AK Page 17

  “Not with the OAU observers in town they won’t,” said Simon. “And this lot’s only got to realize that and they’ll see them off. Bloody hell! Think this’ll take my weight? No, there!”

  Ruthlessly he barged his way across to the stack of used batteries waiting to be dismantled and clambered up, teetering for a moment and then peering over the heads of the crowd. The awning the battery boys worked under had hung from a clumsy tripod. It had been ripped away in the fight, but the poles still stood, so Paul put his basket down, swarmed up, and hung with his arm through the crotch where the poles were lashed together.

  Now he could see the army trucks over the milling mob. Three of them, a dozen soldiers in each, their guns ready, pointing at the crowd. But they were uncertain, nervous, looking around for orders. The people were all around the trucks now, arguing and screaming defiance. Black fists waved in the air. Still the soldiers did nothing. A woman tried to scramble aboard the second truck. Her friends heaved her up from below. Three or four others followed. They harangued the soldiers like mothers scolding their children—indeed most of the soldiers looked almost young enough for that, and grinned and shook their heads and made not-my-fault shrugs, like children do when they are bad-mouthed.

  An officer was leaning from the window of the cab on the other side, bellowing at the crowd, not realizing what was happening behind him. One of the women was right up on the cab roof now. She dragged a young soldier up beside her, flung her arms around his waist, seized his other hand, and began to dance, stamping her bare feet on the metal as she spun him around. He seemed helpless in her grasp, like a straw man, hypnotized. The crowd below clapped in rhythm to the stamp of her feet. Now the officer twisted around, leaning still farther, to see the cause of the thunder over his head. His mouth gaped. His eyes bulged. Then someone below opened the door and he fell headlong into the crowd.

  Cheering rose, and its roar spread and spread. Turning, Paul saw that though a few minutes ago he’d been standing at the back of the crowd, now it crammed the alleys fifty deep behind him. Anywhere climbable had someone perched on it, shouting news of what was happening around the trucks. Half the market, far more than had risked actually fighting the Deathsingers, must have gathered to the uproar. He could feel their excitement, the surge of power that came from such a mass of people that armed soldiers seemed helpless against it.

  The engines roared. Slowly, surrounded and followed by the hooting mob, the trucks backed away. The torrent of bodies swayed Paul’s perch, so he slid to the ground, rescuing his basket just in time. He struggled across the stream to the battery pile, where Simon was scrambling down.

  “Great stuff, if Bim got it,” he said. “Only what the hell was it about? Why’d they send just rookies?

  Paul shrugged. He’d never seen or heard of government soldiers behaving like this before.

  “Right,” said Simon. “Now we want something to tie this in with what you were saying about it not being just a fuss about water. From all I hear Basso-Iskani’s a total thug, but what we’ve got so far doesn’t show him that way.”

  “Maybe I finding you Major Dasu. He head of Scorpions—he telling you.”

  “Not another talking head if I can help it. Something more visual, a protest march, banners with slogans, get it? Hey, Bim! How’d you make out? Where’s that Sonia?”

  He forgot about Paul and started a frantic-seeming discussion with his crew, but then a group of young men nearby broke into an impromptu triumph dance and the cameraman swung around to film it. Paul tugged Simon’s sleeve.

  “Please, mister,” he said. “I fix you banner, okay?”

  “Fine, fine. See you back here in half an hour, right? Hey! Derek! Where’ve you been? Seen Sonia? Look …”

  Paul hurried away. He knew about banners—the children had made them when Colonel Malani had come to the camp to open the new school—and now it was something to do, a way of not thinking about what had happened to Jilli and to Michael, a way of joining in the fizz of excitement that was throbbing through the market. In a pile of cleared wreckage he found two poles. From a stall on the other side of the market he bought a pot of yellow paint and a cheap brush. He chose a bright green cotton from the ones Jilli had bought to hide the gun, unrolled it, and lashed the ends to the poles, then laid the whole contraption on the ground. He worked out the spacing and wrote his message in tall, thin letters.

