He had been able to piece together a fairly full account of the disaster. A few days after his departure two calves had drowned in the river. Such accidents did sometimes occur—there were dangerously soft spots of sand in which cattle would sink, mournfully bellowing. This time all attempts at rescue had failed. One of the calves vanished into the sand, the other was retrieved already dead. It was the skin of this calf that Mackenzie had found stinking at his first visit. Shrieve’s absence at the time of this fairly ordinary accident had had an unfortunate and unforeseeable effect. One of the chiefs had claimed that the calves had died because the gods were angry—whether god or gods wasn’t certain, but the uncertainty was itself a bad sign. The chief said he had been visited by dreams in which voices had told him to beware of danger. The prophecy had caused deep gloom among the other chiefs, and among the women, too. When gloomy the Ngulu gave up sex, and the women moped when deprived of regular love-making. The chief who had heard the voices then became ill. Since illness for the Ngulu meant possession by a god, the ravings of his malaria (for that was what it almost certainly had been) were taken to be messages from the god currently inhabiting him. Since the ravings made no sense, the Ngulu became even more disconcerted and gloomy than before.
Yet all might still have been well: though it was a bad case of tribal neurosis, Shrieve had known worse from which no serious harm had come. Now, however, came the blow which threw the chiefs into complete panic. Two young bulls had a fierce battle in which one was killed outright and the other very badly wounded. Cattle were always hobbled by the Ngulu, but one of the bulls had managed to free himself enough to attack the other. Although at an obvious advantage, he had been severely mauled before goring his victim to death, and had died himself after two days. The death of two bulls was an awesome and terrible matter: it indicated grave anger among the gods at the very least. The gloom became deeper, the women sulked more and more. They began to huddle in covens. One of them, after one of their huddlings had lasted several hours, apparently became possessed, leading the others in a frenzied dance towards the tree-stump at the edge of the village. There Amy’s account refused to go into details. She had been present at the huddle, but she had become afraid during the dance and dropped out of it unnoticed at the tree-stump.
The men were incensed by this unprecedented female activity. Convinced that there was bewitchment going on, appalled by the omens of the dead bulls and the two drowned calves, they shut the women in their huts. When Mackenzie next came, the skins of the bulls were being dried: no doubt the fact that the Ngulu had cut what they could from the badly gored skins made Mackenzie think they belonged to calves. Pleased themselves for having shut up their women, the chiefs had been agreeable and said they had no problems. They had smiled at Shrieve’s name, glad to hear he was well. But they hadn’t, Amy said, ever trusted Mackenzie, and one of the surviving men had added that Mackenzie couldn’t be a good man because he came smelling of the Luagabu. They had made their gesture of hopelessness after him with their palms in—not palms out as they made it to Shrieve—which was the worst insulting gesture they knew, reserved for Luagabu only. Mackenzie, of course, wasn’t to know this.
Things had gone better for a day or two, the women had been let out again, the skins had dried. But then doubt had arisen whether the skins should be used at all. If the gods had decided to kill the calves and the bulls, they probably wanted the skins for themselves. The chief who had heard voices and then raved argued that a terrible disaster was about to take place. He so convinced the others that he induced them to join him in a solemn propitiatory fast for two days. Clearly weakened by the malaria, and perhaps mentally unbalanced, he had continued to fast after the two days were over. On the fourth day he went into a trance from which he did not emerge. He died on the sixth day. The fatalism of the Ngulu did the rest. Within three days four were dead: by the time Shrieve returned they were dying of sheer resignation at the rate of five or six a day.
His return had done nothing to halt the sickness. The Ngulu looked at him with lack-lustre eyes as though they did not recognise him. Those that were not already ill refused to discuss the matter. For two months he watched healthy men gradually sink into an apathy and silence from which nothing could raise them. The doctor and specialists from the capital could find nothing physically wrong. Autopsy after autopsy was performed with negative results. The creeping hopelessness affected everyone, old and young: the old sat outside their huts, softly moaning, the children did not play. Yet it wasn’t the old and the children who died: day after day news came of more able-bodied men and women who had retired to their huts, who were sinking, who were dead. Frantic, Shrieve tried everything he could imagine. The doctors had injected and sedated and drugged, the relief workers (from the Kwahi-Nuaphi, who were not objectionable to the Ngulu) had tried beating and slapping; nothing had any effect. In a desperate gamble, two hundred Ngulu were moved to a military camp near the capital. Fifty died on the way, forty died there: the survivors were again the old and the young.
