Prodigies

by Francis King

  ‘Well, can’t we hack through it?’

  He laughed, infuriating her even more.

  ‘Do be reasonable, dear,’ Harriet implored.

  But to be reasonable was something of which Alexine was now incapable.

  There was the further problem of the paddles of the steamer, which was making its maiden voyage up the river. Repeatedly they became choked with floating plants. The crew then had to descend into the viscous water and, naked but for their exiguous loincloths, perilously balance themselves on the paddlewheels and hack and pull until at last they were freed. At one moment, such was her impatience, Alexine herself was about to Join them in this task.

  ‘No, no!’ Harriet cried. ‘ No!’

  ‘But they’re such idiots!’

  ‘No!’

  Eventually, the flotilla reached Mashra Ar Riqq, a trading-station, and anchored in a curve of the river, where alligators were said to make any entry into the water extremely dangerous. Huddled on the bank, chained to each other by neck-collars, were groups of slaves, impassive under a heavy, coppery sky that presaged a storm. Harriet preferred not to look at them, playing patience by herself under an awning on the main deck. But Alexine, accompanied by Sunny, ventured out.

  Sunny clutched her hand and remained close to her, as though terrified that one of the Arab dealers might suddenly snatch him up and away. He stared intently into the faces of the slaves, as though looking for someone he knew. Eventually, on an impulse, Alexine swung round and began to march back to the steamer, dragging him with her. She returned with a tin of biscuits, which she began to apportion first to one group and then to another, until they were all exhausted. The recipients stared at what they had been given, turning them over and over in their hands. Then one of them, an elderly woman, raised a biscuit to her mouth, nibbled at it, and at once began to gobble. The others followed her example. The lucky ones began to laugh and chatter among themselves. The rest held out their hands and set up a weird keening.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ Alexine said. ‘What can one do?’

  Sunny gazed up at her, without an answer.

  Two nearby Arabs began to laugh.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ Alexine demanded in Arabic.

  The men laughed again.

  The storm broke that night. Alexine looked out of her cabin window and saw the humped shapes of the slaves lying out in the pelting rain. They looked little different from the provisions, covered in tarpaulins, two shrouded soldiers armed with muskets seated beside them on guard, that next day would be carried aboard. Sunny was asleep on a pallet on the floor of the cabin, beside her bunk. He preferred that to climbing up into the upper bunk or even, as she had offered, taking the lower bunk while she went above.

  Eventually, she got off the bunk, pulled a mackintosh cloak over her shoulders and went out onto the deck.

  Nanny Rose and Daan were already there. They were standing close to each other but at once moved apart as they heard her approach.

  ‘What a downpour!’ Nanny Rose exclaimed. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘I hope this doesn’t mean that the rainy season has started,’ Daan said. ‘ I was woken by all that thunder and so was Nanny.’ It was as ‘ Nanny’ that he now always referred to her, as though that, and not Mabel, were her Christian name.

  ‘I feel sorry for those poor devils out there. It’s so cruel to leave them there, tethered like animals, with no shelter.’ As soon as she had spoken, Nanny Rose hurriedly raised her hands to her ears as the sky swung open like an iron shutter, letting in a glaring flash of lightning, and then slammed shut again. A tremendous thunder-clap followed, echoing back and forth and ringing in Alexine’s ears.

  ‘What can one do?’ Alexine asked, as she had asked before.

  She drifted away from them and re-entered the cabin. Sunny stirred, whimpered, then went back to sleep.

  She sat on the edge of the bunk, her feet almost touching him.

  What can one do?

  She was filled with despair. She could hand out biscuits or, as she had repeatedly done with the porters, medicines and bandages. But even if she were to hand out her entire vast fortune, it would make virtually no more difference than the scattering of a handful of sawdust in a vast abattoir.

  Harriet was playing patience, Alexine was staring down at the Colonel’s map. Once again the whole flotilla was doing a U-turn and retracing its passage. The network of scarlet lines on the creased, soiled parchment might have been a tracing of their own journey, back and forth, east and west, north and south.

