Instruments of Darkness. Robert Thomas Wilson

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       Chapter 3

      Heike was smoking cigarettes through a two-inch holder which took out most of the tar. After the hundredth time I’d seen her cleaning it, I gave up smoking and took up watching. She held the holder between her teeth at the side of her mouth and snorted smoke while she counted bundles of small denomination notes.

      In the late afternoon, we stopped for a while and drank some sugary mint tea. Heike lay on her back with her legs bent and crossed at the knee. She told us that she had persuaded the women in her aid project to plant aubergines which would grow in the poor soil up north. It had taken some time because the men were suspicious of a new vegetable. The clincher had been to get the men and women together and deliver a seminar on the aphrodisiacal properties of aubergines. She had selected a number of priapic specimens as examples and had nearly been trampled to death in the stampede.

      We continued and the sun gave us a warm yellow light to work by, which quickly turned pink and then orange. Then the sun dropped like a penny in a slot and we turned the lights on. The atmosphere changed to smoky poker room and we cracked some cold beers.

      At eight o’clock I stood up. Moses, sitting crosslegged on the floor, fell backwards. I picked up the warm beer, went into the kitchen and threw it down the sink. Moses said he was going to get some chicken. Heike came into the kitchen and drank mineral water from the bottle in the fridge.

      ‘I hate money,’ I said, looking at Heike who was reflected in the darkness of the window, looking at me out of the corner of her eye with the neck of the mineral water bottle in her mouth.

      ‘Money’s all right, but not all the time,’ she said, pouring some of the chilled water into her hand and patting her breast bone. She walked over to the sink and I felt her body leaning against me.

      ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

      I turned and our faces were very close together. We were breathing a little faster and my hand slipped to her bare waist. Her eyes were darting around and her mouth opened. I moved my lips to hers so that they were almost touching. Our eyes held each other’s. My hand slipped around to the small of her back and I put two fingers on either side of her spine and pushed up very slowly. We both swallowed. Our lips touched. My fingers were nearly between her shoulder blades. A long arm snaked across my back and her fingers ran up my neck and spread out through my hair. She crushed my lips to hers and her tongue flickered in my mouth. I didn’t mind the taste of tobacco and lipstick. I felt her breasts pressed to my chest and her legs trembling against mine. The inside of my body lifted as if I’d just hit a hump in the road. We both heard Moses coming back into the house and drew away from each other.

      ‘It’s been a long time,’ I said, holding her wrist and letting my hand slip down into hers. She breathed heavily, licking her lips and said nothing. Moses came in the kitchen. Heike looked across at him, her shoulder against mine. Moses grinned. His sex radar was infallible.

      We ate the chicken with some hot Piment du Pays that I’d brought over from Togo. I opened up a bottle of cold Beaujolais that had had Heike’s name on it for the last couple of months. Moses stuck to beer. Afterwards, we dragged ourselves back into the living room and carried on counting the money.

      It was 10.30, we were taking it in turns sighing, me like a horse on a cold morning, Moses like a dog left in a car, and Heike like someone who’s into her third day in Immigration. She stood up, stretched and went to her bag and came back with a pack of cards in her hand.

      ‘Poker?’ she asked.

      Moses, who had fallen back with his head resting on some blocks of cash, sat up.

      ‘You deal, Miss Heike.’

      ‘Miss Heike beat us no small,’ I said to Moses.

      ‘There’s nothing like playing with other people’s money,’ she said and riffled the pack of cards. The noise from the cards shot through me and I sat rigid. The tickering from the car, but not the car, the noise of a playing card flicking over the wheel spokes of a bicycle. There was always fifty bicycles behind you in Cotonou. That was the tail. The noise had stopped as soon as we’d got to the house. Vasili was right – Madame Severnou’s first lesson. How to outwit the Oyinbo^* without raising a sweat.

      ‘Something the matter?’ asked Heike.

      There was a click at the gate. Moses turned on to his knees and was up at the window looking down like a cat.

      ‘It’s Helen,’ he said.

      ‘What’re we nervous about?’ asked Heike.

      I found myself staring down at over a million pounds in cash and feeling things going wrong. With Heike here I’d lost concentration, hadn’t thought things through. I’d had that feeling in the port this afternoon that Madame Severnou was going to be trouble. I’d done nothing about it and now lesson number two was coming. How to burn the Oyinbo for the lot.

      Moses knew what I was thinking and was already packing the tied-up blocks of money into carrier bags.

      ‘Let Heike do that,’ I said, tying up the bedsheet. ‘Tell Helen to go back to her sister and get the car ready.’

      Heike was on the floor packing the money. I picked up four carrier bags and the sheet and ran downstairs. Moses was reversing the car into the garage. Helen slipped out through the gate. I flung the money into the boot and ran back up the stairs. Moses was out and opening the gates. I hit Heike coming through the doors telling me she had it all.

      I left the lights on, checked the floor and dropped down the steps two at a time. Moses drove the car out and I closed the gates. The car pitched and yawed over the mud road. Heike leaned forward from the back seat. We parked up under some bougainvillaea that fell down the walled garden of the house on the opposite corner to mine. We could just see the gates. It was very dark and the light СКАЧАТЬ