by Owen Stanley
The silence was frigid, and he went on, unperturbed.
“Judges will also be elected to the local courts, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court, but here again any provision for special qualifications would be invidious and divisive, and violate the Bill of Rights. No elitist notions of literacy here, you will be pleased to observe. Oh yes, I forgot to say that all voting will take place once a year. How does that strike you?”
“You will, of course,” said Prout, acidly, “disregard the frivolous and mischievous manner in which Moncreif has seen fit to present the Constitution, and which we might have expected of him. In fact, the Bill of Rights will simply be the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, of which we have been given a most malicious parody. But the basic information he has presented on the institutional framework of the Constitution is correct. What do you all feel about the political structures of the Constitution?”
“Well,” said Daubeny, “It all seems rather authoritarian to me. The people are really being forced and regimented into a most rigid form of system.”
“That’s right, man,” said Richie Kleist, the Cultural Development Officer, from Ottawa. He was an obese young man, with rimless glasses, thick lips, and a goatee, with spindly legs that flew in all directions as he walked, as though collapsing under his weight. His favorite topic of conversation was his exertions on behalf of pimps and drug pushers in the slums of Toronto. “These guys have been pushed around too goddamn much. They need air to breathe, to swing their balls around, after twenty thousand years of shit an’ oppression.”
“If I may say so,” Prout broke in, “I think you are all mistaking the real aim of this Constitution. It has been designed precisely to allow the maximum possible opportunities for self-expression by the people, hence the elaborate apparatus of checks and balances. What we have provided is simply the canvas and the frame within which the people may draw their own vision of their future, the basic tool kit with which they can express their aspirations for that new way of life which they so much desire.”
This high-minded defense did much to quell suspicion of the constitution, which, sprang less from its contents than from the fact that Moncreif had had a major hand in it. But Prout’s testimony showed it to be the liberal-minded conception that it truly was.
After some technical arguments about its production and dissemination, Prout declared, “The people can ratify their new Constitution on Independence Day, which in my view should be July 14th. This is Bastille Day, of course, which I think very appropriate for a people who have been deprived of their rights for so long.”
The assembled company all nodded vigorously, as if to indicate they not only knew what Bastille Day was, but had been about to suggest it themselves.
“It will take about three months for us to get everything organized, and that date will also fall in the middle of the dry season. I have also heard from the Chairman of the Committee on Decolonisation, Lord Southall, that he’ll be able to visit us in July, so the 14th will be ideal in every way. As you probably all know, Lord Southall is not only an economist but also one of the world’s foremost champions of human rights, and only last year persuaded the Catatonian Government to abolish prisons, for which he has just been awarded the Jenkins Prize for Social Compassion.” Prout did not add that the miserable republic of Catatonia had since been almost dismembered by blood feuds, private armies, and trade-union intimidation.
Lord Southall, although only a Life Peer, came from a family with distinguished, not to say aristocratic, Liberal antecedents; starting life as an economist, he had gone to the United Nations as an adviser on development programmes and never looked back. His intellectual convictions, born of years of study, and his deep awareness of suffering humanity, gave him a moral force that none could resist as he charted his course of rescue among the developing nations of the world with absolute assurance. But by some strange process that defied analysis, his touch upon the nations he came to save reliably sent them into a rapid social decline: ancient African kingdoms were dismembered by civil war; robust republics of Amerindian peasants were reduced to beggary overnight; Muslim emirates were plunged into anarchy and despair. His genial self-confidence, and his reputation, grew with every disaster, as the expiring victims of his benevolence strewed his career like water-logged hulks in the wake of some pocket-battleship.
“Of course,” Prout was saying, “his advice on such an occasion will be invaluable, and I’ve no doubt we shall all learn a great deal. It’s also a way of reassuring those of us who are feeling a little remote from the centre of things that those who matter are thinking about us. So, let’s put our backs into it over the next three months to show them their trust in us has not been misplaced. Now, Tristram, what was it you wanted to raise?”
“Well, Dr. Prout, I think we’ve all heard these horrible rumours about killings up in the mountains, and even cannibalism. They seem such kind people that I can’t believe they’re true, but oughtn’t we to investigate, in case something’s gone wrong somehow?”
“I quite agree, and as soon as we can persuade the people to open the roads we’ll send up a welfare team. But we must be prepared for a temporary increase in violence at this stage of the process which we are inducing. We are passing through a phase of transitional disequilibrium, in which a centrifugal shift of the locus of interaction is producing a redeployment of social forces.”
His audience looked a little blank. He tried again.
