If the Press contingent had a disturbing effect upon Port Victoria, it was nothing to the confusion and uncertainty that they brought to Gamate.
It could hardly have been otherwise. Out of a hot blue sky they descended upon the town, avid for a story – eager to probe, to question, to promote controversy, if controversy and probing would produce the desired effect. In an old pattern, they were the new messengers of doubtful rumour; subtly they acted as a dissolvent of grace and order, bringing to this delicate balance a greedy expedience and a ruthless incomprehension of what such a balance involved.
It did not matter to them what degree of chaos they left in their wake; they would not be there to reckon the price, much less to pay it. Only the story mattered, and the story sprouted like a gory weed under their able hand.
They came to this ancient, orderly, and simple town as new minted human beings from the vast outside world, supposedly authentic, accidentally godlike; they made an extreme mark, as men and women must who talked differently, greeted strangers in a novel way, spent their money carelessly, laughed and walked and looked round them with a flattering blandishment such as no one else had used within living memory. They did all these things to Gamate, descending upon the modest community like gamblers and harlots upon a gathering of innocents. Their strength was the careless strength of men who would shortly disappear, leaving the bill for someone else; leaving the scattered fragment to be picked up again, and the tangled ends retied, by anyone who was stupid enough or unlucky enough to be left upon the field.
They came as fortune-seekers, stayed briefly as exploiters, left as conquerors. They sucked up from Gamate, and from the whole of Pharamaul, a tribute of hatred, bloodshed, and confusion wonderfully calculated to edify the outside world; and thereafter they took flight again, leaving behind them all the scars to be healed, all the dead to be counted, every penny of the price still to be paid.
But on the day that they arrived in Gamate, the blessed day of their departure was still far distant.
Press headquarters was the Gamate Hotel; and from there (like Tulbach Browne, a few weeks previously) the new arrivals foraged with diligence and cunning, looking for trouble, and returning at nightfall to refresh themselves, exchange stories, show off to the village clodhoppers, and plot tomorrow’s excursion. Fellows, the landlord, loathed them and everything about them – Fellows, tough, strong, competent, who remembered vividly the Tulbach Browne–Dinamaula incident, and the complex, continuing trouble it had caused. He knew that it might all happen again, because these were the sort of people who made these things happen. If Tulbach Browne could fake a colour bar incident (and it had been faked, no question about that), then the rest of them might try the same trick. If not the same trick, then something worse.
Fellows’ brow grew black, and his bald head shiny with sweat, as he swabbed down the bar counter. Bloody idiots, playing with something they knew nothing about … He hated them, in spite of the money they spent, the good-humoured camaraderie they spread (though that could easily turn to quarrelling, the way they talked about Gamate and Pharamaul), the brittle liveliness which their presence inevitably brought. He hated them because they were here to make trouble, all the trouble they could promote; and a few laughs and an extra pound or two in the till each evening could never compensate for that sort of thing.
He hated Clandestine Lebourget and Noblesse O’Toole – bloody disgusting old bags, he called them – because they had said: ‘We want a colour shot of you behind the bar, with all those bottles and glasses, saying “No” to Dinamaula. Can you fix it?’
He hated Pikkie Joubert of the South African News Service, who said: ‘Hear you had a bit of kaffir trouble the other day. Man, you’ve got to keep stamping on them all the time!’
He hated Axel Hallmarck of Clang, partly because of his crew-cut hair and outlandish bow tie, partly because of the two questions, warily spaced with at least an hour between them, which he asked. The first was: ‘What sort of profit do you make here?’ and the second: ‘How much do you pay the Maula boy who washes up the glasses?’
He hated John Raper of the Globe, who arrived forty-eight hours behind the rest of the party, to be greeted by knowing cries of ‘You’ve certainly earned your OBE!’ and who got raucously drunk on the night of his arrival, and had to be put to bed by friendly hands, in full sight of the hotel servants.
He hated, especially, Tulbach Browne, who, brazenly cheerful, leant on one corner of the bar with the air of a man who doesn’t need to work for some time to come, and said: ‘I told you I’d make you famous, didn’t I?’
