off.
I dropped down and put my back against the warm rock. I was hot, and I drank some water from my canteen. Bright sky above, dome of Africa, the Sahel pressing down, empty of God, of any help. Found some tamarinds in the sleeves of my robe, chewed them, tried not to cry. I wondered if Sekli was telling the truth. I wondered what I would do if she were. Sacrificing himself to save me? It didn’t seem like the U. I knew. Not personal, then, only part of his deep game? I am completely lost, here among the simple primitive people. Thought, anthro such a crock of shit sometimes.
As the sky went scarlet, he just walked out from around the rocks, I didn’t see or hear him approach. I was so surprised I cried out and jumped to my feet. He grinned and laughed. Janey, you’re looking good. I see you’ve gone native too. That outfit suits you. He was wearing an Olo sarong and cloak. He came closer, and touched my headdress casually. Long time no see, he said, and opened his arms. I hesitated a second and jumped in. I was so lonely, like in a fucking dumb Elvis song. We hugged. We kissed. He said, What’re you doing here out in the middle of nowhere? I said, I have to get a snake for my sorcery teacher. And then I laughed, we both laughed. Because it felt real, not weird, American, a couple of culture-shocked Americans in Africa. We talked. What’ve you been doing, Janey? I told him amusing anecdotes about my life with U. And you? Oh, you know, writing, taking notes. Learning a little anthro, too. Learned the language a little. Really? Say something in Olokan. He did and it was true, he spoke it better than me. Sound of a bird, then, saw it, too, the looping flight of the honeyguide. Purr-purr-purr WHIT. We laughed. He said, Yeah, that’s my bird, he sympathizes with me, poor Witt.
And then I remembered what U. had said about not talking to anyone. Suddenly, I was frightened, and I saw the brown snake too late, it was right in front of me sliding along and I scrabbled after it on my hands and knees, and just missed it. It went down a hole in the rocks. I stood up and said, Goddamn, I missed it. But Witt wasn’t there. I ran around the rock pile, scattering cow bones, and he wasn’t there. I climbed on the rocks and looked around, I could see for a long way, and nothing at all.
I walked back in the dark and now I am writing this on my pallet. U. is in some kind of coma, and no one will talk to me, not even the kids. U.’s compound filling with other Olo sorcerers, all grim-looking. Tourma still gone.
THIRTY
He finished reading and put the journal on the table. She was wearing black jeans and a white shirt, standing there looking at him. It was hard to believe, what he had just read, hard to believe it had happened to this woman. She looked just like a regular person. She said, “Stunned, Detective Paz?”
“It’s a lot to take in. You didn’t write the final chapter.” She noticed he had washed his face and sponged off the worst of the stains on his clothes.
“No. Do you want to hear it? She’ll be half an hour putting on outfits. She’s at the stage where she likes the layered look. She’ll come down with three dresses on, one on top of another.”
“I’m dying to hear it.”
“A figure of speech, I hope,” she said, taking a chair. “Well, it’s briefly told. I fell asleep. Actually I cried myself to sleep, I’m ashamed to say. Then I woke up. Middle of the night. It was a dream, but not a dream, if you know what I mean. I was walking through Danolo, out of Danolo along a trail. Jackals were barking, nightjars were going tok tok tok. There was a fire up ahead. My husband was there, naked, painted, and there was another man, I couldn’t see his face, he was just a kind of shadow in the glow, I could see the flash of his teeth, a necklace of shells around his neck, and the whites of his eyes. I knew it was Durakne Den, the dontzeh witch. Tourma was there, too, naked. She looked like she was asleep. I watched Witt slice her belly open with a little black stone knife and remove the baby. Tourma didn’t even twitch. The baby writhed and gasped; Durakne Den was chanting something in Olo and Witt was chanting too. He … you know what he did?you’ve seen it. He sliced into the baby’s skull and scooped out its brain, like taking the stone out of an avocado. Blood splattered all around. I felt drops strike my face. I was paralyzed, I couldn’t do anything, like in a nightmare. They cut and they ate. I remember staring at him, Witt, and I saw the blood dripping from his mouth. The most horrible part was, he looked happy, really happy, like he was at a good party. He told me what was happening, about the okunikua, about his plans. Suddenly, I was free, I ran, and I heard him laughing. In the morning, at first light, I grabbed everything I could carry, my box and some water and food, loaded it into a pirogue and paddled away.”
