Ahmed's Revenge (30 page)

I dialled again: 222-222. Why wasn't anyone answering at the police department? Were Detective Mubia's colleagues sleeping or were they gone?

When my father came out for breakfast, he had his old Minister of Wildlife uniform on. I'd been up for an hour and had made pancakes, but my father insisted on standing while eating because Beatrice had just ironed his trousers and he didn't want them spoiled.

“But how will you get to town?” I wanted to know. “And whom will you impress, wearing such a thing?”

“Uniforms impress,” said my father, “never mind whom.”

All during his time as Minister of Wildlife my father had worn a business suit, never this quasi-military thing. The uniform had been given to him at the time of his promotion to the job, but I could remember his wearing it only twice, at President Kenyatta's inauguration, and once on Kenyan Independence Day. The uniform was in good condition, dark blue and well made, but it had gold braids at its right shoulder and reminded me now of something worn in a military band. The fit, however, was fine, and since I could tell my father was not going to change, I turned my attention to the food.

Through the kitchen window and across the valley I could see the top of Dr Zir's house. I could see his bedroom window and the red awning that covered his porch, but I couldn't see the driveway where our lorry was parked.

Now that the day was at hand, what was I going to do about Mr Smith, how would I resolve things and begin to take up my ordinary life again? I was sure I'd had at least the beginning of a plan last night, but now, standing in the morning light, I couldn't remember what that beginning had been. I had intended to negotiate with him from a position of strength, I think, since what I had was of value and what he had was not, but beyond that, I no longer had the slightest idea what my first move ought to be.

I went into the living room and looked at the telephone. I would call him and dictate how and when we could effect an exchange. I would tell him I wanted my husband back but that I wanted money too. There was an obscene aspect to asking for money, but what else could I do, in what other way could I be sure of causing the man pain? Ah, but it was a horrible plan. I didn't know how much to ask for, and at the same time I knew that no amount would even things out. In pounds and pennies how much was my husband's life worth, how much should I demand?

When the phone rang it seemed a telepathic response, since I'd been staring at it all this time. And when I didn't make a move, on the third ring my father came out of the kitchen and picked it up.

“Hello,” said my dad, and Beatrice, her hands in dishwater, said, “There is another someone at the door.”

I wanted to listen to my father, but Dr Zir's big nose was pressed up against the glass, so I had to go let him in.

“Ah, lovely, Nora!” said Dr. Zir. “It's a beautiful day!”

“No one bothered the lorry last night?” I asked.

“Safe and sound, Nora. I had my security guard sleep on top of it just to be sure.”

Dr. Zir's exuberance was something I had never tired of before. Now, however, I wanted to concentrate on the telephone conversation. “There are pancakes in the kitchen,” I said, but Dr Zir put both hands on his belly and said no.

“I understand,” said my father, “but I think that's a very difficult place to meet.”

“Who is it?” I asked. “Give me the telephone.”

“Yes, yes,” said my dad. “I know all that. Who do you think I am, young man?”

“Give it here,” I said. “Let me talk.”

My father had the receiver clamped to his ear, but when I got my hand around it he suddenly let go, throwing me off balance and sending the telephone crashing from the piano to the floor. Its grey plastic cover cracked around the dial and its back fell off.

“Hello! Hello!” I said. “Can you hear me? Who is this? Are you still there?”

“Your house is not in order,” said Mr Smith's voice. “That is why things have gone so wrong.”

“Tell me what you told my father,” I said. “And tell me what you did with the detective yesterday, where you let him go.”

“Your father has just said that you finally brought my property back to town. Is this true?”

“I have it,” I said. “What about the detective? What else did you say?”

“This morning I saw the announcement of your husband's wake in the newspaper. My own father showed it to me and made me feel sorrier than before. We were playmates, you and I, and we should remember better times. Also, my father's memory is shorter than my own. He has forgiven the issue at hand and does not want me to bring it up again. He does not want to think of it. My father is an old-fashioned man. He has stopped me in my dealings with your father and has saved this detective of yours. As I promised, all I did was give him a ride back to town. I dropped him at Nairobi Hospital, where so much of this latest round seems to want to unfold.”

