by Jeremy Duns
It was shortly after I realized this that the sound came back. Just as suddenly as it had been shut off, someone lifted the needle and placed it back on the record. My panting breaths, the rush of the wind and the sound of my trousers pushing through the brush burst into my brain at what seemed like double the normal volume, but after a few shaky seconds where I nearly lost my balance, I was almost insanely happy. The deafness had lasted just a few minutes, and now it had gone! The swish of my legs now spurred me on – create more swish, more noise, let the sounds continue for as long as you can enjoy them – and I leapt over rocks and eddies and kept running, full pelt, towards Gunner, until I slowly started to bear down on him, my heart thumping in my ribcage.
*
‘I need to get to Udi. Do you have any idea which direction I should take?’
He shook his head. ‘You no fit to go anywhere. You be very sick. You shake and sweat, and you no answer when I speak.’
‘I lost my hearing for a couple of minutes,’ I said. ‘It’s back now.’
He looked at me. ‘This has happen to you before?’
I felt inside my shirt pocket and pulled out the soft pack of Players. So much for my little game – the remaining cigarettes were all sodden.
‘Who the hell is Samuel Johnson?’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Someone I know at school. It was the first name that came to my mind.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks for the help back there,’ I said. ‘I appreciate how hard it must have been.’
There was an awkward silence. When he’d seen that I was still visible from the road, he had realized it would lead the men down the hill – to me, but also to him. So he’d run back, made me duck for cover, and it had worked. But we’d lost Senegal and Boxer as a result – and who could blame them?
Now we were resting for a moment against a large palm tree he had picked out. He had found some of its flowers in the surrounding shrubbery and squeezed them open until a string of sap had dribbled from the stems, which he had offered me. Fermented, it would have become ‘palm wine’, but the sweet stickiness had been welcome enough and I had gained a little strength from it. My shivering had also subsided, although my thigh still pulsed with a dull pain.
‘I sorry about your girl,’ said Gunner.
I crumpled the cigarette pack in my hand. The tenses in his English were sometimes hard to decipher: the present was also used for the past. Did he mean that seeing Isabelle killed had helped persuade him to come with me – or was he sympathizing generally? Perhaps both. I had a sudden memory of her sitting and smoking in her black swimsuit on the breeze blocks at the Lagos Yacht Club, when I had mistaken her for Anna. And then later that night, her body glistening with sweat as she had called out to me in the dark.
‘She wasn’t my girl,’ I said. I considered whether or not I wanted to know the answer to my next question, and decided it might be important. ‘What’s the procedure for prisoners’ deaths?’
He nodded. ‘It depends on the importance of the prisoner. I think they will bury her and the compound reverend bless the ground. But I don’t think they tell anyone about it.’
‘No.’
It would probably be weeks until her office became worried enough to notify the embassy in Lagos, and then her parents – were they in France? I couldn’t remember if she had said – would fly over and start trying to piece together what had happened.
‘This war must end!’ said Gunner suddenly, standing and spitting on the ground to emphasize the point. ‘I want no more part of it.’
I wondered which part he meant – the shooting of Isabelle, or the fate of the Biafrans? Isabelle had not deserved to die, but she had chosen to be here, chosen this cause. And she had chosen, finally, to confront an armed soldier while a prisoner of war. The Biafrans, on the other hand, had had no choice, or very little. Fight for one side, fight for the other, or fight for none. Another image swam into view: their skeletal frames immobile on those flea-infested mattresses. The flies buzzing into the huge eyes of the children as they had stood in the hut. I pushed it down, as Gunner had pushed me down into the wet earth a few minutes before. Humanity coming over the hill. Don’t let it spot you.
