In the evenings, stripped to the waist, the leaders liked to play football: jostling and trampling and stirring up clouds of dust, they would scuffle over a plastic bag stuffed with sacking, barging and tussling and kicking until it was no more than a tattered scrap; then the members of the victorious team would swagger about, ammunition rolled around their waists. ‘We are kings,’ Bat heard the Thief crow. ‘No one can defeat us. We are kings and we’re going to take over this land.’ And he burst into laughter. It was not like the laughter that Bat remembered from his village. It was fierce and staccato as the firing of a gun.
‘It’s witchcraft that gives him his strength,’ Gulu explained the next day as he and Bat crouched together in the evening, cleaning their guns. They were old and rusty and their mechanisms jammed easily. ‘He has met the Diviner, who founded this army. And he has bush magic. The Diviner can change shape when he likes, become a leopard or a dog. He can pick a rock from the ground and it will sparkle like a storm of lightning. The government forces can’t catch him because he knows when they are coming. Like a spider, he sees the fist falling and always scuttles off.’
Gulu twisted the butt stock from the barrel of his rifle, and set to work cleaning a rusted bolt with a rag.
‘Once an ambush was laid for him on the far bank of a river,’ he went on. ‘It was in the very place that he had been about to cross, but somehow he sensed it and, fording further downstream, he doubled round in a loop and attacked his ambushers from behind. “We will kill the crocodile that waits in the water,” he said. The current of the river ran red that day.’
‘Were you there?’ asked Bat.
But Gulu didn’t answer. He was absorbed in adjusting a metal spring. All his stories were told as if he had just been watching, reporting on something in which he had no part. It was almost as if he stood outside himself, Bat thought; as if he was watching his own actions like some appalled witness. He never spoke of the feelings that made him screw up his face and scream in the night, that left his eyes so dark and blank when he woke.
‘When the Diviner speaks,’ Gulu eventually continued, snapping the rifle’s clip-latch back into place, ‘his voice echoes all around you. It’s as if it is rising up out of the air. It swirls all around you and gets inside your head.’ He looked critically at the gun, which he had now almost reassembled, and screwed the barrel a little tighter into the chamber end. ‘You too will meet him one day. He meets all his soldiers. He will come for you one day; one day when he’s sure that you’ve finally become his, and he will sprinkle you with water that has the power to ward off bullets and tell you that no one who is true to him can ever be harmed again.’
Bat shivered as he glanced across the camp at a gang of child leaders. They wore trousers and grubby canvas shoes that had come from the market, and the Goat even sported a watch on his wrist. A few were dancing to the music on the commander’s radio, their dreadlocks whipping around their necks. The rest squatted by the fire, gambling and passing a bottle of maize spirit between them. The giddy smell of dagga mingled with the wood-smoke.
Gulu followed Bat’s gaze. ‘Dagga is a strong drug,’ he warned him. ‘It’s dangerous. It can make you do anything. And you won’t even mind doing it because it somehow makes you feel as if everything that’s happening is happening somewhere else. And for a while that seems good,’ he told him. ‘You can forget for a bit. Forget what you’ve seen . . .’ His voice trailed off as, turning, he looked outwards into the night, as if he could see something, as if there were pictures out there in the blackness. ‘And forget what you’ve done,’ he added quietly as he finally turned back.
The eyes of the two boys met. And for a moment Bat thought he saw a fresh life flickering up in that blankness. He saw the sorrow that made this child cry out at night. He saw the pain of the memories unlocked from his head. He reached out an arm and slid it around his shoulders. But Gulu’s thin back hardened, resisting his touch. He shook his head rapidly as though trying to dislodge something from it. ‘But dagga only works for a bit,’ he murmured. ‘The memories always come back . . . they always come back . . . and then they are even worse.’ And picking up his rifle, he rose swiftly to his feet and went.
Bat was left alone. It was true, he thought sadly. All the soldiers were troubled. He had noticed how shaken they would be on their return from a raid. Then, even the most fearsome might sometimes be spotted withdrawing into the shadows, watchful as a spider whose web has been shaken, stroking his gun as tenderly as a little girl strokes her painted wooden doll, as if it was the only thing in the entire world he could trust. Once, he had even seen the Goat squatting alone on a stump, his head dropped in his hands as he rocked back and forth, back and forth. He had gone on for hours, as if his whole being was tuned to the swing of a soldier’s march.
