DECEPTION (III)
(Contd.)
The village was in a deep peaceful sleep. My rousing surprise of sudden visibilty was tamed when I looked up and saw a crescent moon peeping through the cloudless sky. I felt like one of those three men on their way to Bethlehem – the next thing I earnestly needed was wisdom. Wisdom to trail this rogue unnoticed.
Though I couldn’t still make out what time it was, I knew it was well past mid-night. I made sure I kept a good distance in-between Aghazi and I but never letting him out of sight. He trotted with such a focused determination, and so masterfully navigated the winding footpath that I wondered if I was following the same man who’d just been howling like a mad hyena a while ago. For a fleeting moment I feared if it was a wise idea to continue. I fought the eerie feeling I walking into a trap. But a silent dancing bird must be harkening to mute forest tunes. I was eager to find out the source.
Soon we were descending the hill-side to the right, into the deep Kizi valley. The bushes there were denser and taller, but beyond the river lay the craggy landscape. My footsteps no longer resounded, and the grazing of my shoes were quickily drowned by whistle-sharp creak of crickets and endless croaks of giant frogs. It was all kind of weird but I braced myself for more jungle surprises.
The gently sound of the easy flowing Kizi-kizi river slowly pervaded, the air was fresher, colder. Aghazi suddenly slowed down, perhaps he heard my footsteps. I quickly docked behind a large tree. The was a deafening hush. He stopped. A rustle suddenly ensued behind me and then stopped. I froze in shock as Aghazi returned to check it out. I felt my heart in my throat, pushing the base of my tongue.
He was a few steps from me, I could smell the scent of his body; it wasn’t that offensive stench I would have perceived from a mad man notorious for living in a hand-dug hole by the river-side. Then there was a croak, and then another and a repeat of the previous rustle – a large frog, the size of a bucket emerged from behind me and jumped past the footpath. Aghazi stopped for a moment that felt like eternity, as if to assure himself he was alone, he then turned and continued down the river. Again his phone beeped, I made out the light before he reached his pocket for it.
“Point ‘A’, I will be there,” he muttered sharply into the phone in clear English and killed the phone.
My anxiety matured into perplexity, my throat felt so dry I grunted to ensure I hadn’t lost my voice. Intuition told me I was delving into something complex, something dangerous. Once again I thought I should have called Tsuami.
Aghazi continued and I let him go a few more meters than I had followed earlier. This time I needed more than curiosity to carry on, I needed courage, and I got that at a very slow bit rate, but I tried to garner them into strength and confidence as much as I could. He made into a clearing at the bank of the Kizi-kizi.
Suddenly a dug-in canoe glided into view, with three men onboard. They docked and disembark with high-powered torches which for the sake invisiblilty they didn’t use on the waterway. I quickly noticed one of them was not indigenous, his long hair was cropped backwards in a pony tail, he was stocky and average. The others were locals, one was lean and tall and the other was not far from a dwarf, but bounced along all right.
They shook hands with Aghazi and stooped into a pitch dark, cave-like hole by the clay hill-wall, not far from me. Aghazi was in the lead. A bright ray of light came through the dark hole seconds later.
I soon realized what I thought was a clearing initially, was, in fact, soil resulting from fresh digging into the hill side. That must have been the mad man’s house Tsuami had talked me about. I stood up to take a closer look just when light turned outwards and I fell right on my face, I was caught.
I didn’t need to be told what my fate would be – the night was perfect for murder, however brutal, and the river ideal for disposal. I heard footsteps around me as fell back to the the ground, and slowly raised my head, already mourning the tortuous way I was to die. Then it occurred to me that they were the same distance as before. I saw the visitors board their canoe with three seemingly heavy bags, one each, and they rowed away as slowly and as smoothly as they have come.
I was left once again with Aghazi.
I waited.
The light from the hole was still on. My thoughts battled. should I go in? Should I just return and call Tsuami? I knew I would go in before the end of that thought process, even if that was the last thing I did. And I was in there.
It was easy to make out everything at a glance with that powerful light. The wisest man on earth could have taken the fetid, dirty façade for a real lunatic den, on a good day. But this was not a good day. And it took a fool like me to know otherwise. The stench in the air was so was real and nauseating, it could have been feces or worse, and I wondered if he really stayed in there for long, everything about him was phony except for the money he was counting and stuffing a haggard looking bag with. Bits of those yellowish stones were strewn around him. I can’t remember what happened before I hit a rusty can and sent it clattering down towards the crouching Aghazi.
