Ahmed's Revenge

by Richard Wiley

  I sometimes fear there’s too much randomness in my story, too many of the arbitrary activities of everyday life. This Miro, for example, had stayed out of my mind for years. She had nothing to do with Jules or the problems I was having now. She had nothing to do with anything, yet because I felt self-conscious sitting at the Norfolk bar alone, because, in fact, I’d gone there on a Monday looking for a Friday man, I now have a vaguely remembered acquaintance coming into my story like a regular player with a regular part to play. And though my impulse to invite her for a drink had everything to do with the fact that she didn’t know what had happened to me, what else would I do with her once we were settled in our chairs but tell her? How could I relate to her, except as a kindred spirit and a sympathetic female ear?

  I stood in the car park while she changed into street clothes, but when I looked toward the front door of the National Theatre again Miro was there, and I understood that the small crowd I’d passed before weren’t ticket purchasers but fans. Miro took all the time she needed to sign her name on old programmes and to chat. As I watched her I imagined her solitary exits in London or New York, the loneliness she’d encountered wherever it was that she had gone.

  When she broke away we walked across the street quickly and without speaking, until the dust of the car park and road no longer had much chance to invade her nose and mouth. “I get hoarse so easily,” she explained.

  In the bar my original table was taken so we had to sit in the back. We were against a wrought-iron railing that looked toward the National Theatre car park and separated the bar from the sidewalk and street below.

  “Now,” said Miro, “tell me about this farm of yours. Don’t tell me about all the hard work. I want to hear about the satisfaction that comes at the end of the day.”

  The question was humourous and seemed entirely sincere, but the expression on Miro’s face told me also that she expected stories of a special kind. She wanted a success story that was entirely contrary to whatever had happened to her in the singing world. Maybe that had been her own motivation for coming along.

  “It still exists,” I said carefully. “But a week ago my husband died, so I’ve been spending most of my time in town.”

  “Good sweet Lord,” said Miro, “dear Jesus, no!”

  I hadn’t planned on making such a dramatic announcement, but I did get authentic pleasure from her reaction. Her look contained focussed shock, and seeing someone else struck by the enormity of what had happened was a large part of realising that enormity myself. I’d been surrounded by clowns with vendettas or slip-knot minds: the Mad Hatter and his doctor, a religious policeman in a red suit, and the father of my enemy showing partial scenes from a distant day. It may not seem like it from the story I’ve told so far, but before my life with Jules began I’d had a penchant for best friends. In school there was always one girl or another whom I kept right by my side. Now I was alone with Miro, and I understood that what I’d been trying to do all week was to connect with someone, to find just one person who could help me see this through, whose spirit would be willing to mingle with my own. That is why I’d been taken with Detective Mubia, and that, believe it or not, is what I had tried to feel with Mr N’chele as well. I wanted connection, I wanted a confidant.

  “It’s a horrible way to tell you,” I said. “I should find an old friend to burden with such terrible news.”

  Our drinks arrived, and Miro, who had ordered whiskey, tossed half of hers down and told the waiter to bring another. “But we are old friends,” she said. “We just weren’t very close ones.”

  After that I told her everything, from seeing Jules et Jim to the night at Mr N’chele’s house the first time and the night at Mr N’chele’s house the second. I gave as clear a description as I could of the hospital on the afternoon of Jules’s death, I told her about Mr Smith and Kamau, and about my visit to the New Florida Nightclub two days before. I even showed her the note Mr N’chele had given me on the paper napkin. When I told her about the tiny tusk and the letter that my father had found in his post office box, and when I mentioned Ralph chasing after its pages on the road, I slowed the story down, letting Miro ask questions, of which she had more than one or two.

  “How well do you know this character Ralph?” she asked. “And don’t you think it’s odd that he should show up just then?”

  I hadn’t thought about that but I didn’t think it was odd and I told her so. Miro, however, gave me a sage nod. “No doubt he isn’t involved, but you must think about everything, my dear. If you fail in your battle with these men it will be the casual elimination of such possibilities that does you in.”

