Figures of Fear: An anthology (21 page)

Albert’s mouth opened and closed, but he still couldn’t speak. Something glistened on his cheeks, and Michael realized that he was witnessing an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon – the sight of a spirit, crying.

‘I am still your darling,’ begged the shadow-woman, reaching out again to touch him. ‘I am still your wife and the mother of your children.’

‘And they?’ asked Albert, his mouth puckered with grief.

‘Dead, sir,’ said Roger. ‘All long dead. I’m sorry.’

Albert gradually sank to his knees, and his head dropped as if he were waiting for an execution that would never come. The shadow-woman put her hands on his shoulders, but he was inconsolable. She had lost her young husband when he died, but now he had woken from the dead to discover that he had lost his sparkling young wife.

‘Can you not find it in your heart to love me, now that I am old?’ asked the shadow-woman.

Albert couldn’t answer. All he could do was bury his face in his hands and remain where he was, too grief-stricken to move, while the candles in the Durbar Room guttered and died.

Michael saw them only once more, on the afternoon that he was due to leave. He was carrying his suitcase out to a waiting taxi when he happened to turn and look along the broad avenue that led to the shore of the Solent. It was difficult to see them, in the foggy half-light, but it looked as if they were walking very slowly toward the house. She was leaning on his arm for support. He had his face turned away from her.

Michael watched them for a while, then climbed into the taxi.

‘Are you all right?’ asked the taxi driver.

‘Yes, why?’ said Michael, and it was only then that he realized that his eyes were filled with tears.

WITCH-COMPASS

O
n his last night in Libreville, Paul went for a long, aimless walk through the market. A heavy rainstorm had just passed over and the air was almost intolerably humid. He felt as if he had a hot Turkish towel wrapped around his head, and his shirt clung to his back. There were many things that he would miss about Gabon, but the climate wasn’t one of them, and neither was the musty smell of tropical mould.

All along the Marché Rouge there were stalls heaped with bananas and plantains and cassava; as well as food stands selling curried goat and thick maize porridge and spicy fish. The stalls were lit by an elaborate spiderweb of electric cables, with naked bulbs dangling from them. Each stall was like a small, brightly coloured theatre, with the sweaty black faces of its actors wreathed in theatrical steam and smoke.

Paul passed them by, a tall rangy white man with short-cropped hair and round Oliver Goldsmith glasses, and already he was beginning to feel like a spectator, like somebody who no longer belonged here.

A thin young girl with one milky eye tugged at Paul’s shirt and offered him a selection of copper bracelets. He was about to shoo her away when he suddenly thought: what does it matter any more? I won’t be here tomorrow; I’ll be on my way back to the States, and what good will a wallet full of CFA francs be in New Milford, Connecticut?

He gave the girl five francs, which was more than she probably made in a week, and took one of the bracelets.

‘
Merci beaucoup, monsieur, vous êtes très gentil
,’ she said, with a strong Fang accent. She gave him a gappy grin and twirled off into the crowds.

Paul looked down at his wallet. He had hardly any money left now. Three hundred francs, an American Express card which he didn’t dare to use, and a damp-rippled air ticket. He was almost as poor as the rest of the population of Gabon.

He had come here three and a half years ago to set up his own metals-trading business. Gradually he had built up a network of contacts amongst the foreign mining companies and established a reputation for achieving the highest prices for the least administration costs. After two years, he was able to rent a grand white house near the presidential palace and import a new silver Mercedes. But his increasing success brought him to the attention of governments officials, and before long he had been summoned to the offices of the department of trade. A highly amused official in a snowy short-sleeved shirt had informed him that, in future, all of his dealings would attract a ‘brokerage tax’ of eighty-five per cent.

‘Eighty-five per cent! Do you want me to starve?’

‘You exaggerate, Mr Dennison. The average Gabonese makes less in a year than you spend on one pair of shoes. Yet he eats, he has clothes on his back. What more do you need than that?’

Paul had refused to pay. But the next week, when he had tried to call LaSalle Zinc, he had been told with a great deal of apologetic French clucking that they could no longer do business with him, because of ‘internal rationalization’. He had received a similar response from DuFreyne Lead and Pan-African Manganese. The following week his phones had been cut off altogether.

