A Darkening Stain (13 page)

‘Ah, Gio,' sighed Marnier, taking the thin-bladed machete and flicking it so that it walloped in the thickening air.

There was nothing in Gio's features that was translatable into any human emotion. His face was still, composed and huge. If Marnier wanted satisfaction he was going to have to work for it because Gio was as relaxed as if he was on a pool side. With one knee crooked and the other leg straight out, I realized what he was showing Marnier.

Most men faced with an ugly death would have had genitals contracted to a pebble cluster in lichen—Gio's sizeable penis slept along his thigh as peaceful as a sun-doped seal. Marnier, with measured disdain, flipped it up on to Gio's abdomen with the end of the blade. Gio lashed out with his leg and caught Marnier on the shin so that he slipped into one of the holes feet first with a splash.

‘Felix,' said Marnier, calmly.

Felix helped Marnier out and then turned Gio over on to his front. Marnier, with two swift, practised slashes cut through Gio's Achilles tendons so that the calf muscles snapped up behind his knees. The gaslight hissed on. Christ knows what Gio was biting on, because there wasn't a peep from the man. Two more strokes from Marnier and the hamstrings were gone. Gio's head and shoulders came up off the floor. He bowed his back and lumps of muscle bunched between his scapulae. Deep divots appeared in the back of his arms where the triceps strained against the nylon rope around his wrists, but there was no give in it.

I knelt and went back on my heels and tried to breathe the
contrefilet
back down. Then I saw the state of my shirt, black with Carlo's blood. I tore it off and threw it into the half-filled grave and sent a stream of vomit in after it.

Marnier changed machetes. He put his foot down the middle of Gio's white, sweat-lined back and chopped him on either side of his neck with a heavy-handed knighthood that went down to
the clavicle bone. Gio slumped forward. Nothing flowed through the arms any more. Marnier hacked through the ropes and Gio's hands slipped down the side of his buttocks. I crawled to the door.

‘Where are you going?' asked Marnier.

‘Out of here,' I said. ‘This isn't my battle. It's between you and these people talking to each other in the only way you can.'

‘Violence,' said Marnier, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his hair unlocked from his scalp, mad-looking, ‘the Esperanto of our century.'

‘Right.'

‘There's no other language for a man like this.'

‘You're going to kill him in the end. Why not kill him now? Be civilized if you can be. Your wife—'

‘Shut up about my wife!' he said, and brushed his hair back off his face as if that was enough. ‘If I don't do this he will die knowing he's won.'

‘And you get what?'

‘I will have avenged my face,' he said, and motioned Felix to turn Gio back over.

‘Gio did that to you?'

‘And don't you believe that he didn't know what he was doing. He could have killed me too ... quickly. He had a gun. But it satisfied him more to send me out into the world as an example of his work.'

I knew Marnier was right because Gio allowed a squiggle of emotion to play in his face. He looked up and smiled—nigh on beatific—a genius with his magnum opus.

‘You lost, Jean-Luc,' I said. ‘He knows you've got to kill him. And he knows as you push him into that hole that you're still going to be out there with the face he made for you. Now finish it, for Christ's sake, finish it.'

Marnier looked back at Gio and saw his grin. It triggered something in him—a raw, savage, primitive anger that I'd only ever seen on a man like Franconelli. He slashed at the man's
genitals and reduced Gio's face to a ribboned skull. Then, without finishing him off he had Felix throw him in the hole and fill it in. He sat on the cement sacks and watched, smoking cigarette after cigarette while Felix brought the two holes up flush with the floor.

Marnier stamped the two graves down and told Felix to pile on more earth.

‘What's the third hole for?' I asked.

‘That was for you,' said Marnier, ‘if you hadn't told me they were coming. You made the right choice, Bruce. I'm happy for you.'

‘Did I? Are you?'

‘You'll look into your child's eyes. Think of that.'

‘But what will it see in them?'