Could I believe that much? Could I believe that Detective Mubia wasn't lying dead somewhere, as charred and immobile as his car? I wanted to find out more about the condition he was in, and at the same time I wanted to hurt Mr Smith with words, but I didn't do it. I had learned that lesson twice before. Now I had to find the discipline to restrict myself to the business we were about. “What else were you telling my father?” I asked. “Where do you want to make the exchange?”

“We will meet at the opera tonight,” said Mr. Smith. “Drive your lorry to the National Theatre car park and when the performance is over walk around the foyer with your keys in your hand. The room will be crowded and well suited to a quick exchange.”

“What kind of exchange is that?” I asked. “What about my husband? Are you going to bring a crew to switch the boxes, to put my husband where your goods have been, all while the opera-lovers are filing out to their cars?”

“Please,” said Mr. Smith. “I am not finished. Listen carefully to what else I have to say and be careful, do not call things by their names. Your husband's death was accidental. If you take time to think about it, you will agree that no one could have planned a death like that. If you want to ask my father, he will tell you as much. A lion works for no man, do you understand that to be true?”

“Kamau was not a lion,” I said.

“Ah, yes, he was not, but listen again. That fool was actually trying to shoot the lion when he fired. That is the second truth of your husband's horrible final day. Since your husband was the only one who knew the location of my property, though I was angry with him for stealing it, I would have a vested interest in keeping him alive, would I not? What happened at the hospital was Kamau's mistake, that is all, the mistake of an amateur and a reckless man, something done out of fear and completely on his own. And I have seen to it that he paid for his mistake. He was working for me, that much is accurate to say, but what he did on your farm and at the hospital was the product of his bad aim and bad judgement, nothing more.”

Detective Mubia's name was on my tongue again and I very much wanted to speak it into the phone, to tell Mr Smith that I knew Kamau was dead and who had killed him, and by doing so somehow twist in a blade of my own. I wanted to express everything in outraged terms, but I said only, “It was all an accident. Everything that's happened so far.”

“My original idea was simply to trick your father into acting on my behalf, into thinking that my tusks were not real,” Mr Smith said. “I have wanted to disgrace him, to avenge my own father's humiliation, as you now understand, my whole life long. In the end we must all strive to defend our fathers, however trying they are, no one knows that better than you and me. But things have gone too far now. I actually liked your husband. I never had violence in mind.”

Mr Smith's voice was close to conspiratorial, as if, through our moment of shared remembering, we had now become accomplices. But did he think I was as big a fool as Kamau, that I would make the same mistakes my husband and father had made before? He knew I had his box, but did he think I hadn't looked inside?

“So you believe that our exchange tonight will make us even?” I asked. “That after we trade boxes things will be fine?”

“No,” he said. “My father has told me that something more must be done. So listen one time more. Your husband's remains are loaded on the back of a new Mercedes-Benz flatbed lorry. I bought it only today. When I come into the National Theatre foyer we will exchange keys, not words, I hope. After that we will simply walk away. I will keep your farm lorry and you will keep my new Mercedes-Benz. The particulars will be in the glove box. It may seem a cold solution, but it is my gift to you for the mistakes that have been made. Anything more would be untoward.”

“Untoward,” I said. “Untoward” was a word I had always enjoyed. Its meaning wasn't clear in its make-up, but it had the ability to fit in nicely, to add oddness to an ordinary phrase. “All right, so I get a new lorry, a Mercedes-Benz.”

I tried to make my tone pleasant and I must have succeeded at least this one time, for Mr Smith heard acquiescence in it and suddenly sighed.

“Oh, good,” he said. “I was worried you might not see it that way. Until tonight then, when
Madama Butterfly
is done.”

I was about to hang up, to turn to the others in the room and begin to think about what in the world I would really do, when Mr Smith spoke one more time. “May I add that I am sorry for your loss?” he asked. “I am a married man. I don't know if you knew that, but I know the pain I would feel should I somehow lose my wife.”

“Pain,” I said. “Yes, I'm sure that's true.”

“Everything was an accident,” he said, “that is all. Most of what has happened was a big mistake.”

