Dust (45 page)

The Trader turns to Petrus, who has lifted the AK-47.

“Ni yako?”
Yours? Petrus asks.

“In a way.”

“Wacha kunichezea akili.”
Don’t mess with me.

“Same source as yours.”

“Oganda?”

The Trader raises his brows—up, down; up, down.

“He knows about this?” Petrus’s voice is high-pitched.

“Naw.”

Petrus rasps, eyes dark. “How did the children offend you?” A vision of chaos. Petrus’s head throbs, his joints ache; tiredness coagulates into a moment filled with buzzing flies.

The Trader’s eyes are soft. “Didn’t mean it. Then I thought, ‘one for every one of mine.’ ”

The sun lightens the brown of the medicine bottles and throws a tainted shadow on the ground. “Why were they here?” The Trader sobs. “What are they doing here? This isn’t their home.”

“You should’ve asked them.”

“I did.”

Petrus shivers. Listening.
Playing life-death. All of them. With shadows
. Their reflections on shards of glass.

The Trader says, “My trade in secrets.”

“So?” Petrus asks.

“The world still craves my existence.”

Petrus’s laugh is bereft of noise. “Yours and mine.”

The Trader smiles. “Your name?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’ll tell you things about yourself. Name?” A challenge.

“Keah. Petrus.”

“The warlord?”

“Meaning?”

“Kenyan interrogation squad, 1968 to 1989, 1982. Your works include Nyipir Oganda.”

Petrus stares.

The Trader notes, “Your gun is trembling.”

Petrus lowers the gun against his thigh, observes his shaking hand. Outside, the call of ibis. Petrus digs for a cigarette to chew on.

Tears in the Trader’s eyes. “Nineteen eighty-four.”

“What about it?” Petrus voice cracks.

“The blood at Wagalla is not dry.”

“So?”

“I saw.”

“So?” Petrus’s voice is thin.

“I saw you.”

Petrus shuts his eyes. A 1984 northern-frontier security operation had gone out of control. Five thousand corpses later, he had been summoned to help clean things up. He had overseen the washing of the blood-spattered Wagalla runway, had arranged burials in secret sites, had terrorized would-be witnesses into what should have been eternal silences.

“My job,” Petrus snarled. “Where are the other patients?”

The Trader sniggers. “Bullet-created miracles. The dying rose, life restored.” The Trader squints at Petrus. “Cigarette?”

“Smoking kills.”

“Light me one.”

Petrus’s match flares over the end of a cigarette. He almost inhales. With reluctance, he relinquishes the stick to the Trader, who immediately says, “John 3:16.”

Petrus tilts his head.

The Trader says, “
Yalahi!
I asked Pastor to forgive me for what I was thinking.”

“And?”

The Trader turns. “A very rude man.”

Flies are filling the room.

Petrus asks, “Your belly?”

“The gentle Mrs. Jacobs. Kitchen knife.”

Petrus says without zeal, “Good.”

“John 3:16.”

Petrus frowns. His head and joints ache. “The cat?”

“Ricochet.”

“All this death.”

Myriad other faces stare at Petrus, bloody shadows crawling from the past through cracks to be with him. Petrus focuses hard on the man lying broken on the bed.

The Trader says, “Correction: all this sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?”

“Ya ibada.”
For the liturgy.

“What?”

“You know. The liturgy that feeds nations. You’re one of its slaughtering priests.” Short laughter. Then a look. “Wanted to stop. Tried. Couldn’t.”

“You
carried in
an assault rifle.” Petrus’s voice is strained.

“To threaten.” Murmurs, “Only threaten. Wanted to stop,
haki
 …” The Trader allows a grimacing “
Ratatata
 … something takes over.” He exhales smoke.

Silence.

Petrus watches the flaring red end. “So—what’s your death for?” he asks.

Smoke rings. “I choose one star to give it to.” A snort. “You’d say
country
.”

Petrus blinks. It was true.

The Trader asks, “Intelligence?”

“Mhh.”

“Ghana-trained,” says the Trader. “First car, Renault Roho.”

“How do you know?”

“A patriot.” A giggle. “My advice? Find another god to serve.”

“Kenya’s my father’s patrimony.” A pause. “Trade unionist, like Mboya. Mombasa. Hung by the Crown. Died for this country. Yes, I’m a patriot.”

The Trader wheezes, “Nobody remembers him, intelligence man.
Your country pumps biogas into other balloon ghosts to elevate and worship,
thee-thee-thee
!”

Sheen on Petrus’s upper lip.

The Trader looks at his radio. He murmurs, “What to do about the world.”

Petrus grinds out, “What does it need?”

“Memory loss.” The Trader turns to Petrus, his face sunken. “Like me.”

Petrus sets his rifle’s sights, adjusts the elevation until the Trader is perfectly framed.

Wind flings dust. Heat boils Galgalu’s body. Several heartbeats later, an explosion. Then three more in succession. The wind snatches the fireball and scatters the flames across the land. Galgalu runs out of the car. Dashes to and fro. Stops.

What a willful presence is fire. It disarrays the terrain.

Petrus reappears, the rifle dangling from his left hand. It is a little past noon, and time is an intense blue. Petrus asks, “You know where the Trader lives?”

Galgalu points northward.

They drive off.

The fire behind them falls upon life, a maniacal omnipresence.

