Johnson Denis - The Laughing Monsters

“What for?”

“For whatever it’s worth.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it lasts.”

“As long as what lasts?”

“Let me get you out of this.”

“To where?”

“Back to Freetown. For a start.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got business there. I can set us up.”

“Nair, there’s nothing between us.”

“Come here. Let me hold you.”

“Are you crazy? Stop touching me.”

I had to stop, or I couldn’t talk. The feel of her skin took my breath away. “I’ve known Michael for almost twelve years, and all this time I’ve thought I was infatuated with him, and I was wrong. All the time I’ve known him I’ve been infatuated with you. Waiting in infatuation for you to materialize. For him to produce you, conjure you, bring you, fetch you.”

“Oh God,” she said, “you’re complicating this impossibly. You’re making it impossible. Why do you have to be crazy too?” She stood up and started piling things on the bed. “What’s Michael’s plan? If any.”

“He’s going to Congo.”

“And you’re not.”

“That depends on you.”

“I think I’d better go.”

“I think we’d better not. There’s no law over there. The government has no writ. The cops, the army, psychotic warlords — they all take turns robbing anyone who’s not armed.”

“Then why don’t you leave us now?”

“Because I can’t. I couldn’t bear it. Not without you.”

“This is awful. Shut up.”

“Once you’ve had a look at the place, you’ll want to come with me.”

“I’m going with Michael. Take me to Michael.”

“I’ll take you wherever you want.”

“I’ve got to. I can’t just disappear. I have to hang on till Michael’s situation is … stabilized or something. Or at least clarified.”

She put a bag on the bed and started filling it like a pit.

“Hold up for a bit. Will you? Okay?” She didn’t. She kept packing. “Davidia. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Well, you did scare me. I’m scared — of you.”

“I got crazy. I don’t want to make you crazy too.”

“Too late.”

“Have I forced you into this decision? Because I didn’t mean to put you in a corner. Wait a minute.” She didn’t pause. “Stop packing for a second.”

“I’m going with Michael now, and I think you’d better take me to him.”

“Are you sure? Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“All right, fine. Just a minute. Look at me.” She settled down. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

“I agree.”

“I’m crazy.”

“I said it first.”

“So we agree on that too. So will you keep all this quiet?”

“Quiet?”

“Don’t tell Michael.”

“I’ve promised Michael I won’t talk to anybody, now I promise you I won’t talk to Michael — is that what you’re saying?”

“Let me be the one to come clean with him, that’s all.”

“When?”

“Not right away.”

“How long do I have to betray him, then?”

“Not long.”

“How long exactly?”

“Two days exactly.”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Correct.”

“Promises to him, promises to you, and everything is secret from everybody else. This is what we call a situation.” She seemed to see some humor in the thing.

* * *

To make ourselves more visible I lit the headlamps. Nobody else did such a thing, none of the bikes or vehicles set themselves apart.

Davidia said, “This is blood, isn’t it? How badly is he hurt?”

“He needed quite a few stitches.”

“Where’s the hospital?”

“Actually it’s back that way.”

“Then why go this way?”

“Couple of errands.”

For these conditions I drove too fast. It was nearly 4:00 p.m. I had no idea how late the Catholic communications center might be open. Nevertheless I stopped at a vendor’s shack and bought all his hundred-milliliter packets of spirits. Then I stopped at another vendor, and I did the same thing. Still I had less than a couple of liters. Before I left the hotel I should have gotten the biggest bottle of rum, or tequila, whichever had the bigger proof. Baboon Whiskey, if that’s all they had. But I’d forgotten.

On the way up the long hill in the middle of Arua I nearly stopped again for another such transaction, but the sight of the towers at the top lured me on. “I’m stopping up here at a place with internet,” I told Davidia. She said nothing.

Across the road from the gates, I turned off the engine and said it again. “If you have someone you want to communicate with, here’s the place to do it.”

“Just hurry up. I’m worried about Michael.”

“You can wait with the guard.”

“I’m fine right here.”

When I got out, I went around to her window. She didn’t roll it down. “Will you be all right?”

“Will I?”

“If you get uncomfortable, lock the doors.”

I heard them locking even as I turned away.

* * *

I had two e-mails, the first from Hamid:

Firm and final offer is cash funds 100K US for you.

If your answer is yes, we meet same place same hour.

Cash takes time.

Your share 100K US. Final offer.

I liked his figure. I didn’t like his next one:

Will meet 4 weeks following date last meeting.

Not 30 days. 4 weeks exactly. No fallback. One chance.

On the one hand, the money was set, and it was good money. But with his other hand he’d ripped two days from the calendar. I closed my eyes and set about composing a comeback, a counteroffer, and then scotched it. I had nothing to offer.

I opened the second e-mail: several hundred angry words from my boss at NIIA. Before I’d read half, I deleted it.

I banged at the keys: “Hello, you idiotic shits. Are you waiting for my report? You can wait till Hell serves holy water.”

I pressed DELETE.

Again I banged on the keys, this time at some length:

Goddamn you. You smiled sweetly while slipping a rocket up my ass and lighting the fuse. Now you want to dress me down?

Would you cunts please explain what British MI is doing at my hotel?

Would you cunts care to describe Mossad’s involvement in — what shall we call it — this affair? Investigation? Cluster-fuck?

All of you, go fuck yourselves. Fuck each other.

I hold the rank of captain in the Army of Denmark. What has any of this got to do with Denmark? What has any of this got to do with me?

Why have you put me in a position to be murdered?

For three seconds, four seconds, five, my finger hovered over the DELETE key, and then I pressed SEND.

I logged out, plugged in my own keyboard, and went to PGP. I wrote back to Hamid:

Sold.

[OCT 15 11PM]

All right, Tina. The chief captor, the witch doctor, the general, the jailor or kidnapper or whatever he is, has just showed me my favorite thing in East Africa, a plastic baggie that would fit exactly in a shirt pocket, and shows me the label, “40 % Volume Cane Spirits 100ml,” before biting off the corner and sucking it dry, explaining, “It’s for the cold,” and tossing it aside, and I notice, right now, that the dirt floor of this big low hut we’re in is littered with similar packets sucked empty and tossed aside — paved with them—“Rider Vodka” and “ZAP Vodka” and the Cane Spirits. I’m familiar with these packets, in fact many of these empties were mine-all-mine as recently as one hour ago, when they stole them, yet I don’t perceive any gratitude in the black lacquer faces of these drunken soldiers all around us. What I do perceive is that this place smells powerfully of unwashed humans.

I just saw a single firefly flash upward. Or a capillary exploded in my brain. The truth is I’m a little drunk too. And this won’t be one of those pitiful attempts to explain “how I got into this mess,” because there’s no sense calling it a mess until we see how it all turns out. Sometimes you just get stuck. That’s Africa. Then you’re on your way again without any idea what happened, and that’s Africa too. And while you’re stuck, if they give you a pen and paper? — you might as well.