For the Governor of Pharamaul to hold a personal aboura, with full ceremony, was a very rare happening indeed. Even the oldest of the Maulas of Gamate could only remember three other occasions, in seventy or eighty years; the most ancient memory was a cloudy legend, almost lost in the mists, when the Great Maula himself had returned from a visit to their mother the Queen, bearing gifts, and had joined with the Governor at an aboura full of splendour, to mark the sixtieth year of the old Queen’s reign. Now, it was freely said, the old Queen had turned angry, and had taken away their chief; and her special emissary the Governor was coming with soldiers to kill all who resisted, and to put on new taxes … It was no wonder that, all over the town, the old men talked with lowered voices, and the young men made secret plans, and the children played games that started with processions and speeches, and finished with cruel hangings, and wild running away.
On the aboura itself, there was much to see, much to enjoy and comment upon. Men came to decorate the balcony, putting up banners and coloured emblems, setting out chairs and tables. Other men – policemen – went through curious actions, marching towards the aboura, flourishing their clubs, halting at a shouted word of command, making a ceremonial circle round a spot marked with a large white cross. There, it was said, the Governor himself (a man ten feet tall, dressed in feathers) would stand holding a golden spear in his hand, and the policemen would close round him, ready for secret tortures … Yet other men came out with broad brushes made of thorn twigs, and pots of white paint, and drew marks on the dusty earth of the aboura.
‘What are these marks?’ they were asked, many times.
‘They are for the aboura.’
‘What do they mean?’
‘They are to show where to walk, and where to stand.’
‘Cannot men walk and stand without white marks?’
‘There will be many men, many policemen. This is to show them how to form a pattern of honour.’
‘Are they children then, that they cannot form a pattern of honour without white marks to guide them?’
‘Do not mock.’
‘You there – put some white paint on your face, and be a white man forming a pattern of honour!’
‘Or be a white woman, ready to marry the chief!’
‘Do not mock. Go away from here.’
‘Since when has the aboura been a private place for making white marks?’
‘Take your white paint, and leave us in peace.’
‘They say no one will come to this aboura. It is an aboura only for white men.’
‘For white men, and for Maulas with white paint on their faces.’
‘There are to be no such Maulas. It is an order.’
The long white lines were drawn, with crosses to mark certain places. The coloured decorations were raised up; chairs and stools were ranged in careful ranks; the policemen drilled and marched, time and time again, while the children watched, and the bystanders talked among themselves.
Out of sight, over the hill towards the burial place, other men also drilled and marched. They had no uniforms, no white lines, no chairs and stools; but their drilling and marching were not less orderly and determined.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Crump decisively. ‘It’s not just gossip and rumour – it’s something more definite. I don’t like it at all.’
‘Cheer up, Keith!’ said Forsdick. ‘Even if some of them do stay away from the aboura, there’ll still be enough Maulas to make a show. That’s all the old boy wants.’
Crump shook his head. ‘I wish I could agree with you.’
Forsdick, red-faced and sweating, rose with ponderous determination and made his way to the sideboard. ‘What you want,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘is another beer.’
It was high noon in Gamate, twenty-four hours before the Governor’s aboura; Crump and George Forsdick, meeting in the latter’s house, were running over the final plans for the morrow’s ceremony. That, at least, had been their original intention, but they had not progressed very far; the day was too hot, Forsdick too hospitable, and the omens (as Crump saw them) much less than favourable. Crump, waiting for Forsdick to return from the sideboard, was well aware that some of his doubts might stem from within himself; the last week had been the most trying seven days of his life, and the three futile deaths that had marred it – the stabbing of the headman, the shooting of the Maula child, and the killing of one of his own men – had depressed him vilely.
But even allowing for personal misgivings, he could not join in Forsdick’s easy optimism. Within his professional world, there was too much evidence against it.
‘Cheers,’ said Forsdick, proffering a newly filled tankard of beer.
