Safari

by Tony Park

  ‘Truth is, I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do when I’ve made enough money to buy my own place. What I mean is, I don’t know what I can do. Soldiering’s the only trade I know.’ He finished the last of his black-coloured drink and grimaced.

  ‘You could become a professional hunter – of animals.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not for me.’

  ‘So, you’re happy to hunt and kill people, but not, say, a wildebeest.’

  ‘No wildebeest ever tried to kill me.’

  ‘You could farm,’ she suggested.

  He gave a derisive snort. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, the Government of Zimbabwe has put in place certain disincentives for white farmers. Same thing’s coming in South Africa and Namibia – by more peaceful means, perhaps, but buying a farm in Africa’s like leaving your truck in the main street of Goma with the doors unlocked and the engine running. It might be there tomorrow, but you wouldn’t want to bet on it.’

  ‘You could run a safari lodge . . . and prey on all those rich women who come down with khaki fever.’

  He looked as though he were considering it, nodding sagely. ‘Too many jealous husbands. Bad for tips if you steal from your clients.’

  ‘So what do you want to do? Just buy a piece of land and sit on your ass like a hermit?’

  He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out. ‘Well, since you put it that way . . . yeah.’

  ‘Might be lonely?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how many endangered animals I’ve got roaming my plot of land.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, leaning forward, resting his elbows on the table so he was closer to her, ‘the more threatened species I have, the more keen, unattached wide-eyed postgraduate students I can get to stay in my purpose-built research camp.’

  ‘Aha. A cunning plan. What makes you think these impressionable – and presumably overwhelmingly female – researchers would pick you?’

  He sat back again and said, ‘You tell me.’

  She wadded a serviette from the table and threw it at him. ‘You do Coca-Cola and booze – no self-respecting girl’s going to come and camp with you.’

  ‘That’s what I’m counting on. I only want the bad ones.’

  She laughed again. He was the only person she did that with these days. ‘Come on, let’s go to a bar.’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘Don’t get any ideas. I told Wise we’d pick him up about now. There might be time for you to have a lemonade.’

  After Wise had waved goodbye to Michelle, he entered the bar, letting the familiar, welcome shebeen fug overwhelm his senses. The beat from the boom box reverberated through his chest, the deep bass connecting with his own frayed nerve endings. The smells weren’t pleasant, but they were, in their odd way, comforting reminders of the bars he hung out in back in Bulawayo. Beer. Urine. Vomit. Sweat. Perfume. He had a lot on his mind. He was looking forward to talking to Shane about what troubled him, but, for now, alcohol would help allay his concerns.

  ‘Primus,’ he said, pronouncing the last three letters as ‘moose’. It was as close as he got to a French accent beyond the clumsy ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle,’ he offered to the big-hipped maiden standing next to him, paying for a Guinness. She smiled at him and said something he didn’t understand. It didn’t sound angry, and she punctuated the foreign phrase with a wink.

  Bloodshot eyes followed his movements as he gestured for the girl to join him behind a rickety tin-topped table set in front of a long wooden bench. Wise glared back at the three Congolese men sitting at a table in the corner, the darkest part of the bar. He drained most of the bottle of beer in his first two swigs. He wanted release. The beer might help him get it, but the woman would guarantee it. She wore a stretchy pink top with only one sleeve, which gave a tantalising view of her deep cleavage and smooth mahogany skin. He guessed she was part white – maybe the daughter or granddaughter of some long-gone colonialist. He preferred his women as dark as himself, but he wasn’t a racist. He smiled at his own joke and the girl, taking it as a compliment, ran her tongue around her full lips.

  Wise had wanted to talk to Shane sooner, but there hadn’t been the right time. Shane had gone to the hospital and the mad French doctor’s run-in with Patrice had robbed him of a chance for a quiet moment with Michelle on the gorilla trek. On the journey from the hunting camp down to Goma, he’d had doubts about the worth of saying anything at all. Michelle obviously liked the French scientist, despite her crazy outbursts, so it would have been hard for him to voice his concerns. He needed to talk to a man, as only a brother would understand talk of the madness of women and not take it the wrong way. He’d tried broaching his concerns with Mr Reynolds, but the boss had rebuffed him.