  FREE MICHAEL KAGOMI

  By the time he’d finished a small crowd had gathered. They were in the mood where almost anything would have been a fresh excitement, and the moment he put his brush down two of them snatched up the poles and began a jigging march along the nearest alley. The rest followed. They were mostly boys, a bit older than Paul, and when he managed to get to the front of the procession and tried to get his banner back from them so as not to miss the TV people, they just laughed at him.

  “What do these words say, man?” shouted one. “What are we telling everyone?”

  “Free Michael Kagomi,” said Paul. “But hey!”

  The boy laughed again, drunk with the dance and the parade.

  “Free Michael Kagomi!” he chanted, spacing the syllables out into a sort of drum rhythm—Bam. Bibi. Bam. Bam. Bam. The others took it up, clapping their hands in time to their chant and doing a stamp dance on the last three syllables. Around them people cheered and clapped. The procession grew, though already they were into the main heat of the day. It snaked its way systematically up and down the alleys between the stalls, and was long enough by now for Paul to see the tail of it jigging noisily down one alley as he was working his way up the next just behind his banner. He had joined the chanting and the stamping, but couldn’t clap in rhythm with the rest as he needed a hand to steady the basket in the sway and jostle of the dance. Some of the time he was himself swept up with the others in the boiling energies that had focused themselves into the market and come bursting out in the parade, until all he could think, all he could hear or feel, was the thud of his feet on the bare earth and Michael’s name repeated and repeated until the syllables were as meaningless as the call of a bird. But then the weight of the gun would pull him down, reminding him of his difference, reminding him of Michael bloodied in his cell and Jilli smashed and senseless in her hospital bed.

  At the top of the central alley Madam Ga was waiting for them with the TV crew behind. She made herself the head of the procession and danced toward the camera, clapping and chanting with the rest. The lens followed her and swung back to follow the banner and then the swaying, stamping, clapping, chanting snake of people. She led the parade the whole way around the rest of the market and back to the now cleared space where the fighting had been. Major Dasu’s truck was parked there, and she climbed into it and stood on the passenger seat, holding up her hands for silence. It took a while for the tail of the parade to gather and the cries and chanting to die away.

  “My friends,” she called. “Yesterday was a great day, when we joined all together and thrashed the Deathsingers. Today is a great day, when Basso-Iskani sent his soldiers to arrest me and the other leaders of the fighting. But we made them go back. We sent them away. We proved that we are a free market!”

  There were yells of agreement, cheers and whoops. The chant for Michael rose, Madam Ga held up her arms for silence but the noise went on. For a moment it looked as if the procession was about to re-form and go around the market all over again. She leaned forward and reached for something which was passed up to her. She held it over her head. It was an AK-47.

  Instantly silence fell.

  “No,” she cried. “I am not going to use this gun. I only show it to you. It is a gun we took from the soldiers who came. I show it to you because there are no bullets in it. Yes, Basso-Iskani sent his soldiers without bullets. What does this mean, my friends? Has he suddenly become a timid deer, who was a lion yesterday? Oh no, he is still a lion. But while the observers are here from
the Organization of African Unity he will not show his claws!

  “This is why I say to you that yesterday was a great day, and today is a great day, but tomorrow will be a greater day than either. Tomorrow we, the free market of Dangoum, will go all together to Basso-Iskani’s palace to demand our rights!”

  This time she let the shouting and cheering go on and on. Paul edged across to where Major Dasu was still standing watching.

  “I see the black lion,” he said.

  “You get my message?” said Major Dasu.

  Paul shook his head.

  “Kagomi’s in the palace, in the pumping-hall cells, along with my cousin and half a dozen of the others—big men around Malani who kept their fingers out of the money bags. They’re trying to squeeze confessions out of them.”

  “Did he tell you any more?”

