EQMM, August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  That night he drove blocks out of his way to avoid the spot where the shanty drummer had died.

  Meg had to ask him three times what was wrong. Finally he told her Steve had been taken out by the cops.

  "Oh Jim, that's great! What are the charges?"

  "Nobody knows. He'll probably be back tomorrow. It could just be a misunderstanding."

  "Doesn't matter, sweetheart.” She threw her arms around him. “You know how Mr. Purle feels about scandal. Stinky Steve is out. And that means you are in!"

  "I don't know about that,” he said.

  * * * *

  Jim had no idea how he made it to work the next day. It was a miracle he hadn't hit anything. At the office, the first thing he did was check Steve's office. Still empty.

  Surely by now they must have let him go. He must have had an alibi. Or the shop that detailed his car would be able to tell them that the bumper had not been damaged.

  He stared at his computer screen, not seeing a thing, until just before lunch when Arlene came rushing in. “Did you hear the news?"

  "About what?"

  "Steve's been arrested for hit-and-run! He killed some kid in the streets of Newark and left him to die."

  Jim tried to stand up, but his feet failed him. “That's crazy. It must be a mistake."

  "No mistake. He confessed."

  "Confessed?"

  "Yup. Kate just heard it on the radio. Do you know what this means?"

  It means I framed a guilty man.

  "You're a shoo-in for the job, Jim. You'll be the next department head!” Arlene was almost jumping up and down. “Why aren't you excited?"

  Jim blinked. “I guess this wasn't the way I wanted to get it."

  "Of course not. But it's not your fault that Steve screwed up, is it? Remember, he wouldn't spare a second to feel bad about you."

  That was true enough. “I'd better call Meg and let her know.” But as he reached for the phone, it rang.

  The boss wanted to see him right away.

  * * * *

  Mr. Purle stood when Jim entered the office. A sign of respect for the last surviving contender? With a wave of his manicured hand, he pointed Jim to a chair. “You probably know what this is about."

  "I think so, sir."

  "I said we were going to make a decision on the new department head this week. The management committee is in agreement. We have chosen you for the job."

  "I don't want it,” said Jim.

  Was that really him speaking? It almost seemed like he was watching someone else.

  A near-death experience, except it's my career that's dying, he thought.

  Purle's normally ruddy face went bloodless. “Would you mind explaining that statement?"

  "I've thought it over and I don't want to be department head. I'm sorry to let you down. But I wouldn't feel right taking the job."

  Purle's eyes narrowed. “Don't think for a minute that you can turn this down and keep your current position."

  "I don't.” Jim rose to his feet. He felt ten pounds lighter, as if he had thrown a great load off his back. What in the world was he going to tell Meg? “I'll clear out my desk."

  He was halfway to the door when Purle spoke again. “I was right about you. You just don't have the killer instinct."

  Jim laughed out loud. “Isn't it pretty to think so?"

  That was a quote from Hemingway. Maybe he could get a job teaching English.

  Copyright © 2009 by Robert Lopresti

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Passport to Crime: SNOW ON BLOEDKOPPIE by Bernhard Jaumann

  Bernhard Jaumann taught college preparatory school for several years before leaving to travel widely. He has received several prizes for his fiction, including the Friedrich Glauser Prize of 2003 for best noveland the German Crime Fiction Prizeof 2009. The following story won the Glauser short crime fiction prize of 2008. The author makes his home in Windhoek, Namibia.

  Translated from the German by Mary Tannert

  "The investigation has not been concluded yet.” Sweat pearled on the chocolate brow of the Swakopmund police officer. The fan overhead churned slowly through the sticky air. Any minute now, it would grind to a complete stop. A loud, excited voice was audible next-door, barely muffled by the shabby wall of the office. It spoke in an unintelligible language. Hohner couldn't help but think of an interrogation, although he wasn't able to say whether the voice belonged to a suspect volubly insisting on his innocence or to an investigator shouting out one accusation after another.

  "I came all the way from Germany,” said Hohner. “Ten hours in a plane and another four in the car from Windhoek to Swakopmund. Don't you think I...?"

