Ahmed's Revenge (34 page)

Because we had front-row seats and were in the middle, it took us a long time to reach the foyer, where Mr Smith and I would attempt to exchange the keys we didn't have. I was languid and fulfilled. I didn't want to talk, I didn't want to see the man. From the opera I had learned that it was truly over, this hideous duel between Mr Smith and me, that human conflict in a temporal world has a natural end. I even somehow knew that Jules would be satisfied with the new lorry—I no longer needed to read his letter again to know that. I had managed to put the real tusks back where they belonged, and I knew he'd be pleased at the value put on his bones, at the fact that the lorry Mr Smith was giving us was the best that money could buy. It was strange, but when I saw the character of Madam Butterfly float away from Miro's brow, it was as if Jules had finally gone too, a thinned-out spirit, ever near me since he'd died, but too tired to stay around anymore.

So when I finally got up and followed Ralph into the foyer, I was tranquil. We had stayed so long in the theatre, however, that the rest of the audience was gone. Mr Smith and his father, in fact, faced my father and me in an almost empty room; only Dr Zir and Ralph stood a little bit off to the side. I was of a mind to remind him that the keys he wanted were waiting outside and then to pass him by, but Mr Smith's demeanour was peculiar to behold. The mood he'd affected in that morning's telephone call seemed completely gone.

“There has been another development,” he said.

I could understand his words well enough, but the voice he used to say them was so choked that he had to stop almost as soon as he began. His emotions were strewn like driftwood, causing havoc all over his face, his eyes were up and his lips were down. I knew the opera hadn't done that to him, and the only other thought I could find was that he was planning on keeping what he'd said he'd give away, that he wanted to change boxes but take home the new Mercedes-Benz.

“I want my husband and I want the new lorry he's on top of,” I said. “I want my pistol and my husband's letter too.” I spoke quietly and with the deadly calm of that orchard snake. The opera had perhaps put me in a philosophical mood, but it hadn't made me an easy mark. I would end this thing tonight, but not on any terms other than those already agreed upon.

Mr Smith seemed to understand, and waved his hand impatiently, as if to say that what I was thinking did not compare with what he had to say, if only he could get it out. But whatever it was, a long time went by and he didn't say another word. He was choking on the air in the foyer, so finally his father stepped in.

“I have recently discovered the entire truth,” Mr N'chele said, “not only about the big tusks on your lorry outside, but about the little ones that have been smuggled out of our country for a year and a half.” Mr N'chele stopped and looked at his son to see if his son would take over, but his son would not.

“My son has decided that in order for him properly to rectify everything he has done, or at least as much of it as he can, you must not only take the new lorry, with its priceless cargo, but you must allow me to deliver, right now, the contents of the old lorry to the National Museum. You may come with me if you like, personally to view the exchange. It is what I was insisting that he do before your husband took the tusks away. I informed the museum before the opera, and people are standing by. Everything must go back where it belongs, my dear, then this whole thing can end. This is what I insist upon. Order first, and then all the trouble will be undone.”

Madama Butterfly
still had me under its spell, but could I believe my ears? As his father spoke Mr Smith's demeanour got worse. He couldn't stand it. He looked ready to explode. In his face I could see not only the man who had put Detective Mubia's legs to the fire, the man with whom I'd done battle over the dominion of my husband's body, but also the child with whom I had played so many years before. As I watched him I could see all those faces passing by, so it surprised me when he somehow did manage to mutter a few words.

“I concede that the lorries and their contents are both out of my control,” he said, “given by me freely for the mistakes I have made.”

Those words seemed to cause Mr Smith as much agony as giving up her son caused Madam Butterfly, and as I listened I understood that they were memorised words, words dictated to him by his father, words he had practised on the way to the opera or during an earlier part of the day. Speaking them out loud was the final part of the price his father had extracted for once again coming to his aid.

“I see,” I said.

