It wasn’t often that Janet’s personnel saw her get mad. The very first time it happened was almost a year ago, when Dee the zoo cage cleaner had decided to leave the project. “It’s too much for me,” she told Janet. They could hear Dee was on the verge of tears. “I just can’t do it to him.” That was before she had made up the excuse about going off to swim with whales.

Janet hadn’t screamed at the time or shown any visible anger. That probably would have made it easier for the people at the office to deal with. No, she had simply kept silent for an entire week instead, and being around her became almost unbearable. Even Ethel Goodleigh found it difficult to tolerate, but she knew it was because there was so much at stake. The loss of Dee had put them back to square one.

The news they received tonight, of the chimpanzee’s unplanned escape and of Upton being tied up and left alone, did not have the same affect on Janet as Dee’s resignation, but they could sense her anger and it scared them. They knew how important it was to her that Upton didn’t get hurt.

“Where is he now?” she demanded, her voice controlled, although she might as well have been shouting. It was a while before someone dared to answer her.

“In the coconut trees, ma’am.”

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* * *
A Pair of Brikas

Upton was perspiring so much that it didn’t take him long to slip his hands out of the ropes and then undo his blindfold. Ella Bazaar’s last words to him still rang in his ears. “Save the chimp!” Except now not only did the Pan troglodytes called Maurice need to be saved, but so did its owner.

It took Upton an hour to find his way back to the road, and another two until he reached a small town. The town looked deserted, but he was nevertheless happy to find a town in what seemed to be The Middle of Nowhere. He went to a small building that had a police sign outside, and found a lone sergeant having a mid-afternoon snooze in a corner.

“Pardon! Pardon!” Upton called out excitedly. “My friend has been kidnapped by Tuaregs! It happened not far from here!”

The man didn’t move. Then, without lifting his head, he spoke. Upton could hear he was irritated.

“There is no such thing as a Tuareg here, monsieur. We don’t have enough sand.”

“But I saw them,” Upton replied. “They were there in blue and white, with sabers. And one smelt of beer. And they knocked me over the head with …”

Upton almost choked on his words. The policeman had raised his head far enough for Upton to see that he was wearing sunglasses. And they weren’t just any sunglasses but a pair of angular, Swiss-made Brikas. Bigelow’s words of warning immediately flashed through Upton’s head: “Fthere’s a brand twatch out fer, itsa Brika models. Same kine worn by whirlclass cycliss.”

Upton could almost remember Bigelow’s speech word for word, because he’d made it in a moment of uncharacteristic lucidity.

“Marcel Tuttis, thassa worst,” he’d said. “Edie Amin bought forty pairs whennay firs came out, and Emprah Bokasa was said tav shares inna company. Sept you hardly findem kneemore. But Brikas – I’d think twice bout takin em on, wot.”

Upton’s mind went blank, and whatever he was about to say stuck in his maw. He might as well be trying to get a favor out of The Office of Imports just before closing on a Friday afternoon. And if he’d never been able to win an argument at The Office with a corrupt official in Ray-Bans, he knew he didn’t stand a chance against a pair of Brikas. Nor did he have the time. When he spoke, all that came out was a dry rasp.

“Of c-course. Exactly. N-no Tuaregs.”

Upton started reversing out of the room before the policeman had a chance to summon him back. Not that he knew where he was going to turn next, or whose help he could ask for, but he had to get out of there fast.

Once Upton was gone, the policeman lowered his Brikas and looked after the retreating figure. His eyes, when you saw them, weren’t mean at all. If they showed anything, then it was concern. He pulled out a cell phone and dialed London.
* * *
The Toucan Deal: The Entourage

Felix Magna told his bodyguards that he didn’t want to be disturbed, so they sat in the room downstairs playing cards. They were still annoyed at their boss for not letting them blow up Senor Alvarez’s limousine outside the Scarlet Macaw restaurant. However, Felix Magna had felt safer using people who were familiar with the layout of downtown Tegucigalpa.

“My men have their limitations,” he’d once confided in Jocelyn during one of her visits. She had just complimented her brother on how talented his bodyguards were, although she wasn’t referring to the things they did with their clothes on.

Given his own men’s limitations and their unfamiliarity with the layout of the Honduran capital, Felix had decided to use the three men with big chests. He had gotten their details from Antonio, an acquaintance in Mexico City. Antonio was giving Felix the name of a supplier of Panamanian Gold in Tegucigalpa, when he mentioned in passing that he knew three ex-bouncers in the city who had a variety of talents – nudge, nudge – if he should ever need them.

So, in the end, Felix Magna took both Antonio’s suggestions.

“Here’s to you, Antonio,” he said, raising a joint he’d just rolled, his voice echoing into the room.

Antonio wasn’t really Antonio’s name, but it was what Felix Magna called him. Like the rest of the entourage that followed the scion of Magna Exchange through the nightclubs of Mexico City, Antonio was beautiful and had no identity, at least not one that Felix Magna knew of. And that’s the way he liked to keep it. He had no time for them, and they simply remained his hangers-on. He gave them names of his own choosing. If they reminded him of actors – and most of them did, in a bland kind of way – then he’d refer to them as such. They became Marisa. Or Juliette. Or Kevin.

Antonio, who called to mind a Spanish movie star, was the only one of the entourage who Felix Magna had ever engaged in anything more than a brief conversation. In the weeks after their first meeting, however, something started coming over Felix Magna, and it became more and more obvious to him why he had initially approached Antonio and why he kept going back to him. Felix Magna was in love.

At first Felix Magna thought it was nothing more than the kind of boyhood crush he’d felt for the leader of his gang at boarding school, a thug named Bigs Bigelow. But then he started having dreams about Antonio and waking up in the middle of the night with his shorts damp. The idea that he might love another man scared Felix Magna, because he knew that if his father ever found out, he’d be disinherited as quickly as the old fart could shout ‘Tally-ho!’ To block out his fantasies, Felix Magna smoked more and more marijuana.

“If you’re ever in Tegucigalpa,” Antonio had told Felix that night in Mexico City, “I’ve got some names for you.”

So, for the first time in his life, Felix Magna let lust play a role in his decision-making. Not that he was displeased with the results. The men with big chests had blown up the Mercedes-Benz, Senor Alvarez was virtually eating out of his hand, and he’d already gotten a supply of Panamanian Gold to try out.

Within seconds of taking a drag from the joint, it began to have the desired effect. Felix Magna began smiling, then tittering, and then laughing loud enough for his bodyguards downstairs to hear him. The noise disturbed them so much that they stopped playing cards. It was the same laugh that was said to have made Solomon Magna’s first wife go crazy. The poor woman couldn’t believe she had given birth to such a monstrous-sounding creature.
* * *
The Girl in the Zebra-Print Sarong

“Eh! Cherie!” the young woman called out.

She had nice legs, her knock knees trapped inside a cloth wrap imprinted with a zebra pattern. They were legs just like Pretty Thing’s, a sight that had briefly stirred Upton once upon a time. Before he had reached her mouth, that is. Before Gracie the Nigerian. Before Ella Bazaar. Before La Cité. Before the Bikini Tuaregs. But now he felt nothing.

“Ou tu vas, blanc?” she asked.

“I’m looking for a monkey,” he said, more out of exasperation than because he expected any help from her. In his search for the Pan troglodytes named Maurice, he’d found nothing. He had wandered the back streets of the small town, hoping the policeman in the Brikas hadn’t followed him, wondering at the same time where Ella Bazaar might be. What would the kidnappers do to her? She might be the orphaned child of a circus ringmaster, and she might know how to buy animals at auction to smuggle into Europe, but was she tough enough to endure the Saharan sect? Her very own postcard had said, ‘Beware the Bikini Tuaregs.’

Upton had passed a droguerie, a patisserie, and a café. So far he’d seen dogs, rodents, and a handful of goats, but no monkeys. He felt like Hercules, who’d gone searching in vain for animals to stock Sylvie’s park. But Hercules had been given two weeks, while Upton only had a few hours.

He was standing in the middle of an empty road contemplating where to go next when the girl in the wrap appeared out of nowhere. When Upton told her a second time what he was looking for, she hissed at him like something inhuman. In his anxiety, he was saying sang not singe. He had been asking not for a ‘monkey’ but for ‘blood.’ He quickly corrected himself.

“Ah,” she said encouragingly, “Viens ici, blanc!”

He couldn’t believe it. Was it possible that she had Maurice? Could she have actually found the priceless chimp? Ahead of him the zebra-print-wrapped hips swayed and the knees slapped one another as she walked briskly through the village. She led Upton to a house and then into countless small inner courtyards that made up a kind of maze. In the center courtyard sat a small group of people.

“Tantes, oncles, cherie,” she explained curtly, then left him so that she could consult with two men sitting on an array of mats.

As Upton waited, he noticed something that made his heart sink. The mats they were sitting on were the same kind he had once bought in The Capital – the single item Magna Exchange had accepted from him. But Operation Carpet, as it came to be known, had turned out almost as badly as The Perfume Affair. The container they were being transported in somehow got damp, and the whole consignment of a thousand mats was spoiled by the time the ship docked in Rotterdam. The only pleasant memory Upton had of the ordeal was his ditty: For a third-world reprisal/There’s nothing better than sisal.

One of the seated men was very fat and wore lots of rings. He rose with difficulty and wiggled a bejeweled finger at Upton, who followed him and the girl into another courtyard, where they stopped in front of a pile of garbage. It was only after a while that Upton noticed that behind the heap, tied to a piece of string barely long enough to qualify as a dog leash, there was a creature. Perhaps it was a monkey, but he couldn’t tell because it was busy studying its genitals.

The fat man clapped his hands, whereupon the animal jumped around and looked at the newcomers like a wrestler would an opponent in a ring. On full view, it was even more pitiful than Upton had imagined. A primate of sorts, yes, but it was mangy and had a big welt on its left buttock.

“Attention!” the fat man cried. Then, with the confidence of a magician about to perform some incredible trick, he reached for his pocket. On seeing that gesture, the monkey stood on its head and did a slightly wobbly somersault before falling not onto its feet but its stomach. A belly flop on land instead of on water. As a reward, the fat man threw a few peanuts into the air, which the monkey practically strangled itself trying to reach.

As far as Upton could remember, Maurice didn’t resemble this animal at all. Admittedly, he’d only seen the pan troglodytesin a cage and then, albeit briefly, as it scampered wildly down a dirt road, but he was sure it had looked completely different. Different color, different head, different-shaped buttocks. Would Ella Bazaar be able to tell the difference? What if he was able to dye its hair? Upton was sure he had seen the vendors on Boulevard Kwame Nkrumah in the village selling hair colorant or shoe polish. That would be perfect.

“I’ll take the monkey,” he said.
* * *
The Iguana Deal: The Hurricane

“It won’t be much longer,” the pilot assured the passenger.

Jocelyn Magna wiped the window with her cocktail napkin and looked outside. The small airport building she saw in the distance could have been anywhere in the Pacific or Indian oceans, if only because there were palm trees and sand all around.

“I have to get back to Manila pronto, dammit. It’s a matter of life and death. Get this damn thing in the air or I’ll have your license.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Magna,” the pilot said. “Not until the weather clears.”

Jocelyn peered out the window again.

“I can’t see any hurricane,” she began, then stopped when the stewardess came up behind her and held a bottle over her head threateningly.

“More champagne?”
* * *
Upton Walks a Monkey

Upton was scared of the animal at first. He’d never had a pet since the Chairman had gotten rid of Pépé the Labrador. After taking the leash from the monkey’s owner, he held it gingerly for a while, as if he was convinced the animal might bite him. But once he’d walked it through the town looking for shoe polish or some Revlon, he started getting used to it. The monkey seemed to be as tame as a dog.

“You’re all right,” Upton concluded.

The town had by this stage come alive with vendors and people loaded down with bags, all heading off in the same direction with a sense of urgency. At one point Upton heard a high-pitched cry, and he thought one of them might have stepped on the monkey. He stopped, turned around and looked at the creature, but then he heard the noise again. Then he realized it wasn’t the plaintive cry of an animal he’d heard, but the whistle of a train.
* * *
The Disappearing Magnas

“Where are those two?” Solomon Magna put it to Goodleigh, even though his assistant, as usual, wasn’t meant to answer him. “Off competing with each other again, I’m sure. What was it they came up with the last time?”

Now Goodleigh was meant to answer.

“A chemical waste disposal company and an asbestos factory,” he said, his voice emotionless.

For a moment Solomon Magna reflected in the glow of those two acquisitions. He sighed contentedly. At least he could say that two of his children did him proud.

“Yes, that was it. Why can’t Upton be more like them? They remind me of my father and my uncle, always trying to outdo one another.”

Goodleigh nodded, but he knew it wasn’t true. Solomon Magna’s father had been a poor filing clerk as well as an only child. The Chairman of Magna Exchange didn’t have an uncle, and the one he did speak of was as fake as the portrait of Mortimer on his office wall.
* * *
The Fantastic Story of the Jungle Woman

There was so much commotion going on around the train, so much wind and sand blowing from an approaching storm, that none of the passengers noticed Upton had a monkey on a leash. Besides, the other travelers had animals of their own, live chickens tied up by their legs in bunches, and skinned goat carcasses they were dragging down the corridors. The trails of blood made Upton queasy.

If the passengers were distracted by anything, it wasn’t an animal but a person. Upton saw them whispering to each other excitedly about one of their fellow travelers. He couldn’t see who it was, because the person in question was being guarded by half a dozen men who stood around him and created a human shield. The men all wore wraparound sunglasses with reflective lenses, a style that would have been more suitable on a Swiss ski slope in daytime than on an African train at dusk. The eyewear put Upton on edge.

“I wouldn’t look at them for too long,” someone near Upton said.

A man in his fifties, wearing a pair of bifocals and a colorful morning robe thrown over his right shoulder, removed the books piled on the seat next to him so that Upton could sit down. The monkey lay obediently at Upton’s feet and stayed there even when the men in ski glasses started shouting at curious passengers that got too close to whoever it was they were protecting.

“As I said,” the teacher repeated to Upton, “I wouldn’t stare if I were you. He apparently doesn’t like it.”

“Who is ‘he’?” Upton asked curiously.

“There are rumors. A politician. A guerrilla leader. A holy man.” He neatened the pleats in his robe while he talked. “Every person you ask tells you something else. It’s hard to know.”

“Have you seen him?”

“They say it’s safer not to.”

“Why?”

“I have heard that anyone who looks at him the wrong way – and there seems to be no right way – pays the price.”

Upton raised his eyebrows.

“As for people who dare to cross him …” The man swallowed. “Well, you can imagine.”

The train shook and rattled, then it began to move. The faster they went, the more noise and clanking that came from under their carriage. The monkey, curled into a ball, was nuzzling Upton’s feet.

“One story about him has become quite famous,” the teacher said conspiratorially.

The metallic scraping noises below his seat bothered Upton, so he tried to ignore them by paying attention to the teacher.

“And what was that?”

The teacher looked up every now and then to check the guards.

“It seems that he was in the north of the country – trading, fighting, who knows what? – when a commercial plane crashed in his territory. Only one person was on the plane and, miraculously, survived. A woman, apparently.”

“Good heavens.”

“Nobody knows what was being transported. But there are strong indications what it was.”

Upton was sure he knew.

“Guns, right? It must have been guns.”

The teacher shook his head.

“Wild creatures.”

Upton suddenly wasn’t paying attention to the unhealthy noises the train was making.

“Animals?” he asked.

“Yes indeed,” the stranger answered. “Even though most indigenous animals in the area had been slaughtered long ago by guerrillas, there were lots of them around the crash site.”

“So they had been on the plane?” Upton suggested.

“Quite possibly.”

Upton suddenly thought of something. Animals on a plane plus a lone woman flying that plane? Could the pilot have been Ella Bazaar?

“And the woman?” Upton asked. “What happened to her?”

“She was taken hostage,” the teacher said, nodding slightly in the direction of the guarded passenger. “Apparently, he took such a liking to her that he tried to make her his mistress.”

Upton’s mouth dropped open.

“What did he do to her?”

The teacher shrugged.

“No one knows but the two of them.”

“And then?”

“It seems that one of the junior men was also smitten by her, and he was convinced that if he helped her, she would be his. So one night he led her away, planning to hide her somewhere.”

Upton kept thinking of Ella Bazaar. Could it really have been her?

“A day later, however, the soldier limped back into camp, a beaten man. His leader was so enraged by her escape that he made her capture a priority. Seeing they were in such impenetrable forest, and it was all controlled by his men, he was sure it wouldn’t take long to get her back.”

“Did they find.…” Upton started to say Ella Bazaar’s name, but stopped. “Did they find the woman?”

