The Gloaming (10 page)

‘What do you want?'

‘You're very beautiful.'

‘I'm not going to sleep with you.'

He laughs, then talks in a low, soft voice: ‘Sleep? No.
Fuck
. I'd like to fuck you. And then maybe hurt you. You'd like that.'

I keep walking. He catches my arm, his fingers digging in. ‘I know.'

‘Know what?' I turn to face him. Looking into his eyes I feel like I'm watching a snuff film.

‘I know exactly who you are,' he says.

He jerks my arm behind my back. I hear the sound of his zipper. He presses against me so I can feel his erection and rubs himself slowly against me. ‘I know,' he whispers. ‘I know everything, princess.' When I try to move, he pulls my arm higher. He'll break it if he wants to. Very quickly he comes with a sigh, and lets me go, zips up. He walks casually back toward the bar.

And I stand with my pounding heart, this constriction in my chest and this absolute fear. My breath comes in quick little bursts.
I know exactly who you are
. I know who you are. I know everything.

But how can he?

As my breath slows I decide he knows me the way a rapist likes to think he knows women, that my resistance merely masks my lust. Even as I need to run to the bathroom and vomit in the sink and take off my shirt, I consider the pettiness of Martin. For all his brutality, he holds onto a lie that he must at all costs turn into a truth: that I desire him, secretly, that other women do.

Or maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe Martin knows he repels me. And this excites him.

Or maybe he just doesn't care. The way the villagers taunted him, laughed at him—the way he'd turn around and kill them if he was paid to, even the women, even the children.
No matter how they die, burning, screaming, guts falling out, whatever. There's always more of them
.

But they would kill him, too, without hesitation, hang him from a meat hook, hack him to pieces with a machete. They are bound together, this merchant of violence and his victims, as if they need each other; as if, like a snake eating its tail, there's no distinction. Tom would say to me that violence becomes an identity, how people see themselves in the world, and to ask them to stop being violent is asking them to erase themselves.

Martin Martins leaves that afternoon. The sound of his car rubs the smooth, familiar air. I can just see him through the window of my room. A dozen barefoot children chase him, shouting, laughing. And when he speeds up, pulling away from their vortex, they start to throw pebbles. Then stones. He is leaving, he is leaving without them, he is leaving them behind, and they are furious.

 

Dorothea invites me for dinner. When I get to her house, Kessy is sitting on the sofa watching TV at top volume. He's not in uniform, just jeans and a T-shirt. He's quite at home. He shakes my hand—the three-part shake I've come to know here, but it's a cursory greeting; he's riveted by the football. Dorothea comes in and speaks curtly in Swahili. At first he ignores her, and so she turns off the TV. He looks at her, shakes his head with disdain, gets up and walks out. She immediately plumps the cushions where he's been sitting.

‘This is just a private club to him,' she says, mimicking him: ‘“
Lete beer, lete nyama choma, lete chai, ongeza sauti
.”'

She gives me a Coke. ‘These Swahili men, they think they can just tell you what to do. Get this, do that. White men do not treat their women in this way. You see for yourself in the cities. Women are all looking for a white man, even the old ones, the drunk ones, the poor ones. They are all better than one Swahili man.'

‘There are white men like Martin,' I tell her. I think of his sticky cum on the back of my shirt. I think of the bruises on my arm.

Dorothea makes a sour face as she sits down. ‘Yes. He is
mbovu
. You know what Gladness told Kessy?' She looks at me over her Coke. Tonight, she wears the red pageboy wig and a purple dress. She slips her kitten heels off as she curls her legs underneath her. I'm surprised by the soles of her feet, which are flat and callused, as if she is accustomed to going barefoot. She raises an eyebrow, ‘Samwelli found the old fuel pump from Martin's car.'

She makes sure I am listening, then she leans forward. ‘It was not broken.'

‘Does Samwelli know about cars?'

‘He cannot even fix a flat tire on a bicycle.' She makes her derisive little snort, then taps my leg. ‘But he gave the pump to Kessy.'

‘And Kessy knows about fuel pumps?'

She nods. ‘There was nothing wrong with it.'

