‘Pointing it at something?’
‘No, just holding it in his hands. I don’t think he wanted to kill me. He might have been working up the courage to shoot himself. I took it away and he never reached for it again. We sorted out our route and waited till sunset. He was stealthy and quiet, probably an excellent hunter, but once we got the flute he got careless, like he wanted someone to know we were there. We were far away from the village but some dogs heard us first. I knew we could still make it to the canoe and we did, but he wouldn’t lie down. He started screaming a bunch of nonsense and I would have shoved him down but I had to start the engine and steer us out of there. I don’t get it. I promised him a quarter of the cash from this thing.’
It was hard to know how much to believe. I wasn’t sure it mattered anyway. Xambun was dead. The S S Calgaric would leave the next day at noon.
I made to get up from my black chair.
‘I saw you on the beach with her,’ he said. ‘I knew what would happen. I’m not stupid. You knew I’d go and I knew you wouldn’t stop me. But you can’t have Nell like you can have other girls. She says she’s Southern but she’s not on the Grid. She’s a different type altogether. Trust me on that one.’
He refilled my glass. We’d nearly drunk the bottle.
‘What type is she?’
‘Damned if I ever let you find out.’
This time I did get up. He stood, too.
‘I had to get that flute,’ he said. ‘Don’t you understand? There has to be a balance. A man can’t be without power—it doesn’t work like that. What was I going to do, write little books behind hers like a fucking echo? I needed something big. And this is big. Books on this thing will write themselves.’
‘In blood-red ink, Fen.’
On the way back down the hallway were the stairs to the third floor. I hesitated, and then continued to my room. I opened the door as quietly as I could, in case she could hear my movements as I could hear hers. I didn’t want to wake her and I didn’t want her to know I’d been drinking with Fen. I lay on the bed in my clothes and stared up at the white swirled plaster. It was silent. I hoped she’d managed to fall asleep. My bed felt more comfortable than it had the previous nights and despite the slight spinning, Fen had been right: the cognac was going to allow me to sleep. I drifted down into it.
I awoke to pounding. Louder, and louder still. Then her door opening. All I could hear were footsteps and the low buzz of voices, first in the doorway then all over the small room. As their voices grew stronger their feet moved faster, back and forth above me. Something hit the floor hard. My body was on the stairs then pounding on her door before my mind caught up.
‘Your boyfriend’s here,’ I heard Fen say.
‘Let me in.’
A man across the hall said, ‘Belt up, will you?”
The door opened.
Nell was in her nightgown at the end of the bed.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Please, let’s not get thrown out of here.’
‘Nellie wants to go to the police. Get me thrown in the calaboose. Maybe make you her next houseboy. But you can bloody well forget that.’ He bent over to light a cigarette. ‘Natives kill natives. No one’s going to put me behind bars for that. And the flute—it’s not exactly the frieze of the fucking Parthenon and nobody cared how Elgin got that except for a few sentimental Greeks.’
‘I want the governor of the station to know there could be trouble between the Mumbanyo and the Tam, that’s all.’ Her voice was thin, alien to me.
‘Nell,’ I said.
She shook her head fiercely at my tone. ‘Please, go to bed, Bankson. Take Fen and go.’
Without a fight Fen followed me out of the room.
When we got down to the second floor I said, ‘What happened up there?’
‘Nothing. Marital argy-bargy.’
I grabbed him and shoved him against the wall. His body was completely relaxed, as if this were something he was used to. ‘What was that noise I heard up there? What hit the ground?’
‘Her duffel. It was on the bed and I chucked it to the floor. Christ.’ He waited for me to let him go then opened his door.
I returned to my room and stood for a long time in the center of it, watching the ceiling, but I heard nothing the rest of the night.
Outside my room next morning was a hotel laundry bag, half full. I brought it to my bed and took out the items one by one: a pair of leather shoes, a tortoiseshell comb, a silver bracelet, her wrinkled blue dress. At the bottom, a note for me.
You have already done so much that I am ashamed to ask for one thing more. Will you give these things to Teket when you go back, and ask him to take them to Lake Tam the next time he visits? The bracelet is for Bani, the comb for Wanji, the dress for Sali, and the shoes for Malun. Ask him to say to Malun that she is tight in my stomach. Teket’s cousin will know how to say it.
Please let me go. Don’t say anything more or it will make it worse. I am going to try and fix what I can.