Vinegar Soup

by Miles Gibson

  ‘Do you have any sardines?’ asked Frank hopefully when they had donated their Bovril to the hoard.

  ‘It’s emergency. Special. We don’t touch it,’ barked Boris. He looked angry. He looked threatened. He bundled them out and quickly chained the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Frank. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘They’re all thieves,’ grumbled Boris. ‘Don’t trust nobody.’ He pushed the key back into his vest and glared across at the kitchen. ‘You got to keep stuff for special.’

  ‘The boy’s sick. You get queer appetites when you’re sick. I’ll look after him,’ said Gilbert gently.

  ‘I give him sardine. What happens? Pretty soon every damn bastard want a sardine. Pretty soon we got no rations.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘I got to look after these things,’ seethed Boris.

  ‘You’re the best man for it,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘They don’t steal nothing from me,’ insisted Boris.

  ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘I teach the bastards a lesson,’ growled Boris.

  ‘They wouldn’t forget it,’ said Gilbert.

  Boris nodded and looked mollified. ‘You want the car today?’ he inquired suddenly.

  ‘No,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Good,’ said Boris. He pulled off his hat and examined the brim. ‘I got business in town. You want something? Ask Happy. Nothing happens.’

  Frank and Gilbert watched him hurry away.

  ‘That’s a rum business,’ said Gilbert, at last. He searched among the pockets of his jacket for a scrap of something to eat. He found a broken biscuit and picked at the crumbs.

  ‘He’s mad,’ declared Frank. ‘No wonder the hotel is empty.’

  ‘I suppose Sam must have had his reasons,’ said Gilbert doubtfully.

  ‘I’m sorry about Sam.’

  Gilbert discovered a sultana at the bottom of a pocket. He offered it to Frank. ‘Let’s collect Veronica,’ he said.

  They walked back into the shadow of the silent hotel and found Veronica in her room. She was sitting on her bed, counting shoes and underwear. She had filled a little wardrobe with frocks. Her empty suitcase was thrown on the floor.

  ‘Have you had breakfast?’ said Gilbert. He looked around in the hope of a crust. It was a large, bare room with pictures from the life of Christ on the walls. The Nativity. The Sermon on the Mount. The Last Supper.

  ‘Boris brought me coffee,’ said Veronica absently. ‘There’s a shower at the end of the corridor.’

  ‘Did he seem strange to you?’ asked Frank, peering through the window at the great forest.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Boris.’

  ‘No,’ said Veronica. ‘He’s Dutch.’

  ‘He told me he was Hungarian,’ said Gilbert.

  They waited until Veronica had finished counting her clothes and then wandered aimlessly up and down the hotel corridors.

  ‘That’s the shower,’ said Veronica.

  They paused. It was a tiled cell with a crucifix nailed above the door.

  ‘That’s my room,’ said Frank as they turned a comer. He tapped the door with his fingernails.

  ‘And this is my room,’ said Gilbert, opening his door and waving them inside. There was a bed, a window and a painted wardrobe. Pictures from the life of Christ: Healing the Sick. Walking on Water.

  ‘All the rooms look the same,’ said Veronica.

  Gilbert smiled. He sat on the bed and clasped his knees. ‘Look in the wardrobe,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need a wardrobe,’ laughed Veronica. ‘You didn’t bring any clothes with you.’

  ‘No room for clothes,’ grinned Gilbert.

  Frank pulled open the narrow, plywood doors. The wardrobe had been fitted with shelves and on the shelves there were twenty large, black, telephones. They had been carefully arranged in rows, catalogued and numbered, like prehistoric knucklebones.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ murmured Frank.

  ‘Waiting,’ smiled Gilbert. ‘Waiting to be connected. One day we’ll be able to call anywhere in the world.’

  ‘I knew there was something wrong,’ sighed Veronica as she caught sight of the hoard. ‘I knew there was something missing.’

  ‘Why aren’t they working?’ insisted Frank. It puzzled him. He thought Boris must have hidden them. I give him a telephone. What happens? Pretty soon every damn bastard want a telephone. Pretty soon we got no telephones.

