I wake from a dream about Walt Sackett so vivid in detail and so obscure in meaning that I feel disoriented. The dark forms around me became gradually clear. Yes, I’m lying in my own bed. Beside me, Nirina breathes slowly in her sleep.
I never know when she will come. When she does, she comes alone and always at night. She seldom stays more than a few minutes, only long enough to take from me the dollars I’m stealing from Picard so she can buy Walt Sackett’s freedom.
Whatever her intent, the nature of our brief transactions feels like an unholy middle ground between extortion and the harlot’s trade, though in fact, after that first visit, she has kept me not only figuratively but literally at arm’s length. I tell myself that she’s only bruised my male pride by hammering home how utterly resistible I am. Truthfully, it’s more than that. I can live without the girl I found in my bed that night, the one who walked away from me the next morning. But I long for the vulnerable young woman who spoke to me with such honesty in the car near Tamatave, the one who could make me desire the thing I always avoid, a real connection.
Not that I have much to worry about on that score. She understands that I want Walt out of jail as much as she does. She doesn’t really need to offer me anything else. Ours is a strictly business relationship—or was, until this evening.
She hardly said a word when she arrived last night. When she spoke she avoided my eyes. When she finally looked at me, I saw such pain, such need that, in a staggering failure of imagination, I held out my hand and led her upstairs.
We struggled in bed like animals, panting and groaning and crying out. The moment we found our release we separated, dazed and unhappy.
Afterward, I hand her the money. At first she tells me to put it in the pocket of her dress, then asks to count it first. “A hundred and sixty dollars? That’s it?”
“Admin’s watching me. I can’t cash big bundles anymore.”
“And Monsieur Picard is happy with this?”
“No, he’s not happy with this. I keep telling him this is all I can do, but he thinks I’m holding back on him.”
“You are.”
“You think I don’t know it?” I’m shouting. “How about the guy you say you’re bribing? Can’t you delay him? What’s the hurry?”
“He has his own needs. He tells me he needs it now.”
“Who’s it for? Who do you have on the hook? You’ve never told me.”
“You don’t need to know.”
I’ve short-changed Picard nearly four thousand dollars, telling myself that I’ll have plenty of time later to think of how I’ll deal with the Frenchman. “Later” has come, and I haven’t got a clue.
Well, what’s he going to do about it, kill me?
I look at the clock. It’s only ten. I’d thought it was the middle of the night. Without waking Nirina, I slip from the coil of twisted sheets, put on my robe and go downstairs. I dial the phone in the dark and wait out the long pause while the signal travels halfway around the world. If I had any sense, I’d just call Christine on her cell phone and avoid the risk of my ex or her new husband picking up. Of course, if I had any sense I wouldn’t be in my present fix.
Over the static in the line, I hear the ring, imagine it reverberating off the cold tile of the kitchen thousands of miles away, ringing from the small table near the front door, disturbing the peace of the upstairs bedroom, where my former wife lies every night with another man. I realize it’s late morning back there and Christine is at school, the adults at work. My call rings in an empty house.
I let it ring a little longer, loopily imagining that I’m putting down layers of sound that might still be pulsing when Christine comes home and she’ll know I called, that I was thinking about her before I was murdered.
I hang up, go upstairs, and climb back into bed.
“Where have you been?” Nirina asks, lying on her side, her back to me.
“Downstairs.”
“You were trying to call your daughter.”
“When did I ever tell you about her?”
“I knew.”
“You’ve added clairvoyance to your witching skills?”
“Is that what you tell yourself? That I am holding you through sorcery?”
“You’re going to tell me it’s love?”
She won’t face me. “There is no gain in loving you, only loss. If I had thought I could love you that way, I would never have done this.”
“You just jump into bed with me now and then to keep me under control.”
“Monsieur Knott—” She says it like a school teacher bringing a miscreant boy to attention.
“I think you can go ahead and call me Robert by now.”
“Monsieur Knott, I do this for love—as you do.”
“Me? Are you kidding? I love no one.” I hear the note of self-pity in my voice and despise myself for it.
“I almost wish it were true, but you are full of love. For your daughter. For Walt. For Samuel the driver. For Miss Gloria. For the woman from the embassy you speak of, the one who slept here before me. But you stay at a distance from all of them because you are afraid.”
I think about telling her to shut up.
With a graveyard laugh, she adds, “You think you’re wicked, but you are only frightened and cynical. And cynicism is only another way of being naive.”
“You’re too damn smart for someone your age.”
“I’m Malagasy. I am thousands of years old.”
“And I’m just lucky enough to get you when you’re only—” I thought for a moment I wanted to guess her age, but suddenly realize I don’t.
