Last Dance

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “Who?”

  She slides her cigarette case into her clutch and stands, pushes her shoulders back. I can see the ballerina in her, distant. Is she here to lead me in the right or wrong direction? Like a Russian doll. Many pieces. She fixes her pearls, straightens her dress.

  “Can I talk to Maria?”

  “This will never happen.”

  “Can you and I talk again?”

  “Maybe. I find you, Mr. Sam.” She turns to leave, turns back. “You know the men with no faces listen to everyone.”

  She leaves. I stand at the window. She walks out of the hotel and gets into the back of a black car. The chauffeur closes the door. A light rain falls across the cobblestones. The car turns east. She is gone.

  Chapter 20

  “Change of plans, Sam.”

  “What?”

  “A little detour,” says Stefan.

  “Where?”

  “Africa.”

  “What are you talking about? I can’t go to Africa. I have to get back.”

  “One day extra, max.”

  “Stefan . . .”

  “Sam, we must go. Please.”

  I look out the Gulfstream window. Rain is turning to snow; yellow lights flash against trees at the edge of the runway. A small plane lands with silent ease. Baggage men laugh and hurry. Chloe is scrolling; Roberto is in the cockpit. I text Ortiz, tell him I met Zhanna but that I’ll be a day late. I don’t mention Africa. I text Lily. “Stay on Krause. Home soon.” Stefan is eating Danish and sliced fruit. His deal is done, and he is pleased. He reads. Looks up.

  “The Bridge over River Drina,” he says. “Story of Balkans all in this book. I read it first long time ago.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “I let you have it when I finish.”

  “Stefan, I need to get back.”

  “Don’t worry about things, Sam. You will be home soon.”

  We lift. Wind shakes the plane; snow squalls. Then, as before, we rise to blue, sun on the wing.

  “Where?”

  “South Sudan,” says Stefan. I feel Chloe’s glance. “Newest country in the world, Sam. Imagine. Hard place. Very hard place, like former Yugoslavia but much worse, yet also beautiful. Important place for you to know.”

  “Why?”

  “You will see. Sleep now. Later you tell me about Zhanna.”

  I’m angry but captive. This is Stefan. I press him once more, shout expletives. He looks at me is if at an errant child.

  “Trust me, Sam. We need to go.”

  I put on headphones and drift between jazz and sleep. I awake in Nairobi. A man boards, hands Stefan a bag, and hurries away. We fuel and take off for Juba. Chloe gives Stefan two folders. He reads. We fly over grasslands and thin streams. Thatched villages are covered in yellow-red dust, and men race below on motorcycles. I have never been to sub-Saharan Africa, but I have a framed photograph of a tribesman on a wall in my apartment. I saw it in a gallery years ago. It was cheap, but the tribesman, looking at a storm gathering on the horizon, had the bearing of a prophet. Chloe hands me a magazine and a few newspaper stories. I read about South Sudan’s wars, atrocities, oil, women who are traded for cattle, and its president, a guerrilla-turned-statesman who wears a cowboy hat, carries a revolver, and speaks perfect English. I write this in my notebook. I write about the past thirty-six hours, Zhanna, and Stefan too—his “Moonlight Sonata,” his deals, bits and scenes of him, but not all of him. Words cannot do that.

  “So how was this Zhanna? Good-looking for an older lady.”

  “You’re awake.”

  “I never sleep long on a plane,” he says.

  “She’s not that old. How do you know her?”

  “A man I know, knows another man. He knows her. She was a spy or is a spy. Who can tell with Russians? A dancer, too, I think, but long ago.” Stefan yawns, looks out the window and back. “She was helpful?”

  “She’s Katrina’s aunt.”

  “Must know something.”

  “More than she said.”

  “Like all women,” says Stefan, winking at Chloe. “You will see her again.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Some women go and come back, Sam. I think you will see her again.”

  “I don’t know if I trust her.”

  “Like I said, it’s hard to know with Russians. Businesspeople, spies, bankers all run together like, how do you say, very tight knot. Biggest place for secrets in world is Russia.”