Fellows hated them all. They were living in the hotel, taking up all the available rooms, crowding the bar, complaining about the service, spoiling everything. They were strident in their dislike of every single aspect of Gamate – the heat, the flies, the tepid drinks, the dust, the greasy food, the lumpy mattresses, the dull menus, the fact that they had to share rooms. it was as if they had burst into the hotel – the hotel he was reasonably proud of – determined to sneer and bitch about everything. He hated them all. He was always glad when, at ten a.m., they took themselves off for the day. At least, he would have been glad, if he had not known and cared what they were doing and trying to do.
Pikkie Joubert talked to the two senior Regents, old Seralo, and Katsaula the historian of the tribe. It was not an easy meeting, on either side. Joubert had to hold in check, all the time, his natural, ingrained contempt for negroes, whatever fancy ideas they dreamt up for themselves. The Regents on their part did not understand why Joubert, or any of the others, had come to Gamate in the first place; they could not comprehend their behaviour; they could not forgive the strange tales they heard.
But they would have felt guilty of gross discourtesy if they had hinted at this lack of understanding, this disapproval, when talking to a guest.
‘We greet you,’ said old Seralo, sitting upright in the tall chair of state, formally placed at the head of the long table in the council room. Katsaula sat at his side, worried and uncertain. He knew nothing except that new men had come into Gamate, talking of strange things, writing all words down, laughing like foolish girls, chattering like katlagter birds. It could only forebode ill for the tribe.
‘We greet you,’ echoed Katsaula none the less. ‘Ahsula! We are glad to see you in Gamate. You come from England?’
‘No,’ answered Pikkie Joubert brusquely. ‘From South Africa.’
‘We have heard many things of your country,’ said Seralo after a pause.
‘It’s on the map,’ said Joubert ironically. ‘Now let’s get a few facts … What’s all this about Dinamaula marrying a white girl?’
‘We know nothing,’ answered Katsaula. ‘That is a hidden matter.’
‘Don’t give me that!’ said Joubert immediately.
‘We know nothing,’ repeated Seralo, with tremendous, quavering dignity. ‘We are the Regents of the tribe. We have no lies in our mouth.’
‘Who are you covering up, for Christ’s sake?’ asked Joubert. ‘You know he told one of the newspapers he was going to marry a white girl.’
‘The marriage of the chief,’ said Katsaula, ‘is a matter for him, and for the tribe. It is a great matter. Until it is settled, silence is best.’
‘That’s just double-talk,’ said Joubert contemptuously. ‘But I’ll play it your way, if you like. Let’s see … If he chose to marry a white girl, what would the tribe think about it?’
‘That is a difficult question,’ said Seralo, after a long moment of silence. ‘It is not a question to be answered in a few minutes of talking.’
‘I’m in no hurry,’ said Joubert.
‘It is a question we cannot answer,’ said Katsaula finally.
‘You’d better find an answer,’ said Joubert, on a hard note, ‘before it’s too late. The world wants to know about this. So does South Africa.’
‘It is a matter for the chief and the tribe.’
‘Bull!’ said Joubert rudely. ‘There’s a hell of a lot more to it than that, and you know it – or if you don’t know it, you bloody well ought to!’
‘Sir,’ said Seralo, with formal dignity, ‘we cannot answer such questions.’
‘In my country,’ Joubert persisted, ‘a marriage like that is against the law.’
‘In our country,’ said Katsaula, ‘it is against the custom.’
‘What are you going to do about it, then?’
Katsaula shook his head. ‘It is a matter for the chief and the tribe.’
‘If you mean,’ said Joubert, ‘that you’re going to let him get away with it, then you’d better think again, and think differently. South Africa is very interested in this marriage.’
‘This is not South Africa,’ answered Seralo simply. ‘We are the children of the Queen.’
‘What the hell difference does that make?’
Seralo, suddenly intent, suddenly ironic, looked at Pikkie Joubert for a long moment. ‘There has been a difference in our minds,’ he said finally, ‘for more than a hundred years. I think it is in your mind also.’
Baffled, brought up short against a wall of dignity and deep feeling, Joubert cast about him for another approach. He did his best to make it sound effective.
‘If you won’t talk,’ he said, ‘I’ll find someone that will. I’ll go direct to the chief.’
‘We understand,’ countered Katsaula smoothly, ‘that Dinamaula will see no one – no friends, no strangers – at this time.’
‘I’m not surprised. He’s certainly blotted his copybook in a big way. But I’m still hoping …’ Joubert stood up. ‘Well, that’s that. I’ll get going.’
