Dust (43 page)

Ali Dida Hada stands at attention. “Correct, madam.”

“How many days?”

“One.”

“Mhh! I’m Sister Catherine.”

“A pleasure.”

Isaiah follows silently.

Later.

After meditations under a kerosene lamp, seven nuns and three aides examine the visitors to the tune of Álvarez’s “Plegaria” while they eat scrambled eggs and rice and a dark-green bitter-salty vegetable. Soft murmurs. Lilt in speech. Four of the nuns are Irish. Two are from the Philippines, the other a local, from Marsabit.

All of a sudden Isaiah starts to cough laughter. Ali Dida Hada nudges him. Isaiah leans over his plate, struggling with the juxtaposition of Álvarez, a woman whose face was the dusky-hued version of Vermeer’s
Girl with a Pearl Earring
, Irish prayers, Filipino lilts, and two unwashed male travelers eating sensible scrambled eggs in a dark, arid landscape tormented by moaning winds. Tears from suffocated mirth flavor Isaiah’s meal.

Later.

A tiny, clear-eyed nun with freckles says, “Next to the corral, there’s a small room. Good for two. Someone will bring water. Use a cup to wash. At dusk, join our prayers. Then breakfast. God bless.”

Isaiah and Ali Dida Hada cross the short distance to their room across a pathway lit by fireflies. The wind lowers its tone. And then, in this derelict place, a cold and fearful stone, a decrepit resident of Isaiah’s soul, crumbles.

In his safari bed, listening to Isaiah’s snoring, Ali Dida Hada, grateful for the presence of another human being, crosses his arms behind his head and looks into a place in his being where Akai Lokorijom has lived from the day he first saw her. He examines its contours and how it has formed him.

36

GALGALU IS SWATTING FLIES BUZZING OVER MEAT HE BARTERED
for honey when the drone of a laboring engine scatters his attention. Few cars ever drive into Wuoth Ogik. And when they do, it is usually someone who is lost.

A dark-green Land Rover with government number plates stops at the gate. A man in a dark-blue suit jumps down. With the sun glancing off his shiny Italian shoes, he strolls over and stops next to the courtyard fence. Standing with his legs apart, he surveys everything.

When Ajany recognizes him, she ducks. She is sure that Isaiah has officially accused the Oganda family of his father’s murder. Grief. It bothers her that this should matter.

Nyipir turns.

Stares.

Hands clinging to the handle of his walking stick, Nyipir limps unsteadily toward the man. It takes him six seconds to toss away the stick, and another five to rush the man and pound on every accessible part of his body.

The visitor rolls in the dust.
“Msee,”
he cajoles, “is that how to greet a lost brother?”

Petrus Keah has come to Wuoth Ogik.

A brown bird squeals past them. Petrus narrows his eyes, adjusting
his bifocals. Nyipir sweats, breathing heavily. Petrus lies on his back to consider the sky. “About the boy … we were betrayed,” he explains, watching for Nyipir’s hands. “I was late.” A grunt. “But we’ve taken care of it.” Rising, he scans the ranch, tilts his head at the crumbling house. “This is Wuoth Ogik?”

Nyipir looks at Odidi’s cairn. “What you’ve said has not caused a resurrection.”

Petrus flinches. “It’s hot.” He tears off his coat. “I am on a
mison
to the
mison
. Some American prayer people were supposed to have reported to their embassy five days ago. I’m here to find them and the terrorists they’ve spotted.”

Nyipir scoffs: “A junior officer’s job?”

Petrus lifts his head. “
Msee
, you underestimate its difficulty. I was heading up here anyway.”

“To see me?”

“Yes. And Ali Dida Hada. Where is he? He’s signed over all his bank accounts to me. Has he killed himself?”

“You’ve come to save a life?” Nyipir’s brows rise and almost touch his scalp.

Petrus grins. “Yes.”

Nyipir snarls in Luo,
“I jajuok?”

He scoops up dirt to throw at Petrus. “Murderer!”

Petrus dodges.

Ajany has picked up a stick to wield against the invader. Galgalu circles.

Petrus, his hands raised, says, “Before you grind me into flour … I’ve a message from Odidi.”

Ajany rolls her eyes, steps closer.

