Continent (12 page)

Awni closes the door from the veranda to the restaurant. All we can hear now is the hammering and chipping and nailing of electricians at work. He stands with his back to the door facing out over the veranda towards the crowd. The youngest and the cruellest electrician can control children with stern words but he cannot hold the crowd. It edges forward until it lines the veranda steps.

‘What’s the fuss, Awni?’

‘There is no fuss.
You’re
making the fuss. Go home!’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing … improvements…’

‘What improvements? Why can’t the children see? What are they making for you in there? An electric woman?’

Even Awni laughs at this.

‘Listen,’ he says, coming close to us. ‘Be patient. You see these?’ He points to the petitions and lofty announcements which decorate the wall. ‘Now this town is on the map. We have electricity. Soon the road will be made up. Then we will have an airstrip, a cinema, a radio transmitter, a factory, our own abattoir. But first we have electricity … so let us be
ambitious, let us have the best electricity in the world. Let the Minister come here and see how we excel with electricity. Then he will nod and say to himself, “Ah, that town has vision. Send engineers, send aeronauts, send projectionists, send radio operators, send industrialists, send slaughtermen. Send money. Turn that town into a city!”’

‘But what are you hiding, Warden Awni?’

‘I
will
show you,’ he says. We crowd behind him as he throws back the door to the inner room of the restaurant. Inside, the electricians are standing on chairs and tables, their arms lifting and pushing towards the ceiling.

‘Let us see. What is it? What is it?’

A thin girl crawls past Awni into the room and walks into the centre of the circle of electricians. She looks up and then returns to the crowd at the door.

‘They’re fixing the propeller to the ceiling,’ she says. ‘They’re making an aeroplane.’

Awni stands aside for us all to enter and admire. ‘It is my gift to this town,’ he says, ‘to mark the visit of the Minister and the installation of electrical power. It is the largest, the finest fan in the land.’

The last screw of the fitting which attaches Awni’s fan to the ceiling is tightened. An electrician pushes against one of the huge polished blades. It turns resentfully, unpowered, its tip nearly reaching the restaurant walls. Its shadow, cast by the light from the
veranda windows, is a huge black moth. ‘Solid wood, solid metal,’ says Awni boastfully. ‘A monumental fan.’

T
HE FIRST
to arrive is the Minister’s Secretary. His black Peugeot has been dusted grey by the journey over bad, dry roads. He has seen maned deer, quibbling flocks of ground-thrush, a mesmerized bandicoot caught mid-carriageway by the engine roar. He sees gnawed gourds and damaged saplings – the work of Baird tapirs and their comic snouts. All good pot animals, and sitting targets, too. The thought of land here becomes more attractive. The comfortable family lodge with a small gourd farm transforms into a hotel for hunters, weekend marksmen keen on game but untempted by treks and danger and patience. Is there profit here, good business? When he first sees the Rest House he becomes more certain. This is no competition for his hotel: it is a timid, wind-swept little coop in wood and plaster, badly situated and poorly equipped. What idiot arranged for the Minister to switch on the current from there? Tin-pot town. Tin-pot people.

The Minister’s Secretary waits in his car a field’s distance from the Rest House. Soon the army jeeps will arrive with the soldiers and ceremonial equipment.

The Secretary is free to scheme. Later that day he
will investigate Nepruolo land and select a good site, close to the road and the police station, but wind and neighbour free. Electricity has come; the gourds will fatten. Nepruolo will be kept to his promise. Landowner and Secretary, as ever, will see eye-to-eye -particularly as they now share interests in the same town. A newly surfaced road – now, that would benefit both. Remove those potholes. Lay that dust with tarmac. Weekending huntsmen, purses full and game bags empty, speed to the country: they pass brimming convoys of Nepruolo trucks delivering plump-as-dove candy gourds to city wholesalers. The Secretary can see it all. He will speak dreams to his colleagues, the secretaries of appropriate ministries.

Once the jeeps and the black car draw up outside the Rest House the crowd begins to gather. They will wait all day for the Minister to arrive. They babble and laugh and miss nothing. The Minister’s Secretary is perplexed. He turns to the commander of the six soldiers for explanations. ‘What are they doing?’ he asks.

‘They’re shaking their backsides and snitching their noses.’

