Dust (20 page)

The Trader was saying, “In the places of water, where stories are left to be found, long-ago tales of a man named Hugh Bolton linger. It is said, one day he left. Was he looking for the house of red rain?”

Nyipir squirms, blows his nose, and allows himself a grunt.

The Trader says, “I feel there’s something you need.”

“Nothing.”

“Anything?”

Nyipir gestures toward the coffin. “Bring him back to life.”

The Trader grabs Nyipir’s forearm. Nyipir’s muscles shudder and then relax. He emits a groan.

The Trader leans close. “I met a friend of the family.”

“Who?”

“A
d’abeela
.”

“What do you want?”

The Trader pulls out coffee beans and shrugs.
“Ka-ha-wa?”

Nyipir looks away.

“Truuut—rat-a-tat-tat,”
sings the Trader.

Nyipir answers, “I don’t trade anymore.”

“It’s what
I
want.”

“I don’t trade.”

Silence.

“I can help.”

“What?”

“Eliminate poisonous snakes that infest a quiet house.”

Silence.

“He’ll leave.”

The Trader looks over at Wuoth Ogik.

“Maybe. Akai is frightened of snakes. The venom … could kill her.…”

“He’ll leave.”

“When?”

Nyipir shifts.

The Trader leans his head against his shoulder. “I can make watering holes forget everything.”

Nyipir mutters, “It’s not like that.”

“As you say.”

“What do you want?”

The Trader snorts, “You were a terrifying man before. Now we only pray for you.”

Nyipir glares.

The Trader says, “Costs much to make a man disappear.”

“I paid.”

“A discounted rate.”

Nyipir exhales; his nose flares; he grits his teeth. “I’m grateful.”

The Trader smiles. “So?” He extends a quarter-filled pot. “I’ve added four drops of clove oil and a cinnamon twig. Try it. Clears the head, helps the mind to retrieve its silence.” A ravening grin. “A great feat, to cause a man or men to disappear—
paff
—or bring them back!”

“What do you want?” Nyipir’s eyes blink rapidly, and his hands shake.

“Very little,” says the Trader.

Outside, a small wind eases past a thorn tree. Inside, the scent of ghee, smoke, and warm leather. It saturates skin, cloth, blood, grime, and sadness. In the dark, Galgalu slithers into the room where Isaiah snores. In his hand, the Trader’s potion—it is shaped like a fist-sized incense lump. Simple instructions given with a glimmer in the eye:
Light this in the room where he sleeps. You, you must leave when the smoke rises
.

“What’s this?” Galgalu asked.

“A gift for the home,” the Trader said, and giggled.

Lump in one hand, Galgalu watches Isaiah’s chest rise and fall. He wonders at the haplessness of sleeping souls. Swallowing saliva. “Isaiah?” Galgalu tugs at the coverlet with the free hand. “Isaiah!” A hiss.

Isaiah jumps awake, stands naked, swaying. “What is it?”

Galgalu puts a finger to his mouth, listens for something outside, and then throws Isaiah’s trousers at him. “Go.” Tosses his shirt.

“You can’t just come in here and …”

“Leave.”

“Why?”

“Go to Nairobi. Find Ajany. She’ll tell you everything. Go.” Desperation. “Save your life.”

“I’ll leave after I speak to the old man.” Isaiah pulls on the unclean shirt, khakis.

“Wait and die, Isaiah,” Galgalu says, lucid. And then, “You want to die? Stay!” Galgalu pushes Isaiah’s chest. “Go! Go! Go!”

Isaiah grabs his things, more shaken by Galgalu’s urgent gestures than by what he’s saying. Immortality’s veil cracks. Icy fright. He is so far away from home.

Galgalu spits resentment: “You open quiet graves and think the dead won’t also look for you?” He shoves Isaiah’s chest. “Go, with your sickness.”

“Why not just kill me?” asks Isaiah.

“Too much work.” The death nugget feels hot within his palms.

Isaiah squeezes his eyes shut. In between wondering and deciding, an image shows up: the death-destruction-fear-night-of-death goddess Kalaratri. A shudder slithers through Isaiah’s body. He succumbs. “How do I leave? Here, I’ve got a map.”

Galgalu rolls his eyes. “Leave the house, walk a straight line from the door. Don’t stop till you see many, many black rocks that are the
shape of many, many breasts. Wait there. I’ll come with the cows. Listen for bells. Go. In Nairobi, find Ali Dida Hada. Police headquarters. In your map, write ‘Ali Dida Hada.’ ”

“Who’s he?”

