Slow Birds: And Other Stories

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Slow Birds: And Other Stories Page 7

by Ian Watson


  The news seemed to be lasting an inordinately long time. What was happening in the world? The news must be vitally important to bother relaying it all the way to the middle of nowhere for their special benefit. Harry imagined the radio waves passing through a grazing rhino en route, printing cartoon pictures like X-rays on its huffer-puffer lungs …

  If only he could just sit happily glazed like Desai, an idol among his incense, enjoying his own confusion! Harry was no more experiencing visions of the truth than Desai’s slides of lions copulating were other than jumbled blurs …

  ‘Leopard,’ announced Desai, as though reading Harry’s thoughts. ‘Let’s go and find leopard. It’s time.’ He rose.

  ‘But you can’t drive around in the dark when you’ve just been …’ Helen tailed off, lost in the maze of her own words.

  ‘You’ll be safe with me, Madam. You said we would go out and look for leopard. That was the agreement. Are you trying to back out? You’ll make me an angry man.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ Helen whispered.

  Harry could see the sense in her caution, but on the other hand there was a perfectly simple way out. It was night; their own tent was some way off.

  ‘We’ll go to our tent first,’ Harry told Desai. He spoke in a manner which left no doubt. ‘And when we’re there,’ he muttered to Helen, ‘we’ll see …’

  Harry helped his wife up. ‘Many thanks for the meal!’ he called to the two Asian women. Prom the back of the tent, where they had both retired, Desai’s wife and aunt smiled and nodded.

  ‘Isn’t your uncle coming?’ asked Harry.

  The gaunt man made a negative gesture, spreading his hands flat on the bed, two branches of grey veins.

  Outside, it was pitch black. The moon had disappeared. The fires in the hills had either moved nearer, or else new fires had sprung up on the plain, though this didn’t make the darkness any less dark. Drums were throbbing in the night, somewhere. Or perhaps this was the beat of Harry’s own blood?

  Helen was very reluctant to follow Harry into the black depths of the Peugeot.

  ‘What’s the matter with English Madam?’ demanded Desai. ‘Your gentleman’s in the car!’

  ‘We’d rather walk, thanks.’

  ‘You’re joking! What about the wild animals?’

  ‘I’m sure they won’t come into the camp.’

  ‘Won’t come into the camp! Last month a woman like you went to the toilet in the middle of the night and met a lion. My friend the German hunter had to chase him away with fireworks. So don’t insult me.’

  ‘We’d rather walk to clear our heads. It was so stuffy …’

  ‘What’s this stuffy?’

  ‘Harry, please get out of the car and we’ll walk.’

  ‘Helen, please,’ came her husband’s voice. ‘We’re just going to our tent in his car, don’t you understand?’

  ‘Damn fool woman, she annoys me,’ swore Desai. ‘What’s stuffy? You English come into our homes, then when you’re bored with looking at us … But you aren’t going to be bored. We’re going on a leopard hunt!’

  ‘Get in, will you!’ Harry hissed from the front seat.

  Helen did so, clambering into the back.

  As soon as Desai had switched the engine on, he leaned over swiftly and locked Helen’s door. While she was fumbling to try to unlock it and failing to find the catch in the dark, the Peugeot took off with a squeal of tyres. During the journey to their tent – where they were indeed heading, she was relieved to see – Desai alternately stamped on the accelerator and braked abruptly, shouting something over his shoulder about ‘drifts’. Helen couldn’t see any such thing and jarred her head against the window trying to. This bump on her brow, and the seesaw motion of her body as the car slowed and leapt ahead and slowed unpredictably, stopped her from solving the riddle of the lock.

  ‘Have you ever slept with native girls, Mister Harry?’ enquired Desai conversationally. ‘No, of course you haven’t. They’re filth. We Asians like white skin. Stupid Europeans, lying on beaches burning yourselves black!’

  By now their own VW was framed by the headlights; and there stood the tent next to it. This time Desai braked as though he had spotted a crevasse opening up in front of his Peugeot. Stretching over, he flipped the passenger door open and fairly bundled Harry out. Before Helen knew what was happening the Peugeot sped off again, throwing her back against the upholstery. The open door where Harry had sat swung wildly to and fro as Desai raced the car onwards through the scanty bush, swerving to avoid trees and termite mounds.