And who is this?’ Awni has come out onto his veranda and begun an oration.

‘Honoured Minister and friend,’ he says. ‘We welcome you…’

‘Not yet. Save your prostrations. I am not the Minister. I am his Secretary.’

Awni beams and clasps the visitor by the elbow. ‘Then we have corresponded,’ he says, and points to his gallery of documents. ‘I am Warden Awni. Here is my petition for electricity, you remember? And here, today, is the outcome.’ He raises his arms in self-congratulation and swings the newly hung glass lanterns in yellow, green and orange. ‘But I cannot claim all the credit. The Minister, too, deserves our thanks…’

The Minister’s Secretary begins to wonder whether he is the victim of some subtle irony. ‘These people?’ He indicates those few in the crowd who are still racing bums and noses. ‘What is the point which they are making? Who are they?’

‘Townspeople, Secretary. They have come to admire the electricity and the Minister.’

‘Yes, but what is this shaking?’

‘Ah,’ says Awni, happy to provide the simple explanation. ‘They are sending messages from their brains. No sooner sent than received. Like electrical power!’

Now the Secretary is convinced that his hotel will have no competition. The Warden of the Rest House is as mad as a mongoose. Perhaps it would be politic – just for the day – to lock him out of sight. The Minister is a man not keen on aberrations. But the
Warden has hurried off, busy with preparations and self-esteem. The Minister’s Secretary is left to deploy his soldiers (‘Subdue those shakers. Let no one pass’) and then spy out his land. Soon the ceremonial will be over and business can begin.

T
HE
M
INISTER
has arrived in a motorcade of limousines, windscreen-wipers rinsing the dust. This town has never known so eminent, so punctilious an assembly. But why so quiet? All that the townspeople can hear – they are roped off and distant – is the commotion of Awni’s servilities. He introduces his guests: he indicates his fan, his table lamps, his icebox, the coloured veranda lights, bright with polish. He applauds his foresight and planning: there is the liquidizer already filled with unmixed cocktail, its sweet gourd, mint-water, cheap Korean whisky, salt and sayoot powder, impatient for a powered whisk.

But except for Awni the inner room is stiffly silent. The guests are tightly packed. They cannot circulate and chatter. They do not like to jostle and shout to friends with the Minister so near. What can electricians say, in whispers, when pressed so close and warmly to the president of their company? How can the policeman’s wife amuse the unsmiling pressmen and photographers when she cannot stretch her arms and sing? How intimately, how cunningly, should landowner Nepruolo address the Minister’s Secretary
now that they are wedged shoulder to shoulder: as a neighbour, colleague, friend, partner, collaborator? As a stranger? Schoolteacher, policeman, barrack captain, town doctor, bullock-gelder, merchant’s wife – all are close tongued.

‘Let us get on,’ the Minister commands an aide. The Minister is not impressed by fans and liquidizers. What he loves most is the privacy of his limousine.

It is now night. The townspeople stand, roped off in moonlight. The last wild flames are snuffed on candles and oil lamps in the Rest House. The Minister makes a brief speech. He has had the personal satisfaction, he says, of fighting and winning the political battles for the electrification of forgotten communities in the Flat Centre. It is a project close to his heart. How he wishes that government business was less exacting – then he could act with lizard-impulse and accept Warden Awni’s generous offer of a few days’ rest amongst the fine people of the town. (Here the Minister discharges a smile for the policeman’s wife.) But, no, he must settle for the lesser pleasure of service and duty. He must return shortly to the city. But first … ‘Let me leave you with a fond memory of your Minister.’ He grasps the ceremonial power-switch and pulls.

It is startling how light can shorten distance. The Rest House – now a grid of hard white with a diadem of coloured lamps – has leapt towards the
townspeople. Every face at the window of the inner room is distinct. Every word is clear. Even the far fields have closed in, defined by the stipples of illumination at the school, the hospital, the police station, and on Nepruolo land. The town has shrunk. Only the sky and dawn seem more distant.

Awni’s guests are a little startled, too, though not by electricity. Most of them have stood before in false light on visits to the city. No, they are startled by Awni’s liquidizer, which slices into action almost before the lights have penetrated to the corners of the room and thrown shadows over blinking faces. They all turn to stare at the liquidizer, labouring them a cocktail, and there is laughter. Applause, too.

