A Guest of Honour

by Nadine Gordimer

“Onabu as chief, but plenty of white officers who really run the show, under him.”

  “Exactly. Those whites are the real professionals who just want to do what they’re paid. No chance of any of them being interested in us. And there are more police than soldiers.”

  “Onabu’s not a fool, either. Roly wouldn’t have advised Mweta to hand over to him if he had been. He knows how to rely on his white officers when it comes to a situation like this. He’ll be thanking God for them.”

  “That’s how it is, James. Too many policemen. And their organization is old-established, eh? People are used to listening to them. They were all we had for donkey’s years, when all there was in the way of an army was a few kids from the U.K. doing their military training here. The police force’s always been paramilitary. And they’ve got the Young Pioneers to do the things it wouldn’t look nice to do themselves. I know all that. But there are a few signs that are not so bad … D’you know of any coup in the last fifteen years or so where a police force has defended its political masters? It’s inclined to be essentially bureaucratic … And in a country this size, with a population still mostly agricultural, living in villages, the biggest numbers of policemen are in the country areas—can you see Selufu’s local men rushing off to the capital to protect a government they’ve never seen?”

  He listened but would not answer.

  “We’ve got other friends, too. In a good place. The Special Branch. It isn’t only a help to get information, it’s also important sometimes to be able to do something about what’s leaked. I mean, to have Tola Tola out of the way, that’s something, you know?”

  “So it’s all very professional,” Bray said.

  Shinza looked at him appraisingly a moment. “Yes! If it’s done properly, there should be no heads broken. Not a drop, not a scratch.”

  “What about Somshetsi?”

  “He’s been thinking about nothing but this sort of thing for years. We need portable equipment for communications, man—things like that. We go for the organizational centre, we don’t look for battles in the street.”

  “When would you want me to go, Edward?”

  “Now. As soon as you can. You’ll get back the fare at the other end. I’m going to tell you the addresses because we don’t write down anything, eh? I don’t want you to be ‘apprehended’ …”

  “I don’t know how soon I can go. I’m not still playing for time. There are personal things to be arranged—thought out. I have to decide how best to do it.”

  “Fine. Fine. But I won’t be here. People are always coming up and down, you can leave a message here at the bar, but it might not reach me right away. Best thing would be to make contact when you come down to get your plane. Go to Haffajee’s Garage—you know?—ask for the panel beater, Thomas Pathlo.”

  “Haffajee’s Garage again.”

  “Mmmh? Pathlo knows where I am. Or Goma, if I’m not there. —Well, so you’ll see the family again in England, anyway. At least I’m doing Olivia a good turn.”

  “I may not be able to come back,” Bray said. “Mweta may not let me in. He must know we are in touch. And if he let me in again he would have to arrest me.”

  Shinza suddenly spoke in Gala. “Perhaps he needs you to set his hand free for that, even now.” The phrase ‘to set the hand free’ meant the lifting of the taboo against harming a member of the tribe, one of one’s own.

  “It’s been done,” said Bray.

  They discussed exactly where he should go and what sort of support he should try to find; they arranged the contacts he should use to inform Shinza, both at home and through Somshetsi over the border. It was long after the curfew time when he began to walk home. The Fisheagle was in darkness, the main street still and shrill with crickets and the tiny anvil—ring of the tree frogs. He met only one police patrol and did not try to dodge it: a white man coming from the direction of the Fisheagle bar would hardly be regarded as a security risk. The policeman mumbled a hoarse good night in Gala and he mumbled back. Of course, in England too, he would be breaking the law; wasn’t it an offence to plan the overthrow of a friendly state? Winter was beginning there, as it was last year, almost a year ago, when he left. Cold damp leaves deadening the pavements and the sweet mouldering grave—smell muffling up against the face. England. A deep reluctance spread through him, actually slowing his steps. England.

