A Distant Shore (16 page)

“Mama?” Gabriel speaks quietly, as though not wishing to rouse her from an afternoon nap. “Mama, are you all right?”

She says nothing in return, and so he bends down to touch her.

“Mama?”

“I have not had my blood in many months.”

He hears her voice, but she does not turn around to face him. He reaches down and pulls back her shoulder in order that he might look into her eyes, but there is no face. It is as if somebody has taken a piece of cloth and rubbed out her features. Gabriel jumps back in alarm, and then he opens his eyes and sees one of his travelling companions looking down at him.

“Gabriel, are you all right?”

Gabriel says nothing, and he simply stares at Bright.

“Gabriel, you were screaming. My brother, you are covered in sweat.”

Gabriel realises where he is. Beyond this man, and beyond the people who lie idly on their cots, he can see daylight through the open flaps of the tent. It is morning. Gabriel sits upright and wipes his damp brow with the sleeve of his jacket, and then he gestures to the empty cots.

“Where is everybody?”

“They have gone back to Paris to try to find Joshua.”

Gabriel looks to the cot where Amma used to lie. Bright reads his mind, and he speaks before Gabriel has time to frame the question.

“Yes, the woman too. She seemed sad to leave you. I think she wanted to wake you to say goodbye, but you were sleeping very heavily.”

Gabriel is disappointed with Amma, but there is little point in his letting Bright know this. Gabriel sits upright and looks around, and then Bright laughs, a loud, almost hysterical laugh, and he slaps Gabriel on the back.

“Come, let us get some food before these people eat it all.”

Gabriel follows Bright out of the tent. His friend is heavily built, but without being fat, and Gabriel guesses him to be in his mid-twenties. During the journey he has said very little to Gabriel, but even in the most difficult of times he has noticed a quiet determination about this man, Bright. They line up to collect their metal plate of rice and vegetables, and their hunk of bread, and then they both squat in the sunshine and eat. The ground is too muddy for them to sit, but it is too depressing to go back inside the tent. Bright eats quickly, as though unconcerned by what he is shovelling into his mouth, and when he finishes the food he tosses the plate to the ground and then turns to Gabriel.

“I think we should try to reach England tonight. I have been speaking to one of those men.” Bright gestures towards an unusually tall Chinese man in a red woollen hat who, judging by the manner in which he pulls his thin jacket around him, appears to be suffering badly with a cold. Suddenly this man bends almost double, and begins to cough loudly into his chapped hands.

“He told me that we can smuggle ourselves onto a boat. It is better than the trains, for everybody is trying the trains. The boats are unprotected most of the time.”

“Bright, you are sure about this?”

“The Chinese man told me that for those with no money, the only way into England is the boats. If we do not try, then we are defeated.” Bright pauses. “This man says that he is coming with us.” Again Bright pauses and he looks directly at Gabriel. “It is either this or Paris. But I am an Englishman. Only the white man respects us, for we do not respect ourselves. If you cut my heart open you will find it stamped with the word ‘England.’ I speak the language, therefore I am going to England to claim my house and my stipend.” For a moment Bright falls silent, and then again he begins to speak. “My brother, this is difficult to talk about, so I will just say it once and then we can forget it. In our country they put me in prison and did terrible things to me to try to make me talk. If it was not for a cousin who brought me money so I could pay the guards and eat, I would not be here. I got dysentery from the one chamber pot that fifty of us were forced to share. I got lice from the damp mattress on the floor. The half-cooked rice in palm oil soothed my pain, but it made me very sick. I know we have all been afflicted, but I, this man, cannot go back ever. I hate it. I want to forget Africa and those people. I am an Englishman now. I am English and nobody will stop me from going home. Not you, not these people, nobody.”

Gabriel smells the sea, but he says nothing. The three of them continue to edge their way down the dark road, until they are greeted with a bank of floodlights which reveal a bustling scene of trucks and people, all of whom are bathed in the dazzling pool of bright fluorescent light. The Chinese man points to the bulk of a huge ship and then he speaks to Bright in a whisper, all the while glancing towards the vessel. Bright listens and then turns to Gabriel.