Before the last light of day, they enter the Trader’s homestead. Petrus hurries into the compound, knocking things down, kicking objects in all directions. He breaks down the flimsy entrance and from within comes the
clang-bang-tumble
of a
tukul
being ransacked. Scent of coffee blends. Galgalu follows. Petrus reaches into the roof, pulls out sealed packages. Freedom in chaos. Together, they pulverize things, they eradicate proof of existence. Galgalu—lost to the frenzied clearing, gasping, hungering, strong beyond his previous knowledge—uses his bare hands to break a wooden Lamu chest. They empty the Land Rover’s three jerricans of petrol in and around the
tukul
. Galgalu is aroused after Petrus tosses three matches on the ground and fire explodes. He is ashamed, but only for a second. He laughs out loud.

Three hours later, a high-keening
d’abeela
creeps into the Trader’s emptied compound. He stamps out the lingering flames. Wipes his
eyes. He sniffs burned coffee remnants. Plowing through the Trader’s goods, he salvages a charred guitar.

Galgalu says, “There was a fire; it ate everything.”

Nyipir asks, “Yes?”

“Even the Trader.”

“You saw him?”

“No.”

“He’ll return,” Nyipir replies.

“I tell you, there was a fire,” explains Galgalu.

Petrus Keah shivers and sweats in Nyipir’s bed under the spell of malaria. His cells suffocate under a concoction made of neem and baobab and crushed roots, which Galgalu ladles down his throat. Malaria’s hallucinations parade in Petrus’s being, and it becomes normal for Wuoth Ogik to be shaken by his shrieks.

Tending to Petrus gives them something to do. And when his fever breaks, it is as if a soft and tender wind has visited Wuoth Ogik.

Petrus has taken to sitting on Odidi’s cairn to watch the land. A state of partial dress—shirt buttons undone, hair uncombed, Nyipir’s tyre sandals on his feet. He smiles at stones, trees, insects, birds, at clouds and at the sun. At intermittent moments his shoulders move like pistons for no clear reason. Unseen by Petrus, Ajany sketches a hazy impression of him. Galgalu crouches next to her, studying Petrus.

Ajany purses her lips. “What’s he laughing at?

Galgalu suggests, “It’s malaria.”

He adds, voice low, “There was a fire. It left nothing. Even the Trader’s gone.”

Ajany tilts her green-tinged image of Petrus.

Galgalu touches it. “What else can you see?”

They watch Petrus.

Ajany’s hand starts to draw outward. Lines, curves, dips, and
contours become a likeness of Isaiah. Ajany sees what she has done. She stops. Galgalu watches as she scribbles the image away until there is only a dark blob on the paper. She tears out and scrunches up the paper. Galgalu hears Petrus laugh. He also remembers the fire, that it ate everything.

Nyipir sidles up to Petrus, holding two tin mugs of spiced coffee. Handing Petrus one, he asks,
“Inyiero?”
Laughter?

Nyipir stoops, scanning Petrus for evidence of lunacy.

“Life,” Petrus answers. Petrus says, “Life is presence.”

“Yes?”

Petrus says, “You saved me.”

“You may thank me,” Nyipir replies.

“But I won’t,
msee
.”

Nyipir sips his coffee.

They both study the land.

What accounts for your life?
Petrus asks passing clouds in his thoughts. He lowers his cup, digs out his cigarette packet, unwraps the single cigarette, sniffs it, and with a small twitch dangles it on the tip of his lips.

Nyipir steps closer to Petrus, opening his mouth to ask,
On what side of the oath do you stand?
He closes it.

Petrus then tilts his head away from the sun’s glare.

He pauses mid-movement, gaze trapped by the shape of Nyipir’s left hand, the twisted fingers, the protruding, black stumpy-nailed thumb. In slow motion, he raises his right hand and watches as his fingers wrap around Nyipir’s hand.

Nyipir jerks backward.

Eyes wet, he faces eastward.

A hesitation.

But then his hand closes over Petrus’s.

The day’s hard light toasts their skin. Petrus chews hard on his cigarette end. Fresh wrinkles wreathe his face. His unlit cigarette falls and, like soft November rain beginning to fall, his tears create an inkblot on the earth’s surface.

Later.

“I’m wondering,” Nyipir says as he watches the regress of a column of safari ants. “Mandalay, 21° 59′ N 96° 6′ E, Rangoon, 16° 47′ N 96° 9′ E.”

“Yes?” Petrus rubs his spectacles.

“Burma.”

“Myanmar,
osiepna
. And Rangoon is
Yangon
.”

“So my daughter says. She’s very clever.”

Petrus squints at the light on faraway mountains.

Nyipir says, “A place to see. Burma.”

Three pairs of ibis squawk their way home. Petrus studies their flight route. Dropping rules. Escaping dutifulness, he grabs at the offer of a trail of friendship. Atonement? His eyes pop, lift, and meet thick brows.
“Msee,”
Petrus asks, surrendering to his craving, “do you have fire to lend me?”

Unknown and unseen wanderers have added stones to Wuoth Ogik’s new graves. Nyipir counts these, seven. He also counts the cigarettes he and Petrus have shared in life. This last one was their second.

39

WATERING HOLES ARE LITTERED WITH MEMORY CIPHERS. CATTLE
bones—casualties of past droughts, a prevailing north wind. Ali Dida Hada asks after a red dance-ox. Wanderers tell him where they have seen it, marveled at its trained, polished horns, lofty temperament, and majestic amble. Following the trail, he and Isaiah reach a cross-shaped boulder in a wadi.