The Book of the Heathen (33 page)

‘And just when I imagined there were no new horrors for the child to endure, that she would soon be insensible from her wounds and oblivious to what must now happen to her, the two men holding her took her closer to the fire and raised her until she was directly above the glowing ashes. Smoke rose off her hair, and her screams grew shriller and shriller and more animal than human. And then I watched as the men released their hold on the girl's legs and these fell into the embers themselves, disturbing them and causing her to try to kick herself free, almost as though she were running through the fire in an effort to be free of it before it consumed her. But she was still held by her arms, and for every feeble effort she made to escape, so the two men pulled her back. The smell of scorching flesh filled the air. Her feet were firmly inside the embers, and I wondered how much longer, how many more of those endless seconds, she would remain conscious before her suffering became too great for her.

‘And then, just as I was about to call out again, she fell silent, and I thanked whatever cruel god was looking over her that her ordeal was over. I remained silent. I could not imagine how she had persevered for so long. But then, just as I anticipated that the four men might now drop her corpse into the embers, one of them threw a container of water over her face and revived her slightly. It seems they were not to be denied even a minute of their pleasure.

‘And having burned her legs, they grabbed her by her blackened knees and held her upside down over the flames so that she scrambled now with her arms to lift herself free. It was more than I could bear to see. What little remained of her hair burned quickly. Her face was only inches from the embers and she pushed through these with both hands in an effort to keep herself above them. The smell of her burning flesh grew even greater, and it was no longer possible to make out any of the punctures or lines on her scorched body.

‘And then, because all this had lasted too long, and because I had again remembered my pistol, I took it from my satchel and pointed it towards them, shouting for them to turn and look at me, to see what I was doing, but even though I attracted their attention this time, they were all by then so greatly excited by what was happening, that none of them took the slightest notice of me other than to glance across to where I sat. Perhaps they calculated their chances of being hit, or missed, and perhaps they had found my pistol and unloaded it. I no longer cared. And then, just as I picked out the feather-gatherer as my target, the two men holding the girl released their grip on her and she finally fell into the embers.

‘And seeing this, I knew immediately what I must do, and I aimed at the screaming, flailing body and I fired. There was still a bullet in the pistol, and the instant I fired the girl stopped screaming and struggling and so I knew that I had struck her and killed her. The small flames and grey dust rose all around her and she quickly lost her outline in the heart of the blaze. I saw where her head lay, and the bulk of her small body, but her legs and arms were quickly covered and lost to me. There was nothing else I could do, and the pistol fell from my hand. I waited for the men to dash to me and to kill me too, but in the few seconds of consciousness which remained to me, I saw that not a single one of them moved, that they remained by the fire, and that with various gestures of dismissal they turned away from me back to the body which now cooked at its centre. That was all I saw. I passed out immediately afterwards.'

He stopped speaking, and for a few seconds the heartbeat of the drumming women filled the air, until that too fell quiet on a single beat and the overwhelming silence of the place descended upon us and laid itself over us like a shroud.

Frere sat with his eyes closed, his fingers pressed tightly into the flesh of his face, as though they too were flames and he might himself now be consumed by them. I could not imagine the depth or the extent of the darkness into which his closed eyes gazed. I considered putting my arm around his shoulders, but even that simple gesture was beyond me, and so, in yet another act of abandonment, I rose and left him where he sat.

28

I left the garrison in a daze, my mind filled with all that Frere had just told me. At the edge of the yard I was accosted by Bone, who emerged from the trees and grabbed my arm, demanding to know why I had left Frere alone and in the open. I pulled myself free of him and pushed him in the chest, causing him to stagger backwards, lose his balance and fall. He cursed me and scrambled back to his feet. He retrieved the rifle he had dropped and pointed it at me. He jabbed me in the stomach with it and I pushed back even harder. I told him that Frere had no intentions of going anywhere. He turned in a full circle and peered into the trees behind him.

I saw that something other than Frere was on his mind. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that another of his men had been attacked earlier that morning, wounded in the leg by an arrow he believed to be tipped with poison.

There had been reports of unknown men approaching the garrison yard during the night. Fires had been started in the surrounding trees to burn off the undergrowth. I knew he was over-reacting to the situation and told him so. I asked him where the wounded man was and he indicated the garrison house. I told him to send the man to Cornelius, but he said the man was too scared even to venture outdoors. Then let him die here, I told him, unwilling to indulge this fantasy of attack any longer.

I left him and followed the path to the compound. Behind me, I heard him running and calling to Frere.

Upon reaching my room, I rested. The walk had exhausted me. In places the blackened ground still smouldered and I had been forced to make detours. I was determined to go in search of Nash and demand to know why, having been told the same story by Frere, he still insisted on sending him to trial for murder.

But despite my resolve, my exhaustion was greater than I realized and I fell asleep where I sat, surrounded by the last of my charts.

When I woke it was evening. I had slept for six hours.

I went outside. The deformed boy lay asleep on my step. I prodded him with my foot, and when he did not respond I kicked him harder. I told him to fetch Nash to me, but he made no attempt to rise. He rubbed his eyes and looked up at me. I saw that he was naked. He had shaved his head, and someone – he was unlikely to have done this himself – had followed the curved hump of his spine in a line of white thumbprints, extending this over his twisted shoulders and along each arm. I kicked him again and repeated the order before returning indoors.

Nash came an hour later. He entered without announcing himself and cleared a space at my desk. He seemed intoxicated. He told me immediately that he had come as a courtesy to me, and that, regardless of what I had been told, what I now understood or believed to be the truth of the matter, he would not discuss with me any of the events Frere had related. The girl had been killed and Frere had willingly confessed to shooting her.

But my outrage at this was uncontainable and I listed reason after reason why Frere should not now be facing trial.

