ECLIPSE (8 page)

She shook her head, an ambiguous gesture he could not decipher. “Please, Damon, help me. This is something I need to do.”

He looked into her face, caught between the sense that he might still dissuade her and the instinct that a man less selfish would respond as a friend. As though someone else were speaking, he heard himself say, “Then I hope your life in Luandia is all you want it to be. Keep safe for me, all right?”

For a moment she tried to smile at him. Then she reached up, fingers grasping the hair at the nape of his neck, and kissed him swiftly on the lips.

“I have to go,” she said, and hurried away into the darkness.

T
HOUGH MARISSA HAD
disappeared, she had not vanished.

Her first letter had surprised him. He answered promptly; her next letter, more discursive, had a warmth and comfort that surprised him more. She had come to understand that she did not want to lose him, she said—from eight thousand miles, friendship was possible, even essential. And so they began writing, trading stories about their different worlds and observations about the world at large.

He had been wrong about her. Though she struggled in Luandia, she persevered. As the years passed, Pierce could feel her growth: he still remembered entire passages from the early letters that she had written, and he had saved, before e-mail became their way of speaking to each other.

“When I first arrived,” she wrote after two years in Luandia, “I was as clueless as you thought I’d be. My American family was fractured and dysfunctional; in Luandia, families share everyone’s business in a way that takes some getting used to. I was outspoken about everything; here even strong women resort to subterfuge.

“In Goro, polygamy still exists. Women aren’t allowed to cook during their period, or to appear at social events if they’ve just had a baby. Marriage is usually arranged—with the appropriate bride price, of course. And despite everything, I’ve come to love it here.

“That’s taken some work. I was married in Goro as a true Luandian bride. I walked to my wedding with a large tin bucket balanced on my head, filled with gifts from Bobby suitable to my new life as a married woman—native wraps, shoes, a watch, a handbag, an umbrella, and some cooking utensils. In my entire life, I’d barely cooked. But then I’d never walked a hundred feet beneath a bucket I was forbidden to touch, to the beat of a line of native drummers. By my bridal day, I could actually dance to the beat a little. Even Chief Okari seemed impressed.

“But becoming a wife was easier than being accepted as Bobby’s partner. I know Luandian women who’ve forged a place of influence based on sheer character and will. But at first all I could do was avoid getting hit on: in Luandia, sexual taboos are minimal. Never was I more alluring. But never once was I unfaithful to Bobby.

“Like everything else, married life was an adjustment. In many ways Bobby reverted to the traditional male role—spending time with other men, expecting me to do household chores without a lot of thanks. What I wanted was to be part of Bobby’s movement. It helped that he respected my judgment; maybe it helped more for me to learn patience.

“After a time, I began going to meetings with Bobby and his advisers. I was careful to parcel out my advice sparingly, or to save it for when he and I were alone. Now, I think, no one doubts my commitment to his cause. Just the other day, I realized that Luandia truly is my home. People have started addressing me with honorifics like ‘auntie’ or ‘madam.’ The little village girl I most love, Omo, always calls me ‘ma’am.’”

In the letters and e-mails she sent him over the years, her precarious existence seemed almost exotic. But her inner life remained, at most, a subtext. Even when he had known her she had been more guarded: now, given the gulf between how they chose to live, to explain herself might seem beyond the power of the printed word. Or perhaps it was the way they had parted. Whatever the case, he divined that she, too, was childless solely because the only children she mentioned were, like Omo, those whose futures she had come to fear for, just as Pierce now feared for her.

Once more, he checked his watch. It was one-fifteen; in Luandia, ten-fifteen in the morning. The eclipse was moments away.

M
ARISSA WATCHED
B
OBBY AS HE CLIMBED THE PLATFORM AROUND
which silent villagers clustered.

Most were gazing upward, hands shading their eyes. The sun was partially covered now, reduced by the black disk of the moon to a diminishing crescent of light. The air was still; the birds soundless. In the gathering darkness, narrow bands of light and shadow raced across the red earth.

Omo came to Marissa’s side. The crescent diminished to a sliver, then broke into pinpoints of light that vanished one by one. “Look, ma’am,” Omo exclaimed.

Marissa smiled at her wonder. “Those dots are the last sunlight,” she explained, “shining through the valleys on the face of the moon.”

