Ross Thomas: Missionary Stew

“It is not goat,” Citron said.

“Did I say it was goat? I said kid — young and tender. Does it not dissolve in your mouth?”

“It is not kid either.”

Sergeant Bama peered suspiciously into the pot, fished out another small piece of meat that swam in the brownish liquid, and sniffed it. “Pork perhaps?” He offered the piece to Citron. “Taste and determine. If it is pork, you will not have to share with the Sudanese, who are Muslim.”

Citron took the meat and chewed it. “It is not pork. I remember pork.”

“And this?”

“This is sweet and tough and stringy.”

Sergeant Bama giggled. “Of course. How stupid of me.” He clapped a hand to his forehead — a stage gesture. “It could only be monkey. A rare delicacy. Sweet, you said. Monkey tastes sweet. There is nothing sweeter to the tongue than fresh young monkey.”

“I’ve never tasted monkey.”

“Well, now you have.” The sergeant smiled complacently and looked around. The other prisoners were seated or squatting in the shade, none of them nearer than six meters, awaiting the outcome of the negotiations. When the sergeant turned back to Citron, the scowl was again in place and a harsh new urgency was in his tone. “I must have the watch,” he said.

“No,” Citron said. “Not for this.”

Sergeant Bama nodded indifferently and looked off into the hot distance. “There will be a visitor this afternoon at fifteen hundred,” he said. “A black woman from England who is a high functionary in a prisoners’ organization with a rare name.”

“You lie, of course,” Citron said, wiping a thin film of grease from his mouth with the back of his hand.

Sergeant Bama looked at him and shrugged. “Believe what you wish, but she will be here at fifteen hundred to interview the other foreign scum. It is all arranged. You, of course, will be transferred to the isolation block and thus will miss the black Englishwoman. A pity. I am told she is a marvelous sight. Of course...” The sergeant’s unspoken offer trailed off into an elaborate Afro-Gallic shrug.

“The watch,” Citron said, understanding now.

“The watch.”

Citron studied Sergeant Bama for several seconds. Over the sergeant’s left shoulder he could see the private soldier approaching with a big pot of rice. “All right,” Citron said. “You get the watch — but only after I see the black Englishwoman.”

He was surprised when the sergeant agreed with a single word: “Good.” Sergeant Bama rose then and turned toward the other prisoners. “Come and eat,” he called in near English, adding in rapid French, which not all of them could follow: “We want you fat and sleek for when the black Englishwoman arrives.”

The prisoners rose and started filing past the pots of meat and rice. The sergeant presided over the meat, the private soldier over the rice. The sergeant used a gourd ladle to dish meat into the prisoners’ plastic bowls.

“What’s this shit?” the young Mormon missionary asked.

“Monkey,” Citron said.

“Oh,” the Mormon said, hurried away with his food, sat down in some shade, and ate it quickly with his fingers.

Miss Cecily Tettah, who worked out of the London headquarters of Amnesty International, had been born on a large plantation in Ghana just outside Accra forty-two years before, when Ghana was still called the Gold Coast. After the war she had been sent by her cocoa-rich father to London to be educated. She had never returned to Ghana, never married, and, when asked, usually described herself in her splendid British accent as either a maiden lady or a spinster. Many thought her to be hopelessly old-fashioned. The few men lucky enough to find their way into her bed over the years discovered not only a magnificent body, but also an acerbic wit and an excellent mind.

Still a handsome woman, quite tall with graying hair, Miss Tettah, as she rather primly introduced herself to almost everyone, had been granted the use of Sergeant Bama’s tiny office to interview the foreign prisoners. She sat behind the plain wooden table, a thick file open before her. Citron sat in the chair opposite. Cecily Tettah tapped the open file with a pencil and looked up at Citron with wide-spaced, bitter-chocolate eyes. She made no effort to keep the suspicion out of either her tone or gaze.

“There is no record of you,” she said, giving the papers in the file a final tap with her pencil. “There’re records of all the others, but none of you.”

“No,” Citron said. “I’m not surprised.”

“They claim you’re a spy, either French or American. They’re not sure which.”

“I’m a traveler,” Citron said.

“I had an audience with the Emperor-President this morning.” She sniffed. “I suppose that’s what one should call it — an audience. He has agreed to release all of the foreign nationals — all except you.”

“Why not me?”

“Because he thinks you’re a spy, as I said. He wants to see you. Privately. Will you agree?”

Citron thought about it and shrugged. “All right.”

“Not to worry,” Cecily Tettah said. “We’ll get it sorted out. Now then. How’ve they been treating you?”

“Not bad. Considering.”

“What about food? You look thin.”

“There was enough — just barely.”

“Today, for instance. What did they feed you today?”

“Meat and rice.”

“What kind of meat?”

“Monkey.”

Cecily Tettah pursed her lips in approval, nodded, and made a note. “Monkey’s not bad,” she said. “Quite nutritious. Almost no fat. Did they feed you monkey often?”

“No,” Citron said. “Only once.”

The Emperor-President’s anteroom was an immense hall with no chairs or benches and a once magnificent parquet floor now ruined by cigarette burns and boot scars. The room was crowded with those who wanted to petition the Emperor-President, and with those whose job it was to prevent his assassination.

There were at least two dozen uniformed armed guards, plus another dozen secret police. The secret police all wore wide gaudy ties and peered suspiciously out at the world over tinted Ben Franklin glasses. The guards and the secret police stood. The threadbare petitioners sat on the floor along with a host of preening sycophants, a squad of sleepy-looking young messengers, and a pair of Slav businessmen in boxy suits who spoke Bulgarian to each other and tried to look forbidding, but whose wet friendly eyes betrayed their optimistic salesmen souls.

Citron also sat on the floor, his back to the wall, guarded by Sergeant Bama, who amused himself by shooting out his left wrist to admire his new gold Rolex. The sergeant smiled at his watch, then scowled at Citron.

“You will be alone with him.”

“Yes.”

“Do not lie about me.”

“No.”

“If you lie, then I might have to reveal what was in the morning pot. There are those who would pay well to learn its contents.”

“Monkey,” Citron said, knowing it wasn’t.

The sergeant smiled a quite terrible smile that Citron felt he might remember for years. “It was not monkey,” Sergeant Bama said.

“Last night,” Citron said. “The screams. They sounded like children’s screams.”

Sergeant Bama shrugged and gave his new watch another admiring glance. “Some got carried away.”

“Who?”

“I will not say.” He glanced around quickly, then leaned closer to Citron. The smile reappeared, even more awful than before. “But you helped destroy the evidence,” he whispered and then giggled. “You ate up all the evidence.”

Citron stood throughout his audience with the Emperor-President, who sat slumped on the throne that had been cleverly crafted in Paris out of ebony and ivory. Citron thought it looked uncomfortable. He also thought the Emperor-President looked hung over.