The Claws of Mercy

by John Harris

  Jimmy hurried past the complaint before it developed further. “I’ll back you up,” he said, thankful that at least Gotto wasn’t going to demand that he play cricket and prepared to overlook the threadbareness of his personality because of it.

  ‘Well, it’s nice to know you’re not just the Ma-Imi type,” Gotto went on. “They called me Snotty Gotty down there. Did you know?”

  Jimmy gave him an embarrassed smile and said he didn’t.

  “Oh, yes. They thought I didn’t know but I did. They never got on with me. Never even tried. They sent me up here to get me out of the way.” Gotto seemed to take a queer delight in his isolation.

  “Anyway, I’m with you, whatever you do. Listen–” Jimmy closed the last twisted drawer on his clothes with an effort that brought beads of sweat to his face – “let’s go and sit on the veranda and talk, shall we? It’ll be cooler there than in here.”

  Gotto sat bolt upright against the bare concrete wall. “Outside?” he said. “It’ll soon be dark.”

  “I know. I like sunsets, don’t you?”

  Gotto’s look seemed to suggest he was mad and then it changed abruptly to a smile.

  “Yes,” he said quickly. “I do. That is, I suppose I do. Never particularly noticed them, to tell you the truth. Always too busy trying to find something to do.”

  They moved out on to the veranda, through the stifling little bungalow with its characterless company-issue furniture and its native cloth curtains, its carved canoe-paddle wall decoration, its African leather pouf and the drum that was used as an occasional table.

  The palms in the distance were blue and velvety by this time and the sun, just disappearing behind the hills, was a bright golden orange in a sky of pale green and salmon pink. They could hear the honk of a hornbill in the distance and, pulling up a chair, Jimmy caught the first cricket’s cheep.

  As they sat down, a figure in white rose from the side of the veranda and appeared in front of them, suddenly and unexpectedly, and Jimmy noticed that Gotto jumped nervously.

  “What do you want, you fool, coming up like that?” he demanded sharply.

  “Sah!” The African grinned, his face slit across with a water-melon slice of white teeth, and Jimmy caught a glint of spectacles. “Jus’ me. Clerical Officer Smith.”

  “Clerical Officer, my Aunt Fanny,” Gotto said in a high thin voice that sounded like jangled nerves. “You’re just a bloody pen pusher.”

  “Thass right, boss, sah.” The African beamed at Jimmy. “Chief bloody pen pusher. Clerical Officer Joseph Windsor Buckingham Smith, sah. I read. I write. I type better dan de Queen England. I come greet de new boss, sah. Fo’ de African people I greet you, boss. Fo’ dese po’ black folk, dese uneducated black trash with no reading, no writing, no civilisation.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr Smith.”

  “I work hard fo’ you, boss,” Smith continued, the slash of his white teeth dividing his black face into two halves. “I de best clerical officer in all de worl’. Any black boy give you cheek I kick him backside one-time, all-same de police.”

  Gotto interrupted the flow of self-esteem with an irritated wave of his hand. “OK. You’ve said your piece. Now shove off. And don’t come here again at night, savvy?”

  “I savvy, boss.” Smith gave him a nervous flickering glance and turned again to Jimmy. “I come greet fo’ de African people. Dass all. Boss, you like dis Africa country?”

  “Tell you better in a week or two.”

  Gotto gestured again, more angrily. “Go on, hop it,” he said.

  “OK, sah, I go now.” Smith looked once more at Jimmy. “I see you in de mornings, sah. I yo’ clerk. I polish yo’ desk. I spit on yo’ chair and polish wit’ de handkerchief. Make smoot’ for yo’ backside. I read, sah. I write. I type better dan de Queen England. Goo’ night, boss.”

  As he disappeared, merging abruptly into the swiftly growing dusk, Gotto stared after him. “Too smooth, that Smith,” he said. “Clerical officer my eye. Just reads enough and writes enough to he useful. Recruited round here. Twigg picked him. The educated Africans won’t have this joint. Too quiet. And I can’t say I blame ’em.”