‘Cheers!’ replied Crump automatically.
Forsdick, subsiding in his chair with the careful economy of a heavily built man nursing a freshly poured drink, surveyed his preoccupied guest.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s have it. What’s on your mind?’
‘It’s talk, mostly,’ admitted Crump, staring at his tankard. ‘But it’s pretty definite talk. My chaps have been drilling down on the aboura, as you know; practising the guard-of-honour ceremony. They’ve heard a lot of funny things while they’ve been there. And then my other chaps–’ he jerked his head as if to mark a special category, and Forsdick nodded, ‘–my other chaps have brought in a whole batch of stories. The talk downtown is that this is a special aboura, for white Government only, and no Maulas are to attend. If they do attend, there’ll be trouble.’
‘But that’s just another rumour!’ said Forsdick. ‘You know how many of them there’ve been lately.’
‘Maybe. But it is a fact that the Dinamaula Regiment have been drilling and practising, up on the hill, and the thing they’ve been practising is, putting a cordon round the aboura. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. They’ve marked out a space the same shape and size as the aboura; they run out and surround it, just like my policemen, as soon as the signal’s given; and then they all turn outwards.’
‘Odd,’ said Forsdick carelessly.
‘It’s bloody odd,’ replied Crump. ‘And if you put the two things together – the talk of a boycott, and the drill to keep people away from the aboura – then it adds up to a fair-sized flop, tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Could be,’ agreed Forsdick, still unimpressed. ‘Certainly it fits in with what one of those bloody Pressmen said to me in the bar last night. It was that bastard Tulbach Browne – he’s just back from Port Victoria. He said: “I’ll give you three to one there won’t be an aboura.” I took him in pounds.’
‘You’ll lose,’ said Crump morosely. ‘The fact that he’s back in Gamate is just about all we needed.’
‘But,’ continued Forsdick, after a deep draught of beer, ‘I honestly don’t think it will work. You know what the Maulas are. They’ll walk twenty miles, just to watch Andrew laying the first stone of a new wash-house. They’ll ride fifty miles for a firework display on Guy Fawkes night. Anything for a free show … I’ll bet you they won’t be able to resist the idea of a full-scale Governor’s aboura. They’ll turn up in their thousands, whatever the talk is beforehand. They always do. The town’s absolutely bursting with people already.’
‘But if they’re kept away,’ said Crump doubtfully. ‘What then?’
‘How can they be kept away? There are a hundred thousand of them.’
‘It could happen … To start with, the word seems to have got around that there’s to be a boycott. Some Maula herdsmen from one of the outlying villages were seen trekking away from Gamate, this morning. When they were asked why they were leaving before the aboura, they all said: “A man told us there could be no aboura without the chief.” When there’s that sort of uncertainty, it wouldn’t take many people – if they were really tough and determined – to block off the aboura ground, and keep it blocked off … There may be a hundred thousand Maulas in Gamate, but they’re mostly sheep, as you know.’
‘They haven’t been behaving like sheep, during the last few days.’
Crump shook his head. ‘That’s exactly what they have been behaving like – sheep on a stampede. They’ve been persuaded that they’re being ill-treated, and that Dinamaula has been railroaded out of Gamate. Result – the whole place is in an uproar, and a hundred thousand Maulas, normally as sweet as a nut, have become completely unmanageable.’
‘Who’s behind it all?’
‘Puero, chiefly.’ Crump brooded. ‘Now there’s a character who is high on my list for exile, when the time comes for a showdown … But the whole resistance idea has caught on amazingly, in the last few days. It hardly needs a single leader now. In so far as there’s ever been a co-ordinated tribal movement, with definite aims, this is it.’
‘I wish to God Andrew would do something constructive about it,’ grumbled Forsdick.