  ‘We’re a long way out,’ Gilbert explained patiently. ‘The lines haven’t reached this far into the forest. But the telephones are here. And that means, one day, we’ll be able to use them!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ hooted Veronica. ‘Until then we’ll use cocoa tins tied to a piece of string!’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Gilbert impatiently, rubbing his knees.

  ‘But what happens if there’s an emergency or something?’ demanded Frank. ‘How do we get help?’

  ‘Shout,’ said Veronica.

  ‘There’s a post office in town,’ said Gilbert. ‘They’ll have a telephone.’ He jumped up, closed the wardrobe doors, and pushed them from the room.

  ‘I’m sleeping next to Boris,’ said Veronica. ‘You’re sleeping next to Gilbert. There are six empty bedrooms.’ She counted on her fingers. ‘Where does Happy sleep?’

  ‘I think he sleeps in the kitchen,’ said Frank.

  ‘Boris keeps him in a barrel,’ said Gilbert.

  They strolled into the yard and sat in the shade of the mud wall. The air dazzled them. Wisps of dust smoked from the baked earth.

  ‘No one’s stayed here for years,’ sighed Frank, staring up at the house.

  ‘Have you seen the dining room?’ asked Veronica. ‘It’s the big room at the front. The room that opens on to the veranda.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘There are birds building a nest in a hole in the ceiling.’

  They fell silent. Frank scratched the earth with a stick.

  Veronica closed her eyes. Gilbert sat and studied his shoes.

  ‘Are we going home?’ said Frank, at last.

  ‘Do you want to go home?’ Gilbert asked him.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you want to go home?’ Gilbert asked Veronica.

  She shrugged and opened her eyes. ‘What are we going to do here? We’ve reached the hotel at the end of the world.’

  ‘We could make something of it,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We could make a few changes here and there,’ said Gilbert. ‘Fix that roof. Paint these walls.’

  ‘Pull it down and start again,’ said Veronica.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘But who would find us here?’ demanded Frank, waving his arm at the forest. ‘We’re lost. We don’t even have a telephone.’

  ‘There’s a town at the bottom of the hill,’ said Gilbert. ‘A town needs an hotel.’ It was obvious. If they didn’t want a bed they would come for the food and the beer. Bring out the tables. Light the candles. Supper under the stars. Yes. You have to start somewhere.

  ‘I thought it would be different,’ said Veronica miserably. She stretched out her legs until her feet stuck from the shadow and caught the heat of the sun.

  ‘It could be different. Sam would have wanted us to stay. He had plans. We could turn the place into something special. Look at this yard. It could be a huge garden. Everything grows in this heat. You could stick an umbrella in the ground and the bugger would root. Imagine. It could be beautiful. The place doesn’t look too good at the moment. But we can make it work. And once we’ve settled down – word gets around – people will start to search us out.’

  They were discovered sooner than he expected. At dusk Boris returned with the car and announced his arrival by leaning an elbow on the horn. He had two white men with him.

  ‘Patron!’ he shouted as Gilbert appeared on the verand
a. ‘Patron, we have some friends for supper.’

  The two men grinned and waved at Gilbert. One of them wore a crisp, blue safari suit and spectacles. The other was dressed in a brown city suit and leather sandals.

  ‘Good evening,’ shouted Gilbert as he waited for them to climb the steps. He beckoned Frank and Veronica from the sofa in the lobby where they had been trying to make sense of Sam’s account books.

  ‘Maurice Grey,’ grinned the one in the blue safari suit as he reached for Gilbert’s hand. He had a long, pale face and smelt of too much aftershave. He squeezed Gilbert’s hand like a piece of wet flannel.

  ‘Oscar Stamp,’ smiled the one in the sandals. He was smaller than his companion and had a face like a potato.

  Everyone shook hands and nodded and smiled. Then Boris led them through the hotel into the compound where Happy had arranged a table and chairs.

