I stood up, steadying myself against the door. Already I felt exhausted, but it was time to collect Noon, borrow the inflatable and make our way back to the ferry. I brushed the flaking tempera from my arms. Above a cracked bidet, stained with all the forgotten pleasures of the Lake Kotto oil-workers, was a mirror smeared with lipstick. I looked at my heavy beard, a ragged but almost messianic bush that sprang forward from the exposure sores on my cheeks. My eyes were flecked with yellow motes and my thinning gums gave my drawn mouth a wolfish smile. I knew that I was still infected with an intermittent fly fever. A posse of armed gendarmerie was after my blood, I was infatuated with a teenage girl, and almost everyone I had recruited to my bizarre cause was either dead or dying. Yet I felt more determined than at any time since leaving Port-la-Nouvelle. I thought of the lunatic events of the previous evening, of Sanger’s attempt to kill me. But these had already taken their place in the continuum of strangeness which had enveloped my life since the birth of the Mallory.
I turned the rusty handle of the door, only to find that it had been latched from the companionway.
‘For God’s sake … Mrs Warrender!’ I drummed my fist against the tempera breasts above my head, dislodging a plaster nipple that burst on the floor among the empty lipsticks and faded film magazines. The pair of sturdy feet which patrolled the deck now came to a halt. The woman consulted Mrs Warrender, her voice like that of a keeper discussing an uncooperative beast in her charge.
I remembered the Diana running alongside the car ferry. One of the African women had stepped through the glaring spotlight. She had leaned into the Mercedes and put her arms around Noon’s feverish shoulders, taking the cassette from her like a headmistress putting an end to a dormitory prank. Once Noon and Sanger were safely aboard the Diana, the women had come for me as I knelt in the wheelhouse, my mouth pressed to Mr Pal’s, trying to breathe life into his lungs. Their strong hands had seized my arms, hustled me through the chairs and tables of the restaurant deck, and then bundled me down a companionway into the airless cabin with its reek of stale scent and damp plaster.
‘Mrs Warrender—!’
I was about to burst the rotting door from its hinges, but a hand turned the latch. In the corridor stood Fanny, the oldest of the African women, the broad-shouldered bouncer and bar-keep at the oil-riggers’ saloon. She gazed imposingly at me, as if I were an unruly customer who had failed to pay his bill.
‘You can go on the deck. Your time for fresh air.’
‘Thank God for that … now, where is Noon?’
‘The child? She is resting. With Professor Sanger – you leave them now.’
‘Listen to me – I want to see them. They need my help.’
‘Your help? No thank you, doctor. No more strange medicine from Dr Mal.’
Unsure what to answer, I followed her large and purposeful buttocks up the companionway. Although a handsome woman, whom I had often admired from the windows of the clinic at Port-la-Nouvelle, she now belonged to another, remote order of womanhood.
We stepped on to the open deck, and the sunlight soon shortened the focus of my eyes. The ancient timbers of the Diana had been scrubbed to a lime-like whiteness. The blanched planks formed a marquetry of bones, as if the skeletons of all the oil-riggers who had lain in the cubicles below the restaurant had been placed side by side, a brothel-ship built from the ribs and skulls of its patrons. The once derelict barge had been transformed by Nora Warrender and her companions. Every inch of ornamental paintwork had been scraped and scoured, the grime from its hundreds of decorative scrolls reamed out like dirt from all the ears in a boys’ reformatory. The Diana gleamed like old ivory, emitting an eerie sepulchral light, as if the vessel was a funeral gallery being prepared for a waterborne cremation. Above the dance floor the women had roped a canvas awning between the funnel housing and the wooden roof of the restaurant, and even this canopy had the look of a flayed human skin stretched out to dry, its balls and tassels forming a frieze of pizzles and scrota.
At the edge of the dance floor, shielded by the awning, stood a group of animal cages that I had last seen in the breeding station at Port-la-Nouvelle. A pair of macaques and several marmosets clambered across the bars, intrigued to see me and obviously eager to welcome a sympathetic spirit to their disciplined realm.
