Tropic of Night

by Unknown

  U. withdrawn and short-tempered tonight. He snarled at the woman who brought us our evening meal, which I’ve never seen him do before. I thought she was going to piss herself with terror. I asked him what was wrong. Ignored the question, told me some kind of parable. Suppose a leopard is attacking your goats. Then you get all the strong men of the village together, with spears, and you wait for the leopard to come to the goat pen and you kill it. That’s easy. But suppose you hear that a leopard is attacking the goats of your cousin far away in another village. In that village all the men are weak and their spears are broken. What then, Jeanne? Should you help your cousin? How should you do this? I don’t know, Owadeb. You could tell your cousin to set a trap. You could tie a goat over a pit and then the leopard might attack the goat and fall in. This answer seemed to please him a great deal, and his mood improved. He called for beer and we both got a little buzzed. A good answer, Jeanne, he said. But it would have to be a brave goat, the one who stays at the pit. Yes, I said, a brave goat and maybe a stupid leopard. He laughed his head off. I wish I knew what the hell he was talking about half the time.

  Day 51, Boton

  My first divination today. Wife of a Fulani herder, Maramu by name, a young childless woman, hence of rock-bottom status. No one with any clout would have risked it. We did it in the open under a canopy. I gave her the full verse in Olokan, which, of course, she did not understand, and then translated into halting Bambara. She would have a child but had to make sacrifices to ensure the child did not become an enemy. She was radiantly happy, embarrassingly grateful; the other wives gave me dirty looks. You can’t please everyone in the oracle business. After that, business pretty good. All girls, of course, no man would stoop so low, although I give good discounts compared to U. Most of the findings concerned children and sick relatives; women don’t make too many big decisions in these parts. A couple, though, about witchcraft.

  Again, it’s hard to explain. I don’t have to think of what to say. The interpretation just pops into my head. Later, told U. about this. He’s not surprised. Ifa is my pal, according to him.

  Day 52, Danolo

  We are back here, in the midst of some unexplained disaster. Last night, after throwing Ifa all day, I collapsed on my pallet in the room the villagers provided for us, and fell instantly to sleep. Awakened by a dream. A man I’d never seen before, an Olo, was talking to me over a fire. I could see his face quite clearly. He was holding a sorcery box, not a cake tin, but one carved of wood. He opened the lid and showed me the contents. It was a little black statue, and I knew that it was a statue of W. The guy said, in Olo, Come join your husband, he’s lonely without you. And in the dream I felt this burning desire to enter the box, it was like the ultimate happiness, and I was about to step into it when I looked up at the guy and saw that his black eyes were the heads of worms. Then I woke up. U. was up, too, lying on the pallet across the room from me. I could see his face in the moonlight. What is it, Jeanne Gdezdikamai? I told him the dream. He became agitated, and immediately began to gather our stuff into straw carrier bags. I asked him what was wrong. He said, The okunikua, we have to go back, quickly, quickly! Now, at night? Yes, it is already too late. I have been a stupid old man. And that’s all he would say. He kept repeating something, though, like a prayer?Creator and head, fight for me!

  Ten minutes later we were in our pirogue, launched into inky water striped down the middle by a three-quarter moon. I was in the front, paddling like mad, he was in the back, chanting, steering us God knows how through the channels. Terrible sense that other passengers were in the boat, like feeling the presence of Eshu behind you in the oracle, but different. The Eshu feeling is of something huge and old, like the loom of an island in the fog before you see it. This was of something spiky and wet, and it was all I could do to resist the urge to turn around in the pirogue. The canoe seemed sluggish, too, like something was grabbing at it with weedy fingers.

  The moon was down and it was dark as a cellar when he turned the pirogue onto a beach. He jumped out and crashed into the bushes, with me on his tail. Remarkably, it was the right beach?we were in Danolo. When we trotted through the gate he stumbled, and I grabbed his arm. Loltsi was waiting there with a smoking torch. By its light U. looked as though he had lost two inches and forty pounds?for the first time he looked like a little old man. In the compound, everyone was awake and wailing, even Sekli. Tourma is missing. According to Sekli, everyone went to sleep in good order. Sometime in the middle of the night Mwapune, who shares a room with Tourma and the two kids, got up to pee and found the other girl gone, and raised the alarm.

