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Mozambique

John Silvio

    A rat scurried across the alley and disappeared behind a trashcan. Moonlight reflected off the trashcan’s lid and lit up the brick wall behind it. Someone had spray-painted the wall in big bubble letters that I couldn’t make out in the darkness, but in my mind they said, “Don’t look. Don’t look at the guy you met at the bar who said he’d help you catch a cab. Don’t look into his sunken, desperate eyes. And don’t, whatever you do, look at the dull circle of metal of the barrel of the gun he’s pointing at you.”
    But I looked. I couldn’t help looking. A surge of adrenaline sobered me even though I could smell whiskey on my breath, and I felt my heart beating and my blood pounding in my ears. I saw the rat and the trash can and the graffiti. I saw it all, but what held my attention was that dull circle of metal .38 inches wide that had just appeared in front of me. If this was how it was going to end, I wanted to see it coming.
    And when your life’s just about to end, you start thinking about things you wouldn’t think you’d think about. I didn’t wonder why Andy, this guy that I had just met, was mugging me after we had shared a few drinks at the bar. I didn’t pray to God and I didn’t wonder what Hell was like. No, I thought about that little girl in Mozambique who’d given me a tiny wood carving of a cat. I’d tied it to a string and wore it around my neck every day for good luck. I was wearing it now. I had only forgotten to wear it once. The sun beating down on me as I sank into a river bank with blood on my hands.
    “Hold it,” Andy said. The barrel shook.
    I dropped my hand. I had reached for the necklace without realizing it.
    “Sorry, buddy,” Andy said, keeping the trembling .38 pointed my way. “Your wallet.”
    I pulled it out and handed it to him.
    “Most people freak out when I point a gun at them. You ever have a gun pulled on you before?” he asked. His eyes were wide open and shining, and his whole body was shaking. I doubted Andy had ever pointed a gun at anyone in his life.
    I could’ve told him I was scared, too. I might have thought I didn’t care, but the fear was real - there’s always a part of you that’s afraid of death. So I kept my mouth shut.
    “Whatever,” Andy said. He stepped back, keeping the gun on me with one hand, and he went through my wallet with the other. He pulled out the cash and let the rest of the wallet fall to the ground. “Twelve bucks? What the hell?” he said. “I thought you were an investment banker or something.”
    “I was,” I said. “But I’ve been in Africa for the last three years.” Though I had left that part out when we talked at the bar. Why would Andy care that one day I made a decision that cost my company millions, and I woke up the next morning and didn’t even care? So I took the next flight to Paris and never looked back. I made it down to the Riviera then somehow ended up in Mozambique.
    Andy was still agitated. “But the suit...” He gestured to the now rumpled, blue pinstripe I was wearing.
    “I had an interview today. I’m currently unemployed. I’ve gone through most of my savings. I’ve maxed out my credit cards and I’ve got seventy-eight dollars in the bank. So you can keep the twelve bucks.” I winced. Maybe I shouldn’t piss off the guy mugging me.
    “Oh, man,” he moaned. He lowered the gun and leaned back against the building behind him. He slid down the wall.
    I let myself breathe. I stood still for a second, thinking. If he was going to sit there, then I wanted my wallet back. I moved forward so I could pick it up from where it had fallen. When I bent over, I noticed Andy was crying.
    “You all right?” I asked without thinking. I winced again. I waited a heartbeat and was just about to walk away when he finally raised his head.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s just... oh, nevermind.”
    “All right then,” I said.
    “Wait,” Andy said.
    I should have started walking, but there was something in his voice, maybe I just imagined it, a hint of the pain and guilt I knew all too well, and it froze me.
    “I’ve just got myself into a bit of trouble, that’s all,” Andy said. “I just needed the money to skip town.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” I said.
    He hung his head and didn’t say anything so I turned and was about to get out of there when an explosion rattled down the alley. A bullet missed me and hit the trash can. I spun around, but Andy was still sitting on the ground. Two fat men had come in the other end of the alley. They looked familiar, I think I had seen them outside the bar when we left, but all the booze had made my memory hazy. The important thing was that they had guns, and the guns were pointed at me and Andy.
    I don’t know why, but I grabbed Andy’s arm, pulled him to his feet, and took off running with him down the alley while a few more shots flew by us. We got to the end of the alley, pulled a hard right, and kept turning down quiet streets until we lost them. We ducked into a darkened doorway.
    “What the hell is going on?” I whispered.
    “Those guys are after me.”
    “No kidding.” I looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of anyone.