The two women, Louise and Poupee, who had rowed the inflatable from the Salammbo, now moored alongside, and began to lift the electrical units on to the deck. I stepped forward, about to offer my help, but Fanny pushed me away, huffing at the very idea of my assistance, as if more than my token presence on this ship of bones was an intrusion.
Under the awning in the stern of the Diana sat a fourth young woman, recruited since my departure from Port-la-Nouvelle. On the table beside her stood a collection of ornamental lanterns, whose casements of coloured glass she buffed with a leather cloth. Was this female self-support group planning to reopen the Diana for business? Curious about this brisk housekeeping in the old brothel-boat, I crossed the dance floor to the semicircular bar behind the funnel. Through an open hatchway I could see into the engine-room, where the elderly gasoline engine had been restored and polished like the most proudly owned kitchen appliance.
Could I commandeer the ship? Peering into the small bridgehouse I had a sudden image of myself at the trimly centred wheel, captain of an all-woman crew. I stepped forward to the bridgehouse, about to test the pliant wheel, but Fanny caught my arm.
‘Doctor, you stay on the dance floor. Or you go below.’
‘Dance floor? Look here …!’ I tried to free my elbow from her strong grip, slipped and fell to the deck at her feet. She pushed my head away with her heavy thigh and then lifted me on to my shaky knees. Steadying myself against her muscular arms, I looked down at my gasping chest that pumped like a leaking ventilator at the humid air. Far from being able to commandeer their vessel, I was at these women’s mercy.
‘Where you belong, Dr Mal!’
‘On the dance floor? Right … what’s happened to Mrs Warrender?’
‘She’s here … out hunting. She wants to talk to you later.’
‘Good. But first I ought to see Sanger and Noon.’
‘The child? Well …’ Fanny turned towards Louise and Poupée. who were dusting the screens of the television sets. I saw no recognition in the young widows’ eyes that I existed, but Fanny gestured me to the companionway. ‘You can see the child and Professor Sanger. Just for a few minutes. I don’t want you making them sick, doctor.’
It was only then, as I carried out my brief examination of Sanger and Noon, that I realized once again to what physical extreme we had been carried by our voyage in the Salammbo. Sanger lay on the semen-stained mattress in the cubicle beyond my own, a pair of woman’s sunglasses clasped in both hands, eyes fixed on the naked figures who swam across the unseen electric sky above his head. Resting there in his ragged clothes, he resembled an elderly vagrant who had returned to the abandoned nightclub where he had spent the dreams of his youth. His irregular heartbeat, the rash of impetigo that covered his chest, and the wasted arms and legs jutting like poles from the torso of a scarecrow, together reminded me how much I had neglected both him and Mr Pal.
‘Mallory …’ He pressed the diamante frame of the sunglasses into my shoulder, a kindly gift from Nora Warrender. It was all nonsense. Madness on that mad ship. We’ll go back to Lake Kotto?’
‘Yes, we’ll go back.’
‘And Mr Pal?’
‘He’s already left. You’ll join him soon, Sanger.’
‘Good … I miss Mr Pal …’
I unpicked his fingers from my hand. His fever had abated, but I felt unable to do anything for him, because I had ceased to think and act as a physician. During the voyage of the Salammbo we had moved into a realm where sickness and obsession, health and sanity had ceased to be opposites.
Even when I saw Noon, lying like an undernourished child with her bony forehead hidden by a small pillow, I could only think of her as the
young woman she had become during our voyage from Port-la-Nouvelle. I held her stick-like wrist, searching for the uncertain pulse, trying to will her back to the car ferry abandoned in the centre of the lagoon. I needed to feel again the spring of the Salammbo’s decks beneath my heels, to see Noon in the bows swaying her adolescent thighs as she steered me between the sand-bars whose submerged forms, touched by the keel of the ferry, stirred my half-conscious dream of caressing them.
However, those dreams had reduced this once beautiful child to little more than a skeleton. As I wavered, my confidence ebbing in myself and our eccentric voyage, I became aware that Noon was watching me with her sharp eyes, the patient assessing the physician. She counted the sores on my face and arms, estimated the strength that remained in my chest and shoulders. I realized that she was asking herself if I was well enough to go on.
