Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

I have no other plan.

This is it.

After a while I stand and go to wait inside the trees, squatting with my back against a trunk. I’m not hungry; I eat an apple for the energy I may need. I eat it all including the core. Then I kick over the sodden pine needles at my feet and make a place for myself and Kos among the dry ones. I sit and listen to the rain. I tell myself nobody can get past me to the ravine. I wait. From time to time I stand up to stretch my legs. The moon rises. The rain eases off. Perhaps I doze; I am not aware of dreaming and yet it seems as though I am, as if everything that is happening is taking place in a dream. I pray for it to be so. I wait, adrift in time and space.

The hours pass and nobody comes. It’s well past midnight when I head back down the hill with Kos at my side. We go back down through the woods, cutting across the hillside. The thoughts fly, of what I will do next, I don’t yet know but I am no longer in the same state as when I found the bodies, ran through the long field to the blue house. Then the fear had been at my heels. Now it is curled around my heart, my heartbeat has slowed and my mind is sharp and cold.

We have almost reached the bottom tree line when I become aware of a shift in Kos, a new tension. She trots ahead and begins to loop, running in circles and swinging her head from side to side. She is breathing heavily. I go to her and offer the cloth and the scarf one more time. She sets off, running in circles and figures of eight, and then she stops, sniffs the ground and heads unhesitatingly in the opposite direction from the one we have come in, uphill away from the ravine. Her pace gathers, her nose is close to the ground. I run behind her. It’s hard going, my legs are heavy, my boots soaked. Kos never stops, except once when she loses the scent and doubles back on herself a short way to make sure, then follows the same line. She leads me straight uphill towards the old concrete bunker. A few hundred metres from the top tree line I see the beam of torchlight stitched through the trees. I slow down and stop and put out a hand to touch Kos, who slows too. I make her wait as I go forward.

A group of people. I count four. There is Fabjan and the two men I saw with him earlier. And Anka. The first thing I notice is that she no longer has the scarf she was wearing when she climbed into his car and I wonder what happened to it. Another thing, she is barefoot. Why is she barefoot? Where have they been all this time? What has Fabjan done to her? The thought fills me with rage, I come close to rushing at him. Was Anka Fabjan’s reward for a job well done? It cannot be, and yet what else could account for the missing hours?

Anka. What has he done to you?

I look to the left and to the right. Nothing. I move forward until I am level with the last line of the trees. I can hear them talking. I can’t catch the words, but they are spoken in an ordinary tone as though they are trying to decide on something. Nothing from Anka. Then an exclamation from Fabjan: ‘Jesus!’ He covers his nose with his hand. A gust of wind brings with it the stench of the pit latrines. They start to move further on, away from the smell. The youth moves Anka on by pushing her in the back with his elbow. How full of swagger he is now. I follow them, moving parallel to them, soundlessly, behind the line of the trees.

Another hundred metres on they stop. The rain has started again and is growing heavier, the moon risen to its full, faint strength and the light catches the slanting lines of rain. Now that there is a little more light I can see the two men carry rifles; the youth’s is an old hunting rifle with a wooden stock, the uniformed man is carrying a military-issue rifle and has a pistol in his belt. Fabjan appears unarmed, instead he stands before Anka revealed in all his true nature. And Anka stares at him through the rain. It’s hard for me to see her expression. There’s fear, yes. But it seems to me, as far away as I am and as little as I can see, there’s puzzlement too. People who find themselves about to be killed, for no real reason, must wonder how it came to this, when they have hurt nobody, done nothing to deserve it. She must have thought Fabjan hated her and wondered why. But what Fabjan has for her isn’t hatred, Fabjan doesn’t hate, he doesn’t need to hate to do the things he does. This is what you have to understand: for him, people like him, it’s not difficult.

He simply wants what he wants.

‘Go on,’ said Grace.

I must kill them first, before they kill Anka. But they are three and I am one. Though Fabjan appears unarmed, he might easily be concealing a pistol. It’s a risk I have to take. But before I kill Fabjan I must kill the men who are clearly armed. Which one first? I can try for them both in quick succession, the group is so tight, but of course with the first shot everything will change. These are the split-second calculations I’m making as I hide in the line of trees. A fresh thought comes to me: Anka’s arms aren’t bound. Because she’s an unarmed woman, they don’t see her as a physical threat. When the shooting begins they probably won’t concern themselves too much with her in the first instance, they’ll save themselves. Perhaps I can lead them away, give her the chance to escape. It’s now almost completely dark. I look at the curled strip of the moon: there’s a wisp of cloud across it which will clear in a moment and the small amount of extra light will help me with the shot. I raise my rifle. I decide to take the uniformed man, reckoning the youth probably is the lesser shot.

But something happens first. Anka lunges at Fabjan. If she is to die, she wants to show him what she thinks of him: spit at him, hit him, anything. There is a struggle, the youth loses his grip on her arm, she manages to break free and runs a short way. Anka slips and falls into the mud and comes up more furious. Fabjan is hit in the mouth, perhaps by Anka, more likely by the butt or barrel of a rifle. He swears and I see his hand go to his mouth. He spits something out: saliva and a fragment of tooth. The struggle lasts a very short time and then it is over. The youth is holding onto Anka, like a dog waiting for the command from its master. I shoot him in the forehead. He stands for a moment, teetering, dead on his feet. Then he falls forward onto his face. The uniformed man is the first to react, he shouts and he and Fabjan run for the cover of the trees. I follow right behind them; more than anything I want to kill Fabjan.

They split up and head in different directions. I chase the one I am sure is Fabjan, I can still see well enough. Without his torch Fabjan blunders and crashes through the trees and more than once trips and falls. I’m gaining on him when the first shot comes. Two shots from the militiaman’s pistol, he doesn’t care much if he hits Fabjan. I go down, I keep still. I think of Anka up by the bunker, she will have run. I need to give her more time. I can’t let them have her. I have killed a man and I will kill again if that’s what it takes to keep them away, but now it’s too dark and I’ve lost track of them. So I fire once into the trees, so they know I’m still out here and to keep them on the move.

I wait for minutes, listening. No more shots come, no sound of boots; later I hear an engine. I leave my place and begin to make my way back up the hill. I call for Kos and a few minutes later she is by my side.

There is the dead youth. I turn him over: one eye is a bloody hole, the other sightless. Of Anka there is no sign, which is as I would have expected. My plan now is to follow her and to catch her up, to take her to safety. But the rain and the mud have made things difficult for Kos. During the scuffle the scent lines became tangled, now they cross and recross each other and Kos doubles back on herself trying to follow a single line. We branch out in several different directions before I give up, too dangerous. At any moment the militiaman could come back for me, could bring reinforcements. For Anka, too, who along with me is a witness to all that has happened. As I pass the dead youth I think of disposing of his body the way I disposed of others, over the ravine and into the swimming hole. I have my hands under his arms, I let them drop. What does it matter? Instead I look for his rifle. It is missing.