The Gloaming (27 page)

‘Thank you,' Strebel nodded. He saw then that someone had put a jar filled with frangipani blossoms on the floor near the metal leg of the sorting table. He noticed also the makeshift reverence of the room: an effort had been made to clear a place for the table away from the boxes of squid. He noticed the cleanliness of the sheet (where had it come from?). He noticed that someone had combed Koppler's hair, for it was smooth against his scalp. Care had been taken; strangers had been gentle.

Why did that surprise him so?

Lies had been told, obfuscations proffered, mysteries had dropped before him like little black stones. He would never solve them. There would be no statements. Peter the driver would never be found and no one would explain to him how Koppler ended up in the sea. Mr Tabu, the old men at the bar, the Greek manager, Kulunju—they were without malice. They accepted that life had marooned them here on the edge of the continent.

He could keep looking for Pilgrim, and he would find her—alive, he was certain. Gloria, whatever her conspiracy, had not filled him with dread. He recalled the transformation of her face when she saw the children, how she was almost beautiful.

Pilgrim was safe. Somewhere. But she had not summoned him. Had not phoned. The letter she sent had not been to him. So Strebel rode in the front of the fish truck with the driver. Five hours later, just after dawn, they reached Dar es Salaam, and the Swiss vice-consul met them at the morgue. He offered Strebel the guest room at the Embassy and Strebel accepted. Soon, he was resting on a bed in an air-conditioned room, and if he'd been able to blot out the searing African light, he could have been in a hotel in Belgium or Reykjavik: the mustard-colored bedspread, the high speed Wi-Fi.

There would be questions. The vice-consul, his superintendent, Ingrid. He would answer, but he could not explain.

He shut his eyes. And he felt her move next to him, in her sleep, reaching out for him, with the deepest honesty of her unconscious. ‘Paul,' she murmured, and he turned so that his body cupped hers. He held her lightly in his arms, ‘I'm here,' he said. ‘My darling, I'm here.'

 

Mohemedi told him there was a boy at the gate asking for him.

‘What's he want?' Harry had just ordered another beer and it was cold and slender in his hand. It fit just right. He was feeling good about now, sixth beer into the evening. Smooth, slippery. He liked to maintain this oozy sensation for as long as possible—another three or four beers. And then he stumbled downhill, drinking faster and faster, and around a sharp bend, so that he'd end up where he started: the particular feeling of sand under his skin. He'd drive home, maybe stop at the Casa Chica and dance with Sugar and things would be better for a few hours. Or maybe just drink more at home, pass out. Start all over again.

‘
Mzee
, it's something to do with that American mama,' Mohemedi said. ‘There is trouble.'

Vaguely, Harry connected to the words. He felt no alarm. His emotional bandwidth wasn't very wide. He really just wanted to finish his drink. And have another one.
American mama
. Gloria. What did that fat old bitch want? But floating up to him was another face. A girl, very pretty. Lillian? Oh, dear, his poor Pooh-Bear brain.

He thought about suicide a lot. The thinking was entirely satisfactory in and of itself. He couldn't be bothered to actually do it. He'd have to find a hosepipe. Maybe there was one in the boat shed? Or he could swim out into the rip tide. That would take too long and he didn't want to be afraid the way he'd certainly be in deep water. And there were sharks. Bull sharks in the bay.

Alcohol would kill him soon enough.

‘The boy,' Mohemedi said. ‘What shall I tell him,
Mzee?'

What? What boy? Ah! Yes. Lillian. American. In her thirties. She was really very pretty. She reminded him of Jessica, same tall, slender build, same lethal doe eyes. Reminded him of antelopes. Jessica. Lillian. Deer in the headlights.

Something was wrong. A bad feeling. Cold spot in the room sort of thing. Cold.

Beer.

The taste of beer.

Had improved since the South Africans took over the brewery. Consistency.

Of taste and supply.

The hair on the back of his neck was prickling, bloody hell, why was it so cold? Wind off the bay? What?

But, as he was thinking, or was he saying? Was he talking to Maurice? Before the South Africans you couldn't be sure. Murky beer, the color of a diabetic's piss.

