The Uttermost Parts of the Earth
Page 21
KWAME THOUGHT about the letter for two days. Obviously Livie was sleeping with the man who wanted her to move in with him. He felt no jealousy about that. He was pleased that Livie had someone in her life. He had always known their relationship would end.
He answered:
“Dear sweetest Olivia,
“I wish we could talk. Or phone. Or e-mail. I wish I were there to make the loneliness go away, but the grind of law school would still be there, wouldn’t it? I don’t know what to say about your moving in with this guy. Maybe it’s okay. Being lonely is not a good idea—and melancholy and having to deal with it. I think you should do it.
“Strangely, I’m not lonely. I’ve told you about the two or three other expats here and the group we form. There’s a Zairean woman too—very educated for a village girl, beauti …”
Kwame stopped writing. Should he acknowledge that a woman was living with him in his room? No. This would be his last letter to Livie. There was no reason to hurt her, to let her think that she had been replaced. He completed the word “beautiful” and added “married to a Belgian.” The sentence now read: “There’s a Zairean woman, too, very educated for a village girl, beautiful, married to a Belgian.” She might wonder where the Belgian was, but he would leave it that way. He added: “She acts as a bridge for us to Africa and we are all half-infatuated with her.” Why not let Livie think—Whatever she chose to think.
“Most Americans would probably hate this place,” Kwame went on. “The pace of American life grows faster and faster. Here time stands still. In the States there’s an underlying noise of hurry. It’s technology clicking away, making our lives more convenient, more frenetic. Here, it’s all stillness, a silence so great that sometimes the sky seems to press down on us. That huge sky wears different colors throughout the day. And the river is always slipping past. I must be vegetating. Because for the moment that’s enough.”
Kwame told Livie how much her love had meant to him in their years together. “The love we shared, it’s something I’ll always carry with me. Foolish, isn’t it, to think of permanence as the only value?”
Kwame bid Livie succeed in law school. Perhaps someday years hence, he wrote, they would meet somewhere, have a meal together, and meet each other’s children. He knew that he would not hear from her again.
LE TOUT MBANDAKA attended a party that weekend given by the Badekas and their Bomboko Congo instructors. Kwame, Kalima, and Dr. Odejimi arrived together, followed almost immediately by the Moulaerts. Mme Berton appeared alone in a dress of yellow chiffon, very Paris couture; her husband, she reported, was down at the plantations. The Badekas hoped their guests would dance to new CDs from Kinshasa, but most of the men gathered in a corner, beers in hand, to discuss events in eastern Zaire.
Both the BBC and shortwave broadcasts from Brussels had reported the Kisangani airport under attack by Kabilistes, so-called after their leader Laurent Kabila. At the time of inde pendence in 1960 he had been a Lumumbiste and an opponent of Mobutu for thirty years. In addition, some 350,000 refugees were said to be roaming the jungles in the area.
“Will Mobutu’s men be able to hold Kisangani?” Moulaert asked.
“No,” predicted Badeka. “History is repeating itself.”
“With a precision that is unnerving,” remarked Berton. He had arrived out of nowhere, just in from the bush, and gotten himself a beer. He wore work shorts and a safari jacket, its pockets full to the brim. “These troubles will reach us here,” he said. He scanned the guests with an edginess of manner.
Kwame wondered where Mme Berton had gone. He had seen her with Odejimi.
“In the midsixties,” recalled Badeka, “Simba rebels came out of the Kivu to menace Kisangani.”
“It was Stanleyville then,” remarked Berton impatiently. “It fell like a ripe papaya.” He quaffed his beer, surveying the guests.
Kwame also looked over the guests, searching for Odejimi.
“Will the rebels push into the Equateur?” asked Moulaert. “What do we do if these rebels come toward Mbandaka?”
“They never got this far in the sixties,” said Badeka. “But here we are thirty years later. Mobutu is very rich; Zaire is very poor. Mobutu no longer works as a man; Zaire no longer works as a country.”
“And the Americans are back,” remarked Berton.
