Soon bored by the news and propaganda from the government radio-station, broadcast in a language unknown to her, Noon rooted about in the chauffeur’s locker. There she discovered a parcel of educational cassettes which Kagwa had ordered, popular guides to political philosophy, colonial history and third-world resources. For Noon these cassettes became her guides in a basic English language course, the first tuition of any kind that she had received in her life. She moved to the front seat, befitting a pupil, and nodded gravely to the lecturer and his interlocutor while the fragments of dialogue were recited in the over-formal tones of the correspondence schools. Adept with the push-buttons, she punched the playback and fast forward controls, as if her fingers had become her surrogate vocal cords. In the pregnant pauses, Noon first whispered and then tried to repeat aloud the catch-phrases.
‘… tourism and bourgeois hegemony … the natural park as neo-colonialist folk-lore … African wild-life and the exploitation of racist stereotypes …’
Embarassed at being unable to get her tongue around these polysyllables, Noon turned up the speaker. Sounds of jargonized dialogue with a Marxist slant boomed across the water, and two small zebra drinking by the bank looked up at us in alarm. Delighted with this, Noon began to play the cassettes to the passing birds, informing the oystercatchers of the merits of solidarity and the rails of the hazards of exploitation.
Another reminder of the world we had left behind came on the seventh day – I had almost lost count, measuring our voyage in terms of the changing flora and fauna. We had entered a stretch of the river where the channel divided into the waterways of an internal delta. Huge sand-banks rose through the surface, and we moved across an almost abstract landscape of golden bars that emerged from the water like the limbs of a bathing giant. Noon sat in the prow, too proud to signal with her arms and muttering confused fragments of dialogue remembered from the cassette lessons.
‘For heaven’s sake, Noon.’ I cut the engine and called her to the wheelhouse. I gestured with my arms. ‘Let’s agree on this. Left equals “solidarity”. Right equals “exploitation”. Okay?’
Frowning fiercely, she returned to the bows. Hands deep in her trouser pockets, she planted her legs astride the anchor, now and then turning to bark at me:
‘…’ploitation! …’ploitation!’ then, in panic: ‘Doc Mal! – soderality!’
At last we emerged from this delta into the open channel, and Noon returned to her classroom in the Mercedes. I drove the throttle forward, increasing our speed to six knots. For a quarter of a mile we sped steadily between the submerged sand-bars. Then, when the deep water began to surge against the bows, I felt the deck rear upwards against my feet, as if the diesel had broken loose from the engine pit. A violent scraping ground the length of the keel, a ragged shudder that threatened to strip the plates from the hull. The wheel spun clockwise, knocking my hands from the spokes, and the vessel lurched to a stop, tilting to starboard. While I climbed to my feet on the sloping deck the ravenous scraping continued. Something had seized the ferry, trying to split the hull from bows to stern and devour the engine.
From the foaming wake beside the port rail a cascade of red-flecked spray leapt into the air. A huge spine, more than fifty feet long, rose from the water. Encrusted with weed and scale, it resembled the armoured back of an ancient saurian, feet planted on the river-bed, jaws gripping the ferry’s rudder.
The spray and foam subsided, and the ferry groaned into an upright position. Tipped from the passenger seat of the limousine, Noon sat on the deck among the scattered cassettes. I switched off the engine and stepped from the wheelhouse, watching our assailant subside into the water.
We had run into the steel gantry of an ore-conveyor, part of a mining excavator that had worked the now submerged quarry beneath us. I opened the starboard side of the after-peak, and removed the manhole door, exposing the propeller to view. The blades were undamaged, but a steel hawser that trailed from the gantry had wrapped itself around the shaft.
As Noon watched, intrigued by the Mercedes’ resources, I took the tyre levers and jack from the limousine’s tool-kit. From the rail I lowered myself on to the catwalk of the conveyor. I sat astride the box frame, trying to free the steel tentacle that tied the ferry to this underwater leviathan.
Noon swam near the bows, spear raised, casting rice on the cool stream.
‘Doc Mal …’
She dipped a finger into the water, and pointed downwards with a knowing smile, as if the snaring of the ferry had given her an idea.
