A bell jangled as I opened the door and greeted a woman who sat behind a glass counter reading a newspaper. She looked up, pinning me with a glare.
“No hawkers,” she said. “And no car wash.”
“I’ve come to see Boubacar,” I answered.
“And you are?”
“Patson Moyo. He helped my family get to Marange. He knows me. This is his tie.”
She looked more closely at me, and then picked up the phone, indicating that I should wait in the corner. I sat on the edge of the chair and looked out the window. There was no sign of Arves. My hands started to sweat. The woman dropped the phone back in its cradle and returned to her newspaper. For a spectacle shop, there were very few on display.
The silence was hot. Sweat trickled down my back, and my leg was twitching up and down. I leaned hard on my knee and at that moment Boubacar stepped through a beaded curtain. He stared at me with a bemused expression.
“Patson?”
I’d forgotten how ugly he was but I had never been happier to see those scars and his broken nose.
“Can we talk?” In the background a police van hurtled down the road, its siren blaring.
“Come.” Boubacar parted the beaded curtain and led me up a flight of stairs. We stopped on a small, dimly lit landing outside a heavy door. Our precious tin of ngodas wrapped in newspaper and stuffed among nuts and fruit seemed to be burning a hole in my bag.
“Grace wanted to come with me,” I said. “She says hello.”
He nodded. “But that’s not why you came to see me.”
“No.”
This was the moment I had to take the plunge. After all we went through to get to Marange I felt I could trust Boubacar. “I found some diamonds,” I blurted. “I need your help to sell them.”
Boubacar’s black hooded eyes bored into my own. “On Banda Hill?”
I nodded.
“And your uncle knows that you are here?”
I shook my head, suddenly embarrassed, as if I had been caught out in a lie.
Again, I shook my head, unable to answer or even look at Boubacar.
“Patson, what you are doing is a very dangerous thing. Diamond dealing is not for children. Do you think that if you are caught the police will treat you any differently from an adult? No, they will not. Now, before I can help you, you had better tell me everything. Okay? And no lies.”
I could not refuse Boubacar nor could I lie to him and so I told him how we lived in the tobacco sheds behind Kondozi Farm, how my father did not get the teaching job, and how he now worked on the mine for Uncle James. I told him how the Wife had left my father. I told him about the gwejana syndicate, how we operated secretly within the Banda syndicate, how we swallowed the stones, and how we all needed money to help our families.
“We live in a tobacco shed, Boubacar. I’ve got to do something to help my father. Once we have enough money we will leave this place. But I don’t know who to sell our ngodas to and so I thought of you. Please, can you help me?”
“Let me see your stones.”
I hauled out the tin box and handed it over. This was the moment Kamba had spoken about. What would I do if Boubacar pocketed the tin box, picked me up, and threw me down the stairs and out onto the street?
He opened the tin and studied the small stones.
“You gwejanas have a big appetite,” he said, with a flicker of a smile. “I will help you on one condition: that you behave like a man in there and speak the truth. Yes?”
“Then we go to meet the Baron.” He rapped twice on the door behind him before we stepped into a carpeted room with shelves of books on every wall. Sitting at a desk in one corner in a haze of smoke, a gray-bearded man, a pair of glasses on his head atop his small white cap, was studying a pile of stones, the now-familiar loupe stuck into his right eye. A cigarette burning in an ashtray curled a tail of smoke through the eerie light of a green lamp.
“Mr. Abdullah, we have a visitor.” Boubacar walked over to the desk and placed the open tin on the table. “This is Monsieur Patson Moyo. He would like to do some business with you.”
“You know I don’t do business with children, Boubacar.” The old man popped the loupe from his eye and lowered his glasses to study me.
“I know this young man,” said Boubacar, moving to stand slightly behind Farouk Abdullah. “You can trust him.”
“Hmm, so you say.”
Farouk Abdullah picked up a pair of tweezers to move the tin box closer. Then he plugged the loupe back into his right eye and deftly picked up stone after stone with the tweezers, studying them briefly and dropping them with a clink back into the box. “A neat little collection of low-grade industrial diamonds, cloudy and flawed. Insignificant weight, with poor light. No, I would say not worth more than a hundred US dollars.” He sniffed, closed the lid, and pushed the box toward me.
Only one hundred dollars. My heart sank. I glanced at Boubacar but his ugly face gave away nothing.
“I might have a hundred here, somewhere,” Abdullah said, patting his pocket and producing a crisp Ben Franklin, which he laid next to the tin.
I was about to take the money, but then I remembered the advice my father gave me when I was tormented by a bully at school. “In circumstances where you find yourself powerless, words are always your best weapon, Patson,” he had said, gently applying a dishcloth packed with ice to my blackened eye. “You can always argue your way out of a tight corner by using the bright light of logic to defeat dull, dim thinking. If you get them listening to you, it is the first step to victory. Words are powerful, Patson. Put in the right order, they can move mountains.”
I didn’t want to move a mountain; I only wanted the Baron to change his mind.