  ‘Don’t you know where we’re going?’ Alexine demanded more than once of the captain.

  Each time he merely shrugged and muttered: ‘The sudd, mademoiselle. The sudd.’

  The sky was now always still and leaden except when sudden spectacular thunderstorms erupted, followed by rain that fell down in what seemed to be a solid sheet, obscuring the mangroves and water-hyacinth that continued repeatedly to choke the paddles.

  Eventually, at an even more remote trading station, the captain announced that he could proceed no farther.

  ‘What do you mean? Of course you can!’

  He shook his head.

  Alexine raged at him. It was ridiculous. Many people in Khartoum had told her that they could go much farther.

  ‘Few, if any, of those people have travelled this far.’

  Like a fencer who suddenly realizes that his sword has buckled, Alexine realized, with mingled rage and panic, that even her all-conquering will could not move the steamer on.

  She did not sleep that night, but brooded on what to do next. It was clear that the rainy season had started and that the expedition could not proceed by land until it was over. Over breakfast, she announced to Harriet, Nanny Rose and Daan – all of the Europeans, along with Sunny, now fed together – that she would be setting off the next day with Osman, a dozen of the most trustworthy of the soldiers, two porters and a local guide, to the Gossinga mountains – some sixty miles ahead, so she had been told by the guide – where she would prospect the possibility of their camping there on high ground until the rains were over.

  The others all protested that she could not possibly make the journey. She must send Osman with the others and stay behind herself. But she was adamant.

  ‘If I don’t go with them, the others may never come back. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘They’ll come back, dear, never worry,’ Nanny Rose said. ‘ They’ll come back to get their money.’

  ‘I must go.’

  ‘I will go with you,’ Sunny, who had been silent all through the conversation, suddenly announced.

  Alexine laughed and shook her head. ‘No, no. You’re far too young.’

  ‘I will go too! I will go!’ Suddenly he was shouting in fury.

  ‘No. You must stay here to help Daan look after Mama and Nanny Rose. Will you do that for me? Yes?’

  He pondered. Then reluctantly he nodded.

  ‘Good. Then that’s settled then.’

  On the first day the rain fell remorselessly, so that, despite her mackintosh cloak and hat, Alexine was eventually soaked to the skin. Then, suddenly, early the next morning, the sky lightened and, after little more than an hour, the sun was beating down. Soon, the thick bush gave way to wooded country. There were flowering shrubs and fruit trees all around them, and a constant screech and twitter of birds. Even the guide, an elderly man who had been morosely taciturn throughout the previous day despite Alexine’s attempts to draw him out in French and in Arabic, now brightened up. He called for a rifle, and after two or three failures, brought down a guinea-fowl. Alexine took the rifle from him and almost at once, with mingled triumph and dismay, brought down a gazelle.

  Soon she was dismounting to jot down notes on the flora and even to draw rough sketches of it. When they passed through a wood of gardenias in full flower after the recent downpours, the grass beneath them an astonishingly luminous green, Alexine was enchanted.
/>   ‘Do you think that the rainy season is over?’

  Osman shrugged. ‘Who can say? Nothing is regular here.’

  Alexine’s enchantment intensified when they passed through a gallery forest, a precipitous ravine full of huge trees entangled with creepers. She remarked on the beauty of it to the others, but they merely looked at her in bewilderment.

  Eventually, in the foothills of the mountains, they arrived at about four o’clock at a small village of neat tukuls, with a stagnant pond as its centre. Soon, summoned by some of the inhabitants, the local Sheik arrived on a mule, kicking at its lean sides with his bare heels. A tall, handsome man, he seemed not in the least surprised by Alexine’s presence and at once offered to clear a family out of the largest of the tukuls in order to accommodate her. She protested that they were travelling with tents, but he would have none of it. All that night, she was devoured by fleas.

  The next morning, she said to Osman: ‘ We could make our camp here. What do you think?’

