Briefly I explained the purpose of my visit. He didn’t answer for a moment, but just lay there, staring at me. At length he said, ‘The people are angry, sidi. They will not come to work for the man of machines who has destroyed the water.’ He raised himself up on one elbow. ‘My father and his father and his father’s father have lived here in this place. In all the time we have been here, the water has never been like it is now. The people are afraid to drink it. They are afraid that their trees will finally be destroyed.’
I tried to explain to him that it was only mineral discoloration, that it would soon pass, but he shook his head and murmured ‘Insh’ Allah.’ His people might need money, but nothing I could say would make him send them up to work at the mine. I offered them as much as five hundred francs a day - an unheard of figure - but he only shook his head. ‘The people are angry. They will not come.’
In the end I left him and walked back to the bus. I didn’t tell Julie what he had said. It had scared me badly, for in the south here water was the same as life, and, if they thought the water had been poisoned, anything could happen.
As we drove up to the camp we passed several villagers, sitting on the banks of the stream bed. They stared at us as we went by, their tough, lined faces expressionless, their eyes glinting in the sunlight. ‘Where did they come from?’ I asked her. ‘They weren’t there when we drove down.’
‘They came out of the palmerie. There are some more over there.’ She nodded to the open country between ourselves and the mountains. There were about twenty or thirty there, sitting motionless as stones in the hot sun.
‘Which direction did they come from?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t see. They were just suddenly there.’
Karen was alone at the camp when we drew up. ‘Where are the others?’ I asked her. ‘Up at the gorge?’
She nodded and I walked up the track. The sun’s light was already slanting and the gorge was black in shadow. I had to go into the shaft to find them. There, in the light of the torches and amongst the debris of the rock fall, I told Ed what Moha had said. ‘Until this matter of the water is cleared up,’ I said, ‘you won’t get any of them to come and work for you. I think we should get down to the Post.’ And I explained about the group of villagers who were waiting within sight of the camp. ‘I don’t like it,’ I said. ‘It may be just curiosity, but I had a feeling they were expecting something.’
We stood there in the torchlit darkness arguing for some time. Jan was angry. Time was running out for him and he desperately wanted to get through that rock fall, to know what was on the other side. But time meant nothing to Ed and he was all for packing up the camp and getting down to the Post. ‘If we can’t get labour, then we can’t and that’s that. The only thing for us to do is go down to the Post and wait for Legard to return. He’ll have a talk with the Caid and then maybe we’ll get somewhere.’
We went out into the daylight and they washed and put on their clothes. Jan was in a sullen mood. When he was dressed, he walked over to the entrance to the shaft and stood there looking at it. I didn’t hear what he said, but I guessed he was cursing that fall of rock. Twenty men could probably have cleared it in a couple of days. As it was, he’d have to leave it. He turned suddenly and stared at me. ‘If only we could have got down here two or three days earlier.’ He said it as though it were my fault that we hadn’t.
‘Come on,’ Ed said. ‘There’s no good beefing about it.’
‘What about the bulldozers?’ I asked him.
‘We’ll pile all the gear and that box of explosives on them and take them with us. I’m not leaving them to be fooled around with by curious villagers. Come on. Give me a hand and let’s get started. It’ll be dark before we get down to the Post, anyway.’
We had just started to collect the tools when we heard the sound of footsteps in the entrance to the gorge. We stopped, all three of us, for they were a man’s step, but light, as though he had sandals on his feet.
But it wasn’t a Berber. It was Kostos. He saw us and jerked himself into a shambling run. His clothes were white with dust and his shoes were cracked and broken, the thin soles breaking away from the uppers. He was shabby and tired and frightened. ‘Jeez!’ Ed exclaimed. ‘He looks like a piece of white trash.’
‘Lat’m! Lat’m!’ Kostos came to a halt and his eyes watched our faces nervously. ‘I must stay ‘ere. I must stay with you.’ He was out of breath and his eyes seemed to have sunk back into the dark sockets as though he hadn’t slept for a long time. He was unshaven and the blue stubble of his chin emphasised the pallor of his face. A drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his sharp nose and hung on the tip.
