In the midst of the uncertainty over the Emir’s impending death the semi-annual salt caravan from the north arrived in Timbuctoo. It was a great, if somewhat unexpected, spectacle, and all the foreign ambassadors, restless and by now passionately in need of diversion, turned out despite the heat to watch its entry into the city.
There was tremendous clamor. The heavy metal-studded gates of the city were thrown open and the armed escort entered first, a platoon of magnificent black warriors armed both with rifles and with scimitars. Trumpets brayed, drums pounded. A band of fierce-looking hawk-nosed fiery-eyed country chieftains in flamboyant robes came next, marching in phalanx like conquerors. And then came the salt-laden camels, an endless stream of them, a tawny river, strutting absurdly along in grotesque self-important grandeur with their heads held high and their sleepy eyes indifferent to the throngs of excited spectators. Strapped to each camel’s back were two or three huge flat slabs of salt, looking much like broad blocks of marble.
“There are said to be seven hundred of the beasts,” murmured the Chinese ambassador, Li Hsiao-ssu.
“One thousand eight hundred,” said the Grand Duke Alexander sternly. He glowered at Li Hsiao-ssu, a small, fastidious-looking man with drooping mustachios and gleaming porcelain skin, who seemed a mere doll beside the bulky Russian. There was little love lost between the Grand Duke and the Chinese envoy. Evidently the Grand Duke thought it was presumptuous that China, as a client state of the Russian Empire, as a mere vassal, in truth, had sent an ambassador at all. “One thousand eight hundred. That is the number I was told, and it is reliable. I assure you that it is reliable.”
The Chinese shrugged. “Seven hundred, three thousand, what difference is there? Either way, that’s too many camels to have in one place at one time.”
“Yes, what ugly things they are!” said the Peruvian, Manco Roca. “Such stupid faces, such an ungainly stride! Perhaps we should do these Africans a favor and let them have a few herds of llamas.”
Coolly Prince Itzcoatl said, “Your llamas, brother, are no more fit for the deserts of this continent than these camels would be in the passes of the Andes. Let them keep their beasts, and be thankful that you have handsomer ones for your own use.”
“Such stupid faces,” the Peruvian said once more.
Timbuctoo was the center of distribution for salt throughout the whole of West Africa. The salt mines were hundreds of miles away, in the center of the Sahara. Twice a year the desert traders made the twelve-day journey to the capital, where they exchanged their salt for the dried fish, grain, rice, and other produce that came up the Niger from the agricultural districts to the south and east. The arrival of the caravan was the occasion for feasting and revelry, a time of wild big-city gaiety for the visitors from such remote and placid rural outposts.
But the Emir of Songhai was dying. This was no time for a festival. The appearance of the caravan at such a moment was evidently a great embarrassment to the city officials, a mark of bad management as well as bad taste.
“They could have sent messengers upcountry to turn them back,” Michael said. “Why didn’t they, I wonder?”
“Blacks,” said Manco Roca morosely. “What can you expect from blacks.”
“Yes, of course,” Sir Anthony said, giving the Peruvian a disdainful look. “We understand that they aren’t Incas. Yet despite that shortcoming they’ve somehow managed to keep control of most of this enormous continent for thousands of years.”
“But their colossal administrative incompetence, my dear Sir Anthony—as we see here, letting a circus like this one come into town while their king lies dying—”
“Perhaps it’s deliberate,” Ismet Akif suggested. “A much needed distraction. The city is tense. The Emir’s been too long about his dying; it’s driving everyone crazy. So they decided to let the caravan come marching in.”
“I think not,” said Li Hsiao-ssu. “Do you see those municipal officials there? I detect signs of deep humiliation on their faces.”
“And who would be able to detect such things more acutely than you?” asked the Grand Duke.
The Chinese envoy stared at the Russian as though unsure whether he was being praised or mocked. For a moment his elegant face was dusky with blood. The other diplomats gathered close, making ready to defuse the situation. Politeness was ever a necessity in such a group.
