go eat him!’ Moses confirmed to himself as if it were a fair thing to do.
‘Hot dog,’ I said without smiling, knowing that Moses would roar with laughter, which he did. My best lines fall on deaf ears, my worst are a triumph. I think I satisfy his anticipation.
‘Here we go,’ I said, standing up.
Moses turned and saw the group of hadjis heading our way. Al hadji is the title given to a Muslim who has been to Mecca. Before air travel it must have been a big deal to have been a West African hadji. Now they charter planes and a grand will do the job. These boys have got money and Allah on their side and a long line in horseshit.
They looked quite something, for a bunch of businessmen, dressed in their floor-length robes, their black skins against the light blue, green, burgundy and yellow cloth, their heads bobbing underneath multicoloured cylindrical hats. In another world they could have been showing a summer collection. Here they meant business. They were going to hassle me for the rice which wasn’t mine to be hassled for. I reached for my cigarettes. They weren’t there. I gave up last year. That’s why I put on the weight. It all came back.
I heard an expensive engine. A grey Mercedes with tinted windows stopped with a squeak in between me and the hadjis. An electric motor lowered the window. The hadjis huddled together so that the car’s occupant must have seen seven sweaty faces pressed into the frame of the window. One of them took out a hanky and wiped his brow.
Some African words came from the back seat of the car. The words sounded like they could move some sheep around. They had the hadjis rearing back. The group moved as one, turning and walking back to the port entrance. The window buzzed back up. One of the hadjis fell back to get a stone out of his Gucci loafers.
The Mercedes swung round to where Moses and I were standing. The driver, anthracite black, was out of the car almost before it had stopped. He opened the rear door and looked as if he might drop to one knee.
I got a short blast of air-conditioned cool and with it came Madame Severnou. All five foot of her and another nine inches of sculpted deep green satin which sat on her head but could just as easily have made it to a plinth in the Uffizi. At six foot four I could put a crick in her neck, but as Madame Severnou knew, size wasn’t anything.
‘Bruce Medway,’ she said, as if tungsten would melt in her mouth. She held out a small coffee-coloured hand encrusted with gold rings and jewels.
‘Madame Severnou,’ I said, taking her hand and thinking, this is one of the few occasions you put twenty grand into someone’s hand and get it back. ‘How’s business?’
‘Very good. I’ve been in Abidjan…Ali!’ she shouted, withdrawing her hand and checking it to make sure she hadn’t slipped a grand or two.
The driver, who had been standing to attention by the boot, opened it on cue. He took out the double bedsheet which had been drawn into a sack like laundry. Moses opened the boot of my smacked-up Peugeot estate and Ali dumped it on top of the tool box and spare tyre.
‘What did you say to the hadjis?’ I asked Madame Severnou.
‘I remind them I am the seller. They know it but they forget sometime.’
Madame Severnou was petite from the waist upwards but downwards was the market mamma bottom, a bargaining tool not to be messed with. This meant that she didn’t walk, she waddled, and the bottom did what the hell it liked. She waddled over to the Peugeot. Moses backed off. She turned to me and said: ‘Six hundred and thirty-six million CFA. I hope you have some friends to help you count it. Not much of it is in ten thousand notes.’
She held out her hand and I put an envelope in it which she tore open. Her eyes flickered for a fraction of a second.
‘This is a non-negotiable copy,’ she said with an edge to her voice that I could feel against my carotid.
‘It is,’ I said.
‘It’s no Monopoly money in here!’ she said, pointing at the boot. ‘Ali!’ she roared, whipping the air with her finger. Ali lunged at the laundry.
‘Moses,’ I said in a voice made to steady the thin red line. The boot came down and Ali was lucky to get away with his fingers still on.
‘I’ll count it and give you the original tomorrow,’ I said to Madame Severnou. The ground frosted over between us but we both started at the two vultures which dropped down beside the dark patch where the pye-dog had been killed and broke Madame Severnou’s concentration. She turned back to me.
‘I give you six hundred and thirty-six million CFA and you give me a piece of paper.’ Her voice came fully loaded. I said nothing. The look she gave me thudded between my eyes and I realized this was not the usual West African drama.
The two vultures, their wings folded behind their backs, paced around the patch on the quay like two detectives inspecting the outline of a murder victim.
‘What about demurrage?’ asked Madame Severnou.
‘Time doesn’t start counting until tomorrow noon.’
‘What about my trucks?’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ve only got twenty-four hours to count all this.’
Something clicked in Madame Severnou’s face. The points had changed. The boiling anger flattened to a simmer, her little mouth pouted and broke into a smile.
‘OK. You come to lunch. I cook for you. Agouti. Your favourite.’ Her smile was like a faceful of acid.
I got the panoramic view of her bottom as she climbed into her car. Ali closed the door. The window buzzed down. She had all the techniques and the technology to go with them.
‘I do the snails for you as well. Just like last time.’
The window slid back up and the Mercedes moved out into the fierce sunlight between the warehouses. Agouti? That’s bush rat which she cooked with okra and manioc leaves. ‘Rat in Green Slime’. The snails, my God, the snails – they looked and tasted like deformed squash balls and the chilli sauce was so hot the last time, I woke up the next day still in a silent scream.
Moses hadn’t missed the cruelty in those eyes as the electric window zipped up her face. He was fumbling for the door handle. I was nervous myself.
‘Less go now, Mister Bruce.’
‘Wait small.’
‘Is lunchtime.’
‘I know. I think is better we wait small. Let the traffic calm down. Then we go. We look at this ship now.’
We drove to the ship circling the vultures on the way. They were shaking their heads, then looking at each other, then staring at the ground. They knew there had been a death, a recent one, and a pye-dog too, but where the hell was it?
This was a first for Moses and I to be driving around with more than a million pounds in the back seat and Moses’s clutchless gear changes were shredding metal and my inner calm. Madame Severnou hadn’t made things any easier for us. At least she didn’t know where I lived and I was anxious that she didn’t find out. I had a feeling from the sweetness of her lunch invitation that well before we sat down to eat I was
