Three

by Justin D'Ath

  Mbuti and I were not the only passengers. One of the two guardsmen who had come up to my apartment now sat in the rear-facing seat across from us. His Uzi lay across his lap and his eyes were watchful. The other guardsman sat in the front with the driver. Four vehicles made up our little convoy. Two soldiers on motorbikes rode ahead of the limousine. Behind us came the jeep with the mounted machine gun that had collected me from the police cells three days earlier. Corporal Joseph was driving, with Captain Falana sitting next to him; but I could not tell if the machine-gunner in the back was the same one, because he was wearing a big helmet and dust goggles. Our motorbike escorts led us between rows and rows of large, camouflaged huts shaped like cut-in-half oil drums, to a big, four-storey building with a sign that said, ‘HOSPITAL’.

  We were not the only visitors. A white minibus was parked over to one side, and a small group of civilians with cameras, microphones and recording equipment stood watching us from the shadow of the hospital portico. They came swarming around the limousine as soon as we stopped.

  ‘What is going on?’ I asked, shielding my eyes from the flash-flash-flash of their many cameras.

  Mbuti smiled into the lens of a television camera right outside his window. ‘It’s your fan club, Sunday. Didn’t I tell you? You are a superstar!’

  ‘They are journalists,’ I said. ‘They are not fans.’

  ‘You cannot have one without the other.’ Mbuti chuckled. ‘Get used to it, Magic Feet.’

  I could see the microphones more clearly now. One had a little sign on it that said BBC. Another said CBS. Suddenly it became plain to me why Mbuti had made me wear my World Cup football uniform to the hospital. I was on display. By bringing me to the hospital dressed like this, by letting me ride with him in his private limousine, he was showing everyone – my supporters all over the world – that he was not the tyrant that some of the overseas newspapers claimed he was.

  And who knew – if people all over the world could be fooled into thinking that Mbuti and I were friends, mightbe they would also believe his lies about who had killed my parents.

  ‘No photos!’ I said, leaning forward and covering my head.

  ‘There’s no need to be shy,’ said Mbuti, unstrapping his seatbelt. ‘Come on, let’s get out and be friendly.’

  ‘I am not getting out until they put their cameras away.’

  ‘Don’t spoil the party, Magic Feet. Sit up and take a look around you. These people aren’t your enemies, they are your fans!’

  ‘They are journalists. All they want is a story.’

  ‘So give them a story, Sunday. Give the world a story!’

  ‘Then I will tell them the truth,’ I said.

  ‘What truth?’ asked Mbuti. ‘That you are only wearing those football clothes because people were scared of your father?’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows what is true and what isn’t? Let’s just be friendly to the press and give your millions of fans something to smile about.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to them,’ I said stubbornly. ‘This wasn’t part of our agreement, Lionel. I said I would play football, I didn’t say I would talk to the press.’

  We both looked out our windows at all the journalists waving microphones and calling out questions that we could not hear through the bulletproof glass.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Mbuti sounded amused. ‘Shoot them?’

  I glanced at his pistol. I was thinking of shooting someone, but not the people outside the limousine.

  I asked that person: ‘They are not coming into the hospital, are they?’

  ‘Maybe just one or two of them,’ Mbuti said. ‘A couple of the photographers. Think how impressed your girlfriend will be!’

  It was pointless to resist. I had waited all this time to see Holly, so I would go along with Mbuti’s plans. But I hated giving in to him.

  ‘You planned all this, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘Just to make you look good.’

  ‘You are wrong, Sunday. I did this for you.’

  My eyes returned to his pistol. If I was quick enough, mightbe I could grab it. But the guardsman sitting across from us was watching closely. His Uzi was pointed casually in my direction, but there was nothing casual about the look in his eyes. So instead of reaching for Mbuti’s pistol, I reached for my door handle.

