Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (17 page)

Yoko's torso turned toward Max. “Look, have you ever lived outside the US or even Maine?”

“No.”

She hesitated. “Excuse me for saying this, but you have Asperger's. You're not going to be good at judging violent interpersonal conflict between groups of people. Making decisions about what to do will not be one of your strengths.”

“You're right.”

There was a pause from all of them.

Nodding down at the floor, Max added, “But there are lots of things that I am not especially good at that I still have to do as best I can. Just as there are tasks in your life I could accomplish better than you, but you get to do them.”

There was silence from the others.

She said, “I promise I will ask for your advice before I make any decisions. Tell me what happened.”

Dubois cleared her throat. “Yesterday three men from a mining camp in the Congo drive near Kirumba to look for coltan.”

“Coltan?”

Yoko said, “It's the material that cell phones need in order to work. The area of the Congo on the other side of these mountains is one of the few places in the world that has it. Worth boodles per ounce.”

“Greedy idjuts,” said Pip.

Yoko interrupted, “Yo, some of them are dead. Let's not call them names. And if she's going to hear the story, at least let me tell it. I'll stick to the facts. You'll put in crap just to scare her so you won't feel like a coward when you leave here.”

“That was mean,” said Pip. When she spoke again it was in her lower serious voice. “I have a child. I can't risk my life for your gorillas.”

“Please,” said Mutara, almost in a whisper. He didn't turn away from the window. “Please do not fight. There is enough fighting out there.”

There was a rustle of cloth as the others looked at him.

After a moment, Yoko spoke in a quieter voice. “Coltan, gold, and diamonds are what pays for all the guns the warlords have around here. Part of the reason the Congo's so screwed is cause it's got resources. Everyone wants to control it. Geologists, they don't bring a lot of good to the area.”

“Kirumba is more south than the Kutu tend to go,” added Dubois. “These geologists, yesterday, must believe it is safe.”

“Safe,” snorted Pip.

While they talked, Max turned her head further away from them, watching their reflection in the window that Mutara stood looking out of. Their faces there in the candlelight didn't overwhelm her, hazy circles transposed on dark glass. Although Mutara was the closest to the window, because of the color of his skin, he was the hardest to see.

“The survivor—what was his name? Patson? Patterson?” Yoko asked. “He said he and the two other geologists were still setting up their equipment when some kids with Kalashnikovs stepped out of the bushes. Ten, maybe twelve years old. They seemed pretty jumpy.”

“Qat,” Max said, remembering.

Yoko nodded. “Yeh, they were high from chewing qat. The Kutu pushed the geologists back into their jeep and drove them to a spot where there were at least eighty other Kutu milling through the trees, a few cooking fires burning. The geologists were told to kneel on the ground and lace their fingers together on top of their heads. Some of the kids hung out near them, playing a game with shells. A few stood guard. Others lay down and slept.”

“At one point,” Pip interrupted and Yoko snorted irritated, but didn't stop her, “one of the kids got up to get some food. Walking by, he touched the barrel of his rifle to the back of Patterson's neck. Left it there for a tic, then walked on.”

Max remembered sitting under the willow tree with her Grampie's gun in her mouth. She imagined how different it would be if the gun were pointed at her against her will, if it was an assault rifle and a child's finger was on the trigger.

Yoko continued, “Patterson didn't know how long they knelt there, but the kids finished several games and his hands had been laced on top of his head for so long his shoulders were trembling.”

“Hullo?” Pip said into the phone, “Yes, I'd like a ticket to Australia? Ticket?”

“And then this man comes by,” Dubois said.

Max noticed a strange eagerness in their voices in telling this story, the way their words rushed in one after another. She'd heard this tone before when people talked about car accidents, robberies or childbirth. The need to divulge details, the relief that came from describing trauma.

“We assume it's François Kutu, the warlord, 'cause he's the only adult there,” said Yoko. “Approaching, he didn't seem especially scary. He was on the short side and had a sort of mincing walk, might have come from his outfit that was a little tight around the ankles. The outfit was so ripped and stained, Patterson couldn't figure out what it was, thought maybe something ceremonial or a frilly bed sheet.”

“Hullo?” called Pip into the phone. “Hullo? Am I on hold? Anyone there?”

“François stands there. He says nothing,” said Dubois.