  He drained his beer and burped, then pulled out his wallet and withdrew some notes. He passed the money to the woman across the tabletop, which was slick with condensation and spilt beer. He nodded to his empty and her half-finished drink, then to the bar. She frowned, but snatched up the money and swayed her way to the counter. Wise watched her arse as she walked and felt the pump of blood to his loins.

  He thought about Shane while he waited for the girl to pay for the drinks. Shane was a warrior who had fought and killed in many places around the world, and Wise admired him for his skill with the rifle, and his discipline and craft in the bush. Wise had never known a better life. His time on anti-poaching patrols had been better paid, more exciting and more fun than his army service. He had hated the Congo as a soldier, but now, with money in his pocket and food and beer in his belly, he could savour the experience of living in a different country. He patted his jeans pocket to make sure the condoms were there.

  The one problem with Shane, Wise mused as he nodded a curt thanks to the girl and pushed the change back across the table to her, was that he was growing tired of the killing. He had seen it in Shane’s eyes. The deadness there. Wise had come into contact with killers in the army. There were three kinds, he reckoned. First were the wild-eyed crazy ones, who were fascinated, obsessed, with the blood and gore. These were the ones who bragged about body counts and mutilated their vanquished foes. Second were the humane men, the ones who did what they had to do, but were racked by guilt afterwards. These were the ones who cried at night in their tents or, in extreme cases, ended their own lives rather than live with the reality of what they had done. Third were the ones like Shane. They killed because it was a job, and experienced as much joy or horror as a woodcutter might experience felling a tree, or a farmer would feel driving his tractor.

  Shane would either grow bored with killing and retire from it or, and Wise feared this might be more likely, one day the dam of human emotions he kept inside him might break, letting out a flood of grief and shame and horror that could drown a man from within. A woman would help him. It was plain to Wise and Caesar, for they had discussed it several times, that Shane wanted Michelle. Wise was of the view that a man should take what he wanted, when he wanted, but Caesar had pointed out that such a course of action might cost them all their jobs. Caesar was smart, but he spent too much time with his head in a book or writing to his girlfriend.

  The girl arched a plucked eyebrow and did that thing with her tongue on her lips again. Another man entered the shebeen and mumbled some foreign words of greeting to the trio in the corner. He looked about and, for a second, locked eyes with the girl. She nodded back to him. Wise assumed the man was either another of the prostitute’s customers or her pimp. Well, he would just have to wait his turn. The man turned and left the bar.

  Wise grinned. If Shane didn’t realise the benefit of hot, wet flesh, that was too bad for him. The afternoon dragged on at a leisurely pace. As the beer relaxed him, Wise took to the middle of the bare concrete floor to dance to a couple of numbers with the woman, his hands beginning the inevitable process of exploration as she gyrated against him. When he had finished his fifth
beer, she stood in silence and held out a hand. Wise needed no further encouragement. He rose and let her lead him out a rear door and into a small courtyard which smelled even stronger than the shebeen.

  ‘Antoinette,’ the girl said, pointing to her ample bosom with her free hand.

  ‘Wise,’ he said, and she smiled and nodded.

  ‘Come.’

  She led him across the courtyard to one of a half-dozen identical doors set in a long rendered building with a rusty tin roof. He felt the sweat spring from his pores as they entered. The girl stood next to a timber bed with a thin foam mattress and pulled the one-sleeved blouse over her head. She was young – maybe not yet twenty – though she had the cold eyes of her trade, a look that would stay with her until she died. Oddly, and a little embarrassingly, the eyes reminded him of Shane’s. He banished the thought as he watched her unzip and slip out of her skirt.

  Wise heard footsteps in the courtyard and turned. ‘Ici,’ the girl said. He looked back and saw she had lifted one plump breast in her hand and, head bent, was teasing the erect nipple with the tip of her tongue.

