Three Read online

  ‘One hundred per cent,’ I said. ‘Please call me if you hear news about Holly.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Three waited until I had put down the phone, then it asked, ‘Who shoot Holly?’

  I had forgotten that a talking monkey was also a listening monkey.

  ‘Ask your friend Mustafa,’ I said.

  22

  Hole

  First thing the next morning, I checked the phone once more. There were no messages from Jessica. But it was lucky that I checked, because the little battery symbol at the top of the screen showed almost empty.

  Why could they not make a phone that did not go flat all the time?

  I texted Jessica to tell her that I was switching off Holly’s phone to save its battery. I would turn it on again every few hours to check for messages. If she heard news about Holly, could she please text me, not phone me? I asked. Then I switched the phone off and lay back in my blankets.

  Aaaaee! It was so hard to not know anything! Three days ago I was the son of the president, everybody treated me with respect, and now I was locked in a warehouse, hiding like a criminal.

  At least I was not alone. ‘How are you feeling this morning, Three?’

  ‘Hungry.’

  We had a can of rice pudding each. Three drank two full mugs of water with its rice. But I did not want water so early in the morning. At home, always I had a hot drink with breakfast. Usually it was sweet, milky tea, how my mother liked it. O Ama!

  There was an electric jug on the counter. I found teabags and a jar of lumpy sugar in one of the cupboards. There was a carton of milk in the refrigerator. It smelled sour when I opened it. I went out to the warehouse to look for more. All I could find was baby formula. It was in large cans, sealed with foil that you pulled open with a little tab. Inside was fine white powder that did not smell like milk. I spooned some into my hot tea but it went all lumpy. Then I read the directions on the can. Mix in cold water. Okay. I found a plastic jug in one of the cupboards and made baby formula. It still did not smell like milk, but it didn’t taste too bad in a fresh mug of tea.

  Three was sitting on its blankets watching me drink my tea. It finished its second cup of water and held up its mug. ‘Three can have?’

  ‘You want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Just milk.’

  I filled its mug from the jug of baby formula. ‘It is not proper milk, it is for babies,’ I said. ‘Human babies,’ I added.

  The brid peered into its mug with its one good eye. ‘Three not baby.’

  ‘Beggars are not choosers,’ I said. It was something my last teacher had read to us from a book, but I had not fully understood what it meant until now. ‘Try it.’

  Three took a little sip of baby formula. It licked its lips, then it did a brid’s version of a smile. ‘Taste good! Thank you, Sunday.’

  ‘You are welcome, Three.’

  After breakfast, we both used the bathroom.

  ‘Three not sick no more,’ the brid said when I went back in to get it. ‘No more runny poo.’

  I laughed. ‘Thank you for telling me that.’

  ‘You welcome, Sunday.’

  It was Monday morning. Despite what I had said to Jessica, I was still worried that one of Mrs Parr’s workers might have their own key. So instead of taking Three back to the kitchen, I made a little hiding place behind some cartons in the back of the warehouse and carried the brid there. I collected our blankets, the phone, Holly’s backpack and the first-aid kit from the kitchen, and took them all back to our hiding place. Then I made three more trips back and forth, bringing a full jug of water, the baby formula, our mugs, several cans of rice pudding and the can opener.

  The last time I went back, I tidied the kitchen, cleaned the table and the sink, and even swept the floor with a brush and dustpan from one of the cupboards. Aaaaee! How proud Ama would have been to see me do this! But it was for Holly’s mother that I had cleaned the kitchen. If she or any of her helpers did come to work that day, they would not know that anyone had been there. Three and I would stay very quiet in our hiding place until they locked up and went home in the evening.

  My precautions were not necessary. Nobody came to the warehouse. But Three and I stayed in our hiding place anyway. It felt safer there. But it was boring. I checked the phone too many times. There were no messages from Jessica. Mightbe she was at school. Would school be open today, I wondered, after what happened on Friday? And even if school was open, would Jessica’s parents let her go? Mightbe not, I thought. Not after what had happened to Holly.