  "We cannot exclude murder."

  "You said that already. I'd like to know exactly what happened."

  The police officer stared at his flickering computer screen. It wasn't the latest model, but Hohner had expected at most a couple of old manual typewriters in a Namibian police station. He cleared his throat.

  The policeman's gaze met Hohner's again. “Did your brother-in-law have any psychological problems?"

  "What? Why do you ask?"

  The officer tapped the side of his head with his index finger as if he wasn't sure Hohner had really understood him.

  "No,” said Hohner. “Never. At least, not as long as he was in Germany."

  "But he had been living in Namibia for two years,” said the police officer.

  "What happened?” asked Hohner, leaning back and crossing his arms. He wasn't going to be put off until tomorrow or packed off to some other office that was allegedly more responsible than this one.

  The policeman looked back at him, his expression blank. Then he stood and left the room. The unintelligible voice next-door continued its loud lament. Geometrical figures crawled in a ceaseless honeycomb across the computer's screen. Flies buzzed around Hohner. He swatted at the one that kept trying to crawl into his eyes. The policeman came back with a black notebook in his hand and laid it on the desk in front of Hohner.

  "Your brother-in-law kept a journal. But I must ask you to read it here; it is evidence in the investigation."

  Hohner reached for the notebook.

  "By the way,” said the policeman. “Namibia may be a backward African country, but even so there are a few people here who do not believe in spirits and telepathy. Myself, for example."

  Hohner opened the little black book.

  * * * *

  December 23, 3:00 p.m.

  The air is so hot it burns. You don't need to look up to know the sun has inflamed the whole sky. I've gotten out of the car, I'm sitting under the camelthorn tree. The springboks had been standing in its jagged shadows until the noise of the motor scared them off. I watched them as they leapt away, soaring high and wide with each jump. As if they were trying to avoid contact with the fiercely hot sand, touch it as little as possible. Now they're standing still, two or three hundred meters away, as if their feet were rooted in the dried-out soil, their heads all turned in my direction.

  Further away, the air is shimmering in a watery blue above the desert floor. You'd swear there's a lake there; you'd be sure you can see the vegetation on the shore and make out the boats sailing across the surface. It's an optical illusion, of course. There's no water for a hundred kilometers in any direction, not even a puddle, just sand, rock, withered lichen, and some saltbush. That the few camelthorn trees survive in the dry riverbed is a miracle. I doubt a drop of rain ever falls here, but during a good rainy season the rivier, as Namibians call it, probably brings water from the mountains.

  I drink some water. It's lukewarm in the plastic bottle. If I had stayed in Swakopmund, I'd probably be tossing back the first few beers by now, in sheer despair over the regulars at the Tiger Reef Bar who spend their days blasting their brains out with thirty-year-old rock music, always ahead of me by at least a couple of Windhoek Lagers. And I'd be shaking my head at the rest of Namibia's affluent white popula
tion spending their Christmas holidays racing up and down the dunes on quad bikes or sitting in cafes waiting for the idiotic Christmas lighting to be turned on. I hate strings of Christmas lights in the middle of an African summer. I never want to see another Namibian supermarket cashier sweating under a Santa hat. As far as I'm concerned, you could just cancel Christmas here. That'd be fine with me.

  I take another swallow of water. The springboks haven't moved an inch. I can already see the Bloedkoppie, as they call it here, on the horizon. One more hour of driving down a bad gravel road, and I'll be there.

  * * * *

  December 23, 9:00 p.m.

  I've put up the tent close to the wall of the cliff so I've got at least a couple of hours of shade in the morning. Bushes are growing through the cracks in the rock around my campsite, and a little farther back in the valley I can even see a couple of stunted trees. The Bloedkoppie is right across from me. It's a mighty block of raw stone that really lived up to its name—the blood hill—earlier this evening when the sun went down. I sat there and stared, just couldn't take my eyes off the sight, and asked myself whether the unfolding spectacle had more to do with a greedy hunger for life or the inevitability of death. It was as if the setting sun was a wild animal that had been struck down by a spear; its blood spraying rhythmically with each heartbeat up into heaven and raining down across the rock walls to paint them an unreal shade of red just before the eye of the day glazes over and the gray of twilight takes the mountain. This drama was staged just for me, because there's nobody else out here but me. You can almost imagine that no other human being exists, that's how far away the drunks on the beach and the Santa Clauses seem, that's how far away Germany and the past seem.

