Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (25 page)

Muttering, the woman pushed herself laboriously up onto her feet. Whatever she was saying Mutara didn't translate. She tugged part of a root off a plant on the ceiling, three leaves off another, pulled an item out of a box, pushed everything she gathered into a tiny purse. It was clear she was in a hurry.

Some part of Max's mind automatically noted that none of these plants was a vine.

The woman pressed into Max's hand the purse, the neck knotted. The bag was made of fur. Distantly she wondered what kind of animal it came from. The woman's fingers were leathery and thick.

The
féticheuse
spoke in that beaten language. Behind her, hiding in the shadows, Mutara translated. “You find soon what you seek. Then you must decide what to do.” In the dark, his voice became the woman's echo, became her voice. “Keep this with you. Perhaps it can help.”

The woman's pupils glimmered, cloudy, massively enlarged in an attempt to adjust to the permanent darkness of her cataracts. “You have strength,” she spoke through Mutara's soft voice. “Use it.” The hacked-off leg dripped, the fridge gleamed with moisture. Underneath the table something rustled around on a chain.

“What's in here?” Max whispered. “What's this thing supposed to do?”

“It has power,” the
féticheuse
said. “It helps you. Do not look.” Losing interest, she waved them away, no payment requested. She went back to packing, an old woman putting her life away in plastic shopping bags, waiting for what would come.

S
tepping out of his tent in the morning after a desperately deep two-hour nap, Jeremy's foot stumbled over something soft and feathery. Looking down, he discovered discarded on the dirt the body of a headless chicken. He stared at it for a moment without comprehension, his face as heavy as a wet blanket, before he noticed blood had been splashed in lacy fountains across the door of his tent. The chicken had been beheaded right here, the body aimed like a champagne bottle with the cork removed. He focused on the lack of the head, as though finding it would explain the existence of the body and blood. Circling the tent, he kicked through the nearby grass, but was unable to locate the head anywhere.

In his tent, in the depths of his sleep, he had heard nothing. He wondered if the Africans had done this in a protest against the railroad? Or was it the Indians, angered that he had not killed the lions yet? Or was it Alan?

Deep in his chest, the shivers commenced once again. His fingers, he noted, had blood upon them from undoing the buttons of the tent flaps, his flesh stained and sticky. Each time the malaria hit, the chills jarred him afresh. His vision blurred, while all the sounds and smells around him swelled, washing over him in waves. Each sensation struck him as vividly as though he had been born new to this world. In the distance a hammer clanged and he closed his eyes, the noise lingering like metal in his mouth.
Hammer
, he thought, marveling at the concept.

The sensory wealth of this colony, all these laboring unwashed men, all these uncovered latrines and burning corpses. The yells of many languages, the ululating call to prayer, and the clanks of tools and machinery.

The blood shone so red across the white of the tent; the liquid had not had time to dry. In the doorway of the cooking tent, he spotted Sarah watching him. She was standing the way Otombe did when he waited, like a heron on one leg, the other foot pressed against the side of the standing leg. She regarded him without expression.

Spooked, he backed slowly away.

 

Jeremy oversaw the men as they dug out more of the canal, shoveling the dirt into large baskets. As soon as each basket was full, it was hefted up onto a worker's head. The Indian, balancing the basket, would pace regally up the side of the canal to toss the dirt onto the top of the bank. They only had a few more feet to dig before they would open a channel to the old river, the water beginning to pour for the first time into this detour. The river would rise smoothly to fill the gulley between these new banks, churning red-brown and muddied. At that point, Jeremy thought, he would feel as though he were making real progress. The water would wash away the lions' pugmarks, removing their favored play area. And perhaps the satchel lay somewhere along its length, ready to be washed away, rolled along in the muddied water toward the sea, its curse rinsed like a stain from this area.

Within a day of the river starting to flow down this new branch, the workers should have the original branch dammed up. After that, they could start digging the feet of the bridge into the newly dry riverbed. Under such conditions, they could complete the bridge with relative dispatch, then redirect the water flow back into its original bed and leave this accursed area far behind.

Above, the clouds hung thick and waiting, a grayish-yellow, the air motionless before the storm. It was possible the upcoming downpour might collapse part of the canal's sides. Turning his head to survey these clouds, Jeremy spotted Otombe picking his way down the banks toward him. He twisted quickly away. He believed Otombe would be disgusted with him for his behavior last night, for holding his hand, as well as for discharging his rifle at the lions, letting them know that they were being hunted and in what manner. With the workers, he bellowed out in a loud voice, clearly an important man with responsibilities. Only after a full minute did he casually glance behind him and blink, as though startled to see the hunter.