“You and I have each swallowed a stone.” She says it so quietly I can barely hear her.
“Sorry?”
“A Malagasy proverb. We have each taken on problems too big for us.”
The clarity of her judgment irritates me. “I can take care of my own problems. What about you? What happens if you manage to leave Madagascar with Walt and get to the U.S.? Do you really think everything will be just fine after that?”
“I don’t know. I’m only sure that I need to go. Perhaps I’ll be more alive. Perhaps I’ll begin to die.” She hugs her pillow like a life jacket. “Do you believe in fairy tales?”
“Of course not.”
“You should. They show the world we believe in, deep down. In your Western fairy tales there is always a young man leaving home to seek his fortune. He slays the monster, finds the hidden treasure, marries the beautiful princess. In ours, a young man leaves home and is eaten by a magic tree, or his brothers die because he is not there to protect them, or he marries a woman, brings her back home to his village, and she is murdered by his parents.”
“You’re saying nothing good comes of leaving home.”
“Of changing anything.”
“But you’re going to do it anyway.”
“Yes. And I’ll have to make this journey without my family. Or maybe I will find that they’re always with me, no matter where I go—my brothers, my mother.”
Do I love her? I honestly don’t know. But I admire the hell out of her. She’s got more courage than I’ve ever dreamed of having. “Your father too? He’ll be with you?”
She lets go of her pillow and turns onto her back, staring at the ceiling.
The soft parting of her lips before she speaks stirs a nerve deep inside me. “My father is dead. It was a week ago.”
All the usual words of condolence demand to be said, but I can’t bring myself to say them. I’ve been such a phony she wouldn’t believe me.
“So it will be that much easier to leave now,” I tell her.
Did she laugh, or sob?
“Walt thinks you’re in love with him.” She says nothing. “What will you do when you get him out of prison? He’ll stay with you here in Antananarivo?” I can barely discern the shake of her head. “All right. When you spring him—if you spring him—he can stay here with me a few days. The embassy will lend him the money to get a plane ticket home.” She stares at the ceiling. I bore in. “And I’ll bet you think you’re going with him when he leaves for America. You’re going to live with him there.”
It takes her a long time, but finally she speaks. “I know he has no money. At one point, yes, I thought he was wealthy and would help me. I was going to go to America with him. And when I got there I was going to leave him and find Bud.”
“Bud!?” The image of the red-headed Marine pops into my mind like the clown from a jack-in-the-box. She has got to be shitting me. That jarhead? “Bud!”
“He’s the most kind and gentle man I have ever met. He would let me be who I need to be.”
“Bud?” Somehow I can live with the idea of her being let down by Walt, or me, but not with the notion of her being happy with Bud. “Look, tell me—now—who’s the money going to? My guess is that you’re being fleeced by some low-grade flunky who’ll just pocket the money and take off to Paris with it. I don’t even want to think about how dumb—” Paris. It hits me like a hammer which is what I apparently need in order to see the obvious. “It’s Roland Rabary, isn’t it?” It’s all coming clear. “But he doesn’t know it’s coming from me. Doesn’t know that we’re stealing from Picard to pay him.” I try to laugh, but I’m too shocked to pull it off. “How in the hell do you know Rabary? Of course, you seem to know any man who might come in handy when you need—”
“He’s what?”
“From Tamatave. He was a provincial official there.”
“Just tell me if I’ve got this straight—yes or no. You want to spring Walt, even if he can’t take you to America. And Rabary needs dollars to bribe himself into that posting in Paris. Otherwise, you could have just fucked him to get Walt out of prison instead of fucking me.”
I finally get what I’ve been looking for all along. Her slap catches me hard enough to make my ears ring. And hard enough to drive from my mind a thought, just forming, about Rabary and Tamatave.
I grab her arms as she tries to hit me again.
Panting with rage and fear, she works loose, grabs her dress from the end of the bed, takes the money from the pocket and throws it in my face.
We crouch on opposite sides of the bed, breathing hard, like two prizefighters resting in their corners, waiting out the bell for the next round. But neither of us moves, and after a while I feel the tension evaporate. I understand the futility of trying to be something to her that I’m not, and the cruelty of punishing her for my own failure. “It’s okay, Nirina. Really it is,” I tell her. “We all use whatever we’ve got to do whatever it is we have to do.”
I fumble around the bedclothes until I’ve gathered the money into a neat stack. I push it to her across the bed, but she won’t take it.
For a long time the only sound I hear is her breath trembling on the edge of sobbing. When I can’t bear it any longer, I tell her, “Say something. Anything.”
