by Justin D'Ath
My dear mother had not said it to me.
Aaaaee! Mightbe it was a good thing that Holly and her family were going back to America. Too many lies already had been told.
And some lies are told by silence.
So I did not smile for the cameras. My heart was too full of sadness and anger. These men had destroyed my happiness. First they had murdered my parents, then they had taken away this lovely, sweet girl who no longer remembered anything that had happened last Friday night.
I wanted to kill both of them.
After the photos were taken, I did one last thing. I bent over Holly and touched my right thumb to her forehead.
‘May the Great God protect you, baby,’ I whispered.
Then I turned quickly and walked fast-fast from the room.
Clop, clop, clop, clop. Someone with hard shoes was following me along the corridor. I did not look to see who it was. I reached the lift and pressed the button. The other person stopped beside me. It was the journalist from The Zantugan. He nodded to me, then looked back down the long corridor behind us. The others were just coming out of Holly’s room. Mbuti and Mr Parr had their heads close together, talking. The other journalist was showing the hospital director the photos on the screen of his camera. When the lift doors came open, the man next to me lightly gripped my elbow and hurried me inside. He pushed the button marked G and the doors slid closed. I wondered why we were not waiting for the others.
As soon as we were alone, the journalist from my country’s largest newspaper leaned close to me and asked, ‘Is it true that they used a monkey?’
‘What?’ I said, unprepared for this question.
‘There are rumours about genetically engineered monkeys delivering bombs,’ said the man in the lift with me. He was speaking softly and fast. ‘One came to your school last Friday, ne?’
A tiny red light went flash-flash on his camera. He was recording our talk. I wondered how much I should tell him.
‘I saw it,’ I whispered. The lift had begun its three-floor descent. We had only a short time to have this dangerous conversation. ‘What does “genetically engineered” mean?’
‘It means the bomber monkeys came from a laboratory,’ the journalist said. He lowered his voice now. ‘There are rumours that General Mbuti paid a scientist from overseas to come here and make them.’
I wondered if he knew that Holly’s father was the scientist. ‘How can they make alive-things?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’ The journalist shook his head. ‘But I do know this: it is a crime against God. Whoever is responsible cannot go unpunished.’
‘General Mbuti is responsible,’ I said.
‘Yes. And the scientist, also.’
I knew what it was like to lose a father, even a father who had done bad things. I did not wish that shame and sadness on Holly. Truly it was good that they were returning to America.
‘If you got a photo,’ I said, ‘would General Mbuti go to jail?’
‘A photo of what?’
‘The monkey.’
‘Do you mean it is still alive?’ asked the journalist, his eyes going big.
I thought of other eyes then – blue eyes.
‘Mightbe,’ I said.
‘Then it must be destroyed!’
‘Why? It no longer has the bomb.’
‘Because it is an abomination! God did not make it.’
‘God did not make dogs either,’ I argued. ‘Once they were wolves. Should dogs be destroyed also?’
‘No. Men changed them over many years, through breeding. They did not create dogs in a test-tube.’
There was a ding and the lift stopped its descent.
‘It must be destroyed!’ the journalist repeated softly, as the doors silently came open.
The guardsman with the Uzi was standing just outside the lift. A small phone was pressed to his ear. ‘They are here now,’ he said gruffly, then he snapped the phone shut.
‘Mr Ibori, you are to leave,’ he spoke to the man beside me. ‘The press bus is waiting outside.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Ibori. He turned to me and shook my hand. ‘I hope we meet again, Mr Balewo. I would very much like to arrange that photo we spoke of.’
He pressed something into my palm as we shook hands. I glanced at it while the scowling guardsman watched Mr Ibori walk away from us across the hospital foyer towards the door. In my hand was a business card showing the green and purple logo of The Zantugan. Below the logo was printed: Mr Poniso Ibori, Senior Journalist, and a mobile phone number. Mr Ibori wanted me to get in touch with him later, so he could take photos of Three for his newspaper.
But the words he had whispered before the lift doors opened were still in my head: ‘It must be destroyed!’
Okay, I thought sadly. If a crime has been committed against God, then there is one way to make things right.
34
Backpack
‘Where are we going now?’ I asked.
We had left the army base in the limousine and turned right. Instead of heading back towards the Sheraton, our little convoy was driving through the middle of the city.
‘To the airport,’ said Mbuti.
‘The airport? Why?’
‘Remember our agreement, Sunday? First you visit your friend from school, then you play football.’
‘At the airport?’ I said, puzzled.
Mbuti chuckled. ‘What is at airports, Sunday?’
‘Aeroplanes?’
‘Exactly. We are flying to Nabozi City. There is a practice game this evening.’
‘Who is playing?’ I asked.
‘Who do you think?’
When I did not reply, Mbuti reached over and patted the green and purple sleeve of my new football jersey. ‘It is a goodwill game against our friends from across the border,’ he said. ‘We will show those doubters who write lies in the overseas newspapers that Zantuga is indeed ready for the World Cup.’
Nabozi was our second largest city. It lay 200 kilometres to the west, very close to the border. Mbuti must have arranged this ‘goodwill game’ in just three days – after he found out that I was still alive. Who knew how much of my father’s stolen money he had spent to organise it so quickly?
