Ahmed's Revenge (24 page)

The dinner was good, and afterward we all stayed outside until midnight, talking some, but mostly watching the animals in silence. Since this time there wasn't enough sleeping space inside the house, Ralph and I got clean sheets from the supply cupboard and made up three of the empty dormitory rooms. These were rooms that hadn't been used by workers for a season or two. They weren't spotlessly clean, perhaps, but I thought that with new linen they might appear that way, at least in the dark, at least for the single night that my guests would use them.

When we finished, Ralph went back to the house to call the others and I stepped into Kamau's room to look at it in light of what I knew had been his fate. I expected, I guess, that the room would give me something more than it had when I went in there before, but it did not. The table was still cluttered with his letters, and the photograph of Kamau's family, though it had moved me in the first place, was merely a photograph now, camera-ready faces, a white backdrop to make their features clear. Kamau had been a careless man, that's what his room said. He hadn't known what he was doing, he didn't know what he had done. I felt worse for Detective Mubia than I did for our foreman—that was my eulogy to Kamau.

When Dorothea and John came into the dormitory I showed them the larger of the rooms we'd prepared. Dorothea seemed exhausted but leaned against her husband in contentment. “What a day,” said John.

John's abbreviated mustache appeared softer to me now. He was a veterinarian, of all things, but even as I watched him watching the game coming and going from the pond I found it difficult to imagine him with his sleeves rolled up. He had the physical bearing of a businessman, a stockbroker or a banker, perhaps.

Ralph and Michael were to sleep in two smaller rooms nearer to the front of the dormitory, across the hall from Kamau's. Michael wasn't in his room, but Ralph was in his, and when I knocked he said, “Everything went perfectly. Thanks for the invitation, for the idea of having them stay.”

I touched Ralph's sleeve but was too tired to talk anymore, and though I really considered Michael a wonderful man for coaching me so well with the lion's heart, I didn't want to speak with him, either, or find him still sitting in a wicker chair on my porch.

Back in the house I turned the pond light off and moved the dinner dishes from the table back into the kitchen. Michael hadn't been on the porch, nor was he in the house, but before I could find the energy to muster up anything like alarm, I saw him through the window, coming down the path from the orchard in the dark.

I went back outside and said, “It's dangerous to walk around here. This isn't England, you know.”

“I had to see whether or not it was gone.”

“It was, wasn't it? No trace left on that stump, I'll bet.”

“It was there when I arrived,” said Michael. “I watched it get taken away.”

Michael came closer, not up onto the porch, but to the spot where the weak porch light played on his face a bit more.

“What animal was it?” I asked. “Who took the lion's heart?” I could see now that Michael wasn't composed. His white shorts were dirtied and so was his face.

“You won't believe it but it was a leopard,” he said. “I'm sure that's what it was. I was just standing there, looking down into the valley to see what I could see, when it appeared out of the darkness. When I first noticed it, it was already sitting down, staring past the stump and directly into my eyes. It had a white front and a long stiff tail. It sat there watching me for the longest time.”

“I know that leopard,” I told him. “He killed a Maasai cow last year and some warriors tried to hunt him. It's a lot easier killing a lion.''

“This will sound odd,” said Michael, “but after a minute or two I lost my fear. I could tell that he wouldn't harm me.”

I didn't like such talk. It reminded me of mistakes that Jules and I had made, mistakes that could easily lead to my having a dead tourist on my hands, but I only said, “Imagine having him around when you're trying to run a farm.”

Michael went off toward the dormitory then, after saying that in the end the leopard simply lifted the lion's heart off the stump and disappeared back into the night, and when I went inside my house I turned off most of the lights. It was expensive and wasteful to leave the generator on all night long, but because I hadn't provided paraffin lamps for the dormitory rooms, that's what I decided to do.

In my kitchen I couldn't face the mess again, so I made it disappear by turning that light off too. And in Jules's office I shut the drawers and somehow lined up the pens and squared the blotter with the edges of the desk and closed the curtains.

