Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 56

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long, laborious business, almost beyond the ability of the station

master whose previous transmissions had seldom exceeded a dozen words

at a time. He frowned and muttered to himself as he worked, and Vicky

wondered in what mangled state her masterpiece of the journalistic art

would reach her editor's desk in New York. The Prince had left her and

gone off with his escort to the official government residence on the

outskirts of the village, and it was after nine o'clock before the

station master had sent the last of Vicky's despatch a total of almost

five thousand words and Vicky found that her legs were unsteady and her

brain woolly with fatigue when she went out into the utter darkness of

the mountain night. There were no stars, for the night mists had

filled the basin and swirled in the headlights as Vicky groped her way

through the village and at last found the government residence.

It was a large sprawling complex of buildings with wide verandas,

whitewashed and iron-roofed, standing in a grove of dark-foliaged cosa

flora trees from which the bats screeched and fluttered to dive upon

the insects that swarmed in the light from the windows of the main

building.

Vicky halted the car in front of the largest building and found herself

surrounded by silent but watchful throngs of dark men, all of them

heavily armed like the Harari she knew, but these were a different

people. She did not know why, but she was sure of it.

There were many others camped in the grove. She could see their fires

and hear the stamp and snort of their tethered horses, the voices of

the women and the laughter of the men.

The throng opened for her and she crossed the veranda and entered the

large room which was crowded with many men, and lit by the smoky

paraffin lamps that hung from the ceiling. The room stank of male

sweat, tobacco and the hot spicy aroma of food and tej.

A hostile silence fell as she entered, and Vicky stood uncertainly on

the threshold, scrutinized by a hundred dark suspicious eyes, until Lij

Mikhael rose from where he sat at the far end of the room.

"Miss Camberwell." He took her hand. "I was beginning to worry about

you. Did you send your despatch?" He led her across the room and

seated her beside him, before he indicated the man who sat opposite

him.

"This is Ras Kullah of the Gallas," he said, and despite her weariness,

Vicky studied him with interest.

Her first impression was identical to that she had received from the

men amongst the cosa flora trees outside in the darkness. There was a

veiled hostility, a coldness of the spirit about the man, almost

reptilian aura about the dark unblinking eyes.

He was a young man, still in his twenties, but his face and body were

bloated by disease or debauchery so that there was a soft jelly-like

look to his flesh. The skin was a pale creamy colour, unhealthy and

clammy, as though it had never been exposed to sunlight. His lips were

full and petulant, a startling cherry red in colour that ill suited the

pale tones of his skin.

He watched Vicky, when the Prince introduced her, with the same dead

expression in his eyes, but gave no acknowledgement though the flat

snakelike eyes moved slowly over her body, like loathsome hands,

dwelling and lingering on her breasts and her legs, before moving back

to Lij Mikhael's face.

The pudgy, swollen hands lifted a buck-horn pipe to the dark cherry

lips and Ras Kullah drew deeply upon it holding the smoke in his lungs

before exhaling slowly.

When Vicky smelled the smoke, she knew the reason for the dead eyes in

the Ras's puffy face.

"You have not eaten all day," said Lij Mikhael, and gave instructions

for food to be brought to Vicky. "You will excuse me now, Miss

Camberwell, the Ras speaks no English and our negotiations are still at

an early stage. I have ordered a room made ready where you may rest as

soon as you have eaten. We shall be talking all the night," the Lij

smiled briefly, "and saying very little, for a blood feud of a hundred

years is what we are talking around." He turned back to the Ras.

The hot, spicy food warmed and filled the cold hollow place in the pit

of Vicky's stomach, and a mug of fiery tej made her choke and gasp, but

then lifted her spirits and revived her journalist's curiosity so that

she could look again with interest at what was happening around her.

The interminable discussion went on between the two men, cautious

plodding negotiations between implacable luctantly drawn together by a

greater danger and enemies, a more powerful adversary.

On either side Ras sat two young women, pale sloe-eyed creatures, with

noble regular features and thick dark hair frizzled out into a stiff

round bush that caught the light of the lanterns and glowed along the

periphery like a luminous halo. They sat impassively showing no

emotion, even when the Ras fondled one or the other of them with the

absent-minded caress that he might have bestowed on a lap dog.

Only once, as he took a fat round breast in one plump soft paw and

squeezed it, the girl winced slightly and Vicky seeing the crimson

linen of her blouse dampened in a wet dark patch at the nipple realized

that the girl's breast was heavy with milk.

Vicky's artificial sense of well-being was fast fading now, sinking

once again under the weight of her weariness, and lulled by the food in

her belly, the thick smoky atmosphere and the hypnotic cadence of the

Amharic language. She was on the point of excusing herself from the

Lij and leaving when there was a disturbance outside the room, and the

shrill angry cries of a voice creaking with age and indi nation The

room was immediately electric with a charged feeling of expectation,

and Ras Kullah looked up and called out querulously.

A youth of perhaps nineteen years of age was dragged into the room and

held by two armed guards in the centre of the hastily cleared space

before Ras Kullah. His arms were bound with rawhide that cut deeply

into the flesh of his wrists, and his face was wet and shiny with the

sweat of fear, while his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.

He was followed by a shrieking crone, a wizened baboon like figure,

swathed in a voluminous black sham mastiff with filth and greenish with

age. Repeatedly she attempted to attack the captive youth, clawing at

his face with bony hooked fingers, her toothless old mouth opened in a

dark pink-lined pit as she leaped and cavorted before the terrified

youth, trying again and again to reach him, while the two guys pushed

her away with c ee gu aw and playful blows, never relinquishing their

grip on their prisoner.

The Ras leaned forward to watch this play with awakening interest, his

dark dull eyes taking on a sparkle of anticipation as he asked a

question, and the crone flew to him and flung herself full-length

before him.

She began to bleat out a long high-pitched plea, attempting at the same

time to grasp and kiss the Ras's feet. The Ras giggled with

anticipation, kicking away the old woman's hands and occasionally

asking a question that was answered either by the guards or the

grovelling crone.

"Miss Camberwell whispered the Prince. "I suggest that you leave now.

This will not be pleasant to watch."

"What is it?" Vicky demanded, her professional instincts roused. "What

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