He had lived off his savings for a few months, trying to take legal action to have the ‘brokerage tax’ rescinded or at least reduced. But the Gabonese legal system owed more to Franz Kafka than it did to commercial justice. In the end his lawyer had withdrawn his services, too, and he knew there was no point in fighting his case any further.

He walked right down to the western end of the Marché Rouge. Beneath his feet, the lights from the market stalls were reflected like a drowned world. The air was filled with repetitive, plangent music, and the clamour of so many insects, that it sounded as if somebody were scraping a rake over a corrugated iron roof.

At the very end of the market, in the shadows, an old woman was sitting cross-legged on the wet tarmac with an upturned fruit box in front of her. She had a smooth, round face and her hair was twisted into hundreds of tiny silver beads. She wore a dark brown dress with black-printed patterns on it, zigzags and circles and twig-like figures. She kept nodding her head in Paul’s direction, as if he were talking to her and she was agreeing with him, and as she nodded her huge silver earrings swung and caught the light from the fish stall next to her.

On the fruit box several odd items were arranged. At the back, a small ebony carving of a woman with enormous breasts and protruding buttocks, her lips fastened together with silver wire. Next to her feet lay something that looked like a rattle made out of a dried bone and a shrunken monkey’s head, with matted ginger hair. There were six or seven Pond’s Cold Cream jars, refilled with brown and yellowish paste. There was a selection of necklaces, decorated with teeth and beads and birds’ bones. And there was an object which looked like a black gourd, only three or four inches long and completely plain.

Paul was about to turn back to his hotel when the woman said, ‘
Attendez, monsieur! Ne voulez-vous pas acheter mes jouets?
’

She said it in surprise, as if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t come up to her and asked her how much they cost.

‘I’m sorry, I’m just taking a walk.’

She passed her hands over the disparate collection on top of her fruit box. ‘I think that is why you come here. To buy from me something.’

‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘Then what is bringing your feet this way?’

‘I’m leaving Libreville tomorrow morning. I was taking a last look around the market, that’s all.’

‘You come this way for a reason. No man comes looking for Jonquil Mekambo by accident.’

‘Listen,’ said Paul. ‘I really have to go. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think you have anything here that I could possibly want.’

The woman lifted up the ebony figure. ‘Silence those who do you bad,
peut-être
?’

‘Oh, I get it. This is ju-ju stuff. Thanks but no thanks. Really.’

The woman picked up the bone with the monkey’s head and tapped it on the side of the box. ‘Call up demons to strangle your enemy? I teach you how to knock.’

‘Listen, forget it. I got enough demons in my life right now without conjuring up any more.’

‘Jonquil knows that. Jonquil knows why you have to go from Libreville. No money, no work.’

Paul stared at her. She stared back, her face like a black, expressionless moon. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded.

‘Jonquil knows all thing. Jonquil is waiting for you here
ce soir
.’

‘Well, Jonquil, however you found out, there’s nothing you can do to help me. It’s going to take more than black magic to sort my life out. I’ll have to start over again, right from scratch.’

‘Then you need witch-compass.’

‘Oh, yes? And what’s a witch-compass going to do for me, whatever that is?’

Jonquil pointed with a red-painted fingernail to the gourd. ‘Witch-compass, genuine from Makokou.’

‘So what does a witch-compass do?’

‘Brings your feet to what you want. Money, woman, house. Work all time.’

‘I see. Never fails. So what are
you
doing, sitting in the street here, if you could use the witch-compass to guide you to whatever you want?’

‘Jonquil has what she wants. All thing.’

Paul shook his head. ‘It’s a great idea, Jonquil. But I think I’ll pass.’

‘Pick it up,’ Jonquil urged him.

Paul hesitated for a moment. For some reason, the pattering of drums sounded louder than usual, more insistent, and the insects scraped even more aggressively. He picked up the black gourd and weighed it in his hand. It was quite light, and obviously hollow, because he could hear something rattling around inside it. Beads, maybe; or seeds.

‘See in your head the thing that you want,’ said Jonquil. ‘The witch-compass makes its song. Quiet when you want is far off distance. Louder – louder when close.’

