Madagascar

by Stephen Holgate

  I thank him and sip at my tea, trying to remember the date of my hepatitis inoculation.

  The old man’s eyes glow with pleasure. “I have never before received the attention of the American Embassy. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you’ve come.” He takes a swallow of tea, puts the cup down, then lifts it and sips again, like a hummingbird at a flower. Each time he lifts his cup he reveals ragged holes in the elbows of his sweater. “Perhaps you have read the article I published on the United States in my last issue.”

  I had anticipated several ways our conversation might begin. Randrianjana’s frank reference to his article was not among them.

  “Over to you, Miss Burris,” I murmur in English.

  Gloria sets her cup down and puts on her most professional manner. “Yes, Monsieur Randrianjana, that’s exactly why we have come today.” Our host’s smile broadens. He waits for more. “Monsieur Randrianjana, the Embassy was very disturbed by the allegations contained in your article.”

  A glint of concern appears in Randrianjana’s eyes. “Yes, I would think so.”

  Gloria appears knocked off-stride. “Yes, well. It’s particularly disturbing because the story is entirely false.” Gloria waits for a response. When the publisher continues to gaze at her, she adds, “I suspect the source of this story could hardly be called objective.”

  Randrianjana blinks but doesn’t appear to believe that this requires a reply from him.

  I step in. “Mademoiselle Burris is trying to say that the Russian government has been known to plant articles like this in local papers.”

  The publisher nods and smiles. “Yes, that is exactly where I got it.”

  Not much point asking if they paid him. Of course they paid him. “But you made no acknowledgment of the source in your story.”

  “Oh, I would never do that,” the white-haired man says with a little laugh.

  “Why not?”

  “They asked me not to.”

  I look at Gloria. “There. I’ve beaten a confession out of him.”

  Gloria sweeps a stray bang from her forehead. The little publisher’s happy admission has left us both at a loss. “Monsieur Randrianjana, do you ever check the facts on the articles you print?”

  Randrianjana waves shyly at the modest room with its obsolescent printing press. “As you can see, I have no resources for anything like that. I wish I did. Sometimes my wife helps me compose the pages and print them, but other than that…” Still smiling, he says, to me “Besides, who am I to tell anyone what’s true and what’s not?”

  I can’t think of an answer that would make sense to the old fellow. So I ask, “I’m curious, Monsieur Randrianjana, how many copies of your publication do you sell each month?”

  The publisher closes his eyes and takes a considerable time in making the calculation. “Oh, perhaps a hundred. A hundred and fifty if I have a picture. I don’t have the means to print regularly.” He raises his upturned palms, indicating a publisher’s many cares. “I must tell you that if the Russians, and sometimes the French, did not pay for the articles they give me I couldn’t afford to print anything.” He brightens. “Perhaps you have something on this subject you would like me to print. Then we could let the readers decide which story they believe.”

  Gloria closes her eyes and sighs, “Monsieur—”

  “I will give you a discount on your first article.”

  “I’m sorry Monsieur Randrianjana, but we can’t pay you to run articles for us.”

  A look of confusion creases his brow. “But, Mademoiselle, yours is the richest country in the world.”

  I step in like a traffic cop trying to untie this snarl. “Mademoiselle Burris means to say that we don’t work that way. We are not allowed to pay anyone to run articles.”

  “I see.” Randrianjana frowns thoughtfully. “This is admirable, I think.” He holds out his empty hands. “But it is very hard on a poor publisher like me.”

  I can’t help but chuckle. I look to Gloria, expecting her most censorious slow burn. To my surprise, she’s smiling, too.

  The editor sits back in his chair, beaming in the pleasant regard of his newfound friends. “You must have some good stories you could tell me. Something I could print.”

  “All right,” Gloria tells him, “We’ll send a denial of your previous story that you can run. And we have a press release coming out tomorrow on a major book donation to the University of Antananarivo. I’ll see that you are on the distribution list.”

