AK Page 19

  His bruised lips let out a long sigh of amazement.

  What he saw was unimaginable. The space between the palm trees was filled with a grey-gold mist, dust stirred and stirred again by marching feet. Through it, grey as ghosts, came the people, not in ranks or order, but moving all together, a flood of people bursting from their dam, a river of freedom, not like the foaming turbulent rush of water through dead bush gullies after a thunderstorm, but a calm huge onward movement stretching all the way back through the dust-cloud down to the shanties. Hundreds of thousands of the hopeless looking for hope. Oh, if Michael could see this, thought Paul, his heart would burst with joy.

  Below him a group of spectators, too close jammed now to leave even if they’d wanted to, were talking.

  “Don’t know why the army hasn’t shown up.”

  “I came past Dutta barracks, and they’d got all the trucks out ready.”

  “Cairo Radio says there’s splits in the army command.”

  “Anyway, they’d never make it now. Look at them, just look at them!”

  “Scorpions were going around last night telling everyone to turn out.”

  “Oni-oni were saying Basso-Iskani was planning to turn off the water till everyone came to their senses.”

  “No water in any of the Dungu stand-pipes this morning—that’s all Oni-oni.”

  “They’ll have turned it off at the main valve—make people think it was Iskani.”

  “Maybe.”

  Maybe, thought Paul, but that wasn’t enough. You didn’t get a whole city, a whole nation, gathering and marching like this because they’d been told to, or tricked into it. The pressure had to be there in the first place, the longing for peace and hope and freedom after half a lifetime of war. Then it needed only one small thing, like a ground squirrel burrowing its hole in the right place in the dam, for the pressure to find the weakness and the water to come bursting through. It needed the coppersmiths standing up for their rights, and Madam Ga to make others join in, and Paul happening to say the right thing to Major Dasu, and the OAU observers in town—you had to have luck too—and after that you didn’t need to pick away at the dam much more because the pressure of water would widen the breach and sweep the wall aside and let the flood come roaring through.

  A burst of laughter and cheers rose on the far side of the avenue, and Bim shot up above the heads of the crowd, sitting on someone’s shoulders to film the mass of people moving toward the palace. Paul was glad. This was a thing the whole world must see. He worked back to the centre of the tree, slid down the trunk, and tried to make his way across the avenue, wriggling, pushing, and squirming between the barely moving mass of bodies. Down here he was too far from the main protest to hear anything except the vague thud of the drums, and the newcomers had no chants to sing, no dance to follow. Instead they filled the air with a steady muttering shapeless roar, like a fall of rock down a hillside but going on and on.

  When he was halfway across the sound stilled and was replaced by a new noise, the wham of helicopter rotors passing overhead. He looked up in time to see the black silhouette thunder by, close enough for its downdraft to beat on the massed faces below. It settled out of sight toward the palace.

  Silence, as if it had been a devil sign, a sending. What did it mean? Paul drew the dusty air into his lungs and yelled at the top of his voice.

  “Free Michael Kagomi!”

  His small voice was lost, like a pebble dropped in the desert. He yelled again and again, putting the words into the chant rhythm.

  “Free. Michael. Ka. Go. Mi! Free. Michael. Ka. Go. Mi!”

  Around him the crowd took up the cry, as much for something to shout as anything. Automatically they began to sway to and fro to the call, stamping the beat out. Paul struggled on, spreading the message, but soon it had gone ahead of him, filling the street from building to building, the echoes bouncing back off the glass towers, as the packed lines of shanty folk swayed to and fro, shouting for their saviour to come to them.

  Bim was gone when Paul reached the far sidewalk, but he struggled on up toward the palace and found the TV truck under the trees, unable to move for people. Simon was sitting in the driver’s seat listening to a two-way radio. As Paul came up he signed off and laid it down.

  “Hi, Paul,” he said. “Knew you had to be around from the shouting. You’re a one-boy ministry of propaganda. Come for your money? You’re out of luck. We had to know what was happening outside so Derek went back to the hotel to listen in and telephone around. I was talking to him just now.”

  “Don’t matter about the money. What he say?”

  “Not much so far. The soldiers at Dutta barracks seem to have mutinied when they were ordered to come and clear the streets. The OAU are said to be putting pressure on Basso-Iskani to step down.”

  “This chopper coming to take him away?”

  “Could be. It’s a very delicate situation. If the OAU make it clear they aren’t going to back him he might decide he’s got nothing to lose by shooting. With the firepower he’s got he could clear this lot out in twenty minutes. ’Scuse me.”

  The radio had beeped. Simon switched on and listened. Paul looked at his watch. Ten past three. The hospital was right around on the other side of the palace—it might take half an hour—more—to work his way there. At four o’clock he had promised to see Jilli. Through all the exhaustions and excitements of the day the thought of her had stayed in his mind, a dark quiet space, unchanging through the rush and pressure of other thoughts and feelings. How could he leave the Circus now, when any moment Michael might walk free? How could he break his promise? Perhaps Jilli was still unconscious and she wouldn’t know. But perhaps she’d woken, dazed and terrified, and all Sister Samora had been able to tell her to calm her was that Paul would be coming at four o’clock. What could he do? What was right? He was still shuddering with doubt when Simon put the radio down, stood up, and started yelling between cupped hands for Bim.

