Accusation (17 page)

Alazar, what’s he saying?

He is talking about the wonder of the healthy body.

Sara glanced at her watch. We really have to go meet Ed.

As they hurried back to the Fiat, Alazar said, I am so happy to see this circus. In the car, he sped them toward her rendezvous at the bar that Ed Levoix had named.

Ed Levoix’s white Pajero rode much higher off the ground than Alazar’s car. In a brief stop at the hotel, Sara had changed into a linen shirt and exchanged her boots for her blue, heeled sandals. Through the thick dark that fell swiftly after equatorial dusk, along the hilly roads of a sector of the city still without power, oil lamps glowed in the street-side storefronts. The shadows of people flickered around the lamps, and bodies on foot,
people walking
, moved ceaselessly around their vehicle, jackets and skirts and the backs of heads briefly illuminated in the glow of their headlights.

They were talking of Nairobi, where Ed Levoix had previously worked. On either end of her trip to the Sudanese border, Sara told him, she had, on the advice of a friend, stayed in a nunnery there, which had been cheap and safe.

He said, There’s a woman you’ll meet tonight. Anna Quinn, a friend of Elsa Larsen’s. Nun, from Nairobi. Man broke into her room, attempted robbery and who knows what else. Slashed her face. She’s here recuperating, but she’s going back. It’s tough there, these days. But it sounds like you’ve been through worse things.

She’d told him some of the basics: Beirut, the return trips to the Middle East, other trips to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Haiti. Also the time in Eastern Europe. Not specifically about gunfire, rocket fire, the carjacking in Najaf, the memories she preferred to deflect but were recalled in her coiled toes and up into her gut.

Islamabad had not been so bad, and yet one night when she’d been out on her own, talking to an ex-army officer whom she shouldn’t officially have been talking to, a little later than this hour, her driver had raced through the streets, hurtled through red lights and police checks, his own urge for self-preservation as strong as his desire to protect her and get her back to her hotel, the scent of his fear of being pulled over or shot as sharp as the stench of his cigarette smoke. They hadn’t hit anyone, though there had been moments — people leaping out of their way, fleeing at the sight of them, men waving guns — she, her blonde head covered, hunched in the back seat — when she’d feared they would.

Amid the flicker of charcoal braziers and the scent of diesel, the hilly road that the Pajero travelled was too narrow and crowded with bodies for Ed Levoix to drive fast. Sara felt no obvious danger here and had needed no complicated travel insurance before setting out in case she got killed. Alert, avid, buoyed by the circus show, alive with the hunger to pay attention — this was what she felt now. It was the reason she’d done what she’d done so far with her life.

The lights will come back on at seven, Ed Levoix said.

Do you live on your own?

So far he’d been gallant not unctuous, but the sexual loneliness of those who lived in places like this had to be taken into account.

Yes, was all Ed said. The soiree, he’d told her, was a send-off for one of Peter Larsen’s Ethiopian co-workers who was leaving for another job.

Who’s the person you want me to meet or you think wants to meet me?

Gerard Loftus. He’s been working out of town at an orphanage, but he’s on his way back to Canada. He’s a very determined personality. You’ll see.

Lights. A wrought-iron gate loomed up before them, as, on the inside, a watchman raised a hand, blinking in the headlights’ beam, before drawing the gate open upon a forecourt where other vehicles were parked. Incandescence spilled from a house, larger than Raymond Renaud’s, in the open doorway of which a blond man bobbed.

A tall, slim woman with a greying ponytail appeared at his side. The Larsens, Juliet had told Sara, worked for a small NGO involved in setting up early warning systems for monitoring food scarcity: he was Norwegian, she American. Hugs all around, as if they’d been acquainted for years. Peter. Elsa. Sara. Peter Larsen energetically asking, And how is Juliet? So what’s going to happen with Juliet’s film?

Whippetlike in a long skirt, her ponytail falling halfway down her back, Elsa Larsen led the way into a dining room where people stood around a table on which were set out local, brightly woven baskets filled with dips and rolls and peeled sticks of carrot and cucumber, and distinctively Ethiopian silver crosses hung on the walls. Getachew Mengestu, in a natty black suit, on staff at Irish GOAL, another NGO, held out his hand and said, You are here on a visit? Where do you stay? Mariam Hailemariam, who was moving on to a job at Save the Children UK, had a broad, infectious laugh. Ian Flood — yes, that is my name — did drought-related work along with Agnes Strauss, originally from Strasberg. Administrators all, or almost all. Peter Larsen’s ebullient voice rang from the hallway. Ed Levoix handed Sara a glass of red wine and said, I don’t see Gerard, but I’ll have a word with Elsa.

