On the riverside of promise (2 page)

“Compliments of the house, Capitain. The
usual? Some ice, double fine scotch?”

Ethan smiled wryly and nodded while selecting
a song in the jukebox, his index finger searching for the correct
button to press. He pushed `Under my thumb’, and turned to reply to
Louis before setting off to settle in his usual bar stool, the bar
solely at his disposal at that hour:

“Very fine scotch.”

“Nothing but Scotland’s finest, Mr.
Whittmore.”

Ethan sat on the bar stool, his eyes staring
at the glasses and various bottles of liquor neatly arrayed and
featuring prominently in the shelves behind the bar. When he next
spoke, it was with a feeling of relief:

“I’d never thought I’d say this, but God
bless Nigeria.”

Louis had assumed his proper place behind the
bar when he picked up a bottle of one of his finest malts from a
cupboard below along with a short glass, and said grinning while he
poured:

“I’m from Guiana though.”

“Ah, and Scotch is from Scotland but it knows
no borders. Come on then, pour one yourself.”

The unusually tall, lank bartender complied
and picked up a shot glass which he filled promptly and raised to a
toast:

“To all the thirsty men.”

The Rolling Stones song had started playing
in the background. Ethan raised his own glass of scotch and made a
toast as well:

“To Mick Jagger and crew.”

They both gulped down their drinks in one go.
Ethan made a slight motion with one hand, indicating the cupboard
below.

Louis went through the motions of pouring
another glass of scotch and asked his regular customer for the past
year or so with his usual air of cool affection:

“How’s life treating you?”

Ethan’s tone was lighthearted, almost
flippant when he said:

“Not sure. Better than horseshit? I’m not
complaining though. Still ’ere, aren’t I?”

Louis laughed politely and nodded before
replying:

“Woe be me if something should happen to you.
Losing customers, I cannot afford that!”

“You’re not losing me soon enough. Keep the
scotch coming, and I’ll manage.”

Louis let the glass of scotch slide across
the wooden bar and looked Ethan straight in the eye, his face
almost a pale shade of dark under the dim candlelight surrounding
the bar:

“What news from your friends in high
places?”

Ethan shook his head and made a strange, sour
face for a moment. He brought the glass to his lips, sniffing the
aromas:

“Nothing yet. It’s not easy, you knew that.
Not to mention there’s money involved. But it’ll take time Louis.
Your visa isn’t exactly top priority.”

Louis shook his head in disappointment, and
started polishing a basket full of washed glasses. His eyes were
fixed to the task at hand when he replied to Ethan with a mixed
feeling of sadness and slight aggravation, his movements lacking
his usual crispness and finesse:

“You said by the end of the month,
Englishman. Said you knew the `ins and outs’, didn’t you? Who will
keep Insami and Wadu off my back, I wonder. Make it top priority,
can you?”

Ethan kept wearing the same smile that had
won him arguments on innumerable occasions, while he kept tapping
his fingers to the rhythm of the song playing from the jukebox.
After a short uncomfortable silence, he said to Louis:

“It must feel like a kick in the nuts, Louis,
but remember, I’m doing you a favor. Take a look around you.
There’s bigger trouble than those two thugs. There’s a war going
on. If they do pop up and act like a couple of tough guvs, I’ll
make sure they get one in the sack and lose a couple of teeth each.
No use worrying about it now.”

Louis looked a bit distraught, his eyes
somewhat dull from wariness. Ethan tried to change the subject:

“What do you have for me this time?
Auchentoshan? Glenfiddich?”

Louis became his professional self again; he
seemed to relax a bit, his tense mouth loosening into a tight
smile. He reached for a tall cupboard with a lock on the handles,
and used a small key that hung from a chain around his neck. He
opened the cupboard with small, graceful movements of his hands as
if opening a shrine. In it, a dozen bottles of Littlemill sat,
dusty and squat, seemingly with a quite authentic seal, cork and
all. At the sight of the bottles of scotch and the prospect of
savouring them at his leisure, Ethan’s face lit up and his blue
eyes seemed for a moment to sparkle. His voice couldn’t contain his
enthusiasm:

“Littlemill? Thirty-two years old, triple
distillation. Bugger me, oldest malt in Scotland. Let me see that
bottle.”

