Three Read online

  I looked down the stairs. One flight below me was a corridor lined on both sides with numbered doors. And below that, at every second turn of the iron stairs, were more corridors and more numbered doors. All the way down to the ground floor, where the old woman behind the door marked ‘12’ had called my father a he-goat. The whole building might share her opinion. They were all oil workers, or the families of oil workers – simple tribesmen and women from the outlying districts, whose minds were easily turned by rumour and lies. Any one of them might recognise me and get word to my father’s enemies – my enemies now.

  Chief of Police Kimutai had told me to remain where I was. It was good advice. Below me were six storeys of possibly unfriendly oil workers and their families. Above me was the threat of killer baboons. So I stayed on the narrow iron landing, halfway between the top floor and the roof and waited for Mr Kimutai to call back.

  He did not call. I kept checking the phone to make sure it was still working (it was) and to see if there were any missed calls (there were not). I even considered calling the Chief of Police back, but decided I should not. His voice had changed toward the end of our conversation – he had lowered it and spoken more quickly, as if he was in danger too – and I knew he would call back as soon as it was safe to talk.

  My legs were growing tired. I slid my back down the cold concrete wall until I was resting on my heels. I stared at the phone. Call me, I thought. Call me call me call me call me call me!

  Never in my life had I felt so alone.

  Hardly aware of what I was doing, I tapped in the only phone number, apart from my dead parents’, that I knew by heart.

  ‘Hello?’ said her voice.

  ‘Happy Birthday.’

  There was a short pause. ‘Sunny?’

  My heart skipped a beat. Holly was the only person who had ever called me that. She said I had a sunny smile. But that was before my parents died.

  Mightbe I would never smile again.

  ‘Is that you, Sunny?’ she asked.

  I nodded. Suddenly talking was difficult. ‘Yes,’ I managed – more a croak than a word.

  ‘Thank God!’ said Holly. ‘I’ve been worried sick!’

  I tried to think of something to say, but ended up just snivelling like a two-year-old child.

  ‘Are you okay, Sunny?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I heard about your father,’ she said softly.

  I took a couple of deep, hitching breaths. ‘And my mother.’

  ‘Your mother, too? Oh my God! Baby, I am so, so sorry!’

  I could not say anything for a while. Baby – I was not sure I liked being called that, but truly I was acting like one. For mightbe half a minute I could not talk.

  Holly broke the silence. ‘Whose phone are you calling from?’

  ‘A man gave it to me,’ I snivelled. A dead man, I thought. And because I did not want to think about that, I spoke of something else. ‘I got you a birthday present.’

  ‘Did you? You’re sweet.’

  ‘There is a card, also,’ I said. ‘I was going to give them to you at lunchtime. Why were you not at school?’

  ‘My dad made me stay home,’ Holly said.

  ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘No. Dad said Mom and I should have a girls’ day in because of my birthday.’

  ‘That sounds . . . nice.’

  ‘It was weird. Back in the States, I always went to school on my birthday, and Mom never misses work,’ Holly said. ‘But that’s enough about me. Where are you, Sunny? Are you still at school?’

  ‘No. I am on some stairs.’

  ‘What stairs?’ asked Holly.

  ‘In an apartment building.’ I looked up at the little window again. Two vultures were circling high overhead. ‘It belongs to the oil company.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  A door banged in the corridor below me, then I heard footsteps approaching. ‘Sorry, I have to go,’ I whispered quickly and snapped the phone shut.

  I hurried up the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. I wished it was Wednesday, Sports Day, when we were allowed to wear sneakers.

  I wished it was any day but today and that my parents were still alive.

  Opening the green door, I peered cautiously out through the gap. The roof was a mess. Half a dozen pieces of laundry had been wrenched off the clotheslines and lay twisted and dirty on the blood-smeared tar. Others hung crookedly from single clothes pegs. A bed sheet had a small red handprint on it. But I could see no baboons, either alive or dead. So I slipped out onto the rooftop and clicked the door shut behind me. After thinking for a moment, I jammed the chair back under the doorknob. It was no longer baboons that worried me, it was people – people who had seen me on TV or in the newspapers and would know who I was. People like the lady in apartment twelve who were glad that my father was dead.

