Devil’s Harvest (25 page)

A long conversation ensued between Alek and the farmer. It appeared that he was questioning Gabriel’s credentials on the subject. Gabriel heard the word ‘professor’ articulated a few times. The man nodded in acceptance, his eyes flitting across Gabriel’s face.

‘Alek, ask him what they do now with the weeds that they pull out.’

The answer came quickly. ‘They feed it to the cattle. They mix it with the fruit pods from the haraz trees as fodder.’

‘Okay, that’s what I thought.’ He’d seen it referred to in the research coming out of Kenya. ‘The problem is that the cattle distribute the seeds in their faeces.’

Alek frowned at the word.

‘Their poo. The seeds go through their system and come out in their poo, and then they grow again. So you spread the problem. You have to pull the plants out – while they’re small – and then burn them. Don’t feed them to the cattle. Tell him.’

Alek smiled. For the first time since they had left Juba, crinkling the skin at the sides of her eyes and showing the edges of her protruding teeth. She turned to the farmer and explained Gabriel’s advice. The man leant on his stick and listened, looking from Alek to Gabriel and back again. Then he laughed and jabbed a finger at Gabriel.

‘He says thank you. He’ll try and see if it makes a difference. He says you must have very big fields of dura in your village. Now we must come and eat with him.’

They returned to the village, the elderly man leading the way to his homestead. They sat on cut tree stumps outside his simple home while his wife fussed with a pot over the fire. When it was ready the pot was put before them and they helped themselves to fingers of okra.

‘
Bamia
,’ Alek said. ‘Ladies fingers. That’s what we called them when I was little. We used to like the idea that we were eating some fancy ladies’ fingers, one by one. I think it was my mother’s way of getting us to eat it. Mothers are clever in that way.’

Gabriel thought back to his own mother. He could not think of an example at first, and then he said, ‘Frog’s eggs.’ The words blurted out. ‘My mother used to get us to eat something called tapioca. Little round balls that didn’t really have any taste. But she called it “frog’s eggs” and so immediately I was interested to eat them. You’re right, mothers are clever that way.’

Alek smiled again – twice in a day, Gabriel noted – and translated the story for the farmer and his wife. They both laughed politely, but Gabriel wondered if they could possibly comprehend the concept of English cuisine and the strange role performed by opaque balls of manufactured starch boiled in milk.

‘What about your brothers and sisters? Did they also like these eggs?’ Alek still had the trace of a smile on her face.

‘I was an only child.’

Alek looked puzzled.

‘I don’t have brothers or sisters. I was on my own in my family.’

The smile had faded and Alek looked down. Gabriel noted that she did not translate this piece of information for their hosts. It seemed to sadden her, as if he’d disclosed some terrible suffering. She remained quiet even once the meal was over and they had said their goodbyes.

They journeyed in silence for a while, Gabriel watching the conicalroofed huts of the Dinka villages and the cattle byres.

‘I cannot imagine to be one child in a family,’ Alek said after a while. ‘How is it a family with one child? It’s the beginning of a family, yes perhaps, but it’s not a family yet. We have a saying: “A single bracelet does not jingle.” There is a loneliness in you that I see that comes from being the seed of a family but never growing into the tree.’

Gabriel did not answer. She had spoken softly and without malice, and yet she had struck deeply. He had never thought of his childhood as lonely, the long periods spent on his own tracking through the forests, identifying mushrooms at the feet of pines and oaks, observing the miniature lives that played out in pools collected in the drying streams. He had been content to play in his isolated imagination, making stick figures and boats to launch across the duck pond. Yet as he grew into adulthood he became aware that he was regarded as a loner, and that he was socially awkward, often expressing himself in phrases that were wrapped up in his mind, not easily unravelled by casual listeners. He couldn’t say if siblings would have resulted in a different outcome – perhaps this was how he was always meant to be – but he knew that many saw him as aloof, mistaking his solitude for judgement or displeasure.
A single bracelet does not jingle
. Certainly jingling was not something that would come easily to him.

