The Gloaming (6 page)

He extends his hand, ‘Martin Martins.'

A slight European accent, the origin difficult to discern.

‘Pilgrim.' I take his hand; the surface of his palm is rough and surprisingly cold.

We are in the narrow hallway between the rooms. I stepped out and there he was, proximity forced by the small space.

‘Are your parents religious?'

‘Why?'

‘The name.'

The name, the curious name, the cocktail party banter. ‘They're hippies,' I say, as I always do. ‘The Journey of Life.'

‘Seriously?' He laughs. He actually laughs in a ha-ha-ha way.

I consider the comeback, something about how his parents had no imagination and used the same name twice. But though Martin laughs, I already know he's not a humorous man.

‘And here you are on your journey,' he says. ‘Magulu. What a shithole, hey?'

I listen to his voice. Perhaps somewhere in the former Eastern Bloc. Poland or the Czech Republic. Possibly further east.

‘Magulu's not so bad.'

‘By what standard? A Nigerian jail?' Ha ha ha.

Tom spent two years writing a report on Nigerian jails. He came home from his research and interviews stinking. At first I thought it was the smell of the jail, but he said, no, it was him, how he came to smell, listening to the prisoners, seeing what he saw. It was a physical reaction to the suffering of others.

‘Sure, by that standard,' I tell Martin.

He's clearly not sure how to take this flat response, and he inspects me more closely. ‘Imagine the guidebook! The Rough Guide to Shitholes!'

‘Imagine.'

He takes a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and uses the act of offering me one to close again the space between us. The brand is Rooster, I notice, a retro design of a cockerel printed on the pack.

He lights up, turning his head to exhale the smoke. ‘I love Africa. Love it. You can still smoke anywhere you want. When they are chopping each other's arms off and stealing billions in aid money, they can hardly say, “Oh, now we want to have stronger anti-smoking laws.”'

Is this amusing? I'm not sure. Something I read comes back to me: ‘
You know, this Continent of Africa has a terrible strong sense of sarcasm.'
I do not remember the book, one of Tom's. But this man has about him a feeling of dark experience, has taken the sarcasm to heart. He is not a tourist or a traveler. He has purpose and is explicitly unafraid.

‘And you,' I say. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Fuel pump's fucked on my Land Cruiser. I'm trying to get a message to a mate in Mwanza. No fucking mobile service so I had to hire a guy on a bike. I'm here until I can get a replacement. There's a bus or something. A week at least.'

I do not want him here.

I do not want his inevitable questions or his weird vibe or his cold North Sea eyes. I turn to move away.

‘You going out?' he says.

‘Yes.'

‘Where?'

I look at him. ‘Just out.'

‘Promenading?'

‘What?'

He taps ash casually onto the floor. ‘Promenading. You know, walking around and about for the purpose of being around and about.'

‘Yes, promenading.'

‘You've come to Magulu to promenade?'

‘It's in the guidebook. Page sixty-three. “The Promenades of Magulu.”'

He laughs, ha ha ha, and wags his finger to let me know I've got one up on him. Then he taps on my door with his knuckle. ‘This you? Number four?'

I nod.

‘I'm just across the hall.' He gestures to room seven, as if I want to know.

I start to walk away. ‘See you later, princess.'

Outside, I turn right, staying within the perimeter of the town. An old woman selling
mandazis
smiles and waves, and this feels like a blessing: a moment of normalcy, a simple, unguarded interaction. I wave back, but now she offers up a
mandazi
and I feel compelled to purchase one. Her smile vanishes, she's focused on the coins in my hand. She gives me the dense, fried chunk of dough wrapped in newspaper, and the grease leaks onto my hands. I can't possibly eat it, but I cannot throw it away because I keep thinking about the children, shameless and puppy beating, but certainly hungry.

So I walk on, holding the oily newspaper self-consciously. It grows heavier, and when I find myself back at the Goodnight my arm almost aches with strain.

