Chapter Twenty-Four
It was not the first time that Martin had been told that there was a Guinness concession in Namibia. Judging by the number of pints he had witnessed drunk of the potent black liquid since his arrival twelve days ago he considered that it was a smart decision on the part of the Irish-based brewery. As with this evening, too, he was still just sufficiently sober to acknowledge that a considerable percentage of that consumption had disappeared down his own throat. Although tonight he had competition from an unexpected source.
“Two more here, when you’re ready,” said Martin’s companion, as the dark-skinned bar tender passed their table. The voice was slurred and slightly louder than was strictly necessary, revealing that these were by no means the first beers that had been drunk that evening. The older man turned back to Martin, “I was telling you about when I met Lord Lucan. Lucky, you know. Of course, when I knew him he was just plain Richard Bingham. Dicky, I used to call him. Dicky Bingham. Named a racehorse after him, you know. Or was it a dog? I forget.” Despite the effects of alcohol on the man’s vocal chords, there was no doubt from the clipped vowels and swallowed consonants that Martin’s fellow drinker must have, at some time, been a member of what would still be described as the English aristocracy: ‘at some time’ because judging from his dirty clothes, and long, straggling, greasy hair and white beard, tinged orange around the mouth from nicotine, he did not give the appearance of having visited any ancestoral ‘pile’ for many a long generation. Martin had asked the man his name when he had first entered the bar and if he would mind him joining him at his table, but he had not caught the man’s reply, having not sufficiently attuned himself to the upper class accent, and now, several hours later, it seemed too late to repeat his enquiry.
The man pulled a packet of tobacco from out of an inside pocket of a white sport’s jacket, stained grey with sweat, and proceeded to roll a homemade cigarette on the table top between brown-tipped fingers. It would be the fifth time during the course of the evening that he had attempted the same procedure, each time discarding the final, neat tube, without smoking it, with the words, “A filthy habit. I have given up.”
Martin prompted him back towards the topic of his earlier conversation, “You were talking about Lord Lucan.”
“Dicky, yes. Did I tell you that I met him?”
“Where?”
“Here. Well, not in this bar, I mean. But here. This is Botswana, isn’t it?”
“No Namibia,” answered Martin.
The man did not seem to recognise the distinction, “Oh well, near as damn it the same thing. No point quibbling, what?”
“No, no,” Martin agreed, although feeling increasingly convinced that his amiable companion was not entirely compos mentis.
“We used to race together, you know.”
“Horses?”
“No cars. There was me, and Dicky, and Graham. I like to think that I was probably the fastest. I could have turned professional, you know, but it was not considered seemly. Even a gentlemen’s trade is, after all, just a trade.”
“Quite.” Martin found that he could not help but imitate his companion’s mannerisms.
“Still love the motors, you know. Got an old Benzo soft top parked right outside. Perhaps give you a spin in it later, if you like.”
Martin doubted very much that the old man would be driving anywhere later with the volume of alcohol he had consumed, and certainly not with him as a passenger, but he refrained from commenting, instead once again prompting, “And Lord Lucan? Dicky?”
“I would have known him anywhere. It might have been forty years ago, but you don’t forget, do you.”
“No, I suppose not. And you saw him here?”
“Here? No. Heavens no. It was in Botswana.”
Martin vaguely recalled a report that the missing peer had once been ‘spotted’ in the Botswanan capital of Gaberone, gambling in the casino of the Holiday Inn, back in 1976, not so very long after the murderous events of the night of 7th November 1974 when he had - presumably - first been forced to flee Britain.
“And when was this?” asked Martin, “Some time ago?”
“Oh God, yes. God, yes,” he reiterated, “March, perhaps. Maybe even February.”
Martin was astounded, “What, this year?”
“This year? Why, yes, of course, this year. Not likely to remember otherwise.”
“Did you report it?”
“No, no. Good luck to him, that’s what I say. Always stood his round did Dicky. Or was that someone else? Anyway, have to admire him, what?”
“Why?”
“Only man I know to discover the secret of immortality.”
Martin looked puzzled, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
The old man tapped a finger to his temple, where the thin skin was pale and flaky, like the dry wrap of a snake waiting to be shed, “Never going to die, is he? Or at least, he is, of course, but no one is going to know it. There have been people claiming to see him all around the world for the past forty years - that is not going to change. In 2050 you will still have people claiming that they have just seen Lord Lucan and, who knows, perhaps they just have. Its the same as Shergar. Its the same as that Osama Bin Laden chappie. They will all live for ever.”
“Due to absence of proof that they have ever died?”
“Precisely. You are catching on, young man. Your round, I think.”
