Prentice stood at the window alone, watching the street below. He leant forward peering, his nose touching the lace. They were about sixty yards away now, still in their casual slow motion. They were black all right, he thought, but not black-black, not African black. The negroid flat nose and heavy lips had been bred out of them. Forty yards now and look at the one in the middle . . . the one on the centre line. Black-black all right but different. Maybe American negro. And tall. The tallest Black he had ever seen.
They had come by sea, he knew that. No plane could have landed on the island and not be heard, and the UTA to Paris two nights ago, taking everyone else out, was the last plane he had heard overfly. The nearest land by sea east was Malagasy, but they hadn’t come from there. West was the African coast, Tanzania and Mozambique. He pulled at the lobe of his left ear which suddenly itched, rain or wealth he couldn’t remember. Mozambique made sense.
Blacks with Portuguese blood, Frelimo Revolutionaries sent by Maputo on behalf of Moscow. Maybe they had given Laurent five days of grace to prove to the Politburo his credibility and he had failed. Too cautious, too pragmatic, too bourgeois in his ideas for change. His talk of Union’s non-alignment had probably upset them. They’d given him the thumbs down.
So a counter-coup in the name of the people. Laurent overtaken. And all so thinly disguised.
‘Christ! It makes you weep. . . and no one cares a bleedin’ damn! Not one fucking iota.’ Prentice said it aloud.
Fifteen yards away now and Prentice stood back from the window as they lined up along the pavement in front of the hotel. He could see only their dark green berets and the tips of the rifles they now carried high across their shoulders.
He watched the tall Black walk up the hotel steps and take off his beret.
And he shook his head and scratched the tickle in his left ear again as the black guy in a red skullcap rang the doorbell.
From where they were hiding they could see only the base of the lamp-post. What was hanging there was hidden by the chill mist. Just as the year’s summer had come early to the island so now it seemed had its autumn.
They crept forward together and left the cover of the low hibiscus bushes that encircled the Place de la République. The old man found it hard to walk crouched so low, found it hard to breathe and was afraid of the noise he made when he did. But the younger man held his arm and slowly they went forward, blindly, not knowing who was around or ahead of them. Were the soldiers beyond the lamp-post? Had they already seen them? Were they there in the mist, waiting in their cruel fun to shoot them down in their surprise? They felt like someone searching for a light-switch in the dark, feeling the panic rising and the unknown fingers almost touching.
The old man was doubled up, hobbling his way in the grey semi-dark across the Square. Since he was a child he had always remembered the Square as open and sunny and like the island itself, noisy and bright with people, a Square full of sarsaparilla stands and waffle cones full of water ice and large white men in large white shorts and white knee- length socks and white shoes that smelt of lime, walking with large white women. And once a year on the eve of Noel, the full-blossomed jacaranda and tulip trees would hang with coloured lights and the ‘Grands Blancs’ and the French estate owners would dance with their white friends who’d come from the schooners in the harbour, and they would sit on polished wooden benches and sing carols and make speeches and eat from trestle tables covered in starched white linen.
As a small boy he had once played a wooden flute on a makeshift stage by the ornamental fountain, standing next to the nativity crêche and the statue of Mother Mary borrowed from the church. And he had watched the beautiful white people below him eat the crayfish and lobster he had helped his father and brothers catch that same day. He remembered how proud he had been to have done so much to make those Christmas Eves successful.
The people had dropped copper centimes into his father’s hat as they left and then his and the other peasant families stayed behind to dismantle the small stage and stack the wooden benches ready for the Governor’s men next day to take back to the Palace in their horse-drawn carts. But they had eaten what was left of the sea food and the sweetmeats and had emptied the dregs of the wine glasses and casks and had danced and sung carols themselves and still the benches were not stacked when the Governor’s men had arrived at dawn.
Now his eyes watered with the mist and he heard only his own wheezing, and they were by the lamp-post. Then he saw the feet. And the legs. He touched the feet and he knew he had wasted his time and perhaps his life and his son’s life too. They had come for their President but there was nothing anymore worth saving.
The body was stiff and, as the old man touched it, it moved like a stick. He had always been faithful to his Church so he knew something of the spirit and its departing, and he knew now that the President’s spirit had long left.
He held his son’s shoulder and whispered in his ear but the young man shook his head. They had come to take the body, he said, and that’s what they must do.
The old man held the stiff legs tight as his son climbed the lamp-post. He listened but he could hear only their own breathing and beyond them the surf on the reef by the harbour breakwater. Then the sound of the knife cutting through the nylon cord and a moment later he was straining with the weight of the erect body. He let it slip slowly between his arms down through the mist and he looked up and saw the face, the broken head, the hair matted red and grey and the bruised purple neck cut by the orange cord whose frayed end now touched the old man’s cheek. And he saw the hanging eye.
As his son, a fisherman too and strong, bent forward, the old man lowered the body on to his back, back to back, and his son clasped his hands behind him and hugged the body tight against him. Then, taking the full weight, he straightened slightly and began to move back towards the hibiscus. The old man tried to help, tried lifting the legs, but they were rigid.
