Elephant Song

by Wilbur Smith

  I'll do my best, Daniel promised. I'm sure you will, Doctor Armstrong.

  He was looking at Bonny again, but he went on speaking to Daniel.

  The British ambassador is here tonight. I'm sure you will want to pay your respects. He summoned Kajo to him. Captain, please take Doctor Armstrong to meet Sir Michael. Bonny began to follow Daniel, but Taffari stopped her with a touch on the arm. Don't go yet, Miss Mahon.

  There are a few things I would like to explain to you, such as the differences between the Uhali and the tall handsome Hita whom you so admire. Bonny turned back to him, thrust out one hip in a provocative stance and crossed her arms beneath her breasts, pushing them up so that they threatened to pop out of the green dress into his face. You should not judge Africa by the standards of Europe, he told her. We do things differently here. From the corner of her eye Bonny saw that Daniel had left the verandah and followed Kajo down on to the floodlit lawn.

  She leaned close to Taffari, her eyes not much below the level of his.

  Goody! she said. I'm always looking for new and different ways.

  Daniel paused at the bottom of the steps and began to grin as he picked out the familiar figure on the crowded lawn. Then he hurried forward and seized his hand. Sir Michael, forsooth! British ambassador no less, you sly dog. When did all this happen? Michael Hargreave gripped his elbow in a momentary display of un-British and undiplomatic affection. Didn't you get my letter? All very sudden. Hauled me out of Lusaka before you could say "Bob's your uncle". Sword on both shoulders from H. M.

  "Arise, Sir Michael", and all that. Shot me down here.

  But you did get my letter? Daniel shook his head. Congratulations, Sir Michael. Long overdue. You deserve it.

  Hargreave looked embarrassed and dropped Daniel's hand. Where's your drink, dear boy? Don't touch the whisky. Locally made. Convinced it's actually bottled crocodile piss. Try the gin. He summoned a waiter.

  Can't think why you didn't get my letter. Tried to ring you at the flat in London. No reply.

  Where's Wendy? Sent her back to Lusaka to pack up. New chap there has agreed to look after your Landcruiser and gear. Wendy will be here in a couple of weeks. Sends her love, by the way. Did she know you'd see me here? Daniel was puzzled.

  Tug Harrison gave us the word that you'd be in Ubomo. You know Harrison? Everybody in Africa knows Tug. Finger in most pies. Asked me to keep an eye on you. Told me about your assignment here. You're going to film Taffari and make him and BOSS look good; that's what he told me.

  Right? A little bit more complicated than that, Mike. Don't I know it!

  Complications you haven't dreamed of yet . He drew Daniel away to a deserted corner of the lawn, out of earshot of the other guests. But first of all, what do you think of Taffari? I wouldn't buy a second-hand country from him without checking the tyres. Check the engine as well, while you're about it, Michael smiled. The indications are that he's going to make Idi Amin look like Mother Theresa. I saw him giving you fifty lyrical words on his plan for peace and prosperity in the land.

  Rather more than fifty, Daniel corrected him. What it actually amounts to is peace for the Hita, prosperity for Ephrem Taffari, and screw the Uhah. My pals at MI6 tell me that he already has his numbered bank accounts in Switzerland and the Channel Islands all set up, and nice little sums tucked away in them. American foreign aid.

  That shouldn't surprise you. Everybody's doing it, aren't they?

  Par for the course; got to admit it. But he is being rather naughty to the Uhali. Chopped old Victor Omeru, who was rather a decent sort, and now he's kicking the manure out of the rest of the Uhali tribe.

  Some nasty rumours flying about, dark deeds. We don't really approve.

  Even the PM is a bit browned off with him already, which reminds me, got some news of a pal of yours. A pal of mine? The Lucky Dragon.

  Rings a bell, doesn't it? And you'll never guess who they're sending out to run the operation here. Ning Cheng Gong, Daniel said quietly.

  It had to be. That was the reason he was here in Ubomo. He had sensed it all along. This was where he would meet Cheng again. You've been reading my mail, Michael accused. Wing Cheng Gong is right. He arrives next week. Taffari is giving another party to welcome him.

