He began to feel giddy. The walls were swirling about. He could hear his own voice talking, but it sounded a long way off. Raising a hand, he held it up in front of him. It looked like some peculiar creature. He wriggled the fingers about. They felt no more a part of him than some half-squashed creature still writhing. The whole world had receded to the end of a long tunnel. What did he care for those shadows that flickered against the far distant light? He kept on reaching for the bottle. He understood now why the soldiers drank. Lobo smiled and nodded. ‘It puts fire in your belly,’ he said, laughing.
Bat was violently sick on his way back to bed. Doubling over at the edge of the compound, he retched into the leaves. A guard watched him indifferently; the muzzle of his gun raised. Bat looked up at the trees. They were reeling and swaying; but beyond them he could see the face of a new moon. It was so very bright. It stared into his dizzy head. He shuddered. The gods were looking down. They had seen him. They knew what he had done. But then what did they care, he thought angrily, as he struggled back to his feet. What did they care about the lives of the children in that compound, all fighting and suffering and dying and giving up?
He stood swaying a moment as he planned his next move. Like a chameleon, he thought, weaving from side to side as if about to make some tremendous leap but in the end managing only a small forwards waddle. He pitched over. Suddenly, everything seemed tremendously funny. He convulsed in mad giggles. The noise fell about him like a clattering pot.
Gulu was waiting for him as he stumbled to his mat. He could see the boy’s eyes glittering in the bright moonlight; but Bat didn’t speak. He lowered himself unsteadily and stretched out. Everything was swirling around him. He scratched at his neck where a mosquito had bitten him. Another was wailing by his ear. He slapped at the air, hoping that he had killed it, then fell straight from the brink of consciousness into a deep, plumbless slumber. There were no dreams; only black. He woke just as abruptly in the thinning darkness before dawn. The dew was cold on his skin. He was shivering on the outside, but inside he burned hot. A headache pounded his skull. He rose unsteadily to his feet. The light sliced like spear grass. He was swaying as he stood in line at morning drill. He saw the commander watching him as he stumbled, noticing his slowness where the day before he had been swift.
Lobo was watching him too, and also Muka. Why was everyone staring at him? Bat felt suddenly irritable. He shrank back and tried to pretend that everything was normal but he could feel his stomach churning. The bile rose in his throat. He dropped his head in shame. And then, falling to his knees, he was vomiting again.
‘The only cure is another drink,’ persuaded Lobo when the day’s work was done. He seemed almost gentle. ‘It’s awful the first time,’ he cajoled. ‘But it gets better after that.’
Bat followed him into his hut.
‘You see, life in the army is not so bad,’ Lobo told him. ‘At least it’s better than the village . . . and less boring,’ he said. ‘Who wants to spend all day digging holes for cassava? Why hack with a hoe when you can get what you need with a knife?’ He laughed and clapped Bat so hard on the shoulder that the boy bit his tongue. ‘Only joking,’ he cried. ‘But you’ve got to admit it. Life in the army does have something to offer. I mean, look at me – in the village people treated me like I didn’t matter, but here I’m a sergeant already . . . I have respect, and soon I’ll be promoted. The Diviner told me that. I’ve met him, you know.’ Lobo puffed out his chest. ‘The Diviner’s not like you think. People in the villages blame everything bad on him . . . but he’s not a bad person.’ Lobo searched Bat’s face for a sign of assent. ‘He has powers, you know.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I saw him conjure up a rainbow in the middle of his camp. Some of the soldiers were frightened. They started to run . . . but not me. I’m not scared of the spirits.’
The boy took another long pull at the bottle and then, sliding his arm around Bat’s shoulder, leaned close. ‘You can meet the Diviner too. I can fix it,’ he hissed. ‘I can fix it, if you want, as soon as things get better . . . as soon as these troubles have passed. Right now everything is a bit difficult – it’s the government soldiers.’ Lobo spilled his confidences into Bat’s ear. ‘The government is—’
A shadow fell suddenly upon them. The Leopard was standing in the doorway. His head was so high that it brushed the palm-frond roof. Neither boy could read his face. The sun was behind him. But Lobo shrank from the scowl of fury in his voice. ‘The child’s drunk,’ he growled. ‘What the hell are you up to? I don’t want a dithering fool. I need an alert tracker.’
