Dust (44 page)

She glances at Baba, hand propping her chin.

“Burma,” Nyipir repeats, seeing again a cold long-ago night when,
mid-sleep, he heard a lake moaning for its mother, the Nile. All those years ago, he and Hugh had flailed through seven walls of heat, seen mirages for four days. Like every other outsider, Nyipir had been tempted by and tasted Anam Ka’alakol’s waters. Lake Rudolf. Hugh had kicked small stones and sand into the water after he had spat out the soapy, brackish water. They had made camp there, exhausted.

A pause. “I told Baba and Theo,
I’m coming to Burma for you
.”

Nyipir had also told Anam Ka’alakol, the immense lake, that he would take her message of longing to the Nile, and promised to return with an answer.

Nyipir shuffles off toward Hugh Bolton’s cairn.

He had gone neither to Burma nor to the Nile. He reads the dry land. He
had
walked past brown-and-gray elongated, treeless, desiccated, moonscape, mudflats, sweltering,
you-are-not-a-man-until-you-have-crossed
Suguta Valley. It had been greener then. Animals everywhere. Elephants. But he had gone neither to Burma nor to the Nile.

Nyipir leans over Hugh’s cairn. Remembers how, in their wanderings, they had found a man lying on a stone grave who neither spoke nor responded to Hugh’s haranguing in bad Kiswahili,
“Kijana utasimama sasa hivi ni nini unafanyikana hapa?”
What exactly is happening here?

Later, through a Somali trader, by way of gestured conversation, they heard that the grave hosted the man’s Didinga wife.

They had bartered dried meat for a knife.

Steel plate for water and fermented milk.

In the evening, while setting out the service for Hugh’s bush dinner, Nyipir saw Hugh painting the story of a man and his buried wife.

They would hunt antelopes, dik-diks, gerenuk, and oryx for food. Hugh found Abyssinian iconography and thought he had invented it. He wrote out their journey—places, facts, figures—and drew shapes on a rolled-up sheet, counted cairns, and noted a heading in his red notebook,
Vitu vishenzi
. Vile Things. These included wolf spiders, unmade camp beds, lukewarm tea, a raging bull elephant, Hugh’s broken toe-nail, and his swelling foot—and Nyipir’s applying too hot a compress to that foot.
“Umefanya kitu kishenzi!”
bellowed Hugh.

Other
vitu vishenzi:
mosquitoes and tsetse flies.
Watu washenzi
. Nairobi headquarters. Mau Mau. Colonial District Officers. Men who walked naked. Adorned women who hunted like men. Oftentimes,
Nyipir’s ancestors, the Kenya Colony government, the Suez Crisis, and the Northern Frontier District were afflicted with
afya na roho kishenzi
.

Nyipir limps to the falling gate, standing on the boundaries between here and there. Why hadn’t he gone yet to either Burma or the Nile?

Ajany sketches Nyipir’s restlessness.

“Wuoth Ogik?” Ajany’s voice follows Nyipir.

Nyipir shakes himself alert.

“Many, many days later, we made camp near a large termite mound in a corner of the Koroli springs.”

Memory of ruffling winds, doum palms simulating ocean waves. A prismlike dawn and the chirping of assorted birds. A male oryx beside Hugh and Nyipir, more curious than afraid: a pale-gray compact body, clipped mane, and horse’s tail, black-and-white clown-mask face.

Nyipir explains that Hugh had drawn the plans for a house in the dust, his fingers scraping the ground until they bled.

“Akai-ma?” Ajany asks.

“Wait.” Nyipir suddenly smiles. “She’s on her way.”

Almost fifty years ago, an ebony-hued woman, as slender as the leaves of the mwangati tree, whose long, long neck was adorned with wire coils lifted off of telegraph cables, shimmered into view from across a brackish oasis. When she had waved long arms at Nyipir, who was leaning against a tree guarding Hugh, he was sure he had fallen asleep and was experiencing a revelation. When she hailed him in a low, laughing voice, Nyipir had known who she would be to him.

But Akai’s gaze had moved to Hugh. Her head tilted at the sight of the pale, wiry, naked man scooping black mud and rubbing it into his face. She had stooped to laugh, holding on to her sides, and the sound had exploded light into the existence of two different men who had been lonely in their own ways until then.

Two horses and three small-bodied Rendille camels watched, their noses half in and half out of water. Akai’s laughter invited everything to play. Nyipir waved her away, urged her to run off, certain he would follow her. Hugh, in the watering hole, huffed when he saw her.