  Hjalmar and Rebecca were still outside under the fig tree when he got back to the house. Mechanically, he had taken care to open and bang shut the door of his car, so that it would seem he had driven home in it; he could smell his own sweat as he flopped down into a chair and hoped Hjalmar wouldn’t notice he’d obviously been walking. It was so hot that no one felt like going to bed. The moon had dispelled some of the haze, high in the sky, and seemed to give off reflected warmth as it did light. The strange domestic peace that had made its place among them these days, as if it could grow only in the shelter of all that made it impossible and absurd, contained them.

  Later Rebecca said, “I can smell burning.” Over towards the township, the sky showed a midnight sunrise.

  Chapter 20

  Houses were fired that night, and fifteen people died.

  “Holy” burnings began all over the country; Mweta’s “burn the dirty rags” metaphor had been seized upon by the Young Pioneers for their text. Nothing he said now, angry or desperate, threat or appeal, was able to reach them in their fierce evangelism.

  Many of the strikers from the iron-ore mine had families living in Gala. On the day of the joint funeral while the police were diverted from the mine back to town to deal with the arsonists (and people whose houses had been burned began to band together to retaliate with further burnings), these strikers suddenly swarmed upon Gala. They overpowered the small contingent of police left guarding the mine and commandeered mine trucks, travelling at night, and in the confusion managed to get to the town in the morning before the police could stop them. There they somehow split into two factions, the one making across the golf course for the African township, the other ending up in the streets of Gala itself. Bray and Rebecca watched from the boma; the men had been up all night and came singing, plodding along with big, dreamlike steps, a slow prance, some of them in their mine helmets, some carrying sticks more like staffs than weapons. Rebecca had tears in her eyes; he thought it was fear. She said, “Poor things.”

  Aleke sought him out, standing legs apart, holding a deep breath. “Does he think parachutes are going to drop from the sky? He’s mad. How can I get troops here now, this minute?” Selufu had knocked him up out of sleep early in the morning, and kept telephoning.

  “Well, he’s a worried man.”

  “Everyone’s a worried man. I’ve spoken to Matoko, I’ve put through a call to the Ministry, I’ve asked for the Minister himself. Now what does he want? To hell with it.”

  He stood there looking out at the procession with a curious expression of sulky indecision. All his confident good nature seemed balanced like an avalanche that so much as a shout could cause to fall.

  “Any help from Matoko?”

  “Are you crazy too. There’s all hell at the asbestos mine since last week. The Company’s had to send riot breakers. They fired on the strikers yesterday, killed a woman who was somehow mixed up in it. God knows what’s going on up there.”

  The singing grew cello-loud and wavering, bringing close under the windows the peculiar awe the human voice has in its power to produce. Boma clerks and messengers appeared on the patch of grass and flowers. Old Moses the gardener snaked the jet of his hose in the air and shouted in Gala, are you thirsty! The boma people laughed discreetly, expecting to be called back to work; one held a brown government folder to protect his eyes from the sun.

  The strikers’ destination was not clear; it existed within, where they knew themselves threatened over months now by many things: lack of trust in the people who spoke for them at the mine, the puzzling power of men who bullied them in the name of the President’s Party, t
he failure of authority to protect them. They moved past the boma towards the market.