  He was dubious. ‘Yes. Possibly. But if the rainy season is really over, then there is no reason to loiter here. We can push on.’

  Push on. Alexine liked the idea of that. She derived intense pleasure from pushing her huge cavalcade on and on merely by an exertion of her formidable will.

  ‘Then that’s settled. We’d better return.’

  But she returned with regret, making a succession of detours and lingering whenever a place took her fancy. Warburton had been right. It was so much easier and better to travel with just these few, chosen companions, sleeping rough and living off what one could either shoot or acquire locally in return for some of the china beads, mirrors and knives that they were carrying with them, rather than with a vast retinue of animals and men.

  Without Alexine’s enthusiasm, determination and energy to hold it together, the expedition began to unravel. Sitting around chatting, the servants were either dilatory about doing things or failed to do them at all. The steamer had by now set off on its journey back to Khartoum, with a promise from the captain that it would return to fetch them when he received a message by runner telling him that they were ready. It affronted Harriet that many of the goods unloaded still lay in a jumble instead of being tidily stacked and covered. It affronted her even more that, without asking permission, some of the porters, natives of the area, took themselves off to their villages, with only the vaguest assurances that they would ever return. At first she bustled about issuing commands through the cook or anyone else who could speak any French or English. But the commands were all too often ignored. Discouraged, she increasingly came to let things slide, and instead spent more and more of her time in her tent writing letters. She despatched one batch of these letters with the steamer, and a few days later another batch with a runner.

  Such were her innate optimism and her ability to relegate to an attic of her memory whatever was unwelcome, these letters gave little indication of the difficulties, discomforts and unpleasantnesses of the journey. She constantly wrote of the beauty of the countryside and the people, and when she described something untoward, it was always with dismissive humour. To her step-son John, she wrote of a time before Alexine’s departure:

  Alexine and I felt restless. So, by a fine moon, we wandered through a wood near our camp. We laughed at the idea of being in the heart of Africa, nous deux, she on foot and I on a donkey, only attended by an old man with a lantern and our negro foster-child! We were no more afraid of lions and tigers or of the local inhabitants than on the downs chez nous. Oh, it’s a beautiful country and richly repays all our trouble, fatigue and expense!

  To Lucy:

  In comparison with ourselves, the others seem to eat so simply and scantily. But they have magnificent physiques, as you will know. Among the porters I have my special favourites, as Alexine has hers. These are the men who are particularly kind, thoughtful, cheerful. Of course we cannot communicate with words but they have an almost supernatural ability to guess what one is feeling or wanting.

  When not overseeing the two personal maids in their tasks, Nanny Rose now spent most of her time knitting under an awning projecting from the tent that she and Daan openly shared. What she was knitting was a woollen sweater for Daan, who certainly would not need it until their return to Europe. Beside her, sometimes cross-legged on the ground and sometimes on a stool, he would patiently whittle away with a penknife at one amateurish wood carving after another. He was attempting to create carvings similar to those that he had seen on their journeys. When they returned, he planned to sell them, as genuine native artefacts, in Cairo and The Hague.

  One day, the cook announced that the whole of a recently slaughtered sheep had been stolen. ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about it,’ Harriet told him. ‘ Report it to the vakeel.’ The next day Nanny Rose announced that an amber comb had disappeared from her tent. ‘Oh, I’m sure you must have put it down somewhere and forgotten where.’ Harriet now shrank from being involved in these recurrent dramas. She could barely conceal her exasperation when yet again someone bothered her with a complaint, query or request. Oh, if only Alexine would return!

  The Egyptians and Sudanese were constantly quarrelling among themselves. Late in the night, the Europeans would hear their voices raised in anger. One day a token scuffle broke out, with two groups of men measuring up to one another, shouting insults, their teeth bared, and eventually pushing, elbowing and kicking. On that occasion Harriet got up from her chair and marched towards the trouble: ‘Now stop that! Stop that at once!’

  She was amazed that her intervention was immediately successful: the men slunk away.

