The Impressionist (55 page)

One day they come to a fork in the river, and carry on up a channel that is suddenly narrow, little more than twice the
Nelly’s
width. Hour by hour the water gets muddier and shallower, and it becomes obvious that soon it will be unnavigable. After sunset, at the point where the river loses itself in silt, they come upon a crumbling jetty, its wooden pillars splayed out at precarious angles, like buck teeth.

The shore behind the jetty is alive with movement. At the sound of the ship’s engine, hundreds of ragged people have come to crowd the bank, holding out their hands and calling to the white men. Behind them, the glow of campfires lights up the darkness, and an acrid smell of woodsmoke and excrement catches in Jonathan’s nostrils.

Unnerved, the Professor gives the order to moor on the far bank. This does not deter several men from wading into the river and swimming out to the
Nelly.
They try to drag themselves on board, grappling with the crew, who push them back in, where they bob among the floating rubbish, only swimming off when Gregg fires a pistol round over their heads.

‘Where are we?’ asks Gittens plaintively.

‘The end of the river,’ says Morgan.

Marchant spits. ‘End of the bloody world, more like.’

No one feels like going ashore, so they arm themselves and pass a tense night, taking turns to go on watch. Twice they are disturbed by sharp cracks, which Gregg says are rifle shots. ‘So,’ he concludes, ‘there are other white men out there.’ No one takes much comfort from the news.

Gradually most of the watching people drift away from the shore, and they are left to squint into the darkness, listening to a susurrus of unseen movement. It is impossible to say how many are camped there, and all the Professor remembers from his previous journeys is a little trading post, where the owner once sold him a bad can of Argentine corned beef.

The morning reveals a weird scene. The trading post has gone, if (as Marchant whispers) it was ever there at all. In its place is a mean little village, and the ruins of a large iron-roofed shed, which a wooden cross in front indicates is a church. Parked beside it are two lorries, their flatbeds stacked with giant reels of cable, and all around, for perhaps half a mile in every direction, is a makeshift camp. People swarm about, cooking food, washing, collecting water or simply huddling together in disconsolate groups. For some distance in either direction the river bank has been denuded of vegetation. Everything combustible has been gathered up.

The ethnographers go in search of authority, warily stepping into the confusion, pistols and hunting rifles at the ready. Instantly they gather a huge crowd, which, though not immediately hostile, has an intentness about it, a mute insistence that Jonathan finds terrifying. The others obviously feel the same, gripping their weapons tightly, and looking rapidly from side to side. There seems to be no evidence of order, no sign that the civil power has the situation under control. They are about to lose their nerve completely, when a heavily accented voice hails them from the direction of the trucks.

‘Hey! Hey! White men! Come over here!’

There are two of them, and though Eino’s hair is white-blond and Martti’s dark, both their faces are horribly blistered by sunburn. Their surnames defeat even the hardened ethnolinguists in the party, they have been parked in the middle of the chaos for a week, and more than anything they want to know if the Englishmen have brought their fish.

‘Fish?’ asks the Professor.

‘Herring,’ says Martti.

‘In cans,’ explains Eino. ‘We have the akvavit, but we need the herring.’

‘Do we have herring?’ asks the Professor.

Jonathan checks the provisions list. ‘No, sir. No herring.’

‘So,’ says Martti. ‘That is a blow. We thought you had herring.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ says the Professor.

‘So,’ says Eino. ‘The tyres.’

‘For the lorry,’ explains Martti. ‘You have brought the tyres?’

‘No,’ says the Professor. ‘I don’t think so. Come to think of it, I didn’t know there were lorries up here. There are no roads.’

‘You are wrong,’ says Eino. ‘There are roads. So, you have something else for us? Some provisions? Some letters?’

‘Jonathan, do we?’

Jonathan shakes his head.

‘So,’ says Eino despondently.

‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ says the Professor, ‘what are you doing here?’

Picking a flake of dead skin off his nose, Eino points to the reels of cable. ‘Telephone,’ he says. ‘We make the telephone line. To go along the road.’

The anthropologists are incredulous. Martti and Eino look pleased. They start to tell them how their job is very important because one day the whole world will be connected together, and how it is a hard job because the natives do not understand, and they cut the wire for the copper, or pull down the poles for firewood. Perhaps they will not make money. Perhaps they will find things better back in Finland. And now they have a breakdown in the lorry, and they have to sit here and wait for the steamer to come with the parts, and with their letters and supplies, and they think the Englishmen’s steamer is the steamer, but it is not. ‘So,’ says Martti. ‘We have to sit here some more.’