Mr Smith risked a laugh then, and his laugh was uncontrolled, and telling in its way. It had a rising intonation that said he had been under pressure too, and that he could not quite believe that now it all might end.

“There is someone at the door,” I told him. “I've got to hang up now.”

After that I let the receiver move from my ear to its cradle without saying good-bye. Was that a mistake? I had been convincing, I think, but had my deception needed cementing by a solid farewell, an uplifting note like the one in his laugh, a vocal modulation of my own? When I turned to the others they were all staring at me, sober-faced and strange.

“What?” I said.

“You have given comfort to the enemy,” said my dad.

Dr Zir seemed to concur, but I felt quiet inside. I knew by then that the day was mine to win. Mr Smith was like my father; in a way he was like Ralph and Dr Zir as well. By that I mean that Mr Smith was a man, and among men, when everything is finished, there is always the matter of verbal sincerity and form. A man may cheat and he may lie, he may even commit crimes such as those that had been committed against poor Jules, but when one man speaks forthrightly to another, when he comes out and actually says he was wrong, form dictates a reply in kind. That is why Mr Smith believed whatever it was that I had said, and that is why not speaking at the end, not bidding him a clear and cheerful good-bye, might have been my only mistake, the only flaw in my telephone behaviour that day.

“Tell me,” I asked, “how much do you suppose a new lorry costs? A Mercedes-Benz.”

This was such an unexpected question that both men lost their critical attitude. Dr Zir was the first to thaw.

“A new Benz? Oh my dear, it's a bundle.”

“In England you might pay twenty thousand pounds,” said my dad.

“Pshaw! Not anymore,” said the doctor. “Twenty thousand last year, maybe, but more now, twenty-three or even twenty-five. Prices are going up everywhere.”

When they started to argue the point, I left the room. Since I had dressed improperly for what I now had in mind, I went into my bedroom to change. Twenty thousand pounds, last year and in England to boot. That meant that in Kenya my new lorry would be prohibitive beyond belief and that therefore Mr Smith thought his offer to be grand.

When I came out again I was dressed in my smartest clothes, clothes I hadn't worn since my university job. My father was wearing his uniform and Dr Zir always wore a suit, so we were ready to go.

“We have to hurry,” I said. “The day's half gone.”

“What do you want of me, Nora?” asked Dr Zir. “Do you want me to go home?”

I took his arm then and said simply that he and my father should both go to his house, and when they got there they should warm up the lorry. “It's old,” I said, “and needs to idle for a good long while.”

After they were gone and I was alone in the living room I picked the telephone up off the floor, my fingers moving slowly in its broken dial. Miro answered on the first ring, and when I told her what I wanted from her, I could tell that she smiled.

“Where I am concerned he'll do anything,” she said. “But give us an hour, I have to go by the theatre for a final fitting of my kimono.”

When I rang off I went out of the house and into the valley alone. The sky was clear and the monkeys were gone. At Dr Zir's both men were in the drive, standing around the lorry.

“I want you to take my dad and go in your car and find Ralph at his office,” I told Dr Zir. “Ask him to meet us at the National Museum at two and ask him to dress up, not to wear his safari clothes.”

I was giving orders without much latitude in them, but both men hesitated only long enough to see if there was anything else I might say. Like Mr Smith, they could sense a real denouement, and so far as my father was concerned, all he wanted was to make amends, for me to tell him that he had done nothing wrong.

“I'll meet you there,” I said. Then I looked at my father carefully and said the words “Maybe after this we will be able to go on.”

That was what he'd been waiting for, and it was only as I watched them leave that I thought of Jules again. Mr Smith not only had his body, but he had his pistol and his letter too, and I would insist that he give back all three. In the letter Jules had asked me to finish for him what he had so clumsily begun, and I suddenly wondered whether or not Mr Smith had read the letter carefully. It worried me, for if he had, then he might understand that though I'd been weak at the gravesite and sounded weak on the telephone, the word “revenge” was not an anagram. By that I mean that it could not be found in the letters that made up his offering. It couldn't be found in “Mercedes-Benz.”