Flesh and Blood

by Thomas H. Cook

  Frank said nothing.

  “That would not surprise me,” the man went on, “because we certainly have a few people in this neighborhood who do not pay their bills.”

  “This isn’t about a bill,” Frank said.

  “A Mr. Kincaid,” Farouk said. “In apartment 3-B?”

  “What about him?”

  “Someone close to him has died,” Farouk said. “We are here to inform him of it.”

  “Did you ring his bell?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Frank said.

  “He didn’t answer,” Farouk added.

  “When does he usually come home?” Frank asked.

  The man shook his head. “Whenever he wishes. I do not keep track of a man his age.”

  “He is an old man?” Farouk asked.

  “Yes,” the man said. “But he looks quite well.”

  “Does he have a job?”

  “Job? I do not think so,” the man said. “But he does keep busy, I believe.”

  “Doing what?” Frank asked.

  “Working at the settlement house,” the man said. “He does some teaching there. For the immigrants.”

  “The Brandon Street Settlement?” Farouk asked immediately.

  “Yes,” the man said. “Do you know it?”

  “In the past,” Farouk told him. He smiled pleasantly. “How long since you were in Port-au-Prince?”

  The man smiled back instantly. “Long time,” he said, “but I have not missed it.”

  “Much oppression,” Farouk said.

  “They are dying in the streets,” the man added.

  Farouk nodded quickly. “Terrible thing, for the people of Toussaint.”

  “We shall finally have a good land,” the man said determinedly. “Though perhaps not in my lifetime.”

  Again Farouk smiled sweetly. “Well, as they say, ‘if not for me, then for my children,’ yes?”

  “That is how it must be seen,” the man agreed.

  Farouk stepped back slightly. “This Mr. Kincaid,” he said. “You said he works at the Brandon Street Settlement?”

  “I have seen him go over there,” the man said. “I have heard he teaches there.”

  “What does he teach?” Frank asked.

  The man shrugged. “I am not sure. It could be anything. These people are right from the boat, as we say. They know nothing of this country. It is always a new crop. Every six months. They live at the settlement, but they know nothing of America.” He smiled. “Perhaps that is what he teaches them, how to be good Americans.”

  Frank took out his notebook. “How long has Mr. Kincaid lived here?”

  “About a year,” the man said.

  “Has he ever had a job?”

  “No,” the man said. “Just down at the settlement house. You cannot really call that a job. It is an act of charity, perhaps. Or perhaps he merely wishes to keep himself busy.”

  “Do you know where he lived before he came here?”

  “No, mon. He did not say,” the man told him, “but he speaks Spanish very well. It is only Spanish people at the settlement house.”

  “From Spain?” Farouk asked.

  The man laughed. “Spain?” He laughed again. “No, these ones are from across the border. They come in vans. Not from over the water. They live in the settlement house for a while, then they go back home.”

  “And Mr. Kincaid works with them?” Farouk asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Does Mr. Kincaid have regular hours?” Frank asked.

  “Regular?”

  “Times when he comes and goes,” Frank explained. “Regular times.”

  The man smiled broadly. “He is like the moon. In the morning he goes. In the evening he returns. This is his schedule.”

  “When does he usually get home?”

  “Before night,” the man said.

  “Okay, thanks,” Frank said as he closed his notebook. “We’ll be back later.” He turned toward the stairs, motioning Farouk along with him.

  Farouk did not move. He smiled quietly, his eyes still on the superintendent. “Est-ce possible de visiter l’ appartement de Monsieur Kincaid?” he asked, almost kindly, as one colonial exile to another.

  The superintendent smiled back. “Pourquoi?” he asked.

  Farouk said, “C’est quelquechose de très grave.”

  “C’est quoi, cette affaire si grave?”

  “Une maladie des tropiques,” Farouk told him grimly. “Je vous assure. C’est grave.” He reached into his jacket pocket, fumbled around for a moment, then pulled out a laminated card that identified him as an agent of something called the International Center for the Control of Contagious Disease.

