A Single Swallow

by Horatio Clare

  ‘Don’t take the train to the north,’ he says, and Patrice agrees vehemently.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Petits voleurs!’ they chorus together: Little thieves.

  Patrice and I take a taxi. Tonight is on me, I insist: Patrice knows a hotel. It is grotty but cheap – tomorrow we will find a better one, he says.

  ‘Goodnight then,’ I bid him.

  ‘You are going to bed?’

  ‘Yes! Aren’t you?’

  ‘Non! I am going out. Come and drink!’

  ‘Oh God. I don’t know . . . Let’s clean up. Call for me when you’re ready.’

  The bathroom has the first mirror I have seen for days. My face and hair are dark red and my features and body have changed shape. My face used to be rounded but is now triangular. The cheek bones are prominent, the sockets of my eyes have lost their softness. There is a stillness in my gaze, either of exhaustion or of ease. I am as unworried, these days, as I have ever been. My body is pared down. Over my flanks, hips and stomach there is no spare flesh at all. I am over a stone lighter than usual, I reckon. The travelling seems to have altered the way my body works. I have had none of the stomach or bowel problems I believed were guaranteed for a European on the road in Africa: on the contrary, what food we have eaten seems to be absorbed directly into my system, leaving almost no waste. I can go without food for a day and not really think about it. I can fall asleep instantly and wake to an unfamiliar wakefulness immediately. I can sit on a bus, my eyes open, with the rest of my body almost asleep, in neutral, almost oblivious to discomfort, armoured against the passage of uncomfortable time with a blank, bovine patience. Europeans have no idea of the routine physical discomfort of travel as people travel here. You never have a seat to yourself. The heat is omnipresent and unrelieved. And everything always breaks down.

  Even my walk has changed: now I am very light-footed, immediately aware of any imbalance of weight in my rucksack. By adjusting it, and my stride, I can move the pressure around my feet: no more blisters.

  ‘Sebago . . .’ Patrice had said, admiringly, looking at my feet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sebago!’ he said again, pointing at my shoes. Other people had said the same thing; only now do I understand. There are little ribbons on the sides of my shoes, showing the make.

  ‘That’s good?’

  ‘Oui!’ Patrice nodded, emphatically – ‘The best!’

  There is no reason why it should seem so strange that here, of all places, people should be label-conscious and brand-savvy, but it does.

  I take a shower, which runs red, then a cold bath, which is also red. I photograph it and my face with my mobile phone.

  ‘Let’s go!’

  Patrice looks very smart. We go out into hot, dark rain. There is very little traffic moving in Yaoundé.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Club.’

  ‘What club?’

  ‘You will see . . .’

  We sample two. The first has an empty restaurant downstairs; upstairs it has torn-up plush, bright lights and extremely loud music. Behind the bar the server is asleep: Patrice wakes her gently. Onstage seven women are dancing. They turn their backs to the audience, bend over to reveal buttocks under short skirts and begin to shake. They shake and shake, rotating, humping, jerking and shaking again, all their faces set in concentration as they study their own reflections in a mirror at the back of the stage.

  The second club has very low ceilings and red lights. The customers are a mixture of women and men, many in couples. The entertainment is stripping, only the stripping is done out of sight: a tall, naked woman emerges and makes her way through the throng, stopping in front of couples to gyrate and thrust. The couples giggle wildly. She approaches us. I am so tired that this is all becoming a hypnogogic dream.

  ‘Please,’ I say, weakly, as she begins to jerk her groin towards my face, advancing with tigerish steps.

  ‘Please, madame,’ I try again, ‘I am so tired, really, I am just here for a drink . . . please, I implore you, excuse me!’

  I look at Patrice. His face is set in a monumentally stern expression, as if we are about to take on an implacable foe in battle. If I had the energy I would laugh wildly and run out of the club but my body has given up. The naked woman turns on Patrice who sets himself, elbows on knees, fists together and stares fixedly ahead. She fills his vision with her midriff. The music crescendos and Patrice does not blink. It is single combat now; Patrice’s granite gaze versus the woman’s most intimate part, which she thrusts towards his nose.