“You?”
It was like the squeal of a dangerous wild animal, his eyes blazed with murderous flame. He frantically groped for something behind him. And at that moment I recognized him.
I knew I heard shots, I knew I fell over a dozen times, but how I made it to Tsuami’s house remained a mystery.
Tsuami was fast asleep, or so it seemed, when I burst into his dingy room. I took time to calm myself. I listened for Aghazi’s footsteps, for I had come to my last sanctuary, I knew nowhere else to go. Worst of all, I feared for Tsuami’s life, and that made me feverish as I watched him snore softly in what appeared to be a very peaceful sleep. His Kuku crowed discordantly somewhere in the room. Poor, old thing – but it stood a better chance of seeing the sunrise than I did. The I saw to my uttermost horror the parcel I had delivered hours ago, half open, the packet of an empty satelite phone sticking out of it.
I decided not to return to my room, I knew what waited for me, but I didn’t want to wait. The worst death to die was when you waited for it, knowing it would come. When you had the time to imagine the horror of your own demise.
I had four miles to cover if I was lucky, and Tsuami could do without a farewell from Jotto.
The fourteen hours bus ride to the city, after a mad race through the hills, was badly spent. I neither saw the road, my co-passengers, nor bothered to. My mind dwelled on Kizi, it’s unsuspecting, peaceful, and poverty stricken locals, the phony mad man and his accomplices stealing away their precious wealth. I should have known Tsuami wasn’t real, but he was one local involved in high-crime where no crime existed.
Kizi – how long was it going to stay natural and secret before it was deluged by a mad rush for its alluvial gold? I thought.
The thick, polluted air of the city felt poisonous but I didn’t mind, the street lights were off but you knew the people were comfortable in their flats, you could see the varied lights; the reassuring presence of civilization. I trotted along the tarmac with one wish on my mind. I was shocked to see light coming from Ed’s flat. But he was supposed to be away on a trip. Maybe Priscilla, his girl friend was staying over. I looked at my wrist watch for the first time, it was 9:58 pm, and I walked down and knocked on the glass door.
“Come in,” it was Ed’s husky voice.
What in the world was happening? I met him sitting on a double sofa in his parlor, looking sober than I’d ever known him. He was a fair skinned, thirty nine years old, and six-footer –only a year older than I was, and bigger.
I was speechless.
“Tsuami told me you left,” he said calmly.
Tsuami, how? I wondered, I remembered the phone I delivered?
Those gun shots didn’t get to my skull though but my sense of curiosity had taken a direct hit. So dumfounded, I sat down, just staring back at him. How much did he know about the Kizi gold rip-off? I thought.
“I owe you an explanation, Mcee. But this is way bigger than you alread know.” He waited for my reaction and got nothing.
“You know how I made my money?”
I thought about the ‘stroke of good luck’ story and said nothing. He skipped that too.
“A few months after that, my younger brother, Jacob – you know him. He disappeared, soon, there were foreigners digging up our gold.”
“What! You are part of this?” I blew my top.
“Please tell me, was it him? Was it my brother?”
“Don’t touch me!”
“Mcee, I needed you to do this, I knew you could. You don’t know what it would be like if the world descended on Kizi for its gold, we are protecting it. Besides those people you saw are illegals, we needed to know who really Aghazi was. If it was Jacob, I needed to take him out before they went for him.”
“You are no better than them, robbing those poor people blind and givin them nothing back!”
“I am so sorry, Mcee. I wanted…”
I was outside before he could say another word. God, I suddenly felt the stench of the whole setup stifling me. I felt feverish. I was as foolhardy as the Kizi people. I felt betrayed and weak – the way the Kizians would some day, when they found out that they had let goats into their ban of yams.
Edoni made no attempt to stop me. I saw the entire apology on earth in his eyes, but I just wasn’t ready. There was only one thing on my mind; I needed to see my home, and have a good night's rest after all the madness.
“Tsuami is dead,” he called at me and waited for my reaction.
I halted a second. Of what use was it now? I knew they would take him.
“He drowned this afternoon,” he persisted.
I slowly made down the pavement, crossed the concrete slabs to the tarmac again, the night was darker down-street, but I knew I would make it. I felt my back tense up, another pair of eyes were on me, I had no doubt whose they were. But I wouldn’t look back, didn’t want to see his face when he did it. I walked on feeling used, useless – decieved.
I must have disappeared into the night.
