Tefuga

by Peter Dickinson

  On we went talking and singing, tho’ I was beginning to get pretty fagged by now. I tried to get people to stay behind to show Ted or Bevis the way at the tricky bits, but they wouldn’t. I know just how they felt. They had to stay with the others. Soon as they were left alone they’d have got terrified of what they’d done.

  And then we got there. No wonder nobody’d found Kailungi. There was a perfectly good path if you knew where to look, but it was blocked by what looked like the worst possible kind of thorn tree, only it didn’t have any roots. I’d have walked straight past, but Manamu and two of the women took hold of branches and pulled it out and there was the path winding up the side of the valley, only just wide enough for one person. Manamu went first and me second, and the others behind, Indian file. They’d stopped singing now—you don’t make a noise near ‘toe’ villages. Up we went, over the ridge, down the other side, and there was Kailungi! A perfectly good village, twenty huts, gardens, chickens, goats, everything. And—this was an absolutely incredible bit of luck—a man who wasn’t a Bakiti at all. I spotted him at once ’cos he was wearing clothes, and he turned out to be a slave from Alafambo’s household who ‘looked after’ all the villages round there and had got trapped at Kailungi by us turning up. A nice, gentle little man, v. polite. Of course he couldn’t see he was doing anything wrong! It was just what had always been done.

  Well, that’s really all. No, it isn’t, tho’ it’s all that matters. I had to wait hours for someone to show up so I sat under a tree and talked about ordinary things, the way I’ve always wanted to, and that was quite nice, but not as good as I’d have liked. My fault for drawing the horse. It wasn’t exactly that they were afraid of me ’cos I was going to do something nasty to them—more as tho’ I was like a bit of wire which sometimes had live electricity in it. You just don’t take risks, that’s all. A bit sad for me.

  Then at last Ted and Bevis came, together. Corporal Igg had taken them to where he’d seen me and there’d been enough of us to leave a good trail and we hadn’t pulled the thorn bush back so it wasn’t difficult. They got hold of the poor slave and he told them everything about the secret taxes and so on—I didn’t listen. That’s their side. And then we all trooped home to Sollum. There’d been ructions, ’cos the Hausa had been trying to frighten the villagers but the villagers had stood up to them. They’d burnt their boats, you see. There might have been fighting, but Corporal Igg had done the right thing and arrested all the Hausa. He is a good man. He could have got into fearful trouble but he did it ’cos he thought it was best. Marvellous to come trailing out of the bush and see that calm black face and that snappy salute and hear him report as tho’ he’d been talking about a missing bucket in his barracks. That’s what Africa needs (except it wouldn’t be Africa then!).

  Then we had some food and a rest and in the evening we went back into Sollum and had a palaver with the villagers. I made sure it wasn’t only the men. They were pretty worried by now, but they saw they’d have to stick by us and they told us as much as they could. Thing is, we’d been extraordinarily lucky. Ted was quite right. There aren’t lots and lots of ‘toe’ villages—if there had been they’d have been found years ago. Apart from Kailungi and the one Mr Mooreshed stumbled into there are only three others! They’re all down in this rather unexplored bit.

  It’s the ‘toe’ men who matter. Ever since Bestermann’s Patrol, when a lot of the men ran away and hid in any case, KB’s people have been sending messengers round ahead of our touring D.O.s warning the villages to keep some of their men out of sight, and then coming around again after the tour to collect the extra taxes. The men who hide are called ‘toe’ men, so naturally they called the hidden villages ‘toe’ villages, tho’ there aren’t nearly as many of them as there are ‘finger’ villages. Ted thinks it might all have started right back in the old slave-raiding days when a lot of villages did their best to keep themselves secret, and then times like Bestermann’s Patrol, when they wanted to again, they knew how. We found the other three ‘toe’ villages later in the tour. We just asked and people took us. They’d heard what had happened at Sollum, you see. I don’t feel like writing about any of that—it wasn’t special.