  The interview did not last long. Mbuti and I stood at the top of the three hospital steps, while the journalists stood below us with their microphones, their phones and their cameras. Each reporter got to ask only one question, and all the questions were about football. Did I think Zantuga would make the World Cup finals? What did I think when my fans compared me to Pelé? Would I score more goals than the young Brazilian star, Alfredo?

  The journalists must have been warned not to ask about the death of my parents. Or to say anything about the coup d’état that had overthrown my father’s government.

  Just as I had suspected, it was not truly an interview. It was a publicity event to make Mbuti look good in the eyes of the world. Here he was, standing next to the young football player everyone had thought was dead, beaming at the cameras like he was my proud and beloved uncle.

  Surely this nice man would never have tried to kill me, the public was supposed to think.

  Surely he could not have murdered my parents!

  I answered all the reporters’ football questions and looked into their cameras, but I refused to smile. I would save my smiles for later, when finally I got to see my girlfriend.

  If I got to see her.

  If all the reports they had given me about her recovery were not just more of Mbuti’s tricks and lies.

  32

  Mustafa

  Two journalists with big cameras followed Mbuti and me in through the hospital doors. Mbuti must have chosen them beforehand. One worked for The World Press, the other wore the badge of our own national newspaper, The Zantugan.

  A fat, bald-headed man wearing a suit and tie was waiting for us in the foyer. He introduced himself as Hospital Director, Doctor Something. I was distracted by the sudden BOP-BOP-BOP! of distant gunfire and did not fully listen to his name. Nobody else seemed concerned about the gunfire – this was an army base, mightbe they were shooting at targets – and soon it stopped. We all crowded into a lift and travelled up to the third floor. The hospital director led us down a long, echoey corridor to a door guarded by an armed soldier. The soldier saluted when he saw General Mbuti, then his eyes looked me up and down with open curiosity. I felt embarrassed to be wearing my football clothes in a hospital.

  The director knocked softly on the door and pushed it partway open. ‘They are here,’ he said quietly to someone we could not see. ‘Is she awake?’

  ‘She is ready,’ replied the voice of a woman.

  I pushed suddenly past the guard, past Mbuti and the hospital director, and slipped inside the room. A nurse stood before me, looking surprised.

  ‘Wait outside please, nurse,’ I said.

  She knew who I was and did not question my right to ask her to leave. But before I could close the door behind her, Mbuti’s big face was there. ‘What do you think you are doing?’ he whispered.

  ‘I want privacy,’ I said.

  ‘But these journalists have come to take photos.’

  ‘They can wait,’ I said. ‘First I want to see my friend in private.’

  Mbuti did not look pleased about this, but he nodded. ‘All right. You can have five minutes with her. But after that, there will be photos.’

  I closed the door in his face.

  ‘Hi,’ said a small voice, in the room behind me.

  Holly lay in a tilted-up hospital bed, connected to several drips and wires and beeping machines. Half her head was wrapped in bandages – like Three’s bandages, only cleaner-looking and tidier – and her face was so pale that it looked almost blue.

  And she was not alone.

  A white woman and a white man sat on chairs beside her bed. The woman
’s hair was dark brown and almost as short as mine. The man had blond hair and wore glasses that made his pale blue eyes seem bigger – and even bluer – than they really were.

  Holly’s parents!

  After all the waiting, all the worry and all the fuss it had taken to get to see her in private, I had forgotten that Holly’s parents were at the hospital with her.

  And of course I could not ask them to leave!

  ‘Hi,’ I said – not just to Holly, but to her parents as well.

  Her mother remained sitting, but her father stood up and came towards me. He shook my hand.

  ‘You must be Sunday,’ he said.

  ‘I am pleased to meet you, Mr Parr.’

  I was very nervous. What had Holly said to them about me? Did they blame me for what had happened to her?

  Mrs Parr smiled at me from where she sat. ‘It is very kind of you, dear, to come and visit our daughter.’

  ‘We go to the same school,’ I said. And then I felt foolish – already she would know that. ‘It is so bad what happened to her.’