‘Sir,’ said old Seralo, also rising, ‘we are glad to have met you. Please take back our greetings to South Africa.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ muttered Pikkie Joubert.
‘Ahsula!’ said Katsaula, raising a formal hand. ‘Peace to you and to your country, of which we have heard so much.’
Miera Katsaula, the forlorn bride who was no bride, sat sullen and silent on the clay-daubed stoep of her hut. She was not alone, though she would have wished to be – alone with the sunlight and the dusty air, alone with the bare mud floor, and the goats who had no thoughts, and therefore no sly contempt. She was not alone. Within reach of her hand and her voice was the fat white man who wanted to ask certain questions, and the interpreter – Voice Tula, so-called – who was there to help them both. Within call was her mother, pretending to be busy, listening from the guarded silence of the hut. Within sight were many neighbours, passing and repassing, not looking, not watching, yet consumed with curiosity, wearing their ears like the fronds of the reeds on the edge of the dam, when the spring pricked them to fullness.
Within sight also were the children, the hated children, moving always, laughing always, looking sideways and whispering ‘No Bride Miera’ without moving their mouths, giggling and chattering and running away before even anger could hope to catch up with them.
Miera sat without movement, without pleasure, her eyes downcast, her hands passive. The rough grey blankets hid her body, her eyelids hid her eyes. The sun laid a slatted pattern upon the contours of her face, outlining the broad black nose and the gross mouth with a curious weave of intermittent light and warmth. In between, dullness and shame and hatred burned like forgotten fires … Miera sat without movement, not looking at the fat white man who had dismissed her body with contemptuous eyes, and who now threw words in her direction like small bones to a smaller dog – words caught up and smoothly offered to her by Voice Tula, a bought man of no pride, a hired dog himself.
‘Ask her,’ said John Raper to the interpreter, ‘what she thought when she heard that Dinamaula was going to marry a white girl?’
Voice Tula spoke obediently in the slipshod Maula tongue, using equally his hands and his voice, looking at the ground. He was a small man, a bespectacled clerkly man of twenty-five, an interpreter on Forsdick’s staff. Mostly he worked in the tax office, sometimes he worked in court, standing between the wrath of the law (as expressed by George Forsdick’s breezy inconsequence) and the cowed malefactors on the other side – usually exuberant drunks or righteous wife-beaters. Only rarely did something of true interest come his way; and never before had he assisted at such a scene as this, a scene in which history, drama, and scandal were so royally blended.
Voice Tula glowed inwardly, listening and talking by turns, aware of power, aware of his own essential role in a legendary exchange. There would be much to tell his wife, later that evening, and much to tell his friends.
When he had finished speaking, there was silence. Then Miera answered briefly, looking also at the ground, as if their words did not travel from person to person, but were part of a vague ambiguous pattern which was spread like a rug at their feet, a pattern to which each of them could contribute a long or a short thread, as they willed.
Voice Tula translated, now using a different speech. When he spoke in English, his voice took on a precise, out-moded punctilio, like a Victorian floorwalker in one of London’s oldest department stores.
‘She answers, sir,’ he now said evenly, without expression, ‘that she has heard nothing of such matters.’
‘Well, I’m telling her now,’ countered John Raper, who was somewhat less than sober, and irritable from the combined heat and smells of Gamate’s lowering noontime. ‘Dinamaula is going to marry some white girl he met in England. He’s definitely said so. What does Miera think about that?’
The voices murmured again, quiet, impersonal, adding to the pattern that lay between them.
‘She says,’ answered Voice Tula presently, ‘that she does not believe this thing.’
‘Has she seen Dinamaula recently?’
‘No,’ – after a pause – ‘Dinamaula is absent, visiting a cattle post to the south. He cannot be reached.’
‘Smart guy,’ commented John Raper. ‘If I were him, I’d keep it that way.’
‘Sir?’ asked Voice Tula, ‘I am to translate?’
‘No,’ said John Raper, ‘that was just one for you and me.’ He dabbed at his brow with a large khaki handkerchief. He was getting nowhere, but it did not matter. This girl was a squalid sort of cow, in any case – far from the coffee-coloured, honey-voiced charmer that the Globe’s readers demanded. With the best will in the world, she was nothing like Rita Hayworth with a South Seas wiggle and a cocoa make-up. Interest must lie elsewhere – perhaps with the unknown white bride … He mused on this for a moment, recalling Anthea Vere-Toombs’s idea for a ‘Find-the-Bride’ competition, recalling Anthea’s other attributes, other inventions. It was a pity he had ever left Port Victoria.