  The man read the card quickly, then stared at Farouk worriedly. “Cette maladie, est-elle vraiment contagieuse?”

  “Oui,” Farouk said, nodding gravely. “Très contagieuse.”

  The man stepped out of the door instantly, his eyes flashing over to Frank. “Please, this way,” he said.

  27

  The room was dark and musty, and as soon as he walked into it, Frank could feel the heavy burden of a life lived far away. There was the curious smell of unusual herbs, plants, spices, of skins dried under different suns, leathers tanned by unknown processes.

  But the light which swept in from the hallway revealed a strangeness that his other senses had only guessed, and from which, Frank noticed as he glanced back toward the door, the Haitian superintendent shrank.

  “Lieu des diables,” he whispered as he edged himself from the door and slipped back down the stairs.

  Farouk’s eyes slid over to Frank. “Place of devils,” he said.

  Frank turned and looked at the room, and as he did so, a chill swept over him, haunting and inexplicable, a sense that the world had suddenly shifted in its flight, edged itself a little deeper into the engulfing darkness.

  He took a short, hesitant step to the right, his fingers gripping the small table which rested near the center of the room. Its feel of cold metal reassured him, and he stepped forward once again, his feet edging into the layer of parched brown stalks and dried leaves which covered the floor.

  “Take care,” Farouk said softly from behind.

  Frank took another step, his eyes turning toward the wall nearest him. It was covered in enormous flat leaves which had been strung on barbed wire and which now hung like small brown bodies from the barbs. A rectangular reed mat lay beneath the curtain of leaves, along with a few earthenware bowls and vases. In his mind, Frank could see Kincaid as he curled up on the mat, sleeping there through the humid summer nights or shivering through the winter ones, his feet half-hidden in the leafy covering of the floor. He looked at the clay water pitcher beside the mat and the small cup beside it, and he could see Kincaid in his thirst and desperation, see his hand wrapped around the bowl, his tongue licking at its rim.

  He turned slowly, his eyes scanning the room while Farouk remained at the door, his hand already curled around the grip of his revolver.

  “What is it that you see?” Farouk asked after a moment.

  Frank did not answer. He continued to let his eyes work for him in the way they always had, in silence, in solitude. He saw a picture of a beautiful woman, which Kincaid had hung with reeds and fronds, and he knew that it was Gilda, now browned by the tropical sun, thinner, less robust, but Gilda nonetheless, staring vacantly at the camera from the veranda of her jungle hut. A small table rested like an altar beneath the photograph, and Kincaid had arranged it with candles, a beaded necklace, a single wooden spoon. A handmade crutch leaned against it, and he had placed ribbons along its sides, stringing them upward in a bright red spiral. A small bit of torn cloth, stained with red, hung from the arm, its tattered edges drooping toward the floor.

  “This is not love,” Farouk said, as he moved farther into the room, his eyes peering wonderingly at the crutch and its bloodstained cloth. “This is worship.”

  Frank’s eyes continued moving steadily around the room. There
were pictures, some hung in ribbons, some in garlands of dried leaves, of brown women in dusty tattered dresses, brown men in buttonless shirts and battered straw hats, brown children staring wide-eyed at the lens, naked or half-naked, their bodies framed by the thick wall of jungle which inevitably rose like an immense green wave behind them.

  “This is a man who remembers,” Farouk said as he took another step into the room. Idly, he picked up a small paper box from the table near the door and turned it slowly in his fingers. “It is filled with teeth,” he said to Frank as he returned it to the table.

  Frank walked into the next room and found it completely bare. There was no furniture, no clothes in the single closet, no source of light or heat, only the bare unswept floors and blank water-stained walls.

  Together, Frank and Farouk moved into the kitchen. Another mat lay across the floor, dirt and leaves scattered around it, along with an assortment of bowls and cups. A large water pitcher rested beside it, still faintly damp from the morning.