Martin had barely made any impression on his last drink and was surprised to see that his companion’s glass was once again empty. “Same again?”
“Of course, dear boy. There’s nothing else, is there. Only the local piss. And if it is one thing that you learn through living in the tropics for as long as I have, it’s that you don’t get very far by drinking the local piss.”
As Martin stood at the counter waiting for the bar’s owner to reappear and serve him, he considered the old man’s words and speculated whether his own disappearance would result in a kind of immortality for himself. Certainly, when he looked in the long mirror behind the bar, he barely recognised himself: over a week’s growth of beard, his hair cropped short where he had finally removed his head bandage, and a general air of dishevelled poverty, had transformed his appearance into that of a world-weary traveller, far removed from the person he had grown to know and accept; the person cosseted by the five star luxury world provided by a rich master. If there was anyone out there looking for him they would be hard-pressed to track him down here. Was there actually anyone who would miss him though? That was the real question.
Martin’s companion was still talking about missing persons when Martin finally returned with two more drinks.
“That Saddam, he’s another one.”
“But he’s dead,” argued Martin.
“That’s what they want you to think,” answered the old man, cryptically, instinctively reaching inside his jacket pocket, at the same time, to begin his cigarette rolling ritual over once again. “Think they got him during the Iraqi War do you?”
“I saw pictures on the TV,” answered Martin, “There was no doubt, it was him.”
“A double,” said the man, decisively. “He had several you know. Had his whole family done before the Americans attacked. Cloned. All those Yanks ever killed was a palace full of Madame Tussaud’s style waxworks. The real ones, they’re all here, you know. They’re all living here now.”
“What in Namibia? Are you saying that Saddam Hussein is still living, here in Namibia?”
“Namibia! No, South Africa, what are you talking about. Namibia, nonsense.”
Martin’s companion was becoming more garrulous as he became drunker, and Martin looked around the bar nervously, anxious that other customers might take offence at the old man’s ranting. He need have little to worry about, other than one large, dark-skinned, young man, cloaked from neck to foot in a single, white, flowing robe, that spilled around him and the chair he sa
t upon like a Bedouin tent, and who appeared to be lost in studied concentration of the bottom of an empty wine glass, the remainder of the bar was deserted.
International terrorism appeared to be a rich topic of discussion for the old English gentleman. “Never understand those suicide bombers,” he was saying, “Not like the Nips during the last war, at least you knew where you were with them.”
“I’m sorry?” Martin had lost the thread of his elderly companion’s conversation.
“I can begin to see the sense in one man driving a car bomb into a building, if he believes that that is going to somehow allow him to become closer to his God. But three? I mean, where is the sense in that? How do you persuade someone to be a passenger on a suicide mission? All I can think is that these people must have a far greater faith in a magical hereafter than anything that I have ever discovered during my four score years on this planet. And let me tell you, when you get to my age, you begin to think seriously about such things.”
Martin found himself smiling, despite his own personal beliefs, at the old man’s lack of political correctness; a throwback to a different generation. There was something undeniably refreshing about a conversation where you could walk freely through the potential minefields of race, gender and religion. “Oh, you’re not so old, surely.” Martin attempted to divert his drinking partner’s talk with a compliment, but the man continued speaking as though he had not heard him.
“In fact I think all of these so-called terrorist groups are rather... what would be your modern day expression? Lightweight. I’ll give you those planes hitting the buildings in New York were fairly spectacular, and that dirty bomb in Seattle those couple of years back was innovative, although I understand, even there, people are already beginning to move back to the affected regions. Doesn’t take long does it? Humans, hey? Born survivors. Wouldn’t have seen anyone from my generation scared off by a dash of low-grade radioactive uranium. It was real bombs when I was a lad, blow your legs off and be done, none of this long-term cancer stuff.”
“But...”
“No, if I was a member of Al-Qaeda, or that new lot... what are they called?”
“The Faction?”
“That’s them. Do you know what I’d do?”
“No.”
“The Channel Tunnel.”
Martin attempted to protest, “But, security...”
“Or the Houses of Parliament. That man Fawkes had the right idea there. He was the first modern terrorist. Damn sight more ambition about him than any of these other showers. He’s another one achieved immortality.”
“But he was found guilty of treason and hung, drawn and quartered,” said Martin, recalling his schoolboy history.
“Not immortality. What word do I mean?”
Martin shrugged, unable to think of an alternative suggestion.
“Infamy. That’s it. Amounts to the same thing.” The old man repeated himself, his voice quieter now. “Amounts to the same thing.”
