The Claws of Mercy

by John Harris

  “We’re not afraid of the Assyrian,” Jimmy said, still in a bad temper. “We never were.”

  “You’re getting the hang of things quickly,” Gotto said from behind him. “Preparing to take over when you’ve edged me out?”

  “You’re not edged out yet, Gotty. So bear in mind it’s your pigeon when we see Indian Joe. You’re supposed to be in charge. You said so yourself. Remember?”

  Zaidee Soloman met them at the end of a long passage that was crammed with sacks of what looked suspiciously like rice. The ceilings and walls were festooned with cheap kerosene lamps, alarm clocks, and buckets, and alongside were stacked rolls of gaudy cotton and silk. On the corrugated iron of the roof, they could still hear the feet of the vultures.

  Zaidee came forward, a dramatic figure in a tight-fitting cotton T-shirt and the bright green trousers she had worn in church. It was quite clear she wore very little else besides and Jimmy began to understand Earnshaw’s attachment to her.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said, turning on them hot black eyes touched with kohl. “Please. This way.”

  The residential part of the house was furnished with bamboo and cane with an incongruous admixture of heavy Edwardian furniture that added to the gloom and stuffiness. Its smell was one of dust and sun-dried wood. On the walls were a gaudy print of the battle of Magersfontein and several enormous sepia pictures of children in the hats and lace pinafores of before the First World War. Over the door with a plan of the Allied battle fleets of 1941, cut from the Illustrated London News, was a newspaper picture of the Queen pushed into a frame, and opposite were two or three pictures of Zaidee in what appeared to be a Freetown photographer’s idea of a Hollywood starlet’s pose.

  Indian Joe was sprawled on a horsehair settee, his heavy body flowing over the edges. He was eating peaches with a spoon from the can. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Peace be with you. This is an honour. Sit down. Coffee for the gentlemen from the mine, Zaidee, my daughter.”

  “Not for me,” Gotto said quickly and, in an attitude of defiance, Jimmy accepted a cup of the thick, sickly coffee, conscious of Zaidee’s bold appraising eyes on him as she handed it to him, and the disturbing shape of her high breasts beneath the T-shirt.

  Indian Joe put down his can of peaches and spoon with a clatter and pushed a small table containing a whisky bottle and soda syphon into the centre of the room.

  “Now, gentlemen,” he said. “What brings you here to honour my household?”

  Jimmy looked pointedly at Gotto who flashed him a desperate, baited glance. Deliberately, Jimmy buried his nose in his coffee cup and made no effort to help.

  “Well, look here–” Gotto began to mumble.

  “First a drink, Mr Gotto!”

  Gotto swallowed quickly. “Not for me,” he said again.

  “Mr Agnew?”

  Indian Joe poured a drink and sat back, picking up the peach tin and starting to eat again, the thick syrup running down his flabby chin.

  “You are new to Amama, Mr Agnew,” he said. “You like it?”

  Jimmy glanced at Gotto who was sitting nervously on the edge of his chair, his expression one of distaste for his surroundings.

  “Yes, I like it,” he said shortly.

  “That’s wonderful.” Indian Joe beamed, showing a mouthful of gold teeth. “Isn’t it, Zaidee? Mr Agnew likes our Amama.”

  Gotto caught Jimmy’s eyes again and he began to speak.

  “We came here–” he said when Indian Joe held up his fat hand.

  “A moment, Mr Gotto. Don’t let us hurry too much. It’s too hot to hurry in Sierra Leone.”

  Gotto subsided, flushing, his eyes glowing with anger.

  “I like someone who comes to Sierra Leone and enjoys it,” the Syrian went on. “I like to dwell on it. Too long it has had a bad reputation. Many years ago, your English Mary Kingsley wrote that anyone who makes up his mind to come to West Africa should promptly unmake it and go to Scotland instead.” He laughed softly and Gotto leaned forward again.

  “Have you read Mary Kingsley, Mr Agnew?” Indian Joe said quickly, ignoring him, so that he remained leaning forward, rubbing his nose and trying to pretend he hadn’t been about to speak.

