Liberation

by Joanna Scott

  HE KNEW what he knew not because his knowledge had been clearly verified but because what he knew about himself and his relation to God had the logic of a sound mathematical equation. Faith founded on the deduction of truth was irresistible. Perceiving himself as blessed, he would go to great lengths to protect his good intentions, even, or especially, during a war.

  He wasn’t entirely naive. He’d seen the devastation after the battles were over. He had helped to bury the dead. He’d even seen the jerking, pleading motion of life’s last efforts when, across a field on Corsica, a comrade took a sniper’s bullet in his eye. But he’d always thought that what he couldn’t bear to witness was a death that he himself had caused, since to kill someone would have disproved the truth, as he understood it, relating the sanctity of his life to its potential.

  Before he learned the value of reticence, he had candidly expressed his desire to become the first Senegalese saint. For this he was considered endearingly childish or even, as the nuns at the mission school had said of him, out of his mind. But the nuns were wrong and he was right. Amdu Diop was not suffering from madness. He knew that what he knew was as trustworthy as n(C)=2, which, though lacking in factual content, paradoxically was eminently applicable to reality.

  But reality was not supposed to be expansive enough to contain what he’d recently seen through the broken window of a shed, which had been enough to cause him to distrust his faith in the value of his life. He was no longer sure how to measure his value or how to plan the miracles for which he wanted to be remembered. He didn’t know what he was worth in a world where he couldn’t do any good.

  His gloom had been powerful while it lasted. Between then and now, however, his hunger and thirst had taken precedence. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s breakfast and had finished the water in his canteen during the night. He’d missed two midday meals. He hadn’t yet tasted the sweet wine the general had promised his men once the island was liberated. Forget about all the blessed who would be chosen for everlasting happiness. He would have traded his own place in heaven for a big cup of clear water, an orange, and a bowl of mutton stew. He would have stolen bread from a child. Maybe he would even have killed the child. To what length would he go to fill his empty stomach? While he was arranging the sails and tarp in the boathouse to make a concealing place to rest, he entertained himself with this idle question. To what length would he go? And then the door to the boathouse opened, sending a pillar of light across the floor, sunlight blotted by an imposing shadow, making the question suddenly relevant. Hiding behind the folds of the musty tarp, Amdu wondered whether he would kill simply in order not to be killed.

  He would have insisted that this was the first time he had contemplated the hypothetical necessity of killing. Pressed on the issue, however, he would have had to admit that in his lazier moments as a soldier he’d allowed himself to wonder how easily he, Saint Amdu, could have been corrupted.

  Nothing, he’d discovered, corrupted an innocent soul as easily as hunger and thirst. The longest he’d ever fasted was from sunrise to sunset, having been invited to participate in Ramadan by a Muslim cousin. A whole day without nourishment had been tolerable, even if it hadn’t changed Amdu’s mind about the faith he’d concocted for himself. But now he was discovering how after thirty hours every thought of some particular fulfillment felt like a pin pricking the soft tissue of his brain. Mon Dieu, what he would have done to be free of desire. What would he have done? He could only wonder in retrospect, for already the light was stripped of its bulky shadow and the intruder was gone.

  He was alone again, and solitude gives a corrupted man the chance to consider missed opportunities. What would he have done, if he’d had the chance? He would have pointed his gun at the nose of the stranger and demanded, in French because he didn’t know how to say it in Italian, a loaf of bread and a jug of water. Except that his gun was at the bottom of a well, remember. Stupid Amdu. Once upon a time he’d planned to be a saint. Now he couldn’t even bully a stranger into giving him food and drink. But what did he know about bullying? For most of his youth he’d been too small and frail to bully others. Then he’d grown tall and become a soldier. And then he’d thrown his rifle in a well. Now here he was, alone in some stranger’s boathouse, hungry, thirsty, willing but unable to commit a mortal sin to replace desire with fulfillment.

