"Always judge a workman by the state of his tools," Sean thought. These were top soldiers, proud and hard. As he came level with each of them he stared into his eyes and saw it there. Of all the people of Africa, Sean felt the greatest rapport with the Zuluoriginated tribes, the Angonis and Matabeles and Shanganes. Had he been given a choice, these were exactly the type of men he would have chosen for this assignment.
Once he had finished the inspection, he went back to the front and addressed them for the first time in Shangane. "You and I together are going to burst the balls of the dung-eating Frelimo," he said quietly. In the front rank Sergeant Alphonso grinned wolfishly.
Her hands still manacled behind her back, Claudia Monterro was marched through the darkness, over a rough track, by the two female war dresses and an escort of five troopers. Often she stumbled, and when she fell and sprawled full length, she was unable to use her hands to protect herself from the rocky surface. Soon her knees were raw and bleeding, and the march became a torturous nightmare.
It seemed without end, hour after hour it went on and every time she fell the tall sergeant harangued her in a language she could not understand. Each time it required more of an effort to regain her feet, for she was unable to use her hands and arms to balance herself.
She Was So thirsty her Saliva had turned to a sticky paste in her mouth. Her legs ached, and her hands and arms, held so long in such an unnatural position, were numb and cold. Sometimes she heard voices in the darkness around her and once or twice she smelled smoke and saw the glow of a camp fire or a feeble paraffin lantern, so she knew she was still within the Renamo lines.
The march ended abruptly. She guessed they were still near the river; she could feel the "of its waters in the air and see the taller riverine trees silhouqted against the stars. She could smell humanity around her: stale lash of cooking fires and woodsmoke, human sweat in unwashed clothing, and human body wastes and the sour odors of garbage.
At lot they led her through a barbed wire gate into another prison compound and dragged her toward one of a row of dugouts.
The two war dresses took her arms, hustled her down a set of earthen steps, and Pushed her into the darkness so she tripped and fell once more on her injured knees. Behind her she heard a door the darkness was absolute.
being closed and barred, and After a short struggle she regained her feet, but when she tried to stand full height, she bumped her head on the low roof It felt like a roof of undressed wooden poles still in their bark. She shuffled backward, stretching out her fingers behind her, until she touched the door. It was of hand-sawn planks, rough and sharp with splinters. She pressed her weight upon it, but it was solid and unmoving.
Bent over to protect her head, she shuffled around her prison.
The walls were made of damp earth. Her cell was tiny, about six feet square, and in the far corner she stumbled over the only furnishing it contained. It was metal, and she explored it with her foot and found that it was an iron bucket. The ripe stench emanating from it left no doubt of its purpose. She completed the circuit of her cell and came back to the door.
Her thirst was an agony now, and she called through the door.
"Please, I need water." Her voice was a harsh croak and her lips felt tight and dry, ready to split. "Water!" she called. Then she remembered the Spanish word and hoped it was the same in Portuguese: "Agua!"
It was futile. The earthen walls seemed to swallow and deaden the sound of her voice. She shuffled to the far corner and sank down to the dark floor. Only then did she realize just how physically exhausted she was, yet the manacles on her wrists prevented her from lying on her back or side. She tried to find a position in which she could rest comfortably and at last, by wedging herself upright in a corner of the cell, she succeeded.
The cold and something else woke her, and she was confused and disoriented. For a moment she believed she was back in her father's home in Anchorage and she cried out for him.
"Papa! Are you there?"
Then she smelled the damp and the sewage bucket, felt the cold in her joints and her pinioned arms, and she remembered. Despair swept over her like a black wave and she felt herself drowning in it. Then she heard again the sound that had awakened her, and she went rigid and felt the cold sweat burst out on her neck and forehead.
She knew what it was instantly. Claudia had none of the more usual feminine phobias-she had no terror of spiders or snakes, there was just one unnatural terror that afflicted her. She sat rigid and listened to the scampering sounds of a creature moving about her cell. That sound was the stuff of her nightmares, and she stared into the darkness, trying to will it away from herself.
Then suddenly she felt it on her, the sharp little claws pricking her skin, the cold touch of paws on her flesh. It was a rat, and by the weight of it on her, it must have been huge, as big as a rabbit.
She screamed wildly, lunged to her feet, and kicked out blindly at It. when at last she stopped screaming, she shrank into the corner and found she was trembling in wild spasms.
"Stop it!" she told herself. "Pull yourself together!" And by an enormous effort of will she regained control. There was complete silence in the darkness. Her screams had frightened the creature away for the time being, but she still could not bring herself to sit on the dirt floor again, for she was terrified it would return.
Despite her exhaustion she stood propped in the corner and waited out the rest of the night. She dozed, almost fell asleep on her feet, then jerked awake again. That sequence happened many times, and then, as she came awake for the last time, she realized that the darkness was no longer total and she could see.
