To Asmara (27 page)

While we waited, pot-bellied and shaven-headed children in dust-laden gowns straggled past us on their way to school in some cave. Their transience was just about palpable—you could taste it on the tongue, in this high, dry country, where a delay in rain or an upgrading of an Ethiopian offensive could cancel them. It was nearly beyond bearing to think of them learning their math in holes in the earth or behind the negligible walls of scrub shelters—7/8 > 3/4, True or False? Training in a pocket of dust for the computer age.
This is the goat of Osman
changed through their schooling to
This is Osman's goat
. Language for a future of commerce with the West, the hard and fast curriculum of the Eritreans! Even the children with the swollen and misshapen skulls, even those who could not credibly expect to see twenty, even those whom one delay of rain or one small enteric fever could be expected to do for, even they were made to sit in class.

We watched the two village teachers, each with his assault rifle and his belt of grenades, boys of eighteen or twenty, saunter along chattering.

It was cool, as everyone kept saying again and again.

Moka returned. He had a berserk grin scarcely under control. He may even have forgotten the divine little chatterer.

“He is here,” he told us, looked away and smiled. “He is asleep.” He began to laugh. “He cannot escape!”

I watched Christine stand up. There was no hint of expectation or fear on her face. She settled her body firmly on her feet. Moka led and we all followed across bare ground. It was sown with tarnished machine gun cartridges and with shell craters from the Silent Offensive, which can't have been too silent.

I'd only think afterward how curious it was, the way Lady Julia and Henry and myself felt entitled to trail along behind Christine now, to share in the intimacies and the dangers of the reunion.

Moka led us to a hut, half of which was of wattle panels plastered with mud, the other half of latticework. Since there were no mountainsides here to bury dwellings in, a whole range of alternative, plateau kinds of camouflage existed.

Through the latticework we saw two figures on the dirt floor, both of them entirely shrouded in those white cloaks which soldiers of the EPLF wore. Around the human shapes lay a number of notebooks neatly fastened up with elastic bands, and what even a layman could tell were video cameras, sound gear, video film cartridges, all zippered up in dusty but fashionable waterproof bags of their own.

There was a noise of snoring from one of the shapes. For some reason it caused Christine to turn to Lady Julia and smile delightedly.

Moka whispered, “I know Masihi. He will wish to be awakened.”

Moka brushed through the burlap door curtain and into the crude verandah-room where the two sheeted figures lay. One of them roused at once, swatting the white cloak away from his face. But it wasn't Roland Malmédy the cameraman, I could see. It was his Eritrean assistant, a thin boy so exhausted still that his flesh did not seem brown but blue.

I saw Moka hold a whispered conversation with him and then, instead of waking the second man, creeping back out to us. “It
is
,” he whispered. “It is Masihi. It is your father, Miss Malmédy.”

He seemed to acquire a certain authority by this brief visit to Christine. Now he returned to the remaining shrouded shape, bent down, and began jiggling the white cloak round about where the cameraman's face should have been. Staring unabashedly in through the lattice while the sleeper fought the cloth away from his face, I watched the emerging features. They seemed blurred by tiredness, by the upside-down business of filming a night war by day. The broad face growled. Perhaps still unaware of what it was doing, the body sat up. Its eyes stared without focus at the four European faces gazing in upon it, all of them utter strangers yet all of them seeming to be exercising rights of familiarity.

Masihi was wearing a brown sweat- and dust-stained shirt. He reached for a swath of orange cloth lying beside him on his blanket and, like a statement and a defence, began to wind it round his head until it was a turban.

“Ciao
, Monsieur Masihi!” sang Moka.

“Ciao,”
muttered Masihi, unreconciled. “What in the hell …?”

“We have your daughter here,” Moka told him.

“Daughter?” asked Masihi. The brown eyes opened enormously in the handsome face. His whites, too, were stained with malaria.

Only later would I reflect on the stunning impact of this particular awakening on Roland Malmédy. In a place like this, how safe—beyond ever having to think about it—he must have felt from the business and the intrusions of family. High on the Hallal Front, in a demi-village marked by the rubbish of war, lost children from another place could be depended on not to materialize.

