Chapter 4: The Night of the Caracal
The Iguana Deal: A Problem
“What do you mean, there’s been a hitch?” Jocelyn Magna screamed into the cell phone. Her sarong was lying on the floor and her lipstick had smudged across her face into a scowl. Unthinkingly she began gnawing at the food that had been delivered the previous night but had gone uneaten – except, in a rather physical ceremony, the mango mousse. Hardly tasting it, she thought about losing out to her brother, Felix.
“I cannot believe you idiots! It’s only a matchstick company, for God’s sake. What could possibly go wrong?”
She reached impulsively for a handful of meringues.
“Book me a charter flight out of here.” She paused. “No, I don’t care what airline it’s on. Just do it, asshole!”
* * *
Ella Bazaar Tells a Lie
Upton opened his eyes.
“You saved my life,” he croaked. “How can I ever thank you?”
Ella Bazaar stood above him as he lay on a deckchair at the Motel du Soleil, his pants now on, although he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there. Ella Bazaar was dressed too, tight shorts and an even tighter T-shirt, the logo SAVE THE WHALES stretched across her chest. He was expecting her to say something about his rash act of diving into a treacherous ocean, but she said nothing.
Even though the Motel du Soleil was in darkness by now, he could see from where he lay that it was totally empty. None of the women who’d been lying there earlier remained. Nor did the menacing black lifeguard. Nor the trio in sombreros. It was as if there had been a mass desertion, a stage suddenly left bare of all its actors. Not that Upton minded. He liked being alone with Ella Bazaar.
“How did you know where to find me?” he asked.
“La Cité is not a big place,” she said. “Omar Touré has done work for me.”
Upton couldn’t mask his disappointment. He had expected the search for Ella Bazaar to be more intricate, more mysterious. Is this all there was to it? Suddenly at a loss for something to say, he brought up the only thing he could think of, the one thing that had brought them together, the stolen animal.
“Where’s Mister Sulahman’s pet?” he asked.
She looked annoyed.
“Is that why you came here?” she asked.
“Well, of course,” he said. “Why do you think?”
Ella Bazaar seemed to think the answer was obvious.
“Business.”
Upton couldn’t imagine what kind of business Ella Bazaar was in, hanging out in places like Prang Hotel and the Motel du Soleil.
“I gather that there was an animal in that bag I helped you with,” Upton continued. She didn’t confirm or deny it. “He’s very upset, you know. Mister Sulahman, I mean.”
“Why should he be?” She was indignant. “It’s my animal.”
“Your animal?!” Upton momentarily forgot his near-death experience.
“I paid him good money for it.”
“What?” Upton exclaimed. He was confused. Mister Sulahman hadn’t mentioned any money. For a brief moment it crossed his mind that maybe he didn’t know Mister Sulahman as well as he imagined he did, but then he dismissed the thought. “He would have told me if there was money involved.”
Ella Bazaar pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and showed it to Upton. He read the following: ‘I sell my treasure to Ella Bazaar for an agreed upon price.’ At the bottom was a scrawl that could have been anyone’s signature, although the name definitely started with a big ‘S,’ as in Sulahman. Upton also noticed the use of the word ‘treasure,’ which was how Mister Sulahman referred to the carpy. He scratched his sand-coated head.
“Well, I don’t know what to say. But the way Mister Sulahman was going on, it didn’t sound like he wanted that animal to leave Prang Hotel.”
Ella Bazaar considered Upton’s words.
“Well, that’s obviously something between you and him,” she said, then grew more serious. “So, you didn’t come here on business?”
Upton immediately remembered the diary. Maybe that was the business she kept referring to. Maybe that’s what she wanted to discuss with him. Maybe it was as he had suspected all along, that there was something important in the diary, some kind of information that made it imperative she get the book back. Quickly glancing under the deckchair, he saw that it was still lying there, along with his ditty-filled Export Notepad, which meant she hadn’t seen it. But Ella Bazaar didn’t even mention the diary.
“Clearly I have mistaken you for someone else,” she said. “I thought you were a potential customer.”
Upton was confused. “A customer? For what?”
“Never mind,” she answered quickly, too quickly, as if she was trying to hide something from him. “It’s safer that you don’t know. Now I will take you back to the city.”
* * *
Dinner at the Scarlet Macaw
Senor Giuseppe Alvarez, owner of one of the most profitable cigarette factories in Central America, firmly believed in luck. More specifically, his own luck. This time, however, luck had had a helpful accomplice, namely his son, Giuseppe Junior.
