Certain of what I have to do, I rise and stagger to the rail. I look into the churning water and know I can’t throw myself overboard any more than I could let myself die for love.
“Okay, okay,” I shout to no one, making one final bargain with myself. Everything I’ve done over the last night and a day and a night has come from a promise to act, to jump out of the long downward spiral that has become my life and do something.
I tell Nirina, “Tell your brother I have to go back. If you want to get away, you have to take me back.”
Grasping the railing, she stumbles across the deck and shouts into her brother’s ear. Waving his hands in the air, he shouts back, then grips the wheel again. She crawls back to me, cups her hands around my ear. “He says that if he tries to turn the boat will go crosswise to the waves and we’ll sink.”
“If I stay aboard we’re going to sink anyway.”
I look out over the stern and am surprised to see the beach no more than half a mile off, probably less. Nearer yet, perhaps fifty yards short of the beach, a line of breakers cuts a white gash across the line of the sea.
I stagger across the tilting deck toward the bow and begin working at the knots holding the rowboat in place. A wave crashes over the bow and I grab the line to keep from being swept overboard. Monja shouts at me, but I ignore him.
Nirina works her way up to the bow. For a moment, I think she’s going to try to talk me out of it. Instead, she kneels beside me, working at the knots. Her hands are quicker and surer than mine and the boat is soon free.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Say so long to Walt for me.” I wonder what weight “goodbye” could carry? Or “I love you?” Or “I don’t love you?” Words are no good. I pull her to me and kiss her.
The crewman, Rakota, comes forward. Shoving me aside, he throws the boat into the water. I reach out to shake his hand. He grabs it and throws me into the boat.
I land on my wounded hand and nearly pass out from the pain. Someone shouts to me from the fishing boat. I look up to see Monja throwing the oars to me. I set them in the oarlocks as our two boats drift quickly apart.
While the rowboat bucks on the roiling water, trying to toss me into the sea, I raise my head and look toward the fishing boat. The waves are driving me speedily toward land and the faces on board are receding, their forms wavering in the warm and humid sea air until they’re no more than smudges against a blue background.
I set the oars in the water but the pain in my hand is too great to row. I turn around on the thwart, facing the shore, and take up one oar like a paddle, resting my injured hand lightly on the top, not needing to propel the boat, only working to keep my course straight.
The surging waves propel me rapidly toward the breakers. If I time my approach wrong they’ll flip the boat and I’ll drown. With the waves driving my quickly toward shore, I allow myself a last glance over my shoulder. For a moment I’m shocked by what I see, then I laugh out loud.
In the few minutes since I’ve left the fishing boat, the seas have turned calmer. The boat breasts the diminished waves, heading steadily east, toward Mauritius. I think I can see Nirina standing in the stern, looking back at me. I start to wave, but realize I have to turn and face the reckoning ahead of me.
While I’ve looked away, I’ve been driven almost to the line of the breakers. I’ll have to pick a forming wave and ride it into shore like a surfer. If I go too fast, I’ll get ahead of the breaker and flip the boat, too slow and the following wave will hammer me to the bottom.
I take a couple of quick breaths to quell the panic growing in my chest and try to back-paddle, buy myself a moment so I can time my approach. With the sea propelling me shoreward like a torpedo, I won’t have much time to get it right.
Craning my neck to catch a glance over the top of the breakers, I see the beach glinting in the rising sun, not a hundred yards away. It seems a hundred miles. I wonder if I’ll reach it alive.
My little boat begins to rise on a forming wave. I can see I’m coming in too fast. I dig the oar deeply into the water and pull back with all my strength. For an instant, I’m sure I’ve got it right. I’ll ride the wave in and land soft as a feather on the sandy beach.
The oar breaks in my hands. For a stunned moment, I can only look at the broken shaft. Then I throw it into the water and grab the other oar. Too late. I’ve reached the top of the wave and the rowboat trembles on its crest like a bubble at the edge of a waterfall. Tossing away the second oar, I grab the sides of the boat and try to remember how to pray.
For an instant that lasts an eternity, I teeter on the edge of the cresting wave, then drop as if I’ve fallen from the sky. The rowboat tumbles as it falls, breaking my grip. I’m catapulted into the water. I manage to take a deep breath before I’m pounded straight to the bottom. I strike the sand hard and grunt out some of my precious air. Disoriented, I thrust out my arms and attempt to swim, but I’ve lost any sense of direction. Thrashing aimlessly, I try to swim to the surface, but feel weighed down. Something is dragging at me, knocking me off balance.
The gun.
My lungs feel ready to explode. Fighting the urge to open my mouth and breathe, I struggle out of my jacket, letting it and the gun drop away.
A new wave catches me from behind and shoots me forward, but I can’t break the surface. Pressure is building in my lungs, the air desperate to get out. Again I hit the sandy bottom.
I lose all feeling except a sense of floating not through the water, but the air. This is death, I think. It feels rich and loving. With a shrug, I give myself up to it.