No, I corrected myself, it was never my father’s money. I saw that headline again: Tyrant vs Tyrant. It was my country’s money. And all of it was being wasted on my account. The game would be televised all over the world, not to show that Zantuga was ready for the World Cup, but to show that Sunday ‘Magic Feet’ Balewo accepted our country’s new tyrant ruler.
I peered out the limo’s rear window. Following us was the machine gun jeep driven by Corporal Joseph. Behind it came the white minibus I had seen outside the hospital. The journalists were coming to the airport with us. Among them would be Mr Ibori from The Zantugan. My football shorts had no pockets, so I had stuffed his business card into one of my socks. I had told him that Three was still alive, but I did not know if that was true.
Mightbe soon I would find out.
We had reached the main city road – the one named to honour my father. It was busy. All the lanes were filled with cars and bicycles and tractors and donkeys and handcarts. Our limousine had to go slowly-slowly behind a wooden trailer that rocked from side to side beneath a mountain of sugarcane. Three small children sat swaying on top. You would hardly know that there had been a violent change of government just one week earlier. But there were clues: an armed soldier stood on an upturned oil drum directing traffic; a tan-coloured flag dangled from a balcony; people waited outside a supermarket in a queue that stretched for a block and a half.
And two men with a stepladder were changing a street sign. They had taken down the one saying ‘Raphael Balewo Avenue’ and were putting up a bright new one that said ‘Lionel Mbuti Boulevard’.
‘It is not going to work!’ I said through my teeth.
Mbuti turned to me. ‘What isn’t?’
‘Our people do not need another tyrant.’
<
br /> ‘I am not sure that I understand you, Sunday.’
‘What it said in that English newspaper,’ I explained. My hands were shaking so badly that it took me a couple of tries to undo my seatbelt. ‘There has been too much injustice!’
Mbuti’s face had turned to wood. ‘Put your seatbelt back on!’ he commanded.
I shook my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guardsman across from us bring the Uzi up off his knees. But I held Mbuti’s gaze. ‘I am not one of Mr Parr’s trained monkeys, Lionel. I can think for myself.’
Then I pushed open my door and stepped out onto the road.
The limo was moving faster than I had thought and I nearly fell flat on my face. But Magic Feet never took dives. After three quick steps I found my balance, then I ran. Behind me, Mbuti swore. The guardsman with the Uzi yelled at me to stop. But already there were cars and bicycles between us. And I was running fast. I went weaving through the traffic like it was the opposing team and I was making a solo run for the goal. But this was not football. And there was something much greater than a goal to be won.
It was called justice.
Someone was shouting my name. There was noise everywhere. About fifty car, bus, taxi and motorbike horns were hooting and honking. I took a quick look over my shoulder. The convoy had stopped. Mbuti had stepped out onto the road and was yelling orders at someone behind the stationary limousine. The man in the back of the jeep was swivelling his big machine gun quickly around so it would aim in my direction.
But I knew he would not dare to shoot me. A busload of photographers and journalists stood third-in-line in the stalled convoy. They would see everything that happened. So would everyone else. There were hundreds of witnesses, and some of them were capturing this on their phones.
I was wearing my official World Cup football jersey. It had my name on the back – Balewo – the name I shared with my murdered father. If they murdered his suddenly famous son in front of all these witnesses, that he-goat Mbuti would be finished.
But there was another way to finish him, I thought as I ran. Its success depended on two things: that Three was still alive; and that the backpack was still where I had left it.
I would soon find out both these things.
Leaving behind me the hooting-honking traffic, I raced down the crowded footpath. People stepped out of my way. There were gasps of surprise. Someone filmed me with a mobile phone as I charged past. Someone else cried, ‘It’s him! It’s Magic Feet!’
A chant went up then: ‘MAGIC FEET MAGIC FEET MAGIC FEET!’
It followed me along the footpath. People called to me from passing cars. They waved from upstairs windows. A small boy sitting on his father’s shoulders offered me his palm and I high-fived him as I ran past.
A girl with big eyes and a pierced nose cried, ‘Marry me, Sunday Balewo!’
Mbuti is right, I thought. They love me! But they had feared and hated my father. How could I have been so blind?
Suddenly there was a terrifying noise – BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP!
People began panicking and screaming and darting in all directions. I bumped into someone; I stumbled; I nearly went down, but once again, my magic feet saved me.
Running again, I shot a quick look over my shoulder. The guardsman from the limo was marching through the traffic on foot, firing his Uzi in the air – BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP-BOP! – clearing the way for the machine gun jeep. One of Mbuti’s motorbike escorts bumped up onto the footpath. People in the supermarket queue shouted and screamed and pushed themselves against the shopfronts to avoid being run over.
It was like a scene from a Hollywood movie, only much louder, much scarier, much more real. Those soldiers were not actors. That Uzi was not firing blanks. And the machine gun, still aimed right at me, could blow me apart with one press of its trigger.
I kept telling myself that this would not happen. Mbuti was a tyrant and a murderer, true, but he was not crazy. He needed me to stay alive. So I kept running.
