' If I did not know you so well, said Comrade Minister Franklin, and he was actually nervously looking around to see if anyone had heard this dangerous talk, Id say you were in the pay of South Africa. That you are an agent for our great neighbour.'
' Okay, said Comrade Mo. ' Don't call the thought police yet. ' Journalists had been arrested and jailed for wrong opinions, only a few days ago. I am among friends. I spoke my thoughts. I am saying what I think. That is all. '
A silence. Geoffrey was looking at his watch. Obediently Daniel looked at him. Various people were getting up, not looking at Comrade Mo, who sat on, partly out of stubbornness, partly because he was going to have trouble walking straight.
' Perhaps we could have a discussion on this subject?' he said to Franklin. He spoke easily, intimately: after all, had they not known each other for years, and discussed Africa noisily, but amicably whenever they met?
'No,' said Comrade Franklin. 'No, Comrade, I don't think I shall be saying any more on this subject.' He got up. A couple of until now silent black men at a near table got up too, revealing themselves as his aides or guards. He gave the clenched fist salute, shoulder level, to Geoffrey and to Daniel, and to various other representatives of international generosity, and went out, with a heavy on either side of him.
I am going to bed, said Andrew. Im getting up early tomorrow. '
I think Comrade Franklin may have forgotten that he has promised us seats for tomorrow's celebration, said Geoffrey sulkily. He meant this as a rebuke to Comrade Mo.
Ill see to it, said Comrade Mo. ' Just give my name. I'll reserve you seats on the VIP stand. '
But I want a seat too, said MP James.
Oh, don't worry, said Comrade Mo, waving his hands about, as if they dispensed largesse, invitations, tickets. ' Don't lose any sleep. You'll get in, you'll see. ' His moment of truth was past, defeated by the demon, peer pressure.
On that morning when Andrew was expected there was trouble at the hospital. When Sylvia walked down through the again dusty shrubs she saw chickens lying gasping, their beaks wide open, and this time it was not their defence against the heat. No water in their drinking tins. No food in their trough. She found Joshua standing swaying, a knife in his hand, over a young woman who was crouching terrified, both hands held up to ward him off. He stank of dagga. He looked as if he intended to murder the woman, who had a swollen arm. Sylvia took the knife from him and said, I told you that if you smoked dagga again then that would be the end. This is the end, Joshua. Do you understand?' His angry face and reddened eyes, his powerful threatening body, loomed over her. She said, 'And the chickens are dying. They have no water.' 'That is Rebecca's work.'
'You agreed between you that you would do it.'
'She must do it.'
'Now, leave. Go.'
He stalked off to a tree about twenty yards away, subsided under it, and sat, his face on his arms. Almost at once he fell over, asleep or unconscious. His little boy, Clever, was watching. He had taken to hanging around, anxious to do any little job given him. Now Sylvia said, ' Clever, will you feed the chickens and give them water?' 'Yes, Doctor Sylvia. ' 'Now watch me while I show you how. ' 'I know how to do it. ' She watched while he fetched water, filled the tins, threw grain down. The chickens hustled to the water tins, and drank and drank but one hen was too far gone. She told him to take it up to Rebecca.
Andrew had trouble getting the kind of car he was used to from the car hire firm. They were all old and scary. 'Is that all you've got?' He knew that any new cars being imported went straight to the new elite, but on the other hand, tourists were being beckoned in. He said to the young black woman behind the desk, You've got to get better cars than these if you want to attract tourists. ' Her face told him she agreed with him, but he wasn't going to criticise her superiors. He took a battered Volvo, asked if there was a spare tyre, was told there was, but it wasn't very good, and, since time was running by, he decided to risk it. He had detailed instructions from Sylvia on the lines of, Get on to the Koodoo Dam road, go through the Black Ox Pass, then when you see a big village, take the dirt road that bends to the right, go on about five miles, turn right at the big baobab, drive ten miles, you'll see the signpost for St Luke's Mission on the same signpost as Pyne's Farm.
He found the country impressive in a grand but hostile way, so dry, and the dust lying in the air, though he knew there had been rains recently. He had visited Zimlia many times, but had never had to find any place for himself.He lost his way, but at last was driving past the Pynes'signpost when he saw on the road in front a tall white man waving his arms. Andrew stopped, and this man said, 'I'm Cedric Pyne. Could you take this stuff to the Mission? We heard you were on your way.' A big sack was thrown into the back, and the farmer went sloping off, back to the house some hundreds of yards away. Andrew deduced that he, or someone, had been keeping an eye out for the dust of the car. He was still waiting to see the Mission, when he saw a low brick house, with gum trees around it, and beyond it the flat low buildings, like barracks, which he knew was a school. He parked. A smiling black woman came out on the verandah and said that Father McGuire was at the school and that Doctor Sylvia was coming just-now.
