The Gloaming (28 page)

‘Don't worry,' he said. ‘I'll just stay here with you until you go. Better not to be alone.'

He sat with the man, holding his hand, the blood thick and dark now, almost black like sticky tar. The kettle began to whistle and he tried the man's pulse again. There was the faintest flutter. He gave it another couple of minutes, and then, when there was nothing, got up and washed the blood from his hands. He turned off the kettle. He found some mugs and teabags. He went over to Pilgrim. She was looking at him, not his face but his shirt and shorts. The blood. As if he'd just killed a pig.

‘Ah,' he said, handing her the tea. But her hand was trembling so he put it down on the floor. He took a sip of his own tea. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had tea. A beverage that was hot and bereft of alcohol.

Imagine if he'd finished his beer: she'd be dead.

‘Look,' he said. ‘I'm not sure what's going on. But I'm supposed to be here. I was brought here.'

He couldn't tell if she understood.
I'm supposed to be here
. Because he didn't finish the beer. Because of the boy.

She was still a little floaty, but he got her to drink a bit of the tea. He told her he'd be right back and went to the bathroom and let the water run over the dead man until it ran clear down the plug. He rinsed out his shirt. He went out to his car and got an old tarp from the wheel well. Why it was there he couldn't recall, but it had been there for years probably, taking up the space where a spare tire should have been. He wrapped the dead man in the tarp, heavy as a sack of hammers, and worried for a moment that he'd put his back out. Who'd ever heard of a knight in shining armor with a bad back?

He dragged the body out the bedroom door but when he tried to get it into the car the tarp kept falling off. The man's limbs protested as if he were still alive, catching on the door jamb, the bushes. Like a drunk who did not want to leave the bar. Who had clung to the stool in The Muthaiga Club, The Mombasa Club, The Tamarind Bar and Grill, The Juba Press Club, The Sheraton Kampala poolside bar; clung to the railing, to a tree even, as others had removed him. He recalled his fury, turning like a bright pinwheel in his chest: the unjustness of the assault! All he had wanted to do was drink.

Covering the body again, he glanced inside at Pilgrim. She lay very still, her eyes open, blinking from time to time. He wondered what she was seeing. He found his mobile phone, dialed.

‘Gloria. I'm at Raskazone. Can you come?'

She'd started to give him gyp. She was expecting the kids in the morning, she was tired, it was late. He cut her off: ‘I need your help. I need you.'

Twenty minutes later she drove through the gate. She got out of her car, left it running, the headlights blazing. ‘What the fuck?'

He gestured down at the body. ‘Help me get him into the car.'

Gloria hesitated, and he was sure she'd refuse, like a stubborn old mare. But instead she bent over, pulled the tarp back to reveal the man's face, blanched in the car lights. ‘Shit,' she said. ‘Oh, shit.'

‘You know him?'

She made a face, as if she was chewing the inside of her cheek. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘Shit.'

‘Who is he?'

‘He's from Switzerland.'

Harry waited. Gloria took a deep breath. ‘He came to see me. He was looking for Pilgrim.' She stalled again.

‘Come on, old girl, out with it.'

With another breath, she obliged. ‘He came to see me. He was looking for Pilgrim. She killed his child.'

‘She killed his child?' Harry was incredulous. ‘Pilgrim killed this man's child?'

‘A car accident. Three children altogether.'

Harry was starting to understand.

‘Oh, Gloria,' he said softly.

‘He just, he just,' she spluttered. She was going to cry. She pulled out a cigarette, but didn't light it. ‘He just, you know—'

‘This is about James, isn't it?'

‘Koppler knew what it was like to, to—'

‘—to lose a child.'

‘It makes you crazy, Harry.'

‘Did he tell you why he was looking for Pilgrim?'

‘No.' Then she shook her head. ‘And I didn't care. I don't care. About her. People like her.'

‘People like her? She's just anyone. Anyone at all.'

‘You're on the outside.'

‘Of what? I'm on the outside of what?'

Gloria lit the cigarette. A moment passed.

‘I'm quitting.'

‘Those kids have AIDS, dear. They've been abandoned by their families. It doesn't matter if you
smoke.'