‘Doctor … time for your cabin. You must rest your mind.’
Fanny stood at the foot of the companionway, calling me from Noon’s cubicle. She returned to the deck when I closed the door behind me. I stood in the narrow corridor, with its musty planks smelling of coffin-wood, wondering how I could smuggle Noon from the vessel. Across the windows of the cubicles were the same metal grilles, placed there to prevent any paying customers from taking a short cut to their pleasures. Even if I could kick the rusty frames from the rotting timbers neither Noon nor I was strong enough to swim to the Salammbo.
Exhausted by the heat, and by the patient industry of the women above my head, I leaned against a padlocked door behind me. The latch jumped from its socket, pulling the hasp from the spongy wood. The chain and padlock fell to the deck, and the door opened on to another cubicle.
Under the same gaudy fresco lay another grimy mattress. I was about to lie on it, but the bed was already occupied. Barrels pointing towards the window, an armoury of weapons lay side by side – three French and American carbines, several Kalashnikov automatic rifles, and Noon’s ancient Lee-Enfield. All had been carefully cleaned, their bolts and firing pins wrapped in oily rags to protect them from the humid air. Beside the rifles lay an assortment of ammunition clips and lose cartridges, and pieces of canvas webbing of a type worn by Captain Kagwa’s soldiers and by Harare’s guerillas. Shoulder harnesses, ammunition belts, grenade pouches hung from the brass rails like so many trophies.
I stared down at this substantial arsenal, wondering how the women had amassed these weapons. None had been exposed to the damp soil or air of the river valley. I picked up the Lee-Enfield, my arms barely strong enough to raise the heavy stock, and unwrapped the rags around its breech. I guessed that the women had strayed into a former battleground during their journey from Lake Kotto.
As I worked the bolt, hoping to find a cartridge in the breech, the door opened behind me. Mrs Warrender stood with the padlock and chain in her hands. She was still dressed in the bath-robe she had worn at Port-la-Nouvelle, as if she had spent the intervening months idling about her dressing-table, and was waiting for me to join her in a nearby cabin. She had cut short her hair, almost to the shaven scalp of a concentration camp victim, exposing the pallor of her face and neck, that eerie whiteness of the Diana. It occurred to me that she too might be a prisoner.
‘Nora – are they holding you here? We can leave on the Salammbo …’
She smiled at me, the same wan flicker of her pale lips that I had last seen in my trailer, when I had failed to rouse her. I heard the chain run through her hands.
‘You’re tired, doctor – you’ve come a long way, and it’s time for you to rest.’
‘Nora …’
I held the rifle across my chest, pressing the bolt against the sores on my breastbone in order to wake myself. Mrs Warrender was watching me in her composed way, as if I was a figment of a dream of men from which she had at last woken and was able to remember only by an effort of will. I knew now that it was myself who was these women’s prisoner, and that if I was to escape, let alone commandeer the vessel, this would be my only chance.
‘Let me help you …’ Mrs Warrender reached out and held the foresight in her small but strong hand. I was about to wrestle the rifle from her when I saw her two companions through the window grille. They stood side by side in the inflatable, rowing towards the Diana from the car ferry. Behind them, in the stern of the dinghy, reclined a small man with an olive face, one arm trailing in the flat water as if he were feeling the direction of the current.
‘Nora – it’s Mr Pal. He must have recovered …’
Before she could close the door, I pushed past into the corridor. I heard her feet behind me as I climbed the companionway.
‘Dr Mallory … it’s your rest time, doctor.’
I stood in the centre of the dance floor, on the planks of hot bone that stung my feet, under the awning of flayed skin. I held the unloaded rifle to my chest, and watched the dinghy approach. Across the pus-like surface of the lagoon the trailing hand of the botanist drew a long palm line that returned to the Salammbo.
