inclined to acquit Mwebi in my own mind. Maybe Father Jim did commit suicide. He must have known he was in mortal danger from the moment Mwebi was arraigned, but he didn’t take even the most elementary precautions. Didn’t bother to change his routine. Said mass in the same places at the same time and went to them by the same routes, every week, and he was ambushed on one of those routes. His body wasn’t discovered until Monday, with the vultures already going to work on him. His mass kit was found in the back of his Land Rover. Chalice. Paten. Hosts. Flasks of holy water and communion wine. He must have believed he was traveling under the protection of those sacred vessels, but their magic doesn’t work over here, as it would in America or Europe. He had set off alone that Sunday morning. Alone. Did he do that because he was brave, proud, stubborn, and dedicated, or because he never understood the testament written in our waters?”
The journalist looks on, bewildered.
“I’m reminded of a couple of Americans I knew six, seven years ago. They definitely did not understand. I don’t judge them for that. Anyway, I try not to. Douglas and Quinette. A pretty name isn’t it? Quinette? I guess I should pass judgment on Africa.” He gives a small, rueful smile, a philosophical shrug. “She isn’t kind to people with good intentions, never has been.”
“You’re talking about Father Jim again, or what?”
“There are other ways to die over here than the way he did”—jabbing with an unlit cigarette—“and other ways to drown. You can suffer what Father Jim would have called spiritual death, you can drown morally but not know what’s happening to you. It’s not Africa’s fault. All it does is provide enough water for you to drown in. Those two—well, they remind me of the scuba divers I’d heard about when I was a kid in the Seychelles. The ones who went too far down and caught nitrogen narcosis. The rapture of the deep. Good word. Rapture. Poor souls thought they were in their native element and the fish out of theirs, so they took out their mouthpieces, offering help to the creatures who didn’t need it. And when the divers’ lungs cried out for breath, they sucked in water, thinking it was air.”
“And this Douglas, this Quinette—”
“Took a few people down with them.”
“Is it too much to ask what you mean?”
He fixes her with a steady gaze that makes her a little uncomfortable.
“It’s a long story, right? Maybe some other time?” she says, explaining that she is to have dinner in half an hour with the UN director of operations.
“He’ll lie through his teeth about all the great work the UN is doing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” the journalist says, and adds, “Really, I want to hear the story.”
“It’s all about swimming and drowning, but it’s history and you’re not in the history business.”
Wouldn’t mind getting to know her a little better, Fitzhugh thinks after she leaves, and is reproached by the photograph of his wife and two children, smiling out of the frame on his desk. Static, only static—there are no planes in the air at this dark hour—hisses through the high-frequency radio atop a small table beneath a poster of Malcolm X, who with upraised hand glares through horn-rimmed glasses at Bob Marley, as if lecturing the dope-smoking singer. A schedule board hanging beside Malcolm X reminds Fitzhugh that he is to fly out at six tomorrow morning to the Natinga airstrip, just over the border. A mechanic and parts are being flown there to repair one of his leased planes, wrecked a month ago when it hit a pothole on landing. He should get to bed early, but he can tell that he’ll only toss and turn, despite the beer. Some paperwork involving the wrecked aircraft holds his attention for a couple of minutes, no more than that. He can’t focus and wishes he hadn’t mentioned Douglas and Quinette to that reporter, for the mere utterance of their names has set the drama reeling through his memory, with all its emotions of regret and anger and disappointment, mostly in himself. It’s as though a runaway videotape were playing in his restless brain, and as it spins forward, his thoughts turn backward in time. In a kind of surrender, he leans back in his chair and cracks another beer, his eyes on the slender green katydids, clinging to the light.