Ahmed's Revenge (12 page)

I sat up slowly, raising myself to my knees and then, with the help of my shovel, all the way to my feet again. I raised my shovel, at first, I think, to clean up the edges of the hole, to make it better, but with my regained wind my anger came back, and I suddenly turned the shovel around, aimed it at that other grave, and let it come slamming down on the top of the wooden box, easily splitting its lid and exposing Jules's arm.

I was appalled at what I had done, but not enough to keep my shovel from hitting the box twice again, one time coming in from the left side, next time coming in from the right. This box was padded, built to withstand temperature variations, maybe, but it couldn't withstand my shovel, and by the time I was done, Jules's arm had rolled free of the box and was lying next to the freshly dug grave, palm down, fingers curled over the edge of the hole, as if they'd just finished the digging themselves. It was bizarre, and what made me angrier still was that Jules's wedding ring was there, his fingers fat around it, as if yeast had been used in the embalming, making them rise.

“God damn you, Julius Grant,” I said. This was no automatic expletive like the one I'd used in the house with my dad, but a genuine heartfelt curse. I wanted God to damn him, to send him down through the hole where his arm was already headed and to let him burn in hell.

Insanity sometimes comes in momentary doses, I had learned from observing my father's wandering mind, and what I did next was along those hereditary lines. I picked up Jules's arm at the place where his bicep had previously been, and I held it above my head like a hatchet. Then I walked the twenty paces or so over to the lip of the hill and swung his arm down, letting his fat fingers slap that sleeping snake. The snake moved in the grass, turning its head and tail both at the same time, as if it were about to twist around whatever it was that was bothering its middle. The snake's head was the same size as Jules's hand, and when it opened its mouth and reached back, I introduced the two of them by casting Jules's whole arm in the snake's direction and then leaping out of the way. The snake struck then, catching Jules's arm above the wrist, and rising up high enough into the air to look for an instant like a cross marking the spot of Jules's grave, like those shadows in the dust on the dormitory wall. And then the snake was down and gone. Not quickly, the way a smaller snake would go, but not slowly either. It slipped over the edge of the hill and down toward the Great Rift Valley with my husband's arm. I could see it going, but I didn't follow it with anything but my eyes.

I was spent by the time I returned to the house. My father was still actively contrite and waiting on the porch with his travelling clothes on. Dr Zir and Detective Mubia had locked all my windows and had shut down the generator and closed the door to the workers' dormitory. The detective offered to take one of them back to town in his car, but both men said they would go with me in the Land Rover.

I watched the detective leave, knowing I'd see him again, knowing now that he had a great deal more to tell. In Narok I stopped at the petrol station and asked the proprietor to hire security guards on my behalf, stationing them strategically around my farm, twenty-four hours a day. It was a service that the proprietor had performed for us before.

That's it, the beginning of my story, told with as much skill as I can muster. Maybe it's been a long beginning, but it hasn't been a bit longer than it needed to be, considering that it relates not only the events that led to the loss of my husband but those that led to my loss of innocence and the beginning of my interest in revenge as well.

In the next part of the story you'll find a slightly altered me, one with a clear purpose and a definite agenda in mind. That's what coming of age will do to you, it will make you sober, it will make you think and grow, it will make you plan.

If you don't believe me, turn the page.

We rode back into Nairobi in utter silence, the two old men together in the back seat, three hours with no one speaking, me speeding over potholes, banging into some of them as if I wanted to break the Land Rover's tyres. When we got to Lower Kabete Road I dropped Dr Zir at the top of his drive, not even saying good-bye.

The security guard opened the gate to my father's house, and only after I'd driven through and parked down under the avocado tree did I notice that my father was asleep in the back seat, slumped over into the space that Dr Zir had occupied a moment before. His mouth was open wider than Julius Grant's had been, and with the engine off, I could hear the troubled rasping of his breath.

I got out of the car and slammed the door, but since my father still didn't wake up, I left him there, opening the door again only to push the window a little aside so he'd have fresh air.