  ‘Now you won’t be bored, Madam!’ The driver laughed. ‘Desai’s little joke, this.’

  ‘I want to go back now,’ she cried in anger. She tried to suppress the panic of her body, uncertain how far Desai intended to carry his joke; or whether he might not simply be driving her round in a big circle back to their tent, to frighten her into making a fool of herself.

  Take me back now,’ she said sternly.

  ‘Soon, soon, Madam. Don’t panic yourself.’

  The headlight beams bounced across termite heaps, thick pencils of hardest stone; across great bovine skulls with horns; across burnt treetrunks – none of which Desai hit, by a miracle. Perhaps he had driven like this many times, practising? If she did solve the door lock and leap out, she would probably break a leg.

  ‘First we’re going to find leopard. Then I’ll take you back to your fine husband, Madam.’

  Ahead there was fire. A licking wall of red flames. The flames weren’t very high nor were they moving fast, though a sudden wind could whip them up. Then they would race away through the bush like a pack of athletes in red shirts. The fire wound through the bush in a snaking line, grazing on the straw, leaving a smoking black desert behind. Such a long line of fire! Desai steered deliberately close to the flames as if daring them to singe his tyres. The mad jaws of the flames crackled audibly as they ate the land.

  Abruptly Helen clutched over Desai’s shoulder for the steering wheel, though she couldn’t say what use there would be in catching hold of it, or wrenching it to left or right. Desai imprisoned her wrists in one big brown hand. Steering seesaw with his free hand he pulled Helen forward across the seat where Harry had been sitting.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she cried.

  Desai laughed in her face. ‘I know! I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m not thinking that! Take me back!’

  ‘You’re not thinking what, Madam? Er, stuffy means dirty, doesn’t it, kind of dirty?’

  ‘It doesn’t. You’re wrong.’

  ‘So you say. But let’s see a leopard, shall we?’ He released her, and she drew back. ‘That’s all I want to show you, then back we go, deliver you safe to your husband, eh?’

  During this exchange, Desai had let the car wander. All of a sudden the fire was directly ahead: a narrow flower border crowded with red roses curving to right and left. Instead of braking or trying to swerve, Desai gunned the engine.

  ‘Now sit still, Madam Helen, or your goose’ll be cooked!’

  Desai raced the Peugeot straight through the fire and braked sharply, upwind of the flames. Now the route back to the camp was blocked by a low wall of fire which only a very foolhardy woman wearing a light cotton dress would dream of skipping over. Desai switched off, though he left the headlights on. Pocketing the keys he jumped out and walked once around the Peugeot to inspect it. He held his hand down to the still-smoking earth to see how hot it was. Satisfied, he stuck his head through the driver’s window. Helen had huddled into the rear of the car.

  ‘I’m not such a fool, Madam Helen. I don’t think I will touch you. Even my friend the German would be upset if I did such a foolish thing. But we won’t see leopard here with this fire about, so I shall just take your picture a few times before we head back to your husband. In the nude, eh? I’ll take your photograph with no clothes on, then I’ll take you back. But I’ll not take you back until.’

  ‘If that’s your idea, we can s
it here till dawn.’

  ‘No, that isn’t my idea, Madam. My idea is that if you don’t pose for my picture you can walk back yourself. No harm in pictures, Madam Helen.’

  ‘Stop calling me by that stupid name!’

  ‘No one knows anything about these pictures except you and me, Madam Helen. And I can call you what I like. Why not slap my face? Ah, but you’d have to touch me then! And I might touch you.’

  ‘I’ll report this to the police. I will!’

  ‘Have you tried reporting anything to the police? They have such odd ways of looking at things. They mightn’t be able to see any crime here, but they might think it was a crime for a government servant like your husband to be smoking bhang when he should be drawing up the budget. That’s the way their brains work. Twenty-four hours’ notice! Pack your bags and get out! Take my word for it, they have simple minds.’