  ‘It’s bad what happened to you, too,’ said Mr Parr, still gripping my hand. ‘Please accept our deepest condolences.’

  It took me a few seconds to understand that the talk had moved from Holly to my parents. Ama and Baba had not been dead for a week, but already I was becoming used to a world without them in it. I felt ashamed.

  ‘Would you like to sit down, dear?’ said Mrs Parr. ‘I expect you want to talk to Holly.’

  At last Mr Parr let go of my hand. But there was nowhere to sit except on the chair where he had been sitting. He told me to sit there, saying that he needed to stretch his legs. The chair was still warm from him and so was my hand that he had held for too long. There was sweat on my face. I wiped it with the green and purple sleeve of my football jersey. Mrs Parr smiled at me again. She and I were sitting side-by-side, too close for a lady who was not my mother. I wanted to move my chair but that would have been impolite. I wished it was just Holly and me in the room. I could smell my own sweat.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked, feeling very self-conscious with her parents listening.

  A tiny smile bent the corners of Holly’s lips. They were almost as pale as the rest of her skin. I remembered kissing them.

  ‘I’m getting better,’ she said softly. ‘The doctors think I’ll be strong enough to go home soon.’

  ‘When will you be well enough to come back to school?’

  ‘Home home,’ she said. ‘We’re going back to Boston.’

  ‘America?’ I said foolishly.

  ‘Yes. Boston, America.’

  ‘How long will you be there for?’

  ‘We aren’t coming back.’

  ‘What about school?’ I asked. What about us?

  ‘There are schools at home,’ Holly said. ‘I’ll probably go back to the same one I used to go to.’

  ‘I thought you were staying for two years in Zantuga,’ I heard myself say. It was that d’lawo feeling again – like I was not really there; like I was outside of our conversation, listening to Holly and someone else having this talk. I could not believe that she was going back to America.

  ‘What about your parents’ work?’ I asked.

  ‘They can get their old jobs back,’ Holly said. ‘It’s not like we were going to stay here forever. And Dad’s finished the project he was working on.’

  I turned to her mother. Even though my mind was still spinning from the news Holly had just told me, there was something else that I needed to know.

  ‘What about your work, Mrs Parr? Is the We Care warehouse open again?’

  ‘Not in the meantime,’ she answered. ‘They’re sending someone to replace me.’

  ‘From America?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘When will they get here?’ I asked.

  Mrs Parr looked puzzled. She must have wondered why I was so interested in her work. She did not know about Three.

  ‘In two or three weeks,’ she said. ‘It depends on the political situation here in Zantuga. Nobody back home is keen to come here until things have settled back down.’

  Until that tyrant he-goat Mbuti has declared himself president, I could have said. Then a newspaper headline flashed into my mind: Tyrant vs Tyrant.

  Could it really be true what they had written about my father? Had he really done those terrible things? I hated that I was starting to doubt him.

  O Baba!

  Holly’s head was turned a bit sideways on her pillow. Her big blue eyes were looking right at me. They were the same colour as her father’s. ‘Hey, it was really nice of you to come visit me, Sunday.’

  ‘I wanted to make sure that they are looking after you properly here,’ I said, trying to make it a joke, even though I was crying inside.

  ‘The doctors have been super nice,’ she said.

  ‘What about the nurses?’

  ‘They’re nice, too.’

  ‘Are there any handsome ones?’ I asked.

  Holly frowned. ‘The nurses are all, like, ladies.’

  ‘It is just as well I came to see you, then!’

  ‘Well, I guess so,’ said Holly, looking confused.

  ‘The other day you said you wanted a handsome nurse, remember?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Sunday?’

  Every part of my face went hot. ‘The other day? You know, that talk we had? About men being nurses?’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  Holly’s mother touched my arm. ‘She’s having trouble remembering things, honey. It’s an aftereffect of her injury.’

  ‘Post-traumatic amnesia,’ Holly said, almost proudly.