The town of Wau turned out to be far larger than Gabriel had imagined, a bustling place similar in many ways to Juba, but cleaner and less overwhelmed by Western aid. The road entering the town was wide enough for three lanes of traffic in each direction – not that the road bore any markings – and the sides were taken up by stalls and cattle markets.
Boda boda
taxis rushed back and forth and donkeys pulled wooden carts resting on old car axles. A vast river stretched out on the right, easily the size of the White Nile, with islands of greenery dotting its course. The far side was blurred by reeds and matted growth, but the bank on the town side was bare, cattle and human traffic denuding it entirely. A communal water pump was chugging away, dripping fuel and dirty water into a channel that ran back into the river. Donkeys queued patiently in the sun, pulling specially designed carts consisting of two oil drums welded together into a tube. The day’s feed – tight bundles of grass – was tied to the axle and several of the donkeys were adorned with tassels and caps.

‘The Jur River,’ Alek announced. ‘“
Jur
” is a Dinka word for a non-Dinka person, an alien.’ Her face was deadpan when she said it. ‘Imagine naming your river after your enemy? You’re right to think this country is crazy. We’re all crazy here.’

The road wound its way towards the river and Gabriel watched two men throwing finely woven nets in the shallows. Some of the stalls on the side of the road had small piles of silver fish, lying head to tail on top of one another. Behind the stalls, many of the buildings seemed damaged, roofs collapsed inwards and walls pockmarked with holes.

‘Last year, the fighting was heavy between the army and the Nuer rebels,’ Alek explained, seeing him staring at a building with fist-sized holes punched through its brickwork. ‘Just because we have seceded together doesn’t mean we can live together.’

Gabriel tried to imagine the street – now busy and industrious – emptied of everyone but soldiers, the artillery shells screaming through the air. Wau was unlike any of the small towns they had passed. There was a tension, the sense of a town used to a military presence. Many people on the street wore some kind of uniform, and truckloads of soldiers drove by, machine guns strapped to their backs. Gabriel looked at the women pushing wheelbarrows piled with breadfruit, the skin a knobbly green and the cut flesh white and glistening. They would all have been part of the conflict, in one way or another. Tall posters of President Salva Kiir Mayardit had been erected at intersections, his defining brimmed hat in place, each one bearing a different message of hope, or a plea for peace.

A convoy of three UN-marked Land Cruisers drove past, their towering aerials like deep-sea fishing rods connected to the front bumpers, the occupants dressed in military uniform and wearing the distinctive blue helmets.

‘They say you can never be at home in Wau,’ Alek continued. ‘It’s because it is the point where so many different peoples meet. It’s a centre where everyone comes to trade and get transport, but it’s not a home for anyone. Even the refugee camp here is only a transit camp.’

A traffic policeman, dressed in white-and-grey camouflage, stopped them and asked for identification. His neck and cheeks also showed ritual scarification, thin parallel lines of keloid running across his face. The inspection was cursory and he saluted Gabriel as they drove on. Gabriel wondered if he’d been mistaken for some kind of dignitary.

He asked Kamal to pull up outside a small branch of the Equity Bank. A donkey stood with its load of water dripping outside the entrance, a faded UNHCR cap on its head with holes cut out for its elongated ears. He needed to exchange some more British pounds, but the bank was also his best chance of finding someone who could understand him. The interior was cool and clean, and, as luck would have it, the teller spoke excellent English. After a short enquiry, she was able to give him the information he needed.

‘I’d like to treat us to some better accommodation tonight,’ Gabriel said as he climbed back into the Land Cruiser. ‘For our last night.’

‘You didn’t like sharing your bedroom with truck drivers then?’ Alek asked lightly.

She pointed to a large billboard alongside the bank. It appeared to be the plan for a town, the layout of the residences divided into strange blocks. The signboard announced that the ministry of housing, physical planning and environment was proposing to configure the city of Wau in the shape of a giraffe. Alek started to laugh. Gabriel joined in, shaking his head.

‘What grand silliness will our new politicians come up with next?’ Alek sighed.

