The Book of Water

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  The gate is solid sheet metal, scarred as if someone had been beating on it with a sledge. A little sliding panel is set at eye level. N’Doch rings for several minutes without result.

  “Gotta be patient,” he assures the girl. “Just gotta wait ’em out.”

  The apparition is scuffing his feet in the dust, his hands shoved deep into the stretched-out pockets of his shorts. N’Doch remembers these shorts now, except they were his shorts, not Jéjé’s, and were particularly prized for being the match to a pair worn by his favorite pop star at the time. And that’s what weirds him out. The time was ten years ago and he hasn’t seen those shorts since. Or the pop star.

  “She ain’t in there,” says the apparition.

  “I said, you gotta be patient. People don’t just come racing out to see who’s knocking. They might be watching their show. They might feel safer not being home.”

  The apparition shrugs. “There’s someone in there, yeah. But it ain’t her.”

  N’Doch’s fists ball up on his hips. “How the hell do you know?”

  The girl looks right and left. The street is empty. She lays a warning hand on his arm. “Surely you’ve seen by now . . . if she says she knows, she knows.”

  Damn! He’s forgotten again. Of all the shapes the dragon could have pulled out of his mind, it had to be this one? N’Doch guesses he should be grateful she’s not walking around looking like his mother. Or Sedou. This last notion leaves a hollow ache in his gut that he’d rather not have to deal with. He resolves to stop thinking of the apparition as his brother Jéjé. He reaches to ring again. “Gotta at least find out if she lives here.”

  The little panel jerks open on squealing tracks, just a crack. “Who is it?” demands a voice.

  It’s a woman’s voice, despite its gruffness. N’Doch assumes his best public persona, the one that always charms the ladies. “We’re looking for my grandpapa’s dear old friend, Mme. Lealé Kaimah. Is she at home?”

  “Yeah? Who’s this grandfather?”

  “He is M. Djawara N’Djai.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I am his grandson, N’Doch N’Djai.”

  A pair of crow-footed dark eyes scrutinize him through the narrow crack. “Lealé doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Excuse me, but my grandpapa received a postcard from her just last month giving this as her address.”

  A short pause on the other side of the gate. “What do you want with her?”

  N’Doch lets a whiff of the bush spice up his performance. “We’re just into town, my family and I. First time, y’know? Papa Dja asked us to look Mme. Lealé up, see how she’s been all these years.”

  “Huh,” scoffed the voice. “Looking to sponge off her, more likely, now she’s found something steady for herself.”

  N’Doch lets his shoulders droop. This woman wants abject humility. “No, no, Madame. In fact, my grandpapa was not even sure that his old friend was still living until he received her card.”

  The voice chuckles. “Oh, she’s living, all right.”

  “Then I may report to him that she’s well?”

  “You can go see for yourself. I guess you sure are new in town, ’cause it’s no mystery to anyone local where Lealé’s living these days. You know where’s the Marché Ziguinchor?”

  “No, but I’ll find it, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, well, you go down there. Ask for the house of the Mahatma Glory Magdalena.”

  “The what?”

  But the panel slams shut as N’Doch leans toward it. He almost rings again, but he’s pretty sure he’s gotten all he’s gonna get out of this woman.

  “I think she means ‘who,’” notes the girl. “The Magdalene was . . .”

  “I know, I know.” He doesn’t, but he’s tired of being informed all the time. He stands chewing his lip for a moment. “The Ziguinchor. What’s Papa Dja doing knowing someone who lives there?”

  “Then you do know it?”

  “Oh, yeah. But I wasn’t about to tell her that.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “A part of town where rich people play, but not the kind like Baraga. He’s bought himself some respectability, at least. The Zig is where the rich and famous go when the old money won’t have ’em around.” He doesn’t know how to say it to the girl, but he’s wondering if Papa Dja’s old pal has made her success working in a pleasure house.

  “Is it far?”