“She got away. No one knows how. Some say it was the birds that led her, or the beasts migrating, that they showed her the way. But I think it is impossible.”

“Maybe a lion could have eaten her,” Upton suggested, half hoping that the woman hadn’t been Ella Bazaar.

The teacher shifted in his seat.

“That remains a possibility. But a month later, something very strange happened.”

Upton was still trying to take in the story he’d just heard.

“A plane flew directly over the same guerrilla camp. It came very low, dangerously low considering there were men below shooting at it. But this pilot knew exactly where to go. At the last possible moment, a huge load was dropped onto the camp.”

“How do you know it was her?” Upton asked. “The woman he’d kept hostage, I mean.”

“The cargo had her mark on it.”

“What was it?”

“Two tons of elephant dung.”
* * *
Good Advice from a Bad Man

“Imagination, that’s the key,” Solomon Magna used to exhort Upton after the tragic death of his mother.

The young boy, without her wonderful stories to soothe him to sleep and without Pépé by his side, would lie awake at night. Solomon Magna, chewing on his cigar as he paced up and down the nursery, told him to think of something else besides his mother. Upton began to cry and said he couldn’t. “Use your imagination,” the Chairman said, then closed the door and left the child alone in the darkness.
* * *
A Very Intricate Plan

“Why can’t we tell him the whole story?” she asked. “Surely he would understand then.”

It was a question Ella Bazaar would ask Janet several times over the course of many months of preparation. Janet would never respond immediately, but when she did she was always firm about what they had to do. She knew that Ella Bazaar would be alone in Africa with Upton, and she couldn’t risk the young woman having any doubts about her mission. Everything could fall apart so easily if she didn’t follow the plan.

“If Solomon Magna even gets the slightest wind of this,” Janet explained, “we won’t stand a chance. He’ll move fast. And he won’t go through with the transfer.”

Ella Bazaar shook her head. “You think Upton would tell him – after all his father’s done to him?”

Janet wasn’t sure what Upton would do.

“He doesn’t know how bad his father is,” she answered. “Besides, there’s too much at stake now. And there’s not that much time either. We have to carry on as planned. For all of us. For the animals. For Upton.” Janet paused. “He’ll understand,” she added, although she wondered whether he really would.
* * *
The Murderous Berry Fineman

The more Upton thought about it, the more convinced he was that it had been Ella Bazaar who’d bombed the guerrillas with dung. It all added up. The animals. The cargo plane flying north. She was capable of doing something like that. Hadn’t the trio in the Grand Marché told him that she was the best in the business? If anyone would have been able to escape from such a terrible prison in the jungle, it was Ella Bazaar. Despite himself, Upton couldn’t help feeling proud of her.

“Then again,” the teacher said, looking through the train window even though it was pitch black outside, “it could all just be a story, a complete fabrication.”

Upton unthinkingly scratched the head of the monkey at his feet, his earlier trepidation already forgotten.

“She must be the one he’s after then,” Upton said, looking toward the mystery man who was being protected by his ski-glassed henchmen.

The teacher nodded gravely.

Upton suddenly feared for Ella Bazaar. She had not only the Bikini Tuaregs to deal with, but the mystery man too.

“Does he have a name?” Upton asked.

“Roberto Bonhomme,” the teacher whispered, so low that even Upton could hardly hear him. “But people call him something else.”

Upton waited for him to tell him what it was.

“Berry Fineman.”

(Next: Construction of the canal across Palm Deux begins, although Hercule cannot figure out what it is for; Hercule and Sylvie start meeting; a huge boat is brought up to the plantation from the coast; lots of engineering and seafaring terms are used by Hercule; a rare animal dies in an explosion caused by the oaf Valery; something starts brewing between Hercule and Sylvie.)

Palm Deux
20 May 1940

5 (415 lbs.)

She places bowls at the fence of her park, often just scraps from their meals at the villa. It’s hardly enough to draw the animals out of hiding – if that is her intention. She tries anything she can find, from manioc and roots to leaves and overripe melons. Every morsel is guzzled up, although by whom or what still remains a mystery to me. Not a single animal has shown itself yet.

All this I can see from my quarters. Sometimes I use binoculars, because I don’t want her to notice that I too am curious about the animals’ whereabouts. They must venture out when no one is watching or when darkness falls. It helps them that there is hardly ever a moon at night.

I can see that the absence of creatures worries her. The look on her face as she stares through the fence, it is almost one of anguish. Is this how an animal lover feels when the animals stay away? I can only guess the answer.

My curiosity has got the better of me at least once so far. One afternoon, when everyone had turned in for a doze after lunch, I sneaked into the park. I didn’t wander very far, but far enough to have come across something: broken branches, leaves pulled off trees, traces of dung. But I found nothing. The place is so quiet, you can’t imagine anything at all living there. But somewhere inside that fence, they have found a place to hide and food to eat.
––––––––––––

Oh yes, before I end off I should mention something about the low figures over the last few weeks. I admit that I haven’t been at my best. But at least that means there are fewer carcasses to hide. Even Mohammed has been outshooting me; it is the first time he ever has.

When I took him some extra ammunition the other day, I found him with that young girl who started the fight outside the Noix. At least I think it was her. As I said, I have trouble with their faces. All I know is that she is younger than I thought, very young.
* * *

24 May
3 (225 lbs.)

There is a rumor going around here about a man from Dakar, in Senegal, where there is a bigger military presence. With the war coming so close to us, there are always rumors. But I think this person is real. If so, he could well offer me the escape I’ve been waiting for. He might be able to get me out of here.

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* * *

22 June

14 (851 lbs).

News reached us by drum long before it came through on Monsieur V-C’s radio. Yaaba interrupted her usual silence for long enough to tell us what the drum beats meant. The message was convoluted, coming from an African language I didn’t understand, but in the end we found out what we needed to know: that an armistice has been declared.

Now everything from Algiers to La Cité, an area five times the size of France, lies in the hands of Hitler. Some people here are worried, although I can’t think why. We are untouchable. It does not take an engineer to work out that this is the last place on earth the Germans would fight for.

One only has to consider the odds facing them. They would have to cross a desert to Timbuktu and Bamako, face the guerrilla tactics of the Tuaregs, and then the bugs and diseases of a dense jungle. It would be easier to come by sea. But if they did that, they would have to anchor off La Cité and endure the treacherous currents. Thanks to the failure of Vridi, there is no harbor. By not finishing the canal, it seems, I have thwarted the enemy. Anyway, from what we hear, the German interest lies elsewhere in Africa, in more accessible places like Djibouti and Somaliland. Understandably so, too. Those countries lie closer to a more strategic canal, Suez, and the Red Sea.

Meanwhile, my friend Michel has left Kong and fled to the Gold Coast, from where he sent me a brief message. Ever since then, I have been thinking of following him east into British territory, but I will not act immediately. I keep thinking about the rumors of the man recruiting from Dakar. Rather than become a conscript for the British, I could be doing something useful – as a spy, or a sharpshooter even. So I will wait. How many times haven’t I seen that waiting pays off? With the elephants it always does.

My visit to the villa, to hear the latest war news, was my first since she held her splendid dinner. We drank coffee and then talked briefly of what the consequences of armistice might be. Monsieur V-C was full of bravado, speaking of how the people at home would not take defeat at all lightly, that they would resist. He thinks everyone is a hero of the Somme like himself. I have my doubts. There are plenty of people like Valery who would support the Germans at the first opportunity they got.

In a corner of the room where we sat, I saw a series of sketches of animals. They must be hers. So desperate is the animal lover to see some wildlife – nothing has appeared from behind the fence of her park yet – that she creates them on paper. She must copy them from books and pictures, the same way she did in the tapestry of the lion, for most of the sketches were of species one would never see in this part of the world. Poor woman, she has still learned nothing about Africa.

She left the room as soon as we began talking about the war. I suspect she doesn’t like being reminded of France, and how she left in such a hurry, and how her abilities as a nurse could have been used more effectively there. Instead, she chose a lucrative marriage in Africa. No wonder she did not want to hear of people dying.

As she always does, she went outside and sat on the porch with her chimp, Maurice.
* * *

26 June

On my way back to my quarters late this afternoon, I saw her in the midst of a large crowd of native women at the villa’s kitchen entrance. The place has become like a small railway station. The women come to work on a vegetable garden that she has started. Together they were leading the vines up poles and placing nets over bushes to keep off the black flies and tsetses.

Sometimes the women arrive with small, unidentifiable bundles they give to her. I don’t know what they contain, but I suspect they are some kind of payment for her palm readings. I have seen how the women join her occasionally as she sits under her umbrella. La blanche. She holds their hands and then talks, as if she were conspiring with them. You cannot miss her between the women, for she wears a pink scarf tied around her straw hat.
* * *

Belleville
30 June

7 (615 lbs.)

If he has a name, I did not find out what it is. I hardly had any time to drive here either. Monsieur Singh, who was heading south after doing our accounts, mentioned that he’d overheard a stranger at the Noix saying inflammatory things about the Germans.

“He should watch out,” Monsieur Singh said. “Anyone could be listening.”

Suspecting that the stranger was the man from Dakar – or the spy, as I like to think of him – I came to Belleville at once but must have missed him. It is difficult to find out any details either, for you cannot approach just any planteur and presume he will be on your side or pro-German.

While I was waiting, I overheard two men talking about someone they’d never seen before “who is on the lookout for hunters with a particularly good eye.” They were so drunk, they thought he wanted to employ someone to shoot elephants, not Germans. I will wait until I learn more.
* * *

Palm Deux
14 July

15 (917 lbs.)

Bastille Day. It was after work already and I was on my way down to the river when Mohammed caught up with me. He told me about an elephant causing havoc on the eastern edge of Zone B, knocking over trees in a ferocious display of what must have been either anxiety or aggression. Who ever knows why they do these things?

We had finished for the day, but Mohammed thought I would want to know about this one because of his unusually large tusks. As we drove off, we almost collided with several women leaving Madame V-C’s vegetable garden near the villa. I never saw her, but I didn’t think anything of her absence at the time.

When we reached the elephant in question, he had already broken a dozen trees, all of them good tappers. I took him below the left eye, and he fell where he stood. We inspected him, as we always do, then I cut out my tooth. Normally I would have left the tusks for later, but seeing it is weekend tomorrow, when Mohammed brings in the immigrants from the shantytown to clean up the carcasses, I decided we should conceal the ivory without delay.

To get to the hiding place from where we were, it was easiest to drive not along Route Douze but into Zone C and then north. Zone C is still unused and bare, and its vast flatness makes it perfect for driving on.

We had barely left the trees and turned north into the clearing, however, when the vehicle got stuck. In the silence after I’d cut the engine, I heard something quite unusual, a sound I hadn’t heard since my trip several months ago to purchase animals in Belleville. It was the caracal! At last I have confirmation that at least one of the animals I bought is still alive and in the park.

I waited for the growl to come again, but I heard nothing. Then I saw a movement between the trees in the park – the caracal? – then a flash of color. I am sure it was a bright scarlet or even pink. It could have been a parrot, but I instantly thought of her.

My curiosity was immediately offset by the most severe anxiety. Standing in Zone C, we were in full view of anyone in the trees. At once I instructed Mohammed to throw something over the back of the vehicle, to hide the ivory. If she was there, we couldn’t risk her seeing what we’d been up to. So far we have managed to keep the killing of elephants and the ivory a secret. I didn’t want to be found out, and, for that matter, in such a foolish way.

I kept looking toward the trees but saw and heard nothing more. I’m sure I was just imagining it. She could never have reached that far in the park without being mauled or killed. Besides the caracal, the elephant she named after me is in there. No, she never could have survived inside on her own.

Mohammed and I quickly got the vehicle out of the hole, then drove off and hid the tusks before nightfall.

As I sit here now and reflect on what happened today – Bastille Day should be memorable for better things than hiding ivory and running away from some imaginary person – I cannot help feel annoyed. It is because of her that I have to cover my tracks and even feel guilty about what I do. Why should I have to act as if shooting is not natural?
* * *

4 August

28 (1517 lbs.)

On the wide porch of the villa, Yaaba and her women had arranged the tables in a long row. At first I found it curious that we were on the side of the villa that hasn’t got the best view, of the Plantain River, but one of the lawn and, beyond it, the trees inside her park. All the chairs, meanwhile, were on the inner side of the tables, facing outward. I should have suspected something then already.

Guests arrived from early on, all the planteurs jovial and in the mood for a party. Even before I left my quarters, I could hear their children screaming with delight at the antics of Maurice swinging from the roof beams of the porch to the trees and back again.

The whole of Belleville must have been there, the chef de canton and his wife, she looking more bored than the previous time I’d seen her, the Maurys, who live near the shantytown and constantly complain about the noise the natives make when they celebrate late at night, the trader Olivier, who asked me if I had used my .605 yet, Valery and his wife with their five children, the strange doctor, his gray hair still not having seen a brush, and many others whose faces I know from the Noix.

The pleasant mood of the day was briefly interrupted when one of the native women took a seat at the table. She was well dressed, too smart to be one of Yaaba’s helpers, although I thought nothing of her expensive outfit until the incident. Her misfortune was to have taken a place next to Valery, who caused more of a fuss than you’d expect from someone who, as everyone at the Noix knows, has had a mousso almost from the day he arrived in Africa.

Madame V-C quickly intervened and placed the woman next to me. I didn’t mind, for the pasty wife of the chef de canton was about to take that very seat. The native was introduced to me as Eve. Speaking flawless French, she explained that she had been living in Paris until very recently but had fled when the city came under siege, and she had left most of her possessions behind. Who could blame her? It was Africa or the Nazis.

Until her departure she had spent all her time in Paris caring for orphan girls from French Africa. Many of them, she explained, arrived in France with nothing and with nowhere to stay. Some even stowed away on boats in order to get there. It was up to Eve to find them and guard them. Sometimes they were so sick when they arrived that she had to operate on them. I asked what kind of operations she carried out, but she did not elaborate. I wonder if she is the doctor our hostess met in Clignancourt and whether that is how they first came to know one another.

By the time the meal was over, you could see people wanted to get on their feet and move about. Their necks were strained from talking sideways to their neighbors. The children were kicking each other under the tables irritably.

Finally Madame V-C stood and said there would be a small performance. Even then my suspicions weren’t aroused. The children took this as a cue to escape their chairs and run onto the lawn. As our hostess followed them, Yaaba suddenly appeared from the side of the villa with something under her arm. Her limbs are so big that at first I couldn’t make out what it was that she was concealing. But then I saw it was an animal, young and squirming dreadfully, a gazelle of some sort. On spying it, one of Valery’s children screamed in delight. Another helper followed Yaaba, also bearing a creature. Then another, and another behind her, each with something small and young. They were all women I had seen before, working at the Coconut Shed or in the vegetable garden, having their palms read under the umbrella. The woman whose hand Sylvie had fixed that day in the village was there too and had covered her animal’s head to prevent it from biting her.

I didn’t know what to think. Could these have been the contents of the bundles that were brought to the kitchen door? Were these the gifts that were exchanged for palm readings? And if so, where had she been keeping them? I have been so busy shooting and covering my tracks afterward that I have not seen what she’s been up to. Then again, we hardly ever talk.

Most of the guests were curious by now and had wandered down from the porch. The gray-haired doctor and Eve stayed behind. So did Monsieur V-C, talking to the chef de canton, leaning close to him, probably going on about the war. When several children tried to touch the animals, their mothers pulled them back. I couldn’t help wonder what it was they disliked more, the animals or their beautiful young owner.

Madame V-C herself moved toward the park gate and opened it, after which Yaaba and the other natives followed her inside. The children wrestled free of their mothers, rushed to the fence and clung to it, peering through.

I only stayed long enough to see the natives place their live bundles on the ground before I left the table and dashed to my quarters to fetch a rifle. Women were inside the park, and so were the caracal and the elephant that is named after me, Perpignon. I immediately knew something bad was going to happen.

As I was coming back, loading shells as I ran, I heard a woman scream. It could have been a scream of delight, but it made me run faster. I didn’t trust the situation. By the time I reached the lawn, the guests were gathered in a row at the fence, blocking any shot I might need to take. There was a burst of laughter again. Once I was closer, I saw they were all watching Maurice play with the young gazelle, which kept stumbling and going in circles, first one way and then the other, only to find the chimpanzee coming around its other side.

The rest of the animals were gone, disappeared as if by magic. They had probably run for cover the first chance they got. The gazelle did not want to go, and it huddled near Yaaba. She and her mistress were the only women left inside the park.

At last the maid picked up the antelope and, entering the trees, was lost from sight for a moment. She returned empty-handed. Everything after that happened so fast, I hardly had time to think. There was a rustle in the undergrowth, which I mistook for the animals that had recently fled. I should have recognized the noise right away, because it is one I know better than most people. Yaaba immediately took Maurice’s hand and left the park, closing the gate behind her.