‘What’s the trouble?’ I said. ‘Why do you suddenly prefer our company to Ali’s?’
His body shivered. It may have been the coldness of the gorge, for his clothes were all damp with sweat. But he had a scared look. ‘Caid Hassan is dead,’ he blurted out. ‘Ali is in control of Foum-Skhira.’
‘Hassan dead!’ I exclaimed. ‘But we saw him only … How did it happen?’
‘I don’t know. I am not there, you see.’ He said it quickly as though it were something carefully rehearsed that he had to be sure of saying. ‘I am in the village, in a pigsty of a house. It happens suddenly. That’s all I know.’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
I glanced at Jan. His face was hard. He was thinking of the old man who had found it necessary to send him the confirmation of his title to this place secretly because he was afraid of his son. He looked as though he could kill Kostos. ‘We don’t want you here,’ he said angrily. ‘Why don’t you go to the Post if you’re scared?’
‘Because at the Post are two men from the Surete. I don’t like to be so close to the Surete.’ Kostos looked at me almost pleadingly. ‘You understand, eh, Lat’am?’ And then his tone changed to truculence as he said, ‘Well, I am ‘ere now. So what you do? It is a public place, this gorge. You cannot throw me out of it.’ He looked at Ed and his small, black eyes fastened on the holster at his belt. ‘I see you ‘ave guns. That is good. You will give me a gun, eh? I am very good shot with a pistol.’
Ed laughed. It was a hard, tense laugh. ‘What do you think we are - an arsenal?’ He turned and looked at me. ‘Is this guy nuts or something?’ He was trying to shrug the whole thing off, but the tremor of his voice betrayed him.
Kostos noticed it, too. He crossed over to Ed and caught hold of his arm. ‘Please now. You give me a gun. You give me a gun and I stay here and — ‘
‘Are you crazy?’ Ed threw his hand off angrily. ‘We haven’t got any guns. This — ‘ He tapped the Luger at his waist. ‘This is the only gun in the place.’
‘The only gun!’ Kostos stared at him, and then his eyes darted quickly round at Jan and myself. ‘But you have women to protect. You must have guns. You couldn’t be such fools…’ His voice died away as he saw from our eyes that it was the truth. ‘Oh, Santo Dios!’ he cried, reverting to Tangier Spanish, and he wiped his brow on a filthy handkerchief, his eyes darting round the sides of the gorge as though looking for a way out.
Jan moved slowly forward then. ‘What’s happened to make you so scared?’
‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Kostos backed away from him. ‘You keep away from me. You keep away.’
‘What about that passport?’
‘I never had your passport.’
‘Don’t lie. Why did you slip it into my suitcase when you came up here that first morning?’
‘All right. I tell you. Because I want no part of any killing. The passport is too dangerous.’
‘And now you come running up here.’ Jan was still walking towards him. ‘Let’s have the truth now. You’re scared of something. You’ve seen something or done something that has frightened you out of your wits. What is it?’ He lunged forward and caught Kostos by the arm. ‘Why have you abandoned Ali? What’s he done that’s frightened you?’ His grip tightened on the Greek’s arm and he began to twist it bac
k. ‘Come on now. Let’s have the truth.’
‘Look out!’ I said. ‘He may have a knife.’ I had seen the Greek’s other hand slide under his jacket.
Jan flung the man away from him and turned angrily back towards us. He pushed his hand up through his hair. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘The old man dead. He was ill, I know, but…’ He turned again and stared at Kostos, who was standing there, breathing heavily, his eyes watching us uncertainly. ‘He knows something. I’d like to beat the truth out of the swine.’
‘I think you’d better go down to the Post,’ I said to Kostos.
‘No. I am staying here.’
‘Then suppose you tell us — ‘
‘Philip!’ It was Julie’s voice and it rang shrilly through the gorge. ‘Philip!’ There was a note of panic in it and I started to run, the others close behind me.