Akai preempted Hugh’s snarl. “What’s your name, mister?” Guffawing, she pointed at his mud-encrusted face.

Hugh had straightened up from the water hole, hand in front of his
balls, swiveled his head to locate Nyipir, and bellowed,
“Kijana, wapi ule mtu kishenzi? Lete hile towel haraka!”
Fetch a towel at once, boy!

Nyipir was underwater, suffocating because meaning had all of a sudden condensed into the girl in front of them. Cat-eyed sparkle, thin arms reaching toward the wrong man. Hugh gasped when the girl kicked off her shoes. Nyipir knew what would happen next, and he howled at Akai, flapping his arms to prevent it. “Go! Go!
Tokaaa!
” To Hugh, a command, “We go now,
bwana
. This is not good.”

Hugh heard Nyipir. Knew his fear, and knowledge became malice.

Nyipir had prayed as Akai jumped into the watering hole and splashed muddy water onto Hugh’s face. He grunted when Hugh reached forward to drag the girl to himself.

Akai came to stay. Five months later, the frame of Hugh’s new house was ready. Breakfast at the site, close to the fraying tents. Nyipir had been standing behind Hugh, who was sipping black Ceylon tea.

Hugh had asked,
“Kijana, utatumia neno gani kwa lugha yako kuhusu nyumba mpya? Neno sio kishenzi.”
What word can be used to name this home? Something civilized.

Nyipir, weary of the three and a half years of seeking, recording, decamping, traveling, and plotting new journeys said, “Wuoth Ogik?” He was being sarcastic.

“Na maana yake ni nini, kijana, ongeza chai?”
What does it mean, boy, more tea?

“The journey ends.” Nyipir had tilted the teapot into the proffered cup.

Hugh slurped the beverage. He rocked in the safari chair. “Damn good. Bleddy good. Write it out, lad, good lad.”

Exactly seven months later, the Kalasinga foreman gave Hugh the hammer that would pound the last nail in a house made of desert stone, coral, crushed obsidian, termite soil, doum palm, rods, acacia trunks, and a sprinkling of cement. Above the door to an inner room with deep-set windows and a curvy roof, a workman etched the
bibas
in
Non draco sit mihi dux / Vade retro satana
.… Hugh smirked. “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Nyipir had asked, “
Bwana
, this says what?”

“Live-in exorcism … A joke, lad.”

Nyipir cleared his throat. “When Madam Bolton comes, what happens to …”

Hugh rounded on Nyipir, face red, ginger hair disheveled, and through gritted teeth ground out, “Mtu
kishenzi
, sweep the veranda,
mara moja
.”

That was then.

Silence now.

His daughter would never hear about the nightmare of a returned, wet-eyed, frantic, and newly damaged woman with a look of such death that Nyipir, without thought, threw his fate and destiny into her hell, even if it meant his damnation. Which it did. Nyipir fights his way back into the present. Something is stuck in his throat. He hurries away as he clears his throat over and over again. Thinking that, after all this time, he had neither gone to Burma nor visited the Nile.

38

A GOVERNMENT LAND ROVER LEAPS OVER BLACK ROCKS. A DOLEFUL
Galgalu sits next to Petrus, clutching the dashboard and reflecting on life, annoyance, and his companion. He misses the livestock, traveling with them, watching over them while they browsed. He misses the honeyguides that led him to the best honey, the honey he kept for himself. Inundated, Galgalu touches the amethyst.

Petrus says, “Tell me more about yourself.”

Right now Galgalu longs for silence.

Petrus turns. “You’re comfortable?”

Galgalu stares out the window.

Petrus says, “
Eh!
This is a big land.”

They drive ten minutes.

Petrus says in Kiswahili, “So—where’s
your
family?”

Galgalu scowls. “Far.”

“Ehe?”
Petrus prompts, chewing on his unlit cigarette.

Galgalu lifts his left tire sandal to pull out pebbles. He leans out the window, clears his sinuses, and blows the mucus from his nose.

Petrus grunts. “Don’t do that in my car.”

Galgalu looks at Petrus’s suit, feels the heat.
Maybe God in His kindness will stew Petrus to death
. Galgalu smiles.

Midmorning, the car rumbles to a hasty stop, throwing dust and pebbles around. Galgalu’s head hits the window. He turns to ask,
What?
And sees a man lying on the track. Petrus throws the door open and rushes over to the prone figure, who is holding on to his stomach. The ground around him is soaked. Next to him a murmuring radio offers a BBC World service signal.