“Inevitably, when one releases pressure built up under a colonial regime, and transfers power back to the local communities, the old equilibrium will take time to re-establish itself. As you know, before the white man disturbed the social system, there would have been relatively little fighting, but the suppression of the traditional mechanisms which maintained social solidarity built up tensions which must now dissipate, and that is what is happening at the moment. But as soon as they ratify the Constitution and realise that they are their own masters, and that they are free to compose their differences peacefully again, we can expect to see a marked decrease in violence. You see, it was precisely because the old regime prevented the people settling their disputes themselves, and forced them to go to the government, that violence was produced, in fact encouraged! The old regime systematically ordered the people to fight one another, as you know—indeed, the first thing I saw when I arrived was a battle on the airstrip—and then went so far as to claim that it was maintaining law and order! At the same time, it destroyed the people’s self-respect by brutal oppression that reduced them to the status of a degraded proletariat. The twin forces of the loss of self-respect and government intervention in their disputes has naturally led to a temporary disposition towards greater violence.”
Everyone looked immensely relieved by this cogent analysis of indigenous violence, except Moncreif, who acidly commented, “I wasn’t aware that the ancien régime had instructed the people in cannibalism.” Prout turned on him with waspish impatience:
“If anyone had ever instructed you in the rudiments of anthropology, Moncreif, you would know that ninety-nine percent of the stories of cannibalism are based on the racial prejudices of missionaries and traders, as a justification of their barbarous treatment of indigenous peoples, and they have absolutely no foundation in fact. The remaining one percent can be accounted for as the ritual sharing of small pieces of their loved ones. Perfectly natural. I don’t find that any more disgusting than a Catholic who believes he is eating the body of Christ. You’ve been carried away by those imperialist fantasies of your friend Fletcher, I’m afraid. There’s simply no evidence that these people are cannibals.”
“Yes, you should try and get out among the real people a bit more, Moncreif,” said Daubeny. “I did, and found that I much profited by the experience.”
“Quite,” said Prout. “Now, we have a few other items before lunch.”
That night, as Phyllis poured the Nescafé after supper, there was a tapping on the fly-screen door. Sydney
went to investigate—they kept no servants, of course—and found Snail Slime lurking outside, looking even more furtive and venomous than usual. Prout, however, saw him as a humble but sincere campaigner for social justice for his people, and the victim of Fletcher’s unspeakable brutality on his first patrol. He welcomed him inside and introduced him to Phyllis, who already knew of his sufferings on that infamous patrol, and sat him down and brought him cakes and coffee. Snail Slime tucked his feet under his chair, curling his toes, demolished the cakes with both hands, took one mouthful of the coffee and spat it back in the cup, and said he wanted to tell big fellow master about how liklik fellow master had “cook him house belong all fellow kanaka.”
Prout beamed upon him, like Diogenes on the point of discovering a just man, and fetched some beer from the kitchen. At first Snail Slime was cautious, testing the extent of Prout’s knowledge, and only suggested that liklik fellow master had “cook him house, bugger up him garden, kill him pig belong all fellow kanaka.” But as he discovered that Prout could hear nothing bad enough about Fletcher, his desire to please a superior, his feculent imagination, and his thirst for vengeance against Fletcher for that knuckle sandwich ten months prior loosened all restraints, and he embarked on a saga of lust and cruelty that would have made Caligula weep.
By the end of five stubbies, Snail Slime had transformed the sylvan glens of Elephant Island into a reeking shambles in which the burning alive of piccaninnies in houses, the bayoneting of pregnant women, and the ravishing of old people were the commonplaces of everyday life at the hands of Fletcher and the fiends under his command. For three hours, Snail Slime basked in the horrified fascination of Sydney and Phyllis, and at the end of his story he asked them, gleefully:
“You kill him liklik master die finish?”
Prout laboriously explained that first there must be big talk-talk along court house, and then the white men over the sea would put him in the calaboose, cut him grass till him die finish. Snail Slime was crestfallen to discover that no bloodier end was in store for Fletcher, but realised that the red men could not be expected to kill one of their own kind for the benefit of the True Men. He became openly alarmed, however, when he learned that he would be expected to appear in court personally, to provide names and dates and, preferably, witnesses to substantiate his lies. Phyllis went out to the kitchen to make some more coffee, while Snail Slime sat looking at the floor, twisting his legs still further under the chair.
“Why does he look so frightened, dear?” she asked, as she returned with the tray. “Could he be afraid that Fletcher will try to murder him?”
Prout reassured him that he would be absolutely safe under the protection of the Mission, and that this applied to his witnesses as well. At length he seemed to recover his confidence, and promised to return in a few days with some witnesses to substantiate his story.
After he had slipped out into the darkness, Sydney and Phyllis sat together before the gas-fire, for the cloudless night was unusually chilly, and held one another’s hands in silence. A tear ran slowly down her cheek, and Prout leaned over and kissed her tenderly. She fell into his arms, clutching him desperately as a shield against the horrors of this world and sobbing bitterly as he caressed her golden hair. She ran her fingers up and down his bony vertebrae and he put his hand under her chin, tilting back her head so that her plump lips were upturned to meet his, and she overbalanced, pulling him on top of her.