  “But I knew Ralph all the way back in school,” I said. “For as long as I can remember he sat in the back of the room.”

  As I spoke Ralph’s name his adult face was clear enough in my mind, but I still couldn’t remember what he’d looked like as a boy.

  “Tell me,” asked Miro, “did I find you today or did you find me? At the National Theatre, I mean.”

  “You found me,” I said. “You were hiding out in my old ballet room.”

  “Ah-ha,” she said, “then you do see my point. Though I was hiding out in your ballet room, you found me, you can’t deny it. And I’ll bet Ralph came along in some sort of helpful way. I’ll bet he found you, am I right? If not, say so and we can go on.”

  “The wind blew my husband’s letter away and Ralph was there to pick it up,” I said, “but he didn’t supply the wind, and he didn’t insist that I take my father to the post office. His safari company is in Westlands and he was just walking by.”

  Miro’s eyes lit up and when the waiter took that moment to put her second whiskey down, she pushed it aside. “Maybe so,” she said, “but if it wasn’t he who supplied the wind, it was nevertheless the wind that gave him his opportunity. It’s a possibility, that’s all I want you to admit.”

  I didn’t think it was a possibility, not in the slightest, but Miro was so engaged by the idea and I loved sitting with her so much that I went ahead and said it was.

  After that we both seemed to decide that we were hungry. Our lurking waiter brought menus and while we examined them I felt the kinship again, the closeness that I’d just begun to understand I wanted and needed so much. My God, Jules had wrapped me up so thoroughly, had covered me so completely with his own sense of the world, that my life had been his while he was alive, simple as that. I hate to say it, but his view of things had been my own.

  My eyes rested on the menu while I thought those thoughts, but I hadn’t really been reading it, so when the waiter came back again I ordered a chicken salad. Miro said, “What the hell,” and ordered ham and eggs. She had tossed down her first whiskey in nothing flat, but the second one remained untouched, and when I finished my shandy and ordered another, she told the waiter to bring some mineral water. Whenever we wanted something our waiter was right there. Such attention was not a part of the Norfolk’s reputation, so I teased Miro, saying that he hovered in order to be near her. When our food came we laughed at the waiter, and when we finished eating and the after-work crowd thinned out, we moved to a better table, one closer to the front. This new table was out of our original waiter’s section, so Miro went back to get our bill. While she was gone I ordered tea and put my elbows on the table, resting my chin in my hands. I felt something like contentment, I was sure I did, and I felt something like guilt for feeling that way.

  When Miro was seated beside me again I asked, “How long have you been back?”

  “Why I only just this second got here,” she said.

  “I mean to Nairobi. How long have you been back in Kenya? When did you give up your attack on the serious opera world?”

  “Ah,” said Miro, “when did I give that up? Let’s see …”

  She didn’t like the question, so I said, “When I was at Oxford I assumed I’d never come back to Kenya to live. I told everyone it was beautiful but that it wasn’t connected with the real world. Does that make sens
e to you? To have the feeling that the real world is somewhere else all the time?”

  “It does make sense and it doesn’t,” she said, “but I don’t like talking about the real world. When it comes to singing, such a world simply means all those northern countries, and they are very cold.”

  “Oxford was cold too,” I said.

  Miro pushed her hands into the air, brushing my words away. “You don’t know it,” she said, “but my ambitions were large. I had the voice and I had the energy and the discipline and training. I also had the stage presence and the guts or whatever to stick with it, come what may. When I left I was truly leaving, I had truly said good-bye.”

  “So what happened?” I asked. “Why didn’t you stay? What are you doing back here, singing at the National Theatre again?”

  Our tea had come. Our old waiter had somehow got his station changed and when he brought the tea there was a note tucked between Miro’s cup and saucer. Since the cup wasn’t riding well, some of her tea had spilled, wetting the edges of the note, so the waiter lifted the note and set it beside the saucer on the table.

