Force was hopeless, he could see at once. There were tanks on the green lawns now, and gun emplacements sited so that their fire could sweep the avenues, but it would never have been easy, even without those. The moat was a good ten yards wide. At its outer edge it brimmed almost level with the paving, but on the inner side the mound on which the palace stood rose from a four-foot wall. Groups of soldiers were at work here, digging out squares of turf, laying grey plastic oblongs into the holes and smoothing the grass back. Mines.
Retractable footbridges spanned the moat in three places, but the one permanent entrance was a stone bridge that led through iron gates onto double curving driveways up to the pillared portico beneath the tower. Here gangs of workmen had been shovelling soil against the sandbags of the gun emplacements and raking it into smooth slopes, but now were resting on the grass. There was an officer in charge. The morning was getting hot, so Paul lay down in the shade of the acacias as though he’d decided to have an early siesta and watched what was happening through half-closed eyes.
Soon a shabby truck drove over the bridge and up to the gate. A sentry raised the painted pole and the truck drove on and stopped between the two emplacements. A man dressed like a farmer climbed out, lowered the tail-gate, and started to unpack his load, which turned out to be a lot of small bushes in flower, and some spiky yuccas and cannas. The officer strode over, inspected the plants, and made angry gestures. The man shrugged, carried a pink-flowered bush over to the right emplacement, scooped a hole in the fresh earth with his hands, dumped the bush in it, and stood back to look at the result. The officer, now furious, started to shout at him.
They were trying to hide the gun emplacements, of course. They were demolishing the roadblocks in the avenues. The Organization of African Unity was sending observers to Dangoum to see if they could still hold a conference here next month without seeming to be approving of a coup by a bloodthirsty dictator, so Basso-Iskani was putting on a show for them. Plant a few flowers in front of your machine guns and the observers will smile at the pretty colours and pretend not to notice the gleam of steel behind.
Watching the scene on the mound, Paul didn’t at first notice the soldiers coming. There were two of them. They must have come out of the side gate and over the footbridge he’d used himself when he’d come to the palace as a tourist. Now they were marching toward him, in step, crossing the road. They wore purple berets and clean, well-kept uniforms. Their boots shone.
He watched at first between his eyelashes, pretending still to be sleeping, but as soon as he heard the crunch of their boots he sat up, trying to look innocent and bewildered, then stood. The men had unhooked their long truncheons from their belts. Paul began to back away, hands up, pleading, but they strode straight at him and the nearer one suddenly swung his truncheon in a low arc, cracking him viciously across his shins and knocking his feet from under him. Pain lashed through his skull as he fell, but he managed to roll as he hit the ground, so that the next blow missed. He was twisting back onto his feet when a truncheon belted into his shoulders, shoving him forward and almost down again. Then he was running, close to the line of trees, jinking between the trunks. A shout, but he didn’t slow or turn. They’d have their guns up by now, but the curving line of trees covered him and it was too hot for them to bother to run. He raced across the next avenue and didn’t stop or look back until he’d reached the one beyond. When he did he saw them marching back to the palace, unhurried, swinging their truncheons.
It was the avenue he had come up by. The soldier was still watching the work at the roadblock. He’d finished the cigar butt.
“What hit you, son?” he said.
“Soldiers. I was only having a rest under the trees.”
“You’re all right. Last fellow tried that, they kicked him unconscious. Bloody purple-hats. One day they’ll get what’s coming to them.”
Paul grunted and limped on. A couple of blocks farther he stopped and looked back. Head, shoulders, and legs were all still burning with pain and the taste of vomit came and went in his throat. It was the sort of thing you had to get used to in a war. You met heavier forces, you took casualties, you retreated and struggled back to base. Then you tried again, some other way.
Up on its mound the palace glittered in the sun.
Okay, thought Paul. Next time I come, I’ll bring friends.
9
That night was bad. When Paul slept he dreamed of Michael being beaten senseless with truncheons by soldiers under the trees, or riding in a military parade strapped to the wheel of Boyo’s car with blood streaming from the back of his head, or just his broken fingers clutching at the grille. When Paul woke his head and back throbbed with his own beating as he stared at the velvet sky and tried to imagine where he might look for friends.
Waiting to fill Efoni’s pitcher at the stand-pipe next morning, he heard two women talking about a fight in the shanties between people called the Oni-oni and another lot called the Soccer Boys.
“What was it about?” he asked.
“Just who takes the fees at a stand-pipe, usual thing.”
“The water used to be free.”
“Oh, sure. Till the Deathsingers came, and started beating the shanties up. That meant everyone had to get up their own gangs to protect themselves. Nagai got up the Grey Jackals and Baroba got up the Scorpions and Fulu got up Oni-oni and so on. They’ll tell you they’ve got to raise funds somehow, so they charge for the water.”
“But Malani threw Chichaka in prison.”
“So he did. And the Deathsingers went quiet for a bit and Malani had the stand-pipes policed …”
“Just meant that the police took the fees,” said the other woman.
