The Chinese built the road to Tamatave years ago and, except for the bit of highway between the airport and the capital, it’s the best road in the country, which isn’t saying much. Narrow and bumpy, it twists like overcooked spaghetti as it rises into the hills east of Antananarivo, leading to the coast.
Sitting in the back seat of an embassy car, I look over my shoulder and draw an easier breath as the city disappears behind me. For the next couple of days I can escape the reach of Picard’s vague threats, Rabary’s vaguer warnings, Nirina’s wholly obscure designs, and Gloria’s clear-as-glass ambition. Among the thousand cuts of which I’m dying, the one that stings the most, though, is the thought of Walt Sackett still rotting in a Malagasy prison.
For the hundredth time, I remind myself that this trip represents my last best hope for redemption. A short, focused visit might reveal the discontent seething under the sunlit surface of Tamatave, show the storm building under its limpid skies. Gathering these tangled threads, I’ll weave a cloth of vivid patterns and stark outlines, drafting a cable that will make clear what the events in Tamatave presage for the people of the island nation and its beleaguered government. With this cogent, insightful essay, I’ll shake off the shackles that the Lilliputians of the goddamn State Department have twisted around me, rehabilitate my moribund career, and restore to me a decent sense of myself. My chest expands in contemplation of these happy prospects.
Unaccustomed to so much oxygen, I lapse into a coughing fit.
“Are you all right, sir?” Samuel asks.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”
We motor east through Moramanga, climb past Andasibe, drive deep into the warm and humid rain forest, alive with lemurs and lizards. We pass through thick canopies of palms and rosewood, past thick tangles of orchid and vanilla. From the forest’s shadows echo the cries of unseen birds and the roar of distant waterfalls. Occasionally I’m still moved by the wonders of the places I’ve been favored to live.
After a couple of hours, we top the summit of the hills and descend their eastern slopes, skirting a fast-moving river that leads to the sea. A few miles on, we emerge from the forest and drive through hills denuded of trees, their lower slopes terraced with rice paddies that spill down the rugged ravines and spread across the coastal plain. Many of the neatly-diked paddies are dry and empty. In others, men and women—who look more African, less Asian, than those on the central plateau—stoop to their labor amid the emerald-green shoots. In the distance, a young man drives three zebu toward a wooden pen. The identical scene must have rolled out on these same fields five hundred years earlier and may do so five hundred years from now.
Not everything speaks to the quiet continuity of uncounted generations. As we speed through a village on the coastal road, I catch a glimpse of burned-out shops. In another there are signs of looting—broken windows and smashed chairs. Women and children poke among the wreckage lying in the puddles left by last week’s rains.
The paved section of the coastal road ends at Tamatave, Madagascar’s main port. We drive through the outskirts and into the city past low huts and wooden shacks. They eventually give way to stuccoed buildings and a view of the Indian Ocean. Diffused by the humid coastal air, the tropical sunlight makes even the dullest colors glow with disturbing intensity. Equally disturbing is the heavy, humid coastal heat—like a sauna, except that you have to wear all your clothes.
Close in to shore, a few rusting cargo ships lay at anchor off a crescent-shaped stretch of beach, the water so crystal clear that the ships appear to be floating in the air.
I check into the Parador, a whitewashed three-story hotel a couple hundred yards from the beach. Like most of Tamatave, it gives the impression of having seen better days. In my room I put on a fresh shirt. I’m sweating through it before I’ve come back down to the lobby.
Samuel waits for me in the car. I climb in and tell him to drive me to the mairie, where I have an appointment with the mayor.
After sweating for nearly thirty minutes in a sweltering outer office, I’m about to tell the mayor’s secretary, “I get it already. He can make me wait,” when a door swings open and a thin, dapper man in a well-cut suit appears. He smiles and holds out his hand. “Monsieur Knott? Gamini Ravalisona. Sorry to keep you waiting. Please, come in.”
Except for the photo of President Ramananjara behind the mayor’s desk, the spacious office, served by a gasping and ineffectual air-conditioner, is free of decoration.
The uniformed man sitting in a straight-backed chair, his back to the door, certainly doesn’t count as ornament. Even seen from behind, he emits sparks of malevolent energy.
“Ah,” the mayor says, “This is Captain Andriamana, the local commander of the national police.”
The notorious captain turns in his chair and shoots me a look like an ice pick to the heart.
People seldom look like what you think they will. Captain Andriamana does. Though seated, he appears tall, with a neat black mustache that frames a thin down-turned mouth. Trim and tough, his olive skin and dark eyes give him a Latin appearance.
