Ahmed's Revenge (15 page)

“What's this?” I said. “You've just returned and someone is letting you know how they are? I like that. I'm always around and I don't get three letters a year.”

The tone and energy of my comment pleased me, but when my father looked up he didn't smile.

“I'm sorry, Nora,” he said. “I shouldn't have opened it. It is addressed to you, and I can't understand what it says.”

I never used my father's post office box so the letter couldn't be for me—Jules and I had a box of our own at the downtown post office I'd passed the evening before—but to please my father I took the letter from his hands. He was holding only a single sheet, yet on the table before him there were perhaps a half dozen more. It was a long letter, and in order to open it my father had had to tear the envelope in a wide and circular way.

“Don't worry,” I said. “Anything in your mail box ought to be opened by you.” But when I looked at the first page of the letter I lost my cheery tone. The letter was from Jules. This is what it said:

My dearest old Nora:
If you're reading this then things are in a muddle for my idea was to take it from your father's P.O. box myself, once things settled down. I was going to get your father's key, retrieve the package I've sent along, and then stand where you're standing now and burn this letter, all the while swearing to myself that I'd never do anything so stupid or dangerous again. I've even placed a match down inside the envelope to start the fire.

Ah well. Nora, you are no doubt wanting to know why I didn't have the guts or whatever to let you know about everything in person, and I swear I don't know the answer to that one myself, except to say that I was too embarrassed, and that until just about now I thought that the story would go better as an anecdote, something to talk about after the fact, don't you see, once it was over.

Listen, Nora, everything started as a lark. One night, well over a year ago now, your father was visiting from England, and he invited me out on the town. Do you remember that night? We were staying at his house and I told you we would be back shortly but it was very nearly dawn before you saw us again. When we left the house I thought we'd get a beer at the Parklands Club and then maybe stop at one other place and then come home, but your father said he had arranged for me to meet some special man.

He was acting very odd, your father, and would only give me directions, turn here, turn there, until he had me way down in the industrial district, you know, nearly past the game park and then in there somewhere on the other side. When I say that your father was acting odd I mean in a cheerful way, like the cat who ate the canary, so I was inclined to humor him, since I had never seen him that way before. Though I was driving it was quite like I was blindfolded, quite like after we arrived wherever we were going I'd find you there ahead of us and that some kind of surprise party had been arranged. The day, as it happened, was very close to my birthday, and that is actually what I thought.

He wouldn't talk except to give me directions, but finally we came to a warehouse, and your father actually told me to honk on the horn, three times short and one time long, like the beginning of Beethoven's Fifth. Imagine my state of mind, Nora. He was happily mysterious and I was ready to feign polite surprise, and completely ready to engage myself in whatever it was your father had in mind. After all, this was the first time since I'd met him that he'd ever invited me out for a drink, and because I wanted him to like me a lot better than I thought he did, I was ready for anything, come what may.

The warehouse was brightly lit, but once inside I could see only one man standing there.

I didn't want to stop reading, but when my father stood up to call for more coffee he bumped the table, sending the package and the other pages of the letter flying to the ground. Over the last half hour a breeze had come up and right away the pages started to blow away from the tables and down the empty road.

“Oh, grab them!” I shouted. ““Don't let them get away!”

I really screamed, so four or five people helped us chase after the stationery, which was scattering all about.

“Oh, Father, damn it, damn it!” I cried.

My father was the slowest of the pursuers, but he nabbed the closest page and picked the package up, holding both of them above his head. I got a second sheet just at the edge of an open sewer, but a thin man dressed in a black business suit seemed to have the best luck in getting the rest. He was everywhere—each time he got a page he took off after another. He was so fast that I calmed down, sure he'd safely catch them all.

“Oh, thank you, sir,” I said. “I never would have got them back. Thank you very much.”

I noticed, as the man smoothed the sheets out and handed them to me, that Jules had numbered each page, so I tried to put them in order again. I had pages two, three, four, five, and seven.

“Daddy, do you have page six?” I asked, but my father's hands held only the box and the first page.

“No page six?” the man said. “Let's have another look around.”

He left me with the pages he'd rescued and went off again, in the direction the wind was going, away from the bakery and toward the place where Beatrice and her churchmates were singing their songs.

“I'll be right back,” I told my dad, but my father wasn't listening anymore. He'd sat back down again and was staring at his reclaimed roll.

I took my letter and the little package and went the way the man had gone, toward the singing, which was hard to hear because of the steadily rising wind. I wanted page six, but I'd been so involved in the first part of Jules's letter that I wanted to continue reading as well, so I stopped again, leaning against a rail. Rather than read the letter, however, I opened the little box. It was thin and cylindrical, and when I first saw what was inside I must still have been under the influence of the shopping, for I thought it was a naked ear of corn, or a thin cucumber, maybe, that someone had peeled and put away. It was harder than any vegetable, though, and when I picked it up, prepared to let it go again should its hard exterior suddenly give way, its surprising weight made no further guessing necessary. It was a tiny elephant tusk, about seven inches long but with a big tusk's curvature and with a surface that was marked and scarred. Its point was chiselled flat as if by use, and there was a slight chip on the tip's inside. At its base the tusk was finer, the ivory thinner, and it had a more polished look. I leaned on the railing and rocked back and forth, clutching the tusk to me as though I could dig with it into Jules's mind. At that point I saw the thin man crossing the road and searching around the edges of Beatrice's crowd, so I stuck the tusk down into my belt and hurried after him. The little tusk immediately slipped down and was poking at my inner thigh, at the spot where that thorn had torn it nearly a month before.