Across the room, a raw red seam crossed the cheek and jawline of a vivacious woman with short dark hair in nondescript skirt and shirt and cardigan: what must it be like to be forced to wear your trauma like that?

Elsa’s long skirt disappeared around a corner. Ed Levoix, in his tweed jacket, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was he in the kitchen, where Sara found Elsa speaking to an Ethiopian woman in slippers and flowered dress and wrapped headscarf who sliced a baguette on a wooden countertop as a vat of water boiled on the stove.

Desta, Elsa said, introducing Sara to the woman, then: Ed says you’re doing something on the circus?

I’m not sure yet. Do you, did you know Renaud?

Know, Elsa said. She peered into her glass, then up with a kind of scrutiny. I always thought he looked down on all of us a bit. We weren’t authentic enough. Or creative. Or something. That’s what I thought then.

Authentic?

He seemed to prefer the company of Ethiopians. The man he works with. It’s horrible, what’s happened. Whatever happened.

Have you by any chance heard anything about a boy, one of the circus performers, being injured?

I don’t think so. Injured how?

In a fall.

No, nothing.

Maybe, Sara thought, he’d worked very hard to keep Yitbarek’s accident a secret, at least from his funders.

Darling Elsa, said Ed Levoix, large in the doorway, sandy hair on end. Is Gerard likely to put in an appearance this evening? He isn’t staying here, is he?

I gave him a night here when he first got to town, Elsa said, but then I told him he had to find somewhere else because of Anna. I think that annoyed him. I don’t know if he’ll show up. He keeps saying he has a lot of people to meet before he leaves and he’s very busy.

She turned to Sara. Do you want to see where your friend Juliet slept?

Sara stepped through a set of French doors off the living room into a large, walled yard, the presence of the wall a deeper shadow in the dark. A path led toward a small, wooden, what would you call it, gazebo, the moist air perfumed by roses. It was true, she thought, she felt, he would not have fit in among these people, they would have chafed at him, as generous as the Larsens, as Elsa Larsen seemed to be. Why? Because they were the sort who played by the rules, who made the rules, and he didn’t want to play by their rules, he wanted to do things his own way, because he thought he was better — what was Elsa Larsen’s word?, more authentic — than they were. Or he hated the fact of their money and his need of it. She understood this. To be in that room made her irrationally long for the crazier company of front-line aid workers, war-zone journalists, the ones given to raucous and stupid behaviour; you walked among them and immediately felt the swirl of jagged displacements of people wildly fending off trauma even if they refused to speak of it.

Someone on the path behind her, quiet as an intruder: Sara turned with a start. A young man, caught in the light from the living-room window, voices from inside pressing themselves against the glass. Youngish, a mess of hair, wearing one of those bulky sweaters, Nepalese or South American, that students often wore, pocked cheeks, the most astonishingly soft and voluptuous lips, a shock in that face. She hadn’t seen him inside. His stare had the fervour of a wild dog. He held a bottle of beer in one hand, sneakers on his feet. Not old but not as young as she’d first thought.

The figure said, Ed said you’re looking to talk to people about Raymond Renaud. I’ll talk to you.

Sara stepped forward and held out her hand. I’m Sara Wheeler, and you are?

Oh. Sorry. He juggled his bottle of beer awkwardly from right hand to left before clutching her palm. Gerard Loftus.

Ed wasn’t sure you’d be here.

No. Well. I showed up. Lucky. He reclaimed his hand. Lucky for me, lucky for you. An oversized smile. It was hard to move her gaze from his lips, or the combination of his lips, his skin, his possibly sun-worn brow. Had he slept in the double bed covered in diaphanous sheets of white cotton in the room that Elsa Larsen had shown her, in which Juliet had slept?

Ed said you don’t live in Addis.

No, Gerard Loftus said. And I’m flying out the day after tomorrow.

Were you involved with the circus?

