Tongues of Fire (28 page)

The moon slipped down the far side of the sky. Neither of them slept. After a while the blackness began to turn navy blue in the east. “You should get going,” Paul said.

“Not yet.”

But it was time. After a few minutes Rehv stood up. The boy stood up too. “It's getting light,” Rehv said.

“I know.”

“Walk with me a little.”

“No.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Then Rehv embraced the boy and hugged him close. He felt the boy's arms squeezing him hard. He kissed the top of his curly head.

“Dad?”

“Yes.”

“You'll be at the bridge?”

“A week from tonight. Where the tracks cross the wadi. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We'll go back.”

“Back?”

“Somewhere.”

Rehv held onto the boy. Navy blue advanced across the sky. Rehv became aware that the boy had let his hands drop to his sides. “It's time,” Rehv said. The boy nodded. Rehv kissed his curly head again and let him go. Two kisses. When was the last one before those? “Until next week,” Rehv said. He turned and started walking away, toward Muglad. He knew he didn't want to go to Muglad. He wanted to go to the cabin on Lac du Loup. But what about the little white house on Mount Carmel? He reached the edge of the depression.

“Dad?”

He stopped. He did not want to turn around. “What?” he called.

“What if you can't make it next week? Or if I can't?”

He faced the boy. “Then we both try the next night.”

“And what if you're not there the next night?”

“I will be.”

“But if you're not?”

“Then it's the next and the next and the next. And so on. But don't worry. I'll be there. The first night. Okay?” He thought the boy nodded, but he was too far away and it was still too dark to be sure. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Rehv turned and walked down into the depression. “My paddle's clean and bright, flashing like silver.” The song started in his head, and it wouldn't stop. It was loud and getting louder. “My paddle's clean and bright, flashing like silver.” He tried to think of something else, or another song, but no other song came. And somewhere behind the music he heard the screaming start. He kept walking.

Paul went to the edge of the depression and watched his father moving away, past the shallow pool and up the other side. He disappeared in the gold fringe that had begun to shine on the eastern edge of the navy blue.

Paul walked back to the baobab trees and lay down. He felt like crying. He let himself cry. Later he slept.

When he awoke, it was the middle of the day and very hot. He was thirsty. He drank from the canteen. He ate a couple of oranges. Then he took off his sandals, his jubba, and his underwear and went down to the shallow pool. He sat in the warm water and washed the dust from his body. He walked back toward the trees. The sun dried him before he got there.

He put on a clean white jubba and sat in the shade and waited.

Soon he saw a dust cloud in the west. It was red brown and hung low in the air. He sat beneath the big baobab tree and watched it coming closer. After a while he could distinguish little figures beneath the cloud, two-legged ones and four-legged ones. They came closer. Men and women. Children. Oxen. A few horses. Cows. Hundreds of them. Paul stood up.

They moved slowly toward him across the plain. Tired, gaunt animals and tired, gaunt men. No one saw Paul. They were interested only in water. They came to the depression. The cows went down to the shallow pool. The men who had horses dismounted. The horses went down to the pool. The women removed the gourds, straw mats, baskets, and iron pots from the backs of the oxen and let them go down too. The men and women stood on the edge of the depression. No one spoke.

After a while they noticed Paul standing by the big tree. They walked around the depression and came near him. They stopped a few yards away. He saw how thin they were, how worn, how dusty; some were dressed in rags, almost naked. But their skin was the same color as his. He looked more like them than like his father.

They watched him the way he had always known they would. He pointed to a spot on the ground between the two trees and said in Arabic: “Dig here. There is water. But you have to dig deep.”

They watched him. An old man, brown and wrinkled, stepped forward and crossed the space between them. He looked Paul in the eye. Paul looked back in his. The old man fell to his knees and kissed the hem of Paul's robe.

“The Mahdi,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

My paddle's keen and bright

Flashing with silver

Follow the wild goose flight

Dip dip and swing.