  Shot!

  ‘Stop it!’ I said to myself, aloud.

  ‘Three do nothing,’ said the brid.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’

  Three seemed puzzled. ‘Who Sunday say stop?’

  ‘Me,’ I said. ‘I was telling myself to stop thinking about Holly.’

  ‘Because Holly got shot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The brid lightly touched my hand. ‘Sunday sad.’

  I stood up. I needed something to do. Something to keep my mind busy. It was obvious that nobody was coming to work at the warehouse that day, so there was no reason to hide. Leaving our hiding place, I walked up and down between the rows of shelves, swinging my arms. They were not so stiff today. And my foot felt good.

  I had an idea. Earlier that day, when I had gone looking for milk, I had passed a crate full of children’s toys. Among all the dolls and toy cars and counting blocks were several brightly coloured plastic balls. Holly had said that I might find a soccer ball. And all I had said was that it was called football in my country. Aaaaee! She had just been trying to cheer me up!

  And then she had got shot.

  I chose a purple ball, because that was one of the two colours of our national flag. Also they were the colours of our team uniform. The plastic ball was smaller than a regulation football and not so heavy, but beggars are not choosers. Ha!

  Moving some shelves and several stacks of cartons, I cleared a three-metres-wide lane along the length of the warehouse – roughly as long as the penalty area on a football pitch. Then I took a black crayon from a box in the crate of toys and drew a line high along the end wall, representing the top bar of a football goal. With a yellow crayon now – because yellow was the away colour of the Cameroon football team – I then drew a goalkeeper in the middle of the pretend goal and made his skinny arms stick out wide. Pacing eleven steps from the pretend goalkeeper and the pretend goal he was defending, I marked a purple-for-Zantuga X on the concrete floor. Then I placed the purple ball in the middle of this X.

  First to the spot in this World Cup Final penalty shootout is Zantuga’s youngest player and star left-winger, Sunday Balewo.

  I took four slow steps backwards. It was as far back as I could go without bumping against a row of shelves stacked with babies’ nappies. I stood still for a moment, breathing deeply, visualising where the ball should go.

  A hush falls over the stadium as 30,000 green and purple-clad football supporters hold their breath and lean forward expectantly in their seats.

  I rushed forward and kicked. Whap!

  Thirty thousand sets of lungs go: Oooooh!

  The light-as-air ball flew much too high. It went sailing over the black-crayon bar into the pretend crowd sitting behind the goal.

  There is a stunned silence from everyone in green and purple.

  Cameroon: 1, Zantuga: 0.

  Closing my ears to the jeers of the Cameroon supporters, I collected the ball and returned to the purple X. Once again, I took four, slow steps backwards. This time I would aim my kick to the right side of the goal and low down. But just as I started to move forward, the Cameroon goalkeeper seemed to sway slightly to his left. Was he trying to psych me out? Would he really go left, or would he dive the other way at the very last moment? It was too late to change the aim of my kick now. Stop the ball if you are good enough, I thought. Whap!

  Thirty thousand pretend
Zantuga supporters cheer and chant: Magic Feet, Magic Feet, Magic Feet!

  Then a real voice asked, ‘What Sunday do?’

  I lowered my raised arms, feeling embarrassed. Three had dragged itself from our hiding place to see what I was doing. Aaaaee! Had I been talking my thoughts aloud?

  ‘Taking penalty kicks,’ I said.

  Three looked at the yellow goalkeeper on the wall. ‘Is game?’ it asked.

  ‘Sort of.’ I went to pick up the ball. ‘But really it is practice.’

  ‘What means practice?’ asked Three. There were so many things that it did not know.

  I explained about penalty kicks and scoring goals. Then I had an idea. ‘Can you keep score?’

  ‘What is score?’

  ‘It is like counting,’ I said. ‘Can you count?’

  The brid nodded. ‘Three can count.’

  I tore a flap of cardboard from a carton labelled ‘Instant Rolled Oats 96 Boxes’ and made two columns using the black crayon. I wrote ‘Zantuga’ at the top of one column and ‘Cameroon’ in the other.