‘Maybe you'll have to learn to act.'

‘And what happens when Franconelli comes to see me?'

‘More acting.'

‘What part?'

‘Improvise.'

‘With Franconelli?'

‘We'll work on it,' he said. ‘You must tell him that Gio and Carlo were never here. You gave them the information. They never showed.'

‘What about their car? There must be a car.'

‘We have to find it.'

‘Are you going to dig a hole for that too?'

‘Felix will put it in here once he's laid the concrete.'

‘What do you think is going to be the first thing Franconelli will do when I tell him they didn't show?'

‘He'll ask to see you, which is why—'

‘He'll send some troops down here to find out what the hell happened.'

‘Then he'll be showing his ignorance of Africa.'

‘Don't tell me you rule this town too.'

‘I have made some connections,' he said. ‘But you are right. Let's find the car and I will teach you something.'

‘I always hated school, Jean-Luc.'

‘I'm sure, but what I'm going to teach you isn't just to get you through an exam.'

He headed for the door spouting Mina, Felix's language, the words peppered with French like
cailloutis
and
béton.
Felix didn't stop shovelling, filling in that third hole which would have been mine if Marnier hadn't insisted that confession out of me. I didn't know what to think any more. I was glad to be alive, a quick flicker of Heike in my brain confirmed that. But Marnier, the horror merchant, full now of nothing more than building instructions. And Franconelli with that head, those charcoal-smudged eye sockets, the gravestone teeth and atomic anger. The gunshots still whined in my ears and the violence of this night was already branded on me for life. Franconelli would be able to look in my eyes and see it all replayed before him like a private viewing.

‘Viens, viens,'
said Marnier. ‘And stop thinking about it. The process of forgetting starts now.'

‘Forgetting?' I said, smacking him on the shoulder, spinning him round. ‘Forget
that
?'

I was showing him my hands and arms, my bare chest and torso covered with Carlo's blood, even my trousers bloodied to the knees.

‘It'll wash off.'

‘You never saw
Macbeth?'

‘That's right,' he said. ‘The brain is a different matter. Now let's find the car.'

I followed Marnier into the grasses. Looking at the back of his head I began to feel what Michel Charbonnier must have felt, that with this man you didn't know who you were any more. Anger, hate, fear, awe—were all part of the Marnier experience. But then there was more complicated stuff and I bridled to admit it. I found something to admire in him. He was fearless
and tenacious. Even after what Gio had done to him he still had a will to live, a drive.

For a second I had something on Marnier. Something like the germ of a poem which if grasped could be got down true, but it ran away from me, scampered off into the night brain to confuse future dreams.

Monday 22nd July, on the Grand-Popo/Cotonou road.

 

‘You know what happens when you erase a computer's memory ... I mean a diskette?' asked Marnier, his elbow out of the window of the car, his face looking straight down the rain-ruined tarmac which the Peugeot sucked in. He took my silence as a negative. ‘You don't actually erase the information, the diskette is not wiped clean. All that happens is that the space is made available to be written over again with different information.'

‘My brain is not a diskette. It doesn't matter how much you write over what I've got in here, I'm never going to lose it.'

‘You've never rewritten a section of your life to make yourself more interesting?'

‘We're not talking about bedding women again, are we?'

‘The truth can be very dull. All those years spent in London in that shipping office.'

‘How do you know about that?'

‘You said.'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Then how do I know?'

‘Anyway,' I said, glancing at his impassive face, ‘the “truth” we've just been through is not erasable.'

‘Don't be difficult, please. Bruce. I'm trying to teach you something.'

‘You're trying to change me.'

‘I'm keeping you alive,' he said. ‘Now, tell me, what could have been worse than last night?'

‘I could have been in the third hole.'

‘That would have solved this untidiness,' he said, laughing. ‘But I'm serious. I want you to think of something that would make you want to lie more than anything else. What could have happened that would make you want to lie?'