‘But,' I say. ‘But why would Martin do that? Come up with such a story?'

‘Kessy says he is looking for someone. Kessy says he's looking for you.' She touches me again, her hand now staying on my knee. ‘No one knows why you are here. And then another
mzungu
comes—this
mtu mbovu
. And then the box, with those things. Too many coincidences.'

‘It's for someone in the village, you said so yourself.'

‘Yes, I tell this to Kessy. You are a good person, I tell him. Such a man as Martin Martins cannot have business with a good person. But, friend,' she hesitates—and I can see she needs to speak but does not want to offend. ‘Friend, why are you here?'

I stare up at the plastic flowers in their vase on top of the vast cabinets. Below, in a special place of honor, she keeps the photograph of her sons. I look back at her, the small, intense, intelligent face. Of course she wonders. She and Kessy have been speculating.

And yet what might I tell her? Why am I taking so long to answer, as if I have a stutter, and cannot find purchase in the word I need to begin.

Kindermörderin
.

She's looking at me, scrutinizing my face, and whatever it is she sees there leads her to say gently—forgivingly: ‘There is a mine north of here. Run by South Africans. Maybe this Martin is working for the South Africans.'

I say nothing, so she carries on, gathering confidence. She has enough conviction for the both of us. ‘Titanium. Yes, of course. That is why he is here. Yes, I know it. He is nothing to do with you.'

I should tell her he's a mercenary. But then she will ask, Why was a mercenary here in Magulu? Was he here for you, friend?

Was he?

She walks into the kitchen and comes back with serving bowls of beans and rice and rich, thick goat stew.

 

The coffee cup was in the sink. The chair was slightly askew. I stood and listened, though I was quite sure he had gone.

The flat was very quiet. Even the Gassners' TV was mute. The silence felt like a withdrawal, a withholding, that might at any moment surge back with a scream.

He had been here again. He, I concluded, because the coffee was black, and I didn't know any women who drank their coffee black. Once, I had expressed a pet theory about this to Tom: that men, single men, often forgot to buy milk or sugar, so they grew accustomed to making do without. Tom took his coffee with full cream milk, making the exception when we lived in Addis, where the coffee was served black and sweet and strong. He had laughed a little at my idea, asking how I'd done my research—how many single men I knew. Not many, of course.

So I had no basis, no basis at all, for the notion that the person coming into my flat was a man. It was an impression. The scent of him hung upon the air. Or I could determine the disturbance of molecules by some atavistic radar.

But what did he want? To just sit here with his coffee? I could find no other trace of him. He hadn't rummaged through my drawers the way a stalker might. Hadn't taken anything the way a thief might. Deliberately, he had left the cup for me to find.

I put my bag of shopping down. I washed the cup and placed it on the sideboard. I pushed the chair flush against the table. I felt a creeping coldness. The small hairs at the nape of my neck rose like tiny antennae. He was not in the room, he was not in the flat, but the cup was his message: he could come anytime he wanted. When I was not there. When I was there.

It was pointless to ask Mrs Gassner, though she must know who it was. He could not have entered without her complicity. She perched like a praying mantis behind the peephole of her door. Perhaps she had even given him a key.

Outside, along the street, there was a taxi stand. I took one to Thun. The driver, whose darker skin and heavy accent suggested recent immigration from the Middle East, kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror. When we'd reached the lake road, he snapped his fingers, ‘Yes, madam, it is you, the American lady. The accident. Those children. Three of them. I know, yes, my sister, she is marry to the cousin of the woman who work for Mr Emptmann.'

I said nothing.

‘They say you were driving like crazy woman. You were drunken woman.'

I kept my eyes on the lake, on the gathering momentum of Thun.

‘If you kill my children I kill you that is sure thing.'

I entered the police station tentatively, but no one seemed to recognize me. No one turned away or murmured their disgust. No one spat or threatened me. A young police officer behind the Plexiglas window spoke in a quick interrogative burst. ‘
Kann ich Ihnen behilflich sein?'

‘Strebel,' I said with my terrible pronunciation. ‘
Kann ich mit Kommissar Strebel sprechen?
'

‘Let me see,' he replied in English. ‘Your name?'