Otombe inclined his head in greeting. “I wish to find the satchel again. We need to learn more about the lions. We need to create a new way to hunt them. It will be more dangerous today, for they know now we seek them. Do you wish to come?”

He found no censure in Otombe's expression, no anger or disgust in his tone or attitude. This lack surprised him at a fundamental level.

“Yes,” Jeremy said, “yes.”

He signaled to Singh to take over the management of the Indians for him, then he and Otombe set out. Once they had scrambled up the riverbank and started into the nyika, Otombe moved more slowly than usual. He made no noise, his concentration focused on the brush around them. This felt different from the walks they had taken previously. For Jeremy, the shift in mood seemed sudden, moving from the clamor of men yelling and shovels clanking to this silent attentive stalk through the jungle. He felt instead as though he were the primitive in a situation of unspeakable complexity. Leaves rustled, birds called, grass swayed. He had no knowledge of where to look, what sounds to listen to, how to scan for danger. Much of his attention was simply taken up with navigating his large leather-bound feet through the undergrowth in relative silence. At work as an engineer, he could let his attention stray for minutes at a time without any toll being taken. Here, that same laziness could potentially cost Otombe and him their lives.

He held his rifle across his chest, at the ready. The birds seemed quieter than normal, perhaps because of the impending storm, the sky looming above so dark. From the tension of this walk, he broke into a slow malarial sweat, the heat prickling along the base of his hair and beading up on his face. To maintain a tight grip on his rifle, he kept wiping his palms off on the sides of his shorts.

After half a mile, they stepped into a small clearing along the top of the canal's bank and Otombe stopped without warning, so Jeremy bumped right into his back. Alarmed by the hunter's attitude, Jeremy followed his gaze to see the satchel on the canal bed below them. Even from a hundred feet, it was easy to spot. The neat man-made square of it, the leather dark against the red dirt. Deep pugmarks everywhere around.

Only then did the smell rise to his nose—faint but distinct—of cat pee and rotting meat.

The lions were nearby.

The men stood there, utterly still. Around them the birds continued to call lazily, the wind to blow. Pressed up against Otombe's back, a significant section of Jeremy's vision was taken up by the curve of the man's ear, the wiry ends of his hair. Through his chest, he could feel the heat of his body and the silent swell of each breath. A drop of sweat ran into the corner of Jeremy's eye, making him blink from the sting.

They stood there, feeling the continuing beat of their hearts, as close as scared children.

And the rain began, drops falling large as grapes. The loud patter everywhere around them, a resonant roar on the canopy above. Jeremy was instantly soaked, his hair hanging forward into his eyes. Objects more than thirty feet away began to gray out in the downpour.

Otombe started swiveling his head, so slowly it was hard to see the actual movement. The only way to tell he was moving was that, over time, more of his cheek became visible. His skin looked darker in the rain, black as a stone, smooth as a carving. His gaze was unfocused, trying to catch movement anywhere around them. Delicately scenting the air, his nostrils widened for the dissipating smell of lion. Perhaps, disliking rain like all cats, the creatures had headed for cover moments before the men entered the clearing. Or maybe the rain was merely flattening their scent, obscuring their nearby presence.

Jeremy eased one foot backward, hoping there was no stick behind him ready to break. He did not bother to watch around them, staring only at Otombe's face for clues as to where the danger might lie. There was the slightest crackle of a leaf beneath his leather sole. Before taking a second step, he wiggled his other foot out of its shoe. His sock-encased toes were able to feel about more delicately for twigs or leaves and thus able to shift his weight more quietly. He slid out of his other shoe. Otombe backed up after him, step by step. Five feet, ten, fifteen. The satchel eased out of sight, the clearing disappearing from view. Otombe turned slightly sideways as he moved down the path, watching behind him as much as he did ahead.

Jeremy imagined, after the storm had passed, the lions yawning and stretching, stepping out from the tree they had taken refuge under, hunching down to shake themselves dry, jowls flapping, their joints as loose as any dog's. Then they narrowed their eyes and ambled forward with curiosity to his abandoned shoes, lowering their massive heads, nostrils widening over the wet leather. Learning about him and his acrid fear, what he had for breakfast, and the particular scent of his shaving lotion, memorizing his smell so as to be able to track him down.

