AK Page 18

  The ranks, blocked in front, stamped sideways, surging to and fro between the trees, churning the dust into a sunlit haze. “Bam. Bibi. Bam. Bam. BAM!” Out of formation now they began to move forward, not an orderly march any longer but a solid mass right across the avenue, marchers and spectators together. They swirled round the TV truck, waving excitedly to the camera as they passed. The officers turned and ran back to the barrier as Madam Ga was forced to lead the march forward. One of the officers snatched a gun, turned, and loosed a burst out over the heads of the crowd. The front rank wavered a moment but the clamour was too great for the ranks behind to hear and they were pressed forward, right to the barrier, sweeping it aside, while the soldiers doubled back up the street.

  At the top they halted, turned, raised their guns, and fired. Simon flung himself down. Paul heard the bullets snapping through the palm leaves above and realized that the shots were aimed high again. The noise of thirty AKs firing all together penetrated the clamour and there was a momentary hush of doubt, followed by a roar as the crowd realized no one was hurt and surged forward again as if they believed themselves somehow invulnerable. Paul couldn’t see what had happened at the top of the avenue.

  By now the marchers from the market had all moved past and the banners were swaying their way toward the palace, but spectators from farther down were still streaming by. A few bodies lay in the road, people hurt in the crush, but one by one they rose or were helped up, staggered to the side of the road and sat down under the trees.

  “Okay, everyone?” said Simon. “Let’s go see what’s new. Round the back, Derek.”

  There was still an immense mêlée at the top of the avenue. Derek turned the truck and took it bouncing back down toward the market, and then around by cross streets to the next approach. There was another roadblock here, manned by the usual slumped and slovenly gang of near-bandits. They must have heard the cheering and shooting but it was none of their business. Derek bought the way through for a hundred gurai, five times what an African would have paid. Reaching the Circus, Derek swung left and drove in along the sidewalk, under the ring of trees.

  The march was heading toward them with Madam Ga at the front circling the palace in a show of strength before tackling the main entrance. Bim leapt down to film the procession with the palace as a backdrop. The excitement had not died down, indeed many of the marchers had by now worked themselves into a kind of delirium, as if they were drunk or drugged or in the grip of a bush demon, frothing at the mouth and jerking their bodies violently to and fro to the shudder of the drums. The banners floated past. NO PAY FOR WATER. FREE MICHAEL KAGOMI (Paul recognized the strip of cloth). ISKANI BIG APE. NDR CROOKS GO TO HELL. FREE SADUF—FREE KAGOMI (on an old blanket). DEATH FOR DEATHSINGERS. FREE MICHAEL KAGOMI. WATER BELONG FOR ALL. JESUS SAVES—ISKANI SLAVES.

  “Your friend Kagomi’s getting a good press,” shouted Simon above the clamour of the chant.

  “Very good man,” shouted Paul. “Best in Malani government.”

  He stared at the glistening building on its green mound. Detachments of the palace guard were drawn up on the lawns, watching the march go past. And deep beneath them in a faint-lit cell, bruised, bloody, aching in every muscle, hearing only the endless thudding of the pumps, sat Michael. He was still there, Paul knew in his heart, still himself, unbroken. Nothing, no threats, no hunger, no torture, could kill the inner spirit. Oh, if only he could see and hear what was happening, the banners with his name, the shouts for his freedom in five thousand voices, the voices of Nagala! Paul remembered his own promise after the guards had beaten him up: Next time I come, I will come with friends. Then he had meant soldiers and Warriors like himself, with guns and mortars and mines to blow up the defences. That hadn’t happened, but this had. This was right. This was his promise, kept.

  “Let’s have some interviews,” yelled Simon. “Find us a few who speak English, Paul. In tribal dress, if poss. Look, there’s some smashers there!”

