The Witch Doctor's Wife (23 page)

I
n his darkened room, lying in a rumpled bed, Dupree heard the faint thumps of distant drums. Then came a sound so strange, so mournful, it made the hairs on his arms and neck rise. Was it human? Animal? Both? Was it one voice, or a thousand?

Dupree pulled his covers over his heard and tried to block out the sound. Perhaps it was the end of the world, and this was the sound of souls left behind. If that was the case, so be it. He already knew he was destined to hell. Any number of priests could testify to that, a few even from personal experience.

For three days he had lain in bed, unable to eat, barely able to perform bodily functions, while his heart ate itself from the inside out. Cezar had been everything to him, and then Cezar betrayed him—not once, but twice. Wasn’t death the ultimate betrayal? To go someplace where a coward cannot follow?

Amanda Brown could not believe what she’d just heard. Captain Jardin, who appeared to be on Cripple’s side, had folded like a weekend poker player with a rotten hand. Maybe he could sit this hand out, but not she.

“I thought you were a good man,” she said, not bothering to fight back the tears.

“I hope that I still am. But this, mademoiselle, is out of my hands.”

“You sound like Pontius Pilot.”

He stared at her.

“Look,” she said, “if there isn’t anything you can do, is there anything that I, as an American citizen can do?”

“Do? Amanda, you Americans act as if you are the policemen of the world and that you have not only the right but the obligation to insert yourselves wherever there is trouble.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Just how serious are you about saving the world this time?”

“Cripple is my friend. I will do what it takes.”

He sighed, and there were tears glistening in his eyes as well. “There is something you might try. There is no guarantee. Still, it might delay the execution.”

“Tell me!”

Cripple was no longer allowed visitors. She’d been moved from her cell and placed in a windowless room. Outside two African soldiers from Luluaburg stood guard, rifles in their hands.

She was numb with dread. How much would death by hang
ing hurt? The young Captain who spoke Tshiluba had tried to comfort her. It was over almost instantly, he said. It was the most humane way for one person to kill another. But how did he know this? Not from personal experience! And did the actual parting of soul from body hurt? He could not answer that, he said. Did she want to have a priest there? For what? Could the
priest
speak from experience? Hardly.

Had there been another way? Not really. It had all happened so quickly, there had been no time to think. But she’d made the right decision.

The second that she’d seen the green truck parked in front of the path that led to her compound, she knew what was happening—or at least about to happen. Sure enough, the children were unattended. Baby Boy was crying. Where is your First Mother, she’d demanded. When Eldest Daughter pointed in the direction of the manioc field, Cripple began to run.
Really
run.

The leg she’d always dragged behind her felt as light as cotton, and she was suddenly able to move it just as fast as the other, and place it just as far in front of her. She ran as fast as a boy of sixteen. No, faster. It was as if the spirit of the chicken hawk had joined with hers, and together they skimmed across the ground and then soared above the trees.

Truly, truly, that was what had happened. Cripple’s first memory of Cezar Nunez’s body had been from above. And how could she, a short lame woman, observe anything from above, were she not airborne? She most certainly did not climb a tree.

“Aiyee,” Second Wife had cried upon seeing her. “I did not mean to kill this man.”

“He is dead?”

“I hit him with a stone. There. You can see the blood.”

And hair. There were long strands of brown adhering to the stone, pasted to it with drying blood. The man’s skull was dented. By a single blow you might ask? If you doubt, regard the arms of
Second Wife, she who chops firewood and pounds manioc roots with a heavy wooden pestle. By comparison, the arms of a white woman were like the strings one picks from a peeled banana. Indeed, there is much to admire about an African woman, and her strength is at the top of the list.

“Forgive me, Sister Wife, if the reason is obvious, but why did you hit this man?”

Before answering, Second Wife crumpled to the ground and beat it with her fists, all the while keening. For the death of any man is a tragedy. Is that not so? Even the death of a white man. Or perhaps Second Wife was grieving for herself, for the missing piece of soul that was the price of killing a man. Or perhaps she was afraid of what might become of her.

At last she looked up, her eyes filled with tears. “He came into our compound, Sister Wife. He demanded to know where Baby Boy had found the diamond.
What
diamond? I ask him. I do not know about a diamond, I tell him. But he demands again and again, and then I remember the stone our husband removed from Baby Boy’s mouth. But truly, I had not thought it was a diamond.”

“It was.”

Second Wife flashed Cripple a look of hatred. “Then we must go to the manioc field, I said—for by then the children were frightened. He wanted to take the children with us, but I told him that I was unsure of the exact location. How could I search with so much distraction? I asked. He agreed, but he made me warn the children that if they told anyone where their
baba
was, then he would kill them. And me.”

“Aiyee!”

“But what could I show him in the field? I looked here for another such stone, I looked there, I looked everywhere until he became so angry that he grabbed me by the throat and began to choke me. I could not pull his hands away, for they were very
strong. But after much struggling, I was able to trip him. Together we fell on the ground, and his hands grew tighter. I had no choice then, Sister Wife, but to feel around for something hard. Something with which to hit him. At last the Protestant God sent me that stone you see lying there.”

“I very much doubt that a white God would send you a stone with which to kill a white man. Surely the stone was there all along.”

“Oh no, it was definitely the Protestant God, and for that I am eternally grateful. But now I beg you, Sister Wife, tell me what to do.”