He began fumbling at her blouse…
Chapter XII
Abuk was disenchanted. It was all very well digging riches from the Houses of Filth, but Laripa and that twisted little monster Garang would get all the credit. In fact, they had got it already. The men of Laripa had put on a definite swagger since the Great Revelation swept the mountains, and were not only claiming the right to instruct everyone else in the building of Houses of Filth, but also a share in the proceeds. Things had gone far enough; Lavalava needed a Counter-Revelation to give one in the eye to Laripa and even the score. Tired of brooding on ways his people had been wronged, Abuk had come down to Ungabunga with his wives to sell vegetables and some meat, and buy a few odds and ends in Erny’s store. This had greatly expanded since the arrival of the Mission, keeping Erny so busy that now he was only drunk by the late afternoon.
There had been a tremendous rush for brilliantine, chewing gum, perfume, baby powder to make their skins shine, lipstick, sunglasses, synthetic gold-lamé shawls, and cow-boy boots, and after a visit to the store the dreaded warriors who had stalked into Ungabunga naked and predatory would totter back into the mountains on their high heels, reeking of jasmine, veiled and peering bashfully at a rose-tinted world like a bevy of Levantine harlots.
Abuk was astounded by the changes at Ungabunga since his last visit the year before, when he had led Lavalava against Niovoro on the day of Prout’s arrival. Where the old fort once dominated the station now stood the great orange cylinders of the Gas Works, and the cluster of store-sheds. The residences of Fletcher and Oelrichs were untouched on the hillside above the Gas Works, but below it the older buildings had been submerged in a flood of asbestos-walled prefabricated mediocrity. Only the Cosmopolitan Hotel breasted the tide, looming like a Mississippi stern-wheeler over a flock of cabin cruisers. On the airstrip and the rough ground outside the store fretful, anaemic, red-eyed European children, with pasty skin inflamed by sun and fungal infections, snivelled and wrangled like village dogs over the possession of scooters, pedal-cars, and dolly-prams.
Abuk sent his wives to the scale to sell their vegetables, and walked over to the store. He beamed at two blue-eyed urchins who stood outside the door, for like all the Moroks he loved children. It was strange to him that the red men’s children should be so discontented and unhappy, when they had so much, but then, who could understand anything about the red men? The Morok children were cheerful, yet more mature even as toddlers; while the Morok boys dashed off into the forest to hunt small game with bows and arrows, their serious-faced sisters followed their mothers to work dutifully in the gardens with miniature string bags.
As he stepped through the new glass doors, into the gas-lit interior, with its vinyl-tiled floor, formica-topped counters, glass and chrome display cases that had replaced the rough old boards and fly-blown shelves of last year, his jaw dropped.
“Ekeh! Ekeh! Ekeh!” he intoned in wonder, and for the next half-hour he wandered round the displays of merchandise with the innocent curiosity of a child. Erny had been trying out some new lines of goods, including toys for the European children, and found that model cars, lorries, bulldozers and other vehicles sold very well.
Eventually Abuk came around to these and paused, attracted by their bright colors but without the slightest conception of their use. It was early in the afternoon, business was slack, and Erny was sober, bored, and looking for some diversion. Noting Abuk’s interest, he spent the next twenty minutes showing him how the cars would run by themselves after they had been wound up or their wheels were rotated by friction. Abuk was entranced and soon had every vehicle out on the counter, running them in all directions. He suggested that they were the red men’s versions of baby pigs, and Erny, who was just starting on his second bottle, and in an increasingly loquacious mood, explained that in his country these things were so big that real people could sit inside them and be carried about. Abuk was almost as astonished by this information as he had been to see the toys move by themselves, and when his women finally came in to join him, he purchased a Lincoln Continental and went out clutching it.
Over the next few days he played with his new car for hours every day, even neglecting his visits to the House of Filth, and was always surrounded by a fascinated audience. One night, he dreamed that his old father, long dead, was still alive, and that he contemptuously flung the car away into a nearby garden. After a time, a strange disturbance was seen beneath the soil, and suddenly with a roar a vast shiny metal object heaved itself out of the ground, shaking off the dirt in showers. It was a real
Lincoln Continental, the size of a house, and stood there making a loud whizzing noise. He and his father got in, and were both carried to Laripa where they drove through the stockade with a crash of splintering timber and roared up and down the dance-yard, scattering the inhabitants like chickens. As they were about to ram the great men’s house he woke up. It was still dark outside. As he lay there and recalled the details of the dream, he realised that it was the Sign for which he had been waiting, the much-needed Counter-Revelation.
Erny was astonished when a couple of days later a body of Abuk’s kinsmen descended on his store and bought every toy vehicle he possessed. So clamorous were they that he dug out some of his old stock of simple models that had no means of propulsion, but these were indignantly flung down when the Moroks discovered this deficiency, flashing dark, suspicious glances from under their heavy brows at the unfortunate Erny, who promised to radio for a larger stock as soon as possible. Phyllis Prout, and Cyril’s wife, Noreen Hiscock, were in the store while the savage Moroks clamoured for toys, a scene to melt the heart of any woman.