Petrus continues, “I was with him. He was alive when I got to him.”

Nyipir stops.

“Mos, jaduong. Mos.”
So sorry, Petrus says. “Here, for you …” He digs into his coat pocket and plucks out a pile of banknotes.

Nyipir addresses the earth. “You kill everything. This was my only son.” He reaches Petrus, rears up, pulls back his fist, and slams it into Petrus’s face. “You kill everything!”

Petrus steadies himself, the money scattered around him. His lip bleeds. A grunt. “That,
msee
, is the last time. Next time I
soot
.”

Nyipir bows, winded.

Petrus moves, touches his wrist. “
Wuod loka
, we’re too old for this. I
was
there with the boy. Before … before he went. I talked to him, I held him like this.” Petrus cradles Nyipir’s hand. “He thought I was you. A brave boy.”

Nyipir shakes himself loose.

Petrus continues: “That day Oganda, I, too, found a son.”

Ajany hears. Remembers the hardness of tarmac. The warmth it retained. “You were with my brother?”

“Yes.”

She drops her guard.

Nyipir replies, “I’ve heard you. Now go.” He shuffles past Petrus and reaches for his fallen walking stick.

Petrus stretches out a hand.

Nyipir stares at his own gnarled fingers.

Thwack!

Petrus’s buttocks hit the ground, and he clutches his head.

“
Aiee!
This is really the last time, Oganda. What are you angry about? Nineteen sixty-nine? If I’d done less, they’d have killed you,” Petrus yells. “You
sould
thank me. A stick like that can break a skull. You
sould
thank me, not try to kill me.”

“Why?” yells Nyipir. An over-forty-year-old question explodes: “Did I submit to your filthy covenant?”

Petrus gets up with care, brushing his trousers.

“And if you had?”

Nyipir’s voice is hoarse. “Did I?”

“No.” Petrus shakes his head. “Another did.”

“In my name?”

Petrus lowers his head.

Nyipir asks, “Who?”

“You want to know?”

Nyipir glowers.

“He died.”

“Who?”

“He was with you.”

Nyipir scans his still-grieving memory. “There were many—who?”

“Tap. Tap. Tap.”

Nyipir frowns, gathering strands of memory. “His name?”

Petrus had always erased the memory of names. “Tap, tap, tap,” he answers.

“Who?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Why?”

For Petrus, names are bothersome. “Does it matter?”

Nyipir spits out his
yes
.

Low-voiced, Petrus says, “You’re alive. He’s not.”

Petrus had driven the man, a former professor, who had been braindamaged, into a large farm where a hard-eyed woman in animal skin administered a stinking, bloody concoction, the vile sacrament of the oath, to men, women, and children. The man muddled through words he did not know, chewed on substances he thought was food, and sealed his will in this covenant. After this, Petrus had registered the poor man as “Aggrey N. Oganda.” He had received his release-from-detention papers at once. Petrus had held on to the documents for him. But when a consignment of souls was carted away in a Black Maria, to be delivered to another farm with large sulfuric acid and lime pits, the former professor was on board.

“Going home,” Petrus had explained to the man.

“Dala!”
The man had grinned when he was lifted into the vehicle. “Bye-bye.”

Petrus had waited for three days before presenting the letters of release to the state dungeon keepers and suggested that the highest authorities were waiting for Aggrey Nyipir Oganda. In less than an hour, Nyipir had been hustled into a hired car. Petrus drove off, speeding out of Nairobi.

Petrus stabs at his eyes to explain to himself to Nyipir: “My loyalty was always under judgment.”

His name, Keah, derived by his father from the acronym for the King’s African Rifles—KAR—blurred access to place of origin. Petrus was hard to place. There were Keahs of every Kenyan ethnicity. Petrus had been born in Nairobi. In the blood-hunt season of 1969, “Tribe Unknown” was a lucky thing to be. But Nyipir had been handed over to him as a temptation and an exam.

Petrus studies his shoes. “Bad times, Oganda. Had to toughen you up. A chance to live.”
By the time I am through with you, you’ll become another. You’ll become mad and strong. You will live
.

Nyipir asks, “Why me, Keah?”

“A picture.”

“A picture.”

