A Dancer In the Dust Read online

  “I presume you canvassed the hotel,” I said.

  “Did you get your knowledge of police procedure from television or do you have some experience on the job?” Regal asked with a slightly mocking smile.

  “Strictly television,” I answered. “Did anybody talk?”

  “One guy,” Regal answered. “He lived across from the victim, and they had a few talks here and there, but according to this guy, Alaya was very closemouthed.”

  “Would you mind giving me this man’s name?” I asked.

  Regal hesitated. “You know, dipping your toe into a murder investigation could be dangerous. I presume Rudy told you that.”

  “He wouldn’t have to,” I said, “but I’ll take my chances.”

  Something in the tone of this answer seemed to convince Regal that I’d figured these risks and accepted them. He took a notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped through it before he found the man’s name.

  “Dalumi,” he said. “Herman Dalumi. Room 14-A.”

  “Thank you.”

  Regal closed the notebook and returned it to his pocket. “There’s one more thing.” He drew a paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “It’s a picture of the tattoo we found on the victim’s back. The ME said it was done right before the murder.”

  I looked at the photo and suddenly felt not nostalgia, but its chilling opposite, not a sweet or even bittersweet return of old feelings, but a wrenching, aching one.

  “Is the tattoo some kind of symbol, like those machetes?” Regal asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered softly.

  “It seems to strike a chord,” Regal said. “Like you recognized it.”

  I nodded. “It’s an oyster shell,” I told him. “There was a woman in Tumasi who used to carve shells like that out of wood. She would tie one to the other, so that they could be clicked together like castanets. She gave them to children who passed by her farm, and in return, the nomads always gave her something. A little cheese, maybe. Some goat’s milk or a gourd.”

  In my mind I saw Martine on one of those scorching afternoons, a group of Lutusi gathered in the front yard of her farmhouse, the children dancing around her, clicking the wooden shells she’d just given them. An old man, wrapped in flowing orange robes, had strolled over to her with something covered in a sack. She’d taken it and bowed to him, then turned toward me. “The Lutusi do not accept handouts,” she said in that softly pointed tone of hers. “They always give something in return.” With that she unwrapped the cloth to find a small pot that clearly delighted her, turned, and spoke to the man in the Lutusi dialect.

  “What did you tell him?” I asked, once he had returned to the other Lutusi lingering beside the road.

  “I told him that what he gave me is useful,” Martine answered. She turned the pot in her hands. “And it is useful.”

  A scraping sound brought me back to the present. It was Regal’s chair as he scooted it forward. “So, what was this woman to Seso?”

  “He knew her,” I said. “That’s all.”

  Regal looked disappointed. “So, that’s a dead end then, that tattoo?”

  “Probably.”

  We talked on for a time, though mostly about other cases Regal had known, odd ones he’d never solved or had solved by accident. He clearly believed Seso’s case would be one or the other. During all of this, I sat silently, my mind focused on the tattoo, the fact that it unexpectedly raised the possibility that Seso had died in some mysterious aftershock of the same quake that had shattered me.

  “So you got any other ideas?” Regal asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  This was true. I couldn’t imagine why Seso would possibly have come so far, a trip that surely must have cost him every dime he had. Toiling in Mafumi’s basement archive could not have paid much, and even such low work would have been done under the watchful eyes of the Emperor of All Peoples’ spidery agents.

  So why had Seso come to New York, and what had he brought with him? Because I had no way to answer this question, I found myself simply remembering him, fondly for the most part, his year of loyal service, and in particular, the time he’d saved my life.

  I’d been in-country only a few weeks at that time. We’d been walking through a part of the savanna I was considering as a possible location for a well. There was dried vegetation all about, along with a scattering of termite mounds that looked, at least from a distance, like the ancient towers of a long-abandoned city. Such was the favored abode and hunting ground of the black mamba, the continent’s most dangerous snake.

  I had no inkling that I was casually strolling a typical mamba habitat, of course. Seso knew it quite well, however. The closer we got to the mounds, the edgier he’d become, and he finally grabbed my hand when, like a little boy, I picked up a long stick and playfully began swinging it around.

  “You should not do this,” Seso said. “You should put down the stick.”

  “Why?”

  “You are calling the mamba,” Seso said. “It does not run. It attacks. And it is very fast.”

  Very fast indeed, I later read, clocked at twelve miles an hour, a snake so swift and deadly it could kill not just an occasional, unfortunate hyena, but an entire pack of them at a time.

  “In my village, one of them killed five dogs,” Seso told me. Then with a forwardness very unusual for him, he took the stick from my hand and dropped it on the ground. “It is good I warn you.”

  It is good I warn you.

  It struck me suddenly that all during my time with Seso, he had continually warned me of this peril or that one, to avoid this place or that animal. He had warned me not to trust Gessee, and on a particular evening, when he’d seen the dreadful signs, he’d warned me not to fall in love with Martine. Looking back now, it struck me that his most important service had been to lower my risks.