“I heard a rumor that the army is coming into town,” I began cautiously. “James Banda says they could be here by the end of the week. When the soldiers come, smuggling diamonds out of the fields will be a lot more difficult, a lot more dangerous too.” I paused to allow this information to settle in the room. My leg wouldn’t stop trembling and I hoped that the Baron did not notice. I glanced up at Boubacar to gauge his reaction. His face remained impassive, but I detected a glimmer of encouragement in his eyes.
“I was right beside Mr. Boubacar when we saw what the soldiers do to men with illegal diamonds,” I continued. “They stripped them, beat them, and made them wish they’d never left home. Boubacar knows, and he can surely tell you worse things than I can.”
The Baron raised his cigarette to his mouth, inhaled, and slowly blew out a trail of smoke, which curled above his head. He sat very still, listening to me. Then he shot a glance at Boubacar, who nodded.
I picked up the tin box, opened the lid, and took a deep breath before speaking again. “Perhaps there will be a day when such a box of little diamonds will be worth more than a hundred dollars. I will have to wait for that day or perhaps find someone at Dairy Den who knows what James Banda is saying is true and has no problem doing business with children… while they still can.” Then I stood taller as if I had made a decision and said, “Thank you, Mr. Abdullah,” and snapped the box shut. “I am very sorry to have wasted your time.”
“Wait a moment,” said the Baron, raising his hand. “I don’t know why young people are in such a hurry all the time.” He sighed, sliding his pile of stones into his desk drawer. “Boubacar, tell your friend to sit down,” he ordered, offering me the stool beside his table. “And make us some tea. I will take some Darjeeling and make the same for young Patson. Perhaps he might like a biscuit too. I see we have a real businessman here who understands that with every transaction there is a process of negotiation. And that process works better when both sides take a little refreshment and the time to understand the needs of the other. Come, sit, and show me those stones again. Perhaps I was too hasty.”
I sat at the table while the Baron looked again at each of the stones and provided a more detailed running commentary on their individual size, clarity, and value. Boubacar, meanwhile, brought a tray with two delicate porcelain cups, a matching container filled with small white sugar cubes, and a teapot painted with small pink flowers. He placed the tray at the center of the table and swirled the teapot gently. Was this the same Boubacar I knew? The one who carried a large knife? Yet he seemed perfectly at ease pouring tea into dainty cups. When he passed a cup to me, I noticed a slight twinkle in his dark eyes, though his face remained as impassive as ever.
“Now, I’m sure you have a figure in mind for these hard-earned stones,” said the Baron, placing three lumps of sugar into his cup and stirring it slowly with what looked like a baby spoon. “What would that figure be?”
“Three thousand,” I said.
The Baron sipped his tea. “Overestimating the worth of stones is a common occurrence in Marange. Those Dairy Den boys will laugh at your price, take your stones,” he said with a thin smile, “and then slit your throat. But here at Farouk’s Spectacles, I offer you tea and biscuits. As you can see, I am a reasonable and cultured man.”
I placed two cubes of sugar into my cup, stirred it slowly, and sipped the still-bitter tea. “And your reasonable offer is?”
“One thousand five hundred.”
My stomach flipped. That was a fortune. I took another sip, trying to keep my hand from trembling. I glanced at Boubacar, who stood directly behind the Baron. I thought I saw his eyebrows rise.
“Two thousand five hundred,” I countered.
“Oh no, my boy, that is still too much for these stones. But I will concede that they are worth something. Perhaps this first transaction could lead us to a more permanent arrangement in the future?” His eyes never left my face. He replaced his cup on the tray, Boubacar refilled it from the rosebud-painted pot, and no one spoke until three more sugar cubes melted beneath his spoon. Only then did his eyelids blink when he said, “I think you need someone you can trust. Am I right?”
“Go on,” I said, sipping more of the tea, now enjoying its delicate sweet-and-sour taste.
“I know Mugabe’s army will be here soon and I have heard of their brutal ways of doing business. If you take all the stones you find to Boubacar, you will not need to run on the streets selling them to strangers or deal with those thugs at Dairy Den. There is no love lost between James Banda and me,” he said dismissively. “I give you my word that our business arrangement will remain a secret.”
What do you look for in a face when you need to trust someone? The spark of sincerity in the eyes? The honest shape of a mouth? Or do you listen to the tone of voice and the impact the words have on your heart? All I knew about this gray-bearded man was that Uncle James Banda didn’t like him and Boubacar worked for him. He served the Baron tea as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I trusted Boubacar with my life; it made sense, then, that if this man was his boss, I should trust him too. What the Baron had suggested was the perfect solution to our problem. There wasn’t much more to think about but, just to be sure, I glanced up at Boubacar and caught another of his almost imperceptible nods.
“Let’s agree on two thousand two hundred,” I said, placing my cup back on the tray.
“Two thousand US dollars is what I am willing to pay for these stones,” said Farouk Abdullah firmly. “And this represents a down payment on our partnership. Do we have an agreement?”
Before I had a chance to answer, the phone on the table rang, followed by a commotion from the shop below. A woman screamed and there was the sound of someone running up the flight of stairs. Boubacar moved quickly to the door, his knife appearing in his hand. He swung the door open.