Light was filtering into the cell, and she blinked and found the source of it. There were slits and gaps between the poles of the low roof. These had been daubed with clay and grass, but in one or two places the dried clay had fallen out of the cracks, allowing chinb of light through. Stems of coarse elephant grass hung down untidily from the cracks.
Fearfully she looked around the cell, but the rat had th pea red it must have squeezed through one of the gaps between the poles.
Claudia stumbled across to the reeking galvanized sewage bucket, and only as she stood over it she did realize her predicament. Her hands were locked behind her back, and with that realization her need became irresistible.
Her fingers were almost devoid of feeling, but in desperate haste she was able to grip her leather belt and gradually work it through the loops of her trousers until the buckle was at the small of her back. Whimpering with the effort of self-control needed to delay her bodily functions, she clumsily unclasped the belt.
She had lost so much weight that as soon as her belt was 1008ened her trousers fell avQ;und her ankles and she was able to hook a thumb under the eWtic of her panties and drag them down as far as her knees.
Always fastidious, Claudia experienced the worst hardship of her captivity when her efforts to cleanse herself properly failed. She found herself sobbing with humiliation as she finally managed to dress again. Her wrists were rubbed raw and her arms ached from the strenuous efforts needed to perform this simple task. She huddled in the corner of her cell and the stench of the bucket seemed to permeate the very depth of her soul.
A single ray of sunlight shot through a chink in the roof Poles and pinned a brilliant silver coin on the far wall. She watched it Tom move infinitely slowly down the earthen wall, and somehow it seemed to warm and cheer her enough to dull the cutting edge of her despair.
Before the coin of light reached the floor of the cell, she heard a scraping at the door as the bars were drawn and the door was forced open on its primitive hinges. The tall sergeant stooped into the cell and Claudia scrambled to her feet.
"Please," she whispered. "You must let me wash," she said in her schoolgirl Spanish, but the wardress showed no sign of having understood. In one hand she carried a metal billy can of water and in the other a bowl of stiff maize cake. She placed the billy can on the floor, then tipped the lump of mai
ze cake into the dirt beside it.
Claudia's thirst, which she had managed temporarily to subdue, returned with even greater agony, and she almost whimpered at the sight of the billy. It contained almost two liters of clear water.
She sank down on her knees before it like a worshiper and looked up at the wardress.
k "Please," she said in Spanish. "I must use my hands, please."
The wardress chuckled, the first animation she had shown, and she nudged the billy dangerously with the toe of her boot; a little water slopped over the rim.
"No," Claudia croaked. "Don't spill it."
On her knees she bent over and tried to reach the water with her tongue. She thrust it out as far as it would reach and felt the blessed wetness on the very tip, but the rim of the metal billy was cutting into her face.
She looked up again. "Please help me."
The wardress laughed again and leaned against the wall, watching Claudia's efforts with amusement.
Claudia stooped again and gripped the rim of the billy between her teeth. Carefully she tilted it, and a few drops trickled between her lips. The pleasure was so intense that her vision clouded. She drank a sip at a time until the level in the billy had fallen to where the liquid could no longer flow into her mouth. However, the vessel was still more than half full and her thirst seemed only to have been aggravated by what she had managed to drink.
Still holding the rim between her teeth, she carefully raised her head and tilted it backward. It was too quick. She choked as the water flooded into her mouth, and the billy slipped from between her teeth and water splashed down her chest and puddled on the floor, to be quickly absorbed into the dirt.
The wardress let out a shrill shriek of laughter, and Claudia felt tears of despair fill her eyes. She only just managed to smother the sob that came up her throat.
The wardress deliberately stepped onto the white maize cake, smearing it into the dirt. Then, with another snort of laughter, she snatched up the empty billy and left the cell. Claudia heard her still giggling as she re barred the door of the cell.
She could judge the passage of time by the angle of the sunlight through the chinks in the roof. The first day seemed interminable.
Despite the discomfort of the manacles, she was able to sleep fitfully, but while she was awake she occupied herself by plan to increase her chances of survival.
Water was her most pressing need. The little she had drunk might just see her through this day, but she knew she was already suffering from dehydration.
"I have to find some method of drinking from that billy," she told herself, and spent most of that afternoon wrestling with the problem. When the solution came to her, she lurched to her feet so hastily she bumped the back of her head on the log roof. She ignored the hurt and examined the untidy tufts of elephant grass that hung down from between the chinks of the roof. She selected one of the grass stems and took it carefully between her teeth, worried it loose, and let it drop to the floor. She knelt over it and, by straining backward, managed to get a hand to it. Fortunately it was dry and brittle and snapped readily between her fingers. She broke it into four equal lengths each about nine inches long and, once again by backward contortions, planted them upright in the loose earth of the floor. She turned round, knelt, and picked up the first of them between her lips. She tried to blow through it, but it was blocked with pith and dirt. She discarded it and went on to the next.