“He says that we are to move quickly through the trucks till we get close to the ship. Then we run to the ropes that secure the ship to the harbour, take them in our hands and drop over the side. There is a ledge on the side of the ship that we put our feet on, and we must hold on to the ship.”

Gabriel seems unconvinced.

“When do we do this?”

“Now.”

The Chinese man is not listening. He looks intently all about himself, and then suddenly his red hat is moving quickly through the trucks. Bright notices that they have been abandoned and he is quick to follow. Gabriel chases after his younger friend, and the two men scamper quickly in an effort not to lose sight of the Chinese man. They hide behind the truck that is closest to the ship, and all three of them wait until they have caught their breath. Then the Chinese man points first to himself, then to Bright, and then to Gabriel so that it is clear that they are to move off in this order. Without waiting to see if his instructions have registered, the man dashes to the side of the ship and swings himself off the quayside and down into the narrow gap between the sea wall and the vessel. Gabriel and Bright look at each other, but neither says anything. Bright glances all around and then scurries off. Gabriel watches as Bright grabs a rope and then disappears over the quayside. And now Gabriel runs out, his heart pounding, and he too grabs the rope and lowers himself until he can feel the ledge beneath his feet. He releases the rope and grabs holds of a metal chain, and he follows Bright and the Chinese man, who are edging their way towards the front of the ship. Once there they edge along the far side of the ship where nobody can see them. And then they stop and wait. Gabriel looks down and can see that there is nothing between this thin ledge and the sea below, and he clings tightly to the metal chain. Occasionally he glances at Bright, but Bright’s eyes are tightly shut and he will not meet his friend’s gaze.

Eventually, the hooter on the ship sounds a half-dozen shrill blasts and the ship begins, almost imperceptibly, to move off and into the open water. As she does so, Gabriel can feel the greasy swell lazily swinging the ship up, and then letting her down again as though having changed its mind. Gabriel notices that a terrified Bright has opened his eyes, but, as though sensing danger, he quickly shuts them again. As the ship moves out into the sea, and her movements become more energetic, water begins to spray up and over Gabriel so that he is instantly sodden, and it is now Gabriel’s turn to close his eyes. As the ship moves forward, Gabriel can feel it hitting a tall ridge of water and then plunging down the far side of the ridge and into a trough, and for a moment he is totally submerged. Soon Gabriel can no longer feel his hands, but he fights with a soldier’s concentration to keep his mind alert.

Gabriel hears the ship’s engines falling quiet, and he notices that the lurching of the ship is becoming less violent. He hears people shouting to each other, and then the shouting becomes increasingly urgent. For a moment Gabriel wonders if this is the afterworld, and then he realises that it is his own name that is being shouted out. He opens his eyes. The ship is approaching a coastline that looks like a long, thin black shadow decorated with speckles of white light, and Gabriel blinks repeatedly, for the sea water is burning his eyes. He can see that Bright is gesturing wildly to him, but there is no sign of the other man. Bright now clings onto the metal chain with just one hand, and with the other hand he is pointing to the black water. “Jump!” Before Gabriel has a chance to reply, Bright leaps down into the water and Gabriel jumps after him. As he hits the water Gabriel feels his leg snap back, as though it has struck something hard. The pain shoots through him like a bullet, and Gabriel opens his mouth to cry out in pain, but water rushes in. Bright is already swimming towards the shore, and Gabriel begins to flail after him although it causes him intense pain to do so. Gabriel decides to turn on his side, and he trails the leg behind him as though it were a semi-discarded article of clothing. As he thrashes his way towards the lights, the cinema of his mind fades to black and then it is suddenly flooded with disturbing, yet familiar, images.

We were the smaller tribe. We worked hard and we did not harm anybody. We tried to do what was best for ourselves, and what was good for our young country. We wanted only to live in peace with our brothers, but it became clear that this was not possible. My father told me they were jealous of us, for our people ran many businesses; not just in the capital city, but in our tribal land to the south. We formed the backbone of the economy, and therefore we had much influence. It was only after one of our people was elected to the presidency that the real trouble began; the killings. The army rebelled, and the government troops spilled out from their barracks and cruised the streets in vehicles with machine guns pointing out of the windows. They began to drink and kill, and kill and drink, and soon my terrified father had little choice but to take me to one side.