I had to think fast. I had to decide right now what I was going to do. Could I tell the truth to Mr N'chele in the presence of his son? Could I tell him not to worry, that Ahmed's authentic tusks were in Ahmed's authentic skull even as we spoke, or at worst still lying before him on the museum's floor? Should I admit to the switch I'd made or let the switch be made again? Though I looked for a second over at Ralph and Dr Zir and my dad, I could see nothing in those three faces that would begin to help me decide.

“There is no hope for us if we don't stop now,” Mr N'chele added. “I believe you know it as clearly as I do. The tragedy of your husband's death cannot be undone, but the past is the past and the very distant past, the particular past in question here, is like something awful we have read in a book. That it was your father who wrote the book, that will have to be your own cross to bear.”

Mr N'chele was looking at me in a kindly way, speaking from his heart.

“What will you do with the other tusks?” I asked softly. “What will you do with the artificial ones? Is it your position that they should be returned to your son?”

“What would you have me do with them?” Mr N'chele asked. “Surely you don't want them for yourself. You will have your husband to take home, enough to handle without the extra burden to bear.”

“Send them back to Marsabit,” I said. “Send them up to Ahmed's own hometown. Build an exhibition hall up there for them. Then I will be satisfied.”

I'd had no idea I would say such a thing, and Mr N'chele was so surprised that for a minute he couldn't speak at all. Mr Smith made another strangled sound, but his father looked only at me, steadily and for a good long time. After I had spoken I wouldn't take the words back again. I could not, however, either fathom where the idea had come from or sustain this old man's gaze, so I looked over at my own father once again. My father hadn't recognised Mr N'chele earlier, and I could immediately see that he was daydreaming now. This was the story of his life we were telling here, but he had missed it because he'd been thinking of something else, of an ancient delusion or maybe a move in the chess game he'd been playing only an hour before the opera began. The muscles of my father's face were as slack as Mr Smith's were contorted, and his mouth was slightly open, pulled down by nothing but the constant weight of his jaw.

“Very well,” Mr N'chele finally said. “You have my word on it. We will take the artificial tusks to Marsabit and build them a home, find some appropriate place so that they can be displayed for the people who knew Ahmed best when he was alive.”

“That's all I ask,” I said. “If that happens, of course, this means an end to everything, an absolute end to it all. Only keep your son away from me from this day on.”

What I was saying with such words, what I was reminding him of, was that we both had our crosses to bear, but Mr N'chele only nodded one last time.

Since there were no keys to exchange, we didn't have to worry about doing anything more, and no one spoke again as the six of us headed out the door. In the car park there were still a few operagoers standing by their cars, and somehow, from seeing these casual groups, I understood that the truth of the matter, the secret of where Ahmed's authentic tusks really were, was known by far more people than I would have felt comfortable trusting before. Miro and Ralph and I shared the secret of the first exchange, and though my father was forgetting quickly, for today at least, he knew, and Dr Zir knew, and perhaps even Miro's dad. That made five people whom I would have to trust where before I had trusted only one. Was it too much to hope for, the idea of trust and reliability, when the number of people was large? Could I go back to such an old proposition, could I begin to believe in it again at this late date, now that Julius Grant was gone?

Mr N'chele had a big black sedan parked in the main lot, ready to drive his defeated son away, and he had another driver waiting to take my farm lorry to the museum, to make the last exchange. I was about to insist on going too, that was my intention, but when we got to the area of the official cars and the lorries, I seemed to remember a little of what I had learned from Madam Butterfly. And when I saw Jules's coffin on the back of that Mercedes-Benz, I knew that my real job, my truest last job on this last and longest day, had to be to drive my husband home again. I could ask Ralph to go with Mr N'chele. Ralph could be my emissary, making sure that the final exchange was done, or I could even let Mr N'chele go alone.