  It was now almost dark and there was a chorus round them of sounds. To the bark of the frogs and the cheep of the crickets, an all-enveloping chorus that seemed to have surrounded them suddenly, without any beginning, was added the sharp whine of a mosquito, and Gotto flapped angrily.

  “Blasted things. Malarial. Pick it up from the natives.” He slapped at his wrist and stared at the smeared insect with an expression that was a mixture of disgust and indignation.

  “Look,” Jimmy said hastily. “How about a shower and a trip in the car up to the town?”

  Gotto turned abruptly, his eyes startled. “A trip up to the town? That’s not a town. It’s a collection of scruffy huts. There are no bright lights,” he said pityingly. “This is Africa. Not the West End.”

  He was obviously reluctant and Jimmy put it down to a desire to remain at home and work at nights.

  “I’m not proposing to make a habit of it,” he pointed out quickly. “It’s just that I’d like to see it before I start work. That’s all.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that. It’s just that it’s dark. Nothing to see.”

  “If you’ve got something else to do, I’ll go on my own. But I’d like to know what it’s like and where I am.”

  Gotto stared at him, then again his face broke into a hesitant smile.

  “Oh, well,” he said. “I suppose you might. All right,” he added. ‘I’ll drive you up. Let’s go and visit the illuminations. I’m not staying here on my own again.”

  Dark masses of giant cotton trees hung over the highway that ran through Amama Town, shutting out the tremendous African moon and making the road a chequerboard of blacks and silver-whites. Beyond the cotton trees, the great dry leaves of the palms rustled in the hot wind and beyond them the sky, slashed by the curving boles of trees, was pricked by starlight.

  The mud and wattle huts huddled among the banana plants were thrown out here and there in silhouette by the yellow light of an oil lamp or the glare of a fire, and what few stone buildings there were picked up the moonlight on their whitewashed fronts and tossed it back nakedly. The aromatic air was heavy with the smell of wood smoke and vegetation, that exciting smell of Africa that Jimmy had noticed as soon as they had turned into Amama Creek.

  In front of a hut near the roadway, a couple of women sat, still prepared to sell mangoes or bananas to all comers from the calabashes on the ground before them and, in the open doorway of a wood and tin dwelling, a tailor crouched over an ancient treadle sewing machine by the light of a kerosene lamp held by his wife.

  From among the shadows at the rear came the murmur of African voices and the monotonous plink-plonk of a single-octave tune on an instrument made from a tin box – in splinters of broken sound as though the melody had been dropped and shattered to fragments. And like a bass accompaniment, across the still hot air the thump of a Bundu drum beat through the crowded trees that flattened the sound to the steady throb of a pulse.

  “Those blasted tomtoms,” Gotto said as he drove. “Always at it. They get to be a part of the landscape.”

  He halted the car as they entered Amama Town – given the title out of courtesy because of the half-dozen two-storeyed buildings in its centre and the few stone dwellings along the roadside.

  “Well, here you are,” he said with a snigger. “Gay, isn’t it? Full of night life. What say?”

  Beyond the small group of stone buildings, Jimmy could see more clusters of native huts in the darkness but it was really the flickering lights inside them and the number of people about the road that indicated a community, for even here the cotton trees clustered thickly along the edge of the bush and the place was jetty with shadow.

  Gotto indicated a couple of naphtha flares that set the foliage glowing greenly outside a brick and wood building just ahead of them, next door to the home of an a
rtisan that showed its Edwardian bric-a-brac and black-skinned portraits in a glow of pride under the light of an oil lamp.

  “Amama’s Café Continental,” he said. “Indian Joe’s Bar.”

  The whitewashed store alongside had its shutters in place and looked more like a lock-up garage than a shop.

  The three or four Africans who sat on the steps at the front with bottles in their hands were delightedly watching an argument that was going on over the counter inside the drab little den, a mere hole in the wall peopled by drinkers with black faces which somehow with the arrival of darkness looked vaguely sinister.

  “How about a drink?” Jimmy asked, greedy for the lights.

  “They’re all Africans,” Gotto said.

  “Well, does it matter? There’s no colour bar.”

  “Ought not to drink with Africans. Damned important. Colour bar or no colour bar. Besides, I don’t want foot and mouth disease. They drink out of the same glasses.”

