Black Mamba Boy (17 page)

Lorenzo watched Jama’s clumsy sweeping, the broom slipping from his grip. Lorenzo laughed and Jama looked questioningly at him.

“Don’t worry, Jama, I just remembered something,” said Lorenzo, still laughing. If only his friends could see him now, sweating in a uniform, watching a native boy cleaning up for him. He found everything amusing now, Fascism, communism, anarchism, he could only trust in the patently idiotic. The blackshirts marching in front of his balcony in Rome, deliriously howling for an Italian Abyssinia, senile housewives rushing into the street to hand over their wedding rings to pay for Mussolini’s war. Demanding the civilization of a country they could not place on a map. He had joined the army late enough to miss most of the fighting but early enough to benefit from the generous officers’ allowances. To his delight he had also found a few Abyssinian girls to enjoy before the others had infected them with unpleasant diseases, but Omhajer was still a hardship posting after the leisure of Libya—a dusty, impoverished town full of the dregs of the Italian army, and a battalion full of ex-prisoners, alcoholics, and lunatics, few of whom had even finished their elementary schooling. They hated Lorenzo’s books, glasses, rumored Jewishness, and bullied him the way only soldiers can their officers. Lorenzo intended to study anthropology back in Italy so took photographs of the local villagers and notes on their lifestyles and societies; he had learned
a smattering of Somali from the askaris, and he had even been invited home for a meal by a well-to-do Sudanese merchant. The other officers were shocked and disgusted at this intimacy with the natives, and one had threatened to report his crimes against racial hygiene to the commander.

Lorenzo had been struck by Jama’s self-possession the day he had been thrown off the bus. Lorenzo sometimes observed Jama muttering to himself in the teahouse and saw him loitering around town late at night, and began to feel sympathy for him. He was always alone, his forehead screwed up in concentration, and he reminded Lorenzo of his own solitary childhood. When Lorenzo’s mother’s letters had first arrived, describing in her unsteady, spidery hand the murders and assaults on Jews in Germany that she read about in the
Corriere della Sera
, he had brushed aside her concerns, reminding her that she had trundled off to the synagogue the day Italy had invaded Abyssinia to sing the Fascist anthem “Giovinezza” with the other neighborhood crones. “Not in Italy, Mama,” had been his final word on the subject. Now that he had spent time with rough, country Italians, and heard their anti-Semitic jokes and rants, he grew more circumspect and advised his mother to get her savings out of the bank and prepare to leave for France. Soldiers idle in their barracks said incredible things. Even Lorenzo was startled to hear a soldier claim the most exhilarating experience he’d had in the army was firing into a civilian crowd in the Ethiopian highlands when villagers there had protested the massacre of monks at Debre Libanos. “Sir, I am finished. How much will I get as a soldier? Can I become a soldier for you instead?” asked Jama, leaning on the broom.

Maggiore Leon looked at Jama. “Why would you want to be a soldier? You’re so young, you haven’t even stopped growing yet.”

“Well, give me lots of macaroni and I will grow quickly,” argued Jama.

Maggiore Leon laughed. “With teeth as big as yours, I am sure you could get through a lot of macaroni, but no, Jama, you have to be fifteen to sign up and then they treat you like dirt anyway, don’t bother yourself with soldiering. Here, go buy me some cigarettes, you can keep the change.”

Jama went to the Sudanese tobacconist and bought the cheapest cigarettes on offer. When he returned to the office, Maggiore Leon had gone. Jama placed the cigarettes on the table and sat on a chair against the wall to wait. The sun rose to its zenith and flies buzzed lazily in the heat. Jama scratched his mosquito bites and paced the room, driven to madness by the buzzing and the boredom. At last he left the office to search for the maggiore.

Maggiore Leon and the other officers were sitting around in the teahouse, Melottis in hand. “Ah, Jama, I thought you would find me. Do you have the cigarettes on you?”

Jama shook his head and scratched violently.

“Go and collect them for me, then go home. I am not going back in this afternoon. The mosquitoes are vicious here, they’ll eat you alive. When you get to the office, open the desk drawer, there is balm for your bites that you can take.”

“Si, signore,” said Jama.

