“I’m not truly free.” Her head drops. “No one is. Freedom’s too frightening.”
“No,” I whisper, “no one is.”
I want to ask if she had held any money back for Walt’s funeral too, because if he doesn’t get out of prison soon he’s going to need one. Not to mention the funeral I’ll need for myself once Picard realizes I’ve stolen nearly four thousand dollars from him.
“What did you think you were going to do?” I ask, surprised at how calm I feel about it all. My wiring must be fried.
“I don’t know. I found the money once. Maybe I can find it again.” She doesn’t say it as if she believes it.
“So Walt stays in prison until you find it. And you stay in Madagascar.”
“Yes. Do you think Monsieur Rabary would still—”
We both jump at the sound of the telephone. I fumble for the receiver. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Knott, this is Sergeant Alcala at the embassy.”
“What’s up, Jess?”
“Sir, I just received a call from Ambassador Herr. She wants you and Mr. Esmer and Mr. Salvatore to meet at her residence in forty-five minutes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No sir.”
“What time is it?”
“Twenty-two-thirty.”
“What’s this about?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Some kind of trouble in the city.”
I hang up and turn to Nirina. “I’ve got to go. I may be a couple of hours.” I turn on the light. Nirina sits on the bed, arms crossed over her breasts.
“Take me home.”
“You don’t … You don’t have to go.”
She doesn’t bother to reply.
We drive the dark streets in silence, Nirina saying no more than, “Turn here,” or “The next left,” then finally, “Stop here.”
We’re in one of the shanty towns on the edge of the city. The tin and tar-paper shacks lie scattered along a slope above a stinking stream that glows a ghastly gray in the moonlight. The orange glow of kerosene lamps leaks between the gaps in the walls. I’ve seen places like this and know enough to stay away from them. The air is full of mosquitoes, the shacks full of sick children and parasite-ridden adults. Living here, Nirina won’t stay young very long.
She gets out of the car and leans in through the open door.
“Now leave.”
It’s past eleven by the time I arrive at the Ambassador’s residence. Esmer and Pete Salvatore are sitting in the living room in their shirt sleeves. Michelle Herr, in her dressing gown, has her feet propped on the coffee table.
Torn from my bed, still reeling with the hangover of Nirina’s confessions, I barely feel present. I pull up an armchair.
Esmer lays out what he knows. It isn’t much. Security maintains a roving patrol at night, two Malagasy guards in an old Land Rover, ostensibly to maintain coordination with the residence guards, but in truth to see that they stay awake. At about nine o’clock the patrol is taking a shortcut between Ivandry and the embassy when they see two trucks filled with soldiers heading toward the university. Very strange. They decide to follow. When they get to the university the trucks stop long enough to drop off a few of soldiers who throw up a roadblock across the entrance to the university. The rest of them continue onto the campus. The soldiers at the roadblock tell the embassy guards to drive on. They do, but not before they see fires among the dormitories, hear the crash of breaking glass and the stutter of gunfire.
Pete Salvatore sags in his chair, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Do we know what’s going on?”
“Can’t be sure yet,” Esmer says, “but when buildings catch fire you usually send for the fire department, not the army. It looks like the troubles have reached the capital.”
“The campus is isolated. Maybe this won’t spread,” Ambassador Herr suggests.
Esmer nods. “Who knows? The government will do everything they can to keep it from snowballing.”
Only a lengthening silence tips me off that someone has directed a question at me. “What do I think? I think the government will figure they can’t keep the trouble on campus. So they’ll make it spread—and quickly.”
Esmer snorts in derision and mutters something to Salvatore, who looks at the Ambassador.
Something in me snaps. “Look, you asked me what I think, so you get it!” I hear my voice rising with each word. “If you think the folks in power here are like you guys, you’ll never understand what’s going on here. They didn’t go to fancy schools or spend their summers in Maine. There’s not going to be anything in the papers or on TV, but word’s going to get around that buildings are burning and people are getting shot. These guys want to blame it on the vazaha, but they can’t do that if it stays on campus. So if they can’t snuff it out immediately—and they probably can’t—they’ll want it to spread, even if they have to help it along. They need a sense of crisis. They need people to be frightened. And they need a scapegoat. That’s us. And the Indians. If you guys don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything.”
