by Wilbur Smith
In one great swoop that left their guts behind them, they were carried over the coral which could have minced them into jelly, and tumbled into the quiet lagoon. With them went little Mohammed, and what remained of the raft.
The lagoon was covered by a thick scum of wind spume, creamy as the head of a good beer. So when the three of them staggered waist-deep towards the beach, supporting each other with arms around shoulders, they were coated with white froth. It made them look like a party of drunken snowmen returning home after a long night out.
– 18 –
Mohammed squatted with a pile of madafu, the shiny green coconuts, beside him. The beach was littered with them, for the storm had stripped the trees. He worked in feverish haste with Sebastian’s hunting knife, his face frosted with dried salt, mumbling to himself through cracked and swollen lips, shaving down through the white, fibrous material of the shell until he exposed the hollow centre filled with its white custard and effervescent milk. At this point the madafu was snatched from his hands by either Flynn. or Sebastian. His despair growing deeper, he watched for a second the two white men drinking with heads thrown back, throats pulsing as they swallowed, spilled milk trickling from the corners of their mouths, eyes closed tight in their intense pleasure; then he picked up another nut and got to work on it. He opened a dozen before he was able to satiate the other two, and he held the next nut to his own mouth and whimpered with eagerness.
Then they slept. Bellies filled with the sweet, rich milk, they sagged backwards on the sand and slept the rest of that day and that night, and when they woke, the wind had dropped, although the sea still burst like an artillery bombardment on the reef.
‘Now,’ said Flynn, ‘where, in the name of the devil and all his angels, are wet Neither Sebastian nor Mohammed answered him. ‘We were six days on the raft. We could have drifted hundreds of miles south before the storm pushed us in.’ He frowned as he considered the problem. ‘We might even have reached Portuguese Mozambique. We could be as far as the Zambezi river.’
Flynn focused his attention on Mohammed. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Search for a river, or a mountain that you know. Better still, find a village where we can get food – and bearers.’
‘I’ll go also,’ Sebastian volunteered.
‘You wouldn’t know the difference between the Zambezi and the Mississippi,’ Flynn grunted impatiently. ‘You’d be lost after the first hundred yards.’
Mohammed was gone for two days and a half, but Sebastian and Flynn ate well in his absence.
Under a sun shelter of palm fronds they feasted three times a day on crab and sand-clams, and big green rock-lobster which Sebastian fished from the lagoon, baking them in their shells over the fire that Flynn coaxed from two dry sticks.
On the first night the entertainment was provided by Flynn. For some years now, Flynn’s intake of gin had averaged a daily two bottles. The abrupt cessation of supply resulted in a delayed but classic visitation of delirium tremens. He spent half the night hobbling up and down the beach brandishing a branch of driftwood and hurling obscenities at the phantoms that had come to plague him. There was one purple cobra in particular which pursued him doggedly, and it was only after Flynn had beaten it noisily to death behind a palm tree, that he allowed Sebastian to lead him back to the shelter and seat him beside the camp-fire. Then he got the shakes. He shook like a man on a jack-hammer. His teeth rattled together with such violence that Sebastian was sure they must shatter. Gradually, however, the shakes subsided and by the following noon he was able to eat three large rock-lobsters and then collapse into a death-like sleep.
He woke in the late evening, looking as well as Sebastian had ever seen him, to greet the returning Mohammed and the dozen tall Angoni tribesmen who accompanied him. They returned Flynn’s greeting with respect. From Beira to Dar es Salaam, the name ‘Fini’ was held in universal awe by the indigenous peoples. Legend credited him with powers far above the natural order. His exploits, his skill with the rifle, his volcanic temper and his seeming immunity from death and retribution, had formed the foundation of a belief that Flynn had carefully fostered. They said in whispers around the night fires when the women and the children were not listening that ‘Fini’ was in truth a reincarnation of the Monomatapa. They said further that in the intervening period between his death as the Great King and his latest birth as ‘Fini’, he had been first a monstrous crocodile, and then Mowana Lisa, the most notorious man-eating lion in the history of East Africa, a predator responsible for at least three hundred human killings. The day, twenty-five years previously, that Flynn had stepped ashore at Port Amelia was the exact day that Mowana Lisa had been shot dead by the Portuguese Chef D’Post at Sofala. All men knew these things – and only an idiot would take chances with ‘Fini’ – hence the respect with which they greeted him now.