“You are my eldest child. My only son.” My father looked directly at me as he spoke, but on his breath I could smell wine. Father did not know how to cope with this new situation, and there were portions of his cheek that he had forgotten to shave. “My son, these people are roaming the streets in aimless packs like disturbed hounds. This morning I saw with my own eyes as they took a woman, wrapped her in a blanket, poured kerosene on her and watched her burn alive. Out on the beach, beside the piles of rotting garbage, I saw this with my own eyes.”

I stared at my father who began now to shake his head.

“Power has not gone to the heads of these soldiers, it has gone to their bellies. They are fat and fleshy. They do not know how to fight, only how to kill. You must go to the south and join our people there. Soon they will kill our president and their army will take charge. I feel this in my blood. Our one hope will be you men in the south.” He paused. “You must go now. You are my only son and it is my duty to send you to the liberation army. You will be trained to become a soldier, and the day will soon come when you will march triumphantly into the capital with your head held high. On this day I will throw petals at your feet, and strangers will rush to you and embrace you with tears of gratitude in their eyes. Your mother and your two sisters will weep with joy, for it is this day that we are all dreaming of. It is this day that we are waiting for.”

I was twenty-nine years old when my poor father said these words to me. The next morning, before dawn, I clambered up and onto the back of a truck with four other “recruits.” My occupation was that of messenger clerk, and before this I had worked for many years at a hardware store. I was not prepared for the life of a soldier. My job as a messenger clerk was to run errands for civil servants and ministers in the government; I worked for the type of men who drove large foreign cars and who travelled freely to Europe and even to the United States. I would take them an envelope, or a pot of soup, or a new cell phone, or whatever it was that I was told to take to them, and I would wait in case they had something that they wished me to take away for them. In this way I hoped to gain influence and to one day secure for myself a position as a junior civil servant. This is how the system worked in my country. One had to be patient, but some days it was very difficult for I was no longer a young man.

Every day I would go into the ten-storey government headquarters, and up the urine-stained steps, for we were not permitted to use the elevator. I would climb through the miasma of piss, and up the unfortunate stairwell where rats played in the corners, and then enter into the brightness of the neon-lit outer offices that were crammed with secretaries and typists, girls who spent their money on hot combs to make their stubborn hair smooth, and who wasted hours using skin-bleaching creams in the hope that they might render themselves more attractive to the men who promised these over-scented women a cosmetics shop of their own, or a half-dozen sewing machines, in exchange for their agreeing to lie back clumsily like upturned buses. I knew the names of some of these women, but such women would never be seen with me. They were goods in a shop, but I had no money. These fat men with greasy skin, who sweated underneath their tight western suits, they had already made a down payment on ruby-lipped Madonna, or fat Baby, or Pleasure with her blonde wig. These women did not consider me to be a man. A messenger clerk is not a man: I was a thing to be tolerated, a creature in a T-shirt and torn pants who was not much better than the cockroaches that skittered noisily across the floor. What did I know of Johnnie Walker Black Label? If the minister or civil servant had nothing for me to take back down the rotten stairwell, then one of these women would dismiss me with a flourish of her red nails and I would once more join the other clerks who squatted in the street rolling dice or playing cards, and I would sit and read until there was another message to be delivered. And then one night my father spoke to me, and in the morning he took me to a truck with no side mirrors, and with no indicators or windscreen wipers. Everything that could be peeled or ripped off from the truck had been taken, and he shook hands with me and reminded me that I was going south to become a soldier and wage war for my people. He pushed a crumpled pack of cigarettes into my hand. He knew that I did not smoke, but he told me that I might be able to use the cigarettes as currency with which to bribe somebody and perhaps smooth my path for what lay ahead. There are, he reminded me, men who value tobacco more than bread.