by Maggie Gee
Because something very bad had happened before. When tourists from the GFC were rounded up and killed, not by the local people, who would never do such things (indeed a local guide was killed as well, though his name was not in the English newspapers that somebody’s uncle read in Kasese). The manner of their killing was terrible, and so the hotel had to change its name, and none of the new tourists know about it, though local people have not forgotten, and indeed it was only a few years ago. But they do not like to think about what happened before, though sometimes, when the tourists are ill-mannered, it is tempting, or when they are mean, and forget to leave tips.
Lunch-time! The hotels provide huge packed lunches, doorstep white sandwiches, English-style, cake and yogurt and fizzy sodas. The male tourists swap raucous stories, as soon as they have exhausted the gorillas, which happens quite quickly: ‘There wasn’t much narrative to it, was there?’ quips Cyrus, the talkative young American medic, a film buff, who has the biggest camera, and a cotton balaclava to protect him from insects, and a GPS, which he consults at too regular intervals – ‘You’re tired? We’re only at 7,000 feet’ – and elaborate gaiters, all straps and buckles.
Before they have lunch, he offers all the tourists medicated wipes. (‘You don’t know what’s out there.’)Vanessa refuses them, to make a point. She thinks, ‘He’s what Americans call a smart-arse.’ Then she realises they have to eat with their fingers, and regrets saying ‘No’. By then Cyrus’s talking about simian immuno-viruses, or SIVs, which are ‘prevalent here’, and are ‘precursors of HIV’. ‘At least you can’t get that through your fingers,’ she quips, but he says, with a humorous popping sound of his lips and knowingly lifted eyebrows, ‘Nope, if you haven’t broken the skin, that is.’
Has she broken the skin? She won’t think about it.
But the women – there are only two of them – sit there agreeing how wonderful it was. ‘It was spiritual,’ says the American woman, who had had to be hauled up bodily, but her eyes are earnest, and Vanessa agrees, and surely, in fact, that’s why the men, embarrassed, are swapping jock-stories about sex and hospitals, discussing Top Gun and Mission Impossible. The release of nervous tension is palpable. Hard to find words to describe their feelings. And so they fall back on claims of achievement. They’ve done it; they saw them; it’s in the bag.
But Vanessa thinks, I believe she saw me. That young female. And I saw her. I think we wondered about each other.
She chews her way through her second huge sandwich. And then she looks upward: flying buttresses of trees, the distant blue sky, a fine golden maze of insects; so much, so much, and I understand nothing, I saw the gorillas but there’s so much else ... A patch of brilliant colour, emerald, ruby, floats quivering and scintillating under the canopy, a butterfly, a tiny bright distant world, and is followed by others, glittering in the sun or glistening dark as they dip into shadow, weaving in and out of the sunlight, dizzying, so many self-willed microcosms ... And at night, Vanessa thinks, if I looked up through these trees ... And she dozes, briefly, nods and dreams of kinds of life she has never known, planets where humans have never been, stars shining like a million dancing midges.
There is a gap of ten feet between the guests and the porters. The guide calls across, ‘I think there are mosquitoes. Perhaps someone has got some insect cream?’ The porters are uneasy; something is biting them. A tiny shiver of unease, as well as the hunger they are used to feeling. There have been too many bad stories recently. Troops are arriving not far away. And in their brother park, just across the border, in the National Park in the Virunga Mountains, six gorillas were butchered a month ago. There is madness brewing in DRC. The guide tries again, correcting his English. ‘Has anyone got some insect cream?’
Vanessa and the other tourists hear, but they are not sure where they’ve put their repellent, it’s probably at the bottom of their bags, and the bags are probably over with the porters, and their legs are tired, and they’re eating their lunch, so they pretend the question was addressed to someone else. In any case, a guide should have his own insect protection. ‘This is perfect,’ says the American woman, chomping her way through all the courses. ‘Have you found your piece of pineapple yet?’