Martin watched, fascinated, as his companion’s eyes slowly rolled back, revealing dirty-white eyeballs, sightless in their sockets, looking like old hard-boiled eggs covered with a gelatinous film and a layer of dust. The old man’s head nodded once, twice and then slumped forward onto his chest, the combined influences of alcohol and tiredness finally silencing him. So sudden had been the man’s transformation from animated dialogue to deep somnolent repose that Martin wondered whether he was a sufferer of narcolepsy, or perhaps - the idea momentarily flashed through Martin’s head - that he had suffered a heart failure and was actually now dead, but the presence of a dark, throbbing, green vein, standing proud against the pale skin of the old man’s forehead instantly dispelled such fanciful notions.
The sleeping man had begun to snore loudly, and Martin wondered if he should just leave him where he was and let the bar staff take responsibility for removing him, or whether, in the spirit of comradeship to a fellow imbiber, he should try to make the old man more comfortable, and keep him company until he stirred. Deciding on this latter course of action, Martin leant forward across the table that separated them, and despite a physical aversion to touching the papery skin and unwashed clothes of his companion, attempted to push his head backwards so that he would be sitting back in his chair in a less awkward posture. It was at this moment that he noticed that the other solitary customer in the bar had silently approached, and now stood at his shoulder.
“You are stealing his wallet, yes?”
Martin looked up, startled; angry, but also embarrassed by the suggestion, “No, I was trying...”
“It is all right.” The newcomer flashed a dazzling, broad smile. “I will not tell him.”
Martin continued to protest his innocence, unsure of why he also felt guilty even when he knew that his intentions had been pure; realising that although he would never actually have committed such a treacherous act as that which he was being accused of, nevertheless the thought had crossed his mind, if only very fleetingly, “No, really. I was doing nothing of the sort.” Martin felt self-conscious, aware that he was sounding pompous. “I was attempting to make him comfortable.”
The standing man smiled even wider, a look of merriment dancing in his eyes, amused disbelief written in his expression, “Of course, of course, my friend. A most honourable intention, and one worthy of such a gentleman as yourself. Please forgive me my presumptuous error.” He held out his hand in an attitude requesting that he be allowed to join Martin at his table.
Martin said nothing in reply, but indicated for the new arrival to sit.
The man whisked up the bottoms of his djellaba, in the manner of a seventeenth century madam hoisting up her petticoats, and accepted the offer of a chair. He faced Martin squarely, his eyes, unblinking, staring into Martin’s beer-soaked lenses, not saying a word. There was an hypnotic quality about his close attention; Martin found that he could not continue to meet his gaze, and looked down at his empty glass, conscious in some way that he had just been defeated in an unspoken game. It was the robed man who broke the silence first, “You must think me very rude. I have not introduced myself. My name is Ghiliba.”
••••••••••
The old man continued to snore loudly as Martin and Ghiliba talked long into the night. At one point Ghiliba removed a box containing dominoes from an inside pocket of his voluminous garment, and set them down on the table. “Do you play?”
“No.”
“I will teach you. It is a good game. It is a game of subtle skill, not appreciated by many in the West, where it is considered just a game of chance. I think I am right, yes. I will teach you how to play dominoes like an African.”
That Ghiliba was inordinately proud of his dark continent origins, Martin had ascertained within the first few minutes of their meeting: several hours later now, though, and he found himself hard-pressed to recall any other definitive facts about his new friend. His question as to Ghiliba’s precise country of birth had been answered by a general, “I am a man of Africa”; an enquiry as to how he made his living, was parried by a vague, “Wherever I go, I am blessedly fortunate that people are generous with their charity”; and a direct question as to what had brought him to this unlikely coastal outpost, had been answered by a maddening, “I can only follow the path that my feet show me”. Admittedly, Martin himself had shied away from revealing any truths about his own identity and origins - since his hurried departure from New York, he had assumed the name of Michael Mertens in all social encounters which did not require the evidence of a passport to reveal otherwise - and so he was perhaps being over-optimistic to expect his companion to be expansive in the face of his own evasion. In the absence of any other anchors with which to fix the enigmatic Ghiliba, Martin, instead, found himself paying unusual attention to the man’s appearance: he was dark-skinned, but not with the glossy black complexion like a native of these southern climes, nor like one of the European settlers ex
posed to too many years of the harsh sun, their skin baked into thick, red, leathery hides, resembling the dried biltong they ate. Martin guessed that Ghiliba’s origins were possibly more north African, maybe Arab, although he may have been influenced in that assumption by his companion’s dress sense. His skin was smooth, unblemished by either tribal scars or time, and his round face gave him a look of innocence, which the few words he had uttered did not belie. He was only a young man: Martin guessed probably five years - maybe more - younger than himself, although he carried himself with the assurance of successful maturity, more than the arrogance of ignorant youth. He was tall too: Martin was no midget, and yet his new friend, when he had been standing, had towered above him, maybe six feet five, or six feet six in his flat, open-toed sandals, and although the djellaba went some way to disguising his girth, it was still obvious that his figure would have been affectionately described as Buddha-like. It was the eyes, though, of his new companion, which Martin found most compelling, and which possessed the hypnotic quality that Martin had experienced when they first met: unusual for a man professing to be indigenous to this continent, Ghiliba’s eyes were pale turquoise in colour, looking like two, watery opals, blinking out, and inviting to be discovered, from the depths of a dark surrounding earth.
