Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (26 page)

 

Teatime took place during the height of the day's heat while the Indians napped, dark bodies lying prone in the shade of the tents.

Jeremy turned around from his desk to watch Sarah set out the tea. From behind, she was so thin she almost appeared to be a boy. As she straightened up, he noted the silver bangles on her biceps. They glinted in the sun, catching the light as she walked away. He was still watching when she looked over her shoulder and caught his stare. She paused for a moment, neither smiled nor looked away, then stooped into the cooking tent.

Waiting for Alan before he started the tea, Jeremy began to shiver, his teeth chattering, his vision trembling. Even in this temperature, he found it necessary to wrap two blankets around himself. When Alan still had not appeared after a few minutes, he began to gulp down the hot tea in hopes it would warm him up.

Yesterday at dawn, when Alan had done nothing at first for the mauled men lying under the slashed tent, Jeremy had spoken strongly to him. He stated that Alan should help these men. When Alan continued to stand still, startled by the harshness of the words, Jeremy had responded by bellowing, loud enough to make all the nearby Indians turn around, regardless of whether or not they understood English.

“You are a goddamn physician.” The curse kicked out of his mouth, satisfying in its hard anger.

Alan had paused before stepping toward the wounded men. Yelling at him was bad enough, but doing it in front of the coolies compounded the insult. His eyes had been slightly hooded, glittering.

Since yesterday, Jeremy felt he could not show weakness of any type around Alan. Thus far, his malaria seemed remained relatively mild. He was still able to talk, to walk around. He knew the majority of the Indians who contracted the disease lived. His chances, he assumed, were better than most from the quality of the food he ate and the quinine he took. As a precautionary measure, he began doubling his daily dosage. He did not know if there was any level at which the medicine became toxic.

Taking a night off to sleep from hunting the lions, even when this ill, was unthinkable. He could not let Otombe face the creatures alone. All day, he kept remembering the quiet way in which Otombe had said he would die to kill them.

When he was back overseeing the work in the canal, Jeremy held himself rigidly straight in front of his men, trying to quell his shivering. What he wanted above all was to see this canal completed, these last ten feet dug, the muddy water spilling along this detour, destroying the lions' favored playground.

The men seemed to feel none of his urgency. They dug leisurely, long pauses stretching out between each rasp of a shovel into the earth. Each man waited a moment before hefting up his full basket of dirt, moving just fast enough to not attract a jemadar's wrath. Like Jeremy, the men must not have slept well since the night the lions took that first victim. They moved so slowly as to appear to be sleepwalking.

After an hour of work, with only two feet of progress made, Jeremy lost his temper.

“Move men, move,” he yelled. They turned to him, surprised, unused to this tone from him.

He searched for the right words. “Do you not understand? The faster we complete this bridge, the sooner we are away from these foul lions?” His voice spiraled louder with each word, audibly trembling from the shivering in his chest. “The quicker we work, the sooner we are away from this river's malaria.” Listening to the volume of his voice, its vehemence, he seemed to float a little above himself. He could see his body swaying on its feet, red in the face. In this heat, people with his skin coloration did not look their best. “The faster you build this, the more of you will live.” His neck swelled with his words, spit flew from his lips. “So work, damn you, work.”

The men's dusky faces were closed. Some of them did not understand English. Singh, standing beside him, stared, not translating.

Exhausted, he plopped down into his canvas chair, blinking up at the sky. After the storm this afternoon, it had turned a delft blue. He made himself inhale deeply while he watched the lilting path of a swallow chasing insects overhead. With every day that the lions slowed the coolies in their work, the railroad's final bill mounted higher. The British Parliament had already vigorously debated whether they needed this colony at all, much less this expensive railroad which ran straight to a lake hundreds of miles from the nearest European settlement. If the lions stalled the railroad's progress long enough, the price tag might grow so large Parliament would order a halt to the work.

Jeremy found this thought was not entirely unappealing. Yes, it would mean his job here would terminate early and the railroad that he had worked to build would end up helping no one. However, on the other hand, without the railroad, this land would stay a little longer the way it was. This red dust, the leaping gazelles, these nearly naked people. Otombe's tribe. He had not forgotten the manner in which some of his neighbors in Maine had regarded him. Once this railroad was built and more settlers arrived, he could well imagine how Otombe would be treated.