Crump remained silent. Forsdick’s position as District Commissioner was less delicate than his own. Forsdick, near the throne, might comment freely. Crump – the security arm – could only do what he was told. He also liked Andrew Macmillan a great deal better than he did Forsdick, whose partiality for Molly Crump continued to be notorious.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t say this,’ continued Forsdick, closely regarding his beer, ‘but the old boy rather seems to have lost his grip lately.’
‘It’s been a very difficult situation altogether,’ said Crump noncommittally.
‘For God’s sake, all it needs is a bit of organization! Just work it out. Our side can’t really function, with so few chaps, unless we nail down the people who are behind the resistance. That means the Press, and the Regents.’ He gestured expansively. ‘We’ve got to clear the Press out of Gamate, and then tell the Regents that they’ll be out of a job unless they toe the line. Simple.’
Crump smiled in spite of himself. ‘Simple! I’d like to hear something complicated. First, the Press won’t go. Why should they? Second, the Regents won’t co-operate. Why should they? Thirdly, even if by a miracle both these things happened, you’ve still got a tribe in a state of continuous revolt, refusing to obey any sort of order unless Dinamaula comes back.’
‘And fourthly,’ said Forsdick obstinately, ‘we’ve got to give Dinamaula the sack, once and for all, and find a chief who will co-operate properly.’
After a pause, Crump said: ‘I’m beginning to see why Andrew’s job is so complicated.’
Presently there was an interruption. Mrs Forsdick, in a faded cotton housecoat, her expression one of long-continued, acid discontent, put her head round the door. She noted the beer, and the air of masculine relaxation. She noted her husband, flushed and pontifical, raising a glass to his lips.
‘Still hard at it?’ she inquired, with practised domestic irony.
‘Yes,’ answered Forsdick shortly, not turning round.
Mrs Forsdick sighed. ‘All this,’ she said, ‘just for a visit from the Governor.’
Crump smiled a conciliatory Irish smile. ‘Just you wait till George is Governor himself. Then you’ll appreciate all the planning.’
‘I’m still waiting,’ said Mrs Forsdick sourly, and withdrew.
Forsdick pursed his lips, and then, with an edge of guilt in his manner, reached out for the file of papers on the table at his side.
‘Well,’ he said heavily, ‘let’s get down to details … First there’s the timing tomorrow. If the Governor leaves the Residency sharp at eleven-forty …’
Waiting on his stoep for the three Regents, whom he had summoned for a final appeal for co-operation, Andrew Macmillan talked to his headboy Johannes. It was the cool of the evening, the most grateful moment of Gamate’s heat-oppressed day; the sun, low in the west, was screened and softened by the smoke from tens of thousands of Maula cooking fires, the air in the shaded garden was benign. Macmillan’s life had held many such moments, when the end of the working day brought him ease and peace; but on this evening there was hardly a memory of the old contentment – for the peace of the Residency garden was a deceptive peace, and the smoke cloud drifting over the enclosed valley of Gamate was a cloak for plotting and secret hatred.
When he talked to Johannes, he had the same sense of doom. It sometimes seemed that Johannes was now the only man in Gamate to whom he could speak freely and easily; they had shared much of the past, they agreed on many things, they were both old men of Gamate, with a sense of tradition and order … If all the Maulas were like Johannes, thought Macmillan morosely, then Gamate would be a happy place. But every hour of every day showed clearly that Gamate was not a happy place, and might never be so again; that men like Johannes were rare men; and that their place in the tribe had been usurped and taken over by tough and truculent youngsters.
It might be that the day of himself and of Johannes was now over. History might have left them behind; history, and change, and a hungry search for freedom. None of those things was a bad thing, but they were things to be controlled, not allowed to run riot; explosive things that must be guarded from the malignant spark. Gamate was old and backward; the world outside was new and sophisticated; the two could only come together, and mix, under a formal pattern and a parent eye.
