Yvonne Owuor - Dust

Later.

Nyipir declared, “I owe allegiance to no nation or people.”

The Trader had guffawed. “Now, brother, we are of the same race.”

Time.

The two men would end up trading in information as Nyipir expanded his gun-trading and cattle-rustling enterprises across the northern territories and into the Horn of Africa. Years later, the Trader would help Nyipir dissolve his circuits and turn assets into cash and gems, after rogue politicians with private armies leapt into the game.

Nyipir owed the Trader one other valuable thing: his nonexistence. The Trader had arranged to purge references to Nyipir’s life from all official records. An uncommon debt, one of the Trader’s favorites. The Trader now faces Nyipir. “I’m sorry — your son.”

Nyipir nods.

“His life has changed.”

Nyipir nods.

“This road is a circle. We’ll meet again,” the Trader says.

Silences.

Isaiah stares at the man. He imagines a silenus with a face that might have been sketched by El Greco. Watches a set of skeletal fingers move, play with air, communicating story, implying conspiracies. He wonders why a guitar juts out of a gunnysack. Sees the man adjusts a blue-and-white kanga hovering around his waist. Isaiah reads the legend on the cloth: Light of All Nations .

The Trader shakes sand off his sandals. Stands, uses the moment to scrutinize those present. He regrets Odidi Oganda’s death. Knows he might have helped, had he known in time. God’s will. Maybe . He, too, has lost a son. Does not often think about it. Still, he can explain how the cosmos of grief is another land. It is territory he traverses in silence.

He sizes up the outsider. Watches agitated hands, and searching eyes that reveal the homesickness of eternal wanderers. Bolton . He maps Isaiah’s body. Reads strained muscles, a throbbing vein. Sadness etched into skin, hardness in downturn of eye and mouth. This man has seen death and lived, a good beginning. The Trader grins, adjusts his features, and reshapes his body to attract response. He sidles next to Isaiah. “Are you a vulture?”

Isaiah turns.

“I say!” the Trader says, a broadcaster’s voice, mocking Isaiah. “I say … you here to suckle our violence … you like?”

Isaiah’s hands rise. “Think what you want …” Asshole .

“Journalist, project manager, philanthropist, messiah, job seeker — which are you?”

Isaiah retreats to the far end of the fire, tenses.

A tap on his right shoulder.

Isaiah sighs.

The Trader says, “I sell secrets. I buy secrets.” He grins. “Which do you need?”

Sweat beads Isaiah’s forehead.

“A secret for a secret.”

Isaiah snaps, “Don’t have any. Don’t need any.”

The Trader tips forward. “Everyone has at least four secrets.”

“You don’t say.” Lack of interest bleeds through every word.

“Thee-thee-thee-thee.”

The heat of morning and scents oozing from the Trader overwhelm Isaiah, making him dizzy. He looks skyward.

“Ah … some coffee.” The Trader grins. “Real coffee. Then we talk about your secrets.”

Isaiah’s brows shoot up. “I’ve none.”

“I’ve none,” mimics the Trader, using Isaiah’s voice.

Feeling hunted, Isaiah heads out of the courtyard.

The Trader chants, “One secret can be repeated only to God.”

Isaiah walks forward.

The Trader glides after him. “Your evidence against His goodness.”

“Absurd,” Isaiah mutters.

“ Thee-thee-thee … The second is buried in between life and death, to be retrieved at the time of a man’s most important life decision.”

The Trader dances in front of Isaiah, walking backward.

“Excuse me.” Isaiah tries to sidestep the pest.

The Trader trills his next words. “The third is the one you sell to buy your oldest longing.”

Humidity suffuses Isaiah’s body as he listens in spite of himself. Waits. Nothing. “There is a fourth, you said.”

“Did I?” the Trader asks.

Isaiah turns and sees the Trader’s broad, yellow-toothed smirk. Blue flies whirl between them.

A chortle. “I knew you’d want to know.”

A stain of red on Isaiah’s skin, a tic above his right eye.

“I’m not irritating you,” says the Trader.

“You are,” replies Isaiah.

“No. Statement. I’m not irritating you. The irritation is already inside of you. Thee-thee-thee .”

Nyipir, listening, turns a sudden laugh into a cough as Isaiah jumps. The Trader has spoken straight into Isaiah’s ear, the voice seeming to spring from within his own body. Isaiah watches the Trader’s mouth. The man’s mouth has not moved. Bloody hell . Isaiah turns away. Ventriloquism in the armpit of Africa?

The Trader persists, “What’s your name?”

Isaiah is desperate to escape. “Isaiah Bolton.”

“Ah! You want the fourth secret?”

Isaiah oozes aversion. He cannot give the hobgoblin the satisfaction of an admission.

The Trader exudes warmth.

Isaiah, confused, frowns.

“The fourth one …” the Trader starts.

Isaiah listens.

“The fourth is the name you baptize your death with.” The Trader laughs out loud, offers an expansive hand gesture. “This name, when spoken out loud, can even kill you … thee-thee-thee! ”

Isaiah lurches back, aware that his hands are shaking and the world is receding. Just then Galgalu steps out with a camphor-and-clove-scented burning censer. Isaiah sucks in the perfumed air. The sinister sensation that assailed him fades.

“Isaiah!” the Trader whispers. Isaiah’s head swivels. “Never trade in a name. Trade in everything else, but not a name. Nothing like a name. For example … Bol-ton . I heard that a man came very close to this place of fire.”

The Trader about-turns, salutes Nyipir, and slow-marches toward him.

Isaiah rubs his arms, feeling as if grimy hands have manhandled his soul. He needs to scrub out the man’s voice from his body.

Nyipir looks over at Isaiah.

Isaiah holds his gaze.

Nyipir turns away.

Isaiah knows a clue to his question has been dropped. Everything spits out fucking riddles . He spins and strides toward the livestock enclosure, his thoughts everywhere, fists clenching and unclenching. What would happen if he held the scrawny peasant in a choke hold? Secrets? I’ll squeeze out secrets!

Engulfing loneliness.

Will I ever return home? He stops mid-stride, leans over the boma fence. His agitation subsides as he watches the placid livestock.

When Isaiah returns to the others, he finds that the Trader is covering Ajany with orange-blossom-scented smoke and broken tunes. Isaiah watches the Trader blow smoke down Ajany’s nostrils. He closes his eyes. Was this the doctor they had all been waiting for? A tic pulses near his left eye. He reminds himself that he does have normal to go back to. A gust of pleasure — it would soon be spring in England. He might even be home before the emergence of new leaves on winter-denuded oak trees. He would also try harder to make peace with Raulfe, his stepfather — a surge of fondness for the fragile man who had tried so very hard to raise him right, dear Raulfe .

TWO AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER.

Soft lights. Night obscured life’s details. The emaciated woman limped around the bathroom of her hospice room in Sussex, easing a cramp in her right thigh. She used to be a marcher when she was not dying, when she was not seventy-eight years old. Touched her hair. Meager where it existed, once ink-black, worn pageboy-style. She winced. Breathing was a chore. The cancer had spread. Curved spine. How tall was she now?