  Gotto seemed to fidget with uneasiness. “Look, we ought not to be up here at night at all. I never trust these devils after dark.”

  He tossed a hand in front of him nervously. “Momo lives down there somewhere. The shift boss.”

  “Yes, I heard about Momo. They said he was pretty hot stuff.”

  Gotto turned in his seat and in the weak glow of the dashboard light, Jimmy could see he was smiling. “So they got you, did they?” he said. “They tried to give me that yarn. ‘Nothing you know that he doesn’t know,’ they said. ‘Get him to help you.’ Help me! My God! I went to mining school back in England, which is something Mr Momo didn’t do. What did they tell you about the rest of ’em up here? – the native labour, I mean.”

  “Much the same,” Jimmy said doubtfully.

  “They smell,” Gotto’s comment was vehement. “Like all Africans. I suppose they did their song and dance act about Amama, too?”

  “Song and dance act?”

  “You know – how marvellous it is and all that. They’re always preaching it, Twigg and that crew. They told me it was a clean, pretty place. It’s pretty scruffy if you ask me.” Gotto sniggered again in a curiously high-pitched way and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. “Like all the rest. Empty tin cans. Dirt. Half-starved dogs and pigs that look like greyhounds. Scrawny chickens. And always a kid asking you if you want jig-jig with his sister.”

  The list of dislikes was in danger of becoming a jeremiad.

  “Look,” Gotto said in conclusion. “I can’t say I like this damn’ place very much at night. Never did. Let’s shove off. What say?”

  “Shove off?” Jimmy felt flattened, his excitement at all the new sights and sounds and scents withered. It was hard for enthusiasm to flower in the face of such bitter opposition.

  Gotto was already fiddling with the starter. “Let’s get back to the bungalow,” he said, his manner growing suddenly warmer, as though he had suddenly become aware of his boorishness and was trying to make amends for it.

  “We can have a drink there. More cosy than in that bar. What say? We can talk about the mine better, too. Look,” he went on in a flooding affability that screamed out loud of loneliness, “when I heard you were coming up, I got a bottle of scotch in. Let’s go and make a hole in it. We ought to celebrate. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to get on well together.”

  Three

  It was after lunch next day when Gotto first appeared, dressed in clean drill and shining with energy. Jimmy was outside in the sizzling heat, sweating cheerfully with a broken hand fork over the neglected garden in front of the bungalow. As he dug in the dusty earth, a naked urchin watched him, his hands behind his back, his round black belly stuck out like a pudding basin. Amadu, the house-boy, sat blinking in the shade of the veranda, wondering whether he were mad or worth assisting.

  Jimmy looked round as he saw an angular shadow fall across the scorched flower bed where he crouched, and his eyes rose to meet Gotto’s.

  “Ready to meet Stella Swannack?” Gotto asked cheerfully. “There’ll be a crowd, y’know.”

  “I’m ready.” Jimmy tossed down the hand fork. “Just putting things to rights a bit. I didn’t know we’d got a garden.”

  “We haven’t. At least, not what I call a garden. This is just a burnt-out dust heap. Nothing grows here. Nothing decent, that is. Just native stuff.”

  “I’ll bet I make something grow.”

  Gotto hesitated. “You want to leave that kind of work to the boys, you know,” he pointed out. “White men don’t do sweated labour out here.”

  “I don’t mind.” Jimmy grinned. “I like gardening. In fact, I thought I might plant a few geraniums in petrol tins and shove ’em on the stoep there. Make the place look homely.”

  “Homely!” Gotto laughed. “This hole?”

  “Well, we can try. Listen, I was rooting round the bungalow last night and I found a butterfly net in a cupboard. Amadu tells me it was Jarvis’. I’m going to see what I can catch. I used to collect butterflies at school. If Jarvis found it interesting, I might.”

  “I thought that was a kid’s game.”

  “It is, but it’ll do to keep me busy.”

  “It gets a lot hotter than this.”

  “I’ll chance it.”

  “Can’t see the point.” Gotto stroked his long nose and strolled off towards the car.

  “Always something to do,” Jimmy pointed out as he caught up with him.