Louis complied even though anyone could tell
from his face he was quite puzzled. Ethan was usually interested in
the contents, not the labels.

“Here you go, Englishman.”

Ethan completely disregarded the bartender’s
effort at a light-hearted insult and studied the bottle’s labels
with focused interest. At length, he nodded appreciatively before
adding:

“From Ayrshire, too.”

Louis asked with real curiosity while opening
the bottle of Littlemill Ethan was still clutching like a
scepter:

“Is that the place for the best scotch?”

Ethan let go of the bottle and while Louis
put a single cube of ice in Ethan’s glass, he continued, his
expression emanating a scholarly aura:

“’Tis the ancestral birthplace of one of the
greatest Scots that ever lived. William Wallace.”

The name of the famous Scottish hero was
intoned with reverence and pride. It seemed to have no effect on
the Guinean bartender who casually asked:

“Who is he?”

Ethan blinked twice and was taken slightly
aback when the name rang no bell. He nevertheless straightened his
back and breathed deeply when he tried to explain to Louis.

“William Wallace fought the English for the
freedom of Scotland for over a dozen years. They killed his wife
and family and in the end he was betrayed. He gave his all, William
Wallace. Biggest set of stones ever.”

Louis looked at Ethan in puzzlement as he
uncorked the fine scotch, its smoky aroma wafting upwards, arousing
the senses. His question seemed to flatten Ethan’s face right at
the moment his nostrils had become so excited:

“But Scotland isn’t free. You serve the Queen
of England.”

“That’s not entirely true, I serve the Queen
of the United Kingdom.”

“But there’s no Queen of the Scots, is
there?”

“She’s also Queen of the Scots. And the
Welsh. And the Irish. Well, at least some of the Irish.”

“See, that’s not unlike the situation here in
Nigeria. The Igbo are like the Scots, they want to be free.
Shouldn’t they be free?”

“I don’t have a say in that. It’s not my job,
and it’s not my people. If they can, they will. And if you want to
know, my father might have been born in Glasgow but I grew up in
Kensington, so piss off with the Scots and all that. Pour, for the
love of God.”

Louis wore a mischievous grin and
retorted:

“You brought it up, Captain.”

Ethan was starting to get properly wound up
when the door bell rang and attracted his attention. He looked up
from his drink and saw Louis pointing with his long bony index
finger to a sturdy, tall and fit black man dressed in fatigues, the
beret of the Nigerian Marine Corps smartly adorning his head. The
man’s eyes peered vehemently through the haze and fog of the smoke
and dust that seemed to always twirl lazily in the
Metropolitaine.

The soldier’s gaze quickly settled on Ethan,
who was spinning around on his bar stool to look at the newcomer
directly. He cracked a smile and gave a mocking half-salute to the
burly man who - judging by his epaulets - appeared to be a brevet
Major. The man did not seem to share the same good humor and did
not salute, neither did he seem to enjoy smiles and levity a lot.
As he approached the bar, Ethan’s mood had swung again towards his
sweet side and he cheerfully made a gesture at the still open
cupboard full of Littlemill, greeting the man with a
proposition:

“James, this is a once in a lifetime chance
for a once in a lifetime experience. It’s Littlemill. It’s the
nectar of the Gods. It’ll be monumental James; getting plastered
with the finest scotch in the whole country, with little doubt. So,
what is the unhappy occassion of your visit here in uniform? Tell
me all about it so I can forget it with the help of Louis and
Littlemill. Is it remotely serious? Are the Biafrans hurtling
shells at Lagos? Can I go home now?”

