Tefuga

by Peter Dickinson

  “But they don’t have anything to do with each other.”

  “My darling Rabbit, that’s something you don’t know. You see about a tenth—a twentieth—of Elongo’s existence. What goes on in the remaining ninety-five per cent is a closed book. All you can be sure of is that it contains a great web of feuds and alliances and obligations and distrusts, and the one thing you must not do is go blundering in, taking sides, trying to alter the web for the better. Only disaster can result.”

  “Then what are we doing in Nigeria at all?”

  “That, if de Lancey has his way. I take it you told Elongo that Lukar has found a new cook and was sending him out to interview us this evening?”

  “Please, darling. I don’t want him.”

  The rain was really roaring down now. You couldn’t hear the thunder ’cos of the noise from the roof, but you knew from the lightning-blinks it must be there. If we hadn’t been sitting so close we’d have needed to shout. The rain made it colder. I tried to snuggle into Ted but his body didn’t answer.

  “What I propose to do,” he said, “is interview this fellow. You can be present, of course, but unless he is clearly useless we will hire him.”

  “Please, darling.”

  “I have already told Lukar to send the man out.”

  “And Lukar’s gone to collect a present from him.”

  “Very likely. So it is not in Lukar’s interest to send us someone unsuitable. It follows that if we refuse to hire this fellow Lukar will be perfectly well aware of the reason. In effect you will have forced me to take sides publicly against him in his feud with Elongo. Is that what you want?”

  I started to cry.

  It really wasn’t fair. It was breaking the rules of the game. But you see, all of a sudden it wasn’t just a game. The whole point about the game was that it didn’t make any difference in the real world. Ted wasn’t being beaten by Mr de Lancey ’cos of anything I’d done (that’s what he thought and it’s sort of true ’cos I hadn’t actually done anything since long before we’d started playing). Now I was trying to make something real happen. I know it was a silly little thing, hiring a cook, but it was part of everything else and that’s why it mattered.

  I didn’t care. I still don’t. I’m not at all ashamed of myself. I don’t usually cry when there’s anyone there—Daddy cured me of that—but once I’d got going it was easy to keep it up so I sobbed away and wheedled at Ted’s shirt with my fingers and watched the rain slithering over the mud outside the door—he couldn’t even send me away while it was sheeting down like that—and said to myself, Come on, Bets—you’re winning. Ted was terribly embarrassed and kept telling me to pull myself together and then I’d sob a bit more and say, “Please, Ted!” until at last he gave a great sigh and said, “Oh, all right. Have it your own way. Mind you, I shall expect haute cuisine all the way to Binja and back.” Then I kissed him like a puppy until the rain stopped and he pushed me off and told me to run away and I sploshed my way home. Extraordinary how well all that’s made me feel—like a swim before breakfast!

  Mon August 11

  I absolutely must scribble this down, spite of the rush and bother of getting ready for the tour—Mr de Lancey here this evening and then off first light tomorrow—cooler than last tour, so no more torch-light treks. I don’t think I’ll take the diary with me, not with de L. there, too public. But something v. strange has happened I’ve simply got to get down before it goes fuzzy.

  It started with a letter from Kimjiri. First off I just thought it was a complete hoot. K. must have got hold of some sort of mission-educated clerk in Birnin Soko and together they’d cooked up their letter. It started off ‘Dear Mr Edward Jackland Esquire Sir, with reference to the absence of the undersigned from his duty as cook to your goodself …’ and on it went like that, apologizing over and over to Ted, and boasting how well he always boiled everything and kept all the lids tight on the boxes and scorned those who begged him to steal food from our stores so a fortiori (yes, really—Kimjiri!) he scorned one who came to him with improper gifts, and then a really funny bit about Madam being the jewel of Mr Edward Jackland Esquire’s soul and his heart’s treasure, and then straight back from that to boiling the water and not letting improper substances get into the food lest he should be hanged by the neck till he was dead (really, I don’t think Ted’s ever gone quite that far) but he was a simple man and afraid of damnable pagan practices and his heartiest wish was to cook for Mr E.J. Esq. again as soon as he left Kiti, and he would pray every day that Mr E.J. Esq. and Madam stayed alive and perceived the wiles of their enemies. And then a lot of flowery farewells.