  Any excuse for a party with our Ephrem, even you. He broke off and stared at Daniel. You all right, dear boy? Taking your anti-malarial, are you?

  Gone as white as a sheet. I'm fine. But Daniel's voice was hoarse and scratchy. He had a terrible mental image of the bedroom of the cottage at Chiwewe, and of the desecrated bodies of Mavis Nzou and her daughters. it left him feeling sick and shaken. He wanted to think of something else, anything but Ning Cheng Gong. Tell me everything about Taffari and Ubomo that I need to know, he demanded of Michael Hargreave.

  Tall order, dear boy. Can only give you the headlines now, but if you drop in at the embassy, I'll give you a full briefing, and a peep at some of the files. Your eyes only, of course. Even got a couple of bottles of genuine Chivas tucked away. Daniel shook his head. We're going up the lakesbore tomorrow to start filming. Taffari has put the entire navy at our disposal. One clapped-out World War Two gunboat.

  But I could drop in at the embassy tomorrow evening. When it was time to go, Daniel looked around for Bonny Mahon but could not find her. He saw Captain Kajo with a group of other officers at the bar and went across to him.

  I'm leaving now, Captain Kajo. That's all right, Doctor. President Taffari has left already.

  You are free to go. You could only tell that Kajo was drunk by his eyes.

  They had that coffee-coloured haze over the whites. In a white man they would have been bloodshot. We will meet tomorrow morning, Captain? What time?

  six O'clock at the guest house, Doctor. I will pick you up.

  We must not be late. The navy will be waiting for us. Have you seen Miss Mahon? Daniel asked. One of the other Hita officers sniggered drunkenly and Kajo grinned. No, Doctor.

  She was here earlier on. But I haven't seen her in the last hour.

  She must have left. Yes, come to think of it now, I did see her leave.

  He turned away, and Daniel tried not to scowl and look abandoned as he went out to the Landrover in the carpark.

  The government guest house was in darkness when he drove up and parked under the verandah. She might be in bed, already asleep with the light out. Despite his altered opinion of her, he felt a stab of disappointment when he switched on the bedroom light and saw that the servants had turned down the beds and rigged the mosquito nets. She had given him the excuse to end it, why was he not more pleased that it was over?

  He had drunk just enough of the local gin to have a headache.

  He picked up Bonny's bag from the foot of the bed and carried it through to the second bedroom. Then he went into the bathroom and swept her toiletries and cosmetics into her sponge bag and dumped them in the washbasin of the second bathroom down the passage. Then he held his head under the cold tap and took three Anadin tablets. He dropped his clothes on the floor and climbed naked under the mosquito net.

  He woke with headlights sweeping the front of the guest house and shining through the curtains on to the wall above his bed. Tyres crunched on the gravel drive. There were voices, and then a car door slammed and the vehicle pulled away. He heard her come up the verandah steps and open the front door.

  A minute later the bedroom door opened stealthily and she crept into the room.

  He switched on the bedside light and she froze in the middle of the floor. She carried her shoes in one hand and her bag in the other.

  Her hair was in a wild tangle, sparkling like copper wire in the light, and her lipstick was smeared over her chin.

  She giggled and he realised she was drunk. Have you any idea of the risk you're taking, you silly bitch? he asked bitterly. This is Africa. What you'll get is a four-letter word and it's not the one you're thinking of, sweetheart. It's spell A I D S. Tud Tut! jealous, are we? How do you know what I've been doing, d
arling? It's no big secret.

  Everybody at the party knew.

  You've been doing what any good little whore does. She took a wild round-arm swing at his head. He ducked under the blow, and the momentum carried her on to the bed.

  She pulled the mosquito net down on top of herself and fell in a tangle of long legs. The mini-skirt pulled up almost as high as her waist, her buttocks were bare and white as ostrich eggs. By the way, he said, you've left your knickers with Ephrem. She crawled up on to her knees and pulled down the green skirt. They are in my handbag, ducky. She got unsteadily to her feet. Where the hell are my things?

  In your room, your new room across the passage. She flashed at him.

  So that's the way you want it? You didn't really think I'd want to pick up Ephrem's leftovers, did you? Daniel tried to keep his tone reasonable.