  The man’s smile fades. “But this release is something you will send to everyone. Don’t you have something just for me?” He raises his hand. “I promise I will not charge you.”

  “Well, we’re not in the habit of giving exclusives.” Gloria leans across the table toward the old man. “But there’s a funny story about things up at the prison.”

  “Gloria.” I can see what’s coming and try to put a note of warning in my voice.

  She looks at me like the old fart I no doubt appear to be to her young eyes and goes ahead, relating the story I had told her about the prison guards allowing burglars to roam at night in exchange for a cut of their take. If she sees me squirming with uneasiness, she doesn’t acknowledge it. At the end she only asks, “You won’t mention your source for this?”

  Randrianjana puts his hand over his heart and bows his head. “Oh, I would never do that.”

  Before Gloria can reply, I get up from my chair and, citing pressing business, tell him we need to go. Gloria’s eyebrows rise in surprise, but she pushes back from the table and we make our goodbyes.

  Randrianjana appears sorry to see us go. He accompanies us to the door, inviting us to return anytime he runs an article by the Russians.

  “We just might,” Gloria assures him.

  “I would be so pleased. Goodbye for now.” He stands in the doorway, smiling and waving, as we retreat down his walkway.

  As we get to the car, I tell her, “You didn’t have to do that.” She can see I’m sore.

  “Do what?”

  “Ingratiate yourself. Tell him that story. If I’d known you were going to spread it around I wouldn’t have told it to you.”

  “Is there something eating you, Robert? I mean, what’s the big deal? He’d been fair with us and I figured we could give him something in return.”

  “You’re not the spokesman for the Malagasy government. It’s not your job to tell him stuff like that.”

  “For crying out loud, Robert, you’re not my daddy.”

  “I’m not your—? Well, thank God for small favors.”

  “I still don’t see what the big deal is. I—”

  “If I’d have let you go another minute, you’d have started talking about Walt Sackett, violating the regs on his privacy.”

  “Well, I didn’t, okay? And I wasn’t going to.” Now she’s hot. “Look, he said he wouldn’t mention his source. We gave him a story. And now he owes us one.”

  “Well, just see that you don’t start breaking all the regs at these things.”

  Gloria puts her hand over her heart and bows her head. “Oh, I would never do that.”

  13

  I learned long ago that if you dread something sufficiently it usually turns out all right. I remind myself of this as I drive to yet another evening reception, this one at the French ambassador’s residence to greet the French Embassy’s newly arrived number two. Once again, I’ll mingle with the usual circle of invitees and have the usual dull conversations regarding the customary range of superficial topics. Did I mention that the life of a diplomat is one of adventure and romance?

  I greet Ambassador Herr, who actually enjoys these things, then go in search of Marc Forestier, my counterpart at the French embassy, an ambitious young diplomat at least a dozen years my junior. While we nibble at pâté and tiny pickles, I volunteer some hearsay on opposition party machinations, tidbits that carry value only because government restrictions on the press have raised gossip to the level of valuable intelligence. In
return, I ask him about disturbances in the hinterlands, in part to see how much the French Embassy knows, in part fishing for any indication that the troubles have spread beyond the coast. Forestier plays it close, which is fair enough. I've given him little and can’t expect much in return.

  By eight-thirty the reception line has played out. A junior officer sticks his head out the door and tells the Ambassador that no further guests are in sight. Alain Jovert, a tall, graying Frenchman of youthful manner, gives the high sign to a couple of servants, who roll back the carpet in the large salon. With a playful skip, he crosses to the stereo and replaces the tasteful Debussy with some tropical dance music, then jumps into the middle of the room and beckons to his wife, a dark-eyed Parisenne, twenty years his junior, who takes his hand and begins to dance with the lambent grace of a candle flame.

  For a moment, the assembled ministry officials, businessmen and diplomats cast uncertain looks at each other. Then, with a collective laugh, they follow their host onto the dance floor. The men loosen their ties and the women kick off their heels to dance in their stocking feet. The new French diplomat who is ostensibly the guest of honor—I've already forgotten his name—stands awkwardly to one side, a birthday boy who has found his party hijacked by guests more popular than himself.