‘But all these people,’ asks the Professor. ‘Where have they come from?’

The Finns shrug their shoulders. ‘Some come to build the road. Others come for other reasons, maybe.’

The Professor shakes his head, and turns to the others. ‘It wasn’t this busy last time,’ he says. ‘It was really quite peaceful.’

‘Do you think it will be like this everywhere?’ asks Morgan, who seems upset.

‘What about the authorities?’ the Professor wants to know. ‘Why does no one have this in hand?’

‘He is in the church,’ says Eino. ‘You have to hit him. you know, with your open hand. He wake up after two, maybe three times.’

On closer inspection the church proves to have been converted into a house. Though most of the mud walls have dissolved, the part where the altar once stood has been repaired, and the holes in the roof have been patched with woven straw. The rest of the perimeter has become a yard, with a hearth, numerous pots and a bicycle standing in one corner, its chain rusted into a solid lump.

‘Hello?’ calls the Professor through the doorway.

From inside comes the sound of coughing, and a disembodied English voice. ‘Piss off. Can’t you see I’m thinking?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Look, chum, is your name Johnnie Walker?’

‘No, sir, it’s Chapel. Professor Henry Chapel of Oxford University.’

‘Well, if it’s not Johnnie Walker I don’t bloody well want to talk to you. So piss off.’

There is a muffled thud – the sound of a heavy object falling to the floor! Then a groan. ‘Help!’ wails the voice plaintively. ‘Help me. I’ve gone and fallen out of bed.’

His name is Short and he’s the bloody government round here and every other thing besides and if they want to give him a hard time about it they might as well come outside and fight. In the yard, after a bucket of river water has been poured over his head, he is a sorry sight, his eyes milky and unfocused, his skin a battlefield of broken veins and insect bites. He is a young man, not much older than Jonathan, but whisky and fever have wrecked him completely. He looks at the circle of anthropologists and cracks a smile over a mouth of black and mossy teeth.

‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘You’re real. I thought I’d made you up.’

They help him back to bed and stand in conference in the yard. Short’s incapacity is a problem. As District Officer, he would be expected to help them find porters, and brief them about the latest situation in Fotseland. At the coast there was some conversation about an escort, perhaps even a detachment of WAFF or native police, yet Short shows no sign of understanding who they are, and seems incapable of feeding himself, let alone helping them with their expedition. Now Jonathan understands why the census job has fallen to him.

When they get back to the
Nelly,
they discover that someone has broken open one of their crates of provisions. The deck hands have seen nothing. Gregg orders a round-the-clock guard, and they spend the rest of the day arguing about what to do next.

As the sun sets, a high wailing voice calls over the camp. Some of the people gather for evening prayers, laying out mats on the baked earth and facing Mecca. Gittens, standing at the rail, looks at the wrecked church and makes a face.

‘Doesn’t look like the missionaries made much of a go of things here, does it?’

As the light fails, clouds of mosquitoes rise up off the water, and it becomes apparent who truly owns this district. Each English head is encircled by insects, like tiny Apaches around a wagon train. They settle on exposed arms and crawl into the openings of shorts and shirts, provoking a frenzy of slapping and ineffective applications of lemon-scented ointment. To escape, Jonathan trudges over to the church and sits in with Short, who is lying on his camp bed, mumbling. Intermittently he becomes coherent enough to hold a conversation, though it rarely makes much sense. ‘Do you know what?’ he says, over and over again. ‘I haven’t seen a white woman for two years. What do you think of that, Johnny?’

They spend two miserable weeks at ‘Short’s Landing’. The people follow them round everywhere, begging for food and money. When they first try to recruit porters they almost cause a riot, hundreds of men forming a scrum around the Finns’ good truck, which they are using as a sort of stage to speak from. Trapped on the rocking flatbed, Jonathan clings on to the frame and tries unsuccessfully not to panic.

Every evening the flies come, bringing an hour of hell to anyone not sitting close to a smoky fire. At night the Finns play orchestral music on a gramophone and take potshots at anyone straying too near the trucks. Despite their vigilance, women can already be seen wandering around with anklets made from twisted copper pair, their children with little copper charms tied to their wrists.