Like a man having an out-of-body experience, I look down and see that I’ve risen to my feet and am standing over Esmer with my fists clenched. “Oh, god.” I run a hand over my face. My fingers are trembling. “Sorry … I have a lot on my mind these days.” I try to smile, as if my behavior is just a misfired joke. But I know it’s too late.
“Why don’t you sit down, Robert?” Michelle Herr says, with the same tone of voice a cop uses to talk a man off a ledge. She looks at Esmer and says oh-so-reasonably, “Perhaps we should look into increasing the guard force at the residences.”
Esmer glances at me before replying. “I’ll get on it.”
She turns to her deputy. “We’d better call a country team meeting for tomorrow morning. Pete, can you make the calls tonight?”
She looks at me, and I can see in her eyes that I’m through. I won’t be a factor in discussions from here on, won’t be assigned anything but the most routine duties. If it’s important, I won’t be a part of it. I can probably stay on until the end of my tour—the Ambassador’s too kind a soul to have me sent home. But from this night on, I’ll be only one more ghost on an island already crowded with them.
The meeting breaks up a few minutes later. Everyone makes a point of wishing me a good night.
Outside, the air is cool and clear. I sit in my car and wait until first Salvatore’s then Esmer’s tail lights have gone down the hill and turned toward Ivandry.
I start my car and head downtown.
At the Zebu Room, the usual walls of chatter, chinked with groans and the occasional cry of joy, sound more than ever like a sado-masochists convention.
I walk up to the cashier’s grill. “Two hundred thousand in chips.”
The cashier’s eyes widen as she looks up from her cash drawer. “Monsieur Knott,” she whispers, “I’ve been told not to give you any more chips.”
“I’ve got cash—dollars.”
She licks her lips nervously, retrieves her lost smile. “Let me call Monsieur Jacques.”
“No. It’ll be fine. Just give me the chips.” I shove under the grill the hundred and sixty bucks Nirina threw in my face earlier that evening.
The cashier looks at the eight twenty dollar bills, but doesn’t pick them up.
“Don’t worry. They’re real,” I tell her.
After a moment’s hesitation—she’s probably never said no to a vazaha, doesn’t know how—she counts the bills and hands me a stack of chips.
A charge goes through me at the sight of the chips. I feel like an artist on the high-wire, the crowd gazing up at me in wonder. I look out over the gaming tables and am suddenly unsure what to do next. The place closes at one. I don’t have much time to win back the four thousand dollars I need to keep from getting killed.
Then I see what I hadn’t known until that moment I’d been looking for.
Quietly elegant in an expensive suit of European cut, Roland Rabary stands at the ro
ulette wheel, his homely face lighted by the fantasy he is allowed to indulge—the gentleman gambler blessed by Fate. Surely it’s a short step from there to becoming a real Frenchman. Only Pinocchio could understand the yearning Rabary feels.
Shouldering my way through the kibitzers, I find a spot at the roulette table across from Rabary. “How’s your luck running tonight, Roland?” I speak rapidly and in English to keep the others around the table from understanding. “Tell me, do they let you win every bet, or do they make you lose a few just to make it look better?”
With the self-control of a Zen master, Rabary barely looks up. “I think you need to leave, Robert.” The Malagasy hesitates, holding a small stack of chips over the betting field. The rest he keeps back, avoiding, I suppose, the drama of making big wagers. Finally, he places his bet and waits for the wheel to spin.
The croupier senses the tension at our end of the table. The Malagasy diplomat gives him the barest nod, indicating he should continue play. The croupier poises the ball over the wheel. “Faites vos jeux.” Place your bets.
