‘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 stooclass="underline" 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.