The bar is quiet, the TV a cold, occluded eye without the generator's power. I look but don't see Martin Martins. Carefully, I walk down the narrow corridor to my room. I try to be silent, but the lack of ambient sound means every action is amplified: the key in the lock, the click of the lock, the grit on the floor scraping as I open the door. And the same in reverse as I shut the door, slicing through the still afternoon.

Sitting on my bed, the window framing a rectangle of light, I watch thunderclouds. Muscular and grand. Their shadows cast across miles, shifting the dominant tone of the landscape from green to deep purple. Almost every afternoon the clouds perform. But despite their baritone rumbles, there is no rain, only the damp and oppressive weight of expectation.

I can hear Martin Martins now. He must have been napping. Is that a real name? An anglicization of something unsayable? His bed creaks when he shifts his weight. I hear the sound of a match striking, a sigh, a page turning. I lie so still because I don't want him to hear me. I believe he is listening.

My hands are still greasy from the
mandazi
, and I wipe them on my skirt. The
mandazi
itself sits on the small corner table, nestled in its newspaper, gleaming with oil. Quickly now I grab it and throw it in the bin.

 

Tom stood awkwardly in the doorway. He offered up a bouquet of peonies and delphiniums.

‘Flowers?' I said, letting him in as though he were a salesman.

‘I wanted to make sure you're all right.'

‘You could have just called.'

‘The phone has been disconnected.'

‘Yes. So it has.'

‘Is there a problem with money?'

‘I forgot to pay the bill. That's all.'

He sat at the table, holding the flowers. I turned away from him. I didn't want him to see my swollen face, the bruises, how ugly I looked. And this appalled me. That my vanity held so fast.

‘How's Elise? How's the baby?'

There was a tic in his movement as he put the flowers on the table. ‘Fine. We're all fine.'

‘That's good. It would be a waste if you were unhappy with each other.'

‘Pilgrim,' he said, and moved to touch my hand.

‘Don't.'

‘If there's anything I can do.'

‘You've done enough.'

He ignored this. ‘What about your parents? Have you called them?'

‘You know that's not possible.'

‘They're still living like that?'

‘Like what?' I wanted him to condescend, to sneer.

‘Like—' But he stopped himself. ‘Without a phone?'

‘Yes. Still. It's how they live, Tom. Feral as goats, and happy.'

‘You could—'

‘Go and stay with them?'

He sighed, bowed his head. ‘I don't know. But I'm worried about you. We're worried.'

We
. I thought about this shift, made in a matter of sentences. Not years, not months, not weeks. Once—for twelve years—we had been
we
. Now we was exclusive of me. This new we he spoke of casually, yet with surgical precision. He was a lawyer, he always chose his words.

‘I'm fine,' I said.

But Tom was not finished. ‘Elise has the name of a great therapist.'

‘You think I should see Elise's shrink?'

‘Therapist. Highly qualified psychotherapist.' He spoke calmly. ‘Shock. It's very insidious. I see it all the time at work. You know that.'

‘And just what do you think Elise's shrink would suggest? That I start an affair with a married man and get pregnant by him so he leaves his wife?'

Tom exhaled softly. ‘Jesus, you're so bitter.'

‘Or did I get it the wrong way round? You got her pregnant so you could leave me.'

‘It's time to move on.'

‘Why? So you can feel less guilty?'

He stood and shook his head with contempt, ‘Three children are dead. Don't talk to me about guilt.' He tossed the flowers in the sink, an expensive bouquet worth several hundred Swiss Francs.

 

A mob of children surrounds Kessy. He holds in his hands a box, and they are all trying to touch the box. Kessy is losing his temper, but he must hold the box with both hands as it is torn, at risk of collapse, and he cannot fend them off. Gladness's brother, Samwelli, wades out to help him. Samwelli is small and neatly formed, like Gladness—not so much bigger than the children, but he is quick and strong; he picks out the main troublemaker and pulls him roughly aside.

The ragged procession moves down the street, drawing in new members, as if Kessy is the center of gravity. The children are screeching and jumping, the adults grinning and chattering. I can feel the frantic energy of the crowd, the greed of it, not for Kessy, or even the box, but for the event itself: something is happening in Magulu!