At first to be back inside my father's house was a relief. I washed my face and arms, removing the dirt of the road, and then I sat at the piano in the living room, letting the fingers of my right hand remember the first four measures of the Mozart sonata that Mr Smith had recorded on our farm, a perfect melodic line used in perfidy, to introduce a further madness into my life. I thought, What is it about living that makes it so impossible to keep the lines straight, to keep order and intimacy among humankind? I had been a happy child, quick and easy under the avocado boughs and at home among the animals of the African plain. I'd had a thirsty intellect from the very start, with the unfettered energy to let it drink. At home I was everyone's joy, and at school I was at the centre still, though of a wider world, with friends gathered around. By the time I went away to Oxford I was not only terrific at learning, but I could speak Swahili perfectly, and decent French as well. At Oxford I was owlishly aware of the world of books and short with those who weren't. I gave myself away there, first in the name of Karl Marx—I hate to say so but it's true—and twice more after that, once in honour of Dylan Thomas, as you may already have guessed, and twice again for Keats and Shelley, in a kind of photo finish. That made four men in my life, plus one more, all before returning to London to visit my still-sane father and to meet my truest love. And now my truest love was gone, dead because of some stupid plan, and I was alone, and I could only think, What's a woman's life but a series of encounters such as these? Is there any real work for a woman to do, any real life for her to live, if she is thirty-one and still naive and already widowed and alone? What is there for her to do if she has lived her life, thus far, in juxtaposition to the lives of all these unreliable men?

My father stayed in the Land Rover until sundown, and when I heard him coming through the front door of the house, I went out the side, circling around and getting into the Land Rover again. While he'd been sleeping I'd slept too, a little, and then I'd bathed and found clean clothes to wear. It was my intention to go out and discover as much as I could on my own before questioning my father again. Since the housekeeper was off, I left food in the kitchen, and I knew that soon Dr Zir would come, renewing the habit he'd formed, over years of being my father's neighbour and friend, of walking through the valley and coming in to drink a glass of port and play a game of chess.

But whatever my intention, as I drove out the gate and down Lower Kabete Road toward Westlands and town, I had no clear idea what I would actually do. I'd left food for my father but I hadn't eaten myself, so at Westlands I searched around a little bit, trying to find a bakery or a restaurant that would serve me something at such an odd time of day. I used to know this part of town well, but it had changed over the years, and I hadn't paid attention to the changes. There had been a restaurant and I had known where it was, but now it was gone, and the other restaurants I passed were either not open yet or were in some other way wrong—too expensive or presenting the wrong kind of food or impossible to enter alone. I circled the area twice, then gave up and drove downtown the back way, toward the National Museum, down the Parklands Sports Club Road.

Now I was driving alone through the only part of Nairobi I had ever lived in as an adult. I saw the building where I'd had my flat, and when I passed the sports club where I had exercised my young girl's body playing squash and running around, I nearly turned in, to experience myself as I had once been. Could I walk as a single woman across the club's creaking wooden floor? Could I do that? Though I tried, I couldn't even summon the faces of those I'd played squash with in that other life of mine, but could I walk in there now, renewing my membership to eat a solitary meal on the patio or in the darkest corner of the club's main bar?

It was already eight o'clock and I was still hungry when it suddenly came to me what I was doing and where I would go. On the streets of East African cities a strange quiet takes over in the early hours of the night, that's what Jules always used to say. Restaurants and bars and nightclubs dot the towns, of course, but the actual streets are nearly deserted. I've seen it in Harare and Mbabane and Addis and Dar. Nairobi's no exception, and as I drove into the main part of town I could see that all over the business district, even on the streets around the big hotels, things were by and large calm. I cruised the length of Kenyatta Avenue, then turned in front of the New Stanley and doubled back to park beside the bar of the Six Eighty Hotel, the one I thought Jules was headed for on that fateful night, and only a short walk from Loita Street. I was going back to the scene of the crime, the place where I had first understood that there was anything amiss at all.