I must not make the same mistake Isabelle had, I told myself. This was not my war. Biafrans were being held prisoner across the country – so were Nigerians. Their fate wasn’t my cross to bear, and there was no especial reason why I should have been concerned about the fate of a squadron of deserters, even with women and children attached. War was hell, and this one was no exception. Listening to Gunner talk about what he had seen and what he believed, I was reminded for a moment that I, too, had once been young and felt I could shake the world’s foundations. Well, I hadn’t done it. I wasn’t sure it was even possible to do. Part of me wanted to argue against his young man’s idealism, to tell him that he wasn’t going to change anything by talking. But I forced myself to keep quiet: I still needed his help, and I’d soon have to persuade him all over again. I had to get to the nearest town and find transport. The scant cover that I was his prisoner was a lot more likely to get me there than going it alone.
And what would I find once I reached Udi? I wondered. From what I knew so far, it didn’t look comforting. Anna was apparently not only still alive, but engaged on a mission to assassinate the British prime minister.
And yet, and yet… could it really be? I still had no solid proof of her guilt. There was no way I could even be completely certain about the photograph of her in Lagos: photographs could be forged. Perhaps they had found someone who looked rather like her, and Slavin’s defection had been an elaborate operation to hook me in. But no, that couldn’t be right. Why bother? Sasha was in touch with me whenever he needed. If they had wanted to cut me loose, they could have done so in London. But the assassination story didn’t fit either… There were still too many unanswered questions. Had Anna really survived, and, if so, what had been her role in Father’s death? How had Slavin found out about me? And how did the plot against Wilson fit into the situation?
I put these problems out of my mind – the answers lay in Udi, and I had thirty-seven hours and twenty minutes to get there. Perhaps the thing to do was to work our way back to the road we’d come from? Would they still have men posted on it? Possibly. It wasn’t worth the risk. We’d have to find another road, or intersect the same one further along…
I realized that Gunner had stopped talking. His face was frozen, grim, and I looked up to see what had made it so.
There were five of them. They all had black beards, fierce expressions and were pointing rifles at us. The patches on the sleeves of their uniforms bore an illustration of an orange sun dawning – or was it setting?
Biafrans. But these ones weren’t starving and there were no flies in their eyes.
‘Come with us,’ one of them said softly. ‘You come with us now.’
XIX
We were led through the palm trees to a mud track, where a battered old Land Rover was parked, camouflaged by fronds and netting. Senegal and Boxer sat in the rear, guarded by about a dozen men, all of whom looked to be armed and – always a bad sign with soldiers – bored. None of their uniforms matched, and they wore an assortment of headgear: helmets, berets, caps and what looked like beach hats. A black metal pole was attached to the front passenger window of the vehicle, holding aloft a radio transmitter, and one of the soldiers held a receiver on his lap, the announcer’s voice leaking out from it in an unbroken stream. We were pushed into the back, and then the jalopy stuttered into life and we started moving slowly down the track.
Pritchard’s dossier had mentioned that Biafra had a guerrilla force. I wondered what Isabelle would have made of them – how they would have fitted with her idea of the Biafrans as utterly powerless victims. Their uniforms and weaponry were tattered and piecemeal, and half of them, I now noticed, seemed to be stoned. But they had crept up on Gunner and me without either of us noticing, and had sprung their trap smoothly and efficiently. With several r
ifles pointed firmly in my direction, I had little choice but to stay put and watch for an opportunity to escape. I wasn’t all that hopeful it would arrive – I’d faced a similar situation just a few hours ago, when Alebayo’s men had driven me to Port Harcourt under a similar armed guard.
Gunner, Senegal and Boxer were seated near me, all of them staring expressionlessly ahead, lost in their own thoughts. No doubt they were repenting their decision to follow me – if it came down to it, they would probably accuse me of kidnapping them or some such story. I wasn’t sure what my own story should be. My thinking was impaired, by pain, fatigue, hunger, thirst – and the nagging thought that I might lose my hearing again. The smell of the marijuana was making me even woozier, and I hadn’t stopped sweating since leaving the Shell camp. Every so often, my guts gave a sudden lurch, and vomit would rise in my throat.