It was true that some day Gamate itself would catch up with the rest of the world, and would be new and sophisticated in its turn; but that day was not tomorrow, nor the next. It could not be, without disaster. Macmillan knew his Maulas; he knew what they could naturally learn, what they could not digest, what would intoxicate them beyond bearing. It had long been his task to act as a pacemaker for the tribe – just as thousands of other devoted men, in thousands of other parts of Africa, were striving to preserve a balance between the somnolent old world and the forceful and garish new.
It could be that this very country of Pharamaul was next in line for the disaster of sudden emancipation. It might be their turn for the fiercely coloured spotlight, the nakedness of prematurity … All Macmillan’s instinct, all his long training, told him that Pharamaul was not ready for it; it would be like a heady and burning draught which, after uneasy gulping and choking, the patient would spew out, with disgusting violence.
Meanwhile, Macmillan talked to Johannes, the other old man of Gamate; talked to him, listened to his slow answers, and feared for the future. It had not surprised him when Johannes, two days earlier, had said: ‘Governor come, hold big aboura’, at least an hour before he himself got the telegram of instruction. Pharamaul was like that. Now, chatting with his old servant, his old friend, he wished he might borrow a like prescience, where the near future was concerned.
‘What do they say about the aboura tomorrow, Johannes?’
Johannes considered carefully before replying. He was shuffling up and down the stoep, tidying, dusting, rearranging. His bare black feet slurred on the rough boards, his white coat hung in folds round a body which seemed to be slowly shrinking inwards to ancient skin and bone.
‘They say, many people coming in to Gamate, barena,’ he answered after a long pause. ‘Coming in from all around…’ He gestured. ‘But they say, can they pass through to the aboura?’
‘Pass through what?’
Johannes scratched his head.‘Pass through other people,’ he answered finally.
‘What other people? Do you mean other people who will stop them coming to the aboura? Who are these people?’
‘Young men,’ said Johannes.
‘How many young men?’
‘Not many,’ answered Johannes. ‘But very strong. They say they are ready to kill, to stop the aboura. Some people go back to their village already.’
Macmillan sighed. It confirmed all that Crump had been telling him; there was to be a boycott, and it would be tightly and toughly organized.
‘Have we no friends in Gamate?’ he asked after a moment.
Johannes paused in his task of cleaning an ashtray. ‘Some friends, barena,’ he said gently. ‘But they have been led away by clever men.’
‘What clever men? Maula men?’
‘Some Maula men. Some white men. They say, how can there be an aboura without the chief? They say, where is our chief?’ Intent and serious, his old face changing expression with swift and deadly clarity, Johannes was suddenly acting the dilemma of the tribe: the clever men asking their questions and pushing their argument, the others listening and being persuaded. ‘They say, is he in prison? Is he dead by hanging? They say, how can we trust Government, since our chief is stolen away when he should be declared chief before all the tribe?’ Johannes shook his head, returning to his own thoughts. ‘The tribe is not happy, barena. Clever men know this.’
‘But that is what the aboura is for,’ said Macmillan curtly. ‘So that the Governor can explain why Dinamaula has been taken away, and what will happen in the future.’
Johannes, polishing slowly, said: ‘Perhaps too late to explain those things.’
‘It’s not too late!’ exclaimed Macmillan. ‘There will be an aboura.’
‘Yes, barena,’ said Johannes. ‘White suit all ready.’
‘The Governor will speak to the tribe. At twelve o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes, barena.’ Johannes put his head on one side, and turned towards the garden and the road leading down to Gamate. ‘Car coming now,’ he said.
Macmillan turned, looking over his shoulder. The yellow dust cloud which signalled an approaching car was slowly mounting, between Gamate and the Residency, catching the last sun as it billowed and spread.
‘That’s the Regents,’ he said. ‘Bring coffee in five minutes.’
‘Yes, barena.’
‘And tell your friends, there will be an aboura tomorrow.’
‘I tell them, barena.’
‘Tell them again.’
‘Yes, barena … You keep many policemen here in Gamate?’
Macmillan stared. ‘I shall keep enough. Why, Johannes?’
