Brazzaville Beach (36 page)

“Of course,” I said instantly. “Glad to.”

 

I could only manage two land mines, and even that was an effort. They were heavy, painted black, the size of dinner plates and two inches thick. Amilcar was carrying four and he had a Kalashnikov slung across his back as well.

We walked slowly up the causeway, heading for the middle, stopping occasionally to let me rest. The sun was rising now and
the mist was beginning to lift off the marsh. Patches of blue were showing through the thinning clouds.

After about four hundred yards we stopped above a culvert. Amilcar slid down the sides of the embankment and I passed him the mines one by one, which he then stacked beneath the roadway in the center of the culvert.

His last contribution to the defense of the heartland, he had told me, was to be the destruction of the causeway. The equipment had been abandoned, the soldiers had fled, but if he could blow a hole in the causeway then he would feel all his efforts had not been in vain. His plan was straightforward: he was going to detonate one of the land mines by a simple mechanism he had devised. The butt of a Kalashnikov would be balanced above the pressure plate of an activated land mine, held up by a prop—a two-foot stick. To this stick a long line of string would be attached. When he was far enough away, Amilcar would simply yank on this string, the stick-prop would be removed and the Kalashnikov butt would fall square on the pressure plate. The mine would explode, as would the other five stacked alongside it. The resulting explosion, he assured me, would demolish a considerable section of the causeway. I said it sounded a good plan—a neat bit of improvisation.

So I handed him the last of the land mines and clambered back up the embankment to the road. I sat down on the verge and waited for Amilcar, taking in the scene around me. It was a fine and clear morning. On the far bank of the marsh some palm trees were reflected perfectly in a reed-free sheet of water. I thought: what an extraordinary and lovely tree the palm is! And I thought how its ubiquity in the tropics often prevents us from appreciating its singular beauty and grace: its slim, curved, gray trunk, the delicate frondy splay of its foliage, the fact that no matter how old or how stunted the tree might be, its essential elegance remained….

My stomach rumbled and I felt a sudden nicotine craving seize me. From the culvert I heard the amplified scrape and clunk of heavy metal on rough concrete as Amilcar stacked his land mines.

I walked to the edge of the embankment and watched as he emerged, stooped, from the culvert, unwinding his ball of string.
He backed cautiously up the slope to the road and then very delicately straightened the loose, looping curve the string made. He laid the string on the ground and placed a stone on top of it. He removed his spectacles and wiped his sweating face on his jacket sleeve.

“Let's hope the prop doesn't fall too soon,” he said, with a nervous grin.

He stepped down the embankment again to check on a grass stem that was snagging his detonating string. I looked up the causeway road. Carried on the still morning air came the faint noise of an engine. I listened hard. A motor vehicle. I shaded my éyes and peered. Even this early in the morning there was a shimmer of heat haze coming off the road. I saw two vertical black dots ride the wobbling quicksilver of the mirage.

“Amilcar! A truck's coming.”

He scrambled up the embankment.

“Oh
no
,” he said, his voice full of petulant disappointment. “Wait a second.”

“Shouldn't we go?” I said, anxiously. But he was already at the culvert's entrance. He went in and emerged moments later with the Kalashnikov.

“Jesus, Amilcar,” I said. “What're you doing? Let's get out of here.”

“No, I promise you. Just a few shots and they won't be back 'till tomorrow.” He cocked the gun, awkwardly. “We'll have plenty of time.”

He waved me away and I crouched down on the embankment behind him. He stood with the gun poised, waiting for the lorry to come closer.

“Nobody wants to get hurt,” he said, snuggling the butt of the gun into his shoulder. “You watch. I'll fire at them and they'll run away. Then they'll call their mercenaries or their airplanes to come and bomb us. But by then it'll be too late.”

“Don't let them get too close.”

“I want to give them a real fright.”

I could see the lorry clearly now, about a quarter of a mile off. It was open-topped and looked to be full of men. I saw Amilcar take careful aim and squeeze the trigger. Nothing happened.
Safety catch, I thought. Jesus. He fiddled with the gun and took aim again.

