The Day of Creation (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) (11 page)

A few minutes later I heard a splash from the water beside the ferry. A freshly cut spear in her right hand. Noon swam across the river. Her left hand glided through the water, releasing the grains of partly boiled rice she had taken from the pot. She peered intently into the water, as if threading a needle with her toes. Then the thin spear, little more than a sharpened reed, flicked from her fingers.

With a hoot of pleasure she stood up, lifting an impaled fish into the sunlight. The water ran from her naked shoulders, but seeing me she sank quickly into the stream. She swam to the ferry and passed the small gudgeon up to me, then drifted away with a satisfied smile towards the
Salammbo’s
bows, where she had hung her clothes, the green vest and fatigue trousers cut off at the knees.

As soon as we finished the meal that Noon prepared, we set out on our journey up-river. The channel had risen a further foot during the night, and the current had lifted the ferry’s propeller from the beach. Once I cut away the overhanging branches we swung slowly into the centre of the stream. I hand-cranked the starter motor, soon aware that I had torn the tendons of my right elbow in my panic to escape from the police wharf. When the diesel began to turn, I waited for its cylinders to fire and then engaged the shaft. The prow of the
Salammbo
cut through the glassy surface, through which hundreds of fish changed course to accompany us. Trapped for so long in the meanders of the Kotto River, they had swum all the miles from Port-la-Nouvelle, as excited as I was by this new channel that had flowed into their lives. I was happy to see them, and glad that they had chosen to travel in the same direction.

The decks of the ferry were speckled with leaves and branches, a useful camouflage that began to peel away in the light breeze. Through the heavy thrumming of the engine I listened for Captain Kagwa and his helicopter. But he and his fierce machine, a metal fist clenched around its own anger, belonged to another sky. We had entered a maiden world, a realm that I had invented and which the child and I would continue to invent together.

15

Capped by crowns of mist, the green walls of the valley slid past us. During the following days the landscape had changed, and the rain-forest of the equatorial hills gave way to the flatter ground of the savanna. Some twenty miles from Port-la-Nouvelle the last of the great softwoods fell away behind us, and the banks were crowded with smaller trees, flowering shrubs, desert lavender and magnolia. The river was wider here, almost two hundred yards from one bank to the other. Sometimes it divided to embrace a narrow island, and then seemed to wander in long curves, as if aware that my own imagination had flagged. Frequently we were halted by floating barriers of sudd, a water plant like small polyanthus with long trailing roots that fouled the propeller.

Looking through the broken glass of the wheelhouse, I was constantly surprised by the richness of this riverine world. Long-dormant seeds that had lain in the desert for decades were now germinating. Revived by the cool flood that crossed the parched land, horse-tails and feather-palms dipped their leaves into the stream. Groves of green bamboo formed a gentle palisade through which I could see the dusty bush beyond. A quarter of a mile from the river lay the harsh white fields of the dying savanna, where rusting water-wheels leaned above dry irrigation ditches, and forgotten fences marked the boundaries of abandoned farms.

But along the Mallory a young life teemed. We had entered a riverside garden planted for the day of our arrival. Watching this pastoral scene through the spokes of the helm, I could almost believe that my own imagination was inventing the river as we moved along its course. Trumpet vines, winter-sweet and pretty nectaries decorated the banks. Thinking of the birds I had heard hooting in the forest behind us, I saw marsh rails and finfoots by the water’s edge. A yellow-throated wagtail sailed above our bow, halcyon bird guiding us to fairer weather. At one of the quiet beaches, a small gazelle drank from the stream. On the opposite bank a forest lynx, tired of roving the arid savanna, loped through the shallows, its pelt gleaming as it sparred with the fish. I reduced our speed, trying not to disturb these creatures with the wash of the
Salammbo
.

No longer needing to guide me, Noon lazed away the days in the warm sun, lounging in the driver’s seat of the limousine, and trying to work the dials on the dashboard. I was unable to find the keys to the Mercedes either in the car or the wheelhouse, but I wired the ignition so that Noon could amuse herself with the radio.

