The Water Thief

by Claire Hajaj

  ‘Not yet,’ she says. Her eyes are cast down.

  He asks her: ‘Are you sure it’s the right time to go?’

  Now I am frightened. Mama, she also fears Baba will change his mind. She says: ‘I wish to make amends.’

  Baba tells her: ‘You have not sinned, Margaret.’

  She is quiet. Nicholas too. Then she says: ‘But who knows when the next chance will come?’

  Baba is thinking. ‘So, Yahya,’ he tells me. ‘You will see where your mother was born. You will be my ambassador there. They must see that we northerners are gentlemen, too.’

  ‘Yes, Baba,’ I say. But I notice Mama. She is looking at me. She looks like she is thinking. Then she puts more chicken on Baba’s plate, and he tells her she spoils him.

  Later Nicholas teaches me how to sing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. He explains what is a partridge, and what is a French hen. I tell him, if Baba bought any of these for Mama, she would send him back to the shop. He laughs. In these stories all the presents are magical, he tells me. If you love someone, then you don’t want to give them something from a shop. You want to give them something that cannot be bought.

  At sunset, Mama sends me out with a bucket to bring water for washing. Now we use our tank water only for cooking and drinking. There is no more water for clothes and dishes. I must go to the lake. So I run. The bucket is light. I am practising: ‘Three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.’ The best part is the five gold rings. If I had five rings I would buy Adeya some new clothes and ask her to forgive me.

  The lake is nearly dark. Binza sends ghosts, Juma says, to drink from the water. And if the lake is dry, she sends them to the village to drink blood.

  I make the sign of the evil eye towards her place. Stay away, witch. Stay away from us.

  I take my bucket to the edge of the water. It feels warm and dark under my toes.

  Then I hear a sound. Behind me. Maybe it was a bird. There are no such things as ghosts. Juma is a stupid liar.

  The lake is dark. The sun makes the grass here tall and black. They are like knives, each one.

  I hear the noise again. Maybe Binza has come out of her place. Maybe she sees me, Binza and her ghosts. I turn around. ‘Come out, Binza!’ I call, to show I am not afraid. ‘Come out!’ I say again. My voice sounds small.

  ‘The witch is not here, JoJo.’

  I turn around, quick. My heart is beating too hard. I say: ‘Who is that?’

  Then I see him.

  He comes through the reeds, white as stone. He has the knife in his hand and in the other some of the tall grass. He sees me looking at the knife. He laughs. He says: ‘Do you still fear me, JoJo?’

  Mister shows me the grass he has cut. ‘What is this?’ he asks.

  I try to shrug, like I don’t care. ‘It’s grass.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘This is money in my hand. I will sell it to the ones who make baskets and masks. They will paint them. Then maybe your friend the English, he will buy them for a high price.’

  I tell him: ‘Nicholas does not want these things.’

  Mister shrugs. ‘Then some man will. Maybe in the capital, or at the hotels.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘You have money from the garage.’ Juma says he makes lots of money. He buys beer from Tuesday and hides it from his father.

  Mister sits on the ground. The mud makes his jeans brown. He starts to weave the grass together. His hands are so quick. Even Adeya cannot do it so well.

  On the ground he looks smaller than me. I see the back of his neck where his head bends forward. It has pink scars on it, deep, like a lion tore him.

  He says: ‘This was how I ate when I was younger than you, JoJo. Before I came to the village. I made things to sell. If my things were no good, they beat me and I did not eat.’

  I cannot imagine Mister when he was small. He must have been pink all over, like a newborn dog. His tears would have been pink on his skin.

  I ask: ‘Was it your father who beat you?’

  He smiles. ‘My mother’s husband was not my father. My mother took another man to her bed. A rich man from the Town. Maybe you heard of him, JoJo.’

  I shake my head, and Mister smiles. ‘No? Well, my mother’s husband punished her. He nearly killed us, and from then we had no home. And my true father, he left us to our punishment. One day I will find him again.’

  I think of a small dog that I saw Jalloh beat for stealing one of his chickens. The dog cried. Its tail went under its legs, to hide from the stick. I begged Mama: ‘Make him stop!’ She held me tight. She said: ‘Some things cannot be stopped.’