Of course modern life must come to this area at some point. But perhaps if this railroad were not built, if this land were not transformed now, during these years of Europe's scramble for African territory, then at whatever point the change did happen, in a decade or two, it might be managed in a slightly different manner.

He was lying back in the chair now, shivering, phrases rolling through his head,
overseeing my men
,
seeing over my men
. Opening his eyes for a second, he saw Singh watching him. Jeremy tried to smile back. Only after he closed his eyes, did he realize Singh was not smiling.

 

That night sitting in a tree again above the satchel—the goats below chained up to several railway sleepers, their tentative
maa-maas
echoing through the forest—sweat began to bead up on Jeremy's face. Otombe had not yet thought of a new way to hunt the lions, one the beasts would not expect. The only idea Jeremy could come up with was to release the goats and chain themselves up instead. The smell of two humans seemed much more certain to attract the lions. Even feverish, he knew enough not to suggest this idea.

Tonight was New Year's Eve. Back in Bangor, his family would be having a dinner party to celebrate the turning of the century and all they believed the next hundred years would bring: modern technology sweeping poverty away around the globe, the regular use of soap even by the lower classes, the spread of the Christian faith, and a modest style of dress to all swarthy peoples. Even his Grandpapi must be staying up late to raise a glass of port to the glories of the future.

At some point, delirious, Jeremy began to mumble to himself and felt Otombe clasp his hand across his mouth. He quieted under the hand, reached up to trace each of the fingers. He was getting sicker, his temperature fluctuations more intense, the times between the deliriums shorter.

He had begun to notice that even when he faced away from Otombe, or, like now, when he closed his eyes, he could sense the precise shape of the space between them like an object. He knew the distance from his shoulder to Otombe's, from his face to the other's, the gap between their hips. Through this new sixth sense, he knew how the hunter was sitting, down to how his left hand lay on his knee with the thumb slightly bent. Still holding the man's palm over his mouth, eyes closed, touching the streamlined beauty of his hand, the heat of the fever swelled in his chest and somehow he understood the encounter with the lions would come within a few days.

He could almost see the beasts, too, with all they now knew of him, their giant heads lowered, tracking through the grass the familiar scent of his trail, moving silently through the underbrush until they could raise their yellow eyes toward his tree, pricking their ears forward intently. Soon they would meet.

Then, either the lions or he and Otombe would die.

Either way, the end of his hunting with Otombe would come, their connection and mission, their time together at night. As it was now, their differences were what brought them together in this tree—Otombe's knowledge and Jeremy's rifle.

If the lions were the ones to die, then afterward a certain awkwardness would result. No longer would there exist a clear subject to discuss or tasks to accomplish. Greeting one another, after the first few sentences, the silence would swell. Their differences would seem more apparent, the disparity in culture, wealth, and expectations. Confusion filling them, each would shift his gaze away.

And in any case, with the lions dead, the railway bridge would soon be built, the construction of the tracks moving on again, past the river, a half-mile further each day. Jeremy would surge ahead with the railroad, tightening its hold across the land, leaving Otombe and his tribe behind.

Startled, Jeremy let the man's hand fall.

 

In the first light of dawn, after an eventless night, the two men slithered down the tree, the cloth of Jeremy's pants rasping loudly against the bark. The sun was starting to peek through the nyika, the birds chattering. Jumping to the ground, Otombe paused to stretch out after the night's cramped waiting. Jeremy half-stumbled as he landed, but straightening up, he watched Otombe. His arms reaching up, spine arching, his head rolling back. The skin tightened across his neck and, for a moment, the beat of his jugular was apparent. Mesmerized, Jeremy took a half step forward, perhaps to trace this delicate pulse with one finger, perhaps to pull this man's whole body against his chest. If he did not arrive at some sort of new understanding with Otombe within the next few days, he would lose him.

But even as his weight shifted forward toward the hunter, he imagined what the crack of Otombe's fist would feel like against his jaw, the punch so hard his head would twist and his body follow, the slow-motion stumble and fall, his face bouncing in the dust.

Mid-step, Jeremy stopped. Loneliness did not frighten him; he had borne it one way or another for most of his life, but if Otombe's gentle eyes regarded him with disgust, if he hit him . . .

The engineer stood there, frozen.

When it came to this area of his life, he was used to surviving on so much less than he desired. Thus, in this moment, unsure of what to do, the question he asked himself was not what he wanted. The question he asked was what he required for survival.

