Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

At the far end of the walled compound, perhaps twenty yards from where they had been sitting, there was a small area reserved for ceremonies, its perimeter outlined by whitewashed stones. Within it, the old man knelt before a carved wooden altar. He was dressed again, but in a pure white caftan, not his original garment. Atuele, too, had changed to a white caftan, but his had gold piping on the shoulders and down the front.

To one side, two men and a woman, Africans in Western dress, stood at rapt attention. “His relatives,” Donnelly whispered. Alongside Atuele stood the two girls who had washed the old man. They were also dressed in white, and their feet were bare. One of them, Hilliard noticed, had her toenails painted a vivid scarlet.

She was holding an orange and a knife. The knife looked to be ordinary kitchen cutlery, the sort of thing you’d use to bone a roast. Or to quarter an orange, which was what Atuele had the old man do with it. Having done so, he placed the four sections of fruit upon the altar, whereupon Atuele lit the four white candles that stood upon the altar, two at either end. Hilliard noticed that he employed the same disposable lighter he’d used earlier to light his American cigarette.

Next the girl with the red toenails covered the old man’s head with a white handkerchief. Then the other girl, who had been holding a white chicken, handed the bird to Atuele. The chicken — pure white, with a red comb — struggled at first, and tried to flap a wing. Atuele said something to it and it calmed down. He placed it on the altar and placed the old man’s hands on top of the bird.

“A lot of the ceremonies involve a chicken,” Donnelly whispered.

No one moved. The old man, his head bent, the handkerchief covering his head, rested his hands upon the white chicken. The chicken remained perfectly still and did not let out a peep. The girl, the old man’s relatives, all stood still and silent. Then the old man let out a sigh and Hilliard sensed that something had happened.

Atuele bent over the altar and drew the chicken out from under the man’s grasp. The chicken remained curiously docile. Atuele straightened up, holding the bird in both hands, then inclined his head and seemed to be whispering into its ear. Did chickens have ears? Hilliard wasn’t sure, but evidently the message got through, because the bird’s response was immediate and dramatic. Its head fell forward, limp, apparently lifeless.

“It’s dead,” Donnelly said.

“How—”

“I’ve seen him do this before. I don’t know what it is he says. I think he tells them to die. Of course, he doesn’t speak English to them.”

“What does he speak? Chicken?”

“Ewé, I suppose.” He pronounced it Eh-veh. “Or some tribal dialect. Anyway, the chicken’s dead.”

Maybe he’s hypnotized it, Hilliard thought. A moment later he had to discard the notion when Atuele took up the knife and severed the chicken’s head. No blood spurted. Indeed, Atuele had to give the bird a good shake in order to get some of its blood to dribble out onto the dirt in front of the altar. If Atuele had hypnotized the bird, he’d hypnotized its bloodstream, too.

Atuele handed the bird to one of the girls. She walked off with it. He leaned forward and snatched the handkerchief from the old man’s head. He said something, presumably in Ewé, and the old man stood up. Atuele gathered up the sections of orange and gave one each to the old man and his relatives. All, without hesitation, commenced eating the fruit.

The old man embraced one of his male relatives, stepped back, let out a rich laugh, then embraced the other man and the woman in turn. He held himself differently now, Hilliard noticed. And his eyes were clear. Still—

Atuele took Hilliard and Donnelly by the arm and led them back into the shade. He motioned them to their chairs, and a male servant came and poured out three glasses of palm wine. “He is well,” Atuele announced. “The stone has passed from his liver into the liver of the chicken. He is lively now, see how he walks with a light step. In an hour he will lie down and sleep the clock around. Tomorrow he will feel fine. He is healed.”

“And the chicken?”

“The chicken is dead, of course.”

“What will happen to the chicken?”

“What should happen to a dead chicken? The women will cook him.” He smiled. “Togo is not a rich country, you know. We cannot be throwing away perfectly good chickens. Of course, the liver will not be eaten.”

“Because there is a stone in it.”

“Exactly.”

“I should haveasked,” Hilliard said, “to see the chicken cut open. To examine the liver.”

“And if there wasn’t a stone in it? Alan, you saw the old man, you shook his hand and looked him in the eye. He had eyes like egg yolks when he walked in there. His shoulders were slumped, his gut sagged. When Atuele was done with him he was a new man.”

“Power of suggestion.”

“Maybe.”

“What else?”

Donnelly started to say something, held off while the waiter set drinks and a bowl of crisp banana chips before them. They were at the Hotel de la Paix in Lomé, the capital and the only real city in Togo. Atuele’s hamlet, twenty minutes distant in Donnelly’s Renault, seemed a world away.

“You know,” Donnelly said, “he has an interesting story. His father’s father was German. Of course, the whole place was a German colony until the First World War. Togoland, they called it.”

“I know.”

“Then the French took it over, and now of course it’s independent.” Donnelly glanced involuntarily at the wall, where the ruler’s portrait was to be seen. It was a rare public room in Togo that did not display the portrait. A large part of Hilliard’s job lay in obtaining foreknowledge of the inevitable coup that would one day dislodge all those portraits from all those walls. It would not happen soon, he had decided, and whenever it did happen, it would come as a surprise to businessmen like Donnelly, as well as to everyone like Hilliard whose job it was to predict such things.

“Atuele was brought up Christian,” Donnelly went on. “A modern family, Western dress, a good education at church schools. Further education at the Sorbonne.”

“In Paris?”

“Last I looked. You’re surprised? He graduated from there and studied medicine in Germany. Frankfurt, I think it was.”

“The man’s a physician?”

“He left after two years. He became disenchanted with Western medicine. Nothing but drugs and surgery, according to him, treating the symptoms and overlooking the underlying problem. The way he tells it, a spirit came to him one night and told him his path called for a return to the old ways.”

“A spirit,” Hilliard said.

“Right. He quit med school, flew home, and looked for people to study with. Apprenticed himself to the best herbalist he could find. Then went upcountry and spent months with several of the top shamans. He’d already begun coming into his powers back in Germany, and they increased dramatically once he channeled his energies in the right direction.”

Donnelly went on, telling Atuele’s story. How he’d gathered a few dozen people around him; they served him, and he saw to their welfare. How several of his brothers and sisters had followed him back to the old ways, much to the despair of their parents.

“There are shamans behind every bush in this country,” Donnelly said. “Witch doctors, charlatans. Even in the Moslem north they’re thicker than flies. Down here, where the prevailing religion is animist, they’re all over the place. But most of them are a joke. This guy’s the real tinsel.”

“A stone in the liver,” Hilliard said. “What do you suppose that means, anyway? I’ve heard of kidney stones, gallstones. What the hell is a stone in the liver?”