And in that moment of surrender, the water recedes from my body, leaving me lying face down on the sandy beach. I try to raise my head and breathe. I take in a mouthful of water and vomit it out. A new wave comes over me, small, almost gentle, only enough to cover me. Too exhausted to close my mouth, I take in more water. My head is spinning. With the blackness coming over me, I give up. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.
With a bone-jarring shock, my head and shoulders jerk into the air, dragging me from death back into life. Clean air rushes into my lungs. I’m being dragged across the beach and thrown onto the dry sand. I land face up, taking in the cool, delicious air. No beer, no wine, no scotch has ever tasted so good. I swear I’ll never drink again, just breathe, only breathe.
I open my eyes to the great blue Malagasy sky. How beautiful it is, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. My eyes get teary at its ineffable loveliness.
A new image comes into view. I blink to clear my vision.
Of course. Speedy.
The young thief smiles down at me. “It’s a good thing Speedy was here, don’t you think?”
For the first time, I understand his smile. He’s laughing at me. I amuse the hell out of him—all of us vazaha do—and he’s laughing. And why not? Once the locals get over the idea that we’re monsters or some separate kind of creature, they see us for what we are, a bunch of damn fools. Working for us must be like working for the circus. If I had any sense, I’d laugh too, but I’m too tired.
Unable to do anything but lie on the sand, I feel the delicious warmth of the sun. I close my eyes and sleep.
When I wake—an hour later? Two hours? Ten minutes?—I sit up and look for the fishing boat.
“It’s gone, Monsieur Knott. Over the horizon.”
Speedy sits next to me on the sand, his arms curled around his upraised knees.
I’ve never truly seen him because I’ve never tried. Gloria has been right all along. He’s not Speedy. He’s Dokoby and she knows it. Speedy is just a name we call him so we don’t have to know him.
Do I know anyone? Is my cynical tough guy pose just a way to hide the fact that I don’t know anyone, or anything? I grope for a question. “What are you doing here? Why …?”
“I knew you would be back. It wasn’t time for you to leave. So I waited.”
I remember how, as we got into the boat, Speedy said goodbye to everyone but me. He’d k
nown.
“Besides, Monsieur Picard’s car is blocking mine. And there’s a police car too. I went back to look a little while ago and saw the cars and decided I didn’t want to stay around. So I came back here to wait for you.”
I close my eyes and laugh softly. That’s all I need to do, see life as Speedy does, see it for the comedy it is. After a while I rise to my feet.
“You’re strong enough to walk, Monsieur Knott?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Let’s go back and see if we can drive away now.”
With Speedy leading me by the hand like a child, we make our way through the trees. They appear less tangled and dense than they had during the night.
Under blue skies and a warming sun we avoid the clearings, and the cemetery too. I have an eerie feeling that if we go searching for the graveyard this morning we won’t find it.
By the time we come to the fallen tree and my battered Peugeot, everyone else has gone, Picard’s men too. Speedy gets behind the wheel and starts the car on the first try. He sticks his head out the window. “Let’s go home.”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
Speedy looks at me, puzzled.
“I need to have my hand looked at, need to make a phone call.”
“If we go into Tamatave, I think the police will shoot us.”
“Not Tamatave. Someplace else. We’ll be welcome there.”
John Barrow tightens the bandage until I wince. The missionary looks at me as if trying to judge whether the pain is sufficient to do me any good.
“I’ve patched you up as best I can,” he tells me. “The bullet went all the way through the hand, but it probably broke some bones along the way. You’ll need surgery if you want it to heal properly.”
I sit on the edge of the table in Barrow’s little dispensary. My euphoria at surviving has faded, and I feel exhausted and depressed. “Okay,” I say.
Barrow leans against a cabinet, crosses his arms. “You know, Robert, a few more inches to your left and you’d have been hit in the gut or the chest and we wouldn’t be here talking to each other.”
“Yeah, well, a few more inches to the right and he’d have missed me entirely.” He doesn’t laugh.
“I’m trying to tell you, you could’ve been killed.”
I nod wearily. “John, I think I spent all last night trying to get killed. I managed to screw that up, too.”
Barrow reaches out and turns my hand in his, inspecting the bandage “You got that other American out of the country. That’s no small thing.”
“If he’s still alive.”
Barrow waits a moment to ask, “What about the girl you were here with last time?”
“She’s gone with him.” I chuckle, though it sounds bleak even to me. “I’m the only one who didn’t manage to get out.”
“And now you’ll have to face the music.”
“If I’m lucky, the government of Madagascar will boot me out of the country.”
“And what would bad luck look like?”
“I get booted out by my own government—and fired on top of it.”
“Seriously?”
“My guess is that both governments’ll be so happy to see me leave they’ll go halvsies on the airfare.” I blow out a breath. “Then I go off and try to start a new life.”
“Born again?”
“Don’t get the idea that you’re going to baptize me, John. It’s been done. Didn’t take.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. Yeah.”
“Why don’t you and your friend spend the night? You could use some rest.”
“No. Speedy’s got someone waiting for him in Antananarivo. And Sarah has already dipped too far into her reserves of Christian charity to put up with me any longer.”
“Won’t the police be looking for you?”
