Amna, blown clear with burns around her neck, was found close by. But not Darcy. It was presumed he was thrown very wide. If so, perhaps he wandered away among the thorn acacias, jolted by what must have been an enormous detonation; jerked back perhaps, away from the familiarity of Eritrea to the familiarity of Fryer River. He may have wandered, looking for holy pools and potent caves. The Ethiopians, whom not everyone believes, say they have not seen him and have gone to lengths to assure the world that they are not holding him. Did he wander into the arms of Ethiopian infantrymen fleeing the ambush site, who might understandably have shot him and perhaps even covered him with stones?
The Eritreans, too, have not been able to find him, though their mobile forces have searched for him and perpetually keep watch.
When Stella Harries saw Christine Malmédy some time after the incident, the girl was working the night shift in a bunker in Orotta, learning to edit—on an old videotape desk—some of the mass of her father’s film material, covering both the war and the famine, as well even as the football match between one division of Eritreans and another. “The child,” Stella thought, knowing that that was what Darcy had called the French girl.
It was a curious phrase, Stella thought, for him to have used of a quite interesting girl of twenty-one or -two. Both Darcy’s former wife, Bernadette Yang, and Stella herself knew that Darcy was a normal male. It reflected well on him, she says, on the sort of man he was and still might be, that while he traveled with Christine he didn’t see himself as journeying at the side of a woman of independent desires.
It is not yet established if he needs or should appropriately be given a monument—but if he does, this passes for one.
The BBC shortwave news indicated correctly that he had vanished during a separate incident from the one at Asmara airport, though the misconception that he was engaged in blowing up planes persists. There were some vaguely hostile comments in the British press about the value of journalists attaching themselves to palpably illicit guerrilla activities. There were one or two panels convened on British television about journalistic ethics. Darcy, in fact, came out not too badly from this.
For the truth is that the famine has worsened, and the world knows it cannot be entirely because Darcy witnessed the blowing up of a few trucks. The Dergue suffers one military disaster after another. The numbers of Ethiopian prisoners in Eritrea have increased threefold. The Dergue is punished by its own economic fatuity, though not as fiercely as are its people.
The July rains in Eritrea are erratic and the people starve in Endilal where Lady Julia saw the seeds of her revolution.
On the Nacfa Front, the grammar classes continue. And all the incidents fail to be separate.
About the Author
Thomas Keneally (b. 1935) is an Australian author of fiction, nonfiction, and plays, best known for his novel Schindler’s List. Inspired by the true story of Oskar Schindler’s courageous rescue of more than one thousand Jews during the Holocaust, the book was adapted into a film directed by Steven Spielberg, which won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Picture. Keneally was included on the Man Booker Prize shortlist three times—for his novels The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates—before winning the award for Schindler’s List in 1982. Keneally is active in Australian politics and is a founding member of the Australian Republican Movement, a group advocating for the nation to change its governance from a constitutional monarchy to a republic. In 1983 he was named an Officer of the Order of Australia for his achievements.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1989 by Serpentine Publishing Company Proprietary, Ltd.
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2673-4
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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