  I thought of another question to ask the Chief of Police: did I have to be president if I did not want to?

  Then the phone started ringing again and I flipped it open, hoping I would get to ask my question straightaway. But it was Holly’s number that flash-flashed on the little screen.

  ‘I cannot talk!’ I whispered urgently and again I clicked the phone shut.

  Twice now I had hung up on Holly. I felt guilty but I had no choice. There were noises on the other side of the door. The knob turned, one way and then the other. I backed away from it, hoping the chair would hold.

  Who was it? I wondered. The person I had just heard in the corridor, or someone else? Into my head came a picture of the man with the AK-47.

  Aaaaee!

  Then I had an idea. The clotheslines were made of lengths of cord tied between T-shaped metal supports. Each one was five or six metres long. If I unstrung three cords and tied them together, I could make a rope and climb down onto the roof of the next building.

  Backing away from the stair-hut, I pushed backwards through the overloaded clotheslines, not looking where I was going. Suddenly I tripped and lost my balance. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Only by making a wild grab at a clothesline-support did I save myself from falling over.

  The shadow of a vulture, flying very low, crossed the sun like a blink from God. I looked up at it, then I looked down to see what had tripped me.

  The suicide bomber baboon lay broken and bloody at my feet. It still wore its muzzle, but the bandage around its head was gone and blood covered its fur. Gashes and holes and bite marks made a grisly patchwork of its body. There were strips of bare, bleeding flesh where whole chunks of skin and fur had been torn away. Already flies buzzed around it.

  But it was still alive.

  One of its eyes was swollen all-the-way closed; the other one fixed me with an icy blue stare, distracting me from where I should have been looking.

  It was too late by the time I shifted my gaze.

  Aaaaee!

  The baboon was still wearing its backpack. While I had been staring into its cold blue eye, its trembling right hand had crept slowly across its ruined body to the shoulder strap on the other side.

  Another vulture-shadow swept over me as I watched the suicide bomber baboon press its little red button.

  6

  My Monkey

  Nothing happened.

  For a few long moments I stood staring down at my blood-covered enemy, wondering why both of us were not dead.

  Then I saw the broken wire.

  The button was set into a little black switch box, about the size of a computer USB stick. Two plastic-coated wires snaked out of it, one green, the other red. The red wire had been snipped in two, halfway between the switch box and the backpack. One of the wild baboons must have bitten through it in the fight. It had saved my life.

  It had also saved the life of the suicide bomber. Or what remained of its life. I prodded the half-dead creature with the toe of one shoe.

  ‘I am going to take the backpack off you,’ I said. ‘If you try anything stupid, I will kick your ugly head in.’
<
br />   I felt a bit foolish speaking to an animal. But the talking helped – it gave me courage. And mightbe the threatening tone in my voice would show the creature who was the Big Man. But I did not feel like a man either big or small. I felt like a scared little boy. Before I lost all of my courage, I stooped and took one of the monkey’s hands, gripping it from behind so it could not wrap its leathery baboon fingers around mine. Then I folded its long, hairy arm at the elbow and threaded it back through the shoulder strap. To free the other arm, I had to roll the baboon onto its side. It whimpered in pain, but I closed my heart to its suffering.

  You tried to kill me, I thought. One like you murdered my parents.

  The backpack was not heavy, but I knew it contained a bomb that could kill me. My heart danced in my chest as I carried it slowly-slowly across the rooftop to the nearest section of railing. Below was the low building where I had first seen the wild baboons. The baboons were gone, but now two men in green ZantOil overalls were there, smoking cigarettes and talking. I did not want to throw the bomb near them, so I went to the railing behind the stair-hut. There was a narrow service alley, with no people. But it was a long way down and I felt uncertain. Would the bomb explode when the backpack hit the ground? A shiny circle caught my eye. I moved sideways to see better. It was a reflection of the sky on water in an open-topped oil drum left in the alley. This was good luck, I thought. If the bomb landed in water, it might not explode. I aimed carefully and let the backpack fall. Then I stepped far back from the railing and held my breath.