  I made a fire, I grilled and ate my lamb chops. I didn't miss anybody, didn't think about anything, just watched as one star after another came toward me from the black sky. Now I'm listening to the crickets chirping and the geckos snarling now and then on the warm cliff wall behind me. Sometimes a bat whirs above my campfire, and at its edges, where the light fades into darkness, I can hear the noise of something rustling and padding around. Probably a jackal that can smell the lamb chops and is circling the campsite.

  * * * *

  December 24, 8:00 a.m.

  My plan was to climb Bloedkoppie at first light, but I don't trust the man. His name is Heiseb, he says.

  "Heiseb what?"

  "Just Heiseb."

  I have no idea whether the name even exists. Heiseb claims to be a Damara, but as tall and strong as he looks, I think he's more likely to be either Herero or Ovambo. I had just gone for a quick leak in the bushes last night, and when I came back he was sitting at my campfire, as calmly as if he'd been there all along. He barely looked up when I spoke to him. Just turned up, out of the blue, and when I said I hadn't heard any car coming, he just laughed and nodded his head toward Bloedkoppie. He lived here, he said; that was his mountain.

  That's nonsense, of course. We're in the middle of the Namib-Naukluft National Park; there's no water anywhere around, no houses, no huts, nothing. No one traipses endless kilometers through the desert at forty degrees Celsius, and nobody can live here all the time, not even the Damara or the Ovambo—or anybody else, for that matter. I tried to get some more information out of him, but he pretended not to understand me even though he spoke English quite well. For example, when I asked him whether he knew Swakopmund, he answered that he'd seen a mountain zebra that morning, running in the precise direction of the city.

  "I see,” I said. And he himself? Had he ever been there?

  "At first I thought the zebra was heading south,” said Heiseb, “but I was wrong. It was running toward Swakopmund."

  "Is that unusual?” I asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Do the zebras here usually run in other directions?"

  Heiseb looked at me, uncomprehending. “Zebras run in all directions, but the one this morning was running directly toward Swakopmund."

  And it went on like that. I asked him questions, and he told me stories that had no point, no message, no sense that I could discern. Soon I gave up. We sat there silently and watched the fire burn down. I was tired, but I didn't want to crawl into my tent with this stranger lurking around. I wasn't really afraid; I just wanted to make it clear to him that I was on my guard, and there was no point in even thinking of stealing anything.

  The night was still warm, even though a breeze had come up from the southwest. The bushes began to rustle secretively. It was almost as if the wind sang from inside them. An unbelievable carpet of stars spread out overhead. I looked for Orion, and immediately found Rigel, shimmering in a metallic blue, and the red giant Betelgeuse; even the nebula that represented the hunter's sword was easy to find. But I could no longer just look at it all and tune out my thoughts. When a sudden gust of wind stirred up the ashes from the glowing embers, it reminded me of the softly blowing snow that winter night, when the snowflakes danced outside the window and seemed to come from all sides at once.

  As if Heiseb could guess what I was thinking, he asked, “It is cold in Germany this time of year, isn't it?"

  I nodded. He nodded back, stood up, and disappeared into the darkness. It wasn't until he was gone that I realized I'd never told him where I'm from. Maybe he'd heard the accent in my English, but I could just as easily have been Namibian of German descent. I took my knife into the tent with me. I slept badly, but nothing happened during the night. My car wasn't plundered. Everything is still there. Including Heiseb. He's sitting a couple of meters away in the shade, leaning against the cliff wall, carefully stacking small stones on top of each other and humming to himself. Unless I miss my guess, it's the melody to “Silent Night."

  * * * *

  December 24, 7:00 p.m.

