The Strange Land

by Hammond Innes

  He turned on Ed. ‘You damned fool!’ And then he was looking at Karen. He was scared and angry, for he was standing by the window and the roar of the crowd came up to him.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ Julie said. ‘He did it for the best.’ She was bandaging Ed’s head with a strip torn from a sheet.

  I went over to the window and looked out at the crowd. They were like cattle, bawling and milling around, waiting to stampede. And then suddenly, above the solid, heavy roar came a liquid sound, an ululation made with the tongue like a yodel. It was just a little sound at first, but it swelled rapidly, a female sound that swamped the male.

  My blood ran cold, for I knew that sound. I had heard it in the High Atlas. But then it had been a greeting, a ceremonial welcome. Now I was hearing it for the first time as I had been told it was really used: a repetitive sound like the singing of crickets to drive the men to a frenzy of excitement, to goad them into battle.

  I went to the window and saw that the women were gathering together, closing up behind the men, their mouths open, their tongues moving; and the shrill, insistent cry gathered greater and greater volume.

  I turned then and ran down the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Julie cried out.

  I didn’t answer her. I think I was too scared of what I knew had to be done to say anything. But she seemed to sense what was in my mind, for she came after me. ‘No, Philip. No.’ She caught hold of my arm. ‘Please.’

  Bilvidic met me at the foot of the stairs. His face looked very pale and he had his gun in his hand. ‘You can give the American back his gun,’ he said.

  ‘You know that sound then?’

  ‘I know what it means - yes. But it is the first time I have heard it.’ He smiled a little wryly. ‘Get your men down here. The ladies should remain upstairs. We may beat back the first rush. After that…’ He shrugged his shoulders. Ed came down the stairs then, his face very pale under the blood-stained bandage. Bilvidic made no attempt to blame him for what was going to happen.

  I stared out of the window at the gathering men standing silent, staring at the door. That throbbing, tongued cry of the women seemed to fill the air. ‘You understand mobs,’ I said, turning to Bilvidic. ‘There must be something that would stop them?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his pale eyes staring into mine. ‘If I went out there and faced them and told them why their men had been killed in the gorge - that would stop them.’

  ‘Then why don’t you do it?’ Julie said quickly, breathlessly.

  , ‘Because, mademoiselle, I do not speak Berber, only Arab, and the mass of them would not understand that.’ His eyes came back to me and I knew he was thinking that I must speak Berber since I’d been a missionary at Enfida.

  ‘That’s what I thought you’d say.’ I turned and walked towards the door.

  But Julie caught hold of my arm. ‘Not alone. Not like that.’

  ‘I must.’ I was trembling and my stomach felt cold and empty.

  ‘I won’t let you.’ She was dragging at my arm.

  ‘Let me go!‘I cried.

  ‘I won’t.’ Her face was white and her dark eyes looked at me with a steady gaze. ‘I love you, Philip.’

  I stared at her and a sudden glow of warmth filled me. It was as though her declaration had set light to something inside me. I felt suddenly calm and at peace. Gently I released her fingers from my arm. ‘You’d better have this,’ I said, and handed her Legard’s pistol. And then I walked to the door and opened it and went out into the hard sunlight and the noise to face the stare of a thousand hostile, half-animal eyes.

  They were bunched out fifty feet back from the house, a compact, solid mass of men that thinned out towards the edges, spreading in a crescent round the house as though formed by instinct into some old order of battle. I was not conscious of their individual faces. They were just a blur in the hot sunlight, a solid mass of flowing robes that ranged from white to brown and matched the arid sand. I was only conscious that they were of this naked land, a living and integral part of it, and that I was an alien.

  I tried to marshal my thoughts, but my mind was a blank as I walked out towards them. I couldn’t even pray. And they watched me walk out to them like a herd of animals, pressed shoulder to shoulder; and there wasn’t a single individual among them - they were a mass and they felt as a mass, not thinking, only feeling. That mass feeling seemed to hang in the air. I sensed it physically, the way you can smell something mad. And behind it all, behind the evil expression of their mass feeling, was that damned female noise, that many-tongued liquid, frenzy-making sound, beating at my brain, thrumming through it until I could feel it against the raw ends of my nerves, stretching them beyond the limits of strain.