  “Nothing you need know,” said Major Dasu and turned away. Paul watched him join Madam Ga and start a discussion. The pumping hall, he thought. He’d known it all along. His dream had been true. Behind him excited voices were arguing in English. He moved nearer.

  “Now listen,” Simon was saying. “I know we were briefed to cover the OAU crowd, but we’re on to something potentially much bigger. The Ga female has got real charisma. She’s it, with knobs on. Dasu’s got information that Basso-Iskani’s only hanging on by the skin of his teeth—there’s a group in his junta all set to topple him—that’s why he’s so desperate for OAU approval. If Ga gets a big enough crowd together to stage a decent protest at the palace it might just turn the tables, and the new lot will want to claim they’ve taken power with popular support, in response to the protest, so they’ll at least have to pretend to take Ga into account for a while. You want to go back to London after all that’s been happening and all you’ve got to show is an interview with an OAU spokesman saying a whole lot of nothing?”

  “You’d rather get back saying, ‘Sorry, they slung us out and took our film away so we haven’t got a bloody thing’?” said Derek. “Sonia’s a Nagala citizen, remember. They play it rough with their own people here.”

  Simon hesitated. Sonia looked really frightened now.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sonia gets out tonight taking what we’ve got with her. Then we’ve got enough to show, and if we do get slung out that’ll make it news. There’ll be nothing more here today—they’ll all be asleep for the next four hours and then gearing up for tomorrow, so we’ll do the OAU fellow this evening—he’ll speak English and then tomorrow we’ll just go out looking for a bit of local colour and sort of happen on the protest. Okay, everyone?”

  “We’ll need an interpreter tomorrow,” said Derek. “Just grab someone off the street when we do,” said Simon.

  Paul hesitated. He wanted to be part of the protest, to join his voice with everyone else, shouting for Michael’s freedom, but at the same time these people were important. They were going to tell the world outside what had happened to Michael. Often during the war Michael had tried to explain that only half the battle was being fought in Nagala. The rest of it was happening on the other side of the world, in parliaments and ministries and ordinary people’s houses where they watched their televisions and saw a little bit about a distant bush war sandwiched between a murder hunt and the cricket results. He stepped forward and touched Simon’s elbow.

  “Please, I come interpret for you tomorrow?”

  “You again?” said Simon. “Why not? Hell, Derek, he’ll do as a fallback. Seems to know the score better than a lot of the adults. And he was one of those kid soldiers—we could do a piece on that with him. What’s your name, kid?”

  “Paul.”

  “Right, Paul. Steps of Freedom Hotel, nine sharp. If we’re not there ask in the lobby for Simon Fry.”

  “I be there,” said Paul, saluting confidently, but as he moved away exhaustion closed around him. He had hardly slept all night, not eaten since last evening, been engulfed in the shock of what had been done to Jilli and then swept up into the delirium of the parade. In a daze he staggered off and found some shade where he lay down, clutching the basket against his side, and let himself plunge into darkness.

  He was woken by a movement under his arm. For a few dream instants he was certain that the AK had come alive and was trying to escape, to go floating around the market looking for targets, but then he was awake and realized that somebody was trying to sneak one of the cottons out of the basket without waking him. He wrenched it away and jumped up, his hand on his knife hilt. Two young men faced him, looking sheepish.

  “What are you doing?” he snapped.

  They shrugged and spread their hands.

  “Only wanted to make ourselves a banner,” they said. “Everyone else making banners. For the march tomorrow, see?”

  “What d’you want to put on it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  He hesitated. Why not? He didn’t want the gun with him tomorrow. The more banners with Michael’s name the better. He could always buy more cloths the day after.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give you one if you write my message on it.”

  They were delighted. He had to pencil the letters onto a scrap of paper for them to copy. Then he went to the rubbish heap, found enough strips of plastic to make a temporary cover for the AK, and went around the market striking the same bargain with anyone he could till he’d given the rest of the cloths away. The whole place was alive again now, not with buying and selling but with the excitement of tomorrow’s protest. He ate early, then found a place to sleep.