After a few minutes, I decided I might as well try to make an opening, and asked the soldiers seated on the bench opposite me where we were going. ‘I’m ill, and I need to see a doctor. Are we anywhere near Udi? There’s a hospital there.’
They stared right through me.
‘If you don’t shut your mouth, old man, you will soon be much more ill,’ said one.
That drew our cosy little chat to an end, and I concentrated on trying to keep my innards on an even keel instead. We bumped along the track for over an hour, past glittering lagoons and mangrove swamps, all the while rending the night air with the commentary from Radio Biafra. My ears pricked up as the announcer mentioned ‘perfidious Albion’ and, sure enough, he began to discuss the Prime Minister’s impending visit. I couldn’t follow it all due to the noise of the engine and a squabble that had started between two of the men near me, but the thrust seemed to be that the visit was a gimmick designed to deflect the world’s media from a sudden and brutal attack by the Nigerians.
Twenty minutes later, we stopped. The radio was switched off, and the man in the passenger seat took out a walkie-talkie and spoke rapidly into it in his language. There was a pause, followed by a reply through a sea of static. After ten long minutes of this, we started up again, but at an even slower pace. Then I caught some movement a couple of hundred yards down the path: a cluster of men in camouflage were stepping out from the long grass. As we approached, I saw that they held bottles of beer and machine guns and that they were manning a checkpoint, which consisted of a bamboo pole across the path. Simple, but effective. We slowed and our driver leaned out of the window and handed over our papers, talking rapidly in the local language. They inspected them sullenly, then waved us through and trudged back into the long grass.
We passed several such checkpoints, each following more or less the same procedure. Finally, we reached a line of hardwood trees, some of which had been felled and used to create a crude gate. Documents were once more handed over and inspected, the gate was opened and we drove down a slightly larger laterite road.
This move was apparently unforeseen, because several of the men suddenly erupted angrily. Through the din, I figured out that they were urging the driver to take another route, but he was adamant that he knew what he was doing and would reach the destination in plenty of time. This assurance was greeted by derision and much pointing at watches. I looked at mine – it was a quarter to midnight. The captain in the passenger seat, who seemed to be in charge, quickly intervened, telling everyone to stop panicking and let the man do his job; as a compromise, he also chivvied the driver along, telling him to put his foot down. This forced us too fast over the next bump in the road and we all went flying, much to the driver’s delight.
About ten minutes later, we came to a wide village square, which looked like it had once been the site of a marketplace. Unlike Aba, there were functioning cars parked on the street and strips of red, black and green cloth tied around the trunks of trees and pinned to some of the buildings: Biafran flags. We drove onto a wider road that proved to be even bumpier than the one we’d been on, until we came to a standstill in front of a large, squat building, which I guessed had been the town hall or something similar. A gruesome poster pinned to the entrance advised residents how to deal with Nigerian paratroopers: ‘Stake all open fields… leave skull-bashing to women… stab them to death…’
The atmosphere among the men had changed since they had decided to trust the driver’s timekeeping: there had been the usual end-of-journey banter and stretching of limbs, but from the tone of their voices there also seemed to be tension in the air. Were they worried they would receive a dressing down from their commanding officer, perhaps?
I was prodded out of the vehicle along with the others, and the captain ordered a quick piss break – or ‘pause for bodily relief’ as he put it. Once that had been taken care of – and even at gunpoint, it was a mighty relief – the captain pushed open the door of the building, and we all filed in after him. I checked my watch again: it was exactly midnight.
The hall was empty and silent, with no seating and just a bare stone floor, although I could see some marks where heavy objects had previously been placed. The windows were all boarded up and there was an acrid smell I couldn’t identify – something burning?
The door clicked shut behind me, and then the lights went out, plunging us into total darkness. As my eyes tried to adjust, my scalp wriggled with incipient fear. I could hear the fast, shallow breathing of the men around me: they were scared, too. So what the hell were we doing here?