What she tells me is this: “The money’s gone.”
The words are so unexpected I can’t take them in. “What?”
“The money’s gone. Everything but what’s lying on the bed.”
“What do you mean, the money’s—?”
“I spent it.”
“You spent it,” I repeat, unable to comprehend.
“On my father.”
“Your father’s dead.”
It’s a long time before she says anything because she needs to put it in words I’ll understand. “In our village my father was a great man. When we buried him we had to show him all the honor we wished him to continue to have. If we held back anything we would lose our place in the village and among our ancestors—and in our own hearts. We needed the finest cloth for his shroud, rice and beer for everyone in the village, and a great feast, as if our money had no other purpose. My family hasn’t got much money. But everyone in the village thought I did. I live in the city and they think everyone in the city has lots of money. The funny thing is that, right then, I did. So I paid for all of it. You won’t understand me when I say I had to.”
I fall back onto the bed. “Gawdalmighty. I risk my life to get you the money to have Walt freed, and you spend it on a funeral.”
“I’m not truly free.” Her head drops. “No one is. Freedom’s too frightening.”
“No,” I whisper, “no one is.”
I want to ask if she had held any money back for Walt’s funeral too, because if he doesn’t get out of prison soon he’s going to need one. Not to mention the funeral I’ll need for myself once Picard realizes I’ve stolen nearly four thousand dollars from him.
“What did you think you were going to do?” I ask, surprised at how calm I feel about it all. My wiring must be fried.
“I don’t know. I found the money once. Maybe I can find it again.” She doesn’t say it as if she believes it.
“So Walt stays in prison until you find it. And you stay in Madagascar.”
“Yes. Do you think Monsieur Rabary would still—”
We both jump at the sound of the telephone. I fumble for the receiver. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Knott, this is Sergeant Alcala at the embassy.”
“What’s up, Jess?”
“Sir, I just received a call from Ambassador Herr. She wants you and Mr. Esmer and Mr. Salvatore to meet at her residence in forty-five minutes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No sir.”
“What time is it?”
“Twenty-two-thirty.”
“What’s this about?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Some kind of trouble in the city.”
I hang up and turn to Nirina. “I’ve got to go. I may be a couple of hours.” I turn on the light. Nirina sits on the bed, arms crossed over her breasts.
“Take me home.”
“You don’t … You don’t have to go.”
She doesn’t bother to reply.
We drive the dark streets in silence, Nirina saying no more than, “Turn here,” or “The next left,” then finally, “Stop here.”
We’re in one of the shanty towns on the edge of the city. The tin and tar-paper shacks lie scattered along a slope above a stinking stream that glows a ghastly gray in the moonlight. The orange glow of kerosene lamps leaks between the gaps in the walls. I’ve seen places like this and know enough to stay away from them. The air is full of mosquitoes, the shacks full of sick children and parasite-ridden adults. Living here, Nirina won’t stay young very long.
She gets out of the car and leans in through the open door.
“Now leave.”
It’s past eleven by the time I arrive at the Ambassador’s residence. Esmer and Pete Salvatore are sitting in the living room in their shirt sleeves. Michelle Herr, in her dressing gown, has her feet propped on the coffee table.
Torn from my bed, still reeling with the hangover of Nirina’s confessions, I barely feel present. I pull up an armchair.
Esmer lays out what he knows. It isn’t much. Security maintains a roving patrol at night, two Malagasy guards in an old Land Rover, ostensibly to maintain coordination with the residence guards, but in truth to see that they stay awake. At about nine o’clock the patrol is taking a shortcut between Ivandry and the embassy when they see two trucks filled with soldiers heading toward the university. Very strange. They decide to follow. When they get to the university the trucks stop long enough to drop off a few of soldiers who throw up a roadblock across the entrance to the university. The rest of them continue onto the campus. The soldiers at the roadblock tell the embassy guards to drive on. They do, but not before they see fires among the dormitories, hear the crash of breaking glass and the stutter of gunfire.
Pete Salvatore sags in his chair, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Do we know what’s going on?”
“Can’t be sure yet,” Esmer says, “but when buildings catch fire you usually send for the fire department, not the army. It looks like the troubles have reached the capital.”
“The campus is isolated. Maybe this won’t spread,” Ambassador Herr suggests.
Esmer nods. “Who knows? The government will do everything they can to keep it from snowballing.”
Only a lengthening silence tips me off that someone has directed a question at me. “What do I think? I think the government will figure they can’t keep the trouble on campus. So they’ll make it spread—and quickly.”
Esmer snorts in derision and mutters something to Salvatore, who looks at the Ambassador.
