A Dancer In the Dust

by Thomas H. Cook

  The next village down Tumasi Road was little more than a collection of huts. It was called Hanuma, and it was here I’d expected to find Martine when I’d gone in search of her twenty years before. In those days, it had been a village alive with children, where Martine was able to stop, trade her shells for food or water, perhaps camp for the night. It had always been an exceptionally friendly village as well, with much singing and dancing and good fellowship. Once welcomed as a guest, she would have been safe there.

  I’d hoped to find Martine still in Hanuma when I’d arrived there late that afternoon. As expected, I’d found the villagers at their routine labors, their chief stretched out on the ground, very much the patriarch, with several women in attendance and two young men intently focused on everything he said.

  “I’m looking for a white woman,” I said. Then, with a strange ache of absolute recognition and acceptance, I added, “But Lubandan.”

  The chief turned to one of the young men and spoke to him in a language I didn’t recognize.

  “I speak English,” the young man said. “Come. I will ask about this woman.”

  I followed him as he moved about the village, inquiring if anyone had seen a white woman. No one had, so it seemed clear that Martine had not made it as far as Hanuma, which could only mean that at some point she had decided to leave the road and head overland toward Rupala.

  This would vastly decrease her risk, and because of that, I felt great relief at the thought of her moving across the savanna rather than so visibly and provocatively down Tumasi Road. On the savanna the Lutusi would receive her as a guest, give her food and let her camp with them at night. Within three days she would be in Rupala, and I’d already decided that I would drive there, wait for her, and then, if she would allow me, bring her back to her farm, where, I hoped, Fareem’s anger would have subsided.

  So I was in a less fearful state of mind by the time the young man escorted me back to my Land Cruiser. No one had seen Martine, and this was good news.

  At that point, I’d planned to return to Tumasi, both convinced and relieved that Martine had decided not to take the far more dangerously exposed open road and was now walking overland toward Rupala.

  “Thank you,” I said to the young man, then turned back toward the Land Crusier, where, in the distance, I saw a woman moving toward us. She was walking slowly, in the way of someone exhausted, which suggested that she had been on the road for a long time, and thus might have encountered Martine.

  We both approached her, and as we did so, her expression grew apprehensive, like one expecting harm. The young man spoke to her in a language I didn’t understand.

  “She is nervous because she has seen bad signs,” he told me. “They are very superstitious, her people, always looking for signs.”

  “What did she see?”

  “Shells,” he answered, “but not from the water. Made of wood. That is why she thought they were bad signs.” He could see that this information had thrown a shadow over me. “She thinks they were put there to trap her. That they were meant to lure her out into the bush. For this reason, she did not leave the road.”

  “Did you see a woman?” I asked.

  The young man turned to the woman, spoke to her, received her response, then looked at me. “She saw only the shells.”

  Only the shells.

  There are moments in life when you are forced to accept what De Quincey called “the lurking consciousness” of a terrifying truth, moments when you know that something has gone catastrophically wrong, and that you were an instrument of that wrong. Such had been that instant for me.

  I’d recalled that terrible moment many times during the twenty years that had passed since then, but never more vividly than when I reached the place on Tumasi Road where I’d brought the Land Cruiser to a halt at the spot where the woman had seen Martine’s shells. For that reason, only the pull of the macabre would have made me stop again and head out into the bush, as I had done on that heartbreaking afternoon. And so I didn’t stop, but instead walked on through the morning mist, then on through the midday heat, and finally through the cool of approaching evening, when at last I reached Tumasi.

  The entire village was in the same state of disrepair as Kinisa, save for a tall storm fence enclosure that had been erected near the road. It was here, I suspected, that whatever was valuable had to be kept in order to prevent its being looted. But there was nothing inside the fence, and beside it only a metal pipe that rose about six feet, then curled over in a spout.

  To my immense surprise, Ufala, now impossibly old and shriveled, sat at a roadside stand not far from the fence. She was selling cassava and was obviously amazed to see a white man. But as I drew near, she recognized me, though with what level of suspicion or dread I could not imagine.

  “It’s been a long time,” I said.

  I could see that, like Bisara before her, Ufala was trying to decide if I could be trusted. And she was right to be cautious, for in a world of such dire risk, the most dangerous risk of all is the one it takes to trust someone else.

  “I’ve come to talk to you about Seso,” I said. “I’m sure you remember him.”

  Ufala nodded.

  “He was murdered in New York City three months ago,” I added.

  Ufala stared at me silently, but I could see a tension building behind her eyes. Everything in life brought her trouble, and surely I was no different from the rest. But she had always been one to calculate the risks, then take the road least pitted with them, and I had little doubt that she was doing that this very moment.

  “You remember that Seso was Lutusi,” I said.

  She nodded again, but remained silent.

  “And when the Lutusi have something valuable to trade, they leave it with someone they trust,” I continued. “Seso had something valuable to trade, and I think he left it with you.”