‘The fact that I'm hours away from sitting in front of Franconelli should be enough but, Christ...'

‘You need something else to hold on to. A lie that's stronger than the truth.'

‘Like what?'

‘Something personal.'

‘My life
is
personal ... to me.'

‘Think, man!' roared Marnier. ‘Think of the woman pregnant with your child.'

‘Heike.'

‘Heike. Is there something that could have happened that you would never want to tell her?'

‘The truth, for a start. What
actually
happened, Jean-Luc, that would be enough.'

‘Something that would irrevocably affect your relationship with her if she found out.'

‘It would do that too.'

‘But
not
the truth,' said Marnier. ‘What was the name of that waitress last night?'

‘I don't know. I don't remember.'

‘Ah, maybe we have something here,' he said, shifting himself to more comfort. ‘You are a natural liar when it comes to women. Now, what was her name?'

‘Adèle.'

‘Guilty already, you see? You liked her. I could see that. What's there to be guilty about? You didn't sleep with her. You paid for your beer. Ah, but you did buy her one.'

‘Leave it alone. I don't want you messing with that stuff.'

‘Would you have liked to sleep...?'

‘Forget it.'

‘If you weren't involved with Heike?'

‘But I am, so it...'

‘What would Heike do if she found out?'

‘There's nothing
to
find out.'

‘But what would she do
if
she found out? If there had been something and she found out?'

I didn't say anything. Marnier tapped me on the shoulder with the back of his hand. I shrugged.

‘Did you tell her where you were going last night?'

‘Maybe Grand-Popo.'

‘What?'

‘That's exactly what I told her.'

‘What sort of an answer is that?'

‘That's what she said to me. I didn't know where we were going. You could have changed your plans.'

‘Well,' said Marnier, ‘if I was a woman I'd be suspicious.'

‘We have an agreement not to talk about my work. She doesn't like the types I have to mix with.'

‘I'm not surprised if they're people like Franconelli.'

‘Or you.'

The road passed underneath us louder than tearing cardboard.

‘Do you and Heike have a good ... have good sex with each other?'

‘Private, Jean-Luc.'

‘I think you do. That's my guess.'

‘Still private, Jean-Luc. Now back off.'

‘Not so good at talking about things. Not so good, perhaps, at being honest, for instance. But fucking ... yes, I think so.'

‘Who are you to talk to me about honesty?'

‘I won't let you change the subject, Bruce. This is about sex. You and Heike have good sex. So what would happen if she found out you were fucking somebody else?'

‘Now?' I asked, getting bloody mad with Marnier.

‘Yes, in her state, if that was what you meant?'

I regripped the steering wheel tighter.

‘I think we've found our lie,' said Marnier. ‘The only one bigger than the truth. Now tell me what happened with Adèle from the moment you went back to the bar for that drink together.'

‘I'm not going to play this game.'

‘Then you will die,' he said. ‘You must learn to live with your choice, Bruce. If you want to stay alive you are going to have to relive last night as a complete and totally believable lie. The only way you're going to be able to do that is to tell me everything as you saw it and as it remained in your head to come back to you in all that time we spend in Africa waiting. Now tell me. Everything. I want every detail down to the size of her nipples, the colour of her pubic hair, the beauty of her labial lips and the tightness of her ass. Go!'

‘I don't know about this, Jean-Luc,' I said. ‘Isn't this just a little bit...?'

‘Don't think, just tell me what happened.'

‘I went back to the bar...'

‘My mistake,' said Marnier. ‘Take it from when we left the bar.'

I told him about driving to the house, what the house looked like, what was in the house, how we drank whisky until a car arrived.

‘We didn't drink whisky ... that was later. What did we talk about?'

‘Nothing. Marnier dozed until the car arrived.'

‘Tell me about the car.'

‘I don't remember.'

‘What plates?'

‘Togolese.'

‘Colour?'

‘Black.'