  Suddenly the door flew open and banged against the wall with enough force to shake loose a chunk of plaster. Wise saw the girl dive for the bed and knew instantly, through his beery fog, he had been set up. He had been right to be suspicious of the movements outside, and wrong to be tempted by more alcohol and the girl’s body. As he pivoted on the ball of his left foot he raised his left arm to his face to protect him from whatever was coming and reached around to the small of his back with his right hand.

  The man who had briefly entered and then left the shebeen earlier in the afternoon charged through the doorway, a panga held above his head. He slashed down and there was nothing Wise could do to stop the blade slicing into the flesh of his arm. The man whooped at the spurt of bright blood and drew back for another chop.

  The nine millimetre Browning self-loading pistol tucked in the rear of the waistband of his jeans was cocked and loaded. After chambering a round before leaving the camp, Wise had carefully eased the hammer forward. The pistol had a single-action mechanism which meant he had to pull back the hammer again with his thumb in order to fire it. Under Shane’s expert instruction he had practised the action until he could do it safely and quickly. Safe for the firer, not the target.

  His first shot smashed through the man’s sternum, slowing his forward momentum enough for Wise to sidestep the second sweep of the panga. A smaller man would have been knocked onto his back, but this bald-headed giant merely lurched back, like a drunkard, eyes wide as he stared down at the hole and spreading crimson stain on his white T-shirt. Wise fired again, the second bullet tearing through the man’s throat, and this time he fell.

  The prostitute screamed like a wounded animal, jumped off the bed and ran past him, to kneel beside the mortally wounded attacker, her hands caressing his face. Wise grabbed her arm and tried to drag her off him, to question her, but she turned on him, aiming long blood-red fingernails at his face. He warded off her first attack, smearing her hand with the blood from his arm. He winced in pain, his body only now registering the fact that he had been wounded. He grabbed a handful of the woman’s hair and forced her to her knees, the pistol pointed at her head.

  ‘Police!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Gendarme!’ he tried. He wondered how long it would take for the cops to respond to the sound of gunfire. Would they come at all? Goma had a justified reputation as a semi-lawless ‘cowboy’ town. Perhaps the smart policemen stayed inside their station when the shooting started.

  ‘Wise!’ a voice called from outside.

  Wise kept a handful of the woman’s braided hair and drew her to her feet again. With his back to the wall, he edged close to the open doorway. He peered around the doorframe into the courtyard.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said.

  ‘Stay in the truck,’ Shane ordered Michelle when they heard the gunshots. ‘Reverse back up the road a hundred metres and wait for me there.’ He opened the glove compartment. ‘Shit, where’s the nine-mill?’

  ‘The pistol? Wise took it.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Shane said. He had given his own sidearm to Fletcher after being dropped off at the hospital. He’d reasoned he wouldn’t need it overnight, and securing it might be a problem. Now he was unarmed. He left the truck anyway, ignoring Michelle’s half-uttered warning. ‘Reverse up the road, now!’ he ordered her.

  People had scattered from the sidewalk on either side of the shebeen and peered from behind parked cars and trucks and through neighbouring shop windows. He moved towards the bar’s front door, sidling along the exterior wall. He risked a quick glance inside.

  ‘Wise!’ he yelled. ‘Are you in there?’

  He looked again and saw through the gloomy interior to a courtyard beyond. The open back and front doors created a draught and he smelled cordite above the usual malodorous signatures of an African watering hole. He took a deep breath and sprinted inside, pausing at a crouch bedside the bare brickwork below the wooden bar counter. He peeked around it and through the back door. No one in sight.

  ‘Wise!’

  He waited for an answer, and every second confirmed his fears. Outside he heard a siren. Now the police were nearly here, the smart thing would be to wait.

  ‘Shane, Sha . . .’

  He was on his feet, running. The voice was weak, racked with pain. He saw the row of doors, one wide open, and the black pockmarks of bullets through the single layer of rendered mud brick. There were at least twenty holes, maybe more. To punch through a wall it had to have been an AK 47. By the pattern it had been close to a full magazine, sprayed on automatic.