And then suddenly, a few days later, the boy they called Bonyo because he was like a locust went mad. He jumped up from the fire where he had been smoking dagga and staggered about waving his gun over his head. ‘I killed the last owner of this,’ he cried. ‘He deserved it. He had done too much damage with it . . . and since then I’ve used it to do some damage myself.’ Then all at once he began shooting, firing all over the place, round after round singing across the compound, rattling the tin huts and ripping through the forest foliage. The air smelled of cordite. The camp was blue with smoke. Most children ducked; hurling themselves flat on the ground, their hands over their heads. A few reached for their weapons. Lobo fled.
The commander stormed over in a rage. ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ he thundered. ‘Do you think we have bullets to waste?’ He sent the boy reeling to the ground with a ferocious blow of his arm. The blood poured from his head.
The commander turned away and spat. Then he swept his slow stare across the now rising children.
‘Ammunition costs money,’ he said. His tone had grown frighteningly calm. And then, to Bat’s terror, it was his face that was singled out of the crowd.
‘But you are going to help us with that, aren’t you, elephant boy?’
CHAPTER TWENTY
The following morning, as dawn was breaking, a detachment of soldiers was assembled: a mixture of seasoned fighters with a handful of youngsters. As usual, nothing was explained, but then, so much that Bat saw didn’t make any sense to him that he sometimes wondered if he had completely stopped wondering. It was so much easier just to do what you were told, he mused. And then, with a jump, he heard his name called.
A few moments later he was part of a squad. He was leaving the camp. He glanced back instinctively to search for Muka, but the girl hadn’t been picked as part of his group. Gulu was behind him and he saw him turning. He gave a hard warning frown. ‘This is a raiding party,’ he hissed.
The child soldiers set off through the forest, twisting their way along a slender trail, twining through creeper-draped thickets, winding between trunks before eventually arriving at the top of a steep and treacherous slope. Bat checked up on Gulu as the land sheered away. He was flinching at each step. The bones in his foot had not mended properly. But even where the drop was sharpest, he never cried out. The silence was absolute. Anyone who broke it would be beaten. Even to send a stone skittering would have earned a punishment. The children stole through the shadows like prowling beasts.
For three days they walked, sleeping out among the trees, making their beds in shallow scoops in the leaves. Then, on the evening of the fourth day, the Goat, the squad leader, suddenly raised a clenched fist. It was the order to stop. The forest cover had ended. An expanse of flat scrub lay ahead. They would wait here until darkness fell. Some of the children lay down to doze in the thickets; others, more restless, skulked noiselessly about. Bat hunched down in the undergrowth. He blinked at the sweat that was blurring his vision. His heartbeat was fluttering. The whole world felt alien. Instead of the freedom he had so long dreamed of, he felt only frightened by the open spaces ahead. He no longer belonged to them, he thought. He was no longer a v
illager. He was one of their enemies. He was one of the wild soldiers the bush people most feared. He had become a stranger . . . even to himself.
As dusk approached, the squad of children stole out. They zigzagged, ducking low through the scrub, as they had been taught: each on his own and yet each keeping watch on the figure alongside him, linked as closely together as if tied by a rope. It was a long while before they finally reached fields that had been cultivated and even then they were bare. All the crops had been stripped. The ground was hard. It should have been planted by now, Bat thought. The rains should have been falling on emerald maize shoots. Instead dead weeds straggled over untilled dust. The dry grass crackled underfoot as the children stole on. They were following the Goat who, clad in a pair of green trousers with a heavy belt of bullets slung around the waist and a bandana tied about his brow, spoke to them only through the signals of his fist. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, Bat thought; not much older than he was, but he would have thought nothing of surviving alone in the bush. ‘With a gun in my hands, I can get anything I want,’ he had once boasted, using its hard wooden butt to crush a lizard for soup.
