With an abruptness that startled me, there was a burst of gunfire in the near distance, and two or three loud explosions. From the direction of the flashes I guessed that they were coming from the far side of a large wood that I had seen earlier, running alongside the main road about a mile from the hamlet. There was more gunfire, more explosions. I saw one spout of white flame, then a red verey-light shot up into the sky from the direction of the wood.
Almost immediately the helicopters took off again, still holding their formation. They swooped into the air and swung away towards the wood. They became lost to sight, though the sound of their engines remained clear.
I heard a movement behind me: the house door opening, closing.
"Is that you, Whitman?"
I made out the dim shape of another man. As he came up to me I saw that it was Olderton, a man with whom I had had only superficial contact so far.
"Yes. What's going on?"
"No one knows. Lateef sent me to find you. What the devil are you doing?"
I told him I had been looking for food and that I was going back to the main camp in a few minutes.
"You'd better come back now," Olderton said. "Lateef's talking of moving on. He thinks we're too close to the main road."
"I think we ought to know what's happening before we move."
"That's up to Lateef."
"Is it?" For no reason I could determine at that moment I felt a taint of rebellion in being told what to do. In any event, I didn't want to discuss it with Olderton.
The sound of the helicopters in the distance took on a new note, and we went back to where I had been standing before, looking across the fields in the direction of the wood.
"Where are they?" Olderton said.
"I can't see."
There was a renewed burst of gunfire, then a shrill, highpitched whistling sound followed immediately by four explosions coming almost together. A brilliant ball of flame rose up inside the wood, then dwindled. I heard more gunfire, then a helicopter roared over the village. There was another whistling sound, and four more explosions. As the second helicopter passed overhead the sequence was repeated again.
"Rockets," Olderton muttered. "They're after something on the main road."
"Who are they?"
"Lateef thought they were Afrims. He said the helicopters looked as if they were Russian."
Over at the main road the barrage went on. The helicopters were timed exactly right. As the explosion from one set of rockets died down, another gunship came in and followed up. Meanwhile, small-arms fire rattled from the ground.
"I think it's those guerrillas," I said suddenly. "The ones we met yesterday. They've ambushed something on the main road."
Olderton said nothing. As I thought about it, the more likely it became.
The Negroes had been concealing something, on that we had all agreed. If, as Lateef had guessed, the helicopter gunships were Russian-supplied and manned by Afrims, then everything made sense.
For a few more minutes the battle went on. Olderton and I watched as well as we could, seeing only the flame of the explosions and the gunships as they came by overhead after their pass. I found myself counting the number of attacks made. After the twelfth, there was a slight pause, and we could hear the helicopters re-grouping in the distance. Then one of the machines flew over the wood again, this time without firing any of its rockets. It zoomed overhead, then went to join the others. We waited again. From the direction of the wood there was now a steady glow of orange and the occasional sound of a small explosion. There did not appear to be any more gunfire.
"I think it's over," I said.
Olderton said: "There's still one of them around."
To my ears it seemed as if the formation of gunships was moving away, but there was no uniformity in the sound of the engines. I kept looking around, but could see no sign of any of the helicopters.
"There it is!" Olderton said. He pointed over to our right.
I could just make out its shape. It was moving slowly and near the ground. It had no navigation lights. It came towards us steadily, and irrationally I felt it was looking for us. My heart began to beat rapidly.
The aircraft moved across the field in front of us, then turned, and climbing slightly flew directly over us. When it reached the smouldering remains of the house on the other side of the road it hovered.
Olderton and I went back into our house, climbed the stairs and watched the helicopter. It was about twenty feet above the burnt-out ruin, and the draught from its vanes sent cinders scudding over the ground. Flames took again in some of the timbers, and smoke swirled up and across to us.
In the glow from the ground I could see the helicopter's cabin clearly.
I lifted my rifle, took careful aim and fired.
Olderton leaped over to me and knocked the barrel aside.
"You stupid bastard!" he said. "They'll know we're here."
"I don't care," I said. I was watching the helicopter.
For a moment I thought my shot had had no effect. Then the engine of the machine accelerated abruptly and it lifted away. Its tail spun round, stopped, then spun again. The helicopter continued to climb, but it was moving to one side, away from us. The engine was screaming. I saw the helicopter check its sideways motion, but then it flipped again. It skidded down over the burnt-out house, disappeared from sight. Two seconds later there was a loud crash.
"You cunt, you stupid bastard," Olderton said again. "The others will be back to find out what happened."
I said nothing. We waited.
During the period in which Isobel left us, Sally and I were in a state of continual fear and disorientation. I think it was because this was the first manifestation in personal terms of the real crisis: the breakdown of all aspects of life we had known before the start of the fighting. I knew Sally would not see it in this way; like all children her grief stemmed mainly from personal considerations.
