Ahmed's Revenge

by Richard Wiley

  Michael went off toward the dormitory then, after saying that in the end the leopard simply lifted the lion’s heart off the stump and disappeared back into the night, and when I went inside my house I turned off most of the lights. It was expensive and wasteful to leave the generator on all night long, but because I hadn’t provided paraffin lamps for the dormitory rooms, that’s what I decided to do.

  In my kitchen I couldn’t face the mess again, so I made it disappear by turning that light off too. And in Jules’s office I shut the drawers and somehow lined up the pens and squared the blotter with the edges of the desk and closed the curtains.

  In my bedroom I thought, “Tuesday’s over, Tuesday’s done,” and since these days really did seem like months, I looked at the wall as if I might find a calendar there, something to mark up with Xs, in commemoration of slowly passing time. I was thawing out, I was sure of it. On the only other night since Jules’s death that I’d slept in this room I had stayed in the shocked posture of dumb disbelief, like Michael when the leopard came. Now, however, one week after Jules had died, it was me in the bed with all my faculties, and when I pushed my leg over to where it usually found Jules, it was me that let a little cry come out, a little tremor to represent all the misery that was still inside.

  What I’m trying to say is that after only a week, the pain was less. May God forgive me and may Julius Grant forgive me too, but the pain, without any question, was less. I could tell, don’t you know, because it was beginning to come out now, and because it hurt so very much more than it ever had before.

  When I awoke in the morning the first thing I noticed was that the generator was shut down. It was nearly eight, so I thought that Ralph must have done it, but I knew right away we’d have to turn it on again if we wanted to get breakfast made. I’d slept well enough and was looking for something fresh to wear. I was sick of those stupid safari clothes and had just kicked them under the bed when I heard the sound of our farm lorry starting up. It was an unlikely sound, since the key was stuck in one of the office drawers, but our lorry’s voice was unmistakable. I dressed quickly and went out of the room.

  “Hello?” I said. “What’s going on?”

  I was smiling hard, lest any of Ralph’s clients think I was irritated that they’d started the lorry without asking, but the front room was empty and the front door was open wide. And when I turned to go into the kitchen, there in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, with my own .380 automatic pistol loosely held in his hand, was Mr Smith.

  “Everything is now out of control,” he said. “Everything has gone too far.”

  “What have you done with the tourists?” I asked. “You haven’t killed them too, I hope.”

  It was a stupid thing to say, at the very least rash. If I was ever going to beat this man I would have to stop acting like that. Luckily, however, Mr Smith didn’t seem to care what I said. He didn’t consider me a formidable opponent, and, so far as I could tell, he had no idea I knew about Kamau. That much, at least, was still on my side.

  “Of course I haven’t hurt them,” he said. “Our economic future depends on tourists like those.” As he spoke he shook his head at my lack of understanding; the lines on his forehead were pronounced.

  Mr Smith was dressed in a suit again, like a cool businessman. I remembered feeling some sense before that maybe he was a man I could reason with, but I knew now that that impression was made almost entirely by his English and his clothes.

  “I do not want to hurt you or that fool policeman or the wildebeest man either,” Mr Smith said. “Under different circumstances you and I might even have become friends.”

  When he said that, I tried to speak with less hostility in my voice. Miro had been right in telling me to take care, and since all of the physical strength was on his side, all the power, I could take care only by using as my weapons the trickery of language and insinuation and tone. And by trying to play upon his already iron-clad image of a woman’s role.

  “It has taken me ever so long to piece all this together,” I said. “I know you don’t believe me, but I knew nothing before. I hadn’t the slightest inkling that we were involved in anything but coffee growing.”

  Even as I spoke I was irritated that though I was now trying to trick him with innocence and guile, what I said was basically the truth. If I hadn’t followed Jules that night I wouldn’t have known a thing. Maybe Jules was a lot like this man here, maybe all men were. Isn’t that what Michael had said the night before?