  Supper that night the men talked on and on about what to do next. Same old argument, except that now Ted agrees KB is going to have to go, spite of it not being really him who’s been doing all the cheating. We could punish Zarafio and some of the others, but no one will believe things are really different while KB’s still there. The problem is, who is to take over. Bevis wants a clean sweep—well, clean as you can get ’cos it has to be one of the ruling family or all the other emirs will kick up no end of a fuss; their whole system depends on that, not just the emirs but all down the line, the same sort of hereditary offices and perks. So Bevis’s idea is to get hold of a boy, about twelve, and pack him off to the chiefs’ school at Katsina and drill some decent ideas into him. Ted says it won’t work ’cos the other Hausa will never respect him.

  “Take our pal Alafambo,” he said. “He is genuinely outraged by what we have been up to. I have no doubt he thinks of himself as a thoroughly moral and upright Muslim gentleman, and of us as the cads and scoundrels. At least Zarafio’s got brains. He’s a slippery little wretch, I’ll give you, but he knows which side his bread’s buttered. He will be able to see that it’s not in his interest to push things too far. That’s as much as we can hope for. You are never going to be able to see inside the African mind.”

  “It would do you precious little good if you could,” said Bevis. “There’s nothing in there worth study. Our only way forward is to prise open the African skull, remove its present contents and replace them. Until the African comes round to our way of thinking, in the literal sense of the word, the European method of organizing one’s thought-processes, he will remain intransigently unreliable and backward. The key, the surgical instrument for this operation, is communication. In the first place, roads.”

  I was still thinking about what Ted had said. I’m usually about one behind in conversations like that.

  “I think you can sometimes see inside,” I said. “I mean a lot of it’s just ordinary, about food and babies and things, but even the funny parts … I didn’t tell you how I got them to tell me where Kailungi was.”

  Ted hadn’t asked me, nor Bevis. I suppose they thought I’d done it their way, reasons and orders. I’d still got the picture in my shirt pocket. I showed them and told them about the dream. They just laughed, but when I got the picture back there was something about the way the firelight wavered across it which made it really rather creepy. No, worse than that. I got a proper shock for a mo, pure fright. Quickly I scrunched it up and threw it in the fire. Better.

  Ted was chortling away about the dream. He said if he’d known there was a termite behind all that white gauze at the altar he’d have thought twice about saying yes. Mr de Lancey was quite interested in his brainy kind of way.

  “It’s an ethnological curiosity,” he said. “Presumably an individual started it and told others, who then dreamed the same thing. A mass dream hysteria. I wonder if there are any similar events in the literature. But, my dear Betty, you cannot rule a country by means of such insights. They may be marginally useful, but you cannot systematize them. All good government is system. That was Rome’s great invention, and now it is our European heritage, which we hold in trust for the world until the world comes of age.”

  Spite of calling me “my dear Betty” he was much less sneery than he used to be talking to me—still talking to me, tho’, not with me—him the teacher, but me not a complete idiot any more. I might have been chuffed about that, only soon as I’d finished telling about the dream—while I was watching the picture burn—I’d started to feel rather odd. Ashamed, not ’cos of what I’d done—I’m sure that was right—but having to do it that way. Here we were, chortling over how cunning I’d been, tricking the ignorant Kitawa into thinking I was a terrible w
itch who knew everything, so they’d do what I wanted. Like that horrid place in King Solomon’s Mines when they used the eclipse to trick the natives into thinking they’re great white magicians from the stars. I suppose there was something a bit magic—only a teeny bit—about the way that terrible horse flowed out of my fingertips as tho’ it was really there all along, waiting to be made visible. And at least once or twice—just now too—I’d felt inside me what it was like to believe in the magic, to be really afraid of it, so it wasn’t pure hocus pocus, not quite. But still, I do wish there’d been some other way.

  And my dream. I was so sure when it happened, so glad I’d been allowed to be part of them and have it too. But now I keep thinking it didn’t come from outside, after all. Perhaps I only dreamed it ’cos I’d heard the women talking about it. In that case it didn’t mean anything, really, did it?