He is near, near: he is almost here. He is happy, because he must be in Uganda. He has crossed the border. And now he hears English, real English English, and American English, the first time he has heard it for over three years, except for voices crackling from the radio, and he heard the mad woman yesterday evening, screaming in the forest like an evil spirit when the driver was carrying her bags up the steps. He presses himself low into the bushes and watches, ignoring the pain from the sore on his knee. He sees two groups of human beings. The white people are eating as if they are starving, yet many of them are fat (and he sees the thin spiteful one from last night!). Bread, fruit, cakes, sodas, things he has forgotten, so bright, so sweet that his mouth waters as he has to watch it all disappearing. The black people are thin, and do not eat. Some of the porters have bananas, but they have no bread, no cakes, no sodas. He wonders why they don’t take the food from the tourists. The white people are old, and greedy, and weak. He will follow these people, at a safe distance. Wherever they go, there will be plenty. For now, he lies down in the sun, and sleeps.
Now Vanessa is too full to eat, and looking across, she sees the dark group of porters sitting quietly, their hands not in constant motion like the tourists. But every so often one glances across, and she catches something in Barnabas’s eyes. Oh God, it’s hunger. Of course, she thinks, and blushes with shame. ‘Excuse me,’ she calls, across the gulf. ‘Could you help me out? I have too much cake.’
Her porter comes across straight away. ‘You want help?’ he asks, uncomprehending. But she gives him the cake, and her heart lightens.
36
It’s the Peaceable Kingdom, thinks Trevor, as he sails on the Kazinga Channel, which runs between Lake Edward and Lake Albert, about half a mile away from Mweya Lodge, and his eyes unexpectedly fill up with tears. The Peaceable Kingdom was a colour plate in his mother’s battered Bible. A picture of heaven, or the Garden of Eden. They all came down to the water to drink.
Trevor and a group of camera-hung guests are in a little steamer with a painted tin roof, chugging slowly, peacefully through the water past things he has never seen before, things he has never dreamed of seeing; great groups of hippos half-submerged in the water, fitting tightly together like a shiny hippo jigsaw-puzzle, patches of pink round their wrinkly eyes, patches of pink at the backs of their ears. The guide is excellent, a woman. She shows them white-headed black fish-eagles perched on treetops, surveying it all; yellow weaver-birds; pied woodpeckers; mats of floating papyrus grass; a yellow Nile crocodile sprawled snake-like on the shore, suddenly baring a long serrated smile; the flash of a tiny blue Malachite kingfisher; enormous conker-brown African buffalos with great top-heavy yokes of yellow horn, pushed down low over their faces; a wide net of swallows dipping and dancing as they skim the water for the clouds of pale lake-flies. And then there are the storks; so many storks; tall ones, probably the country cousins of the ones who paraded about in Kampala, gentler-looking somehow, with pinkish-cream wings and slender yellow beaks.
Trevor passes it all in slow dreamlike motion; he is dozing in the heat, and everything pauses; the fish-eating eagle never plunges, the stork does not stab with its long yellow beak, the lake-flies are suspended just beyond the swallows; it’s heaven, he thinks; I am in bliss, though when he jerks awake, a little later, the guide is pointing out hippo bones, great arching things along the edge of the water. ‘The male hippos often fight. Sometimes hippo males kill their babies.’ But he hardly hears. This is paradise. A hippo’s ears suddenly twizzle in circles, like tiny helicopter blades, and he laughs, so funny, those swift tiny ears on the sides of the massive hippopotamus head.
Later, at dinner, he tries to tell the waiter. ‘You’ve got so much here. I mean, they live all together, all the different animals
coming to the water. Back home there isn’t very much left.’
‘That is interesting,’ the waiter says, but Trevor feels he has explained it badly, and later he hears the waiter listening to the tales of the next-door table: ‘That is interesting,’ the man says, automatically. ‘You saw a hippo? That is interesting.’
It doesn’t matter. Trevor’s very happy. He knows he has done a good thing, in the village, and today he has been wonderfully rewarded. He drinks his whisky. Life is sweet.
After dinner, he goes into the bar. Silver-haired couples with carefully-coiffed hair and neatly pressed, brand-new safari suits are sitting docilely sipping their spirits, dwarfed by enormous furniture. But it’s different from most international hotels, because there is an atmosphere of communal excitement, they’re all eager to enjoy a great adventure, and conversation blows back and forth between the islands as people take it in turn to boast, or share their narrow escapes from destruction. Mostly it’s lions, hyenas, elephants.