  The Europeans were all asleep when they were aroused by a clamour far louder than on that previous occasion. Through the darkness they could see figures racing hither and thither. A lone man hurled a cauldron at a group advancing on him and then raced off, shouting as he did so. The tent used by the Europeans as their dining-room and drawing-room suddenly tipped sideways, as three or four men tumbled over its guy-ropes, wrestling with each other.

  ‘You’d better read them the riot act,’ Nanny Rose, in her flannel nightdress, her grey, unbraided hair falling down her back, told Daan. ‘Go on! What’s the matter with you?’

  Sunny emerged from the tent that he usually shared with Alexine, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Go on!’

  Still Daan hesitated. Then, repeatedly halting as he cocked his head on one side to listen to the uproar or peered into the half-light, he ventured slowly forward. All at once, he halted, turned abruptly and ran back to them.

  ‘They’ve got knives, some of them. I saw. I’m not going to risk my life for them. Let them fight it out.’

  Nanny Rose looked at him with contempt. ‘ I just hope they don’t decide to do us all in.’

  ‘It’s a quarrel among themselves. We’ve got nothing to do with it. Let them fight it out,’ he repeated.

  Eventually, the rumpus was over as quickly as it had started. As soon as the dawn had broken, Harriet and Nanny Rose busied themselves with treating the wounds. ‘What a way to carry on!’ Nanny Rose kept muttering, as she now dabbed with iodine, taking pleasure in seeing the men wince as the soaked cotton-wool made contact with their raw flesh, and now unrolled some more lint or a bandage. For the most part, the wounded were amazingly cheerful when submitting to her and Harriet’s ministrations, laughing and shouting amiably to each other, however deep their gashes.

  Harriet’s favourite porter, beautiful, young, constantly smiling and constantly eager to do something for her, suddenly became silent and still. He no longer smiled, he no longer volunteered for any duty. When asked to do something, he would go about the task as though he were sleep-walking, trudging along jerkily on his heels, his hands behind his back and his once lively eyes dull and glazed. Was he ill? He merely shook his head when, through the vakeel, Harriet put this question to him.

  After four or five days of this, he lay motionless under a tree, knees drawn up to chin and eyes shut. He ate nothing
, he appeared to perform no natural functions. When people, Harriet among them, tried to rouse him, he did not answer or even move out of his catatonic trance. Sunny knelt beside him and took his hand in his. The man made no response; the hand was preternaturally cold in that heat.

  The vakeel said that someone had put a hex on him. Sunny said the same thing – ‘Someone has made magic, bad, bad.’ Sunny no longer went near the man. Everyone seemed to avoid him, as though some contagion were emanating from him. Nanny Rose took him sweetened tea but he did not stir when she approached him with it and spoke to him. Harriet wiped his forehead, face and bare, muscular chest with a sponge soaked in water. Again there was no response.

  One midday, when the sun was at its zenith and the four of them had retreated to the communal tent, they heard a shouting. Sunny jumped up and looked out of the tent and then called, at the same time beckoning frantically, to the others to join him. The man had leapt up from his motionless position on the ground and was now blundering hither and thither, back and forth, as though blind, between the tents, the trees and the high-piled stacks of goods. Everyone was watching him, rapt. No one was doing anything. The man began shouting one word, over and over again. Sunny later told them that it was ‘home’. It transpired that the man had originated from the same area as he had.

  Suddenly the man stopped his racing in erratic circles and headed for the river. He ran out onto the jetty and, with a cry of triumph, threw himself down into the murky water.

  ‘Oh, the crocs, the crocs!’ Nanny Rose cried out. ‘They’ll get him.’ Again she turned on Daan: ‘Do something!’

  ‘I’m not going to do anything. I can’t swim. And I’m certainly not prepared to be eaten by a crocodile.’

  Harriet, followed by the others, hurried down to the jetty. A number of people had collected there but no one was making any attempt to rescue the man, who was now floundering around in the water, clearly unable to swim. His face, mouth stretched wide open, appeared and disappeared repeatedly.