‘Ask her,’ he said finally, carelessly, ‘if she’s a virgin.’
‘Sir,’ said Voice Tula, with rare dissent, ‘that is not a suitable question.’
‘Well, is she?’
Voice Tula smiled, raising his soft absorbent eyes for the first time. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘that such is the case. She was to have been the bride of the chief. These things are customary with my people.’
‘“Was to have been”?’
‘There is now a state of suspended animation.’
‘Huh?’ exclaimed John Raper. ‘Where were you educated, for God’s sake?’
‘At Fort Hare College, in South Africa.’
‘Must be quite a place … You mean the whole thing’s definitely off?’
‘Sir?’
‘He’s not going to marry this one?’
‘Sir, I do not think so.’
‘Is she sad about that?’
‘She is a simple girl, sir. Probably she is sad.’
‘Ask her if she is sad.’
Another pause, longer this time, while Voice Tula talked, and Miera Katsaula stared before her, her blanket covering her chin, her eyes downcast. Finally she spoke a single sentence, and Voice Tula spoke after her.
‘She says, sir,’ he translated, ‘that she does not wish to answer any more questions. She has household work to do.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ exclaimed John Raper, rising to his feet. ‘That’s not the trick of the week! I could do with a drink myself.’
It was a drink which he was able to enjoy within a very few minutes, in the bar of the Gamate Hotel. There, the usual lunchtime session was in progress – both men and women, some drinking determinedly, some passing the time without urgency, some munching their sandwiches. Forsdick was there, and Oosthuizen the farmer, and one of the hospital nurses, and Pikkie Joubert, and the huge bulk of Clandestine Lebourget.
John Raper made a play for the nurse, and was repulsed with antiseptic skill; he took a look at Clandestine Lebourget, and shook his head – a man must have some pride; then he applied himself to whisky and water, drinking George Forsdick level with mutual appreciation. Pikkie Joubert started an argument with Fellows the landlord; Oosthuizen joined in, siding at first with his fellow South African, then veering round and hammering home his encroaching dislike. Their corner of the bar developed a flushed and argumentative air. Then it ebbed away again. Clandestine Lebourget withdrew to comfort Noblesse O’Toole, who was lying down with a headache. Oosthuizen said: ‘Tot siens, kerels,’ and lumbered off to his car. At the twelfth whisky, Forsdick backed carefully away from the bar, and said: ‘That’s my score for now. How about coming home for a bite of lunch?’
‘Are you sure it’s all right?’ asked John Raper. ‘What about your wife?’
‘She’ll love it,’ answered Forsdick largely, ‘though she may not say so out loud. Difficult woman. Shy woman. Let’s get going.’
They drove back erratically, Forsdick humming ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, John Raper beaming owlishly about him like a minor royalty on the loose. They only exchanged three sentences during the journey. Out of the blue, Forsdick asked: ‘How was Anthea?’ and John Raper answered: ‘Terrific!’ and Forsdick countered wistfully with: ‘That’s what they all say.’ Then they were home, and Mrs Forsdick – grim, resentful, and cold sober – confronted them on the doorstep.
She remained none of those things for very long. There was something about John Raper’s intrinsic, gamey sexuality which nicked all ice, solved all female problems. Within a few moments, he was in the kitchen, advising on the preparation of a sauce to go with the corned beef, pledging his hostess in a brew of whisky-sour which she was delighted to share. The two of them talked animatedly all through lunch, while Forsdick kept silence, amazed at his luck, glad to play along with it. John Raper was adroit at all the niceties of gallantry – standing up when Mrs Forsdick came into the room, drawing back her chair at table, making coffee, offering to wash up the dishes afterwards. When she lamented the fact that they were so far from Government House in Port Victoria, John Raper assured her that it was only a matter of time before she took over as châtelaine. When she brought out a photograph album, he maintained an unwinking interest in its contents. When she mourned the lack of companionship in Gamate, he said, ‘What? – a pretty girl like you?’
When Forsdick went back to his office for the afternoon session, John Raper stayed behind. When Forsdick returned, John Raper was still there, feet on the sofa, drinking coffee with neat whisky on the side. Grace Forsdick – slightly flushed, indubitably relaxed – received her husband with rare affability, and presently cooked them both an excellent meal.