END
The village was in a deep peaceful sleep. My rousing surprise of sudden visibilty was tamed when I looked up and saw a crescent moon peeping through the cloudless sky. I felt like one of those three men on their way to Bethlehem – the next thing I earnestly needed was wisdom. Wisdom to trail this rogue unnoticed.
Though I couldn’t still make out what time it was, I knew it was well past mid-night. I made sure I kept a good distance in-between Aghazi and I but never letting him out of sight. He trotted with such a focused determination, and so masterfully navigated the winding footpath that I wondered if I was following the same man who’d just been howling like a mad hyena a while ago. For a fleeting moment I feared if it was a wise idea to continue. I fought the eerie feeling I walking into a trap. But a silent dancing bird must be harkening to mute forest tunes. I was eager to find out the source.
Soon we were descending the hill-side to the right, into the deep Kizi valley. The bushes there were denser and taller, but beyond the river lay the craggy landscape. My footsteps no longer resounded, and the grazing of my shoes were quickily drowned by whistle-sharp creak of crickets and endless croaks of giant frogs. It was all kind of weird but I braced myself for more jungle surprises.
The gently sound of the easy flowing Kizi-kizi river slowly pervaded, the air was fresher, colder. Aghazi suddenly slowed down, perhaps he heard my footsteps. I quickly docked behind a large tree. The was a deafening hush. He stopped. A rustle suddenly ensued behind me and then stopped. I froze in shock as Aghazi returned to check it out. I felt my heart in my throat, pushing the base of my tongue.
He was a few steps from me, I could smell the scent of his body; it wasn’t that offensive stench I would have perceived from a mad man notorious for living in a hand-dug hole by the river-side. Then there was a croak, and then another and a repeat of the previous rustle – a large frog, the size of a bucket emerged from behind me and jumped past the footpath. Aghazi stopped for a moment that felt like eternity, as if to assure himself he was alone, he then turned and continued down the river. Again his phone beeped, I made out the light before he reached his pocket for it.
“Point ‘A’, I will be there,” he muttered sharply into the phone in clear English and killed the phone.
My anxiety matured into perplexity, my throat felt so dry I grunted to ensure I hadn’t lost my voice. Intuition told me I was delving into something complex, something dangerous. Once again I thought I should have called Tsuami.
Aghazi continued and I let him go a few more meters than I had followed earlier. This time I needed more than curiosity to carry on, I needed courage, and I got that at a very slow bit rate, but I tried to garner them into strength and confidence as much as I could. He made into a clearing at the bank of the Kizi-kizi.
Suddenly a dug-in canoe glided into view, with three men onboard. They docked and disembark with high-powered torches which for the sake invisiblilty they didn’t use on the waterway. I quickly noticed one of them was not indigenous, his long hair was cropped backwards in a pony tail, he was stocky and average. The others were locals, one was lean and tall and the other was not far from a dwarf, but bounced along all right.
They shook hands with Aghazi and stooped into a pitch dark, cave-like hole by the clay hill-wall, not far from me. Aghazi was in the lead. A bright ray of light came through the dark hole seconds later.
I soon realized what I thought was a clearing initially, was, in fact, soil resulting from fresh digging into the hill side. That must have been the mad man’s house Tsuami had talked me about. I stood up to take a closer look just when light turned outwards and I fell right on my face, I was caught.
I didn’t need to be told what my fate would be – the night was perfect for murder, however brutal, and the river ideal for disposal. I heard footsteps around me as fell back to the the ground, and slowly raised my head, already mourning the tortuous way I was to die. Then it occurred to me that they were the same distance as before. I saw the visitors board their canoe with three seemingly heavy bags, one each, and they rowed away as slowly and as smoothly as they have come.
I was left once again with Aghazi.
I waited.
The light from the hole was still on. My thoughts battled. should I go in? Should I just return and call Tsuami? I knew I would go in before the end of that thought process, even if that was the last thing I did. And I was in there.
It was easy to make out everything at a glance with that powerful light. The wisest man on earth could have taken the fetid, dirty façade for a real lunatic den, on a good day. But this was not a good day. And it took a fool like me to know otherwise. The stench in the air was so was real and nauseating, it could have been feces or worse, and I wondered if he really stayed in there for long, everything about him was phony except for the money he was counting and stuffing a haggard looking bag with. Bits of those yellowish stones were strewn around him. I can’t remember what happened before I hit a rusty can and sent it clattering down towards the crouching Aghazi.