    “Look, man, I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
    “Sure,” I said. First he mugged me, now he was apologizing. He was a nutcase, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “Well, I don’t see them,” I said instead. They hadn’t looked like the quickest guys anway.
    “Maybe, but they aren’t going to give up ‘til they find me.”
    “Great,” I said. “Well, we should go someplace where there’s people.” I looked around again. Still nobody. All the respectable people were in bed, getting ready for work or school and not running around with the guy who had just mugged them.
    “No, no people,” Andy said, leveling the gun at my stomach.
    A bit of fear hit me again. “All right, no people,” I said, “but we can’t stay out here all night.”
    “I’ve got a place where I’ve been holing up. We can go there.”
    “Sure, Andy, but why don’t you just let me go?” As much fun as I was having, I just wanted to get in my own bed, curl up under the covers, and feel lousy there.
    “You’ll go to the cops.”
    “I won’t, I promise.” I really wouldn’t. I had my wallet back. He could keep the twelve bucks. On the other hand, calling the cops might save him from the guys chasing him. Then again I’d always felt the need to do something when maybe doing nothing would be better for everybody. Sometimes the roads are too bumpy.
    “I can’t risk it. I can’t have the cops after me, too. Look, I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re sticking with me until I can get out of town. I was looking for a little extra cash, but I’ll just have to take what I’ve got and leave in the morning.”
    I shrugged. I had no choice but to go along with him. Andy put the gun in the pocket of his windbreaker and gestured for me to turn around. He shoved the barrel into the small of my back, and we started walking until we ended up in front of an abandoned apartment building.
    Andy made sure no one was looking then pushed me through the front door and up the stairs. He opened the door to an apartment on the second floor and led me inside. It was dark and dusty and dirty. There was a sleeping bag on the floor and candy bar wrappers everywhere, a gallon jug of water and a closed suitcase against the wall.
    “Make yourself at home,” Andy said.
    I found a relatively clean spot on the floor and sat down, leaning on the wall. Andy dropped himself onto the sleeping bag, placing himself between me and the door.
    After a couple minutes of nervous sweating and quiet, Andy said, “Like I said before, I’m sorry for all this. I just need some money to skip town.” The words came out quick, like he was actually worried about what I thought of him.
    “No problem,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
    “Thanks. I mean, I have some money stashed at my place, but I’m pretty sure they’re having it watched.”
    “They?” I said. Then I wished I’d learned to keep my mouth shut.
    “Danny and Paolo Almeida. The guys chasing me.”
    I had a thousand more questions running through my head, but this time I had the sense to just say, “Oh.”
    Andy just stared at the ground. After a while, he pulled a little book out of his pocket and started leafing through it. I could see the pages were handwritten. The writing was large and full of loops. As he read, an expression grew on Andy’s face like he was going to start crying and laughing at the same time. But then his eyes dulled and he sighed and tossed the book on the floor. It landed with a clap and sent a cloud of dust swirling around it.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “My girlfriend’s diary. It’s the only thing of hers I have left.”
    “What happened?”
    “I killed her.”
    “Oh.” Well, that would explain the guilt.
    “I mean it was an accident. We were driving. I was driving, and...” Andy paused, letting me fill in the blanks. “That’s why those guys are after me. They’re her brothers.” Andy’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t really blame ‘em. I probably oughta just let ‘em do it.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “that’s one way to go.” I gestured to the diary. “You mind?”
    “Go ahead,” he said. “I can’t read it anyway. It’s all in Portuguese. You speak any?”
    “Not a word,” I said as I picked up the book. A knot formed in my stomach. I was tired of lying. Even to someone who had mugged me and was holding me at gunpoint. I’d been lying ever since I got back from Africa. And I wasn’t going to stop any time soon. I’d rather lie and feel guilty than talk about what had happened. A rifle frozen in my hands and screams echoing in my head.
    “That’s all right. I just wish I knew what she was thinking. Sometimes I feel like I barely knew her.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “I know how that can be.”
    I started leafing through the diary, reading a page here and there. I wasn’t fluent but I could pick up most of it. Andy clearly had no idea what the it said. The Almeidas weren’t after Andy because of what happened to their sister. They wanted the book back. They were thieves, and they planned to frame Andy for their next job. They picked Andy because he was a two-bit crook himself and already wrapped around Taciana’s finger. I don’t know why she put it in writing, but it seemed like she didn’t always trust her brothers and maybe she wanted something she could use against them if she had to.
    When I finished, I flipped the diary back onto his sleeping bag and feigned disinterest. It wasn’t hard. I was getting tired and drowsy. Impatient. Careless.
