The Diamond Buyer -- by OLB

The early evening air felt close-to-comfortable. The little balls of West African heat that had seeped into everything during the day, like the fine red dust that did the same, rested, stayed still.

Sten Hendricks hunched in the splintery wood chair the village carpenter had made for him, bringing his eyes close to the five small, dirty uncut diamonds in his palm. One of his chickens scrambled into the mud hutch at the corner of his yard, which Sten had made with the help of his village friend Moussa, where it would spend the night on the bamboo roost that hung over the floor of straw and feces.

Moussa sat on a stool a few feet from him, legs crossed, swinging the one on top. He wore a traditional robe, dark blue, the length of his body, and gnawed on a fibrous stick to clean his teeth. Strips of wood stuck on his lips. “Stey,” he started, not saying the final “n.” “You have to go back to Ameriki, for good.” He spoke in Banofa, the language Sten had learned over the past two and a half years he’d spent in the village, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and more recently on his own, as he started to buy gems from local miners. “It will be much worse next time.”

“Don’t you think it will hurt a little less when I have enough money to eat American dollar bills for dinner?” Sten asked, only a hint of a smile in his dry way. He rubbed his scraggly red beard, which covered shallow acne scars.

Sten eyes floated over to Amina, who stood near the entrance to his compound. She was the youngest, and most beautiful, of Moussa’s three wives. She watched Sten, her loose fist covering her mouth, almond-shaped eyes wide. He looked at her breasts, covered by her worn yellow t-shirt.

Sten’s nose throbbed; the skin on its bridge felt smooth, swollen, pulled tight. Moussa brought out from under his robe, like a magician, a small mirror, the reflective part made out of some kind of plastic. He handed it to Sten, who grabbed it and looked at his reflection.

He pulled back after he saw his red nose and the starting-to-turn brown-purple-black-yellow sacks under his eyes. “It will be worse next time. That’s what they were telling you,” Moussa said. He left the mirror in Sten’s hand, sat back down and yelled Amina’s name without turning his head toward her.

She looked, slowly, from Sten to her husband. She pulled down the hand that had been covering her mouth.

“Bring Stey tea,” Moussa said, loudly. He then spoke again to Sten. “They know you’re not with Pesi Kori anymore, that you’re just doing what they’re doing—trying to make money.”

“That’s right. I’m doing what they’re doing. They should understand.”

“Go back to Ameriki, Stey.” Moussa said. “This is not your home.”

Sten laughed. “What are they going to do—kill me?”

Moussa shrugged. “Your embassy doesn’t know what’s going on here.”

Sten got up slowly. Pain and heat shot through him. His ribs hurt and his neck was stiff. “My nose hurts. I don’t feel well. I’m going to rest, just try to fall asleep early.” He wrapped the diamonds in a rough square of burlap and put them in his front pocket.

He went inside his hut, pulled apart his mosquito net and climbed onto his comfortable mattress, stuffed with soft straw. It was still light out and his clothes were on, but he fell asleep a few minutes after he lay down.

He woke a few hours later. He could hear men just over his mud fence, playing cards in the yard of the hut next to his. He had watched enough card games to see in his mind what was going on; a small group of friends or brothers sitting around a rickety, low-to-the-ground wood table, playing a variation of some French game, the winner of a hand slamming his cards down when he won, whole-leaf green Chinese tea brewing in a little blue pot, resting on a bed of black charcoal, its embers bright orange, the only light besides the kerosene lantern somewhere near the table or the moon on a night like this. He could hear the plucky guitar of the Zairois music coming from a Chinese battery-powered boom box, muted, constant. He looked out through his mosquito net, through his screen door.

Amina stood at the door, watching him, no lantern this time. His stomach flipped a little, he imagined the smell of her breath, he could almost feel the smooth, warm skin of her stomach. “Amina,” he said, quietly.

She pulled open the screen door and walked in. She closed it behind her and lifted it, just a bit, from the inside so that it fit snugly in the door frame. She kicked off her green flip flops and scraped her calloused feet along his cement floor. She pulled the mosquito net apart, just as he did when he got into the bed.

She jumped in next to him, landed with a light thud on his left side. It sent a little pain into his ribs, also into his nose. “Ahhh!” he yelped, in a low voice, “Amina! Careful.”

She laughed. “That’s your Ameriki wife hurting you, cursing you,” she said.

Sten laughed and held his ribs. “You know I don’t have a wife in Ameriki.”

“I know your wife is watching you. I know you think of her when you’re with me.”

Sten reached his arm out, put it under her neck and pulled her closer to him. “You’re my only woman.” She began undressing him.

She rolled into his arm, brought her face close to his, licked his lips. She smelled like mint tea with sugar. “Moussa says you have to go back.” she said.

“I’m not going,” he said. “My life is here now.”

“Aren’t you scared of Yaya and Ibrahim?” She unbuttoned his shirt.

Sten kissed her lips. Between kisses, he talked: “In Ameriki, I’m like everyone else. Here, I’m the white man that everyone knows. I’m like a king.”

They made love. After, she lay back, sweat shining lightly between her breasts, the wool blanket he used in the colder months covering the lower halves of their bodies, scratchy.

He woke up again later that night, a few hours later. Amina was gone, the mosquito net untucked where she had gone out of it, the cloth armor blowing in a light wind.

He lay flat on his back, still, breathing silently. He heard crickets outside, rustling, saw the moonlight flickering through the leaves of the mango tree near his house.