A tremor in Galgalu’s tone: “The Trader!”

Petrus squats close to the man. “What’s happened?”

The Trader groans, “Galgaluuu! I dreamed you.”

Galgalu sees what the Trader is holding on to, and blood rushes from his head. Faintness.

The Trader coughs. “Man, could you help put these things away?” His intestines are hanging out.

Soft-voiced, Petrus asks again, “What happened?” He returns to the car to re-emerge with a large, stained beige cloth, which he stretches on the ground. To Galgalu: “You! We lift him, move him into the car.”

Galgalu wipes his mouth.

The Trader mumbles and coughs out phlegm. “The radio …”

Galgalu shuts his eyes. They lift the Trader into the car. Galgalu picks up and wipes the little radio, turns off the dial. Silence.

Galgalu says, “We’re going to the mission.”

The Trader says, “God and I are at peace.”

“OK,” says Petrus. Delirium, he concludes.

They turn the car south and set off again. The sun is high and hot. They race past a troop of baboons, the alpha male muscular, yellow-eyed, and shrewd; his troop look dried up and depressed by the heat. The Trader’s voice from the backseat: “You’ll find some changes at the mission.”

Galgalu wonders at his tone.

They drive for another two hours. A signboard:
Light to the Nations Mission
. A termite mound outside the mission’s fence has erupted with what might be read as a rude middle finger extended skyward.

Petrus switches off the car engine. Another board reads:
Light to the Nations Medical Center
. Behind that, a fenced compound with a solar-powered electrical fence. The drone of flies sounds like an electric razor. Petrus jumps out. Galgalu opens the car’s back door. They lift the
Trader on the sheet, tuck his radio next to him, and carry him into the clinic.

The wind. Its empty moans. Buzzing flies. Pervading silence. The smell of smoke.

Dripping sounds within.

Unease.

The room is empty. Soot on some walls, ward beds unmade, bedpans overturned. A sinking sensation. Petrus looks at Galgalu. The Trader watches them both. Petrus asks, his face somber, “Where are the missionaries?”

The Trader giggles.

Petrus turns to study him.
Changes at the mission
. Petrus asks, “What do you know?”

“Heard something.”

“Heard what?”

“You’ll see.”

Petrus tells Galgalu, “Wait here,” and disappears through the small side gate that leads into the hanging flower garden and the house. Closed door. He knocks, waits, and then kicks the door ajar. On the clay steps leading to the door rests a new AK-47, its muzzle pointing red toward the door, its cartridges scattered, and the wall poked with bullet holes. The dripping sound seems to increase. Petrus moves toward the kitchen.

There, he sees the first corpse.

He counts the others.
What is the last shape a human being holds before death?
The question clears his mind. A black pocket Bible rests next to Pastor Jacobs. Bloody fingerprints. Petrus crouches, picks it up, wipes the blood with his hand, turns the pages, and reads:
“Since Joseph was of the house and family of David he went up from Nazareth.…”
He closes it and slips it into his shirt pocket, staining the shirt with blood. He picks up the AK-47, surveys the room. Steps to the entrance of a kitchen, a large, striped cat on its side, eyes staring. Stillness. What’s that color? Tortoiseshell? Who would shoot an innocent cat? A tremor starts in his bones.

Meanwhile, Galgalu cleans the Trader’s wounds, sprinkles a disinfecting powder in and around the opening. He wraps the Trader’s stomach with bandages dragged off shelves. He looks around for anything else that might help. Galgalu tries to shake off a heaviness that is invading his body and making him drowsy. A no-name feeling.

The Trader swallows down a handful of colorful painkillers.

They wait.

Petrus reappears, waits at the door with the rifle, points at the Trader without looking at him, focuses on Galgalu, and indicates
out
with his other thumb. “Wait in the car.” His voice is hard; his eyes are dark and dead.

The Trader reaches for Galgalu’s fingers. “Stay!”

Galgalu wrenches free and dashes out, stumbling on debris. Things clatter and roll. He runs from the dreadful thing that Petrus had become, and the ugliness that had just looked at him from the Trader’s eyes. Galgalu wavers, stares at the open door of the main house, past the pink and purple African violets hanging from white-painted rectangular buckets. The bad feeling stems from whatever is in there. He runs as if something large and fierce is after him.

Galgalu recites, “
La illaha illa ’lla Hu. La illaha illa ’lla Hu
.”