“And then, morning after the coup, there were the Deathsingers out in force at the stand-pipes …”
“Shows someone knew the coup was coming …”
“So the Jackals and Scorpions and the others had to start all over again.”
“Jackals had split in two by then. There’s the Soccer Boys too, now.”
“They’re a bad lot.”
“Gave the Oni-oni a beating.”
And so on. Paul thanked them. It was something to do, he thought. Better than wandering around the market brooding about Michael. If the gangs were enemies of the Deathsingers they might be enemies of Basso-Iskani too. When he carried the pitcher back he asked Efoni if she knew anyone in the Oni-oni, but she just frowned and said she didn’t want anything to do with them. This was a free market and they’d better keep out.
Inwardly Paul shrugged. Everyone will have to take sides in the end, Michael used to say, and the longer they wait the worse it will be for them. No point in telling Efoni that.
“Where’s Jilli?”
“She finished that big basket. Gone to buy stuff to put in it.”
He was eating his breakfast when Jilli came back with the basket balanced on her head. A fold of yellow cotton flapped over the side.
“Ai! Your poor face! It’s all fat!” she said.
“Just a bit sore. How are you feeling?”
“No good talking about it. I’m a Warrior now. Look, I’ve bought some pretty cottons.”
She had used the process of lowering the basket to hide her face, but as she straightened he could see she was forcing her lips to smile. She settled cross-legged and took the rolls out to show him. A different-shaped bit of stuff lay in the bottom.
“I’d a bit of money left, so I bought a new blouse,” she said, looking at him half sideways to see how he’d take it.
This wasn’t what Michael’s money was for.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Only I don’t want to be a Warrior with just one shirt. Look.”
She unrolled the blouse down her front. It was shimmery green with gold trimmings on the pockets. She looked at him over the collar with her head on one side, pleading for him not to be cross
with her—no, for more than that, for comfort, and friendship, and understanding after the horror of what had happened to her family. He didn’t need to force his own smile.
“Suits you,” he said. “My father says it’s morale that always wins out in the end.”
“He’s right…What does ‘morale’ mean, Paul?”
“What you’ve given yourself buying your blouse. What you’ve given me, bringing me breakfast. Now what we’ve got to do is find some new friends to help us fight old Basso-Iskani.”
They rearranged Efoni’s stock to screen what they were doing, dug up the AK, laid it in the bottom of the basket, and covered it with the cloths. No one could have seen it was there, but the whole load turned out heavier than he’d hoped. As they headed off into the shanties he explained best he could about the gangs.
“Let’s try the Grey Jackals first,” he said.
They asked the way to a stand-pipe and waited for a moment when the men who controlled it weren’t busy, but no such moment came. The men were as tense as fighters on a raid, and the people in the long line were jumpy too. Between the crowded shacks the dusty used air seemed thick and oily, like the air in a village where gas has been sprinkled on the huts, ready for the touch of flame. The Jackals carried clubs and wore grey T-shirts. Paul found one standing alone watching a corner where three lanes funnelled in toward the stand-pipe.
“Please …” he began.
“You want water?”
“No, but …”
“Then clear out.”
“But …”
Paul ducked as the club lashed sideways. He backed away, and perhaps would have tried again, but at that moment there was a whoop from behind him, beyond the stand-pipe, and cries, and crashes. The man looked past him, gripped his club, and rushed to join the fight, while the line scattered. The attackers, a tight group of young men with strips of red cloth around their necks, like scarves, had driven the Jackals from the pipe, but other Jackals came hurrying up and joined in.
Beside Paul a large woman turned to watch with a sigh.
“What’s it about?” said Paul.
“Soccer Boys wanting to take over.”
“Aren’t they Naga too?”
“Sure. The Jackals came first, see. They’re all passwords and secret ceremonies and doing things the way their granddads did. Some of the young ones got impatient and broke off to form the Soccer Boys. They’re pretty wild. It’s sons against fathers, see. Men! They spend more time beating each other up than they do keeping the Deathsingers off our backs.”
She spat at the stupidity of it and sat down to wait for the fight to end so that she could collect her water. “How do I get to talk to the Jackals?”
“You don’t, not unless you know the passwords.”
“What about the Soccer Boys?”
“Don’t you touch them. They’re wild. But I did hear some of them hang around Ishmael’s, over in Queensville.”
The Soccer Boys retreated after a while, in good order, and the line reformed, but the Jackals stayed tense and suspicious, and it was the same at other stand-pipes. He tried letting Jilli make the first approach, and one or two men seemed ready to chat her up, but then laughed contemptuously when she began to explain in her mixture of Naga and English what she wanted, and if Paul joined in they assumed he was a Soccer Boy spy and drove him off with their clubs.
He got nowhere at all that day, nor the next when with Jilli’s help he tried among the Fulu shanties. Despite her smiles and wheedles no one there would admit to even having heard of the Oni-oni. On the third morning he went off alone to the area called Queensville, and found Ishmael’s bar. There were a couple of young men drinking outside, not wearing red scarves but having the stance and swagger of men ready to fight.
“Know anyone in the Soccer Boys?” he asked.
