Johnson Denis - The Laughing Monsters

“Night terrors. Right? Violent memories.”

“It’s driving me nuts. It’s scary.”

“Tell me something: When did you arrive in Africa?”

“Tomorrow will make it two weeks.”

“Just short of two weeks. Right on schedule for a meltdown. Nothing serious. A tiny low-grade implosion, let’s say, of your American personality.”

“I’ve traveled before. Don’t condescend to me. I’m crazy about a man who’s driving me crazy because I’m crazy about him. He won’t tell me anything. He took my cell phone.”

“Really? Jesus.”

“He won’t let me call home.”

“Your people must be frantic.”

“There’s only my dad, and we don’t correspond much anyway. He’s bitter at me since I started doing work at the Institute. Still, I mean, if I could call him — I would. If Michael would let me. Why won’t he let me? Is he always like this? Because it seems like something new.”

“It’s nothing new.”

“You’ve seen it before. Paranoid suspicions. Taking away people’s cell phones.”

“I’ve been analyzing Michael Adriko for a dozen years. First of all — you realize he’s a war orphan. He was born into chaos, and he’s pathologically insecure. He keeps a stranglehold on the flow of information because then it feels like his life can’t get away from him. But whatever you absolutely need to know, he tells you. Even though sometimes I’d like to torture him with electricity.”

“Don’t joke. He’s been tortured before.” It was true.

Davidia stood there holding her cup with two hands looking alone, and pitiable, and stupidly I said, “Are you really going to marry him?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Do you really love him?”

She said, “Do you know who my father is?”

An unexpected query. “I guess not.”

“Michael didn’t tell you? My dad’s his CO — the garrison commander at Fort Carson. Colonel Marcus St. Claire.”

“Oh my lord,” I said, “oh my lord.” I jumped up to say something else and only said, “Oh my lord.”

“Until I met Michael, I’d only known two loves: love for my father, and love for my country. Now I love Michael too.”

“But you said your dad and you were on the outs.”

“It’s complicated. It’s family. I’d say we’re estranged. All the same, he loves Michael as much as I do. Everybody loves Michael. Don’t you love him, Nair?”

“I can’t resist him. Let’s put it that way.” And I added, “Oh my lord.”

* * *

I went to the lobby, more on the order of a vestibule, and ordered some coffee. Soon Michael came through the doors in a powder-blue sweat suit and put his hands on his knees and bowed like that, breathing heavily, showing the top of his big muscular shaved head. Then he stood and whipped off his sweatband and wrung it out over the floor.

I waved to him. “Come here, will you?”

He came over.

“Sit down.”

He sat down beside me on the divan, his leg against mine.

“Michael. You’re pissing me off.”

“Never!”

“Tell me once and for all, in full detail. What’s this all about?”

“Do you like Davidia?”

“I don’t want her here.”

“What-what!”

“Not if you’re up to what I think you’re up to. And if it’s what I think, then you’re fucking up, man. You’re fucking up.”

He stared down at the palms of his hands for a bit and then showed me his face: a soul without friends. “Let’s walk around. I’m still cooling off.” But first he went to the counter and called for the clerk and begged a cigarette and stuck it behind his ear.

I followed him out the doors and into the wash of red mud that passed for a street. The brief stretch of morning had already baked it hard. At this elevation the air was cool enough, but the equatorial sunshine burned on my back. It was crazy to walk.

Michael strolled beside me gripping my arm with one monster hand and with the other massaging my neck, my collarbones. His face shone with joy and sweat. “It’s good to speak honestly to you, Nair! Now it’s time, now I can do that. Now I’m happy. I was desolate, but now I’m happy. Ask me anything.”

“Jesus, Michael, where do we start? How about your military status?”

“I belong to nobody’s military. I was an attaché merely.”

“There’s a US Special Forces unit hunting around eastern Congo. Looking for the Lord’s Resistance. Were you attached to them?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you run off?”

“That’s an ugly rumor.”

“Did you run off?”

“I didn’t run off. I moved away in support of my plan. My beautiful plan — and yes, yes, yes, we’re going to get rich, how many times do I have to tell you? Be patient. Soon you’re going to see something. With one stone, I’m killing a whole flock of birds.”

“Cutting through the muck — your status is AWOL.”

“Detached. Detached is more precise.”

“Next question. Are we messing around with fissionable materials?”

“Hang on, my brother.”

Over the last few days his speech had lost its American flavor, and his stride, I noticed, had an African man’s swivel now, and his shoulders rolled as he walked, like an African’s. The lane climbed steeply here. He stopped to get a light from a vendor and then he was many paces ahead, on a rise, jogging toward the crest while puffing on his cigarette. I caught up with him and he said, “My brother, do you think our wedding ceremony involves U-235?”—with a false and sickly grin. What an amateur. When it came to fountains of falsehood — a bold artist. But a simple denial, one word, a flat lie? No talent for that.

“Hold on,” I said, “let me catch my breath.”

A shirtless beggar in khaki shorts approached, smiling and dragging one leg and crying, “Sahibs!” The leg was enormous from elephantiasis, as if another whole man clung to him.

Michael yoked the man’s throat with one hand, in the web of his thumb and finger, and lifted him so his horny yellow toes dangled a few inches off the ground and said, “Nothing today. Ha ha!” and set him back down. We walked on. To me he said, “I jog at six every morning. Do you want to get in shape with me?”

“No. I want you to tell me about U-235.”

“Not yet. What else? Ask me anything, Nair.”

A bit more, not a lot, had been revealed. No sense driving further against this foam-rubber wall. “How about this one: You’re marrying the camp commander’s daughter?”

“The garrison commander. Yes.”

“This is too wonderful. Where’s the unit from the Tenth?”

“Close by Darba, Congo.”

“If we go up there — won’t he want her back?”

“Whether we go or not, he’ll want her back.”

“He won’t get a bunch of vigilante Green Berets on our tails, will he?”

Michael was silent in a way I didn’t like.

“Will he? I’m not up for risking any bloodshed. ‘Any’ means not one drop.”

“No, no bloodshed. They won’t suspect we’re anywhere near them.”

“Let’s just not go.”

“Not go?” He turned in a complete circle, seeking a witness to my folly. “He says ‘Not go’! Do I have to make it clear? Then I’ll make it clear. Let me make it clear about my clan. It’s as if I left a man for dead and ran away to save myself. Then the next day he walks into my camp covered with blood, ready to go on living. Can you imagine the shame you would feel looking in his eyes? That’s the shame that makes me go back to my village. Can I make you understand? I’m going to marry Davidia. She’ll be my life’s mate. We’ve got to launch our lives together properly, with the blessing of my people. How can I make you understand ? This is essential, it’s not a gesture, it’s not a nice idea — it’s the essence of the thing. Without it, I’m nothing, and she’s nothing, and we’re nothing.”