Links (15 page)

But nobody moved. The man repeated his instructions, and again nobody moved. People appeared disturbed by his indiscretion, and yet no one was ready to challenge him or oblige. Murmurs of disapproval were heard, the din growing louder as people talked among themselves. Even so, no one stood apart, or walked away, and no one declared himself to be mad or sane; everyone found comfort in staying with the crowd.

The old man changed his tack: “What if I asked you to separate yourselves into those who've murdered and those who haven't? Will all those who've murdered please gather here to my left, and all those who've not murdered or harmed anyone, who've raped no woman, looted no property, will they please stand here to my right?”

Nobody obliged, but Jeebleh's curious gaze fell on a military type, who broke into a heavy sweat. Now the old man danced a jig, and as he did so he had a smirk on his face, and his hands moved as though in imitation of a trained dancer performing the classical Indian dance-drama Kathakali—or so thought Jeebleh. The man cut a most impressive figure, with his stylized gestures now in vigorous motion, now gentle, his whole body moving in obligatory pursuit of a ritual, his index finger close to his nose, his hard stare focused on it, his squint disarming. The crowd grew, as more people came. The last group to arrive included a drummer, who beat in rhythm to the man's chants.

Having seen and heard enough, Jeebleh left the area. A man followed him. When Jeebleh slowed, he noted that the man was keeping pace with him. He turned to confront the man shadowing him, looked at him fixedly, and said with a wry smile, “Are you mad or are you sane? Are you a murderer? Are you innocent of all crimes?”

“Ask me a serious question, and I'll give an answer,” replied the man, his stare iron-tough.

“Don't you think these are serious questions nowadays?”

There was something fierce about this man with rough edges, the type you see in films. The hard-stare guy introduced himself: “My name is Kaahin.” And he extended his hand to Jeebleh, who remembered his encounter with Af-Laawe at the airport and decided not to shake it.

“What do you want?” Jeebleh asked.

“I want to know which group you'd join.”

“I've never killed or harmed anyone,” Jeebleh said.

“So you say!”

“What about you? Which would you join?”

“The murderers, of course,” Kaahin said, and guffawed.

Jeebleh saw now that the man's eyes wandered away, toward two men who were standing apart, smoking. Like him, they were military types, but too old to be part of a fighting force. If they were no longer in active service, Jeebleh guessed, they would be acting as consultants to security firms, or as deputies to a warlord, or as well-paid bodyguards to a VIP or to foreign dignitaries visiting the country. To a man, their postures gave them away.

The man calling himself Kaahin said, “Where are you when it comes to brothers and blood?”

“Have you ever heard of Hesiod?” Jeebleh replied.

“Who's he?”

“A poet who lived in the eighth century B.C.” Jeebleh didn't like the amused look on Kaahin's face, but he continued, trying to appear unbothered: “Hesiod advises that you take along a witness when you're in a dispute with your brother or one of your intimates over matters of great importance.”

“Well, perhaps I could be of some use to you, then.”

“In what way?”

“In leading you to someone you want to see.”

“I'm not with you.”

“I'm offering to be in your service,” Kaahin said.

“What will you do for me?”

“I'll come along as your witness.”

“Pray, who will I be meeting, and why do I need a witness?” Jeebleh started to walk away, pretending he had no idea what the man was talking about.

“I'll take you to Caloosha,” Kaahin said.

One of the military men led the way, the other walked behind. Jeebleh was sure that several others were shadowing them from a distance, even if they were invisible to him. They moved forward, in the direction of what he hoped was Caloosha's house.

JEEBLEH ENTERED A LIVING ROOM OVERCROWDED WITH FURNITURE AND immediately sensed the dark movements of a few figures, and then heard the sound of curtains being closed or opened. Likewise he could not determine whether the footsteps he heard on the staircase were gingerly going up or coming down.

