Brazzaville Beach

  A few flies hummed around us. I looked up into the dark center of the tree above my head but saw there was no fruit. I would have liked a mango, to have sunk my teeth into its juicy yellow flesh. But it was not the season. After the rains, if they ever came. My stomach rumbled and I felt my hunger shift inside me like something alive.

  I looked around at the countryside, trying to divert my attention from my appetite. We had left the savannah and were now in a flat terrain of bush and thin forest. The track we had been driving along was old and partially overgrown. I could see no hills in the distance, only a milky haze. The green slopes of the Grosso Arvore escarpment were far away. It felt warmer and stickier here too. If we kept heading north or northeast, I reasoned, trying to recall the geography of the country, we would soon reach the myriad watercourses and tributaries of the Musave River, beyond whose far bank was the frontier. Around it were thick forests and acres of marsh and mangrove. A detailed map I had once seen had shown a tormented writhing of silted creeks and dead-end lagoons, oxbow lakes and seasonal mud flats….

  I tried to remember other information. There had been some oil exploration in the delta, I thought, before the civil war. And some policy of retraining the local fishermen to grow rice, to which end marshes had been drained, rivers diverted, irrigation systems installed. Whatever had been achieved would have been undone by the war, in any event. And farther up the Musave, I seemed to recall, was a huge copper mine run by a Belgian company.

  The Musave River Territories were the main source of UNAMO manpower and the thick jungles and mangrove-clotted waterways of the river were the original UNAMO heartland. I looked over at our two guards. They were dark-skinned, long-necked boys with small, round heads. The people from the River Territories were ethnically of different stock from the rest of the country, and Christians too, I seemed to remember.

  I felt frustrated and angry with myself. UNAMO. UNAMO…who were they? What were their objectives? Hadn’t Alda told me they had been defeated by an alliance of the federal army and FIDE? There had been a big battle, Alda had said—it seemed like years ago now—so who was Dr. Amilcar and where was he taking us? Was this a fleeing remnant of the destroyed UNAMO army, or some kind of flying column, an insurgent force?

  Ian tapped me on the arm.

  “I need to pee,” he said.

  “Well…” I felt a squirm of irritation inside me. What did he expect me to do about that? “Why don’t you ask the boys?”

  He looked at me as if I were mad. “The boys? Jesus…” He stood up and indicated his need to them. They only let him move a few paces away. He turned his anguished face toward me.

  “Go on,” I encouraged. “For heaven’s sake, Ian.”

  He urinated, head bowed, the patter of his water crackling on the carpet of dead mango leaves. He shivered and buttoned his fly. He came back and sat down in silence, his face distorted with embarrassment.

  “We’ve got to get used to this,” I said, consolingly. “We have to be more…relaxed with each other.”

  “I know,” he said. He reached out and squeezed my hand. “Thanks, Hope. I’m sorry. This…it’s just taken the wind out of my sails, rather. I’m so—” He stopped. “I’ll pull myself together.”

  “I really don’t think they want to hurt us,” I said. “They’re just kids.”

  “The kids are the worst,” he said fiercely. “They don’t care. Don’t give a damn what they do.” He was shivering; his voice was a rasping whisper.

  “Not this lot, surely,” I said.

  “Look what they’ve got written on their fucking jackets! Atomique Boum. What the fuck does that signify? Some kind of commando? Some kind of death squad?” He was beginning to panic.

  “For Christ’s sake.” I stood up. The two boys were lounging at the fringe of the shade cast by the mango tree. They were talking quietly to each other, their weapons on the ground, their backs half turned away from us. I walked over to them.

  “Where has he gone, Dr. Amilcar?” I said. They spoke briefly to each other in a language I did not recognize. I suspected only one of them spoke English. One had understood me. Beneath each eye were three small vertical nicks—tribal scars.

  “For gasoline,” he said. “Please to sit down.”

  I pointed at the other one’s tracksuit top.

  “What does this mean?” I asked. “Atomique Boum.”

  “Volley.” He smiled.

  “Sorry?”