Oh, no, not
involved
.

But you knew Raymond Renaud?

He glanced about, twitchy, despite the fact that they seemed to be alone in this part of the garden. From closer to the gate came the drift of a couple of voices as a car door slammed. I don’t want to talk about it here. I can meet you tomorrow, like say tomorrow morning. My time is a bit full up but —

Do you want to come by my hotel?

Which is —

She told him.

No, he said. Then with an air of imperiousness, I would prefer the Hilton. I’ll meet you at ten at the pool bar at the Hilton.

At the Hilton, Sara said, nonplussed, for the high-end Hilton hardly seemed the sort of place Gerard Loftus would frequent.

When, at the end of the evening, she stepped into the lobby of the Hotel Berhailu, Ed Levoix’s Pajero accelerating out of the gate and flying down the street at her back, music poured out of one of the common rooms on the main floor, along with people in fancy dress. The voice of an unseen male singer surged against the clapping of hands, the winding line of a guitar, the melody broken open every now and again by a fanfare of ululations. It was a wedding, the man at the front desk told her, handing over her enormous key.

The music carried her upstairs to her room and poured into the room through the window that opened onto the balcony, while voices wandered amongst the trees in the garden like a flurry of gazelles, other people’s happiness brushing against her hectic need to sort through what Ed Levoix had said before driving off, the meeting with Gerard Loftus lurking inside her like an unsettling present that she wouldn’t able to open until morning.

He’s an odd one, isn’t he, she’d said as Ed had driven her away from the Larsens’ party. Clownlike was her thought; she was having a hard time imagining Raymond Renaud close to this awkward man. Do you know what Gerard wants to talk to me about?

Eyes on the road, Ed Levoix said, I’ve heard his version. Or the short version. But I’ll let him tell you what he wants to tell you. Listen to him. That’s all. He’ll be persistent. Adamant, even overwrought. He is an adamant and persistent person. Hear him out. Then do what you have to do. Make up your own mind.

He was drunk, she realized, or not drunk but he’d been drinking enough to heighten the blunt energy with which he’d met her at lunchtime. He wasn’t oozy, but something had loosened: she caught a glimpse of the ghost of the hockey player he had once been. A fluid young man darting down the ice. And something else. Lattices of lines crossed in the pouches beneath his eyes.

Once through the hotel gate, he pulled up the Pajero before reaching the hotel door and, activating the automatic locks on all the doors, waved off the watchman, who, with a backward glance, returned to the entrance, swinging his nightstick. Sara felt more surprise than unease; the hotel was close. She could yell if she needed to. No threat. What they had was privacy. In a car, you could speak without looking at your companion, as Ed Levoix was doing.

Maybe it happened the way they say it did. What they’re accusing Renaud of. Something systemic. But maybe it didn’t. It’s impossible not to speculate. I find it impossible not to. Maybe it was something smaller. You slip up, you reach out, once, maybe no more than once, you shouldn’t but you do and you are never allowed to forget it. You hand over all power.

A couple in dress clothes, man in a black suit, woman in a shiny dress, black hair waxed and coiled atop her head, teetered into the open air. Sara had to wonder if he was talking about Raymond Renaud or himself, and what spoke through him: guilt or pain or shame or self-recrimination. Did he know something or had he done a thing like this?

You do know that homosexuality is completely forbidden here. Anything that goes on is utterly furtive and hidden. That may not be relevant. But you should be aware of it. It is distorting. The hidden always exerts a pressure. Silence is cunning. Forget I said any of this.

With astonishing velocity, he’d unlocked the doors and was hurrying around the front of the Pajero to help her out on the passenger side. He shook her hand with brutal formality, his internal retreat so swift and total it left her reeling. Ed —

Make up your own mind, he repeated.

Ed, are you, can we — ? She wanted more, needed more clarity.

Good luck with your work. Good luck tomorrow. Very good to have met you.

It was not until Sara stepped, just after ten the next morning, from a boutique-lined corridor through a bar and out onto the Hilton’s patio, and wove through the unoccupied tables and past two breeze-frilled, empty swimming pools, that she registered the desire of Gerard Loftus to meet here as something more than presumptuous insistence. The air was not warm. He sat alone in his bulky sweater beneath a thatched umbrella. No one was likely to come near them.