By the time I realized the sound came from an elephant, I was already running around the edge of the crowd, taking up a position to shoot. No one had seen me there with a gun – so preoccupied were they with watching what their hostess was up to – and I was not about to declare myself. There was no point in scaring them. That would only antagonize the elephant more.

And her? What was she up to? I felt like shouting at her to get out. How could she be so foolish? Picking up a baby chimp with her bare hands that very first day was nothing compared to the danger she faced now. What does she know about an elephant’s behavior after hanging around outside the fence, staring through it, leaving the animals scraps of food?

She obviously knew there was something out there, because she soon motioned the people to hush. They fell silent at once. It was so still, you could hear the palm vultures cry as far away as the Coconut Shed. Then, as only a forest elephant can, he appeared without breaking a twig. One of the women dropped her glass, she was so surprised. The other guests froze. Even though they live with the daily threat of elephants invading their own plantations or roaming onto the streets of Belleville, knowing that they are out there is very different from seeing one up close.

No one seemed to consider the terrible danger their hostess was in, so enthralled were they by a wild elephant being confronted by a human, a woman at that, and one without a gun. What could they have been thinking? That this was some kind of circus routine which she and the elephant had practiced for them?

I glanced briefly at the porch. Why had Monsieur V-C not put a stop to all of this? Did he not fear for his wife? But I couldn’t see him and, with all the people standing in the way, he probably couldn’t see what was happening either.

The elephant was only a hundred paces away from me now, she in between us. Her back was turned toward me, so she could see neither my gun nor me aiming at him. For the moment, the elephant seemed calm, unbelligerent. He stuck close to the vegetation, scratching his rump against a tree every now and then.

Though young and less than six feet high, he was huge compared to her. The cotton dress she wore made her appear even more fragile, although she stood as erect and rigid as a statue. Under the circumstances, she was following the best course of action – no action at all.

I kept my eye trained more on him than on her. When he stopped scratching himself, he turned toward her and the crowd. His gait remained casual, unthreatening, but I knew to get ready. My finger was on the trigger, a hair’s breadth away from pulling it. I was about to shoot when she, having moved not an inch until then, shifted right into my line of fire. It was as if she knew I was there.

I jumped to the right, my heart racing, my mind filled with the terrible thought that Hercule, the hunter who has managed to kill hundreds of elephants when they invaded the rubber groves, the man with innumerable teeth to prove his success, would not be able to kill the single one that mattered, the one that threatened a human being.

By the time I was kneeling in my new position, the elephant had stopped moving and, quite inexplicably, turned his back on her. Then she started approaching him. I was baffled. Was she mad? Was she trying to be killed? What were the two of them up to? The way the elephant was standing, I couldn’t get a good view of his head or his heart. I just kept hoping that I would be able to shoot him before he got her. When he finally moved again, he was so close to her that he could have crushed her. I brought the gun closer to my eye, but she was still blocking his vital organs.

They faced each other – the animal and the animal lover – and seemed to stand there forever until one of the children screamed in delight, which set off a chain of similar cries, and for the first time the audience seemed to understand the incredible danger she was putting herself in. The children were beside themselves with excitement, jumping up and down. Through it all, though, neither the elephant nor Madame V-C moved. And I realized that I had lost any control over the situation I ever had.

The elephant, meanwhile, could not have shown better timing than if he were a performer in a circus ring. When the people began clapping, he tossed his head, rolled up his trunk and then trumpeted, before retreating into the trees from which he’d come. I looked after him, still baffled by what I’d seen. I was even more amazed than the people around me because I knew something they didn’t know: that it had taken twelve strong natives to capture him.

When we were on the porch again, me feeling both confused and stupid, Madame V-C came over to me. She was still flushed from her confrontation with the elephant, and she looked at that moment more beautiful than ever. It suddenly struck me that I have totally underestimated her. I know neither who she is nor what she is capable of.

“You were very lucky,” I told her.

She smiled but said nothing. If she knew that I had been there with my gun, wanting to shoot, she didn’t let on. I was about to excuse myself when Monsieur V-C rose from his chair. I am convinced that he had not left his place until then, not even when his wife’s very life was threatened. Maybe he has total faith in her when it comes to animals.

He began one of his long, dull speeches about Africa, how wonderful it was to be here, in Belleville, and so forth. We had heard it all before. But then – as if I hadn’t had enough surprises for the day – he started talking about me. He thanked me for all my work on Palm Deux. He didn’t mention what that work entailed and what I’d done to get rid of all the elephants, but I knew that’s what he meant. At first it sounded like he was saying good-bye. Did that mean I was free to go? Leave Palm Deux? Go to war? And fight with whom, the British or the Resistance? At that moment, I felt elated at the thought of leaving, and yet I also felt utterly lost.

You can imagine my shock when he said nothing of the sort. I am not free to go anywhere. On the contrary, he wants more than ever that I should stay. He has at last decided on a new project for me – an engineering project. He wants me to build a canal.

(Next: In which we learn a fraction more about Janet, an invalid who seems to be pulling a lot of strings; Upton searches for the escaped chimp named Maurice and meets a policeman wearing sunglasses that scare the hell out of him; we find out about Felix Magna’s Moviestar Entourage, one of whom has an undesired, dreamy effect on the normally nasty Magna scion; Upton chances upon a monkey that might be Maurice (we know, of course, that nothing is left to chance in the tale of Upton); wicked Jocelyn Magna weathers a hurricane; Solomon Magna tries to figure out why he hasn’t heard from his two favourite children, especially on the eve of their massive corporate takeover; a nice man tells Upton a strange story of a woman in the jungle and the animals that saved her; we discover a connection between Janet and Ella Bazaar, and the connection is Upton; and we start to hear more about the fearsome Berry Fineman.)

Solomon Magna stroked the bristles on his head. It was a haircut his latest mistress, Eve Catskill, had suggested would make him look a lot younger. And it did. So young did he feel, in fact, that he was planning a second fox hunt for the month.

But he had other things on his mind right now. For one, the fax from Upton, which lay in front of him. As he read it once again, he could feel the bald patch between the bristles, which bothered him. He raised his voice.

“Goodleigh!”

His harassed-looking aide came running into his office, his hunchback trailing him.

“What do you think of this?” he said, waving Upton’s communiqué in the air. He always liked to reserve judgment until Goodleigh had spoken. Even if his assistant was always sickly, didn’t get laid enough, and took too many vitamins, he had a good head on his sloped shoulders. And if Solomon Magna had one strong point, it was that he surrounded himself with people like Goodleigh.

“Excellent idea, sir,” Goodleigh exclaimed.

Solomon Magna was skeptical.

“You really think so?” he asked. “Selling chimps and dogs to those cosmetics companies is one thing – for lipstick and perfume. But animals a la carte?”

The Chairman of Magna Exchange touched his head gingerly, as if he was scared of breaking something.

“I like it, sir. There’s something immediate and quick about it, which you yourself always like. And think of it, who’s going to demonstrate outside a restaurant? You’re totally safe.”

The Chairman smiled.

“Yes. Get in quick, get out quick and make a neat profit. But whatever you do, get in there.”

Goodleigh nodded.

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“So you want me to send off a reply to him, sir?”

Solomon Magna hesitated before answering.

“This won’t get in the way of the Tiger deal, will it? I don’t like that it’s happening at the same time. Shouldn’t we wait until after it’s all over?”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Goodleigh assured him hurriedly. “He’s not being used in the transaction anyway.”

The Chairman raised his eyebrows at Goodleigh. “Well, not directly, you mean.”

“Exactly. And looking for animals will keep him occupied while the Tiger deal goes through. Besides, we can’t have our people constantly tied up with all those queries he sends.”

Solomon Magna rubbed his scalp.

“You’re right. Him and those fucking ditties.”
* * *
An Auction at the Grand Marché

Upton was met by a riot of noises, and they immediately brought back memories of the times he’d gone to see Dee the zoo cage cleaner at feeding time. Except the cages that surrounded him now in the Grand Marché were different from the kind Dee had worked in. They were small and made of wire, wood, and rattan. And they contained, as far as he could see, creatures no sanctuary would ever keep: rodents, cats, and lots of dogs barking dementedly. The bigger animals, meanwhile, he’d never come across before, either in a zoo or on the safaris he’d taken after arriving in The Capital.

The hall itself was huge, like a old hangar crossed with an Arab souk. At the far end, between the cages and above the heads of everyone, stood a man in a neatly pressed suit, a choice of outfit most unusual for the humid West African climate, even more unusual for this fleapit. All of the people in front of the suited man were gesticulating madly, all of them, that is, except for a tall woman in jeans and a tight T-shirt with a whale on it. Ella Bazaar hardly moved amidst all the frenetic activity. She looked quite calm, in fact, almost comfortable.

As Upton edged closer he saw it was an auction that was taking place, and the man in the suit was standing on a large crate that contained something he couldn’t make out from where he stood. The way the bidding carried on, though, it was clearly a very desirable item. Bids flew like bullets, and even though Upton couldn’t understand what was being said, he recognized the last voice he heard. It was Ella Bazaar’s.

“Damn! She wins again,” someone behind Upton said. He sounded annoyed.

Upton turned to see two white men dressed in khaki. He couldn’t tell whether the speaker was pleased or not about Ella Bazaar’s success.

“She comes here often?” Upton asked them hesitantly, hoping to find out something about his companion..

“Oh, yes,” replied one of the men, leaning so close that Upton found himself stepping backward. “And there’s just no beating her.”

“Been doing it since she was a child,” the second man continued. He wore very thick glasses, so his eyes were magnified to the size of two big coins. He and the other man both had heavy accents that Upton couldn’t identify, but for some reason they reminded him of the two hunters Hercules had met in the Noix, the one with a Weltenham rifle, the other with thick glasses. These two made a habit of finishing each others’ sentences.

“Damn good at the job…,” the man in glasses said.

“Yes, damn her …,” his friend added.

“She learnt from her father ….”

“One of the greatest ringmasters in the world …”

“… killed on the job and …”

“She saw it all …”

“You know, the munching, the crunching …”

“Wasn’t it an elephant?”

“Or a bear?”

“But she was …”

“… toughened by it, they say, and it …”

“… gave her the education she needed to deal with …”

“… a very tough business and …”

“… one of the very toughest people in the business.”

They both paused and then, after looking at each other and then at Upton, said in unison, “You know who we’re talking about, of course. The very toughest person in the business?”

Upton shook his head. The one with the glasses, his eyes gone from the size of saucers to dinner plates, whispered a name.

“Berry Fineman.”

They fell silent, as if they had just said the name of someone who should be both feared, respected, knelt before. At that point a third man, also dressed in khaki, appeared from behind a nearby cage. He looked at the other two accusingly.

“Don’t you two think you have said enough already?” he barked.

They nodded sheepishly, tipped their khaki hats at Upton, and then walked, one behind the other, in the direction of the giraffe-skin exit.
* * *
Genus Pan troglodytes

“Well done,” Upton called out as he approached Ella Bazaar, trying to show as much admiration as he could muster under the circumstances. He certainly admired her business savvy – and maybe he could learn something from her – but he was still having trouble getting around the fact that she bought animals not to love them but to sauté them.

Ella Bazaar didn’t hear Upton because she was pushing her way through the men she’d recently outbid. She took a deep breath of the foul-smelling air.

“I love this place,” she said.

Upton sighed. At least she loved something, even if it wasn’t an animal.

“It’s certainly very … different,” he added.

She put two poles through the upper part of the cage and then moved to the front of it, placing her shoulders under the supports and steadying herself to lift it. She did this all so easily, Upton reflected, you’d think she attended chaotic auctions of animals every day of the week – or at least on those days that she wasn’t stealing them from people like Mister Sulahman.

When Ella Bazaar motioned Upton to lift the poles in the rear, he obeyed her, although not without difficulty. As they began moving through the crowd, people once again shifting aside quickly, Upton could feel something in his back crack.

“What is this?” he huffed, out of breath. “A small elephant?”

“Pan troglodytes,” she said. “A chimp. A rare West African strain. Hardly any left in the world. We will call him Maurice.”

Two thoughts came to Upton right then, immediately causing him to forget the pain in his back. The first thought was, of course, about the chimp in the diary, who was also called Maurice. The second thought was about the chimp in the Tarzan movies he’d seen as a child, an animal, as he recalled, with big doleful eyes, a whooping cry, and lots of dark fur.

“People eat that?” he asked, feeling sick at the very idea.

“Oh, yes,” she said, walking too fast for him. “It’s excellent with a raspberry sauce and a chilled chardonnay.”
* * *
The Iguana Deal: The Delay

Jocelyn Magna climbed the small stairway onto the charter plane in Bangkok, and after she’d settled into her seat she impatiently grabbed the glass of champagne from the stewardess.

Jocelyn was deep in thought about the Iguana Matchstick Company. What should her strategy be? Negotiations had reached such a crucial point. This delay because of her employees in Manila was the last thing she needed. Success now would all be a matter of time and her own brilliance.

“Can’t leave them for a week and they fuck up,” she muttered into the champagne bubbles. “What would they do without me?”

She was preparing herself for battle, for it was imperative that she take over Iguana. If there was a company just crying to be taken over, then this was it. Iguana looked insignificant enough, but when you started studying the books you saw how diverse it was. Pieces of land, forests, lakes, all used in the company’s own insignificant way, but not the way Jocelyn would use them. No, sirree.

Once Iguana was hers, she would start exploiting the mineral rights on a particularly large parcel of virgin territory in Indonesia that the company seemed to have overlooked. And then there was that tract of rare indigenous trees owned by a subsidiary, Hyrax Holdings. After the wood had been auctioned to the highest bidder, she would sell the property off in lots to coffee farmers who would strip-and-burn them. She could already picture the hazy sky created by the trails of smoke. And haze to Jocelyn was the ultimate sign of success, because she knew that everything underneath it belonged to, or had been exploited by, a Magna.

“I’ll get Iguana even if I have to sleep with the whole matchstick factory,” she told herself, a possibility that didn’t entirely displease her.

There was only one problem that stood in the way of her realizing her fantasy, and that was her brother Felix. Jocelyn still felt bitter about his last triumph, where he’d outdone her with a particularly Magnaficent deal in Mexico. He had sold a piece of beachside property south of Cancun to a German leisure company, which discovered only after buying it that a band of militants were claiming the very same beach, and that they were ready to fight to the death over it. By that time, however, Felix was nowhere to be found.

But Jocelyn was confident that Iguana was so close that Felix would never be able to come up with anything as good or as fast. Whatever her sibling had up his sleeve this time, she could beat him. She wasn’t Solomon Magna’s only daughter for nothing.

“Hey, you!” Jocelyn barked at the stewardess, whom she already hated for her long legs and tight ass. “I’ve never flown with you before, but I expect snappy service.”

The stewardess smiled but said nothing, which made Jocelyn uncomfortable.

“Which charter company is this anyway?”

When the stewardess answered, Jocelyn raised her eyebrows.

“Never heard of it, but I like it. Guerrilla Air,” then she laughed to herself. “Very mercenary.”

The stewardess didn’t bother to correct her. To most ears, it sounded the same as the correct name – Gorilla Air.
* * *
A Photograph from Long Ago

For once in his life, Upton was prepared for Solomon Magna’s reply.

‘My boy,’ the fax read, ‘I knew you could do it. I always knew you were a Magna deep down under all that shit of your mother’s. Live animals would be an asset to the company. We do skins already and ivory when we can get it, but live creatures for the pot is pure genius. The rarer, the better. Go to any lengths to find out more. Take all the time you need. Remember, Magnaficent, Magnafrican. Regards, etc.’

It wasn’t often that Solomon Magna praised Upton. In fact, Upton couldn’t remember ever having been praised by the Chairman. Now that he had been, he would’ve preferred it to be for the discovery of lacquer sandals or coconut lampshades and not for sending animals to be braised or pan-fried.

While Upton waited in The Palms bar at the Hotel Noix for Ella Bazaar to arrive for their journey to get Mister Sulahman’s pet, he paged through the diary. For the umpteenth time he looked at the photographs in the middle of the book. There was one of Hercules, who was tall and dark like Upton imagined a Latin movie star in the 1940s might have looked, and another of him together with a black man who was sinewy, square-jawed, and not quite as tall. That must be Mohammed.

Several of the people Upton didn’t recognize from what he’d read so far, characters he knew he’d probably meet further on in the diary’s pages. He stared for a long time at a photograph of a woman – a woman who even fifty years later would have turned people’s heads. There was something about her eyes that reminded him of someone he was sure he knew.