  The conversation continued with difficulty, with Indian Joe doing most of the talking, while the frustrated Gotto made several false starts to put in his complaint. Zaidee stood in the shadows behind her father’s chair, saying nothing, her coffee face bland and blank-eyed as an animal’s.

  Eventually, Indian Joe looked up at her. “Surely we ought to provide these gentlemen with food, my daughter,” he said. “We Syrians are noted for our hospitality.”

  “Not for me,” Gotto said again between his teeth.

  “Mr Agnew?”

  “Well–” Jimmy was almost enjoying himself as he watched Gotto’s growing restlessness – “I think we ought to get on with what we came to see you about.”

  “Ah, yes! Of course. The thing you came to see me about. Well, now, Mr Gotto–” Indian Joe turned round – “you have come to complain about the rice shortage, I suppose. Every time rice is short, Indian Joe is blamed. Always Indian Joe has some underhand reason for withholding food.”

  “That is the complaint against all Syrians, father,” Zaidee said in her low voice. “Always we are guilty until we are proved innocent. Always we are the enemy. We have not the standing of the professional Englishman nor even of the hired black labourer.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Jimmy protested, while inside him some instinct shouted a warning of treachery too subtle to avoid. “That’s not quite what we came to say!”

  Vaguely, he could see Gotto fidgeting on the chair alongside him and as he finished speaking, he stood bolt upright, his face red.

  “I can tell you this straight,” he said loudly. “Any funny business and I go straight to the District Commissioner.”

  Indian Joe’s smile was blank and indifferent. Zaidee’s opaque eyes narrowed but her aquiline Syrian features remained unmoved.

  Gotto glared, more embarrassed than angry at their calmness.

  “Listen,” he shouted. “I didn’t want to come and argue with you over a sack or two of rice. But I was told to and so I have. I’m warning you. We’re having no funny business.”

  “Mr Gotto isn’t threatening us, is he?” Zaidee asked.

  “Oh, God!” His face crimson, Gotto moved to the door, stumbling noisily over the clumsy furniture. “What the hell’s the use of arguing with them? They don’t understand King’s English?”

  Again Jimmy saw Zaidee’s furious glance and he blushed for shame. He started to apologise, stammered to silence, then began to back out after Gotto, fell over the doorstep and found himself – dazzled by the flare of the sunshine after the gloom – in a dirt yard at the back of the house, in a puther of flying chickens. Gotto was standing near by, his face dark with anger and embarrassment, glaring round him for the gateway to the road.

  Indian Joe’s face was still unchanged as he stared through the doorway at them, the perspiration shining in small beads on his upper lip.

  A chicken feather ludicrous on his hair, Jimmy made a last attempt at an apology, dried up, offered a sickly smile instead, then turned, trying to make out where he was.

  They were surrounded by the three whitewashed walls of Indian Joe’s home, shop and bar. The scrawny chickens were clustered now by the wall farthest away from them, clucking noisily round a pile of tin cans, most of which Jimmy noticed were labelled ‘Peaches’. In the middle of the yard a bare white tree, like a bleached skeleton, threw the only fraction of shadow there was and the low sun beating into the yard rebounded from the walls like the open door of an oven.

  “How the hell do you get out of here?” Jimmy said.

  “God knows!”

  “Well, you got us into this mess. You get us out.”

  “I didn’t suggest coming here,” Gotto retaliated furiously.

  “Oh, hell, come on,” Jimmy snarled. “We’
ll be standing here all day.”

  He turned and, followed by Gotto, ploughed his way through the group of hens which splintered immediately into a whirl of noise and flying feathers. A vulture, staring suspiciously from near the pile of peach tins, lolloped away, the dust spattering from its large feet as it flapped awkwardly to the bare skeletal tree.

  They thrust their way through the banana plants and scrub that edged the only part of the yard which was not bounded by a wall and found themselves in the roadway again.

  “That was a damned silly thing to do,” Jimmy exploded in disgust as he slammed the car door after himself.

  Gotto was slumped in the front passenger seat, deflated, his anger dispersed. “Let’s get away from here,” he said.

  “Blowing up like that,” Jimmy fumed as he pushed in the gear.

  “If I hadn’t blown up,” Gotto shouted, sitting up straight, “they’d have had you eating out of their hands. I’m damned if I’m going to kow-tow to a wog.”