Flynn recognized one of the men. ‘Luti,’ he roared, ‘you scab on an hyena’s backside!’
Luti smiled broadly, and bobbed his head in pleasure at being singled out by Flynn.
‘Mohammed,’ Flynn turned to his man. ‘Where did you find him? Are we near his villager
‘We are a day’s march away.’
‘In which direction?’
‘North.’
‘Then we are in Portuguese territory!’ exalted Flynn. ‘We must have drifted down past the Rovuma river.’
The Rovuma river was the frontier between Portuguese Mozambique and German East Africa. Once in Portuguese territory, Flynn was immune from the wrath of the Germans. All their efforts at extraditing him from the Portuguese had proved unsuccessful, for Flynn had a working agreement with the Chef D’Post, Mozambique, and through him with the Governor in Lorenço Marques. In a manner of speaking, these two officials were sleeping partners in Flynn’s business, and were entitled to a quarterly financial statement of Flynn’s activities, and an agreed percentage of the profits.
‘You can relax, Bassie boy. Old Fleischer can’t touch us now. And in three or four days we’ll be home.’
The first leg of the journey took them to Luti’s village. Lolling in their maschilles, hammock-like litters slung beneath a long pole and carried by four of Luti’s men at a synchronized jog trot, Flynn and Sebastian were borne smoothly out of the coastal lowland into the hills and bush country.
The litter-bearers sang as they ran, and their deep melodious voices, coupled with the swinging motion of the maschille, lulled Sebastian into a mood of deep contentment. Occasionally he dozed. Where the path was wide enough to allow the maschilles to travel side by side, he lay and chatted with Flynn, at other times he watched the changing country and the animal life along the way. It was better than London Zoo.
Each time Sebastian saw something new, he called across for Flynn to identify it.
In every glade and clearing were herds of the golden-brown impala; delicate little creatures that watched them in wide-eyed curiosity as they passed.
Troops of guinea-fowl, like a dark cloud shadow on the earth, scratched and chittered on the banks of every stream.
Heavy, yellow eland, with their stubby horns and swinging dewlaps, trotting in Indian file, formed a regal frieze along the edge of the bush.
Sable and roan antelope; purple-brown waterbuck, with a perfect circle of white branded on their rumps; buffalo, big and black and ugly; giraffe, dainty little klip-springer, standing like chamois on the tumbled granite boulders of a kopje. The whole land seethed and skittered with life.
There were trees so strange in shape and size and foliage that Sebastian. could hardly credit them as existing. Swollen baobabs, fifty feet in circumference, standing awkwardly as prehistoric monsters, fat pods filled with cream of tartar hanging from their deformed branches. There were forests of msasa trees, leaves not green as leaves should be, but rose and chocolate and red. Fever trees sixty feet high, with bright yellow trunks, shedding their bark like the brittle parchment of a snake’s skin. Groves of mopani, whose massed foliage glittered a shiny, metallic green in the sun; and in
the jungle growth along the river banks, the lianas climbed up like long, grey worms and hung in loops and festoons among the wild fig and the buffalo-bean vines and the tree ferns.
‘Why haven’t we seen any sign of elephant?’ Sebastian asked.
‘Me and my boys worked this territory over about six months ago,’ Flynn explained. ‘I guess they just moved on a little – probably up north across the Rovuma.’
In the late afternoon they descended a stony path into a valley, and for the first time Sebastian saw the permanent habitations of man. In irregular shaped plots, the bottom land of the valley was cultivated, and the rich black soil threw up lush green stands of millet, while on the banks of the little stream stood Luti’s village; shaggy grass huts, shaped like beehives, each with a circular mud-walled granary standing on stilts beside it. The huts were arranged in a rough. circle around an open space where the earth was packed hard by the passage of bare feet.
