The Laughing Monsters: A Novel

by Denis Johnson

  He sat on the bed and punched buttons on the television’s wand, pushing the device toward the screen as if to toss the signal at it. “News. News. News.” Al Jazeera had sports. The soccer scores. He settled for Nigerian cable, some sort of amateur singing competition, and then he untied his very clean red jogging shoes and kicked them off and set about massaging both feet, each with one hand. Vivid yellow socks.

  “Michael—”

  Michael laughed at the television.

  “Michael, it’s time you told me something. You contact me, you get me down here—”

  “You contacted me! You said, What’s going on, I said, Come down to SL and I’ll show you a plan.”

  “Don’t show me the plan. Tell me the plan.”

  But I’d lost him. He watched the screen with his mouth half open, his hands clutching his feet. The commercial ad from Guinness, the two black brothers, the bus ticket out of the bush … By the power brewed into this drink big-city brother frees his sibling from a curse that neither of them understands, and side by side they set out for the Kingdom of Civilization. Michael’s eyes glistened and he smiled a wide, tight smile. I’d often seen him driven to tears—this was what it looked like. Something had caught him by the heart. Brother for brother, reaching for greatness. Michael was moved. Michael was weeping.

  As quickly as the ad was over he leapt into the bathroom, splashed his face at the sink, blew his nose into the hand towel, loomed in the doorway.

  “Here’s the plan: I am a new man, and I plan to do what a new man does.”

  Now he stood in the middle of the room, offering me tomorrow in his two outstretched hands. “Do you want a plan? I’m just going to give you results. You’ll live like a king. A compound by the beach. Fifty men with AKs to guard you. The villagers come to you for everything. They bring their daughters, twelve years old—virgins, Nair, no AIDS from these girls. You’ll have a new one every night. Five hundred men in your militia. You know you want it. They dance at night, a big bonfire, and the magic men come and stretch their arms to the length of a python, and change into all kinds of animals, and drums pounding, and naked dancers, all just for you, Nair! We want it. That’s what we want. And you know it’s here. There’s no place else on earth where we can have it.”

  “This land of chaos, despair—”

  “And in the midst of it, we make ourselves unreachable. A man can choose a valley, one with narrow entrances—defensible entries—and claim it as his nation, like Rhodes in Rhodesia—”

  “I can’t believe I hear a black man talking like this.”

  “We’ll have the politicians kissing our feet. Every four years we’ll assassinate the president.”

  “The same president?”

  “It’s term limits! We’ll be the ones controlling that.”

  “How many men with AKs?”

  “How many did I say? A thousand. Nair, I’ll come around on my launch on Sundays. Run it up onto the sand of your protected beach. Our children will play together. Our wives will be fat. We’ll play chess and plan campaigns.”

  “You don’t play chess.”

  “You haven’t seen me for seven years.”

  “Man—you don’t play chess.”

  He looked at me, wounded. So naked in his face. “That’s why it has to be you. You’re the one who knows those games.”

  “And your games too, right?”

  “It has to be you.”

  I said, “This better not be about diamonds.”

  “Not diamonds. Not this time. This time we concern ourselves with metals and minerals.”

  “And aren’t diamonds actually minerals?”

  “This is why I can never make a point,” Michael said, “because you query the details like some kind of master interrogator.”

  “Sorry. Is it gold, then?”

  “I tell you now: Stay away from the gold here, unless I say otherwise. The gold around here is fake. You’d see that the minute you looked at a kilo bar of it—but by the time they give you a look, you’re already in a dark place with bad people.”

  “I’ll wait for your signal.”

  He sat beside me on the bed and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I want you to understand me. I have this mapped from point A to point Z. And, Nair—point Z is going to be marvelous. Did I ever tell you about the time I saved the Ghanaian president’s life?”

  It made me uncomfortable when he sat so close, but it was just an African thing. I said, “Michael, what about the girl? Who is she to you?”

  “She’s American.”

  “She told me that herself.”

  “I heard her telling you.”