  “What happen? What happen?” said Paul several times.

  “There he is! Sorry, kid, got to be going. Derek says the local radio’s started putting out uncensored reports. That’s news in itself. They’ve got a man by the bridge. The Ga woman’s been negotiating again. The officer there says he’ll be coming back with an answer at half four.

  “Half past four? This for sure?”

  “Nothing’s for sure.”

  “Only I got sick friend in hospital, got to go see her four o’clock.”

  “You should be okay. Nothing ever happens on time in this bloody country anyway. You won’t miss anything. Good luck. Come around to the hotel for your pay—Derek’ll leave it at the desk if we’re not there. See you.”

  He started the engine as Bim climbed in and with his hand on the horn began to nose inch by inch into the almost unyielding mass. Paul turned and fought his way in the other direction. If Jilli was still unconscious he would leave at once, if she was awake he’d stay with her a few minutes and explain why he must go. She’d understand. She was a Warrior after all.

  On the sidewalk beneath the trees of the Circus movement was just possible, but when he reached the next avenue he found the mass of people packed as close as brick against brick. There was no way through. Hugging the walls, he shoved and jostled back down the avenue, away from the palace until the pressure eased and he could cross. By now he was almost down to the first side street so he made his way through to the next avenue by that.

  This one was yet more crowded, with a line of army trucks stuck in the roadway, their engines off and the men laughing and waving to the cheering crowd as though they were heroes returning from battle. He worked still farther down, through the next side street and on. At each avenue he crossed he could feel the rising tension. Anyone with a portable radio had it to his ear and was shouting the news to the crowd.

  “Hey! They’re telling the truth!”

>   “Two more choppers come in!”

  “Talking on the bridge again—they offered her something and looks like she turned it down, man says.”

  Paul didn’t stop to listen. He wasn’t going to make it by four. In desperation he moved yet another block down from the Circus and then around the long way, still through milling mobs of people who swirled along the side streets looking for a less crowded route to the centre. He reached the avenue he wanted four blocks down from the Circus and it then took him a full half hour to fight his way back up to the hospital. He could scarcely stand for exhaustion. It was twenty past four.

  The steps were crowded with casualties of the crush, some lying inert, some sitting hugging themselves and moaning. Paul pushed his way up. Porters blocked the doors.

  “Hospital’s full,” said one.

  “Message for Sister Samora.”

  “Can’t you hear? Hospital’s full.”

  “She told me to come. She’ll have your guts out.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  The lobby was packed, voices clamouring with fear and impatience and anger. A few desperate orderlies were trying to calm people. Paul pushed through to an inner door, shouting that he had a message for Sister Samora. The orderlies on the door let him through. Casualties lined the long corridor, sitting or lying on the floor. Twice more he was stopped, but Sister Samora’s name got him through to the stairs. As he climbed wearily up each flight led him toward the centre of the building and then out to the glass wall so that as he turned he could look down on the crowd below, the people in it getting smaller and smaller with distance but the crowd itself seeming to grow and grow, stretching away from the Circus on his left far out of sight toward the shanties. He forced his legs on, up and up to the fourteenth floor, and turned into Algeria Ward.

  It was full of noise and excitement. All the nurses, all the patients who could walk, were crowded to the windows, looking down, chattering, arguing, laughing. The radio was on full blast, cheerful Afro-Cuban music filling the ward. Nobody noticed him come in.

  A stranger lay in Jilli’s bed, an old woman with a bandaged eye. Had they moved her? Was she dead? He worked along the beds and found her in a curtained-off space at the far end, lying as he had last seen her with her face all swollen, yellow and purple. A plastic tube led into one nostril. They’d stitched a big cut on her temple and a smaller one under her left eye. A drip-feed stood by her bed, its tubes leading to her arm. She didn’t stir, but he guessed she couldn’t be dead or dying or they wouldn’t have bothered.

  He closed the curtains and went and looked for Sister Samora. She was standing with the others at the windows, and turned impatiently when he tapped her shoulder.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m Paul. Jilli’s friend. You told me to come.”

  “Oh, sure. Didn’t recognize you with your face puffed up.

  “I’m all right. What about Jilli? Is she …”

  “Don’t know. We got the X rays but the doctors are all too busy to look at them. Tests will take a bit longer. Can’t promise.”

  “Has she said anything?”

  “Been asleep pretty well the whole time. When we were bathing her this morning she muttered a bit and I told her you’d be coming, but I can’t say she understood.”

  “I’ve got to go soon, but I’ll sit with her for a bit if that’s all right.”

  “Fine. Fine.”

  She turned back to the window. Paul found a stool and sat by Jilli’s bed. As soon as he took her hand in his, her fingers closed around it, and he felt a wonderful rush of relief that this should be so. It was more than a sign of life, more than just an instinctive movement of muscles. No, it was Jilli responding to his touch, knowing he was there, Paul and no one else. Her lips sighed gently.

  A voice broke into the music and immediately the chatter in the ward fell silent as everyone listened.