Isaac Rehv walked all day. He sang. He talked to himself. “Okay. Muglad. Muglad. First, buy some trading goods. Get the trading goods. Then, then. What? Get a room. Cheap. That's it. Trading goods. Cheap room. Railroad bridge.” He counted them off on his fingers. Once he laughed and started running. He laughed and ran, laughed and ran, his jubba flapping around his legs. He stopped when he felt how hard his heart was pounding. Even after he stopped, it pounded in his ears for a long time. He sat down beside a dusty bush and drank from the canteen. He lay down. He put his ear to the ground, like an Indian. If the earth had a heart beating under its skin he couldn't hear it.

He jumped up. He had done it. He had done it.

Oh, God. The boy.

But the boy wanted it.

He had made him want it.

Had he?

He stopped jumping and walked. The sun pressed down on the top of his head like a heavy weight. At first the dusty sky was yellow ochre. It turned to red ochre as the sun sank toward the horizon. Miles above, a plane scratched a pink line through the redness pointing west. To Lac du Loup. It kept pointing long after the plane had disappeared.

A week from last night. Was that six nights or seven?

The boy.

Dip dip and scream: “Muglad. Muglad.”

He reached Muglad as the sun went down. It was narrow dirt streets filled with sweating people, overloaded donkeys, goats, chickens, and dung. The houses were mud. The stores were shacks; the fancy ones had tin roofs. A man with no legs swung his muscular trunk onto a board with tea-wagon-sized wheels underneath and rolled off through the dirt, pushing himself along with his hands. A woman had a baby with no arms. A man had a face with no nose. They all wanted money. Rehv hurried on.

“Muglad. Trading goods. A room.” But he was tired. The trading goods could wait. He needed a room. Sleep. He would ask at the railway station.

The railway station was a small red clay building. It stood beside a red clay mosque that was even smaller. A man slept on the ground by the door. Rehv walked around him and went inside.

It was dark and empty. There were no windows, and the door that led to the platform was closed. In one corner a small office had been walled off with unfinished plywood boards. Electric light glowed around the edges of the door. Rehv crossed the room and raised his hand to knock on it. He heard people talking inside. He didn't knock: They were speaking English.

A man said: “I wouldn't know about that, love.” He had an English accent.

A woman said: “What about El Fasher?” She had an American accent.

The man said: “Can't get there. Too much shooting.”

The woman said: “South then?”

The man said: “Not so good. The drought's hit hard. Not so much the drought, though, as the way it's been overstocked all these years. Typical.”

Another man said: “I don't care about that. Can we still get through?” He too had an American accent, but it was not that alone which made Rehv feel cold the moment he heard the man's voice.

The first man said: “Oh yes. Track's clear, all right.”

The second man said: “Good.” A chair squeaked.

Rehv backed slowly away across the dark room, his eyes on the glowing outline of the office door. He was cold, but he was sweating more than he had in the crowded train or walking all day under the sun. The voices faded. Rehv turned and ran outside.

Night was falling fast. The sleeping man was turning into a shadow. Rehv crossed the street and sat down with his back against a low mud wall. He bowed his head and pulled the cloth of his robe up over it. He was another sleeping man.

After a few minutes he saw three people come out of the railway station, two men and a woman. He could just make out their faces in the fading light. The woman was young and fair. She wore a kerchief around her head and a camera around her neck. He had never seen her before. The first man wore a short-sleeved white shirt. He was the engineer who read the
Daily Telegraph
. The second man he had seen before, long ago. He had put on weight, and lost his hair, and no longer wore glasses, but his thick dark eyebrows were still the same. He was Major Kay.

Rehv sat motionless, barely breathing. Across the street the three people stood talking in low voices. They took no more notice of him than they did of the shadow sleeping at their feet. The engineer said, “Right then” in a loud, cheerful voice, turned, and started walking down the street. Major Kay and the woman went the other way. Rehv waited until he could no longer see that their skins were white before he rose and followed them.