As the two men got further from the clearing, Otombe did not lead them straight back to camp through the nyika, but took a roundabout route. After fifteen minutes, the rain stopped and they reached the edge of the savannah, began pushing through the long grass. The soles of Jeremy's feet began to ache from the lengthy walk in wet socks. It felt like the wounds from the worms' eggs might have opened up. Perhaps he was bleeding. Still, Otombe kept extending their walk through the savannah; much of the time he paced backwards in order to watch the grass behind them.

“What are you looking for?” Jeremy asked in a normal tone of voice.

Otombe whispered, “If the lions follow, their path will be marked by moving grass. Look for breaks in the normal pattern.”

Jeremy had assumed any danger of the lions was long gone. Startled, he glanced back over the grass. After the rain, uneven gusts of wind fingered it in different directions. The whole plain moved and shivered unpredictably.

A bird about a hundred feet back called out a warning and flew straight up. Otombe's face became so concentrated he looked like a stranger. The men continued to ease themselves silently backward, Jeremy watching the sea of grass with all the care he was capable of.

An object to their right banged straight up.

Both men jerked around to see a gazelle hanging in the air, looking around for the humans it had scented. All around them now, gazelles spronged upward out of the grass, living popcorn, legs ramrod straight beneath, their tails swishing behind their tight white buttocks. Moving so quietly, the men had snuck into a herd of Thomson's gazelles, the tall grass hiding the animals from the humans and visa versa.

My God
, were the only words in Jeremy's head. His gratitude so intense to be here, in Africa.

The gazelles bounded away in the direction the men had come from, their bodies arcing over the top of the grass like dolphins over the sea. Otombe began to relax. He kept an eye on the area where the herd had disappeared. “If the lions come this way,” he whispered, “the gazelles will jump again. Will give us warning.”

In this hour after the rain, the air was slack and clean. From a termite mound nearby, hundreds of newly hatched insects launched themselves into the air, their shiny carapaces catching the light. Some landed on the men, their arms and faces. Jeremy stared at the translucent wings sparkling in Otombe's hair. He looked down at his own arms covered with faceted insects, vibrating from the effort of their transformation.

 

Half a mile later, three Africans stood up out of the grass, nodding solemnly in greeting. Their hair was shaved short; thick necklaces hung upon their bony chests. The rest of their bodies were obscured by the thick grass.

“
Jambo
,” Otombe called.

“
Jambo
,
rafiki
,” they responded.

Otombe conversed with them for a moment in Swahili. Jeremy caught the word, “
Simba
.” They turned to examine the direction Otombe and he had just come from. Their eyes lay sunken in the narrow bones of their faces.

Bidding goodbye, Otombe walked on, saying to Jeremy. “These are WaJamousi. They asked if you are hunting.”

The men watched them go; Jeremy felt the power of their stares. There was no animal in sight to shoot to give them food. He fingered his rifle and raised the palm of one hand in farewell as he followed Otombe. “How many people do they hunt for?”

“Their whole village. Africans share their food.”

“Even if they catch but a dik-dik?”

“Yes.”

To distract himself from their plight, he asked Otombe the first questions he could think of. “Are famines like this common? How do the people survive?”

“Many are not surviving.”

“But famines must have occurred in the past.”

Otombe nodded.

Jeremy pressed his point. “How did they survive before?”

“This famine is worse than most. Also, it is possible in the past the tribes used to be different.”

“Different how?”

“In the time of my grandfather's grandfather, the stories say, some tribes nearby had silversmiths, stone buildings, something you might call a postal system. In case of famine, my grandfather says, the people in neighboring areas helped each other survive.”

The man glanced back over his shoulder. To look at the WaJamousi or check for lions, Jeremy did not know. “And then came guns. Any tribe without guns fell to the first army that had some, whether it was European or African. The way to get guns was to trade slaves for them. Slaves were the only money the whites would accept. Many kings started wars with their neighbors to capture people and trade them for guns.”

“The more wars that were started,” Otombe continued, “the more need there was for guns. Many many people were sold. Kingdoms were splintered. Tribes disappeared. Much knowledge was lost. People do not trust each other, do not care for each other the way they used to. There is less law.”

“According to the stories,” he gestured back in the direction of the WaJamousi, “this is new.”