Who Will Catch Us As We Fall

by Iman Verjee

  ‘Wait – please,’ he said, falling to his knees and clutching the man’s trousers. He was dizzy and thought he might vomit onto the cracked floor. ‘No more.’

  ‘Are you going to get it for me?’

  The blood from his forehead seeped into his eyes and everything turned a watery pink. His head drooped forward, so heavy he thought it might explode as he tried to nod a yes. The man caught it in its downward trajectory and forced it upward.

  ‘You better otherwise I’ll be coming to your house.’ He dropped Jeffery’s chin and with nothing holding him up, he collapsed to the floor, twisted legs beneath him. He struggled to keep his eyes open, his mind understanding. ‘I’ve seen your wife and the mistress you keep.’ A deep belly laugh. ‘Two women in the same house – what a lucky mzee you are.’

  ‘Don’t hurt them.’ His fingers grappled with the man’s shoelaces and he received a swift kick in the abdomen. He doubled over, the breath suspended in his lungs before squeezing forth. ‘I’ll get it for you, just don’t harm them.’

  ‘I’ll give you one more week, sawa? No more chances after that.’ The man straightened out his shirt, wiped at a spot of blood on his cuff and told his companion amicably, ‘I need a beer.’

  The next thing Jeffery was aware of was Marlyn turning him over on his back, shouting for help, the ends of her weave turning clumpy with his blood. ‘Wake up, Jeffery, wake up.’ But he wasn’t listening to her, didn’t care for her rising panic because all he was thinking of was every wrong choice he had ever made and how, if he had been different, he would have allowed himself to fall in love with the quiet yet headstrong housemaid – how everything he had ever been greedy for was now worn out and foul and all those things he had abandoned only aching, incurable regrets.

  By the time he arrived home, Esther was already asleep and Betty was standing by the front door, fastening the buttons of her cardigan. At the sound of his key, she flitted quickly to the wall. A shiver in her stomach gathered into a shortness of breath – she clutched tightly to the pleats of her skirt.

  In the weak moonlight, his movements were only sounds – laborious and painfully slow – and when he reached for the light her hand flew to her mouth in a horrified gasp.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  A face purple as a raisin, raw cheeks that broke into minuscule eruptions of blood as he grimaced at her. ‘Nothing. Why are you here?’ Curt and abrupt once again with no sign of the man Betty had glimpsed in the car. He had been drinking; she could tell from the way he repeatedly smacked his lips together and squinted, concentrating intently on putting one foot in front of the other.

  She tucked her purse under her arm and said stiffly, as she shoved by him, ‘I was just leaving.’

  He stepped in front of her and flicked the door latch. Caught up in a twist of elbows and grasping fingers, she noticed the tremble of his long eyelashes, how lovely the full curl of his mouth was – traces of a past handsomeness – and she wished she had known him then. He asked, ‘Please, won’t you help me?’

  ‘What happened to you?’ she repeated, once she had assisted him in staggering to a kitchen chair.

  Ignoring her persistence, he said, ‘First get me some Dettol and a painkiller.’ He poked at his cheek and groaned. ‘Everything hurts, even my insides.’

  He told her where to find the items – the small, plastic bottle of antiseptic, some cotton swabs and two small white pills. She handed him the tablets with a glass of water.

  After he had swallowed them she scooted closer to him and grasped lightly at his chin. With the sting of ethanol in her nose, her eyes watering, Betty dabbed slowly at his torn cheek. Jeffery winced, struggled away, but she held him firmly.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ The irritated sarcasm again and she stilled her hand, the cotton swab hovering. Their eyes met – hers were stern and made him smile. Softer, he said, ‘Two men attacked me at a bar.’

  ‘Why?’

  His face stung at the memory but he was enjoying the light sureness of her fingertips, the bitter tea-breath that reminded him of his old life. He didn’t know how to say it to her. No doubt there were enough possessions in that Runda house to get him the two hundred thousand he needed but he didn’t want to face her reaction. He couldn’t ever remember being this intimate with someone, grazing the delicate edges of familiarity with a stranger, and he was reluctant for it to end. But time was running out.

