A Guest of Honour (66 page)

He drove round to the backyard quarters. Shinza was lying on the bed, barefoot, smoking. There were two of the young men Bray had seen with him before. A radio was playing. Bray gave him the key, and he held out his yellow—palmed hand with its striations of dark, a fortune—teller's map. “Someone'll drive you back.” “No, I can walk.” “Hell, no, man. Really? I suppose it's better.” Almost lazily. The young lieutenants sat, one on a chair, one on an upturned box, their feet planted, hunched forward in the manner of men who are used to using their hands, in the company of men who use words. Shinza flipped the key to one and told him in Gala to move the car down into the lane behind the Fisheagle property. He looked at the other with his impatient authoritative glance, rolling his beard between thumb and forefinger like a bread pellet. The man got up, stood a moment, and followed.

“You're going back there?” Bray was talking of the capital.

“The army doesn't worry me so much—” Shinza didn't bother to answer. Bray grinned, and Shinza sat up on the creaking bed and put his arms round his knees, raising his eyebrows at himself. “—No, wait a minute. With the army I can get somewhere. A white man's at the top. Mweta's man, the state's man. Brigadier Radcliffe works along with the Company's army—as a matter of fact a friend of his trained them, an old Sandhurst colleague he recommended. Oh yes. But Radcliffe's officers are Africans. At least two high—rankers don't love him very much and they're ambitious. And in any case he depends on all of them to carry out his orders. If one day they don't … There are only three thousand men, and Cyrus has very hopeful contacts among the officers. He's been working on it for some time.”

“Good God.”

Shinza swung his legs down over the side of the bed decisively. Bray couldn't escape him. He went on as if nothing would stop him; the more Bray knew the less risk there was in telling him, the more bound over he would be.

“Cyrus has been pretty successful, I don't mind saying, James. Dhlamini Okoi's useful too. His brother's in army area HQ. You can learn a lot from him. You know that the army was rejazzed a bit before Independence, decentralized so that almost every echelon is operational now. If you can take over control at almost any level, the orders you give will be obeyed at all levels below, because the various commanders aren't used to taking their orders direct from GHQ any longer, as they did before. You've got a pretty good chance to be effective at all levels—except division and battalion, of course, because that's GHQ. Brigadier Okoi went to Sandhurst too. He thinks he could count on the officers of the Sixth Brigade as well as his own, the Twenty-third. That's two brigades, out of a rather small army. The main worry there is the Company task force—that's what he calls it. It would depend how occupied that was … But the police, that's another story.”

“Onabu as chief, but plenty of white officers who really run the show, under him.”

“Exactly. Those whites are the real professionals who just want to do what they're paid. No chance of any of them being interested in us. And there are more police than soldiers.”

“Onabu's not a fool, either. Roly wouldn't have advised Mweta to hand over to him if he had been. He knows how to rely on his white officers when it comes to a situation like this. He'll be thanking God for them.”

“That's how it is, James. Too many policemen. And their organization is old-established, eh? People are used to listening to them. They were all we had for donkey's years, when all there was in the way of an army was a few kids from the U.K. doing their military training here. The police force's always been paramilitary. And they've got the Young Pioneers to do the things it wouldn't look nice to do themselves. I know all that. But there are a few signs that are not so bad … D'you know of any coup in the last fifteen years or so where a police force has defended its political masters? It's inclined to be essentially bureaucratic … And in a country this size, with a population
still mostly agricultural, living in villages, the biggest numbers of policemen are in the country areas—can you see Selufu's local men rushing off to the capital to protect a government they've never seen?”

He listened but would not answer.

“We've got other friends, too. In a good place. The Special Branch. It isn't only a help to get information, it's also important sometimes to be able to do something about what's leaked. I mean, to have Tola Tola out of the way, that's something, you know?”

“So it's all very professional,” Bray said.

Shinza looked at him appraisingly a moment. “Yes! If it's done properly, there should be no heads broken. Not a drop, not a scratch.”

