In a Free State Part 20

Slowly, the man's legs stopped rocking. He giggled.

Linda got up. 'I think we should be starting.'

Bobby smiled and sipped his tea.

'You knew Mr McCartland?' the man asked, after a time.

'I didn't know him.' Bobby stood up.

'He died when he was very young,' the man said, following Bobby and Linda out into the yard and the road, where the dust was still settling. 'He was a great racer. He used to drive early in the mornings from here to the capital at a hundred miles an hour.'

Bobby, walking slowly, looking up at the sky, not acknowledging the man's farewells, said, 'That's what we'll have to do now to get to the Collectorate before the curfew.'

They got into the car. The Indian went up to his verandah and watched them reverse in the garage yard. The dust began to billow again. When they drove away dust blotted out the road.

Linda said, 'Do you believe that man drove to the capital at a hundred miles an hour?'

'Do you?'

'I wonder why he said that.'

At the junction the shops were as closed and blank as before. The bleached Africans on the tin advertis.e.m.e.nts grinned; shadows had lengthened below the eaves.

They turned into the highway and rolled down their windows. The sun slanted through the scratched dusty windscreen. Everything in the car was coated with dust; on the dashboard every little grain of dust cast a minute shadow. On the soft tar, on the righthand side of the road, Bobby saw one of the tracks he had made when he had driven back to the village. All his other tracks had been obliterated, by treads of a chunkier pattern. More than one heavy vehicle had pa.s.sed, keeping more or less to the left, heading towards the Collectorate.

Bobby drove cautiously. He came again to the stretch of subsidence where the road, soft tar on an uneven surface, appeared to billow and melt. Here was where he had stopped: something still remained of the curving tracks where he had turned.

'Are we very late?' Linda said.

'We've only lost about half an hour. But I imagine you'll smile sweetly at them and they'll give us a cup of tea.'

They both smiled, as though they had both won.

At first with private smiles, and then with fixed faces, they drove through the hot afternoon air, shadows beginning to fall on the road, slanting towards them from the right; and neither of them exclaimed when, abruptly, they saw Leopard Tor again, nearer now and larger, half in sun and half in shadow, its vertical wall less sheer, its sloping side, tufted with forest, more jagged.

Linda said, 'Do you believe he's really going to Cairo?'

'He's lying,' Bobby said. 'Everybody lies.'

She smiled.

Then she saw what Bobby was gazing at, at the end of the road: the column of army lorries whose tyre-tracks they had been following.

9.

HE HUNG BACK. He speeded up. He hung back again. Neither he nor Linda spoke. Leopard Tor, rising out of bush, was always to the right, its forested slope in shadow. The vegetation beside the highway had subtly altered. It was still scrub; no crops grew on it; but it was acquiring a rainy tropical lushness. They came nearer and nearer the lorries, a column of five, their slanting shadows falling just over the asphalt and jigging along the irregularities of the verge. Sometimes, through a break in the vegetation, Bobby and Linda could see the purely tropical land beyond the Tor, the territory of the king's people, a vast sunlit woodland, seemingly empty, with only scattered patches of a browner haze to show where, in that bush, the villages were.

The green-capped soldiers sitting with rifles at the back of the last lorry scowled at the car. The faces of the soldiers behind them were in shadow. Then Bobby saw the driver. His face and his cap, shakily reflected in profile in the wing-mirror of the cab, made a featureless black outline against a background of dazzle. Sometimes, when the lorry b.u.mped, or when he turned to look at the mirror and Bobby, the face caught a yellow shine from the sun.

So for a time Bobby and Linda drove on, keeping at a fixed distance from the last lorry. Behind the tailboard, with its heraldic regimental emblem, the soldiers continued to scowl. Intermittently Bobby felt the gaze of the driver; every now and then that face in the mirror shone.

Linda said, 'If we go on at this rate we'll certainly be late.'

'It's not easy to overtake on this road,' Bobby said. 'It winds so much.'

They drove on. The soldiers continued to stare.

Linda said, 'We're probably making them anxious.'

Bobby didn't smile.

They came to a stretch of road that was straight and undeniably clear.

Bobby sounded his horn and pulled out to overtake. The soldiers became alert. Bobby, accelerating, looked up at them, looked away, too quickly, and was dazzled by the sun. He began to overtake, sounding his horn. The lorry moved to the right. Spots streamed before Bobby's eyes; he raced; he was already almost off the road. The lorry continued to move to the right. Bobby was driving beside it. He felt his right wheels mount the verge. The ditch came close. He braked and the car bucked and b.u.mped. The lorry pulled away. The soldiers' faces creased into friendly smiles. The cab-mirror reflected the driver's laugh: suddenly he had a face. Then that reflection was lost. The car was askew on the verge. The lorry moved further away, fell back into line. The soldiers' faces became indistinct. A khaki-clad arm came out from the driver's cab and flapped about awkwardly, hand swinging from the wrist: it was a signal to overtake.

