The Devil Is a Black Dog (12 page)

They stopped talking. David became absorbed in the NGO’s special report. Nobody knew why the fighting had started. The
Dinka people who lived in the town were neutral parties in the war. Members of this small tribe were readily recognizable by the v-shaped scarring on their faces. There were scarcely two thousand in the entire country.

“I hope they buried them right this time,” said François, and began to search for something on the radio.

“Yeah, the last time it stank to high heaven,” David said, grinning at his French colleague’s indignation.

“Right? It was fucking unbearable,” said François. He gave up on finding a signal. They were too far from the base’s transmission; only the noise of static filled the car.

“They should have shown
that
to the delegation,” he grumbled as he turned off the radio. “The kind of stinking shit we work in.”

David tried to imagine what the woman at the reception would have said about the previous village. Everybody had lined up to greet the guests, the entire staff, all forty of them. The commander gave a long speech as the guests sat in the shade drinking lemonade. A woman at lunch had complained to the commander about what strong smells there were in Africa. David could hardly contain his laughter when he overheard this. If not attended to in time, dead bodies would rot in days in the 108-degree heat.

François looked at the GPS, slowed, and turned off the road. They would have to continue on loose, grassy earth. David strained to look into the dusk. After a few minutes the remnants of huts appeared. The two gazed at the blackened walls against the horizon. François turned off the motor but left the headlights burning. He grabbed a camera from the back seat. David, binder in his hand, got out of the car.

“Let’s start with the women. Were they separated?” asked François.

David flipped through the papers, plucked out a photocopied form, checked the information, and looked up.

“No. Everybody’s together. Theoretically, the pit is two hundred yards north from the well.”

“And where is the well?” asked François as he turned on his camera and checked the flash.

They stood looking around for a moment before David set off between the bullet-pocked hut remnants. After a brief search he found the well. It was a pit surrounded by mud bricks; a few steps away stood a trough. On the ground lay a leather sack with a long strap, which was fixed to a brick. The villagers used this to bring up the water. By the well were the tire tracks of the soldiers’ jeeps. To shoot at the houses, they would have had to stop here. David stepped up to the well’s perimeter. He took out his compass and checked the direction.

“That way,” he said, pointing. They both started off. They beat their way through some bush, and continued on the white alkaline soil. The sun’s last rays lit up the horizon, casting everything in the color of congealed blood.

“And what do women say, when they see you’re not circumcised?” asked David as he lifted a few branches from their way. François stopped and took a cigarette from his pocket, lit up, and offered David the pack.

“Nothing. Usually nothing. Or, well, there was one … but she didn’t really say anything,” he said flatly.

“Then what did she
do
?” asked David and took a drag from his cigarette.

“She just pulled it back. She lifted it up and yanked the whole thing back,” François demonstrated the action in the air.

“Did it rip? Was there blood?”

“So much that I thought I’d shit myself.”

They both shuddered at the thought. Quiet fell on the bush.

Something was lying on the ground on the path in front of them. In the dusk they couldn’t make out what it was, though they could smell decomposition. An unctuous odor filled the air.

“Goddamn it, if they left somebody here, I am not going farther,” said François. He stopped and tried to make out the contours of the body lying in front of them. David went ahead to have a look. It was a donkey, its tongue hanging from the side of its mouth, its hide swarming with maggots. The body steamed in the cooling air. Cursing, François went after David. They gave the carrion a wide berth.

“Why isn’t it with the rest?” asked François.

“They don’t put the bodies of animals next to people,” said David.

“Why not?”

“Beats me.”

An oblong pit soon appeared before them. Next to it was a mound. The people who had dug the pit had obviously thrown the dirt there. Shovels were sticking out of the red soil, a sign the workers might be coming back. The two stepped to the edge. The pit was about a yard deep, and ten yards long. The black bodies had been carefully placed side by side along the bottom. David began to count, but soon lost track. François took pictures.

