Blood Is Dirt by Robert Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

make him fall asleep. This made Orishala unpredictable so that when he saw human beings they would sometimes remind him of his frustration and the powerlessness he felt in his work. It could make him angry, incensed that he didn’t hold the ultimate power of life and because he could shape people he would take revenge by deforming them. This is the Yoruba people’s explanation for occasional aberrations.’
    â€˜I’ve always liked that part about the pigeon, the hen and the snail shell,’ said Gerhard, letting us know he was on top of it all along and getting within a hair of thanking Bagado for handing in a good piece of prep. It was a line that wiped out previous goodwill and made me feel more expensive than I had done yesterday.
    â€˜We have a small project in a town called Kétou just over a hundred kilometres north of Porto Novo. We’re very close to the Nigerian border. The project is agricultural but we have a medical service there too. Pregnant women have been coming from a small village called Akata across the border. They’re very frightened pregnant women. They’ve been talking about the anger of the god Orishala. Five women from the village have already given birth to deformed babies. They’ve been telling my staff about how their livestock are sick and their crops are dying.’
    There was a knock on the door. Heike came in. Gerhard didn’t need to stand up, suck in his gut and swell his pecs but he did it anyway. His blue eyes flashed across the room like police lights at night. Now I knew at least one of the reasons why we’d got the job and that made me feel even less cheap. Bagado was leaning forward with his thumb on his chin and two fingers astride the ridge he had coming down his forehead to the bridge of his nose, squeezing.
    Nobody misses love walking into a room.
    Heike was self-conscious. She knew the attention she was getting and she knew I was there watching her get it. I now realized that she hadn’t let me into the sanctity of her workplace for the simple reason of a cheap job. There were messages. How to read them, that was the thing. There was no doubt that Gerhard had got himself all atremble with Heike in the room, but what was I there for? Was this Heike telling Gerhard, ‘This is my man, back off’? Was Heike telling me, ‘I’m still attractive, watch your step’? This could be Heike giving Bagado and I a break, knowing we needed the money, or it could be a little punishment, a helping of self-knowledge.
    I didn’t think Heike was going to try anything on with Gerhard. He seemed too reasonable and she’d already run that one past me with another guy she’d worked with—Wolfgang. They’d gone back to Berlin together after some ugly business of mine had spilled over into our private life. Wolfgang had been no match for her. When she’d disappointed him he’d cried in the street, sat on the edge of the pavement with his elbows on his knees and his fists banged into the side of his head and added to the rains in the gutter—inconsolable.
    I’d spent some time thinking about Wolfgang’s scene while Heike slept beside me with the sweat of sex still on us. She’d always accused me of holding things back from her, not letting her in, building up walls around myself. Maybe she was right and I was just doing some self-protection, making sure I didn’t end up crouched in a street somewhere making mud out of dust.
    â€˜Bruce?’
    I looked up to find three pairs of eyes on me. Bagado’s were the friendliest.
    â€˜What was the question?’ I asked. ‘I was thinking of the good god Orishala.’
    â€˜There was no question,’ said Gerhard, sounding German for the first time, and looking more triumphant than he should have been.
    â€˜You were looking strange,’ said Heike.
    â€˜You’re sending me up country to find out why Orishala is angry and you