Ten minutes more, he thought, and they would be safe across the Square and into the alley that led to their house. Then, through the back yard and on to the slopes of the mountain and the small plot of land where they grew grapes. And there they would bury their dead President, the friend who had promised them a better life. And they had all believed him.
He remembered on that first day when the President had asked them not to celebrate. They had sat in their tiny parlour that night, listening to his radio message. Their journey to real Independence, the President had said, was only just beginning. ‘We will not know it ourselves but our sons will at our age, but still they will not celebrate, because later they will look back to us and this day and know that their journey to Independence was celebration enough.’
They reached the bushes and his son stopped. He was panting and his brown arms were wet with sweat. The old man touched his son’s face gently, ‘Cinq minutes encore, mon fils.’
He turned and looked up towards the mountain and he thought of their small vineyard and the grave they had already dug. It was at the top end of the ground and he had purposely put it there, above the rooftops with a clear view of the sea and the blue-green horseshoe of coral. He had already made the cross, a simple wood support disguised by grape-vines and bougainvillea. It was where he would have liked to have been buried himself one day but he knew his Church would never permit it.
He whispered and his son heaved himself up, the President’s body splayed across his back and they moved quietly forward again into the circle of cobblestones laid out in the pattern of flowers in the centre of the Square. Still the mist was low but he could feel the changing temperature. Soon, in another fifteen minutes, maybe less, the sun would warm the air and the mist would lift, but fifteen minutes was enough for what they must do. Then they would wash and eat breakfast and together, with his wife and son, they would pray for their friend and all they had lost with him.
The first bullet hit the dead body squarely in the stomach and
the young fisherman felt only the thud of its impact. But the second hit his arm bursting the main artery and he dropped the body and spun round in surprise. The third bullet tore his cheek and the fourth smashed into his heart and he fell backwards on to the wet glistening cobbles.
The old man saw them running and heard them shouting, but he didn’t understand. He went down on his knees and put his face next to his son’s and felt the warm blood, his family’s lifeblood, as it mingled with his tears.
They shot him where he knelt and as his body sprawled over his son’s, in that instant of God’s where life meets death, the old man saw the ornamental fountain and a small Christmas stage and a little boy standing by the crêche playing a wooden flute.
10
‘The people want us. Need us. You mustn’t be so furious. We are Revolutionary Saviours, just as your Jesus once considered himself to be.’
‘I don’t think they realize that here yet.’ Prentice said it quietly and to the window. He was sitting sideways to the black guy, who was standing in the doorway that led from Reception to the bar. His red skullcap almost touched the white painted door-frame.
Faraday stood behind Prentice, his hands on the back of the chair. Protheroe was drinking neat Cane at the bar and Doubleday sat by him looking down at his hands clasped tightly on his lap. Faraday thought he was in continual prayer.
The black guy walked over to the window and stood directly in front of Prentice challenging him it seemed to change position again. His rubber-soled boots squeaked on the tiled floor and his shaved head glistened and his face was still wet from the mist. His green khaki uniform was tight-fitting and well pressed and the creases on the front and back of his trousers had been machined so that the creases were permanent. He had no marks of rank and no give-away holes or tears in the epaulets of his tunic where the metal bars of officer status might once have been.
He gave no orders and hardly acknowledged the other soldiers with him. But they watched him and, as he moved, they moved to new positions around him. As he had walked to the window one went to the corner behind him, another went closer to the bar facing the window, the third stood to the doorway, back to the room, his rifle pointing to the front door.
To Faraday watching the manoeuvre, they seemed like pieces rallying protectively around their king in defensive chess. The black guy folded his arms and looked at the top of Prentice’s balding head.
‘Given time,’ he said in easy English, with an oddly familiar accent, ‘and the minimum of re-education and you’ll be surprised how the people here will welcome us. The shock of two revolutions in one week is bound to mute them and they have been slaves for so long it will take them some time to recognize the freedom we now provide. But you mustn’t doubt our final success. It’s said that the longer the change takes, the greater the prize but then again the greater is the chance that change will not happen at all. Here we must move fast if our revolutionary momentum is to progress through Africa.
‘And if we seem brutal they will one day forgive us. Revolution is brutal, often barbarous . . . pure but barbarous . . . and we just haven’t the time to dilute our Revolution with those reserves of mercy and sacrifice that are the luxuries of your so-called Christian democracy.
‘We are the New Idea of the decade and anyone who has read Genesis should not be surprised if a new idea brings with it difficulties. Read history my friend and see how many, many times the blueprints of revolutionary societies have been drawn in blood.
‘And remember, we are dealing with cabbage. These people have never had the chance to think for themselves and they have been so lost for motive they hardly know what is good for them. Now that they have freedom they must be helped to use it. After all, cage a dog in the dark long enough and when you open the door he’ll be afraid of the sudden light and not come out. So it is everywhere. So is it here. That has been the history of Revolution. People you see, must sometimes be forced to be free.’
Prentice did not move his head but he raised his eyes to the black guy’s. Then he spoke very slowly and so quietly that even Faraday standing behind him had to lean forward to hear.