Rabary puts his chips on black and loses. He puts them on Even and loses again. He follows this with a big bet on the first twelve, and wins.
Only because I know there’s a fix do I see the pattern—losing on the low-risk bets often enough that no one pays much attention when he wins at longer odds. Over the course of the evening, conspiring wordlessly with the croupier, he quietly makes a bundle.
Knowing now what to do, I follow Rabary’s bets. Within a few minutes I’ve doubled my money. I look at my watch, make a calculation. Yes, I may just have enough time to make up what I still owe Picard.
Rabary never looks up. I might think he’s forgotten me but for the fact that after every wager he draws out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his hands. He knows that with every bet he wins Picard is getting screwed twice—once by himself and once by me—and he can’t be sure the Frenchman won’t think we’re conspiring against him. That’s rich, but can Rabary really be sure he’ll be able to convince Picard we’re not in cahoots?
By midnight, being careful not to follow Rabary’s bets every time or put down so much money that people are bound to see what’s going on, I’ve got nine hundred bucks. Will that be enough to at least buy me more time from Picard? I doubt it.
Wringing the handkerchief in his hands, Rabary catches the croupier’s eye and inclines his head almost imperceptibly toward me. Then, with a rueful smile, he gathers in his chips.
“What’s wrong, Roland, afraid your luck is wearing thin?” I ask. When he doesn’t respond, I tell him, “If you walk away now, I swear to you I’ll start shouting the game is fixed.”
“No, you won’t,” Rabary replies. But he’s no longer walking away and his voice betrays a trace of unease.
“Tell me what I have to lose.”
Rabary raises his chin and says, “You are too intelligent to indulge in such folly.”
“Like hell I am.”
The Malagasy’s smile is as false as the wheel. “Why this sudden need to win, Robert? I would have thought—”
“You won’t be getting any money from the girl. It’s gone.”
Rabary tilts his head to one side, nothing more.
He’s really good, I have to hand it to him.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the croupier motion a waiter over and whisper something in his ear. Sensing the tension, the other gamblers around the table look curiously at Rabary and me. The croupier holds the ball in his hand but makes no move toward the wheel.
Rabary strokes his ill-favored nose and, with a sudden exhalation of breath, turns back to the table and sets his chips down. Black. I recognize it as the sort of bet he loses. When it’s too late for him to change his mind, I put mine on red.
Confused, a layer of anxious sweat on his lip, the croupier spins the wheel. Twenty-seven. Red.
“Monsieur Knott, how nice to have you with us this evening.” Jacques Razafintsalama grasps my arm in what probably looks to others as a friendly gesture. “Please, won’t you join me for a drink?”
“No thanks. Don’t want to leave the table. My luck’s in tonight.”
“Perhaps not as much as you think.” Jacques’ voice carries a steeliness I’ve never heard in him.
I look at my pile of chips. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Smiling faintly, Rabary puts his chips in his pocket and backs away from the table.
I feel the urge to start shouting but twist it into a laugh as I call out to Rabary. “The girl spent the money. That door’s closed. You want to get to Paris? You’re on your own now, baby.”
Rabary appears unconcerned. With a little wave of his hand, he smiles and drifts away.
For a moment I think of following through on my threat to denounce the game, cry foul, but Rabary has sized me up well. I’ll say nothing.
I jerk my arm from Jacques’s grip. “Tell the man to spin the wheel.” But I know the evening is a bet I’ve already lost.
A stir among the gamblers makes me look across the room.
Maurice Picard is striding across the floor toward us. He’s surprisingly quick for a big guy. Without breaking stride, he grabs the front of my shirt in one meaty hand, his face twisted with anger. “You want trouble? Yes? Good. I can give you plenty of it.” He pushes me into the table.
The other gamblers dart away like a school of fish in the presence of a shark.
“You’re a fool, Robert. I never fully saw it until now. We worked a way out for you. But you’re not smart enough to take it.” He thrusts out his jaw as he speaks, the spittle from his rage hitting me in the face. “Where’s my money? Where are my dollars, Bobby?”