“Sylvie,” he thought, dwelling for a moment on what he’d last read about her. How she had come to the rescue of the badly wounded woman in the native village and had almost found out Hercules’s secret by reading his palm.

Wondering what the connection was between Sylvie, the diary, and Ella Bazaar, Upton began reading where he’d left off.
* * *
The Invalid

Janet contemplated what Ethel Goodleigh had just told her about the most recent developments at Magna Exchange. She herself had just gotten off the phone, having spent half the night talking to contacts in Zurich, Tegucigalpa, two African capitals, and a small landing strip in Oman. She wished she could have avoided Upton’s near-drowning at the Motel du Soleil, but Ella Bazaar had acted quickly. She was grateful for that. Then, feeling a draft come through the open window, she pulled the blanket up over her legs.
* * *
On the Road

Pink Jeep was piled high with baggage covered in canvas and rope, all of which made it resemble a vehicular bouffant. Upton couldn’t see the pan what’s-its-name they’d bought at the Grand Marché, but he was sure the animal was underneath it all. He hoped the poor creature didn’t suffocate before they reached their destination.

When Ella Bazaar had first told Upton where it was they were headed in order to deliver the chimp and to retrieve Mister Sulahman’s pet – the town of Belleville – he was not unhappy. He liked the idea of going to the place where the story of Hercules had occurred. The real purpose of traveling with Ella Bazaar might be to learn all about the business of buying and exporting exotic animals, but it was the thought of reaching Belleville that really excited him. And the more he read of the diary as he sat in The Palms bar, the more excited he got. As soon as he heard Pink Jeep pull up outside the hotel, he closed the diary and tucked it deep into his jacket pocket where Ella Bazaar couldn’t see it.

“There has been a slight change of plans,” she told him.

“What do you mean?” Upton asked.

“We have to make a detour.”

“Where to?”

He thought she said the Red Sea, even though they were on the other side of the continent from Egypt.
* * *
The Rusted Old Boat

An hour after leaving the city, Ella Bazaar turned Pink Jeep onto a dirt road that ended at a vast lagoon. Instead of a bridge there was a pontoon waiting for them, its sole oarsman so young that Upton didn’t believe the boy would get them away from the lagoon shoreline, let alone pole them to wherever they were going. Pink Jeep got stuck driving onto the pontoon, so Ella Bazaar and Upton had to get out and push. Upton sunk so deep into the mud that it swallowed up the kob-skin shoes he’d bought on one of his safaris.

Once they had finally left shore, Ella Bazaar made Upton sit at the top of the canvas pile in order to balance the raft. From his precarious position, he watched the opaque water lapping around them soothingly, the young oarsman poling the lagoon bed with a rhythmic motion, whereupon he immediately started to feel more relaxed. The banks were lined with palms, the silence broken only occasionally by the cry of a lone palm vulture.

As they rounded a bend in the shore, Upton noticed an old, rusty cargo boat upended in the shallows. It looked surreal lying there, and he assumed it must have been left by some crazy mariner who had for some inexplicable reason come down the nearest river, the Bandama, before getting stuck in the lagoon.

There were initials on the boat’s funnel, but the vessel was so badly corroded after years in the humidity, decades even, that Upton couldn’t make them out. The inscription on the bow was more legible, but it was half-submerged. All he could read were the letters SYLV.

Trying to make out more of the word, Upton leaned forward, but at the same time something under him shifted and then poked his buttocks. Upton slipped on the canvas, throwing the flimsy craft off course. When they finally regained their balance, the half-sunken vessel was behind them, and then finally out of view.

Upton peered over Pink Jeep at Ella Bazaar, to see if she had noticed it was him who had thrown them off course. But she was looking behind them too – in the direction of the sunken boat.
* * *
A Bad Day for Geoffrey Badland

“Ruthlessness, boy,” Solomon Magna remarked to Upton when the boy had just turned eighteen. “That’s the key. Never let sentiment stand in your way.”

What led to this remark was the Chairman’s recent acquisition of a notable publishing company in London, which he’d bought for a quarter of what it was actually worth. How he’d achieved this was simple and simply ruthless.

First, he spread nasty rumors about Geoffrey Badland – the owner who had built the company up from nothing – saying that Badland had an addiction to young boys. Next, Solomon Magna promised potential investors that if they helped him take over the company, he would use the printing presses to bring out tabloid newspapers and not, as he put it, “the literary crap” that Badland favored. Before long Badland found it impossible to obtain any more loans to publish the manuscripts he liked, and the night the sale to Magna Exchange went through he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

When the funeral was over, Solomon Magna had only this to say about Badland: “The man had no balls.”
* * *
The Fantastic, Wondrous Great Bazaar

Ella Bazaar studied Upton’s face as he slept in the passenger seat of Pink Jeep. The trip on the lagoon, plus the exertion carrying the chimp’s cage through the Grand Marché, as well as several sleepless nights at the Hotel le Noix, had ensured that he was exhausted.

For the first time now she could see how much he resembled his mother, or at least the woman that she had seen in old newspaper cuttings – the famously beautiful and headstrong wife of Solomon Magna out on the town with her new husband.

Pulling over to the side of the road, Ella Bazaar got out and walked around to the back of the vehicle. Having lifted the canvas off the cage containing the pan troglodytes so that it could get some air, she leaned against Pink Jeep and lit up a cheroot. The aroma never failed to remind her of her father, The Great Bazaar, who had always liked to smoke a cheroot after a good night in the circus ring.

As a child Ella Bazaar had enthusiastically watched every performance of The Great Bazaar’s, as well as the cheroot-smoking ritual afterward. Her mother, a retired acrobat, usually encouraged her to do so, although only when Ella Bazaar was six did she realize that this had nothing to do with The Great Bazaar. It had more to do with André the Strongman or one of the tent riggers, who would be lurking in the shadows near their caravan door with a bottle of cheap wine in hand. As soon as the young girl was gone, they would enter. Eager to stay away from the rocking caravan and to be with her father, Ella Bazaar followed him everywhere.

“Animals are our livelihood,” The Great Bazaar would tell his daughter, scooping her onto the camel’s back while he put a harness of bells around its neck. “I might hold the whip and jab sticks in their ribs, my little hamster, but you must remember that I don’t mean to hurt them. And even though they are in cages, I make sure that their lives are good ones. They might not be in the jungle, but at least it’s better than a zoo.” Then he would draw on his cheroot and add, a little conceitedly, “Besides, I have a gift.”

Ella Bazaar never knew exactly what her father meant by that – his “gift” – until the night Bombay the tiger escaped from his cage. It all happened shortly before the evening’s performance was to start, with the audience already gathered outside the main tent. None of the public knew that a tiger was on the loose, but all the cage hands scattered when they found out, rushing to their caravans or climbing up nearby ropes. But not The Great Bazaar. Oh, no. With only his trusty whip in hand, he approached Bombay. The tiger roared and ripped his claws through the air, but The Great Bazaar did not flinch once. He coaxed the huge cat away from a corner in the tent, across the arena, and back into his cage.

Ella Bazaar’s mother, who normally tried to get rid of her, was calling out her name, begging her to come back to the caravan. But the little girl hid in the folds of the tent so that she could watch her father. She stayed as close as possible to him the whole time, noticing the gentle but stern flick he gave his whip and listening to him mumble things to Bombay – not words so much as humming noises, foreign sounds, clicks and rumbles. She was mesmerized, convinced that she was witnessing him use the gift he had told her about. And from that night on, she wanted to be just like The Great Bazaar.

But then, one at a time, things began to go wrong. Ella Bazaar’s mother ran off with a Romanian clown, and animal rights groups started picketing performances and calling The Great Bazaar “sadist” and “murderer.” The protests went on day and night, causing so much noise that not even the animals could get any sleep. Everyone, both human and animal, was not only on edge but also exhausted.

One afternoon when The Great Bazaar was in the ring working with the bears, the huge female was supposed to act as if she was actually sitting on her trainer. She was so tired, however, that once she had seated herself she never got up again. The Great Bazaar, whose lungs had been overused for years by consumption of his favorite cheroots, couldn’t breathe. He suffocated to death.

In memory of him, Ella Bazaar never inhaled the smoke from the cheroots, but rather rolled the smoke around in her mouth, savoring the taste, and then blowing it out softly, almost unnoticeably. She did that now, watching it disappear into the African air, before tipping some ash onto the roadside next to Pink Jeep. Looking over her shoulder at the rare chimpanzee in the cage behind her, she wondered if The Great Bazaar would have approved of the kind of work she was doing now.
* * *
A Mongoose in Vinaigrette

Beware the Bikini Tuaregs, the postcard read.

The scrawled handwriting as well as the picture on the reverse side – an animal described as a Mellivora capensis, or honey badger – told Upton exactly who the postcard belonged to. It had been on the windscreen until now, but had somehow fallen onto his lap while he was sleeping.

“What does that mean?” he asked Ella Bazaar, who had put out her cheroot more than two hours ago, and then waited for him to wake up. “Who are the Bikini Tuaregs?”

“It’s nothing you should concern yourself with,” she replied, hastily taking the postcard from him. “I keep it as a reminder. Just remember that we are heading into territory that could be unsafe.”

Upton didn’t like the sound of that. He noticed then that the cage had been taken off the back of Pink Jeep and was lying in the shade of a nearby teak tree.

“Not all Tuaregs are bad,” Ella Bazaar added as she folded the piece of canvas that had been covering the back of the vehicle. “Normally they are our friends. They’ve helped me get some of my best animals.” She paused. “The Senegalese desert mongoose was superb.”

Upton tried not to think of the fate of the aforementioned mongoose – lying on some table in Brussels or Lyon, smothered in garlic butter or a fancy vinaigrette.

“But the Bikini sect,” he said, “they are not your friends?”

“No. They’re dangerous and are even said to have links to Berry …”

She stopped herself. Even though he was sure he’d heard the name Berry before, Upton couldn’t think where or when it had been. He scratched his head, which felt burnt from too much sun. He noticed then that the vegetation had changed while he’d been sleeping. They had left the lagoons and were now in terrain covered by smaller palms. It was drier, but it wasn’t desert.

“I thought Tuaregs lived in the desert,” he pointed out to her. “This isn’t desert.”

“The Bikini Tuaregs follow their own rules,” Ella Bazaar answered. “They even wander down as far as the Gulf of Guinea. Thus the bikini name. And they drink lots of beer.”
* * *
The Bikini Tuaregs

The three men in blue robes, their faces covered in swathes of white material, sat in the clump of small coconut palms and swatted flies with their sabers. The first one was drinking beer from a can.

“I’ve tasted better,” he said. The Chairman had recently acquired a publishing company in London for a quarter of what it was actually worth.

“Don’t have more than one,” the second instructed him. “We have to be sober.”

The third, who’d been peering through the trees, paused before he spoke.

“I’m glad he’s not driving this time.”
* * *
A Few Words About Ella Bazaar’s Conscience

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Upton said.

“What?” Ella Bazaar answered.

Lying on the ground, her breasts pressed suggestively against the crossed-out word FUR on her T-shirt. Her head was propped up against the cage, the pan troglodytes inside it reaching through the bars to play with her hair. Upton thought that she looked quite beautiful, much more beautiful than Dee.

“What you do,” he carried on. “I mean, killing these animals.”
He pointed to the creature she called Maurice. “He really seems to like you. Besides, how much meat can you get off those bones?”

“We don’t kill them,” Ella Bazaar said pointedly. “Someone else does.”

It was the kind of thing Jocelyn Magna would have said, which made Upton uncomfortable. He didn’t want Ella Bazaar to be like his half-sister.

“You don’t pull the trigger, but you might as well.”

Ella Bazaar stiffened, sat up quickly, and brushed her hand through her hair.

“Details, details. I don’t have time for that. All I can think of is getting Maurice to Belleville and getting your okapi. Then you shall pay me and our deal will be finished.”

The words of The Chairman echoed in Upton’s head: “Ruthlessness, that’s the key.” Sadly, he realized once again, she was more Solomon Magna’s kind of woman than his kind.

“I do what I have to do,” she said, suddenly looking him straight in the eye, almost challenging him. “How else do you succeed in business? Surely you, a Magna, should know that. Isn’t that how Magna Exchange has become so successful?”

Her words reminded Upton of why exactly he was traveling with Ella Bazaar – not for himself but for Magna Exchange.

“Of course,” he said, “business is about perseverance, authority, ruthlessness.” He was mouthing not his own thoughts but Solomon Magna’s. “The Chairman taught me that.”

“The Chairman?” she asked.

“My father.”

Ella Bazaar said nothing at the mention of his father, but Upton noticed the look on her face, which was suddenly sad and distant, almost exactly like Dee’s when he’d first met her at the A.P.E. coffee bar, where she was recovering from the incident with the out-of-control elephant penis.

In the long silence that followed, a strange sensation started building up in Upton. He wasn’t sure whether it was because of the sadness in her eyes, or because of the way she looked in her tight T-shirt, or because she was almost a real animal woman – he forgot, for the moment, what she did with the animals – but he had this incredible urge to kiss her. Without losing a moment, he slid over to her while she wasn’t looking and opened his mouth for her.

As fast as an athlete, Ella Bazaar fell sideways, which caused Upton to knock the cage behind her with a heavy thump. Its door immediately flew open, and before they could do anything to stop him, the chimp had escaped and was scampering down the dirt road.

“The pan troglodytes!” Ella Bazaar yelled, hurriedly jumping into Pink Jeep and speeding off in pursuit. Upton began running after her.

“Slow down!” he yelled, but before he knew it she’d taken a curve in the road and was lost from sight.

He ran as fast as he could, and after several hundred yards he rounded the bend, only to see that Pink Jeep had plowed into some trees and Ella Bazaar was gone. When he got closer, he saw her behind the trees, although she wasn’t alone now. There were three other people, and she seemed to be struggling with them.

“Upton!” she cried out when she saw him. It was a very different plea for help from the one he’d heard at Prang Hotel. Upton thought his stomach would burst, he was running so fast.

“I’m coming, Ella Bazaar! I’m here for you.”

As soon as he got close to the attackers, he saw that each one of them was dressed in white robes. One of them, a large man, but by no means the largest of the trio, had already got Ella Bazaar in a tight grip. She was struggling in his arms like a ferocious animal. Another of the men grabbed Upton, who smelt beer on his breath.

“I know who you are,” he shouted. “You’re the Bikini Tuaregs!”

Ella Bazaar was being forced into the back of Pink Jeep, while one of the Bikini Tuaregs climbed into the driver’s seat. She called out to Upton.

“Find the chimp! Do that for me! Take him to the Red Sea!”

Right then the third and largest of the attackers, who had been holding Upton from behind, stepped in front of him. He pulled his saber from his belt and then smiled menacingly. Upton tried to struggle, but he didn’t have a chance. The man blindfolded him and then led him off the road and into the palm trees.

(Next: Sylvie longs to see the animals in her park, or so Hercule thinks; when Hercule hides some tusks in the ivory cache, he hears the caracal for the first time since he let it go in the park; dreams of joining the Resistance in France plague Hercule, who tries to be recruited by a spy from Dakar; Sylvie puts on an animal show for guests from Belleville that has Hercule fearing for her life; Monsieur V-C announces that he has new plans for our hero.)

Palm Deux
2 March 1940

11 (1042 lbs.)

I have finally met her, although it happened in the strangest circumstances.

For the past week, a chimpanzee has been causing havoc in the native village. During its attacks, it has toppled cooking pots, rummaged through their possessions, pulled leaves from hut roofs, and frightened the children. The natives have been at their wits’ end, for it usually turns up in the morning or early afternoon, when they are at work and can do nothing about it. The few times they have had a chance to kill it, they were reluctant to do so. I found this curious, especially when you consider that, next to the core of an elephant’s trunk, barbecued monkey tail is their most favored delicacy.

The offending chimp was a big one, weighed at least eighty pounds, and was as tall as a small man if it stood on its hind legs. Its shouts and actions were terribly human too. Some of the natives believed its size and ferocity came from a malicious spirit. Mohammed, who has no time for these beliefs, joked that the animal’s most ‘spirited’ behavior occurred after bingeing on bangui it had found fermenting in a hollowed-out palm tree!

I only noticed the workers’ agitation a few days ago. On the way through Zone B, I found some of the men absentmindedly making huge incisions in trees that were too young, while others digging a trench appeared quite distracted from their task. At the Coconut Shed, Mohammed and I had to help the women douse a huge fire that left at least a thousand head of fruit burnt to cinders. The women were beside themselves. Only after that did Mohammed suggest it might be the chimp keeping them so preoccupied.

