The Nightmare (29 page)

“I think about Penelope when we have sex,” Björn says.

Ossian boos and makes a disgusted grimace as he jogs in the lamplight.

“You’re supposed to tell the truth,” he shrieks. “That’s not even close! No one in the audience would ever believe that you think about the Hag when you’re sleeping with her. That’s one, two, three negative points for the Cutie!”

He spins the bottle again and it stops almost at once, pointed toward Penelope.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Ossian yells. “A special case! What does this mean? That’s right! Consequence directly! Direct to go! I’ll open the box and see what the Hippo has to say!”

Ossian picks up from the table a tiny hippopotamus made of dark lacquered wood. He holds it to his ear as if he’s listening and he nods.

“You mean the Hag?” he asks. He listens again. “I understand, Mr. Hippo! Yes indeed, thank you so very much!”

Ossian replaces the hippopotamus and turns to Penelope with a smile.

“The Hag will compete with Ossian! The area is Striptease! If you can turn on the audience better than Ossian can, you’ll get all the numbers of the PIN code—otherwise the Cutie will have to kick you in the ass as hard as he can!”

Ossian jumps up and down in front of his music system and hits a button so that the song “Teach Me Tiger” comes on.

“One time I lost this competition against Loa Falkman,” Ossian says in a stage whisper while he swings his hips in time to the music.

Penelope gets up from the sofa and takes a step forward. She stands there wearing sailor boots, the pin-striped trousers, and the hoodie.

“So you just want me to take off my clothes,” Penelope says. “Is that what this is all about? You just want to see me naked?”

Ossian stops singing and his mouth puckers in disappointment. He looks at her coldly before he replies.

“Do you believe I’d ever be interested in looking at a refugee whore’s tiny cunt? That’s easy enough to order on the Internet.”

Ossian hits her hard. She sways and almost falls, but manages to keep her balance.

“You need to be polite when you’re talking to me,” he says seriously.

“All right,” she mumbles.

A funny little smile distorts his mouth as he explains.

“I’m someone who often competes with celebrities from television … and I’ve seen you there, though I hurried to change the channel.”

She looks at his excited, flushed face.

“You’re not going to give us the phone, are you?”

“I promise I will. Rules are rules. You’ll get it after I get what I want.”

“You know we need help and you’re using that to—”

“Yes, of course, I’m using it!” he screams.

“All right, then, let’s say we strip for a while and then I get the phone.”

Penelope turns away from Ossian and pulls off the sweater and T-shirt. Her scrapes and wounds are discolorations in the strong light. Her body is covered in bruises and dried dirt. She turns around but keeps her arms over her breasts.

Björn claps and whistles although he looks sad.

Ossian’s face is sweaty, staring at Penelope. Then he stands in the lamplight in front of Björn. He rolls his hips and then whips off the loincloth and twirls it around. He lets it run between his legs before he throws it at Björn. Ossian kisses the air in front of Björn and makes an “I’ll call you” gesture.

Björn claps and whistles louder and keeps clapping as he sees Penelope edging near the fireplace to pick up the iron poker from its rack. The ash shovel next to it sways and clangs slightly against the large tongs.

Ossian is dancing in glittery gold underwear.

Penelope holds the poker with both hands as she walks up behind Ossian, who is rolling his hips at Björn.

“Get on your knees, Cutie,” Ossian whispers. “Get down and give it to me.”

Savagely Penelope brings up the heavy poker between his legs as hard as she can. There’s a loud smack and Ossian falls, screaming with an unearthly sound. He holds himself and writhes around on the floor, howling. Penelope walks over to the music system and gives it four vicious strokes, smashing it to bits while the music squeals to a stop.

Ossian is panting and moaning as he lies on the floor. Penelope walks over to him and he squints up at her with fearful eyes. She stands there looking impassively down. The heavy poker sways slightly in her right hand.

Penelope says calmly, “Mr. Hippo tells me that you’ll give me the phone and the PIN number right now.”