Soon bored by the news and propaganda from the government radio-station, broadcast in a language unknown to her, Noon rooted about in the chauffeur’s locker. There she discovered a parcel of educational cassettes which Kagwa had ordered, popular guides to political philosophy, colonial history and third-world resources. For Noon these cassettes became her guides in a basic English language course, the first tuition of any kind that she had received in her life. She moved to the front seat, befitting a pupil, and nodded gravely to the lecturer and his interlocutor while the fragments of dialogue were recited in the over-formal tones of the correspondence schools. Adept with the push-buttons, she punched the playback and fast forward controls, as if her fingers had become her surrogate vocal cords. In the pregnant pauses, Noon first whispered and then tried to repeat aloud the catch-phrases.

‘… tourism and bourgeois hegemony … the natural park as neo-colonialist folk-lore … African wild-life and the exploitation of racist stereotypes …’

Embarassed at being unable to get her tongue around these polysyllables, Noon turned up the speaker. Sounds of jargonized dialogue with a Marxist slant boomed across the water, and two small zebra drinking by the bank looked up at us in alarm. Delighted with this, Noon began to play the cassettes to the passing birds, informing the oystercatchers of the merits of solidarity and the rails of the hazards of exploitation.

Another reminder of the world we had left behind came on the seventh day – I had almost lost count, measuring our voyage in terms of the changing flora and fauna. We had entered a stretch of the river where the channel divided into the waterways of an internal delta. Huge sand-banks rose through the surface, and we moved across an almost abstract landscape of golden bars that emerged from the water like the limbs of a bathing giant. Noon sat in the prow, too proud to signal with her arms and muttering confused fragments of dialogue remembered from the cassette lessons.

‘For heaven’s sake, Noon.’ I cut the engine and called her to the wheelhouse. I gestured with my arms. ‘Let’s agree on this. Left equals “solidarity”. Right equals “exploitation”. Okay?’

Frowning fiercely, she returned to the bows. Hands deep in her trouser pockets, she planted her legs astride the anchor, now and then turning to bark at me:

‘…’ploitation! …’ploitation!’ then, in panic: ‘Doc Mal! – soderality!’

At last we emerged from this delta into the open channel, and Noon returned to her classroom in the Mercedes. I drove the throttle forward, increasing our speed to six knots. For a quarter of a mile we sped steadily between the submerged sand-bars. Then, when the deep water began to surge against the bows, I felt the deck rear upwards against my feet, as if the diesel had broken loose from the engine pit. A violent scraping ground the length of the keel, a ragged shudder that threatened to strip the plates from the hull. The wheel spun clockwise, knocking my hands from the spokes, and the vessel lurched to a stop, tilting to starboard. While I climbed to my feet on the sloping deck the ravenous scraping continued. Something had seized the ferry, trying to split the hull from bows to stern and devour the engine.

From the foaming wake beside the port rail a cascade of red-flecked spray leapt into the air. A huge spine, more than fifty feet long, rose from the water. Encrusted with weed and scale, it resembled the armoured back of an ancient saurian, feet planted on the river-bed, jaws gripping the ferry’s rudder.

The spray and foam subsided, and the ferry groaned into an upright position. Tipped from the passenger seat of the limousine, Noon sat on the deck among the scattered cassettes. I switched off the engine and stepped from the wheelhouse, watching our assailant subside into the water.

We had run into the steel gantry of an ore-conveyor, part of a mining excavator that had worked the now submerged quarry beneath us. I opened the starboard side of the after-peak, and removed the manhole door, exposing the propeller to view. The blades were undamaged, but a steel hawser that trailed from the gantry had wrapped itself around the shaft.

As Noon watched, intrigued by the Mercedes’ resources, I took the tyre levers and jack from the limousine’s tool-kit. From the rail I lowered myself on to the catwalk of the conveyor. I sat astride the box frame, trying to free the steel tentacle that tied the ferry to this underwater leviathan.

Noon swam near the bows, spear raised, casting rice on the cool stream.

‘Doc Mal …’

She dipped a finger into the water, and pointed downwards with a knowing smile, as if the snaring of the ferry had given her an idea.

‘What is it, Noon? I won’t take your bait.’