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Though the natives wouldn’t kill the animal themselves, they were quite happy for me to do it. They even insisted I should. Normally I would have been elated, but I wasn’t. Monkey is much like fox and hare, a cinch to shoot. My one chance in Palm Deux to hunt an animal other than an elephant and it turns out to be something simple.

Mohammed and I planted a pile of figs near the village. Monkeys can’t resist them. Today we were driving down Route Douze when word came that the marauder was ensconced on the fruit and wasn’t in any hurry to leave. By the time we arrived, it was bloated already, looking quite ridiculous on its pulpy throne. The shot was so easy that I handed the gun, my smallest bore, a .300 Magnum, to Mohammed. He seldom gets to clean up after me when we go after the elephants, so I give him every chance I can.

He weighed the gun in his hands, a habit he has picked up from me, then took particular care aiming, his arms at their formal position, elbows out, the way he learnt in the army. The shot went clear through the monkey’s head, but the animal didn’t immediately fall over or stop eating. When it realized something had happened, it let out a series of short high-pitched squeaks, and then, holding its chest with one hand, lay down like a tired old woman. It was all quite dramatic.

We then carried out a cursory examination. As is our routine on all kills, especially on the elephants, we inspect the animals for any open wounds or signs of disease. I’m not sure what we are looking for, or whether we’d know if we found it, but Monsieur V-C insists.

The animal, we discovered, was a female – unusual considering her size, although it is usually the females who go off and scavenge for food. We prodded gums, eyes, belly, anus, hands and feet, the most obvious places for some malady. Besides a tendency to violence and unprovoked raids on native villages, though, she seemed just fine.

We were about to leave when we heard a rustling of leaves from the base of a nearby tree. At first I thought it might be a bushbaby or a hyrax, but then a baby chimp strolled out, as casually as a precocious child in the playground of Borely Park in Marseilles. At the same time an excited yell rose behind me. I instinctively grabbed my gun and turned back to the corpse, only to discover it was not the chimpanzee that had suddenly come to life, but was an enthusiastic old native woman who had also spied the new arrival. If there is anything better than the tail of monkey, it is a grilled youngster.

We were about to let them catch it when I heard a voice I least expected: Monsieur V-C’s. He never ventures into the groves, preferring to occupy himself with administrative matters in the coolness of the villa. A new wife, I would think, is also enough reason to stay at home. But he had not come alone. She was there too, standing a short distance behind him. Her face was strained. I don’t know how long they had been standing there, but she had clearly seen enough.

Before I could find out why they had come, Monsieur V-C summoned Mohammed, who immediately went back to the carcass, stepped over it, and grabbed the baby chimp, which was still playing with its lifeless mother. It shrieked at his gruff touch, and he clutched the back of its head, pushing it forward, just in case it tried to bite him. He then made his way toward not Monsieur V-C but his wife. And it was to her that he gave it.

The scene was quite bizarre, her standing there in a modish skirt and blouse, an outfit straight out of a boutique on the Rue de Rivoli, receiving into her hands a wild animal which had barely fallen out of the trees. If she was scared of being hurt, she did not show any sign of it. I thought her very foolish indeed.

The baby struggled at first, and I was sure it would sink its teeth into her. Has she not heard of rabies and septicemia, of how easily infection spreads in this climate? Does she not know we are a hundred miles from a clinic? If Monsieur V-C was at all concerned, he showed no sign of it. In no time at all she had wrapped the chimp in a cloth of sorts. She was very lucky indeed not to be hurt.

“It is wild, madame,” I warned her.

“Thank you,” she replied.

That is all we said. She then turned and headed to their vehicle, the creature for the moment pacified, a loose, long-fingered hand hanging over her shoulder. I had forgotten to introduce myself, even though she must know who I am.

Her name is Sylvie.
* * *

14 March

I have completed a second billiard ball. It’s very rough still, oddly shaped, needs smoothing down. Carving demands patience, especially when you have to ensure the nerve runs down the center of the ball. That gives it balance. Our elephants’ ivory is also very delicate, and it splinters easily. I have lots of time to carve, perhaps too much. The nights seem to get longer and longer. I suppose it would be easier if I drank like the men at the Noix.

Sometimes I get it into my head to leave, just pack my bags, my one bag, and take off. I wonder if I will get back to Europe soon and have a chance to fight. Did I leave France too quickly? Getting out of here now is not that simple, even if I went through the right channels. ‘War personnel,’ that is how I’m classified, even though I see no war, no other personnel. But I am sure an opportunity will present itself to escape. Vridi came along at the right time. I must be content to wait. I must show patience. In the meantime, I carve.
* * *
29 March

28 (2912 lbs).

I have just returned from the most elegant dinner at the villa. Who would ever have imagined such a sumptuous event in this far-off, humid place? But life here has changed since she arrived. Not even the fact that Valery was one of the guests could spoil the evening. He didn’t mention the confrontation with Mohammed and me outside the Noix, so I presume all is forgotten.

Besides several other planteurs and their wives, the chef de canton was there, as was the portly Monsieur Singh, as well as a curious man who sat in a corner most of the evening, his distinctive feature an unruly shock of gray hair. He is a doctor who lives alone in the hills north of Belleville and studies herbal treatments used by the natives, or something equally eccentric. When I tried to talk to him, he answered curtly, apparently preferring to be left alone. The only person who managed to animate him slightly was our hostess.

She has brought a perceptible change to the villa. In the past, I preferred to avoid the huge house, for it was moribund, clean but lifeless. The quiet, gigantic maid Yaaba would keep the place in order and cook Monsieur V-C’s meals, but she added nothing more. Now even the portraits of the Valdez-Cullot ancestors seem less dour, if that is possible. There are also colorful new tapestries, one bearing the words Nôtre Maison Belle Maison. In the kitchen is a huge mural of a lion in a jungle. On viewing it, Valery commented that the only cat in our jungle is a leopard.

“And even if there were a lion, you’d never have time to design it.” When she asked why not, he answered, “Madame, we would have already shot it.” With that, he and the other men laughed raucously.

Monsieur V-C, at the far end of the table, was more distant than usual. I am sure it is the war. It is the one thing on everyone’s mind after the recent defeat near Alsace. All his interests are affected. His stores in La Cité have few products, and they get little passing maritime trade. His boat that used to run down the coast hardly ever sails anymore. As for Palm Deux, even if we could get the produce out, we don’t have what the world wants. Sales of rubber have fallen, and we hear rumors of artificial alternatives being developed in America. It’s only a matter of time before one is found. And demand for palm oil has been flagging for years. The subject of coconuts is avoided, meanwhile, because all the planteurs are vying for the same limited quota from the soap factory in Daloa. If the world wants anything, it is pineapples and bananas. Monsieur V-C has grand plans to plant fruit in Zone C, but it might already be too late to start planting.

I thought tonight might be a good time to ask him about his plans for me. I keep wondering what he has in mind, maybe something like a bridge or a new road. That would take my mind off of the long nights and thoughts of getting out of here. The elephants and billiard balls are not enough anymore. By being simple, my work has become routine. I keep thinking of my friends back home fighting. But Monsieur V-C has said nothing so far. Nor has he mentioned the hunting ground for which I gathered the animals. I suspected the dinner might be an occasion to make an announcement, tell everyone that we would soon be having our very own hunting season. But I was wrong – he never spoke about it once.

For the most part, our hostess kept the table entertained. She had stories about Paris: a funny conversation with a harassed politician on the Place de l’Opera, not once recognizing the man as Daladier; a meeting with a West African doctor in Clignancourt, never thinking at the time that she herself would later move here. Even though she must have left a while ago, and things at home change daily, she bears the freshest news. The random newspapers we get are old and talk only of Hitler. And not even Valery wanted to hear about him tonight. The men were more interested in what the women in Les Halles look like now, and if Marlene Dietrich had come to Paris again. And what of the contentious Hedy Lamarr?

The other wives, Valery’s in particular, were obviously annoyed at the attention our hostess was getting. Compared to them, Madame V-C is young and slim. Looking at the others sunken into the couches, you could see that it is the women who suffer worst in the tropics. After several years, their bodies swell badly, their faces harden. Most of them have lost a child or two, know that their husbands keep moussos in Belleville. Madame V-C, meanwhile, is fresh, full of ideas.

She herself remains a mystery. I have learned nothing about her, where she is from, how she came to be in the Gulf of Guinea and married to Monsieur V-C. At one point before I left, she took me aside. She is slight next to me, and she seemed very young all of a sudden. She said that Maurice was doing well. I had no idea who she was talking about, although it sounded as if she expected me to know. Could Maurice be an aging relative she brought from Europe? A dog? It turns out that Maurice is the name she has decided to give the baby chimpanzee.
* * *
15 April

12 (910 lbs.)

I have to lie about the elephants. At first I thought Monsieur V-C was joking, but he couldn’t have been more serious. And it’s all because of her. He is adamant that she shouldn’t know about the shooting or the ivory cache. She also must not find out that my purpose on Palm Deux is to kill elephants. How crazy it all is. I argued with him, although I don’t know why I bothered. It is his plantation, his profits that will dwindle.

“And what of the rubber and the coconuts?” I asked angrily. “The place will be eaten bare. We will go out of business faster than all our competitors. Besides, you employed me to shoot. What am I supposed to do now?”

He doesn’t understand the day-to-day running of the plantation, lets Monsieur Singh give him the latest statistics, and that keeps him satisfied. He thinks he’s still at La Coupole in Paris. After listening to my arguments, however, he conceded that I had a point. He said I could carry on shooting, but not to let her see or hear anything.

“This is to be between us alone,” he said. “Our secret.”

Having heard this condition, I became even more agitated. Has the man lost all his senses? Where is Monsieur V-C’s mind these days? Clearly, it is with her. Once again, I put up a fight. Did he really think this ruse to be possible? That he could fool her?

“There will be the bodies lying about, gigantic bodies,” I put it to him. “There will be the tusks. She will roam through Palm Deux sooner or later and will find some evidence. The natives collect the meat every time I shoot, and they will talk. She is bound to hear about it.”

This time he remained firm.

“You are an engineer and a hunter,” he said. “You figure it out.”

The choice he gave me is this: either I shoot and cover up my tracks, or I do not shoot at all.

I gave no answer at the time, but I have since had a chance to reflect. As crazy as it sounds, the cover-up could work. And, oddly enough, it could be the challenge I’ve been looking for. It is not an engineering project exactly, but I could view it as such. Firstly, only Mohammed and I handle the tusks. Secondly, it is just the two of us, along with Monsieur V-C, who know the ivory’s whereabouts. Thirdly, seeing the elephants are accustomed to staying in the north of Zone B, most of our shooting takes place far from the villa and the native village. No one need hear us. If an elephant should wander near the laborers, I will not act immediately. I will stalk it until it is safe to shoot, and no one will see it die.

The hardest thing will be to hide the carcasses from the natives, and to get rid of the meat without them knowing about it. One possibility is to bring in outsiders from the shantytown north of us. Being immigrants from the French Sudan, they don’t mix with our natives. Mohammed can drive them down once a week. It will be difficult, but we might be able to do it.

Even though I left Monsieur V-C’s ultimatum unanswered at the time, I did point out an obvious contradiction. Why forbid me to shoot only elephants, I asked. Why not stop me from killing all the animals? It was then that I finally found my opportunity to bring up the subject of the hunting ground.

“It seems foolish that we should only be able to shoot inside the enclosure, and not outside it.”

As soon as I said that, I noticed his surprise – “A hunting ground!” he cried out – whereupon several things suddenly made sense to me. Why, for instance, Madame V-C had been so confused when I touched on the subject. And why it was that I had received specific instructions, before I left for Belleville, to get not only big animals, but small ones too. Of course! How could I have been so stupid as to think the menagerie I had so painstakingly collected was meant to be shot? Those creatures are not for us hunters at all. They are hers.

Monsieur V-C himself confirmed this, and in doing so he disclosed certain things about his wife and how she came to be here. He told me that he had been communicating with several agencies in Paris for almost two years, ones that introduce prospective spouses. For a long time, he’d received no replies. No one wanted to come to a plantation in Africa, let alone one that was three hundred miles inland from the Gulf of Guinea. Dakar or Lagos or Conakry maybe, but Belleville? None of the women even knew where Belleville was. And not even the war or the promise of a healthy stipend was incentive enough for them to leave a dangerous continent for an unknown one. Of course, there were women who would marry him for a few sous, but he did not want a putain, he said. He wanted someone of his own class.

“And then you helped me get her, Hercule,” he said suddenly.

Me? Imagine my amazement. How did I fit into all of this?

Monsieur V-C, it turns out, had gotten his idea from a trip I made into the jungle south of us shortly after arriving on Palm Deux. It was the only hunting excursion I have been able to go on since coming here, seeing my duties keep me so occupied. What made the expedition so exceptional was that I killed a leopard, and my description of that experience left a deep impression on Monsieur V-C, especially my words about how a leopard makes Africa so special. Little does he realize what I really meant: that I considered not the animal special, but the hunt for the animal.

“I was looking at my search in the wrong way,” he continued. “No woman would be interested in rubber or coconuts, palm oil or a general store in La Cité. She wouldn’t even be attracted by a ship on which she could take a leisurely cruise to Gaboon.

“So I asked myself: What do we have on Palm Deux that a woman would like, something that would capture her heart? Then I realized what it was. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?” He paused, recalling his own cleverness. “The leopard, of course. All the animals! And it was then that I began advertising for … an animal lover.”

I almost laughed. Animals! What a clever deceit. Everyone else here knows the truth. Almost the only animals that infiltrate the plantations are elephants. But how could an unsuspecting girl from Paris, or Lille, or wherever she’s from have known that? How foolish she is to have been taken in by his story. What could she have been expecting to find out here anyway? Did she think Africa would be full of the animals she is used to? And what would that be? A horde of fluffy dogs? Cute kittens she could keep on her lap? Fifis and Caramels?

While I should feel sorry for her, I am not. She has done what a woman in Africa should not do: she has meddled in the operations of a plantation. Even though I can carry on killing elephants – with plenty of unnecessary subterfuge, that is – she has put a stop to all other hunting. There’s little chance of me ever being able to take on the animals I bought: the sable, the bongo and, of course, the caracal. And what does she plan to do with them anyway? Put them on a leash maybe, lead them around by the nose, perform tricks with them? Will she start a zoo? Already she has Maurice following her around like a dog. Sometimes when I pass the villa, he is playing in the firebird trees, her sitting with a book in the shade below. At night he has taken to sleeping in a cot on the porch. No closer to a dog can you find. Animals in Africa were not made for this.
* * *
17 April
Nil.

We seem destined to dislike each other. My hunting is an offense to her, the same way her coddling of wild animals is to me. The only difference is that I know what her passion is, but she doesn’t know mine. How I should like to tell her, show her all the teeth I have collected. Wouldn’t that shock her? Tonight I took them out to see how many of them there are, to run my hands through them, to let the small ivorylike chips pour through my fingers. Imagine if she could see these. Then she would see who I am.
* * *
20 April

3 (126 lbs.)

It took most of the afternoon to put the youngster away. Monsieur V-C had asked me to find one for the hunting ground. (Oh, I forget, I cannot call it that anymore. It is a park. Her park.) We took down part of the northern fence, which lies adjacent to the open area we call Zone C. Once the young bull saw the trees in her park, he fled into them. Madame V-C was there when we let him go, and she asked how his mother had died. Trust her to ask. I told her that the animal had choked to death on a coconut shard and that we found the youngster wandering near her carcass. It was a ridiculous story but all I could think of at the time. As it turns out, I could have told her anything and she would have believed me. How gullible she is.

Seeing that I had saved the creature, she said, she would name him after me, Perpignon. How funny. I killed the elephant’s mother, and now she has named him after me.
* * *
27 April

6 (916 lbs.)

I saw her walking in the plantation, Yaaba at her side. The large silent maid is with her most of the time, towering over her almost threateningly. I was going in the same direction, so I offered them a lift. I want to discourage her from wandering through the plantation and maybe stumbling onto an elephant carcass. I made an excuse of it being unsafe.

“Not safe?” she exclaimed. “From whom? Animals or humans?”

I’m not sure what she meant by that, but I didn’t think it important.

“There are large creatures about. And you know there is a cat in the park. The caracal. It could get out. And even though it may not be big, it could easily kill you.”

She accepted my offer. Yaaba carried a vanity case that she kept on her lap all the time, covered with her ample arms as if it contained a treasure. When we reached the native village I stayed on, for I was curious to see what the two women were up to.

It being a Saturday, when the men go fishing, there were only women and children about. Understandably, they seemed wary of the white lady. She set herself up under a tree, looking not unlike a sous-chef waiting for people to come and pay their head tax.