Worse sometimes: no beer. Delivery truck broke down in Mombo.

Mohemedi standing, hovering, why—

‘I'll go and see her,' Harry at last remembered. He had a method for getting off the bar stool: plant both hands on the bar, move his ass horizontally right to the edge of the stool, right foot down on the floor, then the left, keep hands on the bar, straighten old knees. Dreadful creaking sound. The next part was more difficult: taking a step. He managed. One, two, one, two. A little march, ho hum. Up the steps. Fuck. Why were there so many of them? That time in Uganda. Mountains of the Moon, a wall of mud, climbing a wall of mud, every time he took a step he slid back. It rained every day, never saw the sun, never been so wet down into his bones, seldom so tired. What had he been doing there, climbing those mountains? What madness—woman or money?

The boy was waiting at the top of the steps, framed by the club gate. Illuminated by the only streetlight in Tanga that worked because the club maintained it. Boy, thin as wire, ragged white shirt many sizes too big. Something—something about him? Harry can't quite put a finger on it, too busy standing up.

And that wave of cold again. Malaria? He shivered. The cold crawled over his scalp with little cold feet.

‘
Shikamoo
,' the boy said softly.

Marahaba
,' Harry replied. It was always pleasant, that little bit of respect even to an old soak. He had a parka in the car and put it on. Couldn't shake the cold.

They took Harry's car and he mused that the boy had probably never driven in a car before. The jerking of the clutch and the pulling of the torqued axle and the inebriation of the driver would seem normal. As they veered through the dark, following the unsteady beam of his single headlight, the boy told how he had been walking by the house and he'd heard the American mama making a strange sound. He'd been afraid to go into the house so he had looked through the window and seen the lady on the floor. She had a bag over her head.

Harry blinked the sweat from his eyes. He was feeling more sober, which made him resentful and sad and afraid. He did not like to think clearly.

A bag on her head?
Mfuko?
Maybe a hat that looked like a bag. Maybe a shower cap. No, the boy said, ‘
Malbolo.'

Big blue bags with the Marlboro Man. Who made them? How did they get to Tanzania? Why? Or what?

Crikey. What was one on her head for?

Over her head, the boy clarified. Covering her head and her face.

The cold little feet were running down his arms now, down his spine. Like ants, swarming, ice ants. He drove a little faster.

Name wasn't Lillian. Funny name. Religious, but not.

Reaching the house, Harry parked under the tulip tree and got out. It was dark, no light, no
askari
. Somewhere he had a flashlight. Under the seat. But no batteries. For a moment he lost track of where he was. Then he remembered the boy. The boy was sitting very still, but he was yearning: Harry could feel it coming off him like lust. Harry got out of the car.

‘Go on then,' he said to the boy and the boy slid into the driver's seat, gripped the wheel and smiled. Perfect teeth, white, straight. So many of them had perfect teeth. Half-starved, subsisting on day-old
ugali
and mangoes that fell off the trees, and teeth from a toothpaste ad. How?

Pilgrim. That was it.

The door to the little round house was open. He was about to call out but he heard it: scuffling, moaning. He went in. He and Gloria used to shag here in their brief shagging days. She'd repelled him physically in the beginning; there was so much of her, so much flesh. But every woman felt the same on the inside, every woman was soft on the inside, and he even began to like her body, how she encompassed him. And it had been nice afterward, a ciggie and a G&T. Gloria certainly had some miles on her. They could talk as equals. Laugh.

In the house now. He could just see, light from the moon. Pilgrim was on the floor. Her head was—

Bloody hell—

Her head was in a
malbolo
and it was fastened around her neck with duct tape. Her hands and feet were also tied with duct tape. She was jerking like a dying fish, the bag sucking in where her mouth must be.

Harry wasn't immediately sure if this was happening. Or a dream, a hallucination. He couldn't be sure these days.

Then he ran and ripped open the plastic.

Her wide eyes. Congo. Pro-Lumumba women put up against a wall to be shot by Mobuto's lot. CIA-backed
jambazi
. Nothing he could do to save the women or stop the men. Only keep himself alive. The women's wide-open eyes, he'd never forget: fear because they still thought they had a chance, still wanted to live, could still
think
, could still offer their bodies for rape. Their eyes changed the instant the shooting started, shutters coming down, the end of hope, the truth, a kind of relief. For him, too.