  Off you go, there's a good little harlot. She picked up her handbag and shoes and marched to the door. There she turned back to him, swaying with a drunkard's dignity. It's all true, what they say, she told him with vindictive relish. They are big. Bigger and better than you'll ever be! She slammed the door behind her.

  Daniel was on his second cup of breakfast tea when Bonny came out on to the verandah and, without greeting him, took her place at the breakfast table opposite him.

  She wore her usual working uniform of faded blue jeans and denim top, but her eyes were puffy and her expression disgruntled with hangover.

  The guest house chef was an anachronism from the colonial era and he served a traditional English breakfast. Neither of them spoke while Bonny demolished her plateful of eggs and bacon. Then she looked up at him.

  So what happens now? You make a film, he said. Just the way it's written in your contract. You still want me around? As a cameraman, yes. But from now on it's a business relationship. That suits me just fine, she agreed. It was getting to be a bit of a strain; I'm not good at faking it. Daniel stood up abruptly, and went to fetch his gear from the bedroom. He was still too angry-to risk getting into an argument with her.

  Before he was ready, Captain Kajo arrived with three soldiers in the back of his Landrover. They helped carry out the heavy video equipment and load it into the back of the truck. Daniel let Bonny sit up in the cab beside Captain Kajo, while he rode in the back with the heavily armed Hita soldiers.

  the town of Kahali was very much as he remembered it from his last visit.

  The streets were wide and dusty where the potholes had eaten, cancerlike, through the tarmac. The buildings looked like those from the movie set of an old-fashioned Western.

  The main difference that Daniel noticed was the mood of the people.

  The Uhali women still wore their colourful ankle-length robes and turbans, the Moslem influence apparent in their demeanour, but the expressions on their faces were guarded and neutral. There were few smiles and no laughter in the open-air market where the women squatted in lines with their wares spread out on sheets of cloth in front of them. There were army patrols in the market-place and on the street corners.

  The populace averted their eyes as the Landrover passed.

  There were very few tourists, and these were dusty, unshaven and rumpled, probably members of an overland safari making their way down the length of the African continent in a huge communal truck. They were haggling for tomatoes and eggs in the market. Daniel grinned.

  They were paying for a glimpse of purgatory. The overland safari meant amoebic dysentery and punctures, five thousand miles of potholes and army roadblocks, probably the only package holiday on the globe with no repeat customers. Once was enough to last a lifetime.

  The gunboat was waiting for them at the wharf. Seamen in navy blue uniforms and bare feet carried the video equipment up the gangplank and the captain shook hands with Daniel as he came aboard. Peace be with you, he greeted him in Swahili. I have orders to take you where you want to go. They left the harbour and turned northwards, parallel to theLakeshore. Daniel stood out on the foredeck and his good spirits returned swiftly. The water was a dark and lovely blue, sparkling in the sunlight. There was a single cloud on the northern horizon, as white as a seagull and not much larger. It was the spray column- where the lake spilled over its rocky rim into a deep gorge and became the infant Nile.

  The ultimate source of the White Nile had been debated for two thousand years and had still not been entirely agreed upon.

  Was it those falls where the Victoria Nile out of Lake Victoria joined the Albert Nile in Lake Albert and spilled over at the beginning of the incredible journey down to Cairo and the Mediterranean Sea? Or was it higher still, as Herodotus had written long before the birth of Christ?

  Did it spring from a bottomless lake lying between the two mountains Crophi and Mophi and fed by their eternal snows? With the lake-spray in his face, Daniel turned to look westward, trying to make out the loom of the romantic mountain peaks in the distance, but today, as on most days, it was a diffuse blue cloud mass, blending with the blue of the African sky.

  Many of the earlier explorers had passed close by the Mountains of the Moon without ever dreaming of their existence.

  Even Henry Morton Stanley, that ruthless, driven, Americanised Welsh bastard, had lived for months in their shadow before the perpetual clouds had opened and astonished him with a vista of snowy peaks and shining glaciers. It gave Daniel a mystic feeling to sail upon these waters that were the lifeblood pumped from the heart mountains of this savage continent.

  He turned and glanced up at the open bridge of the gunboat.