“Stop interrupting, alright? If anything, I'm telling more than I should,” said Yoko. “It seemed understandable he could control the kids. He was the only adult and he never seemed to blink. This was the point that Patterson noticed the beading on the outfit. It was a woman's wedding dress, the train all ripped and dirty. He had the longest eyelashes Patterson had ever seen. François looked the prisoners over and then pointed at the geologist to the left of Patterson. A guy named Stan Mukowski.”

“
Rat-a-tat
goes the guard's rifle,” said Pip. “That fast.”

“Hey, fuck off. I mean it.” Yoko said, “Three Kutu grabbed the body by the collar and dragged it away behind some trees. One of Stan's shoes came off along the way and, later, a kid came back to pick it up. Patterson kept staring at the drag marks all afternoon.”

Max continued to watch them in the window. She examined their reflected gestures and stance. She could see her own body was very still. “How do you know all this?”

“Pip was schtupping a Reuters photographer.”

Dubois said, “You Americans are children about sex.”

“Reuters came here to do a story on us a few months ago. This photographer was with them. He didn't end up taking so many photos.”

“When we heard the news, I rang him up,” Pip said. “He got the story straight from the fella who interviewed Patterson.” She was pacing back and forth as she waited on the phone, three steps one way, then three steps back.

Yoko said, “Patterson said the Kutu were mostly boys, some girls. All of them emaciated. There was no uniform. Some of the older soldiers wore weird stuff, seriously mis-sized: a man's jacket, a woman's shirt, or a girl's dress. Like they were playing dress-up. He saw one boy had on a sequined prom dress, another had on a blond wig and carried a monogrammed purse. One dragged along a teddy bear. Everything was stained and ripped.

“When François came back, he was wearing the vest of the first geologist over his wedding dress. Again he stood in front of the remaining two men. Just as he's raising his finger to point, Patterson saw his eyelashes weren't real, but those fake glue-on ones. One edge of the eyelashes had come unstuck and was uncurling from his eyelid.”

“He points.
Rat-a-tat
,” said Pip. “The other geologist is dragged away.”

“Jesus,” said Max. In the glass she watched the women, noticing how the story affected them. Pip continued to pace, occasionally glancing at the door, as though expecting Kutu to come crashing in at any moment. Dubois sat there compact, like some tiny fierce dog, a Jack Russell terrier ready to spring into action.

Mutara stood in the same room with them, but he sat so still she nearly forgot about him, the hand with the scar on it resting in his other hand. He stared out the window into a distance she could not imagine. He must have been in his teens during the genocide here. She did not know which role he'd been born into: killer or killed.

Yoko stood still, straight and tight as a solider. When she spoke, her voice was flat. “François walks away. Patterson can smell lunch cooking, and some of the kids walk by eating from bowls. He's left there alone for the longest time, with his fingers laced on top of his head, listening to his own breath and the sounds of the kids playing. François comes back a final time. Stands in front of him. And Patterson, he must have gone a little crazy. He can't explain it other than that. He gets to his feet and with all his strength he screams his college-rugby attack-cry right in Francois's face. ‘Yur-
AWWWP
.'

“Standing, he finds he's a foot taller than everyone but this man. From his yell, some of his spit hits the man's lips. François begins to smile, real wide. He has a bit of meat stuck between his front teeth.”

“He didn't point,” said Pip.

Yoko spoke over her, “When nothing happened, Patterson stepped backwards, moving away. He didn't mean to look brave, but his legs wouldn't run, so he walked. François watched, grinning. The children didn't raise their rifles. Once Patterson rounded the corner in the road he managed to shuffle forward into a half-jog. Before nightfall he'd hitched a ride out of the area.”

“See,” said Pip. “I told you . . . . Ah, hullo. Ticket? Airplane?”

Dubois shrugged a very French shrug, her whole body involved, her lips pursed as she blew a little air out. “
Bof
,” was the sound she made, accepting the full mystery of life.

“How long have you been in this country?” Max asked Dubois.

“Three years.”

In the background Pip was saying into the phone, “Australia? Perth?”

“And you?” she asked Yoko.

“Five months.”

“And Pip?”

“Ten weeks.”

Max tried to think of herself as the new assistant in the lab. Yoko and Dubois could tell her what not to touch, where the dangers lay. She lowered her voice to talk to them, while Pip spoke into the phone. “So I said I'd ask your advice. Do you want to leave?”