Kwame withdrew from the conversation. He sought out Théa Badeka, spun her onto the dance floor, and asked, “Where’s Dr. Odejimi?”
“He slipped into the garden with Mme Berton,” she said. Then, alarmed, she asked, “What’s Berton doing here?”
“Madame thinks he’s at the plantations.”
Kwame went outside. He walked through the garden, whis tling to make his presence known. At the back of the property he came to a hedge of bougainvillea. Through it he saw a flash of yellow. He declared in a loud voice, “Berton has arrived. Berton is here.”
Returning to the house, Kwame danced with Kalima. Mme Berton appeared at the kitchen door. She smoothed the skirt of her lemony dress. Odejimi followed behind her. They walked through the kitchen and took the dance floor, playing the moment recklessly.
Berton stalked onto the dance floor. “Jean-Luc!” his wife exclaimed. “You’re here!” She left Odejimi, ran to her husband. “I thought you were gone for another week! How good to have you here!”
“Indeed, old boy,” said Odejimi.
Mme Berton kissed her husband. He pushed her aside. He drew a pistol from his safari jacket. He aimed it at Odejimi. Mme Berton shrieked. Odejimi said, “Easy, old chap.” He raised his hands in submission. A shot rang out. Odejimi staggered. A second shot. Mme Berton howled. Odejimi fell to the floor. Guests fled. Berton shot again. Mme Berton dropped to the floor, her body covering the doctor’s.
Guests rushed outside. They screamed. They whispered. They peered through the windows. They watched in horror.
Mme Berton lay embracing the doctor, wailing and blubbering. Blood pooled beneath her. Kwame saw Odejimi’s eyes stare upward, trying to comprehend this incomprehensible event. The light in them went out. Mme Berton shrieked, feeling Odejimi’s life ebbing away. No one spoke. After the explosions of gunfire, the silence had physical weight, broken only by Mme Berton’s cries.
Berton shoved the pistol into his jacket. He grabbed his wife under her arms. With the strength of passion, he lifted her to her feet. He pulled her through the kitchen. No one tried to stop them.
Kwame knelt beside the doctor. He gently held his head. He looked into his eyes. Moulaert knelt down, took a wrist, and searched for a pulse. “Dead,” he said.
GUESTS SCURRIED away. The Moulaerts vanished. Kalima took Kwame’s hand and whispered, “We must leave.” But when he saw how shaken the Badekas were, Kwame refused. “I will be at the hotel,” she said. She disappeared into the garden. In the grip of panic, Badeka insisted that the doctor might still be saved. He and several students loaded Odejimi’s body into a car and drove off toward the hospital.
After her husband departed, Théa grumbled, “White men are so stupid!” She stared at the pool of blood. “Could Berton not see that his wife was bored? That there would be trouble?” Standing over the blood, Théa vented her anger. “Now he’s killed a doctor. We don’t have doctors to kill.” She shook her head. “Everybody knew what was going on.”
“Berton must have known.”
“Of course, he knew! He came here, hunting the doctor.”
Théa went into the kitchen. Kwame picked up bottles and glasses and took them to her. She had removed her blouse and stood at the sink, an apron over her bra, filling a plastic pail with water. Handing Kwame another pail and old towels, she led him to the pool of Odejimi’s blood. “If we don’t clean this up, it will get sticky,” she said. They dropped to their knees and mopped up the blood, wringing it out in one pail, then rinsing the towels in the other and wiping up more blood. Théa muttered, “I suppose the police will come.”
Badeka returned. “We left the body at the hospi
tal and hurried away,” he said. He went about locking doors.
Kwame went to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands with soap. “I should go,” he told Badeka.
“No, stay. It’s good to have you here.”
When the police came, Kwame thought, his presence might protect the Badekas. He could corroborate their report of what happened. He stayed with them until three A.M. But no police came. Kwame finally asked, “Where are the police?”
Badeka shook his head, almost with relief.
“Won’t there be an arrest?” Kwame asked. “Berton was standing over him with the gun.”
