfastness of spirit, no sense of longing, so the real tragedy was that she, Miro, Madam Butterfly, had fallen in love with the wrong man.

  But what hope it gave me sitting there. I had not loved the wrong man but had loved the right man, who had acted wrongly, and what a difference there was in that, what power it gave me, what renewed strength. Jules hadn’t betrayed me, as the American sailor had Miro, but had betrayed, instead, an aspect of himself. And, oh, how he’d grieved for it, oh, how clearly he’d known what he had done.

  I was set free by Miro, though for poor Madam Butterfly there could be no freedom short of death. There was a second intermission, but all I did was drink my wine. I think my father and Dr Zir came down, I know they did, to greet Miro’s father and to stand with Ralph, posing and grimly staring across the room at poor Mr N’chele with his deplorable son. All these men casting their eyes about aggressively, like bulls in tuxedos snorting across an open field: my own father, so culpable once and so untethered now, especially if the day grew long; Mr N’chele, his mind clear but his son a blemish on his heart; and Mr Smith, using the echo of that slap as a reason to spend his time on earth in evil ways. These were the men in my life, and they were just like Madam Butterfly’s uncle in the world on stage, raving and walking this way and that, in Japan and in Kenya, years ago and now and in untold years to come.

  In the third act a child came out, a boy of about three years of age, and my first impulse was to be critical of the structure of the play, of Puccini’s decision to hide this child from us for so long. But he was a beautiful boy, with hair of a colour no Japanese child’s could be and a way of walking across the stage that beguiled me with its innocence and its unselfconsciousness. The American sailor came back after all, not for Miro, whose wretchedness had compelled her to sleep at the very moment of his return, but with his big American wife, and in order to take the child away, in order to claim the boy so that he could grow up in a wider and more profitable world.

  When Miro awoke and sang her final aria, a farewell to her beautiful child and to her awful existence as well, I thought she would sing “Un bel dì” one more time. I wanted her to, I wanted once again to feel it soar from my heart, but she did not. The orchestra let the slightest strain of it seep into the song she did sing, a glorious echo, but that high and golden note did not come out to waft across the room and torture us again. It couldn’t, of course, because it had been a note of hope, and Madam Butterfly’s hope was gone. And when she died, at her own hand, the audience sat stunned as the final curtain came down.

  Dear God, I had not expected anything like this. I hadn’t known that anything like this was possible in the world, that something like this could happen on a stage and before the naked eyes of ordinary humankind. I hadn’t even wanted to come. Before the opera I had been lost—small of heart and grousing on about the scandal that my presence in the theatre would bring—but now I was at home again. It seemed to me that Miro had given the absolute performance of a lifetime and that it was directed
only at me, a gift from my friend, a gift from her father’s God, and, if you like, perhaps a gift from Julius Grant as well: the tragedy and drama of Madam Butterfly’s life and my own life, there on the stage for everyone to see.

  It took the audience a long time to begin to applaud, but once it started it simply wouldn’t stop. When the American sailor and his friend came out there was a surge in the clapping and when Madam Butterfly’s maid came out there was more, but when Miro reappeared, gorgeous and exhausted, such a roar went up from the throats of the people behind me that I nearly turned to see if something else had happened that was causing it. Miro bowed and stood and bowed again, and as I watched her, I could see Madam Butterfly leaving through the room’s thin air. Flowers came from everywhere, falling across the entire stage floor, and when Miro’s father went forward with a bundle of his own, who knows where he got them, the audience went wild again, one last adoring surge, before it remembered itself and stood and filled up the aisles and headed for the doors.

  Because we had front-row seats and were in the middle, it took us a long time to reach the foyer, where Mr Smith and I would attempt to exchange the keys we didn’t have. I was languid and fulfilled. I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to see the man. From the opera I had learned that it was truly over, this hideous duel between Mr Smith and me, that human conflict in a temporal world has a natural end. I even somehow knew that Jules would be satisfied with the new lorry—I no longer needed to read his letter again to know that. I had managed to put the real tusks back where they belonged, and I knew he’d be pleased at the value put on his bones, at the fact that the lorry Mr Smith was giving us was the best that money could buy. It was strange, but when I saw the character of Madam Butterfly float away from Miro’s brow, it was as if Jules had finally gone too, a thinned-out spirit, ever near me since he’d died, but too tired to stay around anymore.

  So when I finally got up and followed Ralph into the foyer, I was tranquil. We had stayed so long in the theatre, however, that the rest of the audience was gone. Mr Smith and his father, in fact, faced my father and me in an almost empty room; only Dr Zir and Ralph stood a little bit off to the side. I was of a mind to remind him that the keys he wanted were waiting outside and then to pass him by, but Mr Smith’s demeanour was peculiar to behold. The mood he’d affected in that morning’s telephone call seemed completely gone.

  “There has been another development,” he said.

  I could understand his words well enough, but the voice he used to say them was so choked that he had to stop almost as soon as he began. His emotions were strewn like driftwood, causing havoc all over his face, his eyes were up and his lips were down. I knew the opera hadn’t done that to him, and the only other thought I could find was that he was planning on keeping what he’d said he’d give away, that he wanted to change boxes but take home the new Mercedes-Benz.