  “Then you had a very old-fashioned marriage,” Mr Smith said. “My father told me as much, but I doubted him until now.”

  The end of my pistol was loose in his hands, tick-tocking around. I thought it represented Mr Smith’s disrespect for me as an adversary and his indecision as to what to do next. It turned out, however, that he was only waiting for a signal, and the appearance of our farm lorry just off the porch made him move.

  “Let’s go outside with the others,” he said. “Let’s end it all this morning, right now.”

  I could see when he stepped away from the kitchen door that Mr Smith’s other hand held my sisal bag. He’d taken the pistol out of it and he had taken Jules’s letter, all of its pages intact. But though he ordered me to, I didn’t move toward the front door. Instead I let him get close to me and then I grabbed my bag back fast, snatching it out of his hand.

  It was a bold thing to do, but it wasn’t stupid, for I needed to see how he would react. The bag came loose from his fingers easily, and for a second I thought he would strike me with the pistol. However, in the end all he did was sigh and point with it, aiming at the door. “Don’t do that again,” he said. “Do not act that way.”

  I wouldn’t, but I was enlightened by the exchange. If he didn’t want to hurt me, if, for example, his father had begun to intervene, warning him not to go too far, then the weapon of words might be mine.

  This is what I was thinking as I walked in front of the man, but when we got outside I forgot about it. Ralph and his three guests were standing in the bed of our lorry, and to my great surprise, Detective Mubia was there too. All of them had their hands tied behind their backs, and positioned around the lorry were half a dozen horrible-looking men. These men were poachers in oily black rags, with rifles slung over their arms. Their hair was matted and their eyes were wild and terrifying.

  “You don’t want to do this,” I said, but now my words were so weak, so powerless against what I saw, that I was glad when Mr Smith let them go unanswered. He spoke in Kikuyu, which I don’t understand, and the man driving the lorry forced it into gear. We walked behind it over the trampled ground.

  “Your husband’s letter is excellent,” said Mr Smith. “I love the mystery of it, the way it gives you knowledge and makes it necessary for me to have to worry things out.”

  We were going so directly toward the orchard that I was beginning to fear Mr Smith had already worried it out. He was too expansive, and he clearly smelled victory in the air. We finally stopped, however, in a clearing about halfway between the house and Jules’s grave. I had seen immediately that the people on the lorry bed were tied together, Ralph with Dorothea, Michael with John. Only Detective Mubia was tied alone, and he was also the only one who appeared to have been injured thus far. He had a bruise on his left cheekbone and a bit of dried blood under his nose. When Mr Smith saw me looking at him he said, “We found that fool sitting over on the Narok-Nakuru road. Is he your security guard, is that his new job? If so, you should know that he’s a poor one. We found him sleeping in his worthless car.”

  There wasn’t any question that Detective Mubia was their fellow captive, but the three tourists and Ralph were staying pretty far away from him. Like healthy wildebeests, they sensed they should distance themselves from wounded prey. Though he still had his red suit on, the detective’s shirt was torn and his tie had somehow been pulled around and thrown over his shoulder so that it hung down his back like a noose that could be pulled tight at any time. He was su
bdued but he was frightening to look at. His eyes kept darting between his captors and then rolling away.

  “Now,” said Mr Smith. “I have already spoken with your friends. They have agreed to keep quiet. I told them that if things go well I will soon be letting them go, leaving your land altogether, never to return.”

  I looked up at the people on the lorry’s bed, but there wasn’t any contradiction in the faces I saw. John and Dorothea were watching each other, and Michael and Ralph were both looking down. Two of Mr Smith’s henchmen had climbed onto the lorry and lit cigarettes. The others were standing very close, making a circle around Mr Smith and me. With the possible exception of Detective Mubia, everyone was dreadfully calm.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Ah,” said Mr Smith. “It embarrasses me to say it, but I want you to read your husband’s poem and explain its meaning. After that we will be gone.”

  “It is a private poem,” I said. “It shouldn’t be read for others to hear.”