Sometimes Jonathan sits in with Short. During a brief interval of lucidity, he is able to make him understand that he is a scientist, headed for Fotseland. ‘Bad show up there,’ is all he says, and drifts back to Johnnie Walker and the fortunes of the Kent county cricket team, which are much on his mind. Though Short is clearly dying, being with him is restful, or at least better than the part of each night which Jonathan dreads most: when he is on watch. Alone on the deck of the
Nelly,
with the shoreline flickering with silent shuffling Africans, his personal landmarks vanish one by one. After a quarter of an hour he feels uncertain, after half an hour actively fragile. By the time his two-hour stint is over, his boundaries have dissolved altogether and he is lost, or perhaps not so much lost as dispersed through the darkness, his turning world bereft of still points, radically uncertain about who or where or why he is, or even whether he has the right to call himself a he at all. Once he enters this regress there is no turning back and whoever comes to relieve him invariably finds him wild-eyed and moaning, clutching his gun like a talisman. Naturally they are too polite to bring it up, but it is clear his companions think this is a matter for concern.

Finally someone manages to get a message to the local emir. Jonathan is half asleep in the church compound, listening to slurred fragments of pre-war batting averages, when a distant wail of trumpets announces the arrival of El Hajj Idris Abd’Allahi, who, though a slave of God, is hereditary ruler of all the plains to the north and east of the river, for as far as a man can ride in ten days.

The Emir’s party is impressive. Outriders swathed in indigo robes are followed by an escort of chainmail-clad guards who surround the Emir and his courtiers, resplendent in fetching white and gold. The Professor, who in the absence of Short is representing both himself and His Majesty’s Government, is ready with a feast. Once the greetings and introductions are complete, the anthropologists and the royal household share a meal of roast goat and British canned goods, the tinned peaches in syrup being a particular hit. Presents (more tinned peaches, a tea set and an umbrella) are made. Compliments are exchanged. It is well after midnight when the two sides finally settle down to business.

Despite the peaches, the Emir is in a contrary mood. No, he says, you do not want to go to Fotseland. Yes, insists the Professor, we do. You do not, says the Emir, vigorously backed up by his ministers. The Fotse are very dirty. They are infidels and their women are prostitutes. Nevertheless, affirms the Professor, we want to go to their country, and we will pay. Do not go, says the Emir. They are poor. There is a drought. Fotse women will give you inflammations of the skin and private parts, because their men lie down with livestock. Nevertheless, says the Professor…

Trade goods are useless. The Emir wishes to be paid in internationally negotiable currency. The sum the Professor suggests is unacceptable. Even doubled, it is unacceptable. Talks carry on through the night. The fire has burnt to embers and the grey light has started to pick out the shapes of sleeping men, when Gittens unwittingly breaks the deadlock by lighting a cigarette. The Emir indicates that Gittens’s silver cigarette case is pleasing to him. Be a sport, whimpers Gittens, it was a present from my mother. Nevertheless, says the Professor…

Once the cigarette case is securely in his possession, the Emir agrees that a man called Yusef, one of his headmen, will lead them to Fotseland. The Emir also consents to sell the party some camels at a cut rate, which means that Yusef will have to recruit only eighty or so porters. The Professor is provided with a valet, and a man who once worked for a European household in a neighbouring district is hired as head cook. Finally it is agreed that Yusef’s brothers will guard the caravan. At the end of the week, leaving the Finns sitting on their lorries, and Short propped up in bed with a hip flask and some cans of beans, the expedition is able to set off on the last leg of its journey, Professor Chapel swaying precariously on a camel in the midst of a straggling column of men.

Day by day the column advances up a newly laid gravel road, a startling white scar on the red land. The drivers pull at the reins of their bad-tempered camels, while porters balance the lighter loads on their heads, a line of sweating men carrying padlocked chop boxes, tents, the Professor’s precious deckchair. At night Jonathan goes to sleep to the sound of the porters singing round the fire. Their songs are mournful, filled with the heaviness of their burdens and the hardship of being away from home. When he wakes again the singers are walking about in the colourless pre-dawn light, kicking their animals and sullenly undertaking the business of striking camp. One morning a broken line is visible on the horizon. Every morning afterwards it is more distinct; the ragged ring of hills which marks the borders of Fotseland.