  Farouk walked over to the stove and absently turned on one of its gas eyes. It did not ignite.

  Frank opened the small, squat refrigerator, but no light came on.

  “This man,” Farouk said, “lives in his own world.”

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t heat his food,” Farouk added, “or keep anything cold.”

  “I guess not,” Frank said as he closed the refrigerator door.

  “Perhaps its poverty,” Farouk said. “Perhaps he couldn’t pay the bills.”

  “Maybe,” Frank said as he wandered back into the front room. “But all these plants,” he said. “What are all these plants?”

  Farouk followed him into the room. “I don’t know,” he said as he stepped over to the small table. His eyes moved from the tip of the crutch up to the bloody cloth, then over to the tiny framed picture which had been hung next to it. He leaned forward, eyeing it carefully, staring at Gilda, at the dress which hung loosely from her shoulders. “It is the same one,” he said.

  Frank looked at him. “Same what?”

  “The dress in the picture,” Farouk said. He touched the tattered piece of cloth that hung from the arm of the crutch. “This came from it.”

  Frank glanced at the cloth, then stepped over and looked closely at the photograph. “Yes, it did.”

  Farouk’s finger touched the torn scrap of Gilda’s dress tenderly. “This is a man who keeps things,” he said solemnly. Then he looked at Frank. “We must wait for him.”

  • • •

  Night had entirely fallen by the time they heard footsteps trudging up the stairs toward the apartment. The ragged quilts that Kincaid had hung over the cramped square windows blocked even the small amount of refracted light that might otherwise have alleviated what was now an impenetrable interior blackness.

  From his place on the floor, Frank could hear Farouk’s breath catch suddenly as the steps creaked in the hallway. Then he heard his large, ponderous body shift heavily and rise with a quiet groan.

  “You okay?” Frank asked.

  “I am well, yes,” Farouk replied.

  Frank got to his feet quickly and rolled his shoulders to ease their tension. He could hear the man outside as he topped the last step and headed for the door of the apartment. He straightened himself, touched the grip of his pistol as if to reassure himself that it was still there, and then allowed his hands to fall loosely at his sides.

  “Take care,” Farouk whispered from somewhere across the room.

  The door opened slowly and a rectangle of light swept into the room, then disappeared abruptly as the man quickly closed the door behind him.

  In the darkness, Frank could hear him rustling about, a hand in a pocket, an awkward shifting of papers, then the sound of a match, a sudden white glow of light near the door, and after that a yellowing in the air around him.

  Kincaid had lit a candle, and as he turned back toward the room its pale orange glow caught the surprise in his eyes. For a moment, he stood absolutely still, his arms cradling a number of books and papers, his eyes resting first on Frank, steady, even unflinching, and then moving over to Farouk with the same calm suspension.

  “Yes,” he said, but Frank could not tell whether it was a question or a statement, and because of that, the three men simply stared at each other motionlessly, eerily, like the points of a triangle.

  The man turned and placed the books on the small table beside the door. For a moment, he seemed to hold himself in that position, his back to them, as if waiting for them to do whatever it was they had come to do to him.

  “My name is Clemons,” Frank said softly. “Frank Clemons. I’m a private investigator.”

  The man rotated slowly toward them but said nothing.

  “This is my associate,” Frank added, pointing to Farouk.

  Kincaid stared at him expressionlessly. “The time has come,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  Kincaid nodded toward the mat of reeds. “May I sit?” he asked.

  There was a kind of strange tenderness in the question, and it took Frank entirely by surprise.

  “Sit?” he asked.

  “On the floor,” Kincaid said.

  “Of course,” Frank told him.

  Kincaid walked over to the sleeping mat and lowered himself onto it, locking his legs one under the other, Indian-style. Then he picked up a small earthen bowl and rolled it softly between his open hands. His skin was very brown and leathery, and it looked as if it did not belong to him, but to some animal from which it had been stripped, then dried, then laid across his naked bones.