Linda said, 'When you meet the army, play dead.'

The back of Bobby's shirt was wet. His face began to burn. He felt the heat of the engine, the bonnet, the windscreen. The air was warm; the floor of the car was warm. Hot sweat broke out afresh all over his body. His eyes p.r.i.c.ked; his trousers stuck to his shins.

He started the car and took it off the verge. Once more he followed the tracks of the lorries, chunky zipper-patterns on the soft asphalt. He drove slowly, never more than thirty-five miles an hour; and still from time to time they saw the lorries. The Tor grew larger; haze softened its shadowed forested slope. The afternoon light grew smoky.

And now the highway opened up, and for miles ahead was as straight as a Roman road, swinging from hill to hill. The army lorries, small in the distance, climbed, disappeared, and then were seen to climb again. They were entering the territory of the king's people; and the highway here followed the ancient forest road. For centuries, using only the products of the forest, earth, reeds, the king's people had built their roads as straight as this, over hills, across swamps. From far away Bobby could see the small whitewashed stone building, a police post, that stood at the boundary of the king's territory. But the flag that flew there today wasn't the king's flag. It was the flag of the president's country.

Near the stone building the lorries turned off the road, and the road was empty again. But Bobby didn't drive any faster. There was no longer any point; it was past four, the hour of the curfew. Soon they could see the low, sprawling modern building, gla.s.s and coloured concrete, as bright as beads, that the Americans had built in the bush as a gift to the new country. It had been intended as a school, and symbolically it straddled the king's territory and the president's. It had been visited but never used; there had been neither pupils nor teachers; it had remained empty. It had a use today. The cleared s.p.a.ce in front, partly bushed-over again, was full of lorries. And in the shade of the lorries there were groups of fat soldiers.

No barrier stood in the road here; no one waved them down. But Bobby stopped: the school, the lorries and the soldiers to his left, the stone building, over which the president's flag flew, across the road to his right. The soldiers didn't look at the car. No one came out of the stone building. Beyond the Tor was bright woodland, extending to the horizon through a deepening smoke haze.

'Do we wait for them here?' Linda said.

Bobby didn't reply.

'Perhaps there's no curfew,' Linda said.

A soldier was looking at them. He was shorter than the soldiers he stood with, near the open tailboard of a lorry. He was drinking from a tin cup.

'Perhaps the colonel got it wrong,' Linda said.

'Did he?' Bobby said.

The soldier moved away from the group by the tailboard, shook out his tin cup, and walked slowly towards the car. His head was shaved and bare. His stiff khaki trousers were creased below his paunch and down the round thighs that rubbed against one another. He sucked at the inside of his fat cheeks and bunched his lips and spat, carefully, leaning to one side to let the spittle drain out from his lips. He smiled at the car.

Then they saw the prisoners. They were sitting on the ground; some were prostrate; most were naked. It was their nakedness that had camouflaged them in the sun-and-shade about the shrubs, small trees and lorries. Bright eyes were alive in black flesh; but there was little movement among the prisoners. They were the slender, small-boned, very black people of the king's tribe, a clothed people, builders of roads. But such dignity as they had possessed in freedom had already gone; they were only forest people now, in the hands of their enemies. Some were roped up in the traditional forest way, neck to neck, in groups of three or four, as though for delivery to the slave-merchant. All showed the liver-coloured marks of blood and beatings. One or two looked dead.

The soldier smiled, wet hand holding the wet tin cup, and came near the car.

Bobby, preparing a smile, leaned across Linda and, with his left hand freeing the wet native shirt from his left armpit, asked, 'Who your officer? Who your boss-man?'

Linda looked away from the soldier to the whitewashed stone building and the flag, the Tor and the smoking woodland.

The soldier pressed his belly against the car door and the smell of his warm khaki mingled with the smell of the sweat from Bobby's open left armpit and his yellow back. The soldier looked at Bobby and Linda and looked into the car, and spoke softly in a complicated forest language.

'Who your boss-man?' Bobby asked again.

'Let's drive on, Bobby,' Linda said. 'They're not interested in us. Let's drive on.'

Bobby pointed to the stone building. 'Boss-man there?'

The soldier spoke again, this time to Linda, in his language.

She said irritably, 'I don't understand,' and looked straight ahead.