  He heard the rustling of the kittens, which he mistook for mice. Once upon a time he’d gone so far as to imagine that someday, with God’s blessing, he’d be able to talk to mice. And to birds, following the example of Saint Francis, and to fish, like Saint Anthony. The language of fish was a silent language, a language of motion and glance. He thought of this now. If the people here spoke no French, he could say what he needed to say by pointing to his mouth. Kiss me here. No, he didn’t mean that! I am thirsty. I am hungry. I am going to kill you unless you bring me a loaf of bread and a jug of water.

  He was a disgusting wretch, but so what? His temper would improve if some kind soul would only offer him assistance. Whoever had nearly discovered him in the boathouse might have been able to help. And if that same whoever had been willing, maybe the willingness would extend to another place at a later time. He had nothing to lose. He could step from the confines of his hiding place, he could go to the door, and he could follow the girl whose shadow he’d seen on the floor of the boathouse. First he could follow her with his eyes, and after she’d disappeared into the stone palace that must have been her home, he could follow her on foot. And when finally he found her again, he could convey to her his simple needs: a loaf of bread and a jug of water, if you please. And then he would go on his way again, from nowhere to nowhere.

  Spikes of sedge poked from beneath the stone steps leading up to a door. Oleander bushes at opposite corners of the wall were heavy with creamy blossoms. Doves made a steady purring sound. The sound of a baby’s laughing gurgle drew Amdu toward the adjacent cantina. Keeping low to the ground, he moved close to the open window, trying to summon the will to make his presence known, but a burst of angry voices from the upstairs floor sent him fleeing in a panic along the dirt path leading around the front of the villa and into the nearest hiding place—a meager shelter made by an old door propped against the wall, camouflaged by thick junipers. He sat there with his heart pounding, legs folded, knees tucked beneath his chin.

  He waited for a good idea to come to him. He waited to be discovered. When would he be discovered? Sooner rather than later, he hoped. He wanted to be found, dragged into the open, scolded, and eventually set on his feet and appraised. Once he was judged harmless, he hoped that he’d be invited inside for food and drink. The feast would continue late into the night, and his kind hosts, whoever they were, would explain to him in French, if they spoke French, the meaning of this war.

  Yet he didn’t really need an explanation. The war was what the war had done, and because of it he’d been reduced to a huddled, starving, disgusting wretch, nostrils coated with dust, ears filled not with the gentle sound of rain but with the buzzing of flies. He’d fallen as low as the old Dahomy men, the sons and grandsons of slaves, who built their cardboard homes alongside the railway tracks leading out of Dakar. If no one helped him soon, he would have to do what they did and scavenge through piles of garbage for his meals. He’d live like a dog, in the company of dogs, starting with this gray-muzzled dog sticking her snout into Amdu’s shelter, sniffing carefully, cocking her head in thoughtful interpretation of the evidence.

  Amdu offered the dog his open palm. She licked his hand, tasted his salty sweat, licked greedily, licked his fingers, his wrist, his arm up to the dirty cloth that was glued fast to the scab on his shoulder. Amdu was delicious, briny and ripe, and unlike most people he didn’t mind a dog’s slobbering affection.

  The animal eventually settled beside him, resting her head on his boot. Amdu thought about Saint Jerome and the lion. He thought about the silhouette of a baobab tree against a white sky. He thought about monkeys speaking French.
He thought about food and drink. He thought about the bushland, and it was this thought that drew him into a dream that he was loping on his hands and knees beside a magnificent cheetah, who turned to him as they ran and smiled as though to suggest that she had in mind a secret plan.

  “Pippa!”