  I say: ‘It was wrong to beat you.’

  Mister, he stands up. He holds out what he has made. It is a cross, like the one Mama made for Bako.

  ‘For you,’ he says. It feels smooth when I take it from him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I tell him. And he smiles.

  ‘They were right to beat me, JoJo,’ he says. ‘It was their gift to me. They feared my skin. They called me a bad spirit. But spirits feel no pain. They have no tears and no blood. By the time I was your age, I had no more fear. Now no one beats me any more.’

  He looks at me. He says: ‘You are a big man now, JoJo. You go to the Town, with the English. You meet with the governor.’

  I touch my head. The governor’s cap is still there. I wear it nearly every day, after school.

  ‘Nicholas is my friend,’ I tell Mister. ‘He is teaching me things. He is taking me to the capital. One day I will go with him, to England.’

  Mister, he nods. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘You will make a fine white man.’

  I feel my face turn red. I say: ‘He is my friend.’

  Mister tells me: ‘The governor laughed at your father. Did you know? He came back like a dog that was kicked by its master. He is afraid to fight. Like you.’

  ‘He’s no dog,’ I shout. ‘And I am not afraid of you!’

  Mister comes closer. I feel his breath on me. My heart is still beating. His skin is pink where the sun has burned him. His lips are pink, like Mama’s.

  ‘No, you are not afraid,’ he says. ‘I am glad, JoJo. You grew up. It is time for you to join The Boys, I think.’

  I do not answer. The old JoJo wanted to join The Boys. I am with Nicholas, now. And Nicholas is stronger than Mister.

  ‘I cannot join,’ I say.

  Mister lifts his hand holding the knife. He flips it so that he grasps the blade. ‘Take it,’ he says.

  In my hand it feels heavy. It is warm from his touch.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Mister asks. The voice is his, but I feel the knife is speaking. I see how light shines off the metal part. Its shadow stretches long.

  Mister says: ‘The Englishman is a witch, too. He makes his spells on you. But they will break, JoJo. Believe me. He does not want you. So, afterwards you can come and find me.’

  He reaches over to take the knife. His hand is soft, like his voice. Then he goes, turning his back on me. I wonder where he sleeps. Maybe in the garage. Maybe here, by the lake.

  The sun swallows him before it falls. And suddenly I am cold.

  When I reach my home, Baba is inside, cleaning the grandfather clock. The big box with all his tools is open. He looks up at me from the floor.

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Yahya. I must speak with you.’

  I do not want to talk to Baba. I want to speak to Nicholas in his room. I want to tell him about Mister and The Boys. I want to talk to him about England.

  I try to walk away. But Baba, he holds me.

  ‘Yahya, your mother and I have talked with Nicholas. And I’m afraid you cannot go with them to the capital this time.’

  My heart, it stops again. Just like when Mister spoke my name.

  ‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘Why?’

  Baba, he takes my hands.

  ‘Yahya, there are too many uncertain things. Your mother must mend her ties with her family. Until this is done, she thinks it will be too difficult to show h
er son to them. It is a matter best handled by her alone. And then, afterwards, we can all go together.’

  ‘No! I do not understand. This morning I was going to the capital! It was all decided!’

  I am shouting at Baba: ‘Nicholas told me I could go! He promised! It is not fair. You lied!’

  ‘I am sorry for the disappointment, Yahya.’ Baba tries to take my hand again. He says: ‘I will take you another time.’

  ‘I want to go with Nicholas!’ I pull away from Baba’s hand. ‘With Nicholas, not with you!’

  I see his face. And I think: I am a bad son. But inside my head, I can hear Mister, whispering: ‘You see – he does not want you.’

  I cannot listen any more. Not to Baba, not to Mister.

  I run out of the room, back outside under the dark sky.

  I sit down on the steps. I hate to cry. But the tears come.

  I see lights in the kitchen where Mama is cleaning. There are more lights in the room where Nicholas works. But no one comes to find me.

  I wait there until I am finished crying. I wait while the stars come out. All over the sky they come, one by one. Each one has a name, Nicholas told me, like Adeya’s plants. But I cannot remember any of those names. All I remember is that they are all so bright and all so far away.