The solitary bar tender appeared to have shut up shop for the night; chairs had been stowed on top of, or in some cases, underneath tables, and a latch, more ceremonial than functional, had been drawn across the swing top counter of the bar, inhibiting passage between the area reserved for customers and the quarters which were the exclusive preserve of staff. The bar keeper had made no attempt to make Martin and Ghiliba vacate his premises, on the contrary, he had left a complimentary bottle of cheap whisky and two small shots glasses within reach of his final two patrons, and had murmured something to Ghiliba in a gutteral-sounding language which Martin did not understand, but which seemed to interpret into an invitation to remain, before disappearing behind a screen into a room beyond the bar, and presumably his bed. It was only after the barman had left them and their still sleeping compatriot alone, that Ghiliba revealed at little more as to how he had come to find himself in Swakopmund.
“I am on a journey, my friend. Like you too, I think. It is a spiritual journey as much as a physical one, although it is purely a physical reason why I chanced to stop here. The body must be fed in the same way that the mind must be stimulated, without new sustenance both will wither and die.”
“So where is it that you are going?” asked Martin, ignoring Ghiliba’s spiritual reference, assuming that he would be on safer territory sticking with earthly geography.
“My path began at Cape Agulhas, you have heard of it?” Martin confessed his ignorance and so Ghiliba continued, “It is the most southerly point of my continent.”
Martin interrupted, “But I thought that was...”
“You are going to suggest the Cape of Good Hope, is that not right, my friend?” Martin admitted that it was. Ghiliba continued, “All people from the West believe that the Cape of Good Hope* is the furthest south they can travel, but it is not so. Just because it is a name you understand, you stick with believing falsehoods, because you are lazy to learn the truth. Is that not so?”
Martin felt compelled to object to the accusation, “But Agulhas* is not an African word surely, it sounds more...”
“That is of no importance. What matters is what I said.” Ghiliba did not display with any facial expressions his annoyance at being contradicted, indeed he still exhibited a wide smile, but Martin recognised the slight tonal change in his voice which betrayed his outward bonhomie. Martin decided that on some matters it would be prudent not to challenge local knowledge.
“And from Cape Agulhas...?” Martin prompted, pronouncing the unfamiliar word deliberately slowly, feigning the behaviour of a child; uncertain of himself but willing to be taught. As a ruse to draw out more information from his companion it proved successful.
“I am making my way north, through as many of the countries of my own people as I can, until I reach the sea again above the Gulf of Tunis, then I hope that my quest will be over, but only He...” Ghiliba looked momentarily heavenwards, “can know that for sure.”
Martin was intrigued by his new friend’s proposed journey and was full of questions, “How long will you be travelling for? And how do you get about? I mean, car, train... aeroplane?” he suggested, tentatively.
Ghiliba raised his cupped hands upwards, “You ask me how I will travel? I say that there is always someone generous to provide. And when my prayers for conveyance are not met, then I have these.” Ghiliba pointed down to his feet, the thin, canvas sandals he was wearing looking barely capable of standing up to a gentle stroll to the end of the street, let alone a transcontinental expedition. “You ask me how long I will travel? I say as long as it takes. I am not master of my own destiny. Only when all my people have heard my message, then will I know that it is time for me to rest.”
“And what is your message?” asked Martin.
“You have heard of mancala, yes?”
As it happened, Martin had been introduced to the term only a couple of evenings previously. He had been engaged watching two men intently playing a simple board game, involving a wooden board divided up into different sectors, on top of which were placed a number of small, brightly painted pebbles, which the two men moved back and forth in a manner seemingly random and unpremeditated to the uninitiated Martin. When he had asked what the name of the game was, he had been told mancala*.
Martin answered Ghiliba, “Yes, it is a game, right?”
For the first time Martin saw Ghiliba frown, “For you Westerners everything is a game. My whole continent, your forefathers carved up just like a big game, yes?”