  And I was afraid; desperately, horribly afraid. My mouth felt dry and there was a weakness in the marrow of my bones. I prayed God to stop me being afraid. But the prayer was not a real prayer and I stopped and looked at the sea of faces, that blur of figures, and I was afraid then that they would know I was afraid.

  For a moment I could say nothing. I could think of nothing. I stood there twenty paces from them and stared at them. And they stared back at me, silent and motionless, but strong in the strength of their mass feeling. And behind them was that sound that seemed an expression of the very wildness and primitiveness of the land.

  And suddenly it maddened me. I was angry, with myself and with them, and my anger killed my fear. I found my voice then and heard myself shout at them for silence in their own language. I shouted several times for the women to be quiet and gradually the sound lessened and died away. Abruptly the silence was complete, the whole crowd of them so still that I could hear the small sound of the breeze blowing through the dark green sprays of the tamarisks that acted as a windbreak for the house.

  I had them then, I could have talked to them. But my eye was caught by an individual face. It was the bearded, wild-eyed face of the man who had fired into the study. He was standing right in front of me and as our eyes met, I was conscious of the hatred and violence that seethed inside him, and it appalled me. He had his gun clutched in his left hand and with his right he pointed a finger at me. He cursed me in the name of Allah. ‘You have killed my son and my brother and my brother’s son,’ he accused me.

  ‘I have not killed anyone,’ I said. ‘The men who came to Kasbah Foum died because of Ali d’Es-Skhira.’

  My voice was steady and it gave me confidence. I began to tell them exactly what had happened there in the gorge. But in spite of myself I found I was speaking to this one man and not to the whole crowd of them, and I saw his face become set and wooden as he made himself deaf to what I was saying.

  Slowly he shifted the gun to his right hand and slowly he raised it to his shoulder, moving it slightly so that the long, heavy barrel pointed straight at me. I tried to ignore him. I tried to look at the sea of faces, to talk to them as one composite individual. But my eyes were fascinated by the round hole of that barrel. It didn’t waver and it pointed straight into my eyes and I heard my voice falter and slow. His eyes were looking straight at me along the barrel. They glinted with sudden triumph, and in that instant I knew he was going to fire.

  I ducked, flinging myself sideways. There was a report and the bullet hit my shoulder, spinning me round. Somehow I kept my feet. Pain shot through my arm and my whole body seemed to grow numb with the shock. I could feel the blood flowing. I could feel, too, the blood lust of that crowd growing.

  What came to me then, I don’t know. I would like to think that it was courage. But it may only have been the instinct of survival, the knowledge that if I failed to face them now, they would charge and trample me underfoot. I felt suddenly quite cool and a little light-headed, and I was walking towards them.

  I walked straight towards the man who had fired at me, never shifting my gaze from his face. His eyes stared back at me for a moment and then I saw guilt and fear in them and he looked down, shuffling his feet and beginning to back away from me.
The crowd opened up, so that a narrow gully formed in the mass of it. I walked straight into it. They could have killed me then with their bare hands, but nobody moved, and I felt the power of dominating them, of holding their attention with what I was doing.

  The man backed until he could retreat no farther. He was held there by the weight of people behind him. I walked straight up to him and took the gun from him. I didn’t say anything to him. I just turned my back and walked out till I was clear of them. The concrete signpost stood at the entrance to the house. I swung the gun by the barrel and brought the breech down across the post, using all the strength of my sound arm, and the stock splintered and broke off. I tossed the useless thing on the sand and walked down the path and in through the open door of the house.

  In the sudden shade of the room I could see nothing. I felt my brain reeling. I heard a murmur like surf as the crowd gave voice to its reaction and the door closed, shutting it out. A hand touched mine. I heard a sob. And then my legs gave under me and I passed out.

  When I came to I was lying on the couch. There were voices talking. ‘But there must be troops down here.’ It was Ed speaking. ‘How else would you hold the country? If you’re properly organised you should be able to have troops at the top of the pass by — ‘

  ‘I tell you, there are no Goumiers nearer than Boumalne.’ Bilvidic’s voice sounded cold and angry. ‘That is more than a hundred and fifty kilometres away, and they are not motorised.’