  “Zhanna says Katrina knew Mickey Orlov.”

  “Maybe she danced for him.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Mickey Orlov’s a powerful man. Man you don’t fuck with. He is part of the tight knot.”

  “You ever deal with him?”

  “You’re like a question machine, Sam.”

  “Just trying to know.”

  “You will. Zhanna, maybe, is a good person for you. But don’t turn your back.” He laughs. “Never turn your back on a Russian. Mr. Trump knows this. He turned his back; now he’s in shit. Putin has the best face, don’t you think, Sam? Shows nothing. Little eyes, staring. I love how Putin stares. Like animal.”

  “You ever meet him?”

  “I saw him once in Moscow. I was there for a deal. Small one. I finished early and went to the Tretyakov Gallery. You know it? Beautiful, Sam, truly. It was a weekday in February. Not crowded. I heard noise down the hall, and big men in suits—you know the kind—rushing ahead of a little man. Putin. No kidding, Sam. Putin. They pushed us aside. Everything went quiet.” Stefan is telling the story as if it happened a moment ago. “Putin stopped in front of What is the Truth? Do you know this painting? By Nikolay Nikolayevich Ge. Christ standing before Pilate. Pilate wants to know the truth, but he and Christ have different truths and so he will never understand. Putin stepped close to the painting. Examining it. Every inch. He stepped back and looked at it for a long time. Like a hypnotized man. Everyone was silent. A man whispered behind me, ‘He can’t figure out if he’s Pilate or Christ.’ We know what he became, yes, but then maybe we didn’t. He stood for a little longer and disappeared behind the big men in suits.”

  “He say anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think no man knows the truth.”

  “What else?”

  “Putin is small in real life.”

  Chloe brings us mango juice and peanuts. We look out to the sky and are quiet for a while. The land is shades of brown and dust. I think of Katrina and Lily. I touch a finger to the window, feel the cold. Stefan says tribes are fighting below. Battles here and there in a new country ruined even before it begins. He says war never goes all the way away. He starts to say something about his mother but stops, looks at Chloe and me, and turns back to the window. We are low, flying over a river, ladies washing colors along the banks.

  We land. The air is hot. Dry. Soldiers in mismatched fatigues stand by rusted jeeps near customs. The hills beyond are green and small. A man rushes us with a sign: “Mr. Stefano.”

  “That must be us,” says Stefan.

  We hurry toward passport control, Chloe pushing ahead, directing young men to grab boxes and luggage stacked on the tarmac.

  “Supplies,” she says.

  A captain in a beret thumbs our passports and looks us over until Stefan slips him cash. Stamps are thunked, and we pass through the gates, beyond night-black faces and soldiers, to the newest country in the world.

  “Welcome to freedom,” says a man in sunglasses, leaning on a motorcycle, with a Glock shoved in his trousers, and a girl, smoking a cigarillo, draped over his shoulder like a serpent.

  Young men move, slow and effortless, barely mussing the air. We climb into a Range Rover. The driver looks to be twelve. He smiles and tu
rns on music. The Bee Gees spill over us as we speed down a few miles of macadam to a dirt road.

  “Whole country has only fifty-three miles of paved roads,” says the driver. “But now we are independent. More roads will come. The Chinese build many roads. The Chinese are all over. This might be China.” He laughs and continues, “Everyone is coming to South Sudan. But I must say—a man must be honest—it is bad and good times. We have too many tribes. Much killing. It will sort out one day. All things, my friends, sort out. Oh, listen . . .” He turns up the volume. “I love this song. ‘Staying Alive’. Sounds like hyenas in the bush. I love Mr. Bee Gees.”

  We drive for two hours, passing boys with big guns at checkpoints. They hold ropes and sleep in the shade, sauntering toward us, asking for papers. Some want money, some cigarettes; Roberto hands one a flask of Johnny Walker. The grasslands are parched, and men with thin cattle roam past villages burned by marauders. A few warriors, their spears and Kalashnikovs resting against trees, splash and laugh in a watering hole. They bear tribal tattoos the color of eggplant and wave for us to swim. “Do not worry. No lions will come. The crocodiles have been eaten.” They laugh and wrestle and stand naked in the sun, beads of water glistening. We watch them for a moment.

