Stand on Zanzibar (76 page)
Authors: John Brunner
“What are you thinking of doing now?” he inquired.
“I’ve not decided. Now my mind is made up to go to Africa again, I suppose I shall look around for an alternative. Even yet there’s no hope of going home, but certain other countries are tolerant of Europeans, and perhaps they would be better than a swampy little nation in the equatorial rain-belt.”
“Egypt engages many Europeans,” Pierre agreed. “Mostly Germans and Swiss, but Belgians too.”
“There is something else Raoul told me about: how disturbed the Common Europe Board is becoming over the Americans in Beninia, how they may attempt to counter it with aid to Dahomalia and RUNG.”
“That too will need advisors. And yet—” He swallowed hard. “It was such an effort to rein in one’s pride and make application to go and serve
les noirs.
To be told after humbling oneself that it was all a waste—it’s insupportable.”
“
Mon pauvre.
I know how you feel.” She picked up the glass again; over its rim as she drank, she found her eyes locked with Pierre’s.
“Yes, you do, don’t you?” he said. “If there were not in the whole world a single person who sympathised, I believe I would go mad.”
“I too.” With what seemed like a great effort of will she detached her gaze from his and put down the glass. Not looking at him again, she said, “I believe—do you know?—it is there, the reason for my chaotic life of disorder. From one man to another, counting it a triumph to remain together for a year … Looking for someone like you, my heart. Never finding anyone.”
“But at least you had the endurance to continue looking,” Pierre said. “I gave up. Only when it was forced on me, the first time and now the second, did I admit my discouragement.”
The air seemed heavy not only with the fumes of kief, but with something that needed to be spoken and could not. He pushed himself to his feet as though the atmosphere physically dragged on him.
“Let us have music. I feel the emptiness of the house.”
“As empty as my soul,” Jeannine said, and filled her lungs with kief again.
“What shall we hear? Triumphal music? A funeral march?”
“Will you play yourself or put on a recording?”
“A recording. I have no heart for more.” He sorted along the rack and dropped a reel into the player. “Some Berlioz for vigour, hm?” he muttered as he put out the swinging lamp. “It is a clever match, the vision on this one. I don’t believe you’ve seen it.”
The small screen of the player lit with patterns of white and gold; by its glow he found his way back to her side. Stiff, they watched for a while. The volume was shattering, the master’s demand for huge orchestras having found its apotheosis in modern amplification.
“I should get a newer player,” Pierre said. “With this one loses the third dimension unless one sits directly before the screen.”
“Here, come a little this way. But you’re not comfortable. One needs African bones to sit on these accursed things. Will you move to an armchair?”
“No, one cannot fit both the armchairs into the narrow area before the screen … We had some arguments over that too, Rosalie and I.”
“You can see well there? Let me lean on you. No, with your arm around me. Good, that’s comfortable.”
A little time passed. There was scent in her hair. It was soft to put his cheek on. The images and colours matched to the music were of the first order, reaching to him even through his depression and apathy, and he was lulled. He felt, but did not react to, her strong slim fingers twining around his hand, and when she stirred slightly he did no more than adjust his own position economically to correspond. It was natural when her fingertips started to caress the back of his hand and his wrist that he should copy the movement and some while before it registered that he was touching the bare skin of her breast.
The screen of the player went to white and sky-blue. In the sudden brightness he looked at her. On her cheeks he saw that there were tears glistening: two shiny little rivers flowing from two dark pools.
He scarcely heard what she said, for the clamouring music, but her lips framed the words clearly enough.
“There will never be anyone else for either of us, will there, Pierre?”
He could not answer.
“It’s the truth,” she said, a little louder and very wearily. “Shall we stop pretending? I’m sick of everyone, Pierre, except for you. Brother or not, you’ve been my only friend the whole of my life and I’m no longer young. The Parisians want no part of us, the French ignore us, the rest of Europe is a chaos like the vomit of a greedy dog, and now it turns out the
sales noirs
won’t interest themselves in us. Where else are we to go, tell me that?”