‘My friends say they like plenty policemen, tomorrow and the next day.’
But the car did not bear the Regents, coming for their instructions; the car bore Captain Crump, bringing an odd and disgraceful piece of news.
Crump stood before Andrew at the open door of the stoep; trim and taut in his freshly-pressed khaki uniform, his belt and holster polished to a brilliant sheen. He looked at Andrew, and said laconically: ‘The Regents are all ill.’
It took a few moments for Macmillan to realize what the other man was talking about.
‘Ill? What the hell do you mean, ill? I sent for them. Aren’t they coming?’
‘No.’ His principal communication made, Crump relaxed somewhat, like a herald who has delivered, against his will and prudent judgement, an insulting answer to an offer of parley. ‘I tried Katsaula first. He really is ill, as you know. Then I went to Seralo’s hut. He sent his best respects to the Resident Commissioner–’ Crump’s voice was ironic, ‘–but he is too ill to come to the Residency this evening. Then I called on Puero.’ Crump paused.
‘Well?’ asked Andrew, near to violent anger.
‘He made me ill,’ said Crump contemptuously. ‘He was drunk. There were a couple of Pressmen there. He said he couldn’t come. I asked why not, and he lurched forward and was sick all over my boots … Then he said: “You see now that I am ill”, and lay down again. I damned nearly hit him.’
Suddenly Andrew Macmillan felt very old. He was glad that he was sitting down, in a wide chair that offered him total support. At that moment of feebleness and defeat, he could not have raised a hand in greeting.
‘Well, I can’t make them come,’ he said, on a low note, after a long silence. ‘All I wanted to do was to ask them to meet the Governor at the aboura, and to persuade the tribe to listen …’ It was a pathetic scaling-down of his earlier hopes and intentions; Crump felt as if he were listening to some lachrymose apology from a publicly convicted liar. ‘If they won’t come, they won’t … Is there anything else we can do?’
Crump thought: it’s too late to do a damned thing – we should have handled this differently, from the very beginning he knew in his heart that he had disagreed entirely with every phase of Andrew Macmillan’s tactics; the latter had been tough with Dinamaula at that delicate moment when he should have been persuasive and friendly; then he had relented and cajoled, when the only course was a steady disciplinary pressure. But Crump could not say these things now, in this hour of inner decay; for now it was a salvage job – salvage of the aboura tomorrow, salvage of Macmillan himself.
‘I don’t think there’s much to be done at the moment,’ he answered slowly. ‘As far as the aboura is concerned, we must take all the precautions that we can. I’ll be posting a sharp lookout for intimidation, and of course we’ll make our own arrangements, to keep the aboura as free and open as possible. It ought to be all right, even if we don’t get as many people as we expected.’
‘Perhaps the aboura doesn’t really matter,’ said Andrew. Again he was scaling down his plans, fatally cheapening his price. ‘If it’s a flop, it just can’t be helped. But as soon as it’s over, we’ve really got to get a grip on Gamate.’ The word ‘grip’ made him look at his hand, lying open on the arm of his chair; the fingers, loose and flaccid, were trembling perceptibly. Not much grip there, he thought in forlorn humour, and let his hand drop on his lap. ‘Even if the Regents won’t co-operate, somehow we’ve got to persuade the tribe to settle down again.’
‘But that’s the whole idea of the aboura,’ said Crump doubtfully. In his heart he was appalled by this progressive surrender of their few remaining strong points. ‘Surely it’s got to be our first consideration, to make it work. The Governor’s visit could do a lot of good. We’ve got to back him up, haven’t we? – lay on the best show we can?’
‘Certainly,’ agreed Macmillan. ‘But if it doesn’t work, if there is a boycott …’ His voice tailed off. ‘We must just hope for the best.’
‘We must just do our best,’ corrected Crump, made bold by his own impatience, his still-confident determination.
‘Yes,’ said Macmillan, nodding, as if it were the same thing either way. ‘We must just do our best.’