It was Junior who several nights earlier had coaxed his father into staying for an extra helping of tiramisu at his favorite restaurant in Tegucigalpa, the Scarlet Macaw. If he hadn’t stayed, he would’ve been blown to smithereens in his Mercedes-Benz.
After the explosion, Senor Alvarez fully expected that other disasters would come his way – for he knew the kind of tactics employed by the evil eldest son of Solomon Magna. But nothing more had happened, at least not yet.
In spite of the threat of torture and death hanging over his head, not to mention the loss of his Mercedes, Senor Alvarez was still struggling with the idea of selling Toucan Tobacco. He had seven children, a wife, and three mistresses to support. If he could have his way, he wanted Junior to take over the business from him. But achieving that would be as much of a mission as keeping it out of Felix Magna’s dirty hands. Giuseppe Junior, a tall young man who many people said looked like a movie star, had so far shown more interest in taking mountain hikes and bird-watching than in working at Toucan.
As the elder Alvarez wandered around his darkened house – he’d been warned by his son not to burn any lights in case someone outside was watching – he wished Junior was in town right now. He could use the boy’s company and good conversation. Even if he did spend too much time with his binoculars looking for speckled boobies, he was sensible. But Junior had left Tegucigalpa two days earlier without giving any details about where he was going.
“Don’t worry,” he told his father before leaving. “It will be good for your company.”
Senor Alvarez didn’t know what good his son could do at this late stage, even though there was nothing he wanted more. But how could a besieged Toucan Tobacco be helped by a bird-watcher? The thought of birds made the old man’s think of his favorite species, or rather, the species that had given its name to his favorite restaurant, the Scarlet Macaw, a restaurant that made a mouthwateringly good poblano chicken.
His stomach grumbled at the thought of good food, but he knew he couldn’t leave the house. Who knew what dangers might be waiting for him outside? Pacing up and down the kitchen, he retrieved a plate of leftovers from the refrigerator. He nibbled at them halfheartedly, wondering at the same time where his son could have gone to, and for what reason. He hoped that Felix Magna didn’t know.
* * *
Genus Okapia johnstoni
The narrow driveway was lined with bougainvillea and dotted with snails the size of tennis balls, which Ella Bazaar carefully swerved to avoid. Her vehicle had been washed since Upton had last seen it last at Prang Hotel, and the pastel color under the mud was now displayed. A sticker on the dashboard designated it as ‘Pink Jeep’.
The large house at the end of the driveway was quiet – almost too quiet, Upton thought – and it felt as if the place had just been vacated of its last tenants. He concluded that whatever business Ella Bazaar ran, it was sparse and tight, which was exactly the kind of business his father liked. “Simplicity, that’s the key,” the Chairman would say. “It means you can get of town fast if you have to.”
Ella Bazaar led Upton through several rooms that reminded him of Little Victoriabourg, mainly because they were so empty. The only difference was that his house you could pack in hours, Ella Bazaar’s in minutes. They reached an office furnished with a desk covered in neat stacks of papers and a computer that Ella Bazaar switched on.
On the wall behind her was a notice board, and on it several rows of photographs, although from where Upton stood he couldn’t see what they were of exactly. When Ella Bazaar moved away from the desk, he edged close enough to see they were Polaroids of animals – bad, blurry snaps taken in a hurry, maybe even while the subject, like Mister Sulahman’s pet, was being stolen. One of them was of something that appeared to be less an animal than a blob of black fur floating in a dark pool of water.
“Lutra maculicollis,” Ella Bazaar called out. “Also known as the spotted-necked otter.”
The photos immediately confirmed what Upton had suspected from the moment he’d found out that Ella Bazaar had fled Prang Hotel with the Mister Sulahman’s carpy. That she worked with animals. He didn’t know what kind of work she did, but whatever it was, he was sure he would approve. Perhaps she ran a local branch of A.P.E.
Upton’s eyes wandered across the notice board to the photograph of a dumb-looking antelope the color and texture of his shoes.
“Damaliscus lunatus,” she said. “Known either as a topi or a tsessebe.”
He couldn’t figure out how she knew what he was looking at, seeing she was on the other side of the room. He let his gaze fall on a small skunky thing.
“Ictonyx striatus,” she said. “Not often seen. A striped polecat.”
Next, he contemplated a funny rodent that reminded him of the guinea pig his mother had given him on his third birthday.
“Atilax paludinosus. Otherwise known as a marsh mongoose.”
He squinted at something else in a tree.
“Cercopithecus mitis. Sometimes called a samango, other times a blue monkey.”