The nature of the surrender did nothing to make Shrieve’s task easier to bear. If his absence had been in part responsible for the moral collapse of the tribe, his presence apparently did nothing to restore confidence. He dreaded each day, powerless, uncomprehending, aghast. For the first time in his life he was relieved to get away to the capital for consultations with the Governor’s Council and Robbins. He drank a lot with Varner, whose aeroplane was much in demand.
The Ngulu’s dramatic dwindling became world news. Professors Adams and Rich wrote from Oxford and Chicago expressing their condolences, Patrick Mallory sent an expensive telegram asking if there was anything he could do to help, James Weatherby wrote a long and sympathetic letter. Shrieve had replied to no one. Sick at heart, he hadn’t been able to find the strength to sit down and write out the record of what he could not help considering his neglect and failure. Now the sickness was over, he must begin. He was, it seemed, a famous person. A television crew was coming to make a short film about him and his work for the B.B.C. He had been asked to write articles and give lectures. Colin Hoggart, on behalf of the Mallory Foundation, wanted to commission him for a large sum of money to write a detailed account of Ngulu life and customs. There was a mound of paperwork to be got through. Even Jumbo Maxwell had written, briefly saying how good it had been to see Shrieve and how sorry he was to hear there was trouble with the niggers: the rest of his letter had been an indignant account of the monstrous injustice of his treatment by the Brachs chain of restaurants. Although he had read everything that had been sent him, even a bank statement, Shrieve had not been touched by any of the messages of sympathy or expressions of interest. All the people who wrote seemed to belong to another world in a different arrangement of space and time, and their words were no more than scratches of pen on paper, as meaningless as Chinese characters to an illiterate Bolivian peasant.
Now he had to face that world again, to decipher the hieroglyphics, make sense and feeling come back to the words, and most difficult of all, find other words to answer them. He was exhausted. The last time he had been in the capital Robbins had told him that he would order him to take a few weeks off if he wouldn’t take them of his own accord.
“No,” Shrieve had said. “Just leave me alone, will you? I agree I’m whacked, but I’d rather recuperate where I am. I daren’t leave these people again.”
“Balls. Leave now while there are still some of the relief people there.”
“I said no,” Shrieve had said. “I want to recuperate with the Ngulu. I want to be with them. I want to watch them gradually get a grip on themselves again. I shall get a grip on myself at the same time.”
“All right, have it your own way. But it’s not going to look very clever when we have to add your nervous breakdown to the list of the Ngulu dead.”
“I’m not going to break down. I’m going to be perfectly all right. Just let me stay there till the university takes over at the end of next year.”
<
br /> And so he was still there. The relief workers had gone. An appearance of normality had been established.
Amy brought him a cup of coffee. She didn’t make very good coffee, but he was used to that. He patted her bottom affectionately and she swished back into the bungalow.
They had a little more than fourteen months, then. Independence was at the end of the year: the university would take over a year later. Already the paramilitary police force had been sent out to the nearby town where they would stay for as long as was necessary, their presence being all that was required. The Luagabu were clamorously looking forward to independence, but Mackenzie reported that the arrival of the troops had had a most satisfyingly calming effect.
There was, for the future, the question of what would happen to himself and Amy. He had decided not to stay on with the Ngulu, even if the university requested it. He had done his best, and it hadn’t been good enough. He no longer wished to remain: he was, after all, British, he belonged to the old order of things, it wasn’t, in his view, even right to want to remain. But what of Amy? Clearly it would be wrong to take Dayu and Kwuri from the tribe: the Ngulu needed every young person they had. Tom, of course, must go with him. Was Amy to accompany them? Was he to marry her, like the dreary suburbanite he would no doubt become? Was she to spend the rest of her life in an impossibly bewildering England, leading the existence, at best, of a loved nanny? Because Amy, and there was no question about it, was not going to fit into English society, ever. Yet he did not wish to stay in the colony. He was convinced it would be wrong to do so: a new nation did not want, rightly, the administrators of its old régime hanging around. And yet—— The problem nagged at him continually.