Major Kay and the woman walked along a narrow street that smelled of cinnamon, and into a large square. A little boy in shorts was running across the square, rolling an old bicycle tire rim that he controlled with a stick. The rim got away from him, veered toward Major Kay, wobbled, and fell at his feet. Major Kay stopped and picked it up. Rehv stepped back into the shadows of the narrow street. Major Kay rolled the rim back to the boy. The boy let it go by without making any attempt to reach for it. He stood staring at Major Kay.

“What the hell is that all about?” Rehv heard Major Kay say as he and the woman continued across the square. The woman's answer was too faint to hear.

On the far side of the square was a two-story wooden building with a covered jeep parked in front. Major Kay and the woman paused beside the jeep. Rehv heard keys tinkle. Major Kay opened the door of the jeep and took out a small dark package. Then he and the woman went inside the two-story building. The little boy picked up the bicycle rim and ran off, rolling it along with the stick.

Rehv watched the building across the square, and waited. Soon a light went on in a window on the second floor, and then another beside it. A woman entered the square from a street on the other side, a large earthenware bowl balanced on her head. As she came closer he saw that she wore a veil. She did not appear to see him at all. When she was quite near she looked around, lifted her robe, and crouched beside a small tree. Rehv could hear the sound of her urine falling on the sand. She stood up, tugged at her robe, and walked away. The bowl had stayed steady on her head; she hadn't touched it once.

The earth turned the curve of its back on the last rays of light. The square grew quiet. Rehv kept his eyes on the lights in the windows. Shades were drawn over both. From time to time he saw a single silhouette move behind one or the other. Later, the light went off behind one and two silhouettes moved in the same window.

He sat down. Inside his brain the singing had died away, and the screaming too. He thought about Major Kay, and the boy naked and tied to a chair, and pointed copper wire. He began to wish he had drowned in the sea with Sergeant Levy. He stopped himself from thinking about that because he didn't want to go where it led. He watched the window. The silhouettes moved back, forward, to the side. They raised their arms and lowered them. He sat down, resting his back against the small tree. His back hurt. A big brown bird flew down out of the darkness and circled over his head. Heavy wings beat the air. The bird landed on a branch at the top of the tree. The silhouettes moved behind the shade. Rehv fell asleep.

He dreamed of a picnic. He was a boy. He ate apples and cheese in the shade of an olive tree. Then he went swimming in a pool in the rocks. He dove into the cool water and swam down, down toward the bottom. On the bottom was a human leg. It wore a big black boot. He kicked away from it and struggled toward the surface. Then he looked up and saw how far it was. He would never get there.

Rehv awoke, lying on the ground beside the tree. The light still shone in the window of the two-story building. He knew he could wait no longer. The fat yellow moon had risen. The square was quiet and empty. He got to his feet and started walking across it.

The jeep was very new—no scratches, no dents, no rust. In the moonlight he read the words on the door: Food Relief. It was locked.

Over the door of the two-story building hung a small sign he had not been able to read from the other side of the square. Victoria Hotel it said in English. In Arabic was written Hotel of the Faithful. Rehv opened the door and went inside.

He was in a narrow hall with a small reception desk on one side, two stained couches on the other, and a flight of stairs leading up from the far end. A naked bulb shone from the ceiling. The clerk was a barefoot young man who wore a wool cap and a T-shirt with the words Hey Baby! written on the front. He was sleeping on the couch by the entrance, but opened his eyes when he heard the door close.

“Good night,” he said in English, sitting up. “How to serve you?”

“A room please,” Rehv said in Arabic.

“None left,” the clerk said in Arabic, and lay down again.

Rehv looked at the key rack behind the desk. There were four hooks. The keys for one and two were gone, but keys hung on hooks three and four. “What about rooms three and four?” Rehv asked.

“All taken.”

“But there are the keys,” Rehv said, pointing. He noticed a billy club hanging on the wall by the key rack.

The clerk didn't bother looking. “All taken.” He closed his eyes.

“I'll pay you one pound to sleep on the other couch.”