Then the envoy from the Teutonic States said, “Is that not the prince arriving now?”
“Where?” Michael demanded in a tight-strung voice. “Where is he?”
Sir Anthony’s hand shot out to seize Michael’s wrist. He squeezed it unsparingly.
In a low tone he said, “You will cause no difficulties, young sir. Remember that you are English. Your breeding must rule your passions.”
Michael, glaring toward Little Father as the prince approached the city gate, sullenly pulled his arm free of Sir Anthony’s grasp and amazed himself by uttering a strange low growling sound, like that of a cat announcing a challenge. Unfamiliar hormones flooded the channels of his body. He could feel the individual bones of his cheeks and forehead moving apart from one another, he was aware of the tensing and coiling of muscles great and small. He wondered if he was losing his mind. Then the moment passed and he let out his breath in a long dismal exhalation.
Little Father wore flowing green pantaloons, a striped robe wide enough to cover his arms, and an intricately deployed white turban with brilliant feathers of some exotic sort jutting from it. An entourage of eight or ten men surrounded him, carrying iron-shafted lances. The prince strode forward so briskly that his bodyguard was hard pressed to keep up with him.
Michael, watching Selima out of the corner of his eye, murmured to Sir Anthony, “I’m terribly sorry, sir. But if he so much as glances at her you’ll have to restrain me.”
“If you so much as flicker a nostril I’ll have you billeted in our Siberian consulate for the rest of your career,” Sir Anthony replied, barely moving his lips as he spoke.
But Little Father had no time to flirt with Selima now. He barely acknowledged the presence of the ambassadors at all. A stiff formal nod, and then he moved on, into the midst of the group of caravan leaders. They clustered about him like a convocation of eagles. Among those sun-crisped swarthy upright chieftains the prince seemed soft, frail, overly citified, a dabbler confronting serious men.
Some ritual of greeting seemed to be going on. Little Father touched his forehead, extended his open palm, closed his hand with a snap, presented his palm again with a flourish. The desert men responded with equally stylized maneuvers.
When Little Father spoke, it was in Songhay, a sharp outpouring of liquid incomprehensibilities.
“What was that? What was that?” asked the ambassadors of one another. Turkish was the international language of diplomacy, even in Africa; the native tongues of the dark continent were mysteries to outsiders.
Sir Anthony, though, said softly, “He’s angry. He says the city’s closed on account of the Emir’s illness and the caravan was supposed to have waited at Kabara for further instructions. They seem surprised. Someone must have missed a signal.”
“You speak Songhay, sir?” Michael asked.
“I was posted in Mali for seven years,” Sir Anthony muttered. “It was before you were born, boy.”
“So I was right,” cried Manco Roca. “The caravan should never have been allowed to enter the city at all. Incompetence! Incompetence!”
“Is he telling them to leave?” Ismet Akif wanted to know.
“I can’t tell. They’re all talking at once. I think they’re saying that their camels need fodder. And he’s telling them that there’s no merchandise for them to buy, that the goods from upriver were held back because of the Emir’s illness.”
“What an awful jumble,” Selima said.
It was the first thing she had said all morning. Michael, who had been trying to pay no attention to her, looked toward her now in agitation. She was dressed chastely enough, in
a red blouse and flaring black skirt, but in his inflamed mind she stood revealed suddenly nude, with the marks of Little Father’s caresses flaring like stigmata on her breasts and thighs. Michael sucked in his breath and held himself stiffly erect, trembling like a drawn bow-string. A sound midway between a sigh and a groan escaped him. Sir Anthony kicked his ankle sharply.
Some sort of negotiation appeared to be going on. Little Father gesticulated rapidly, grinned, did the open-close-open gesture with his hand again, tapped his chest and his forehead and his left elbow. The apparent leader of the traders matched him, gesture for gesture. Postures began to change. The tensions were easing. Evidently the caravan would be admitted to the city.
Little Father was smiling, after a fashion. His forehead glistened with sweat; he seemed to have come through a difficult moment well, but he looked tired.