I brave a smile, hold out my hand. “I didn’t think I’d have had the pleasure of meeting the Captain until our appointment later today.”
Andriamana looks at my offered hand as if it were a dead fish. “I have a busy afternoon. I’ve canceled your appointment.”
A pretty girl—there is no lack of them in the offices of government officials—brings in coffee and cookies, and we pass fifteen minutes chatting about the recent rains, the current blue skies, and the many points of interest along the road from Antananarivo. Or at least the mayor and I speak of these things. The Captain, who has made it clear he doesn’t much care for me, or for the mayor either, adds an occasional grunt.
When I judge that we have laid down the requisite bed of polite conversation, I steer us toward the dismal state of the economy and the hardships it works on the residents of Tamatave. “It must be tough to keep a city running, to bring jobs in.”
For an instant, the mayor appears to forget the presence of Captain Andriamana, raising his eyes toward the heavens—or at least toward Antananarivo—and speaking candidly. “You have no idea. In the big ministries back in the capital it is all statistics and finger pointing. As a mayor, I must live in the real world, do what I can to make things better. But I have so little to work with.”
I know better than to take notes. A pen and notebook can make even the most expansive personalities clam up.
“It’s the same thing in an embassy,” I say and shake my head in sympathy. “The stuffed shirts back in Washington aren’t satisfied with telling you what to do. They also tell you how to do it, with no understanding of the realities you deal with. Enough to drive you crazy. I suppose people here occasionally want to express their frustration, too.”
Even after the endless preamble, I’ve broached the subject too soon, too directly. The Malagasy prefer indirection to bluntness, metaphor to clarity, and I’ve blundered. Behind his desk, Ravalisona stiffens, casting a nervous glance at the captain.
There’s no going back now. I plow ahead. “In the capital, I hear rumors of unrest.”
The smile has disappeared from the mayor’s face. He leans forward and steeples his fingers on his desk. “Unrest? I cannot speak for other regions of the country. Only for my small corner. While people’s lives are hard, they do not consider violence an acceptable recourse.”
He throws an anxious glance at Andriamana to see if this is an acceptable response. We all know the mayor’s words stop short of an actual denial.
I try to make the next sound as bland as possible. “You know, on my way here this afternoon I passed through villages where I saw some shops that looked as if they’d been burned and looted. And I wondered if—”
“You saw no such thing,” Captain Andriamana breaks in. It’s the longest speech he’s made since we exchanged greetings.
“No?”
The Captain’s voice holds the edged mildness of a man whom no one contradicts. “You saw damage from last year’s storms,” he says, referring to the cyclone that nearly destroyed Tamatave last year. “Regrettably, we are not a rich country like America,” he sneers. “Some of the effects are still visible.”
On the way into town, I’d noted roofless houses and abandoned commercial buildings, the tropical undergrowth slowly pulling them back into the earth. But the damage I saw on the road that afternoon was fresh.
“Some of the buildings I saw had been burned,” I say.
The policeman shrugs. “Abandoned buildings catch fire.”
To atone for his earlier burst of candor, the mayor appears anxious to agree with anything Andriamana says. “Yes. As the Captain says, there is still much damage from the cyclone. We are a country rich in its people, its beauty, its spirit. We are poor only in money.” He makes a little throwaway gesture. “Yet money means so much.”
I think of the debts hanging over me, of Picard and his need for dollars, of Rabary’s yearning for money and what it can buy.
“Listen.” Andriamana shoots out the word like a bullet. “I know what you will do. You will go back to your embassy and speak of how poor our city looks, amuse your colleagues with stories of the backward Malagasy. But do not tell them there is anger directed toward the government here. No. Our people are heroic and understand that our development will take time. If there is righteous indignation, it is justly directed at foreigners, Indian merchants, who profit from the people’s suffering. I enforce the law as best I can, but under the circumstances there are limits. Tell your people that.” The Captain raises his chin, daring me, or the mayor, to disagree.
My first meeting of the day, and I’ve screwed things up already. I could talk with these two all day and get nothing more from them. The mayor is cowed by the Captain’s presence, and Andriamana, if it suited him, would deny gravity. Shadows are falling over my previously clear path to redemption. I give it one more try, just for self-respect. “I hear reports of children being kidnapped near here. Are these all being done by one criminal, or has this phenomenon become general?”
With a nod, the little mayor defers to Andriamana.