Back in the office, Jama opened the drawer. It was full of scrunched-up papers, forms, letters, and a small pile of black-and-white photographs. Jama checked the door and pulled out the photographs. They were mainly head and profile shots of local Bilen peasants. There was a picture of a Takaruri man holding up the skin of a baby crocodile, and one of a Sudanese merchant smiling, his hands held out over his goods. The last picture was of a teenage Bilen girl, topless, her arms wrapped
around her waist, her expression hidden by ornate gold chains that draped down her forehead and from nose to ear. Jama’s eyes scanned the incredible image. He had only ever seen his mother naked, and this girl looked like a mythical creature, unearthly, he could not tell where or when the photo had been taken.

“Sta’frullah, God forgive us,” he said under his breath. He felt his hands burn as he held it, so he stuffed the photo with the others back into the drawer. Jama retrieved the twisted tube of balm and put the cigarettes in the waistband of his sarong. These Italians were becoming more and more perverse to him, he felt that they would corrupt his soul, no wonder his father, God have mercy on him, had fled them. He thumped the cigarette packet on the table and stomped off as Maggiore Leon shouted, “See you tomorrow,” at his back.

Jama slept in whichever tent had spare ground, not that he managed to sleep much. Millions of mosquitoes congregated in the camp, moving in battalions from body to body while they innocently slept. Jama seemed the only one driven to distraction by them. He constantly shifted around, rubbed his legs together, scratched his bites, and slapped his skin, irritating the men whose dreams he punctured. He used the Italian’s medicine but it just seemed to attract the beasts.

“Allah, you look like something pulled from the earth, what happened to you?” said Jibreel.

“What do you think happened?”

Jibreel felt guilty about Jama, the boy’s soul seemed dimmed. “I’ll get you some aloe,” he offered. “Why don’t you rest for a while?”

The aloe soothed his skin but Jama felt like something evil had entered him, as if a jinn were pounding his head with a club, alternately roasting him on a spit and plunging him into ice-cold water. He shivered and sweated, sweated and shivered
until his mat felt like a bucket of water had been sluiced over it. Jibreel watched over him and Jama heard his muffled voice through the pounding in his skull but couldn’t even turn his eyes toward him.

Jibreel folded his arms and unfolded them, took a heavy breath and bent down over Jama. “You have mosquito fever. I don’t know what I can do for you but I will go to the Italian clinic and see if they will give us anything.”

Jama couldn’t remember entering the tent or imagine ever leaving.

The medic refused to give Jibreel anything. The quinine for the askaris had run out and the more expensive medicines were reserved for Italian soldiers. Malaria pounded at Jama’s body and made him feel like he had been attacked by a madman. Without painkillers or quinine, he had to wait and see if this unseen madman would cause enough harm to kill him. Far above him his mother realigned the stars, bartered incense and beads so that the angels would spare her son, and browbeaten, they reluctantly complied.

Jama opened his eyes and instantly closed them again as a scorching wind blew across the plains and threw sand and grit into the tent. He shivered in the heat and rubbed his starved stomach. His skin buzzed with bites, red and angry like fire ants. With his leaden limbs too heavy to move, Jama raised his head and saw a pot on the fire. “Jibreel, get me some food.”

“Well done, Jama, you’re a clever boy, I thought you were gone,” Jibreel said.

“Get me food,” Jama growled. Unable to remember anything, he was in no mood for melodrama.

Before his descent into delirium, Jama had agreed to travel with the maggiore into Abyssinia, to a place called K’eftya, five
days’ journey from Omhajer through deserted land; the people had been cleared away to provide farming plots for the Italian colonists. Maggiore Leon took with him four Italian officers, thirteen Somali askaris, and twenty Eritreans in a convoy of speeding trucks to attack an Arbegnoch hideout. Maggiore Leon had a sick feeling about this trip, the emptiness of the landscape depressed him, and he wondered if Jama had disappeared because he had heard trouble was looming. The Italians slept in one truck, the Africans in the other two. Hyenas laughed all night, leopards panted, and watching Arbegnoch held back and waited for the Fascists to drop their guard. Lorenzo slept badly, so he was the first to hear the soft footsteps in the dark. He reached for his gun and clambered to his feet, whereupon Abraha the Fierce cut his throat from ear to ear. Abraha and his patriot gang, hidden by the colluding clouds, worked their way through the Fascist necks and then started on the Africans. They showed no mercy to the traitors, killing even the young Eritrean boy who had been sent to cook for the Italians. A few men ran screaming for their lives into the dark bush; only two returned to Omhajer to report the attack. When a second convoy went to reclaim the Italian corpses, they found them black with flies. The precious white skin had been sliced clean off their faces.