  I wanted to shriek with laughter when Ted showed me the letter. Dear old Kimjiri talking like that! Not a poetical soul. “What on earth does it all mean?” I said.

  “Somebody offered him a bribe and when he wouldn’t take it they threatened him with some kind of juju and he decided to clear out.”

  Ted wasn’t anything like as amused as I was. He’s minded about Kimjiri running off when they’ve been together so long, and natives using jujus on each other can be a serious nuisance, but it wasn’t that made me suddenly stop chortling. I read the letter again. The bit about the wiles of our enemies. Elongo standing in front of my chair, so serious, warning me about enemies.

  “Lukar,” I said.

  “Oh, come, darling. I must say I’m getting a bit tired of your obsession with Lukar.”

  “I’ve often wondered, in the old days, when our people were dying like flies anyway, how was anyone sure what they actually died of?”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Improper substances in our food.”

  I was feeling very cold and shivery and frightened. Elongo’d warned me, hadn’t he? That’s why it had mattered so much.

  “This is perfectly ridiculous,” said Ted. “Old Kimjiri’s only talking about kitchen hygiene.”

  “He wouldn’t know the difference.”

  “Are you feeling all right, Rabbit?”

  He tried to put his big warm hand on my forehead to feel if I had a fever, but I pushed it away.

  “I’m feeling a lot better than I might’ve if you’d let that friend of Lukar’s come and cook for us,” I said.

  “What earthly motive would Lukar have? He’s a shrewd chap. He’s been Messenger nine years. He knows how the world works. He’s got a well-paid job with a pension coming in the end.”

  “Not if we go on tour and find that Kama Boi’s people have been cheating us out of a lot of tax and Lukar’s been in it up to his neck.”

  “Now that is nonsense. Lukar doesn’t read English. I didn’t say a word to him about going on tour till three days ago when I went over to see old Kama Boi. That was the morning Kimjiri cleared out, so whatever he was frightened of must have happened before that—several days before.”

  It’s funny how people will go on arguing after they’ve changed their mind. I could hear it in Ted’s voice. He didn’t agree with me—I mean what he said about Lukar not knowing was quite true—but all of a sudden he wasn’t sure. He picked up Kimjiri’s letter and started to read it again. I got out of my chair and put my arm round him so I could read it too. It wasn’t really that. I was still rather trembly, thinking about what might have happened. I needed to hold him. I wasn’t wheedling—it was real. He put his spare arm round my shoulder and went on reading. We felt very one.

  “I suppose it’s just possible,” he said. “Something might have got out the Kaduna end. First thing is to get hold of Kimjiri. He’ll have headed for his home village, pretty certainly. I’ll drop a line to Burroughs at Jos and have him arrested as a material witness.”

  “Poor Kimjiri.”

  “Just shows you can never read the African mind, any more than you can expect an African to read ours. By all European lights the sensible thing would have been for him to come to me with t
he whole story. Surely he must know I’d stick by him after all these years. But no. I’m still as much of a mystery to him as a juju in a jungle pool.”

  “What are you going to say to Lukar?”

  “I suppose I shall have to tackle him. It’s only fair. We may be barking up completely the wrong tree. Chances are old Kimjiri had some quite different bee in his bonnet.”

  “But you do think there’s a chance …”

  “I honestly don’t know, and nor do you, Rabbit. I’m still completely at sea. All I know is this. You are—what’s the fellow say?—the jewel of my heart and my soul’s treasure.”

  Aren’t men peculiar? I could feel it all through him, not just in his words and his voice, a terrific sense of relief. He was quite right about K.’s letter being useless to go on, it could’ve meant dozens of different things, but it was just enough. It gave Ted the excuse he’d been waiting for, without knowing it. Now, ’cos of what might’ve happened to me, he could change sides! He’s known for weeks it was no use going on trying to protect KB, but he had to, or he’d lose face. He thought he was honour bound, but he’s even more honour bound to look after me, so Kimjiri’s letter saying one of KB’s people had tried to have me poisoned (if that’s what it meant) let him off. I think he’s still very bitter inside about being beaten by Mr de Lancey, but it’s not so bad as it would have been otherwise. At least it’ll make the tour a bit less sticky.