  “Are you Benjamin Kincaid?” Frank asked.

  Kincaid kept his eyes on the bowl.

  Frank felt his fingers crawl slowly toward the pistol in his belt. “Are you Benjamin Kincaid?”

  Kincaid’s long brown fingers nestled the bowl tenderly.

  “Yes, I am,” he said.

  “And this is your apartment, Mr. Kincaid?” Frank asked immediately.

  Kincaid raised the bowl to his lips and gently kissed its rim.

  Frank glanced questioningly at Farouk.

  Farouk shrugged gently, but said nothing.

  “Is this your apartment?” Frank repeated, this time more sternly.

  “Yes,” Kincaid answered without hesitation.

  “We looked around a little,” Frank said cautiously. He waited for some kind of response. When there wasn’t one, he added, “You have an interesting place here.”

  Kincaid said nothing. He glanced toward the quilt that hung from one of the windows, his eyes following the jagged red line that slashed across its middle.

  “I said, you have an interesting place,” Frank repeated, still trying to draw him out. “All these bowls and candles. These plants on the floor.”

  Kincaid laid the bowl down on the edge of the mat, took up a small vase and poured an amber liquid into it. He did not look up.

  “We’ve been looking into a murder,” Frank added, this time with an edge in his voice, hard, firm, ready to act. “Hannah Karlsberg’s murder.”

  Kincaid nodded. “Hannah Kovatnik,” he said.

  Frank took out his notebook immediately. “Did you know her?” he asked.

  Kincaid said nothing. Instead, he placed the small green vase among the parched reeds and leaves that were gathered around the mat.

  “What can you tell me about her, Mr. Kincaid?” Frank asked stiffly.

  Kincaid’s eyes drifted over to the photographs which he had arranged on the opposite wall. “There was once a beautiful village,” he said. “A perfect village in a perfect world.” He smiled sweetly. “Can you imagine that?” he asked, his eyes shifting first to Frank, then to Farouk. “Living as you do, living in this place, can you even begin to imagine such a place?”

  No one answered.

  Kincaid caressed the bowl again, neither more nor less tenderly than before. “Do you know what misery is?”

  No one spoke.

  “The los
s of paradise,” Kincaid said. He smiled sadly. “You think this is paradise, this city, this country, the way we live? For a long time, I thought it was. Then the Church sent me to Colombia.” He shook his head mockingly. “They sent me to help the people who lived there to become like us.” He threw out one arm then drew it slowly around the room. “But as you can see, I became like them. I loved the things they made and ate and wore. I loved the life they lived better than the one I was trying to force on them.”

  Frank’s eyes moved over to the pictures, and he could see the life that they portrayed, one that was neither lost or desperate, not lived in isolation. He could see its changeless reality in the fruit trees and the river, the play of light on brown and green. In his mind, he could feel the warmth of its air, the sheer blue expanse of its overhanging sky, the vast eternal peace its jungle wall ensured.

  “Do you know what it means to join humanity?” Kincaid asked as he took another vase and began to pour yet another liquid, this one faintly blue, into the bowl. “I mean, to feel that you are a part of it, that you cannot separate yourself from the smallest, most insignificant part of its destiny?” He mixed the two liquids with his finger, then brought the finger to his mouth and sucked it softly. “Of course you don’t,” he said as he drew the finger from his mouth. His eyes narrowed. “How could you, living as you do? One tiny atom in a world of tiny atoms. Each man his own god. Separated from the world, from your neighbor. What can you know but your own mind? What can you feel but your own suffering?”

  For a reason he could not imagine, Frank suddenly saw Hannah at Union Square, aflame in her resolve, then in the photographs on her wall, cheerless, solitary, a woman who now seemed entirely bereft, isolated, cut off. What was her armless hand still reaching for?

  He shifted nervously, then asked a question which, even as he heard it, struck him as utterly distant, lost, unreal: “Did you love Hannah?”