  New Year’s Eve

  Nick and Margaret left for the capital the morning before New Year’s Eve.

  In the pre-dawn quiet, Dr Ahmed lifted their suitcases into the trunk of the taxi – Margaret standing beside the car door, already searching the southern sky.

  ‘Good luck, my dear,’ Dr Ahmed said to her. Nick sensed tension between them, the shadow of anxiety.

  ‘I’ll return soon,’ she told him.

  ‘Say goodbye to JoJo for us.’ Nick offered his hand to Dr Ahmed. ‘Tell him again – I’m really sorry.’ He’d knocked on the boy’s door earlier, to no response.

  ‘He will recover,’ Dr Ahmed replied. ‘Children have the instinct to forgive.’

  As the car pulled away, Nick turned back to watch Dr Ahmed’s scarecrow wave. Then they rounded the corner – and he was gone.

  The car raced south, hours slipping by on waves of heat. The highway was a thin needle pointing through a vast space, bare as a beaten anvil. White rock broke the ground, like shoulder blades and clutching fingers. Nick thought of buried titans, struggling to break out of their prison.

  The air grew heavier as the hours passed: Margaret pressed her face to the window, her breath moistening the glass. Nick watched her as the car bumped and shook, wrestling with his own turbulence. It was only four months ago he’d travelled this same road; but that felt like a different man, or another lifetime. Something in him had changed, or deepened; he was acutely conscious of Margaret’s warmth beside him, of his disturbed happiness broken only by the driver’s gaze flicking towards them in the rear-view mirror.

  The sky curdled and thickened into thunderclouds. As evening fell, the capital appeared in a humid haze of smoke and steel. Dark rainwater ran off the streets as they crossed the blinking red and green of traffic lights where women waited in pencil skirts, shielding their hair with their handbags. A pale, long-haired girl with a backpack stood by a market stall stacked with wooden statues and woven mats. She turned as they passed, catching Nick’s eyes through the steamed window. He thought fleetingly of Kate.

  J.P. had booked them into the same hotel Nick remembered, its walls slick with falling rain. Margaret looked up at them as she opened her car door.

  ‘I don’t remember this place.’ Her voice was low, threaded with unease. Dr Ahmed had assured them he recalled the name from university days.

  ‘The decor must have changed.’ But still she hesitated. Nick touched her forearm, already dappled with water. It brought back a sudden memory – in the garden on their first morning, bright drops falling from the clothesline.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he promised. She looked up, biting her lip, tasting raindrops as they rolled over the swell of her mouth. ‘Change is why you came here.’

  Eric’s driver was asking for payment. Nick brought out the last of his cash, peeling off forty dollars. Tomorrow he would replenish with J.P.’s next tranche and money wired by Kate through Western Union.

  The lobby was unexpectedly chilling. Margaret had goose bumps; she pulled her scarf over her head, vanishing into a shroud of browns. The drab headscarf and concealing travel clothes had been chosen to reassure Dr Ahmed, he guessed. But suddenly he found them claustrophobic.

  ‘You don’t have to wear those here, you know.’

  ‘I am cold,’ was all she would say in reply.

  After the formalities of check-in, Nick led Margaret to the pool where J.P. waited, smoking a cigarette. Moon-yellow lanterns surrounded the water, dangling from poles in a gaudy web. J.P. beckoned Nick and Margaret as they approached.

  ‘You made it! Amazing! This storm . . . I was sure the roads would be blocked. This weather is a mess, honestly. So, everything worked out. Eric’s guy was OK? You’re tired?’

  He ushered Margaret to the table, Nick following behind. A crisp-shirted waiter came for their drink orders. Nick took a beer, as did J.P.. Margaret hesitated.

  ‘They make wonderful cocktails at the bar,’ J.P. urged. ‘Strawberry, pineapple, kiwi.’

  Margaret thanked him, picking up the menu to hide her confusion. Nick knew how she must feel, caught in the friction between two different worlds.

  ‘Try something,’ he said to her. ‘You’re on holiday.’

  She laughed at that notion, her face softening.

  ‘Very well, monsieur,’ she said to J.P.. ‘Choose for me. I will trust your judgement – in fruit juice, at least.’