The entire population turned out to welcome Flynn: three hundred souls, from hobbling old white heads with grinning toothless gums, down to infants held on mothers’ naked hips, who did not interrupt their feeding but clung like fat black limpets with hands and mouth to the breast.
Through the crowd that ululated and clapped hands in welcome, Flynn and Sebastian were carried to the chiefs hut and there they descended from the maschilles.
Flynn and the old chief greeted each other affectionately; Flynn because of favours received and because of future favours yet to be asked for, and the chief because of Flynn’s reputation and the fact that wherever Flynn travelled, he usually left behind him large quantities of good, red meat.
‘You come to hunt elephant?’ the chief asked, looking hopefully for Flynn’s rifle.
‘No.’ Flynn shook his head. ‘I return from a journey to a far place.’
‘From where?’
In answer, Flynn looked significantly at the sky and repeated, ‘From a far place.’
There was an awed murmur from the crowd and the chief nodded sagely. It was clear to all of them that ‘Fini’ must have been to visit and commune with his alter ego, Monomatapa.
‘Will you stay long at our village?’ again hopefully.
‘I will stay tonight only. I leave again in the dawn.’
‘Ah!’ Disappointment. ‘We had hoped to welcome you with a dance. Since we heard of your coming, we have prepared.’
‘No,’ Flynn repeated. He knew a dance could last three or four days.
‘There is a great brewing of palm wine which is only now ready for drinking,’ the chief tried again, and this time his argument hit Flynn like a charging rhinoceros. Flynn had been many days without liquor.
‘My friend,’ said Flynn, and he could feel the saliva spurting out from under his tongue in anticipation. ‘I cannot stay to dance with you but I will drink a small gourd of palm wine to show my love for you and your village.’ Then turning to Sebastian he warned, ‘I wouldn’t touch this stuff, Bassie, if I were you – it’s real poison.’
‘Right,’ agreed Sebastian. ‘I’m going down to the river to wash.’
‘You do that,’ and Flynn lifted the first gourd of palm wine lovingly to his lips.
Sebastian’s progress to the river resembled a Roman triumph. The entire village lined the bank to watch his necessarily limited ablutions with avid interest, and a buzz of awe went up when he disrobed to his underpants.
‘Bwana Manali,’ they chorused. ‘Lord of the Red Cloth,’ and the name stuck.
As a farewell gift the headman presented Flynn with four gourds of palm wine, and begged him to return soon – bringing his rifle with him.
They marched hard all that day and when they camped at nightfall, Flynn was semi-paralysed with palm wine, while Sebastian shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.
From the swamps of the Rufiji delta, Sebastian had brought with him a souvenir of his visit – his first full go of malaria.
They reached Lalapanzi the following day, a few hours before the crisis of Sebastian’s fever. Lalapanzi was Flynn’s base camp and the name meant ‘Lie Down’, or more accurately, The Place of Rest’.
It was in the hills on a tiny tributary of the great Rovuma river, a hundred miles from the Indian Ocean, but only ten miles from German territory across the river. Flynn believed in living close to his principal place of business.
Had Sebastian been in full possession of his senses, and not wandering in the hot shadow land of malaria, he would have been surprised by the camp at Lalapanzi. It was not what anybody who knew Flynn O’Flynn would have expected.
Behind a palisade of split bamboo to protect the lawns and gardens from the attentions of the duiker and steenbok and kudu, it glowed like a green jewel in the sombre brown of the hills. Much hard work and patience must have gone into damming the stream, and digging the irrigation furrows, which suckled the lawns and flower-beds and the vegetable gardens. Three indigenous fig trees dwarfed the buildings, crimson frangipani burst like fireworks against the green kikuyu grass, beds of bright barberton daisies ringed the gentle terraces that fell away to the stream, and a bougain-villaea creeper smothered the main building in a profusion of dark green and purple.
Behind the long bungalow, with its wide, open veranda, stood half a dozen circular rondavels, all neatly capped with golden thatch and gleaming painfully white, with burned limestone paint, in the sunlight.
