Esmer follows the bait. “It’s gone quiet. The cops say they’ve arrested the ringleaders. And they’re telling everyone it was the foreigners who stirred them up.”
“And then the foreigners tried to deflect suspicion from themselves by ransacking their own houses?”
Esmer produces a lopsided grin. “The authorities hope no one wants to think about it too closely.”
“What happens next?”
“That’s what I’m asking my contacts over in the Interior Ministry. They’re telling me it’s all over.”
“You believe that?”
“Nah. These Interior guys are like some half-assed fire department, beating out embers on the lawn while the house burns down in front of them. This ain’t over yet. You got a gun?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Some of the gangs have been wearing a kind of magic vest they think can stop bullets. They go off to rob some house. The owner comes out with a gun. But he doesn’t really want to kill anyone, so he fires over their heads. And these guys figure the vests work. Now they’re not afraid of anything.”
I raise my eyebrows to show I’m impressed.
Esmer continues, “Anyway, I’ve got a couple of extra pistols. Glocks. Military issue. Enough stopping power to knock Godzilla back six feet.”
“Even if he had one of those magic vests on?”
Esmer smiles. He loves this kind of talk and adopts his Bogart twitch. “Look, Bob, if trouble starts heading this way, come over to the house and I’ll lend you some heat. You’ll thank me later.”
“I’ll keep this in mind.” I walk away, happy to have ended the conversation on something other than the Zebu Room.
It takes half the morning to get through to Rabary.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what this is about,” I tell him by way of greeting. The line is silent so long I think it’s gone dead.
“All right, I won’t,” Rabary finally replies. Clearly, he doesn’t want to talk with me any more than I want to talk with him.
“How’s this story going over with the Ministry?”
“Like the lead balloon.”
I can see Rabary smiling to himself for coming up with the idiomatic expression.
“Is the Foreign Minister going to call the Ambassador on the carpet?”
Another long pause. I love overloading Rabary’s circuits with a direct question.
“Look, Robert, we know you weren’t the source on this story. Clearly, the Russians have this Randrianjana fellow in their pocket and they’ve given him something to embarrass the United States so that—What was that, Robert?”
“Nothing.”
“If you think this is funny…”
“No, no, just clearing my throat.” It should have occurred to me that no one at the ministry would think to take the article at face value.
Rabary continues. “We’re only trying to figure out if the real target was you or us. Who are they trying to embarrass?”
A pot this juicy has to be stirred. I lean back in my chair, enjoying myself in spite of everything. “Hey, maybe it was aimed at both of us. They figured your government and mine might be getting too cozy. Planted this story to wedge us apart.”
“Yes,” Rabary says, “Exactly the thought here. But who? Everyone here believes it’s the Russians. But, frankly, I think it might be the French.”
“Yeah, sounds just like ’em, the bastards. What happens next?”
“From us?” Rabary asks. “Nothing.”
“That’s generally the wisest course.”
“The President is very angry. Every burglary victim in the city is demanding compensation from the government.”
“Hey, maybe he could reimburse them from his Swiss bank account.”
Rabary sighs and hangs up.
I’m seeing Jacques at the Zebu Club so often I’m afraid people will think we’re dating. In fact, though, the meetings are so quick I can’t imagine anyone notices. At least that’s my hope. Our handoffs would be even quicker but Jacques must relay increasingly impatient messages from Picard. Shorn of their anger, puzzlement, and implied threats, they boil down to the question of why I’m I bringing him so few dollars for so many francs.
I tell him the rates have changed, fees have increased, the embassy is low on dollars, the transit of Venus has left Mars in the house of Sagittarius. I tell him I have to hold some francs back to keep from looking suspicious. I tell him anything but the truth, which is that I’m giving a big hunk of every transaction to Nirina so she can free Walt Sackett.
My litany of excuses and pleading grows thinner with every meeting. Whatever friendly relationship I might once have enjoyed with Jacques I destroyed when I stiff-armed past him to run down the stairs to Picard’s apartment that night. Now he adds his own bit of menace to Picard’s importunings. “The Colonel’s patience with you is at an end.”
“What patience? He’s been nagging me about this since day one. Tell him to back off or the well runs dry.”
Who am I kidding? Certainly not Jacques. He sees my bluff for what it is, an act of defiance about as empty as a chicken flipping off the fox as it comes in for the kill. His glower turns a shade heavier. “The Colonel reads the papers. He knows the official rate. You have a week to pay him in full for all the cash he’s given you.”
“Hey, if he’s going to believe everything he reads in the papers….”
I swear I can hear myself sweat.
Just in case I wasn’t listening, he repeats, “A week.”
I see the set of Jacques’ face and don’t have to ask “Or what?” Maurice may claim he’s out of practice but, as he said himself, he’s killed men for a lot less than not paying their dues.
I’m shaking by the time I get to my car.
16
I wake from a dream about Walt Sackett so vivid in detail and so obscure in meaning that I feel disoriented. The dark forms around me became gradually clear. Yes, I’m lying in my own bed. Beside me, Nirina breathes slowly in her sleep.