Gabriel directed Kamal using the information from the teller. They drove near the bank of the river until they came to a walled entrance to a white building, a pretty display of roses marking the short driveway. A small procession was having photographs taken with the roses as a backdrop. A woman in a dark dress, with a dramatic ostrich-plumed hat, was the centre of attention, flanked by men in green-and-white robes. The men carried carved sticks and maintained serious expressions while the photographs were being taken. Gabriel and Alek waited until the session was over, to avoid making an unwanted appearance in the documenting of what appeared to be a wedding celebration.

The Wau Luxury Lodge turned out to be expensive – they preferred American dollars or euros – and the European owner looked Kamal up and down a few times before writing his name in the reception book. But the establishment offered a welcome level of comfort, including separate rooms, soft beds and clean linen. There was even a swimming pool overlooking the Jur, though the water looked as if it had been pumped straight from the river. Poinsettia bushes and pink geraniums gave the small bar area an incongruously jolly appearance – given the battle-scarred surrounds – but Gabriel was happy to escape into pretence for a while. Reality in Africa was proving to be a grinding affair.

The air was hot, but not as muggy as it had been in Juba and Rumbek. The heat felt cleaner and somehow more bearable. His bedroom was cool and, by South Sudan standards, very spacious. An overhead fan moved the air around and the room had its own small bathroom. Gabriel stripped down to a pair of shorts and inspected his swollen feet and delaminating toes. The skin was coming off in thick patches and the fresh layer of flesh was an unhealthy purple-red colour. He would have to find some ointment in the town.

He took a towel off the rail and walked across the entertainment area to the pool. Kamal was already sitting in the shade of a canvas umbrella, clothed and unwashed, and seemingly as unimpressed with the world as ever. He didn’t swim, he informed Gabriel through a series of angry gesticulations.

The pool was tepid and silty, and smelt strongly of chlorine, but the water on Gabriel’s body was still invigorating. He occasionally swam at the indoor pool at the university; this was nothing like it. The overhead heat from the sun, the proximity of the slow-moving mass of the river, the smells of distant cattle, all made it sharply exotic. He wondered how he would ever be able to recapture this feeling for anyone back home – the sense of dislocation, yet the excitement redefining his perceptions. And who would he try to describe it to? This thought suddenly troubled him as he splashed the water across his shoulders. Who was there, waiting with trembling anticipation for his return, excited to hear his stories, to share his experiences? Was Brian Hargreaves all he was left with? He had not thought of Jane for days, he realised. His wife – and his life in Bristol – seemed impossibly remote.

Alek emerged from her room wearing a black brassiere and panties, her towel draped over one shoulder and arm. To Gabriel she looked painfully thin, as if her limbs might snap under the effort of walking. He tried to shake the dream image of her in the flowering field from his mind. For the first time, she seemed a little shy, her eyes averted. She let the towel slip to the ground and pin-dropped without hesitation into the pool; she looked like a gnarled stick dropping into the water. In the moment before she hit the surface, she glanced at Gabriel and saw his eyes on her. There was something out of place on her upper arm, where she had draped the towel. He saw a flash of jagged skin, an ambiguity in the shape of her arm or the muscle. Then she was gone.

She surfaced precisely where she’d entered, letting the water drip from her face and not wiping her eyes. They remained at opposite ends of the little pool, embarrassed by the possibility of inadvertent contact. She kept her body beneath the waterline, only her head above, blowing circles out across the surface.

‘I like it here. Thank you.’

It was the first time she’d thanked him for anything and he had to concede that it was also the first time he had thought to consider her needs. He nodded, a simple response to keep the moment open between them, but she sank beneath the water again, rubbing her hair to dislodge some of the dust from the journey. Gabriel was tempted to lower his face into the water to watch her, like she was some rare fish. But instead he took the opportunity to get out of the pool. He was acutely conscious of the glaring whiteness of his skin, the podginess of middle age that had collected about his waist now pressing in a small roll over the top of his shorts. He wrapped a towel around himself in a swift motion.

A young barman stood behind the counter, immobile, as if guarding the glass-fronted bar fridge with its small selection of beers. Gabriel ordered a Heineken for himself. He’d learnt his lesson in Bristol and did not offer one to Kamal. He turned around with the bottle opened and was disappointed to see that the pool was already empty. A line of wet footprints marked Alek’s return to her room.