It was just then, just as I had made my best decision of the night, that I saw Miro standing by the door of my old dance studio, her face perspiring and tired. And my final surprise was that Detective Mubia was there too, safe and standing by her side. Earlier, at the opera's end, I had wanted to find Miro and embrace her, but engagement with Mr Smith kept me from it, and I guess I believed also that after her spectacular performance she would need solitude for a while. But when I saw her at the studio door, when I rushed to kiss her and tell her what a glorious job she had done, it was the look of Detective Mubia that stopped me halfway up the stairs. The detective's face was composed and serious and calm, its muscles sculpted once again into their old mould. And incredible as it was to see, his red corduroy suit was still on him, over a clean white shirt and tie. His jacket was straight and his trousers were whole, washed where they'd been dirty, patched where they'd been burned, mended where they'd been torn.

Detective Mubia walked in front of us all, his head up high, and as he did so I realised that it was he who'd been responsible for what Mr N'chele said inside. Mr N'chele had come to his words not so much out of shame over his son or from his own ethical code, but because, after returning from my farm burned and broken and soiled, Detective Mubia had found Mr N'chele and told him that he must. In a word, Mr N'chele had once more done what he had to do to keep his awful son out of jail.

Detective Mubia left without speaking, and when he was gone Mr N'chele opened the door to his car and pushed his son inside. The parking attendant then gave Mr N'chele and me our lorry keys and we exchanged them, just as we were supposed to do in the foyer, after
Madama Butterfly
. I asked Ralph to ride with Mr N'chele in the old farm lorry and I asked Dr Zir to take my father home in a taxi.

So this is how it was when I walked across the car park and unlocked the door to the Mercedes-Benz. I was alone. Once inside the cab I looked at the gleaming knobs and the buttons and the windows that were so spotlessly clean. When I started the engine the sound was calm and low, and when I turned to look at Jules, to make sure he was securely tied, I saw my .380 automatic pistol and my husband's last letter on the seat beside me. The pistol was dirty and the letter was ripped apart; several pieces of it had fallen to the floor.

As I drove out of the car park the sky was clear and the moon was bright, and by the time I got to Kijabe Street no one else was on the road. As I passed the big roundabout, driving with one hand, I leaned down to pick up the pieces of Jules's letter, to smooth them out on the seat beside me, even before I got home.

That is the first stage of mending.

Matching up the pieces that are torn.

I could go on, I think, writing until I caught up with my present life—writing each day as I've lived it these last five years, a summary hour each night, before allowing myself to sleep. It's a strange addiction, always telling what you know, always writing it down.

But let me forgo all that and just say that in view of what happened after the opera, Jules's wake was a sad and short affair. I reintroduced him to his skeletal left arm, putting it up the sleeve of his new black jacket, so he had a fleshy hand and a boney one, reminding everyone who looked at him that life was short. After the wake we buried him back on the farm, simple as that. And Mr N'chele was true to his word—he exchanged the tusks again, proving, I guess, that ivory and irony are anagrams, only a letter apart.

As for me, I haven't returned to the National Museum to see the place where Ahmed's bones still stand, but it's given me pleasure, all these years, to think of visitors from all over the world reaching across the cordon to touch Ahmed's tusks in awe, to marvel at their length and circumference and the numerous scars that they have, evidence of Ahmed's life and the battles that he won. That's Ahmed's own revenge, don't you think, that the tusks they touch aren't real?

The real tusks truly are up in Marsabit, though. Six months or so after the final exchange Mr N'chele supervised the building of a museum up there, out at the edge of the park where Ahmed lived. The entire museum is a single stone room, very simple, but it's got Ahmed standing at its centre, and around the outer walls it's got photographs of Ahmed as he lived before the guards were posted, and photographs of the Rendille Children's Choir singing “Greensleeves” with their Ahmed badges on. Ahmed's Marsabit skeleton, I should say, is nothing like the one in Nairobi. In Marsabit his skeleton is abstract and angular, deeply primitive and made of black wood. It is unlike any elephant who ever lived, and in that it is superb. How stark and beautiful to see his authentic tusks coming out of it the way they do. Ebony and ivory—it's extraordinary. I've been there many times. When Miro comes from New York, as a matter of fact, visiting Ahmed is the first thing she wants to do. Detective Mubia is back on the police force, by the way. I know it because Miro tells me. For five years now she has been the one sending money home, to pay his children's school fees.