When I got to the man, he was creeping along behind the drummers and singers and had stopped behind a woman who, from the back at least, looked a lot like Beatrice. All these women were wearing blue, so it was easy to see that a square of white paper was stuck to the back of this woman's gown.

“Grab it,” I said, “take it down.”

I'd just reached him and we were both sort of crouched behind the congregation.

“You grab it,” he said, “you take it down.”

The woman had a big rear end and the paper was riding it well, conforming to its contours, and was even tucked into the folds of her gown. I handed the man the other pages of Jules's letter and reached up, trying to find a loose end on page number six.

The etiquette of Beatrice's church service seemed to be that each time the preacher said something the women would beat their drums and sway. I'd heard these drums all of my life but I had never come close enough to figure out their method before. When the preacher said, “Our Lord Jesus shows Himself in many ways,” I took hold of the paper and pulled.

“Ouch!” the woman said. She missed the beat of her drum and jumped around quickly, her drumstick raised in the air.

The woman's shout drew everyone's attention. The configuration of their circle didn't break, but no one played her drum and everyone looked our way. Even the preacher was watching.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I dropped my letter and a page of it blew against the back of your dress.”

“That's true,” the man said. “We both chased it over here just now.”

When the woman turned to look at us page number six stayed attached to her.

“Excuse, please,” she said, “but it is only that I have mended my gown.”

As she spoke it was suddenly easy to see that the square on her bottom wasn't paper, but material. I could even see the stitching at its edge.

“Oh, my God,” said the thin man.

“He is everyone's God,” said the woman. “Let's praise Him.”

Jules had used good stationery for his letter, and this woman's material was poor, so they met at that place where paper and cloth are cousins and they looked almost the same. I took my letter back from the man and held a page up so the woman could see that it was true. I was about to beg her pardon again, but the preacher took over and when he spoke everyone turned back to face him, once more banging their drums. It was only then that I actually did spot Beatrice, way across the circle, staring at me coldly from the other side.

“Let's get out of here,” the man said. “Your page six must have gone a different way.”

He took my hand and led me back, helping me to cross the roundabout, where we ducked behind a building before either of us dared stand straight again.

“That was terrible,” I said, “and to lose a page of my letter is worse.”

“In that case let's continue looking until we find it,” said the man. “We should split up. If you like I'll take the farther reaches. It is also possible that the page is staying near your father, so perhaps you should look there.”

I was about to thank him again, and to ask how he knew my dad was my dad, when it became clear that this man knew me, that he was someone I had known before.

“Very well,” I said, but he saw my hesitation.

“I am Ralph Bunche N'deru,” he said. “I was your classmate at school. You and your girlfriends used to tease me by calling me Ralph Bunche Road.”

I remembered Ralph Bunche Road, one of the few black Kenyan boys in our school, but this man wasn't him. Ralph Bunche Road had been skinny and quiet with his ears sticking out, and this man was handsome and tall. This man seemed self-assured, whereas Ralph Bunche Road had always looked to me as if he was about to break down and cry.

“I've changed,” he said.

He was off then, darting out from the protection of the building and over to the sewer so quickly that I thought he was going to leap it, the old schoolboy inside him showing off. When he got there, however, Ralph slowed and began searching among the grass, so I took the territory he'd assigned me, looking everywhere as I limped back toward my dad. I had been desperate to find page six just a few moments before—-it was Jules's last letter, after all—but now I had that tusk, and I began to think that I would likely be able to piece things together using the pages that remained. By the time I reached my father I was a lot calmer than I'd been before. My father's roll was gone, but his coffee cup was full again.

“Do you know who that was?” I asked. “Did you recognize the man who tried to help me just now?”

“Ralph Bunche Road,” said my dad. “I knew his father well.”

“You recognised him! I wouldn't have known him in a million years.”

“He's a travel agent now, a safari man. His father was a travel agent too. I was Minister of Wildlife when he was setting up and I helped him out. I'm surprised you haven't seen Ralph in Narok. He used to take tourists out your way.”

Jules and I were too far off of the Narok-Nakuru road to get tourists, but in Narok, and when we went out toward the Maasai Mara, we did see them all the time. I was trying to think back to Ralph in school, but it was no longer clear to me whether I was remembering him or one of the other African boys. They were all running together in my mind.

“What's the name of his company?” I asked, but my father didn't know.

When I looked for him I couldn't see Ralph anymore, so I pulled the tusk up into my belt again and sat down next to my father to wait, opening Jules's letter once more.

The warehouse was brightly lit, but once inside I could see only one man standing there.

“You are late,” the man said. Your father had been excited when telling me he wanted me to meet this man, but now he was all business.

“Show my son-in-law what you showed me before,” he said. I think the man had intended conviviality. Behind him there was a table with three chairs and some peanuts and beer. But when he heard your father's tone the muscles of his face hardened and he led us to the back of the warehouse, not talking again until we were standing beside a row of odd-looking machines, burners and an acetylene torch and ceramic ovens and boiling vats. It looked like a laboratory of some kind with broken molds all over the floor. “Here it is,” he said. “Look what it can do.”

“It makes tusks that look like real ones,” your father told me. He was suddenly excited again. “You won't believe it, Julius,” he said. “No expense to the elephants and a great expense to the buyers! Ha-ha!”

The man poked a button and there was a racket and pretty soon he poked another button. The machine stopped and he unlocked its middle and opened the whole thing up. There was a tusk inside and the man asked my help in lifting it out…

This was not the kind of letter I could easily stop reading, but Ralph was back and I had to look up. He was empty-handed, but I thanked him anyway and then introduced my father, who smiled and said, “Ralph Bunche Road.”