The police captain eyes me as if measuring me for a coffin. “There have been reports. We are looking at suspects,” he says. “I’m sure we will make an arrest very soon.” His lips compress in resentment at his need to give credence to anything I say. “I suppose this sort of thing never happens in your country.” He barks a mirthless laugh. “We both know of the deviants and criminals in your society. Even you, Monsieur Knott, have your vices, yes?”
The elevator of my soul drops ten floors. Can he know about my misadventures with Picard? Who would have told him—and why would they have bothered? Or maybe it’s only a chance remark that my guilt has blown out of proportion.
“Yeah, I like to gamble,” I tell him, leaning back in my chair, and smiling, hoping it will irritate the policeman. “I recommend the Zebu Room in Antananarivo, Captain. I’m sure they’ll treat you well.”
My little act of bravado has a remarkable effect. The Captain leans forward in his chair, his face red with anger. Yet behind the rage, his eyes betray a flicker of unease. It vanishes so quickly, I could have missed it, but I know what I’ve seen.
He sees it, too, and goes on the attack. “We know the sordid ends to which men turn themselves. You can be sure that here, at least, they will be dealt with as they deserve.” He raises his hands, to forestall any further conversation, then slaps them against his thighs, loud as the crack of a pistol.
I slide into the back seat of the embassy car and tell Samuel, “I want to visit a shop.”
“Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him, but after my unsettling talk with Andriamana the hand I run through my hair is shaking. “Just find a shop for me.”
“What shop, sir?”
“Any shop. It doesn’t matter.”
After fourteen years of driving for the embassy, Samuel knows every town in the country as if it were his own. A five minute drive brings me to a dirt street lined with unpainted houses and small stores, most of them closed, a strange thing for a late afternoon. I spot a small grocery with its door open, and tell Samuel to stop.
Idle rickshaw drivers sit in the shade of the trees, watching us. In my present state, I’m sure that among them is one of Andriamana’s spies.
I take a deep breath and walk into the little shop. Its unpainted shelves rise to the ceiling, sparsely ranged with a few canned goods, some spices, and cartons of long-life milk. Two large bags, each with a little rice at the bottom, take up a large part of the floor. Baskets of mangoes and papayas hang from hooks.
Standing behind the counter, the shop’s owner—like so many small-time merchants in Madagascar, a man of Indian descent—greets me with silence.
I pick out a packet of batteries and a carton of milk from the shelves as the opening bid to conversation. “Business is good?”
The man behind the counter looks at me, his eyes giving away nothing. Indians make up the merchant class in most cities along the rim of the Indian Ocean, and are almost universally despised for their prosperity. It makes them suspicious of everyone but their own.
I want to appear as if I know more than I really do. “It doesn’t look as if you’ve suffered any damage. You’re lucky.”
The guy hears my accent and switches the conversation to English. “The others are afraid to open. I’m not.”
I look out at the nearly empty street. “Why? Things seem pretty quiet here.”
The merchant scoffs, and I know he’s seen through me.
Though his tone testifies to his reluctance to talk, I’m a fellow foreigner, which makes me relatively safe, and he needs to tell someone what’s happening. “It’s at night they come. That’s when there’s trouble.”
“So you close at night.”
The man blows out a breath and turns his head away. He has no words to waste on the obvious.
“Your neighbors stay shut even during the day.”
“To avoid trouble at night. Me? I need to make money.”
“And people have very little money?’
The Indian looks past me and into the street. “They haven’t got rice. That’s worse than not having money. Rice is the only thing they believe in.”
“I passed the rice fields today. They looked good.”
“Then you don’t know how to look. These days the government tells the farmers how much they can charge for their crop. But the farmers can’t grow rice for that price. So they abandon their paddies. People go hungry.”
“Why do they attack you and not the government?”
The man glares at me as if I’m deliberately aggravating him. A thin man in a ragged shirt comes in and pretends to be considering the papayas. The shop owner makes a show of puttering with items on his shelves until the man leaves.
I figure I’ve lost him, that he’s going to clam up tighter than the mayor, but his anger overwhelms his reticence. “They started out by protesting against the government. Then someone”—with a flick of his dark eyes he indicates the hostile world outside his shop—“told them it was our fault, the Indians’ fault, and they turned on us. The police come, but they stand aside long enough to let the mob beat one of us up and take everything from the shelves. Then they step in and make a couple of arrests. But the same men they arrest are in the crowd again the next night.”
“So the government won’t protect you.”
Now he turns his anger on me. “Who do you think tells them to attack us?”
“You want me to understand this. To take it back to Antananarivo.”
“I want you to know these things. What you understand is up to you. Now I want you gone. I’m closing up.”