World War S 3

Chapter 4

Why him? How did we find this man? He pondered, shaking his head. He had looked so confident when he said that sentence in that market …

“Hey, man of God!”

John didn’t stop to turn back and look because nobody had ever called him that before, but Julie looked in the direction of the voice. The man who shouted stood behind a four-metre-long table overloaded with all kinds of requisites for making magic. They were in Tanzania, in a city market, looking for an experienced local guide.

“Not you, woman, I speak to the man of God!”

John was really surprised, as the only person who could be referred to as godly around here was Dr Bond. That young woman was undeniably attracted by the spiritual experience—which she called Near Death Experience and which had pushed her towards God. But he, John? Ungodly, that would have been the correct attribute matched to him, if the guy had known his past.

“Who, me?” John asked, looking back at the black man with a malicious grin. The stranger wore a funny headgear decorated with sickle feathers—it must have been like a shabby silk hat—which had bones and other animal parts hanging on its sides. His long hair covered his shoulders with thick braids. Following John’s question, he broke into a smile. Among his teeth, coloured yellow by tobacco and other substances, there were some flashy gold ones as well.

“Big Boss see!” the guy said, nodding frequently. “Big Boss not only see the visible, but the unseen as well! That’s why he is rich, and he is the owner of this whole area!”

John clicked his tongue admiringly. Wherever he looked, there were stands and sheds selling amulets, magic devices, and talismans.

“And what does Big Boss see?”

The man laughed again. He laughed so loud that the people behind the neighbouring stalls began laughing too, while he continuously pointed to John, shaking and guffawing.

“Oh, you man of God, you make me feel good! The answer is very simple. I see nothing!”

John was even more surprised now. He thought the man would start talking rubbish about some kind of Holy Spirit, and white swishing angel wings, but he did not expected to hear nothing.

“Look, I’ll explain. These are simple chicken bones, or they look like normal chicken bones to you. I throw them into that dish and shake them. They change in the dish,” he said, leaning so close that John could examine his wide pupils. He was sure the guy had smoked something hard not long ago.

“The dish endows the bones. They became alive. They revive from death. And they speak,” Big Boss whispered with an annoying hissing. John would have preferred to leave, but Julie got hooked by the presentation.

“Big Boss see the cloud around the bones, the cloud of life.”

“Is it like an aura?” Julie asked. John could not believe this fully qualified physician would engage in a conversation with a quack like this.

“Call it what you want. I call it life,” Big Boss said, flashing his teeth again.

“So there is no life around me?” John thought he might as well ask if they were already this deep into it.

“Not the same life I see around the bones. I see that emptiness mostly around holy men and believers of God.”

“I can assure you that I’m neither of those.”

“Don’t be so sure!” the magician lifted his forefinger. “Big Boss has never made a mistake.”

John thought about his handsome guardian angel for a moment. Yes, he had a guardian angel, and indeed, he was the only one who had seen him. He wondered if that odd guy would be able to see when his angel would appear to him next.

“All right, I believe you. We have to go!” he said vigorously to Julie and pulled her shirt sleeve.

“Don’t be in such a hurry!” Big Boss said, exercising his charming smile again. “Around the lady I see swirling, nothing is calm. The air is so vibrant!”

“Really?” Julie asked, smiling confusedly. “What you see is the projection of my scientific interest.”

“It is still an interest …” the witch doctor said affably and led Julie closer to his table.

“Julie, we shouldn’t get stuck here …”

“Just a few minutes. I’m really interested in the things they have here,” answered Julie, asking forgiveness with her eyes.

“All right, but don’t be too long.”

When she moved away from John, she felt relieved. John’s cavilling and pressing disturbed her. She had never been in a place like this before where she could study the requisites of black magic. And this witch doctor had it right; she was really interested about how people could charm each other using only animal parts. It could be like hypnosis. Not the tool or the requisite itself that made the effect, but the monotonous and rhythmical music.

“You might be looking for something special,” Big Boss’s eyes flashed to Julie. “Something you didn’t find at home. Do you like the man of God?”

Julie involuntarily broke into a laugh. She might have wanted to hide the fact that she was finding John to be more and more likeable, even if she could not imagine being in a long-term relationship after Keith; but she still felt some kind of attraction towards John.

“Your laugh reveals your feelings. This very fine powder,” Big Boss said, grabbing her hand before Julie could pull it away, “that I rub into your skin has had positive effects on many of my clients.”

Julie felt the man rubbing something into her wrist. It felt like a raspy, rough material.

“May I ask what that was?” she asked, freeing her hand. The white powder looked like grated bones.

“This is very effective stuff. Many politicians came to me for help, and this made them fly high up in the institutes.”

“And what is it?”