  “Radio Dangoum, Ikaka Fong reporting. A bulletin has been issued from the offices of the council of state, as follows. ‘Fruitful negotiations are now taking place between the military authorities under Colonel Tsoro and the General Committee for the Market. Following a frank exchange of views the military authorities are now considering how best to meet the demands of the General Committee without endangering the stability of the state. A further announcement will be made at seventeen-thirty hours. Meanwhile under the emergency powers act all citizens of Dangoum are ordered to disperse from the area surrounding the presidential palace and return in an orderly fashion to their own homes.’

  “A message has also been received from the General Committee, as follows: ‘Stay where you are, everyone. Don’t go home till we get what we’ve come for. We are winning. Long live Nagala.’”

  Remote though he was from the crowds below Paul could hear the wave of cheering that rose before the music started again and drowned it. He looked at his watch. Quarter to five. If he left in five minutes that would give him forty to fight his way back to the bridge.

  He sat, gently stroking the back of Jilli’s arm with his fingertips and watching the seconds slip by. But when the five minutes were up and he started to ease his hand loose from hers she moaned and grasped him tighter. Her lips murmured. His name? He couldn’t hear, but that didn’t matter. The meaning was clear.

  All right, he thought, another five minutes. Though he longed for Michael, longed to be present and rejoicing, close by, at the heroic moment of release, Michael didn’t actually need him any more. Jilli did.

  He started to watch the seconds again. His whole body ached with exhaustion. Anyway, he thought, they’d never get him out over the bridge—they’ll have to lift him clear in one of the choppers .

  He fell asleep without knowing it had happened.

  A hand on his shoulder, a voice whispering his name. The old signals. Instantly he was awake and reaching for the AK, then realized he wasn’t in the bush but slumped forward across cloth in a lit room. Jilli’s bed. The ward. His muscles shrieked with stiffness as he raised himself and looked up.

  “Michael?”

  The face looking down at him out of the light glare was haggard, grey, an old man’s.

  “Sure. Me. Michael Kagomi.”

  The voice was right. Paul rose and flung his arms around him, but only one arm returned the hug.

  “They let you go? How did you know I was here? What time is it?”

  “Getting on midnight. I did an interview with some TV people. They said there was this boy who’d been trying to get me out single-handed. Paul, they said. You’d told them you were coming to the hospital. So was I, for a check-up, so I had people ask around. Somebody knew which ward.”

  “Check-up? Are you all right? What’s happened to your arm?”

  “They gave us a bad time in the pumping hall. I’ll be okay, Paul. Who’s this, though?”

  “Jilli. My friend. She’s a Warrior. She helped too.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Paul told him briefly, aware that people, doctors and others, were hanging around just outside the curtain, impatient, anxious. He was holding Michael’s good hand now and could feel his exhaustion and frailty. Michael sighed.

  “It is all part of the price Nagala has paid,” he said. “All the deaths, all the burned huts, all the ruined lives. And now your friend.”

  “But it’s worth it. Jilli would tell you so too.” Michael sighed again.

  “It will be twenty years before we know whether it was worth it,” he said.

  Twenty Years On, Perhaps: A

  The Deputy Prime Minister climbed from the helicopter and the children struck up the national anthem. He bared his head and stood to attention while they sang, a small, plump man with a solemn baby-like face. The tropic sun glistened on his balding brow. Still solemn he shook hands with the foreign dignitaries and officials who had been invited to
witness the ceremony but when he came to the park warden, last of the line, he threw his arms around him and hugged him to his chest, then slapped him on the back while they laughed together.

  “Great day, Paul!” he cried. “Great day!”

  His staff, and the others who knew him, glanced at each other in surprise. They knew their minister as a brilliant, dedicated, eighteen-hour-a-day administrator. Even in the throbbing, jolting helicopter he had been busy on his papers. Now for this moment he was a schoolboy on holiday and looked ten years younger, young as he in fact was.

  He climbed the timber dais and made a short, clever speech in English, mainly for the visitors, telling them without seeming to boast how much Nagala had achieved in the last twenty years, and at the same time without seeming to beg, how much help it still needed. Then he spoke to the children in Naga, briefly again, so as not to bore the visitors, about Michael Kagomi and his dream for Nagala, and how the children themselves as well as this National Park were part of that dream come true. When he’d finished he unveiled the inscriptions on the monument, one on each surface of the rough twelve-ton stone pillar, all saying the same thing in their four languages. In memory of Michael Kagomi. Freedom, Justice, Love.

  After that the children danced in their tribal costumes, a Baroba spear dance and a Goyu spirit warning with great bobbing masks, and the Fulu crocodile ritual. The minister turned his head as the girls snaked to and fro to the twittering reed whistles.

  “Heard from Jilli lately?”

  “She called last week from Bangkok. She’s fallen in love again—didn’t say who with. Her new film looks like being nominated for some kind of prize. Her second cousin’s husband’s niece is getting married next month so she’s coming back for the buffalo giving.”

  “She’ll be staying with you?”

  “Couple of days. My kids adore her. They’re both going to be film directors.”

  “Soon as you’ve got dates give my office a ring. I’ll get out somehow. I could use a day in the bush.”