Tropic of Night (40 page)

It is my last day of work. I will pick up my check, deposit it at the credit union at lunchtime, and then take the car in for the work it needs. The check should be a big one, with the unspent vacation time and the rebate from the pension fund. Whatever happens next, it should be enough to keep us until I can set up in a different line of work. Or to buy a getaway. I think again of running. He knows I’m alive, but he doesn’t know where my body is … no, he doesn’t really know I’m alive, that was hallucination last night, that and the dreams. Just a bad dream. This is real. I bang the heel of my hand against the hard, old-fashioned plastic steering wheel. It stings.

I am actually glad to see Mrs. Waley. She is not glad to see me, however. I start for my desk, but she motions me over. She is in magenta this morning, a pantsuit, over a pink polyester blouse. I am thinking about the check and calculating how much it will be. At least twelve hundred. I go into her office and shut the door.

“What do you mean by coming to work dressed like that?” she says immediately. “Just because it’s your last day don’t mean I’m relaxing my standards. No ma’am. Overalls and a T-shirt? And not even clean. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

In fact, I find that I am ashamed. I murmur an apology.

“That’s not good enough,” says Mrs. Waley. “You all think you can get away with murder, but you can’t, not while I’m in charge, missy. You’re going to give me a full day’s work in proper office apparel, or I am not going to sign off on your separation check. What do you think of that?”

I don’t think anything. I absolutely have to have that check. I stand mute. Mrs. Waley goes over to her closet and comes back with a lime-green pantsuit on a hanger, wrapped in cleaner’s plastic.

She says, “Out of the goodness of my heart, I’m going to lend you an outfit. Here. Put this on!”

I take the hanger and start to leave. She stops me. “No, right here. Change right here.”

What can I do? The woman is crazy and I need my check. I take off my overalls and then my T-shirt, and stand there naked. Mrs. Waley has a triumphant expression on her face, as if she knew that I was, underneath my submissive mien, a girl who would go out of the house in the morning with no undies on. I realize then I am standing in front of Mrs. Waley’s window. There are dozens of people looking in, all my medical records colleagues, and yes, there’s Lou Nearing, too. Well, he’s seen it all before, hasn’t he? I feel okay about it, though, because it’s my last day. I press my breasts up against the glass and wave. I feel the cold glass against my nipples, and feel them get stiff.

I am in the hammock with the moonlight making patterns on the opposite wall. The A/C throbs away next door. Now I believe that I’ll stay in the hammock, and watch the moonlight fade and the sunlight arrive, and just wait for what’s next. Perhaps Luz will come down after a while, and when she can’t get any response from me, she’ll run weeping over to Polly’s and Polly will come. She won’t be able to move me either. After a while a cop and a couple of guys from Jackson will come, and they’ll take me away and some intern in neuropsych will shoot me full of Thorazine and then I’ll be fine. I’ll spend the rest of my life in and out of the nut hatch, not making any trouble, resting quietly. Perhaps I’ll even gain some weight. Luz will get a nice foster family, I hope. Then I’ll die, and wake up in this hammock with the moonlight playing on the opposite wall and the A/C humming …

Now I dream that Jake the dog starts to bark, and he doesn’t stop, a high-pitched, frantic barking. I hear Polly’s door slam and hear her tell Jake to shut up, but he doesn’t and then I hear Polly screaming, calling upon the Deity, which she rarely does in real life. A door slams again. A honeyguide darts across the yard in that dipping way they have, and I hear, or think I hear, the purr, purr WHIT of its song. Or perhaps another sort of bird. It doesn’t matter here in dreamland.

Now my back hurts, just as if this were real. I want to get up, and I do get up. I mean, why not? I dress with care, not forgetting my undies, in full Dolores rig, a long-sleeved aqua T-shirt with gay balloons in bright felt appliquéd to its chest, and a midlength skirt in a bad cobalt blue: polyester, naturally. I take pains with my hair, to squeeze the last increment of ugly out of my turd-colored locks. I put on my awful glasses and step out on my landing to see what the fuss is about. Now I hear sirens.

I can see it quite clearly from here, on a big sheet of newspaper, right under our mango tree. It’s his way of telling me he knows where I am in real life. If there is such a thing as real life, I might be back in it now. Too soon to tell. How would I know?

