He walked out across the carrier’s flight-deck, busy as usual with copters for both passengers and freight, said hello to Gideon Horsfall descending from one of them in a great hurry, and leaned on the rail facing the land. Just at the moment it wasn’t actually raining, but if anything he detested this condition of saturated air still more. It made his clothes clammy and his scalp itch.
Absently rubbing his head, he stared towards Africa. A coaster was easing past into Port Mey, her reactor-fed jets giving one pulse every two seconds or so, pop … pop … pop … Lining the deck, several dark figures yelled and waved at the carrier. Norman waved back.
It was several minutes past the due time when the copter from Accra came down the ladder of the air. Norman was at its door directly it settled and felt a stir of impatience when the man he was expecting turned to say good-bye to a couple of his fellow passengers.
But at last here he was, jumping to the deck and holding out his hand to be shaken.
“Good to see you here,” Norman said. “Took you long enough!”
“Don’t blame me,” said Chad Mulligan. “Blame GT’s staffers. Everyone from Prosper Rankin down seems to regard me as some kind of a miracle-worker. Though part of it was my fault, to be honest. I decided I could study up the background better in New York than here—library facilities aren’t too good in Africa, they tell me.” Gazing around the deck, he added, “It’s great to see one of these antiquated arks being put to some practical purpose. What’s her name?”
“Hm? Oh, she was formerly the William Mitchell, but they told us to change it right away, and—” Norman chuckled. “Nobody could think of a better name than the Shalmaneser.”
“Both male names, hm? I don’t mind bivving in principle but this is doing it on altogether too grand a scale.” Chad mopped at his forehead, which had begun to glisten with perspiration the moment he emerged from the copter’s conditioned air. “What’s the climate like down below?”
“Better, by a fraction.” Norman turned towards the nearest elevator. “Who were those people you were talking to in the copter, by the way? The man’s face looked familiar.”
“You probably saw a picture of them. They’re a young couple from the States that you’ve hired. Going up-country to get some new school off the ground. Frank and Sheena Potter were the names.”
“Yes, I remember them. Their application was a borderline case which came to me for adjudication—something about an illegal pregnancy. But they seemed satisfactory otherwise, so I said take a chance, we can always pull them out later if we have to.”
“I noticed the pregnancy—by now you can’t help it. But they seem very attached to each other and that’s a good sign. How’s your recruiting going, by the way?”
“We’re not getting former colonial officials of the quality we expected. Or maybe we are and I’m being too rigid.” Norman ushered Chad into the elevator. “The same day I dealt with the Potters’ case, I remember, I was sent another which I’m still sitting on. Can’t make up my mind.”
“What’s the difficulty?”
The elevator stopped and they emerged into the bowels of the beast. Norman fingered his beard and studied the direction signs, then started left along the corridor.
“It was an application from Paris,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m being too doctrinaire, but—well, they’re a brother and sister whose parents were both pieds-noirs, and the Algerian legacy isn’t what you’d call a good reference.”
“Don’t take them even if they come on bended knees. Also don’t take any Portuguese or Belgians or wooden nickels. Christ, listen to me generalising. Where are you taking me?”
“We got here.” Norman opened a steel door and led the way into a large, well-furnished, air-conditioned lounge, the former wardroom of the officers’ mess. “I thought you’d probably want a drink after your long trip.”
“No thanks,” Chad said curtly.
“What?”
“Oh, maybe a cold beer, then. Nothing stronger. I owe you a lot, you know, including wringing out the alcohol from me.” Chad dropped into the nearest vacant chair. “I couldn’t go on drinking and study up on Beninia at the same time.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Norman said. He hesitated. “Ah—you haven’t reached any conclusions, have you?”
“Conclusions? You mean hypotheses, I hope. I got here five minutes ago and so far I haven’t set foot on Beninian ground. But … Well, speaking of recruitment as we were: did you get me the people I want?”
“You asked for a sheeting lot of them,” Norman grunted. “What was it you said? ‘Psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and synthesists not hopelessly straitjacketed by adherence to an ism’—is that right?”
“‘Glutinous adherence’, to be exact. But did you get them?”
“I’m still working on the synthesists,” Norman sighed. “That’s a discipline which doesn’t attract as many people as it ought to—seems people have this idea that Shalmaneser is automating them out of a job, too. But I turned in an application to State and Raphael Corning said he’d see who he could find. For the rest—well, I’ve short-listed a dozen possibles for you to interview, all well recommended by their current employers.”
“Sounds discouraging.” Chad scowled. “I prefer people who’ve ruffled their employers’ tempers so many times … But that’s prejudice. Thanks, it sounds fine. Incidentally, I think I will have that beer after all.”
“It’s on the way.”
“Splendid. How’s everything else here—how’s Elihu?”
“He dropped in this morning with Kitty Gbe, the education minister, to talk over the selection programme we’re mounting to choose the first wave of student-teachers. I think he’s at the palace this afternoon.”
“And the president—how’s he?”