‘What is it, Noon? I won’t take your bait.’
She feinted with the spear, and then ducked and dived beneath the water. I rested astride the gantry, watching the semaphore of Noon’s pale feet. A coquettish water-nymph, she was as smooth and agile as a seal puppy, a child-siren inviting a passing mariner down to her bower. I assumed that she wanted to impress me, to tempt me down into a realm where she, without doubt, would have the upper hand. But perhaps, too, she wanted to demonstrate that the river would no longer harm me, and that I was safe now within its depths, wrapped in the mantle of its dream. And given that I had created the Mallory, I could almost believe that I would not have drowned had I tried to follow Noon. Its waters flowed from my own bloodstream …
I watched her swim to the narrow beach on which she had laid out her clothes. Around my thighs the current was softer, and the pale green trees and flowering shrubs seemed to be holding their breath, as if involved in some secret complicity with Noon.
Covered with oil and flaking paint, I decided to rest before cutting away the last of the frayed cable. Standing on the conveyor, I took off my trousers and hung them from the stern rail, then dived into the water and swam the fifty feet to the beach.
A grove of wild myrtle ran down to the narrow strip of sandy clay. I rubbed the oil from my arms, breathing the thick scent of desert lavender. Fan-palms and slender saplings of bamboo formed a cool waterside garden, an arbour filled with succulents and passion-flowers. I walked through this charming glade, placing my bare feet between the aloes and armoured rosettes of century plants that sprang from the damp floor. Nourished by the river, a vivid new flora had emerged in the past months, a cool realm that extended a hundred yards into the parched savanna. Curious tubers and corms, scarlet drupes, and culinary and medicinal herbs grew in the pale light, and I saw the yellow tubes and flared mouths of fragrant datura, their alkaloids promising drowsy potions on which the river might dream. As I looked down at the hundreds of green shoots rising between the saplings I seemed to be witnessing the birth of the flowering plants, which had brought colour and scent to the sombre world of the ferns and cycads.
Through the trees I noticed Noon returning from her foraging expedition. Under her arm she carried the sticks and tinder which she had gathered from the desert’s edge. She paused to pluck a wild herb to add to the dish of rice and fish that she would prepare. She strolled between the flowering shrubs, her shoulders covered with the downy catkins and the tissue leaves of hibiscus, as if she too had just been born into this arbour. Her smooth limbs and pensive eyes had also sprung from the moistened earth. Seeing her, I was almost certain that I had thrown my spit on to the ground and created the river, which in turn had given life to this child.
She walked through the dappled glade towards the beach. Hearing my breath, she saw me among the spears of bamboo, standing naked with my paint-reddened arms and chest, the black streaks of oil like the display of a solitary forest male.
‘Doc Mal …’ She spoke distinctly, and then uttered a fetish word, as if she could place me at a safe distance by marking me with my name. But I saw that she accepted my nakedness.
Did I trust myself with Noon? Bathed in the scent of the flowers, I rested on the beach before returning to the propeller. The meagre diet – a shared bowl of rice morning and evening, with whatever fish Noon could catch – left me exhausted after the smallest effort but I was too exhilarated to eat properly, or to look after the chafed ski
n of my arms and face, already suffering from the effects of exposure. Spectres swam beneath the calm surface of the river, caravels freighted with a treasure that would ransom all the debts and memories of the unhappy years.
Trying to calm myself, I gazed at the placid stream. Anchored to the steel gantry of the conveyor, the Salammbo rocked gently on the current. Dreams of pagan powers moved across the surface of the Mallory. I tried to stand back from my obsession with the river, but already I was thinking of the irrigation of the entire Sahara, of the transformation of the desert into the Edenic paradise that I saw around me in these green glades and sensed in its sweet airs. A new race would spring from Noon and myself as we lived peaceably in these forest bowers. It was time for a naming of new things, of new hours and new days. I would christen this quiet beach, bathed in the baptismal waters of the Mallory … Port Noon.
Through this sun-filled reverie I saw her standing at the starboard rail, waving to me fiercely with both fists. When I failed to stir she leapt into the limousine and switched on the cassette player.