  The Minister of Health, a massive and amiable fellow, decorously asks a dance of Ambassador Herr, who blinks in surprise, then laughs and accompanies him onto the floor, where she breaks out a vintage but serviceable Twist.

  Her husband, Max, a former car dealer a few years on the far side of seventy, takes a chair and a Vodka Collins. “Hey, Robert,” he calls, “C’mon over here and talk to me. We embassy wives get ignored at these things.”

  I pour myself another fruit juice and walk over to chat.

  “So, young fella,” he says to me, “what are you diplomats up to this evening?”

  “Just the usual, Max, sniffing each other’s behinds and taking our turn pissing on the corners of the walls. How about you?”

  “I’m enjoying myself e-normously. Watching people go by, sizin’ ’em up.” He laughs. “We old guys take our pleasures quietly, eh?” He regards the crowded dance floor. “I look at ’em and think about what kind of car I’d try to sell ’em back home. See that big fella over there dancing with my wife? Cadillac, all the way. To close the deal, I’d tell him the one he’s looking at is something we ordered for someone else, but I’d be willing to sell it to him instead. He’d love that.” Max takes a sip of his drink and savors his imagined duplicity.

  Glass in hand, I indicate a short, irritable-seeming man squeezing between dancing couples as he makes his way across the room. “How about this guy here?”

  “Him? He’ll kick the tires, won’t accept your best price, accuse you of cheating him, and walk away mad.” Max raises his eyebrows. “Hey, I’d better shut up, he’s headed this way.”

  “Mr. Herr, good evening.” Roland Rabary, gin and tonic in hand, smiles his homely smile. “Ah, Robert, I was at the Zebu Room last night. I didn’t see you.”

  I squeeze the glass in my hand until I think it might break. “No, you didn’t.”

  “Your losses there are making you a folk hero.”

  I turn to the Ambassador’s husband, hoping rumors of his hearing difficulties are true. “Sorry, Max, but I gotta get to work.”

  I grip Rabary’s skinny bicep and pull him toward a corner of the room. “You win again at Picard’s last night?” I ask between clenched teeth. “A real shame they can’t pay you in dollars.”

  The Malagasy arches a brow. “Ah, friend Picard has been indiscreet.” He tries to straighten his tie, but I hold his arm tightly in place.

  “What is it you have on him? This isn’t some routine shakedown for a stamp on a piece of paper. What’s up?”

  “As usual, Robert, when you don’t understand something you lumber around saying foolish things. You really must stop before you damage your reputation.”

  “What reputation?” I press my fingers deeper into the Malagasy official’s arm. “But if you ever again mention the Zebu Room to me in front of another American, I’ll throw my drink in your face. Believe me, you won’t look good with papaya juice dripping off your chin.”

  Rabary cringes, but when I don't toss the drink at him he tries to regain his bland demeanor. “Brother Picard has been very indiscreet indeed.”

  “That’s right. This is a small town in a lot of ways, and after a while the only thing we have to talk about is each other.” I release Rabary’s arm. “Smile, Roland, people are beginning to look over here. Just smile. Then walk away.”

  It's late by the time Monsieur Razafy opens the gate for me, offering a nod that looks even more ironic than usual. I tell myself that after my run-in with Rabary I'm simply reading my own folly in the faces of other people.

  I go upstairs and have started to undress when I hear a noise near the bed. Real? Imagined? I freeze.

  “Who’s there?” I ask.

  Then a voice, soft, low: “Don’t turn on the light. It will hurt my eyes.”

  “Good God, you nearly gave me a heart attack.” I catch a hint of familiar perfume in the dark room. “Nirina.” Why do I want to say her name like that? I try to walk it back, sound tough. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “I flew over your wall. I am a witch.”