  If that protective impulse was still fundamental to his character, then perhaps it was for that reason that Seso had come to New York, I thought, bearing whatever he’d brought with him from Lubanda… as a warning.

  6

  Another risk management maxim occurred to me as I made my way home after talking with Max Regal. It states that the window of speculation narrows as proven facts accumulate, the final goal of risk assessment being the complete closure of that window. The problem, of course, is that indisputable facts remain open to highly disputable interpretations.

  For example, the shell tattoo. The very sight of it had called up a critical element in Seso’s character, how protective he’d been of me, of Fareem, and most certainly of Martine. This had led to my speculation that he’d come to warn Bill about something, an idea I’d found quite convincing at the moment it had occurred to me, but which my training in risk assessment now demanded that I call into question.

  True, Seso had chosen a symbol that would have meant nothing to anyone who hadn’t known Martine, but darkly suggestive—a potent symbol indeed—to anyone who had. Even so, I couldn’t remotely be sure of the tattoo’s meaning. Perhaps Seso had had his own reason for having it done. Perhaps it was the symbol of some cult he’d joined or some secret organization. Surely it was possible that it had nothing to do with Martine, save that Seso had, in coming here, felt himself no less doomed than she had been.

  I had only the memory of a particular night to argue that Seso had always considered himself something of a marked man. “I am an outcast,” he’d said on that occasion. He’d said this grimly, his words weighted with fatality, and he’d never seemed more a boy of the bush than at that moment, a boy who’d seen just how a pack of hyenas surround their isolated prey, their cackling and their cries, the nipping at the flanks of their exhausted victim. There is nothing kind in nature, as anyone who lives at its mercy knows, and Seso had certainly lived that unforgiving life. Even so, I’d come to believe that as he’d lived alongside me, he’d become more trusting not only of me but, dare I say it, of his fellow man, perhaps even his institutions. More’s the pity that
he’d abruptly found that trust both unwarranted and dangerous.

  I’d been in Tumasi for only a couple of weeks when it happened, and on that particular day I’d been driving about the savanna in an attempt to come up with a helpful project. While I was gone, an official from the Agricultural Ministry who’d stopped in the village had returned to his car to find his binoculars missing. He’d seen Seso loitering about his car and had immediately accused him. Seso had stood silently and with great dignity as the official hurled insults at him. “You are an outcast,” he’d yelled, “a thief like the rest of your kind.” At that point the official had more or less arrested Seso, then taken him to Nulamba, where the National Police had an office.

  It was Fareem who’d told me all this when I got back to Tumasi late that same afternoon. He’d been in the village when Seso was accused and had waited there until my return so that he could tell me what had happened. He agreed to go with me to Nulamba, where we’d found Seso locked in a back room of the small, tin-roofed building that served as headquarters for the district police. In a room that doubled as a storage closet, Seso sat on the floor in a humble, squatting posture, surrounded by a bramble of brooms and mops and plastic buckets. He seemed utterly reduced and humiliated, like one whose best efforts had come to nothing.

  “They are accusing me,” he said as he lifted himself from the floor, “but I did nothing. I work hard. I am not a thief.”

  It was the cry of a young man who’d done everything he could to better himself. To be locked up like a common criminal in this sorry backroom depository of plastic jerry cans and buckets seemed almost more than he could bear. “I am not a thief,” he repeated brokenly. “I do not steal.”

  It was seeing noble, hardworking Seso in such a condition that had emboldened me at that moment, so that I’d marched back into the constable’s office and demanded his release.

  “I am sorry, but he must be questioned,” the constable said.

  He wore no badge on his plain, olive green uniform, so there was nothing to suggest his authority save the decidedly innocuous sunflower pin on his cap, one that would be replaced by crossed pangas a few years later. This shaved-down form of official dress had also been part of President Dasai’s ideology of Village Harmony. In Lubanda, even the attire of authority was to be soft, pliable, unthreatening. That the constable currently wearing it would shift his allegiance to Mafumi when the time was right, get a much-sought-after promotion, and later help to carry out the Janetta Massacre, would never have occurred to Lubanda’s soon-to-be-filleted chief of state.

  But the constable’s capacity for violence was plenty clear to me. I could almost see the shadow of jackboots creep over his saintly sandals. He started to get up, then thought better of it, and eased back into his chair, where he rested like a big cat in the corner of his cage. “This prisoner has been accused of stealing, Mr. Campbell,” he explained. “This is a serious crime in Lubanda.”

  “Seso is not a thief,” I told him.

  The constable smiled. “I have only brought him here. I have not denied him food or water. Father Dasai does not wish any of his children harm. Negritude forbids it.”

  I recalled that the Lubanda Constitution had emphatically and repeatedly stated its faith in Negritude, the concept that no black man could do to another black man what white colonists had done, but I’d never heard the word used by a government official.

  “Surely you know this,” he added pointedly.

  “Of course I do,” I assured him. “I know Lubanda’s Constitution very well, and on the basis of that knowledge, I think it’s fair for me to ask when Seso will be released.”