  “I had no intention of coming back,” she said. “I was living in New York at the end. I was singing every day and was finding a foothold. I had found the ladder, at least, and was ready to step up onto that ladder’s first rung. I knew people at the Met, and I was getting a reputation, those people were telling others I was there.”

  “But you did come back?” I said. I knew little about opera and a lot less about whatever it took to become a star, but everything I did know told me that this girl could make it anywhere. She had everything she said she had and she was charismatic. In the short time we had been together she had made me want to stay by her side. I was both comfortable with her and glad that she wanted to be my friend, and our waiter, whose infatuation clearly surpassed my own, was nearly at the point of approaching our table on his knees. It wasn’t that she was so beautiful, but she was magnetic, and as likable as anyone I had ever known.

  “It was my father,” she finally said. “He got sick. Word came that he was dying, so of course I flew home.”

  “My father’s still alive,” I said, “but I know what you mean.”

  “Ah, but my father is alive too,” said Miro. “God forgive me, but that’s the problem. He keeps insisting that he won’t last long, that death is calling to him from the next room over. He actually says things like that. He’s past sixty now, but whatever he says, I don’t think that death is anywhere near the next room, I don’t think it’s even in the house. He’s an assistant curator at the National Museum and believe it or not, he’s gone back to work, he goes almost every day.”

  “So why don’t you leave again? Go back and find that ladder in New York, climb it all the way.”

  Miro shrugged. “My father is as strong-willed as I and I love him very much,” she said. “He gave me his blessing when I left the first time, but now he is lonely and wants me to stay.”

  She laughed and then cast a thumb over her shoulder toward the National Theatre. “And now there’s Butterfly and I do love the part. Since its run is short, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see it through.”

  Miro had taken up the waiter’s note and was turning it in her hands, absently testing the sharpness of the three corners unaffected by the tea.

  My God, how our fathers invade us, I thought. I was about to say it out loud, but just then a shadow fell across our table and made us both look up. I expected the waiter, but Detective Mubia was standing there.

  “Godspeed, Mrs Grant,” he said.

  Since Miro already knew about the detective, and since I’d described him pretty well, she smiled when I introduced them, demurely looking down. I called the waiter over and ordered another cup of tea, but I had been prizing my time with Miro so much that I could no longer remember why I’d wanted the detective and I wished he’d go away. When his tea came I said, “I know I shouldn’t be telephoning you like this. It was kind of you to come.”

  Miro heard the artifice in my voice, and she’d have none of it. “Nonsense,” she said. “Sit down, Detective, and tell us what you know. So far no one will speak plainly to this girl. She’s getting pieces of the story, but she doesn’t know how to make the pieces whole.”

  Detective Mubia sat down slowly and then slightly bowed. “It is good to call,” he said, “but there is nothing new that I can say. It isn’t really a case, you know. There are irregularities, but my superiors have not yet given it a case number. Everything is supposition, even until today, and we are too understaffed for that.”

  The detective had been speaking to Miro, and when he finished she asked, “What about the feather in her husband’s mouth, what about the pillow on the ledge outside his room? Surely that alone is enough for you to assign such a thing as a case number. Do your superiors suppose that there isn’t anything to it, that there’s nothing for her to worry about? Do they suppose that nothing more will happen if you leave it alone?”

  Detective Mubia nodded, and for a moment seemed to be a nearly social man. His face was kind of bemused, as if he was pleased to be taking up the question he’d been asked. He waited and then he said, “I am not a supposer. If I were a supposer my supposes would be suppositions, don’t you see, and we are too understaffed for that.”

  There was a second or two of odd silence before Miro started to laugh. Detective Mubia had made a joke, if that was his intention, but he had kept his face so completely straight that both of us felt left behind.