  Mr Smith nodded as if willing to concede that point, and I suddenly got a small idea, “You read it to me,” I said. “You say the words and I will answer questions about them.”

  There is an oddly prudish strain in Kenyans sometimes, and I guess I spoke because I hoped I might detect it in him. Still, I had no idea what such a strategy would get me, even if he was reluctant to read the poem. My only idea was to take up time, to remain standing there, to have the issue of his property unresolved until a better idea came along.

  Mr Smith thumbed through the pages of Jules’s letter until he found the poem. After that he spoke Kikuyu again, and immediately one of the men in the lorry cut the ropes that bound Michael with John. Both men began rubbing at the sore spots on their wrists. And just then the poacher who’d cut them loose took a long puff on his cigarette. He shook the ash away and pushed the bright red end of it into Michael’s arm.

  “Ouch! Christ!” said Michael, and John shouted with him, jumping aside.

  Mr Smith tried to pretend that he hadn’t ordered the burning; he yelled at the poacher and the poacher threw the cigarette away, and in a second Michael’s arms were tied again and the poacher made John jump down. Mr Smith held page six of Jules’s letter up in front of John’s face. “Read this,” he said. “Read it so the lady can refresh her memory and tell me what it means.”

  John rubbed his wrists some more. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and cleared his throat. We all understood he didn’t want to, but in the end there was nothing for him to do but to read the pitiful poem.

  Under our bed

  yes, under hot covers,

  where the sweet smell of sex

  draws the sharp claws of others.

  “Is he talking about your bedroom?” Mr Smith quietly asked. “Is he talking about passion here? Must I tear your house apart to find what I want?”

  If I said yes it would buy us a world of time, but it would also destroy my house, and when he found nothing he would be furious. And since the two poachers on the lorry, at least, wanted to cause us pain, keeping Mr smith engaged was the only hope we had.

  “I haven’t given it much thought,” I told him, “but no, Julius would never hide anything in the house. He was an outside man.”

  “Where, then?” asked Mr Smith.

  I told John to read the poem again while I put on a thinker’s pose, as if I were finally paying close enough attention to worry things out. I stood there, chin fisted, my other arm laid across my middle, and said, “Maybe he means the New Stanley Hotel. We used to stay there once in a while. When we were feeling romantic and wanted to get away from the farm. My husband loved the New Stanley Hotel—maybe he means he has left your property there.”

  But this time I went too far and Mr Smith barked, “I don’t care about your mischief, I want my property back! Tell me where it is and stop the rest! I’m not one you should trifle with, Mrs Nora Grant, this is not the good old days. My patience is as thin as that fool detective’s ridiculous coat.”

  John was so frightened by Mr Smith’s raised voice that he actually began to read the poem again.

  “No need for that,” I said. “I know it by heart.”

  “Do you understand it or do you not?” said Mr Smith. “I am asking for the final time.”

  “I do not,” I said. “I realise that my husband thought he was making it easy for me and difficult for everyone else, but I’m notoriously thick where puzzles are concerned. You can ask anyone.”

  If we were playing poker I wouldn’t last a minute with a strategy of this kind, but I didn’t know what other strategy to use. I was lost, and Mr Smith smiled down at me, calling my bluff immediately.

  “Very well,” he said. He looked at his poachers and this time he spoke in Swahili. “Burn the house,” he told them. “We will find my property in the rubble.”

  “Wait,” I said. “There’s nothing you want inside.”

  Mr Smith held up a hand, stopping the poachers, who’d already started to walk away. “If you know that’s so, then you know it from your husband’s poem. And if you know where my property is not, then you must know where it is, too. That is deductive reasoning. Didn’t we both learn that in school?”

  “It’s outside,” I said. “As I have told you, I know it because my husband was an outside man, but I know it also because of the poem’s last line, the one about the sharp claws of others. Once when we were sleeping out here we drew the interest of some lions and had a bit of a close call. He must have buried your property, as you call it, at the spot where that event occurred.”