‘You must come again,’ said Forsdick to John Raper, when they said goodbye, much later, under the lambent Maula moon. ‘Every night, as far as I’m concerned.’
Axel Hallmarck of Clang, sitting in his hotel room, filling an hour between lunch and his appointment with Andrew Macmillan, was playing his favourite game. It needed only three things – a typewriter, a good memory, and a wish to perfect his current style. He had all three.
It was a hot day in the cemetery, [he wrote, his fingers supple on the keys]. Even the war graves seemed to wilt at the prospect of a routine presidential speech. The President, an ageing (54), awkward, and angular figure in hit-or-miss store-clothes, fidgeted as he faced his audience. He was ill-at-ease, though not (according to current reports) more so than usual. Behind him, his aides, much better dressed, fingered their carefully ghosted briefs, wishing audibly that the President would not talk off so frayed a cuff.
The troops in the guard of honour yawned. When the President began to speak, the nasal twang was as prominent as his Adam’s apple.
‘Four score and seven years ago,’ he began, hitting a pedantic stride, ‘our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’
The lines of soldiers, recognizing the old presidential malarcky, settled down to a bored indifference. The war, for them, had been mostly waiting in line. Now they were waiting in line for yet another politico to go through the motions of democracy.
‘Now we are engaged in a great civil war,’ (‘Jesus!’ muttered a disgruntled GI, ‘who does he think he’s telling?’) ‘testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.’
The assembled aides smirked and looked brave, though it was safe to say that none of them had been near this, or any other, battlefield, until that morning. Perhaps aware of apathy among the fighting section of his audience, the President now played it for pathos.
‘It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.’
Up on the platform, a stage widow in militant mourning wiped away a tear, using elaborate care and a black-edged handkerchief. The aides looked sad. The soldiers looked at their boots.
‘We here highly resolve … that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.’
The aides raised their eyebrows ironically, and reached for their hats. The soldiers relaxed, recognizing a political peroration when they heard one – even if none of them could have spelt the word. The President nodded glumly, and stepped off the platform.
No one cheered. No graves opened, since no one could have mistaken this flat unmusical occasion for the Last Trump. Without regret, Gettysburg Cemetery went back to sleep.
Axel Hallmarck grinned, pleased with his effort. He read it through, pencilled in a word here and there, and then deliberately tore it up. The day’s game was played, the exercise was over. Here, in Gamate, were other battlefields, and other cemeteries, promising more elegant slaughter, deeper corruption, than any from the past.
With a curious, twilight sense of doom, Andrew Macmillan read over the last sentence he had written, the beginning of the account of the big tax troubles in his History of Pharamaul.
The centre of unrest [he had written] was the town of Gamate itself, already uneasy owing to the prolonged absence of Chief Simaula, who was visiting the outlying tribes.
Andrew Macmillan raised his head from his manuscript book, suddenly wishing to write no more that day, nor to think of the troubled past. What he had just written was altogether too apt to the present, too much a part of the inevitable history of the Maulas. Five years ago there had been a sudden blaze of riot in Gamate, stemming from discontents as frivolous and as varied as the colour of a new tax form, and the rumour of restrictions on the practice-periods of the Gamate Town Band. Starting with senseless defiance, it had run a furious and bloody course, and ended with many dead men on either side, including four Maulas hanged for murder in Port Victoria jail.
Was the present to be another segment of the same murderous spectrum? Andrew Macmillan let his pen fall on the desk, and sat back, his hand rising automatically to cover his eyes. He was, as usual, desperately tired; he had a sense of defeat and inadequacy such as he had not felt in ten and twenty years – a sense of defeat even before the battle was joined … Certainly Gamate today was full of rumour, full of uneasiness; certainly Dinamaula, like his father Simaula, was absenting himself indefinitely somewhere outside the town, and the fact was causing all sorts of gossip and unrest. Certainly there were many things likely to set a spark to trouble – wild talk about the chief’s marriage, vague surmise of ‘new things’ which the new chief was to bring with him, vivid speculation on the presence of strangers in the town. This was no time for the Resident Commissioner to loosen his grip. But that was what was happening.