I never know when she will come. When she does, she comes alone and always at night. She seldom stays more than a few minutes, only long enough to take from me the dollars I’m stealing from Picard so she can buy Walt Sackett’s freedom.
Whatever her intent, the nature of our brief transactions feels like an unholy middle ground between extortion and the harlot’s trade, though in fact, after that first visit, she has kept me not only figuratively but literally at arm’s length. I tell myself that she’s only bruised my male pride by hammering home how utterly resistible I am. Truthfully, it’s more than that. I can live without the girl I found in my bed that night, the one who walked away from me the next morning. But I long for the vulnerable young woman who spoke to me with such honesty in the car near Tamatave, the one who could make me desire the thing I always avoid, a real connection.
Not that I have much to worry about on that score. She understands that I want Walt out of jail as much as she does. She doesn’t really need to offer me anything else. Ours is a strictly business relationship—or was, until this evening.
She hardly said a word when she arrived last night. When she spoke she avoided my eyes. When she finally looked at me, I saw such pain, such need that, in a staggering failure of imagination, I held out my hand and led her upstairs.
We struggled in bed like animals, panting and groaning and crying out. The moment we found our release we separated, dazed and unhappy.
Afterward, I hand her the money. At first she tells me to put it in the pocket of her dress, then asks to count it first. “A hundred and sixty dollars? That’s it?”
“Admin’s watching me. I can’t cash big bundles anymore.”
“And Monsieur Picard is happy with this?”
“No, he’s not happy with this. I keep telling him this is all I can do, but he thinks I’m holding back on him.”
“You are.”
“You think I don’t know it?” I’m shouting. “How about the guy you say yo
u’re bribing? Can’t you delay him? What’s the hurry?”
“He has his own needs. He tells me he needs it now.”
“Who’s it for? Who do you have on the hook? You’ve never told me.”
“You don’t need to know.”
I’ve short-changed Picard nearly four thousand dollars, telling myself that I’ll have plenty of time later to think of how I’ll deal with the Frenchman. “Later” has come, and I haven’t got a clue.
Well, what’s he going to do about it, kill me?
Yes.
I look at the clock. It’s only ten. I’d thought it was the middle of the night. Without waking Nirina, I slip from the coil of twisted sheets, put on my robe and go downstairs. I dial the phone in the dark and wait out the long pause while the signal travels halfway around the world. If I had any sense, I’d just call Christine on her cell phone and avoid the risk of my ex or her new husband picking up. Of course, if I had any sense I wouldn’t be in my present fix.
Over the static in the line, I hear the ring, imagine it reverberating off the cold tile of the kitchen thousands of miles away, ringing from the small table near the front door, disturbing the peace of the upstairs bedroom, where my former wife lies every night with another man. I realize it’s late morning back there and Christine is at school, the adults at work. My call rings in an empty house.
I let it ring a little longer, loopily imagining that I’m putting down layers of sound that might still be pulsing when Christine comes home and she’ll know I called, that I was thinking about her before I was murdered.
I hang up, go upstairs, and climb back into bed.
“Where have you been?” Nirina asks, lying on her side, her back to me.
“Downstairs.”
“You were trying to call your daughter.”
“When did I ever tell you about her?”
“I knew.”
“You’ve added clairvoyance to your witching skills?”
“Is that what you tell yourself? That I am holding you through sorcery?”
“You’re going to tell me it’s love?”
She won’t face me. “There is no gain in loving you, only loss. If I had thought I could love you that way, I would never have done this.”
“You just jump into bed with me now and then to keep me under control.”
“Monsieur Knott—” She says it like a school teacher bringing a miscreant boy to attention.
“I think you can go ahead and call me Robert by now.”
“Monsieur Knott, I do this for love—as you do.”
“Me? Are you kidding? I love no one.” I hear the note of self-pity in my voice and despise myself for it.
“I almost wish it were true, but you are full of love. For your daughter. For Walt. For Samuel the driver. For Miss Gloria. For the woman from the embassy you speak of, the one who slept here before me. But you stay at a distance from all of them because you are afraid.”
I think about telling her to shut up.
With a graveyard laugh, she adds, “You think you’re wicked, but you are only frightened and cynical. And cynicism is only another way of being naive.”
“You’re too damn smart for someone your age.”
“I’m Malagasy. I am thousands of years old.”
“And I’m just lucky enough to get you when you’re only—” I thought for a moment I wanted to guess her age, but suddenly realize I don’t.
“You and I have each swallowed a stone.” She says it so quietly I can barely hear her.
“Sorry?”
“A Malagasy proverb. We have each taken on problems too big for us.”
The clarity of her judgment irritates me. “I can take care of my own problems. What about you? What happens if you manage to leave Madagascar with Walt and get to the U.S.? Do you really think everything will be just fine after that?”
“I don’t know. I’m only sure that I need to go. Perhaps I’ll be more alive. Perhaps I’ll begin to die.” She hugs her pillow like a life jacket. “Do you believe in fairy tales?”
“Of course not.”