  The seconds went by and nothing happened. There was no explosion.

  Praise God!

  But it was too soon to relax. There was still the baboon to deal with – the baboon that had tried, more than once, to kill me.

  No problem, I thought. I was Magic Feet – I could kick a football 80 metres with my right foot and 55 metres with my left. How many kicks would it take these feet to kill a three-quarters-dead baboon? It was time to find out.

  But when I got back to the baboon, all the violence drained from me. My anger was for Mbuti, not for this pathetic, nearly dead creature. I stared down at it and it stared up at me.

  I do not know how long we stayed like that, two enemies who had not killed each other.

  When a fly crawled into the corner of the baboon’s good eye and would not go away when the animal blinked, I bent and shooed the insect off.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  The baboon frowned and made a slight side-to-side motion with its poor bleeding head, almost as if it was also wondering why. But it was just an animal, I reminded myself. Animals did not wonder or think.

  That led to another question: how could a being that was incapable of thought be a suicide bomber?

  A harsh scraping noise interrupted my thoughts. I turned to see what had caused it. Part of the stair-hut was visible through a gap in the clotheslines. The chair I had placed under the doorknob lay flat on the tar! A man wearing the uniform of a janitor had opened the door with a small crowbar. Behind him came a woman in a pale blue kaftan, carrying a tall, woven reed basket.

  They had not yet seen me, so I ducked behind a big colourful quilt. I heard the woman gasp and say something about all the messed-up washing. The janitor muttered angrily – something about baboons – then his car-tyre sandals came flap-flapping across the rooftop in my direction. I realised he would be able to see my legs below the quilt, so I stepped out from behind it. But the janitor was not looking at me; his eyes were fixed on the baboon at my feet. The crowbar was raised like a club.

  ‘Do not hurt it, suh!’ I cried. ‘This one did not make all the mess.’

  The janitor blinked in surprise. For a second or two, I was sure he had recognised me from the newspapers or the Internet. But he asked, ‘Was it you who put that chair against the door?’

  I had to think fast. ‘There were some wild baboons, suh. They were swinging on the clotheslines and pulling down everyone’s washing. I was worried they might go inside and do more damage.’

  ‘And this one?’ The janitor pointed at the blood-covered baboon at my feet.

  ‘It is mine, suh.’ The words came from my lips, not from my brain. Mine? Two minutes ago, I had wished the animal dead. And, truly, I still wished it dead. But not this way, I thought. Not clubbed to death with a crowbar, while the woman in blue and I had to look on.

  So I told more lies: ‘We tried to stop the wild ones from wrecking the clotheslines, suh, and they turned on us.’

  The janitor poked the baboon’s leather muzzle with the pointy end of his crowbar. ‘You should have taken this thing off it first.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said guiltily. And for a moment it felt as if everything had happened exactly as I had said – as if this baboon, the one I had called mine, had acted heroically; as if I had failed it by not removing its muzzle so it could defend itself against its wild attackers.

  As if I was somehow responsible for its terrible injuries!

  ‘Do you live here?’ asked the janitor.

  ‘I was visiting my aunty,’ I said. One more lie.

  ‘Which apartment?’

  ‘Number twelve.’

  He frowned. Now I was sure he was going to accuse me of lying. But he just said, ‘No animals are allowed. Your aunt should have told you.’

  ‘She did tell me, suh.’ I shrugged. ‘I left this one down in the street, but someone must have let it inside.’

  We both stared at the poor, bleeding animal. A swarm of flies buzzed around it now.

  ‘Get it out of the building,’ the janitor said finally. ‘I don’t want it attracting vultures.’

  Now I very much wished that I had not lied. He wanted me to carry the filthy thing all the way downstairs! Aaaaee! I bent to pick it up.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said the janitor.