“Not good,” Norman said. “We got here too late. He’s a sick man, Chad. Remember that when you meet him. But under the—the veil of senility there’s a rare personality.”
“Who’s going to take over?”
“A caretaker government under Ram Ibusa, I imagine. As a matter of fact Zad signed regency papers yesterday to be used if he does become too ill to continue.”
Chad shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’ll matter much. Shalmaneser is running the country as of now, isn’t he? And from personal acquaintance I think he’ll make a fine job of it.”
“I hope you’re right,” Norman muttered.
A girl arrived with Chad’s beer and placed it on the table between them. Chad followed her appreciatively with his eyes as she moved away.
“Local recruit?”
“What? Oh, the waitress. Yes, I imagine so.”
“Pretty. If they have shiggies of that calibre here I may enjoy my stay even if I don’t find what I’m looking for. But I forgot—you have a fixation on blondes, don’t you?”
“I don’t have any fixations any longer,” Norman said stonily. “Fixations and Beninia don’t co-exist.”
“I noticed,” Chad said. “I’m glad you finally did, too.” He poured half the beer down his throat and set the glass aside with a contented sigh.
“Speaking of what you’re looking for,” Norman said, a trifle over-eager to switch subjects, “I take it from the requirements you sent me that you—”
“That I haven’t the vaguest notion what I’m after,” Chad interrupted. “You’d better be ready for me to ask for something entirely different tomorrow. In fact, on my way over I realised I should have asked for some biochemists and geneticists as well.”
“Are you serious?”
“Not yet. Give me a week or two and I very well may be. Also priests and imams and rabbis and fortune-tellers and clairvoyants and—Norman, howinole should I know? What I asked for just seemed like a reasonable basis to start from!”
“Ask for whatever you want,” Norman said after a pause. “I have a suspicion there’s nothing more important, not even the Beninia project itself.”
“There you go
again,” Chad said. “Feeding my ego. Christ, aren’t I vain enough already?”
tracking with closeups (30)
DÉFENSE D’ENTRER
Approaching from the street, Jeannine thought at first the house must be empty, but she soon perceived a glimmer of light from behind the heavy old-fashioned drapes covering the window of the salon and heard the soft sound of the piano. It was one of her brother’s favourite pieces, La Jeune Fille aux Cheveux de Lin.
The front door, curiously, was unlocked. She went inside. By the distant glow of the street-lamps she saw that the hallway was in disorder; bits of a large vase crunched under her shoes and a Moroccan rug had been kicked against the wall in a heap. The air was thick and sweet with the aroma of kief.
The music ended. She opened the door of the salon and saw her brother silhouetted by a swinging lamp. A kief cigarette burned on a brass dish and a half-empty bottle of cognac and a glass stood beside it on the lid of the piano.
He spoke her name in a neutral voice and she came in and closed the door. Moving to one of the low cushioned benches she said, “Where’s Rosalie?”
“We had a row. She walked out.” He began to let his hands wander up and down the keyboard seemingly under their own volition, framing long wailing lines of melody which somehow suggested the Arab songs no piano could imitate.
Jeannine listened for a while. She said at length, “You heard from the American company.”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes. They took you on, I suppose, and that started the row?”
“On the contrary.” He got abruptly to his feet, shut the piano, drained his glass and brought it and the bottle over to a low table in front of his sister. Sitting down beside her, he poured himself another shot and asked with his eyes if she wanted some. He received assent and made to rise and fetch a glass. She stopped him with a touch on the arm.
“We can share it. Don’t bother to fetch another.”
“As you like.” He stubbed his cigarette and opened the box to offer her one.
“You said on the contrary. Did they not accept you?”
“No. That was why I lost my temper with Rosalie. You?”
“They turned me down as well.”
For a long time after that there was silence. Eventually Pierre said, “I don’t seem to care very much. I ought to. I remember I hoped very strongly that I would be engaged to go to Africa. Here I am not having secured the post and on top of it having lost my wife—yet I feel numb.”
“There’s no chance of a reconciliation?”
“I detest the idea. Is it worth having if it has to be cobbled together from the broken pieces? Only the most precious objects deserve that treatment.”
“I’m in the same gallery,” Jeannine said after a pause. “Raoul did not realise how much the idea meant to me. We disagreed and for the last time. It’s not worth the trouble.”
“Outsiders don’t understand. They can’t understand.” Pierre emptied the cognac glass and refilled it. His sister took a quick sip at it the moment he let it go.
“What are you thinking of doing now?” he inquired.
“I’ve not decided. Now my mind is made up to go to Africa again, I suppose I shall look around for an alternative. Even yet there’s no hope of going home, but certain other countries are tolerant of Europeans, and perhaps they would be better than a swampy little nation in the equatorial rain-belt.”
“Egypt engages many Europeans,” Pierre agreed. “Mostly Germans and Swiss, but Belgians too.”
“There is something else Raoul told me about: how disturbed the Common Europe Board is becoming over the Americans in Beninia, how they may attempt to counter it with aid to Dahomalia and RUNG.”
