The Gloaming (11 page)

‘For me?'

‘That you should have someone to talk to.'

‘Tom suggested his girlfriend's shrink.'

Strebel laughed out loud. ‘Really! What a sensitive guy!' He chuckled on, and then stopped abruptly. ‘I'm sorry. I know that even if you could find it funny, there's no room in you for laughter now. But, really, I hope you find it funny one day.'

He reached out to touch my arm. ‘You can talk to me, okay? Look, try. Ask me something. You'll see, I'll answer as Paul not Inspector Strebel.'

‘How do they—' I stopped myself. Again, I felt the conundrum of honesty. Did I really want to know, or was I just asking what I thought he expected me to ask? I was so tangled in words, in what I should think versus what I did.

‘How do they get through the day?' he finished for me.

‘Yes. How do they get through the day?'

He took a moment to realign his side plate and butter knife in front of him. ‘They brush their teeth,' he said. ‘They do the laundry.'

I thought of the cup: the ritual of making coffee, the kettle, the cafetière, the measuring of grinds. The rigid sequence.

‘And they breathe their loss. Bitter air. And it takes a long time. But life is persistent. For you, too.'

‘And you?'

‘Me?' he raised his eyebrows. ‘This is my work.'

‘But when you're not a policeman, when you're Paul.'

‘Yes, I see. Because I'm always a policeman, an investigator, aren't I? It's a state of being.'

‘A suit of armor?'

He tilted his head to consider me. ‘No,' he said. ‘Because you can take that off.'

We sat for an odd moment in silence, as if too much had been revealed and we didn't know how to return to the mundane. The waiter came with the bill. Strebel paid. ‘We should get back before the rain.'

‘You said that last time.'

‘Ah. Next time we must make sure it's sunny.'

In the street, he hailed a taxi and told the driver my address. As the door closed, as the car pulled away, he glanced through the glass and then raised his fingers as if to doff an invisible hat.

 

I sit on the bed in the room that was Martin Martins.' I look in the empty waste-paper basket, the empty drawer, the empty cupboard. I feel ridiculous. Did I think I would find a clue? To what? Anyway, Gladness has cleaned everything with her usual thoroughness. The room reeks of bleach; though, underneath, the smell of cigarettes lingers. I think back to every instance I saw Martin. What he was doing, what he was reading. Wasn't it an old
Spiegel?
He drank beer, he slept in his room, he slept with a prostitute, he watched the TV in the restaurant, he smoked Roosters. This is the behavior of a man waiting for a spare part for his broken car.

So why do I have this cold pit in my stomach? Martin's lie about the fuel pump. His
I know you
.

Too many coincidences, Kessy said.

But who decides how many is too many? Who can see conspiracy in the random? I forgot to pay a phone bill.
MAHNUNG
! Mrs Gassner could not tie her laces. Tom brought me to Arnau because he'd met Elise by the lake. In proximity—the imposed proximity of chronology—these events clustered and swarmed, connected.

But taken separately—

Perhaps Martin lied about the fuel pump for some reason quite beyond me or Kessy or Dorothea. Perhaps he was waiting, or hiding. Perhaps Kessy is wrong and the fuel pump was broken.

Why am I so ready to believe Martin Martins intended me harm? He called me princess. He saw my coldness, my vanity: the hard, little pea of my heart. He saw what I keep from others, and so I imbue him with special power. I give credence to his story of being a mercenary.

Or have I fashioned a projection of unexamined guilt? What better tableau than a professional killer on which to display my moral dilemma—my inability to feel anything for three small, dead children. Martin Martins absorbs all light like an imploding star.

I have taken lives, like a petty god. I have importance because of that. I am no longer Tom's wife, no longer his ex-wife. I am a looming giant in the lives of the children's parents, Godzilla, stamping and tramping, crushing and smashing. I am
Kindermörderin
. I am Martin.

I note the shambling rustle of pink bougainvillea outside the window and the filament of a spider's web. Beyond the bougainvillea lies the kitchen courtyard. I can see Gladness hanging up sheets on the line. Around her scatter ubiquitous chickens, and an emaciated kitten toys with a piece of colored wool. Gladness bends and plucks white pillowcases from the green laundry tub. I recall how she watched me when Martin told me his story. Suddenly I realize that she's the one who slept with him, and she was worried I might fuck him for free. In the same matter-of-fact way she does everything here, she sleeps with the customers. It's all money. Apart from Dorothea, with her commands and her talk of STDs, no women come near the place. But there are plenty of men.