    “Aren’t you afraid they’ll find us?” I said. “Someone must have seen you come in and out of here. Maybe we should go.”
    “I know,” Andy said, “You ever think, that maybe, that’s what I want?”
    “Why don’t you do it yourself then?”
    Andy’s eyes flashed with anger, and my skin prickled. But then his head sagged and he put the gun down on the ground. He looked up at me. The anger was gone, and there was nothing there but pain. “You think I haven’t tried? I don’t have the guts.”
    We fell into another silence. I pitied him, but not much. I knew how he felt. Like a part of you is missing, and it’s just filled with pain, and eventually the pain dies down, but never completely, and you’re left with an empty hole in your chest, only it’s not empty. If it was empty, then eventually something else could take root there, but nothing ever does. Except, maybe, for the guilt.
    “What’s that?” Andy’s voice cut through the quiet.
    I had pulled out my necklace again without realizing it. “A cat,” I said. “A little girl gave it to me in Africa.”
    “What for?”
    “I gave her a candy bar. We were in her village trying to convince her tribe to not hunt hippos even though they had nothing else to eat. I felt bad so I gave her a candy bar. And she gave me this.” I shoved the cat back into my shirt.
    Andy looked like he wanted to say something else, but I turned away so he just leaned back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling.
    I wondered what that little girl was doing. She would be nine or ten by now. It would be morning there. She might go down to the river to wash clothes or to bring back a jug of water for her family. Then pray that the water wouldn’t make her family sick. Or she might not be doing anything at all.
    Another ten minutes went by. Andy was sitting there, probably thinking about the girl he loved. And he didn’t have a clue. I was tired of sitting around watching him feel sorry for himself.
    “Come on,” I said, “let’s get out of here.” I stood up.
    “Not yet. We’re not going anywhere,” Andy said. He reached for the gun. I didn’t think he’d shoot me, but if he did...
    I stepped past him.
    “Don’t take another step.” His voice cracked.
    I walked towards the door. Andy fired the gun and the bullet slammed into the wall next to me. I waited for the blood in my ears to stop pounding before I turned to face him.
    “Why didn’t you shoot me?” I asked, keeping my voice under control.
    “It was a warning.” Andy’s voice broke, like he was holding back tears.
    “Andy, you’re not going to shoot me. You’re not a killer. You’re a loser who lost his girl and is looking for a shoulder to cry on. Fine, you want to talk, let’s talk. But we’re not doing it here. Let’s go.” I walked out the door and down the steps. A few seconds later Andy followed.
    I poked my head outside. No one around. I looked at my watch. “Let’s get a drink.”
    “Whatever,” Andy said.
    It was a quiet night. We didn’t run into anyone except for the homeless lying on the street. Andy didn’t seem to notice the bums at all. He had other things to worry about. So did I. Rough country roads and whispered pleas for help.
    We walked into the first bar we saw. The lights were dim and the whole place was brown. There were only three people at the bar and one couple sitting at a booth in the corner. We walked up to the bar and sat down on two open stools. The bar and the stools were wooden and badly nicked and dark and almost sticky from all the coats of lacquer slapped on them over the years.
    The barman made his way over to us. We ordered two beers and sat sipping them for a few minutes. I was starting to think that maybe I’d get out of this OK when Andy said, “Have you ever been in love?”
    I sighed. That was the last thing I wanted to talk about, but I wanted to keep him happy so I said, “I guess so.”
    “How did you know?”
    I rubbed my temples. “I don’t know, I just did. You see someone and you feel it or you don’t.” It was more complicated than that, but would he really want to know about that night I met her at that hotel in Nice, and we started talking and she said something, it wasn’t particularly funny, something about the poaching problem in Africa, but the way she said it, with her English accent, struck me just the right way that I started laughing. She told me I was a jerk, and stormed off. At first I thought whatever, but then I realized that was the first time I had laughed in months. But Andy didn’t want to hear that. He just wanted me to say something he could relate to so that he could feel better.
    “I guess you’re right,” he said.
    “Sure.”
    I hoped he’d drop the whole thing, and he was quiet for a few minutes, but then he said, “I knew the minute I saw her. She had these freckles and this long, wavy hair and the cutest accent. She was Brazilian. You ever have a Brazilian woman cook for you?”
    I shook my head.
    “It’s great. She’d make this thing with beans and yucca flour... Anyway it was great. She was great.” Andy looked down at his beer for a minute before turning to me again. “The girl you loved, what was she like?”
    “Like a woman,” I said.