  “Probably get sweat rash as a result. I’ve had a bit.”

  “I might not.” Engrossed with being alive, Jimmy weighed up the sweat rash against the possible excitement and decided it was worth risking. “Like to have a go with me?”

  “Me?” Gotto stopped with his hand on the door handle. “I’ve got something better to do than indulge in nursery pastimes.” He paused and went on with an encouraging, understanding smile. “Everybody starts off like that, you know – dashing all over the countryside like mad, looking at things and chasing butterflies. Tourist stuff. But you gradually settle down. Keep that pace up and they’ll take you home on a stretcher. When I arrived out here, it didn’t take me long to make up my mind about that. That’s why I’ve kept fit. Nothing wrong with me.”

  Nothing beyond a little mental stagnation, Jimmy thought spitefully.

  “Sorry,” he apologised. “I thought perhaps you found time hung a little heavy.”

  “It does. By God, it does,” Gotto said vigorously. “But to hell with sweating your guts out after butterflies. That’s the sort of thing Earnshaw does.”

  It was only a short run to the church, but the sun on the roof of the car made it seem like an oven long before they arrived. The district of Amama, which took its name from the largest inhabited place, was almost an island, jutting out into a bend of the river and joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus which carried the only road out of the area, a fact which left it isolated and lost to officialdom, for its contentment caused it to be overlooked. The promontory contained, in addition to Amama Town, half a dozen other places with names which to Jimmy, as a newcomer, all sounded extraordinarily alike – Rotumba, Marama, Miambi, Kamara – and the fishing village of King Tim tucked away in a rocky bay on the south side. The mine was driven into a small hill at the river end, a red bite out of the earth, levelled by zigzag roads that descended to the mine office and a small petrol railway, and eventually to the rickety jetty where the conveyor loaded the ironstone into Earnshaw’s dumb barges.

  In spite of the heat, the place looked fresh in the morning sunshine, with its bright green foliage and gaudy earth and the iridescent butterflies that abounded on the fringe of the trees growing like a cliff at the side of the road. They could hear the clipped simian cries of monkeys and the shriek of parakeets, and could see glossy purple starlings and lemon-coloured weavers darting among the leaves. Inevitably, they passed the eternal solitary traveller, a symbol of Africa almost, a woman wrapped in a gaudy lappa decorated with great scarlet handprints and carrying on her head an umbrella
held down by a large Bible – obviously a member of Swannack’s flock on the way to prayer.

  At the little rose-red church set in a vault of rustling palm trees, there was a record crowd, obviously all turned up to see the new white missis. The bell, begged from the burned-out wreckage of a Liberty ship torpedoed and run ashore in the Bunce during the war, hung on a wooden framework by the gateway and was tolled by an enthusiastic and tireless small boy in a loin-cloth. It had been clanging for an hour when Jimmy and Gotto arrived.

  The overflow from inside the church had gathered in a mass of colour in the dense, dappled shadow, chattering in that peculiar high-pitched note of an African assembly, the men at the front and the mammies, some of them with children at the breast, twittering like a lot of excited monkeys at the back, seeing what they could between the brawny frames of their lordly menfolk. The girls stood to one side in a giggling group and the children, mother-naked except for a ju-ju of cowrie shells or chicken feathers, stared solemnly from any point of vantage.

  Mrs Swannack met them at the gate with the shriek that did duty for her laugh. The powder on her face was crusted by the perspiration but she seemed otherwise unmoved by the heat.

  “Big day today,” she shouted in a voice like the bray of a trumpet. “Father’s in back with the choir. Usually I’m with him – routine, I guess, just routine – but today I thought I’d meet everybody here and give a welcome in the name of the Saviour.”

  The church was already crammed tight and as they appeared in the entrance, more than a hundred pairs of eyes, white in black faces, swung in their direction. For a church, it seemed remarkably noisy to Jimmy. There were suits and stiff collars on the few who could afford them, Clerk Smith prominent among this opulence in a starched white outfit he had worked on personally all morning until it had the consistency of a plank. The rest wore shorts, pyjama cloth robes, or the gaudy loin-cloths of the village.