  In the pit of the night he woke himself. The market was silent and dreamlike under a hazed half moon. With knife and hands he chipped and scooped a trench in the hard earth and laid the AK, wrapped in strips of plastic in the bottom. He stamped the earth into place and moistened the surface with water from the flask, making a clay which would dry back into a crust. As he was smoothing it down he realized he had been crooning under his breath, but the words and the tune were lost the moment he tried to think about them. They’d been like a song in a dream. They might have been a lullaby, perhaps, something a mother sang to her son in a remote bush village long ago, before the soldiers came.

  11

  Singing, clapping and dancing the procession crawled up the avenue under a cloud of golden dust. Madam Ga was at the head, striding along in a green robe in the centre of the front rank. Yesterday as it had snaked between the close-packed stalls it had seemed to fill the market with its noisy energy and excitement. Today, though there were probably at least as many people in it, it seemed far smaller, little more than an interruption in the peace of the long, empty road. The excitement was there, but the marchers had to work for it all the time, cheering each other on. It didn’t build and sustain itself like something with a life of its own, the way it had yesterday.

  Clinging to the spare wheel at the back of the parked TV truck, Paul watched it come. The TV people had staged a breakdown a few yards short of the roadblock so that they could have an excuse for hanging around there without seeming to know that something was going to happen. Now they acted surprise and interest and set up their camera to start filming. The soldiers on the barrier seemed only to notice what was happening at this stage. The ones who were asleep woke up. The corporal tried to use a two-way radio to report the news, but it can’t have been working because after a bit he flung it on the ground and marched off.

  People were coming out of the houses and shops and offices now, lining the pavement, craning down the road to watch the march approach. Soon Paul could hear its noise. Somebody had found drums to back the beat of the chant and improvise fresh rhythms. The banners waved above the heads of the marchers. The crowd along the pavement was clapping in unison, calling out with excited cries, whooping. Nearer now the procession seemed to grow in strength and energy. Paul could feel its joint purpose, its steadiness as it moved toward the roadblock.

  From up
the avenue came an answering noise, barks of command, the rush of booted feet. The roadblock itself was only two poles on trestles between the trees—the sandbags had all been cleared away—so the marchers at the front of the procession could see the soldiers doubling down and taking up position in a line across the road behind the barrier with their guns held ready across their bodies. These men wore the purple berets of the palace guard. They stood upright, evenly spaced, alert, with their guns all at the same angle across their bodies. They looked like real soldiers, trained to kill.

  The clamour of the procession filled the street. Paul could read some of the banners now. The leading one said THIS MARKET OUR MARKET but the next said FREE MIACHEL KAGGONI and on the line below FREE WATER ALSO. He didn’t hear the command from the barrier but he saw Madam Ga stop and raise her hands dramatically above her head. The leading rank—all women—stopped with her and the march jostled to a halt. When he looked at the barrier he saw that the AKs were up and aimed.

  The silence felt solid.

  “Ready to duck, everyone,” said Simon.

  He was standing on the hood of the truck with his arms folded, watching calmly. Bim was filming. Only Derek looked worried. He was in the driver’s seat with his hand on the ignition key.

  “Better get in, Simon,” he said. “We might have to…”

  “They’re not going to shoot,” said Simon. “They’d have closed us down first.”

  Two men, officers, ducked under the barrier and marched forward. At once Madam Ga stepped out to meet them. She was taller than either of them, magnificent in her new green robe. From their gestures the officers seemed to be telling her to turn back, while she was insisting on leading her march forward to the palace. The street was no longer silent as the marchers behind began to lose patience. There were shouts and whoops. The banners waved to and fro, out of time with each other. Somebody started the chant. “Free. Michael. Ka. Go. Mi!” Almost at once it swept through the crowd. “Bam. Bibi. Bam. Bam. BAM!” They were stamping now, clapping in rhythm, and the spectators at the roadside, and others who had followed the procession to see what was going to happen, joined in the clapping and chanting.