  “They are like children,” says the driver. “A new South Sudan is coming.”

  We race across flatlands, and after exhausting much of the Bee Gees’s catalog, we round a curve through a stand of trees and roll toward a small lake. A band of men with guns stand smoking and drinking around a bed with billowing sheets, where a man wearing a medallion and a red beret sits bare chested, like a king.

  “Mango?” he says. “Grapes? Lamb?”

  He laughs. “Get over here, Stefan, or I will shoot you. You have been away too long. Do you like my bed? It fell off a truck in Juba, and my men brought it here. I think it is the bed of a diplomat. I wonder where he is sleeping now.”

  He laughs again, rising from the bed and hugging Stefan. His skin is splotched with scars.

  “How is my hospital?” says Stefan.

  “When you build a hospital, people are always sick. Have you noticed?” He laughs again. “Come, let’s go see this thing you have made in the jungle. You are Stanley Livingstone. Do you know Stanley Livingstone? He was around here sometime long ago. He is in books I have read.”

  “How are things?”

  “The Dinka and the Nuer fight. How long have we been fighting? I don’t know. How long has the sun been in the sky? The UN sends people, but what can a few blue helmets do? We need guns, Stefan. You have built a hospital. But we need guns. Then you can have more people for your hospital.” He smiles and finishes his mango. “Seriously, Stefan, you bring guns to other lands; this is what I have heard. Why not here?”

  “I got out of the gun business. I am in finance now.”

  “This is true? You brought us guns in our war against the north. Our war for independence.”

  “Since then, I am finished with guns.”

  “Mmmm. I don’t know if this is a wise move. The world will always need guns.”

  We walk along the lake. Stefan and Samuel—King Samuel, he jokes—lead the way past women carrying jugs on their heads, through a stretch of marsh to the north end of the lake, where we cut across open land to a collection of huts and a long wooden building with white curtains blowing in the shade. Villagers walk toward Stefan, some holding out their hands. One woman throws a flower at him; two others sing a native hymn. Children gather around us.

  “They always sing when Stefan comes,” says Samuel. “Always the same song. We need to teach them a new one.”

  Roberto and Chloe appear in the Range Rover with several of Samuel’s men. They park and unload boxes and duffels that men in white lab coats carry into the building.

  “You see,” says Samuel, “your hospital is doing well, Stefan. No one has burned it down. It is very tidy. And clean. You can smell how clean it is. I love the smell of cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. Breathe in. See? Dr. Goodluck is very strict about dirt. Aren’t you, Doctor?”

  A man with a stethoscope and a clipboard appears. He is smoking. His glasses are thick. He hugs Stefan. “My friend, why have you been gone so long?”

  Stefan puts his arm around him. We follow them up four wooden stairs into a ward rowed with beds covered by scrims of mosquito netting. Three nurses tend to the sick. We walk past them to a small operating room, an office, and two examining rooms, where boys sweep and wash instruments beneath a sign that reads, “Dirt brings sin and infection.” We pass into a room at the back. A line of children and their mothers wait outside at the door, and a nurse, her white uniform bright against her black skin, sits on a stool with a box of syringes.

  “Shot day,” says the doctor.

  He slides another stool toward the nurse. Stefan sits, and Samuel stands behind him. The nurse shushes everyone, and one by one, the families come. Children climb onto Stefan’s lap; the nurse swabs and sticks them. Some cry, some shake, and when each climbs down, Chloe hands them a lollipop. The line lasts for two hours. Families arrive from far-off villages. They bring goats, carved trinkets, sweet potatoes. A priest holds up a rosary; a shaman appears with an antelope horn.

  “They all come for Stefan,” says Samuel. “You are king like me, Stefan. A white king in the jungle. Stanley Livingstone.”