Pierre shook his head and raised one hand in a gesture signifying absence of all hope.
“Ainsi je les emmerde tous,”
Jeannine said. So far she had only loosened her bluzette and parted it to expose the breast she had given him to stroke; it was a very beautiful breast, of a fullness that trespassed over the border of voluptuousness. Now she unzipped the garment completely and threw it aside. He made no move to stop her, but equally no move to co-operate.
Having looked at him from the length of an arm away for a few thoughtful moments, she said, “I’ve sometimes wondered whether you lost your women because you were less of a man than I imagined. Is that so, Pierre?”
His face suddenly grew dark with anger. “No question of it!” he snapped.
“No question, either, that I’m an attractive woman. It came to me suddenly today, when I received that letter, what I really want. And what you want, too. A dead world. But there must be some of it left. I thought: we understand each other! We could—we
must
—go and look for what we want, the sensible way, in company. There are things that would have to be arranged but I can arrange them. There are places where they value a person more than a piece of paper saying what he was when he was born.” She hesitated.
“We could have children together, Pierre.”
“Are you mad?” The words were whispered between pale lips.
“Think for a while,” she said composedly, and leaned back on the cushions to continue watching the record. She put her palms on her breasts in a parody of modesty that she knew could be relied on to inflame most men.
When she felt the first touch of his hand she turned her mouth up hungrily to be kissed.
“Linguistically Shinka in the pure traditional form exhibited only by extremely old men and women when reciting songs, catches and folk-tales learned as children is a typical member of the sub-family which dominates this area. A number of anomalies have been noted in addition to the ones originally cited, especially significant being the cognate relationship between the words for ‘warrior’ and ‘fool’, and the homonymic identity of the words for ‘wound’ and ‘disease’.
“However, ‘pure’ Shinka has been displaced almost completely. Heavy contamination exists in all urban centres with English, though there is no self-sufficient vocabulary forming a pidgin. The Holaini dialect constitutes a pidgin in that it hybridises a vocabulary mostly of local origin with grammar originating elsewhere and
vice versa
—these two poles often co-existing in the same speaker and varying in his speech according to the degree of communication he has with his listeners. Over the whole of the north of the country where Holaini influence is most pervasive the majority of the people irrespective of origin understand Holaini words and can follow simple Holaini sentences but the predominant domestic usage must be classed as contaminated Shinka.
“Additionally there are the enclaves of Inoko and Kpala each of which retains its parent language (now with heavy Shinka contamination) but is effectively bi-lingual or, in the case of children educated at schools where in class they have to speak English, tri-lingual.
“English is the language of government, foreign commerce and to a great extent of the intelligentsia. TV broadcasts are made in all five languages including English but entertainment is either locally produced in Shinka or bought in canned form from abroad in English.
“Languages of which traces can still be detected include Arabic, Spanish, Swahili, and along all the borders of the country the various adjacent dialects, which have occasionally supplied the common term for trade-objects.
“A systematic analysis of the vocabulary recorded will be begun as soon as…”
* * *
“Physically the inhabitants are negroid with marked incursions of Berber in the north and a substantial minority in the vicinity of Port Mey with some English or Indian ancestry. The average height for both sexes is below the average for adjacent countries (for men ½", for women 1" approx.) and so is the stripped weight. This is accountable (a) in terms of dietary deficiencies and (b) in terms of the debilitating effect of endemic diseases. Trypanosomiasis and malaria are well known to the inhabitants and they have been efficiently educated in public health measures for these, but an insidious and apparently antibiotic-resistant strain of ‘blackwater fever’ abounds and occasionally provokes infantile mortality though it does not appear to be fatal in adults. Tuberculosis, smallpox, and a number of other diseases are held at bay by an inoculation service well accepted by the populace, but…”
* * *
“The median IQ of the school pupils tested by our team lies nearly 2½ points below the average found in adjacent territories but it is uncertain at present whether this is statistically significant as the tests were difficult to weight for background noise. Assuming the difference is real it is probably due to dietary deficiencies over many generations, the staple diet of mealie flour, sago and other starches being only lightly reinforced with high-protein substances and fresh vegetables. Successful government education in the use of citrus fruits, however, has eradicated scurvy, and fish-meal is now available.