I knock his hand from my chest. “You lost it, Maurice. You took a gamble on me. You should have known better. It’s gone.”
“You’re lying, Robert. Where’s my money?”
I want to laugh, but I’m afraid that if I start I won’t be able to stop. “Believe whatever you want, Maurice.” I nod toward the windows and the darkness between us and the university. “It’s too late anyway. This place is finally starting to burn. Why? Because you live in a country where half the people haven’t got enough to eat, where kids are rotting with leprosy or walk on their hands and knees because they’re born with broken backs. You live in a country where the ones in charge buy gold-rimmed china with the money they steal from hungry people. That includes you, you murderous son of a bitch. And all you’re going to get with all that money is a fancy funeral, ’cause you’re going to be buried here.” I heft my chips—it all feels so righteous—and fling them into Picard’s face. Then I walk toward the door, praying with every step that Picard hasn’t brought his gun with him. With all the men the Frenchman claims to have killed, he must have shot a few of them in the back.
17
Halfway up the winding road to the national prison, I roll down my window and stick my head out like a dog, gasping for my sanity, trying to exhale from deep in my lungs the knee-buckling sense of doom I’ve brought on myself with the previous night’s folly at the Zebu room. I’ll be lucky if word doesn’t get back to the embassy about my confrontation with Picard. I’ll be even luckier if he doesn’t kill me before the day’s out. He already had enough reason to have me killed in cold blood, but now his blood is hot and I’m thinking my life isn’t worth a dime.
The Country Team meeting we held earlier this morning went nowhere. I knew they would decide nothing. The interminable weighing of possibilities and the rehashing of events over which the embassy has no control radiated nausea into every corner of my body until I thought I’d puke out every bit of bile built up by two decades of professional civility, uncounted years of reasonableness, numberless seasons of balanced views, and endless days of well-considered judgments—everything that isn’t passion and madness, the only values I trust anymore.
Inevitably, they eventually opted for the habitual dodge of “awaiting events” because it sounds so much better, more action-forward, than
“let’s do nothing.” In fact, there’s nothing for them to do. Just like me, everything is slipping out of their control.
Toward the end of the meeting we discussed, for entertainment value, President Ramananjara’s sacking of the prison superintendent for allowing the burglars to roam free at night and his order that prison guards were henceforth to live on their salaries, which is a laugh. The fact that they make next to nothing is what caused this problem in the first place.
The President’s statement led to the only action to come out of the meeting, the Ambassador’s request that Gloria and I go up to the prison to make sure Walt Sackett’s all right. The guards have probably guessed he’s the original source of the story about the burglars. They might take things out on him.
Now I’m hanging out the window with my ears flapping in the wind.
“Robert, what are you doing?” Gloria reaches across the car seat and pulls me back in. After blowing my top at the Ambassador’s residence last night, I suppose I should be grateful to be doing anything that smacks of official business.
I take a couple of deep breaths and try to ignore the look in Gloria’s eye. “I’m fine,” I mutter, by which I mean I haven’t started frothing at the mouth yet. In the rearview mirror I catch Samuel’s eyes darting away from me. It’s the first time I’ve drawn him as my driver since that night near Tamatave. His face betrayed nothing that morning when he opened the car door for me in the embassy parking lot, but once behind the wheel, he turned around and said, “This time I think it’s better if I drive, and you ride in the back.”
You can’t say he’s lost his sense of humor.
We’re topping the last rise on the winding road outside the city when Gloria grabs my arm. “Ohmigod, look!”
Below us, the massive prison is sprouting flames from a dozen places. The French built the prison’s outer walls of stone, but constructed the inner structures out of wood. And that wood is burning fiercely in the morning sun.
As we draw closer we can see that the guards have thrown open the gates and are busily waving out the collection of scarecrows that make up the prison’s population. The liberated prisoners are scattering across the bare hills in every direction, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the prison before the guards can change their minds.
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