He fired a long burst. Then he fired a quick sequence of short bursts afterward. The brass cartridges tinkled prettily on the tarmac as the echoes of the shots dispersed across the marsh.

The lorry had stopped abruptly. I heard the sound of confused shouting. Amilcar lay down beside me.

“Watch,” he said.

The lorry began to back away rapidly, swerving from side to side. Amilcar took aim and fired again from the prone position. I stuck my fingers in my ears.

In the silence that followed, I heard the frantic tearing of gears as the lorry did a three-point turn. Now the men in the lorry started firing themselves. Far out in the marsh a long spray of bullets churned up water. The lorry finally negotiated its turn, and I heard the engine rev as it accelerated off. There was a manic crackling and popping of gunfire as it retreated, like fat on a skillet. No bullets came near us.

Amilcar stood up and emptied his magazine after them. He let his gun drop and gave a disgusted laugh. The sound of firing diminished.

“Why can't we win this war?” he asked. “It's so easy.”

I did not hear or see him hit. One of the dozens of aimlessly fired bullets found its target. I was rising to my feet and saw the exit wound form, a sudden spit of blood in the middle of his back, like a fist-sized bolus of phlegm, a tussock of minced flesh suddenly sprouting.

He fell sideways, doubled up, and lay there, one arm weakly paddling, like a baby waving.

I scrambled over to him. The fall had knocked his spectacles half off his face. His eyes were tightly closed. His top lip was clamped hard between his teeth. He was making strange, grunting, talking noises in his throat, like a guttural dialect of Chinese.

I took his spectacles off. I felt completely, entirely helpless.

“What should I do Amilcar?” I said, feebly. “What should I do?”

I saw his black face lose its sheen, go opaque like drying paint. He opened his eyes and I saw them bulge.

“Don't let them catch you,” he said with a huge effort.

“I'm not talking about me,” I said desperately. “I'm talking about
you
!”

But he couldn't speak anymore. About three minutes later, he died.

 

I left his body there and strode back to the village. I felt light-headed, absurdly fit, as if I were being blown along by a stiff, following breeze. I forced myself to sit down when I reached the gun pit. I was quivering with huge reserves of energy suddenly unleashed, as if there had been hidden stockpiles of adrenaline in my body, now bequeathed me to do with whatever I wanted. Run twenty miles, demolish the village with my bare hands, chop down a forest of trees.

I sat on the sandbagged wall by the elegant gun for over an hour, debating what to do. Two possible courses of action dominated my thoughts during this period. The first was Amilcar's body: what to do with it? I knew how unhappy he would be to be left out there by the road to bake in the sun. I wondered if I had the strength to dig a grave for him or whether I should simply set him on fire. The second was whether to try and finish what he had accomplished. If I could detonate the mines and blow up the causeway I knew that would have made him happy.

I sat and thought, and in the end could bring myself to do neither. I did the sensible thing.

I made a thorough search through the abandoned stores and weaponry, looking for something white. Eventually I found an empty crate, about twice the size of a tea chest, that was lined with a coarse grayish-cream calico. I ripped it away to reveal foil beneath. I could not imagine what the chest had contained.

I went into the bush with a machete and cut two long poles and with my squares of calico fashioned two white flags. I took one to the gun pit and wedged the pole in the sandbags. There was no wind and the flag hung inert. But it was unmistakably a flag of truce, I told myself, quite unambiguously so.

I glanced up the causeway but I was glad to note that the heat haze made it impossible for me to see Amilcar's body by the road
side. I walked a few paces out toward him but I found I could go no farther.

What could I do for him now? I couldn't set him on fire. I had no kerosene or petrol. I couldn't simply set a match to his new uniform and hope that would do the job. Bury him, a voice spoke in my head. Could I take a spade and scrape a grave for him, roll him in and shovel the dirt back on his body? Tip him in the marsh?…I turned away, angry at my impotence, frustrated with my lack of ingenuity.

I took my second flag and returned to the center of the village. I dragged a couple of empty wooden crates into the middle of the road and erected my flag above them. I rigged up a poncho to cast some shade and crawled into one of the crates to wait.