The shock of Moka's announcement made him stand. He wore loose khaki trousers, his feet were bare. The standard pair of scuffed plastic sandals waited for him in the corner. All of us at the lattice expected him to reach for them. We would have reached for
our
shoes even under the attack of MIGs, because we knew how dangerous the earth of Africa was, how bestrewn with thorns and scalding stones—not a terrain for the unschooled heel.

Masihi, however, who in the past eleven years had learned to walk on this earth of scorpions, came forward through the open door.
“Poupi?”
he asked.

Christine stepped forward, drawn by the pet name and tripping on a stone.
“C'est moi,”
she said. The word and the voice, barely louder than the breeze, seemed to come direct from old French melodrama.

“Mama mia!”
said Masihi. He considered his daughter with a crooked, apologetic smile. “It is you.”

She grinned at the ground. “Oh yes,” she said, and it sounded both a piteous and relentless sentiment.

“Oh God,” said Masihi, his eyes darting.
“Excuse-moi, j'ai besoin de pisser. Ton père légendaire, Poupi, en fait il est comme tout le monde. Un instant!”

And the man we'd all pined to see disappeared around the edge of the bunker, looking for a crater in which to relieve himself. Christine pursed her lips and stared after him. She did not believe his need was as pressing as that, and neither did I.

Just the same, we all seemed to realize at once that we were intruding on this remarkable reunion, that we could be the element which was making it ridiculous. We would have liked to have remained there and stared, but we understood that it would have been somehow improper.

Lady Julia murmured, “I should leave you to it, Christine. Be firm with him …” She walked away toward the hut Moka had pointed out as hers.

But I was determined not to be led off to the bunker Henry and I were assigned to share. I found myself suddenly declaring, swearing in a mumble that I, too, had a full bladder. I ducked behind the cameraman's dry stone shack. I wanted to make sure he did not escape or try to evade the girl.

Up to his knees in a crater, Masihi was pissing reflectively on earth that was all grit, goat droppings, cartridge cases. Hearing me, he looked sharply over his shoulder but showed no recognition. I didn't speak until he'd finished and had buttoned so slowly that you got the impression that his plea of nature was a mere delaying tactic.

He turned and nodded at me cursorily in a way which said,
What in the hell are you doing here when you have the whole of Eritrea to choose from
?

“You mightn't remember me,” I said unnecessarily. “My name's Tim Darcy, and I met you at Stella Harries' place in Khartoum. You showed us footage of the famine and of the battle of Mersa Teklai.”

“Oh yes,” said Masihi, being polite and clearly not remembering me. “You didn't bring in any brandy, did you?”

“Sorry. The Sudanese aren't big on brandy.”

“Oh, well.
Sewa
's nice. I made my bed …”

He still had trouble working out why strangers were following him around this morning. He didn't know the power of his pale daughter to draw the rest of us in.

“Is that really my daughter?” he asked.

“Her passport indicates she is,” I told him.

“Ah! I must have a look at her passport.”

“It's back in Port Sudan, I'm sorry.”

Masihi reflectively felt his stomach through the ragged brown cloth of his shirt. “But you saw it?” he asked.

I must have laughed at that, reprovingly, as if I suspected him of trying to avoid all claims of parenthood.

“Consider this!” he said. “I am aware of the cult of personality in the West. Who isn't? Would it be possible that some impressionable kid saw one of my films in one of the unfashionable places they're shown in Europe and
decided
to come and claim me as a father? Is that possible?”

I actually felt anger. He was wriggling to avoid what we'd all traveled so far to establish.

“You ought to accept it with grace. The girl's your daughter. Who'd have a motive to do the sort of thing you describe?”

After all, you're not Robert Redford, I wanted to tell him.

He laughed, but was still willing to argue. “Oh, motives are everywhere. Who would have thought anyone could have a motive to perish for such a plateau as this?”

I was merciless. “This is definitely your daughter,” I told him with a smile.

He made a face. “How is Stella?”

“She's in England.”

“Ah, England,” said Masihi with a Gallic grin, as if an English return were forgivable in Stella's case. “That scrawny man? He is not my daughter's lover, is he?”