“Ahh,” said Dubois. “But no. This story is terrible. Terrible. The man is lucky to be alive. But this happens far away.”

“How far?”

“Almost thirty-five miles,” said Yoko. “That's like being in Connecticut while a gang shooting happens in the Bronx. It doesn't concern us.”

“The Kutu were fifty miles away before.”

“Yeh, they're a little closer now. But they're still on the other side of the mountains. They're still across the border,” said Yoko. “Pip, she doesn't understand. You should hear some of the crazy stuff that's happened in South Africa or Somalia . . . ”

“In Sudan or Burundi,” added Dubois.

“Or here,” said Mutara. “Here in Rwanda.”

There was a silence after his words. Pip was the one to break it. She was repeating the words “Perth” and “Australia” with varying emphasis into the receiver.

Max asked, “Mutara, where were you during the genocide?”

“Gisenyi. The town down there.” In the reflection in the window, she saw him gesture with his chin.

“So you've seen what can happen?”

He didn't speak, but his head nodded once.

She thought this over. “At what point would you be alarmed by the Kutu? At what point would you leave?”

Mutara didn't answer quickly, so Yoko spoke instead. “If they got closer than fifteen miles.”

“
Oui
,” agreed Dubois. “Otherwise, it is just a bad thing that happens somewhere else. Like a train accident or explosion in another country.”

“Think of all the people there are to murder and pillage between Kirumba and here,” said Yoko.

Not knowing the distance to Kirumba or how populated the countryside was, Max continued to await Mutara's advice.

Into the silence, Mutara spoke, answering Max's question. He said, almost to himself, “Where is there to go?”

Pip's voice got louder. “Planes? Vroom, vroom?” She took the phone away from her ear to stare at it in amazement, then hung up. “The phone charge is gone.” Her voice was tight. “God, I hate this.”

“We charge the phone tonight. Wait for tomorrow. Call the airlines again. Ask Mutara to speak for you in Kinyarwanda.” Dubois spoke soothingly, stepping over to pull Pip close. “You must not worry. You will be with your daughter again.
Tout va bien se passer.
”

Pip pressed in against her, hiding her face.

 

Late that night, Max lay in bed, wondering what to do, thinking over the responses of the others. They were neurotypicals. She normally relied on them for what to do. Unfortunately they didn't all agree on one course of action.

She imagined not going back up the mountains tomorrow, not seeing the gorillas again. Not finding the vine. She imagined returning to Maine now, to live back among the humans.

Yoko had the flattest, least emotional voice. A voice Max associated with being scientific and objective. A voice similar to her own.

She decided to go with Yoko's estimate.

O
tombe led Jeremy to the WaKikuyu village where the lions had recently killed. Standing on the riverbank, Otombe pointed out where the lion had ambushed a woman when she was washing clothes at sunset, dragged her under the nearby tree to eat her, with her five-year-old watching. Now, no one went out at any time close to sunset, did not step outside of their bomas until well into the next morning when the lions would probably be sleeping.

The tree was a huge baobab, the trunk twenty feet in diameter, the limbs clenched and twisted. Beneath, the shade was cool and the grass rich, a strangely beautiful site for a murder. By the time they arrived, there was nothing more incriminating remaining than some slightly trampled grass, not even a stain. Morning doves called, grasshoppers whined. After the long walk, Jeremy felt the need to lie down here in this cool shade, on the matted grass and nap. Instead he studied the branches above for lions.

Catching him at this, Otombe said, “Lions are poor climbers, too heavy. People can go higher, faster. If you need to flee, always run up a tree. Climb more than the height of two men. They can jump that high.”

Run up a tree, Jeremy thought.
Run
? He remembered his awkwardness in scaling the tree when they were hunting the hippo.

From the WaKikuyu village, a crowd shuffled toward them. The children were bony and naked like the N'derobbo children. A few of them had strangely distended bellies as though they had just consumed the meal of their lives, but even these ones moved as slowly as the old people, barely lifting their feet. These WaKikuyu, he saw, were not faring as well as the N'derobbo.

“The more you know about lions,” Otombe said, “the better you will hunt them, the more likely you will survive. I will teach you. Any boma must be very tight to stop them. The lions are used to thorns. They have to push their way through the nyika all day long. They can force themselves through tiny holes.”

He thought of the small nyika tunnel he had attempted to crawl through a few days ago, in order to trail the lion.