  He pointed to a laughing group in blazing-coloured wraparounds with their hair hauled up into a sort of turret and tied with beaded cord. Paul recognized two of them as prostitutes, though he’d seen them only in slinky European clothes before. They’d already gone well past the camera before he caught up and tugged at the nearest one’s dress. For a moment she didn’t notice, lost in the daze of the dance. She looked down.

  “Like to come on TV?” he said.

  “TV? Sure.”

  She dropped out of the line. He didn’t bother to ask if she spoke English—all the prostitutes did, because it made them seem higher-class.

  “Okay,” he said. “You come and talk to my friends. They want to know why you’re doing this.”

  “Don’t know myself. Just Madam Ga told us to put on village dress and come along. It’s a great party, great!”

  “Okay, you tell my friends you’ve come to get Michael Kagomi out of prison.”

  “Sure. Sure.”

  “Better say you want to keep the water free, too. And don’t tell him your job—tell him you’re a spice seller or something.”

  “Sure. What’s spice seller in English?”

  Simon was delighted with the interview. The girl’s English wasn’t much good, but she got Michael’s name in, and the bit about water, and managed to sound as though she meant it, then ran laughing back to her friends to tell them about her adventure. By the time Paul had found a couple more English speakers the march had circled right past the back of the palace and come around to the main gate. When he returned with the next interviewee he found that Derek had driven the others off to film there. A French TV crew was already in position, and some Africans setting up on the far side.

  Five tanks, wheel track to wheel track, barricaded the bridge. Craning from the back of the truck Paul could see their gun turrets over the heads of the crowd, and the double line of soldiers standing aboard the tanks armed with truncheons, ready to beat back any protesters who tried to climb the barrier. Another row of tanks waited in reserve behind them, flanked by platoons of the palace guard. The machine guns were manned in the camouflaged emplacements.

  “Watch it, everyone,” called Simon. “If those chaps up there decide to shoot there’s going to be a massacre. Wish the hell I could see what’s happening on the bridge.”

  “I go find out,” said Paul and jumped down. As he wriggled his way between the close-packed bodies he could hear Madam Ga’s voice, and the yells of encouragement and agreement that rose as she paused between phrases. The crowd was charged with power, the sense of its own energy and purpose. The sun belted down. The thrice-breathed air, thick with churned dust, stifled in the nostrils. All skin was slick with streaming sweat. None of that mattered. This was the moment of crisis. This, Paul knew, was where he had to be, not out on the edge of things, watching it all with the Europeans, but in the middle of it, part of it, heaving against the gate of oppression

  A cheer rose and the crowd surged forward like a rush of water bursting through a bank, helpless to go any other way. Almost at once screams began to thread through the cheers. The deep boom of tank engines joined the other noises. The screams rose louder than the cheering. Paul found himself crushed, suffocated between bodies. The woman on his left began to collapse. He saw her face above him, eyes closed, mouth gasping. As he wrestled to heave her back upright the whole mass swayed to his right and he fell beneath her. Legs battered to and fro. The crowd surged again, helpless, and more bodies came down, knocking him flat as he struggled to free himself, pinning him down, more weight still, smothering … blackness.

  His own groan woke him. He opened his eyes and saw leaves. There was air around his body. Achingly he sat up and found that he had been laid out with some other casualties under the trees. One of them lay limp, with his head cradled into a woman’s lap while another woman slap-massaged his legs, but the rest were stirring or sitting up. The drums were going again, and the chant and cl
apping, loud and strong, close by. He rose, holding on to a tree trunk to steady himself, and saw that the line of march had been re-formed and was going steadily by under its banners. He felt desperately thirsty and remembered that there’d been water bottles in the TV truck so he staggered off to find it.

  Major Dasu was there, but not in his Scorpion uniform, talking to Simon. Three men whom Paul recognized as his lieutenants, though they wore ordinary clothes too, stood close by. Paul was still drinking when Simon noticed him.

  “Hey, what happened to you?” he said. “Looks like you met a tank.”

  “I been in the middle when this woman she fall over top of me. After that, don’t know.”