“Police. He was looking for Bolton.”

“What?”

“Yes.”

Galgalu disintegrates into darkness, leaving Isaiah alone after he has tossed the poisoned lump onto the bookshelf.

Fear’s moldering stench. Isaiah listens for movement.
Is this an ambush?
The water tank creaks. Isaiah craves a place where tea shops sit next door to Covent Garden ballets. He misses the disembodied voice nagging, “Mind the gap.” He wants to hear Christmas bells and dull sermons from apologetic vicars. Isaiah grabs his bag, stuffs in some books, stares at the night, greedy to live. Terrifying Kalaratri. She is also a mother. So he prays.
Help me!
He is not running away.
Help me, Kalaratri
. Needing to live, promising to live.

14

THE LAND
’
S ROCKS CANNOT DECIDE WHAT COLOR TO BE. THE
splendid Mount Kulal is violet, then a pink-edged blue. An oryx herd gallivants and leaps. Someone’s scattered camels huddle, and a weaver colony strain the branches of an acacia, chattering with intent. The morning stillness enhances desert murmurs. Isaiah has walked for exactly four days, using the landmarks Galgalu had crafted on the ground. The long, brown, beaded gourd of milk that Galgalu had also left behind dangles from his wrist.

Isaiah had written out
Ali Dida Hada
on his map. He had also transferred Galgalu’s earth map, created when Galgalu met him that morning. With a thin stick, Galgalu had pointed to the sentinel to their left, “Kulal.” He indicated a sketched area of earth. An “X.” And he used the tip of the stick to move black pebbles. “You walk here … here … here …”

Lines and holes on the ground, a curve to show a
laga
, a hump for a mountain, small holes to indicate valleys, ridges, watering holes, and sand dunes. Galgalu said “North Horr, OK?” and went quiet.

“OK,” Isaiah replied.

He has retraced the earth map to the hum of flies. Such insects. Horrible heat.

He wanted to stay close to another human being, but he was too embarrassed to plead for Galgalu’s company. “What’s the name of God here?” Isaiah asked instead.

“Sometimes Waaqa, sometimes Akuj.” Galgalu’s finger pointed upward, and then swept in all the directions of the world. The sky was a dome over everything.

Galgalu tossed his herding stick at Isaiah.

Isaiah gave it back. “Yours.”

Galgalu thrust it at him.

A hesitation. Isaiah grasped it. A nod.

They turned their backs on each other, stepped in opposite directions.

Isaiah struck out, dry-mouthed, wet-palmed, walked as if he were being chased, glancing back every few meters along pathways with panoramic views of sculpted volcanic disarray and scattered boulders of all shades and sizes.
Mount Kulal to the left
, he told himself. A burst of yellow and black first alarms and then amazes him. It soars skyward, lands on a flat-headed tree, where it spreads out its wings and, like a butterfly, flitters: a supernal bird. Then, at night, the stars. A discovery: here, the moon was the other way round. He had lost his north.
Think, Isaiah
. He was startled by his own voice. He licked dry, cracking lips. He walked on soft, crumbling sand. Then hard rock. Sand again. Pebbles. Treacly sweat, scented with salt. The milk became a tart paste. Isaiah chewed it down anyway.

A slender red line lacerates the sky. A night insect stings Isaiah’s face. He scratches the place. A lone jackal watches him, lets him pass, golden gaze puzzled. Small blue insects get a free ride on Isaiah’s body. The silence. Old presences appear, like the floral perfume that a woman he loved used to wear. Delicate, hopeful, like tender dreaming. He wonders again why he still lives. He reads the new sky, tests wind direction and the position of stars. Finds pattern and rhythm. God-roamed-land. He might start singing litanies to nomadic deities. Later, dog-tired and
fiercely fed up with loneliness, he just stops walking, sits down dust drenched, curls into himself, and sleeps.

A high-pitched wind that night.

“Eeeoiiiah!”
A cry pours out of Isaiah.

He sits up and hears echoes of the howl of a wounded beast.

15

A TAXI DRIVER
’
S RECOMMENDATION HAD BROUGHT AJANY TO A
guesthouse hidden in a Nairobi suburb. A Kenya colonial-style bungalow with wooden floors. Few guests. The round-faced chef, built like a cheerful wrestler, offered Ajany strawberry crêpes and cream at once. His name was Calisto, and his crêpes were the best in the world. The day Ajany arrived, she crawled into bed, and then screamed and screamed into her pillow.