  Aleke suddenly said, “Come on” and urged by an apprehension rather than clear about what they could do, Bray found himself with him, down the old wooden-balustraded stairs of the boma, out past the clerks, who, although Aleke didn’t so much as look at them, were afraid to follow, and striding up the road after the men. Aleke’s big muscular buttocks in well-pressed terylene shorts worked like an athlete’s. He managed with superb instinct to turn to advantage the undignified aspect of the chase—instead of hurrying alongside the strikers he cut a swathe for his presence right in among them. He and Bray moved up with the will of sheep-dogs swiftly through a flock. Bray felt the jogging bodies all round him and smelled the sweat and dust; more of the men recognized him than knew Aleke. Eyes on him: a contraction of inevitability, flash of exposure—as if his commitment to Shinza, his real place in all this instead of the image of himself as the neutral support of Aleke, were bared a moment for those who could see. But the habit of authority was instinctive. He and Aleke broke through the front ranks of the men just at the market and strode backwards a few paces, their hands raised in perfect accord. The singing died; the men in front stood, and those behind came on, closing. They spilled so that Aleke and Bray were surrounded, but in a clear space, among small piles of drought—wizened vegetables and dried fish. One old woman was trapped there with them at her pitch and sat without moving, horny legs drawn up under her cloth. Aleke began to speak. His arms were folded across his big chest. When the men pressed forward to hear he broke through them again and jumped on a home-made stall, standing among peanuts and manioc. It creaked but held; his strong good-humoured voice neither bullied nor pleaded. He said he knew why they had come: they were worried about their relations. But he promised that everything was being done to stop the burning and fighting. If they took it on themselves to try and stop it they would make things worse for their relations. If they would go back the way they came he would personally guarantee that they would not be arrested or molested….

  He knew and they knew that he could promise nothing of the sort. But they believed he would try; and their purpose, unsure of its proper expression, wavered, comforted, before his command. The tension dissolved as he moved talking among the men, and the people in the market broke into discussion, peering and pointing. Bray said, “Get them back to the golf course. Out of here as quickly as possible. But it would be safer to manage it in groups. And they must avoid the main street.” There were about a hundred and fifty men; difficult not to alter by too obvious a taking over of the authority of the leaders, the atmosphere of consent rather compliance that Aleke had managed to create.

  “Shall we go with them ourselves?” Aleke and he stood as if in a crowd coming out of a football match, sweat streaming down their faces, the market flies settling everywhere. Aleke wanted above all to avoid any encounter with the police. Then with a touch of old easy confidence: “I’m going to look a damn fool, stepping it out in front.”

  “If they divide into three groups, one can go back past the boma, another round behind the abattoir—no, no good, too near the lime works—round the old church hall, that’s better, there’s a path across the open ground. And then the third can follow the boma road about ten minutes behind the first. The great thing is to let it all fizzle out,” Bray said.

  “I’ll just sort of stroll up to the boma with the first lot—it’ll look as if I’m going back there, and then I can simply carry on with them after all.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “But you stay here,” Aleke asked of him. “Just stay put and keep your eyes on them. … I don’t like the idea of this market, with all these people, eh?”

  The men were beginning to disperse, eddying, become tired individuals rather than a crowd. One or two were even buying manioc to chew; it must have been many hours since they had eaten. Bray heard behind him at once the scud of tyres, yells, and turned full into a lorry-load of Young Pioneers bursting into the crowd. Something struck his shoulder savagely in passing, the old woman was leaning over her onions in protection, wailing—the Young Pioneers with their bits of black-and-red insignia flew past him like horses over an obstacle and battered their way in among the strikers. They hit out with knobbed clubs and bicycle chains. Aleke had stopped dead, thirty yards away, with the other strikers. Bray yelled at him to go on, but it was too late, the men were racing back to their mates. Vegetables rolled, a pile of fowls tied by the legs were being trampled upon, squawking horribly, feathers and blood mixed with ripped clothing and gaps of bare flesh. He saw with choking horror hands grab bright orange and green bottles from the cold drink stall, the coloured liquid pouring over the burst of broken glass, the jagged-edged necks of bottles plunged in among heads and arms. One of the strikers staggered towards him, the terrible astonishment of a blow turning to a gash of blood that opened the whole face, from forehead to chin. Blood of chickens and men was everywhere. Bray fought to hold back an arm that had raised a bottle-neck above another head; he twisted that arm and could not have let go even if he had heard the bone crack. When the bottle dropped into his other hand he thrust it deep into his trouser pocket, struggling at the same time with someone who had grabbed him round the neck from behind. People came running from the boma and the turn of the road that led to the centre of town. While he fought he was filled with anguish at the awareness of more and more people pressing into the bellowing, fighting crowd. He was trying to get to Aleke without having any idea where he was; suddenly he saw Aleke, bleeding from the ear, struggling towards him. They did not speak but together heaved a way through blows and raced behind the market lavatories, through the backyard of a group of stores, and to the back of the boma.