  Samuel laughs and pats Stefan on the back. Stefan says nothing. He smiles and lifts another child as a mother kisses his hand. A tear rolls down his face. I have never seen a man so content. All his energy stilled. He starts to say something, but nothing comes. He gathers and calms the next child. They file up one by one. He whispers to them, light breaking through the door, shining on black faces—old, young, wrinkled, ancient, and new, scars aglimmer and palms, bright as river stones, reaching out, calling.

  I look up and see her. Katrina.

  In photographs on the wall. Surrounded by children, like Stefan now, she is white, like a dove flying through night. Stefan is with her in a few pictures, holding sick children, giving shots, fixing a roof. Two strange missionaries. The photographs are different from any I’ve seen of Katrina. She is relaxed, hair falling, big smile, far from stage and costume. It is her but not, a serene impostor. She draws you in, inviting, and the photographs, all in black and white, have the air of a past world. Stefan glances at me. He hands a girl to her mother and motions for me to follow. We walk to the shade of a tree and sit in rattan chairs. My anger seeps, my words low and tight.

  “You said you barely knew her, saw her only once.”

  “At Harvey Weinstein’s party when she danced,” says Stefan. “That is when we met. But more came of it.”

  “Why did you lie to me?” I breathe in. I feel I might yell, but I don’t. “Why are we here?”

  “I wasn’t ready to tell you then. I am now.”

  “Did you . . .”

  “Let me talk, Sam.”

  Chloe and Dr. Goodluck walk toward us. Stefan waves them away. The children have gone, and Samuel sits on the clinic porch, smoking with his men.

  “The night I saw her dance, I had to know her,” he says. “We talked and drank vodka on the Weinsteins’ lawn. She liked that I was half Serb. Came from people with souls like hers. She was taking pills then, I think, but not so many. She seemed . . . clear—is that right word? Most days. We started seeing one another. Not often. We both traveled a lot. It lasted a few months. It was a time she was beginning to question things about her past. Her family. She never said anything specific. But she was bothered. I knew she and her mother didn’t get along.”

  He stops for a moment and looks at me.

  “One night at my home,” he says, “she saw pictures of this place. She said I must take her. We came and stayed for three days. She helped with the children. She sat in the sun. I could feel her loosen, you know, like on vacation. She sang morning songs with the wome
n. She danced around a bonfire. She moved like a spirit burning up from the earth. You know how she could move, Sam. You’ve seen. They never saw that here. The tribal men danced with her. It was like in a dream. She said she wanted to never leave. Her career was over. She could not do what she once did, and it hurt to know that. She got a text while we were here. I don’t know who from. Or what it said. It upset her.” Stefan looks beyond the shade to women on the road, babies strapped to their backs. “She said we had to go. We flew to LA. She cried on the plane but wouldn’t tell me why. I dropped her at her loft on Spring Street. We drank wine and made love. It was not the same. I left before it was light. I called a few times. She never answered. I came by. She was never home. I never saw her again.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Maybe two years.”

  “How do I know that’s the truth?”

  “It is.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was drunk on the night you told me she died. Before you came, I was remembering my mother and the war. I was talking crazy. I was no good. You saw me. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe it. But I knew I would help you.”

  “Are you telling me the truth about Zhanna? You don’t know her?”

  “I know people who know her. That’s all. The first time I met her was with you the other night in Brussels. I didn’t know she was Katrina’s aunt.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “You’re mad. I understand.” A boy brings warm Cokes and a flask. He runs away. “Let’s have some bourbon, Sam.” We drink the Coke down a bit, and Stefan pours in the bourbon. A scent, a little rush. The taste calms. We sit in silence. Vultures perch in trees; smaller birds circle above. A breeze blows off the river, but not enough to cut the heat. Men with spears herd cattle past; boys kick a soccer ball made of tape, puffs of dust rising from bare feet. “I made calls after Katrina died,” says Stefan. “It was clever who did it. To make it look like overdose for a girl who could overdose. Or maybe, really, she did overdose. Zhanna knows. I think she did not tell you all.”

  “What do you think?”