Black Mischief

WITH LOVE TO

MARY
AND DOROTHY LYGON

Preface

B
LACK
MISCHIEF was written after a winter spent in East and Central Africa, an
account of which appeared in
Remote People
and now survives, abridged,
in
When the Going was Good.

The
scene of the novel was a fanciful confusion of many territories. It was natural
for people to suppose that it derived from Abyssinia, at that time the sole
independent native monarchy. There are certain resemblances between Debra Dowa
and the Addis Ababa of 1930. There was never the smallest resemblance between
Seth and the Emperor Haile Selassie. The Arabs of Matodi never existed on the
Ethiopian coast. Their model, so far as they had one, was in Zanzibar.

Thirty
years ago it seemed an anachronism that any part of Africa should be
independent of European administration. History has not followed what then
seemed its natural Course.

E. W.

Combe Florey
1962

Chapter One

‘W
e, Seth, Emperor of
Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas,
Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year
of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of
our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim…’
Seth
paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh
breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. ‘Rats,’
he said; ‘stinking curs. They are all running away.’

The
Indian secretary sat attentive, his fountain pen poised over the pad of writing
paper, his eyes blinking gravely behind rimless pince-nez.

‘Is
there still no news from the hills?’

‘None
of unquestionable veracity, your majesty.’

‘I gave
orders that the wireless was to be mended. Where is Marx? I told him to see to
it.’

‘He
evacuated the town late yesterday evening.’

‘He
evacuated the town?’

‘In
your majesty’s motor-boat. There was a large company of them — the
stationmaster, the chief of police, the Armenian Archbishop, the Editor of the
Azanian Courier,
the American vice-consul. All the most distinguished
gentlemen in Matodi.’

‘I
wonder you weren’t with them yourself, Ali.’

‘There
was not room. I supposed that with so many distinguished gentlemen there was
danger of submersion.’

‘Your
loyalty shall be rewarded. Where had I got to?’

‘The
last eight words in reproof of the fugitives were an interpolation?’

‘Yes,
yes, of course.’

‘I will
make the erasion. Your majesty’s last words were
“do hereby proclaim”.’

‘Do
hereby proclaim amnesty and free pardon to all those of our subjects recently
seduced from their loyalty, who shall during the eight days subsequent to this
date return to their lawful allegiance. Furthermore…’

They were in the upper
story of the old fort at Matodi. Here, three hundred years before, a Portuguese
garrison had withstood eight months’ siege from the Omani Arabs; at this window
they had watched for the sails of the relieving fleet which came ten days too
late.

Over
the main door traces of an effaced escutcheon were still discernible, an
idolatrous work repugnant to the prejudice of the conquerors.

For two
centuries the Arabs remained masters of the coast. Behind them in the hills the
native Sakuyu, black, naked, anthropophagous, had lived their own tribal life among
their herds — emaciated, puny cattle with rickety shanks and elaborately
branded hide. Farther away still lay the territory of the Wanda — Galla
immigrants from the mainland who, long before the coming of the Arabs, had
settled in the north of the island and cultivated it in irregular communal
holdings. The Arabs held aloof from the affairs of both these people; war drums
could often be heard inland and sometimes the whole hillside would be aflame
with burning villages. On the coast a prosperous town arose: great houses of
Arab merchants with intricate latticed windows and brass-studded doors,
courtyards planted with dense mango trees, streets heavy with the reek of
cloves and pineapple, so narrow that two mules could not pass without
altercation between their drivers; a bazaar where the money changers, squatting
over their scales, weighed out the coinage of a world-wide trade, Austrian thalers,
rough stamped Mahratta gold, Spanish and Portuguese guineas. From Matodi the
dhows sailed to the mainland, to Tanga, Dar-es-Salaam, Malindi and Kismayu, to
meet the caravans coming down from the great lakes with ivory and slaves.
Splendidly dressed Arab gentlemen paraded the water-front hand in hand and
gossiped in the coffee houses. In early spring when the monsoon was blowing
from the north-east, fleets came down from the Persian Gulf bringing to market
a people of fairer skin who spoke a pure Arabic barely intelligible to the
islanders, for with the passage of years their language had become full of
alien words — Bantu from the mainland, Sakuyu and Galla from the interior — and
the slave markets had infused a richer and darker strain into their Semitic
blood; instincts of swamp and forest mingled with the austere tradition of the
desert.

In one
of these Muscat trading fleets came Seth’s grandfather, Amurath, a man wholly
unlike his companions, a slave’s son, sturdy, bow-legged, three-quarters Negro.
He had received education of a kind from Nestorian monks near Basra. At Matodi
he sold his dhow and entered the Sultan’s service.