Isobel's absence induced in me some unexpected reactions. In the first place, I experienced quite distinct pangs of sexual jealousy. In the time we had been married, I knew that Isobel had had both the opportunity and the motivation to take a lover. Yet at no time had I suspected her of doing so.
With the present uncertainty, however, I found my thoughts turning to her often.
Secondly, for all the conflict we had endured, I found I missed her company, negative though I had often felt it to be.
Both Isobel and I had been aware of the future, of what would have happened to us when Sally grew up and left us. In practice, our marriage would have ended at that time, though in fact it had never started.
Alone with Sally in the countryside it felt as if the predictable course of our life had ended abruptly, that from this point nothing more could be planned, that life had ended, that the future was the past.
An hour passed, during which Lateef and the others joined us. The night was quiet, with only the faint flicker of light from the wood to show that for a few minutes the war had been conducted around us.
I found myself in an ambivalent position. Though I detected an aura of grudging respect over the shooting down of the helicopter, Lateef and one or two others stated unequivocally that it had been an unintelligent action. Fear of reprisals was always great, and had the other gunships learned of my action at the time, it was likely that they would have attacked the village.
Now that the moment of action, and the subsequent period of greatest danger, had passed, I was able to think objectively about what I had done.
In the first place, I was convinced that the pilots of the gunships had been either Afrims or their sympathizers. And while it was generally conceded that, regardless of racial or nationalistic prejudices, participating Afrims were the one common enemy, in my particular case the firing of the rifle had represented to me a gesture of my individual reaction to the abduction of the women. In this I still felt I differed from the other men, though it was arguable that as I possessed the only rifle I was the only
one placed to make such a gesture. In any event, I had derived a curious pleasure from the incident, as it had signalled my first positive participation in the war. From here I had committed myself.
There was some discussion over our next move. I was tired and would have been pleased to get some sleep. But the others were debating whether to visit the wrecked helicopter or to trek across to the wood and examine whatever it was that had been attacked by the Afrims.
I said: "I'm against either. Let's get some sleep, then move before dawn."
"No, we can't risk sleeping here," said Lateef. "It's too dangerous.
We've got to move, but we need barter for food. We'll have to take what we can from the helicopter, then get as far away as possible."
It was suggested by a man called Collins that there might be more of value in the wood, and several of the men agreed with him. Anything that was considered a worthy target by the military forces represented to us a potential source of exchangeable commodities. In the end it was agreed that we would break with our normal policy, and separate. Lateef, myself and two others would approach the wrecked helicopter; Collins and Olderton would take the rest of the men over to the wood. Whichever group finished first was to join the other.
We returned to the camp at the other end of the village, repacked our gear, and separated as planned.
The helicopter had crashed in a field behind the burnt-out house. There had been no explosion when it hit the ground, nor had it caught fire. In that respect at least it would be safe to approach it. The condition of whatever crew there had been aboard was the main hazard. If they had been killed in the crash, from our point of view all would be well. On the other hand, if any of them were still alive we could be in an extremely precarious position.
We said nothing as we moved towards it. When we reached the edge of the field we could see the shape of the wreck, like a huge smashed insect. There appeared to be no movement, but we watched for several minutes in case.
Then Lateef muttered: "Come on," and we crept forward. I had my rifle ready, but still doubted privately whether I would have the guts to fire it again. Lateef's use of me as an armed assistant reminded me uncomfortably of the incident at the barricade.
The last thirty or forty yards we moved on our stomachs, crawling forward slowly, prepared for anything. As we neared the wreck we realized that if anybody were still inside he would not be in a condition-to present a threat to us. The main structure had collapsed and one of the vanes had bitten into the cockpit.
We reached the wreck unchallenged, and stood up.
We walked round it cautiously, trying to see if there were anything that we could liberate from the wreckage. It was difficult to tell in the dark.
I said to Lateef: "There's nothing here for us. If it were daylight --"
As soon as I spoke we heard a movement inside and we backed away at once, crouching warily in the grass. A man's voice came from inside, speaking breathlessly and haltingly.
"What's he saying?" one of the other men said.
We listened again, but could not understand. Then I recognized the language as Swahili -- though I had no knowledge of the language, the sound of it was familiar to me as most radio broadcasts that I had heard in the last few months had been duplicated in Swahili. It is an indistinct language, not easy on European ears.
None of us needed to speak the language to know instinctively what the man was saying. He was trapped and in pain.
Lateef took out his torch and shone it on the wreckage, keeping the beam low in an attempt to prevent from seeing it anyone else who may be in the vicinity.
For a moment we were unable to make out coherent shapes, though on one patch of relatively undamaged metal we made out an instruction printed in the Cyrillic alphabet. We moved in closer and Lateef shone the torch inside. After a moment we saw a Negro lying in the broken metal. His face, which was towards us, was wet with blood. He said something again and Lateef shut off the beam.
"We'll have to leave it," he said. "We can't get inside."