    “Come on.”
    I gave up. He wasn’t going to. “All right. She was English. I met her in France. She happened to be staying at the same hotel. I got to know her. She was a biologist. She liked animals. She liked me.”
    For a minute, Andy thought about the little I had said, and I guess that wasn’t enough for him. “Did you know right away?”
    “No, she was arrogant and she was a crazy tree hugger. She wasn’t even that beautiful.”
    “Then how’d you get together?”
    “We just kept running into each other. It just happened, I don’t know.” Though, of course, I did. After that night at the hotel, I kept bumping into her around town. One day she walked up to me and asked me if I was following her. I laughed and walked away. She ran after me and apologized and asked me if I wanted to get a drink that night. So we did. The rest, et cetera. But I didn’t see how that would help Andy.
    He kept pressing. “There must have been something about her you liked.”
    “Sure. She was nice to kids, old people, and dogs. She loved the ocean. Dreamed about seeing the Pacific some day. And she really believed in what she was doing. More than I’ve ever believed in anything.” I took a deep breath. Andy opened his mouth to say something else, but I cut him off. “Look, Andy, it’s been a rough night. I’ve got a headache. Why don’t we get another beer?”
    “All right.” He looked glum. I’m sure he wanted to talk about what had happened to him, but I didn’t. We ordered two more beers. They arrived shortly and didn’t last long.
    “I’m going to the men’s room,” Andy said. He stood up and tripped, knocking into the stool next to him. The gun fell out of his pocket and crashed into the floor. The couple in the corner looked up, and the girl let out a half scream, and now everyone was looking. Andy pocketed the gun but everyone had seen it.
    “Hey, you’d better go,” the bartender said, “or I’m calling the cops.”
    The gun came out again, but this time it was in Andy’s hand and pointed at the bartender. “No cops.” He had that crazy look in his eye.
    The bartender looked at the gun, but didn’t say anything. I glanced around. The room had cleared.
    “Andy, why don’t you let him go?” I said. Sweat ran into my eyes.
    “He’s gonna call the cops,” Andy said.
    “So what? We’ll be long gone before they get here.”
    Andy wavered for a moment, but he lowered the gun. “Fine.”
    The bartender’s face was ashen, and he stumbled out of the bar. He was scared out of his mind, and I knew that he’d run to the nearest phone and the cops would be there in a few minutes. That was fine with me. I reached over the bar and grabbed a bottle of Jameson’s and took a long pull. I coughed and my knees buckled.
    “What are you doing?” Andy asked.
    “I’m having a drink,” I said.
    “We’ve got to get out of here. The cops could be on their way.”
    “They probably are. But what do you care? You can go. Nothing’s keeping you here.”
    “All right,” Andy said. “Whatever.”
    He was acting like he lost a friend. There wasn’t anything I could do for him except maybe tell him the truth. He was almost out the door when I said, “Do yourself a favor. Forget the girl. She never loved you anyway.” I was drunk and tired. I shouldn’t have said it like that, but it was too late.
    At first he looked hurt, then angry, then really angry, and he strode over to me and slammed the butt of the gun into my temple. I fell to the ground and felt the blood trickle down the side of my face. I knew I deserved it. I sat up against the bar. He pointed the gun at me again, and I could see in his eyes that this time he might do it.
    “What the hell do you know?” he asked.
    I looked up at him. “I lied to you before. They speak Portuguese in Mozambique.”
    He pushed the barrel of the gun into my hair, resting it on my skull. “You’re full of it.”
    “Yeah, but you were just about to walk out the door. I could have let you go, but I thought you should know the truth.”
    “What did she say?”
    I paused and shook my head. “I don’t really remember.”
    Andy reached into his jacket with his free hand, pulled out the diary, and threw it down in front of me. “Read it to me.”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
    The gun hit the other side of my face. “Read it! Read the last thing she wrote. I want to know what she was thinking about before she died.”
    I picked up the diary and opened it to the end. I hesitated.
    “Read it!” he screamed. Then he cocked the hammer. I felt the muzzle on my forehead.
    So I started reading. I read to him about how she felt bad about setting Andy up, but they were her brothers, and she had to help them. She felt bad because she knew how Andy felt about her, but she didn’t feel that bad because Andy was a criminal, too. It wasn’t her fault that he was too dumb to figure out what was going on, that he was so pathetic...
    “Stop,” Andy finally said, “Enough.”
    He let the gun fall to the floor, and he sat down next to me. He brought his knees up to his chest and started crying. I staggered to my feet to give him some room. I felt funny. Telling him the truth hadn’t been any better than lying to him.