It was
a critical time in local history. The white men were returning. From Bombay
they had fastened on Aden. They were in Zanzibar and the Sudan. They were
pushing up round the Cape and down through the Canal. Their warships were cruising
the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean intercepting slavers; the caravans from Tabora
were finding difficulty in getting through to the coast. Trade in Matodi was
almost at a standstill and a new listlessness became apparent in the leisured
life of the merchants; they spent their days in the town moodily chewing khat.
They could no longer afford to keep up their villas round the bay. Gardens ran
wild and roofs fell into disrepair. The grass huts of the Sakuyu began to
appear on the more remote estates. Groups of Wanda and Sakuyu came into town
and swaggered insolently about the bazaars; an Arab party returning from one
of the country villas was ambushed and murdered within a mile of the walls.
There were rumours of a general massacre, planned in the hills. The European
powers watched their opportunity to proclaim a Protectorate.

In this
uncertain decade there suddenly appeared the figure of Amurath; first as
commander-in-chief of the Sultan’s forces, then as general of an independent
army; finally as Emperor Amurath the Great. He armed the Wanda and at their
head inflicted defeat after defeat on the Sakuyu, driving off their cattle,
devastating their villages and hunting them down in the remote valleys of the
island. Then he turned his conquering army against his old allies on the coast.
In three years he proclaimed the island a single territory and himself its
ruler. He changed its name. Until now it had been scored on the maps as Sakuyu
Island; Amurath renamed it the Empire of Azania. He founded a new capital at
Debra Dowa, two hundred miles inland on the borders of the Wanda and Sakuyu
territories. It was the site of his last camp, a small village, partially burnt
Out. There was no road to the coast, only a faltering bush path which an
experienced scout could follow. Here he set up his standard.

Presently
there was a railway from Matodi to Debra Dowa. Three European companies held
the concession in turn and failed; at the side of the line were the graves of
two French engineers who went down with blackwater, and of numerous Indian
coolies. The Sakuyu would wrench up the steel sleepers to forge spear heads and
pull down lengths of copper telegraph wire to adorn their women. Lions came into
the labour lines at night and carried off workmen; there were mosquitoes,
snakes, tsetse fly, spirillum ticks; there were deep water courses to be
bridged which for a few days in the year bore a great torrent down from the
hills, bundling with it timber and boulders and an occasional corpse; there
was a lava field to be crossed, a great waste of pumice five miles broad; in
the hot season the metal blistered the hands of workmen; during the rains
landslides and washouts would obliterate the work of months. Reluctantly, step
by step, barbarism retreated; the seeds of progress took root and, after years
of slow growth, burst finally into flower in the single, narrow-gauge track of
the Grand Chemin de Fer Impérial d’Azanie. In the sixteenth year of his reign
Amurath travelled in the first train from Matodi to Debra Dowa. With him sat
delegates from France, Great Britain, Italy and the United States, his daughter
and heir, her husband, while, in a cattle truck behind, rode a dozen or so
illegitimate children; in another coach sat the hierarchies of the various
Churches of Azania; in another the Arab sheiks from the coast, the paramount
chief of the Wanda, and a shrivelled, scared old Negro, with one eye, who
represented the Sakuyu. The train was decked with bunting, feathers and
flowers; it whistled continuously from coast to capital; levies of irregular
troops lined the way; a Jewish nihilist from Berlin threw a bomb which failed
to explode; sparks from the engine started several serious bush fires; at Debra
Dowa Amurath received the congratulations of the civilized world and created
the French contractor a Marquess in the Azanian peerage.

The
first few trains caused numerous deaths among the inhabitants, who for some
time did not appreciate the speed or strength of this new thing that had come
to their country. Presently they became more cautious and the service less
frequent. Amurath had drawn up an elaborate time-table of express trains, local
trains, goods trains, boat trains, schemes for cheap return tickets and
excursions; he had printed a map showing the future developments of the line in
a close mesh all over the island. But the railway was the last great
achievement of his life; soon after its opening he lapsed into a coma from
which he never recovered consciousness; he had a wide reputation for
immortality; it was three years before his ministers, in response to insistent
rumours, ventured to announce his death to the people. In the succeeding years
the Grand Chemin de Fer Impérial d’Azanie failed to develop on the lines
adumbrated by its founder. When Seth came down from Oxford there was a weekly
service; a goods train at the back of which was hitched a single shabby saloon
car, upholstered in threadbare plush. It took two days to accomplish the
journey, resting the night at Lumo, where a Greek hotel proprietor had proposed
a contract profitable to the president of the line; the delay was officially
attributed to the erratic efficacy of the engine lights and the persistence of
the Sakuyu in their depredations of the permanent way.