It is a magic charm. Tongues are loosened. Electricians shake their President’s hand. Pressmen smile at tradesmen. The merchant’s wife – ‘not for the first time’, it is whispered – offers her cheek to the bullock-gelder. The Minister discharges more smiles for the policeman’s wife. Nepruolo and the Minister’s Secretary embrace. It is a celebration.

‘Now we are remembered!’ calls Awni through the open window.

Bald men, and women with naked arms, are the first to notice that the wind is rising. The room shivers. Cigarette smoke speeds back at the smoker. Cocktail glasses rattle. ‘There will be rain’ or ‘The moon is belching’ or ‘Expect a birth in town tonight’,
comment the superstitious. The rest button their jackets and send Awni to close the shutters.

B
UT THE
breeze does not abate. Now it buffets the inner walls and hammers a passage between the guests. The squall is growing from within.

‘My fan!’ says Awni. ‘I had forgotten.’

How could he forget his centrepiece, his gift to the town? It has responded slowly to power – its wooden arms too broad and heavy to rotate freely. It has spun like a seed mast, gradually picking up speed, gradually herding and pocketing the air in the Rest House. Now it is in command.

‘That
is
a large fan,’ says Nepruolo. ‘It’s as wide as the room…’ All conversation has stopped and Awni’s fan is the centre of attention.

‘Minister,’ demands Awni. ‘Have you ever seen such a fan before, in all your travels, in all the fine buildings you have visited…?’

‘Never,’ says the Minister, thinking of the discreet, silent air-conditioning in his own office, home and car. ‘I believe this fan to be unique.’

‘I dedicate this unique fan to the Minister,’ declaims Awni, ‘in thanks for the provision of electrical power…’

The guests – their faces chilled and rosy from staring windward – feel obliged to applaud both Minister and fan.

Still the giant blades are gaining speed. They shovel air from the heights of the room and pitch it at the heads of honoured guests.

‘See, see!’ cries Awni, blocking all escape through the veranda door. ‘Now everyone is cool. Feel how cool we are!’

The fan’s shadow, cast darkly across the ceiling by electric light, beats and flaps, reaches and dips, like a flail-dancer, spinning faster and giddier. The fan has outstripped electricity: it is self-propelled, driven by its own turbulence. Clothes tug tightly on bodies, eyes are lashed with tears, plates and glasses tumble from shelves and shatter, as squall gusts into gale and gale into cyclone. Who there does not fear the electrical storm?

‘One place is safe,’ says the Minister, putting his arm around the policeman’s wife with the intimacy of an uncle. ‘At the hub.’ They labour against the blast and stand as close as doves in the narrow column of stillness directly beneath the fan.

‘It is simple physics,’ explains the Minister, relishing the plump songstress in his arms. ‘Locate the eye of the storm and escape all turbulence. Here, we are quite safe.’

Their fellow guests recede further from them, flattened and crouching against the Rest House walls. Those who dare watch the ceiling, but they can see no
fan. It is moving so fast that it has disappeared. They cup their eyes against the wind and look again. But no, nothing. Only the faint smell of scorched wires, and a cloudy smoking of the air.

The first indication that the storm has peaked is a crack in the ceiling. The second is a shower of crumbled plaster: half settles lightly on the Minister and his ward, half is pulled into the windy vortex and turned into stinging grapeshot. The third is a sharp detonation. The ceiling can no longer withstand the weight and pressure. It releases Warden Awni’s fan. A blade hits the Rest House wall and splinters into a thousand needles of best tarbony. The cyclone is armed.

‘Switch off the current,’ commands an electrician. (He and his comrades are squashed safely behind the restaurant counter.) But too late. The jagged vanguard of needles reaches the guests. Splinters of tarbony slice flesh and chip wall-plaster; missiles of wood lacerate the New York skylines of table lamps and shatter bulbs; a salvo strikes the icebox; a single, knotted bolt of timber finishes the cocktail, showering electricians in mint-water, whisky and liquidizer. What remains of the fan kicks and cracks against the ceiling and then, snapping its wiring, falls. The Minister and the policeman’s wife – those two doves at the eye of the storm -receive the great weight of the wreckage. One by one,
the mangoes on the veranda smoke, burn and fail. Now the only light is the occasional flash of a pressman’s camera.