Something in me snaps. “Look, you asked me what I think, so you get it!” I hear my voice rising with each word. “If you think the folks in power here are like you guys, you’ll never understand what’s going on here. They didn’t go to fancy schools or spend their summers in Maine. There’s not going to be anything in the papers or on TV, but word’s going to get around that buildings are burning and people are getting shot. These guys want to blame it on the vazaha, but they can’t do that if it stays on campus. So if they can’t snuff it out immediately—and they probably can’t—they’ll want it to spread, even if they have to help it along. They need a sense of crisis. They need people to be frightened. And they need a scapegoat. That’s us. And the Indians. If you guys don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything.”
Like a man having an out-of-body experience, I look down and see that I’ve risen to my feet and am standing over Esmer with my fists clenched. “Oh, god.” I run a hand over my face. My fingers are trembling. “Sorry … I have a lot on my mind these days.” I try to smile, as if my behavior is just a misfired joke. But I know it’s too late.
“Why don’t you sit down, Robert?” Michelle Herr says, with the same tone of voice a cop uses to talk a man off a ledge. She looks at Esmer and says oh-so-reasonably, “Perhaps we should look into increasing the guard force at the residences.”
Esmer glances at me before replying. “I’ll get on it.”
She turns to her deputy. “We’d better call a country team meeting for tomorrow morning. Pete, can you make the calls tonight?”
She looks at me, and I can see in her eyes that I’m through. I won’t be a factor in discussions from here on, won’t be assigned anything but the most routine duties. If it’s important, I won’t be a part of it. I can probably stay on until the end of my tour—the Ambassador’s too kind a soul to have me sent home. But from this night on, I’ll be only one more ghost on an island already crowded with them.
The meeting breaks up a few minutes later. Everyone makes a point of wishing me a good night.
Outside, the air is cool and clear. I sit in my car and wait until first Salvatore’s then Esmer’s tail lights have gone down the hill and turned toward Ivandry.
I start my car and head downtown.
At the Zebu Room, the usual walls of chatter, chinked with groans and the occasional cry of joy, sound more than ever like a sado-masochists convention.
I walk up to the cashier’s grill. “Two hundred thousand in chips.”
The cashier’s eyes widen as she looks up from her cash drawer. “Monsieur Knott,” she whispers, “I’ve been told not to give you any more chips.”
“I’ve got cash—dollars.”
She licks her lips nervously, retrieves her lost smile. “Let me call Monsieur Jacques.”
“No. It’ll be fine. Just give me the chips.” I shove under the grill the hundred and sixty bucks Nirina threw in my face earlier that evening.
The cashier looks at the eight twenty dollar bills, but doesn’t pick them up.
“Don’t worry. They’re real,” I tell her.
After a moment’s hesitation—she’s probably never said no to a vazaha, doesn’t know how—she counts the bills and hands me a stack of chips.
A charge goes through me at the sight of the chips. I feel like an artist on the high-wire, the crowd gazing up at me in wonder. I look out over the gaming tables and am suddenly unsure what to do next. The place closes at one. I don’t have much time to win back the four thousand dollars I need to keep from getting killed.
Then I see what I hadn’t known until that moment I’d been looking for.
Quietly elegant in an expensive suit of European cut, Roland Rabary stands at the roulette wheel, his homely face lighted by the fantasy he is allowed to indulge—the gentleman gambler blessed by Fate. Surely it’s a short step from there to becoming a real Frenchman. Only Pinocchio could understand the yearning Rabary feels.
Shouldering my way through the kibitzers, I find a spot at the roulette table across from Rabary. “How’s your luck running tonight, Roland?” I speak rapidly and in English to keep the others around the table from understanding. “Tell me, do they let you win every bet, or do they make you lose a few just to make it look better?”
With the self-control of a Zen master, Rabary barely looks up. “I think you need to leave, Robert.” The Malagasy hesitates, holding a small stack of chips over the betting field. The rest he keeps back, avoiding, I suppose, the drama of making big wagers. Finally, he places his bet and waits for the wheel to spin.
The croupier senses the tension at our end of the table. The Malagasy diplomat gives him the barest nod, indicating he should continue play. The croupier poises the ball over the wheel. “Faites vos jeux.” Place your bets.
Rabary puts his chips on black and loses. He puts them on Even and loses again. He follows this with a big bet on the first twelve, and wins.
Only because I know there’s a fix do I see the pattern—losing on the low-risk bets often enough that no one pays much attention when he wins at longer odds. Over the course of the evening, conspiring wordlessly with the croupier, he quietly makes a bundle.