“You should. They show the world we believe in, deep down. In your Western fairy tales there is always a young man leaving home to seek his fortune. He slays the monster, finds the hidden treasure, marries the beautiful princess. In ours, a young man leaves home and is eaten by a magic tree, or his brothers die because he is not there to protect them, or he marries a woman, brings her back home to his village, and she is murdered by his parents.”
“You’re saying nothing good comes of leaving home.”
“Of changing anything.”
“But you’re going to do it anyway.”
“Yes. And I’ll have to make this journey without my family. Or maybe I will find that they’re always with me, no matter where I go—my brothers, my mother.”
Do I love her? I honestly don’t know. But I admire the hell out of her. She’s got more courage than I’ve ever dreamed of having. “Your father too? He’ll be with you?”
She lets go of her pillow and turns onto her back, staring at the ceiling.
The soft parting of her lips before she speaks stirs a nerve deep inside me. “My father is dead. It was a week ago.”
All the usual words of condolence demand to be said, but I can’t bring myself to say them. I’ve been such a phony she wouldn’t believe me.
“So it will be that much easier to leave now,” I tell her.
Did she laugh, or sob?
“Walt thinks you’re in love with him.” She says nothing. “What will you do when you get him out of prison? He’ll stay with you here in Antananarivo?” I can barely discern the shake of her head. “All right. When you spring him—if you spring him—he can stay here with me a few days. The embassy will lend him the money to get a plane ticket home.” She stares at the ceiling. I bore in. “And I’ll bet you think you’re going with him when he leaves for America. You’re going to live with him there.”
It takes her a long time, but finally she speaks. “I know he has no money. At one point, yes, I thought he was wealthy and would help me. I was going to go to America with him. And when I got there I was going to leave him and find Bud.”
“Bud!?” The image of the red-headed Marine pops into my mind like the clown from a jack-in-the-box. She has got to be shitting me. That jarhead? “Bud!”
“He’s the most kind and gentle man I have ever met. He would let me be who I need to be.”
“Bud?” Somehow I can live with the idea of her being let down by Walt, or me, but not with the notion of her being happy with Bud. “Look, tell me—now—who’s the money going to? My guess is that you’re being fleeced by some low-grade flunky who’ll just pocket the money and take off to Paris with it. I don’t even want to think about how dumb—” Paris. It hits me like a hammer which is what I apparently need in order to see the obvious. “It’s Roland Rabary, isn’t it?” It’s all coming clear. “But he doesn’t know it’s coming from me. Doesn’t know that we’re stealing from Picard to pay him.” I try to laugh, but I’m too shocked to pull it off. “How in the hell do you know Rabary? Of course, you seem to know any man who might come in handy when you need—”
“He’s from Tamatave.”
“He’s what?”
“From Tamatave. He was a provincial official there.”
“Just tell me if I’ve got this straight—yes or no. You want to spring Walt, even if he can’t take you to America. And Rabary needs dollars to bribe himself into that posting in Paris. Otherwise, you could have just fucked him to get Walt out of prison instead of fucking me.”
I finally get what I’ve been looking for all along. Her slap catches me hard enough to make my ears ring. And hard enough to drive from my mind a thought, just forming, about Rabary and Tamatave.
I grab her arms as she tries to hit me again.
Panting with rage and fear, she works loose, grabs her dress from the end of the bed, takes the money from the pocket and throws it in my face.
We crouch on opposite sides of the bed, breathing hard, like two prizefighters resting in their corners, waiting out the bell for the next round. But neither of us moves, and after a while I feel the tension evaporate. I understand the futility of trying to be something to her that I’m not, and the cruelty of punishing her for my own failure. “It’s okay, Nirina. Really it is,” I tell her. “We all use whatever we’ve got to do whatever it is we have to do.”
I fumble around the bedclothes until I’ve gathered the money into a neat stack. I push it to her across the bed, but she won’t take it.
For a long time the only sound I hear is her breath trembling on the edge of sobbing. When I can’t bear it any longer, I tell her, “Say something. Anything.”
What she tells me is this: “The money’s gone.”
The words are so unexpected I can’t take them in. “What?”
“The money’s gone. Everything but what’s lying on the bed.”
“What do you mean, the money’s—?”
“I spent it.”
“You spent it,” I repeat, unable to comprehend.
“On my father.”
“Your father’s dead.”
It’s a long time before she says anything because she needs to put it in words I’ll understand. “In our village my father was a great man. When we buried him we had to show him all the honor we wished him to continue to have. If we held back anything we would lose our place in the village and among our ancestors—and in our own hearts. We needed the finest cloth for his shroud, rice and beer for everyone in the village, and a great feast, as if our money had no other purpose. My family hasn’t got much money. But everyone in the village thought I did. I live in the city and they think everyone in the city has lots of money. The funny thing is that, right then, I did. So I paid for all of it. You won’t understand me when I say I had to.”
I fall back onto the bed. “Gawdalmighty. I risk my life to get you the money to have Walt freed, and you spend it on a funeral.”
Madagascar Page 15