‘Kind of a Geiger counter, then,’ smiled Paul. ‘Except it looks for luck instead of radiation.’

‘Money, woman, house. Work all time.’

Paul rolled the witch-compass over and over in his hand. There was something very smooth and attractive about it, like a giant worry-bead. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It depends how much it is.’

‘
Il y a deux prix
,’ said Jonquil.

‘Two prices? What do you mean?’

‘
En termes d’argent, le prix est quatorze francs. Mais il y a également un prix moral à payer, chaque fois la boussole pointe sur ce que vous désirez
.’

‘I have to make a moral choice? Is that what you said?’

Jonquil nodded again. ‘No thing that you truly desire come free.’

Paul gently shook the witch-compass and heard its soft, seductive shaking sound.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Fourteen francs. If it works, I’ll come back and thank you in person. If it doesn’t, I won’t be able to afford to come back.’

‘You will come back,’ Jonquil assured him, as he counted out the money. ‘Your feet will bring you back.’

It was dry and breezy when he arrived back in New Milford. The sky was startlingly blue and red and yellow leaves were whirling and dancing on the green. He drove his rental car slowly through the town, feeling just as much of a ghost as he had on his last night in Gabon. He saw people he knew. Old Mr Dawson, with a new Labrador puppy. Gremlin, his previous dog, must have died. Jim Salzberger, leaning against a red pick-up truck, talking to Annie Nilsen.

The same white-painted buildings, dazzling in the sunlight. The same town clock, with its bright blue dial. Paul drove slowly through but he didn’t stop. He didn’t want anybody to know that he was back, not just yet. He had been crackling with ambition when he left this town, and his parents had been so proud of him whenhe made his first hundred thousand dollars in Libreville. But here he was, back and bankrupt, more or less, without even the will to start over.

He drove out along the deserted highway to Allen’s Corners, past Don Humphrey’s general store. The sunlight flickered through the car windows, so that he felt that he was watching an old home movie of his previous life.

At last he took the steep turn up through the woods that led to his parents’ house. It wasn’t much of a place: a single-storey building on the side of a hill, with an awkwardly angled driveway and a small triangular yard. His father was out back, sawing logs with his old circular saw, and there was a tangy smell of woodsmoke in the air.

He parked behind his father’s Oldsmobile and climbed out. His father immediately called out, ‘Jeannie! Jeannie! Look who’s here!’ and came hurrying down the steps. He was a tall man, although he wasn’t as tall as Paul, with cropped grey hair and the slight stoop of somebody who has worked hard in an office all his life, and never quite managed to fulfil himself. Paul’s mother came out of the kitchen still carrying a saucepan. She was tall, for a woman, and although her hair was grey she looked ten years younger than she really was. She was wearing a pink chequered blouse with the sleeves rolled up, and jeans.

‘Why didn’t you say you were coming to see us?’ asked his mother, with tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t have a thing in!’

His father slapped him on the back and ushered him up the steps into the house. ‘I guess he wanted to surprise us, didn’t you, son?’

‘That’s right,’ said Paul. ‘I didn’t know that I was coming back until the day before yesterday.’

‘It’s great to see you.’ His father smiled. ‘You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you? Hope you’ve been eating properly. All work and no lunch makes Jack a skinny-looking runt.’

‘I should have gone to the market,’ said his mother. ‘I could have made your favourite pot roast.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ his father said. ‘We can eat out tonight. Remember Randolph’s Restaurant? That was taken over, about a year ago, and you should see it now! They do a lobster chowder to die for!’

‘Oh, Dan, that’s far too expensive,’ said his mother.

‘What do you mean? Our son here’s used to the best, aren’t you, son? How’s that Mercedes-Benz of yours running? Or have you traded it in for something new?’

‘Oh … I’m maybe thinking about a Porsche.’

‘A Porsche! Isn’t that something! A Dennison driving a Porsche! Listen, how about a beer and you can tell us how things are going.’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’m kind of pooped.’

‘Sure you are, I’m sorry. Why don’t you go to your room and wash up? You can fill us in when you’re good and ready.’