Martin tried to be appease the unpredictable giant, “I’m sorry if I offended you. Perhaps I misunderstood. Please tell me... you were talking about mancala.”
Ghiliba smiled again, reaching across the table to slap Martin companionably across the shoulder, “It is all right, my friend. I do not blame you for the wrongs of your ancestors. Mancala. Yes, some people think it is a game. You know, I have heard some of your Western anthropologists describe it as the oldest game. It is funny, yes? It is also the most widespread game. Did you know that? You go to Lesotho, you play mancala. You go to Brazzaville, you play mancala. You go to Freetown, you play mancala. Kigali, Djibouti, Tripoli, in all places, you play mancala. A good game, yes?” Martin was not allowed the opportunity of offering an opinion before Ghiliba answered for him, “No. These people, my people, they think they are playing a game. Let me tell you they are not. Mancala, it is not a game, it is an exercise in control. It is a Western plot to further subvert the will of the African race. Do you see?” Again Martin was not permitted a breathing space in which to answer. “You have my people, in Lesotho, in Brazzaville, in Freetown, they are all living in poverty, living lives more befitting of the dogs they keep tethered up behind their houses, than of noble human beings, and what do they do? They play games. Mancala, that is what they do. And they play their games and they think the world is not such a bad place, because if the world was truly evil then there would not be any games to play at all. But they are wrong. They have all been tricked. It is all a Western plan to keep my people down. If they are wasting their time playing their simple games they do not have the time to rise up and do what they should be doing.”
“Which is?” Martin said, surprising even himself that he had managed to slip in the two words into the course of Ghiliba’s torrential oratory.
“Which is. Which is,” Ghiliba echoed, “Which is to fight. To reclaim what is rightly theirs. Do you know what mancala means?”
Martin did not answer immediately, not expecting his companion to pause, in the way that he now did, actually requesting a response. Finally he said, “No, I’m sorry, not a clue.”
“It is an old Arabic word. It mea
ns to transfer. You have seen the so-called game being played, yes? This is what these men do, is it not? They transfer their counters, or their chips, or their stones, whatever it is they are playing with. Mancala. It is the name I have adopted for my network, for my union as I like to think of it, a union of brothers across this mighty continent, all boundaries set aside, united as one people. Mancala. Transfer, you understand? Our aim is to transfer all the lands that were taken from my African ancestors back to their rightful kin. It is an honourable intention, do you not think?”
Martin found himself nodding in agreement. Was it those hypnotic eyes again? There was something undeniably charismatic about Ghiliba, not that this was necessarily always a good thing: there were people who described Hitler as being charismatic upon meeting him so, too, Idi Amin, but that did not automatically mean what they said was right.
Ghiliba had continued speaking, “I heard you talking earlier with the old man.” He indicated their sleeping companion, with a nod of his head, “I heard you speak of Saddam, and of Osama. I think you disagreed with the old man’s opinion, am I right?” Martin, by now was feeling so tired, his head confused by the combined effects of alcohol and rhetoric, that he could not recall a word of what his elderly companion had previously talked to him about. Once again he found himself nodding in agreement, and so Ghiliba continued, “I think that you thought that these brothers were freedom fighters, not terrorists, am I right?” Another nod. “I think that you could be just the man I have been looking for. I need a spokesman to spread the message of Mancala to the West. When the time is right, you will be that man.”
Martin did not dispute the bizarre statement, merely asking, “And when will I know the time is right?”
Ghiliba had risen from his seat, preparing to leave. As he walked towards the door of the bar he said simply before leaving, “You will know, my brother.”
Martin felt his eyes beginning to close, and his head beginning to nod with exhaustion, and he had to summon all his remaining energy to force himself to an upright position and make his way over to the single, dirty pane of glass which passed as a window in the room. Outside, to the extremities of his vision the African night was terrifyingly dark, having closed in like a thick black tar while he had been drinking, but immediately outside the bar a small electric lantern, almost appearing alive with the mass of nocturnal insects it had attracted to the promise of its weak light, shed a peculiar yellow glow to illuminate Ghiliba’s retreating form. Martin watched as the big man, his white robes reflecting the lantern’s rays like a photographer’s screen, advanced purposefully towards the solitary vehicle in sight - a white, mud bespattered Mercedes Benz convertible - saw him smash the front offside window with the wooden dominoes box which he had retrieved from the tabletop, reach inside the broken pane in order to open the door, and then having clambered inside, manage to start the engine and drive the big car away within a matter of seconds, not bothering to turn on the headlights, supremely confident in the direction of his path ahead.
It appeared that once again the local people had proved ‘generous’ to the Mancala cause.
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