“You?”
It was like the squeal of a dangerous wild animal, his eyes blazed with murderous flame. He frantically groped for something behind him. And at that moment I recognized him.
I knew I heard shots, I knew I fell over a dozen times, but how I made it to Tsuami’s house remained a mystery.
Tsuami was fast asleep, or so it seemed, when I burst into his dingy room. I took time to calm myself. I listened for Aghazi’s footsteps, for I had come to my last sanctuary, I knew nowhere else to go. Worst of all, I feared for Tsuami’s life, and that made me feverish as I watched him snore softly in what appeared to be a very peaceful sleep. His Kuku crowed discordantly somewhere in the room. Poor, old thing – but it stood a better chance of seeing the sunrise than I did. The I saw to my uttermost horror the parcel I had delivered hours ago, half open, the packet of an empty satelite phone sticking out of it.
I decided not to return to my room, I knew what waited for me, but I didn’t want to wait. The worst death to die was when you waited for it, knowing it would come. When you had the time to imagine the horror of your own demise.
I had four miles to cover if I was lucky, and Tsuami could do without a farewell from Jotto.
The fourteen hours bus ride to the city, after a mad race through the hills, was badly spent. I neither saw the road, my co-passengers, nor bothered to. My mind dwelled on Kizi, it’s unsuspecting, peaceful, and poverty stricken locals, the phony mad man and his accomplices stealing away their precious wealth. I should have known Tsuami wasn’t real, but he was one local involved in high-crime where no crime existed.
Kizi – how long was it going to stay natural and secret before it was deluged by a mad rush for its alluvial gold? I thought.
The thick, polluted air of the city felt poisonous but I didn’t mind, the street lights were off but you knew the people were comfortable in their flats, you could see the varied lights; the reassuring presence of civilization. I trotted along the tarmac with one wish on my mind. I was shocked to see light coming from Ed’s flat. But he was supposed to be away on a trip. Maybe Priscilla, his girl friend was staying over. I looked at my wrist watch for the first time, it was 9:58 pm, and I walked down and knocked on the glass door.
“Come in,” it was Ed’s husky voice.
What in the world was happening? I met him sitting on a double sofa in his parlor, looking sober than I’d ever known him. He was a fair skinned, thirty nine years old, and six-footer –only a year older than I was, and bigger.
I was speechless.
“Tsuami told me you left,” he said calmly.
Tsuami, how? I wondered, I remembered the phone I delivered?
Those gun shots didn’t get to my skull though but my sense of curiosity had taken a direct hit. So dumfounded, I sat down, just staring back at him. How much did he know about the Kizi gold rip-off? I thought.
“I owe you an explanation, Mcee. But this is way bigger than you alread know.” He waited for my reaction and got nothing.
“You know how I made my money?”
I thought about the ‘stroke of good luck’ story and said nothing. He skipped that too.
“A few months after that, my younger brother, Jacob – you know him. He disappeared, soon, there were foreigners digging up our gold.”
“What! You are part of this?” I blew my top.
“Please tell me, was it him? Was it my brother?”
“Don’t touch me!”
“Mcee, I needed you to do this, I knew you could. You don’t know what it would be like if the world descended on Kizi for its gold, we are protecting it. Besides those people you saw are illegals, we needed to know who really Aghazi was. If it was Jacob, I needed to take him out before they went for him.”
“You are no better than them, robbing those poor people blind and givin them nothing back!”
“I am so sorry, Mcee. I wanted…”
I was outside before he could say another word. God, I suddenly felt the stench of the whole setup stifling me. I felt feverish. I was as foolhardy as the Kizi people. I felt betrayed and weak – the way the Kizians would some day, when they found out that they had let goats into their ban of yams.
Edoni made no attempt to stop me. I saw the entire apology on earth in his eyes, but I just wasn’t ready. There was only one thing on my mind; I needed to see my home, and have a good night's rest after all the madness.
“Tsuami is dead,” he called at me and waited for my reaction.
I halted a second. Of what use was it now? I knew they would take him.
“He drowned this afternoon,” he persisted.
I slowly made down the pavement, crossed the concrete slabs to the tarmac again, the night was darker down-street, but I knew I would make it. I felt my back tense up, another pair of eyes were on me, I had no doubt whose they were. But I wouldn’t look back, didn’t want to see his face when he did it. I walked on feeling used, useless – decieved.
I must have disappeared into the night.
END
This was absolutely engaging!
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