  I had started thinking this the moment I’d learned that Seso had not left whatever it was he had for Bill Hammond with Bisara. So there had to be someone else. It could have been anyone, of course, but surely Seso would have known that any close associate would have fallen under suspicion, and that for that reason it would be less risky to give it to a more distant acquaintance, and even better to leave it with a woman, whom no man would suspect of being trustworthy. If this was true, I reasoned, then Seso might possibly have left it with Ufala. It was a long shot, I knew, but it was the only shot I had.

  I told Ufala all of this, though it was difficult to tell how much of it she understood. She was very, very old, after all, and suspicious by nature. Nor did I have anything to offer her, save what suddenly occurred to me—a threat.

  “If you have what Seso gave you,” I warned her, “some men are going to come here and they are going to do bad things to you.”

  Ufala remained silent.

  “Seso is dead, and, besides, you don’t owe him anything,” I told her. “Why take a chance on being hurt?”

  I couldn’t tell if she believed any of what I’d told her, or even cared, since it was possible that Seso had never given her anything. But I had come all this way on unproven suppositions, so why not follow the road I’d taken to its end.

  And so I waited. For a long time, Ufala stared at me in that inert posture I remembered from so many years before. Then, as if an answer had come to her in the wind, she rose and waved me to follow her. We walked through the old market, which was stirring a bit, past the little house in which I’d lived and worked, now filled with stacks of cassava and kindling. I saw again the stalls, the produce, the small milling crowds. I thought that a few of the villagers recognized me, but I wasn’t sure. I had changed a great deal since then, grown older and grayer, and with a far less hopeful sparkle in my eyes.

  At the far end of the village, we came to a hut. Ufala pointed to it, then to herself.

  “Yours,” I said.

  She nodded, then bent down and went inside.

  Waiting outside her hut, I could smell the various grains
of the region, millet and fonio and teff. In the absence of aid, beyond the pressures of the global market, the people of Tumasi had returned to their ancient grains.

  When Ufala emerged again, she was carrying a small sack. She glanced at the pots that lay about the fire pit just beyond the entrance, one of which I recognized as having once been Martine’s.

  When she saw that I recognized it, she said, “Men bring her back and put her on fire. They do this in the field behind her house. And when she burn up, they kick around the ashes.”

  Such was the product of your error, the Ancient Chorus sang to me, yours and yours alone.

  I abruptly felt like Actaeon, the hunter, who turned into a deer and was set upon and torn apart by his own ravenous dogs. But such soul-lacerating thoughts were more than I could afford. Or at least more than Fareem could afford. I had come to save him, not condemn myself, and so I forcefully returned to my purpose.

  I nodded toward the sack that dangled from Ufala’s hand.

  “Is that what Seso gave you?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I took the sack from her, reached into it, and found a sealed plastic bag. The plastic was thick and almost opaque, so that I got only a glimpse of what was inside, a thin envelope stamped with the crossed pangas of Mafumi’s old regime.

  “Thank you,” I said to Ufala.

  I turned to leave, and once again noticed the storm fence that had been erected at the entrance to the village.

  “The fence looks new,” I said as I turned back toward Ufala. “What’s it for?”

  “Lutusi children,” Ufala answered. “The trucks bring them here to drink and wash, then they take them to Rupala.”

  “Trucks take them to Rupala?” I asked “Why?”

  Ufala shrugged. It had never been her habit to ask questions.

  It wasn’t until I’d gotten back to the road, slumped down in a small area of shade, and drawn out the contents of the envelope that it had been revealed suddenly, revealed in the way an image in a camera abruptly comes to sparkling focus, allowing me in that shattering instant to understand the hope Seso had had for Lubanda, and in just what risky, desperate way it had also been Martine’s.

  Rupala, 1:47 P.M.

  The children press in upon us as Fareem escorts me through the camp that now covers Independence Square.

  “Most of these children are Lutusi,” Fareem informs me.

  “A noble people, but with a few strange customs,” I tell him. “When they had something valuable to offer, they never brought it with them to the market.”

  Fareem smiles as if his spirit is lifted by a sweet memory. “That is true. They left it with someone they trusted. Martine often traded for things she’d never seen.”

  He kneels down and the children tighten around him. He cradles them in his arms, and almost immediately one of his aides steps forward and takes a picture.

  “I did that once, remember?” I say as Fareem rises. “Took pictures of a president with children on his lap.”

  “President Dasai, yes,” Fareem says. “We all went up north.” He appears to recall just how risky that trip had been. “Dasai was brave, you have to give him that.”

  “Unfortunately, courage is never enough,” I remind him. “One has to be aware of traitors behind the curtain.”

  Fareem nods sagely, a man who has learned this lesson well during his years of opposing Mafumi as comrade after comrade fell. “Yes, it is important to know who’s at your back.”

  I think of Nulli Beyani, the shadows within which he may yet lurk. “Do you know who is at your back, Fareem?”

  “I am watchful, if that is what you mean.”

  I think of my mission, the steps that have led me back to Lubanda once again, the report I’d given Bill after my return to New York, the way he’d stared bleakly at the photograph I’d given him, and which had surely been what Seso had wanted him to see. After that, we’d agreed on what should be done next, and on the fact that this action, like the ones before it, was fraught with risk, as all things human are, a decision whose consequences would be small for us, but great for Lubanda, and yet worth risking.