  “Who is she, Michael?”

  “More will be revealed.”

  This was his style, his tiresome, unchangeable way. Information was an onion, to be peeled back in layers.

  “What about you? What’s your passport?”

  “Ghana,” he said, and he didn’t look happy about it. “Ghana will always welcome me.”

  I shrugged away his heavy hand and got up. “Enough of Michael’s nonsense. Let’s get a drink.”

  “Prior to sixteen hundred,” he said, “I drink only bottled water.”

  “As they say, it’s sixteen hundred somewhere.” I checked my phone. “Here, as a matter of fact.”

  “I stink! Get out while I shower.”

  Looking down at him now—“Final question: What about Congo gold?”

  “Nair!—you’re so far ahead of me.”

  “If I was ahead of you, I’d know what I’m doing in Freetown instead of Congo, where all the gold is.”

  “The important thing is that you came without knowing why.”

  “I know why I came.”

  “But not why I asked you. You came without an explanation.”

  “You’d only lie to me, Michael.”

  “For security purposes, perhaps. Yes. For your protection in transit. But we’re friends. We don’t lie to each other.”

  He believed it.

  * * *

  As I made for the elevator, the lights died in the hallway. I took the stairs. Candles at the front desk, in the lobby, the big dining room. In the bar, the smell of burning paraffin, the stench of cologne overlying human musk. Voices from the dark—laughter—candlelit smiles. I ordered a martini, and it tasted just like one.

  Tina strayed into my mind. I drank quickly and ordered another.

  Why hadn’t I simply loaded the goods into my Cruzer in Amsterdam, and left Tina out of things? That seemed simple enough—now. But I’d been sent here to Freetown on an NIIA errand, and I had no idea what sort of last-minute scrutiny the powers might have authorized. Anything at all seemed possible, including my being called aside at airport security and confronted with a couple of NIIA comptrollers donning latex gloves. Afraid of some kind of search, I’d made Tina some kind of patsy.

  After I drained the second glass and ate the second olive—really, all would be well. Many people keep watch. Nobody sees. It takes a great deal to waken their curiosity. NATO, the UN, the UK, the US—poker-faced, soft-spoken bureaucratic pandemonium. They’re mad, they’re blind, they’re heedless, and not one of them cares, not one of them.

  I could have reasoned all this out from the start. But I’m a coward, and I couldn’t bear living alone in the abyss. Therefore Tina, unaware, lived in it beside me.

  Perhaps Tina and I would be married on my return, after I’d met my contact and sold the goods and made money enough for several honeymoons, and after I’d been relieved of my current duty, which was to report on the activities and, if possible, the intentions of Michael Adriko.

  * * *

  From half the distance down into my third martini, I heard Michael’s voice in the lobby—“What happened to my sandwich?”

  The desk clerk followed him. “It’s coming to the room, sir.”

  “Send it to the bar, will you?”

  He took the vacant stool beside mine and ordered a Guinness. I said, “Really? Guinness?”


  “Guinness is good for you. Let’s sit alone.”

  I joined him at a table with my martini. Two more sips, and I was ready to take him on.

  “Talk to me, Miguel. Talk, or I walk.”

  “I’m here to talk,” he said. “We’re talking.” But all he did with his mouth was pull on his beer.

  “This place is a dump. What’s wrong with the Papa Leone?”

  “Too many people know me there.”

  “Right. You’re broke.”

  “I’m on a budget. Is that dishonorable?”

  “It’s troubling.”

  “Why trouble yourself? Is it really your problem?”

  “It is if I’m in business with you, because I’ll end up living in this hovel. I can’t run back and forth.”

  “That’s your choice, Nair. Don’t blame me.”

  “Am I in business with you?”

  “That’s also your choice.”

  I took a breath and counted to five. I released a delirious sigh. “What about the girl? Is she with us?”

  “I met her in Colorado.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. I’m a lucky man.”

  “Who is she?”

  “More will be revealed.” A lighter flared across the room, somebody starting a cigarette in a group of five white men. Michael cocked his head in that direction, not looking there, his face full of conspiracy. “Now, who are these fellows?”