  “For God’s sake,” Jimmy snapped, “stop saying that!” He started the car with a jerk that clicked their heads back, bitterly conscious that what Gotto had said was true and that he had been hypnotised by Zaidee’s handsome eyes.

  He swung the car savagely round a bend in the road towards the mine. “Fat lot we got out of it,” he said. “Now I suppose he’ll be all the more determined to withhold the rice, the way you spoke to him. All that tripe about King’s English. If you’d left it to me, at least we shouldn’t have had a barney like that. I was just getting on all right with them.”

  “You’d have been inviting that damned woman down to the mine for dinner or something.”

  Jimmy flushed guiltily. “Don’t talk rot,” he snapped. “You’ve got to feel your way. You can’t go insulting people. We might have jollied the old boy into being more decent.”

  “I’m damned if I’m going to bow and scrape to a wog.”

  “Wog, wog, wog,” Jimmy snarled bitterly. “Is that the only bloody word you know?”

  Gotto gave him a long angry glare, then, as the car shrieked to a stop outside the bungalow in a cloud of drifting red dust, he climbed out and stalked away in silence. Jimmy sat staring at the steering wheel for a while, made all the more savage by the knowledge that he had not been particularly helpful and, indeed, that their humiliation could really be laid at his door for forcing Gotto to do the talking. It occurred to him suddenly that the quarrel had probably been deliberately provoked by the Syrian to enable him to evade the tricky subject of rice, and his frown grew deeper. Bitterly, realising he was a tyro in the art of crafty diplomacy, he climbed out of the car and slammed the door with a crash that set it rocking on its springs.

  Three

  Gotto would never have been an easy person for Jimmy to live with – there was too vast a difference between their temperaments – but after the visit to Indian Joe, the relations between them went from bad to worse.

  It would have required a genius to have extracted much enjoyment out of Gotto’s company, but Jimmy had managed to put up with him, neither liking nor disliking him particularly, until now, when he found himself dodging him at meal times, hanging about in the shower to avoid eating with him, or remaining at the office until he was certain he was out of the way.

  He even began to take a delight in indulging in pinpricks, taking a perverse pleasure in making a great show of setting off for his evenings with Stella; going out of his way to be as friendly as possible to Alf Momo and the black foremen when Gotto was around; organising his football team of small boys outside the bungalow at lunch time when he liked to doze and encouraging them to make as much noise as possible when the orange ball burst; deliberately describing Earnshaw as an African pioneer; trailing his coat all the time with every possible device, enjoying all the little things guaranteed to provoke Gotto to anger, knowing he was not mentally equipped to argue for long, so that he eventually retired hurt and unhappy into his shell. In his dislike, Jimmy began to enjoy even that.

  It wasn’t hard to cause Gotto misery. He was desperate for company and conversation but he seemed to have quarrelled with everyone who might help him. Even Amadu was by now conducting a feud of his own so that Gotto could never get his washing done properly or on time. Every other day he was involved in some noisy argument with the house-boy that brought him almost to tears with rage and frustration.

  “My washing” – the contest took place with monotonous regularity – “why haven’t I got any clean khaki?”

  “Boss” – Amadu’s black face was all innocence – “you no’ lay ’um out.”

  “It was on my bed when I left the bungalow this morning.”

  “Boss, no.” Amadu was placidly insistent, his light voice flat and unworried, his face smooth in its contempt. “No see ’um, Boss.”

  “Well, do it now then.”

  “Boss” – Amadu was still infuriatingly untroubled about it all – “no can do. Amadu no got charcoal for hiron. All charcoal used this afternoon to hiron Boss Jimmy’s clothes. I no see yours. I catch charcoal tonight when I go to village.”

  Gotto glared, certain he was listening to lies, then he waved Amadu away. As he disappeared, his bare feet slapping on the concrete floor, Gotto sank into a chair, mopping his face.

  “Why don’t these black devils like me, Agnew?” he said wearily, his eyes anguished with defeat. “God, I try hard. They like that bastard Earnshaw, and look at the way he treats ’em. I can’t even get my washing done properly. Yet Earnshaw kicks them and swears at them and calls them niggers and they’d do anything for him. Why?”