The trumpets sounded again. The camel-drovers regained the attention of their indifferent beasts and nudged them forward.
There was new commotion from the other side of the plaza.
“What’s this, now?” Prince Itzcoatl said.
A runner clad only in a loincloth appeared, coming from the direction of the city center, clutching a scroll. He was moving fast, loping in a strange lurching way. In the stupefying heat he seemed to be in peril of imminent collapse. But he staggered up to Little Father and put the scroll in his hand.
Little Father unrolled it quickly and scanned it. He nodded somberly and turned to his vizier, who stood just to his left. They spoke briefly in low whispers. Sir Anthony, straining, was unable to make out a word.
A single chopping gesture from Little Father was enough to halt the resumption of the caravan’s advance into the city. The prince beckoned the leaders of the traders to his side and conferred with them a moment or two, this time without ceremonial gesticulations. The desert men exchanged glances with one another. Then they barked rough commands. The whole vast caravan began to reverse itself.
Little Father’s motorcar was waiting a hundred paces away. He went to it now, and it headed cityward, emitting belching bursts of black smoke and loud intermittent thunderclaps of inadequate combustion.
The prince’s entourage, left behind in the suddenness, milled about aimlessly. The vizier, making shooing gestures, ordered them in some annoyance to follow their master on foot toward town. He himself held his place, watching the departure of the caravaneers.
“Ali Pasha!” Sir Anthony called. “Can you tell us what’s happened? Is there bad news?”
The vizier turned. He seemed radiant with self-importance.
“The Emir has taken a turn for the worse. They think he’ll be with Allah within the hour.”
“But he was supposed to be recovering,” Michael protested.
Indifferently, Ali Pasha said, “That was earlier. This is now.” The vizier seemed not to be deeply moved by the news. If anything his smugness seemed to have been enhanced by it. Perhaps it was something he had been very eager to hear. “The caravan must camp outside the city walls until after the funeral. There is nothing more to be seen here today. You should all go back to your residences.”
The ambassadors began to look around for their drivers.
Michael, who had come out here with Sir Anthony in the embassy motorcar, was disconcerted to discover that the envoy had already vanished, slipping away in the uproar without waiting for him. Well, it wasn’t an impossible walk back to town. He had walked five times as far in his night of no sleep.
“Michael?”
Selima was calling to him. He looked toward her, appalled.
“Walk with me,” she said. “I have a parasol. You can’t let yourself get any more sun on your face.”
“That’s very kind of you,” he said mechanically, while lunatic jealousy and anger roiled him within. Searing contemptuous epithets came to his lips and died there, unspoken. To him she was ineluctably soiled by the presumed embraces of that night of shame. How could she have done it? The prince had wiggled his finger at her, and she had run to him without a moment’s hesitation. Once more unwanted images surged through his mind: Selima and the prince entwined on a leopardskin rug; the prince mounting Selima in some unthinkable bestial African position of love; Selima, giggling girlishly, instructing the prince afterward in the no doubt equally depraved sexual customs of the land of the Sultan. Michael understood that he was being foolish; that Selima was free to do as she pleased in this loathsome land; that he himself had never staked any claim on her attention more significant than a few callow lovesick stares, so why should she have felt any compunctions about amusing herself with the prince if the prince offered amusement? “Very kind,” he said. She handed the parasol up to him and he took it from her with a rigid nerveless hand. They began to walk side by side in the direction of town, close together under the narrow, precisely defined shadow of the parasol beneath the unsparing eye of the noonday sun.
She said, “Poor Michael. I’ve upset you terribly, haven’t I?”
“Upset me? How have you possibly upset me?”
“You know.”
“No. No, really.”
His legs were leaden. The sun was hammering the top of his brain through the parasol, through his wide-brimmed topee, through his skull itself. He could not imagine how he would find the strength to walk all the way back to town with her.
“I’ve been very mischievous,” she said.
“Have you?”
He wished he were a million miles away.
“By visiting the prince in his palace that night.”
“Please, Selima.”