I go to my room, retrieve the box from the back of the cup board. I estimate its weight at six pounds. Hate does not diminish, I'm learning. It can shift atoms, congeal into matter. It takes shape in the material world.

I do not say goodbye. This is force of habit: all the leavings in my life with Tom, associations with associates abandoned every two years. There were no parties, no one said goodbye. People left Dili or Lagos and the only evidence of their leaving, of their ever having been there at all, was the new people in their house. Tom taught me; leave quietly, don't slam the door.

As I pay the bill at the Goodnight, Gladness doesn't ask where I'm going or why. Her job is to usher in and usher out. I give her a good tip. ‘
Safari njema
,' she says. Travel safely.

The bus leaves at noon from under a huge fig tree near the market. It rattles as it idles, exhaust fumes stinking. The crowd here is focused, active; there's incentive to leave Magulu. People shove bags and even children through the windows. Touts sell tickets. The driver sweats as he manoeuvres boxes and sacks into the luggage compartment. Boys sell hard-boiled eggs. Others carry large boards on their shoulders—window height—bearing plastic combs, mirrors, packs of cards, key rings, dolls. They resemble peacocks, moving their displays stiffly up and down the length of the bus.

A young man in a tie tries to co-opt my seat by the window. I bought my ticket from the bus office—a table under the fig tree manned by the agent, a Rambo-esque vision in a red bandana and mirrored shades. I paid extra for the window seat.

As the young man won't move—he has settled in, folding his arms, crossing his legs, determined as a suffragette—I summon the tout. He shouts at the young man and smacks him on the head. When I have reclaimed my seat the tout comes back and stares meaningfully. I pretend I don't understand that he wants a thank-you tip—which is a mistake, because he places a very fat old woman next to me.

She glances down curiously at the box on my lap.

‘
Vitabu
,' I lie. Books. She looks away. And moves so that part of her buttock takes up part of my seat.

We reach Butiama at dusk.

Only a decade ago Lake Victoria lapped at the edge of the town. The dusty shacks and crumbling buildings might have then seemed almost picturesque. But the lake level has dropped, and a wide hem of mud and trash now separates the town from the silvery-blue water. The dark mud smells, the day's sun has heated the garbage rotting within it, and I find myself almost gagging on the thick, fetid air. The woman next to me shrivels her nose, shakes her head.

Outside, a medieval scrum surrounds the bus, as if people want to lynch the passengers rather than greet them. We can't disembark because so many beggars, thieves, taxi drivers, touts for other destinations, screaming relatives are blocking the door. I realize my best option is to slip behind the old woman, drafting her bulk like a cyclist.

I have not thought what to do now, where to go. The ticket touts shout out destinations: Arusha, Mwanza, Dodoma, Kisumu, Mbeya. Pick one, I think. But not Mwanza, where they burn witches, where they kill albinos. In the frenzy, I am separated from the old woman, and I feel as if I have just lost a friend. Almost immediately, the crowd notices my solitude and I am surrounded by shouting faces. I feel hands grabbing at my suitcase, grabbing at the box under my arm. ‘Sistah!' ‘
Mzungu
!' ‘Arusha!' ‘This way! This way!' ‘Sistah!'

Frantically I scan the faces for one that might be open, sincere. I see only the same hungry expression of the men in Magulu when they nearly attacked Kessy.

‘This way! This way!' a boy in a white shirt is saying. ‘This way, this way, this way.' He takes firm grasp of the handle of my suitcase. I look down at him, his dark, indecipherable eyes. The white shirt is huge, a man's shirt engulfing him, making him thinner, smaller: vulnerable. So I soften immeasurably toward him, and he senses this in an instant. He pulls me, shoving aside his competitors as if they are not larger and heavier and meaner. He pulls me confidently, a fish on the line. ‘This way! This way!'