One shy child with an ugly lump on his forehead approached her, but a woman grabbed him and pulled him back. Two older women standing alone came up to her and said something quickly, which Yaaba translated. Neither of them seemed particularly eager to be with Madame V-C, especially while the others were watching. Once they had moved away, she explained to me that both of them, after a recent trip to Odienne, had contracted sleeping sickness. She was treating them with arsenic.

I was astounded. She uses poison as a treatment? What does she know of these things, I asked. Cleaning wounds and passing out mild medications is one thing, but dispensing a lethal poison?

“It is already unwise for you to be in the village,” I put it to her. “But what if you should kill one of the natives? There would be an investigation.”

It was then that she told me that she is a nurse. The vanity case, when opened, displayed an array of pills, alcohol, methyalate, numerous bottles of dark liquid, a few tweezers, and several shiny sharp knives. She admitted that her nursing course in France had taught her very little about tropical diseases, but she had been reading whatever she could find. The doctor with gray hair who was at her dinner party and lives north of Belleville had told her things too, including what he knew of such radical treatments as this one.

At that moment a series of shouts broke out in one of the huts. Yaaba suddenly appeared, dragging a woman who was clutching one of her arms to her chest. The screaming native might as well have been on her way to the stake, she was so unwilling to cooperate. But Yaaba is as strong as an ox, and there is no fighting her. The villagers who hadn’t already gathered around Madame V-C were now drawn by the racket. Soon everyone was circled around the white lady. Once in front of her, Yaaba grabbed the struggling woman in such a way that the hand she’d been clutching was visible. It was a mass of blood.

She had apparently wounded herself while sharding at the Coconut Shed, piercing her hand on the end of a metal tripod. She kept screaming at Madame V-C, who got up from her chair and stood right in front of the patient, as unrash a move as it had been taking a baby chimp in her bare hands. The woman spat at her, which made the other natives gasp. Yaaba was about to hit the wounded woman, but Madame V-C intervened and took hold of the patient’s healthy hand, the right one. The woman pulled back, but suddenly seemed to lose all her strength and her desire to escape. It was as if some mysterious power was being exerted over her. Madame V-C turned the hand over, palm upward, and began stroking it. Her gesture soothed the native, who all at once let herself be led into the shade of the tree. The two of them sat there, one opposite the other, Madame V-C talking softly and Yaaba translating. I didn’t hear what she said at first, but then realized that she was reading the woman’s palm.

The villagers were fascinated. They’d never witnessed such magic before. They know native fetishists but not a European one. I heard them call her la blanche, the white one. Madame V-C, in the meantime, was saying something about a desert, a lost husband, a drowning. At different words, the spectators muttered excitedly to each other. Their eyes were wide as saucers. Only later did I learn that Madame V-C had quite correctly recounted the patient’s life.

The woman had lived for several years with a man who was the only immigrant on Palm Deux. He had come down from French Sudan when he was a child. He had died shortly before my arrival in Belleville, when the taxi he was traveling in veered off the road into the Plantain, and he and the ten other passengers drowned. She had been left with three children to care for. She was concerned that if she died now, they would be left alone. Madame V-C told her not to worry, that she would live long enough to marry again.

Her words did the trick. By the time she’d finished talking, the native was as quiet as if she had been sedated. Not even I had noticed that she had in the meantime been coaxed into putting her wounded hand into a bowl of dark curative solution. Once Madame V-C had wrapped the hand with a bandage and said a few more words to her, she closed her bag and stood to leave. Before she could take one step, though, several of the other women moved in and blocked her path. They touched her, as if that would prove she was real. It reminded me of the way the Senegalese merchants in Belleville had poked my caged animals. A few of them stuck out their hands, demanding a palm reading too. Yaaba pushed them back, but her mistress was unbothered by the attention. She even seemed to enjoy it.

On the way back to the villa, I asked her where she’d learned to read palms.

“It is nothing,” she laughed. “A trick I learnt at school.”

I replied that it looked real enough to me.

“I prepare well,” she said.

Before going to the village, she had found out everything she could about the wounded woman. That was why she had gone there in the first place – to treat her hand. Yaaba had told her what she knew of the woman’s background. All Madame V-C had done was to relate the woman’s life back to her.

“A little information can be priceless,” she said conspiratorially. “I just talk to them.”

She couldn’t have possibly carried out a palm reading that convincingly if it had been her very first time. But she clearly didn’t want to tell me any more than that. Then she turned to me.

“Would you like me to read your palm?

I immediately declined.

She laughed. “Are you afraid?”

Yes, I felt like answering the animal lover, I’m afraid you might see the traces of cordite.

(Next: In which lots happens; we learn of evil Solomon Magna’s mistress, who has the curious name of Catskill; Ella buys a chimp in the market, where Upton meets another trio of men (except now we notice their big chests are covered and they wear khaki); while nasty Felix Magna plays with the Toucan company in Mexico, mean Jocelyn Magna manipulates the Iguana company in the Philippines; we wonder whether there is some significance in all the companies and people named after animals; Solomon at last reacts positively to one of Upton’s suggestions – to export animals from West Africa – which should make Upton happy, but it doesn’t; we wonder who Janet in Switzerland is; Ella and Upton set off in Pink Jeep; Ella fondly recalls the Great Bazaar, her father, and a tiger; the Bikini Tuaregs (a trio, once again) cause havoc.)

“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.

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“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.

(Next: The beautiful Sylvie arrives on Palm Deux as the new wife of Monsieur V-C; she has a dinner party, which Hercule enjoys, but then she forces him to stop shooting animals; he says he will, but then disobeys her; Sylvie goes into the workers’ village to treat patients; Hercule acts as if he doesn’t like Sylvie and doesn’t trust her, but we know something else is happening.)

Belleville
16 January 1940

13 (1121 lbs.)

I must find some animals. I haven’t been told why. Monsieur V-C has only instructed me to collect as many as I can. The single condition is that there must be a variety of them, male and female, big and small. Mohammed carries on at Palm Deux without me.

What are the animals for? My guess is for hunting. People back home might laugh, say it’s a bizarre notion to put together a hunting ground in Africa. But much stranger ideas have been brought to this continent; the traders I meet, they will import and export anything, no matter how bizarre – perfumes even. “But, Hercule,” I can hear you say, “this is different. Why create what you already have? A hunting place in Africa? There are already enough lions in the streets to shoot.” If only there were. If only I could show you Palm Deux, where I see only one species.

Rather than being a bizarre notion, a hunting ground is a very good one. Monsieur V-C, though he no longer shoots, can entertain his guests for the weekends. The sous-chef in Daloa likes to hunt. And I myself would not mind the chance to go after something new, something other than elephant.

It must be for the animals that I have also been told to mark off a large area north and east of the villa. The fence around it is being erected by a man from Touba who, we heard from Monsieur Singh the accountant, happens to have six miles of barbed wire at his disposal. That is typical in Africa. You find what you least expect in the most obscure of places. A man could as easily arrive here with a ton of truck parts, even though there are hardly any trucks, and then he’d just as easily, just as inexplicably find a place to sell them. It is a maxim I hope holds true tomorrow, when the native hunters return from searching for me.

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My first day looking for animals in Belleville was not auspicious, the following three hardly better. The Senegalese traders in the market sent their children to me with mangy dogs, snakes, birds, agouti with their front teeth knocked out, and small antelope, their legs broken or body parts missing. There were also two baby crocodiles on offer. What was I supposed to do with crippled, dying and man-eating animals, or birds that will fly away, I asked them. They think I want to eat them. So, whether lame, dead, dangerous or on the wing, what difference does it make? Their prices are ridiculous, too.

By yesterday I began to set my sights lower, much lower, like the engineer who had once hoped to design a canal but now has to be content with making a coconut plantation safe from intruders. When I left Palm Deux, I was thinking in terms of rhino, buffalo, maybe a large cat or two. So far, though, I have only obtained a menagerie of three, all of them small.

A trader driving down from Odienne, near Kong, with a truckload of salt had with him a young gerenuk, a honey badger, and a banded mongoose. While he and I talked, the Senegalese hung about. They saw my interest in anything young and unhurt, even though I’d already explained what I wanted. Seeing the animals in the flesh made a difference somehow. They poked sticks through the cages, as if that helped them gauge the product’s value, then consulted among themselves. Afterward, they went to offer cigarettes to a group of Kwa hunters who were in town to buy supplies. I’m sure they were being employed to find me something.
* * *

26 January

My patience is wearing out. I drive back and forth to see useless things, everyone insisting they’ve got some ‘treasure’ of a creature for me. The men at the Noix pass snide remarks about how I used to be a shooter, but now I collect rodents. Even though I have only bought a fraction of the animals Monsieur V-C expects, I will return to Palm Deux tomorrow. I doubt whether a month would be long enough. Dogs I could have aplenty. So far, I have barely more than a dozen animals, most of them puny. The manager of the auberge complains about the smell and noises they make outside his back door.

Some of the animals do not even come from around here but from inland, from more arid country. The natives arrive with their merchandise tied up by the legs and carried, or pulled by a leash of some sort. They tell me whatever they think I want to hear. When I ask if a creature comes from the forest, they nod. For savanna, they nod too. Seeing Belleville lies just inside the forest before the beginning of the Sahel, it could be either. I only hope all my purchases will survive in the jungle.

I know little about the animals except what the trader from Odienne told me before he left. He seemed to be an expert of sorts, at least about animals. I will jot down a few notes.

The honey badger and the banded mongoose hiss perpetually, which makes it even harder to tell them apart. The badger has claws that remind me of a bear I once shot near Grenoble.

The sable is by far the most expensive item so far, and it is the very first of its kind I have seen up close that is not dead and already skinned.

I bought two blue duikers. I could have done with only one, but I need the numbers.

My biggest acquisition so far is a young giraffe. It was brought in by a planteur who said it appeared in his garden one day and ate only his exotic trees, as if it knew which ones were the most valuable. His wife wouldn’t let him shoot it. When she found out that someone in Belleville was gathering animals – “for a zoo,” she had heard – she agreed to let it go. I told him that I’m no zookeeper, but he did not mind. “You can stuff it and use it as a hatstand, for all I care,” he said, then left.

The bongo, meanwhile, has a body too big for its short legs. Small horns between wide ears, wonderful markings. It is chestnut with broad stripes across its back and light dots on its cheeks that resemble big tears. The gerenuk, by comparison, is slight, weighs less than a tusk from an elephant.

The bushpig I got from a woman who was taking bananas to market. Though the pig has quite vicious teeth in its lower jaw, it is a pitiful double for the boar we used to hunt in the Luberon. It seems unusually tame, as if until now it had been a pet in someone’s home. It behaved quite sociably while the owner was around, wheezing and blowing. Since she left, however, it has stood with its head in a corner.

There are several other animals I haven’t seen yet. I will pick them up on the road back to Palm Deux tomorrow morning: an oryx, a clawless otter and a bushbaby. Oh yes, and a kob.
––––––––––––––––

It is shortly before I return home, but I add this quickly. Late last night, I was taken to the native quarter by an odious Malian who insisted I accompany him. He wouldn’t leave until I did so. The creature he had captured, he told me, was too dangerous to transport by himself. How many times haven’t I heard that before, only to discover that what’s being sold is something useless, like a monkey. But something made me go with him, and I’m glad I did. When I saw the animal, I did not hesitate to buy it. It is a cat, a caracal. I didn’t even quarrel about the exorbitant price. My problem now is how to get it back to Palm Deux and where to put it. To be safe, I will make a special trip back to Belleville to fetch it. This animal alone makes my days of waiting here a success.
* * *
Palm Deux
30 January

6 (517 lbs.)

The fence around the hunting ground is not quite finished yet, but we have nevertheless freed some of the animals. I cannot keep them caged forever, and the giraffe’s rattan harness wouldn’t have held for very much longer. Monsieur V-C has gone off somewhere again and has left no word of his whereabouts, which I find odd. He seemed quite urgent about me getting the animals into the enclosure before the end of the month, and yet he is not here to witness its progress. I assume he has gone to La Cité once more to see about his stores and his boat. I have asked Yaaba, his maid, to feed the animals that are still caged. I hope she doesn’t misinterpret me and eat them instead.
* * *
Belleville
31 January

The light in my room at the auberge is weak, hardly enough with which to see what I am writing, but I have nothing else to do. I left my book behind, Kittenberger’s memoirs of hunting in East Africa. The noise coming from the Noix across the road makes it hard to sleep, even though I am exhausted from a day full of shopping. And it wasn’t for animals this time.

A truck arrived from the coast a few days ago, which means that both general stores are fuller now than they have been since the war began. Settlements in the interior like ours are always the last to get what little new merchandise is available, so everyone had their wallets out.

I bought some ammunition (Kynoch mostly, as well as a carton of Terks & Rubey) and a sight for my Westley Richards. I saw several catalogs, a bit dated perhaps, but very welcome when you haven’t seen one for so long. The latest Winchester is marvelous. How far they’ve come since the .405 Roosevelt used; with this one he would have had no excuse for not hitting the wildebeest center forehead every time. There are new models from Newton, and from Wheler and Griffin too. Vickers has come out with a beauty of less than eight pounds. I heard some of the men rave about the Mannlicher-Schoenauer 9.5mm, mostly because it’s cheap and you can get a scope fitted for half of what we’re used to paying. The revolving magazine is a bonus, I admit, but not particularly useful in dense jungle. I would rather go for something smaller, even a 9.3mm Mauser – and I’m not even partial to Mausers.

In the Noix, I met a hunter from Philadelphia who rolls his own nitro express shells. Quite mad, clearly. He went on about muzzle velocities, bullet grains, and ton-pressures. He obviously goes by the book. He carried on at length about open versus aperture sights and whether U or V heads blur the bead. What interested me more was that just before the war broke out, he employed Weltenham to build him a special light double .375 with a 25-inch barrel, all weighing less than nine pounds. Using a Zeiss 2-1/2-power hunting scope, he has shot almost everything that moves, bear in Canada, elk, tiger in India, drill sheep, ovis ammon, and even ibex in Nepal.

Because of the war he has been forced to hunt in Africa, although he’s not impressed with what he has seen so far. He has been in the French Congo for the last few months, where he shot gorilla, forest buffalo, and, his favorite, a giant forest hog. His major feat was killing two buffalo with one shot, the full-patch slug going through the male’s forehead, passing out the rear and hitting its companion in the neck. At least that is what he claimed – and, it has to be said, he made his assertions that only after he’d had several stiff drinks.

His partner sat by him without saying a word, only nodding. What a pair they made. The one talked endlessly, while the other was so short-sighted that he carries a pair of prismatics with him at all times when he hunts. Six-strength, mind you! He will only shoot after his tracker has pointed him and his rifle in the direction of his prey. Can you imagine the damage he must cause?
–––––––––––––––––

I write this much later. It is dead quiet outside, not a sound coming from the Noix, but my heart is still racing so fast that I find it impossible to sleep. I hope that Mohammed is not badly hurt.

I have not fully pieced together what happened yet, but it seems the trouble began earlier in the evening, when a group of natives gathered on the Rue Gambetta to protest against the head tax. Their leader was a Liberian preacher, a follower of the Christian preacher named Harris, who claims to be the natives’ Redeemer. But tonight they were more interested in politics than religion.

About fifty of them marched until they were in front of the Noix, where they very unwisely came to a halt. It was there that members of the administration and the conservative Syndicat Agricole were gathered. If the natives wanted to antagonize them, they could not have chosen a better moment or a more irritable group.

It was the gunshot that caught my attention first. Even though there are always guns at the Noix, one seldom goes off. And when this one did, I immediately knew it was not intended for a wild animal or an elephant that might have strayed into town. If there can be a difference between the sound made by a bullet meant for a human and one for an animal, then I heard it.

Once I had rushed downstairs and onto the street, I could not see anyone hurt, at least not by the bullet. Several of the planteurs were pushing their way through the natives, who remained passive the whole time, more intent on clutching their placards and shouting “Citoyens nous!” The Liberian tried to keep the natives and the petits blancs apart, but he was pushed to the ground.

“Go back to Monrovia, nigger!” someone called out.

One of the farmers, on recognizing a native as one of his own, went after him with a stick and chased him all the way back to the Rue Gambetta. The white people who were still at their tables in front of the Noix were amused, as if this was a little Friday night entertainment being staged for them. They laughed even harder when a particularly drunk planteur began shouting at one of the native women. His finger waving more than wagging, he sounded like a father reprimanding his daughter for staying out too late, not a master his worker for demonstrating. She was obviously his mousso, and he wasn’t going to tolerate her being there. When she eventually took off down the road, she screamed back at him over her shoulder. By that stage the Noix was in fits of laughter.