He listened to all this without speaking, unmoved by my protests and pleas. At one point he rose, took the bottle of brandy from beside my bed and drank from it.

When I finally fell silent, he pulled his chair closer to me and handed me the bottle.

‘He killed the girl,' he said. His words were slurred. He was unshaven, with a small cut above one eye which shone wetly each time he ran his hand across it. ‘It's all that matters.'

‘But surely, the circumstances—'

‘Tell me, if you're so concerned for the wretched child, what was her name, what was she called?'

‘What does it matter what she was called?'

‘Precisely.' He retrieved the bottle. ‘Did he tell you that she was the feather-gatherer's youngest daughter? No? Seven years old.'

‘Hammad's lie. The man—'

‘And that, having come across Frere barely conscious, barely alive, on the bank of the river, the man was attempting to help him when Frere pulled out his pistol and fired at him without warning, missing him but striking the girl, who was unloading the canoe beside him.'

‘Even
you
can't convince yourself of that.'

‘It's the story the feather-gatherer tells.'

‘Rehearsed by Hammad, who wants his show trial. What about the testimony of the others present?'

‘What others? According to him, he, Frere and the girl were alone.' He raised both his hands. He knew every protest I would make.

‘The burned body, then.'

‘She fell into the fire when Frere shot her. Her father was fighting with Frere to prevent him from re-loading and firing again. Hammad's agent found the grieving man two days later at one of their usual rendezvous to trade the birds and feathers.'

‘And the man's story was worth more to Hammad than his cargo?'

‘Incalculably more.'

‘Where is he now, the feather-gatherer?'

‘Presumably being measured up for a suit at Hammad's expense ready for his visit to Stanleyville.'

‘And after that?'

Nash shrugged. ‘Ask Hammad.' He drank again from the bottle. ‘If it is any consolation to you, Frere denies none of it.'

‘But his own story is entirely different.'

He acknowledged this in silence. ‘He killed the girl. He went in search of what he found. His journals tell the whole story.'

‘The journal Hammad brought to you.'

‘And others. The man was obsessed. Did he tell you that, had he not been exhausted and unwell, had he not been suffering and delirious, that he would in all likelihood have accepted the men's offer to take part in what they were doing? Imagine that –
he cannot deny,
for all the extenuating circumstances, for all that did or didn't happen,
he cannot deny
that he may have participated.'

‘And so his honesty will hang him.'

‘He was delirious. Who knows what he did or didn't do?' It was the last feeble echo of a broken argument.

‘You do,' I said. ‘And I do.'

He shook his head.

‘And he does,' I added.

But his work here was finished, and nothing I said would divert him in the slightest from the course he now followed.

‘I did what I was told to come here and do,' he said eventually.

‘Of course you did.'

I could see that my words stung him, but that he no longer possessed the strength or the will to persist in trying to convince me that, of everyone at the Station, I alone insisted on following this different course.

‘I shall leave Stanleyville as soon as it is expedient for me to do so,' he said, as though in response to another question.

‘Of course you will. Expedient. And Frere will be long dead before you even reach the sea.'

He rose at that, picked up the bottle and tipped it upside down so that what little remained of its contents splashed over the papers scattered at his feet.

*   *   *

I slept fitfully through that night. The colony of small apes returned and ran clattering over my roof until something scared them off two hours before dawn.

I made a small pile of my spoiled papers and took them outside to start a fire. The boy sat and watched me. I cared little for him any longer. I asked him where the old boatman was, and he said, simply, ‘Gone,' nodding upriver as he spoke. He, on the other hand, would fulfil his blighted dream of travelling downriver to the growing cities there. He insisted on helping me gather up more papers and feeding them to the blaze. Those soaked in brandy burst into blue flames and floated above the dying fire. The boy took some pleasure in watching all this, and he rolled on the ground like a satisfied dog. He picked up the blackened papers and crushed them to dust in his hands. In the darkness, the white markings along his spine gave him the appearance of a serpent curving back and forth, attracted and repelled in equal measure by the blaze. I fed more to the flames than I had intended, but I was as mesmerized by them as the boy was, and once started I did not want the fire to die.

It was a clear, dry night, and the sky above me shone with the intensity of lacquer. The moon was gibbous and pale and it lay whole on the water, barely disturbed in its outline.

The compound was in darkness, but a succession of lights still showed along the far shore. It was said the Station there was now so inundated with trade that vessels were filled and unloaded through the night. They were distant, but it was possible to make out the figures of men passing among these lights. Klaxons and whistles sounded, faint and distorted over the expanse of moving water; there was no peace there.

The boy complained that the fire was burning low. I returned to my room, pulled the trunk from beneath my bed, and took from this the journals Frere had asked me to keep safe for him, those accounts of all our early wanderings together, of everything he had discovered and described. I took them all out to the boy and showed him how easily they burned if fed to the flames a page at a time. I could not bring myself to look at the writing, drawings and small paintings and maps they contained. But I knew that if I did not burn them, then someone else would, someone who had never known Frere, someone disgusted by the mention of his name.

I burned packet after packet of his precious photographs.

The boy looked more closely at the torn pages; he recognized the animals and birds, each of these identifications a small thrill for him. There were some pages he was reluctant to burn, and I stood over him to ensure that he concealed none of them and later took them away with him.

The bindings and covers of the journals burned more slowly, with a strong and acrid smell, and the boards themselves cracked and spat like burning bark. We were at least an hour in the task.

At some point before the fire died, Fletcher came out to us. He carried his pistol and wanted to know what I was doing. I told him to mind his own business. He looked from the blaze of consumed papers to the boy and said that he too had been unable to sleep. He said that earlier in the night he had seen Abbot feeding a fire of his own, tending it some distance from the compound in the hope that no-one would see him.