The heavily set man had a quite intimidating
appearance. The capability of severely wounding a man armed with
nothing but his hands was the usual first impression. At odds with
his brutal image he had a strangely calm and serene demeanor, a
grim look on his face that implied his mind was occupied with grave
matters. He approached Ethan and taking off his beret he calmly
said:

“It’s your brother, Ethan. We have reports
their caravan was probably attacked today. Somewhere in the jungle
near the border. They never reached Owerri.”

Ethan’s smile evaporated. He suddenly looked
somber and withdrawn. The news were a mood-killer to say the least.
He looked at James with weary, stern eyes:

“Red Cross is supposed to have Army support.
Where was their support, James?”

James’ bulky shoulders shook with a
disarmingly vulnerable shrug. He embraced Ethan with a single arm
and told him in a friendly, casual manner:

“Let’s have a drink, Ethan. Let’s talk.”

* * *

Business in the Metropolitaine was now in
full swing. A small gang of sailors were celebrating one of their
mates birthday, following the custom of drinking till the botswain
comes looking for them. Louis kept a wary eye on a couple of
strange-looking figures, but other than that the orders kept coming
in and that made him a happy man.

Ethan was sitting opposite James at a small
round metal table in a corner near the bar, looking far from
jovial. What James had told him had suddenly turned this war into a
personal matter, something that every professional soldier tried to
avoid. A well-known but sadly overlooked factor in dying was doing
stupid things for all the wrong reasons, and making a war something
personal was both stupid and wrong.

James had fallen silent for a couple minutes,
sipping at his wine, a local plonk variety that barely passed the
mark. Ethan was down to his last couple of cigarettes,
chain-smoking ever since they had sat down to talk. At length,
Ethan broke the uncomfortable silence:

“I should have pulled some strings when he
told me he was going in with the Red Cross. Red tape, paperwork,
passport trouble. Surely someone you know in the Interior could
have been of some help. Maybe forced him to stay in Britain,
somehow. Don’t know, really.”

James motioned a definite `no’ with his head,
eyes closed shut. He then had another sip before answering:

“You know there are many ways to come to
Nigeria. If your brother wanted to come, he would have found his
own. There’s nothing you could have really done to prevent him from
coming here in the first place.”

Ethan drew heavily on his cigarette and
exhaled briskly. He spoke with some irritation:

“True enough, that. Maybe you could have
detained him when their caravan set off for Biafra? I could have
spoken some more sense into him. It doesn’t matter now, does
it?”

James was as calm as before, answering with a
flat and emotionless voice, trying to calm down Ethan as well:

“Not a Red Cross caravan. How would it look
in the papers if Nigeria blocked the Red Cross? It would look like
we want to let children die of dysentery and famine. No, we could
not have told your brother to just stay put. It was not my job, and
not yours either. It was his choice, his life.”

Ethan put out his cigarette, drank the rest
of his drink in one go and made a gesture with his empty glass to
Louis who seemed to notice almost immediately. Ethan then looked
straight into James’ eyes; a set of dark eyes accented by the small
bit of white that surrounded them. He tried to calm himself and
find the appropriate words:

“You are right about that… Maybe I should
have just whipped him good like when we were still ten years old.
But he’s a grown man, a doctor no less. He has his duties, his
obligations. Like I have my own. Though I still think it was a
stupid thing to do, at least he acted like the man he’s supposed to
be. He wanted to help, he signed up with the Red Cross. Never
really saw meself how lying down on the grass all day long, smoking
pot and fucking like rabbits could stop people from dying. Still, a
stupid move coming here.”

There was a pause. Louis was returning to
their table with Ethan’s refill of Littlemill and a clean ashtray.
Ethan nodded his thanks to Louis who in turn bowed slightly and
fleeted off to serve some other table. James had rested his arms on
their table, his frame too large to comfortably seat himself in the
Metropolitaine’s plain chairs. Ethan took a mouthful of Littlemill
and flinched when he felt the malt burn down his throat and into
his stomach. He then went on: