It’s Pete’s way of saying my blow-up at the Ambassador’s place is behind us. I’m grateful.
“Along those lines …” I offer, seeing he wants to go somewhere with this.
“Along those lines, I got another call from that guy with the Interior Ministry. He wasn’t real direct about it—he wouldn’t be—but he wanted me to know they’re pushing the Foreign Ministry to declare one of us persona non grata—PNG—over this thing. Boot one of us out of here.” He gives me a look that slowly reveals its meaning.
I let out a little “ah” of surprise. “And you figure it’s me.”
“They’d want someone fairly high-ranking. They know you’re the one that drove Sackett away from the prison. And there’s the … Is there something funny about this?”
There is. But I can’t tell Pete that if the Malagasy government chooses to PNG me over Walt Sackett, I get to go back to Washington as a sacrifice on the altar of diplomacy, trailing the aura of a hero, second-class. With a little bit of luck I could break my assignment to Ouagadougou and be on my way to—why not?—Canada. Most of all, Picard doesn’t get to kill me. This could literally be a life saver.
“Funny?” I repeat. “No. Not really. Should I start packing my bags?”
“Things move slowly here. It’ll be a while. Besides, you never know, they could decide to boot Trapp, or even me.” He flashes a tired smile. “But I’d put my money on you.”
18
I wander from room to room of the place that for almost two years I’ve called my house but never considered my home. Packing will go easily. Most of the stuff belongs to the government anyway. If I get booted, Lynn and Jeanne will see that the packers do a good job with my personal effects.
Once it makes up its collective mind, the Malagasy government will likely give me forty-eight hours notice. I’ll leave Jeanne with three month’s salary and a letter urging my successor to hire her. I’ll leave something for Monsieur Razafy, though, as a guard, he’s paid by the embassy, so will still have a job. Other than that, there’s not much I need to do. Someone in the embassy will take over my section until a successor can get out here. I won’t leave much mark that I’ve been here.
The emptiness of the house comes on me with a little spasm of panic. There will be no visit from Nirina tonight, nor, certainly, from Lynn. I think for a moment of calling Steve Trapp, asking him if he wants to go out for a drink. Just one. No. Given my track record, my call would be about as welcome as an invitation for a midnight stroll with Dracula. Would Picard have enough nerve to send over someone to make a short, violent visit on me? I tell myself no, but the thought rattles me further.
I pick up the phone and dial from memory. She picks up on the third ring.
“Hello?” The long hiss in the lines tells her who it is. “Daddy?”
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
“It’s really early here, Daddy.” Again, that long pause.
“I wanted to catch you before you went off to school.”
“You woke everyone up.”
I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry, honey. Look, I called because I think I’m going to be moving again.”
“Where?”
“Coming back home.”
“You’re moving in here?” Her voice wavers with a tremolo of teenage horror.
“No, Christine, I didn’t mean …” I chuckle to let her know it’s all right. “I wanted to tell you we’ll be getting to see each other more often. And your mom, too.”
“We have a new life now, Daddy.”
“I know you do, sweetheart. I don’t mean to say—”
“Why are you suddenly so big on seeing us? You never had time for us when we all lived together.”
“You know that’s not true.” I hear my voice rising.
Her voice becomes muffled, talking with her hand over the receiver.
“What are you saying, Christine?”
“That was Howard. He’s asking me who’s on the phone. I told him it was you.”
It sounds like an accusation.
“Look, there’s no need—I only called to say—Shit, Christine, it’s not like I’m—”
“Daddy? Have you been drinking?”
“Not yet.”
“If you’re going to yell—”
“I’m not yelling!”
“I’m putting Howard on the phone.”
I slam the receiver back into its cradle hard enough to bring down the entire Malagasy phone system. I stumble out of the living room and reel toward the kitchen, my body already anticipating the effects of the alcohol it craves. I need a drink. No, I need to get drunk, and self-loathing will make the booze go down better than any handful of peanuts.
Later, I vaguely remember crashing through the plates and glass in the kitchen, looking for the bottle of scotch I’ve so carefully hidden from myself. Did Jeanne at some point come into the kitchen, and did I shout her back to her room? Maybe. Certainly.
Then the alcohol, blessed relief, like oxygen, blood, sex, drugs, every balm a man ever longed for.
After the months without so much as a sip I’m out of training. No endurance. No capacity. The sickness later is memorable, vomiting in the study and the hallway, finally collapsing around the toilet like a frat boy, vomiting great gouts of bile and goo until it all comes out, everything in me, every bit of the poison of being a bad husband, a rotten father, an indifferent officer, and a lousy gambler, of being a mediocrity in almost every aspect of the one life given to me, leaving me hollow and empty.
It’s light outside by the time I pull my face off the filth of the bathroom tiles and prop myself against the wall. My legs twitch, kicking over the scotch bottle, which spins across the puke-stained floor. Empty. Jeanne must have come in and poured the last of it into the toilet. I couldn’t have drunk the whole bottle—not unless I was trying to kill myself, a possibility not easily dismissed. If that was my unspoken intent, I’ve screwed up even that.
I survey the wrack I’ve left in my wake, the empty bottle, a broken drinking glass, twisted clothing lying on the floor. The bathroom looks like a crime scene, an existential slaughterhouse. With a start, I see I’m naked as a newborn.
Short of killing myself, I’ve done about the worst I can do. And I’m sick of it, sick of the life I’ve made, sick of myself.
Yet, from somewhere inside, leaning hard against the headwinds of my endless capacity for self-destructiveness, I feel the stirring of something else. At first I just think I’m going to be sick again. But through the layers of residual nausea, the incipient headache, the feeling that my vitals have been dropped from a great height and landed splat on the sidewalk, I feel something new coming over me, the hint of an odd, detached sort of euphoria. Nothing more than a glowing coal, but I can feel its heat.
I’ve lived through this night, and I’m all cleaned out now. Is my life going to get better? Unlikely. Am I going to get thrown out of Madagascar? I suddenly doubt it. It would be too neat, too fortunate. Am I going to die? Yes, and maybe soon. But I don’t feel stuck anymore. My life has been grooved into an endless loop of folly and despair. No more. From here on I’m going to act, not simply get acted on.
It’s a big responsibility, and a part of me wonders if I’m up to it.
Groaning with dread, I pull myself up the wall and lurch into the shower.
Cheryl doesn’t try to hide her shock when I stumble into the office. “Robert, you look like shit.”
“Yeah. Something I ate.”
She gapes like a passerby at a fatal car crash.
“Look, is Walt still in his—Hell, of course he is. Where else would he be?” I know I’m raving. Somewhere I read that Trotsky, after receiving his fatal blow, tried to chase down his assassin with an icepick sticking out of his head. I feel much the same.
Ignoring Cheryl’s horrified gaze, I go back down the hall.
Walt’s just finishing breakfast, already looking healthier than I’ve seen him in weeks. He must have got that cheeseburger an
d fries. “Look, Robert,” he starts to say, then stops. “Whoa! You look like shit.”
“Yeah. Something I ate.” I sit heavily in a straight-backed chair and feel my brain clunk against the inside of my skull. “How you doing?” I ask. The sense of resolution I felt back at the house is leaking out of me like the air from a bad tire.
“I feel a heckuva lot better. Slept in a real bed last night. First time in months. Seems like years.” Without looking up from his plate, he says, “Look, about all that stuff I said yesterday—”
“It’s all right. What happens in a converted office-bedroom on the backside of hell stays in a converted—”
Gloria stalks into the room trailing smoke. She nods toward Walt before turning on me like a rabid squirrel. “Robert, I need to talk to you now about—Gosh, you look like—”
“Shit. Yeah, I know.” The morning is starting too fast, too many people. I wasn’t counting on this. I had a plan, bold and clear. But I’ve already forgotten what it was. “How’d it go with Speedy yesterday?”