  He shakes his head, but he’s thinking that the Zig is the sort of place he’d rather go by himself, not dragging some white girl and a kid after him. He’ll have to turn down offers for them right and left, and somebody might get argumentative. But he’s got nowhere he can stash them meanwhile, so he’ll have to risk it. Better in the morning than later on. At least a tourist will be less of a novelty there. He’s never seen the Zig by daylight. It’s the one part of town that doesn’t even get started until after dark.

  He leads them back to the main drag, and all the rush and bustle on the boulevard. They’re just crossing to the shade on the north side when he hears sirens coming. His first thought is, Run! But he can’t, with all this new responsibility. He hurries the girl and the kid onto the sidewalk, against the charred wall of a boarded-up house. The crowd stops and lines up along the curb to stare at the oncoming vehicles.

  The girl moves in close, looking up at him wide-eyed. “What is it?”

  N’Doch bites back an impatient reply. Probably she saw him tense up, and it worried her. It’s not her fault she doesn’t know anything, but he’s just not cut out to be a tour guide. “Somebody famous.”

  “A powerful lord?”

  N’Doch laughs. “You’re thinking, like your daddy, hunh?”

  “No, N’Doch. My father wasn’t very powerful. I used to think he was, but that’s because I was a little girl. Now I see that he wasn’t as powerful as he wanted to be, and that’s why he allied himself with Brother Guillemo. To get more powerful.”

  He blinks at her. This story of hers is beginning to sound interesting. Maybe there’s a song or two in it. “Well, that’s the way of it, isn’t it? Power and money.” He stands up tall to see over the heads of the men in front of him. The lead pair of motorcycles have just run the signal at the intersection, their headlights flashing. Behind them are four more, rolling along two by two, a stone’s throw ahead of the limo. Behind the limo, more flashing lights and the sirens of the rear guard. N’Doch lets out a low whistle. What blows his mind is not the numbers or the noise, but the style and splash.

  The six lead cycles are bright cherry red. All their chrome parts are polished gold. The riders are uniformed in opaque black helmets and glossy black boots, and skintight gold bodysuits set with bits of mirror, so that each is shaped by darkness top and bottom and by edgy, dancing sparkle in between. The limo itself is mirrored gold all over, even the windows, and entirely anonymous. No logo, no flag, no banners, none of the usual personal advertising. Not even an initial.

  “Who is it? Who?” the crowd murmurs.

  The hot air is full of guesses and pronouncements. Even N’Doch finds his cool ebbing away. The sirens fill his ears and set his blood pounding. The bright heavy sun, rising toward the midday heat, pales to insignificance before such brilliance, such blinding spectacle. He imagines the frosty interior of the limo. He smells the soft leather of its seats, the sensual perfume of the woman next to him as he rides across town to the studio to shoot his latest music vid. Maybe it’s two women, and they’re chatting softly while he, aloof, gazes through the gold-tinted window at the people who’ve lined the streets to stare at him with fascination and envy. And then a new thought enters his fantasy: Will he remember where he’s come from, when that day arrives? Will he remember that it was him once, lining the streets? He’d like to think he would, but . . . hey, why should he? Nobody else does, once they’ve made it.

  The limo slides silently past. Behind it are another six cycles, roaring and flashing. When they’ve all gone by, the street
seems vastly empty. The crowd mutters and complains.

  The girl is entranced. She cranes her neck after the tail-lights, clapping her hands in glee. “Oh, a golden carriage, oh wonderful! Is it a king?”

  “You think everyone rich is a king? We don’t have kings here, you get it?” Like the crowd, N’Doch is left aroused and dissatisfied. “Don’t know who it was, anyway. A publicity stunt of some sort, maybe. Who’d go to all that trouble and expense, otherwise; without telling you who they are?”

  He’s aware now of a low keening sound in that place between his ears where the dragon music has staked its claim. He looks around, realizing he’s lost track of the apparition. He spots the kid balled up in the corner of a gated doorway, shoulders hunched, his hands pressed hard to his ears. “Oops,” says N’Doch.

  He slips through the dispersing throng to catch hold of the kid and help him to his feet. The girl is there instantly, wrapping her arms around the boy-thing, crooning to him soothingly. This time, N’Doch thinks, it’s she who’s forgotten the kid’s really a dragon.