He wished he had been able to see Dinamaula, and clear up at least one aspect of the problem – his marriage. But Dinamaula had first sent non-committal messages of delay. Then he had been ill. Then he had left town, ostensibly to visit some of his cattle posts in the surrounding ranchland. Until Macmillan could talk to Dinamaula, get the truth from him, persuade him (if necessary) to see reason, then he could make no start of any sort.
If it had been twenty years ago – if it had been ten years ago – he would have taken all this in his stride, dealt with it in a few sentences, a few brusque summonses to the tribal leaders, a quarter of an hour’s forthright speaking on the aboura. Now, faced by shadowy difficulties, vague and grotesque fears, he felt powerless to cope with them. Perhaps he had been too long in the territory. Perhaps, at fifty-seven, he was too old and worn out. Perhaps history in Africa had moved on, leaving him bobbing foolishly in its wake, using old methods, mouthing old phrases, when the call was imperative for the new, the experimental, the bold and dramatic.
He wanted nothing more than to reach across the dusty cluttered desk, pick up the telephone, put through a priority call to Port Victoria, and say to the Governor: ‘Sir, I resign.’ Then he would stroll out into the Residency garden, enjoying the late afternoon sun, ignoring the ants. Then he would go back to his armchair, fill his pipe, ring the bell for Johannes (that other old has-been) and sip whisky and water until it was time for an early bed … Instead, he could do none of these things: not now, nor for two or three years to come. Instead, he had to cope with Dinamaula (as soon as he could get a grip on that elusive character); he had to curb the running riot of rumour that was filling the town; he had to watch a dozen other things – normal things, abnormal things, inexplicable things – that were reaching his eyes and ears from a dozen different sources.
Especially, he now had to talk to an American Pressman with the defeating name of Axel Hallmarck – and talk to him in the light of a truly preposterous directive which had just reached him from the Secretariat at Port Victoria. In paragraph one, it stressed the need for extreme caution in dealing with the Press. In paragraph two, it called for ‘a demonstrated readiness to discuss all aspects of Maula affairs’.
It was a wonder, thought Andrew Macmillan sourly, that there wasn’t a paragraph three, telling him to do the whole thing standing on his head under a full moon.
But when finally he met Axel Hallmarck, at teatime, with the sun lengthening all shadows in the garden as it dipped towards the west, Axel Hallmarck turned out to be one of the nicest young men he had ever encountered. True, the spotted bow tie and the convict hairstyle were a little hard to endure, when first one caught sight of them; but Hallmarck himself was so pleasant, so patently sincere, so ready with deference towards a man many years his senior in age and experience, that Andrew Macmillan could not complain on any score.
He had been expecting a trying end to a trying day; instead, he found his new companion delightful, and their short meeting – for the young American was especially concerned lest he intrude too long on his host’s privacy – their meeting was a refreshing tonic.
Axel Hallmarck’s questions were few, and innocently concerned with the normalities of life in Gamate. He wanted to know about the tribal hierarchy; he was interested in the local system of control and organization – how much was delegated to the Maulas, how much rested in the hands of the Resident Commissioner and his staff. He asked a few questions about native diet, and housing, and the average wage of a black man – any black man, the first to be met on any street – compared with the wage of someone like Fellows, who presided over the bar of the Gamate Hotel. He showed an interest in the local crime rate, and the length of time that Andrew had been in the territory, and the feeling – the general feeling, nothing detailed or quotable – of the local white residents concerning a possible mixed marriage. Presently, unassumingly, he asked if he could have a quick word with Johannes, Andrew’s old servant.
‘Now why on earth should you want to talk to him?’ asked Andrew, amused. He was feeling more relaxed than for many days past, sitting at ease in one corner of the stoep, sipping his tea, pulling at his pipe. Closing his eyes, he could almost imagine himself to have retired a few hours earlier … ‘I doubt if Johannes has ever met a reporter in his life. I’m certain he’s never read a newspaper. He wouldn’t know what to say.’
Axel Hallmarck smiled agreeably. ‘You said he was an old man. I wanted to talk to one of the older Maulas. Just to get their point of view.’
‘Johannes hasn’t got a point of view,’ answered Andrew. ‘He’s been my houseboy for over thirty-five years.’
Axel Hallmarck was still smiling, with the utmost goodwill. ‘That, for me, is the interesting part. He must have a whole range of significant memories, just because of that long service record.’