In a corner of the room, a cat was trailing a spool wound with thread, which it pushed around so coquettishly that Jeebleh was quite taken with the acrobatic performance. This was when Caloosha made his staged entry. By the time Jeebleh became aware of his presence, Caloosha was already seated in the singularly placed high chair. Reduced to a sideshow, the cat pawed at the spool for a few more seconds, and then lost interest. Eventually, it walked out of the room altogether. Kaahin and his men spread out, one of them approaching Jeebleh where he stood.

“So here you are at last, my long-lost junior brother!” Caloosha said.

Jeebleh fought shy of applauding sarcastically, aware that Caloosha had worked very hard on his rehearsed delivery; he enunciated the phrase “long-lost junior brother” to give a sharp, cutting quality. He might as well have said, “Now, what have you got to say for yourself?” That Caloosha was upset was also obvious, but not why.

Jeebleh took his time, comparing his memory of Caloosha when he had seen him last with the specimen in the high chair. He was looking at a man with a more prominent nose than he remembered, a much fatter man, with so distended a paunch it spilled over his belt and lay flat in his lap. His face was puffy, the hair was thin on his skull, patchy, and peppered with gray at the sides. He could easily have done a send-up of a Buddha, only he had no wisdom to impart. Alas, the years had not humbled the fool in the least.

“It's been naughty of you to come to
my
city and to stay in a hotel,” Caloosha said, his double chin trembling, his breathing uncomfortable. “You could've stayed here. I'll tell it to your face, it's been very naughty of you, very, very naughty. Yes, that's how I feel, that's how I feel, and I'll speak about it.”

Ever since childhood they had been at loggerheads, and the memory of how Caloosha had again and again hurt him returned with a vengeance, causing Jeebleh to display his rage right away, and violently. The question now uppermost in his mind was how to keep from losing his cool.

“Is this a way to welcome a long-lost junior brother?” he said.

“Admit it, you've been naughty!”

“Maybe you could be nice to me for a change.”

“How do I do that?”

“Humor me, but don't shout at me.”

“Cut the crap,” Caloosha said, “and explain how you ask to be taken to a hotel in
my
part of the city. I have this big villa all to myself.”

“Af-Laawe suggested that I put up there.”

“Because you asked him to!”

“Let's talk about something else.”

“I've heard all about you and what you've been up to since your arrival,” Caloosha said, wagging a finger in mock threat.

This gave Jeebleh a tremor of unredeemed guilt. Might Caloosha have any idea what murderous thoughts were actually brewing in his mind? “I don't like it that we're fighting on our first meeting after so many years,” he said. “Can we allow peace to reign, at least for the time being? You can see that I've come to pay my respects to you, I've come to make amends, not to quarrel.”

They stared at each other with the fierceness of unresolved conflict. After a long silence, Jeebleh stammered, “Unfortunately, I had no way of reaching you.”

“You're a liar!”

Jeebleh was at a loss for words, and he looked about the room as if he might find there the expressions that were eluding him. He saw Kaahin and his two sidekicks, and thought that even though he didn't like what was being done to him, he wasn't a fool and wouldn't be misled into believing that he could gain anything by reacting violently. In the two days he had spent here, he had seen nothing but destruction, because none of the men at each other's throats was prepared to compromise, and none showed humility. Where would arrogance lead him? It would create further rifts, cause more deaths, and spill more bad blood! He considered the possibility too that Caloosha was playing to the gallery, showing off for his buddies. Now he said, “I'm not a liar, and you know it.”

“Lying at your age. Shame on you!”

Jeebleh took a step to the right, and from the corner of his eye, he could see that Kaahin was moving watchfully closer to him. This was a badly acted piece of theater all around, and so he said, “This isn't getting us anywhere.”

Then he made to leave. He didn't want to go—well aware that his departure would not bring him any nearer to learning how much Caloosha knew about where Raasta and her playmate were being held hostage, or who their captors were—and he suspected that Caloosha wouldn't let him walk out like this.

“Af-Laawe has been to see me,” Caloosha blurted, “and he told me about your message to Bile, that you wanted to meet up with him. Why didn't you send word to me too, unless you're fibbing?”