  “Good,” said Mr Smith. “Show me the place. Find it for me and I’ll be on my way.”

  “But you see, my husband was the romantic in the family, not me. It was in his nature to remember such things but it isn’t in mine. That’s the truth. I do know that it was around here somewhere, but I don’t know the exact spot. We slept outside often, but so far as I can recall, we never settled down twice in the same place.”

  Three of those still remaining in the lorry, Ralph and Dorothea and Michael, seemed to be trying to affect disinterested looks, as if other business was occupying their minds, but Detective Mubia, over the past few minutes, had been taking up a progressively more aggressive pose, getting our attention by staring down at Mr Smith and growling, making a gurgling sound deep in his throat. When Mr Smith noticed it he spoke in Kikuyu again, and in a split second all four of them were pushed out of the lorry, left to land on their feet or not, but without the use of their hands.

  “If what you say is true, you will give us the general area and we will look everywhere,” said Mr Smith, ignoring the falling bodies and turning back to me. “We will all take shovels and search for places where the ground is no longer hard.”

  Michael and Detective Mubia came down off the lorry pretty well, feet-first, and rolled away, but because Ralph and Dorothea were still tied together they had no way of turning in the air and therefore landed hard. It wasn’t a great distance from the lorry bed to the ground, but Dorothea’s right side took the brunt of the fall. She shouted and then turned pale. Ralph was wiggling around to try to get his weight off her.

  John and I both ran over to them. “Give me a knife,” I yelled. “Quickly! Can’t you see she is injured?”

  I couldn’t see Dorothea’s face, but she was so quiet now that I thought she might have passed out.

  Mr Smith only stared at us, but when I stood again, he finally did take a knife from his pocket, flipping it my way. “I don’t need this,” he said. “Cut them all loose.”

  The ropes were easiest to reach by Ralph’s arm, and since the knife was sharp I got the job done in a second or two, but Dorothea didn’t move, even when we turned her onto her back.

  “Get some water,” said John. “Dorothea’s pain threshold is low.”

  “I’m going into the house,” I told Mr Smith. “We need to bring this lady around right now.”

  When Mr Smith nodded I left quickly, got
to the house without a guard, and rummaged around in my kitchen. I put cold water in a bottle and took ice from the freezer compartment of my fridge. I got a washcloth from the bathroom, and a bottle of aspirin from above the sink. Before I went back outside I tried to think what weapon I might find, but in the end I only grabbed our first-aid kit and ran. Dorothea was sitting up when I got there. Michael was beside her and John was at her back.

  “Her bones are brittle,” he told us. “That arm’s been broken before.”

  Maybe that was true, but when I knelt by Dorothea and looked at her arm, it seemed to form a straight-enough line, and there wasn’t much swelling. I gave her water and made her take four or five aspirin tablets, and then I found an elastic bandage in the first-aid kit and wrapped the arm, tying it off at her elbow.

  “Can you think straight, Dorothea?” I asked. “Do you understand what’s going on?”

  Mr Smith had surprised me by letting me go into the house alone, surprised me more by waiting patiently since my return, but now he seemed to have had enough. When he spoke to his men in Kikuyu again, three of them pulled Detective Mubia and Ralph and Michael away from Dorothea and John and me, pushing them up toward the orchard.

  “Enough of this playing, Mrs Grant,” Mr. Smith said. “I want you to help me right now.” Dorothea was standing by then, so John and I supported her as we followed the others.

  Until that moment everything I’d thought and everything I’d said, however muddled, had been with the intention of doing what Jules had asked me to do in his letter, namely, to seek a modicum of revenge, to avoid giving the property back. But by the time we reached the edge of the orchard I had pretty much decided to resign the fight. Someone else would surely be injured if I didn’t; someone might even be killed. I would simply have to honour my husband’s memory later, and in some other way. Michael, however, turned and spoke before I could, surprising us all.

  “This is a graveyard,” he told Mr Smith. “It’s a cemetery. If you dig here you’ll find nothing but human bones.”