Upton was impressed. Not only did she work with animals, but she could tell which photo he was looking at from across a room. Dee couldn’t do that. Finally his eyes settled on a big cat with huge tufted ears, a species he knew not only because there was a picture of one in the diary, but because Solomon Magna had once shot one and put its head on the wall in his study.
“Felis caracal,” Ella Bazaar said.
On closer inspection, Upton noticed that each of the animals had a name written beneath it. Most of them he recognized. Hercule the Fifth, Yaaba the Third, Valery the Second. He was about to mention the connection to the names from the diary, but he stopped himself. Hardly able to control his excitement at finding a link between the animals and the diary, although he didn’t know what that meant exactly, he kept scrutinizing the notice board.
Ella Bazaar came up behind him.
“So, I was right,” she said. “You are interested in my animals.”
Upton suspected that she might be mistaking his interest in the names of the animals for interest in the animals themselves, so he decided to play along with her. Perhaps he could find out more about her and the diary that way. He nodded vaguely at her.
“I was right then. That’s why you have come to La Cité then,” she continued, “for an animal.”
Upton suddenly remembered. “Oh yes, Mister Sulahman’s pet.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. That one is quite impossible. But I’m sure I can interest you in something else.”
Upton was confused. What was she up to?
“No, nothing else. I want only the…,” Upton began, but he’d suddenly forgotten the name of Mister Sulahman’s pet.
“Impossible,” she said. “Besides, I don’t think you could afford it.”
Upton was indignant.
“What are you talking about? I’m not going to pay for it.”
Ella Bazaar waved around the sales receipt Mister Sulahman had allegedly signed, and Upton could see that he might have no choice but to pay. He’d never imagined he would have to spend money for Mister Sulahman’s animal, and he never thought Ella Bazaar would actually demand it from him.
“If you don’t have five thousand dollars…” Ella Bazaar began.
“Five thousand dollars!” Upton cried out. “That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what a specimen like that goes for.”
“I don’t care what it goes for,” Upton said. “I’m not paying that kind of money for an animal.”
At that point Ella Bazaar took out a photo from her back pocket and stuck it onto the notice board. When she walked away, Upton looked at the animal in the picture, which was fuzzy and also looked as if it had been snapped in a hurry. Someone had written ‘Upton’ underneath it.
“Hey, that’s me,” he said.
“Okapia johnstoni, a very rare creature.”
Upton was still angry, but touched.
“That’s the animal you’re after,” Ella Bazaar said. “Mister Sulahman’s pet.”
Now that the animal had a face and a name, Upton relented a little. He still wasn’t going to pay five thousand dollars for it, but maybe he could bargain with her and bring the price down to a few hundred. Maybe he could string her along, get her to take him to see it in the flesh, prove to him that she in fact had it, show him that it was more than just a shape shifting around in a canvas bag.
“Could I see the animal before I make up my mind?” Upton asked.
Ella Bazaar hesitated before answering. “Well, that might be a bit difficult.”
“Why?”
“The animal is already somewhere else.”
Upton had a terrible thought.
“It’s not dead, is it?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
Upton shook his head. “Not yet? Where is it?”
Ella Bazaar starting typing something into the computer.
“It’s not in La Cité, but I can take you to where it’s being kept.”
The idea of being with Ella Bazaar a while longer appealed to Upton, especially seeing he’d found her more quickly than he’d anticipated.
“All right then,” he said. “Can we go?”
“Oh, it’s not that simple,” she replied. “I’ll have to prepare things.”
Upton didn’t know what she meant.
“It will take us at least several days to get there. The animal is already up north.”
“Up north?” Upton repeated her. “How far north?”
“Near a town called Belleville.”
Upton started at the mention of the town in Hercules’s diary. He was sure it meant that he was getting closer to the connection between Ella Bazaar and the book.
“What happens there?” he asked, trying not to sound too excited.
“That’s where we send the animals off from.”
“Send them off?” Upton asked.
Her answer couldn’t have caught him more off guard.
“They are exports.”
If that took Upton by surprise, the second part of her answer shocked him even more. And it would have made Dee the zoo cage cleaner and her friends at A.P.E. send out their red-paint-throwing, militant riot squads.
* * *
Ethel Takes Notes
“Now, are you sure you’re eating well, son, and taking your vitamins?” the woman said, stroking a large Persian cat on her lap. “Remember, Herbert, it’s the big deals that give ulcers to you people in the city.” She paused. “Anyway, you know what’s best for you.” Before she hung up, she added, “I love you.” .