  Patrice does not quail. The music climaxes and stops. There are cheers and the whole club applauds – the woman, primarily, but also, one senses, Patrice. I have seen men stare down a few things, but never anything like that.

  Yaoundé is built on hills. On their crests and ridges are the skeletons of buildings like the ruins of Rome. But these are not the relics of antiquity; they are the shells of a future that never came to pass. Concrete frames, with doorways and holes for windows, their construction was halted when the money ran out. Now they stand, unsafe, rain-weakened, waiting for someone who will not come to pull them down and start again. Around their feet are the shacks and bungalows of the city. We switch hotel to a relatively homely place overlooking the railway tracks. All day and all night there is activity down there as trains shunt, load logs and clank sombrely away down the line to Douala, the port and the world across the sea. It seems to be the only thing that works and never stops working in Yaoundé, this mechanism for transferring tree trunks from trucks to flat cars.

  Through television, the newspapers and gossip the political situation becomes clearer. I stand with groups of silent men, when the evening editions of the papers come out, staring at the headlines on news-stands. The demonstrations lasted for three days. In riots which began as a transport strike over the fuel prices maybe forty people died, maybe more. The authorities used tear gas, water cannon and live ammunition. Now many of those arrested are coming to trial and being rapidly sentenced to prison. Newspaper editors have been threatened and radio stations taken off the air. As a last word on all this, the government has just announced the budget for the next twelve months: the police and the army have been given significant pay-rises.

  ‘That is all it takes,’ says a barman. ‘The army are the best-paid in the country. They will shoot us to protect their salaries. Nothing is going to change.’

  Patrice comes into my room and sits down. He is awkward, tense with a kind of frustration I have noticed in him, as if his huge muscles crave something solid to test themselves against. He takes off his cap and spins it unhappily in his hands.

  ‘Horace, will you help me?’

  ‘Of course. What do you want?’

  ‘You know I am a rugby player, and I am good.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But they would not let me go to France, to play.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So will you invite me to Wales?’

  ‘Of course! But why do you want to come?’

  ‘Because if I can get a coaching certificate from a European Rugby Union I will be able to work here. Even if I cannot play, I can coach. If I could visit you I could get a certificate and come back . . .’

  ‘I got one of those at school. It was easy . . . I don’t see why we shouldn’t get you one. But how will you pay for your flight?’

  ‘I have a friend . . .’

  Mr Kenneth is much older than Patrice, small and bald with a direct gaze. He is a businessman based in Yaoundé for whom Patrice had done a little work – mostly lifting and packing, as far as I can tell. I am prepared to be suspicious of him, as he is of me. We speak English, Mr Kenneth being an Anglophone, and interrogate each other, politely, as Patrice watches us, head turning from one to the other as he tries to follow our conversation.

  ‘But why do you want to pay for Patrice?’ I ask.

  Mr Kenneth nods rapidly as he makes each point.

  ‘Becau
se I have seen him play rugby and I know that he is good, because there is nothing for him here, because I do not want to see him waste his life. If we could give him a chance . . .’

  I was certain of him very quickly but we talked for half an hour and then I summed up.

  ‘I cannot promise anything but I will do everything I can to help Patrice come to Britain. I have no house of my own but when he arrives in London he can stay with my father and me for a night or two and then we will go to Wales where my mother lives. She has a farm and spare rooms. I am sure she will be very happy to put us up for a couple of weeks, and Patrice could certainly help us with the farm. In Wales we will try to get Patrice a coaching certificate. I have friends who are into rugby there: if we can, we will get Patrice a trial, or at least introduce him to a Welsh club. I cannot promise he will get a coaching certificate, but we will try. At least he will see something of the world, and I will repay him for his great kindness to me.’

  Mr Kenneth nods gravely.

  ‘I will pay for Patrice’s flight,’ he says, ‘and I will give him some money for Britain.’