  While he and I had been talking, the woman in the blue kaftan had begun taking down washing from one of the clotheslines and folding it into her basket. The janitor called out to her now, using one of the tribal languages I did not know. She shook her head, as if annoyed by his words. He spoke again, more sharply. Muttering to herself, the woman stomped over to one of the other clotheslines, took down the bed sheet with the red handprint and brought it to the janitor.

  ‘Wrap this around your monkey,’ he told me. ‘It will keep the blood off your good school uniform.’

  My monkey. How could I know, as I wrapped the quivering, half-dead animal in someone’s ruined bed sheet, that one foolish lie could change the future of a country?

  7

  Dumb Animal

  The baboon weighed more than I had expected and it smelled truly bad. Everything about it was bad. Already I could feel its wet, warm blood seeping through the fabric of the stolen bed sheet. Aaaaee! My ‘good’ school uniform was ruined. It would have to be thrown away, or mightbe given to the servants. Are there still servants? I wondered, recalling the first bomb. O Ama! O Baba! But now was not a time for such thoughts. I had to keep my mind in the present. If I lost concentration, if I was not careful, I might fall down the steep iron stairs of the apartment building and badly injure myself.

  I could not see past the big smelly monkey in my arms; I could not see where to put my feet. And to make matters worse, the bed sheet came loose as I descended and a bent, furry leg flopped out. Bump, bump, bump went the baboon’s foot against the bare skin of my leg where my shorts ended. Its toenails were sharp. The janitor saw what was happening – he could have tucked the dangling leg back in – but he did not help. When he stopped to wait for me on one of the lower landings, I could read the message in his eyes. It is your monkey, they said.

  But it was not my monkey! It was General Mbuti’s monkey! One just like it had killed my parents!

  It was impossible to believe they were dead.

  Think about something else, I said to myself. Think about Mbuti.

  Think about getting revenge!

  Somehow I made it all the way down the twelve flights of stairs without fall
ing. But there was blood all over me – stinking monkey’s blood. How had I got into this situation? Why was I helping my enemy?

  The janitor led me along the ground floor corridor, past number twelve. I was glad when the door did not open. I did not want to be there when the janitor spoke to my ‘aunty’. Enough lies had been told today. And not just by me. ‘He-goat president’! How could she say such a thing of my father? Many people did not like him, I knew that, but was that not true of all leaders? Nobody I knew, not even the teacher who had criticised the oil company, had spoken bad things about Baba within my hearing. Until today. Until he was murdered by that he-goat Mbuti.

  Baba, I will make him pay for his treachery!

  As soon as the janitor closed the outside door behind me, I looked for somewhere to leave the baboon – someplace where it would not get in the way of people or traffic, or be bothered by the vultures that still circled high overhead.

  Someplace where it could die in peace.

  Luck was with me. I found a good place just along the alley. There was a half-metre gap between the apartment building I had just come from and the one next to it. I could just squeeze in. The baboon’s dangling foot rubbed against the bricks on one side, while my shoulder, elbow and hip scraped along the bricks on the other side. I had to step over rubbish – disposable nappies, someone’s broken sandal, an old wooden box that once had held 24 bottles of Elephant Cola (how I longed for one now). Finally I came to a clear space. Kicking aside some rusty mattress springs, I set the baboon down on the damp earth. Then I bunched up the filthy bed sheet like a pillow and put it under the horrible creature’s head. It stared up at me with its one good eye.

  Do not leave me, it seemed to be saying.

  ‘I saved you from getting your head bashed in,’ I said. ‘I carried you all the way down here. That is enough, ne?’

  The blue eye shone accusingly in the gloom. I looked away.

  Aaaaee! A big brown rat sat watching us. Its long whiskers twitched.

  ‘Go away!’ I said, sending the rat scurrying off into the shadows. But I knew it would come back. It would return after I was gone. And others would come with it. The baboon was too weak to defend itself. The rats would eat it alive.