Julie stopped as she came round the base of the slide and saw us. Karen was with her and they stood there, panting. ‘What is it?’ I cried. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I think it’s Ali,’ she panted. ‘There’s a whole crowd of them coming up out of the palmerie. Some of them are on mules. They’re heading straight for the camp.’
‘Julie saw them first,’ Karen said. ‘I was in the tent. She called to me and then we began to run, up here.’
‘Okay,’ Ed said. ‘Let’s go and see what it’s all about.’
We didn’t have to go far. From the entrance of the gorge we could see them swarming over the camp and round the bus. ‘Goddammit!’ Ed cried. ‘They’re looting the place.’ He had unbuttoned the holster of his pistol and was pulling it out.
‘Better put that away,’ I said, ‘till we find out what they want.’
‘Do you think I’m going to stand by and see my whole outfit vanish under my nose?’
I tightened my grip on his arm. ‘How many rounds have you got on you?’
He stared at me. ‘Only what’s in the magazine,’ he said sullenly and began cursing under his breath.
Just twelve rounds and there were a hundred men milling around the camp. ‘Then I think you’d better regard that gun as being for purposes of bluff only.’
He nodded sullenly, staring at the scene with hard, angry eyes. A murmur of sound came up from the camp. They were like wasps round a jam pot. They were looting the food and all the time a man on a white mule was shouting at them. It was Ali and he was trying to get them to follow him up towards the gorge. The crowd increased steadily. It was being joined by little groups of men coming in from the desert and up out of the palmerie. A wisp of smoke rose in a blue spiral from the cook tent. It drifted lazily up into the still air and then died away as the tent disintegrated. The other tents were on fire now and then the bus was set alight. We could hear the crackle and the roar of the flames above the steady murmur of the mob.
‘The bastards!’ Ed cried. ‘The bastards!’ His eyes glistened with tears of rage and frustration. I kept a tight hold of his arm. The situation was explosive enough.
A hand touched my sleeve. It was Julie. She was staring at the bus which was now well alight and I knew she was thinking of her brother. It was her last link with him, apart from a few paintings scattered up and down the world. ‘Why are they doing it?’ she whispered. ‘Why are they doing it?’
‘The Caid is dead,’ I said. ‘And they think the water is poisoned.’ I turned and glanced back at the gorge. The sides were too steep to climb. We should have to retreat back into it until we could climb out. ‘Come on,’ I said to the others. ‘We’d better get started. I don’t think they will attack us.’
Jan nodded. ‘Yes. We’d better go.’ The mob was breaking away from the tents now and starting up towards us, packing close round their leader on his white mule. They weren’t shouting. They were, in fact, quite silent, so that we could hear the sound of the flames. Their silence was full of menace. ‘Come on,’ Jan said, and we went back hurriedly into the gorge.
But when he came to the bulldozers, Ed stopped. He had his gun out now. ‘I’m staying here,’ he said. He looked very young and a little frightened. But his tone was obstinate.
‘You’ll only get hurt,’ I said. ‘Come on now. There are the girls to think of.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You go back with the girls. But I’m staying here.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Jan said.
Ed stared at him sullenly. ‘These machines represent all the cash I got in the world. If you think I’m going to run off and let these bastards… Latham. Will you stay here with me? I don’t speak their language. But if you were here, maybe we could — ‘
‘No,’ Julie said. ‘Please, Philip. Don’t stay.’
But Ed caught hold of my arm. ‘You’re not afraid to face them, are you? I’ve got a gun. I can hold them off. If you’ll only talk to them, explain to them.’
‘All right,’ I said, and I turned to Jan and told him to get the girls back up the gorge.
‘Do you rate a couple of bulldozers higher than your own life, or Philip’s?’ Julie demanded. ‘Please, Philip. Let’s get out of here.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You go on. I’ll just have a word with Ali and see what I can do. They won’t harm us.’