In my bedroom I thought, “Tuesday's over, Tuesday's done,” and since these days really did seem like months, I looked at the wall as if I might find a calendar there, something to mark up with Xs, in commemoration of slowly passing time. I was thawing out, I was sure of it. On the only other night since Jules's death that I'd slept in this room I had stayed in the shocked posture of dumb disbelief, like Michael when the leopard came. Now, however, one week after Jules had died, it was me in the bed with all my faculties, and when I pushed my leg over to where it usually found Jules, it was me that let a little cry come out, a little tremor to represent all the misery that was still inside.

What I'm trying to say is that after only a week, the pain was less. May God forgive me and may Julius Grant forgive me too, but the pain, without any question, was less. I could tell, don't you know, because it was beginning to come out now, and because it hurt so very much more than it ever had before.

When I awoke in the morning the first thing I noticed was that the generator was shut down. It was nearly eight, so I thought that Ralph must have done it, but I knew right away we'd have to turn it on again if we wanted to get breakfast made. I'd slept well enough and was looking for something fresh to wear. I was sick of those stupid safari clothes and had just kicked them under the bed when I heard the sound of our farm lorry starting up. It was an unlikely sound, since the key was stuck in one of the office drawers, but our lorry's voice was unmistakable. I dressed quickly and went out of the room.

“Hello?” I said. “What's going on?”

I was smiling hard, lest any of Ralph's clients think I was irritated that they'd started the lorry without asking, but the front room was empty and the front door was open wide. And when I turned to go into the kitchen, there in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, with my own .380 automatic pistol loosely held in his hand, was Mr Smith.

“Everything is now out of control,” he said. “Everything has gone too far.”

“What have you done with the tourists?” I asked. “You haven't killed them too, I hope.”

It was a stupid thing to say, at the very least rash. If I was ever going to beat this man I would have to stop acting like that. Luckily, however, Mr Smith didn't seem to care what I said. He didn't consider me a formidable opponent, and, so far as I could tell, he had no idea I knew about Kamau. That much, at least, was still on my side.

“Of course I haven't hurt them,” he said. “Our economic future depends on tourists like those.” As he spoke he shook his head at my lack of understanding; the lines on his forehead were pronounced.

Mr Smith was dressed in a suit again, like a cool businessman. I remembered feeling some sense before that maybe he was a man I could reason with, but I knew now that that impression was made almost entirely by his English and his clothes.

“I do not want to hurt you or that fool policeman or the wildebeest man either,” Mr Smith said. “Under different circumstances you and I might even have become friends.”

When he said that, I tried to speak with less hostility in my voice. Miro had been right in telling me to take care, and since all of the physical strength was on his side, all the power, I could take care only by using as my weapons the trickery of language and insinuation and tone. And by trying to play upon his already iron-clad image of a woman's role.

“It has taken me ever so long to piece all this together,” I said. “I know you don't believe me, but I knew nothing before. I hadn't the slightest inkling that we were involved in anything but coffee growing.”

Even as I spoke I was irritated that though I was now trying to trick him with innocence and guile, what I said was basically the truth. If I hadn't followed Jules that night I wouldn't have known a thing. Maybe Jules was a lot like this man here, maybe all men were. Isn't that what Michael had said the night before?

“Then you had a very old-fashioned marriage,” Mr Smith said. “My father told me as much, but I doubted him until now.”

The end of my pistol was loose in his hands, tick-tocking around. I thought it represented Mr Smith's disrespect for me as an adversary and his indecision as to what to do next. It turned out, however, that he was only waiting for a signal, and the appearance of our farm lorry just off the porch made him move.

“Let's go outside with the others,” he said. “Let's end it all this morning, right now.”

I could see when he stepped away from the kitchen door that Mr Smith's other hand held my sisal bag. He'd taken the pistol out of it and he had taken Jules's letter, all of its pages intact. But though he ordered me to, I didn't move toward the front door. Instead I let him get close to me and then I grabbed my bag back fast, snatching it out of his hand.