  “It is our game. We play volleyball. We are the team Atomique Boum.”

  “Ah.”

  I felt an odd subsidence in my gut, a hollow feeling that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  “It’s a good game,” I said. Lost in Africa, prisoners of an armed volleyball team.

  “Very good,” he agreed.

  Then the other one said something, more sternly. The boy with scarred eyes smiled apologetically, and motioned for me to return to my place. I rejoined Ian. Anxious Ian.

  “Relax,” I said. “We’ve been captured by a volleyball team.”

  Dr. Amilcar came back after an absence of about an hour and a half. We all climbed into the rear of the Land-Rover to discover our space was to be shared with five jerrycans of petrol. It was a much tighter squeeze. We set off once more, still heading north.

  We stopped before sunset and made camp. The boys lit a small fire and cooked up a kind of grainy porridge, yellowy gray in color with a bland, farinaceous taste. I ate mine with some enthusiasm. Ian began to eat, but then had to go behind the Land-Rover to shit. I felt confidently costive, my bowels locked solid. I went to urinate, though, just to show Ian I was sharing his discomfort. I walked out a little way into the bush, accompanied by a boy. He stood a discreet few yards away in the gathering gloom as I lowered my trousers and pants and squatted down behind a bush, feeling dry grass stems scratch my buttocks. When I came back, Ian asked me needlessly and solicitously if I were all right.

  Throughout the day, Amilcar had pointedly kept himself to himself, rarely talking to us. Now, after we had eaten, he wandered over to join us, with two blankets under his arm, which he handed to us. Then he took off his spectacles and cleaned them with a scrap of chamois leather. His eyes were small and slightly hooded, and without his glasses he looked more innocent, the goatee suddenly something of an affectation and not, along with his spectacles, a symbol of his intellect.

  He sat down cross-legged, facing us.

  “There’s a problem tonight,” he said, reasonably. “My boys have to sleep—they’re exhausted. So I can’t guard you. But—” He paused. “I don’t particularly want to tie you up.”

  “I promise we won’t try to escape,” I said at once. “You don’t need to worry.”

  “Hope!” Ian rebuked me, outrage driving his voice high.

  “Come on, Ian,” I said, exasperated at him. I gestured at the bush. It was black like a wall, alive with insect noise. “You going to run off into that?”

  Amilcar watched us bicker. “You could run,” he said. “I wouldn’t come to look for you. I think you would die.”

  “We won’t run,” I said.

  “Why have you kidnapped us?” Ian demanded sharply. “We’ve got nothing to do with anyone. The government, UNAMO, nobody.”

  I felt it was time that I showed some signs of agreeing with Ian, so I said, frostily, “Yes. Exactly.”

  Amilcar pouted his full lips, thinking.

  “Actually,” he said slowly, “I don’t know. Maybe I should have left you at the road?” He stroked his beard. “Maybe I thought if we met federal troops it would be useful….” He shrugged. “When we get to the front line, I’ll probably let you go.”

  I looked at Ian as if to say: see?

  Amilcar stayed on talking to us. He was in a loquacious mood and told us quite candidly what had happened and what his plans were.

  He had been cut off from the main column of UNAMO forces in the south after the heavy fighting at Luso. It had been a running fight, he said
, rather than a battle. Nobody could claim a victory. He and the Atomique Boum team had spent the last weeks laboriously making their way back to base. We were indeed heading for the Musave River Territories, much faster now thanks to the Land-Rover. It was still a difficult journey. The UNAMO enclave in the River Territories was currently being attacked by two columns of troops: the federal army and some FIDE units.

  “What about EMLA?” I said.

  “They are in the south, far in the south. FIDE thinks, you see, if they finish us in the north, then they can return to the south with the federals and finish EMLA.”

  “Will they?”

  “No. But maybe they will attack EMLA later in the year. I don’t care. I only care about UNAMO. The others are worthless. Everyone is paying for them—America, Russia, South Africa. Only UNAMO is independent. Truly.”

  “But after Luso?”