And the answer appeared to him so quickly it was as though it had been prepared long ago, only waiting for him to ask. He thought the minimum he needed was to hold on to his memories of the past few days: walking with Otombe through the nyika, the nights in the trees, bathing in the river naked, all the while feeling himself understood and accepted. In many ways this was more than he had ever believed he could possess. As mechanically as though he were turning the crank to shift the weight on some vast fulcrum, he forced himself to twist his face away, to turn from the man who was just easing out of his stretch.

Thus, Jeremy was the first to spot the pugmarks. The prints pressed deeply into the mud beside a puddle, six feet from the tree. The wide pads of each paw, the crisp indents of the claws. Looking around, he found the prints everywhere. The lions had not touched the goats, but spent their night quartering the ground around the tree, staring hungrily upward.

Otombe followed his stare. For the first time, Jeremy saw his expression fill with something he would call fear.

A
s Dubois drove the van into the parking lot, they saw it was now full of the army. Jeeps and trucks and cars were parked everywhere; soldiers leaned against the doors, smoking cigarettes. There seemed to be no uniform. Instead there was a hodgepodge of jogging pants, T-shirts, and sneakers mixed with a scattering of as much camouflage as could be afforded. Mounted on the back of many of the jeeps and trucks were large guns. The sheer number and size of these riveted Max's attention. Before today she'd never seen any gun bigger than a policeman's neatly sheathed handgun.

On the drive here, Dubois had told Max the news she'd learned, that yesterday an American spy plane had flown over the known Kutu encampment. Beamed back to Washington, the aerial photos had shown an empty clearing, no people visible, only the cindery remains of three large bonfires.

The Kutu were on the move.

In the parking lot, two soldiers signaled to Mutara to stop the van. One walked around to lean in the driver's window, examining the passengers. He spoke a fast command.

“We get out of the car,” said Mutara. “The army takes it.”

“Tell him we are from the research station,” said Dubois. “They do not take it.”

Mutara paused for a moment, looking at Dubois, before he turned to the soldier and translated the statement. The man didn't bother to reply. He simply nodded and the soldier on the other side of the van clicked back the safety on his rifle.

The three of them piled out of the van with laudable efficiency.

As Max stepped from the vehicle with her bags of food, she realized she was losing the van's ability to speed her away from here, away from this situation. Everything around her clicked into sharper focus. The guns, the soldiers, the jungle behind. Up until now, this region had been one she simply voyaged through, surprised at its conditions, while her mental viewpoint remained anchored in Bangor. Standing on the asphalt now, her perspective shifted dramatically. This country became her country in the critical terms that this was the place in which her body currently resided, her particular pocket of flesh sucking in its measure of air.

While one soldier rummaged through the van searching for anything of use, the other told Mutara if they wanted to dispute the loss of the van, they should talk to the Colonel over by the yellow Honda.

The Colonel was speaking on a cell phone in Kinyarwanda. He was easy to pick, out for he wore a real uniform. He had only one hand, his right arm ending in a beige nub where the wrist would normally be.

Max wondered how many more right hands were missing in this country than in the States. She imagined Rafiki and him meeting each other, reaching forward to clasp invisible right hands together in a hearty handshake—sharing so much.

When the Colonel hung up, Mutara addressed him in Kinyarwanda, his voice clear but respectful.

The man paused, probably while he examined them, then replied, “I grew up in Uganda. You can speak English.”

“Sir, we are researchers from the Karisoke Station.” Dubois said, “Your soldiers take our van. I ask you to give it back.” “Mandative” was the word that came to Max. It was clear Dubois had dealt with government officials before.

“We require its services for now.”

Dubois took half a step forward as she pressed their case. “Perhaps you appreciate to know your Minister of Environment is my employer. If you like, I ask him to call you.” She sounded collected and confident. Max's eyes drifted over to the nearest jeep and the three-foot-long gun mounted in the back. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and worked on not rocking back and forth.

His voice tightened at her persistence. “It's possible you haven't heard the latest news. A convoy of several hundred jeeps has been reported headed in this direction from Rutshuru.”

Max glanced at Dubois to see how to take this. Her expression revealed no emotion, but her eyes moved fast to look up at the mountains.

“So far this story comes only through secondhand accounts,” said the Colonel. “I have also heard stories of trucks heading away from us toward Kinshasa. I've even had an eyewitness describe a hijacked plane leaving for Florida.” A soldier appeared and saluted, awaiting his attention. The colonel held up one finger to the man to wait. He was working hard to be patient with them. “What am I to believe? Perhaps none of these rumors are true. Or maybe, as we speak, all twenty thousand of them are hiking up the other side of these mountains.”