  “Yeah, that was a nasty moment. Madam Ga was still talking with the soldiers when the others lost patience and tried to storm the tanks. They didn’t make it and the tanks began to push forward while people at the back were still pressing the other way. They hoisted her up on their shoulders so everyone could see her and she got them to back off. I didn’t see you being carried out, so I thought you must have joined in the march.”

  “Why she doing this around and around again?”

  “Got to do something. It’s stalemate on the bridge. She’s got to keep the impetus going.”

  “Okay. That be where I belong now. You don’t want me no more?”

  Simon looked surprised.

  “Looker-on sees most of the game,” he said. “But if that’s what you want. Thanks for your help. Hey! Hold it! You get paid, you know. Where’s Derek? Hell! Look by later and Derek will pay you off. And if things quiet down I’d like to do a piece with you about your time in the bush. Okay? See you soon.”

  Paul waited for one of what he thought of as his own banners to come by, then linked himself in beside it. He was tired and sore. His right eye was closing as his flesh swelled around it and the whole of his other side ached with bruising, but almost at once the rhythm swept him up and he forgot everything except the chant, and the stamp of his feet, and the sting of his palms as he clapped out the beat. He laughed as he sang. He jeered at the purple-capped guards, sullen and sweating in their weaponed ranks on the stupid foreign grass in front of the stupid foreign building. He and the other marchers were life, they were joy, they were Nagala, they were Africa. The soldiers and the palace were dead, empty, meaningless for all their power. The only thing power could do was kill and kill and kill.

  As the sweep of the road brought the marchers around behind the palace he saw the hospital tower ahead, its silver panels reflecting the glaring sky. That could be Nagala too, that could be Africa, there was room for that. The thought of Jilli lying up there in the darkness of her coma didn’t depress him. He could pour his life and his joy out and up into the sky in a magic beam to flood through her and heal her and bring her back to her natural happiness.

  On the other side, deep under the earth in a different darkness, the darkness of prison and waiting, was Michael. That didn’t depress him either. “Free. Michael. Ka. Go. Mi!” As he shouted the name aloud with the others Paul pictured Michael sitting like a bushman in his cell, knees drawn up, chin on his crossed forearms, feeling his spirit strengthen as the message of freedom beamed down to him. Perhaps he couldn’t hear it with his ears through that mass of earth, but he would sense it, understand it, and at the same time the stupid guard at the door would shiver and feel afraid.

  It was no effort to dance the dance of freedom in the heat of noon.

  Around and around they went. Boys dipped buckets into the moat and flung the water in flashing arcs across the marchers to cool them. As each group passed the main gate they twisted from the line of march and faced the tanks, waving their banners, shouting their slogans, jeering and whistling, making mock rushes across the bridge before dancing back to let the next group follow. The moat water was too foul to drink, but trucks had come, manned by Scorpions and Jackals and Oni-oni, carrying drums of water from the stand-pipes. At each circuit the march became more organized. Soon there were stewards picking out groups to go and rest under the trees in turn.

  Paul left the line reluctantly. He felt he could have marched and danced and chanted forever, but even before he’d reached the shade his legs almost gave way. His eye was completely closed, and the whole of that side of his face was tender to the touch. His lips crackled with blood, and his body was sore all through. It was nearly half past one, so he’d been dancing and chanting for over an hour in the full heat of noon without even noticing his hurts.

  “You all right, friend?” said one of the group Paul had attached himself to. They were leather workers, slim, big-boned women from the cattle-herding tribes along the upper Djunga. Their men were famous for being the laziest people in Nagala.

  “I’m okay,” said Paul. “I got a bit crushed at the bridge.”

  “I’ll bathe your face for you.”

  “My thanks.”

  She was still swabbing away when a market woman came by with a basket of breadsticks which she was giving away, only a few to each group, barely a mouthful per person, but a sign, a token. Others brought around fruit, and spiced lentil cakes, and ropes of mu nuts.

  “This is beautiful,” said the woman who’d bathed Paul’s face. “It is like heaven. Everything is for everybody.”