She fell silent, shaking her head. He said, “I don’t get this about this ritual, okunikua? He eats pieces of a woman and the baby and what … he gets powers from this?”
“Well, I never got the details, but yeah. In combination with other things he’s done to himself, there are chemicals in the various parts of the victims that have been modified by other chemicals fed to the mother during the ceremony. Not fed, actually, breathed in. It’s like an amplification of what he can already do. Think of the difference between a plain vanilla A-bomb and an H-bomb. It needs four women, though, as I said.”
Paz thought about this for a while. “How come he let you go? There in Africa.”
“I don’t know. Part of the plan, I guess. Who can figure out why the Olo do anything? Why they let Durakne live there. Witt had other things to do. My sense was that the Olo were gathering to somehow block Durakne Den in Danolo, which is why Witt might have had to leave. He came here, where there’s no one to stop him.”
“We’ll stop him,” said Paz, hardly believing it himself. “So how did you get out of there?”
“Oh, that part’s a little vague. The dry season was on by then, the channels were drying into mud, not that I knew what channels to take. And I was hallucinating a lot, and I was sick, really sick. I got completely lost. I ended up stranded on the mud, burning up with fever. Fade to black. The next thing I remember was the hospital in Bamako. They thought I had hepatitis. Apparently, I was found by a Fulani herder driving his herd down to the Niger for the big river crossing, the Diafarabe. He recognized my amulet and figured it would be good juju to rescue me. I guess you must’ve got the rest if you talked to my father. The weirdest thing was that when Witt showed up in my hospital room in New York, I was sort of glad to see him.” She laughed. “That old black magic’s got me in its spell.”
He was about to say something about it being nothing to laugh about, when Luz came tromping down the ladder, wearing a threadbare red velvet dress over a gingham pinafore over yellow pedal pushers and a frilly blouse. Paz stood up and said to the little girl, “Great outfit, kid, let’s go eat.”
“And see the fishies.”
They got into the old Buick and drove north on Douglas. The Grove seemed reasonably quiet; people were staying in. There were few cars; once a police car whipped by, siren whooping, and Paz felt a pang of guilt. He was, officially, off duty, but maybe he was AWOL as well. He had not called in to find out what was going on, or where his partner was. He had run. He had left his partner and run. Of course, the alternative was staying and shooting his partner and a bunch of guys with machine guns, or being shot himself. He told himself that he was in fact where the action on this case really was. If it could be fixed at all, he would either fix it with this crazy woman or die trying.
At the Trail, they had to stop for some time, while emergency equipment, fire trucks, ambulances, buses full of cops went by, sirens and lights. The worst of the trouble seemed to lie east, over by the bay and Brickell Avenue. Paz directed her west.
Jane said, “I assume you’re off duty.”
Paz gave her a quick nervous look. “I guess. I don’t know what good a cop is when the guy who’s doing the bad stuff can’t be collared and locked up. It strikes me that the prudent investigative posture is to stick as close as possible to you.”
“As bait? Or … what?”
He thought for a moment. “Barlow used to say, the difference between a good detective and a no-account one is three things: patience, patience, and patience. I’m waiting. Something’ll turn up.” After a while he added, “Do you think … will Barlow ever come back to, like, normal? Like he was?”
“He might,” she said. “If he has people around him who treat him like he’s the decent guy you say he was, and love him, the grel may fade back. People have what we call ‘nervous breakdowns’ all the time, and recover. And there are more direct methods against them. Were you close to him?”
“Not close, but he was really good to me. I respected him more than any man I ever met.”