10/31 Lagos—Bamako

Writing this on the plane, a charter. Personas non grata the two of us. My persona grated away, nothing left, really. Reaching inside, trying to comprehend. What did I do wrong? W. asleep, drugged. Can’t look at him, can’t imagine touching him again. But here he is, I sprang him. Went to see Musa. He screamed and stood very close. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, although he is Muslim. Gave him the money, thought he was going to demand something more personal. Would I have? For W.? Spared that.

Found W. lying in the corner of a fetid cell, on the floor. He was very glad to see me, pathetically glad, crying. W. not really a tough guy, not physically tough. Not like Greer. I saw they’d broken him completely, his fellow Africans. His face was swollen with bruises and cuts, he’d lost a couple of teeth, too. Later, back at the hotel, we had the Brit doctor who takes care of the oil people in to take a look, knocked him out with Dilaudid & the guy went over him. Fuckers had concentrated a good deal on his groin, as they always do.

Want my daddy, want Greer to be my daddy. This can’t be over, won’t let it.

Pilot just came back to say we have clearance. We’re going to Mali. Berne thinks that’s where we need to pick up the trace of the Olo, if there ever were any. I thought about just going home, but I want something to come out of this disaster. W. doesn’t express an opinion. So I will look. We’re taxiing. The plane is shaking so th

11/2 Bamako, Mali

Hotel de l’Amitié, the best in town, eighty bucks a night, I took a suite. Have arranged for an English-speaking doc, Dr. Rawtif, a Lebanese, to see W. He still looks pretty bad, but Rawtif says there are no breaks or internal injuries. The genital swelling has decreased, too. They were careful, it seems. I told him and the hotel staff that he was in a car wreck. No one believes this, but they are kind people.

11/11 Bamako

He left the suite for the first time today. Shaky on his legs. Still won’t talk about it. We had dinner in the hotel dining room. The place is modern four-star, you could be anywhere provincial, Hamburg, Toulon. Lots of Germans and French, a few Americans, mainly businesspeople and rich tourists. November is the best month here, the height of what passes for a tourist season in Mali. The rains are just over and it is as cool as it ever gets. We got the usual looks.

I left him this afternoon to visit the contact Greer gave me at the Musée National, a Dr. Traore, asked him about the Olo, got funny look. We spoke about old Tour de Montaille. According to him a charlatan imperialist. Made up stories about witchcraft, human sacrifice, to denigrate Africans, justify la mission civilisatrice . Conversation flagged. Asked him if I could make a financial contribution to the museum. Conversation cranked up again. Dr. Traore had spent a year at Chicago, so we had something in common. I wrote a check, got the run of the archives. He showed me around, the usual long termite-ridden wooden racks of crumbling papers, covered in red-ocher dust. Oddly enough, they have not computerized the catalog at the Musée National du Mali. I wrapped a bandanna around my face and poked around aimlessly for a couple of hours. An incompletely cataloged collection where I will spend rest of my life, manless dried-up stick of a spinster. No, divorcée. Annulée? Find I am more interested in my career now that my marriage has collapsed. If it has. He is quiet now, docile. It is almost worse than when he was being monstrous. Returned to the hotel to find him out cold. Dr. Rawtif has a free hand with the downers.

11/8 Bamako

A little scene in the lobby today. W. was just standing there & a tourist came up to him and told him to take his bags out, waving some currency. W. walked away & the guy came after him and grabbed him and W. punched him in the nose. Remarkable, since he is so uncoordinated. I saw it, too. W. grinned, for the first time in months, it seems like. Both of us in a good mood all day behind it. We went to the Grand Marché after that and had lunch, we talked, joked, almost like we used to be. That’s a big “almost.” Can hardly recall how we used to be. Maybe all a fantasy anyway. Romance = hallucination, M. used to say.

Bamako is a lot nicer than Lagos, there’s a lively buzz, a friendliness, and I have not seen evidence of the nastier sorts of crime. Fell in with an American nurse, a nun actually, Dolores something. Funny bird. She spends most of her time in the bush giving inoculations and other pediatric care. She gets around in a pirogue when she goes upriver and by moped otherwise. Asked her about Bambara lessons, which I’ll need, and she gave me some names.

11/10 Bamako

We have to leave the hotel because of W.’s dust-up. I asked him where he’d like to stay and he said anywhere he doesn’t have to see tourists. Talked to Dolores, later. She suggests living on the river.