  “So they caught us a bit there. And so we retreat, to rearm and reequip.” He smiled broadly, showing his teeth. “Reculer pour mieux sauter. You understand?”

  I congratulated him on his French. Then he spoke a few sentences to me in French and I realized he was in fact virtually fluent. I admitted defeat and felt foolish. Amilcar told us he had studied at the Faculté de Médecine at the University of Montpellier for three years before completing his studies in Lisbon, after he won a state scholarship there.

  “But I came home when the war started,” he went on. Before I could finish my internship.” The disappointment appeared momentarily on his face. He had organized and worked in field hospitals for the UNAMO columns for two years before steady attrition had necessitated his own move into the guerrilla army.

  “I was at Musumberi,” he said, “for six months. There were many refugees and we had a school there. When I wasn’t working in the hospital I was the coach for these boys.” He gestured at them, most of them now curled in blankets around the embers of the fire. “My volleyball team. They are good players.” He stopped. “But now they are tired. And they are depressed. Two of their fellows were shot three days ago. We were surprised in a village, and when we were running away…” He didn’t finish. “It’s a team, you see? And these boys were the first ones we have lost.”

  He paused, reflecting, making little clicking noises with his tongue. He looked up and scrutinized us both.

  “It was a mistake. To bring you. I’m very sorry. But now you have to stay on for a few days only.”

  “Well…” I was about to say something consoling but I glanced at Ian. His face was set tight, full of frustration and anger.

  “You are both working at Grosso Arvore?” Amilcar asked. “With the monkeys?”

  “Chimpanzees. Yes,” I said.

  “With Eugene Mallabar?”

  “Yes.”

  “A great man. He has been a great man for this country.”

  Amilcar wagged a finger at us. “So, are you both doctors?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of science,” Ian said, with abrupt pedantry.

  “So we are three doctors,” Amilcar chuckled. He clearly found the situation very amusing. “Here in this bit of forest we are three doctors.” He stood up. “I won’t tie you. If you want to go, you can go.”

  MINONETTE

  In Massachusetts, in 1895, a man called William G. Morgan invented a game called Minonette. The only equipment required was a rope stretched across the gymnasium or shed or barn and the inflated bladder of a basketball. The two teams on either side of the rope batted the ball to and fro. Points were scored or lost whenever the batted bladder hit the ground. No catching or throwing of the ball was permitted. Anyone—old or young, fit or unfit—could play Minonette almost anywhere, indoors or out. No special equipment, skills or dexterity were required. It was very cheap.

  Minonette seems to me to be, quite possibly, the most democratic game ever invented. As further evidence of this conclusion it possesses one of the most thoughtful and unselfish rules in any sport.

  I learned about it this way. During a game a high ball was hit over the net. One of the receiving team from the back of the court yelled “Mine!” and pelted forward to intercept it. Suddenly, one of his teammates flung himself at him and wrestled him to the ground. Meanwhile, another teammate, better positioned, intercepted the ball himself, batted it back over the net, where it simply fell to the ground, the other team having been wholly distracted by the fight on the other side of the court.

  A point was duly awarded and a hot debate ensued. It was decided when Amilcar consulted his tattered coaching manual and rule book for guidance. The question was quickly resolved. In Minonette no penalty is awarded if one player actively holds or restrains a teammate from committing a fault such as running into the net or crossing into the opponents’ court. Which is exactly what would have happened, it was argued, if the first player’s hectic, foolhardy rush for the high ball had not been checked. Play on, Amilcar said.

  In 1896, a year after the game had been invented, the name Minonette was dropped in favor for the more prosaic volleyball. But the courteous, helpful rule remains.

  “No. What I did was this. You know that in volleyball you have to rotate the players, so that in a game everyone plays in every position?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So, normally in a team you have a mix of sizes: some small agile players for the back-line returns, and some tall ones for the blocking and smashing. But in my team I only chose the tallest boys.”

  “And that made a difference?”