Using the flash, they saw that the people had been laid in the ditch with no regard for age: women, men, old, and young alike. Their clothing was soaked through with blood and their bodies had begun to decay in the equatorial weather. Despite this it could still be seen that the men had been killed with bullets, while the rest had been murdered with bayonets and rifle butts. They knew this because only the men’s heads showed no wounds. The two stood quietly for a little while.

“Is it possible you didn’t fuck the coordinator like last time?” said François and spat on the ground. David grimaced, and then began to take notes.

“Now is it seventy or seventy-two?” He looked questioningly at François.

“I don’t know. I didn’t count.”

“Then count.”

“Count my cock. What’s the difference, if it’s plus or minus a few? Write seventy.”

The case number was already printed on the form. Only the geographical coordinates, the number of victims, and the name of the village needed to be filled in. David took out a pen and wrote in the number, then scratched his head with the pen.

“What was the reason?”

“For what?”

“For the killings.”

“How should I know? Obviously the soldiers had something to do with it.”

“Obviously,” said David, staring into the ditch. “It’s also possible that the villagers started it.”

“Do these look like people who play rough?” grumbled François and spat into the pit.

“Aren’t you just a little interested in what happened here?” asked David, unclipping a pocket light from his belt and shining it into the ditch.

“Write whatever you want,” said François, and he resumed taking pictures.

David finished filling out the form. In the “Cause” line he wrote “Unknown,” then shined the light into the pit again. There he noticed the untouched body of a girl. She was young, perhaps fifteen. Her left breast had fallen from her dress, and a man’s hand rested on her stomach. Her face showed no wounds. They must have stabbed her from behind.

“Look how beautiful she was,” he said, bending over the pit. “There isn’t even any tribal scarring on her,” he added.

François also looked into the ditch, and then began to smirk. He stood and with a stick pushed away the man’s hand, so as to take in her whole body.

“So like the women in Abéché,” said David.

“How do you know? You didn’t come with us once.”

“Of course not. They’ll rot your cock off.”

“The little Jew is touchy about his circumcised cock.”

“I’m not touchy. I just heard that last year they cut somebody’s whole prick off because he got some kind of infection.”

“Bullshit. Nothing like that happened,” said François and lit a cigarette. David also took one and lit up.

“I’m only saying. In the end the dude couldn’t even walk. Some name starting with an “R”: Ronald or Robert. An Irish radioman. I heard about it in the canteen.”

“The Irish are Catholics. They don’t even cut off their foreskins,” said François, grinning.

“Cutting off the foreskin is beside the point here. If you stick it in a rotten place, it goes rotten. Supposedly the guy swelled up like a billy club. And it was all cheesed over.”

“The girls in Abéché are clean.”

“Like hell. They all have AIDS.”

“You need to fuck with a condom.”

“Yeah right, the Chinese ones don’t fit my wang,” said David, indicating the size with his hand.

“Mao Tse-tung had a little pecker,” François said and began to guffaw.

They both laughed, then tossed their cigarette butts into the pit and began back to the truck.

“You just gotta get a blowjob, then there won’t be any worries,” said François. They walked around the rotting donkey and to the end of the village.

“That’s all you gotta do.”

They got in the car and pulled out onto the main road. François looked for music on the radio, but again found nothing. David threw the papers into the back and looked into the swarm of bugs, which had been attracted by the headlights.

“It is better to be circumcised, you know,” said François.

“Yeah, and it’s not just the Jews who do it. So do Christians. For the sake of hygiene.”

“And it doesn’t get cheesy if you miss a shower.”

“No,” David affirmed.

“And it’s not as sensitive,” said François.

“Why, is yours sensitive?”

“More sensitive than if they’d cut the skin from it.”

“That’s crap.”

“It’s not crap. It doesn’t rub as much.”

“So, because I am a Jew, my cock isn’t sensitive enough.”

“Yep.”

“Then how sensitive is yours?”

“Very. And it has skin, so the cock is protected.”

“That is so girly,” laughed David, then added, “So you’ve got a touchy-feely cock.”