He pulled the tape off Pilgrim's mouth. She sucked in, deep, howling breaths.

‘You're all right, you're all right now,' he said and held her face so that she looked at him. Her lips were blue.

If he'd stayed to finish the beer—

The boy in the white shirt—

Something—

She was coming back to him now, her breath slowing, color coming back. He cradled her head, stroked her hair. He was saying things in a soft voice like, You're all right, you're all right, it's all over now. He took the tape off her hands and rubbed her wrists. Took the tape off her ankles. Her legs were beautiful. Antelope. Jessica. It's okay now, darling. I'm here.

When she sat up she gripped him fiercely, her fingers clutching his shirt.

‘There, there.' He kept stroking her hair and then lifted her onto the sofa, put a cushion under her head. ‘I'll put the kettle on.'

But first he went outside. The boy was standing by the car, looking at himself in the side mirror. Harry gave him a couple of hundred shilling coins. ‘Off you go now. Don't say anything about this.'

As the boy turned and trotted off, Harry saw that his white shirt was bloody and agape at the back, exposing a large wound. Even in the moonlight he could determine that the wound was large and very deep.

That it was the kind of wound made by,

say,

a propeller.

The kind of wound from which you could not recover.

Harry felt his knees give and the fearful cold rush through him. ‘Hey,' he shouted after the boy. The boy turned briefly and smiled, then disappeared. Not around a corner or into the bush. Not a trick of darkness or moon. But disappeared.
Stepped back to that other place
. Absorbed. Harry steadied himself. It could just be the DTs, or some more permanent dementia.

But in his heart—that rusty old clock—Harry knew who the boy was and why he had come. For years, Harry had been waiting for him, or some other emissary. They had unfinished business.

Oh, he'd seen them before. Saw them all the time. In the shadows, in the evenings, riding bicycles, mingling with the living. Sometimes, they would glance at him, catch his eye in mutual acknowledgement, like members of a secret club. Yes, yes, their casual gaze seemed to say, We know you, you know us. But always they moved on. Their business was not with him.

He'd tried to talk about this with Gloria once and she'd laughed at him. ‘Ghosts? You've been in Africa too long.'

This was true. Africa too bloody long.

But the ghosts—
shetani
, spirits—the ghosts weren't just here. He'd gone to England a few years ago, visiting his sister. They didn't get on, never had. Sandra, very conservative. Garden like Legoland, all straight edges. She lived in a modern village in the southeast, least spooky place you could imagine. But he saw a man on the bus. And a child throwing bread to a duck. They saw him, casual nods. Ghosts.

These ghosts, they came and went, back and forth. The other place and here. Maybe there were several other places, like a multi-level parking garage. The universe was an awfully big place and had to be filled with something.

From time to time, he wondered if he, too, was dead—a ghost, and this is why he could see them. But then he would get the most godawful hangover, and he was pretty sure that the dead didn't get hangovers.

Lots of things you get used to in Africa. It's the most honest place on earth. Why should the dead simply be dead? Or go to heaven? Rubbish about being reincarnated into beetles or Egyptian princesses. The dead were here, among the living. Side by side.

Harry turned and went back into the house. He found the light switch. What comfort electricity offered, to enter a cocoon of man-made light scooped out of the infinite dark. What it was like for villagers when they could afford a kerosene lamp. The reassurance, even, of a cheap Chinese flashlight.

Light.

The kitchen wasn't separate, just around the corner from the living area. He found the kettle, filled it up, turned on the stove. He noticed then that the water still seemed to be running. As if the overflow in the loo was broken. He glanced over at Pilgrim. She was curled up on the sofa. She was in shock. But she'd be okay.

Harry went into the bathroom. It was brightly tiled, the shower in the corner. And under the shower was a middle-aged white man in a raincoat. And an awful lot of blood. The blood was still oozing from his wrists, but Harry knew enough about exsanguination to know that it was very nearly over. He turned off the shower and put his fingers over the man's carotid artery. Yes, nearly over. He looked into the man's eyes.