We are free of the crowd, but still he doesn't let me go. ‘This way.' We cross a road. A man tries to sell me a bottle of water. The boy shouts at him. We enter a narrow alley, turn into another alley, another, another. I think about the girl Kessy found deep inside a maze. I think about her toes, smashed with a hammer, a kind of meticulous cruelty. Kessy saved her, and he was punished, rendered helpless in exile. I remember him saying to me on the road north of Magulu, ‘Who is going to stop them? Me? With my club? My flashlight? My laws?' The terrible cruelty extends to Kessy: for a man to find himself capable of good, and then be stripped of the means ever to do good again. I think of Dorothea holding the hand of a dying girl, holding the photograph of her lost sons. These emotional assaults seem so carefully crafted—bespoke—that I can almost believe in God.

The boy turns back to look at me. His expression is serious, but sure. ‘This way.'

Alley folds into alley, an origami of shadows. ‘Where are we?' I finally say.

‘This way.'

And we burst out into a courtyard illuminated by evening sun. There is a water pump, a fig tree, a Land Cruiser. For a moment I panic, for I'm certain it belongs to Martin Martins. But a large, black Tanzanian sits behind the wheel. The boy seems to know him. They speak in rapid Swahili. The boy turns to me, assertively: ‘This man will take you.'

He has his newspaper half-folded in his hands, the sports pages. He smiles. ‘Only three hundred dollars.' Then he taps the side of the door with the newspaper. ‘Missionary car. It is in excellent condition.'

‘But where are you going?'

‘Very comfortable. God has personally blessed this car.'

The boy looks at me and nods. ‘You go with him.'

‘Where?' I demand.

‘You go with him. He will take you.'

Perhaps they think I'm someone else—some other white woman.

‘Who is the car for?'

‘You,' the boy says, smiling. ‘It is for you.'

‘But who am I?' I say and, almost—almost—I laugh. Because I wouldn't be completely surprised if the boy and the driver said, ‘Of course we know! You are Tom's ex-wife! Yes, Mr Tom. He is a very good man!' So I try again, ‘The car—has it been ordered?'

‘Ordered?' Boy and driver look to me.

‘Ordered,' I repeat, hopelessly now. ‘A name, an organization. Someone who paid for the car.'

‘Order? No, no, madam, there is no order.'

‘You pay for the car,' the boy taps the hood in reassurance. ‘Only three hundred dollars. It is in excellent condition.'

The driver extends his hand to me, ‘My name is Davis. Welcome.'

‘But I didn't order a car. I didn't arrange for a car.'

‘Yes,' Davis says, giving me his own version of the boy's bright and certain smile. ‘But it is an excellent car.'

I consider my trajectory, my arrival at this point: I view myself from high on a Google map. A white woman in a backstreet of a Tanzanian town stands by a white Land Cruiser. A series of dots illustrates my journey, back through Magulu, through Kilimanjaro Airport, north across Kenya, across the Sahara and the Mediterranean, the boot of Italy, the Alps, Arnau. I have to think quite hard about the distance I've traveled, that the journey is a physical reality; because it feels as if I've just stepped through a portal. I have to look closely at the figure on the Google map and say, yes, that's me, definitely me, that far out, that far away. I could very easily believe I was someone else, that Arnau had never happened.

When I finally understood that I must not stay in Arnau, I took a taxi to Zurich airport. I did not know where I was going. I thought vaguely of Addis Ababa. I thought of calling Strebel. I thought—very briefly—of my parents. At the airport, I began to walk, absorbed by the other travelers, their sense of purpose buoying me, instilling in me the confidence of direction. Calm, assuring voices came over the PA system in different languages. I imagined that if I listened closely I would hear my instructions: ‘Passenger Jones, Passenger Pilgrim Jones. Please go to counter E13.' Traveling with Tom, there had always been a car and driver, business-class tickets, everything preordained.

For several minutes I had stood in front of the departures board. Dubai, Shanghai, Sydney, Boston, Mumbai, Istanbul. Anywhere. Cairo, Tel Aviv, Kilimanjaro. Tom's alimony was extremely generous. I had so much choice.

And if I had chosen Cairo? Or Sydney? What unconscious criteria led me to Kilimanjaro? A memory of snatched conversation, a picture in a magazine? No. I was propelled away, not toward. I thought of my father's favorite saying, ‘The journey is all, the end is nothing.' I was sure he'd never considered the intense vertigo of a totally blank future. I had no image in my head, no expectation. Only where I would go and not hear
Kindermörderin, Kindermörderin
.