  His scowl grew deeper as he looked at Jimmy. “How is it,” he demanded angrily. “you can always get your washing done?”

  “Try giving him a cigarette or two from time to time,” Jimmy suggested. “Cigarettes seem to be good for the eyesight. He never misses mine. It’s a sort of blackmail, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “It’s not just the cigarettes,” Gotto snapped. “It wouldn’t make any difference if I gave him hundreds.”

  Jimmy paused before he replied. “OK,” he said slowly. “How about trying a little sweetness and light? That might help a bit.”

  As Gotto stalked to his room, still clutching a towel round his loins, to put on the crumpled khaki of the night before, Jimmy stared after him, aware that the argument would have its repercussions in the working of the mine.

  Like Earnshaw, he had now learned enough about Gotto to realise that no argument finished when the last word was spoken.

  He was quite right. Immediately, there was a rash of incidents provoked by nothing more than Gotto’s spitefulness as he worked off his feelings against Amadu on the boys at the mine.

  The only fisherman who dared to show his nose at the jetty was immediately seized by Sergeant Asimani on Gotto’s orders and hustled down to the calaboose in Amama Town, and a dispute in the workings led to a deputation of union officials, which ended in a blazing row. Within two days, Alf Momo had appeared at Jimmy’s side at the jetty with a complaint.

  “Boss Jimmy,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, “I work for Boss Twigg since I was a piccaninny. The war come, I work for the Air Force building runways. I work with good man, bad man, clever man, fool man, but I never see Africans treated like this. That Boss Gotto, he is no good.”

  Jimmy wearily wiped the perspiration off his face with his hands. “You’re probably right at that, Alf,” he said.

  “Boss, he is no good for Amama. He cause trouble. Boys no like him. He tell me ‘You lazy.’ He say ‘You spoil the mine!’ Boss, I am not lazy. I work hard for all the white bosses. Even Boss Gotto. I do not like him but I work hard. I wait for a long time before I complain. Now the time comes.”

  “I know, I know, Alf.” Jimmy leaned heavily on the door of the station wagon, and offered a cigarette.

  “Boss, I am not a clever man. I have not been to college and could not get big job in big mine like Ma-Imi or Marampa. But I have taught myself to rea
d and other things. What I know here I have learned over many years. I am not always wrong.”

  “Alf, I know that. You know I know it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Boss Jimmy. I do.”

  “What do the union people think about it all?”

  Momo frowned unhappily. “Boss Jimmy, union officials think they go to Freetown. They very displeased.”

  “I see. Alf, can you call ’em off for a while?”

  “Boss, I am not union official.”

  “No, I know. But you’re Alfred Momo.”

  Momo grinned, pleased at the implied compliment.

  “Just for a bit, Alf.”

  “OK, Boss Jimmy. I tell ’em.” Momo grinned again. “Boss Jimmy, other black boys blame you. They think you like him” – he used the word as an insult. “But I know. I do not blame you, Boss Jimmy.”

  “Thanks, Alf. That’s nice to know.”

  Jimmy felt a little overwhelmed. He had arrived in Sierra Leone to be a mining engineer and he was coping as psychiatrist, diplomatist and squire of Twigg’s responsibilities. “Listen, Alf,” he said. “I’ll talk to Boss Twigg. As soon as I get the chance. Just hold on a bit. He’s taking a long time to settle down. That’s all.”

  “Plenty bad man, Boss,” Momo insisted.

  “Not really, Alf. He’s sick, Alf. I’ll get rid of him somehow, though. I’ll tell Twigg. Honest I will.”

  But as Momo disappeared, Jimmy remembered the plea for mercy he saw in Gotto’s eyes every time he was hurt or offended and he knew he never would.

  Inevitably it was Earnshaw who first heard the rumours that the fishermen from King Tim were planning retaliation.

  Earnshaw had sources of information that were denied even to Romney. In his hole-in-the-corner, catch-as-catch-can methods of business, it paid him to have his spies up and down the river at the various points where his boats put in with supplies, and it was through Suri, his coxswain, that he first heard the stories of revenge. There was a lot about Earnshaw that probably wouldn’t have stood up to investigation.