Gloria’s gaze slips to the floor.
“You got him home, yes?”
She thrusts out her hands, overacting badly. “We got to his place and the police were already there. They nearly saw him before he could duck back behind the seat.”
“Gloria, what have you done with Speedy?”
“I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“Where’s Speedy?”
She waggles her head. “I decided he’d better stay at my place.”
Walt and I both burst out laughing, though I suppose Walt’s laugh doesn’t make his head feel as if it were about to crack open.
“He slept on the couch,” Gloria protests against our laughter. “Nothing really happened.”
“Nothing really happened?” I ask.
A series of conflicting emotions blow across Gloria’s face. “I didn’t—We didn’t—”
“Gloria, it’s okay.” I regard her with new eyes. In the days since the blow-up over the story in Notre Madagascar, she has seemed somehow more comfortable with herself, her work more professional. Relations with her staff have improved. And now love. In her few weeks in Madagascar she’s learned more of what she needed to know than I have in two years.
I look at Walt, wondering if he sees the same thing I do. But Walt isn’t looking at me or Gloria. His eyes are fixed on Cheryl standing in the doorway.
My secretary looks at the three of us. “Sorry to interrupt, but I got a call from Post One asking me to bring up a visitor.”
That’s when I realize that Walt isn’t looking at Cheryl either, but at someone just over her shoulder, a woman who walks slowly into the room, her head down, uncertain of her welcome.
Gloria looks at her, puzzled. Then her expression clears. She holds out her hand and says in French, “You must be Nirina.”
She takes Gloria’s hand. “And you are Gloria.”
The two women look at each other, one dark where the other is light, one privileged where the other is poor, their attributes wholly opposite and wholly balanced. They see it too and a smile of recognition passes between them.
“I’ve wanted to meet you. You’ve done so much for Mr. Sackett.” Before Nirina can reply, Gloria snaps to, standing ramrod straight, “But I’ve got to get back to my office. I’ll leave you with these two.” Where before she might have looked at us, or at least at me, with resigned exasperation, this time she smiles crookedly at us both, and we can’t help but smile back.
My God, is she learning to flirt? This is like handing her the atom bomb.
With a last glance over her shoulder, she disappears down the hallway with Cheryl.
Nirina looks toward the doorway as if thinking of following them out. While her attention is elsewhere, Walt looks at me. He knows what he has to do.
The old cowboy struggles out of his recliner and stands, swaying slightly, in the middle of the room, his arms held away from his body, as if inviting a blow, or maybe an embrace. “How you doin’, darlin’?” Unable to look her in the eye, he lowers his head. “Uh, look, Nirina, before you say anything, there’s somethin’ I gotta tell you.”
Nirina shakes her head. “No,” she says, “There is nothing you need to tell me.”
“Yes, there is. Now let me say it.” He sounds like a grandfather chiding a favorite granddaughter. “You’ve made me feel like a young man again. And you kept me from dyin’ in that prison. I don’t deserve half of what you did for me. And all along I knew I didn’t have any real way of payin’ you back. So maybe I tried to do it with a bunch of promises, things I knew I would do for you if I could. I said I’d take you back home with me. And I told you I loved you.” Walt took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “The truth is I can’t, not like you deserve. Not like I made out and—”
But Nirina has already crossed the room, put her arms around the old cowboy and laid her head on his chest. “Oh, Wolt, I don’t love you, too.”
Walt Sackett slowly places his big crooked hands on her back and holds her tight, free from the need for more words.
I work late that night. By the time I drive home, the streets of Ivandry are empty, and the walled residences look more than ever like fortresses in hostile territory. Normally, my headlights would have picked up a few souls walking along the road, rice farmers and charcoal makers from the hamlets that surround my upscale neighborhood, or a guard squatting by a smoky fire, waiting out the long spirit-filled hours of the night. Tonight there’s no one.