  We look at Patrice like two fathers who have hit upon a plan for the advancement of a child. There is something about his bulk, his directness and his troubled-son’s air of having been helped and of needing help that inspires one’s urge to help. It is as if he was not made for the world Mr Kenneth and I know, of complications, of probable failures, of connections, strings, snakes and ladders, but for the parallel, brutally sanitised world of the rugby field. How amazing it would be to welcome Patrice to Britain, to take him to a rugby game, to get him a certificate – and what a fairy tale it would be to see him play, to ‘put his body on the line’ as they say in the game, for the pleasure of spectators; how magical it would be to give him a shot at the kind of triumph his great hero had achieved: the Cameroon-born flanker of the French national team, Serge Betsen. We shake hands and embrace. Patrice goes to his room and comes back:

  ‘Horace, I have something for you,’ he says, and presses something into my hand.

  ‘I am also a sculptor,’ he says, shyly. ‘This is how I make some money.’

  It is a small bronze bull with buffalo horns. It is very heavy and very beautiful. It stands on three legs, the fourth being slightly raised, as if pawing the ground. The power of the bull and its barely arrested forward charge are eloquently present in the metal. Greatly moved I hug Patrice again, then we go out to see about the visa: how hard can it be?

  ‘My God, he’s only a bloody Taff!’ booms the white-haired man. Three nights later I am having a gin and tonic in the hotel bar: the white-haired man has been gossiping with one of the waiters. His French is very fluent and the waiters all seem to adore him. One of them has just asked me where I am from.

  ‘How do you do?’

  We introduce ourselves. His name is Barry and he is British.

  ‘I am in the oil business,’ he confesses, not embarrassed, but confessional nonetheless. ‘I have been to every single country on this continent.’

  ‘How does Cameroon compare?’

  ‘Bloody terrible! Terrible! Haven’t you seen it?’

  ‘Well, a little.’

  ‘Do you know – the people here have coins? Fucking coins! Not even notes. Coins. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It means they’ve got nothing. It means that when they die there is a ditch, a bloody ditch, which they throw your body into.’

  ‘What can they do?’

  ‘They should have a revolution, that’s what. I’ve been telling them that for years. I’ve even told the government! But nothing changes.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Oh, you try to help. You know, I’ve been helping someone for years. She wanted to sell SIM cards. You’ve seen all the kids selling SIM cards? Well, I tried to help her do that. But then someone in her family got ill and she gave them all the money. Then she wanted to sell something else, and so I helped her set up again. It didn’t work, all the money vanished, you know, bills, family. The government gives them absolutely fuck-all. Even schools aren’t free; as for health-care, forget it. If you get ill, that’s it, you’re probably dead, and they throw you in the ditch.’

  To apply for a visa for Britain from Cameroon you first have to log into a website. Despite Cameroon being a Francophone country, this website, and the visa form, are only available in English. Guessing that the best way of getting the process right is to speak to a human being, we try the British Consulate. The lady at the gate turns us firmly away: ‘You must apply through the website,’ she insists.

  We download copies of the form at an internet café and take them back to the hotel. Patrice needs a letter of invitation, proof of income, an itinerary and something to prove that his accommodation in London actually exists: I email my father and arrange for a copy of one of his utility bills to be couriered to Mr Kenneth. We go over the form several times. Though a trial with a rugby club would be a clear infringement, as the holders of tourist visas are not allowed to seek employment, I can see nothing to suggest that gaining a coaching certificate would be against the law. There is a box on the form in which anyone who has helped with the form must identify themselves, which I do.

  In the evenings we pick our way along broken pavements to small cafés, where we are served minuscule portions of thin, delicious chicken with manioc or rice. Patrice devours them in seconds. My stomach has shrunk: one small meal in the evening, with a breakfast of eggs the next morning is all it seems to require.

  On the fourth day – visa application being a slow business – Patrice receives a telephone call. I watch his face as he takes it. He looks stricken.

  ‘My wife is ill,’ he says, ‘malaria. I must go home.’

