Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [68]
Connor welcomed us warmly to his home, but regretted he could not feed us. “My maid has knocked off for the night,” he said. “But if you want to cook some fish and sadza, I can unlock the pantry for you. I am afraid there aren’t shops around here, so we don’t have anything out of a tin or a packet.”
“It’s all right,” I said, “we brought food.”
I opened a packet of biscuits and some cheese, rescued from the festering tin trunk, and set up a picnic while K unpacked the pickup. I was enjoying the first sip of a cold beer when K emerged from the dark. He looked distraught. “They stole my water bottle and my knife.”
“Who?” I asked.
“At the border, it must have been.” K glared at me. “You were supposed to be keeping an eye on the back of the pickup.”
“I was. I did.”
“You were looking at the fertilizer thieves.”
“But, I was sitting on our katundu. How could anyone have stolen anything from underneath my bottom? I’m sure they’re not stolen. Let me help you look.”
“Did you have a tarpaulin over everything?” Connor asked.
“It was tied down with rope,” said K.
“Eh! In Mozambique. The black limbs of Satan, man. They will steal anything. Anything. I promise you. They can steal like no other people on this earth. It is their special God-given talent. Did you stop anywhere?”
I thought of the police stop and of the children who had sneaked up to the car and of how I had been distracted by my need to pee.
I said, “I am sorry, K.”
“I’ve had that knife and that bottle since the war,” K said. He sat down next to me and put his head in his hands. “Fucking gondies. I don’t care if they steal my fucking sleeping bag or my tent. But that water bottle and that knife . . .”
He began to tear through our belongings—my bag, his bag, the tin trunk—spilling everything out onto the floor. Connor and I watched in silence. “I am going to go back there and rip their fucking heads off,” K growled. His lips looked swollen and murderous. “Fucking savages.”
Connor, in a failed attempt to lighten the atmosphere, said, “I caught a pregnant puff adder once and when all the babies were born I thought I’d raise them and keep them to put inside empty briefcases. Then I’d go to Maputo and wipe out a few thieves with them. You see, when the black limbs steal a briefcase they run away from you, sticking their hand in the briefcase as they go, to get the money or whatever you have in there. Then they throw the briefcase away. Instead of loot, they’d have a puff adder dangling from their fingers. Wouldn’t that be great?” Then his face folded back into sobriety. “But the damn puff adder and all her babies escaped.” He glanced over his shoulder at the garden and said, carelessly, “They’re all out there somewhere.”
After K had shaken our clothes and food all over the dining room floor, torn the vehicle apart, and emptied out the back of the pickup, the knife and water bottle were found behind the seat where K had put them for safety. “I swear, I thought I put them in the back,” he said, having the grace to look a little sheepish. He sat down with his head in his hands for a few moments, and when he lifted his head he announced solemnly, “That’s a message from the Almighty.”
“What is?” I said.
K said, “That’s the Almighty telling me that I shouldn’t go ripping people’s heads off until I know they’ve done something wrong.”
Connor said, “Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that. Around here, you’re pretty safe ripping the head off anything with two legs and a pair of hands, with or without evidence. I’ve never met such a thieving bunch of bastards in my life as these lot. They’d steal the air from your tires if they could.”
IT WAS JUST before midnight when Connor