“What about Somshetsi?”

“He's been thinking about nothing but this sort of thing for years. We need portable equipment for communications, man—things like that. We go for the organizational centre, we don't look for battles in the street.”

“When would you want me to go, Edward?”

“Now. As soon as you can. You'll get back the fare at the other end. I'm going to tell you the addresses because we don't write down anything, eh? I don't want you to be ‘apprehended' …”

“I don't know how soon I can go. I'm not still playing for time. There are personal things to be arranged—thought out. I have to decide how best to do it.”

“Fine. Fine. But I won't be here. People are always coming up and down, you can leave a message here at the bar, but it might not reach me right away. Best thing would be to make contact when you come down to get your plane. Go to Haffajee's Garage—you know?—ask for the panel beater, Thomas Pathlo.”

“Haffajee's Garage again.”

“Mmmh? Pathlo knows where I am. Or Goma, if I'm not there. —Well, so you'll see the family again in England, anyway. At least I'm doing Olivia a good turn.”

“I may not be able to come back,” Bray said. “Mweta may not let me in. He must know we are in touch. And if he let me in again he would have to arrest me.”

Shinza suddenly spoke in Gala. “Perhaps he needs you to set his
hand free for that, even now.” The phrase ‘to set the hand free' meant the lifting of the taboo against harming a member of the tribe, one of one's own.

“It's been done,” said Bray.

They discussed exactly where he should go and what sort of support he should try to find; they arranged the contacts he should use to inform Shinza, both at home and through Somshetsi over the border. It was long after the curfew time when he began to walk home. The Fisheagle was in darkness, the main street still and shrill with crickets and the tiny anvil—ring of the tree frogs. He met only one police patrol and did not try to dodge it: a white man coming from the direction of the Fisheagle bar would hardly be regarded as a security risk. The policeman mumbled a hoarse good night in Gala and he mumbled back. Of course, in England too, he would be breaking the law; wasn't it an offence to plan the overthrow of a friendly state? Winter was beginning there, as it was last year, almost a year ago, when he left. Cold damp leaves deadening the pavements and the sweet mouldering grave—smell muffling up against the face. England. A deep reluctance spread through him, actually slowing his steps. England.

Hjalmar and Rebecca were still outside under the fig tree when he got back to the house. Mechanically, he had taken care to open and bang shut the door of his car, so that it would seem he had driven home in it; he could smell his own sweat as he flopped down into a chair and hoped Hjalmar wouldn't notice he'd obviously been walking. It was so hot that no one felt like going to bed. The moon had dispelled some of the haze, high in the sky, and seemed to give off reflected warmth as it did light. The strange domestic peace that had made its place among them these days, as if it could grow only in the shelter of all that made it impossible and absurd, contained them.

Later Rebecca said, “I can smell burning.” Over towards the township, the sky showed a midnight sunrise.

Houses were fired that night, and fifteen people died.

“Holy” burnings began all over the country; Mweta's “burn the dirty rags” metaphor had been seized upon by the Young Pioneers for their text. Nothing he said now, angry or desperate, threat or appeal, was able to reach them in their fierce evangelism.

Many of the strikers from the iron-ore mine had families living in Gala. On the day of the joint funeral while the police were diverted from the mine back to town to deal with the arsonists (and people whose houses had been burned began to band together to retaliate with further burnings), these strikers suddenly swarmed upon Gala. They overpowered the small contingent of police left guarding the mine and commandeered mine trucks, travelling at night, and in the confusion managed to get to the town in the morning before the police could stop them. There they somehow split into two factions, the one making across the golf course for the African township, the other ending up in the streets of Gala itself. Bray and Rebecca watched from the
boma;
the men had been up all night and came singing, plodding along with big, dreamlike steps, a slow prance, some of them in their mine helmets, some carrying sticks more like staffs than weapons. Rebecca had tears in her eyes; he thought it was fear. She said, “Poor things.”