The sole remaining light became as brilliant as a diamond. Then its glimmer vanished, and the black moon was framed by the faintest of orange halos. The village, for once unlit by flaring oil, was swathed in eerie darkness.

From atop the platform, Bobby called out, “Let the world see
our
light.”

Along with Omo and Marissa, people began snapping cigarette lighters, their glow illuminating somber faces that now turned from the sky to Bobby. He stood straighter, preparing to speak, and then became still, as though seeing something the others did not.

The first sound Marissa heard came from the ocean.

Turning, she saw the stream of lights on the obsidian waters, heard the
growl of outboard motors heading toward the beach. From above, a sudden beam of yellow cut the darkness, causing Omo to shrink back against Marissa. The black form of a helicopter appeared over the palm trees, blades chopping as it rotated to turn its searchlight on Bobby. A second helicopter appeared, then a third, their thudding so loud that Marissa could hear no other sounds. As their searchlights crossed, she saw the black logo of PGL.

She swirled to look at Bobby, suddenly small and stricken. She drew Omo closer. Pressed against her, the girl trembled.

From the ocean the throb of outboard motors grew nearer. Turning, Marissa saw men emerging from the first boat as it struck the sand, weapons projecting from their shadow. “Oh my God,” she cried out. Then a spark came from a figure running toward them, and Marissa heard the soft moan of the man beside her falling to his knees.

Yanking Omo by the arm, Marissa pulled her to the ground.

Bullets flew from all directions. The man beside her, gut-shot, shuddered and was still. In the darkness Marissa saw the flash of guns firing, heard their cracks amid pounding footsteps and yelps of pain and panic. An acrid smell sifted through the air, and Marissa’s eyes began to water. Omo pressed so tightly against her that they seemed to breathe as one. “Please, God,” the girl whispered.

Marissa shut her eyes. From the darkness came the haunting sound of soldiers singing and chanting, the cries of women and children, the muffled sound of bodies falling, the crackling of fire. The smell of tear gas mingled with that of burning wood.

Marissa swallowed convulsively. Through slitted eyes she saw the village burning. Backlit by the rising flames, a soldier shot a kneeling man in the back of the head. The soldiers kept up their eerie, warlike chant, their deep voices a terrible counterpoint to the piteous pleas of men and women and children, the shouts of their comrades, the dull thud as a soldier kicked a girl writhing on the ground. A dry retching sound issued from Omo’s throat.

“I’m still with you,” Marissa whispered. From behind them Marissa heard boots stomping, the sounds of slaughter coming closer. The heat of conflagration brought dampness to her forehead. Closing her eyes, she prepared to die in Luandia.

She lay there, Omo whimpering in her arms. Minutes passed. The
cries subsided, the gunfire grew scattered. The chanting stopped. In the eerie silence, glowing cinders brushed her face.

She opened her eyes again. The eclipse was passing, and the smoke of fire and tear gas drifted through the false dawn. A few feet from her lay Omo’s would-be suitor, an arm stretching toward them, eyes sightlessly peering from his nearly decapitated head. Omo trembled soundlessly.

Fearful of notice, Marissa did not move.

Nor did she wish to. Arrayed in front of her were the bodies of once vibrant villagers in the grotesque postures of violent death. Two soldiers wrenched a man outside her line of vision; gunshots followed. A small boy darted into the bush, seeking cover. Another soldier, his pants around his ankles, sodomized the wife of a village elder as she lay on her stomach groaning; the plump head teacher stared dully at the soldier and his victim, blood dribbling from her severed ear. Three soldiers poured gasoline on a wounded youth, then wrenched the cigarette lighter from his grasp and set his clothes afire, adding more gasoline as he began to twitch and scream. Beside him, Omo’s mother clasped a head scarf to her face, as though to ward off the stench of burning flesh. A soldier ended the boy’s misery with a gunshot and then, turning, put a bullet through Omo’s mother’s head.

“Good,” a deep baritone intoned from behind Marissa. She knew it was Okimbo before he stood in front of her.

She gazed up at him, Omo’s face still pressed against her. “You came to hear a speech,” he said. “Listen, and I will give you one.”