“Maybe. You going to buy us a drink?”
“Maybe. You going to help me talk to the Soccer Boys?”
“What d’you want?”
“Find someone who’ll help me get Michael Kagomi out of jail.”
“That black Englishman! He’s no good. Better where he is. Listen. Basso-Iskani’s doing just fine, hacking out the old bush, clearing the ground, messing around like a mad ox. Give him his head and before long everything’s going to fall apart, and then we’ll take over and put it back together how we want.”
Back at base camp there’d been fighters who talked like that. Our next enemy, Michael had said. Paul turned away without a word and started back toward the market. Queensville, it struck him, was the worst area he’d seen among the shanties, the faces both angrier and duller, the smell of hopelessness in the air almost as strong as the smells of rot and dirt. But in any case there was no help for him among the shanties. All those people! They should have been a great power, a pressure, a torrent to sweep Basso-Iskani and his soldiers away, but they lay here rotting and listless, hundreds of thousands of meaningless lives, like the marshes below Tsheba. He reached the market far more deeply depressed than he had been when the soldiers had beaten him up at the Circus.
Jilli had bought a mess of okra and peppers, which he was sharing with her after the midday rest when through the stir of the waking market they heard a woman’s voice coming toward them, calling some message.
“It’s Madam Ga,” said Jilli. “She’s boss of the blanket-weavers. She’s a strong woman!”
Soon she came striding past, big as a tall man, with a powerful dark face like carved wood. She had a black gum ring in her hair and wore a loose crimson robe.
“Come to the stand-pipes, everyone!” she was shouting. “The Deathsingers are trying to take them over!”
Clamour broke out in her wake. The Fulu women thronged together, shrilling outrage and fear. Off to the right the hammers of the coppersmiths fell silent and the big gong began its booming groan. Jilli jumped to her feet.
“We’re going, aren’t we?” she said.
Paul shrugged. He wasn’t interested in the stand-pipe war. It was a diversion, preventing people seeing what really counted. Soccer Boys against Jackals, Death- singers against the market, what did it matter?
“Oh, Paul!” said Jilli. “We must go. This market’s the best thing in Dangoum. We don’t want Deathsingers here!”
It was what Michael used to say—the market was an image of the kind of Africa he wanted. The Fulu women were still arguing but Efoni seemed to be winning. She wouldn’t want to become involved. If she had to pay a few gurai for water, she’d grumble and pay. But other traders had left their stalls and were moving toward the nearest stand-pipe. Paul rose, tucked his own basket in under a pile of Efoni’s, and joined the stream with Jilli.
Soon the alley between the stalls was jammed solid with people, but wriggling under the trestles on hands and knees they made their way forward and came out at the edge of a wide ring of people around the stand-pipe. In the centre stood a dozen men carrying long police truncheons and wearing blue T-shirts stencilled with music. One of them was haranguing the crowd through a megaphone, but the crowd was yelling back and the market loudspeakers were blaring close by, so he couldn’t be heard. Two women lay inert on the ground. A man was crawling back toward the crowd with blood streaming down his face. The Deathsingers were swaggering around, twirling their truncheons, dominant, contemptuous of the crowd’s anger.
Now there was some kind of commotion over to the right, as if newcomers were struggling to get through. The crowd heaved, and out into the space burst a group of men, coppersmiths Paul saw at once from their leather aprons. There were only about eight of them, but without hesitation they charged at the Deathsingers with their big hammers brandished above them. The attack was so sudden that for a moment the Deathsingers gave way, but then they rallied and their truncheons began to flail as they surrounded the smiths. The fight mightn’t have lasted a minute, but into the space between it an
d the watching crowd strode Madam Ga. She carried no weapon, but flung out her right arm toward the struggling men and with her left made a sweeping gesture, summoning the watchers to help, then rushed at the nearest Deathsinger, seized him from behind by his shoulders, and flung him to the ground. With a roar the crowd surged in behind her.
Paul was carried forward by the rush, knocked down, trodden on, kicked. He huddled into a crouch on elbows and knees and managed to rise into a space as the rush went past. For a while it was impossible to see what was happening at the centre of the swaying and yelling mass. People were crawling or staggering clear. A Deathsinger emerged, his shirt torn half off his back, and three women rushed at him and started to pummel him with their fists, weak, unskilled blows which a strong man would have laughed at, but he covered his head with his hands and ran off.
Paul couldn’t see Jilli anywhere. He waited, watching, as the scrimmage gradually loosened and the yelling died away. People were sitting on the ground huddling their heads between their knees or resting back onto their arms. Others were lying moaning. One group had a couple of Deathsingers down and were kicking and beating them where they lay, until Madam Ga strode over and with just two or three words made them stop. The Deathsingers rose and limped away. The coppersmiths were standing together, inspecting each other’s hurts. One of them looked as if he had a broken arm. Madam Ga turned to them and began to speak, making forceful gestures. Someone passed her the megaphone the leader of the Deathsingers had been using and showed her the switch. She nodded and put it to her lips. Her voice came strongly through the music from the palm trees.
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