  Her companions made murmurs of agreement. Their creased dark faces shone with happiness.

  Rumours swirled to and fro under the trees, group calling to group. Basso-Iskani had hanged himself. Soldiers from Dutta barracks had mutinied and were coming to join the protest. They hadn’t mutinied and were coming to clear the protesters out. A colonel had talked to Madam Ga on the bridge and promised there would never be any charge for water in the market, but she’d told him that wasn’t enough. (Everyone had their own list of demands they wanted her to make, from free housing to UN-supervised elections.) The prisoners had all been freed. The soldiers were poisoning the water supply. The prisoners had all been executed. The OAU was sending an international force to drive Basso-Iskani out. And so on.

  After twenty minutes’ rest a steward told them to join the march again. Paul found as he rose that he was almost too stiff to move.

  “You don’t need to come,” said the woman who’d bathed his face. “You stay on here.”

  He shook his head and hobbled into the line beside her. It was really hot in the sun, the hottest part of the day. The arcs of water flung from the moat to cool the marchers laid the dust for a moment but then steamed away and were gone. The march itself was quieter now, the dance no more than a shuffle with shouted slogans as they passed the gate. Marchers were fainting all the time and being carried away into the shade. At first Paul limped along, unable to raise himself back into the glorious joint energy he had experienced earlier. The certainty was gone, the feeling of magical shared strength which he could draw into himself from the mass of people and then beam out to Jilli in her ward and Michael in his stinking cell. He clapped and shuffled and called his slogan because he had to, because it was the only thing he could do, and he would still have done it if his had been the only voice and the only pair of hands in the world.

  But it was not the only voice, not the only pair of hands. Slowly he became aware that the sounds of the march were increasing, its energy renewing itself, its joy and purpose coming back. It seemed like something he had done himself, by his own lonely efforts, keeping the ember of freedom glowing with his breath until it crackled into flame again. Then he realized that though all around him marchers were dropping out, fainting in the heat or being told off by the stewards to rest, the march itself was not thinning. Indeed it was more close-packed now than it had been, so that sometimes he and his group had to stay in one spot, shuffling from side to side, as they waited for the groups ahead to move on. Opposite the gate there was always a holdup. Madam Ga was no longer leading the march, but had set up a sort of parade stand there under an awning and was urging the marchers on as
they came past. She looked exhausted with the long effort, but still managed to radiate power and purpose.

  Paul had worked his way to the inside of the line of march because he needed to see the palace and the soldiers, to cry his cry against them and what they stood for, and not just out into the blazing sky, so he hadn’t been aware what was happening until there was a longer and more boisterous holdup just ahead and a huge new banner unfurled itself from side to side of the march. GIVE US HOUSES. GIVE US JOBS, it said. The people carrying it had their own chant, with a leader singing a long line and the other voices joining in to bay their answer. They sounded fresh, as though they’d just arrived.

  “They come up from the shanties,” said someone. “Lots of them coming now, all down the roads.”

  To see if it was true Paul wriggled himself free. As he got clear he heard a shout ahead and a file of young men burst through the ranks of spectators and rushed alongside the marchers waving red banners over their heads to whistles and catcalls from the marchers, and a few cries of welcome.

  “Soccer Boys,” said someone. “They’ll be wanting to take over.”

  “Too big for them,” said someone else. “Bigger than any of the gangs.”

  Paul squirmed through and found the entrance to the avenue blocked with jostling newcomers. He couldn’t see anything, so he wrestled his way to the tree that stood on the corner. Some boys were already up in its branches, watching the march. He tugged at a man’s sleeve.

  “Give us a lift up, mister, please.”

  The man laughed and heaved him up. Yesterday he might have told him to go to hell, but today everything was for everybody, as the leather seller had said. Paul worked his way along a branch, not toward the palace but out over the avenue. The branch was already beginning to sway beneath his weight before he found a gap in the leaves and could look down toward the shanties.