11/15 Bamako

Writing this looking out at the brown Niger, from the deck of our houseboat. You can really get anything you need on the water, from the floating market, including black hashish. We both smoke a good deal. It makes things easier, and he says it helps him write. I wouldn’t know, he doesn’t read things to me anymore. No sex, I don’t want it, he doesn’t offer. We haven’t spoken about Lagos.

Dull days these, in the dust of the archives, will give it another month, then take a little cruise, maybe upriver to Djenné to see the mosque, the largest mud structure in the world, they say. The kind of thing poor Mali would be distinguished for.

11/20 Bamako

A tiny discovery today, the journal of a Salesian father who worked at a leprosarium here in the late 19th. Crumbled, full of wormholes, but still legible. He mentions Tour de Montaille, who stopped by for a cure, an officer of good family, in the last stages of exhaustion, with fever, says Fr. Camille, if I am translating correctly, with tales of monstrous occurrences among the natives of the northern interior, un gens trčs dépravé qui s’appelle des Oleau . This is, as far as I know, the only independent mention of the Olo anywhere. (Tour de Montaille blowing smoke at the priest? fever delirium?) The leper hospital was located near the present town of Mdina, about 120 km northwest of here. The hospital no longer exists, according to the French embassy, closed in 1921.

Shopped for Xmas presents in the Petit Marché later. Found a remarkable pistol for Dad, in prime condition, an 1896 Mauser nine mm, with the famous red nine stamped on the handle, and an antique amber necklace for Mary. For Dieter, an album of old studio photographs from the French days, and a terrific market painting for Josey. Didn’t get anything for W., yet. Maybe a silver hash pipe, he might wear out the one he’s got before the holidays. Shipped all of it off to Sionnet. Thought about Christmas there, got a little homesick. Nothing for Mom either, not that it matters, she’ll hate whatever I buy. Doe stubbornness, not ever to give up on people. Got it from Dad. May explain why I am still with W. So I will keep looking.

11/23 Bamako

On a roll now, sometimes it happens that way, M. always used to say, one discovery leads to another. In one of the street markets, shopping for Mom. Spotted a small leopard mask, ivory, heavily incised, with the eyes made of some greenish stone?looked just like her, the expression. It turned out to be a Mande article, and the shopwoman was knowledgeable about its provenance. While she was wrapping it in newspaper, I looked around the place. The usual mix of textiles, jewelry, fetishes, except that she seemed to have a wider range than the usual market joint, and better taste. It was just sitting there, sticking out of a clay pot that stood on the head of a big drum, looking very old, yellowed like ivory, with shallow geometrical inscriptions on it. It had a hole drilled in one end.

Trembling when I brought it up to the proprietor. Turtleshell, she said, Fula from upriver. I asked her where she got it. A trader. Name? She looked doubtful. I flashed money. A man named Bonbacar Togola, a trader and hunter. Where could he be found? In Mdina, she said, and I saw stars. I bought the little thing without even the pretence of bargaining and walked out, with the leopard mask, too. My mother’s gift, that had got me into the place to make this spectacular find. In the street I checked it out again. Good I took physical anthro. Saw that it really was the sternum of a neonate human, decorated and drilled for hanging in the house of a witch. Tour de Montaille had described just such a house, and the hanging racks of such objects ( idubde) & also the rituals that produced them. I’m holding an actual Olo artifact! Thanks, Mom!

They seemed to be in a park bordered by poplars in full leaf, through the trunks of which shone dappled lawns. The road ended in a broad apron of tan gravel, washed golden in pools by shafts of sun. They parked and climbed stone stairs to a terrace, and there was the house, Sionnet. It was long and rambling and many-gabled, a Queen Anne fantasy in rose brick and tan stucco, its gray slate roofing pierced by dozens of brick chimneys. There was a large white wooden barn off to the right, and through some trees they could see the glitter of a greenhouse, and beyond that the sheen of the Sound. Seabirds shrieked above, and they heard the sound of a mower in the distance.

Paz and Barlow walked to the front door, past a flagpole from which the Stars and Stripes crackled in the breeze. The terrace was nearly as large as a football field and formal in design, with neat, bright flower beds, and lozenges of lawn cut by graveled paths. A group of workmen in khaki were doing some repairs on the stone balustrade that enclosed it. The front door was iron-bound, thick-planked dark wood, pierced by a small diamond window.