  Amdu woke abruptly to the sound of a man’s voice. “Pippa!” The dog raised her head, pricked her ears forward, barked once, then yawned and let her tongue droop lazily over the side of her jaw. “Pippa, vieni!” But Pippa liked it here beneath the door. She liked it when Amdu rubbed the fur smooth along the ridge between her ears. “Pippa!” Amdu heard a man’s boots crunch along the path in slow approach. He watched a pebble, kicked inadvertently, roll into the grass. The dog’s easy panting and her half-lidded eyes gave her an aura of impermeable lassitude, as though she were used to doing as she pleased. And what pleased her now was to stay with Amdu for a while, her head in the coolness of this shelter, her haunches extending out into the warm sunshine.

  But her master had a different idea. Amdu cringed when he saw the man’s boot raised, and he pressed his face into his knees so he wouldn’t have to look up when the door was knocked aside and the blows started to fall, falling harder than ever because the master would discover two dogs in place of one. But the blows never came. The man, oblivious to Amdu, merely nudged the dog’s rump with the toe of his boot, rolling her to force her upright and out of her hiding place, rewarding her when she obliged with gentle pats, which caused the dog to forget her new friend entirely and trot happily in advance of her master back along the path, leaving Amdu to go on rotting and starving, alone on an island where he didn’t even know the word for help.

  It was hot and cold under this wooden door, dusty and damp, bright at the edges, dark in the center. Amdu stayed there a long while, feeling sorry for himself. He thought of his mother and father. He thought of the Soeur Maria at the mission school. He thought of the wrestler at the stadium in Dakar who was draped in beaded gris-gris. Before the match began, the wrestler had boasted of his strength while drummers drummed and a trio of women sang in praise of him. Amdu remembered the man vividly: the clacking, shimmering talismans hanging from his neck, the stark muscles in his arms, his pride and confidence. It was odd, then, that Amdu couldn’t remember whether the women sang in Wolof or in French. Or who had won the wrestling match. Or the name of the officer he’d seen last night in the shed, the captain who would cut out Amdu’s tongue if he ever caught him.

  Last night was so long ago. Hours were no proper measurement of time. Time could only be measured with food and drink. How do you say food and drink in the language of fish? That’s what he wanted to know. And why do dogs deserve to live during a war when soldiers and girls deserve to die? And when would he go home? And who was playing the piano?

  The musician, whoever it was, had some technical knowledge but little talent—that was Amdu’s conclusion based on the first melody played. The second song, however, was more promising. Perhaps the pianist had talent but no skill. Perhaps there hadn’t been enough time to practice. But why, then, wasn’t the pianist practicing now? Whatever Amdu heard, it didn’t include exercises. The pianist, then, was lazy. Or else the pianist was a spoiled child, a young girl left to her own devices while her parents worried about the war, the same girl, he concluded, whom he’d followed from the boathouse.

  What finally drew Amdu out of his shelter and back toward the garden terrace was not the overwhelming desire for food and drink. All he could think to want right then was to tell the girl that she could improve her playing if she only set her mind to it and practiced. Beautiful music doesn’t come easily, he would tell her. Just from the way she played, he knew la petite princesse at the piano was a spoiled child. She didn’t know what it meant to work toward beauty. Why work when you have more than enough of the things that other people covet?

  The world would have been a better place without spoiled princesses who played the piano—badly—during a war. Amdu’s parents, blessed as they were with material wealth in a poor country, would never have spoiled their only son. Their plan for him was fixed: mission school to the lycée to the military to Al Azar University in Cairo to study medicine so he could return to Dakar at the age of twenty-three as Doctor Diop. That’s Saint Doctor Diop, if you please. Or Amdu Dogboy, if no one saved him from his current plight.

  Hear that noise? That was Amdu accidentally knocking over the iron rake leaning against the back of the trellis at the bottom of the steps. And this was the silence of a young girl’s apprehension. La petite princesse had stopped playing in order to listen; she was waiting for Amdu to make another sound. But Amdu wasn’t going to oblige. She played too poorly to be so easily satisfied. And as though to prove this point, she began playing again, worse than before, because now she played grandly, clearly wanting to impress him.