Ethel Goodleigh glanced at the piece of paper on which she’d been writing throughout their conversation, hoping she’d gotten all the dates and figures correct. It sometimes bothered her that she was getting involved in this intrigue – talking about vitamins and foods when she actually meant days and sums of money – but she took comfort in the fact that she was doing it for her dead husband and also for the woman she loved. Putting the cat down, she got up and walked across the room to give the latest information to Janet.
* * *
In the Zoo with Jock
Ella Bazaar couldn’t sleep that night. The conversation with Upton had gone off perfectly, but she still found it hard dealing with him. For some reason she found herself thinking of Jock, even though Upton couldn’t have been more different from him, physically especially.
It had taken Ella Bazaar three years to get over Jock Sinclair-Matthews, three years and seven countries. When they had first met, he reminded her of her father. Even though he wasn’t a circus ringmaster but a famous zoologist, he had a way with animals. He spent most of his time traveling, if not to give speeches about the mating habits of various cats, especially the caracal, then to visit the jungles of the Congo, Nepal, and the Amazon.
“Can I come along with you?” Ella Bazaar asked him. “I know how to deal with dangerous situations. I could help you.”
But he refused to take her with him. “Not this time,” he would say.
Jock was a large man, with hands so big that he could hold Ella Bazaar’s clenched fist in one of them. But she worshipped him less for his physique than for his occupation. He had given his life to conservation. There were small things about him that bothered her but which she overlooked, such as the fact that he liked her to wear tight T-shirts that he’d tear open every time they made love. As a result, Ella Bazaar went through countless shirts, which Jock kept replenishing from a supply he got from the conservation groups he worked for. “Don’t worry,” he would say, a bit too carelessly she thought, “they’re free.”
He also preferred having sex outdoors. Every time he arrived back from the jungle, he would immediately insist they make love. He wouldn’t even wash the month-old sweat from his body before driving her to the zoo, where he had access to the grounds. It was usually late at night, when no one could see them, and they would sneak past the front gate. At the end of their lovemaking, he would lend her his shirt to wear home. His ferocity and his pungency never failed to thrill Ella Bazaar.
“You make love just like a beast,” she said.
In the beginning they did it in the public areas, but then Jock said he wanted to go closer to the exhibits. They fucked near the gorilla cage and then on the bench overlooking the pool where the polar bears swam. Soon they were so near the animals that by the time he had come inside her Ella Bazaar bore the imprint of the cage bars on her back.
One night after he’d gotten back from Madagascar, reeking more than ever, he proposed that they go not only to an enclosure but inside. It bothered Ella Bazaar, but she believed in Jock and went with him. The first time they did it, it was in a pen full of ostriches, who gathered in one corner and just stared at the humans writhing. As time went by, they made love in front of the vervets, the fruit bats, nine types of antelope, and a gnu.
Each time it happened, though, Ella Bazaar grew more concerned – not because of the animals watching, but because of Jock. As soon as they entered the zoo, he would grow quiet and distant. He seemed to be with someone else, even though it was her body that he was sliding into.
The night Jock came back from two months in Borneo, smelling so awful that it was hard to breathe in his company, he suggested going into the caracal’s cage. Ella Bazaar refused.
“You’re scared?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “but not of the animal.”
Angry, Jock went off on his own. After an hour, Ella Bazaar got worried, although it wasn’t for Jock, who was big enough to look after himself. Something else made her go after him, a horrible premonition. She knew exactly where to go – to the center of the zoo. To the very place she used to visit whenever Jock was away, where she could sit and imagine herself being with him. To the very place where they’d made love so many times.
Once she’d slipped over the zoo wall – Jock was the only one with a set of keys – she wandered through the grounds. There was a stillness in the air that scared her, as if all the creatures were holding their breath. But in anticipation of what? For once in her life, Ella Bazaar’s sense of animals – that gift she had inherited from her father, the Great Bazaar – failed her.
Suddenly the most chilling sound she’d ever heard tore through the darkness. It could have been an animal or a human, but it made Ella Bazaar run as fast as she could. She made for the exit, but the pathways through the cages and enclosures became a maze, and she found herself going deeper into the zoo until she was precisely where she didn’t want to be – near the cats. Cats just like the tiger Bombay, the Great Bazaar’s favorite. Cats like the lion and the cheetah and the leopard and, finally, the one whose breeding habits Jock had given so many speeches about, the small but ferocious caracal.
She slowed down to a walk, passing the animals one by one, each creature pacing anxiously up and down its cage, their paws making no noise, their prey invisible. She stopped at the caracal’s enclosure and then, even though she didn’t want to, forced herself to step closer to the wall and to peer into the grounds beyond. At first she could see nothing in the darkness except the shadow of the thorn trees and scrub that were meant to duplicate Africa.