  Tues August 26

  Long sigh. Flop into chair. B. & s. The river. The gramophone. Home … And we’ve done it! We’ve won! I’ve won. Yes. It was really me. If I hadn’t been there it wouldn’t have been any good. Oh, some day, in five years, or ten, someone would’ve found out. But I did it, this year. It was my private war, and I won. Now I’m going to write it all down, before the men start telling it their way.

  Well, now, starting at the beginning, the tour began very badly indeed. Off we went with Bevis (which is what we’re supposed to call Mr de Lancey now!) and our six soldiers and our bearers (you never saw such a job lot!) to Ofafe where we were going to meet KB’s people, same as last time. Not a sign of them. And not a sign of Lukar, either! Ted was perfectly furious—I’ve never seen him really angry before—and in the end he took the soldiers off to Kiti to find out what had happened and when the ones who were supposed to be coming with us—the Bangwa Wangwa and KB’s waziri and one of his sons called Alafambo—said they’d changed their minds and tried to make excuses like being ill he arrested them on the spot and gave them the choice of coming on tour as tho’ they liked it or coming in handcuffs! I wish I’d been there to see their jaws drop, tho’ I don’t suppose they did—Hausa nobs try not to show their feelings, ever. It’s one of the things that makes them so tricky to deal with. And Lukar still missing. Not in his house, nowhere. Ted got back to Ofafe middle of the afternoon, still raging, then we plugged on till long after dark and set up camp in the middle of nowhere, everyone in a filthy temper except Bevis. He was v. gracious and smarmy to Ted and didn’t complain about anything, even supper, which was only just eatable though poor Elongo’d done his best! I do wish I could find a way of liking him. He’s so much cleverer and more amusing and well-read than Ted, as well as understanding about painting, but as a person he isn’t a patch on him. Oh, yes, I was in a foul mood too, ’cos when we were waiting at Ofafe I went off and tried to chat to the villagers. Nobody stopped me, but it wasn’t any good. They were terrified—some of them absolutely grey with fear. They tried to pretend I was talking a foreign language. Only one or two children, till their mothers called them away. Such a let-down!

  Then, in the middle of the night, all our bearers tried to run away. Mercifully Corporal Igg, who was in command of the soldiers, is an absolutely splendid type, straight as a ramrod, black as a squashball, a real advertisement for what army training can do for the African. If only there were a few more like him we wouldn’t need to be here at all! Anyway, he’d got wind of what the bearers were planning and told his men to be ready and when it happened he rounded them up—just like a first-rate sheepdog—and came and reported. Ted and Bevis questioned the bearers, but course they only said they wanted to get back to their gardens. But it was clear as crystal somebody’d put the wind up them. Even Ted agreed. He was a changed man, by the by. In a funny way he was rather enjoying himself, breaking rule after rule, losing his temper and so on. It started after he’d read Kimjiri’s letter and now everything that happened gave him a fresh excuse, but I don’t think it was just that. There’s a lot of frustration and rebelliousness been bottled up inside him for years. He’s been longing to throw his weight about and bully people a bit, spite of what he’s always said about being patient with the native and doing things the African way. That was only what he thought he thought—what he thought he ought to think—but he didn’t really, not deep inside. Aren’t people funny, living whole lives pretending to themselves, until something happens? I’m not going to let that happen to me. Well, I hope I’m not—don’t get cocky, Bets.

  Well, next day we did a huge march, v. exhausting for everyone. I’ve forgotten to say how different the bush is after the rains—you almost wouldn’t know you were in the same country! The grass has shot up, some places high as a man or more, and then it’s got heavy with the wet and its own seeds, and sort of tired so it flops across the track and whoever’s going first has to shove their way through—we used the horses for that, and they hated it—and all the loose seeds fall off and get inside your shirt. And the insects! Ouch! And top of that you can’t really see more than a few yards most of the time, even from a horse. It was an absolutely rotten time to go and look for hidden villages. Ted had known all along, of course, and so’d Bevis, but Bevis had got the bit between his teeth and was absolutely determined to get on with it. Really we’d have done much better to wait till the grass-burning starts, tho’ that doesn’t always mean there’s a village near—it’s mostly the honey-hunters who start the fires.