  U. looked close to collapse. The women put him to bed. From what I could make out before they shooed me away, he is under attack from some rival sorcerer and it has something to do with me. I am not popular just now. I went back to my own bon and leaned against the wall. Something landed on the roof, heavy, with claws. An oppressive, crushing sense of despair, of evil. I looked up and there were eyes staring through the thatch, more than two, green ones, and red. I threw powders, chanted tetechinté and thanked God he had made me memorize the words. Voices in my head, urging murder and suicide. I filled my head with the chant, and after a while things returned to what passes for normal around here. I went outside and watched the sun come up.

  Walked into the center of town and made sketches. Unusual atmosphere about the place, not many people on the streets, the houses closed up, as if a war was expected.

  Sitting on my front step, chewing tamarind, I watched Sekli come out of the big house carrying a bag. She grabbed up one of the cockerels scratching in the dust, and walked across the compound to me, indicating with a jerk of her head for me to follow her. We went into the center of the compound where the big stone stands in the eye of the pavement spiral. She gave me the bird to hold and from her bag took some clay pots and what I guess was kadoul, but of a type I hadn’t seen before. She ignited a fire with flint and steel in a mass of fuzzy brown matter, and when the smoke was up and thick she took the cockerel from me and cut its throat with a sharp piece of obsidian. The blood spurted and she sprinkled it in patterns over the standing stone. I recall thinking I should take notes, but I did not. I also recall thinking that although this stone is an important cultural artifact, I had never, before this, thought to come near it. She was chanting in Olokan all this time, too fast for me to follow. I did note that what had seemed natural discolorations in the rock were actually the marks of dried blood, very thick and probably very old.

  Sekli squatted and sliced the cockerel open. Haruspication, divination by entrails. I had never observed this before among the Olo. It is rare in Africa in any case. She passed her hands through the chicken guts several times, peering closely at their bloody coils. Then she rose abruptly and tossed the chicken against the stone. She stared at me, her face wooden. It is well? I asked, one of my few Olokan phrases. Without answering, she clutched my arm and pulled me back to Uluné’s room. He was lying on his pallet.

  A rapid dialogue between them followed. U. beckoned me closer and spoke to me in French. Do you know what is happening, Jeanne? I don’t, Owadeb, I said. He said, Something very bad. Durakné Den, the witch, has suddenly grown very much stronger. He has eaten someone, and now he has more power, more than me right now. I said, You mean he has eaten someone, like meat? No, not that way. Not m’fa eating; m’doli eating. His spirit. So, now that he is strong he attacks me and steals Tourma. I think he is trying to do a forbidden thing with her, a very great chinté that we don’t allow. Why don’t you? The orishas don’t like it. It has to do also with the Ilidoni, the Shameful March. He made the warding-off-evil sign that the Olo make on the few occasions when they happened to mention it. I must admit I was excited; all my anthro neurons were aglow. At one level; at another level I was quaking with fear. Will you tell me more about this, Owadeb? He said, It is better not to have that in your head. You might write it down. Here a faint smile.

  He patted my hand and I felt the heat of h
is skin, feverish. Look, Jeanne, here is what you must do. I need a weidouliné . You understand what that is? I said, Yes, Owadeb, a magical ally. Good, he said. This ally is a small brown snake, about this long. He held up his hands a few feet apart. You must go north, out of Danolo through the north gate; Sekli will take you there. There is a path through the bush, north, north. In a while you come to a red rock like a tent (he made a shape with his hands) so, and bones of cows all around it. Wait there. This kind of snake lives in the rocks. Wait there for the sun to just disappear, and one will come out to you. Grab him quickly and put him in your bag and come back here. Now this is important, Jeanne. Don’t talk to anyone you meet there at the rocks. Whoever it is don’t talk to them. Do you understand? Now, go; and take this. He pulled the amulet he always wore over his head and draped it around my neck, a small red leather pouch. The mission seemed simple enough and I was glad to do it. Sekli said something, angry, gesturing at me. U. calmed her down somehow, and indicated that we should leave. Sekli grabbed up a finely worked homespun bag and thrust it into my hands. She went out and I followed behind her.