  “Musta been the sirens,” he offers. “Hurt his . . . her ears.” He assumes it’s pain. What’s a dragon got to be afraid of?

  “No,” the girl replies. “Well, yes—mine, too . . . but not only. Mostly, it was the badness, she says.”

  He finds himself staring at them, this alien white girl with her arms around his dragon. “So why can’t she say that to me?”

  The girl looks up at him. “But she does. She will. She wants to. But you have to listen.”

  “Hunh,” N’Doch says. They’ve been this route before. But he thinks maybe he’ll just give it a try, for the hell of it. See what it’s like. “So, remind me—how do I do that?”

  She cocks a dark eyebrow at him reprovingly. “You know how, N’Doch. Just like you do it to understand me. Like you do it when you want to. Only you also have to do it when you don’t want to.”

  “Hunh,” he says again, but then he’s more interested in something else. “What’d she mean, the ‘badness’?”

  “It was a feeling she got.” She releases the apparition and urges it gently toward him. Sounding just like Papa Dja, she says, “You ask her.”

  N’Doch lets out a breath, feeling already like he’s conceded something. “So. What did you mean?”

  The apparition shimmers, seems to swell and shrink with its own breathing. N’Doch throws up both hands, palms out.

  “Not here! You can’t! Don’t change!”

  The apparition shakes its head, shivers and settles back into a steadier reality. “Sorry. Just kinda threw me there, y’know?”

  “Umm . . . no. I don’t.”

  “In the car, I mean. Not bad, exactly. Something . . . wrong.”

  “Yeah . . . like what?”

  The boy-thing shrugs, as if its panic had never happened. “Don’t know, bro.”

  N’Doch lowers his hands. “Great. All that fuss for an I-don’t-know.”

  “It’s a warning,” says the girl.

  “Right. ‘It’s a sign! It’s an omen!’ You sound like Papa Dja.”

  “You could do worse,” notes the apparition. “At least he gets it right some of the time.”

  Unfathomably irritated, N’Doch rounds on him. “Whadda you know? You never even met him!”

  Now the apparition looks truly offended.

  “Of course she did,” puts in the girl hastily.

  N’Doch presses both palms to his temples and squeezes hard. Yes! What was he thinking? “Sorry! Sorry. Okay? You two are making me crazy. Look, it’s time to move. We gotta check out this Mahatma Glory Whosits while it’s still daylight.”

  “Magdalena,” say the kid and the girl together.

  N’Doch sighs. “Whatever.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  They’re still on the outskirts of the Ziguinchor when N’Doch begins to see the signs. Posters in shop windows and pasted on the walls. A billboard, erected hastily on the roof of someone’s house, alongside an old satellite dish. Even little stickers, brand new, in all the colors of the fluorescent rainbow, blooming on the faded doors and gateposts. He’s used to having political broadsides and government proclamations plastered up all over the place, but this is different. These are almost . . . decorative.

  He points them out to the apparition and the girl. Carefully, the girl sounds out the words.

  “Glow . . . rye? Sorry, the letters are funny. Glowree? Glory!”

  Impressed, he nods. “It’s her. That’s the place we’ll find Lealé.”

  The image is the same everywhere: the dark face of a woman superimposed on a bright four-pointed star. It’s shaped like a compass rose, like he’s seen on old maps in the history vids. The woman is smiling beatifically. “That’s all it says, ‘Glory,’ but it’s gotta be where that woman was talking about.” He’s kind of relieved, ’cause this face don’t look like it’s selling sex or kinky games. Still, you never know. “Maybe Lealé’s joined some kind of religious cult.”

  The girl shudders. “Oh, I hope not.”

  “Why? You know your Bible stuff, sounds like. I’ll let you go ask her where Lealé is.”

  She eyes him sideways. “But, N’Doch, I do not speak her language.”

  He snaps his fingers, an oversized gesture. “Damn! Right again!”

  Her brow creases, then smoothes. Her eyes lighten and she grins, sketching a little bow. “Ah ha,” she says, then nods for him to lead the way down the street.