  Maurice Grey introduced himself as a baby-food man from You-Kay. He said his company was very big in bottled baby-care products. He had been working in Batuta but had been sent to the forest to investigate new opportunities in the powder milk market. He looked disappointed. Nobody wanted his powder milk. He said the darkies preferred their teats. They suckled their babies for years. It wasn’t natural. You couldn’t teach these people anything. He blamed the teat. He said if women didn’t have teats he’d be a happy man. Pardon his language. He was finished with Africa. He was going home to You-Kay.

  Oscar Stamp said he was a tractor man. The forest needed his tractors. He said one day they would succeed in clearing out the forest with proper tractors. He had been in Africa for seven years and he also wanted to go to You-Kay but first he had some business in Lagos.

  When they were settled at the table Happy came running from the kitchen. He was wearing an apron splattered with blood. He brought peanuts and bottles of ice-cold beer.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ asked Gilbert as they sucked at the bottles. A lantern on the table had attracted a cloud of pinhead moths. They floated like sequins above the flame.

  ‘He’s staying with me,’ said Oscar, nodding at Maurice. ‘I’ve got a house in town. The company looks after me. I can’t complain in that department.’

  ‘Why don’t you stay out here at the hotel?’

  Oscar laughed and shook his head.

  ‘He got a woman. She cook. She clean. Look after him,’ said Boris.

  Veronica snorted and spat peanut shells.

  ‘She likes to see me comfortable,’ admitted Oscar. Happy staggered through the darkness carrying a cauldron of hot goat stew. He had mixed the meat with tomatoes, peanuts and peppers.

  ‘You’ve taught him to cook,’ marvelled Maurice as he sniffed up the steam.

  ‘Is he still farting?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘The bastard don’t stop,’ muttered Boris.

  ‘You should change his diet,’ said Maurice. ‘What are you feeding him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Boris indignantly. ‘Scraps. He steals what he want.’

  While Boris served the stew Happy scuttled away and returned with bowls of yam and fried plantain.

  ‘Sam could take a goat and make it taste like a baby lamb,’ sighed Oscar.

  Boris nodded sadly. He picked up his bottle of beer, turned towards the garden and gave the grave a salute.

  ‘I’ll miss old Sam,’ said Maurice, looking at Frank. ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  ‘No,’ said Frank.

  ‘He was my friend,’ said Gilbert proudly. ‘We walked across the whole damn country after the war.’

  ‘It’s changed a lot since those days,’ said Oscar.

  ‘Sam was a character,’ said Maurice.

  ‘He drank me under the table,’ said Boris with considerable admiration. A large beetle with scarlet wings fell from the sky and landed in the bowl of yam. He pulled it out, cracked it with his thumb and threw it away.

  ‘You’re fresh from You-Kay,’ said Oscar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Sam sent for me.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Maurice. ‘Are you staying on?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frank. He couldn’t decide when he had made this decision but, confronted with the man’s expression of incredulity, he felt determined to stay with Gilbert and make it work.

  ‘You’re keeping the hotel?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Veronica, glancing at Frank. ‘We’re keeping the hotel.’

  ‘I’ll give it six months,’ said Maurice.

  ‘Twelve if you’re lucky,’ warned Oscar.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s no damn good. Nothing happens. Nothing works. You’ll learn,’ said Maurice.

  ‘It’s a flea-bitten, God-forsaken country,’ said Oscar. ‘The place is jumping with jiggers.’

  ‘There’s worse than jiggers,’ said Boris mildly.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Oscar, waving his fork. ‘There are flies that crawl up your nose while you sleep and lay their eggs in your sinuses. Then the maggots hatch out and eat your brains.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ grinned Frank.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Boris. ‘I heard of someone. He died from it.’

  ‘It’s the heat,’ complained Oscar. ‘It slows you down and wears you out. You arrive and you think you won’t make the same mistakes. But it gets you in the end.’ He fell silent for a minute and contemplated a mouthful of gristle, turning it over with his tongue.

  ‘Look what happened to Sam,’ said Boris.

  ‘It’s the darkies,’ said Maurice. ‘The darkies drive you mad. You can’t teach them anything. They suckle their babies for years and years. Can you believe it? They’ve all grown teats like cucumbers. Pardon my language.’