  I glance about the camp and think of Seso’s son, how his death must have severed that lonely man from his last hold on earth, set him to take the risk he took, knowing, as he always had, that the color of his skin would not protect him from murder, the fantasy of Negritude that had orphaned Martine no less a myth in his last hour, as the blows rained down upon his feet, than it had ever been.

  Fareem sees some part of this playing in my mind, though he cannot know its terrible detail, and so he says, “We’re doing our best to deal with the problem of Lubanda’s orphans, but, as you can see, their numbers are quite overwhelming at the moment.”

  With that, he drapes his long arm over my shoulder. “Come, Ray, let’s go now.”

  We walk back to the car and get in.

  “Food and shelter are in short supply,” he says. “Once these are secured, we can begin the process of returning these children to their homes.”

  We are moving swiftly now, down one of Rupala’s rocky roads. The tumbledown city spreads out in all directions, looking like nothing so much as a vast pile of worthless goods, the remnants of an old largesse, a landscape littered with the spare parts of things that should perhaps never have been brought here in the first place, the shoddy treasure Mafumi came to seize.

  “Everything is in disrepair,” Fareem tells me when he notices me staring out the window. “Mafumi did nothing to maintain the infrastructure.”

  “He was waiting,” I tell Fareem.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Waiting for aid,” I answer. “When people expect it, they wait, and so they don’t initiate anything.”

  Fareem is clearly troubled by my remark. “Is that what the think tanks believe now?”

  “No, it’s what Martine believed,” I answer. “She wanted Lubandans to be themselves, a people and a place with their own pace and character, one that shouldn’t be distorted by foreigners.”

  “Ah, yes,” Fareem says with a look that is surprisingly dismissive of the argument made in Martine’s Open Letter. “But does it distort a people to give them running water, electricity?”

  “Martine had neither,” I remind him. “And ‘give’ is the operative word.”

  Fareem’s eyes narrow somewhat, but he says nothing.

  “I remember how she once positioned the hand of the giver over the hand of the receiver,” I add. “The receiver’s hand just waits for something to be dropped into it.” I let this latest remark hang in the air between us, then add significantly, “Martine wanted to save Lubanda from people like me.”

  Fareem turns from me and stares out the window. He says nothing more until we reach the Presidential Residence, but I can feel the heat from his relentlessly calculating brain.

  When the car pulls up to the Presidential Residence, he turns to me, and I see a great upheaval in his eyes. “I did love her, Ray,” he says with great sincerity. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “What wasn’t easy?”

  He seems taken aback by the question. “What happened on Tumasi Road. It wasn’t easy for me to go on after that.”

  “You took a great risk,” I remind him. “Leaving Lubanda, going to Europe. Coming back is an even greater one.”

  “Why?”

  I draw in a long, hard breath. “Because you never know who’s at your back. Someone you think a friend or a comrade in arms, but who is actually a traitor.”

  Fareem looks at me curiously, but with the intensity of old. “I trust you have brought something other than suspicion to Lubanda,” he says with a quick glance at my briefcase.

  “I have brought nothing but hope to Lubanda,” I assure him.

  With that assurance, Fareem opens the door and I follow him out into the bright sunlight. The new flag waves in the hot air as we mount the stairs, and I once more feel the weight of what I carry in my briefcase, the terrible risk that
in this, too, I may be wrong. Still, I can see no other way, dark and unknowable as this way surely is.

  “I have a private office,” Fareem tells me. “Much smaller than the grand one where you waited. Let’s go there. We can talk without fear of being heard.”

  “Is that one of your fears?” I ask him.

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “So you have complete trust in those around you?”

  He nods. “Of course. That is important, don’t you think?”

  “I do, yes,” I tell him. “Perhaps the most important thing of all. Without it, what is there?”

  “Emptiness,” he says.

  “And fear,” I add. “You are never afraid, Fareem?”

  “Of what?” Fareem asks.

  “That your country might not love you back,” I answer starkly.

  Fareem stops short, as if by the unexpected warning of a peril equally unexpected.

  “No,” he says confidently, though it seems to me an uncertain confidence because he knows that Lubandans, like most mortals, are limited in their judgment but unlimited in their violence, easy to fool, frighten, and enrage.

  With that same uneasiness, he turns and we head down a long corridor festooned with the various artifacts of the former regime: portraits of Mafumi posed before iconic places he had never been, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower, and Mafumi himself, the poster child for idiocy.

  “You’re keeping all this?” I ask.

  “We plan to build a memorial to Mafumi’s victims,” Fareem informs me. “There is to be a museum, and these things will be exhibited there.” He smiles. “Along with what he thought was Hitler’s pipe. Of course, Hitler did not smoke.” He shakes his head at the sheer lunacy on display before him. “Mafumi spent millions on such fake artifacts. Paintings without provenance. A piece of the moon. Sand from Mars.”

  We are nearing the end of the corridor.