  We walked through deserted streets, through a part of the town I had not seen before. The buildings were not in good repair. Mud brick takes a lot of maintenance, and many of the structures we passed had slumped back into the soil. Danolo had obviously once been more populous than it now was. Explains the scarcity of children? Why don’t they breed? Ask U.? Through a half-ruined gate.

  We walked a path through rough bush?thorn, stunted acacias, cran-cran, broken rock?in silence for about an hour, I estimated. I could see the tent rock from a long way off in the flat terrain, a tumble of red platelike boulders maybe four meters high. There were cattle skeletons strewn around. She pointed and turned to go. I asked her in Bambara if U. would get well. I don’t know, she said. I think he was (something?) to teach you ndol and this is the result. As I told him. I told him he should (something?) you, but he has a hard head. He told me it was (something?) for debentchouajé . Incomprehensible. I just bow.

  I asked, It’s because of me that the witch attacks Uluné? No, she said, the witch would have attacked anyway. Witches attack him all the time, and he throws them off easily. The witch is attacking you . Uluné is protecting you , so he can’t protect himself. She said something else in straight Olokan that I didn’t get, and walked off.

  I dropped down and put my back against the warm rock. I was hot, and I drank some water from my canteen. Bright sky above, dome of Africa, the Sahel pressing down, empty of God, of any help. Found some tamarinds in the sleeves of my robe, chewed them, tried not to cry. I wondered if Sekli was telling the truth. I wondered what I would do if she were. Sacrificing himself to save me? It didn’t seem like the U. I knew. Not personal, then, only part of his deep game? I am completely lost, here among the simple primitive people. Thought, anthro such a crock of shit sometimes.

  As the sky went scarlet, he just walked out from around the rocks, I didn’t see or hear him approach. I was so surprised I cried out and jumped to my feet. He grinned and laughed. Janey, you’re looking good. I see you’ve gone native too. That outfit suits you. He was wearing an Olo sarong and cloak. He came closer, and touched my headdress casually. Long time no see, he said, and opened his arms. I hesitated a second and jumped in. I was so lonely, like in a fucking dumb Elvis song. We hugged. We kissed. He said, What’re you doing here out in the middle of nowhere? I said, I have to get a snake for my sorcery teacher. And then I laughed, we both laughed. Because it felt real, not weird, American, a couple of culture-shocked Americans in Africa. We talked. What’ve you been doing, Janey? I told him amusing anecdotes about my life with U. And you? Oh, you know, writing, taking notes. Learning a little anthro, too. Learned the language a little. Really? Say something in Olokan. He did and it was true, he spoke it better than me. Sound of a bird, then, saw it, too, the looping flight of the honeyguide. Purr-purr-purr WHIT . We laughed. He said, Yeah, that’s my bird, he sympathizes with me, poor Witt.

  And then I remembered what U. had said about not talking to anyone. Suddenly, I was frightened, and I saw the brown snake too late, it was right in front of me sliding along and I scrabbled after it on my hands and knees, and just missed it. It went down a hole in the rocks. I stood up and said, Goddamn, I missed it. But Witt wasn’t there. I ran around the rock pile, scattering cow bones, and he wasn’t there. I climbed on the rocks and looked around, I could see for a long way, and nothing at all.

  I walked back in the dark and now I am writing this on my pallet. U. is in some kind of coma, and no one will talk to me, not even the kids. U.’s compound filling with other Olo sorcerers, all grim-looking. Tourma still gone.

  THIRTY

  He finished reading and put the journal on the table. She was wearing black jeans and a white shirt, standing there looking at him. It was hard to believe, what he had just read, hard to believe it had happened to this woman. She looked just like a regular person. She said, “Stunned, Detective Paz?”

  “It’s a lot to take in. You didn’t write the final chapter.” She noticed he had washed his face and sponged off the worst of the stains on his clothes.

  “No. Do you want to hear it? She’ll be half an hour putting on outfits. She’s at the stage where she likes the layered look. She’ll come down with three dresses on, one on top of another.”