But one man, older, in a neat black suit that looks out of place among the beiges and khakis, speaks more graphically, sibilantly, emphatic, the low light glinting on the steel of his spectacles. He tells a story that hushes the circle. He breaks when a smiling waiter appears, but then resumes, and all of them listen, the hairs standing up on the backs of their arms, 90 per cent horrified, 10 per cent thrilled. ‘There’s a darker side to this country,’ he says. He has marked cheekbones and cavernous eye-sockets. The glass of his spectacles hides his eyes; you could almost think they were an absence. He could be American; he could be British, or a foreigner who has learned perfect English.
‘Ja, the LRA,’ says a portly German. ‘We know about zis. But zey are not here. I am more worried about ze Congo situation. It is not looking good. There could be a war.’
‘The LRA is one thing, this is worse.’ says the man. He goes on to tell the story of what happened in 1999, in western Uganda. ‘You all heard about the massacres in Rwanda, in 1994, how the Hutus tried to exterminate the Tutsis, and they made a film about it, Hotel Rwanda?’
A woman asks her husband, ‘Wasn’t that fiction?’
‘You wish,’ smiles the dark-suited man, and continues. ‘Well, although they were driven out of Rwanda, some of the Hutu fighters fled into DRC. And in 1999 they came over the border to Bwindi, and went to the smartest camps in the place, where the rich people went, and you know they still do, though they had to change the names after all this happened – do you know the Gorilla Forest Camp? I expect some of you have been there – and they abducted seventeen tourists, you know, white people, Europeans, Americans, Australians, and marched them off into the jungle ...’ Now he tells how eight tourists were cut up with machetes. As he describes the massacre, his hands chop the air. They are long, and bony, and catch the light. Trevor starts to hate him. He looks like a death’s head. I mean, bloody hell, we’re on holiday. No good frightening the horses, or upsetting the ladies. ‘No-one went to Bwindi for a long time after that. So you see, you good people should have a care!’ And he laughs, a light, mirthless laugh, a repellent sound which no-one echoes.
‘Well, that’s very cheerful,’ says Trevor, breaking into the silence, which is full of fear. ‘That may be so, but it’s a long time ago, and I can tell you, today, out on that little boat, I felt as though I was in heaven. I thought, this place is paradise. The way all the animals were there together.’
There’s a rustle of relief, a murmur of assent, and soon they are sharing their stories again. Instead of waving to a waiter, Trevor strolls to the bar. When he looks round again, the dark-suited one has vanished. There’s a price-list on the counter, and spirits cost the earth. The barman is the tired waiter, the one who said, ‘That’s interesting’ to everyone. ‘One more of these, and I’m for my bed ... may I buy one for you?’ Trevor asks, on impulse.
With a flash of pleasure and a look over his shoulder, the man accepts, and they chat for a bit. Yes, he has a wife and child; the staff live in ‘huts’, in busisira at the back of the hotel. ‘Tikwo kiri. It is not like this.’ He indicates the ambience here with his hands. He has a degree, in Tourism, from Makerere. ‘That’s more than I have, mate,’ says Trevor. Then the waiter asks Trevor about Manchester United.
And just before he goes, Trevor asks him if it’s true, the story of the murders at Bwindi. By then, the man has finished his drink. ‘It is not true,’ the waiter says, quietly. ‘It is not true, what it sayed on television. My friend saw the news on CNN in Kasese. They sayed that eight bazungu were killed. But they did not talk about our people. There was a ranger from Ugandan Wildlife Authority. And other people earlier, in the same year. They come over the border, these Hutu Interahamwe. They cut people in two, with machetes, like this’ (he slices sideways, and Trevor lifts up his drink, anxious). ‘Or they cut them with axes, like this’ (and he chops his hand down hard on the counter. The salted peanuts jump in their bowl.) ‘But CNN only talks about the tourists.’
Trevor looks at him appalled. ‘Blimey!’
Nothing for it, really, but to go to bed.