  It sounded bad. ‘Can you remember anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I can. It’s not like my mind’s gone totally blank. I’ve just forgotten stuff that’s happened in the last couple of weeks. Like someone pressed a delete button in my brain: pzzzt – gone!’

  ‘Do you remember your birthday?’

  Her blue eyes swivelled up to her mother’s greenish-brown ones. ‘That’s the day I was shot, wasn’t it, Mom?’

  ‘The day after,’ Mrs Parr said. ‘But it’s probably best you don’t dwell on that, sweetie.’

  ‘We don’t know how any of it happened,’ Holly said to me, ignoring her mother’s advice. ‘I disappeared in the middle of the night. It was just Mom and me at home, because Dad got stuck at work all night on account of the curfew. Mom says we both went to bed early and she didn’t hear anything unusual. Next thing anyone knew, some soldiers find me unconscious in the street, about a half mile from home. We think I might have been kidnapped by the rebels, and maybe it went wrong or I tried to escape or something.’

  ‘Scary!’ I said. Because I had to say something. I could not say what I was really thinking: that I knew almost everything that had happened to Holly that night, except who had actually shot her. (I hoped it wasn’t Corporal Joseph.)

  ‘It’s probably best that I don’t remember!’ Holly joked.

  ‘True,’ I said. But there were some things that I wished she did remember. Like calling me her handsome nurse, for example. Like kissing me all those times!

  Like being my girlfriend.

  ‘How did you know it was my birthday?’ she asked suddenly.

  More than ever, I wished her parents were not in the room. I wanted to tell Holly that I had known about her birthday for a long time. I wanted to tell her about the CD I had got her and the card with the fifteen kittens on it. But I could not say those things with her parents listening. I could not remind her about our kisses.

  ‘Jessica told me,’ I lied.

  ‘Jessica from school?’ Holly said. ‘I didn’t know you were friends with her.’

  ‘Not close friends,’ I said. Not like you and me. ‘We were just talking about you and she said it was your birthday.’

  ‘Where was I?’

  I shrugged. I felt sad for Holly, for forgetting everything. But even sadder for me, who sti
ll remembered. ‘You were at home.’

  Holly looked at her mother. ‘I stayed home on my birthday?’

  ‘That’s right, sweetie.’

  ‘Why? Was I sick or something?’

  Her parents exchanged a look that Holly and I were not supposed to see. ‘You and your mother decided to have a girls’ day at home,’ Mr Parr said. ‘To celebrate your birthday together.’ Holly had told me this before she lost her memory. But a week ago, she was suspicious. She had wondered if her parents had a different reason for making her miss school – one that they were not telling her.

  Mightbe they knew something was going to happen that day, I thought now. Something bad.

  There was a knock on the door. The nurse stuck her head in. ‘Excuse me, Mr Parr. Is it all right if the photographers come in now?’

  Holly’s father turned to me. Now he seemed annoyed. ‘Are you ready for your photo shoot, twinkle-toes?’

  I only half-heard the strange name he had called me – twinkle-toes? – and stored it in my mind to think about later. But something the nurse had said stayed fully in my thoughts. Her accent told me she was from the north, and she did that thing with her P and F sounds.

  Instead of calling Holly’s father Mr Parr, what the nurse had called him sounded much like another name I had been hearing a lot lately.

  Mustafa.

  33

  Abomination!

  Mbuti, Holly’s parents and I stood beside Holly’s bed while the two journalists took photo, after photo, after photo. The man from The World Press asked me many times to smile, but I would not smile. Next to me was the man who had ordered the deaths of my parents. On my other side was the man who had made it possible. How could I smile in such company?

  I did not even want to be in the same room as them!

  And here is what made it much, much worse: my dear girlfriend was the daughter of one of these men!

  Holly did not know what her father had done. She did not know that Mr Parr was Mustafa, the man who had trained Three and sent it to kill me. The man who had sent another brid to kill my parents. I would not tell her. How could you say to someone who you loved: Your father is a murderer?