The first clear sign of trouble is nothing more than a slight disturbance in the order of things—the gate ajar, too much light coming from the house. The air vibrates with quiet menace.
Razafy does not come to open the gate and greet me with his usual ironic nod. I turn off the ignition and get out of the car. In the silence, my footsteps scrape loudly on the concrete drive. With one hand, I slowly push open the gate, like opening a dead man’s mouth.
All the lights in the house are on, their yellow glow spilling out onto the lawn. The front door stands wide open.
Slowly, I walk up the drive, cold shivers running up and down my back. Light spills onto the carport through the broken pane of the kitchen door. Holding my breath, I push it open and walk in. Broken glass crunches under my feet.
From its place next to the stove, I pick up the long metal rod used to turn off the water main. Holding it in both hands, like a baseball bat, I go into the living room.
Signs of the intruders are everywhere—overturned chairs, smashed crockery, the sofa slashed.
Holding the iron rod at the ready, I creep upstairs, eyes and ears straining for any sign of someone lurking in the shadows or behind a door.
The covers have been pulled off the bed and lay twisted on the floor. In the study, the TV lies tipped over on its side. Books litter the floor.
Whoever broke in has gone through each room, smashing, overturning, scattering its contents. The disorder is oddly haphazard. My radio—a valuable item in Madagascar—is still on the nightstand. The easily stolen DVD player remains on its shelf.
I head back for the living room.
I’m halfway down the stairs when I hear a faint scraping on the kitchen floor. With my blood rushing into my face and uttering an animal growl I didn’t know I had in me, I raise the iron rod, ready to swing.
“Don’t hit me!” a voice cries.
Hiding behind the kitchen door is Jeanne, a single wide eye visible around the door frame.
“Oh, Monsieur Knott!”
“What happened, Jeanne?”
“O-h-h-h,” she moans.
“Jeanne, tell me, what happened.”
“Men came.” She blinks slowly, frozen with fear.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. I got under my bed when I heard them. I was sure they would find me and kill me.” She begins to whimper, the pitch rising toward hysteria.
“Jeanne.”
She swallows hard, breathes a little more slowly.
“I don’t know. A while ago.”
“How long have they been gone?”
“They were here and then they were gone.” She looks at me, her eyes wide. “They called your name, Monsieur Knott.”
“They what?”
“They called for you.”
I pick up the phone and call the Marine on Post One. The last person I want to talk to is Esmer, but if I don’t report the burglary it’ll raise all kinds of questions I don’t want to answer. And once I report it, I know Esmer will come running.
After I receive the Marine’s assurance that he’ll send Esmer, Jeanne seems to be a little better.
“Where’s Monsieur Razafy?” I ask her.
She gulps and shakes her head. She doesn’t know.
I go back outside and find Razafy crumpled in the grass near the gate. A groan comes up from deep inside him as I kneel and turn him gently onto his back.
“Razafy.”
Like a sleeper, he mumbles, “Monsieur.”
“Razafy, can you tell me what happened?”
As he recognizes my voice, the guard’s eyes widen and he tries to get to his feet.
“No,” I tell him, “Just lie still. Do you know what happened?”
Razafy blinks vacantly. “Men came. I opened the gate and they hit me.”
“A gang?”
The guard’s eyes glaze over as he begins drifting back into unconsciousness.
“Razafy, was it a gang?”
Razafy shudders into wakefulness. “No. Two men. They came in a car. I asked them what they wanted and they hit me in the head.”
“Just the two men?”
“No. There was another man. In the car. I didn’t see him well. A big man.”
I feel vaguely flattered that Picard would give me such personal attention. On the other hand, despite my fears, part of me thought he wouldn’t really try to kill me. That part of me knows better now. It’s not a happy thought.
Madagascar Page 18