  ‘I owe them money.’

  She had withdrawn her hand to pour some more Dettol onto a cotton ball and when she dabbed again, her actions were lighter and disappointed. ‘What for?’

  ‘I made some deals that went wrong.’ He trapped her hand as it left his face, pressed his thumb to the fleshiest part of it and felt the unwavering beat of her heart. He brought his mouth close to her palm, almost touching. ‘I was a good man, you know,’ he told her. ‘And I can be good again.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Her hand itched, struggled to push itself closer to him, and when he took her elbows, pulling her downward, she let her mouth fall open slightly, felt the sweet sting of his breath, just before he said, ‘But there’s something I must do first.’

  She pulled away slightly. ‘What is it?’

  He arranged the words on his tongue, prepared them carefully, but when they came out they were cleaving blades. ‘Betty, I need your help getting into the Kohlis’ house.’

  His request sent horrified vibrations through her mind and she began to laugh hysterically. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I need two hundred thousand shillings by next Wednesday and if I don’t get it by then, they’re going to kill me.’ He thought it necessary to add, ‘Then, they’re going to come for you and Esther.’

  For a long moment, the earth became a vacuum, trapping her inside its rushing stillness. Then she felt a touch, hard and worried, on her knee and everything burst into movement once more, sending her into a sickening turmoil. She shut her eyes tight and whispered, ‘You used me.’

  He reached out two fingers and held lightly to the hem of her skirt. ‘I’m protecting you.’

  She slapped his hand away. ‘You told them who I was so that I would have no choice but to help you get into that house.’

  It stung him that she could so easily think of him that way, cut him to the quick. ‘I would never do that to you.’

  She stumbled up with a face dark and shiny with tears. Spat at him, ‘Even if they were going to kill me, I would never help you do something like that.’

  ‘I don’t have any other option.’ He held on to her cardigan, tangled it between his hands and they struggled, ridiculous and wide-eyed. ‘I promise you no one will get hurt – we can do it when they’re all out of the house. There are ways, Betty.’

  ‘And when they find that things are missing? When I lose my job? What then?’

  ‘You’ll come and live with me.’ He said it as if it were a decided thing and at her look of incredulity he whispered, more questioningly, ‘I want to look after you.’

  His words wrapped around her – she had wanted him to say it for a while, she knew that now. But his words had come at the wrong time, in the most impossible scenario. She fumbled for her purse at the door, struggled with the strap. ‘Tell Esther I said goodbye.’ Her indignation was interrupted by hiccupped sobs, a face creased with sorrow as she retreated out of the door. ‘Tell her I’m sorry, but I won’t be coming back.’

  ‌

  41

  Michael had only been in there for a few hours, but even days later the cold stayed with him, seeped into his bones. The moist stench of human feces that had littered the walls and floors of the tiny communal lavatory, and the shuka-draped, aging villager with sharp knees who huddled close to him for warmth, had all disappeared from his mind. He couldn’t remember if there had been six cells or twelve and whether or not there had been any women, tourists or muhindis.

  But he hadn’t been able to get ri
d of the chill, to forget how his hands and feet ached with cold – the kind that was dull and difficult to precisely locate. The muscles along his shoulders and back had cramped so painfully that every movement he made stuck half-way.

  When the policeman came to get him, calling several times from the door, Michael had been unable to respond; he had been grinding his teeth so hard, his mouth was numb.

  ‘Kijana, do you want to stay here until God himself comes to get you?’

  It had been a sensation like floating, or walking on a very high carpet with electricity beneath his feet, springing up in a host of pins and needles as he limped forward. When he reached the doorway, the police officer shoved him forward, slamming the door and the protesting villager behind him.

  ‘What can I do for you, officer?’ Back at the small table, Michael feigned a carefreeness he no longer felt. The policeman hadn’t allowed him a phone call and he was acutely aware that no one knew where he was.

  ‘I want to know why you refused to help me.’