  He climbed the steps, unable to resist the lure of the imperfect song. Listen to me, the music said. Applaud this accomplishment. The song was in an easy tempo, though flexible enough to be elaborated in the treble notes, key against jack, hammer against strings. Amdu knew exactly how the pieces came together and thus had a sense of the instrument’s potential and the musician’s inadequacy. Eighty-eight notes and that was the best she could do?

  Adriana would have gone on playing and Amdu would have gone on listening through to nightfall if there had been no interruption. But when the soldiers entered the villa from the courtyard and began shouting in French, the princess stopped playing. And then there were other noises—the sound of something shattering followed by the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. Amdu didn’t consider what he should do next—he just did it. Having already convinced himself that he could only keep running away, he ran toward the opposite side of the loggia, colliding with the shuttered door as it was flung open from the inside.

  The force of the impact caused him to stumble, but he managed to stay on his feet. His fingers went automatically to his face. Before he even opened his eyes he became aware of the stickiness of blood oozing from his nose. Groping for a handhold to steady himself, he tried to put his thoughts back into proper order: he was here, newly bloodied. He opened his eyes and discovered that he was no longer alone. He was standing opposite the startled princess, the little dark-haired spoiled child who played the piano badly, the one he’d wanted to ask for food and drink. What were the words for food and drink in Italian? He felt that he used to know these words and that he’d forgotten them. Now the only Italian word he could recall was pace.

  “Pace!” Stupidly, he said it aloud. Yet as stupid as he sounded to himself, apparently he’d said the right thing. For a moment the girl’s eyes seemed to flicker with understanding and relief. This was a beginning. Pace. He started to say it again but couldn’t get past the opening popping sound of the p because another popping sound, a rifle’s second report, came from inside the villa, and the girl slid forward into his arms with such force that Amdu thought she’d been shot in the back. But when she started clawing at him, hissing some combination of a curse and a plea, when she started wriggling to be free of him, he could tell that she was unharmed, and this dance she was doing in Amdu’s arms was her crazy attempt to stay unharmed.

  He was confused, but he could see that the girl was even more confused. She didn’t even realize that she was begging him to help her. What was the word for help? He didn’t need to know it. There were soldiers in the villa, guns were being fired, and the girl had fled from her piano bench and ended up in the arms of Amdu Diop.

  He would take care of her. Pace, Princess. Amdu had no way of conveying his sense of decency, and the girl resisted him. But he was stronger and could drag her down the steps and across the terrace, yanking her forward by the wrists, dragging her along on her knees when she fell, dragging her through the opening in the box hedge separating the terrace from the olive grove, pulling her away from the place where bullets were flying, soldiers were yelling, women were screaming.

  Now the little p
rincess was screaming—a dangerous mistake, for the soldiers would be drawn to the sound of a young girl’s desperation. Yet it was understandable that she was terrified. How could she know that Amdu was trying to help her? How could he communicate with her? All he could think to do was slap his hand over her mouth to trap the sound. But she fought hard against him, and with his palm slippery with sweat and his arm still sore, he couldn’t keep a tight hold of her wrists. She pulled one arm free and managed to scratch his neck. He was startled, and when the vise of his fingers weakened, she slipped loose and stumbled away, half running, half crawling, back toward the terrace garden in the direction of the villa.

  No! She would be killed if she returned! How could he explain this to her? There wasn’t time to explain. There was time only to jump on her from behind before she reached the hedge, to feel her collapse beneath the weight of him, to cover her mouth again so she couldn’t scream. Pace, spoiled child. She wasn’t lovely enough to be so spoiled. But she wasn’t unlovely. Amdu would have had to admit that it felt good to blanket the girl, to lie there supporting himself with his knees to lighten his weight, confining her without suffocating her, and to smell the sharp lime smell of crushed grass mixed with the dry brown spines from the hedge and to feel the body beneath him accept its defeat. Was this what his comrades had felt with the girl in the orchard shed? The good feeling of being powerful enough to choose whether a child lives or dies.