“If a lion catches you, he will kill in one of three ways. Sometimes he stops your breath with his mouth over your face.” Otombe opened his mouth wide and fit it over his fist, kept it there for a long moment. Jeremy found that his breathing became a little labored at the thought. “Sometimes, instead, he pokes his teeth through your temples. That is the best way. Death is like that then.” He clapped his hands. The children turned their slow eyes to him, not able to comprehend even a word of English. “Sometimes, with his hind claws, he kicks out the belly of you, the entrails. That is not so good. Most times you are not dead before he starts to eat.”

Jeremy felt no desire to know how Otombe learned these details.

“First thing,” he continued, “lions like to lick the skin off your body, especially the thighs and haunches. They lap the blood up for their thirst. They eat the muscles after that, some of the innards. Most times, they do not touch a human's head or face. My people think it is because the lions are spiritual, believe it a sin. The head and the bones they leave to the hyenas. Hyenas are not like lions. They will eat anything.”

The hunter continued, “Lions do not like to go into enclosed places they cannot see into. They do not know if there might be danger in there. You are safer in a tent than in the open, even though they could easily rip through the canvas.

“Whatever happens, never run unless you can get up a tree. They are cats and will chase whatever flees, and we are not fast like gazelles. If you cannot escape up a tree, better to stand quite still.”

Momentarily Jeremy attempted to picture this, staring at a lion from a few feet away, a cat weighing over four hundred pounds, standing four feet tall. He imagined trying to stand still without his legs crumpling underneath him from the fear.

To distract himself from the image of what would happen next, he took his lunch out of his satchel for the WaKikuyu children. After hearing how the lions ate, he had lost all hunger. He held the sandwich for a moment in his hand, uncertain how to divvy this tidbit up for so many. Before he could arrive at a solution, the children leapt forward, adults slapping them out of the way, everyone grabbing. He was squeezed out of the crowd by the frenzy. Afterward, as he remembered it, the detail that frightened him the most was the utter silence of the fight; not a single child cried out in pain.

While the village battled over the scraps, Otombe led him away, walking fast, not saying a word in praise or rebuke.

 

Late that afternoon, they trailed the day-old prints of the lion that had walked out of the railroad camp carrying the dead man's bag. They followed the pugmarks for half a mile before they found the strap of the satchel. It lay at the bottom of the river detour that Jeremy's men had been digging for days. The strap lay torn and chewed, marks in the dirt where the lions had rolled on their backs and played with it like kittens. Crumpled up on the dirt nearby, the leather satchel itself was wet with their saliva. They must have come back here recently.

Otombe crouched down to examine the prints up close, but Jeremy noticed he touched nothing.

He does not want the lions to get a clear whiff of him, Jeremy thought with sudden certainty. He does not wish for them to know who in particular hunts them. Jeremy became aware, after walking all day in the heat, he was rather fragrant himself. He eased away from the nearby bushes that might brush against him in the breeze.

“They've been at this spot more than once,” said Otombe, hunching down to look at a pugmark so clean Jeremy could see the imprint of hair between the toes. “They like this place, this man's things. Do you have any sheep in camp?”

Jeremy blinked at the change in subject. “Some goats I believe.”

The man nodded. “Have three tied up here to an object so heavy the lions cannot drag it away. Use chains, not rope, nothing the lions can bite through. Tonight, we will wait with your gun in a nearby tree, at the very top. See if the lions return. Now, we must bathe. Scrub with herbs at the armpits and groin. Tonight we must have no scent.”

For their bath in the river, Jeremy summoned two askaris with rifles to stand on vantage points upon the riverbank above, watching for crocodiles and hippos. He had been around Otombe all day long, with him wearing only his goat-skin toga and choker, yet when the man dropped his robe to the ground to step into the water, Jeremy turned away, trying to erase from his mind the image of his slender body.

Involuntarily he remembered Bert at the watering hole, his drooping bathing suit, the look of triumph he gave Jeremy just before punching him.

His own clothes were much more difficult to remove, unbuttoning and tugging, him hopping about on one foot trying to pull off his drawers. He did not look at Otombe, did not want to see any amusement at the complexity of his layers. Finally naked, he hurried into the river.

In the water it was different. After the heat of the day, the water felt delicious against his body, cooling him off, easing the tightness of a headache. He wondered what the askaris saw looking at the two of them in the water. Without guns or clothing to differentiate who had the power of the railroad behind him, they simply became two men, one short and sure in his body, the other not.