  ‘What about the Legion?’

  ‘The Legion is in Indo-China. All our troops are in Indo-China.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with that for a story. You’ll see. The Commandant knows there’s trouble. He’ll have troops here fast enough. It’s just a question of whether they get here in time.’

  I closed my eyes, wondering what there was about the Americans and the French. They always seemed to get on each other’s nerves. I felt a little weak and my left arm was cold. It had been bared by cutting away the sleeve of my jacket and shirt at the shoulder. I moved it gently, flexing my fingers. The muscles seemed all right. I was conscious of somebody close beside me. Fingers gripped hold of the arm and there was a stinging pain in the wound halfway between elbow and shoulder. I cried out, more with surprise than with pain, and Julie’s voice, close to my ear, said, ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were still unconscious. There’s no damage. It’s just a flesh wound and I’m swabbing it out with iodine. The bullet nicked your arm.’ Her voice was cool and soothing.

  ‘I lost my nerve,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She gripped the arm as she began to bandage it.

  But I was remembering how I had ducked and the man had fired. ‘If I’d walked up to him, he’d never have fired. I let him dominate me.’ My voice sounded shaky.

  The others crowded round me, salving my wounded pride with kind words. ‘It requires courage, mon ami, to face a mob like that,’ Bilvidic said. There was a warmth in his voice that soothed me, but I had a feeling that if he’d been the one who had spoken Berber, he would have outfaced them.

  As soon as Julie had finished bandaging my arm, I swung my feet off the couch and sat up. ‘What’s happening outside?’ I asked.

  ‘C’est ca,’ Bildivic said. ‘You have given them something to talk about. For the moment they are no longer a mob.’

  I got up and went over to the window. It was true. They were no longer bunched together in a solid mass. They had split up into groups. Some were sitting down well away from the house as though content to be merely spectators. Others were drifting back to Ksar Foum-Skhira. ‘It is very hot today.’ Bilvidic had come to my side. ‘I do not think they will do anything during the heat of the day.’ There was a note of reservation in his voice.

  ‘And afterwards?’ I asked.

  ‘Afterwards…’ He spread his hands with a Gallic shrug. ‘Afterwards, we shall see.’

  ‘Where’s the man who fired at me? Is he still out there?’

  There was a momentary hesitation, and then he said, ‘He has gone back to the village.’

  ‘Because he was ashamed or afraid, or what?’

  It was Jan who answered. ‘He couldn’t stand their taunts.’

  ‘Their taunts?’

  He nodded. ‘They jeered at him because you had taken his gun from him.’

  ‘If you hadn’t taken his gun away, he would have reloaded it and killed you,’ Bilvidic said. ‘They laughed at him and threw stones at him because he had been afraid of you.’ He turned abruptly away as though he were afraid to talk about the incident. ‘I think we should have some food.’

  We split into two watches, one half keeping guard, the other half feeding. The time passed slowly. It was a weird business. We dared not go out of the house and, it seemed, the mob dared not attack it. We played through all Legard’s records on the gramophone, opening the windows so that the people outside could hear our music and would know that we weren’t afraid. By midday the crowd had thinned to no more than a few hundred who sat or lay stretched out quite peacefully on the sand. The rest had gone back to Foum-Skhira. We had lunch and played cards. It was cool in the house, but we could feel the heat outside - the heat and the stillness. ‘Why the hell don’t they send those troops?’ Ed cried, suddenly throwing down his cards. ‘This waiting is getting on my nerves.’

  Nobody answered him. The waiting was getting on everybody’s nerves. ‘They must have a garrison at Agdz. Why don’t they send them?’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ I said angrily. My arm was stiff and painful. That and the waiting was making me irritable.