Jama heard about the attack from Jibreel and didn’t know how to feel. Jama’s clansmen had been killed in one of the trucks, and they discussed how the Italians had buried them in mass graves without any prayers. Jama had escaped two deaths in a matter of days but he still felt pursued, he stayed in the tent longer than he needed to, scared of the dangers that lurked outside. The image of the maggiore’s skinned face haunted Jama’s dreams, as did Abraha’s dagger. Only when he heard the other
askaris complaining to Jibreel about the boy holed up in their tent, eating their food, did he rise and stagger to the office. He cast a weary gaze over the teahouse as he passed; it was full of new teaboys, Eritreans in long shirts and trousers, their deep pockets bulging with food pilfered from the tables.

“It’s you, is it? Well, your Hebrew friend has gone to meet Jehovah, so if you want to keep working here you better do exactly as I say and never even so much as look at me in the wrong way, got that, Alfredo?”

Jama’s heart sank as he listened to his new superior. He could barely make out the rapid Italian but the cold gaze of the man was as clear as glass. Jama had a strong urge to flee but he lacked the courage or energy.

“Things are hotting up around here, and I need a disciplined, efficient team. I will take insubordination in this office as a form of treason against the empire,” the Italian bellowed to the men.

The office now teemed with soldiers and Eritrean askaris coming and going, preparing offensives against the patriots, reprisals against rebel villages, and purges of mutinous askaris. Jama couldn’t imagine a place for himself in this industrious beehive. The Italian grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and placed him by the desk. “Take this and keep the flies off me,” he demanded, thrusting a fly whisk into Jama’s hand.

Beside the thick arm of the Italian, a coiled hippopotamus-hide karbaash whip waited. Jama knew that despite the pain in his malaria-weak muscles he must continue or risk having his own skin whisked away. Unfortunate civilians and askaris carried the livid geography of lashes on their backs. The Italians used hippopotamus because the tough hide cut through human
skin like a razor. One hundred lashes were enough to kill a healthy man, and they were generous with the blows. Jama felt that one stroke of the whip would probably send him to jannah in his delicate state. Standing so close, Jama could count the thin strands of hair greased over the Italian’s pate. He scrutinized the thick line of dirt under the man’s fingernails, the color of old blood.

Jama stood in the busy street after work. He felt strange and dirty, and he hoped he might find familiar company to lose himself in. Dust kicked up by pedestrians and donkey carts glittered in the setting sun, a crowd came up the dirt road. In its midst a local Takaruri crocodile hunter carried a large drum. He was as-saayih, a town crier, and he marched somberly and ceremoniously.

He addressed the bystanders in a sad voice: “Fighters of the land, the seas, and the air, blackshirts of the revolution and the legions, men and women of Italy, of the empire—listen. By decree of Emperor Vittorio Emanuele, all possessions held by the natives of Italian East Africa are deemed to be held only in trust and their true ownership will be adjudicated by colonial legislators. All hunting, fishing, and trapping is prohibited without permission from colonial authorities. O people, hear me, they are telling us we own nothing, and we cannot kill a thing for our mouths without asking them first.” The crowd laughed uncertainly.

“Oh no, this is no joke, my people! They are saying they own everything that lives. These locusts will take the food out of our children’s mouths,” roared the town crier. Jama walked alongside him as he made the announcement at every corner, his voice getting hoarser and more tragic with every declaration.

Jama pulled at the man’s sleeve as they walked. “What will you do? Will you still catch crocodiles?” he asked.

“No, son, not around here. When a jackal is shitting, the ants give it space. I will find some other work for the moment.”

Jama was surprised by the hunter. He could wrestle with man-eating crocodiles but like everyone else had been beaten by the arrogance and violence of the Fascists.

“You’re late, Alfredo!” barked the Italian as Jama ran in one morning. He avoided looking at the angry red face. He had developed a terrible fear of invoking someone’s unrestrained anger; he knew what some people were capable of and hated being around reckless fury. He didn’t try to explain that his sickness had still not left his body. “Scusami, signore,” muttered Jama as he reached for the fly whisk. Jama caught his breath as the Italian grabbed the karbaash and struck him on the palm. Tears shot out of Jama’s eyes and his hand curled up like a leaf in a fire. The Italian stared into Jama’s eyes and Jama stared back, waiting for a glimmer of remorse.