  ‘Horace . . .’ he begins. A black face blushes as readily as a white one. I press a mixture of euros and dollars into his hand and we dash to the offices of Western Union: Isabel will get anti-malarial drugs this evening. We make our arrangements on the run to the bus station. When my father’s utility bill turns up Patrice will be ready to submit his application. He will let me know by email when he has done so and I will track its progress by calling the consulate – they are likely to want to speak to me, we believe.

  We hug. I lift Patrice off the ground.

  ‘Force, Patrice!’ I cry.

  ‘Force, Horace!’ he returns.

  We shake hands.

  ‘See you in London,’ we say, and he goes.

  The Nigerian Embassy in Yaoundé is much quieter and more efficient than the one in London. Two visits, a long wait in a Chinese restaurant across the road, gawping at huge bats which circle and flap in broad daylight like flocks of gulls, a third visit and a short sleep in reception yield a visa. I have given up on taxis now, being short of money and depressed by the regularity with which they break down, or sit in dammed streams of smoking traffic. I walk everywhere. When I am nervous I carry my notebook and pen: a sword and shield, I tell myself, as I did in Lusaka, then in Brazzaville. No threat appears.

  There are two routes to choose from: north-east to Maroua in the marshes south of Lake Chad, west to Maiduguri, then Kano in Nigeria and north again to Zinder in Niger. I study this and dismiss it. There has been fighting in Chad, with French forces backing the government against a rebel insurgency. The swallow route, based on the last time I saw a great many of them, should lie to the west, nearer the coast. That is the way ornithologists say they come south – across the Gulf of Guinea. I will take the train to Douala on the coast, then look for a boat across the armpit of the Gulf, up into Cross River State, in Nigeria. From there I will go due north, across Nigeria and into Niger, striking west again to meet the Niger River at Niamey. I will go on to Agades, way up in the Sahara in northern Niger, not far from the Algerian border, where I will use a number that Christine in Brazzaville gave me for a guide named Akly. There are rumours of Touareg rebellion on that border, but if anyone can get me through to Tamanrasset in Algeria, she
said, he could.

  The Douala train is drawn by an old diesel locomotive which looks like a steel egg-carton stuck on top of a shoe-box. The carriages have fewer doors than doorways – in the last, where I sit, the back is open, showing the tracks tailing gently away. We roll out through slums, into hilly wooded country, over river beds, through a morning which heats and turns smoky yellow. At the first stop, all around the train, suddenly, whipping in swirling dives above the roof of the station, there they are: a flight of swallows.

  I rush to the open door to stare at them. There are twenty or thirty; they come and go too quickly for me to count them. Their moult looks complete: their new blue backs shine in the hazy sunlight like hardened silk. It seems extraordinary and somehow unbelievably simple: they have kept to the course I plotted from the Mambili; they have overflown the whole of the rainforest, crossed Gabon, and now here they are, feeding ferociously. I see more flocks in Makak and Eseka: I am on to them again, I have found them. The day becomes hotter and hotter and the carriage more crowded, as much with hawkers who travel from stop to stop as with travellers bound for Douala. The train seems to lose speed rather than gain it but I am perfectly happy. This is the most luxurious, gentle travel, and I am keeping pace with the birds. What I am seeing, they see. Where they have been, I have been. Where I am going, I dare hope, they are going; I feel a drowsy oneness with them and fend off sleep by speculating on the effort it costs them to cover ground at the speed I am, slumped in the seat. Four wing-beats a second, 240 a minute, 14,400 an hour: suppose they fly for eight hours a day, at a conservative guess – over 115,000 wing-beats. It seems ludicrous, and perhaps it is. Along with swifts and martins, swallows are the smallest birds capable of gliding flight, which assists in hunting, and even more so with migration. Without the ability to glide, their task would be akin to riding a bicycle over 6,000 miles while prohibited to free-wheel. Swallows have a much higher power to weight ratio than most birds thanks to their wing-loading: at just over 14 grams per 100 square centimetres this is much lower than that of most birds. The bird’s shape, the swell of the breast tapering to nothing at the very end of the tail streamers, is similar to a racing yacht.