  J.P. laughed with her; one hand smoothed his thinning hair, stirred into unconscious vanity. While the waiter retreated to fill their order, he bent closer to Margaret. ‘I didn’t know you spoke French, mademoiselle.’

  ‘The nuns at my school said French was the language of seduction.’ Her drink was placed on the table, foamy layers topped by pineapple and a striped straw. ‘So we came to class ready to be seduced. But we were disappointed.’

  ‘Such a shame,’ J.P. said. ‘Maybe you were not studying the right subjects.’

  ‘I do not think the nuns approved of most subjects.’ Margaret bent her head to sip from the straw. ‘It’s good,’ she told J.P. with a smile. ‘A good start.’

  As they talked, Nick realised that J.P. was flirting. He leaned towards Margaret, needlessly close, adjusting the collar of his crumpled shirt. Nick felt a brief tug of jealousy. The air was a moist cocoon of scents, flowers unfolding somewhere unseen.

  Tomorrow stretched out, clear as the southern highway. First he would win J.P.’s support for the village well. Then he would reunite Margaret with Sarah. Their old sorrows would die with the year.

  His eyes travelled to the pool, sparkling under the party lights. The claws of memory had loosened; he had a new purpose, and his heart no longer ached for Madi. He could even forgive his father, imagine them really talking for the first time since they’d sat silently at Madi’s tiny, pefunctory funeral. I understand now.You only despised me so I would redeem myself.

  Margaret was saying she was tired. The rain had given way to a wild jumble of night sounds: croaking frogs, music spilling from the hotel bar, the chatter of arriving guests. She rose, stretching her arms over her head. The slight curve of her stomach was silhouetted against the pool lights. Three children have come out of that body. The thought filled Nick with awe, reminding him of life’s hidden powers.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he replied. ‘I mean – I’m tired as well.’

  ‘OK, so, see you tomorrow morning.’ J.P. bent over Margaret’s hand. ‘And you, mademoiselle.’ His glasses grazed her skin. ‘Will I have the pleasure of your company again? There’s a New Year’s Eve party here tomorrow. The usual disaster, no doubt – warm champagne, bad music.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Margaret said, slipping her hand from his.
Nick felt J.P.’s eyes watching them go.

  They walked upstairs and along the hotel’s dim corridors. Opposite Margaret’s room, a large window reflected the pool below. She looked out, bathed in the flicker of fairy lights, yawning as she rested one hand on the windowsill.

  ‘I could sleep for a hundred years.’ she said. ‘Such a long journey.’ Her mouth curled in a wry smile. ‘And all just to come back to where I started.’

  Nick smiled too, joining her at the window. ‘You should rest,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow is a big day for both of us. I have to get money for our well. And you’ll see Sarah again.’

  She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. Nick remembered the ending of her book: the start of many wonderful adventures – words straight from childhood’s optimistic heart.

  ‘It’s the beginning of a new story,’ he promised. ‘The Thorn Princess, Part Two.’

  Her palms pressed against the windowpane. ‘Thank you.’ Her murmured words misted the glass. Then she turned to him and spoke directly. ‘Thank you for this chance. If you had not come . . .’

  A shriek drifted up from the pool. A woman had fallen in, drunk and stumbling. Two waiters were trying to fish her out with a pool cleaner. Her braids snaked out from her head, a watery Medusa, arms flailing in splashy circles.

  Margaret leaned her forehead against the pane to watch them. ‘Like a mermaid,’ she said, half in wonder.

  The waiters were jabbing at her ineffectually with the long pool cleaner. ‘I don’t think much of her handsome princes.’

  ‘They cannot all be princes,’ she said. Colours wove across her forehead, wreathing it in a red and green crown.

  Lady Margaret. She was close enough for her warmth to brush his thin shirt; when she reached up to pull off her headscarf he saw the long line of her neck bending forward, wet curls nestled at its nape. Lingering cotton strands clung to the line of bare skin hovering above her abaya, damp in the night’s heat. Unconsious, he reached to brush them off. She drew back, hastily; he recovered himself. Apologies formed in his mind – weak against the confused tides of feeling.