  ‘Can you read?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Three.

  Part of me felt disappointed, another part felt superior. I pointed at the left column. ‘This one is me. The other side – over here – is for when I miss. Use the crayon to make a mark every time I kick.’

  ‘Put mark here?’

  ‘It depends where the ball goes. If I kick higher than that black line on the wall, it is a mark on the other side. And if I hit any place on the yellow man, put a mark on the other side, also.’

  ‘How Sunday get mark?’

  ‘I have to kick the ball any place inside the goal, without hitting the yellow man.’

  ‘Very easy,’ said Three.

  It was not easy. The ball was too light and it went all the places where it should not go. When I added up the points after twenty minutes of penalty kicks, the score was: Cameroon 111, Zantuga 88.

  ‘It is only halftime,’ I told Three.

  All through the first half, I had been uncomfortable in my new jeans. They were for a fat man and kept sliding down. I changed them for some basketball shorts from the bin for children. They were tight, but better than too loose. Taking a drink from the jug of water, I went back to the penalty mark.

  The new shorts made a difference. The final score was Cameroon 147, Zantuga 222.

  I showed the brid how to do high-fives. ‘Zantuga won!’

  ‘Sunday got most marks,’ said Three, tapping Zantuga’s side of the score card with its crayon.

  I remembered that it could not read. ‘That says Zantuga,’ I explained. ‘It does not say Sunday.’

  ‘What say other side?’ asked Three.

  ‘Cameroon.’

  ‘Two countries.’

  ‘True. I am Zantuga, the yellow man is Cameroon.’

  ‘Two countries,’ Three repeated.

  ‘The teams of two countries,’ I said.

  ‘Where teams?’ Three waved its crayon. ‘Just Sunday and yellow man.’

  I clucked my tongue. ‘It is all just pretend, Three. Use your imagination!’

  ‘What is imagination?’

  Mightbe it did not have imagination, I thought. It was not human. ‘Close your eyes,’ I said.

  One of Three’s eyes already was closed. Now it closed the other one also.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Dark,’ it said.

  ‘Think about a face,’ I said. ‘Not mine. Mustafa’s face, or the face of someone else that you know. Can you see anything yet?’

  Slowly the corners of Three’s lips bent upwards in a brid-smile. ‘See face.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘That face is not real. You can’t truly see that man, can you? Only your imagination can see him.’

  ‘Not man,’ said the brid, its eye still closed. ‘Three see Holly face.’

  Aaaaee! How long was it since I had last checked for messages from Jessica? I hurried back to our hiding place and switched on the phone. After a long, long wait, the screen finally came alive. There was a two word message: Call me.

  Jessica must have been waiting for me to call, because she picked up right away. ‘Hi, Sunday. How are you?’

  It did not matter how I was! ‘Did you hear news about Holly?’ I asked.

  ‘Dad finally got through to her father,’ Jessica said. ‘They’re in the army hospital, like we thought.’

  ‘How is Holly?’

  ‘They’ve got her in an induced coma.’

  I did not know what that meant – did not want to know, really – but I had to ask. ‘Is that like being asleep?’

  ‘Yeah. The doctors do it with drugs. Mum says it’s to stop the brain from swelling.’

  It took me a few moments to think about those words. Brain. Swelling. Suddenly my legs felt weak. ‘Did she get shot in the head?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Jessica said. ‘Her father didn’t actually say much about what’s wrong with her, just that they’re flying this guy out from England – some super-important brain surgeon – and he’s going to operate on her. And he asked about you.’

  ‘The brain surgeon?’ I asked.

  ‘No – Holly’s dad,’ Jessica said. ‘Before they put her to sleep, Holly said some stuff about you. She wasn’t totally conscious, and her dad said it didn’t make much sense, but she kept saying how Sunday Balewo was locked in.’

  My ear felt hot against the phone. ‘Did she say where I am?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jessica said. ‘And when Dad told me and Mum about it, I pretended I didn’t know, either.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But I really wanted to say something, Sunday. I think Dad could help you.’