  “I’m dying to hear it.”

  “A figure of speech, I hope,” she said, taking a chair. “Well, it’s briefly told. I fell asleep. Actually I cried myself to sleep, I’m ashamed to say. Then I woke up. Middle of the night. It was a dream, but not a dream, if you know what I mean. I was walking through Danolo, out of Danolo along a trail. Jackals were barking, nightjars were going tok tok tok . There was a fire up ahead. My husband was there, naked, painted, and there was another man, I couldn’t see his face, he was just a kind of shadow in the glow, I could see the flash of his teeth, a necklace of shells around his neck, and the whites of his eyes. I knew it was Durakné Den, the dontzeh witch. Tourma was there, too, naked. She looked like she was asleep. I watched Witt slice her belly open with a little black stone knife and remove the baby. Tourma didn’t even twitch. The baby writhed and gasped; Durakné Den was chanting something in Olo and Witt was chanting too. He … you know what he did?you’ve seen it. He sliced into the baby’s skull and scooped out its brain, like taking the stone out of an avocado. Blood splattered all around. I felt drops strike my face. I was paralyzed, I couldn’t do anything, like in a nightmare. They cut and they ate. I remember staring at him, Witt, and I saw the blood dripping from his mouth. The most horrible part was, he looked happy, really happy, like he was at a good party. He told me what was happening, about the okunikua, about his plans. Suddenly, I was free, I ran, and I heard him laughing. In the morning, at first light, I grabbed everything I could carry, my box and some water and food, loaded it into a pirogue and paddled away.”

  She fell silent, shaking her head. He said, “I don’t get this about this ritual, okunikua ? He eats pieces of a woman and the baby and what … he gets powers from this?”

  “Well, I never got the details, but yeah. In combination with other things he’s done to himself, there are chemicals in the various parts of the victims that have been modified by other chemicals fed to the mother during the ceremony. Not fed, actually, breathed in. It’s like an amplification of what he can already do. Think of the difference between a plain vanilla A-bomb and an H-bomb. It needs four women, though, as I said.”

  Paz thought about this for a while. “How come he let you go? There in Africa.”

  “I don’t know. Part of the plan, I guess. Who can figure out why the Olo do anything? Why they let Durakné live there. Witt had other things to do. My sense was that the Olo were gathering to somehow block Durakné Den in Danolo, which is why Witt might have had to leave. He came here, where there’s no one to stop him.”

  “We’ll stop him,” said Paz, hardly believing it himself. “So how did you get out of there?�
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  “Oh, that part’s a little vague. The dry season was on by then, the channels were drying into mud, not that I knew what channels to take. And I was hallucinating a lot, and I was sick, really sick. I got completely lost. I ended up stranded on the mud, burning up with fever. Fade to black. The next thing I remember was the hospital in Bamako. They thought I had hepatitis. Apparently, I was found by a Fulani herder driving his herd down to the Niger for the big river crossing, the Diafarabe. He recognized my amulet and figured it would be good juju to rescue me. I guess you must’ve got the rest if you talked to my father. The weirdest thing was that when Witt showed up in my hospital room in New York, I was sort of glad to see him.” She laughed. “That old black magic’s got me in its spell.”

  He was about to say something about it being nothing to laugh about, when Luz came tromping down the ladder, wearing a threadbare red velvet dress over a gingham pinafore over yellow pedal pushers and a frilly blouse. Paz stood up and said to the little girl, “Great outfit, kid, let’s go eat.”

  “And see the fishies.”

  They got into the old Buick and drove north on Douglas. The Grove seemed reasonably quiet; people were staying in. There were few cars; once a police car whipped by, siren whooping, and Paz felt a pang of guilt. He was, officially, off duty, but maybe he was AWOL as well. He had not called in to find out what was going on, or where his partner was. He had run. He had left his partner and run. Of course, the alternative was staying and shooting his partner and a bunch of guys with machine guns, or being shot himself. He told himself that he was in fact where the action on this case really was. If it could be fixed at all, he would either fix it with this crazy woman or die trying.