Snatching his arm from Bat’s shoulder, Lobo lumbered to his feet. ‘He asked me to give it to him, sir. He said that he wanted—’
‘Go!’ the Leopard barked. ‘This boy’s got a job to do. I want him sharp as a dog, not lolling about like some savannah baboon.’ He kicked out at Lobo with a booted foot and the boy, flat to the wall like a spider, slipped quickly past him and scuttled off.
The Leopard glowered at Bat. Then, picking up the bottle, he turned on his heel and strode off.
Bat didn’t move. He didn’t feel scared or worried or guilty or nervous. He didn’t feel anything . . . and yet, to feel nothing, he mused blearily, was one of the strongest feelings that there is. He stared at the ground. Was this, he wondered, what it was like to be dead?
Across the compound, he could see the child soldiers gathering around the cook-fire; the older ones barging and jostling their way through to the front. They were craning to peer into the pot of simmering millet porridge which, now that every scrap of yesterday’s antelope had been finished, the bones cracked for their marrow, the hide scraped for its fat, was all the children had to eat. But Bat didn’t get up. He was beyond hunger now. He dropped his head to his knees and gazed dully at the ground between his feet. An ant was hauling a speck of food across its dusty expanses. He put out a finger and blocked its course. The ant changed direction and looped its way around him. Bat blocked it a second time. Once more the little creature turned. Again and again Bat set down his obstacle; again and again the ant resumed its course. It was such a tiny thing, the boy thought, and yet it had so much resolution. In a battle of wills it would always win. Somewhere behind him he could hear the noise of a radio. It fizzled as busily as the blankness that fizzled inside in his head.
We are launching a new offensive. The announcement from the radio snagged his attention.
The rebel army is a parasite, a deep voice was booming. Then the radio crackled and spat. Bat strained his ears now to hear the government broadcast, but only a few tattered fragments drifted across . . . a troublesome jigger lodged under our skin . . . we will impale it . . . pull it out of our land. Our soldiers are—
The transistor was abruptly switched off. A few moments later the Leopard stormed out of his hut. There was a thunderous frown on his face. He called the commander over. Bat watched them as they conferred. The Leopard paced back and forth, back and forth, restless as a caged animal, his hands clasped behind him. The commander just stood, his jaw muscles gripped.
Suddenly the commander whipped round. ‘What are you hanging around for?’ he screamed at the children. ‘We don’t feed you here so that you can just laze about. This army is alert. It’s strong. It’s all-powerful! It will defeat those government hirelings. It will grind them into dust.’
His cries rang around the heads of the soldiers as they scrambled to attention. Then, swallowed up by the forest, they slowly faded and died, leaving nothing but a huddle of thin children standing bewildered in a clearing and a mood of anxiety hanging in the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘Elephants! Elephants!’
It was the Goat who was shouting the next morning, arms waving in excitement as he arrived in the camp. He must have walked all through the night to get back at this hour. But the hungry children who, on seeing his arrival, had looked up from the breakfast fire and momentarily brightened, soon let their heads again fall. They were dis
appointed. For days they had been waiting for the return of his raiding squad. They had been dreaming of maize cobs and chickens and yam roots. But now here he was back from the forests empty-handed; carrying nothing with him but a piece of news.
Bat’s heart gave a great jolt. It shook him out of his torpor. All the confusions created by drinking were suddenly cleared. His mind felt very sharp, very alert, very still. He rose quickly to his feet. Every nerve-end was trilling. Every muscle was steeled.
The Leopard, roused from his shelter on the far side of the clearing, was also now emerging. The commander, still barefoot, hurried along behind. Ears straining, Bat crept up as close as he dared.
‘When we got near the village,’ the Goat was saying, ‘we found the government army. Soldiers were hanging off a jeep, thick as bats on fruit trees. They had automatic rifles and belts full of bullets . . . there were too many for us, so we ran. But we didn’t take the normal path. We were worried they would follow . . . we didn’t want to risk leading them back to the camp.’
The commander grunted his approval. But the Leopard remained silent, his thin lips clamped firmly shut.