  ‘How could he help?’

  ‘I think he could organise it so you could go to Australia.’

  ‘I don’t want to go there.’

  ‘But you’re in danger here, Sunday! General Mbuti wants to kill you – you said so yourself.’

  ‘He will not chase me from my own country,’ I said.

  Jessica was silent for a few moments. ‘So what will you do?’

  I did not know. And it did not seem important right now. I asked, ‘What will the doctor from England do?’

  ‘I guess he will take the bullet out.’

  ‘Out of her brain?’ I felt sick just thinking about it.

  ‘We don’t really know what’s going on,’ Jessica said. ‘But I guess that’s what he will do – if the bullet is still in there.’

  The phone against my ear made a beep-beep noise. I thought it was another call coming in, but when I moved it to check the screen, there was a flashing message that said, Battery Low.

  ‘We can’t talk much longer, Jessica – this phone is nearly dead. When is the operation?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Message me as soon as you hear more.’

  After the call finished, I stood staring at the empty black screen without really seeing it. Just a few minutes earlier, when I had explained to Three about imagination, the brid had smiled when it imagined Holly. I was imagining her now, but I was not smiling. My dear girlfriend lay on her back on an operating table. Her eyes were closed. Her face looked peaceful.

  And there was a small round hole in the centre of her forehead.

  23

  Suicide Bomber

  After lunch, I sat Three on one of the kitchen chairs directly beneath the light and began unwinding the long, thin bandage wrapped round and round its head. An ugly red stain had come up through all the layers to the outside, and I had to see what was going on under there.

  It was not what I had expected. The big scalp wound looked a bit swollen along the neat row of stitches that Holly had made there, but there was no bleeding. The stain on the bandages had come from Three’s ear. The new plasters had fallen off once again, exposing the little round hole in its ear lobe.

  The bullet hole.

  A picture of another bullet hole came into my imagination
then, bringing a burn of half-digested rice pudding up to my throat. I ran to the bathroom. When I returned to the kitchen, my face was freshly rinsed and I no longer wore the Sweetwater Texas T-shirt. While I was gone, Three had rolled up the dirty bandage and pressed it against its ear to stop the bleeding. It noticed my damp face.

  ‘Sunday spew?’ it asked.

  I did not answer. Searching in the first-aid kit, I found the antiseptic, the cotton wool, more dressings. ‘Move your hand, please.’

  Three winced as I cleaned its ear. ‘Do not be sad, Sunday,’ it said through gritted teeth. ‘Holly will get well again.’

  Truly it was hard sometimes for me to remember that this talking monkey was my enemy.

  ‘I will get you all patched up, Three,’ I said. ‘Then you can keep score when I kick goals against Brazil.’

  Brazil 188, Zantuga 157.

  I was not happy to lose, but I did not get angry like my father. When the real Zantuga had played the real Brazil (last year, at the opening of our new national football stadium in Nabozi City) I sat with Baba in the President’s Box. Many people were watching us, as were the TV cameras. I tried to calm Baba every time Brazil scored.

  It was not easy seven times!

  That night on television, in a very short interview, my father had angrily said: ‘This disgrace will not happen again! The next time our football team plays for the pride of Zantuga, my son Sunday will be wearing the green and purple.’

  O Baba!

  Every thought in my head made me sad.

  To distract myself, I went to the office and opened a slit between the blinds. The afternoon sun blazed down on the empty street outside. Where were all the people? There was a curfew, it was true, but that ended at daylight. People had to go out and get food. They had to go to their jobs.

  But not the people who worked in this warehouse. Holly’s mother was at the army hospital and she had the keys. Or mightbe they were lost when Holly got shot. I let the blinds snap closed.

  Aaaaee! It was making me crazy to be locked in this place!

  Back in the warehouse, I found Three pulling itself slowly-slowly across the floor towards the bathroom. One leg dragged behind it like a second tail.

  ‘Would you like me to carry you, Three?’