‘… neo-colonialist folk-lore …’
The fragments of amplified dialogue boomed along the shore, then stopped abruptly. Noon returned to the rail, fingers to her scarred mouth as she grimaced at the southern sky. An ugly shadow had crossed the water and was now speeding towards the ferry. I heard the shriek of an approaching engine, and saw Captain Kagwa’s helicopter loom out of the air above our heads. Two yellow pontoons were attached to its undercarriage like huge poison sacs. It scrambled across the cool light, a malevolent creature emerging from a more primitive sky.
16
The Helicopter Attack
I knelt beside the radiator grille of the Mercedes, trying to conceal myself from the French pilot. Noon had taken refuge in the rear seat of the limousine, terrified by the noise and violence of this threatening machine. The down-draught dented the water, and then scythed through the riverside trees, driving away a whirlwind of coloured blossom. As the petalled cloud drifted towards the desert a storm of furious air thrashed the groves of myrtle and bamboo beside the beach, erasing all memory of our riverside idyll.
Captain Kagwa sat in the cockpit beside the pilot, sunglasses propped on to his broad forehead. Clearly he had not expected to find the handsome limousine in the charge of a naked man and his twelve-year-old companion. He signalled to the young Frenchman, ordering him to circle the Salammbo, still unsure whether the savage figure stained with red and black stripes was the former WHO physician at Port-la-Nouvelle.
The helicopter approached the ferry, barely twenty feet above the wheelhouse. The navigation lights kept up their monotonous pulse, reimposing the rule of the electric circuit on the tranquil day. Already hundreds of birds were rising from the wooded banks of the river, and fleeing out into the desert.
Kagwa leaned against his lap-strap and loosened the buckle of his holster. The noise of the engine sank to a flatter pitch as the pilot levelled his rotor blades before coming down to land.
‘Noon …!’ I ran around the Mercedes and opened the passenger door. ‘Stay there. I’ll find the rifle.’
She lay across the rear seat, one thumb in her mouth, the other plugging the bullet hole in the leather upholstery as if this would ward off any further missiles.
‘Doc …?’
‘Don’t move … Kagwa won’t shoot his precious car …’
I closed the door and darted between the fuel drums to the wheelhouse. The helicopter settled on to the water beside the ore-conveyor. The pilot throttled back the engine, the blades thudding as they cuffed the warm air. Mooring line in hand, Captain Kagwa stepped from the cockpit on to the starboard float, and secured the cable to the gantry of the conveyor. He tested the exposed trelliswork, head lowered below the flicking propeller blade, and then walked towards the ferry. Already he was sweating in the sunlight as his buffed leather boots picked their way among the upturned ore-buckets, clearly concerned with more important matters than this minor episode of river piracy.
I watched him through the broken glass of the wheelhouse. Beside me on the bunk was the Lee-Enfield. Careful not to reveal the rifle to the Captain, I cocked the firing-pin.
‘Dr Mallory …?’ Recognizing me with difficulty, Kagwa shook his head. He scrutinized the Mercedes parked on the cargo deck. Grudgingly satisfied with its condition, he glanced up and down the length of the ferry, noting the stove and piles of firewood, Noon’s clothes and other evidence of this odd menage. He then peered beneath the stern of the ferry, and examined the coils of cable looped around the propeller shaft. I had cut away almost all the steel threads, but Kagwa seemed to decide that the shaft was hopelessly snagged.
‘You’ve come a long way, doctor. But again you’ve been thinking too much. You are very tired. We’ll take you back to Port-la-Nouvelle.’
‘I’ll stay here, Captain. My journey isn’t over.’
‘Your journey is finished.’ Kagwa stood on the metal catwalk twenty feet from me, hands on hips, still shaking his head in sympathy at my tragic mental plight. From the brutal interrogations I had witnessed, I knew that it was during these moments of understanding when Captain Kagwa was at his most dangerous. ‘Piracy, doctor. You assaulted my men and carried out an armed seizure of this vessel and cargo. A most valuable cargo. WHO will have to pay much compensation.’