  “We won everything. Atomique Boum was unbeatable. You see, when you are a boy it doesn’t matter if you are tall or if you are short. OK, if you are a man, it is important. A small man can retrieve a low ball more easily than a tall man. But with boys such a difference isn’t really there.” He was enthused. “Even if I found a very good player who was small I wouldn’t let him in the team. With Atomique Boum whatever the stage of the game the other team could not change their tactics. After every point we would rotate the players and each time the front-line players were tall. Every time the blocking wall was there. Every time there was one tall fellow to spike it.” He illustrated. “Chack-chack-chack. Atomique Boum!”

  It was about an hour after sunrise. We had been traveling for three days now and a pattern to our day had established itself. We were wakened before dawn, a fire was lit and breakfast cooked—invariably a porridge of various textures, ingredients and flavors. With the first glimmerings of light we were on the road and we would drive without stopping for three to four hours. Then, in the heat of the day, we lay up, the Land-Rover parked under a dense tree or else camouflaged with brushwood and branches. During these rest periods some of the boys would go off foraging for food. Amilcar seemed quite happy to let them go to nearby villages. “They all like UNAMO here,” he would say. Our diet was occasionally improved, as a result, by the addition of chicken or goat, sweet potato or plantain. We ate only twice a day, at dawn and sunset, and the portions were always fairly meager.

  During our protracted midday halts the time would crawl by. The farther north we progressed, the closer we approached to the great river delta, so it grew more humid. We would lie or sit in the shade for hours, sweaty and uncomfortable, waving vainly at the flies that swarmed round our salty bodies, occasionally stirring to drink some water or relieve ourselves. Beyond the circle of shade we lay in, the sun smashed down on the baking earth, and in the sky great boiling ranges of cumulus massed inexorably only to disperse—like a miracle—at the end of the afternoon.

  In the hours before and after noon while we rested, there were many planes in the sky, jet fighters and transports. It was the aircraft that made us hide in the day. We were too far from the base, Amilcar said, and the pilots refused to fly in darkness; consequently they concentrated their activities around the middle of the day. I told him that the pilots were experienced. Of course, Amilcar said, but they can’t trust their instruments. If they can’t see, they won’t fly. So we drove at the day’s beginning and at its end.


  Amilcar let Ian and me sit in front now. Most of the time he himself drove, occasionally squeezing a fourth in on the bench seat when one boy or another had local knowledge of the way. The countryside was unchangingly scrubby, with clumps of trees and the odd small rocky hill, and threading through it the faint dusty tracks and rutted lanes we followed. There were no signposts on these makeshift roadways and in our three days of driving we had never seen or heard a hint of another vehicle. Occasionally we would reach a fork or a junction and Amilcar would stop, descend, talk to the boys, make a choice and drive on. At this stage of the journey he used no map or compass. I asked him how he knew the way, and he replied simply that it was UNAMO country we were driving through, as if it were sufficient explanation.

  In the days of our traveling Ian’s mood had not improved. He remained taciturn and cast down and often seemed close to tears. I tried initially to rally his spirits, but talk of the camp, of what the others would be doing, of official search parties and so on, only seemed to depress him further. He was losing weight rapidly, also. We all were, but Ian seemed unable to keep any food in his system for more than an hour or so. I suspected that he was still in some form of delayed shock; I hoped he would come out of it in due course before his health gave way completely.

  One factor he could be sure of was that Amilcar and his Atomique Boum team posed no physical threat. Amilcar was garrulous and charming; the boys were gentle and lugubrious. Privately, Amilcar told me that they still had not recovered from the deaths of their teammates.

  My own mood was more complex and bizarre. Sometimes, I felt jaunty and spry, as if I were privileged to be taking part in this extraordinary adventure, especially so now that I knew Amilcar planned to release us. At other times a resigned, stoical lassitude infused me. Then I felt that this interminable journey through this dry and scrubby landscape was some kind of curious dream, a heady reverie of capture, a fantastic, benign kidnapping in which I felt part victim, part accomplice.

  On our third evening, Amilcar called a halt a little earlier than usual. The Land-Rover was parked beneath a thin acacia and covered in brushwood. A small fire was lit and a pot of maize porridge, with some fish heads in it, was set to stew.