It was a bold thing to do, but it wasn't stupid, for I needed to see how he would react. The bag came loose from his fingers easily, and for a second I thought he would strike me with the pistol. However, in the end all he did was sigh and point with it, aiming at the door. “Don't do that again,” he said. “Do not act that way.”

I wouldn't, but I was enlightened by the exchange. If he didn't want to hurt me, if, for example, his father had begun to intervene, warning him not to go too far, then the weapon of words might be mine.

This is what I was thinking as I walked in front of the man, but when we got outside I forgot about it. Ralph and his three guests were standing in the bed of our lorry, and to my great surprise, Detective Mubia was there too. All of them had their hands tied behind their backs, and positioned around the lorry were half a dozen horrible-looking men. These men were poachers in oily black rags, with rifles slung over their arms. Their hair was matted and their eyes were wild and terrifying.

“You don't want to do this,” I said, but now my words were so weak, so powerless against what I saw, that I was glad when Mr Smith let them go unanswered. He spoke in Kikuyu, which I don't understand, and the man driving the lorry forced it into gear. We walked behind it over the trampled ground.

“Your husband's letter is excellent,” said Mr Smith. “I love the mystery of it, the way it gives you knowledge and makes it necessary for me to have to worry things out.”

We were going so directly toward the orchard that I was beginning to fear Mr Smith had already worried it out. He was too expansive, and he clearly smelled victory in the air. We finally stopped, however, in a clearing about halfway between the house and Jules's grave. I had seen immediately that the people on the lorry bed were tied together, Ralph with Dorothea, Michael with John. Only Detective Mubia was tied alone, and he was also the only one who appeared to have been injured thus far. He had a bruise on his left cheekbone and a bit of dried blood under his nose. When Mr Smith saw me looking at him he said, “We found that fool sitting over on the Narok-Nakuru road. Is he your security guard, is that his new job? If so, you should know that he's a poor one. We found him sleeping in his worthless car.”

There wasn't any question that Detective Mubia was their fellow captive, but the three tourists and Ralph were staying pretty far away from him. Like healthy wildebeests, they sensed they should distance themselves from wounded prey. Though he still had his red suit on, the detective's shirt was torn and his tie had somehow been pulled around and thrown over his shoulder so that it hung down his back like a noose that could be pulled tight at any time. He was subdued but he was frightening to look at. His eyes kept darting between his captors and then rolling away.

“Now,” said Mr Smith. “I have already spoken with your friends. They have agreed to keep quiet. I told them that if things go well I will soon be letting them go, leaving your land altogether, never to return.”

I looked up at the people on the lorry's bed, but there wasn't any contradiction in the faces I saw. John and Dorothea were watching each other, and Michael and Ralph were both looking down. Two of Mr Smith's henchmen had climbed onto the lorry and lit cigarettes. The others were standing very close, making a circle around Mr Smith and me. With the possible exception of Detective Mubia, everyone was dreadfully calm.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Ah,” said Mr Smith. “It embarrasses me to say it, but I want you to read your husband's poem and explain its meaning. After that we will be gone.”

“It is a private poem,” I said. “It shouldn't be read for others to hear.”

Mr Smith nodded as if willing to concede that point, and I suddenly got a small idea, “You read it to me,” I said. “You say the words and I will answer questions about them.”

There is an oddly prudish strain in Kenyans sometimes, and I guess I spoke because I hoped I might detect it in him. Still, I had no idea what such a strategy would get me, even if he was reluctant to read the poem. My only idea was to take up time, to remain standing there, to have the issue of his property unresolved until a better idea came along.

Mr Smith thumbed through the pages of Jules's letter until he found the poem. After that he spoke Kikuyu again, and immediately one of the men in the lorry cut the ropes that bound Michael with John. Both men began rubbing at the sore spots on their wrists. And just then the poacher who'd cut them loose took a long puff on his cigarette. He shook the ash away and pushed the bright red end of it into Michael's arm.