‘Pilgrim Jones. No—Lankester.'

‘Which is it?'

‘Jones. But the file may be under Lankester.'

‘Wait.'

I waited.

Strebel appeared, pushing open a security door with a hesitant smile. ‘Miss Jones?'

‘I wasn't sure—the name,' I fumbled.

‘My name?'

‘My name.'

‘You don't know your name?' He raised a wayward eyebrow.

‘I mean, who I might be to you. Jones or Lankester.'

‘Well, which do you prefer?'

‘Jones.'

‘So I got it right.'

‘It's odd to hear. After so many years.'

‘But it's a nice name. Complex in the beginning, then simple, so people have to think a little bit, but they don't forget and they don't mangle the spelling.'

Again he gave me that half smile. It didn't promote levity or humor or the complicity of friendship. It was carefully appropriate and meant to reassure: in all this madness, I'm not swayed, not partial, not your friend, but not your enemy. In its strict neutrality, Strebel's smile was deeply sincere.

He shifted his weight and tilted his head. ‘How can I help, Miss Jones?'

I knew, then, I could not tell him about the cup and the chair. That even if he believed me—which was unlikely—I would seem ridiculous. And I wanted this singular man to like me.

With Tom, I'd never considered how people felt about me, because they liked Tom, they loved Tom. They leaned in to hear what Tom had to say. But Strebel did not know Tom. He spoke to me, not around me, as if I was a portal to Tom. With Strebel I wasn't Tom's wife.

‘Has there…' I began, uncertainly. ‘Has there been anything new?'

He frowned. ‘New?'

‘I mean, evidence. Or—' I put my hand over my mouth. Was I lying? By asking the question I had not intended to ask, by showing concern that was merely improvisation, was I being dishonest? This clever man would ferret out dishonesty.

‘Evidence?' Strebel noticed the gesture. ‘No, no new evidence. Only what we have. As I said.' He peered at me, then fussed with the papers on his desk. ‘Let's go, shall we? Lunch? I'm a little hungry.'

‘Is that appropriate?'

The smile—only this time, something warmer. ‘Miss Jones,' he said. ‘You're not a suspect.'

The café was around the corner, nondescript with an unhappy rubber plant in the window. The waiter knew Strebel and hailed him with menus and a gesture to the table by the plant.

‘The soup is always good here,' Strebel said to me. ‘Everything else, very mediocre.' I saw him pat his breast pocket, then turn to me. ‘Can you tell me what it says, the day's specials. I've forgotten my glasses.'

‘Consommé,' I began. ‘That comes with a side salad.'

‘So you read German?'

‘Strictly menus.'

‘No to the consommé.'

‘
Blumenkohl?
Cauliflower?'

‘Yes, cauliflower.'

‘And chicken with vegetables.'

‘What about you?' he said.

‘The cauliflower.'

‘It's excellent here, they add a bit of Appenzeller.'

While we waited for the soup, he said, ‘How is it for you? Sometimes people can be cruel.'

I did not meet his eyes. A cup. A chair. I hope cancer eats your face.

‘It's fine,' I said.

‘Even so,' Strebel said. ‘People want to blame. They want there to be bad so they can believe in good. So they can be good.'

‘Isn't there bad? Isn't there good?'

‘Only degrees. But that's my experience. I'm not a philosopher or a priest.'

He seemed to me a little of both.

The food came. It was the first meal I had eaten with another person since Tom left.

‘You're right,' I said of the soup.

‘I think Swiss cooking is like Scottish cooking. We praise blandness.'

‘Except for cheese.'

‘Well, cheese is not food. It's sacrament.'

I almost smiled. He noted this struggle. He put his spoon down. ‘Why did you come today?'

The question cornered me, and he spoke in the gentlest voice, so I had to lean forward to hear. ‘What I'm asking, really, is do you have anyone to talk to?'

I looked away.

‘Miss Jones—'

‘Pilgrim, it should be Pilgrim.'

‘Well, I'm Paul, then.'

‘Paul.'

‘You're very isolated,' he said. ‘I'm worried for you.'