The soldier behaved as though he had been slapped. He gave a sheepish smile and took a step back from the car. He shook out his tin cup; he stopped smiling. He said softly, 'Don' un'erstan'. Don' un'erstan'.' He looked down at the body of the car, the doors, the wheels, as though searching for something. Then he turned and began to walk back to his group.

Bobby opened his door and got out. It was cool; the sweated shirt was chill on his back; but the tar was soft below his feet. He could see the prisoners more clearly now. He could see the smoke from the woodland beyond the Tor. Not haze, not afternoon cooking-fires: in that bush, villages were on fire. The rebuffed soldier was talking to his comrades. Bobby tried not to see. His instinct was to get back in the car and drive without stopping to the compound. But he controlled himself. Quickly, right hand swinging, he crossed the bright road into the dusty yard and the shadow cast by the stone building, and went through the open door.

As soon as he entered he knew he had made a mistake. But it was too late to withdraw. In the cool dark room, with its desks and chairs pushed to the walls, with the new photograph of the president on the green noticeboard, among old notices about rates and taxes and wanted criminals and other printed and duplicated lists, there was no officer, no policeman. Three soldiers with shaved heads were sitting below the window on the concrete floor, their caps on their knees. They all stood up as Bobby entered.

'I'm a government officer,' Bobby said.

'Sir!' one of the soldiers said, and they all stood to attention.

'Who your officer? Who your boss-man?'

They didn't reply and Bobby didn't know how, after his good start, to continue.

They saw his hesitation and they ceased to be nervous. They relaxed. Their faces became full of inquiry.

The soldier in the middle said, 'No boss-man.'

Bobby felt he had used the wrong word. He looked from the soldier in the middle to the soldier on the right, the fattest of the three, the one who had called him sir. 'You give pa.s.s here?'

The fat soldier's cheeks rode up to his small liquid eyes. He waved his right hand slowly in front of his face, showing Bobby the palm.

'No pa.s.s,' the soldier in the middle said.

Bobby looked at him. 'Mr w.a.n.ga-Butere my boss-man.' Smiling, he held his hands in front of him to indicate an enormous paunch, and he pretended to stagger under the weight. 'Mr Busoga-Kesoro my big boss-man.'

They didn't smile.

'Busoga-Kesoro,' the fat soldier said, studying Bobby's face, and working his cheeks and lips as though gathering spittle. 'Busoga-Kesoro.'

'You no have curfew?' Bobby said.

'Car-few,' the fat soldier said.

The soldier in the middle said, 'Car-few.'

'What time you have car-few? Four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock?'

'Five o'clock,' the fat soldier said. 'Six o'clock.'

Bobby held out his wrist and pointed to his watch. 'Four? Five? Six?'

'You give me?' the fat soldier said, and held Bobby's wrist.

Black skin on pink: they all looked.

The fat soldier moved his thumb over the dial of the watch. His eyes were friendly, womanish. His cheeks and lips began to work again.

The soldier in the middle unb.u.t.toned the pocket of his tunic and took out a crushed, half-empty packet of cigarettes. It was the brand which, in the advertis.e.m.e.nts, laughing Africans smoked.

Outside, lorries were revving up. There was chatter and shouting. Boots grated on asphalt; cab-doors slammed. Lorries whined away in low gear.

'I no give you,' Bobby said. 'I no have no more.'

He had made a joke. They all laughed.

'No have no more,' the fat soldier said, and let Bobby's wrist drop.

'I go,' Bobby said.

He walked towards the door. He had a view of the sunlit road, the dusty yard with its diagonal line of shadow, the insect-spattered front of his car.

'Boy!'

He stopped; it was his error. He turned, to face the dark room.

It was the soldier in the middle who had spoken. He was holding out an unlit cigarette, very white, between his middle and index fingers.

'I give you cigarette, boy.'

'I no smoke,' Bobby said.

'I give you. Come, I give you.'

And Bobby walked from the door and the brightness towards the soldiers, preferring that what was going to happen should happen here, in the dark room, rather than in the open, before the others.

The soldier's hand was outstretched still, open, palm down, the cigarette perpendicular between the middle and index fingers. Then the fingers widened, the cigarette fell, and in that same movement of finger-widening the palm came up at Bobby's face, only clawing, it seemed, but then landing hard on his chin. The other hand tore at the yellow native shirt.

'I report you,' Bobby said, falling back. 'I report you.'

The other soldiers were behind him, to support him as he fell, to seize and twist his arms with practised hands; and it seemed then that the soldier in front of him was maddened not by his words but by the sound and sight of the torn shirt. He tore again and again at the shirt and the vest below the shirt, and with the right hand that had held the cigarette he clawed with clumsy rage at Bobby's face as though wishing to seize it by the nose, chin and cheeks alone.