‘You have come.’
The voice erupted from nowhere, and resonated in my skull. It was male, booming, commanding. A few of the men started mumbling responses, but the voice quietened them.
‘Please be seated.’
Groping in the dark, I lowered myself to the floor with the others.
‘Now listen,’ said the voice from out of the darkness. ‘Listen.’
After a few seconds, it began to speak again, but it was now talking in an African language, and the tone was completely flat, with equal stress on all syllables. An incantation of some sort? For the first few seconds, it seemed almost comical, like something out of a Rider Haggard story. But as the voice droned on, the words merging into one endless stream of sound, it started to gather force. Although I didn’t understand a word of it, part of my mind began to enter the stream and try to decipher or imagine meanings, until I was drifting along, my eyes half-glazed, my face covered in cooling sweat, transfixed by this eerie, disconnected chant. The voice seemed to be talking to me about events in my past. Yes, that was right – Anna. I remembered now. That day she kissed me back. All the world blazing in light – the future stretching ahead of us. No war now. Home to England. ‘What will you do in England?’ she had asked me. ‘What will you do now the great dragon has been slain?’ And then the direction of the voice shifted a little, and I could see myself running into the clinic, the Russian soldiers, her body on the stretcher, the red wound and the closed lids. But her face wasn’t her own, it was Isabelle’s and at this horrific realization the floor started shaking and I looked up and the ceiling was, too, and there was light up there, light coming from the ceiling, three sources of light, and as they came closer, drifting down, I saw that they were in the shape of bodies – that they were bodies, in fact, humans in light form, and they reached the ground and one of them leaned in, and he had a strong face, a strong African face, and he asked me what my troubles were and I started crying because I couldn’t tell him, I couldn’t tell him all the troubles I had because I didn’t know where to begin and he took me by the arm and told me it was all right, it would be all right in a little while, but I couldn’t stop crying and it was taking me over, I was heaving and my lungs were on fire, and I couldn’t get the next breath out to tell him, let go of me, don’t hold me, I can’t breathe, my back, hit my back, I can’t breathe, let me breathe, help me breathe…
*
It was so warm in Germany, you see. I hadn’t been used to the warmth, and it had taken me some time to get used to it again. A beautiful day for vengeance. But h
is neck, sweating. Sweating in the sun. I was unable, I had been unable… The wound had been warm, and there had been something comforting about that. No more ice. No more snow. Just a seeping warmth…
Sound.
It jolted through me.
What was it? A stream?
No, not that. Listen.
Animals! Geese, perhaps?
No, there was more to it, it was deeper. Listen again, closer this time.
Voices. That was it. Human voices. Criss-crossing. Now changing pitch, moving deeper. Singing. They lifted, somehow, and I felt myself carried away with them, on a tide… Not of water. Why was I thinking of snow? The voices seemed to be drifting down like snow, drawing me into their drift. And yet I was warm. Hot, even. Strange to have snow while I sat here sweating.
But there was a breeze. Hadn’t there been a breeze just now? Yes, there it was again. It felt so good. It was almost as if I could follow every atom of it wafting across my face. Now it had reached the bridge of my nose, now onto my cheek. And then it had gone again. Why? How can it have gone like that? Now I felt drier than I did before. Wait. Here it came again…
I opened my eyes. A man wearing a white mask was waving something at me.
A banana leaf. So that was the breeze. Yes, keep waving it, I wanted to say to him. Give it to me. Let me wave it! He didn’t. Instead he stopped waving. I could see the sides of some glasses frames through the peepholes of the mask, and behind the lenses lay dark watchful eyes. The man stood suddenly and moved away from me, out of my line of vision. The singing stopped abruptly, and as it did I placed the song. The snow falling outside on the black cars. The sky darkening. Cocktails at the consulate in Helsinki, all those years ago.