“They’ll be looking for me tomorrow, too.”
We find Speedy in the living room, lounging in the best chair, a cup of tea in his hands.
Sarah turns to us, laughing. “Oh, John, Dokoby was just telling me the funniest story. He is the most charming fellow.”
I smile at what a lucky guy I am to know him. “He is that, Sarah.”
Speedy sips his tea and smiles.
“Come on, Dokoby,” I tell him. “It’s time to go home.”
Barrow accompanies us to the car. “Thanks to your regular visits, I’m getting very good at treating gunshot wounds and looking after battered cars.”
I regard my bashed and mud-spattered Peugeot. “I really have to knock this shit off, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Will you join me in a short prayer before you go?”
“Do I ever?”
“No. But I keep asking.
“Say one for me.”
“I will.”
“You don’t know how I count on it.”
Speedy gets behind the wheel and starts the car. Waving goodbye, we make our way out onto the highway.
By the light of day, the damage from the tempest is less than I’d thought. The wind and rain have left little trace of their passage, as if the storm was nothing more than the product of our collective imagination.
Thoughts such as these have ceased to bother me.
24
Darkness has fallen by the time I drop Speedy at Gloria’s and turn up the familiar driveway of my place in Ivandry. Razafy, a bandage around his head, gives me his customary tilt of the chin as I drive through the gate.
The house looks dark as a tomb. I enter through the kitchen, switching on the lights as I pass through each room. The few traces I’ve impressed on the house over my two years have been erased by the thorough clean-up, leaving it in the state I found it—anonymous as a waiting room.
A shriek from behind nearly pushes me across the living room.
“Hello, Jeanne,” I manage to say after my heart restarts.
“Oh, Monsieur Knott, I thought you were a ghost.”
“No. I tried my best, but here I am.”
More out of relief than merriment, she put her hands on her knees and laughs. “You’re right. A dead man would look better than you do.”
Until this moment I’d never seen anything more than her mask. For an instant, she has let it slip and I have a glimpse, a revelation, of who she really is. Smart, funny. I like her very much. I wish I had known her.
She must have caught a glimpse of herself in my eyes because she immediately reassumes her ironic pose, again becomes a servant. “Miss Gloria has called three times today. I think she’s very upset.”
“It’s all right. I just left her place.”
Gloria nearly jumped into Speedy’s arms when we came through the door, but managed to hold back, restraining herself until I left.
I asked her if anyone had been looking for me.
“Only everyone. Paul Esmer called, then the DCM, then the Ambassador. I don’t know why they’d think I knew where you were.”
“Because in fact you did.”
The look she gave me wasn’t pretty. “Not really, I didn’t. Anyway, everyone’s upset that Walt would take off like that.” Like a pair of teenagers, Gloria and Speedy keep glancing at each other, then quickly away. “They don’t know where he is.”
“He’s gone. With any luck he should be in Mauritius by now. And I suppose I’m toast for having helped him.”
“That’s the funny thing.” And I could see that by “funny” she meant infuriating. “Everyone knows the whole thing smells to high heaven, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that you’re connected with it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“They have it from the Marine on Post One that he saw you in the monitor when you drove away. He says the others left in another car and in another direction. That’s all they know.”
I try to take it in. I’d hoped that the ruse with the cars would fool the cops outside the embassy. I hadn’t anticipated that it would fool the embassy too.
“I suppose the Malagasy government is displeased,” I said.
“Now they are madder than hops. They want someone’s head on a platter.”
“Mine, no doubt.”
“The only betting at the embassy is whether they’ll give you twenty-four or forty-eight hours to get out. And—What did you do to your hand?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She looked to Speedy for an explanation. The young man only smiled.
“Okay,” she said to me, hands on her hips. “Why don’t you just tell me that I’m too young to understand?”
“You’re too young to understand.”
“Anyway …” She shook her head at me as if I were a naughty child. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I think you want to be addressing those words to Speedy, don’t you?” I said with a laugh. “Why, Ms. Burriss, I’ve made you blush.”
She glared at me and took me by the arm. “Time for you to go home.”
On the way out the door I turned and said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not saying anything.”
“Maybe it’s only because no one asked me exactly what I knew.”
“Yeah? Still, thanks.”
So I left, wishing Speedy—Dokoby—a better night than the previous one, and drove myself the half-mile to my house.
Jeanne busies herself in the kitchen and finds something to fix me for dinner. She offers to return the money I gave her when I left.
“No, you’d better hang onto it,” I tell her. “I don’t think I’ll be here very long.”
The sizzle of a pork chop and the smell of roasting vegetables make me realize how hungry I am even as a wave of weariness comes over me. I decide to lie down on the sofa for a few minutes before dinner.
I wake to the morning light streaming in the window. Still groggy with sleep, I throw off the blanket Jeanne laid over me and stump around the house a bit. I eat the cold pork chop and vegetables she left in the refrigerator and go out through the French doors into the back yard. Despite my throbbing hand, I feel good, the sun is warm on my face and I enjoy the peace of a Sunday morning after a storm.
Madagascar Page 24