“Inside your file. A photo of you carrying the Kenyan flag on a black horse.”

Nyipir frowns.

Petrus continues: “You and the horse are—
were
—my Kenya.”

Nyipir wrestles a tidal flow of memory, his first contact with Petrus in the interrogation rooms. Petrus had made it a boxing match.

“Cowards run from hard touch.” Petrus fists had been up. “Am I your enemy? When confronting an enemy, truth is in the fight. Blood must be spilled. Hands up!”

A blow had fractured Nyipir’s jaw.

He had fallen.

“Get up!” Petrus had screamed.

“Read your enemy’s eyes. Truth sets free.” A blow to Nyipir’s solar plexus. Nyipir had tumbled to the ground, gasping.

“Pay attention! Up!”

Nyipir, blinded, had got to his knees; scrambling about and with indifference, had thrown a punch that landed just above Petrus’s boot.

Petrus had laughed. “A bull is wounded a little to give its killer advantage, but sometimes even the bull can win.” He had helped Nyipir up and tried to whisper a message: “Take the oath. Go home to Akai, your wife.”

Nyipir remembers how the blood from his head had blinded him, the soft swollenness of his head. “Aloys,” he had spat.

Petrus, who had not heard of Aloys Kamau, had snarled, “Why sing the songs of those who can’t even say your name?”

“I brought you home,” Petrus now whispers.

Petrus had driven Nyipir as close to Kalacha Goda as possible. Maikona. Petrus dragged a catatonic Nyipir out of the car and said, “Live. Forget.” He would not see Nyipir again until the day in late 2006 when Nyipir came to beg him to find Odidi and save his life.

Doum palms rattle in Wuoth Ogik. Inside the house, a split tank groans, and the back wall breaks. Outside, Nyipir’s voice is amused. “Now I should thank you, Keah?”

“Yes.”

“No.” Nyipir pokes at the ground. He says, “History professor. Married to Nadezhda Grigorieva. His name, Ochieng Andronico,
wuod
Seme.”

Petrus shivers, “Who?”

“The code tapper. He had a name.”

Drifting white streaks cover the sky above.

Then, “I see. The boy?”

Nyipir stares at Petrus before pointing at Odidi’s cairn, “He’s there.”

They all stand around Odidi’s cairn. Petrus embarks on an extravagant prayer: “
Ah! Obongo Ruoth Nyasaye Nyakalaga, wuon polo kod piny, Nyasach oganda
”—O great, omnipresent, and omnipotent Governor of the heavens and earth, God of humanity … Petrus does not finish. He is whimpering. The sound releases what has been blocked within Nyipir.

The weight and curse of holding Kenya up for his children, his fear of Akai’s fears. His questions converge in a howl that twists his body. But before Nyipir can disintegrate, Petrus gathers him up. He holds Nyipir. A trick of light makes Petrus’s tears look like blood, which stains Nyipir’s collar.

Ajany sobs dry tears, clutching her body. She spins away, racing to exhaust herself. Galgalu scuffs his feet.
Tears are rain. They water soil. Restore life
. Galgalu thinks he will light the lanterns early today.

The next morning, Petrus Keah leaves, with Galgalu as his guide, to go to the American mission. He leaves with Ajany’s old AK-47.

37

NYIPIR IS USING STONES AND STICKS TO SHOW AJANY HOW, IN
1956, the year Kenya competed in the Olympics for the first time, he laid out Hugh Bolton’s forks, knives, and spoons. “The government got tired of him, and he was annoyed with them. He said they were selling Kenya to murderers. He shouted at them until the day he was told to plan for security north of the Ewaso Nyiro River, in the Northern Frontier District.”

“They expect me to refuse and resign, boy,” Hugh had told Nyipir, “but I shan’t, the buggers.”

Nyipir remembers.

“Our lorry fell into a gully near Marigat. Did Bwana Bolton say, ‘Go back’?” No. He said, ‘We walk,’ so we walked.”

“You walked?” she asks her father.

“A long, long time.”

Ajany sketches Hugh Bolton, trying to find Akai-ma in what Nyipir does not say.

Nyipir speaks of counting every twenty-third shilling he earned each month as servant and serviceman: “Money for Burma.”