They stood there while she smoked. Finally, Gloria said, still not looking at him, grinding the butt into the sandy earth: ‘You want there to be retribution. For someone to pay. Like a sacrifice, I suppose. It doesn't matter who, you can pile all your anger on anyone. He…' she bent down and pulled the tarp away from the dead man's face. ‘He deserved justice.'

Harry grabbed her. He felt very sober, as if someone had pulled the plug and all the alcohol had drained right out of him. ‘Listen, listen, so you get it right. Not just translated through your grief, it's like a bloody echo chamber. Will you listen?'

Gloria did not move away. So Harry said, ‘She's just a person. Not a monster. She'll wake up with an image of those dead children every morning for the rest of her life.' His hand softened on her arm, almost a caress. ‘I'm so very sorry for your pain, Gloria, love, with everything that is left of my heart. And I'm sorry for his. But maybe it's a mistake to go around comparing pain and trying to make it match up.'

He helped himself to one of her cigarettes, lit it and inhaled savagely. ‘Only bloody thing I ever managed to accomplish.'

Gloria looked away, out at the dark sea, the star-seeded night. ‘Is she all right?'

‘Just a bit shaken up.'

‘We'll have to clean this up. If the cops—I'll never get my kids. Oh, God, Harry, I'll never get my kids.'

‘The cops? They don't need to be involved. This is a private matter.'

Suddenly, she reached out and put her hand on his gnarled old wrist. He renegotiated the movement, so that he held her hand. They held hands. Gravity is different in a place like Tanga, he thought. People fall together who normally would not. You and I, Gloria, trailing the dusty, wrecked caravans of our lives, have fallen.

Together.

‘Take her, get her away from here. Take my car,' Harry said. ‘I'll deal with him.'

‘No.' Gloria knelt to touch the dead man. ‘Let me take him. We understood each other.'

* * *

By dawn Harry and Pilgrim reached the ferry at Pangani. Harry loved how the great walled buildings crumbled under the weight of thick webs of vines. Once, centuries ago, Pangani had been a major port. Now, huts grew like shy mushrooms among the ruins.

He almost laughed out loud at the idea of progress.

There was a decent guesthouse for smugglers, because Pangani was—still, after dusk—a port; and the same goods came down the slow, dark river that always had: gems, ivory, slaves, illegally harvested hardwood. And the same goods went up it: guns. Though drugs now, too, and counterfeit electronics from Dubai.

The ferry was on the other side of the river, a small collection of cars and trucks loading up. Villagers with bicycles and children and baskets of fruit, someone with a goat. Always someone with a goat. The sun, popping above the far horizon of the ocean, illuminated the river. On contact, the surface of the water ignited in sparks. The shadowed portions rippled like yards of lavender silk. Harry marveled at how the river had come all the way from Kilimanjaro. He'd done the stretch from Boma ya Ngombe to Nyumba ya Mungu in a wooden canoe. About a thousand years ago, when he was a young man and big herds of elephant still came down to the river, back when the whole country was just animals and bush.

Now the ferry began to move out from the far bank. Only the starboard engine worked, so the boat crossed in a series of slow pirouettes. It was why he loved this country.

By late morning, he turned off the main road (such as it was) and onto a narrow sand track through a grove of palm trees. The track cut directly east, so that in a few miles they reached a small bungalow on the edge of the sea. Pilgrim got out of the car and Harry watched her walk toward the water. She had barely spoken, she was still far off. She walked to the water's edge, and then into it, deeper and deeper, like a crazed baptist.

He ran after her and pulled her back. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you're not the one who's dead.' She looked at him, green-blue eyes, Jesus Christ, she was beautiful. He persevered. ‘There's a basket of food in the back of the car. Go and put it in the kitchen.' As she walked up to the house, he took out the Konyagi and had a long drink. He had always been drawn to folly.

* * *

Pilgrim slept. He had given her two Valium claiming they were aspirin. He wanted her to sleep, best thing for her. But also, he needed time to acknowledge his own life was shifting. At last. To open his ears and hear the tap, tap, tapping of the past. He needed to decode the message.