But Trevor’s lucky; he’s an optimist. The images of murder and mayhem fall away. As he walks upstairs, in his mind’s eye he sees hippos and weaverbirds and narrow blue fishing-boats darting like kingfishers across the wide lake with James aboard, his genial driver who had gone off to stay with his friend in the fishing village. Trevor walks himself back into the Peaceable Kingdom.
Back in his room, though, he’s still restless. He’s not quite ready to go to sleep. He wants to tell his story to somebody he loves; someone who might really be interested. Pride and happiness have to be shared. Vanessa’s phone’s been on answer all day, so Trevor has left her three messages. No-one at all has contacted him. Now he switches his phone on: ‘You have one new message’. Perfect, he thinks, that will probably be Ness.
But it’s a message from Justin. His voice is all wrong.
‘Where are you, Dad? The jeep’s fucked. I have to get Abdy to hospital. If you get this in the next twenty minutes, ring me back.’ Trevor looks at the arrival time: it came this morning. And it’s already 11 PM, 1 AM in England, too late to ring, to talk to his son.
In a single second, everything changes.
In Bwindi, the heavens have opened again, but the trekkers are happy as they eat their dinner, and afterwards Vanessa, under one of the GFC’s huge rainbow golf umbrellas, does not shiver with foreboding and look over her shoulder as she walks down the long narrow path to her tent. She is insulated by wine and achievement. How quickly the strange becomes familiar: and surely what is familiar is safe: nothing bad can happen to Vanessa here, because nothing bad has happened so far. She’s seen the gorillas. Now nothing can touch her.
She sits on the bed and looks at her photographs. Some of them are beautiful, others are a meaningless mosaic of gorilla parts, dark among excessively bright vegetation, and none of them manages to catch the wholeness she saw in the forest, the net of life; the camera’s too small; a blind little aperture. She looks again, more slowly, enjoying it, but still the sequence doesn’t come together. But in her head, behind her eyes, it is there. She doesn’t want to put out the light, and so, out of habit, her traveller’s habit, the anxious habit she cannot forget, she checks for her phone (but of course she hasn’t got it: oh tragedy, she would love to tell Justin, or boast to Trevor, but it’s back in Kampala), then goes to the money belt she’s hidden in the bed and counts her money: the rustle of notes. When she was a child, when things were very bleak, when her mother had one of her periods of blankness and her father was unable to talk about it, Vanessa used to lie in bed and count sweets. Something of her own, against the night.
My money (which I earned) has brought me to Bwindi, she tells herself, and feels proud, for a minute. Neither of her parents had ever left England after her father was invalided out of the army, from Burma (which he only mentioned once, in her hearing, as ‘that shithole’, before her mother shushed him), and limped back to the vill
age, back to the farm. But she, their daughter, is here, she has made it; she has plenty of money, as they did not. She hides it again, with a squirrelling motion, then takes it out and counts it one more time. Tomorrow, she’s gorilla trekking again. Another gorilla group, perhaps more distant. She starts checking, again, checking, counting: torch, camera, malaria pills ... Twenty minutes later, she puts out the light.
But the boy-man is watching. Close: coming closer. The thickness of glass, a gap in her curtains. He has crept out of the bushes and under the sheltering overhang of the rich woman’s tent, just a miserable arm’s-length of semi-shelter, but the rain is phenomenal, inhuman, and why should he alone in all the world have no comfort? And there she is, tiny, framed by the dark, the old white woman with the miserable face, the one he saw quarrelling with her driver, then sitting with the tourists who did not share their lunch, and she’s hunched there, stroking her wealth like a miser, old, ugly, understanding nothing, and he feels his power, for he knows, he sees her, and she’s showing him everything that she has. All she takes for granted. All that he wants.
37
‘It is 8 AM, Sir.’ The soft, polite African voice on his bedside telephone soothes Trevor as he wakes to Mweya. A flood of white light behind the veil of mosquito net. His first thought: pleasure, as he stretches down the sheet, a glorious lie-in, an enormous bed. They had offered him another game drive this morning, but what plumber on holiday gets up at 5.30? – it’s bad enough doing it every day for work.
Then he wakes properly. Horrible. The boy. Abdul Trevor. Justin’s message. He shoots upright and reaches out for his phone.