“I saw you, you know. Early in the morning, when I was leaving. You ducked out of sight, but not quite fast enough.”
“Selima—”
“I couldn’t help myself. Going there, I mean. I wanted to see what his palace looked like. I wanted to get to know him a little better. He’s very nice, you know. No, nice isn’t quite the word. He’s shrewd, and part of being shrewd is knowing how to seem nice. I don’t really think he’s nice at all. He’s quite sophisticated—quite subtle.”
She was flaying him, inch by inch. Another word out of her and he’d drop the parasol and run.
“The thing is, Michael, he enjoys pretending to be some sort of a primitive, a barbarian, a jungle prince. But it’s only a pretense. And why shouldn’t it be? These are ancient kingdoms here in Africa. This isn’t any jungle land with tigers sleeping behind every palm tree. They’ve got laws and culture, they’ve got courts, they have a university. And they’ve had centuries to develop a real aristocracy. They’re just as complicated and cunning as we are. Maybe more so. I was glad to get to know the man behind the façade, a little. He was fascinating, in his way, but—” She smiled brightly. “But I have to tell you, Michael: he’s not my type at all.”
That startled him, and awakened sudden new hope. Perhaps he never actually touched her, Michael told himself. Perhaps they had simply talked all night. Played little sly verbal games of one-upmanship, teasing each other, vying with each other to be sly and cruel and playful. Showing each other how complicated and cunning they could really be. Demonstrating the virtues of hundreds of years of aristocratic inbreeding. Perhaps they were too well bred to think of doing anything so commonplace as—as—
“What is your type, then?” he asked, willy-nilly.
“I prefer men who are a little shy. Men who can sometimes be foolish, even.” There was unanticipated softness in her voice, conveying a sincerity that Michael prayed was real. “I hate the kind who are always calculating, calculating, calculating. There’s something very appealing to me about English men, I have to tell you, precisely because they don’t seem so dark and devious inside—not that I’ve met very many of them before this trip, you understand, but—oh, Michael, Michael, you’re terribly angry with me, I know, but you shouldn’t be! What happened between me and the prince was nothing. Nothing! And now that he’ll be preoccupied with the funeral, perhaps there’ll be a chance for you and me to get
to know each other a little better—to slip off, for a day, let’s say, while all the others are busy with the pomp and circumstance—”
She gave him a melting look. He thought for one astounded moment that she actually might mean what she was telling him.
“They’re going to assassinate him,” he suddenly heard his own voice saying, “right at the funeral.”
“What?”
“It’s all set up.” The words came rolling from him spontaneously, unstoppably, like the flow of a river. “His stepmother, the old king’s young wife—she’s going to slip him a cup of poisoned wine, or something, during one of the funeral rituals. What she wants is to make her stupid brother king in the prince’s place, and rule the country as the power behind the throne.”
Selima made a little gasping sound and stepped away from him, out from under the shelter of the parasol. She stood staring at him as though he had been transformed in the last moment or two into a hippopotamus, or a rock, or a tree.
It took her a little while to find her voice.
“Are you serious? How do you know?”
“Sir Anthony told me.”
“Sir Anthony?”
“He’s behind it. He and the Russian and Prince Itzcoatl. Once the prince is out of the way, they’re going to invite the King of Mali to step in and take over.”
Her gaze grew very hard. Her silence was inscrutable, painfully so.
Then, totally regaining her composure with what must have been an extraordinary act of inner discipline, she said, “I think this is all very unlikely.”
She might have been responding to a statement that snow would soon begin falling in the streets of Timbuctoo.
“You think so?”
“Why should Sir Anthony support this assassination? England has nothing to gain from destabilizing West Africa. England is a minor power still struggling to establish its plausibility in the world as an independent state. Why should it risk angering a powerful African empire like Songhay by meddling in its internal affairs?”
Michael let the slight to his country pass unchallenged, possibly because it seemed less like a slight to him than a statement of the mere reality. He searched instead for some reason of state that would make what he had asserted seem sensible.
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Seven: We Are for the Dark Page 40