“On the other hand, a small number of outstandingly bright children were found, of whom one tested at approximately 176. Tests are continuing to try and determine whether there are any more exceptional genetic strains cropping out…”
* * *
“A number of conflicting rituals have been found associated with the standard landmark-events: birth, puberty, marriage, bearing and fathering of children, sickness and death. Some are of local origin while many others can be assigned to Muslim or Christian influence. A table is appended showing the significant features of such ceremonies with areas of highest incidence. NB: the attitude of the people towards these events is essentially celebratory rather than magical or propitiatory but it cannot be established whether this is an indigenous factor or due to gradual de-ritualisation by Europeans of their own religious festivals during the colonial period…”
* * *
“The structure of the family is typically patrilineal among Holaini and trends towards the matrilocal among the southern Shinka, especially in the cities where maximal movement of male labourers is found. However, both sexes enjoy equal rights before the law and folklore indicates that women of forceful personality were accepted into male councils before the advent of the European. The elaborate familial terms of aboriginal Shinka are giving way to a simplified pattern probably related to the English and much influenced by missionary teaching. However, it has not yet been determined…”
* * *
“The ideals of the community were examined both in Shinka and English with marked variation between the results. In English targets such as ‘wealth’ and ‘to be President’ scored high; in Shinka qualities such as (translating loosely) ‘public respect’ and ‘likable behaviour’ scored high. It has not yet been settled whether this is due to a real conflict or is a function of superior availability of the terms…”
* * *
“As is common in primitive societies there is a high reliance on proverbs and folk sayings in social conversation. However, the content is somewhat idiosyncratic.
“The universal admiration for Begi is well exemplified in the phrase ‘You could welcome Begi in your house’, a term of praise for someone whose family does him credit.
“Full study of the differences betwen Shinka and Holaini usage, as well as of Inoko and Kpala influence, must await…”
* * *
“
To all study groups from Chad Mulligan:
“You don’t yet know! You haven’t yet established! You aren’t quite sure about!
“How about letting me have something I can take a proper grip on—soon?”
SEWN ON WITH NEEDLE AND THREAD
An hour after sundown Jogajong shook Donald’s hand and gave him into the charge of one of his lieutenants. Escorted by four armed guerrillas and accompanied by four more carrying Sugaiguntung swathed in a sort of cocoon of plastic strips, he set out along a different trail from the one he had been brought in by. On his back, haversack-fashion, were the neatly rolled anti-radar flotation suits in which he and his companion would have to spend perhaps hours of lonely dark waiting before the coast was clear for the submarine.
The trail was rough and the black-light goggles he had been loaned were inefficient. Here, crossing one of the slopes radiating away from the foot of Grandfather Loa, the ground was too warm for the vegetation and the human bodies around him to show up except as blurs. Used to walking soundlessly through the dark jungle, the Yatakangis with him seemed to exude contempt whenever he brushed against a hanging branch or threatened to lose his footing on some lump of mud.
Somehow, though, the distance was covered and they reached the first stage’s end at the headwaters of a small river. A crude wooden platform jutted out of the bank, and moored to it was a shabby praheng driven by a stern-sweep. The boatman was waiting immobile, cross-legged on the jetty, smoking a cigarette cupped very carefully between his palms which nonetheless glinted like a firefly when his fingers parted.
Sugaiguntung was placed gently in the bow of the boat and covered with old sacks. Donald stepped aboard next and sat on a midships thwart. Behind him came two of the guerrillas, their bolt-guns across their laps. He could not help wondering how much attention they were paying to him, how much to their ostensible task of watching for spies on shore. With not a word spoken except the password to identify the party, they drifted into the centre of the narrow stream and the boatman began to work his sweep with a faint rhythmical creaking like a cricket’s.