55

the maritime police

It’s extremely humid in Ossian Wallenberg’s summerhouse. Björn keeps getting up from a chair to look out the window at the ocean and the dock. Penelope is on the sofa with the phone in her hand, waiting for the police to call her back. They had taken her emergency call and had promised to call back once the maritime police boat got closer. Ossian is sitting in an armchair with a large whiskey glass in front of him. He watches them. He’s taken painkillers and says, depressed, that he’ll live.

Penelope keeps looking at the phone and notices that the signal is weaker but still strong enough to take a call. Anytime now they should be returning her call. She leans back. The humidity is suffocating. The T-shirt she’s wearing is damp with sweat. She closes her eyes and begins to think about the time she was in Darfur: the oppressive heat as she traveled to Kubbum by bus in order to join Jane Oduya and her work with Action Contre la Faim.

She’d been on her way to the barracks, which was the organization’s administration center, when she stopped. She’d glimpsed some children playing a strange game. It looked like they were putting clay figures in the road so that the passing vehicles would crush them. She walked closer. They laughed out loud whenever one of their clay figures was smashed.

“I killed another one! This one is an old man!”

“I killed another Fur!”

One of the children ran into the road and put out two clay figures. One was large and one was small. As a cart rolled past, the little one was crushed beneath its wheels.

“The kid died! That whore kid died!”

Penelope walked over to the children and asked them what they were doing. But they didn’t answer, just ran away instead. Penelope stared down at the clay fragments left on the burnt-orange dirt road.

The name Fur had been given to the people in the area of Darfur. This ancient African tribe was now being slaughtered because of the Janjaweed terror.

For centuries the African people had been farmers, and there had always been conflict between the farmers and the remaining nomadic tribes; that conflict seemed to have gone on since the beginning of time. But now oil had been discovered under the ground in Darfur, and the African tribes that farmed this soil seemingly forever were being shoved aside. Oil production drove everything—including the genocide. On paper, the old civil war was over, but the Janjaweed continued systematic raids. They would kill the men, rape the women, and then burn down the village.

Penelope watched the Arab children run away, and then she gathered up the remaining clay figures. Someone called out “Penny! Penny!”

She jumped, fearful, but then turned to see Jane Oduya standing and waving to her. Jane was fat and short. She wore faded jeans and a yellow jacket. Penelope could hardly recognize her. Her face had aged so much in just a few short years.

“Jane!”

They hugged each other tightly.

“Don’t talk to those children,” Jane said. “They’re like so many others. They hate us because we are black. I don’t understand it. They just hate black skin.”

Jane and Penelope walked toward the refugee camp. The odor of burned milk overlay the stench of latrines. The blue plastic UN tarps were everywhere and used for everything: curtains, windshields, blankets. Hundreds of the Red Cross’s white tents shook in the wind coming across the open land.

Penelope followed Jane into the large hospital tent. Jane cast a glance through the plastic window to the surgical unit.

“My nurses have become good surgeons,” she said. “They can now perform amputations and the easy operations on their own.”

Two thin boys, about thirteen years old, brought in a large box with material for dressing wounds and set it down carefully. As they approached Jane, she thanked them and asked them to assist the women who were just arriving. The women needed water to wash their wounds.

The boys were soon back with water in two large plastic jugs.

“They used to belong to the Arab militia, but everything is quiet now. Without ammunition and weapons parts, equilibrium has set in. People have time on their hands and some have decided to help out here. We have a school for boys, many of whom used to be part of the militia.”

A woman on a cot moaned. Jane went to her and stroked her face. She didn’t seem to be more than fifteen years old but was greatly pregnant. One of her feet had been amputated.

An African man of about thirty, with a beautiful face and muscular shoulders, hurried over to Jane with a small white bottle.

“Thirty new doses of antibiotics!”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded, beaming.

“Good work!”

“I’m going to go and lean on Ross some more. He said that we might get a box of blood-pressure cuffs this week.”

“This is Grey,” Jane said. “He’s actually a teacher, but I couldn’t keep going without him.”

Penelope extended her hand and met the man’s laughing eyes.

“Penelope Fernandez.”