Badeka shrugged. “Maybe they’ll try to arrest him tomorrow. When he’s had time to flee.”
“They’ll let him flee?”
“They want to flee themselves,” Théa said. “There are rebels in Kisangani. They may come here.”
Badeka said simply, “There is no law here.”
WHEN KWAME returned to the hotel, he sat for a long time in the film truck, remembering Olatubusun Odejimi. The doctor had showed him how to live in Mbandaka; in a sense he had saved his life. Now he was dead, he who seemed to know everything about survival. Poor doctor. Madame Berton was no woman to die for.
He glanced up at the hotel. A light shone dimly in the doctor’s room. Someone was already there, looting his belongings. They did not wait long, Kwame thought. He hoped Kalima was safe in his room.
As he went along the passage, he stopped outside Odejimi’s door. Anger welled up in him at the doctor’s death. He felt an urge to take vengeance on the looters in Odejimi’s room. He moved silently to the door, turned the handle, and burst inside. The looter gasped and slid into darkness.
“Docteur?” the voice asked.
“Kalima?”
“Kwame?”
Kwame shut the door. Kalima moved from behind the armoire into the dim illumination of the reading lamp. He embraced her, held her to him. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “I thought you were his ghost!”
But another ghost was suddenly with them in the room. Kwame took Kalima’s arm and held it tight. “Is this what happened to Mason?”
“Why talk about Mason? Odejimi’s dead.”
Kalima pulled out of his grip. She cried, “Odejimi’s dead!” She went back to looking through the doctor’s belongings. Kwame went to the table beside the bed where she was working. On it he saw Odejimi’s checkbook, a small stack of hundred dollar bills, and packets of nearly worthless zaire notes in bundles. The doctor must recently have bought black market currency.
Kwame saw that Kalima had forced open the armoire. Seeing his surprise, she said, “If we do not take these things, the police will take them. Or someone who did not even know him. His ghost is in the room here. He wants us to have these things.”
She handed Kwame the cash and the checkbook. He stuffed them into his pockets. He went into the bathroom, searched the place, and took the toiletries. Kalima found his tobacco and whiskey. They transported what they could carry into Kwame’s room. Kwame returned, gathered the rest, and closed Odejimi’s door.
Back in their room Kalima poured Kwame a whiskey. He shook his head. She came beside him, gave him the drink, and took some of it herself. An idea had occurred to Kwame. Examining it from every angle, he wondered if he had the cold nerve—the balls—to carry it out. Finally he finished off the drink. He took the bundles of cash and the checkbook. He sped across town to the center and hid them in a footlocker he kept above the ceiling.
He drove out along the river to the Bertons’ house. He reckoned they would be awake, packing luggage to flee. He drove almost into the house. His headlights shone brightly into the front room. Kwame left the truck, moving slowly so that Berton would know who he was, his arms away from his body. Berton could see that he was not armed. The planter appeared out of a side door. He held his right hand behind him, obviously hiding a gun.
“I know he was your friend,” Berton said, “but he defiled my wife.”
Kwame said, “You’ll want someone in your house while you’re gone.”
Berton moved closer. He peered at Kwame across the headlight beams.
“My companion and I would like to occupy it,” Kwame said. “It’s us or Zairean squatters.”
Berton said nothing, studying him.
“We’ll take good care of the place,” Kwame assured him. “At least until rebels push us out.”
“What can you pay?”
“You can’t collect rent from anyone.”
Finally Berton said, “You Americans never miss a chance, do you?”
“Never do,” Kwame said.
“You want the cars, too, I suppose,” Berton said.
Kwame had not thought of the cars. “Why not?”
Berton spat to show his contempt.
“If you agree to this,” Kwame said, “put it in writing. That will give me some authority against squatters.”
Berton spat again. He disappeared around the side of the house.
Kwame waited. He heard the river sliding past, just beyond the yard. The night was dark, densely black, even with the headlights. Kwame grew cold. He waited for what seemed forever, feeling strangely that Odejimi’s ghost was standing just beyond where he could make him out. He was sure the ghost was chuckling. “This was worth a try,” Kwame told the ghost—silently for if he were truly a ghost he needed no audible words.