He kept his back turned to the men as he scrubbed himself awkwardly with the plants Otombe had given him. They smelled of mint and something medicinal. Even though the water felt cool, he stayed in it not one extra second, sloshing quickly out to hide in his towel.

Otombe stayed longer, floating on his back, breathing gently out his nose, his chest bobbing at the surface, his face quiet. Whatever he felt about the upcoming night's hunt was not obvious.

When they returned to the site of the satchel, the goats were securely chained to a railroad sleeper, a trunk of creosoted wood weighing almost three hundred pounds. The goats' vibrating
maah-ahhs
of confusion traveled far through the forest. Otombe requested that a ladder be propped up against the side of the nearest tall tree and, once it was there, the two of them climbed it, neither them nor the ladder touching the trunk of the tree anywhere below fifteen feet. Twenty feet up in the tree, they nailed boards into the branches, one for a seat, the other for a seatback, and then settled down to wait. Carrying the ladder, the Indians who had helped them hurried back toward the safety of the boma.

“Down there, will the lions not smell us? On the goats and the sleeper, on the ground?” Jeremy found he was beginning to talk like Otombe, his sentences shorter and rhythmic.

“They can smell humans, yes, but the smell will be hours old. With luck, they will not scent us now in this tree. Not on the trunk or on the breeze.” Otombe looked at him. “No more talking. If you have to, make hand signals. Move as little as possible. They will start hunting soon.”

The sun set within minutes, the night calls of the riverbank began, the groans and splashes of the hippos, the yips of the jackals, the
woo-oop
of the hyenas. The mosquitoes rose as a low cloud. Otombe sat motionless, his arms tucked into his cloak, not slapping at the insects. Jeremy draped some mosquito netting over his hat, tucking its ends deep into his collar to keep the bugs off his face and neck. He hid his hands in his armpits and attempted to sit still.

Within half an hour the first of the lions roared, perhaps a mile to the west. The noise rough and full, echoing through the night. The sound and the distance it traveled clearly signaled the power of the animal.

Nervous, Jeremy started to pack a pipe with tobacco. Otombe closed his hand round Jeremy's fingers on the pipe and shook his head. Jeremy looked down at their hands together. Otombe did not make the gesture brief, did not withdraw from the contact as a European would. Jeremy waited long enough to feel the warmth, the firmness of the man's grip, then he broke the contact, putting his pipe away.

He assumed at no point during the long night ahead would he be allowed to sip from his flask of fragrant coffee either. Even his water, he realized, must be rationed, because urine would smell.

The second lion answered from the southeast, some trailing grumbles at the end of his call. He could imagine the brute standing there, his paws spread, head back, the roar rumbling through his chest. His golden eyes half-closed as he sampled the breeze all around.

Below the tree, the goats bleated uneasily and their wood bells thunked. The chains tying them to the sleeper clanked. After a minute, one of the goats tore at the grass and began to chew.

The moon rose above them, an orange orb low on the horizon, lighting the ground below them surprisingly well. Otombe mimed sleeping, then he pointed to Jeremy and a spot in the sky the moon would reach in about three hours. Nodding, Jeremy wrapped the rifle's strap several times around his forearm, leaned back, and was asleep almost instantly.

He awoke when a bird flapped by his face close enough he could hear the waxy whisper of its pinions. He startled up, even in his alarm remembering to be silent. Otombe sat motionless beside him, his eyes fixed on a spot off to the right, somewhere past the nearest trees.

Below them, the bell of a goat thunked. One of the goats shifted its footing. Looking down, Jeremy realized the night was strangely quiet. Not a hippo chuffed, not a leopard rasped. He could just make out the goats below, standing at attention, all looking in the same direction as Otombe. Jeremy ran his eyes over the trees where they looked, a few low bushes, tiny pinpricks of fireflies signaling intermittently. He wondered if the goats' strange yellow eyes had good night vision, if Otombe's dark irises worked better in the darkness than did his green ones. Perhaps, while he had slept, there had been some noise. At the moment, the silence was so crisp he could hear it ringing in his head.

Then the screaming started, the gunshots and the clanking of pans. Camp.

At this distance, all the fear and frenzy was stripped from the noise, just faint clanks and pops and squeals, the pathos of bugs. Above the other noises, one man's voice cut through, a single word called again and again, crying out the name of his lost friend.