“Exactly,” grumbled François. “Now go suck your mother.”

“How sensitive are you on a scale from one to ten?”

“Seven.”

“That’s pretty sensitive.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Why don’t you just have it done?”

“No.”

“Why, are you afraid you’ll look like a Jew?”

“I’m just not letting anybody near it with a knife.”

“That’s fair. I wouldn’t, either.”

David sat back in the seat, put the binder in his lap, and finished filling in the information. He just wasn’t sure about the village’s name. But François remembered from the canteen: it had been written with a magic marker in the daily work schedule. It was called Darhu. David managed to write it correctly on the second try.

I
f you decide that you want to see the end of the world, you will need the permission of the military in Sana’a. The night will be heavy and cold. No more so than in Europe, perhaps, but there won’t be electricity and you can see the stars. You will be up in the hills, in the middle of a crater, where they built a city near the sky.

You were always curious about the end of the world. The zero point where everything reaches its end. Civilization, culture, government, order—everything. All the rules that bind the world. Unlike the center of the world, you can go to the end of the world, because there’s no competition to get there. Where questions of religion and discrimination can’t find you.

They will summon you for 7:30
PM
at headquarters, half an hour before evening prayer and twenty minutes before the khat begins to kick in in their hearts and heads. You know, because your mouth will also be filled with khat. You will swallow the bitter and green spit until the effect takes hold.

“True, its kiss is more bitter than a woman’s, but it’s a kiss of eternal pleasure,” the dealer you buy it from says. He’ll only cheat you by a few dollars, because he thinks you are Muslim when you slip in an Egyptian-accented “Salam.”

You knock at headquarters, but you wait in vain for somebody to answer. With two fists you beat the door until someone finally opens up. It will be a conscript, a familiar-looking weapon in his hand and his cheeks stuffed with khat.

He will show off his small piece of Hungary. Since you set foot in the Middle East, you’d hoped that this wouldn’t be how people know your homeland. You figured that even in the Gaza Strip they’d speak of soccer legend Ferenc Puskás, the Golden Team, or the Rubik’s Cube. Anything but this. That a young Hamas recruit wouldn’t tell you what a wonder the Automatic Modified Paratrooper rifle is, what a great people you are, because your country gave the world something you can properly kill with, and that it even comes with a scope mount. For a moment you hope that this won’t happen, that the talk will be about Puskás, Rubik, the Golden Team, or even paprika—but no. You are Hungarian so it’s the AMD-65 rifle. Slowly it dawns on you why every Hungarian embassy in the area has a military attaché. You can’t spit because your mouth is full of dry khat.

The conscript will grin at you, strike the floor with green spit, then indicate that you should follow him. The corridor you walk down is lit by petroleum lamps, and it takes you past the weapon stockpile. The collection, which includes the Eastern Bloc’s every last wonder, will be on a long, hardwood-carved lunch table.

He escorts you to a door, its red paint flaking. You enter; there sits an older soldier. In his eye you will see that he is
good with God.
He looks at you with childlike amazement. He doesn’t understand what you are looking for in this country when they are killing your sort. With his hand he shows how five—exactly
five—Westerners were killed by Al Qaeda just yesterday. To drive home his point he passes his finger across his neck. Yes, they cut their throats. You think of Marie, the flaxen-haired blonde with a Dutch accent whom you met at the hotel. You picture how they cut her throat.

You have seen it already in the method they use to kill chickens—if your line of work has taught you anything, it’s that people aren’t much different in death. God comes to your mind as well; you repeat in your mother tongue that he doesn’t exist. That’s why you will do this, because you are becoming increasingly unsure of this assertion. It only happened by chance that you didn’t go with Marie, that you weren’t killed as well.

You will smile at the officer because you have no better idea what to do. You say you don’t want to leave the country, you would just like to ask permission to travel tomorrow, south to the sea, to Aden. He will ask what you want to do there. You lie and say that you are going to visit an NGO. You know you won’t get permission if you tell them you are going to interview rebels.