  Bonny Mahon was filming. She had the Sony camera balanced on her shoulder and pointed towards the shore. He grimaced with reluctant approval. Whatever their personal problems, she was a true professional. At the end she'd probably get a good shot of the devil on her way through hell, and the thought made him grin and took the edge off his antagonism towards her.

  He went back to the chartroom below the bridge and spread the survey maps and architect's drawings that BOSS had provided for him on the table.

  The site that had been chosen for the hotel and casino was seven miles up the coast from the port of Kahati. Daniel saw that it was a natural bay with an island garding the entrance.

  The Ubomo River, pouring down the escarpment of the Rift Valley from the great forests and snowy mountain ranges, debauched into the bay.

  On the map it looked an ideal site for the holiday complex that Tug Harrison hoped would make Ubomo one of the more desirable holiday destinations for tourists from southern Europe.

  To Daniel there seemed to be only one drawback. There was already a large fishing village sited on the bay. He wondered what Tug Harrison and Ning Cheng Gong planned to do about that. European sunbathers would not want to share the beach with native fishermen and their nets, while the odour of sundried fish on the racks would not encourage the appetite or add much to the romantic attractions of Fish Eagle Bay Lodge, as the project had already been named.

  The captain hailed Daniel from above. He left the chart-table and went out to the open deck, just as the gunboat rounded the headland and Fish Eagle Bay opened ahead of them.

  Daniel saw at once why the name had been chosen. The island at the mouth of the bay was heavily forested. Nourished by the lake's sweet clear waters, the ficus and wild mahogany trees had grown into giants with branches spreading out high over the rocky shore and the surrounding lake waters. Hundreds of mating pairs of fish eagles had built their nests in the high branches. With russet and chestnut plumage and glistening white heads, these were the most spectacular of all the African . raptors. The great birds sat on every prominent perch, while still others sailed overhead on wide pinions, throwing back their heads in flight to utter the wild yelping chant that is so much a part of the African pageant.

  The gunboat anchored and launched an inflatable Zodiac to take Daniel and Bonny to the island. For an hour they filmed the eagle colony.

  Captain Kajo threw dead fish off the rocky cliff and Bonny captured exciting sequences of ri
val eagles contending for the offerings and engaging in ritual aerial combat by hooking each other's talons and spinning and swirting in flight.

  Daniel helped her lug the Sony camera up the smooth, massive trunk of a wild fig tree to film the eagle chicks in the nest. The parent birds attacked them both on the exposed branch, coming in on screaming power-dives with talons extended and curved yellow beaks agape, pulling away at the Last possible moment so that the draught of the great wings buffeted them on their exposed perch. By the time Bonny and Daniel reached the ground, their personal antagonism had been shelved and they were operating as a professional film crew again.

  They returned to the Zodiac and ran out to the gunboat. As they came aboard, the captain weighed anchor and pushed on slowly into the bay.

  It was a spectacular site with volcanic rock cliffs climbing sheer out of the blue water and bright orange sand beaches in between the black rock.

  Once again they climbed into the Zodiac and landed on one of the beaches near the mouth of the Ubomo River. Leaving Captain Kajo and the two seamen on the beach with the boat, Daniel and Bonny climbed to the highest point on the cliffs and were rewarded with a panoramic view over the bay and the lake.

  They could look down on the large fishing village at the mouth of the Ubomo River. Twenty or so dhow-rigged boats were drawn up on the beach while as many more were dotted out upon the lake waters. On gull-winged sails the fleet was bearing in towards the bay, the night's fishing over, coming in to land the catch.

  Along the head of the beach the fishing-nets were spread out in the sunlight to dry and the smell of fish carried up to them, even on the top of the cliff. Naked black children played upon the beach and splashed in the lake. Men worked on the dhows or sat cross-legged with needle and palm to repair the festooned nets. In the village the women moved gracefully in their long skirts as they pounded grain in the tall wooden mortars, swinging rhythmically to the rise and fall of the pestles in their hands, or squatted over the cooking-fires on which stood the black three-legged pots Daniel pointed out the various features which he wanted filmed and Bonny followed his instructions and turned the camera lens to record it all. What will happen to the villagers? she asked, still peering into the viewfinder of the Sony.