It was an extraordinary question, but of course he was still sorting us out.

“She doesn't have one.” Though I did remember the story Henry claimed to have been told on the roof in Port Sudan. “Certainly not at the moment, anyhow.”

He reflected and then let out his breath so that his shoulders collapsed. “So she's my daughter, that thin little girl?”

“Seems so.”

“The accent's right, my friend Darcy. There's a family resemblance. She's like her mother. And like a grandmother of mine—a thin, miserable old bitch.”

I could imagine Christine in those terms if she suffered a lifetime's thwarting. I began to laugh and he misinterpreted it.

“I know I must seem a comic person. I mean, it is hard to imagine that many French girls would forge a passport and an identity just to chase me to the Hallal Front and yell
Papa
!”

“It's a bit farfetched,” I confessed.

Now he walked energetically toward me, studied my face and frowned. “I suppose I'll have to go and see little
Poupi
. But what in God's name will we talk about?” He laughed helplessly and musically, with the charm I remembered. “I feel ashamed, let me tell you. To be caught out here. There's a rumor they'll use nerve gas. And my child arrives at such a time, in such a place?” Under his turban, he raised one eyebrow. A music-hall Frenchman couldn't have done better. “I'm a little tired, I suppose. But I suppose I must see what I can do to renovate my fatherhood. You'll excuse me …”

He moved back in the direction of the place where Moka and the girl were waiting. Then, struck by a thought, he turned around to me again. “By the way, what sort of traveling companion is she?”

“Quiet,” I told him. “Not a natural tourist. But she never complains. She has a generous streak, too.” I was thinking of the Malinta cola she'd bought for the cripples and amputees in Port Sudan. “She's a strange kid, but she's not malicious.”

“Strange?”

“Detached. And she never complains. That's strange in someone as young as that.”

“Her mother was like that. Uncomplaining. But you couldn't tell whether it was courage or a certain dumbness.” He devoted a few seconds' thought to his remote marriage.

“That Englishwoman,” I said. “She and Christine seem to get on well. She trusts other women.”

He laughed. “She's learned so much already then?” he rumbled. “Poor little
Poupi
. And please forgive me, but perhaps I
do
need some sort of briefing. Did she say why she came looking for me now of all times? It is, after all, springtime in Europe.”

“Something happened to her,” I said. “Nothing massive—not an accident or trouble with the police. Some emotional business. But I don't know what it is. A boyfriend maybe.”

“Motherhood?” asked Masihi, arching his eyebrows.

“I just don't know, Roland.”

He lowered his voice. “Her mother is a frightful woman. Maybe I made her so. I married her too young. It was my stupid idea as well. A sullen beauty, and I went for that then. I should have seen the signs. She loved modernist furniture, the stuff you can't sit in, as if she'd discovered it herself!”

The irony was, I thought, that Masihi had now found a nation without furniture.

“Don't you think it's a cruel business?” he asked. “Here am I, all at once again the father of the child, asking a stranger for hints.”

“Well, you've been very busy,” I conceded.

“That does not seem an excuse. Thank you, Mr. Darcy, for the guidance.”

He finally left me standing by the crater. From the far side of the bunker I could hear Masihi's voice, falsely hearty, and then Moka's running away into laughter, and then Christine's level and relentless speech. I admit that I still felt a proprietary right in this reunion, but the bunker or hut or whatever it was blocked my view. “But I can use sound equipment,” I heard Christine say. “Good, good,” yelled Masihi with creaky jollity, warding off his strange child.

I began to move toward the guest bunker, to which Henry and Lady Julia had very decently gone earlier. Lady Julia was still sitting on its highest step, as if surveying the scenery, the continuing wafts of detonation and dust from the front.

I was going to speak to her about my fears for Christine, the almost certain disappointments of this reunion. But I heard a noise behind me and, looking over my shoulder, was astounded to see, as the cameraman gestured and no doubt raised his eyebrows beneath his turban, the girl laughing in a full-throated way I'd never seen in her before. She showed no sign of the illness which had taken all her attention for days past. The sight of her parent, this abashed and uneasy hero, had achieved that much.