She feinted with the spear, and then ducked and dived beneath the water. I rested astride the gantry, watching the semaphore of Noon’s pale feet. A coquettish water-nymph, she was as smooth and agile as a seal puppy, a child-siren inviting a passing mariner down to her bower. I assumed that she wanted to impress me, to tempt me down into a realm where she, without doubt, would have the upper hand. But perhaps, too, she wanted to demonstrate that the river would no longer harm me, and that I was safe now within its depths, wrapped in the mantle of its dream. And given that I had created the Mallory, I could almost believe that I would not have drowned had I tried to follow Noon. Its waters flowed from my own bloodstream …

I watched her swim to the narrow beach on which she had laid out her clothes. Around my thighs the current was softer, and the pale green trees and flowering shrubs seemed to be holding their breath, as if involved in some secret complicity with Noon.

Covered with oil and flaking paint, I decided to rest before cutting away the last of the frayed cable. Standing on the conveyor, I took off my trousers and hung them from the stern rail, then dived into the water and swam the fifty feet to the beach.

A grove of wild myrtle ran down to the narrow strip of sandy clay. I rubbed the oil from my arms, breathing the thick scent of desert lavender. Fan-palms and slender saplings of bamboo formed a cool waterside garden, an arbour filled with succulents and passion-flowers. I walked through this charming glade, placing my bare feet between the aloes and armoured rosettes of century plants that sprang from the damp floor. Nourished by the river, a vivid new flora had emerged in the past months, a cool realm that extended a hundred yards into the parched savanna. Curious tubers and corms, scarlet drupes, and culinary and medicinal herbs grew in the pale light, and I saw the yellow tubes and flared mouths of fragrant datura, their alkaloids promising drowsy potions on which the river might dream. As I looked down at the hundreds of green shoots rising between the saplings I seemed to be witnessing the birth of the flowering plants, which had brought colour and scent to the sombre world of the ferns and cycads.

Through the trees I noticed Noon returning from her foraging expedition. Under her arm she carried the sticks and tinder which she had gathered from the desert’s edge. She paused to pluck a wild herb to add to the dish of rice and fish that she would prepare. She strolled between the flowering shrubs, her shoulders covered with the downy catkins and the tissue leaves of hibiscus, as if she too had just been born into this arbour. Her smooth limbs and pensive eyes had also sprung from the moistened earth. Seeing her, I was almost certain that I had thrown my spit on to the ground and created the river, which in turn had given life to this child.

She walked through the dappled glade towards the beach. Hearing my breath, she saw me among the spears of bamboo, standing naked with my paint-reddened arms and chest, the black streaks of oil like the display of a solitary forest male.

‘Doc Mal …’ She spoke distinctly, and then uttered a fetish word, as if she could place me at a safe distance by marking me with my name. But I saw that she accepted my nakedness.

Did I trust myself with Noon? Bathed in the scent of the flowers, I rested on the beach before returning to the propeller. The meagre diet – a shared bowl of rice morning and evening, with whatever fish Noon could catch – left me exhausted after the smallest effort but I was too exhilarated to eat properly, or to look after the chafed skin of my arms and face, already suffering from the effects of exposure. Spectres swam beneath the calm surface of the river, caravels freighted with a treasure that would ransom all the debts and memories of the unhappy years.

Trying to calm myself, I gazed at the placid stream. Anchored to the steel gantry of the conveyor, the
Salammbo
rocked gently on the current. Dreams of pagan powers moved across the surface of the Mallory. I tried to stand back from my obsession with the river, but already I was thinking of the irrigation of the entire Sahara, of the transformation of the desert into the Edenic paradise that I saw around me in these green glades and sensed in its sweet airs. A new race would spring from Noon and myself as we lived peaceably in these forest bowers. It was time for a naming of new things, of new hours and new days. I would christen this quiet beach, bathed in the baptismal waters of the Mallory … Port Noon.

Through this sun-filled reverie I saw her standing at the starboard rail, waving to me fiercely with both fists. When I failed to stir she leapt into the limousine and switched on the cassette player.

‘… neo-colonialist folk-lore …’

The fragments of amplified dialogue boomed along the shore, then stopped abruptly. Noon returned to the rail, fingers to her scarred mouth as she grimaced at the southern sky. An ugly shadow had crossed the water and was now speeding towards the ferry. I heard the shriek of an approaching engine, and saw Captain Kagwa’s helicopter loom out of the air above our heads. Two yellow pontoons were attached to its undercarriage like huge poison sacs. It scrambled across the cool light, a malevolent creature emerging from a more primitive sky.