The whole had about it an air of feminine order and neatness. Only a woman, and a determined one at that, could have devoted so much time and pain to building up such a speck of prettiness in the midst of brown rock and harsh thorn veld.
She stood on the veranda in the shade like a valkyrie, tall and sun-browned and angry. The full-length dress of faded blue was crisp with new ironing, and the neat mends in the fabric invisible except at close range. Gathered close about her waist, her skirt ballooned out over her woman’s hips and fell to her ankles, slyly concealing the long straight legs beneath. Folded across her stomach, her arms were an amber brown frame for the proud double bulge of her bosom, and the thick braid of black hair that hung to her waist twitched like the tail of an angry lioness. A face too young for the marks of hardship and loneliness that were chiselled into it was harder now by the expression of distaste it wore as she watched Flynn and Sebastian arriving.
They lolled in their maschilles, unshaven, dressed in filthy rags, hair matted with sweat and dust; Flynn full of palm wine, and Sebastian full of fever – although it was impossible to distinguish the symptoms of their separate disorders.
‘May I ask where you’ve been these last two months, Flynn Patrick O’Flynn?’ Although she tried to speak like a man, yet her voice had a lift and a ring to it.
‘You may not ask, daughter!’ Flynn shouted back defiantly.
‘You’re drunk again!’
‘And if I am?’ roared Flynn. ‘You’re as bad as that mother of yours (may her soul rest in peace), always going on and on. Never a civil word of welcome for your old Daddy, who’s been away trying to earn an honest crust.’
The girl’s eyes switched to the maschille that carried Sebastian, and narrowed in mounting outrage. ‘Sweet merciful heavens, and what’s this you’ve brought home with you now?’
Sebastian grinned inanely, and tried valiantly to sit up as Flynn introduced him. That is Sebastian Oldsmith. My very dear friend, Sebastian Oldsmith.’
‘He’s also drunk!’
‘Listen, Rosa. You show some respect.’ Flynn struggled to climb from his maschille.
‘He’s drunk,’ Rosa repeated grimly. ‘Drunk as a pig. You can take him straight back and leave him where you found him. He’s not coming in this house.’ She turned away, pausing only a moment at the front door to add, ‘That goes for you also, Flynn O’Flynn. I’ll be waiting with the shotgun. You just put one foot on the veranda before you’re sober – and I’ll blow it clean off.’
‘Rosa – wait – he isn’t drunk, please,’ wailed Flynn, but the fly-screen door had slammed cl
osed behind her.
Flynn teetered uncertainly at the foot of the veranda stairs; for a moment it looked as though he might be foolhardy enough to put his daughter’s threat to the test, but he was not that drunk.
‘Women,’ he mourned. ‘The good Lord protect us,’ and he led his little caravan around the back of the bungalow to the farthest of the rondavel huts. This room was sparsely furnished in anticipation of Flynn’s regular periods of exile from the main building.
– 19 –
Rosa O’Flynn closed the front door behind her and leaned back against it wearily. Slowly her chin sagged down to her chest, and she closed her eyes to imprison the itchy tears beneath the lids, but one of them squeezed through and quivered like a fat, glistening grape on her lashes, before falling to splash on the stone floor.
‘Oh, Daddy, Daddy,’ she whispered. It was an expression of those months of aching loneliness. The long, slow slide of days when she had searched desperately for work to fill her hands and her mind. The nights when, locked alone in her room with a loaded shotgun beside the bed, she had lain and listened to the sounds of the African bush beyond the window, afraid then of everything, even the four devoted African servants sleeping soundly with their families in their little compound behind the bungalow.
Waiting, waiting for Flynn to return. Lifting her head in the noonday and standing listening, hoping to hear the singing of his bearers as they came down the valley. And each hour the fear and the resentment building up within her. Fear that he might not come, and resentment that he left her for so long.
Now he had come. He had come drunk and filthy, with some oafish ruffian as a companion, and all her loneliness and fear had vented itself in that shrewish outburst. She straightened and pushed herself away from the door. Listlessly she walked through the shady cool rooms of the bungalow, spread with a rich profusion of animal skins and rough native-made furniture, until she reached her own room and sank down on the bed.