‘We followed the course of the dry river that runs down the ravine,’ the boy was continuing, ‘and it was then that we saw them . . . a whole herd . . . with vast tusks,’ he said, stretching out his arms as far as they could reach. ‘I could have shot one,’ he boasted, brandishing his old bolt-action rifle, ‘but I was worried that the government soldiers might hear it. I turned to check about me; and when I looked back, all the elephants had disappeared.’
‘How far away?’
‘Less than half a day’s walk.’
The Leopard pivoted on the heel of his boot, only to find that Bat was already there. ‘Get ready,’ he barked, and strode back to his hut, turning only to snap a brisk order at Lobo. ‘Give him some food!’
Bat hunched over a calabash of cold rice but he couldn’t eat. There was a knot in his stomach that took up all the room. The moment had come; the moment that he most dreaded. Only a few days earlier he had thought he had given up all hope, but all the while, he now realized, it had still been smouldering inside him, like an ember still glowing beneath the ashes of the fire. Why did people always tell you that hope was a good thing? he wondered. It wasn’t. Gulu, all along, had been right. Hope was cruel: it was cruel as a fish hook. Just when you imagined you had finally got free of it, there it was, lodged inside you, yanking you back again.
He thought of the elephants; of those animals that for so many years had formed the horizon of his whole world. He imagined the great matriarch standing watch over them. He saw her deep hollowed cheekbones and her sagacious look. If only he too now had someone to guide him. If only he also had someone who could tell him what to do.
He looked up. Muka was hovering near him. There was a perplexed frown on her face, but when she saw his eyes lifting, she allowed a faint smile to flicker across her drawn features. It shone for a moment like a star between two parting clouds. Bat just dropped his head. He felt ashamed and confused.
‘I don’t understand, Bat,’ he heard her murmur as she drew a few steps closer, pausing only when she was a few paces off. ‘I don’t understand what is happening. But whatever it is, I know you’ll do what is right.’
Bat lifted his eyes helplessly. ‘But I don’t know,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘I don’t know what’s right. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong any more.’
‘But you will discover,’ Muka whispered. ‘You will find out when you face it. And I know that when the time comes you will find that you know too.’
Bat wanted to get up; he wanted so much to touch her, to take her hand in his own. He wanted to explain everything and hear her reassuring him. He wanted to hear her tell him that it could all be put right. But she was already leaving. He felt the air stirring as she brushed lightly by him; and then she was gone. A sob rose in his throat.
The next thing he knew, the Leopard was assembling a squad. Bat was trotting across the compound, he was falling into file. Lobo and the ranger were in line ahead of him, and behind him slipped four of the camp’s most trusted child leaders: Bonyo, the locust; then the Thief and the Goat, then the boy called Kamlara because his temper was hot as a pepper, and last and most ruthless, the one nicknamed Kwet which meant ‘brat’. All except Bat carried rifles slung over their shoulders. All had pangas and knives and ammunition belts. Bonyo and the Thief both also carried knapsacks, and Kwet and Kamlara had coiled ropes around their waists.
Bat didn’t look behind him as they set off. He knew Muka would be watching. But what was the point of meeting her eye? It wouldn’t be him any more she was watching. The village boy from Jambula had vanished long ago. Now Bat was a soldier. He was an instrument of the army. Like a melted-down hoe that is turned into a panga, he had been transformed into a weapon of war.
The Leopard took the lead as the forest closed around them. They were following a narrow trail. It was the very one that he and Muka had been forced along all those moons ago, Bat suddenly realized, as they jogged down a slope towards a stream. It was here, at the bottom, that he and Muka, still bound, had knelt to lap water. But what had been a pool was now no more than a parched fissure. Thin yellow weeds clawed their way across the cracked earth.
Eventually they reached a clearing where, just as Bat remembered from before, a jeep had been left beneath a covering of hastily hacked branches. The Leopard crossed to it quickly and, pulling a chainsaw from the back, slung it around his shoulder on a makeshift harness of rope.
‘Let’s go,’ he growled.
This time it was the Goat who went first. He was leading them back to the elephants.