Aleke sought him out, standing legs apart, holding a deep breath.
“Does he think parachutes are going to drop from the sky? He's mad. How can I get troops here now, this minute?” Selufu had knocked him up out of sleep early in the morning, and kept telephoning.

“Well, he's a worried man.”

“Everyone's a worried man. I've spoken to Matoko, I've put through a call to the Ministry, I've asked for the Minister himself. Now what does he want? To hell with it.”

He stood there looking out at the procession with a curious expression of sulky indecision. All his confident good nature seemed balanced like an avalanche that so much as a shout could cause to fall.

“Any help from Matoko?”

“Are you crazy too. There's all hell at the asbestos mine since last week. The Company's had to send riot breakers. They fired on the strikers yesterday, killed a woman who was somehow mixed up in it. God knows what's going on up there.”

The singing grew cello-loud and wavering, bringing close under the windows the peculiar awe the human voice has in its power to produce.
Boma
clerks and messengers appeared on the patch of grass and flowers. Old Moses the gardener snaked the jet of his hose in the air and shouted in Gala, are you thirsty! The
boma
people laughed discreetly, expecting to be called back to work; one held a brown government folder to protect his eyes from the sun.

The strikers' destination was not clear; it existed within, where they knew themselves threatened over months now by many things: lack of trust in the people who spoke for them at the mine, the puzzling power of men who bullied them in the name of the President's Party, the failure of authority to protect them. They moved past the
boma
towards the market.

Aleke suddenly said, “Come on” and urged by an apprehension rather than clear about what they could do, Bray found himself with him, down the old wooden-balustraded stairs of the
boma,
out past the clerks, who, although Aleke didn't so much as look at them, were afraid to follow, and striding up the road after the men. Aleke's big muscular buttocks in well-pressed terylene shorts worked like an athlete's. He managed with superb instinct to turn to advantage the undignified aspect of the chase—instead of hurrying alongside the strikers he cut a swathe for his presence right in among them. He and Bray moved up with the will of sheep-dogs swiftly through a flock.
Bray felt the jogging bodies all round him and smelled the sweat and dust; more of the men recognized him than knew Aleke. Eyes on him: a contraction of inevitability, flash of exposure—as if his commitment to Shinza, his real place in all this instead of the image of himself as the neutral support of Aleke, were bared a moment for those who could see. But the habit of authority was instinctive. He and Aleke broke through the front ranks of the men just at the market and strode backwards a few paces, their hands raised in perfect accord. The singing died; the men in front stood, and those behind came on, closing. They spilled so that Aleke and Bray were surrounded, but in a clear space, among small piles of drought—wizened vegetables and dried fish. One old woman was trapped there with them at her pitch and sat without moving, horny legs drawn up under her cloth. Aleke began to speak. His arms were folded across his big chest. When the men pressed forward to hear he broke through them again and jumped on a home-made stall, standing among peanuts and manioc. It creaked but held; his strong good-humoured voice neither bullied nor pleaded. He said he knew why they had come: they were worried about their relations. But he promised that everything was being done to stop the burning and fighting. If they took it on themselves to try and stop it they would make things worse for their relations. If they would go back the way they came he would personally guarantee that they would not be arrested or molested….

He knew and they knew that he could promise nothing of the sort. But they believed he would try; and their purpose, unsure of its proper expression, wavered, comforted, before his command. The tension dissolved as he moved talking among the men, and the people in the market broke into discussion, peering and pointing. Bray said, “Get them back to the golf course. Out of here as quickly as possible. But it would be safer to manage it in groups. And they must avoid the main street.” There were about a hundred and fifty men; difficult not to alter by too obvious a taking over of the authority of the leaders, the atmosphere of consent rather compliance that Aleke had managed to create.

“Shall we go with them ourselves?” Aleke and he stood as if in a crowd coming out of a football match, sweat streaming down their faces, the market flies settling everywhere. Aleke wanted above all to avoid any encounter with the police. Then with a touch of old easy
confidence: “I'm going to look a damn fool, stepping it out in front.”