  And Desai lit a cigarette. He puffed it through cupped hands. His lips didn’t touch the cigarette; they only touched his brown stained hand. With the cigarette held thus at right angles to his mouth, he sucked smoke out of his fist like a conjuror …

  Desai considered Helen, in the headlight beams. Though he had insisted she remove her white socks along with everything else, he had let her step back into her sandals. After all, the soles of her feet weren’t those of an African woman! They weren’t horny pads impervious to thorns; and he mustn’t injure Helen, not physically.

  He examined her, naked in the hot burnt night, through his viewfinder. An auburn head of hair, cut short, haloed an oval face with startled, shamed eyes. Mascara like brown tears rimmed the lids. Her nose was small, her chin childishly dimpled. She shaved her armpits, but not her crotch. Her flesh was amber from visits to the beach, though albino bands cut across her bosom and her loins thanks to a bikini; this made her breasts seem larger and rather shapeless as though they spread out around her whole chest …

  He frowned. ‘Not there! Away from the car! Nearer to the fire. I have flashbulbs.’

  ‘Have you?’

  He motioned her impatiently; and she trod awkwardly towards the crackling line of flames. Odd, he thought, how ungainly her stride became when she was reduced to bare essentials.

  ‘You don’t walk very gracefully, Madam!’

  ‘Don’t I? What a pity.’

  ‘You couldn’t carry a bundle of firewood on your head. But never mind! Stand there. Touch your toes then throw your arms right up in the air, high and wide.’

  ‘I didn’t say I’d do tricks for you.’

  ‘Oh come on, Madam. I want good photos!’

  The first flashbulb popped off, blinding Helen with white light. Then another, and a third. The radiance dazzled her. Glowing after-images cavorted.

  Suddenly, right in front of her, a scream tore the silence. A crashing, a growling violence! Then another piercing, deafening cry of agony, which bubbled away like sea-foam into sand. She staggered, though nothing had touched her except the noise.

  Through the fading auras of exploding stars, picked out faintly by the flames behind and the backwash from the car’s headlights, Helen saw Desai’s body lying crumpled and torn on the black soil – and a great spotted cat astride him, shaking its head from side to side, thrashing its tail like a rope. Impossible! Impossible! No wild animal would ever rush in the direction of flames and flashbulbs!

  She froze. She blinked frantically, to see.

  A man straightened up from the corpse: an African man dressed in ragged trousers and a shirt so torn that it had become a waistcoat. She thought that the man’s feet were thickly caked with soot and cinders till she realized that he was wearing sandals cut from old tyre rubber. The man’s right arm hung down as though he was gripping a panga in his hand, but in fact he was holding nothing; certainly no long blood-soaked blade. Yet Desai’s body looked badly mauled.

  The man approached her. She covered her crotch with both hands, as nonchalantly as she could. He stepped right up to her. She smelt sweet strong body odour. His eyes had milky webs inside them like strings of burst boiled egg in water.

  ‘Who are you?’ Her voice was feeble. ‘U nani?’

  ‘We almost met earlier today, Memsahib. I am chui, the leopard.’

  ‘We almost met? What do you mean?’

  ‘I was running along the road. Now I have caught up with you.’

  ‘What?’ she gasped.

  ‘Hapo zamani palikuwa na mtu, Memsahib …’ It was the traditional way a tale began. He continued in English. ‘Long ago there was a man, who was knocked down on that road by a driver who did not stop. So I lay there, hurt, and a leopard found me. And ate me. So I became the leopard. Now no one can catch me when I run. But I was always good at running. Memsahib. I won the rickshaw races quite often.’

  ‘Rickshaw races?’

  ‘Oh yes. In the old days, which are not so long ago, the white Bwanas used to get drunk, and when they got drunk they would spill out of the bar of the New Africa Hotel to organize the Great Rickshaw Race – from the New Africa all the way along the harbour front to the railway station then back again. The native who could pull the hardest and run the fastest would win five shillings – a little fortune!’

  ‘Oh my God … This is madness.’

  ‘Madness? Not so. Madness is having your soul caught in a cage. That man was catching your soul.’