  N’Doch thinks, Now we’re getting someplace.

  * * *

  The stickers and signs soon become elaborate arrows pointing the way. N’Doch just follows them.

  “That Water Street woman sure was right about this place being no trouble to find,” he remarks. But the closer he gets, the uneasier it makes him. This Glory person doesn’t look to be leading a very private life. There’s sure to be lots of people around, and awkward questions about the kid and the girl. He wonders if he can manage to hunt up Lealé without getting tangled in this Mahatma’s dubious business.

  They come around a corner finally and there in the wide square is the ramshackle four-story pile of crumbling yellow stucco that houses the Marché Ziguinchor. N’Doch thinks of the coins Papa Djawara has given him. He thinks of cheese and bread and oranges. Oranges! Maybe even a tidbit of chocolate, that fabulous luxury of luxuries. But the market is closed, and the ring of outside stalls as well. It’s nearing noon. Both vendors and customers have fled the heat. Those with no place to go have staked out niches in the shade. The bundle of rags tucked in each corner is a person napping. N’Doch’s timing is off again, but it’s no disaster. He’s hoping, despite his disclaimers to the woman at 913 Water Street, that Lealé will be good for at least one full meal in the Glory woman’s kitchen, and a cooling siesta in his grandfather’s name.

  Besides, now that he thinks about it, he’s glad the stalls are closed. He wouldn’t want the girl to have to see some of the stuff they sell in there besides food. But he oughta find shade for her pretty quick, he sees. She’s damp and flagging, and paler even than usual. She may not know to drink enough, though N’Doch notices the apparition is sure putting a big dent into the water bottle he made it carry.

  Still, he lingers by the south entrance to the market, staring pensively at the big, barred wooden doors. Litter has blown up in piles against them, like they haven’t been open in a while. There used to be showers of neon here, people night and day, and music blaring into the streets. A resourceful kid could always find what he lacked at the Zig. All sorts of deals going down, lots of biz, the very center of biz, even in the hottest noons. Maybe at night, it still is. N’Doch hopes so, ’cause right now, it’s looking real drab and down on its luck, falling apart like everything else.

  The apparition taps him on the arm. N’Doch turns, and there’s the place.

  “Yee-ow,” he murmurs.

  It’s a big stone building, a mansion really, filling one entire end of the market square. It has white
columns and an upper gallery with wrought iron railings, like from colonial times, even to the magenta riot of bougainvillea cascading from the balcony. N’Doch recalls there was some kind of hotel here before, but he doesn’t recall these elegant columns or that lacy iron gingerbread, or the ornate but massive gates in tall white walls topped with razor wire. The place even has its own driveway. He especially doesn’t remember the mammoth light-box sign over the front portico: the beaming woman in the golden four-pointed star. Above, her name in glowing block caps: “GLORY.” Underneath, a legend: In this sad world, a bridge to the next.

  N’Doch eyes the impressive guard house between the motor gate and a smaller pedestrian gate beside it. He supposes an entire system of locks, screens, sensors, alarms, and monitors—and armed bouncers.

  “I guess Lealé’s come up in the world, all right,” he mutters. “If she’s in there. Question is, how’re we gonna get us in? Probably need a password and our own personal bar code.”

  “Go knock on the door,” says the apparition.

  “Sure thing, smart mouth. You got ‘rich boy’ stamped on your forehead?”

  “It says ‘Welcome.’”

  “Where?”

  The boy-dragon points. Sure enough, over the pedestrian gate, in gold letters. Bienvenue.

  N’Doch fights through a twinge of resentment. The real Jéjé never lived long enough to learn how to read. “Well, it don’t mean us, you can bet on that.”

  “You won’t do it, I will.”

  And before N’Doch can stop him, the kid is sprinting across the square. The girl starts after him, swaying a bit in the sun, then looks back. “Kommen sie nicht?”

  “Huh?” The damn kid’s fallen down on the translating job. N’Doch holds his ground a moment, then groans softly and follows. Got to get the girl inside before she drops. Besides, he’s just noticed the shiny new street signs on the mansion’s corners: Rue de la Terre.