Marissa sat up, mute. Okimbo walked to the platform and climbed it to stand where Bobby had, the colonel’s audience corpses strewn amid slaughtered goats and chickens and the few villagers not yet dead—a woman covering her face; a six-year-old boy wailing without tears; a grizzled man, eyes dull with shock, contemplating his missing arm. Their sole kinship now was fear. Of the buildings, only the church and Bobby and Marissa’s home survived.

Pausing to adjust his eye patch, Okimbo drew himself up as though imitating Bobby, addressing the dead and traumatized with mock solemnity. “Asari people,” he proclaimed, “this is your day of liberation.”

He pointed to the charred remnants of the village, the gesture stately and grandiose, as though this were a miracle of renewal. “What you see,” he called out, “is the eclipse of the Asari movement—the consequence to
those who follow Bobby Okari into the charnel house of murder and sedition. This will happen in every village where people gather in his name. I will come in the night. After my soldiers kill your men and enjoy your women, they will burn your empty houses to the ground.” He stared across the bodies at Marissa. “This is how we will sanitize Asariland, Marissa Okari. So watch, and learn.”

Lying in Marissa’s lap, Omo remained as still as the dead. “Bring Okari’s father,” Okimbo ordered.

Two soldiers dragged Chief Okari to the foot of the platform, machetes dangling from their belts. Still garbed in his headdress and robe, the old man gazed stoically at Okimbo as though clinging to the remnants of his dignity. Okimbo pointed to the church. “Take him to the altar,” he told the soldiers. “Make of him a sacrifice as in the Old Testament, when man truly feared his God.”

At this, Bobby’s father slumped. The two men dragged him toward the church, his feet barely touching the ground, then disappeared inside. An army captain approached the platform. “Sanitize the rest,” Okimbo ordered, and then pointed toward Omo and Marissa, adding softly, “But not those two.”

Arms folded, Okimbo presided over the execution of those who survived—to Marissa all the more terrible because the soldiers carried out their orders with such deliberation, each act of murder carrying a weight it could not have had in the slaughter that had gone before. Amid this tableau, soldiers with wheelbarrows carted away corpses, while others searched the burning rubble for anything of value. Through the door of the one remaining house came a corpulent sergeant, Bobby’s fax machine tucked under his arm. Seeing an old woman sitting nearby, he pulled the pistol from his belt and shot her in the eye.

Through it all, Omo lay still.

Numbed by shock, Marissa watched. Okimbo stood on the platform, arms still folded, observing the horrors in front of him without expression. Absently, Marissa stroked the girl’s hair.

Two soldiers hauled a youth to the platform, hands manacled behind him. “He was trying to escape,” one told Okimbo.

“Then let him try the creek.”

With his hands still shackled, they bore him to the creek, its surface slick with oil. Dully, Marissa watched as they held him upside down, lowering
him face-first into the oily water until his head vanished. His torso writhed helplessly. Then bubbles appeared amid the oil, and his body stilled.

Only then did Marissa hear Okimbo’s footsteps. “When I was a child,” he told her in conversational tones, “we, too, practiced total-immersion baptism.” For Marissa, meeting his eyes required an act of will. Staring down at her, he asked, “Do you wonder why I saved you?”

Steeling herself, Marissa felt Omo stiffen beneath her fingertips. Laughing softly, Okimbo said, “Perhaps you can sacrifice this girl in your place.”

“She’s dead.”

“And yet she breathes,” Okimbo said softly.

“No.” Marissa’s mouth felt dry. “Take me.”

Okimbo paused, as though pondering her offer, then knelt beside Omo. “You can awaken now,” he whispered into her ear. “Do not be afraid.”

Omo stirred. Almost gently, Okimbo took both her hands and drew her up to face him. She stood before him, her thin shoulder blades moving with each ragged breath. Okimbo smiled at the girl, then turned to Marissa. “My bride and I must borrow your home. To my regret, your village lacks accommodations.”

Reflexively, Omo looked up at Marissa, her lips trembling. Marissa felt herself swallow. Then, slowly, she nodded.

Okimbo took Omo’s hand. As she followed him to Marissa’s home, Omo gazed back at her older friend, eyes moist and frightened. Marissa forced herself to watch until they disappeared inside.

The silence that followed was, for Marissa, more terrible than the sounds that had gone before.