  A sound drifted through the open windows, the beat of drums coming faintly across the sands to us from Foum-Skhira. The tam-tams had started again. And almost immediately that harsh, wailing chant of the women took up the rhythm. Ayee-ya-i-ee Ayee-ya-i-ee. Ed, who had been pacing up and down, stopped to listen. ‘Can’t you do something? Get on the phone again to Agdz. Tell them to hurry. Tell that darn fool commandant — ‘

  ‘What is the good?’ Bilvidic asked. His voice was calm. ‘He knows what the situation is.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Ed’s fists were clenched with anger. ‘Are you going to sit there and do nothing while they whip themselves up into a frenzy again? Will you telephone Agdz or will I?’

  Bilvidic shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do as you please,’ he said. ‘But I assure you that everything that can be done — ‘

  ‘Okay. Then I guess it’s up to me.’ And Ed turned and stumped off into the study.

  Bilvidic looked almost apologetically at the rest of us. ‘He is very young,’ he murmured. ‘It is over forty kilometres from Agdz to this place and the piste is cut up near the pass.’

  ‘They could send planes,’ Jan suggested.

  Bilvidic turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘This territory is controlled by the AI. It is a military responsibility. They will handle it themselves.’

  ‘Well, they’d better hurry,’ Jan muttered. He looked across at Karen. Bilvidic was watching him. ‘It’s a pity you had to bring Madame Kavan into this,’ Jan said.

  We listened to Ed trying to get through to Agdz. He tried for almost a quarter of an hour. Then he came back into the room. ‘The line’s out of action again.’

  Bilvidic nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I tried to telephone them after Latham was wounded. I could not get any reply.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘There is no point in telling you,’ Bilvidic answered quietly.

  Georges called down the stairs then. He was acting as lookout on the roof. ‘There are some riders coming in now,’ he said.

  ‘Troops?’ Jan asked hopefully.

  ‘No. Berbers on mules.’

  We went to the windows. They were riding in across the open space between the forts, their robes billowing out behind them. They paused to speak to some of the people squatting on the sand. Then they rode on towards Foum-Skhira. ‘I guess those are the guys that passed me up on the mountain road last night,’ Ed said.

  ‘I
t is possible.’ Bilvidic was staring through the window towards the palmerie. Then he turned abruptly. ‘Georges. Go back to the roof. Watch the palmerie.’

  ‘Out, oui. Ca va.’ His assistant hurried back up the stairs.

  ‘Let us continue our game of cards,’ Bilvidic said and took up his hand again.

  But we couldn’t concentrate any more. The drums were beating faster now and the sound, though faint, seemed to throb through the room. It was nearly four. ‘I’m going to make some coffee,’ Julie said. Her voice sounded small and taut. She and Karen went out together into the kitchen.

  We had ceased all pretence at playing. We were just sitting, listening to the drums. ‘It won’t be long now,’ Jan murmured. He rubbed his hand across his face. ‘It’s funny,’ he said to me, speaking softly. ‘For more than five years I have been wishing for Karen to be with me. And now …’ He half closed his eyes. ‘Now I wish she weren’t.’ He looked across at Bilvidic who had joined Ed at the window. ‘I’m sorry for him, too.’ The detective came towards us across the room. ‘Are you married?’ Jan asked him.

  Bilvidic nodded. ‘Yes, and I have two children also -a boy aged eleven and a girl nine.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jan said.

  Bilvidic’s face softened into a friendly smile. ‘It does not matter. It is my work. There is always some danger. The boy - Francois,’ he added, ‘is in France now. He has gone to Dijon to stay with his grandmother for the New Year.’

  The drums were growing louder and a moment later Georges called down that the mob was coming out of the palmerie. Bilvidic muttered a curse as we went towards the windows. ‘It is those men who came in from the mountains. They have whipped up the people into a fury again.’ The mob looked different this time as it swept past the ruins of the souk. It was led by a man on mule-back, and it seemed to have more purpose. ‘There is going to be trouble this time.’ Bilvidic turned to the stairs. ‘Georges! Can you see anything moving on the piste from Agdz?’

  ‘No, nothing. Un moment. Yes, I think so. Just one man; riding a mule, I think.’

  Presumably it was a straggler from the party who had already arrived. ‘Ecoutez!’ Bilvidic said. ‘There is to be no shooting. You understand? No shooting. We retreat up the stairs and then up to the roof. Only then do we fight. As long as there is no shooting we have a chance.’