  “Very good,” said Miro, “but I have asked the wrong question, I can see that now. Tell us what you know about Mr Smith instead. What does he want Nora to give him that he thinks of as his property? Surely not just another elephant tusk or two.” Miro looked at him, and while she waited she picked up the waiter’s note.

  Detective Mubia had paused again, but this time I knew he wasn’t trying to think of something clever. “Mr Smith is evil but his father is good,” he said. “When good and evil are brothers, when they are father and son, we cannot destroy one without destroying the other. Were the father out of the picture, then I could tell you everything you want to know about the son.”

  His speech was impassioned, for a man with such a narrow emotional range, but his words were just as ambiguous as those of the good and evil men he spoke of.

  The detective sat forward to drink his tea, and Miro still had her second whiskey next to her, in a shot glass that she now covered with the waiter’s folded note. She had been looking at her watch for a short while, so I soon called for the second part of our check and pushed my chair away. It was nearly eight o’clock and the after-work crowd was gone.

  When Miro and I stood to leave, Detective Mubia bid us good night, saying he would order more hot water for his tea and stick around. Miro would have left the waiter’s note where it was, resting over her whiskey glass, had I not touched her arm and pointed at it. The waiter was watching from his station by the kitchen door, so Miro took the note, held it up to him briefly, then unfolded it and leaned under the nearest light to read. She read quickly, with a serious expression in her eyes, and when she finished she folded the note again and tucked it into a pocket somewhere.

  “Which way are you going?” I asked. “In what part of town do you live?”

  Miro laughed, taking hold of my arm. “Like you, I am staying with my father,” she said, “but we are going opposite ways.”

  There were taxis waiting across the street by the entrance to the National Theatre car park. “I don’t mind driving you,” I said, but she waved my offer away, and just then a driver got out of his cab and opened the back door.

  “I didn’t say so earlier,” Miro said, “but one coincidence in all of this is that my father’s house is out on Ralph Bunche Road.”

  Miro got into the taxi and rolled the window down. She had my phone number and I had hers. “From this evening we will be friends,” she said, but the driver wouldn’t wait for my reply, and since the cab threw dust into t
he road, I didn’t stand there watching her go.

  Over in the theatre car park my father’s Land Rover was safely standing by. There was little traffic on Harry Thuku Road by then, but I had to pause for another taxi, which had blocked the car park entrance to let its occupants down. It was then, as I waited for the road to clear, that I happened to glance over the top of the taxi and into the bar. Detective Mubia was still at our table, but he wasn’t alone. Our waiter stood above him, and the seat I had occupied, the one facing me now, contained another Kenyan man. He was very dark and wore a black suit with a white shirt and tie. At first I thought this man was Detective Mubia’s superior and that the detective was being scolded in some way, I suppose because the man was sitting up straight and poking his finger into the intervening air. I considered parking the Land Rover again and going back inside to try to explain, but when the taxi moved and I could see the table better, I realised that the man sitting there was not Detective Mubia’s boss, at least I hoped he wasn’t. This was a man I had seen before, and though his father didn’t like the name, I said it anyway, sitting alone in my own father’s old car: “Mr Smith.”

  And just then a tall lorry pulled up, blocking my vision but letting me use its cover to turn onto the road and drive away.

  It wasn’t a long drive from the Norfolk to my father’s house, but by the time I got there I had put myself at sea again. After all his talk of good and evil, could Detective Mubia be working for Mr Smith? Was that also possible in this colliding world? And since the waiter was standing with them, what was the nature of the note he had given to Miro? Perhaps it wasn’t infatuation that made him write the note, perhaps it wasn’t he who had written it at all. And if all that was possible, then what about Ralph, and why shouldn’t I worry about Miro herself? Could Mr Smith have everyone on his side? What about Beatrice, what about Dr Zir?

  I parked the Land Rover in the drive and was walking into the house, feeling desperate and sorry for myself and tossing it all over in my mind, when something suddenly shot past my ear and something else slammed into my back, knocking me down. Oh God, Jules, I thought, here I come!