  Anyway we started before dawn and hardly stopped at all till noon, when we reached a place called Gokwo. Our poor bearers were practically dropping by then, so the soldiers rounded up every able-bodied man in Gokwo and Ted paid the old bearers off and on we went and got to Binja utterly exhausted just before dark. The horses were in a dreadful state and all us riders were saddle-sore, and the Hausa were groaning and clutching their stomachs and swearing they’d been poisoned and the bearers—usually bearers sing on the march to help them keep going, but these ones just made a sort of moaning chant up and down the line as tho’ they were going to a funeral! Even the soldiers were limping a bit. Only Corporal Igg looked as tho’ he’d have liked to do the whole march over again. But at least we’d got to the part we’d been aiming for.

  Next day Ted and me stayed in Binja to check the census with Alafambo and the Bangwa Wangwa. Actually Alafambo is rather a nice-looking man, about forty, I’d think. He’s been to Mecca and he’s supposed to be a good Arab scholar—if he was white he’d look just right pottering round Oxford in a gown and mortar-board—but he was just as determined to be difficult about everything as any of the others. While we were doing that Bevis and the soldiers went out to explore. We didn’t find anything, and nor did they. Censusing is terribly difficult with people like that. You can count huts but you don’t know how many men are using one ’cos brothers often share, tho’ the huts belong to the women. We only count men, of course. You can look at the gardens and try and work out how many men from that, but the ground’s so poor that the Kitawa have to get a lot of their food from the bush, hunting game and finding wild plants. The idea of trying right after the rains was to catch as many at home as possible, working their gardens, but there didn’t seem to be even as many as there were supposed to be. It was terribly slow. They did their absolute best not to tell us anything. Even the simplest question they’d think ages about before answering. At least they stopped pretending they couldn’t understand my Kiti after I’d got Elongo along to help.
(Alafambo tried to object to that, by the by.) But the awful thing was E. was obviously almost as frightened and nervous as they were. I asked him why when I got him alone to make arrangements about supper, but he wouldn’t tell me. And then Bevis and the soldiers trailed in. They’d split up into three parties and between them they must have gone miles. No good.

  We had to leave the horses at Binja, ’cos from then on it’s much thicker bush and swarming with tsetse. You don’t get them nearly so much out in the grassland, provided you’re careful about not watering the horses in the shade and so on. So we had to plug on on foot. I could’ve hammocked but I was d—d if I was going to ’cos that would’ve given the Hausa an excuse to say they wanted to hammock too and there weren’t enough bearers. Funny, broken country, much more interesting to paint if there’d been time—not actual hills but all crumbled and wrinkled into crooked little valleys. Much more water about, and sudden terrific strong smells after the rains, specially from a bush covered with tiny green flowers the size of pinheads. Mr Mooreshed’s butterflies. Bags of game, Ted thinks, but v. difficult to hunt.

  Got to Sollum early afternoon. I was thoroughly fagged after my tramp, so Ted and Bevis took the soldiers out for a first explore (no luck) and after that we decided we’d have a change of tactic so Ted and me went down to the village (the rest house is on a ridge outside—come to that in a mo) and got the elders together and told them that tomorrow we were going to count them and they absolutely must make certain that all the men were in the village. I actually asked them if there were any people hiding. It wasn’t terribly promising ’cos they clammed up, like at Binja, and they wouldn’t look me in the face, tho’ I noticed that usually one of the ones I wasn’t talking to kept glancing over to where the Hausa had setup camp. We purposely hadn’t brought any of them with us. Another rule broken, but it didn’t do much good!

  We went back to the rest house feeling thoroughly dumpish. It still wasn’t dark so Ted and Bevis decided to go and see if they could shoot anything and I went round to the back of the rest house to see how Elongo was getting on with supper. Sollum is in the bottom of the valley, but the rest house is up on a ridge, terribly tumbledown, stinking of bats and crawling with huge spiders. That’s what happens in Africa the moment your back’s turned. Nobody’d used it for four years, Ted said, and we’d all three taken one look at it and said we’d sleep in our tents, but we had to pretend to use it for supper so Ted could make a fuss with the elders about getting it cleaned and tidied.