‘See him if you like,’ agreed Andrew carelessly. ‘But I warn you, there won’t be any surprises for you. He’s my houseboy. Hasn’t got a thought beyond that. Thickest head in the territory. But have a word with him, if you care to.’
‘I surely would.’ Axel Hallmarck rose to his feet, and held out his hand. ‘Thank you very much indeed, Commissioner, for a swell meeting. Just what I wanted. Just what I hoped for.’ He looked round him, at the garden and the sunlight. ‘You know, I envy you, living here … Now, if I can just go through to the kitchen or whatever it is, for a few moments.’
‘I’ll show you,’ said Andrew, preparing to rise in his turn.
‘Don’t you bother,’ said Axel Hallmarck, showing his only sign of true alacrity so far. ‘I feel I’ve taken up far too much of your time, as it is … I reckon this is the way.’
He opened the swing door leading to the dining-room, and passed through, adroit and untraceable as quicksilver. Silence fell again, broken only by a vague murmur from the direction of the kitchen. Presently, lulled by its sound, Andrew Macmillan dozed off.
On the other side of the town, under the sad cypress trees and the shadows of the great rocks, among the chipped and weathered tombs of the Maulas, some of the older headmen were gathered. They stood, as befitted their rank, in attitudes of grave attention, their heads bent, their eyes resting on the largest tombstone, the tombstone of Maula the Great. One of them, the oldest man of all, whose trailing blanket covered a thin, wavering body, had placed one hand on top of the headstone, and with the other was pointing at the august name. The others watched him, their expressions masking a deep bewilderment.
The flashgun popped, and Noblesse O’Toole, observing from a distance, called out: ‘Try it again, for God’s sake! They look like act two of Porgy and Bess.’
Clandestine Lebourget, striding forward, took hold of the oldest man by his meagre shoulders, and moved him a half-pace nearer to the grave. Then she reached out a hand, and tucked his blanket neatly under his beard. The others watched her, wary and uncomprehending. She felt in the pocket of her huge corduroy slacks, brought out a handful of loose change, and gave each of the headmen a silver coin – either a sixpence or a shilling. Then she pointed at the tombstone, and commanded, ‘Keep looking at that. And look sad.’
Nothing happened.
‘They just don’t speak the language,’ said Noblesse O’Toole disgustedly.
Clandestine Lebourget took out a large coloured handkerchief, none too clean, and pretended to mop her eyes.
‘Sad!’ she repeated, at the top of her voice, and pointed to the tomb. ‘Great chief dead! Wah! Wah! Make like with tears.’
The old men regarded her unwinkingly. They admired large women, who were traditionally fertile; but for the Maulas, women in trousers had long been a tribal symbol of venereal infection. Perhaps the box with the blinding light would prove to be some kind of safeguard.
‘Got me an idea,’ said Noblesse O’Toole, after an unprofitable pause. ‘Get ready to take a picture …’ She stooped down, picked up a stone, and flung it at the base of the tombstone of Maula the Great. The old men recoiled in horror and astonishment, then stared at the desecrated tomb with expressions of the utmost consternation. The flashgun went off.
‘Perfect,’ said Clandestine Lebourget happily. ‘Never seen six old guys so depressed …’
She brought out another handful of coins, and distributed them to the headmen of the Maula tribe. To the oldest one, a distant cousin of Dinamaula, she gave a two-shilling piece, then shook him by the hand.
‘You’re just darling!’ she said, as she turned away.
Presently, in his own tongue, the old man inquired of his neighbour: ‘What is this dar-ling?’
The man he spoke to was the father of Voice Tula, the interpreter, and with him had talked much of the language of the white men.
‘It means,’ he answered gravely, ‘that she loves you.’
The old man raised his hands. ‘Are they all mad today?’
On their way back to the town again, Clandestine Lebourget and Noblesse O’Toole passed by the edge of the Gamate dam. Here, some groups of young girls were washing out their blankets, sitting by the margin of the water, sluicing the rough fabric and then pounding it with small flat stones. It was a scriptural scene, a scene as old as the dam itself.
Some sang as they worked, some sat in dreamy meditation. All the girls were naked from the waist upwards, and the sun made a dappled pattern on their breasts and shoulders. Many of their bodies, shyly flowering, were of exquisite grace and contour.
‘Set ’em up again, Tooley,’ said Clandestine Lebourget, coming to a dead stop. ‘This is where we get a bit of art.’