"But what about the man?" I said.
"I don't know. There's not much we can do."
"Can't we try to get him out?"
Lateef switched on his torch again and flashed it over the wreck. Where the man was lying was almost totally surrounded by large pieces of broken cockpit and fuselage. It would take heavy lifting-gear to move.
"Not a hope," said Lateef.
"We can't just leave him."
"I'm afraid we'll have to." Lateef returned the torch to his pocket.
"Come on, we can't stay here. We're too exposed."
I said: "Lateef, we've got to do something for that man!"
He turned to me and came and stood very close.
"Listen, Whitman," he said. "You can see there's nothing we can do. If you don't like blood, you shouldn't have shot the fucking thing down. O.K.?"
To foreshorten the exchange, as I did not like the new tone in his voice, I said: "O.K."
"You've got the rifle," he went on. "Use it, if that's what you want."
He and the other two men started back across the field in the direction of the houses.
"I'll catch you up," I said. "I'm going to see what I can do."
No one replied.
It took only a matter of seconds to establish that what Lateef had said was substantially true. There was no way of freeing the Afrim. Inside, his voice kept lifting and dropping, interrupted by sudden intakes of breath. If I'd had a torch I would have been tempted to shine it inside and look again at him. As it was, I was relieved not to be in the position to do so. Instead, I ran the barrel of the rifle into the space, and aimed it in the approximate direction the man's face had been.
And paused.
I had no wish to shoot him, any emotion in me having been expended by the act of shooting at the helicopter in the first place. The fact that I was confronted with an Afrim -- and that it was barely conceivable that this man may be connected indirectly with those men who had abducted Sally and Isobel
-- was irrelevant. Practical considerations, such as that I might attract the attention of other troops in the area with the sound of the shot, were similarly unconsidered. The fact was that the physical act of pulling the trigger and killing the man was too positive an act . . . one in which my commitment would be affirmed.
And yet the humane instinct in me, which had kept me here originally, argued that to kill the man quickly would be marginally better than to leave him here to die.
A final thought was that I had no way of knowing how badly he may be injured. He would be discovered in the morning, and if still alive then would perhaps have his life saved. If this were a possibility, any arbitrary act I made here would be inappropriate.
I pulled the rifle out, stood up, and stepped back two paces. Then I lifted the barrel and fired two shots into the air.
The voice inside the wreckage stopped.
Within two years of Sally's birth my relationship with Isobel had virtually disintegrated. We learned to suffer one another; growing to dislike the sound of each other's voice, the sight of each other's face, the touch of our backs against each other as we lay in bed. My friend explained that the purpose of the new laws was not to persecute the African immigrants but to protect them. He said that the government took the view that they were essentially at our mercy, and that we should treat them as temporary dependants rather than as unwelcome intruders. The population of the country should not be panicked into unconsidered actions by the sight of one or two aliens who may be armed. As illegal immigrants they could only act outside the law for as long as it took the law to apprehend them. This was the whole purpose of the new Order Act.
I argued that I had heard many stories of persecution, of rape, murder and abduction. There was the well-publicized Gorton torture case, in which ten African women had been systematically degraded, raped, mutilated and finally murdered.
My friend agreed with me and said that this was precisely the kind of atrocit
y which the new Act was intended to prevent. By restricting the rights and movements of the aliens, they would be afforded a greater degree of official protection provided they themselves submitted to the various regulations. The fact that so far the majority of the Afrims had rejected this protection was only a further indication of their essential alienness.
My friend went on to remind me of John Tregarth's early political career, when, even as an Independent back-bencher, he had made a name for himself by his commendable policies of patriotism, nationalism and racial purity. It was a measure of his sincerity that he had held to his views even during the temporary phase of neo-liberal xenophilia before the beginning of the emergency. Now he had risen to high office, the nation would see that its far-sightedness in electing his party into government would be rewarded.
I said that I was under the impression that Tregarth had come to power through the sponsorship of various business interests which had undertaken the expense of the campaign.
Again my friend agreed with me, pointing out that it is an expensive business to create an entirely new political party. The fact that they had been defeated at only one general election before taking office was further evidence of their immense popularity.
I argued that it was only through creating a rift in the existing Opposition that Tregarth had acquired any following at all.
We lapsed into silence for a while, knowing that political differences can damage friendship if not discussed amicably. I did not care for the way in which the present situation was affecting my own life. I had thought my days of political participation ended when I finished my studies, but now I was able to see with my own eyes the human effects of political extremism.
My friend reminded me that Tregarth had come to power several months before the Afrim situation began, and that there was no question of racial discrimination in the way the emergency was now being handled. A difficult set of circumstances must be dealt with firmly, and for all the declared humanitarian motives expressed from some quarters, the fact remained that the Afrims were hostile and dangerous aliens and must be treated as such.
Fugue for a Darkening Island Page 11