I was standing off to the side, in a doorway of the apothecary. I did not want to get involved. Even though I don’t like the petits blancs, least of all the planteurs, this is more their country than mine. I haven’t come here for the same reason as them. They have made this place their home, bringing their wives and families with them. I am a shooter and all alone, biding my time until work on Vridi starts again. Or until I can go fight in Europe. At least that’s what I thought until, amidst all the rioting natives, I saw Mohammed.

The leader of the planteurs, a fat, obnoxious man named Rudolph Valery, had grabbed a native girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. He made lewd gestures, and his cohorts spurred him on. Seeing this, one of the natives forced his way between Valery and the girl. Though the light was bad and the people were constantly shifting, it took only a few seconds for me to recognize the native as Mohammed.

Normally he is a silent man, the last person I would expect to find in the center of a riot, particularly this one. Needless to say, his action further angered the planteurs, several of whom circled him and began prodding and taunting him. Although I have never been in a situation like this before, my immediate reaction was to act the same way I do when I hunt – to set my sights on the leader of the pack. I headed for Valery, a bullheaded man even at the most peaceful of times. I have seen the way he acts in the Noix or when he chairs meetings of the Syndicat Agricole, and I couldn’t imagine him giving in without a fight.

By the time I reached the crowd, Valery had slapped Mohammed several times already, although he was too drunk to cause any serious injury. Soon he held Mohammed in his grasp. Mohammed could have struck back, but he didn’t. No one was hurt yet, but there was a carelessness in Valery I did not trust. I pushed my way toward the two of them.

On seeing me, the planteurs called out my name. “Hercule!” It sounded like a war cry. They believed I had come to join them, to assist them. They respect me because of my height, because I worked on Vridi. Any other man who did not drink with them every night at the Noix would be a source of ridicule. Because of my size, they also mistake me for a fighter. When they realized I had come not to support them but to try and break up the fight, they became belligerent once more. Still, they let me through.

Once I had reached Mohammed, I paid him no attention, acted as if I didn’t know him, had not seen the blood on his face. Much as I hated it, I had to appear indifferent. I could not let on that we shoot together. No one recognized him as one of my men, and I had to exploit the fact that all natives look alike to us, as I suspect we do to them.

I tried to keep my voice even, make light of the heated situation. “Come now, Valery,” I joked. “Can’t you see that this is a Friday night rally? The natives just got carried away.” I looked over to the preacher, who nodded unconvincingly. He himself had been caught off guard by the sudden violence.

Valery held on to Mohammed. He was not going to give up easily. I went for his weakest spot – the same way that when I’m up against an elephant, I aim for the medulla oblongata. In someone like Valery, it is his fierce sense of nationalism. I lowered my voice in order to address only him. “Think of le patrie. A country at war can hardly afford this kind of trouble. These are French subjects you’re assaulting. What if one of Hitler’s agents was to see us, citizens and subjects, fighting among ourselves? What kind of nation are we?”

The planteurs waited for their leader. The natives stood still. I don’t know how long I faced Valery. His intransigence and his gross size (even his eyes are obese) reminded me of the bushpig I had bought – and right now his head was similarly stuck in a corner, and he was unwilling to move. From this point on the situation became less like a true hunt. I had no experience to guide me, no double-bore, no magazine with extra bullets to shoot. I simply had to wait. When you hunt, the waiting is invigorating. This, by contrast, was long and excruciating.

Eventually Valery shifted, grunted a curse and gave Mohammed a last shove. He shouted “Vive la France!” and then spat on the ground in front of Mohammed. Even though he might not have intended it, the gob also landed at my feet. The other men, as I’d expected, grumbled halfheartedly and then followed him. The natives suddenly shouted “Vive la France!” too, which almost stirred up the fight all over again. The preacher quickly hustled them off down the street.

Mohammed never said a word to me, and there was blood all over the new tunic I had bought for him earlier in the day. He left comforting the young girl who had caused all the trouble. She could have been his daughter, although he held her as close as he might his own woman.

After all this commotion, I hope he remembers to meet me in the morning. There are only a few hours remaining till we leave. What with all that has happened, I have almost forgotten the reason we came to Belleville: to pick up the caracal.
* * *

Palm Deux
15 February

20 (1516 lbs.)

The sly old devil, he has just left my quarters. Monsieur V-C went to the coast not to see how his businesses and boat are doing, and to spend evenings with the Commandant, but to get married. I have not seen her yet, but I can only imagine what she’s like. There are no beauties in this part of the world, even fewer women who are single, so I wonder what he landed up with. Could she be huge and dour, like the maid Yaaba? I wouldn’t be surprised if she is. But his mood has altered for the better. He seems quite ecstatic, in fact. I also think I heard a new kind of music on his porch tonight. For that change alone I should be grateful. He brought a bottle of Moët to my quarters as a gift. I couldn’t help wonder what he was doing in my room if he had a new bride waiting. Could she be that awful? The villa lies just across the lawn, so I will meet her soon.

(Next: Upton finds out that Ella Bazaar is an animal woman, but unfortunately not the same kind he knew at A.P.E.; read (at your peril) about what happened to Ella in a zoo long ago; Upton learns some very strange Latin words; numerous red herrings start appearing (or is Upton simply finding too many coincidences in Hercule’s diary?); and Upton follows Ella into a curious marketplace that will turn his world upside down.)

The three men wore no shirts underneath their dark waistcoats, and their chests seemed almost unnaturally big. Felix Magna made a point of not staring at their huge pectorals as he instructed them to rough up Senor Alvarez.

“But don’t hurt him too much,” he added, smiling.

Senor Alvarez, or Giuseppe to his friends, was the owner of Toucan Tobacco, one of the most profitable cigarette factories in Central America and, as such, the latest company that Felix Magna had set his sights on taking over.

In the beginning, Senor Alvarez hadn’t wanted to sell, but Felix could already the old man’s resistance cracking. And all he’d had to do so far was to blow up Senor Alvarez’s Mercedes-Benz. Actually, the three men with big chests had blown it up, but Felix, as always, took, the credit for the malevolence he’d set in motion.

It was the first time Felix had used the trio, and the job had gone off more smoothly than he could have anticipated. He wasn’t sure that his own men could have done it better. He hadn’t seen the wreckage himself, but he’d heard the blast from his hotel in downtown Tegucigalpa, and he’d listened to the bombers describe the carnage afterward.

“There’s a bonus in it for you,” he shouted after the shirtless threesome as they sped off on their motorbikes in search of the to-be-roughed-up Senor Alvarez. Before getting into his limousine, where his bodyguards were waiting for him, Felix paused for a few moments, basking in the knowledge that he would soon be the owner of Toucan. Then he shouted into the air, “Beat that if you can, Jocelyn!”

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* * *
Hôtel le Noix

Sweat from his hand seeping into the copy of Hercule Perpignon’s diary, Upton stepped off the plane and entered the hot night air of La Cité. It felt the same as The Capital – a humid African city on the Gulf of Guinea – but he knew it was different. It had to be. It was French, and it was the home of the mysterious woman called Ella Bazaar, and it was where Hercules had begun his journey in Africa.

As soon as his taxi crossed the causeway to the city center, Upton saw a sign for Vridi, the canal he’d read about in the diary. He was going to tell the driver to turn off, but the man did anyway. And before Upton could even ask about a hotel, the car stopped in front of a rather faded, two-story building with a neon palm tree and a sign that, if all the lights had worked, would have read Hôtel le Noix.

“Just like the café in the book,” Upton said to the driver, who smiled at him blankly.

The man behind the reception desk had the biggest smile Upton had ever seen. “Bonjour,” he began. “My name is Omar Touré, descendant of the famous warrior Samory Touré.” He paused, then looked behind Upton expectantly. “Room for … one?” It sounded like a question he didn’t ask very often.

Upton nodded, thinking that maybe the Noix, like Prang Hotel, lacked clientele. The similarity made him immediately feel at home.

“For the … night?” Omar Touré asked.

“Well, of course,” Upton declared, adding, “What kind of place is this anyhow?”

Upton got his answer only after he reached his room and heard two couples in quick succession use the room adjacent to his. When a third couple took up their positions before the hour was up, he put on his clothes and went down to a bar called Les Palms and ordered a Mamba beer from Omar Touré.

Carefully resting his notepad on the fake palm-trunk table in front of him, Upton began writing a few lines that had been knocking around in his head ever since he’d gotten off the airplane and had smelt chocolate on the humid night air. The coincidence bode well. He’d hardly arrived in La Cité and he had already discovered a new product.

Candy not Swiss but tropical, he composed. How’s that for topical?

Upton wrote a ditty for every item he believed might interest head office as a potential export. The product went in the front of what he called his Export Notepad, the ditties in the back. Initially, he’d written the rhymes to serve as a kind of commercial hors d’oeuvres. He couldn’t just send off a note saying, ‘How about lacquer sandals?’ or ‘Any interest in traditional wood beds?’ He had to work up Magna Exchange’s appetite. And while none of the exports had worked so far, he’d developed a real taste for these compositions. He’d even mentioned the possibility of a writing career to Solomon Magna, although his father hadn’t taken the suggestion well. Upton could still remember his exact words: “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

No one entered Les Palms while Upton paged through his Export Notepad, reading old verses and touching up a word here and there. After several Mambas, he was exhausted enough to sleep through any activity in the room next-door to his. As he got ready to leave the bar, three large men came into the bar looking windblown and worn out, as if they’d just completed a very long journey by motorbike. Upton didn’t pay much attention to the men, except to notice that they wore big mustaches and carried rifles.

“Hunters,” he thought, “just like Hercules.”

He was sure that the trio’s arrival had to be a good omen.
* * *
The Tiger Deal: Six Days

Solomon Magna was agitated, which you could tell from the way he was drumming his stubby fingers on the cherry wood desk.

“You know why I really sent him to Africa?”

Goodleigh knew why, but he waited to hear Solomon Magna tell him all over again. That’s what the man wanted.

“Because he’s useless. He’s too fucking sensitive. Just like his mother, damn bitch.”

The memory of his second wife, Melanie, always brought a sour taste to Solomon Magna’s mouth, even though she was dead. It also sent a cold shiver down his spine, as if he was revisiting the place where she had died in what had come to be widely known as “a terrible skiing accident.”

Solomon Magna knew better. He also knew that if it hadn’t happened, she would have divorced him and taken away half of his company. Instead, Solomon Magna got to keep everything, including, he was sorry to say, Upton.

The stubby-fingered man raised his voice. “The one place I can be sure that he won’t be able to embarrass me is in Africa.”

“Yes, sir,” Goodleigh replied, not really listening but thinking instead about his own mother. In the same way memories of Melanie brought the worst out in Solomon Magna, memories of Ethel Goodleigh did exactly the opposite to her son.

Ethel had worked hard to put him through university, doing night duty in a hospital ever since his father had died – and that was something Goodleigh would never forget.

“In twelve months, what has he sent me?” the Chairman carried on. “Carvings I don’t want, masks that have ‘Made in Taiwan’ stickers stuck on them. And that’s the good stuff.”

Solomon Magna drummed his fingers some more, then reached for a half-chomped cigar.

“So how long do we have?”

“Six days,” Goodleigh answered, his mother now a memory. A memory with a very bright halo. A memory he would be talking to very shortly.
* * *
A Malian’s Secret

She snored heavily, and Upton watched her. It was two in the morning and he wanted her to leave, but he couldn’t risk waking her up. Who knew what her reaction would be? Every time he was on the verge of rousing her, he thought about Thursday, the slaughtered chicken, and the decapitated woman on the front page of The Guinea Times, and then he’d decide that it would be safer to listen to the woman gurgle for the rest of the night.

On arriving at his door earlier, she announced that Omar Touré had sent her. Upton had told Omar that he was looking for a woman, so here she was.

“No,” Upton replied, “I told him the woman I’m looking for works with animals. And she could possibly be French.”

“I am French,” the black woman replied indignantly. “I am from Mali. You like me?”

She was quite attractive, Upton had to admit, with breasts that were like Pretty Thing’s. Without undressing him, she started playing with herself on the bed, and Upton soon found himself quite excited. Then he thought of Solomon Magna’s words, The mouth, boy. Use the mouth, and immediately he wanted her to leave.

Not long after that she’d fallen asleep. Lying with her legs wide open, it was almost as if she was inviting Upton to look at her cunt, which, he couldn’t help notice, had been cut in the same way Gracie the Nigerian’s had. The thought of a woman having her genitals cut out always made Upton feel sick, although Bigelow had tried to put the whole thing in perspective for him.

“Snow big deal,” he’d said. “Sides, you don’t use their cunts anyway, wot.”

Now that he had the chance, Upton moved in closer to the wound. The dark skin around the Malian’s vagina had been shaved and there was a scar running along the left rim. The skin was rough, bumpy and inhuman, almost elephantlike. He was tempted to touch it, but the woman suddenly gave a loud snore, kicked out a leg that cuffed him in the shoulder, and then rolled over onto her stomach. Upton, holding his shoulder, kept his distance for the rest of the night.

When the Malian left the next morning, Upton fell back into bed, hoping to get the sleep he hadn’t had because of her loud breathing. Just as he was dozing off, though, he heard a sharp knock at the door. He opened it and was surprised to see the woman had returned.

“Oh, please,” Upton said, scared she might come in again. “You’ve already done enough.”

The woman held a postcard in her hand.

“It was on your door, cherie,” she said, then left.

The postcard was of an animal Upton didn’t recognize but which was described on the opposite side as a hylochoerus meinertzhageni, or, in English, a giant forest hog. Underneath was written, Meet me at the Motel du Soleil at midday.

Suddenly wide awake, Upton was thinking of how at last he’d discover more about the mysterious woman from Prang Hotel. He read aloud the signature at the bottom of the card, a name that was starting to roll off of his tongue like good poetry.

Ella Bazaar.
* * *
The Bureau for Exports

Upton saw a wicker settee, then he composed a rhyme: Comfortable and sane/Amidst African cane. A moment later, for some whiskey-bottled peanuts, he scribbled down in his Export Notepad, Snacks in glass/My, what class.

Driving along the Corniche Giscard d’Estaing, he passed mile after mile of stalls set up on the roadside to sell merchandise, or, rather, what he thought of as Potential Exports. They were just like the stalls around Tetteh Ouarshie Circle in The Capital, only more chaotic, more French. He kept peering at them so intently that at times he almost veered off the road. The sight of all the goods reminded him of the other reason, besides tracking down Ella Bazaar and Mister Sulahman’s pet, why he was in La Cité – to find a product that Magna Exchange would approve of. If he didn’t, it would be Aden for him.

When Upton first arrived in Africa, he’d tried not exporting goods but importing them. That had lasted a very short time, however, or at least until what had since become known as The Perfume Affair.

Jocelyn had sent him a shipment marked AID FROM THE U.N. but which was, in fact, phony eau de cologne from Manila. She’d also warned him that the scent had a shelf life of sixty days before turning into something that smelt like diseased horse piss.

No sooner had the cargo arrived in The Capital when someone in The Office of Imports demanded that Upton either deliver documents both of them knew didn’t exist or buy him a secondhand Toyota. The official was wearing the standard uniform – brown shirt, brown pants, official stripes of some sort, and that single article of clothing Upton would soon come to hate most of all, sunglasses.

Unused to the ways of The Capital, Upton stood firm. He had a strong hunch that the official would give in. Bigelow had told him that there was a shipload of Korean tractors waiting in the harbor that very same week. And with agricultural vehicles offering more lucrative pickings than perfume, Upton counted on The Office needing every inch of quayside space it could get. Upton was sure that if he held out, the perfume would be cleared.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. The bottles of scent remained untouched – except for one crate that was smashed when three tons of machinery from Seoul fell on top of it, the contents gradually transforming into rancid urine. Magna Exchange deducted the loss from Upton’s salary, although Jocelyn still got her commission and the customs official got his Toyota from a more cooperative trader from Lebanon. The next time Upton saw him, he was wearing a pair of gold-rimmed Guccis.

“It’s your face,” Jocelyn sneered at Upton when he called her about The Perfume Affair. “You’re too pious-looking.”

Whenever Upton asked Bigelow what he thought about Jocelyn’s assessment, the older man laughed.

“Snot your face,” he said. “Iss their sex.”

The men in The Office, Bigelow explained – and there only seemed to be male employees whenever Upton went there – were always balancing their horniness and their incomes.

“I spect one’s too big,” he concluded, “while the other stew small.”

A bribe’s size, therefore, bore a close relationship to the day of the week it was. The closer it got to the weekend, when all the men in The Office would be competing for girlfriends, the more severe the extortion would be.

“Foove got stuff cummin inta port or ta Gran Innapenance,” Bigelow added, “jus spray snot Friday.”