At this image, Max's fingers clenched and touched something hairy in her pocket. Already on edge, she jerked her hand out in a big motion as though she'd been burned. Then remembered the
féticheuse's
pouch. Everyone, including the waiting soldier, turned to stare at her. “Fuckity fucking fuck,” she said, flapping her hand.

There was a pause while they absorbed that.

Dubois spoke first, “Some researchers are still at the station up there.” She motioned toward the mountains.

The Colonel said, “Use my cell phone. Get them down now.” There were two soldiers lined up now, awaiting his attention. A third was striding briskly toward them.

“The phone up there is not working. We no longer have electricity. Listen, you keep the van. In exchange, you give us twenty men to protect us. We go up to bring the others down.” Dubois spoke quickly, bargaining for all she could get. “Also, when we get back, you transport us away from here.”

The Colonel paused, probably he was staring at her. “Perhaps you haven't noticed, but I don't have a lot of men here.” He gestured with the nub of his arm around at the soldiers. They seemed to number in the hundreds rather than thousands. “We do not have people to spare.”

“I call our embassies,” said Dubois.

“Good. Have them send a car and get you out of my way.”

“Sir,” said Mutara. “If researchers die up there, it makes trouble for Rwanda. Maybe we get four men. We are off the mountains by nine in the morning.”

His torso turned toward Mutara, considering.

“Remember,” Mutara said, “that journalist during the genocide, how angry the Americans get?”

The Colonel was silent for a moment. “Two men. Be off the mountains by seven.”

As they turned to go, he held up the nub of his wrist. Maybe he had a clear image of the motion he was making with his missing hand. In his mind he might have been holding his hand up in a policeman's gesture to stop, or pointing his index finger authoritatively at the mountains. Or perhaps his palm was simply cupped, to catch whatever fate was thrown their way. “Understand. I cannot begin to guarantee your safety.”

Within five minutes, the two soldiers were ready, and Dubois stood at the base of the path with them, tightening her backpack. She seemed to feel no doubt about this mission, and assumed Max would come along. Max watched her, unable to decide. She imagined the first Kutu just reaching the top of the mountains, peering down toward the clearing where the research station lay. She did not want in any way to climb these mountains. If Dubois, Mutara, and these boys went, was her presence really necessary?

The soldiers the Colonel had lent them were definitely not his most valuable men. They looked no older than fourteen. The oversized rifles and ammunition seemed unfair burdens on their gangly frames. The officer who had brought them over talked to them first in a loud voice, pointing up at the mountains and then at their chests, jabbing his fingertip into their sternums. Although Max couldn't understand what he was saying, she did see Mutara's head turn fast toward the boys, startled. In spite of their youth, their breath in the breeze had a rotting scent to it—the breakdown of protein—like someone with a wasting disease or bad dental hygiene. When the older boy responded, his voice sounded like he might cry. The younger one kept his head down, but his voice, when he talked, held no shame in it.

“It is one-thirty,” Dubois said over her shoulder to Max. “If we climb to the station in three hours, we can descend before dark.” In French, she repeated her statement to the soldiers, then had to say it again slower and with some illustrative pantomiming before they nodded. Their French seemed far from fluent.

Dubois started to climb, leaving Max at the base of the path, frozen with indecision. Then Mutara spoke from behind them. “Dubois.”

Turning, they saw him still standing down on the asphalt, his arms at his sides. Dubois came to a halt.

He talked to her, not Max. “You understand. I cannot go with you.”

“What?” said Max.

“Oh,” said Dubois. “Your family. You must care for them. Get them away from here?”

He nodded.

“Family?” asked Max.

Dubois ignored whatever fear she might have held for herself. “I thank you for helping us. For taking the time.”

“I am sorry I am not able to do more.” His neck turned so his head faced in the direction of the two soldiers then turned back to Dubois. The shadows of the afternoon had already started. His voice when he spoke was not happy. “Climb down tonight. Get off the mountains fast.”

Dubois said, “Next time we meet, we have a big meal and tell stories of this day. Good luck to you and your family. For now, let us hurry.” She turned and started climbing.