Then she saw it, a movement. It wasn’t the movement of an animal. She knew that. And yet there was an animal out there. There was a human too. The movement came again. Jerk, jerk. Spasms of an action. They were two, the human and the animal, but they were together. The man had grabbed the creature from behind, his huge hands under its belly, his dick slipping in and out. When the caracal’s cry pierced the air again, it muffled the sound of another scream: Ella Bazaar’s.
By the time Jock got home, she had disappeared.
* * *
A Letter to Solomon Magna
Upton furrowed his brow. He would’ve preferred Ella Bazaar to be a different kind of animal woman. Why couldn’t she send her exports to zoos or game farms? He liked women who liked animals, but this? And paying her five thousand dollars for an okapi, an animal he’d never even heard of? It was all too ridiculous.
On the other hand, he needed his life here to change. Hadn’t he told Mister Sulahman that he wanted change? And this was his chance. This was his chance to find a new product. Besides, he was quite sure that Solomon Magna would go for the kind of business Ella Bazaar was in. She was, in fact, the only kind of animal woman Solomon Magna would like – one who exploited animals, not one who loved them. That was one of the reasons Upton had never told the Chairman about Dee the zoo cage cleaner. In his father’s eyes, the real value of animals lay not in the whole, but in the parts: the skins, the tusks, the horns.
Upton began writing:
Dear Sir,
I tried to phone you, but I was told you were busy. Good news. I am on the trail of a most exceptional export possibility.
‘Animals not meant to be petted or caged/But to be cooked with thyme, parsley and sage.’
I will stay in La Cité for several more days to finalize details.
Regards, your son and Africa branch manager, Upton Magna.
* * *
The Trouble with Lacquer Sandals
Ella Bazaar led the way into the crowded marketplace, a tall woman, not taller than Upton, but tall for a woman. She had on another tight T-shirt, this time emblazoned with the words HUMANITY FOR MANATEES.
“It’s the perfect ruse,” she had told Upton on the way to the Grand Marché. “People think you’re protecting the very thing you’re selling.”
It reminded Upton of something the Chairman used to tell his three children over the dinner table. “Deception,” he would say, “that’s the key.”
Upton wondered if Ella’s ruse would work for him. He couldn’t imagine that wearing around a T-shirt that said something like BOYCOTT LACQUER SANDALS would get him any more attention at head office than his ditties did. Nevertheless, he made a mental note to jot the idea down in his Export Notepad when he got back to Le Noix.
As Ella Bazaar strode through the Grand Marché, the crowd parted in front of her like believers might give way to a holy man. Upton stayed close to her so that he wouldn’t get lost or swallowed up by the ranks as they closed behind her. Even though the stench of the chaotic marketplace was overpowering, he could smell her scent if she stayed close. It was something herbal, something wild.
She made her way past a section selling the kind of things Upton normally would have put in his Export Notepad and made ditties about (straw hats, stone carvings, wood carvings). He saw the products Jocelyn had forced on him: skin-lightening creams that left faces blotchy, muscle relaxants that she had told him were really rebottled mayonnaise mixed with car oil. Next they came to garishly colored materials, spices, vegetables, and mountains of kola nuts and manioc.
They eventually reached dead things – mostly fish and birds. Then came the external body parts of animals: paws, toes, claws. There were round things that could have been eyeballs or testicles, Upton wasn’t sure. From his experience in Manila, though, they certainly looked less off-putting in powdered form.
Ella Bazaar nodded to someone every now and then, suggesting to Upton that it wasn’t her first time here. He was grateful for that. She stopped to talk to a woman who had a stand laden with camel leather goods: wallets with bad stitching, poorly made attaché cases, and bulky handbags that could conceal a small animal, a baby okapi named Upton, say. The woman looked in Upton’s direction, said a few words to Ella Bazaar that got lost in the noise around them, and swung her hips suggestively at him and winked. Ella Bazaar moved on.
Once past the body parts, they arrived in a cul-de-sac. A serious man in a flowing robe presided over a stall full of animal skins, although he didn’t seem as keen as everyone else to sell his wares. Ella Bazaar walked through the stall and then pulled aside a giraffe skin that was so badly lacerated, you could see light behind it. She disappeared through a doorway and the skin fell back into place.
Upton hesitated for a moment before following Ella Bazaar. The stall owner looked at him menacingly, so Upton took a deep breath, thought of one of Solomon Magna’s credos – “Risk, that’s the key” – and gingerly lifted the rancid giraffe skin. He let the hole consume him.
Please register or log in to comment