“Powdered animal bones, and many other things I can’t tell you about. But believe me, the man of God will fall in love with you in a few days. I guarantee …”

“I can’t wait,” Julie murmured and thought how deeply the superstition must be rooted into this society if even the politicians used these things. “Do you believe in God?”

Big Boss opened his arms and recoiled.

“What do you think? If your friend’s God would not give his blessings to my work, would I have such a big success?

Look around! Do you have such a large hospital back at home, doctor?”

Julie’s eyes rounded. The man’s malevolent smile showed that he was aware of the shock he caused by naming Julie’s profession without her mentioning it before.

Julie looked back, searching for John, who stood in front of another stall. Dried animal bodies, heads, odd-looking chitter-lings, frog and lizard preparations, rattling bones stuffed into snakeskins covered every free space. The wind was getting up, blowing the fringed edges of the tent-clothes and the corrugated iron walls of the suspicious-looking shops. The area controlled by Big Boss had an enigmatic ambiance due to the continuous swirling sand. Julie shuddered.

“I don’t want to know why you know all of these things about me.”

“You don’t want to know why I know that you are looking for Africa’s Saint.”

Julie became almost petrified. They really had come to find the new pope, Philippe Nshombai, who was better known by that name.

“Do you know him?”

Big Boss grinned again and said something to the neighbouring venders in the local language. They could not stop laughing.

“I should charge an entrance fee for my stand-up comedy show,” Julie said, pointing to the laughing people.

“I can assure you that you will get your salary if you continue like this. You Americans are so funny.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about you. Would you answer my question?”

The witch doctor took two c**k heels out of the dish.

“If they turn to each other, I’ll take you to him,” he said and shook the c**k heels closed into his palms. When he opened it, the heels were not just simply pointed to each other but were connected by their very last points as if Big Boss had glued them together.

Julie almost said “What a …” but she bit her tongue. She must get used to the magic happening in front of her eyes in this place. Since they were in the land of black magic.

“So, can we go?” asked Big Boss stretching out his hand.

“Since we’ve made a good friendship, I’ll tell you my real name is Big Jabari. My employees call me Big Boss,” he waved to the men and women looking at them from many sides.

“I don’t know if it’s my pleasure … John! We have our man!”

John looked at Julie as if she were a ghost.

“Him? Seriously?”

Julie grabbed John’s arm and pulled him aside.

“He knows where Nshombai is. He mentioned the pope’s name without me even saying anything. This guy is a real illusionist.”

“This guy is dangerous! We came here—after carefully analysing Josh’s drawings—because we suspect that the village he drew is at the southern border. We planned the route. That single-engine, fragile plane brought us here with that bush pilot who had about as much experience flying as I do, which means zero. He couldn’t even read the gauges, and he didn’t fill up the fuel tank properly, so we made the last kilometres in gliding to land on that dirt road behind the market, which you can’t even call a runway. And after all this, you are telling me that this mad witch doctor will lead us to Africa’s Saint?”

“Yes. Do you have a better idea?”

John looked up to the heavens as if he were waiting for someone sent by God to help them out of this situation. Possibly that handsome angel in a perfect suit with a four-wheel drive car.

“Man of God, look no further, I’m the one sent by your god,” Big Boss said. “God sometimes provides very strange servants for the journey. If you miss him, he will not send another.”

John looked daggers at him, eyeing him with suspicion. Big Boss’s leather waistcoat was full of all types of pins that looked like had come from a jumble sale. On his decorated belt was a holster with the grip of a pistol sticking out of it. And I was not allowed to bring mine, he fumed.

“All right, but your hat has to stay,” demanded John, pointing to the old silk hat. The witch doctor threw it to his employee with a flick of his wrist.

“Take care of that,” he said, squinting and whistling to his deputy, who took control over the market for him.

John should have been more suspicious when that shaky four-wheel drive minibus turned north. When they asked why they were going that way, the guides said they were taking a precautionary measure.

“Big Boss …”

“Big Jabari, do not bother with formalities,” the witch doctor interrupted John. Jabari sat at the front with one of his helpers, with John and Julie in the second row, and finally Jabari’s other man with a gun in the back. They were in a sandwich-like grip, and their guides were capable of devouring them if they really wanted to. John had already regretted three times that he agreed to Julie’s idea, and he also regretted several times that he had let the vision standing at the end of his bed persuade him to come to Africa. And more than that, he regretted that the cursed list—made by William Ridmoore—named this continent as his final resting place.

“Okay, Mr Jabari. Are you sure this is the way?”

“I’m absolutely sure. We have been many times to see Africa’s Saint, haven’t we?”

The others nodded uniformly.

“Are we talking about the same person? Philippe Nshombai?”