Max forced herself to look into Mutara's face, into his eyes. “Thank you,” she said. She noticed for the first time he had a small sty on the bottom of his right eyelid. His jaw was tight with worry.

Holding his gaze, she nodded once as she had with Titus, a short and serious nod.

Then she turned her eyes to Dubois, who was moving upward, low and purposeful, planting each foot firmly and grabbing onto what branches she could. She had her hair pinned up, out of the way for the hike. This hairstyle revealed the back of her neck, the tendons so narrow and exposed. For a moment, Max could picture exactly what the end of a rifle barrel would look like, nestled there between those tendons, aimed at the spinal cord.

The world creaking on its fulcrum.

This tiny woman climbing up, all alone except for two boys.

So Max followed. Not so much a decision as an unavoidable response given the circumstances. Perhaps her lifetime of forcing herself to do things she didn't want to somehow made this choice easier.

She concentrated on simply moving, finding handholds, and not slipping. She imagined herself running back down this slope at sunset to be driven away from here in a military car—Yoko, Dubois and Pip sitting giggly and exhausted beside her.

When she reached the first turn in the path, she glanced down one last time to the parking lot and the safety of the army. Beyond them, she glimpsed Mutara running along the road toward town, head down and serious.

For a moment, standing there, she could smell again that dank room full of datura and tobacco hung up to dry, could hear the
féticheuse's
voice rumble in her ancient language, “You have strength. Use it
.
” Jerking away from the sight of the road, she continued to climb. At least up here among the trees, she felt less exposed.

Hiking up, they were all a little nervous, but the soldiers seemed the most twitchy. They held their rifles in front of them at the ready, even though that made climbing more difficult, and they jerked toward every loud birdcall, pointing their guns. This slowed their climbing down. Within a few minutes, she caught up with the younger soldier on the trail. Climbing past him, she noticed out of the edge of her eyes a wad of food or tobacco bulging in his cheek. His jaws worked on the wad nervously, his hands tight on his rifle. It was possible these boys had never been in a jungle like this before.

Twenty minutes up the trail, a nearby hyrax screamed, and the younger boy panicked, shot a short round in that direction. The noise was explosively loud in the jungle, the violent chatter of a jackhammer. Where the bullets hit a
Vernonia
tree, wood chips flew out, a canyon created big enough for Max's foot to fit inside. The white center of the trunk was revealed, seeping slow sap.

At the gunfire, the older boy threw himself to the ground, while Dubois and Max, inexperienced with flying bullets, stood there tall as patient targets, gaping shocked at all the damage visible in a being as large and solid as a tree. Max knew she could have chopped at the
Vernonia
with a hatchet for ten minutes before she could create that much damage. Luckily, a tree could survive a wound as deep as this, for its large body was based on the concept of multiple redundancies: many leaves, many roots, many veins filled with sap. Nowhere was there the soft lump of a fragile and irreplaceable organ.

Standing there, her ears echoing with the noise, she knew that her body, on the other hand, was a pulpy bag.

Her eyes turned to the rifle the boy carried. Her wariness of it had intensified exponentially. The other soldier lay on the ground, cradling his hands over his head. She had never imagined she would live—even for a few hours—in this sort of world. She glanced at Dubois, who was gaping at the tree, mouth ajar. Max would have to learn on her own how to navigate this.

Lesson number one, she thought. Next time bullets flew, she'd be the first to throw herself to the ground, hug it for safety. Around guns, she could not afford many lessons.

After Dubois had explained to the boys in French that the sound that had scared them had come from a tiny animal, the group began to climb again. The soldiers tired quickly at this altitude, huffing like Max had her first day up here. Within half an hour, they were stumbling along the trail, heaving for breath and pleading, “
Arrêt, arrêt.”
It was clear at this speed the group wasn't going to reach the research station soon enough to get back down the mountains during daylight.

Half a mile from the station, the women hurried ahead of the soldiers, to warn Pip and Yoko. They got seventy-five feet ahead, then maybe a hundred. The yells from the soldiers got more emphatic. “
Arrêt
,” yelled one of them, “
arrêt
.” Dubois ignored this, but the shrillness caught Max's attention. She was used to judging emotions through the voice. She glanced back. The younger boy was pointing the rifle loosely in their direction. She didn't feel entirely sure he wouldn't use it. She called to Dubois and they waited for the soldiers to catch up. When the boys walked by, their heads were higher. They cradled their rifles in front of them. The power shifted to those who held the guns.