A cold chill came through the small window on his right side, the one that faced the dirt path that rolled past his hut. The chill seemed to blow onto him, stopped just on the bridge of his nose, rested on the most tender point, like a butterfly. He looked at the tip of his nose, cross-eyed, but saw nothing, really, besides part of his nose. He didn’t blink, though his nose throbbed.

And then it was gone, the chill disappeared. He could hear the men playing cards in the village again, laughing and talking and slamming. He looked over at the window on his right. He watched it, saw chunks of the moon through the still leaves of the mango tree.

He woke early in the morning, just a few hours later. Amina was at his front door again, this time with a bowl of millet porridge. “Wake up, Stey,” she said.

He sat upright rapidly, and his ribs hurt for it. He reached a hand up and touched his nose, which still throbbed. He sniffled and wiped across his upper lip with the top of his finger, to get rid of an itch. He pulled the finger down and saw that his nose had been bleeding.

He got out of the bed, slowly, gingerly, favoring his hurt ribs. “Amina, my nose is bleeding,” he said.

“Here’s the porridge,” she said. She left it just in front of his door and backed away, a serious look on her face. Then she turned and walked away, quickly. She brought one hand up to hold on the fabric that wrapped her hair and used the other to hold the cloth that covered her legs.

He rubbed just under his nose with his fingertip and looked at it. It seemed like he had stopped bleeding a while earlier, but the blood left on his face was still wet. He opened the door, bent and picked up the scratched, blue plastic bowl full of millet porridge, and put it in front of the chair he’d been sitting in when talking to Moussa the night before. He walked to his outdoor toilet to wash his face. He took his shirt off, and used the warmish water from his clay water holder to rinse his face and hands.

He returned to his hut to get his clear plastic bag of sugar, sat down on the wood chair and poured it in the bowl so the cereal became crunchy sweet; he popped the little granules between his teeth like they were caviar.

After a few bites Moussa walked into the courtyard, looking at the ground. They exchanged morning greetings, the same as they always did. Moussa then asked, “Are you better today?”

“Yes, I am,” Sten said. “I feel better. But my nose started bleeding.”

“They came to my house last night,” Moussa said. “Asked if I had convinced you to go home.”

“Who – Yaya and Ibrahim?”

“They told me to warn you to leave, told me to take care of it.”

Sten closed his eyes and balled his fist. His face reddened. “This is my business. My money! I’m not hurting them. They can’t drag you into it.”

“It’s time to leave, Ste. It’s time to leave the village, me, your sungurun.” He used the word that could mean either girlfriend or whore, or both.

Sten looked at him. “What woman?” he asked. He could feel his face tighten.

Moussa looked into his eyes. “Yaya and Ibrahim talked to me about other things last night, too. They told me about you and Amina. They showed me.”

Sten flushed red under his beard and reached up a grubby right hand to stroke his face. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I saw you fuck my wife,” he said flatly.

Sten looked at the ground. “I don’t know what to say . . . .”

“I am not angry. You are a guest here. I see how she looks at you. You are both young.” Moussa reached out and grabbed Sten’s hand. He squeezed it softly, held onto it. Sten could feel his rough calluses, his thick, strong fingers. As he looked at the ground, a drip of blood fell from the tip of his nose to the dirt ground below. It turned into a little mud ball.

“I had a strange dream last night,” Sten said, after they were silent for several beats. “I’m not sure I was even asleep.” Sten looked in the direction of a rumbling from outside the village, down the road that passed in front of his hut. So did Moussa. A bush taxi was approaching, stirring up a cloud of dust behind it. It bobbed up and down, like it had shocks made of slinkys. Goats were strapped to the suitcases and cardboard boxes on top of the metal frame that arched over the payload. Their bleating sounded like babies crying.

Sten felt the morning sun beating down on his head, eating at the middle of his scalp. He took short breaths out without taking in much air. A mango fell from the tree across the road from his house and rolled down the barely-sloped hill into the middle of the road. The car kept bumping, bouncing, coming. The cries of the goats got louder, and they could now hear the faint noise of conversations among the people sitting in the back of the truck. A black plastic tarp covered them so no one could see out of the back of the truck and no one could see in.

“What happened in the dream?” Moussa asked.

“It came in through the window, landed on me, and left. I can’t really remember. But it felt so real.”

The car stopped under the mango tree just across the street. The driver turned off the engine but it choked, coughed, sputtered. Then it wheezed and chugged loud two times before shutting off.

Sten looked into Moussa’s eyes. “If I don’t leave, will they hurt you and Amina?”

“You can’t stay,” Moussa said, looking at the ground. You must leave.” Moussa said. Sten looked at the truck. He looked back at Moussa.

When Moussa didn’t look at him for ten heartbeats, Sten left his yard and told the driver he needed to go to the capital, and paid him to wait a few hours for him while he packed.

He came back into the yard.

“I’m sorry, Ste,” Moussa said. “You are my friend. I want to protect you.”

“I know.”

“We should go to say goodbye to the chief, your friends. Then you can pack.”

“Yes, the driver said he will wait. I don’t have much stuff. I sent it home with Pesi Kori.”

“And to Amina. You will say goodbye to Amina. She will be very sorry that you are leaving.”

Sten looked at the ground. “I am sorry, Moussa,” he said.

“Come on,” Moussa said. He grabbed Sten’s hand and led him out of the yard, towards the center of the village.