  That would explain a lot. For she is no longer the young thoughtful woman I talked to in the car near Tamatave. I can tell by her voice—by the fact that she has come at all—that she is playing the wanton girl of my dreams. I know I should be asking myself why, but right now I don't really care. And I know she's counting on that.

  “You really know how to put the ‘mad’ in Madagascar, don’t you?”

  “I told you. I’ve become a tromba woman.”

  Now I understand the odd look I got from Razafy. She must have come to the gate and told him she was expected. He would have let her in without question. A woman’s beauty is all the passport she needs.

  I take one try at doing what I know I should do if I have any sense. “Great,” I tell her. “Now get your tromba ass out of my bed and go home.”

  “You’re not going to throw me out, are you?”

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t got any clothes on.”

  I allow a fatal pause before saying, “I don’t care.”

  “I think you do.”

  I search her voice for the false smile, the feigned desire. I'm sure I've heard them, then sure I haven't, then absolutely certain I don't give a damn. Caught between what I feared and what I desire, anger is the easiest emotion.

  “I’m getting tired of you stalking me, Nirina. Whatever it is you think you want from me—”

  “Ah, but it is you who stalks me, isn’t it? In your mind?” The sound of her voice gives me a shiver. “Tell me, how many times have you thought of touching me, of having me here, in your bed?”

  I can't shake my head hard enough to get rid of the answer to that one. “What do you want?”

  “The same thing you want—a life I can call my own in a place I am meant to be.”

  “That’s fine with me. What’s keeping you from it?”

  “The same thing that is stopping you—the life I have here.”

  “You really are a witch aren’t you?”

  “No. It’s that you are in a place so foreign to you that everything seems like dark magic.”

  I recall Adrianansoa, the Malagasy professor, telling me that Madagascar is the land where, the more fantastic the possibility, the more imperative that it come to pass.

  I feel the sweat on my skin, and feel the distance between me and the bed shrinking, as if it's crawling across the room toward me. Nirina wants something from me and knows the world’s oldest way to get it. Though I can see at least that much and understand the need to resist, the world’s oldest impulse spurs me forward. I'm still telling myself not to give in as I slide into the sheets beside her. I feel the warmth of her bare t
high against me and her long silky hair brushing my arm.

  I kiss her on the mouth and she slides over me, pushing my shoulders against the bed with both hands, her weight comfortable, fitting perfectly against me. “There,” she says, “now you’ve caught me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just. This.”

  “Ahh …”

  “You don’t mind? Like this?” Her dim outline hovers over me.

  “Not unless … ah …the neighborhood kids come in … and start calling me a sissy.”

  Her laugh is like blossoms falling from a tree. Whatever it is she wants, I'd give it to her just to hear her laugh again. The world outside of my bedroom ceases to exist. She moves against me, rocking back and forth until I don't care about anything.

  Afterwards, lying in the dark, feeling complete for the first time in months, I hear her say, “Monsieur Knott?”

  “Mnmnh.”

  “I must find a way to get Walt out of prison.”

  There it is. The price. I suppose I should tell her she doesn't need to do this to get my help. I’d do it anyway. But I decide I can bring that up later.

  She leans over me and her hair falls over my face. “There is someone I can talk to. A man who can get him out of prison, but I need dollars.”

  “What? Who can get him out?”

  “I can’t tell you who. He wants four thousand dollars.”

  “Four thousand dollars? Doesn’t anyone believe in the franc anymore?”

  “Can you get it for me? Can you do this for me? For Walt?”

  Her hand slides between my legs and up my thigh, and I have a glimmer of how weak I am at that moment. I tell her, “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “That’s good. So good. Lean back.”

  Swirling trails of cigarette smoke and cheap cologne burn my eyes as I look over the Zebu Room. Tonight the buzz of the gamblers’ voices carries the sinister menace of bees confined in a too-small hive.

  “Tonic water and ice,” I tell the barman, who knew me as a scotch and soda man and has lost interest in me since I gave it up.