  Better stop writing now. I’ve worked myself into a dump again. It’s been like that ever since Sollum—terrifically up one moment like I was when I started writing this, and then soon after right down again. Stupid things. I keep worrying about the ‘toe’ villages. Why were there only four? It isn’t nearly enough. I mean it’s enough for Ted and Bevis ’cos they’ve made up their minds to get rid of KB anyway, and Kaduna can’t go back now without losing awful face, but it isn’t enough for me. After what Atafa Guni told me at Jabu. I’ve read what I wrote about that again and again, and I know she didn’t actually say how many, but … I mean, I think I understand why she and the other women sort of invented Jabu so’s to have something to show me, but what was the point if really there were only four real ‘toe’ villages, miles away in the south? It bothers me. Trouble is, I can’t talk to Ted about it either, ’cos that would mean telling him lots of other things I really daren’t.

  Another dumpish thing is that he’s decided as part of his clean sweep that he’s going to take Elongo on as his Messenger. It’s a marvellous chance for the boy and I mustn’t stand in his way. If only I’d had time to teach him to read and write, he really might have gone far. Oh dear! Nothing will ever be the same again.

  And then, even worse than that, such a blow for poor Ted, who’d been perfectly marvellous not showing how much he minded losing to Bevis, and keeping cheerful, and getting the work done—two days ago, on our way home, riding ahead through the long swishing grass, suddenly Salaki didn’t seem to know where she was going. The track was so narrow she couldn’t go wrong, but she weaved around and stumbled and I couldn’t keep her straight and after a bit I had to get down and lead her. She looked so sorry for herself it was dreadful. We got her home all right, leading her most of the way, but she isn’t any better, and three of the Hausa horses are just as bad. We’re almost certain she’s been bitten by tsetse and got nagana, which is usually fatal for horses. We’ve had to separate her from Tan-Tan, tho’ it may be too late.

  Ted feels it dreadfully, but he’s ashamed of letting himself show it and that makes it worse. He makes his usual awful jokes, but they sound different, bitter. Last camp of the tour we finished up the brandy and pretended to be jolly.

  “Joke is,” he said, “all those fellows we found, they’re not going to get off anything. Now they’re going to have to start paying taxes to us termites, and doing road-gang work on top. I bet you in ten years’ time they’ll be talking about the good old days when the horse was their master!”

  I laughed and Bevis snickered, but it didn’t sound like a joke at all.

  Thirteen

  Without warning the engine died. Jackland tried the starter a couple of times, then switched off lights and ignition. The reek of unburnt petrol joined the soft night smells.

  “Flooded it, I should think,” he said. “I’ll give it a couple of minutes’ rest. It may have over-heated—all the low-gear work.”

  “It does not smell very hot,” said the Sarkin. “Is there a gauge?”

  “Not registering. All three trucks have been playing up in different ways. I’m not sure which one this is—fuel-pump, I think. I had to take the nearest.”

  “Are you mechanically minded, Mr Jackland?”

  “No.”

  “Nor am I.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “Thank you. My last for some time, I should think.”

  “What are your plans?”

  There had been very little chance to talk so far, what with the noise of the engine and the constant tension of trying to pick their way by headlights through virgin bush. Despite Miss Boyaba’s confidence in her uncle’s skill they had managed to miss the remains of the old track almost as soon as it had emerged from the thorn-belt. Even as a young man the Sarkin could seldom have been used to night journeys—as Betty Jackland had guessed, few primitive people like to be out in the dark—and in such country the narrow beam of headlights has the effect of seeming to make a path almost wherever it points. It had been possible to stick to a rough general direction using the moon and the few hazed stars, but that apart they were wholly lost.

  “I think both you and your colleagues would be in a better position if I did not tell you,” said the Sarkin.

  “OK.”

  The Sarkin seemed slightly taken aback by this ready response. It was as though he had wished to be pressed a little.

  “Let us say I would rather live in the bush than die in prison.”

  “Oh, I’m with you there. But …”

  “In fact I would rather die in the bush than live in prison.”