When she blew through this one, a tiny cork of dirt flew out of the end like a bl e and then it was hollow and clear. She flopped onto herobUZe and sat in the middle of the dirt floor with the straw still stuck in her mouth, laughing around it in triumph. Her sense of elation and achievement dispelled the Corroding sense of despair that had almost destroyed her will to keep on living.
She crawled to the corner and carefully hid the precious straw.
Then, for the rest of that day, she planned how she would use it.
The rays of sun no longer penetrated to her cell, and the heavy gloom of evening was on her before she heard the wardress at the door. She huddled in her corner when the sergeant stooped into the cell, carelessly dumped the stodgy lump of boiled maize meal into the dirt, and stood the metal billy beside it.
She leaned expectantly against the doorjamb and waited for Claudia to scramble for the food and drink like an animal on all fours. Claudia crouched motionlessly in the furthest corner of the cell and tried to show no expression, but her throat contracted in an involuntary swallowing reflex and her thirst was a raging beast within her.
After she had not moved for a few minutes, the sergeant said something irritable in Portuguese and gestured to the hilly. With an immense effort Claudia prevented herself from looking down at it. The woman shrugged. Once again she stepped onto the maize cake and ground it into the dirt. She gave a snort of unconvincing laughter and backed out through the door, dragging it shut behind her, but left the billy can standing at the threshold.
Claudia forced herself to wait until she was certain the wardress had truly left and was not watching her through a spy hole. Once she was sure she was not observed, Claudia crawled in frantic haste to the corner where she had hidden the straw and picked it up between her lips.
Still on her knees, she crossed to the billy can and stooped over it.
She drew the first mouthful through the straw and let it trickle down her throat, closing her eyes with pleasure. It was as though she were drinking down a magic potion. She felt new strength and resolve flow through her veins.
She drank most of the contents of the billy can drawing out the pleasure of it until it was almost totally dark in the cell, but she could not bring herself to eat the sticky mess of maize cake smeared into the dirt.
She hoarded the remains of the water, taking the wire handle of the billy can between her teeth and carefully moving it to the far corner of the cell where she could ration herself to small sips during the long hours ahead. She settled down for the night feeling almost cheerful and a little light-headed, as though she had been drinking champagne rather than plain unbolted river water.
I can endure anything they do to me she whispered to herself. They aren't going to break me. I won't let them. I won't."
Her mood did not last. Almost as soon as it was fully dark in the cell, she realized her terrible mistake in leaving the uneaten maize cake on the floor. Last night there had been only one rat, and it had fled when she screamed at it. This night the odor of food brought them pouring through the gaps in the roof. To her frenzied imagination, it seemed as though the floor of the cell was swarming with furry bodies. The smell of them clogged her nostrils, the nauseating ratty smell like boiling horns and hooves in a glue pot. She cowered in her corner, shivering with cold and horror, and they brushed against her legs and scurried over her feet, squeaking and squealing as they fought for the scraps of spilled porridge.
At last Claudia succumbed to panic. Screaming, on the edge of hysteria, she kicked out at them wildly; one of them whipped around and bit her naked ankle; the sharp little teeth were like a razor cut. She screamed again and kicked, trying to dislodge it, but for a few dreadful seconds its curved teeth were buried in her flesh.
At last she sent it flying into the darkness.
The rat hit the billy can containing her treasured water, and she heard the metal clank against the wall and the liquid splash onto the earthen floor. She crawled to the overturned container and wept with despair.
After long hours of horror and dark terror, the rats consumed the last of the maize and disappeared back through the roof.
Claudia sank to her knees, exhausted both physically and emotionally.
"Please God, let it end. I can't go on."
She toppled over on her side and lay in the dirt, shivering and sobbing softly to herself, and at last dropped into the dark void of oblivion.
She woke with something tugging at her hair and a strange grinding sound very close to her ear. Still groggy with sleep, it took her long seconds to
realize what was happening to her. She had slumped over sideways, and one cheek was pressed to the dirt floor. She lay for a moment, enduring the sharp pulls on her hair and the grinding crunching in her uppermost ear, and then the terror came back to her in full force.
A rat was chewing off her hair, cutting it with those sharp curved incisors, gathering it for nesting material. So great was her horror that it paralyzed her. She could not move. Her whole body tingled, her stomach knotted with cramps, and her toes and fingers curled with the strength of revulsion.
Suddenly she w4 no longer terrified. Her fear changed to anger.
In one lithe movement she rolled to her feet and began to hunt the loathsome creature.
Relentlessly she pursued it around the cell, following it only by sound, the tiny scratch and patter of its feet. She no longer kicked out wildly but deliberately aimed each blow at the sound. Twice the creature tried to climb to safety, but each time Claudia heard it and used her whole body to sweep it from the wall and knock it back to the floor.
Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die Page 35