They reached a village. Bat couldn’t tell where he was. He couldn’t tell anything except that he was terrified. What if there were people? What if they tried to shoot him? The palms of his hands felt clammy. Perhaps someone would kill him without realizing that he had never wanted to join this army. But then, wasn’t that what had happened to all the children? he thought. They had all been abducted. None of them had gone into the army from choice.
The village was deserted. The raiders poured in like the swarms of soldier ants that would stream in from the forest, stripping every tree, every bush in their path. Bat remembered a time in his own village when these creatures had once passed implacably through, sending the villagers racing in panic for the river, crying out for lost children and grabbing tethered goats. Every surface had boiled with shiny black specks. The shambas had been stripped, the grain stores devoured. Even the fresh thatch on the roofs had been eaten. The army of ants had left nothing behind it and, when the villagers had finally returned and Bat had gone back to search for his broody hen, he had found her just where he had left her, trapped under a basket, a skeleton squatting upon a clutch of eggs.
The soldiers lit flickering torches to give themselves light. The huts were abandoned, but possessions had been left behind: there were knives, tins and pots in the cook-huts, maize in the stores and blankets on the mats. Roosting poultry shuffled anxiously in the boughs of the trees. Bat stood there uncertainly.
His companions were already rampaging about. They broke down the thatch in search of hidden possessions, found dried fish and kola nuts, a tin can of honey and a gourd of goat’s milk. A girl discovered a bottle of medicine and gulped it down at one draught. A boy’s grin gleamed in the torchlight as he carried a pumpkin. But Bat just stood there and stared. He wondered if, even now, the inhabitants were hiding and watching, hearts thumping, the fathers clutching their pangas, the mothers clamping their palms over trembling children’s mouths.
‘This was my uncle’s village,’ a young soldier informed him. He was munching at two corn cobs, one gripped in each fist, taking a mouthful out of each in turn.
Bat’s eyes widened. ‘Does he know you’re a soldier?’ he stuttered.
The boy shrugged. ‘Perhaps . . . every family gives soldiers . . . but I don’t suppose mine know if I’m dead or alive.’ He grinned. ‘This is my family now,’ he said and, jerking his chin back at the gun which dangled over his shoulder, he crammed in the next mouthful of yellow corn.
Bat slipped into an empty hut and stood there. He didn’t know what to do. His mind was humming inside him. ‘Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as a hive of wild bees.’ The words of his grandmother rose up through his thoughts, and even now, even amid all the alarm and confusion, the pictures came flooding back to him to remind him of who he was.
He thought of Jambula’s shaded huts and its trees; of the passers-by who, when offered a calabash of cool water, would say how much they envied its peaceful spot. He imagined his cattle browsing in the long grass by the river, the herds of wild animals that speckled the plains, the elephants drifting through their forested tunnels. He saw his grandmother squatting wide-kneed over the cook-fire, throwing handfuls of peppers into hissing clay pots . . .
‘What the hell are you doing?’ A voice made him jump. A face scowled at him furiously. A brandished torch was held aloft. ‘Scram!’ the Goat barked as he touched his firebrand to the thatch. A tongue of flame flickered upwards; the dry grass crackled and caught.
Bat dashed from the hut. All the soldiers were gathering. The smoke of burning houses was swirling around them. Their eyes glittered in the light. At a cry from their leader the raiding horde made off. The flames that leaped from the roofs seemed to be waving their farewell. They licked the night sky with their hot yellow tongues.
A row of flapping chickens had been slung upside down on a pole. Two of the youngest soldiers carried it between them; the rest laboured along under sacks of maize and rice. They returned far more slowly than they had come but still dawn was only just breaking as they slipped back into the trees.
Stopping after a while at a forest pool, they rested. The water was slimy. It felt almost viscous to the touch. If the rains didn’t come soon, it would dry up completely, Bat thought. He watched two of the soldiers who were now sitting beside it. They were girls. He had seen one of them earlier, prowling through the darkness, her filthy face ferocious, eyes drilling into the black; but now she was unfolding a cloth that she had stolen and tucked away like a trophy into her belt. It was a woman’s wrap. A pattern of red and green flowers burst open as she shook it. The biggest and brightest were in the middle, but they were not as bright as the smile which suddenly broke upon her face. For a moment she looked like a child again.