‘I reckon I’m twice your age, Blackman, and I’m no political virgin. My hymen was broken by bastard propaganda like that before the spunk even left your Commissar father’s balls and I haven’t stopped bleeding since. So don’t try that “re-education” crap on me.’
His voice was louder now and Faraday could see his knuckles lose colour as they tightened on the arm-rests of the chair.
‘You’re looking at someone, Blackman, who’s seen your kind of freedom. I’ve seen how you introduce it and the bloody stick you hand out to those poor buggers who don’t want it, like the Soviet Jews who feel freer in Siberia than Tel Aviv.
‘I saw the kids, kids mind you . . . fifteen, sixteen years old . . . throw stones to try and stop your tanks entering Prague and I saw what you did with them afterwards. Forced them to be free with the biggest pair of boots in the ribs and crotch I’ve ever seen in my life. But they were free in the end, bleeding on the pavement and crippled with ruptured balls.
‘You’re looking at someone, Blackman, who thought he’d seen it all in Vietnam, until that day in Hue when we’d driven our jeep fifty yards before I realized we were going over dead bodies and our tyres hadn’t touched the road once. Cut the lot down you did with machineguns, babies and all, just so they wouldn’t have the chance to go to the other side, because they may have preferred it that way.
‘You’re looking at someone, Blackman, who drove one Saturday afternoon to a mission school high up in the Rhodesian mountains and saw how you’d freed thirteen missionaries and their babies. You raped the mothers with the kids still in their arms and then smashed the lot of them with bayonets and clubs as they lay there in the dark in their pyjamas. But by Christ! you made them free all right, all the way to bleedin’ Heaven.’
His face was red now and he was trembling in his anger. The veins on his temples stood out as if they were varicosed, and Faraday could see the grey hair on the nape of his neck darken with the line of sweat.
‘I’ve seen something of the net you red bastards are trying to throw over us so don’t come your “forcing people to be free” shit with me. We know who you are, who you’re here for, why you’re doing it, so you can forget your bloody campaign message. We’ve seen in one day how much the people here need you, nice ordinary people with as much malice as a butterfly. They need you, Blackman . . . you and yours . . . like I need a dose of clap. Welcome you? Like the rats’ plague they do.’
He held the black guy’s stare, still breathing heavily. Faraday looked at the other soldiers, but there was no reaction. Obviously they spoke no English.
The black guy began pulling at the corners of his mouth with his finger and thumb, creasing the lower lip. Still he held Prentice’s stare. It seemed to Faraday that he was working out not what next to say as what next to do and horrifying options began to present themselves in his mind, and for the hundredth time he thought of Elizabeth and felt a tingle of despair.
The black guy suddenly turned his back on Prentice, leant forward and with both hands lifted the sash window frame and let in the warm damp air. Faraday could now see beyond the Boulevard and out to sea. There was a red glow from the early morning sun which was still hidden by the low cloud swirling and cascading over the tip of La Souffrière and he smelt the salt and heard the seagulls. The sea at least was still the same. They hadn’t touched that yet.
The black guy breathed the air in deep himself. Still looking out of the window to the sea, he said: ‘You speak well and your rhetoric is well practised. But the English have a knack for it. You have, I suppose, little else left nowadays.’
Faraday watched the black guy hold his hands behind his back and stretch his arms. Two elephant-hair bracelets were tight on his left wrist and on the little finger of the same hand he saw a thick raised
ivory ring veined red. He was a powerful man and as his arms pressed against his back, his biceps spread out from his short-sleeved tunic. His face was very square and flat and his brown eyes were deep-set in it. In every way he seemed perfectly symmetrical. Maybe it was the cut of the uniform but Faraday couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone so well measured, so well balanced. And something else. Now that the moisture had dried on him, his skin had lost its shine. It had a sheen instead - a dull almost purplish sheen.
‘But you are short-sighted,’ the black guy said. ‘Our ambition does not begin or end on this island, that much you must surely already know. Our designs go far beyond and they are far grander and more entire, so any means we employ as Socialist Revolutionaries totally justifies our final end. And we are trained to turn our head from suffering. What happens here to this island, to its people, is not important. To us the important thing is that Union has become a member of the Socialist Republics, integral to the inevitable process of World Socialism. That, my friend, is why we are here.
‘You accuse us of aggression, invasion. Dangerous words if we were to use them, but we do not. We admit only to a spontaneous revolution, of the people, by them, for them. It is the chemistry of your own Democracy, something more adored by you than possibly Christianity itself. The Democratic ethic is enshrined in Western Capitalism, it is its frontispiece, the disguise of so many of its abuses. So who among your Governments would dare now to retaliate at this? . . . the Democratic will of the people of Union. Did you in Angola? Or in Ethiopia? Or Zambia? Did you when we eventually eased our way into Zimbabwe? Did you last week when President Laurent seized power? Will you now? No! Having fought so many bloody battles in your history to conceive and then defend that simple delusive principle of Government, the Democratic code, you have no choice now. No choice, whatever your private misgivings.
Red Joker Page 12