  ‘By taking my picture? No, that’s nonsense. Why, even the Masai sell you the right to take their photo for a shilling or two. They don’t mind.’

  ‘Yes! With your nakedness pictured in his collection, he would always have owned you.’

  ‘Maybe just a little bit… till I left the country.’

  ‘Always! He would have been gloating over you constantly, showing you to his friends. You would have felt your soul touched in England or America.’

  ‘What are you? Are you human?’

  ‘I told you, I am chui.’

  ‘And it was really you we passed running along the road? It must have been – or how else could you have known? But we didn’t stop. So why did you …?’

  ‘Why did I kill this man for you?’

  ‘It’s out of proportion. He has a family. It’s horrible. Is he truly dead?’

  ‘His veins and nerves are torn by my filthy claws. His throat is bitten through. This way, Memsahib, I have caught your soul, not him. Wherever you go to in the world, I can always find you.’

  ‘All because we didn’t stop. That’s out of proportion too.’

  ‘It was a sign to me, of a million other things.’

  ‘If we had stopped …’

  ‘Ah, but you didn’t! You would never wish to stop. But you wished that this man’s heart would stop and he would fall down dead. All to save your shame. Your white spotless pride. White as the excreta of diseased dogs.’

  ‘What do you want? What should I do?’

  ‘Clean yourself. You’re unclean. You have pissed yourself. Your urine has run down your legs.’

  Helen realized that this was true. ‘You’re worse than him,’ she shouted. ‘Much much worse.’

  He laughed. ‘Why did you ever come to this country? That’s what you’re thinking now. And I say: why indeed?’

  To help. I came to help.’

  ‘No. You came to use. You use so many things: cars, refrigerators, electricity, oil, roads, gin, whisky. You need them all. And you use so many people. By coming here, you use Africa. Then home you go again with the spoils: the pictures, the carvings, the zebra skin drums, the bonus and the happy memories of servants. And you bind us to you also, with your things: your used clothes, your used money, your trash.’ He leaned even closer. ‘One day, Memsahib, all your things will burn, just as the grass burns here. But nothing new will sprout. Your land and your air and your water will be poison. I see it! You will be burnt one day, along with England and America. But I have caught your soul. So you will come back here to the womb. I shall make you be born, as a little shy dik-dik or a zebra foal. Then I will hunt you. You will reme
mber nothing but that I will always hunt you till I catch you – and eat you. Then your flesh will repay what you have taken from us. Just wait for the fire that comes, Memsahib!’

  Helen fainted.

  When she roused, the African had gone. Her body was hot and sooty from lying where she had sprawled. Her legs were sticky where she had wet them. She scrambled up. The car headlights still glared. The line of fire hadn’t moved far. Desai’s body lay brokenly, his camera nearby.

  Nerving herself, she darted close to him and seized the camera. The film inside! She tried to release it but the camera was unfamiliar. Besides, she realized that she was smearing ashen fingerprints all over. So she ran back to the line of flames, braving the heat as closely as she dared, and tossed the camera where it would burn, be fused, disfigured. Then she walked back to the Peugeot, fumbled for her underclothes and dress, put them on.

  There was no key in the ignition. No: it would be in the dead man’s pocket. She hesitated. She couldn’t bear to go back and touch him. Anyway, she mustn’t take his car.

  She walked away at random through the night. After a while, off to her right, she heard a throaty growl. Hastily she changed direction. But she mustn’t run; she mustn’t run.

  A softer growl came from her left … correcting her.

  As she walked through the blackness, the faint pat of padding paws accompanied her.

  She couldn’t understand why the camp was so dark and silent when she reached it. Surely that German hunter should be out searching? Surely the Asians’ tent ought to show a light? Surely Harry …?

  She made her way to their tent, with the VW parked beside it.

  The flap was unzipped.

  ‘Harry? Harry?’

  ‘Eh?’ Sudden commotion in the darkness inside. A flashlight snapped on, dazzling her. Quickly this was redirected towards the paraffin lamp, which Harry lit fumblingly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Helen, are you all right?’

 

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