‘It’s not too late,’ Bat whispered to Gulu, who was sitting beside him. ‘It’s never too late. We just have to find a way . . . a way to get back.’ But his friend didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to hear. He just stared into the distance. He looked dazed as a beetle, Bat thought, which, scorched by a lamp, tumbles onto the ground and lies there, too hurt to recover. And then they were shouldering their burdens again and setting off.
Gulu struggled under the weight. Bat lagged to help him. They were falling behind. ‘We have to keep up,’ Gulu muttered. ‘We have to keep going. If we don’t we will get lost.’
‘We must think of a way,’ urged Bat. It was so hard in the camp to find time to talk safely. ‘We have to think of a plan,’ he hissed. ‘We have to find a way for you, me and Muka . . .’
The boy just shook his head between gasps, and struggled to catch up.
‘We’ll help you,’ Bat urged, pressing hard on his heels. He had to get through to him. ‘Muka and I . . . we can help you.’
Gulu still didn’t answer. The sweat was dripping from his brow. It was running into his eyes and blinding him. He blinked rapidly, over and over. The muscles on his thin bony limbs were bulging, his sinews stretched taut. The smell of dagga drifted back along the column. The Goat and Bonyo the locust boy were smoking to keep their strength up. They hadn’t noticed how far back the two boys were now lagging.
‘Why not now?’ The thought leaped into Bat’s head. He felt the surge of his heartbeat. Why not run now? He could make it. He and Gulu could make it. He stopped in his tracks. But what about Muka? His heart scudded in his chest. Could he leave Muka? He could come back and get her later. He could bring help. A picture of the girl suddenly rose up in his mind. He saw her as she stood there, tall and skinny, in the middle of the camp. Unbidden tears were shining in her huge black eyes; but she refused to acknowledge them, refused to cover her face. She would never compromise. Bat winced from the thought. It was unbearable to him to think of her suffering. He could never leave her. He would not go without her. He hurried to catch up with the still
struggling Gulu.
‘We can’t give up hope,’ he whispered as he pressed closer to him. He was trying to reassure himself as much as to persuade the boy. ‘Once you’ve given up there’s nothing left,’ he murmured, ‘and when there’s nothing left . . . well, then you just die.’
‘We’ll just die anyway,’ Gulu answered.
Suddenly, Bat stopped once again in his tracks. There was something there. His eyes scanned the forest; there was nothing to be seen. But he wasn’t mistaken. He could feel it. There were elephants. He could sense them. It was like a singing in the air. The memories shifted inside him like a child that stirs and shifts and rolls over in its sleep. He froze still as he could, every sense straining. ‘Meya?’ he whispered. ‘Meya, are you there?’
‘Keep up!’ hissed Gulu, flashing a glance over his shoulder. ‘You have to keep up!’
Bat ignored him and just stood.
‘Meya?’ he whispered again, this time a bit louder.
Gulu swivelled and fixed him with a ferocious stare.
Bat let the sack of flour he was carrying slip. His eyes were darting about him. The elephants had come. They were watching him. They knew he was there. But where? He searched frantically. The forest was so thick.
‘Keep up!’ a voice hissed in his ear. It was Gulu. He had come back. ‘Keep up! If you don’t they will kill you.’ He shook Bat roughly by the wrist. There was a look of complete desperation in his face. ‘They will kill you . . . there will be no second chance . . . and then’ – Gulu’s voice dropped down to a barely audible murmur – ‘and then I’ll have no one,’ he whispered. ‘I will have no one at all.’
Bat swept one last desperate look around the trees; the shadows held their secrets. Nothing stirred. Perhaps he had only imagined it. Perhaps it had all been a dream whipped up by his hopes. He willed with every fibre in his body to see them . . . but no lumbering shape disturbed the eerie stillness. No branch gave a rustle. No great beast breathed out. Shouldering his load, Bat set his weary step back to the slope. He was carrying a sack of millet flour. There were bottles hidden inside it. The Goat had found the palm wine that had been hidden in the thatch. It was heavy; so heavy. The nape of Bat’s neck burned.
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