  “That’s more arguable. It depends how long.”

  “You cannot forecast the course of a military regime. They have taken on insoluble problems. Soldiers do not have the patience of politicians. They are trained for action, and action implies results. Assuming this coup succeeds, and there is nothing to stop it, there will be frustration and dissension among its leaders by this time next year. I suspect that in any case the coup is pre-emptive, to prevent a more radical revolution by young military hotheads. One way of maintaining the popularity of a regime is to find scapegoats to try for its failures. They will need confessions. I am too old to stand much pain.”

  “Do you think it’d come to that? Last time round they shot a few people, didn’t they, but then Gowon took over and they settled down into comparative stability, at least by the standards of military regimes.”

  “The problems are more intractable this time. No, I do not think they would resort to torture. This is Nigeria. But I will not take the risk.”

  “Presumably they’ll come and look for you.”

  “I am a modest catch. My arrest is of importance mainly to Major Kadu’s career. He will certainly try and find me. But remember this same bush hid several thousand Kitawa from the British for many years, and one old black man in a grass belt looks much like another. Should you try the engine again?”

  “A bit soon. It’s about sixty miles to the border, isn’t it?”

  Presumably it was professional pride that forced Jackland to hint that he did not immediately accept the Sarkin’s account of his plans. Perhaps the old man had never really intended to reach Tefuga, but had been leaving a false trail for Miss Boyaba, and now Jackland, to pass on. If so, he did not seem put out by the question.

  “Less than that from here. How far do you think we’ve come?”

  “Hard to say. Ninety minutes, plus. Ten miles an hour average, would you think? Fifteen miles?”

  “Another fifteen to Tefuga, then.”

  “Something like that. Do you think you can make it on foot?”

  “If I must.”

  The Sarkin appeared entirely calm. He dragged deeply at his cigarette, but this did not seem to be a sign of suppressed anxiety, more a deliberate enjoyment of the moment.

  “You think there’ll be show trials?” said Jackland.

  “Where they can produce the evidence.”

  “There should be plenty of that around, from what I�
��ve seen.”

  The Sarkin checked his response. He had not perhaps known Jackland long enough to be aware of his normal tactlessness, in this case compounded by the journalist’s tendency to believe that news events operate in a different sphere from individual lives, so that it is reasonable to discuss the problem of corruption with a man fleeing from a purifying coup. The Sarkin took a slow pull on his cigarette, then chuckled.

  “There was an Emir of Gwandu in the ’thirties,” he said.

  “Yahaya?”

  “Yes, his name is in all the textbooks, of course, because he was, in British eyes, the perfect example of Indirect Rule. His accounts were a model of accuracy and probity. He built schools and hospitals. He rode about Gwandu on a motor-bike. He had only one wife. In fact his first act on achieving the emirate was to dismiss the court procurer. He made Gwandu the showpiece of British rule.”

  “I’ve often wondered what the other emirs thought of him.”

  “They thought variously. Many despised him. Some tried to copy him but lacked his intelligence and discipline. But that is not the really interesting question. I have wondered how he would have fared had he needed to maintain his authority in post-independence Nigeria. What did the people think of him? How would they have voted had they been given the chance? There are some votes in schools and hospitals, there are very few in financial probity, none in monogamy. But there are many, many votes in being a great man, giving public displays of one’s greatness, in being able to advance the careers of one’s protégés and petitioners, so that they in turn can help a further circle of their own dependants, and so on. It seems to me that even the saintly Yahaya would have found he needed to make certain compromises. This is something that very few of the British understood. Anyone who is not a fool can perceive the pragmatic benefits of honest government, but that does not necessarily mean he feels them in his heart. Your father and his kind actually felt deep admiration for probity, and determination to show it themselves, but they did not manage to instil that feeling in the peoples they ruled. All they have left us with is the rhetoric of probity. The virtues we genuinely feel are different—generosity, spontaneity, boldness, bravura, personal authority. You will tell me you can’t run a country on those. I tell you you can’t run even a small province of Nigeria without them.”