  Inside, the brothel’s room looked like an abattoir. Blood spattered the off-white, fly-specked walls. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he saw three prone bodies – Wise, a near-naked woman and a bald-headed African with bullet wounds to his chest and throat. A panga lay next to the dead man’s body. The woman stared at the ceiling, her eyes wide and lifeless. Wise lay on his side. He blinked when he saw Shane, then coughed. A spray of blood painted the bare concrete floor, adding to the swelling puddle.

  ‘Jesus.’ He kneeled and rolled Wise onto his back. There were four entry wounds that he could see, stitched in a line across his friend’s chest, frothy blood bubbling out with every tortured wheeze. ‘Wise, hang on, man.’

  Wise blinked. ‘Shane . . .’

  ‘I’m here, mate. I’m here.’ Shane whipped his T-shirt off and pressed it down hard on the wounds. ‘You’ve got to hang on, Wise. Who did this to you?’

  Wise moaned and blinked his eyes a few times. He focused on Shane as the other man fought to stem the bleeding and said, ‘Marie . . . doctor . . .’

  ‘What? She killed you?’

  ‘N-no . . . Told him . . .’

  ‘Told who, Wise?’

  Wise blinked, then screwed his eyes closed tight with pain or frustration. Shane felt the first tremors beneath his hands as he pressed down on the wounds. Voices speaking French filled the courtyard as Wise opened his lips to speak again, the effort sending more spasms through his body. ‘Hunts . . .’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, shut up!’ Shane yelled out the doorway. He lowered his head to Wise’s lips. ‘Hunts what, mate?’

  Wise’s lips touched his ear in a macabre, tortured kiss as his head began to bob up and down and the shakes passed through his body. ‘No!’ Shane shouted. He had seen this too many times before. The room was filled with Africans in uniform and they stood, useless, with pistols drawn and assault rifles at the ready. He registered Michelle’s pale face peering over the heads of the police and soldiers, her mouth agape in horror.

  They could do nothing but watch as Wise died.

  21

  The city of Bulawayo, like the rest of Zimbabwe, was down on its luck, but driving down its wide, dusty, jacaranda-lined boulevards, Michelle almost felt as though she were coming home.

  ‘I never thought Zimbabwe would seem like a haven.’

>   ‘You read my mind,’ Michelle said over her shoulder to Shane, who was on the rear seat of Dougal’s twin-cab bakkie. Michelle sat beside the pilot, who had collected them from Joshua Nkomo airport in his truck.

  ‘Fletcher and Caesar couldn’t make it?’ Dougal asked.

  ‘Fletcher’s got a party of German hunters in camp. He couldn’t leave them alone. Caesar’s fighting off a bout of malaria, so I made him stay behind.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Dougal. Michelle shook her head. The one-word commiseration was a common term in southern Africa, which could be applied to everything from a broken fingernail to the death of a loved one.

  Michelle looked back and saw Shane was staring silently out of the tinted window at the passing streetscape. She remained worried about him.

  The sight of Shane standing and walking from that terrible room of death, bare-chested and spattered with Wise’s blood, wiping his hands on his jeans, came back to her. More than the gore, it was the blankness of his eyes that lingered in her memory. He had walked past her and the jabbering policemen, who finally fanned out into a fruitless search for the killer.

  She had found him out in the street, sitting in the gutter dragging on a cigarette, ignoring the cluster of onlookers.

  ‘Shane. I’m so sorry. He was such a great guy,’ she said, sitting beside him, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  He stared straight ahead, exhaled, and flicked the half-smoked cigarette onto the roadway. ‘He knew the risks.’

  She was shocked, and rounded on him. ‘How can you . . . how can you be so cold? He was your friend, Shane, and he just died in your fucking arms!’

  He stood and said, ‘There’ll be things to arrange. Transport, death certificate, the funeral.’ He walked towards the Landcruiser, not stopping to look back at her.

  She stood in the steaming heat rising from the black volcanic roadway and screamed at him, ‘Wise is dead, goddamn it! Can’t you grieve for him?’ Shane ignored her, climbed into the truck and started the engine. He sat in silence behind the wheel, staring out through the windscreen at the pyramidal green bulk of Mount Nyiragongo, which smoked ominously, like a crematorium chimney.