Scuttling across a wide track that cut straight through the forest, they headed into dense brush. They were climbing uphill now. Their faces were streaming with sweat. Flies clung to their foreheads, to their eyes, to their nostrils; they crawled up their necks and glued themselves to their mouths; but still they trudged on, hacking through thickets and pushing through the thorny underbrush, lifting their elbows to part hanging creepers and scrambling over fallen trunks. They were like machines, Bat thought, driven by the pump of their lungs and the crank of their muscles, by the tug of their sinews and the thud of their hearts. He listened to the sound of his breathing, but it seemed to come from another person who was walking beside him. An eerie quietness roared like a river in his head.
He prayed that the elephants had gone by the time they arrived. But the squad moved as swiftly and efficiently as a pack of wild dogs. It slipped through the shadows with barely a sound, and the sun had not even yet reached its noon zenith when they found themselves cresting a ridge. The slopes fell away below them into a dark gulley. The Goat raised a clenched fist. ‘Down there,’ he hissed.
The Leopard grunted and, pausing only to readjust his rope harness, gave a signal for his little posse to go on. They descended the slope in a long, slewing skid, their progress unbroken except once or twice when a dislodged rock rattled and they all froze in their tracks, ears straining for the sound of any answering motion, for any warning of other living creatures about.
When they were almost at the bottom they paused again. The Goat glanced briefly around. He had slipped and cut his elbow. His jacket was stained with drying blood. But he seemed not to notice. He was getting his bearings. With a sudden forward scoop of his arm he beckoned them, and once again they were travelling, this time following the line of a stream that crawled through a deep rocky fissure far below. And then, all at once, they were stepping into a small scrubby clearing and the Goat was un-shouldering his rifle; he was gripping the stock. His eyes were sweeping about him and the others were following suit. Weapons at the ready, they were scanning the trees, tuning their senses to every slip of a shadow, to every rustle in the bushes, to every crack of a branch . . . but nothing . . . the forest was quiet save for the endless unbroken scream of the cicadas. The jungle was drowsing in the sweltering noon heat.
&nb
sp; But the Goat was right, Bat thought. There had been elephants there. He glanced at the Leopard. A marauding smile was creeping over his face. He too had noticed how the underbrush had been trampled, how the branches of the trees around had been snapped, and now he was dreaming of ivory . . . of the money it would bring him, of the guns it would buy.
Bat lowered himself to one knee. He knew that he had been brought along as a tracker. Now he simply did what they expected him to do. There was a pile of elephant dung among the leaves. He picked up a piece and broke it open. Forage was not good, even here in the forest, he noticed. He could see strips of undigested bark in the bolus and the jagged ends of torn twigs. But the ball was fibrous and dry. Beetles had already buried their way into the heart of it. The elephants must have left a while ago. He let the dung drop. The glossy insects spilled out onto the earth like black beads.
The Leopard was watching him carefully as he rose once more to his feet. His eyes were prowling his face. A sudden flood of bile rose into Bat’s mouth. For a moment he feared he was going to be sick. He swallowed. It tasted as bitter as his thoughts. He looked around helplessly. The trees were reeling about him. What should he do next?
‘Here!’ It was Kwet who was calling, his voice urgent and low. He had found the onward tracks. It was inevitable, Bat thought. The elephants too would be following the line of the gully; they would be looking for a way to get down to the water, for a place to rest, drink and wash. He moved over to the spot at which Kwet was now pointing; saw the scuffmarks left behind by soft pads in the dust. They were pockmarked with drops of long-since dried morning dew.
Now the Leopard pushed him forward. It was Bat’s moment to lead, and obediently, he moved on. The shadows were closing more thickly about them. The elephants, Bat thought, would see well in this dimming light. He followed the broken thread of their trail. At least they had been travelling swiftly, he noticed. They had descended this path at a fast swaying walk. He could tell by the side-to-side straddle of their tracks, and the way the ovals that were made by their hind pads had been planted in front of their more rounded fore-prints. But still, it was only a walk. Why hadn’t they trotted? Why hadn’t they hurried as fast as they could? Elephants could move at great speed when they wanted to. ‘Streaking,’ Bitek called it. Elephants will hang around in the same area for days, he had said, and then suddenly they’ll go: moving without stopping along their secret corridors, and you won’t see them again. They will vanish for months to some far-off feeding place. Was it possible the elephants would do that now? Was it possible they might be gone before the squad could catch up with them?
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