  “Pilots. Russian. They work for the charter outfits.”

  “They don’t look like civilian pilots. They’re all young, all fit. Why doesn’t at least one of them have a beer belly? Look at the haircuts—regulation.”

  “All right, very good. Who are they?”

  Suddenly he stood up and strode over to their table. He spoke. They replied, and he came back with an unlit cigarette between his teeth and sat down again. “It’s a Rothmans,” he said. “Australian.”

  “You’re still smoking?”

  “Now and then. But everything in moderation.” He took up the candle between us and lit his Rothmans and sat back and blew smoke over my head. “Nair, I’ve got people on my trail.”

  “These guys?”

  “It could be anyone.”

  “Are you in trouble? What’s your situation?”

  “I’ll fill you in eventually.”

  “Stop it! Jesus!” I was the loudest one in the room. I lowered my tone, but I leaned in to his face. “I expected you to be dealing with the big men. Moving money around. Dispensing government contracts, you know? Contracts, not contraband. Diverted aid, siphoned oil revenue, that kind of thing. Money, Michael. Money. Not pebbles and powders.”

  “Don’t let your speech get so strong, mate. There’s plenty of time for plenty of developments. Let’s enjoy the moment.” He mashed his cigarette in the candle’s dish and looked away and entered a personal silence.

  You had to be careful with him. For hurt feelings, Michael would stop the whole show.

  I waited him out. It never took long.

  “It’s been seven years since we saw each other, Nair. I’m thirty-six years old now. I’m changed, I’m different. I’m new.” He turned toward me fully and placed two clenched fists on the table as if in evidence of his newness. “I left Afghanistan four years ago. I underwent training for two years at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, after which I was transferred to Fort Carson, in Colorado. At Fort Carson I worked as a trainer for internationals, mostly from South America, sometimes from the Middle East. They were confined to the post, and whenever I was part of the training team for an international group, I was also kept on the grounds. Between groups, yes, I could go into town in civilian clothes. On the post I wore a US Army uniform with a sergeant’s hash marks. But I was not in the US Army.”

  A waiter came with a sandwich on a plate. Michael ignored him. He set it on the table. Michael ignored it.

  “They promised me permanent US residency, Nair. They lied. They told me I was on a path to US citizenship. They lied. They said I would enter the US Army as an officer and go as far as my talents could take me. They lied.”

  He waited for comment. I provided none. The white men across the room were drinking like Russians. They laughed like Russians.

  “Listen to me, Nair. I can build you a bomb. Just give me five minutes, I hardly have to move from this spot. Just bring me matches, Christmas lights, and sugar. I can shoot a man from one thousand meters. I’ve done it. I am a man of courage and discipline, and the reward for that is becoming a thug for hire. A goon, a pawn, a cog in a robot who is programmed only to tell you lies.”

  “Sure. We’re all getting older and wiser. That’s sort of my point.”

  “I’ve looked at every opportunity for changing my situation, and I’ve chosen the best one.”

  “Give me a piece of the plan. Anything.”

  “First of all,” he said, “we’ll go to Uganda for my wedding.”

  “Oh, God. Should I feel somewhat enlightened, or further confused?”

  “Right. I’m engaged.”

  “Not for the first time.”

  “But for the last. I told you—I’m a new man.”

  “Is that what I’m here for? And nothing else?”

  “It’s important that we keep things need-to-know and take things one step at a time. Nair, please, you’ve got to trust me. Remember—once or twice, didn’t we make a lot of money?”

  “We made a lot of money for guys in their twenties. Now we’re grown-ups. We should be getting rich. Are you asking me to settle for less?”

  “I’m not asking you to settle for less.” He gathered himself, so to speak, around his bottle of Guinness, and went to his depths to collect his words. “Here is my promise to you: we are going to get rich.”

  His eyes were steady. I believed him. Or anyway I was tired, tired of the struggle to disbelieve. “Good enough,” I said.