Knowing now what to do, I follow Rabary’s bets. Within a few minutes I’ve doubled my money. I look at my watch, make a calculation. Yes, I may just have enough time to make up what I still owe Picard.
Rabary never looks up. I might think he’s forgotten me but for the fact that after every wager he draws out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his hands. He knows that with every bet he wins Picard is getting screwed twice—once by himself and once by me—and he can’t be sure the Frenchman won’t think we’re conspiring against him. That’s rich, but can Rabary really be sure he’ll be able to convince Picard we’re not in cahoots?
By midnight, being careful not to follow Rabary’s bets every time or put down so much money that people are bound to see what’s going on, I’ve got nine hundred bucks. Will that be enough to at least buy me more time from Picard? I doubt it.
Wringing the handkerchief in his hands, Rabary catches the croupier’s eye and inclines his head almost imperceptibly toward me. Then, with a rueful smile, he gathers in his chips.
“What’s wrong, Roland, afraid your luck is wearing thin?” I ask. When he doesn’t respond, I tell him, “If you walk away now, I swear to you I’ll start shouting the game is fixed.”
“No, you won’t,” Rabary replies. But he’s no longer walking away and his voice betrays a trace of unease.
“Tell me what I have to lose.”
Rabary raises his chin and says, “You are too intelligent to indulge in such folly.”
“Like hell I am.”
The Malagasy’s smile is as false as the wheel. “Why this sudden need to win, Robert? I would have thought—”
“You won’t be getting any money from the girl. It’s gone.”
Rabary tilts his head to one side, nothing more.
He’s really good, I have to hand it to him.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the croupier motion a waiter over and whisper something in his ear. Sensing the tension, the other gamblers around the table look curiously at Rabary and me. The croupier holds the ball in his hand but makes no move toward the wheel.
Rabary strokes his ill-favored nose and, with a sudden exhalation of breath, turns back to the table and sets his chips down. Black. I recognize it as the sort of bet he loses. When it’s too late for him to change his mind, I put mine on red.
Confused, a layer of anxious sweat on his lip, the croupier spins the wheel. Twenty-seven. Red.
“Monsieur Knott, how nice to have you with us this evening.” Jacques Razafintsalama grasps my arm in what probably looks to others as a friendly gesture. “Please, won’t you join me for a drink?”
“No thanks. Don’t want to leave the table. My luck’s in tonight.”
“Perhaps not as much as you think.” Jacques’ voice carries a steeliness I’ve never heard in him.
I look at my pile of chips. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Smiling faintly, Rabary puts his chips in his pocket and backs away from the table.
I feel the urge to start shouting but twist it into a laugh as I call out to Rabary. “The girl spent the money. That door’s closed. You want to get to Paris? You’re on your own now, baby.”
Rabary appears unconcerned. With a little wave of his hand, he smiles and drifts away.
For a moment I think of following through on my threat to denounce the game, cry foul, but Rabary has sized me up well. I’ll say nothing.
I jerk my arm from Jacques’s grip. “Tell the man to spin the wheel.” But I know the evening is a bet I’ve already lost.
A stir among the gamblers makes me look across the room.
Maurice Picard is striding across the floor toward us. He’s surprisingly quick for a big guy. Without breaking stride, he grabs the front of my shirt in one meaty hand, his face twisted with anger. “You want trouble? Yes? Good. I can give you plenty of it.” He pushes me into the table.
The other gamblers dart away like a school of fish in the presence of a shark.
“You’re a fool, Robert. I never fully saw it until now. We worked a way out for you. But you’re not smart enough to take it.” He thrusts out his jaw as he speaks, the spittle from his rage hitting me in the face. “Where’s my money? Where are my dollars, Bobby?”
I knock his hand from my chest. “You lost it, Maurice. You took a gamble on me. You should have known better. It’s gone.”
“You’re lying, Robert. Where’s my money?”
I want to laugh, but I’m afraid that if I start I won’t be able to stop. “Believe whatever you want, Maurice.” I nod toward the windows and the darkness between us and the university. “It’s too late anyway. This place is finally starting to burn. Why? Because you live in a country where half the people haven’t got enough to eat, where kids are rotting with leprosy or walk on their hands and knees because they’re born with broken backs. You live in a country where the ones in charge buy gold-rimmed china with the money they steal from hungry people. That includes you, you murderous son of a bitch. And all you’re going to get with all that money is a fancy funeral, ’cause you’re going to be buried here.” I heft my chips—it all feels so righteous—and fling them into Picard’s face. Then I walk toward the door, praying with every step that Picard hasn’t brought his gun with him. With all the men the Frenchman claims to have killed, he must have shot a few of them in the back.