Bigelow then helped himself to a bottle from a case of whiskey Upton was going to use at The Office later that day.

“What’s the option then?” Upton asked.

“Essports. Snow question bouddit …”

Bigelow couldn’t get the cap off the bottle, so Upton helped him.

“Really?”

“Course. Everyone stryinga bring stuff inna country. Radjos, cars, cement, guns. Slike the colonial days backwards. But essports…” He sipped his drink and savored the taste for a few moments. “Seasier, wot. Fact, I can’t member when someone inna Bureau lass asked for summin more spensive than a paira Levis.”

‘The Bureau’ was what they all called The Bureau for Exports.

“Havven you ever noticed?”

“What?” Upton asked.

“Snow one inna Bureau ever wears sunglasses.”

The lack of eyewear was reason enough for Upton to prefer The Bureau to The Office, although there was one problem that did remain, and it wasn’t insignificant – actually finding something to export. Magna Exchange got rubber from Indonesia, cacao and coffee from South America, and everything else from Taiwan and China. Anything Upton suggested, they seemed to already have or not want. Which was why, for several months now, Solomon Magna had been hanging the threat of a transfer to an undesirable Middle Eastern branch office over Upton’s head.

“Find me something decent,” the Chairman said, his tone becoming reverential. “Something Magnaficent. Something … Magnafrican. Or it’s Aden, my boy.”

Upton had searched The Capital for a decent export, but he’d come up emptyhanded. What he’d found in La Cité so far – chocolate, cane furniture, peanuts in a whiskey bottle – they were all good, but deep down Upton knew that they were neither Magnaficent nor Magnafrican.

Instinctively, Upton cast a quick glance at the old vellum-covered book lying on the passenger seat next to him, the diary from Prang Hotel. Perhaps that might lead him to something the Chairman would want, an item they’d traded fifty years ago but which people had forgotten about. Hercules had mentioned a huge cache of ivory sunken somewhere in Palm Deux. Ivory wasn’t a new product for Magna Exchange, but Solomon Magna was always on the lookout for more. At least he wouldn’t turn it down.

Not that Upton was crazy about the idea of selling ivory – it was something Dee from A.P.E. never would have approved of – but he rationalized it this way: the animals on Palm Deux had been dead for a long time. That made it a little easier to do. And he knew it would keep the Chairman off his back for a while. So whenever Upton read anything in the diary about the hiding place of the elephant tusks, he made a point of taking out his pencil and circling it.
* * *
A Second Trio

The three men driving the Quatre L station wagon on the coastal road out of La Cité no longer wore their mustaches. They passed the turnoff to the Motel du Soleil, looked back at it, then turned to each other quizzically. A half hour later, when the car ahead of them made a U-turn, they did likewise.

“Doesn’t look like his brother,” the first one said.

“Doesn’t look like his father,” the second one added.

The third one, the cleverest, paused before he spoke.

“Doesn’t look like he knows where he’s going, either.”
* * *
A Curious Event at the Beach

Upton missed the Motel du Soleil turnoff because he’d spied a stall selling lampshades made of coconut grass. He’d taken his eyes off the road for a few seconds to write in his Export Notepad.

Need a light?/Try a nut by night.

After he had turned around and found the side road and swerved onto it, he drove through row upon row of palms, bumping over what seemed like several decades’ worth of coconut shells. At the end of the road he pulled up at a gate, on the other side of which stood a large guard in sunglasses. Upton checked his wallet to see how much money he had for bribes, but as he got closer he saw that the man posed little threat.

By now Upton was such an expert on sunglasses, and, more importantly, on which brands posed a bigger threat – say a pair of sleek, anatomically designed Michel Kleins with an ultralight frame versus a pair of anti-scratch Aviatrixes with self-adjusting nose pads and ear stems – he knew the gate guard would be a pushover. His shades were cheap Made in China imitations.

No sooner had Upton walked through the gate than he stopped in his tracks and squinted at something ahead of him. Between the palms, ever so briefly, he spied a woman wearing a nice smile – and nothing else. He couldn’t believe it. She was naked! And then he saw the sign that explained what was going on. The Motel du Soleil was a nudist resort.

Upton walked forward slowly, finally reaching what looked like the front office, a shack made of reeds that was so flimsy, it could have been erected in an hour or two. In one corner was a lone table, on top of which lay an old copy of Le Monde Nu.

“Is Ella Bazaar here?” he asked, suddenly anxious at the thought of going into the resort.

A flat-chested girl behind the counter told him that he would have to take off his clothes to find out, then pointed to a doorway with a sign above it marked Hommes. After getting undressed, he came out, holding his Export Notepad above his head to provide some shade, the diary in front of his crotch.

As he looked for a place to sit down, he hardly noticed the people around him. Only after he’d fallen gratefully into an empty deckchair, the diary still covering his groin, did he dare to look around.

Nearby him stood a big black man who, besides guarding the little patch of beach in front of the resort, was staring at Upton threateningly. Otherwise there were perhaps a dozen people, most of them women, all lying on their stomachs and so totally motionless that they could have been plastic mannequins tossed on the beach as props.

The only woman Upton could see the front of was very pretty and young, and she was hanging onto an Arab who from a distance looked just like someone he’d once seen at Prang Hotel. But it was hard to tell with his clothes gone. Besides the Arab there were only three other men, who sat together in a far corner wearing sombreros that shaded their faces. Upton envied their big chests.

“Hello,” a voice said behind Upton, and he started. When he turned around, he saw a woman who’d been wearing a tight T-shirt the first time they’d met at Prang. But now she wasn’t. She had breasts that looked almost as nice in clothes as out of them, and there was hardly any hair between her legs. Upton couldn’t help noticing this because her crotch was at the same level as his nose. He didn’t know what to say.

“Uh … Ella Bazaar?”

“I’m glad you could come,” she said.

The sight of her naked excited him and yet made him shift uncomfortably in his deckchair. For some inexplicable reason, he wanted to give her something to cover herself with.

“I thought Prang would be the last time I saw you,” he said.

“Yet here we are.”

Upton tried to concentrate.

“What’s this all about, anyway?” he asked. “All this mystery. And you rushing away from Prang. And Mister Sulahman’s …”

She interrupted him.

“Later,” she said. “You swim?”

Ella Bazaar turned her very tight bottom on Upton and walked down the beach toward the water. He hesitated only a moment before he put the two books, the Export Notepad and the diary, under his deckchair and ran toward the sea. Only when he’d caught up with her did he realize what he’d unmasked by removing the diary from his groin.

Covering up the hardness with his hands, he quickly dashed into the water, forgetting that what the Gulf of Guinea lacks in action above the surface, it more than compensates for below. In no time at all, Upton was sucked under the surface.

His first thought as he was being tossed around, strangely enough, was about Hercules’s diary. He thought of the native workers who had been sucked into the canal and minced up underwater by Cachet’s machines. Would he end up the same way? He then thought about Hercules himself. Until that moment, Upton had believed that they were very similar, in age, in the way they’d come to Africa to work for some greater ideal, Hercules to clear up a plantation, Upton to find exports. But now, as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful of salty brown water, he saw how wrong he was. The Frenchman had been successful – hunting, planting trees, building canals, doing manly things – and Upton hadn’t. He couldn’t even find a simple export for Magna Exchange before drowning in the Gulf of Guinea. So much for discovering something worthy to be Magnafrican. So much for being Magnaficent.

Suddenly something grabbed Upton. He thought it might be a shark, but it was too toothless, too smooth. Strong but smooth. It went around his neck like a big snake, pushing his head to the surface so that he could breathe. He felt a body, a naked body, under him, the person’s legs kicking evenly and firmly, like a lifesaver’s. The voice was reassuring. It could have been Dee. Or was it his mother?

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m here.”

Two things happened in quick succession after that. Upton once again felt himself growing hard, and then he passed out.

(Next: Hercule is instructed by Monsieur V-C to buy animals, although he doesn’t know why; Mohammed clashes with the white farmers in Belleville; Hercule finds a caracal; Monsieur V-C returns from La Cite with a new wife.)

Palm Deux
5 December 1939

3 (267 lbs.)

La Cité is not at all what I expected a town in Africa to look like. The streets are lined with cafés the one side, sorcerers the other, boutiques cheek by jowl with the lowliest of bars, diamond merchants next-door to “doctors” who promise to remove certain parts of your anatomy for a couple of sous. I have seen several that will cut out the most delicate part of a woman. One day I came upon a young girl being dragged into one of these doctors by her mother. She was screaming so much, you would have sworn she was being led to her execution.

And yet, the place is as vibrant as it is repulsive, as close to civilized as you can get in the tropics: 15,000 people and growing by the day. I saw a shop selling dresses my young cousin Betty would not be unhappy wearing to her debut at l’Opera.

Up here in the north things are wilder but a lot quieter. Our nearest town, Belleville, is small and unimpressive. The petits blancs are much the same as in the south, worst luck. Curiosity festers like an open wound in the humidity. Despite being an hour away over a bad road, it did not take more than a few days for people to find out there was a new shooter on Palm Deux.

Monsieur V-C promises there will be other work for me soon, perhaps some task of engineering. In the meantime, the elephants keep me busy. My job is not hard, and at last I have something to shoot. In La Cité, there are few animals and nothing worth hunting. If I saw anything, it was mostly the pesky colobus that chatter away in the trees of Banco forest, or the gazelle that often wander into the streets of Treichville. As for the manatees that infest the Ebrié, I left them to the natives, because they are too easy to kill, fat creatures that loll and move away slowly, always nuzzling the lagoon bed for ferns. A few spears from a dugout and they are goners. They are hardly what I would call a challenge. Here in Palm Deux, I have plenty to shoot.

It often surprises me how unafraid the elephants are to die. They are not tame exactly, but nor do they seem to mind us getting near them. One or two may look my way, contemplate the trees behind me, as if they do not see me, then casually carry on eating, unaware that death is so close. And then it is upon them, and I can collect my tooth.

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* * *
10 December
14 (1216 lbs.)

My Rigby is turning into quite an acquisition, and I have written to tell Prescott what a wonderful gift it has been. The elephant stand little chance. The lead I brought from La Cité comes in more than handy and is particularly effective: so far not one shell has been spoilt by damp. Some of the men at Le Dôme laughed at me before I left, said I would struggle to finish five thousand rounds, but they would be surprised.

I began taking a tooth as a keepsake from the very first elephant, and on Mohammed’s urging I have started saving a tusk for myself every now and then. I have even begun carving a billiard ball. What a sight that must be!

* * *
23 December
23 (2056 lbs.)

I know that I promised to write more than just figures, more than just how many elephants I’ve shot and how much ivory we have collected off of them, but I don’t feel like adding anything tonight. I will have to let the large numbers from the last fortnight speak for me.

* * *
31 December
5 (419 lbs.)

I have fallen into a routine easily. Mohammed is a good man, quite solid. He is unusually taciturn. His silence does not bother me so much, although it leaves him quite an enigma. I know that he is a Wolof from Senegal, and a Muslim, of course, although he does not seem to practice his faith anymore. I do not know whether he is married or has friends, although I assume he does.

Whenever we go to Belleville, he always has something to do. He quickly disappears into the native quarter and surfaces only the next morning. He is so exhausted, he dozes off for the entire drive home. If he ever says anything, it usually has to do with his soldiering days with the Force Etranger. Last week he told me that once, when he was stationed in Central Africa, he saw how the pygmies hunt an elephant. They sneak up on their bellies and cut the tendons in its legs so that it cannot run. Their cohorts, who have meanwhile positioned themselves in the trees above, fall upon it with their weapons. I replied to him that with my Rigby the task is a lot quicker and less arduous. We laughed.

Hunting is the one thing we have in common, the easiest topic of conversation. Mohammed is a fair shot, and he maintains the Farquharson I gave him as if it were a double-bore of ten times the value. He tries to learn from me. I can always feel his eyes taking in my every movement. He is full of questions, most of which I cannot answer because they are about sensibilities, patterns a hunter comes to know with time and practice, things you cannot learn from a book or from being told. I wish we could get out into the savanna more often, but Palm Deux takes up most of our time. If you leave for more than a few days, the elephants get in and the trees suffer. You would not believe what havoc they can cause.

Our work is simple. Every day we scour the plantation for intruders. Route Douze, the roadway that runs north from the river, is the dividing line. To its west lies Zone A, the original farm, which is fairly safe from elephants, especially now that the trees are older, the leaves tougher, and access is difficult. It is bordered on its other side by a tributary of the Plantain River. The southwest corner of Zone A is where our natives live and where Mohammed spends most of his time. He also has a room attached to the villa, but he never seems to use it.

The elephants mostly infiltrate from the forest in the east. Their target is Zone B, because it has so many young, tender trees. The intruders keep their activity to the north, far from the villa, so Mohammed and I drive up in search of them early in the morning and again late in the day, when it is cooler and they prefer to eat.

This afternoon, we found a young male who had caught himself in one of the countless trenches that crisscross the groves. Although the trenches are meant to impede the elephants, they usually find a way across and have even been known to climb into them and act as bridges for their mates to walk over. But this one was not so lucky. He was trapped. A simpler shot I couldn’t have asked for. Afterward, I took my tooth, my memento – third from the back, upper left side – and Mohammed cut the ivory.

We loaded the tusks into the truck and took them, as we always do, to a small crater on the far northern edge of Zone B, where we deposit them. Monsieur V-C wants as few people as possible to know the ivory’s whereabouts. With the natives roaming about the forest and the plantation, however, someone is bound to find it sooner or later. The tarpaulin and palm branches with which we cover the cache are hardly enough to camouflage it. Like the trou sans fond at Vridi, it is only a matter of time before it is stumbled across. So far, however, it has remained undetected, the horde of ivory still our secret.

As I sit here now, I can hear music playing, Monsieur V-C’s music, which reminds me that I have said nothing about him. Maybe I should fit him in before the end of 1939, then the picture of Palm Deux will be complete.

On the mantel in his study, he has a photograph taken in 1929, him at La Coupole in Paris with Kisling, Cocteau and Foujita. He could still be there, the way he acts and dresses, even though he lives several thousand miles away. Next to the photo is a steering wheel from one of the vehicles Andre Citroën (“a personal friend”) took across the Sahara in 1925; a miniature wooden replica of the Bleriot II monoplane flown by Captain Joubert in 1914 (“a cousin of my ex-wife’s”); and a medal from Ypres (his own). His life. The souvenirs would not be out of place in an apartment in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, but here they are as odd as the fireplace below them which never gets lit.

His array of guns, however, now that is something else altogether. They are quite formidable: three Remingtons, a Westley Richards, a Gibbs .505, two .500-bore Mausers, and at least one double hammerless made by Holland. And those are only the ones I can remember. Just seeing them behind that glass makes me itch to try them out. He himself doesn’t shoot anymore. He told me once that it exhausts him. He was wounded in the groin in 1916, and sometimes he still walks with a silver-tipped ebony cane.

As for Palm Deux, it appears that he was left the plantation by a relative who bought it late in the last century and spent so much of his life here that everyone presumed he truly must have gone out of his mind. When Monsieur V-C lost everything in France ten years ago, this was where he came. He brought his wife, but she lasted barely a year. He has grown-up children, but they now live in America.

Besides Palm Deux, he has two stores in La Cité and often goes down there for a week or two at a time. Perhaps he has a woman. He keeps a cargo boat that occasionally runs down the coast to Gaboon and the Equator, although fuel is getting harder to come by with the war, so I don’t know how long that will continue.

He is not someone you get to know. He keeps his distance, the way I do from the petits blancs, the way Mohammed does from me. We are three men together and yet on our own.

We seldom see Monsier V-C on the grounds, for he doesn’t meddle in the running of Palm Deux. His instruction to hide the ivory is the only one he has given me so far. Otherwise the coconuts go to the soap factory in Daloa, the rubber to Assinie, from where it is shipped, and the accounts get done by portly Monsieur Singh in Belleville. Even though he might not have enough money to survive in France, he has enough for Africa. I do not know how he stands the isolation, though, especially tonight. I couldn’t stay here forever.

His favorite hour, if you can call it that, is between dusk and ten, when he finally goes to bed. A fuzzy light burns on the porch that faces the Plantain, while rather doleful music echoes across the dark water. I do not care for the sound. Tonight, of course, he is playing it later than usual. The end of the year is only fifteen minutes away. I wonder what 1940 will bring.

(Next: Upton looks for Ella Bazaar in La Cité; Felix Magna shows how nasty he can be; Upton draws comparisons between himself and Hercule in the diary; memories of Upton’s dead mother plague the evil Solomon Magna; three strange men start following Upton, who finds a Malian in his bed; Upton is faced with a very big problem when he finally meets Ella Bazaar, who is wearing a bikini.)