  He was a dark-skinned man with ripe cheeks and a face that could have been sweetly handsome.

  ‘How did you expect me to agree?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Are we not the same, you and I? Do we not know the same sufferings, the same injustices?’ His hands swept across the table in urgent gestures and he said, ‘When I was very young, around your age, my mother died.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ It seemed odd that this stranger who he had just met, who had arrested and jailed him, should now choose to share something so personal, and his foot tapped nervously on the ground.

  The man didn’t look up from the table. ‘She died because other people here live too large. Because some of us have to make do with nothing while they, the real thieves, hide out in their huge mansions or escape for a little while overseas.’ His voice trailed, lost in the crevices of an old pain. ‘My mother didn’t even have one sip of good water available to her. This country failed her and that is why she is gone.’

  ‘I don’t understand how robbing a house is going to make what happened to your mother right. You’re an officer of the law – you should know better than anyone how wrong that is.’

  ‘Yet if I don’t get that money, I will die also.’ The officer’s eyes came up, sightless and black. ‘If what happened to my mother taught me anything, it’s that to survive we must be selfish. No one else is going to look after you.’

  ‘If that’s the case, if we refuse to look after our country and instead steal from and kill each other, what does that mean for the future of Kenya? Things cannot just change by themselves. We have to accept responsibility for that.’

  ‘I used to sound just like you.’ The policeman gave a derisive snort of laughter. ‘But one day you will see that while you were busy thinking pretty thoughts about everyone else, they were pushing you down to get to the top.’ He stopped to contemplate his words. ‘I love this country but I must accept it for what it is. A place where thieves are celebrated and good men die unremarkable deaths.’

  Nothing could be heard but the sleepy, second-hand clock overhead and the crickets outside, which meant that the policeman’s words rang unimpeded. Michael was slightly frightened of them and asked, ‘Can I go now or do you want to put me back in the cell?’

  The policeman scraped back his chair legs tiredly. ‘You may go.’

  As Michael collected up his things quickly, slinging his satchel over his shoulder and going for the door, the policeman stopped him. ‘You must remember what I said.’ His voice lagged with defeat. ‘One day, the same thing will happen to you and you will say, Oh, Jeffery,’ a finger pointed at himself, ‘that’s my name. Jeffery was right. I have spent my whole life doing the right thing, only to have the wrong thing done to me.’

  When he told Jai what had happened, his friend laughed incredulously.

  ‘You were arrested by a cop who then tried to convince you to help him rob a house?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Jai ran frustrated fingers through his hair. ‘That makes absolutely no sense. Do you know what Leena would say about all of this?’

  The name jerked tiredly inside of him – he felt exhausted now when he thought of her. ‘What?’

  ‘She’s picked up a habit of saying “only in Kenya” and then she rolls her eyes and expects me to understand what that means.’

  ‘How is she?’ Despite himself, Michael asked and found that, as he waited for the answer, the cop and the jail cell were forgotten and, temporarily, so was the cold.

  ‘She’s come down with the flu so she’s been in bed for the last couple of days.’ What Jai said next made Michael snap to quick attention. ‘She’s leaving next week.’

  Michael looked toward the large storage cupboard, shut tightly with a steel padlock. A few days before he had been arrested he had begun a sketch, and even after an entire afternoon it remained rough lines and jagged dips, not enough yet for anyone but him to know what it was. The morning after he had been arrested, instead of heading home, he had come here to finish it. A nude woman lying on her side, the dip of her curves leading to the sweeping up-rise of her thighs, dark hair thrown over her shoulder.

  She lay over a box, her back to him, guarding his cowardly secret and all the insecurities he had thought himself immune to. Those he had been too afraid to say out loud because he was terrified of being rejected or being made to feel inferior, afraid of what Jai might say, that he wouldn’t approve and that the reason would be identical to Pooja’s: that Michael wasn’t good enough.

  He thought about what the policeman had said to him; the reason his words had frightened Michael was that because, in some way, they were true. Pulling his eyes away from the cupboard, filled with the determined hope and resolution of his youth, he said to Jai, ‘I want to see her.’