“Maybe he forgot to deliver it?”

“He wouldn't dare! It was I who alerted him to your arrival and sent him to greet you at the airport.”

“Truth-telling” sits awkwardly on evil men, Jeebleh thought. Caloosha's distended belly was filled with sentiments of war and wickedness, which was why he looked so ugly, and so unhealthy. Attrition retarded his brain, evil dulled his imagination, did not sharpen it.

“How did you know what flight I was coming on?” Jeebleh asked.

“Because I know everything that happens hereabouts.”

Reminding himself of the purpose of his visit, Jeebleh smiled and chose not to be provoked. They might get somewhere if he didn't deflate Caloosha's inflated ego in the presence of his buddies.

“I've had you followed,” Caloosha asserted, “and I know where you've been, to whom you've spoken, what comments you've made, from the moment your plane landed until you walked in here. Tell me, are you or aren't you a liar?”

Jeebleh felt like a mischievous pupil called to the headmaster's office to explain why he had behaved badly. He didn't know whether apologizing would help or play into the stronger hands of a brute, adept at exploiting a weakness in his character. He dodged and asked, “Where's the family?”

“What family?”

“Your wife and children.”

A primal joy descended on Caloosha's features, and his double chin trembled. It was touching to behold the sudden change in the man, whose expression was so infectious that Kaahin and his men grinned from cheek to cheek too. Jeebleh looked like a baby with a sweet tooth made to taste salt.

Caloosha intimated with a flick of his right hand that Kaahin and his companions should leave. Then he rose, heaving himself up and out of the high chair, and waddled toward Jeebleh, with every distended part of his body waggling. Jeebleh allowed himself to be hugged for the sake of peace. Caloosha smothered him in a fleshy, all-encompassing embrace. Jeebleh thought of women submitting themselves to men they loathed, for the love and safety of their children. Part of him didn't wish to know what his life would be like after this embrace.

Jeebleh's hand was entirely lost in Caloosha's acquisitive grip. Even so, he thought it best not to withdraw, lest his action provoke a hostile reaction from his host. Now that they were standing close to each other, he saw how ugly the man was, short, fat, and always short of breath. “How are they, anyway, the family?”

“They're all well.” Caloosha paced in circles as he spoke. “Do you know how many wives and how many children I have? Unlike you, I have twenty-two children, the perfect number for two soccer teams, with me as referee. I was married five times, and am currently married to three wives. I've been a grandfather seven times, all of them boys.”

“You're married to three women?”

“That's right.”

“Where are they, your families?”

“Almost all the children by my first five wives are in Holland, Sweden, and Denmark as asylum seekers, or in Canada and the U.S. as naturalized citizens. One of my wives is in Canada with her five children, another in the U.S. with seven, and so on and so on. In Canada and the U.S. my children changed their names to those of their mothers, fearing being linked to me, because of my earlier job. What a bore! But they're all doing well, earning enough and living comfortably. In fact, the two oldest girls send me monthly remittances, but the boys think more often about themselves, their latest fads and the cars they drive, and seldom about their old man. But we thank God for His great mercies!”

Jeebleh said, “You must be relieved that they are all out of the country and out of harm's way, what with the fierce fighting and all.”

“One of my current wives is here,” he said, and nearing Jeebleh, spoke in a whisper. “She's somewhere in this villa, the latest acquisition of an old man ready to retire.” Crassly, his left hand went to his crotch, and made a show of caressing it.

“How did you
acquire
her?” Jeebleh asked.

“We blundered into each other,” he replied.

“Blundered into each other?”

“That's one way of putting it. She and I blundered into each other out of fear, out of the loneliness of old age on my part, and out of the aloneness of youth on hers.”

There were no more mysteries to the brute, and Jeebleh could have killed him for that. If he did not act upon his visceral loathing, it was because the extent of Caloosha's ugliness was so overbearing and revolting at the same time, and of course, he hadn't the wherewithal to follow it through. Nor had the fool any sense of shame. The latest acquisition of an old man, indeed!