  “This I cannot say, Mr. Campbell,” the constable told me. “There are certain problems.”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “Where he was when the theft occurred,” the constable answered. “He was near to the official’s car.”

  “Tumasi is a market,” I said. “I’m sure there were lots of people near the official’s car.”

  The constable didn’t answer, but we both knew the truth. Seso had been accused because of his tribal origins. It was the old, old story of guilt by association, and Lubanda was sunk as deep in that reeking mire as any other place.

  “He admits he went near the agricultural inspector’s car,” the constable said.

  “So what?”

  The constable looked at me with the motionless eyes of the seasoned interrogator he would later become as district commander for the Ministry of Internal Security.

  “I cannot say more at this time, Mr. Campbell,” he said, after which he offered a wide, Lubandan smile, all white teeth and cordiality, but in his case, with something steely in it.

  “I will come to you with any later questions,” he added, then glanced over to where Fareem stood in a corner, his hands folded in front of him, the posture of a valet.

  “Who is this?” he asked me. “One of your… servants?”

  “No,” I said. “A friend.”

  The constable appeared to find this mildly amusing. “You were in Tumasi when the theft occurred?” he asked Fareem.

  Fareem nodded.

  The constable looked at me. “He will stay.”

  “Stay?”

  “He will stay here,” the constable repeated. “To be questioned.”

  I looked at Fareem. There was a fierce supplication in his eyes: Please do not leave me with this man.

  “No,” I said. “If you need him later, let me know. I’ll bring him in myself. You have my word on that.”

  For a moment the constable stared at me with those same motionless eyes. He was obviously trying to calculate the risk, if there was any, in insisting that Fareem remain behind.

  “I will take your word, Mr. Campbell,” he said at last. “You may take your man with you.” His eyes shifted over to Fareem, and I saw in them the faint sparkle of contempt that would later shine so brightly in the eyes of Mafumi, as well as in those of all his officers and minions, his followers and hangers-on, the ululating women who danced at his rallies, the boy army that committed his outrages, a smoldering hatred so intense it was all but blinding.

  But that dreadful wave had not yet inundated the country, and so I simply nodded to this officer who had not yet transformed himself into the murderous factotum of a tyrant, glanced at the sunflower pin that winked from his cap, and said, “Good, then we can go.”

  With that I waved Fareem toward the door, then turned to leave myself. I had just reached the door when the constable called me back.

  “One moment.”

  I turned to face him. “Yes.”

  “You know that woman, yes? ” he asked.

  “That woman?”

  “The white woman. The one who has a farm at the end of Tumasi Road.”

  “Martine Aubert? Yes, I know her,” I said. “I met her my first day in Tumasi.”

  The constable stared at me evenly. “So she also is a friend of yours?”

  “Yes, she’s a friend,” I told him.

  His large eyes were dark and still. “Good,” he said, quietly, though with a curious edge. “It is good that she has a friend.”

  He meant a white friend, as we both knew, and by that he meant someone with influence. Even so, his remark had less than an amiable tone, the suggestion being that Martine would soon be in need of such a friend, and that quite naturally that friend, like Martine, would be white.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  The constable only smiled, then nodded toward the door. “Be careful on your way back to Tumasi. It is a dangerous road.”

  We walked out of the building, got into my Jeep, and headed back toward Tumasi. Fareem was clearly shaken, and for a long time he said nothing. Then, quite suddenly, he said, “It is as I thought. They are after Martine.”

  “Who?”

  “The big men in Rupala,” Fareem answered. “She got a letter from them. They want to evaluate her farm.”

  “‘Evaluate’? What does that mean?�
�

  “I don’t know, but it is never good when they come here, the people from the capital.”

  I tried to reassure him. “Everything is going to be fine,” I said. “It’s probably just some sort of survey. Governments are always taking surveys.”

  The sun was going down when we arrived at Martine’s house an hour or so later. She was sitting on the porch as we came to a halt, but rose quickly and was almost upon me by the time I got out of the Land Cruiser.

  “There is something wrong,” she said the instant our faces came into view.

  I told her what had happened—the theft, Seso’s arrest, our journey to Nulamba, what had transpired there.

  “The constable wouldn’t release Seso,” I said at the end of the narration. “But he looked fine. He hasn’t been harmed. I expect that he’ll be released very soon.”

  I started to buttress this conclusion with some unfounded notion about legal procedure, the rule of law, the present government’s commitment to these decidedly Western principles, but before I could speak, I happened to glance out and, in the distance, across the plain, I saw a long line of slender figures moving slowly at the far reaches of the bush, their animals moving with them: goats, cattle, camels, a dog or two. It was a group of Lutusi on their way to some watering hole perhaps forty or fifty miles off, slowly and gracefully moving at their own pace.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said by way of lightening the mood. “The way they move.”

  The tenderness of Martine’s reply touched some previously untouched part of me.

  “The Lutusi have their own pace,” she said in that way of hers, with neither admiration nor condemnation, but only as a matter of fact. They had their own time, and it was at one with their immemorial course, immutable as an ocean current. It was neither good nor bad. It simply, intractably… was.