  Rebecca’s teeth showed clamped between parted lips, like someone who has been taken out of cold water. She stared at them with embarrassment. Godfrey Letanka, the elderly clerk in his neat alpaca jacket, grabbed the towel from beside the washbasin in Aleke’s office and held it to the bleeding ear. “Is it from inside?” Bray asked. “Was it a knock on the head?” Aleke, his great chest heaving for breath, shook his head as if a fly were in his ear. They tried to wipe away the blood so as to see where it was coming from; and there Bray discovered a small, deep hole, right through the cartilage of the ear shell: so it was not a brain injury. Letanka found the first-aid box somewhere and Rebecca held the ear tightly between two pads of cottonwool to stop the bleeding. Aleke was no longer dazed. “Get hold of Selufu—try the phone, James—” “—The police are there,” Rebecca said. “You didn’t see—they were on the edge of the crowd, two jeeps arrived from Nairobi Street, that side. Godfrey and I saw them from the roof.” “The roof?” “Yes, we found you can get up onto that little platform thing where the flag is.”

  With Aleke holding a wad of cottonwool to his ear, they rushed along the empty corridors (“Those bloody fools of mine, they’ve all gone to get their heads broken”) and climbed through a window onto the curlicued wooden gable that had been built as a setting for the flagpole when the Union Jack had flown there. “Don’t come up again, it may be too much weight,” Bray said to Rebecca, and she stood there below, waiting. A car had been overturned and was burning, obscuring everything with smoke and fumes. But they could see the two police jeeps, the shining whips of their radio antennae.

  They went back inside the boma and Aleke tried to telephone Selufu. While he questioned the constable on duty and they watched his face for his reaction to the replies, Rebecca whispered to Bray, “You’re bleeding too.” He looked down; there was dark blood on his shoe. “Chickens were killed.” She shook her head; she pointed, not touching him before the others. “It’s running, look.” His hand went to his pocket and he took out the broken neck of the lemonade bottle. He looked around for somewhere to put it. She took it from him and laid it, bloody and dirty, in Aleke’s big ashtray. The inside of the trouser pocket was sliced and in his groin Bray’s fingers touched a mess of wet hair and
beneath it, a cut. He shook his head; it was nothing.

  “He’s in the township. People have been killed there. They had to fire on them. There’s nobody at the police station but the man on the phone. Nobody.”

  There was silence. She looked at the bloody shoe.

  He said, “We could take the car and go back, if you like.”

  “What can the two of us do,” said Aleke.

  “You were doing fine. If only the Young Pioneers had kept out of it everything would have been all right. What you could do—we could make a quick whip round the lime works and so on—keep people inside and off the streets.”

  “What about Rebecca? Think it’s okay for Godfrey and her here?”

  Bray said, “We’ll drive them up to my house.”

  “I can drive us. I’ll keep away from these roads. Godfrey and I’ll be all right.”

  Bray and Rebecca looked at each other for a moment. “Take the track past the cemetery. Don’t go near the golf course.”

  Sitting beside Aleke he had a moment of deep premonitory gloom about Rebecca, as if something had already happened to her rather than that she was likely to run into trouble. The small wound hurt like a cigarette burn that produces a radius of pain out of all proportion to its surface injury. Aleke was very good down in the industrial quarter. There was some disruption of work there; rumours of what was happening in the township had made people take their bicycles and race home. He spoke to groups of men while they stared at his ear bound to his head by Rebecca with criss-crossed tape, and Bray saw them drawn to him, to the physical assurance of his person just as, at home, women, friends, children were attracted without effort on his part.

  Aleke said, “D’you want to go into the township?”

  It was one way of putting it. “I’ll come with you.”

  Aleke suddenly yawned passionately, lifted his hands from the steering wheel and slapped them down on it again. “We’ll go round by your house to see if they got back all right.”