  Heiseb is sitting by the fire, grilling. Trout. Exactly what Christine always cooked on Christmas Eve. It had been that way in her family for decades, and after we got married she insisted on carrying on the tradition. First the trout, then the Christmas presents. Except: In Namibia, there's no trout. There's kingklip, hake, sole, whatever, but no trout. I've been here for two years, and I've never ever seen one. Not in the supermarkets in Swakopmund, and not in the few delis in Windhoek. And we're here at the base of Bloedkoppie, in the middle of the Namib Desert!

  Heiseb just grinned when I asked him where the devil he got the fish. It's a special day, he answered, and he wanted to invite me to share a special meal.

  "Very nice, Heiseb,” I said, “But where did you get the fish?"

  He snapped his fingers as if he'd conjured it up. This secretiveness of his is really getting on my nerves. But even more uncanny is the way the man can apparently read my thoughts, as if they were an open book for him. No, it's worse than that. It's as if he was poking around in my brain only to dig up things I don't want to think about anymore. This morning he asked if I missed my wife. Just like that, out of the blue.

  "I'm not married,” I replied.

  Heiseb pointed to the wedding ring on my finger.

  I said, “We haven't been together for two years now. I just can't get the ring off."

  "She's dead, isn't she?” said Heiseb. “Died at Christmas."

  I stared at him, at the tiny red veins tracing the whites of his eyes, saw the snow blowing outside the window and Christine on the bed and the blood that had soaked the sheets. It had taken me a long time to get over that, and now every detail was just as vivid as when it happened.

  "Get lost!” I shouted. “Get out of my life!"

  Heiseb left without saying another word. I ran off, too, completely beside myself, ran across to the other side of the valley and up the gently rising stone face of the Bloedkoppie. Small plates of rock that had broken off in the heat crunched under my shoes. Tiny lizards scurried out of the way. Soon it got steeper and I needed my hands to pull myself up, clawed my fingers bloody in cracks that glowed red with the heat, and finished up at some point in front of a smooth upright rock wall that c
ost me a half-hour to circle around. Then I huffed my way up a narrow ridge. Above it, the desert wind roared as if from a giant hair dryer. I was nearly at the summit when I realized I'd set out in the midday heat without a drop of water. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, my thoughts dried up in my brain, above me there was nothing but burning rock and a ball of fire that filled the sky and made my blood boil. It pounded so loud in my ears that I could barely hear the wind whistle. Spots danced in front of my eyes, as if snow were falling. I could barely walk, but I kept going, staggering, all the way to the top.

  I have no idea whether I would have made it back down without Heiseb. He was squatting at the summit. Wordlessly he handed me a bottle of water. I emptied it greedily. Before we started down again, I sat down next to him for a few minutes, and we looked out over the Namib Desert. A godforsaken, lifeless, empty wasteland.

  "How did you know my wife died at Christmas, Heiseb?” I asked.

  "You went alone into the desert, far away from your country, so that her spirit would not find you on the anniversary of her death.” Heiseb nodded. “That was a clever thing to do."

  I've heard more convincing explanations. Not from Heiseb, admittedly. But on the other hand, who knows what the natives here think? Maybe to them, running away from spirits is the only conceivable reason to come to this barren place. I had just started to accept this view of things, but then he turned up with the trout. There's definitely something “fishy” about it all!

  * * * *

  December 25, 8:00 a.m.

  I've got the large hunting knife right here next to me, and the pocketknife in my pocket, just in case. I have to make a decision whether to escape on foot or just hope that a park ranger comes by sometime during the day. I can't go another night without sleep.

  I wish my head didn't hurt so much! Yesterday's heat, probably. I press back into the shadow of the cliff wall. Heiseb is sitting next to the open hatchback of the Land Cruiser, eating breakfast. Crackers and beef biltong from my food supply. He appears to enjoy the meal. Nothing about his behavior betrays that he's just waiting for an opportunity to kill me. Last night he got up suddenly and began to bow, murmuring something, toward the pile of rocks at the base of the cliff.