  “I want my husband and I want the new lorry he’s on top of,” I said. “I want my pistol and my husband’s letter too.” I spoke quietly and with the deadly calm of that orchard snake. The opera had perhaps put me in a philosophical mood, but it hadn’t made me an easy mark. I would end this thing tonight, but not on any terms other than those already agreed upon.

  Mr Smith seemed to understand, and waved his hand impatiently, as if to say that what I was thinking did not compare with what he had to say, if only he could get it out. But whatever it was, a long time went by and he didn’t say another word. He was choking on the air in the foyer, so finally his father stepped in.

  “I have recently discovered the entire truth,” Mr N’chele said, “not only about the big tusks on your lorry outside, but about the little ones that have been smuggled out of our country for a year and a half.” Mr N’chele stopped and looked at his son to see if his son would take over, but his son would not.

  “My son has decided that in order for him properly to rectify everything he has done, or at least as much of it as he can, you must not only take the new lorry, with its priceless cargo, but you must allow me to deliver, right now, the contents of the old lorry to the National Museum. You may come with me if you like, personally to view the exchange. It is what I was insisting that he do before your husband took the tusks away. I informed the museum before the opera, and people are standing by. Everything must go back where it belongs, my dear, then this whole thing can end. This is what I insist upon. Order first, and then all the trouble will be undone.”

  Madama Butterfly still had me under its spell, but could I believe my ears? As his father spoke Mr Smith’s demeanour got worse. He couldn’t stand it. He looked ready to explode. In his face I could see not only the man who had put Detective Mubia’s legs to the fire, the man with whom I’d done battle over the dominion of my husband’s body, but also the child with whom I had played so many years before. As I watched him I could see all those faces passing by, so it surprised me when he somehow did manage to mutter a few words.

  “I concede that the lorries and their contents are both out of my control,” he said, “given by me freely for the mistakes I have made.”

  Those words seemed to cause Mr Smith as much agony as giving up her son caused Madam Butterfly, and as I listened I understood that they were memorised words, words dictated to him by his father, words he had practised on the way to the opera or during an earlier part of the day. Speaking them out loud was the final part of the price his father had extracted for once again coming to his aid.

  “I see,” I said.

  I had to think fast. I had to decide right now what I was going to do. Could I tell the truth to Mr N’chele in the presence of his son? Could I tell him not to worry, that Ahmed’s authentic tusks were in Ahmed’s authentic skull even as we spoke, or at worst still lying before him on the museum’s floor? Should I admit to the switch I’d made or let the switch be made again? Though I looked for a second over at Ralph and Dr Zir and my dad, I could see nothing in those three faces that would begin to help me decide.

  “There is no hope for us if we don’t stop now,” Mr N’chele added. “I believe you know it as clearly as I do. The tragedy of your husband’s death cannot be undone, but the past is the past and the very distant past, the particular past in question here, is like something awful we have read in a book. That it was your father who wrote the book, that will have to be your own cross to bear.”

  Mr N’chele was looking at me in a kindly way, speaking from his heart.

  “What will you do with the other tusks?” I asked softly. “What will you do with the artificial ones? Is it your position that they should be returned to your son?”

  “What would you have me do with them?” Mr N’chele asked. “Surely you don’t want them for yourself. You will have your husband to take home, enough to handle without the extra burden to bear.”

  “Send them back to Marsabit,” I said. “Send them up to Ahmed’s own hometown. Build an exhibition hall up there for them. Then I will be satisfied.”

  I’d had no idea I would say such a thing, and Mr N’chele was so surprised that for a minute he couldn’t speak at all. Mr Smith made another strangled sound, but his father looked only at me, steadily and for a good long time. After I had spoken I wouldn’t take the words back again. I could not, however, either fathom where the idea had come from or sustain this old man’s gaze, so I looked over at my own father once again. My father hadn’t recognised Mr N’chele earlier, and I could immediately see that he was daydreaming now. This was the story of his life we were telling here, but he had missed it because he’d been thinking of something else, of an ancient delusion or maybe a move in the chess game he’d been playing only an hour before the opera began. The muscles of my father’s face were as slack as Mr Smith’s were contorted, and his mouth was slightly open, pulled down by nothing but the constant weight of his jaw.

  “Very well,” Mr N’chele finally said. “You have my word on it. We will take the artificial tusks to Marsabit and build them a home, find some appropriate place so that the
y can be displayed for the people who knew Ahmed best when he was alive.”

  “That’s all I ask,” I said. “If that happens, of course, this means an end to everything, an absolute end to it all. Only keep your son away from me from this day on.”

  What I was saying with such words, what I was reminding him of, was that we both had our crosses to bear, but Mr N’chele only nodded one last time.

  Since there were no keys to exchange, we didn’t have to worry about doing anything more, and no one spoke again as the six of us headed out the door. In the car park there were still a few operagoers standing by their cars, and somehow, from seeing these casual groups, I understood that the truth of the matter, the secret of where Ahmed’s authentic tusks really were, was known by far more people than I would have felt comfortable trusting before. Miro and Ralph and I shared the secret of the first exchange, and though my father was forgetting quickly, for today at least, he knew, and Dr Zir knew, and perhaps even Miro’s dad. That made five people whom I would have to trust where before I had trusted only one. Was it too much to hope for, the idea of trust and reliability, when the number of people was large? Could I go back to such an old proposition, could I begin to believe in it again at this late date, now that Julius Grant was gone?