Only then did I feel a prick of panic: not about the children, but that I couldn’t remember. The children were not real; no more real than if I’d read about their deaths in the paper. Their deaths had nothing to do with me. But the missing time — the part of me that I could not retrieve — it was like waking up with a stranger in my bed or finding a tattoo on my arm. It was like waking up and finding Tom gone from my bed, and that moment of confusion when I wondered where he was.
I should speak, I was expected to express my horror. But I could only turn inward, frantically searching for an image, even a glimpse — the corner of a memory that I could drag into the light.
‘Mrs Lankester, are you all right?’
Slowly, Sergeant Caspary came back into focus. I knew what I was supposed to ask. ‘Was it my fault?’
She shifted in the seat, still watching me. ‘There is an investigation, of course. So at this time we cannot conclude fault definitively. Your car hit a bus stand, just outside Arnau village. Three children were waiting. Two died almost instantly, the third was taken to hospital. She died a few hours later.’
I turned away. I kept thinking it must be an elaborate mistake. But if I stepped back, wherever I stepped, the ground was unstable, there was no truth. Tom hadn’t bought the land.
‘We’ll need a full statement from you,’ she said. I heard her push the chair back and stand. ‘We’ll need you to be available for the duration of the investigation.’
I began to cry.
For myself. Pity for myself that I had lost hours, had lost my mind, was hurt and vulnerable and confused. I wanted my husband to fold his arms around me and tell me it would be okay, that Mrs Gassner was mistaken about the land. But he would not.
Sergeant Caspary put her hand on my shoulder. She was touched by my grief. ‘Your driver’s licence is suspended during the investigation.’
Magulu, May 1
A man is trying to lead a large white goat. There is a rope around the goat’s neck, and the goat pulls back against this, matching the man’s determination. But not quite his strength. Inch by inch, the man succeeds in pulling the goat forward.
Why is the goat so stubborn? Does it know that at the end of the journey there is a noose that will haul it upside down in seconds and a knife that will slit its throat? And if it can’t know that, does it sense at least some kind of mute and awful darkness to be avoided at all costs? Is it lore among goats that when you are taken away by yourself with a rope around your neck, you will never return? Perhaps I’m expecting too much of the goat; the goat simply resists the man because it is the nature of goats to resist.
Another man comes and he pushes the goat from behind. But still the goat will not accept defeat. It turns sideways. So now the second man must steer the rear end of the goat, trying to anticipate or counter the determined veering, while the man in the front must maintain the tension on the rope.
Watching this, I’m tempted to think it’s funny, and I catch myself almost smiling. I look around to check if anyone has seen me and I notice Dorothea coming from the direction of the clinic. She’s dressed like a demented Tinkerbell today, a pale green satin dress and a little blonde wig.
‘Friend!’ she cries out and waves. ‘Have you seen Mr Kessy?’
I shake my head.
‘Are you free to walk with me? Perhaps we will find him at the police post.’
Beside her I feel like a giant. Glancing down, I can see the seams of her wig on the crown of her head. We walk toward the roundabout and turn north. A few shops line the road. They sell the same things: packets of soap powder, bottles of water, sodas, Tanzanian gin, cooking oil. There are little cafés, too, and these also sell the same things, fried balls of dough called mandazis, greasy chapattis, sweet, milky tea. I think the ubiquity isn’t so much lack of innovation as lack of alternative. What else is there to sell? What else is there to cook? As Jackson said, the bus comes once a week. I’ve never heard another vehicle.
The police post is a shabby cement building with an office and a cell. No one is here.
‘Where is this man?’ Dorothea says, frowning. ‘Let us wait. Are you free to wait with me?’
The late afternoon light stretches out the shadows and the air cools. We sit on the steps. Down by the roundabout I see the men with the goat resting. The goat bleats with passion, its ribcage visibly expanding and lifting. How it longs for the reassurance of another goat’s answer.
‘Kessy says you walked with him toward the north.’
As if we’d gone on a little hike. ‘Yes. He came to help me.’
‘The children, he told me. I’m sorry for your trouble. They are very bad. Little animals.’
‘So Kessy said.’
She’s looking up at me with a small smile. ‘This word, animals, you don’t like it.’
Tom and I could never trust anyone with frankness. In those high-minded, expatriate circles, a comment made even in dark humor or innocence could be twisted. To call someone ‘an animal’—even one of the perpetrators — would lay you open to charges of racism. It would be a career-ender.
‘Somehow it is shaming?’ Dorothea presses.
‘Yes.’ And this makes her laugh.
‘But they are without shame. Like animals. Do you see? You maybe feel shame for them, but they do not feel shame for themselves. They are strong, because their brothers and sisters who are weak have already died.’ She waves her hand around, encompassing all we see. ‘This is a graveyard. Here are more babies than rocks buried in the soil. It is too crowded. There is no room for shame.’
In my mind’s eye, I see the three children dancing in the road — yes, shameless, weightless, and Kessy saying, ‘Do you think they will become civil?’ They were beating a puppy to death.
‘Friend.’ Dorothea touches my wrist with her fingers. ‘Sometimes you’re going very far away.’
Soon, I think, soon she will start asking questions. Why and how and who. So I turn to her, the party trick of my full attention. ‘Tell me. Tell me about Mr Kessy.’
‘You see that he doesn’t belong here?’
‘He doesn’t belong here.’ Tom called this means of deflection, lobbing. He was proud of my ability to lob our associates. For hours at any given dinner table I was able to deflect, to reveal not a single thing about myself while giving the impression of participating in the conversation.
Dorothea adjusts her wig. ‘Kessy is a bad policeman but a good man. Once he was a good policeman and a bad man. He changed, you see. One day. In only one day, one hour, one minute. For the police, it is not the same in this country. They are corrupt. They must be.’
Possibly, I could say to Dorothea: You’d be surprised at what happens in my country. But which country? My country was Tom. Instead, I simply lean forward, creasing my brow to show her my concentration.
‘In this country,’ she says, ‘the salary of a policeman is too low and the barracks are filthy with very poor plumbing and often no running water.’ The spool of her story unravels, the more she tells, the more she wants to tell.
There are seasons of corruption: twice a year, when school fees are due, and just before Christmas or Eid. The pressure on police to provide for their families is greatest during these times, so they set up roadblocks to check drivers’ licences and find all kinds of things wrong with cars: a cracked mirror, a missing door handle. This is easy to do because the Traffic Act is hundreds of pages long. Even driving in flip-flops is an offense.
‘We plan for these periods,’ she explains. ‘We make sure we never have a lot of money in our wallets, only small bills, because a policeman will accept even two thousand shillings. A policeman does this twenty times a day and he has made enough for one child’s school fees for one term. That is what he must do. Even we, his victims, understand.’