  “So now, let’s go. Let’s have some dinner with my fiancée.”

  As we rose from our seats, I took in the group of possible Russians—now Michael had me doing it—all of them youngish, poised, and trim. I heard one say, “Are ya lovin’ it!”

  Michael left his sandwich. I drained my glass and surrendered to the hour. After all, I was getting paid for this.

  * * *

  As soon as we’d ordered our drinks at the Bawarchi—we’d come early; Davidia hadn’t arrived—Michael started picking at a point. “Who contacted who?”

  “I had your address at Fort Carson, so you must have contacted me first, or I wouldn’t have known your whereabouts.”

  “Yes, yes—but after more than a year of silence between us, I had a letter from you that was forwarded from Fort Carson at the beginning of August.”

  “Forwarded to what location?”

  “And then I answered you, and I said, ‘Come to beautiful Sierra Leone!’”

  “Maybe this time around, I contacted you first. Is any of this important?”

  “Everything’s important.”

  Judging by the throng of Europeans, we could expect good food here. It was a spacious Indian place on the outskirts of town, on the beach—open-air, excepting a thatched roof—with a cooling sea breeze and the surf washing softly within earshot. The beach was fine white damp sand, like table salt. In fifteen minutes it would be too dark to make it out.

  Michael’s suspicions touched everyone. Now he pointed out a middle-aged Euro at the bar. “CIA. I know him.”

  “I can only see his back.”

  “He was the head of the skeleton staff at the embassy in Monrovia. I knew him then.”

  “You? When?”

  “When Charles Taylor held the East.”

  “You would have been—thirteen? Twelve?”

  His face came under a cloud. “You don’t know about my life.”

  In an instant the day ended, night came down, and the many voices around us, for the space of ten seconds, went quiet. A few hundred meters away the buildings began, but not a si
ngle light shone from the powerless city, and the outcry coming from the void wasn’t so much from horns and engines, but rather more from humans and their despairing animals. Meanwhile, waiters went from table to table lighting tapers in tall glass chimneys.

  And as soon as they’d made everything right, Davidia St. Claire entered the scene, slender, elegant, wearing an African dress. She had the usual effect of one of Michael’s women. He wouldn’t have had one who didn’t. Even in the Third World he managed to find them, at fashion shows and photo shoots, at diplomatic cocktail parties—at church. The gazes followed behind her as if she swept them along with her hands.

  Standing up for her, I knocked my chair over backward. Michael, sitting, extended his foot and caught it with his toe, and I was able to set it right before it clattered to the slate floor.

  She laughed. “That’s quite an act.”

  “In honor of your dress,” Michael said. I held her chair for her, and he added, “Nair will hold your chair.”

  “I just bought it at the shop at the Papa Leone. It’s from the Tisio Valley.” She modeled for us, turning this way and that. The dress was mostly white, with a floral pattern, perhaps red—it was hard to say by candlelight—ankle-length, sleeveless and low cut and soft and clinging. I was aware, everybody was aware, of her arms and hands, and the insteps of her sandaled feet, and her toes. She dropped her shopping bag and sat down and smiled.

  “It’s almost as wonderful as you.” Michael took both her hands in his own, leaning close. “Such eyes. How did they fit such enormous eyes into your beautiful face? They had to boil your skull to make it flexible to expand the sockets for those beautiful eyes.”

  He was trying to embarrass her, I guessed. She didn’t blink. “Thank you, such a compliment.”

  Davidia wore her hair short and almost natural, but not all the way, not tightly kinked, rather relaxed into close curls. She was of medium height, more graceful than voluptuous. She had a face I’d call the West African type, a wide face, sexy, cute, with a broad nose, full lips, soft chin, a child’s big eyes, and she looked out from deep behind them with something other than a child’s openness.

  Michael took over and ordered for us all, a little of everything, more than anybody could have eaten. Two youthful waiters both wanted the honor of serving us—serving Davidia—competing for it with a kind of stifled viciousness. Davidia seemed to accept this as her right.