They had come to him again, they had come to remind him. They did not threaten, but they were insistent.

He sat for a long time, through the hot, still afternoon and into the night, watching Pilgrim, watching the light change, drinking, though not too much.

* * *

Dreams. A long time since he'd had them. Dreams had no mercy, dreams were sons of bitches. Of course that's part of the reason he drank: to keep the dreams at bay. But he'd always drunk too much. That's why it had happened in the first place. A sober man would have made a different decision: too late to fly, go in the morning, the pussy'll still be there.

In certain dreams he turned around, banked the plane through the golden clouds and headed back to Arusha. He would wake and grasp at the golden seconds of possibility, try to suck them in like clean air. He had turned around.

But he hadn't. No. He had kept flying. He had seen the strip in the bush, a little cut in the miles of bundu, a little scratch. It was way too dark and he should have done a flyover, he always did flyovers. But he was drunk, he couldn't be bothered. He'd landed.

The sea, deep blue in the dawn light, wrinkled with wind. A little ruffle on the sand, a petticoat of surf. Incredible that the big bold sea could be so delicate. It was cheating to drink the dreams away. He should live them, he should dream them every night. His dreams should be a memorial to his shame.

Betty and Dave had had to sell the farm. They'd woken up one night, the house surrounded by villagers holding flaming torches. They'd climbed out the bathroom window, run to the Land Rover and driven off. Left everything: Betty's pugs to be killed, Dave's Steinway to be set ablaze. They moved to Iringa, managed a tea plantation. They'd stayed together. Harry had seen Betty once in Dar, maybe fifteen years ago. She was walking down the street, plumper, her hair graying, but the beauty lingered in the way she moved, the structure of her. She saw him and pretended she hadn't, ducked into a shop. He stood at the entrance to the shop, shouting, ‘You can't take back a fuck.' He was at the nasty end of a bender.

You can't take back a fuck. You can't take anything back.

Now he drank the Konyagi, three big gulps, then screwed on the top. He couldn't go cold turkey, not with the girl to sort out. But he would ease off. Not too much, mind: he took another three swigs. He regarded the girl on the bed under the mosquito net. He wanted desperately to touch her, but more desperately to be the young man who he had been, when beautiful women took off their clothes for him.

Before. Before he dropped the air speed. Before he lowered the wing flaps.

Take his dreams and put them on the table. He'd sat there, listening—hearing. The propeller stopped spinning. His throat opened, his mouth had been dry.

They hadn't been able to get the living ones out until morning. A tourniquet can only do so much. So some of them died. Exsanguination.

* * *

Pilgrim made breakfast: papaya and toast, a pot of tea. ‘There are eggs,' she said. But after some discussion—boiled, poached?—neither of them wanted one. She was wearing an old
kikoi
of his, she must have found it in the cupboard. It hid her breasts and hips, but this only accentuated the slim length of her arms, her lovely ankles.

‘I need to know,' she said. ‘About the ghosts.'

Had he told her about them? He didn't recall. He must have been bat-faced to blather on like that. He could deny it, say it must have been the booze talking, he didn't know any ghosts.

‘Need?' He was still trying to decide what he should tell her. ‘Why do you
need
to know?'

‘The boy,' she said.

Harry noticed the little knot of bone where her wrist joined her hand.

‘The boy in the white shirt,' she continued. ‘Who is he?'

Harry considered denial. What boy? ‘Ah,' he said to give himself another fraction of time. He kept thinking: if I'd finished the beer, if I'd finished the beer. But I didn't. Because of the boy. So he said what was obvious, ‘The boy is a ghost.'

Pilgrim laughed, an odd, contorted little laugh.

Now Harry laughed. And he caught her up in his true laugh, so that laughter flowed out of her.

‘A ghost?'

‘Yes, a ghost.'

‘This is a ghost story?'

Later, after they'd eaten, he told her.

‘It's a long time ago now. They were in the road, walking home. They'd lived near me, a young couple. One block over. I used to see them when I drove home from the club at night. For a long time I thought they were just out walking. One night, I stopped to have a chat. I realized too late the woman was crying. They've had a row, I thought.

‘But the woman said to me, “We can't find our dog.”