But no matter how fast I ran, even Sunday ‘Magic Feet’ Balewo could not outrun a motorbike. I could hear it behind me, coming closer and closer. The rider was beeping the horn to make people get out of his way. He did not care that I could hear him, also. Mightbe he was even enjoying himself, like that nasty hyena in the old Zantugan folk tale:
Run baby warthog,
As fast as you can,
But you will not escape me,
I am as fast as a leopard.
(It sounds better in traditional language.)
But unlike the poor baby warthog in the folk tale, I was not out in the open grasslands. I was in the middle of a crowded city, surrounded by people who might not have loved my father, but who did love his football-playing son.
‘MAGIC FEET MAGIC FEET MAGIC FEET!’ they chanted, loud in my ears.
But still I could hear the motorbike.
‘Help me!’ I cried to a man pushing a barrow of fat cassava roots along the edge of the road. ‘Stop the motorbike!’
He did not ask why. Seeing who I was, hearing the chant of my supporters, he waved at me to go past, then he hauled his barrow across the footpath and tipped it onto its side. Cassavas scattered everywhere. A second man laid his bicycle across the barrow, making a barricade. Straightaway, a crowd of bystanders formed behind it.
A great cheer went up when the motorbike came to a stop before the barricade, and the barrow man yelled over his shoulder: ‘Run, Magic Feet!’
I ran and ran and ran. None of Mbuti’s men were following me now, but everyone I passed seemed to know what was happening. I kept running for three city blocks. Cries of ‘Good luck, Magic Feet’ came from passing cars; people stepped out of my way, grinning at me and shouting encouragement; nearly everyone, even girls and ladies, tried to high-five me as I went puff-puff-puffing past.
An idea came into my head.
When a man wearing a brown vinyl motorbike jacket saluted me and said, ‘Go well, Magic Feet,’ I stopped and shook his hand.
‘Would you like my jersey?’ I puffed.
He seemed puzzled. Mightbe he had never met someone famous before. ‘Your football jersey?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘I will swap it for your jacket.’
‘You are joking!’ he said.
‘I am not joking,’ I told him. Pulling off my bright, green and purple football jersey, I handed it to him. ‘A straight swap,’ I said. ‘Your jacket for this jersey.’
A short time later, no longer recognisable as Magic Feet, I came around a corner into a narrow side street. Halfway down, nearly blocking the street, was a broken-down matatu bus with one wheel missing. I slowed to a walk, my face streaming with sweat, my breath sawing. There were no crowds here. Nobody was chanting my football name. But I checked anyway, just to make sure that I was not being watched. Then I crouched behind the matatu and peered underneath.
And Three’s backpack was there.
35
Not Someone
Everything looked the same. The six glass louvres were neatly stacked near the hand basin where I had left them. The security grille still leaned against the wall. Nobody had been here while I was away.
Or had they? The toilet lid was raised and my foot nearly went in as I lowered myself from the window. Also, the door was open. I peered nervously out into the warehouse.
‘Three?’ I called.
There was no reply.
‘Three?’ I called, a little louder.
Still there was no reply. It gave me a bad feeling in my stomach. How many days had passed since I had left the brid deeply asleep from taking fourteen Teledol capsules? It was too many days. I had only left one cup of water in case it woke up before I got back. And I had left it no food. Mightbe Three had woken up while I was gone, only to die of thirst or starvation because of my thoughtlessness.
Aaaaee! Was I a murderer?
I made my way softly-softly between the shelves of We Care boxes. I did not call anymore. It was too sad to call to someone who
already is dead.
But Three was not someone, I said to myself. Three was something.
So it was not murder to cause its death.
But still I felt guilty in my heart.
The cartons were stacked across the entry to our hiding place just how I had left them. I hesitated. I did not want to move them and see what was behind. But I had to be certain – I had to see with my eyes that Three truly was dead. Aaaaee! My blood pumped loudly in my ears as I shifted the heavy cartons to one side.
And Three was not there.
There was just a scatter of rice pudding cans with their tops roughly prized open. Also there was our water jug, half-filled with white stuff that looked like baby formula. I stared at these things while my brain tried to make sense of their meaning.
Then a small noise came from up on the shelves above my head. I raised my face to look.
‘Where Sunday been?’ asked Three.
36
Destiny
Three’s hip was fixed. It proudly showed me how it could walk on all four legs again – like a proper animal – and how it could climb.
It was much stronger, also, from all the baby formula and rice pudding it had eaten while I was gone.
I checked its other injuries. The big bite wound on top if its head looked much better. There was hardly any swelling around the stitches and the edges seemed to be growing back together. The hole in its ear had scabbed over also. And its bad eye was partway open – I could see the second blue eye peering out through the slit.
‘Thank you, Sunday, for fix Three,’ the brid said with a smile.
I tried to smile back, but it was hard to look into those trusting blue eyes.
You are ready, I thought.
Alone in the kitchen, I used sticky plasters from the first-aid kit to repair the broken red wire. My fingers were steady, but my heartbeat was not. This was dangerous. The wire connected the little red button on the shoulder strap of the backpack to the bomb inside. One mistake and I would be dead.