“That too will need advisors. And yet—” He swallowed hard. “It was such an effort to rein in one’s pride and make application to go and serve les noirs. To be told after humbling oneself that it was all a waste—it’s insupportable.”
“Mon pauvre. I know how you feel.” She picked up the glass again; over its rim as she drank, she found her eyes locked with Pierre’s.
“Yes, you do, don’t you?” he said. “If there were not in the whole world a single person who sympathised, I believe I would go mad.”
“I too.” With what seemed like a great effort of will she detached her gaze from his and put down the glass. Not looking at him again, she said, “I believe—do you know?—it is there, the reason for my chaotic life of disorder. From one man to another, counting it a triumph to remain together for a year … Looking for someone like you, my heart. Never finding anyone.”
“But at least you had the endurance to continue looking,” Pierre said. “I gave up. Only when it was forced on me, the first time and now the second, did I admit my discouragement.”
The air seemed heavy not only with the fumes of kief, but with something that needed to be spoken and could not. He pushed himself to his feet as though the atmosphere physically dragged on him.
“Let us have music. I feel the emptiness of the house.”
“As empty as my soul,” Jeannine said, and filled her lungs with kief again.
“What shall we hear? Triumphal music? A funeral march?”
“Will you play yourself or put on a recording?”
“A recording. I have no heart for more.” He sorted along the rack and dropped a reel into the player. “Some Berlioz for vigour, hm?” he muttered as he put out the swinging lamp. “It is a clever match, the vision on this one. I don’t believe you’ve seen it.”
The small screen of the player lit with patterns of white and gold; by its glow he found his way back to her side. Stiff, they watched for a while. The volume was shattering, the master’s demand for huge orchestras having found its apotheosis in modern amplification.
“I should get a newer player,” Pierre said. “With this one loses the third dimension unless one sits directly before the screen.”
“Here, come a little this way. But you’re not comfortable. One needs African bones to sit on these accursed things. Will you move to an armchair?”
“No, one cannot fit both the armchairs into the narrow area before the screen … We had some arguments over that too, Rosalie and I.”
“You can see well there? Let me lean on you. No, with your arm around me. Good, that’s comfortable.”
A little time passed. There was scent in her hair. It was soft to put his cheek on. The images and colours matched to the music were of the first order, reaching to him even through his depression and apathy, and he was lulled. He felt, but did not react to, her strong slim fingers twining around his hand, and when she stirred slightly he did no more than adjust his own position economically to correspond. It was natural when her fingertips started to caress the back of his hand and his wrist that he should copy the movement and some while before it registered that he was touching the bare skin of her breast.
The screen of the player went to white and sky-blue. In the sudden brightness he looked at her. On her cheeks he saw that there were tears glistening: two shiny little rivers flowing from two dark pools.
He scarcely heard what she said, for the clamouring music, but her lips framed the words clearly enough.
“There will never be anyone else for either of us, will there, Pierre?”
He could not answer.
“It’s the truth,” she said, a little louder and very wearily. “Shall we stop pretending? I’m sick of everyone, Pierre, except for you. Brother or not, you’ve been my only friend the whole of my life and I’m no longer young. The Parisians want no part of us, the French ignore us, the rest of Europe is a chaos like the vomit of a greedy dog, and now it turns out the sales noirs won’t interest themselves in us. Where else are we to go, tell me that?”
Pierre shook his head and raised one hand in a gesture signifying absence of all hope.
“Ainsi je les emmerde tous,” Jeannine said. So far she had only loosened her bluzette and parted it to expose the breast she had given him to stroke; it was a
very beautiful breast, of a fullness that trespassed over the border of voluptuousness. Now she unzipped the garment completely and threw it aside. He made no move to stop her, but equally no move to co-operate.
Having looked at him from the length of an arm away for a few thoughtful moments, she said, “I’ve sometimes wondered whether you lost your women because you were less of a man than I imagined. Is that so, Pierre?”
His face suddenly grew dark with anger. “No question of it!” he snapped.
“No question, either, that I’m an attractive woman. It came to me suddenly today, when I received that letter, what I really want. And what you want, too. A dead world. But there must be some of it left. I thought: we understand each other! We could—we must—go and look for what we want, the sensible way, in company. There are things that would have to be arranged but I can arrange them. There are places where they value a person more than a piece of paper saying what he was when he was born.” She hesitated.
“We could have children together, Pierre.”
“Are you mad?” The words were whispered between pale lips.
“Think for a while,” she said composedly, and leaned back on the cushions to continue watching the record. She put her palms on her breasts in a parody of modesty that she knew could be relied on to inflame most men.
When she felt the first touch of his hand she turned her mouth up hungrily to be kissed.
context (27)
STUDY GROUP REPORTS
“Linguistically Shinka in the pure traditional form exhibited only by extremely old men and women when reciting songs, catches and folk-tales learned as children is a typical member of the sub-family which dominates this area. A number of anomalies have been noted in addition to the ones originally cited, especially significant being the cognate relationship between the words for ‘warrior’ and ‘fool’, and the homonymic identity of the words for ‘wound’ and ‘disease’.