By way of the window into Nairobi night skies, memory had dragged her back into the terrain in Brazil called “Saudade.” Its acual name was “Clube Dorival.” It was evolved by a few of the assorted casualties of music’s broken promises. Saudade’s men showed up in suits and ties and two-toned shoes; its wild-haired women in recycled evening wear that flowed and shed light and molded cloth to all-shape bodies. Desire was communicated through still moments: a way of glaring, for example. Saudade was a crossroads peopled by remnants of the colonized. Portugal-infused Africans, vagabond refugees, wounded immigrants, all in-betweeners, representatives of nations’ detritus, those who had disappeared into “lost” and the merely curious. It was a place of meeting,
and sometimes a bordello. Ajany found it five years ago, on an evening of drizzles, after a disheveled woman stepped into her homeward path, palm out, and snarled
“Menina”
in a too-high voice. A slithery sensation had assailed Ajany, who turned and fled, until the string of the woman’s voice roiling in her head snapped.

She had rushed through a doorway around which elegant Lusophone men stood.

A breathed-out song reached her—
Estes braços eternos, curvados sobre as penas
—and she followed it into Saudade.

Dark-brown décor, coffee, wine, voices into music, over music, as music, russet mustiness. A blend of spice and perfume, night jasmine too. Aphrodisiac melodies. Chico Buarque and other tunes. It was always dusk there. They were five, the music makers. A slender guitarist, playing with his eyes closed. A percussionist channeling Neguinho do Samba. Singers: two women, plump coquettes in sparkling high heels, who slapped their thighs, clutched breasts, and rolled and rolled their hips. A big man, a blue-black man, seated, a guitar’s stem to his face, right ear pressed close to hear the chords he sometimes gave voice to, crisscrossing scales in clean lament. Bernardo gestured for music from his one-eyed guitarist. Ajany watched a woman in a shiny brown satin dress. The woman moved, climbed the stage, grabbed Bernardo’s arm, and leaned into his ear. He leapt off the creaking stage. He prowled across the room, a pathway creating itself for him while, in a large, gruff voice, sewn together with laughter, he called for drinks all round.

Ajany was still staring from a stool in the back of the room. And then he was there.

He said,
“Mulhere!”

She tried to leave.

Before he touched her.

Her body shook.

He grinned, put both his arms around her. “I’m taking you home with me.”

She shivered next to him.

“Cold?” He spoke into her ear.

She said nothing.

“Wait for me.” He laughed.

He had gone.

Ajany left.

Ajany would paint him that night. Furious violet and dark-blue hues, rubbed into paper with fingers.

She returned the next evening.

Bernardo found her.

They left together.

She did not care.

And for an entire season she forgot about Wuoth Ogik.

Then she wrote home.

Dear Odidi, I am happy
.

Bernardo said, “Song is sorcery.”

He said, “You are the voice of my dark.”

He said, “I called you into my madness.”

She listened. It did not occur to either of them that she, too, might speak. Laughter, anguish, moans of relentless, endless, deep filling. Feeling. He played her body, too. He loved her, he said. “Loving you, I live.” And her body opened a way for her soul to fall into his.

She wrote.
Dear Odidi, I love. I am loved
.

Bernardo said her madness was not African enough. “I feel … authenticity.… That’s your dilemma.” It was the first time she would cry because of him.

But.

Seduction: the house of forgetfulness.

She did not write home.

Ajany opens her eyes and discovers she is in Nairobi. Sun-sprinkled pale-orange light through white veils. Ajany jumps out of bed, lands on the floor a meter away. A habit devised to avoid Obarogo.

Calisto the chef offers mulberry crêpes.

“No,” says Ajany.

“English breakfast?” His hands clasped partly in prayer.

“No,” she stutters. “Just tea.”

His jaw sags. “Is my food bad?”

Ajany murmurs, “Crêpes.”

Calisto grins.

Other people’s English breakfast. Bacon. The meat smell evokes the
morgue. Ajany gets up, grabs the orange juice, and heads for the garden. A cold morning, but she can eat her crêpes there.

She calls up yesterday’s taxi driver. His name is Peter. He communes with God. He says he has to. “Not all passengers are good.”

She can understand.

He asks, “You’re from where, madam?”

“Here.”

“Where?”

“N-north.”

“Where?”

“Kalacha …”