‘They aren’t keen on ransom, Captain. I’ll return the ferry to you when my mission is over.’
‘You have no mission. What is this mission? The same foolishness about destroying the river?’
‘My river, Captain. I created it, I gave my name to it, and I’ll do what I want with it.’
‘My dear Dr Mallory … this river is now a strategic waterway. You are in a military operational zone. Also’ – he pointed to the Mercedes – ‘you are giving shelter to one of Harare’s guerillas …’
‘She’s not with Harare, Captain. The girl is working for me.’
‘The girl? Is she still a girl, doctor? Your medical dictionary might say something else. I won’t harm her, doctor, Mrs Warrender can care for the child. Everyone is concerned for you – I had to stop Mrs Warrender hiring a boat to follow you …’
‘Tell her to care for Professor Sanger – the last time I saw him the poor man needed it.’
‘That was for your sake, doctor. To save you being a laughing stock on Japanese television. He was making a secret programme about you …’
Kagwa stepped on to one of the ore-buckets, shouting in Sudanese at the Mercedes. Noon’s face appeared in the rear passenger window. She stared back at the Captain, and squeezed her trembling nostrils, wiping the phlegm on to the driver’s headrest. The door opened, and her scarred heel touched the deck.
Captain Kagwa braced his feet against the gantry. I saw his hand move to the heavy police holster on his left hip. His broad fingers lifted the leather flap.
‘Get down, Noon …!’
I shouted to the child above the soft thudding of the helicopter’s propeller, and stepped from the wheelhouse on to the deck, waving Noon behind the car. Fifteen feet from me, Kagwa’s service revolver was already in his hand. As I stood naked beside the funnel, waving my paint-streaked arms at Noon, the young French pilot watched me without expression through the aircraft’s bubble canopy, like a tourist observing some curious native rite.
Without hesitating, Kagwa levelled the revolver and fired a single shot at my head. The discharge burst into my eyes, and I heard the bullet strike the funnel. It shattered against the cast-iron casing, and a small fragment hit the side of my head. The metal spur cut my right ear and then tore through my scalp. Stunned by the noise, and by the calculated way in which Kagwa had lured me from the wheelhouse, I felt the blood run on to my shoulder. On the deck behind me lay a bloody pelt of hair and scalp. Although Kagwa was aiming his revolver at my head for a second shot, I stared at this leaking fragment of myself, unable to move.
‘… wild-life and the exploitation of racist …’
Th
e lecturer’s voice boomed from the limousine’s loudspeaker. Noon sat forward over the cassette player, working the volume control. When Kagwa hesitated, I ducked back into the wheelhouse and switched on the magneto of the starter motor. As the blood dripped on to the deck at my feet I primed the carburettor. Working the crank with both hands, I swung the small motor into life, and then released the clutch and engaged the main engine. Above the noise of the helicopter I heard the diesel turn and begin to fire, its cylinders one by one shaking into motion.
Already the steel gantry of the ore-conveyor was dipping in and out of the water. Kagwa swayed on his feet, revolver lowered, riding the switchback as smoke pumped from the ferry’s funnel. I advanced the throttle, winding up the diesel’s heavy pistons. The ferry lumbered forward, and there was a brief scream of metal from beneath the stern when the propeller chopped through the last threads of cable around the shaft.
In a roar of foam and rusty water the Salammbo moved away, tilting to starboard as I spun the helm to keep us in the deeper stream. The ore-conveyor began to sink below the surface. The waves swilled across the trellis-work, the wash running over Kagwa’s boots as he sank knee-deep in the Salammbo’s wake. Drenched to the waist, he pulled himself over the last few struts to the helicopter’s mooring line. He freed the anchor and tried to reach the nearer pontoon, but the aircraft was already drifting on the current.
I steered the ferry into the centre of the channel, heading for a right-hand bend two hundred yards away. Through the mist of my blood sprayed across the window of the wheelhouse I saw Kagwa holding to the mooring line, while the young Frenchman tried to pull him towards the passenger door. Head ducking among the waves, he was carried along below the cloud of blossom that sailed high into the air above the floral shore.
The Day of Creation Page 12