  ‘Why do they do it?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Birth control,’ said Maurice. ‘They think it works like birth control.’

  ‘It sounds perfectly sensible to me,’ said Veronica.

  ‘Birth control?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It isn’t natural.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m a baby-food man,’ said Maurice. He shook his head, stunned by the absurdity of the world into which he had fallen. His spectacles flashed in the lamplight.

  ‘I can’t wait for You-Kay,’ said Oscar, grinding gristle between his teeth.

  Maurice sniffed and took a swig from his bottle. ‘You know what I miss about You-Kay?’ he said.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Oscar.

  ‘It’s clean and cold and everything works.’

  ‘Which part of You-Kay you from?’ demanded Oscar, turning to Gilbert.

  ‘London.’

  ‘London!’ crooned Maurice. He rubbed his rough potato face and grinned.

  ‘How is it?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Oxford Street on a wet November afternoon.’

  ‘Selfridges blazing with Christmas lights.’

  ‘Egg and bacon.’

  ‘Apple pie and custard.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus.’

  ‘I just want to get to Heathrow,’ said Maurice. ‘I just want to get to Heathrow and you know what I’m going to do?’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Oscar.

  ‘I’m going to fall down on my knees and kiss the ground.’

  ‘You don’t miss it, I mean you don’t appreciate it, until it’s taken away from you,’ said Oscar.

  Gilbert thought of London and tried to see it as the golden city of the cold, blue north. He could see only gloomy office blocks, collapsed Victorian tenements, dirty streets and gimcrack bazaars. The people looked grey, their clothes smelt dirty, there was sickness in the sulphurous rain. The old city, throne room to an empire, had become a bear-garden for tourists, a diorama, a tuppenny peepshow. He wanted to explain these things to the visitors but he knew they wouldn’t hear him. The London they had carried with them across the length of Africa was a lost world, made miraculous by memory.

  ‘I feel sorry for you, stuck in this hole withou
t Sam,’ said Maurice. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I hope it works out. But it makes me feel sick just thinking about it.’

  ‘It’s no life,’ said Oscar.

  Gilbert said nothing. The man was a buffoon. It’s no life in London. The noise. Bedlam. The squalor. Nasty. Women locked away at night. Afraid to walk the streets. Anyway. People don’t have lives any more. They have television.

  ‘Have you got an English cigarette?’ said Maurice hopefully, when they had finished the stew.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘They got no medicines neither,’ said Boris scornfully.

  ‘Isn’t there a doctor in town?’ asked Veronica.

  Oscar laughed. It was a queer, high-pitched yapping noise like a little dog. ‘There was a doctor. He was a Frenchman. Drank himself to death on palm wine. Poisoned his blood. Legs like balloons. Remember him, Boris?’

  Boris nodded. ‘He was a bastard.’

  ‘Darkies make their own medicine. It’s the whites who suffer,’ said Oscar. He sighed and stared at his bottle. ‘It makes no difference. The town is finished. We don’t need a doctor. There’s no one left. You and me. Henry left last month.’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ said Maurice. ‘It used to be a good town. There were a couple of dozen families here at one time. French and German. Women and children.’

  ‘Why did they leave?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘Different reasons.’

  Veronica shivered, glancing out at the dark forest.

  ‘It’s Agassou. He’s the problem,’ said Oscar. ‘You come out here and build a factory and as soon as you get it working old man Agassou throws you out and steals the business. He stole the rubber. He stole the coffee. And now he’s trying to steal the trees.’

  ‘Why don’t they do something about him?’ asked Frank innocently.

  ‘He’s the president,’ said Maurice.

  ‘Why don’t they get rid of him?’ asked Veronica, who wasn’t sure she understood.

  ‘It’s a one-party state. The parti democratique de Bilharzia. They hanged the opposition after the last election,’ explained Oscar.

  ‘Which election was that?’ asked Maurice.

  ‘There was only one election,’ said Oscar.

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ growled Boris. He leaned across the table and touched Veronica’s arm. ‘Don’t listen. The sun turn their brain soft. They leave. Others arrive.’