She turned and faced Ed. ‘Damn you!’ she cried. ‘Damn you and your bloody bulldozers.’ She was crying with anger.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Corrigan,’ Ed said, his voice quiet and restrained. ‘I appreciate how you feel. But those bloody bulldozers cost me eighteen months’ work. No man likes to pass up eighteen months of his life without a fight.’ He looked at me. ‘You do what you think best, Latham.’
‘I’ll stay, for the moment,’ I said, and told Jan to take Karen and Julie back up the gorge. Julie hesitated, her jaw set, though her face was white and frightened. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
I turned to face the mob that was now coming into the gorge round the base of the slide. As I did so, I caught sight of Kostos. He was beside the bulldozer nearest the mine entrance and he was bending down, stuffing something into the pockets of his jacket. ‘Kostos!’ I shouted. ‘Get back with the others.’ And as he didn’t move, I shouted, ‘What are you doing? Get back with the others.’
He straightened up then and his pale, haggard face was twisted in an evil, frightened grin. He held out his hand so that I could see what he had been picking up. He held a stick of dynamite. ‘One gun is not enough,’ he said. ‘I like to be certain.’ And he bit the slow-match of the cartridge off short.
‘Kostos!’ Ali’s voice rang through the gorge. He had halted his white mule just in sight of us, sitting it very still. He was wearing a turban now like his followers and it gave him height, so that he looked a commanding figure with his aquiline face and his blazing eyes. His exile hadn’t made him a stranger to the land that had produced him. He belonged, and sitting there, with the sides of the gorge reared up on either side of him, he looked like some virile leader out of the Old Testament. The tribesmen were bunched together behind him. ‘So. This is where you are hiding. Come here! At once! You hear me?’ He had spoken in French, but Kostos didn’t move. And when he saw that the Greek wasn’t going to come, he turned and gave an order in Berber to the men who were mounted on mules close behind him. They thumped the flanks of their mounts with their bare heels and came riding forward at a trot, their voluminous clothes billowing out behind them.
I shouted at Kostos to come down and join us, for there was panic in his face. He was city bred with no sense of this country or these people, and I was afraid he’d light the fuse of that stick of dynamite and fling it without thought for the consequences. If he did, the Berbers would attack. There would be no holding them.
But instead, he broke and ran, flinging himself at the steep slopes where the fig trees grew.
‘Don’t shoot,’ I warned Ed. ‘For God’s sake don’t shoot.’ He had the gun in his hand and it was aimed at the men who were riding their mules towards us. But he didn’t shoot and they s
wept past us, headed towards Kostos.
The mob was now packed tight in the entrance of the gorge and Ali was coming forward again, his mule stepping daintily on the stones of the track. The men of Foum-Skhira closed up behind him, shoulder to shoulder like a herd of goats. They were mostly young men and they were silent as though awed by the place and by what they were doing. I called on them to halt and began to speak to them in their own tongue, telling them that what they were doing was a wicked thing, that the wrath of Allah would fall upon themselves and their families if they did harm to anyone. I started to explain that there was nothing wrong with the water, telling them that if they wished I would drink it myself. And all the time I didn’t dare look round to see how far up the gorge Julie and the others had got, though I was conscious of the movement of rocks and the scrape of feet as Kostos was hounded up the slopes.
Ali’s voice suddenly cut across mine. ‘Monsieur. These people are angry. They have no food and the water is bad. This place belongs to Foum-Skhira and they believe there is great wealth here that will save them from starvation. Leave this place and you will not be hurt. But if you stay, I cannot be sure what my people will do.’
That mention of ‘my people’ reminded me of the Caid’s death and I called out to them again in Berber: ‘Men of Foum-Skhira! Two nights ago I saw Caid Hassan. Because of this man’ - I pointed to Ali - ‘he was not permitted to say what he wished. He had to send a secret messenger. That messenger was set upon by the men of Ali. They tried to kill him. Now Caid Hassan is dead and I must tell you …’
‘Silence!’ Ali screamed at me in French. ‘Silence!’ And then he was shouting at his followers, screaming at them in a frenzy, inciting them to attack. And they answered him with a low murmur like an animal that is being roused to fury.
The Strange Land Page 24