There was work to be done. He put down the coffee cup and stepped off the veranda to walk down the village. Every morning he made this walk, as a genius loci, he liked to think, might stroll around his grove. The sun was already hot on his bare head, and the old people were hobbling out to sit in front of their huts, pieces of yellow bread in their hands. He greeted them with the gesture that meant, roughly, May all be as well in your house as it is in mine. They replied with a few words and the right hand to the left cheekbone, which meant, May it always be so. Some children stopped their elementary hopscotch to besiege him for sweets. Gravely he searched his pockets. There were no sweets in his coat, he was sorry, but perhaps in the trousers …? They followed his movements with round eyes. They knew he had sweets, he always had sweets: this ritual he went through of not being able to find them was a necessary ritual for him, no doubt, and they must wait for it to be over in quiet politeness. The sweets were, after all, and to his astonishment, in his coat. He distributed them, the toffee papers glinting in the sun, gay as confetti. He patted some of the nearest heads and continued down the village. More greetings were exchanged, more sweets were handed out. One of the nine remaining adult men joined him for the stroll: he assumed an important air as though they were deep in vital matters. Confidence, then, was slowly returning to the survivors. A week ago there was not even a pretence of being able to cope with the tribe’s business.
As they walked on they were joined by the other men, until there were ten of them solemnly patrolling the village. At the end of the muddy track by the river they halted, watching the cattle drink. A boy of twelve or thirteen was in the water with them, standing up to his knees in the river, washing himself. He did so with elaborate self-consciousness, making much of his genitals and taking particular care over his nipples.
“He has a girl,” said one of the men. “He is in love.”
The others laughed. The boy looked up from his self-absorption, horrified to have been seen by the adults. He plunged at once under the water, only his head showing, two white eyeballs flashing in his black face. A girl—it was Dayu—scampered from some nearby bushes. The nine Ngulu men laughed uproariously. Shrieve smiled. For some reason he could not join in the laughter, he found the scene too painful, too hopeful.
He turned away, fighting his tears.
“Aiee!” called one of the men to the boy. “You can come out now, she’s run away!”
The boy moved slowly towards the river bank, crouching down so that below the navel he remained covered by water. The men laughed and jeered at him. Though they were almost naked themselves, total nudity was always considered funny. Suddenly the boy stood up straight and began to laugh with them, dripping in the sunshine, his body still that of a boy, with only the first hints of adult hair. He ran up through the shallow water to where he had left his loincloth and put it on, his back turned modestly towards the giggling men.
They began to walk back slowly through the village. Shrieve found he had two men on either side and five behind, an almost military formation, though the Ngulu would never even pretend to go to war again. He smiled into the sunlight, hoping they would think his tears came from squinting into the brightness. There were letters to write, there were reports and memoranda. He thought of Edward Gilchrist’s letter, gauche and awkward and full of genuine concern. Of Jumbo, irrepressibly aggrieved. Of Weatherby and Mallory and Hoggart. He could face them now, he thought.
When they reached the bungalow, the nine men stopped and he turned towards them, saying a few conventional words.
They replied with equally conventional phrases. They weren’t much to build on, these nine. They were weak, uninspired men, who had probably survived because they could not muster the courage or conviction to die. They smiled. He smiled back. They bowed. He acknowledged their bow. They went away, very pleased with themselves.
He watched them go, thinking of Dayu scampering from the bushes, of the boy washing himself so that she could see. They were simple people, his Ngulu.
He climbed the steps to the veranda, nearly tripping over Tom, who came toddling unsafely to greet him.
“Hello, Tom,” he said in English. “Come on, little one, you’ve got to learn your native tongue. Say hello. Hello, Tom, hello.”
“Ho,” said the child. He wobbled to the top of the steps, looked at their steepness in alarm and sat abruptly down. He began to cry. Shrieve picked him up.
“None of that,” he said. “You’ve got to put away your Ngulu habits, Tom. English boys just don’t cry, I’m afraid. They have stiff upper lips, they don’t let their feelings show.”
Amy came out and took the child. “That girl Dayu,” she said in a scolding tone, “I don’t know where she is.”
Shrieve didn’t tell her. He went indoors to his desk and began to write letters.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Julian Mitchell, 1964
Preface to the 2013 Edition © Julian Mitchell, 2013
The right of Julian Mitchell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–30423–3
%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
The White Father Page 35