Cripple resisted the temptation to tell Second Wife that she should ask God for advice, given that God was obviously more powerful than Cripple. Even she could not send a stone.

“I will tell you what to do,” Cripple said, “after we bury this man.”

“Bury him?”

“No one must know what happened. To kill a white man—that can only mean death.”

“But I meant only to make him stop!”

“Why should they believe that? Could it be that you lured him into the field so that you could have sex? Then you changed your mind, but he would not stop?”

Second Wife clamped her hands tightly over her ears. “No, no, no! I would never do that. Cripple, you must believe me. I did not have sex with this man.”

“I believe you, Sister Wife. But what will the white man believe? The one whose job it is to pass judgment? If you confess to killing this man, they will hang you. Then who will care for our children?”

So it was that Second Wife, while Cripple stood watch, dug a hole in which to place the body of Senhor Nunez. She dug only with her hands, and it took her a very long time, because the hole
had to be deep enough to discourage jackals and hyenas. Before she was done her hands were bloody and her back ached.

At last she stood. “Now what should I do?”

“First, you must promise me that no matter what, you will never reveal to anyone what really happened here today.”

“I promise.”

“Now promise on the life of Baby Boy.”

“Aiyee!”

“Promise!”

The words were whispered hoarsely. “I promise on the life of Baby Boy.”

“Now you do nothing. But tomorrow morning I will go the police and say that I killed this white man.”

“
You?
”

“Yes. I have a plan. You have not heard, Second Wife, that this afternoon the white man’s truck rolled down the hill, gathering speed, and crashed through the railing of the bridge. But I will say that I tampered with his truck, and that he was in it. Now he churns beneath the falls, like a log caught in a vortex. His death is my fault.

“Then everyone’s attention will be focused on the river, and no one will ever think to look in a manioc field. No body will ever be found, so that eventually they will have to release me. In the meantime, you will care for our children. Do you not think it is a perfect plan?”

Sister Wife nodded vigorously, tears flying in all directions.

“But right now,” Cripple said, “we must hurry back to the compound. I just heard the first hyena.”

I
t was the perfect day for an execution. The air was both cool and clear, thanks to a steady night breeze that had blown away the mixture of fog and dry-season smoke that rendered most days in sepia tones. Towering white cumulus clouds, tinged in gray, scuttled across the sky, promising rain in a week or two. Perhaps the hanging was a good omen, a signal that new life would return to the savannas and riverine forests of southwestern Congo.

Even before dawn the first spectators began to arrive. Within an hour the main roads and village paths were clogged with people vying to arrive at the airfield in time to secure a spot with a decent view of the scaffold. At one point, so many people crowded the bridge that it began to sway, precipitating a stampede in which three children were seriously injured, and one woman trampled to death.

But like moths to a flame, they kept coming. From every village within a night’s walk they came, having been summoned by the drums. Never in the history of the region had so many tribes gathered peacefully in one spot. For some it was merely an exciting spectacle, but for others the beginning of a new era, one in which the execution of a crippled woman, one from the Baluba tribe, would be the turning point. Soon the tables would be turned, and Europeans would be hung for egregious crimes against African people.

Their Death would be among the first to exact revenge. He would send Second Wife and the children back to her village of birth, and then he would devote himself to the cause of justice. He would give up his life if necessary. The Belgians were going to pay.

Feigning indifference to the stares of other whites, the OP took his seat in the VIP section of the grandstand that had been erected behind the gallows. The six-tiered structure had been built the day before and would be torn down minutes after the crippled woman was swinging free at the end of a rope, her neck broken. Built specifically for the European population of Belle Vue, the grandstand was, however, open to anyone white. Or even someone just half white—if his or her skin was light enough. From his vantage point in the center, the OP recognized several missionaries from outlying stations. Even the newly arrived American woman was there.

He knew what they were all thinking. What was he doing,
watching an execution, when he should be out looking for his wife? Why hadn’t he even bothered to drive to Luluaburg, to see if she had gotten on a plane there? Well, to hell with them—every single last one of them. He was there because it was his job to be there; the crippled woman had killed one of his employees. The real question was, What were they doing at the execution?

Amanda Brown wanted to vomit. She
needed
to vomit, but her stomach was empty. Not as much as a sip of water had passed her lips, since Cripple’s sentencing, that hadn’t come back up. It was as if her body was refusing to cooperate with life itself, when that of an innocent woman was about to be extinguished by a vengeful colonialist, one without a molecule of compassion in his heart. And to think that some Europeans had the nerve to call the American South a racist region.

What was the difference between Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Belle Vue, Belgian Congo? Well, for one thing, they no longer held public executions in South Carolina. At least not officially. And even if South Carolina did hold public lynchings, they wouldn’t build a grandstand for the public. Still,
if
there were public executions in Rock Hill, and
if
there was a grandstand, you can bet the seats would be for whites only. That much was the same.

But in the United States you almost never heard of a woman getting the death sentence, unless she’d been accused of being a Communist spy. Cripple was most certainly not a spy, nor was she a murderess. She was a brilliant, albeit hardheaded, independent woman. She could be funny at times, but never cruel. She was undeniably selfish, but not the least bit self-centered. Amanda knew she was lucky to have known Cripple, even if just for a few days, and that she was a better person for it.

It was time to give back.

“Not yet,” the police inspector said, as if reading her mind again. He squeezed her shoulder.