Dorothea stands outside the clinic, ready and alert. Kessy hands her the box and turns on the crowd, his club swinging like a propeller, opening up a semicircle of space. People are shouting questions at him. One man, in a red T-shirt, shoves forward and stabs his finger at Kessy, his voice hysterical with accusation. In an instant, Kessy grabs him, flips him onto the ground, cold-cocks him. The crowd steps back in awe, as if they have seen a magic trick. Kessy places his knee on the man's back and jerks his wrists into handcuffs, one at a time.

Now, looking at the crowd, pulling the man to his feet, Kessy speaks in a low, hissing voice. They listen and seem to obey, for they back up. But I see in their eyes something base. One day, they will tear Kessy apart. One day, they will hit him until he falls on the earth and they will kick him, his face, his ribs, his stomach, his groin, until he is no longer a policeman, no longer anyone they knew, and when he is good and dead, when he is meat and dust, then they will vanish into the bush.

Am I beginning to understand?

‘Friend!' Dorothea calls to me. ‘Come, come here!'

Inside the clinic, she opens the box. It once contained paint and is tied with yards of sisal string. One panel is agape.

‘Why is Kessy bringing me such things?'

Just as she finally succeeds in cutting away all the sisal, Kessy reappears to explain: some children found it in the roundabout.

Tentatively, with the end of her pen, Dorothea pushes back the flaps of the box. Its contents are wrapped in newspaper. She puts on latex gloves and unwraps the first item. It is about a foot long, severed at both ends. The surface is pale as milk, shriveled and dry. I think it must be some part of an animal.

Dorothea recoils. ‘God bless us.'

She takes out another object, unwraps it. It looks like a large prune.

‘A human kidney.'

‘You are sure?' Kessy asks.

‘And the first is a forearm, cut at the wrist and the elbow.'

There is also a hand, dried and shrunken, so that it seems to have belonged to a monkey; but these are all human parts: a heart; a liver; and two ears, wizened as dried apricots.

A human being can be reduced in any number of ways. I think of Tom's reports. Machetes. Kalashnikovs. Axes. The clustering of words in certain paragraphs: disemboweled, decapitated. We never spoke about any of it and he never read the reports when I was in the room. But they were always there, on a desk, in his briefcase, vibrating with detail.

‘Albino,' Dorothea says. ‘From the color of the skin, I can tell this was an albino person.'

Kessy shakes his head in disgust and turns to me. ‘This is the magic of the Sukuma people and their superstitions. They believe albinos are spirits and ghosts. And their bodies are magic.'

‘How do they get the bodies?' I ask, although I'm sure I already know because nausea is welling in my throat.

Dorothea makes her noise of disapproval: a soft snort. ‘They kill them. Yes, they kill them, even children. And they then cut them into small pieces. Like this. For a lot of money. This magic is worth a lot of money.'

Perhaps Dorothea mistakes my disgust for disbelief. She looks directly at me. ‘It is to put on a curse. A powerful curse.'

‘What kind of curse?'

‘For many things,' Kessy says. ‘To get some land or some money. To kill an enemy.'

‘How do you kill with this?' I gesture to the box.

Kessy smiles. ‘Imagine someone hates you this much? What have you done to him? Perhaps in your heart you know you are guilty. And this magic speaks to your heart.'

A sensation comes over me, as if something is moving underneath my skin, one of those terrible worms that beds down in your flesh. For a while, no one says anything, and I realize Kessy and Dorothea are afraid. Yet they don't want me to see their fear: that they are like the people of the village or the people who would kill an albino and cut him up. They don't want me to see that a part of them believes in magic so strong.

Dorothea says to Kessy, ‘You must keep this at the police station. It is not safe here.'

‘But I have no place to keep it there. Only my desk. And there are no locks.'

‘I'll keep it,' I say, and I see their relief, even as the worm flutters at my throat like a pulse.

I take the box and as I'm walking to my room I see Martin Martins.

‘What you got there, princess? Some kind of treasure?'

Holding the box in one hand, I can't quite unlock my door. He moves in to help, taking the box before I can protest. He sniffs. ‘Smells funky.'