I got out and locked the Land Rover's doors, but I had two things inside it that I didn't want stolen—that automatic pistol, which was lodged up in the springs under the driver's seat, and the file I had found in our office on the farm—so I asked the bar's security guard to watch the car while I was gone. After that I took a direct little road that led up beside the central post office, crossing Kenyatta Avenue in the dark.

The first time I saw the building, on the night I followed Jules around, I had approached it from the Market Street side, and it was harder than I expected it would be to find again now. And once I did find it, it looked less dilapidated, far less like a poacher's den. It had shingled sides, not the flaking brown paint that I'd have sworn it had before, and its front-room windows were large. All in all, in fact, it wasn't a place that had the guarded appearance that I'd seen with my foolish, wifely eyes, but, rather, one that seemed open and fine. It still had the residential aura that I'd felt before, and I still thought that was odd, on a street that otherwise contained businesses and vacant lots. There was no security guard in front, and there was no fence, but though it was well past business hours, the windows of the place were lit, as if reading lamps were on.

I had no idea what I was going to do at this place now. Could I follow the inclination I'd had on the only other night I had been here, nearly a month before? Could I knock on the door and ask whoever answered, not whether Jules could come out and play, but why they'd had to see him dead? Since my father and Detective Mubia wouldn't tell me, could I see if some stranger might?

I looked at my watch. It was already later than I wanted it to be, nearly eight-thirty on a never-ending day, but I stepped onto the porch of the house and tried to look through the small windows that fanned across the upper portion of the door. I had to stand on tiptoes, and the glass was bevelled, obscuring my view and fracturing the internal light, but I could see there was a man standing there. He wasn't looking at me but seemed to be cleaning something, rubbing a cloth against an object that he held in his hands. I stepped back a foot or two and knocked firmly on the door.

“Hodi?”
I called. “Is anyone home?”

I could see from the way the shadows moved on the glass that the man on the inside was standing against it now, but he didn't answer my call.

“I have business here,” I said, “a question to ask of the owner or the resident, whichever the case may be.”

I'd been sure that the man was standing still, listening from the other side of the door, but suddenly I saw his face, peering out at me from the lower and larger window to my left.

“Mr N'chele is not at home,” the man said. “He is never here at this time of night. He is at the New Florida Nightclub, taking his evening meal.”

“What?” I asked. “What did you say?” I had heard the man's words perfectly well, but I had no idea how else I could reply. My God, was this Mr N'chele's house? Mr N'chele was a famous man whom I had met once or twice as a girl. He'd been in the papers every day at the time of Kenya's independence a dozen years before. He was a fervent nationalist and a political candidate back then, but I hadn't heard his name in years. I guess I had supposed that he was dead. But if this was Mr N'chele's house, whatever my husband had been doing here became an even larger question than it had been before.

After the servant told me what street the New Florida Nightclub was on, I thanked him and stepped off the porch again, walking quickly away. The New Florida was nearby; it was the nightclub I'd seen above the petrol station on my original walk down here. But how could I approach a man like Mr N'chele in a bar? What could I possibly say?

I went back toward the end of the block again and was soon out of sight of the house. Walking straight would take me to my father's Land Rover and home, but the New Florida Nightclub was to my left and I somehow turned that way, not exactly deciding to go into the bar, but only intending to walk for a while, to amble forlornly along. And it was just then, just after I made my turn, that a kind of dizziness set in, a vertigo that made me put my hand against the nearest wall. I could already see the top of the New Florida Nightclub, but the street where I stood quite suddenly seemed changed, familiar to me, but in the oddest of ways. I felt as I had at that petrol station in Narok when I finally understood that what the hospital box contained was Jules's severed arm. The building I leaned against, which I'd barely noticed before, became one that I recognized from years and years ago. When I stood away from it, putting my hands to my head to rub my eyes, I could see the building as it had been, with a different coat of paint on it, with a newer and stronger look. And its juxtaposition with Mr N'chele's place, whence I'd just come, made me see everything else on the street as it had been when I was a child as well.