4
Swift and silent as a cheetah after an antelope, the dust cloud chased the approaching Jeep. Almost, you could imagine it putting on a burst of speed, catching the Jeep and devouring it. Squinting over the sun-baked soil, Leonora Tesla gave in to an ironic smile as she found herself rooting for the dust.
Since she’d come to Namibia she’d seen this contest often, the predator running the prey. Conscientiously, she told herself not to take sides-they were all God’s creatures, and they all had to eat-but her heart was always with the prey. And her heart was usually broken, because the predator usually won. Now she was on the other side, but-as usual, Leonora!-in a hopeless cause. The dust would lose this race, settling into defeat as the Jeep came to a stop in front of her hut.
At least this time, she wouldn’t have to worry about heartbreak: This would not be a life-and-death struggle, only an annoyance in her day.
“He’s a funder,” her program manager had said over the village’s single crackling telephone, calling from Windhoek, his voice equal amounts sympathy and command. “You will have to see him.”
Leonora Tesla had come to the bush so she wouldn’t have to see anyone, except the HIV-positive women she worked with. After The Hague, after the hunting-after the shock of being called together and told by Harold the Volunteers must disband-even the smaller African cities had been too much for her. So she’d gone to the bush, traveling from village to village, staying not long in any one place. Her mandate was to establish craft cooperatives, micro-financing women’s paths to independence. The work suited her. Her days were filled now with distracting minutiae-finding hinges in one village so another’s kiln door could be repaired; lending the equivalent of four American dollars so a group could buy paper on which to keep records of baskets sold. And with beauty: the color-block quilts, the Oombiga pots whose tradition had almost been lost. Beauty suited Tesla too. Visual beauty: the way the women weaved echoed the stark subtlety of the African landscape. And musical beauty: The only artifact of 21st century technology she’d brought into the bush was an iPod loaded with-among other things-Bach preludes, Shostakovich symphonies and Beethoven sonatas. Reluctantly, she removed it now, cutting off Chopin as the Jeep neared. She hoped this wouldn’t take long. She’d ferry him around, this funder from… She’d forgotten to ask. She’d show him the kiln, the looms, the workshop. She’d rattle off her statistics on life-span extension and self-sufficiency, give him her little speech about hope for the next generation. The women would present him with a quilt or a pot for which he could have no possible use and he’d be patronizingly pleased with them and inordinately proud of himself for making this all possible. Then maybe he’d go away and leave them in peace.
Oh, Leonora, at least try to smile.
The other Volunteers used to say that regularly, and precisely because their work gave them little to smile about, she’d try. She did it now, a polite smile for the angular blond man who stepped from the Jeep. He smiled back and slapped his hat against his thigh to shake off the dust. He took off his sunglasses: well trained in the art of courtesy, at least.
“Leonora Tesla? I’m Gunter Schmidt.”
He spoke in English with a soft accent she couldn’t quite place. Not German, but no law said his German name meant he was brought up in that country. That’s what the permeability of European borders was about. It was supposed to be a good thing.
They shook hands. Schmidt’s was soft and fleshy, as befit someone who dispensed money from behind a desk. “You’ve had a long drive,” she said. “Sit down. I’ll get you something to drink.” She indicated a stool on the hard clay under the overhang, but he followed her into the house. He’d learn, she thought. In Africa the indoor, though shadowed and appealing, was never cooler than outside.
Still smiling, Schmidt dropped himself onto one of the rough-hewn chairs at her plank table. She handed him a bottle of BB orange soda. In a hut without electricity, of course she had no refrigerator, but she’d learned the African trick of burying bottles in a box in the hut’s clay floor, so the drink was relatively cool. “We’ll be more comfortable outside,” she suggested, resigned to try to be pleasant to this intruder.
“No,” he said, “I’d rather stay here. Leonora.”
She bristled at the odd way he said her name, but his expression was mild as he looked about her hut. So she shrugged, wiped her brow with her kerchief and sat beside him.
“You’ve lived here long?” Schmidt asked, taking a pull from his soda bottle.
“No. I don’t live anywhere long. My work takes me many places.”
“That would account for the… simplicity.”
“And yet my possessions, few as they are, are more numerous than those of the women in our programs. When you’re rested, I’ll take you to see the kiln. We’ll be covering a lot of ground today if you want to see the full scope of our work.” She stood to reach her own Jeep keys on the hook by the door.
“No, I think we’ll stay here. Leonora.”
She turned sharply. His smile and the mild expression in his eyes were still in place, but his hand held a pistol, pointed at her.
Calm, Leonora. Stay calm. “What do you want?”
“Where is Harold Middleton?”
Tesla’s heart, already pounding, gave a lurch. But she spoke calmly. “Harold? How would I possibly know?”
Schmidt didn’t answer her. The gun moved slightly, as though seeking a better angle.
“Isn’t he in America, in Washington? That’s where he lives.”
“If he were in Washington,” Schmidt asked reasonably, “would I be here?”
“Well, I haven’t heard from him in almost a year.”
“I don’t know whether that’s true, though eventually I’m sure I’ll find out. But it doesn’t matter. Whether you’ve heard from him or not, you know where he’d go. If, say, he were in trouble.”
In trouble? “No, I don’t.”
“When you worked together-”
“When we did, I might have been able to tell you. But I don’t know anything about his life now. He teaches music; I don’t even know where.”
Neither of them had moved since Tesla had seen the pistol. Neither of them moved now, in the stretching silence. A breeze rustled the leaves in the acacia behind the hut. Sweat trickled down Tesla’s spine.
“Who are you? What do you want with Harold?”
He laughed. “I suppose you had to ask that, but you know I won’t tell you. But it’s about your work, Leonora.”
“The Volunteers?”
His smile was bitter. “Your work. So. You really don’t know where Middleton is? Not even if I shoot you?”
A gunshot roar ricocheted off the tin roof and mud walls; Tesla stumbled, grasped the plank table for support as clay shards flew everywhere. She found herself staring into Schmidt’s mild eyes. Wheezing a few breaths, quieting her heart by an act of will, she answered him.
“Even if you shoot me. I don’t know.”
Schmidt nodded. “All right. You don’t know where he’d go if he were in trouble. I suppose then we’ll have to depend on what he’d do, if you were in trouble.” He stood. “Come.”
“What?”
“As you said: We’ll be covering a lot of ground.”
She walked ahead of the gun out onto the uneven baked earth. The glaring sunlight was unforgiving; she did not turn, but waited. There: a stutter in his step, a whisper of plastic on fabric. Behind her, Schmidt reached into his pocket for his sunglasses, she dropped down and rolled into him. He stumbled; she yanked his ankle forward, threw her weight sideways into his other knee. Dust boiled as he thudded to the ground. Another shot screamed, but out here in the endless bush it didn’t thunder, and she’d been prepared to hear it. The gun waved wildly, looking for her, but by the second shot she was in the hut and by the third she’d hurled a clay pot with the force and accuracy of Yaa Asantewa’s spear.
In the whirling dust, Schmidt-and more important, the gun-was still.