  He did not want to die an unremarkable death.

  ‌

  42

  She had prepared dinner for him. He came through the kitchen at nine o’clock and reeled from the new scent. The house had smelled like this when David was alive and Jeffery would come to visit them. Standing now at the alcove, he collected up the sourness of burned ugali.

  Esther was sitting at the table, gray smoke making its slow yet steady rise from the pot. He dropped his coat and rushed by her, dragging the bread off the heat and saying, ‘Are you trying to burn this house down?’

  ‘I made you something to eat.’ Her voice was flat, uncaring. ‘If you haven’t eaten already at the bar.’ This was her greatest weapon against him: talking past him and treating him as if he were nothing but a nuisance.

  The kitchen was descending into a light layer of choking smog and he was forced to open the window. A brown moth, attracted by the lights, fluttered in and settled on the kerosene lamp, warming itself.

  Jeffery stared down at the mess in the pot. It was runny and blackened but he spooned it onto a plate and added a large helping of the beef stew. Seized by the oddity of the situation, he went and sat by Esther. In an attempt to thank her, he scooped up the ugali with his thumb and forefinger but it was too watery and refused to stick. He settled for a fork and eating the beef stew on its own.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said gruffly, between bites.

  Her eyes were fixed on a spot on the wall behind him, somewhere above his head, and when he turned to follow her gaze, she said, ‘I want to go and see Betty.’

  Jeffery kept his face turned, his breath ragged. It had been three days, seventy-two long hours, since he had last seen Betty. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. Remember I said that she’s very busy this month and won’t be able to come here as often.’

  ‘Take me to her workplace then. You know where it is.’

  He had forgotten what a headstrong woman she could be. He recalled a night, some years ago, after the three of them had eaten dinner at this very table, while the two men were relaxing and David had said, ‘I have the police commissioner calling me now, investigating our office for corrupt activities. He�
��s asking for our logs, receipts.’ He had turned desperately to his whiskey. ‘What will I do?’

  His wife had regarded him unsympathetically. ‘If you choose to lie down with dogs,’ she had said, ‘you must be prepared to wake up with fleas.’

  How different she had been then – with her stinging words and laughing ways. Now her life was made up of small, meaningless activities – pacing her room, cleaning the stove, watching the wall, which she did with the staring, blank eyes of a dying fish.

  He said to her, feeling guilty for countless reasons, ‘You know I can’t do that, Esther. What would her employers think?’

  Finally, her eyes came down from the spot on the wall. They were shining with mischief, treating him as an accomplice. ‘She told me that on Sundays, they all go to the temple. They’re gone in the morning and don’t come back until two.’

  Esther couldn’t have known the value of her words; how they invigorated him with new hope, settling the turning in his stomach. But it was diluted by something else: a worry for Betty, the fear of pushing her even further away from him.

  ‘It’s too risky for her,’ he heard himself say from someplace else.

  Esther’s patience evaporated fast. ‘You do so many wrong things, every day, every hour! Why can’t you do this one thing for me?’

  He thought about the house again: the massive driveway and carved red-wood door; the quiet, waiting richness promised within. There was a hard pressure on his hands and Esther’s gripping, pleading words. ‘Please, Jeffery. We’ll go in and out, straight away. No one will even know we were there.’

  That Saturday evening, he scanned the dim club for Marlyn in annoyance. All he required in order to wait was a drink and a chair, but neither seemed available.

  His usual table had been pushed against the wall to make room for a dance floor, where the music throbbed in his ears and the crowd was terribly young and rowdy – already his shoes clung to the floor, sticky with spilled alcohol. Jeffery slipped out onto the narrow patio, where it was possible to see most of Westlands in one swooping gaze. It was an overcast night, the stars hidden within spreading gray clouds, and he settled on a wicker chair, glad for the quiet. When a waitress came to take his order, he had shouted after her, ‘Tell Marlyn to come quickly! I want to see her.’