He followed her on to the verandah and into the front room where he was invited to sit.
Andrew's experience had been with the Africa of presidents and governments, officials, and attractive hotels, but he had not ever descended to the Africa he was seeing now. This wretched little room offended him, and precisely because it was a challenge. When he talked Global Money, dispensed Global Money, was a fount of ever-unfailing largesse, this was what it was all about -wasn't it? But this was a mission, for God's sake! This was the Roman Catholic Church, wasn't it? Weren't they supposed to be rich? There was a rent in the cretonne curtain which was attempting to exclude the glare from a sun that had only just climbed high enough not to strike it direct. Tiny black ants crawled over the floor. The black woman brought him a glass of orange juice. Warm. No ice?
The kitchen where the black woman was, opened to his right. Another door, standing ajar, was on his left. On the door a dressing-gown hung from a nail: he knew it was Sylvia's, he remembered it. He went into the room. The bare red brick floor, the brick walls, the gleaming pale reed ceiling which now was to Sylvia like a second skin, seemed to him offensively meagre. So small, this room was, so bare. On the little chest of drawers were photographs, in silver frames. There was Julia, and there, Frances.
And one of him, aged about twenty-five, debonair, whimsical, smiling straight back at him. It hurt, his younger self he turned away, unconsciously passing his hands down over his face, as if to restore that confident unmarked face, that innocent face. He thought, mocking the surroundings, so inimical to him that little crucifix that he had not then eaten of the fruit of good and evil. He stared conscientiously at the crucifix, which defined a Sylvia he did not know at all, trying to accept it, accept her. Her clothes were hanging on nails on the walls. Her shoes, mostly sandals, stood along a wall. He turned and saw the Leonardo on the wall. The other pictures of Virgins and infants he ignored. Well, there was one decent thing in the room.
Now he heard that someone approached, and went to the window that opened on to the verandah, and watched Sylvia coming up the path. She wore jeans, a loose top similar to the one he had seen on the black servant, and her hair was bleached by the sun, and tied back with an elastic band. Between her eyes was a deep frowning furrow. She was burned by the sun a dry dark brown. She was as thin as he remembered ever seeing her. He went out, she saw him, rushed to him, and there was a long embrace full of love and memories.
He wanted to see the hospital: she was reluctant, knowing he would not understand what he saw: how could he, when it had taken her long enough? But they walked together down the path, and she showed him the shed she called the dispensary, the various shelters and the big hut which it seemed she was proud of. Some black people lay about on mats, under trees. A couple of men came from the bush, lifted a woman he had thought was sleeping on to a litter made of branches, the fronds of leaves tied down over it for softness, and went off with her into the trees. 'Dead,' said Sylvia. 'Childbirth. But she was ill. I know it was AIDS.' He did not know how she wanted him to respond if she expected a response. She sounded what? Angry? Stoical?
Back at the house, they found Father McGuire had come. Andrew disliked him and began talking, as was his way with difficult situations. He spent most of his life in committees or congresses or conferences, always presiding, and in control of people from a hundred countries representing conflicting interests and demands. Never has a man better deserved that technical adjective facilitator: that is what he was, and what he did, smoothing paths and opening avenues. Some facilitators use silence, sitting with unspeaking faces until at last they enter the fray with conclusive words, but others talk, and Andrew's urbane and affable rivers of words dissolved discords, and he was used to seeing angry or suspicious faces relax into hopeful smiles.
He was talking about the dinner last night which in his description became a mildly humorous social comedy, and would have made hearers laugh who knew something of the background. But these two and that black woman standing there did not smile, and Andrew was thinking, Of course, they are as good as peasants, they aren't used to... and still Sylvia and the priest stood by their chairs, while he was already sitting, ready to command, and waiting for them to smile. But he was not winning them, not at all, and a glance between them suddenly enlightened him: they wanted to say grace. Anger at himself made him go red. 'I'mso sorry, ' he said, and stood up.
Father McGuire recited some Latin words which Andrew could not follow, and Sylvia said Amen in a clear little voice that Andrew remembered from that other distant life.
The three sat. Andrew was so discommoded by what he saw as his social gaffe, that he was silent.