Berton returned with a handwritten letter of authorization and a collection of keys.
Kwame said, “Have a good life.” Then for the benefit of the ghost, he added silently, “It’s more than you deserve.”
He got back to the hotel, exhausted. Kalima was relieved to have him safe. He could see that she’d been crying. He lay down beside her, knowing he would not sleep, and said, “I got us a house.”
KWAME LEFT the hotel at dawn. As he started down the passage, he discovered that Odejimi’s room had been sacked, his clothes removed, and papers and books scattered by looters looking for cash. Among the debris he saw a book that bore Odejimi’s signature. He took it, went to the center, and practiced again and again writing something that resembled the assemblage of curlicues Odejimi used in signing his name. Then he took the doctor’s checkbook from the footlocker in which he’d hidden it. He wrote out a check to himself for a bit less than the amount remaining in the Nigerian’s account. He psyched himself up and attempted what he hoped would prove to be a passable forgery of the signature. His third try looked worth testing.
At the bank the manager was closeted with important patrons. The assistant manager told Kwame he could not be disturbed. The young man examined the check. He looked carefully at Kwame. He scrutinized the signature, compared the amount of the check to the balance in the account, and returned to Kwame. “It is remarkable,” he said, “that the doctor should write you a check that is almost exactly the balance in the account.”
“We had a wager,” Kwame told the man. “I emptied my account to him if he won. And if I won—”
“And you did. Lucky you.” Kwame nodded with a smile. The assistant manager stared at him. He had an accountant’s manner. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, a white business shirt, and a tie and coat and clearly had ambitions beyond Mbandaka. “I suppose wagers do happen at a time when the world is falling apart,” he noted. “Kisangani fell to the rebels last night.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Kwame said. “Will the rebels come here?”
“They are killing refugees in the camps,” the assistant manager reported. Then he asked, “Can you help me get to America?”
“These days I’m not sure I can get to America myself,” Kwame replied.
The young man looked again at the check, then back at Kwame. He glanced toward the door of the manager’s office. “This is so unusual,” he said. “This is quite a large check. I think the director should approve it.”
“But he is so busy. I would appreciate it if—”
“Could Dr. Odejimi come to authenticate it?” the assistant manager asked.
The assistant manager reappraised the check, then stole another glance at the manager’s door. “Yes, there is,” he said. “Ten percent. I thank you for reminding me.” He smiled at Kwame, relieved. “If you’d like to wait, I can handle the matter now.”
“Perhaps you’d like to put the money in there,” Kwame said. He gave the young man a cloth duffel. He took it and went off.
As Kwame waited, the bank manager’s door opened. He escorted M. and Mme Berton from his office. Apparently they had been arranging their financial affairs. From what Kwame overheard it seemed that they were leaving Mbandaka on the noon plane. He heard Berton say that they might be gone for some time.
Berton spoke quietly, in tense clipped phrases, his glance furtive. Madame, however, was expansive, her cheeks abloom with health, her voice lilting with melody. The fact that her husband would murder a man out of jealousy made Madame kittenish. She was as flirtatious as a new bride well-satisfied with her wedding night. Her voice trilled with merriment. Her perfume scented the room. She moved with a sprightliness, clinging to her husband. Berton caught sight of Kwame. He nodded. Madame danced up to him. She extended her hand. Kwame shook it. “Bon voyage,” he said.
She replied, “Have a good stay at our house.”
As soon as the bank manager returned to his office, the assistant manager appeared with the cloth duffel, now stuffed quite full. “It turned out that the bank’s service charge came to more than 10 percent,” he said.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Kwame said. The two men shook hands.
AFTER HIDING the money in the footlocker in the center, Kwame returned to the hotel. The police were searching Dr. Odejimi’s room. Looters stood watching from the road outside, waiting for them to finish. Kalima paced at the far end of the hotel property. As soon as Kwame appeared in the film truck, she stepped into the road and waved. They left quickly.