Already I could see that Mr Pal was dead, and that the two oarswomen were about to bury him. They rowed towards the bows of the Diana, as Mrs Warrender and Fanny stood beside me. The sun’s reflection lay on the water behind them, and the intense light pressed against their backs and the top of Mr Pal’s head, as if they were returning from the future with the body of the last man, removing the remains of an extinct species from their world and taking it back for burial in the past.
25
The Wildfowlers
Later, while the women settled Mr Pal into the papyrus grass on the western bank of the lagoon, I sat with Mrs Warrender among the salvaged lanterns.
‘I’ll want to leave soon,’ I told her as she polished the cheap glass. ‘An hour after sunset, if I can start the engine.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Yes – Kagwa’s forces may be here tomorrow. I advise you to leave, Nora. Harare’s men are all over the place.’
‘We’ve seen one or two of them. They haven’t given us any trouble.’
‘That surprises me. All the rifles and webbing – where did you find them?’
‘On the way from Port-la-Nouvelle.’ She stared at the burial party at work in the long grass. ‘They … weren’t needed any more. I think you should rest here. Perhaps we can find someone to take you back to Lake Kotto.’
‘No – I have to head up-river. I’ll take Noon with me.’
‘She can’t possibly travel. Besides, are you safe with her?’
‘She’s the only person with whom I am safe. But for Noon I’d never have come so far. She knows the river like … the inside of a dream.’
‘She’s tricking you, doctor. She’ll stay with us. You’ve already killed two people – left to yourself, you’ll kill several more.’
I ignored this, and watched the two women who had buried Mr Pal walking through the papyrus grass to their rubber dinghy. After a few steps they ducked down, hearing something in the maze of waterways. In the cages beside the dance floor the macaques were picking at the bars in an agitated way. I stood at the rail and listened for any sounds of Kagwa’s helicopter, but the source of the noise seemed nearer to hand. As one of the women parted the papyrus grass the other raised her rifle. After a pause they stepped into the dinghy and rowed themselves towards the mouth of a narrow channel between the walls of grass. Behind them they left eddies of rotting vegetation. Already the water in the lagoon was becoming stagnant.
I pointed to the milky surface, and to the dead weeds that cloaked the stern anchor.
‘Has the Mallory stopped flowing?’
‘The Mallory?’ Mrs Warrender repeated the name, as if it described some obscure disease. ‘Do you mean the river?’
‘My river.’
‘The river you’ve named after yourself, and which you want to destroy.’
‘It attacked my dry wells … in fact, I want to find its source. It’s a private matter between myself and the Mallory. Sanger understands that.’
‘A
private matter? This river can irrigate the Southern Sahara, and create a nature reserve ten times larger than the Serengeti. How can you claim that it belongs to you?’
‘Because I created it. In a real sense, I am the Mallory.’
Humouring me, she buffed her lantern. ‘You are the river? The dead snakes and the mud and the rotting fish?’
‘All those – and its dream of life.’
‘And when you reach its source?’
‘That depends on what I find.’
Perhaps you’ll drown yourself there?’
‘Drown myself? So the entire voyage is a suicide attempt? There must be more than that. I don’t know …’
‘Perhaps Noon knows?’
Before I could reply, the sound of a rifle shot reached the Diana, its report muffled by the dense papyrus grass. Mrs Warrender’s pale face swayed among her lanterns. She picked at her lips, watching the creek into which the two women had rowed the dinghy. Behind me Fanny stood by the rail of the dance floor, eyes searching the walls of grass. She and Nora shared the same nervous but expectant look, as if a prize turkey was about to be brought home for the pot. I resented the idea that they should shoot the birds, those creatures who drank from the body of the river, from the waterway that had once flowed from my own bloodstream. Even Noon and I, however hungry, had not eaten the birds.
‘Harare’s patrols will hear you,’ I warned Mrs Warrender. ‘There are stragglers all over these lagoons. I’ll captain the Diana for you.’
‘Captain …? The Diana has no captain. We take turns here, doctor. The sort of cooperation that rouses all your suspicions …’
‘You’ll rouse Harare’s suspicions. What are you doing this far from Lake Kotto?’
‘Like you, we’re looking for the source of the … Mallory. A great river like this draws men to it.’
The Day of Creation Page 19