I waited all day. Fatalistically, patiently, deliberately not thinking too far beyond the present moment. I had a clear view down the littered road. The entrance to the causeway was obscured by a bend but I could see the barrel of the gun in the gun pit and the askew pole of my flag of truce.

About midafternoon I heard a short burst of firing in the distance and then silence. As the afternoon advanced, a dry breeze sprang up that caused the flag above my head to flap and crack bravely. That made me feel better. I could just see the calico square at the gun pit, similarly vigorous. Surely, I reasoned, every army knew the significance of a white flag. I was a prisoner of UNAMO waiting to be rescued.

I saw them coming at dusk, half a dozen figures slipping professionally from house to bush, from doorway to compound wall. I crawled out from my crate and poncho shelter and stood up holding both hands high above my head.

“Help!” I yelled as loudly as I could. “Help me! I'm a prisoner!”

Silence. I could not see any of them. For a second, I wondered if I had been hallucinating. I called again, my voice cracking into a scream. I turned and seized my flag, waving it to and fro.

“
Help me. Help me. I'm a prisoner
!”

Then I saw someone move. And another one. I felt a warm flood of relief in my guts as I realized I hadn't been imagining my rescuers. As they scampered closer, still moving from cover to
cover, I kept shouting, reassuring them. It's not a trick, I called, there's no one else here. Just me. I'm a prisoner. Help me.

Eventually they emerged from doorways, from behind walls, and walked toward me, guns leveled. There were five of them. The bulk of their packs and webbing made them seem bigger, their helmets round black silhouettes against the dusty amber light of the setting sun. I held my white flag rigid above my head, my shoulder muscles aching with the effort.

As they came closer I looked at their faces—dirty, sweaty, bearded, but two of them were unmistakably white.

They stared at me, fascinated.

“
T'as raison, coco
,” one said, in a strong Belgian accent. “
C'est une gonzesse
.”

THREE QUESTIONS

My hair needs cutting…. The dogs have come back to the beach…. Water is made from two gases…. I should buy a new fridge…. Nothing in evolutionary thinking can explain consciousness…. Gunter has asked me to visit him in Munich
….

Hope's head is full of such darting, random notions and observations as she sits on her deck with a cold beer and watches the sunset
.

She sees her night watchman arrive and waves to him. He is an old man, gray-bearded, who guards her house with a flashlight, a bow and three barbed arrows. He hauls out his wooden seat from beneath the deck and sits down to begin his vigil
.

She flaps her hands at a whining mosquito and takes a pull at her sour beer. Another subject nudges its way into her mind. “There are only three questions….” Who said that? Some philosopher…. There are three questions, this philosopher said, that every human being everywhere, at any time, of any creed or color wants the answer to. (Kant? Hope thinks…Aristotle? Schopenhauer?) Anyway, she remembers the questions now. They are
:

What can I know
?

What ought I to do
?

What may I hope for
?

All the world's religions, philosophies, cults and ideologies, this philosopher claimed, have attempted to find the answers to these questions
.

When Hope told John about them, he laughed. He said the answers were easy; he could save the philosophers and the suffering mass of humankind a lot of unnecessary grief. He wrote the answers down immediately on a piece of paper
.

Hope was irritated by his arrogance. He was reacting as if this were a party trick that he bad seen performed before. All the same, she kept the piece of paper he scribbled on. It is creased and soft from being carried around and handled so often; it feels more like a piece of fine material or a scrap of soft suede, but you can still read John's tiny, jagged handwriting. He wrote
:

What can I know? Nothing for sure
.

What ought I to do? Try not to hurt anyone
.

What may I hope for? For the best (but it won't make any difference)
.

There, he said, that's that sorted out
.

 

Hope Clearwater stood on the platform at Exeter station waiting for John to descend from the London train. At first she could not see him amongst the crowds of passengers, but eventually she saw him step down from the first-class carriage at the far end. First class, she thought, I don't believe it. She went forward to meet him. He was carrying a heavy case that made him cant his body over severely to counterbalance it, and its weight made him walk in a quick, shuffling manner that under any other circumstances she might have found amusing. What the hell has he got in there, she thought?