    I picked up the gun. In my hand, it seemed smaller. I pointed it at Andy to see how it felt. I didn’t like it. I let my arm drop to my side.
    “It’ll be all right,” I said.
    “No, it won’t,” he said.
    “Yeah, you’re right.” I knew it never really got any better. “It probably won’t help you any, but let me tell you something. Since I’ve been back, I haven’t told anyone the truth. About Natalie, anyway. Maybe I was crazy to follow her out there, but it’s the only time in my life I’ve ever actually been happy.” I almost laughed. “Anyway, one day we went down to the river and somehow she ended up between a hippo and the water. It charged her while I stood frozen with a rifle in my hands. I tell myself that even if I had taken the shot, it wouldn’t have mattered, it had too much momentum, it wouldn’t’ve stopped in time. But I’ll never know for sure. So I know how you feel. I just don’t give a damn.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I looked down. Even now, I couldn’t tell him the whole truth.
    I looked back at Andy. He didn’t say anything for awhile. I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me. Then he said, “But she loved you, didn’t she?”
    “Yeah, she loved me.”
    “Then it’s not the same.”
    I had nothing to say. I thought about how I’d feel if I found out Natalie had never loved me...
    “Kill me,” Andy said, “I can’t do it myself, just do it for me.” He looked up, his face a mask of pain. I remembered how it felt, praying it all would end, and wishing it had while I’d still felt something, anything.
    I looked into his eyes. He wanted it to be over. I put the barrel of the gun on his forehead. My stomach sunk, my palms sweated, my hand wouldn’t stay still. I didn’t think I could do it. Sure, he was sad and pathetic. But I was, too. And things had to get better, didn’t they? If I pulled the trigger, there was no chance of that.
    I reached into my shirt for my necklace. My fingers ran over the old, familiar wood, and I remembered that day I had forgotten to wear it, that day on the river bank. I jerked my hand and the string snapped. I threw the little cat over the bar. Then I put the gun back on Andy’s forehead.
    I thought about Natalie again. Her smile every morning. The way she was always nice to the children in every village we visited even when their parents wouldn’t listen to us. The way she’d grin and swear under her breath whenever another woman looked at me. She never would have let me do this, but she wasn’t there. She was still in Mozambique.
    Andy looked me in the eye again. “Kill me.”
    There were plenty of things I could’ve done. I could’ve just walked away and be done with it. I could’ve called the cops myself and waited for them to haul Andy away. I could’ve pulled the trigger. I could’ve turned the gun on myself. I could’ve just stood there and done nothing. Maybe the Almeidas would show up and do the job for me. I had a lot of choices, but they were all the same. None of them would make me feel any different. And I already knew what Andy wanted.
    I nodded and he understood. He closed his eyes and I closed mine. Instead of Andy sitting there, I pictured Natalie. Her mangled, bleeding body in my arms, her screams piercing my ears, her tears staining my shirt. We both knew we were too far from help, and there was nothing I could do except put an end to her pain. The rifle was still in my hands. Instead, I put her in the truck and started driving. For at least an hour she screamed and begged for me to stop. Then her pleas faded to whispers and then to nothing at all. I don’t even know when she died, only that she was alone when I should have been holding her, that every bump on the rough road caused her more pain, and the man she loved ignored her cries for help because he was too weak to do the right thing.
    This time I pulled the trigger.

***

    When I came to, I was slumped against the bar. The gun was still in my hand. I must have passed out, but it couldn’t have been for long. The cops weren’t there yet, but I heard the sirens in the distance. It would take them awhile to reach me. I had some time. Enough time to pull a trigger. I put the gun to my temple.
    Click.
    I looked over at what was left of Andy. I cursed him for loading his gun with only two bullets.

***

    I’m not sure why I never killed myself. I’m pretty sure I wanted to, but I guess I just never got around to it.
    That night, after the cops had shown up and cuffed me and dragged me downtown, I told them what had happened, mostly. They didn’t believe me, but they found the diary and the bartender showed up with his side of the story. They called it self-defense. I didn’t argue. I had to testify against the Almeidas, but it was the least I could do for Andy.
    Once the storm had blown over, I gave up trying to pick up the pieces of my old life, and I moved to the west coast. Now I’ve got a job working as a repo-man for this shady car dealer. It keeps me on my toes and from thinking too much.
    But today I went down to the beach. Right now I’m sitting in the sand, watching the sun set over the water. And I just realized she’ll never see the Pacific Ocean.

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