“Tarzan,” he replied as he gave her a gentle handshake.

“He wanted to be called Tarzan the minute he came here,” said Jane, laughing.

“Tarzan and Jane.” He smiled. “I’m her Tarzan.”

“I finally agreed to let him call himself Greystoke,” Jane said. “Everyone found Greystoke too hard to pronounce, however, so now he has to be content with the name Grey.”

A truck honked outside the tent. They stepped quickly out. Reddish dust, kicked up by the tires, swirled in the air. On the bed of the truck lay seven wounded men. They’d been shot in a village farther west when a firefight broke out over a well.

Surgery took up the rest of the day. One of the men died. At one point, Grey stopped Penelope and held out a water bottle to her. Penelope shook her head, but he smiled calmly and said, “You have time to drink.” She thanked him, drank the water, then helped him lift one of the wounded men onto a cot.

That evening, Penelope and Jane sat on the veranda of one of the living quarters of the barracks. The day had exhausted them. They’d eaten a late dinner. It was still fairly hot. They chatted and watched the road between the houses and the tents, watched the people going about the last chores of the day before nightfall.

Deep night brought an uneasy quiet. At first, Penelope could hear people going to bed: the rustling near the latrines and the small, almost silent movements in the darkness. Soon everything was totally quiet. Not even the sound of a crying baby.

“Everyone is still afraid that the Janjaweed will pass through here,” Jane said as she collected the plates.

They went inside, locked the door, and barricaded it. They said good night, and Penelope headed to the guest room farthest down the hallway.

Two hours later, she woke with a jerk. She’d fallen asleep, fully dressed, on the guest bed. She lay still, listening to the powerful night, not remembering what had awakened her. Her heart had begun to calm when she suddenly heard a scream outside. Penelope stood to one side of the barred window to look out into the night. The moon shone down over the road. She could hear angry voices. Three teenage boys walked in the middle of the street; without a doubt, they belonged to the Janjaweed militia. One had a pistol. Penelope grasped that they’d been yelling about killing slaves, about an old African man who usually grilled sweet potatoes and sold them for two dinars apiece while sitting on his blanket outside the UN storehouse.

The boys had gone up to the old man and spat in his face. Then the thin boy had raised his pistol and shot the old man in the face. The
bang
had reverberated eerily between the buildings. That’s what had jarred Penelope from her sleep. The boys had yelled, grabbed up some sweet potatoes, and eaten them while they kicked the rest into the dust beside the dead man.

They kept sauntering along the road, looking around. Then they headed for the barracks where Penelope and Jane lived. Penelope held her breath as she listened to them thump around the veranda, yelling excitedly as they banged on the door.

*   *   *

Penelope gasps for breath and opens her eyes. She must have fallen asleep on Ossian Wallenberg’s sofa.

Thunder rumbles in the background. The skies have turned dark.

Björn is standing at the window. Ossian is sipping his whiskey.

Penelope looks at the phone—no one has called.

The maritime police should have been here by now.

The claps of thunder are approaching. The ceiling light goes out and the fan in the kitchen stops. The power is out. The patter of rain starts gently on the roof and shutters, then increases until it seems the skies simply burst open and let the rain pour down.

All cell-phone coverage disappears.

Lightning flashes and lights the room for a second. A crash of thunder follows it.

Penelope leans back to listen to the rain. She feels the cooler air streaming inside through the windows and starts to doze off again when she hears Björn say something.

“What?” she asks.

“A police boat,” he repeats. “I see a police boat.”

Penelope quickly leaps up and looks out. The seawater seems to boil from the massive downpour. The large, official-looking launch is already close and heading for the dock. Penelope glances at the phone. No reception yet.

“Hurry up,” Björn says.

He tries to force the key in the lock of the French door. His hands are shaking. The police launch glides in next to the dock and blares a warning note.

“It doesn’t work,” Björn says. “This is the wrong key.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” Ossian smirks. He takes out his key chain. “Why don’t you try this one instead.”

Björn fumbles with the door key, gets it into the lock, turns it, and hears the tumblers click open.