The Dark of the Sun - Smith Wilbur - Страница 33

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with rifles in their hands, shouting as they ran, black men in dirty

tattered uniforms, their faces working with excitement, pink shouting

mouths, baying like hounds in a pack.

Andre jumped and the dusty concrete of the platform grazed his cheek and

knocked the wind out of him. He crawled to his knees, clutching his

stomach and trying to scream. A rifle butt hit him between the

shoulder-blades and he collapsed. Above him a voice shouted in French.

"He is white, keep him for the general. Don't kill him." And again the

rifle butt hit him, this time across the side of the head.

He lay in the dust, dazed, with the taste of blood in his mouth and

watched them drag the others from the truck.

They shot the black gendarmes on the platform, without ceremony,

laughing as they competed with each other to use their bayonets on the

corpses. The two children died quickly torn from their mothers, held by

the feet and swung head first against the steel side of the truck

Old Boussier tried to prevent them stripping his wife and was bayoneted

from behind in anger, and then shot twice with a pistol held to his head

as he lay on the platform.

All this happened in the first few minutes before the officers arrived

to control them; by that time Andre and the four women were the only

occupants of the truck left alive.

Andre lay where he had fallen, watching in fascinated skin-crawling

horror as they tore the clothing off the women and with a man to each

arm and each leg held them down on the platform as though they were

calves to be branded, hooting with laughter at their struggling naked

bodies, bickering for position, already unbuckling belts, pushing each

other, arguing, some of them with fresh blood on their clothing.

But then two men, who by their air of authority and the red sashes

across their chests were clearly officers, joined the crowd. One of them

fired his pistol in the air to gain their attention and both of them

started a harangue that slowly had effect. The women were dragged up and

herded off towards the hotel.

One of the officers came across to where Andre lay, stooped over him and

lifted his head by taking a handful of hair.

"Welcome, mon ami. The general will be very pleased to see you.

It is a pity that your other white friends have left us, but then, one

is better than nothing." He pulled Andre into a sitting position, peered

into his face and then spat into his eyes with sudden violence.

"Bring him! The general will talk to him later." They tied Andre to one

of the columns on the front verandah of the hotel and left him there. He

could have twisted his head and looked through the large windows into

the lounge at what they were doing to the women, but he

did not. He could hear what was happening; by noon the screams had

become groans and sobbing; by midafternoon the women were making no

sound at all. But the queue of shufta was still out of the front door of

the lounge. Some of them had been to the head of the line and back to

the tail three or four times.

All of them were drunk now. One jovial fellow carried a bottle of

Parfait Amour liqueur in one hand and a bottle of Harpers whisky in the

other. Every time he came back to join the queue again he stopped in

front of Andre.

"Will you drink with me, little white boy!" he asked.

"Certainly you will," he answered himself, filled his mouth from one of

the bottles and spat it into Andre's face. Each time it got a big laugh

from the others waiting in the line.

Occasionally one of the other shufta would stop in front of Andre,

unsling his rifle, back away a few paces, sight along the bayonet at

Andre's face and then charge forward, at the last moment twisting the

point aside so that it grazed his cheek. Each time Andre could not

suppress his shriek of terror, and the waiting men nearly collapsed with

merriment.

Towards evening they started to burn the houses on the outskirts of

town. One group, sad with liquor and rape, sat together at the end of

the verandah and started to sing.

Their deep beautiful voices carrying all the melancholy savagery of

Africa, they kept on singing while an argument between two shufta

developed into a knife fight in the road outside the hotel.

The sweet bass lilt of singing covered the coarse breathing of the two

circling, bare-chested knife fighters and the shuffle, shuffle quick

shuffle of their feet in the dust. When finally they locked together for

the kill, the singing rose still deep and strong but with a triumphant

note to it. One man stepped back with his rigid right arm

holding the knife buried deep in the other's belly and as the loser sank

down, sliding slowly off the knife, the singing sank with him,

plaintive, regretful and lamenting into silence.

They came for Andre after dark. Four of them less drunk than the others.

They led him down the street to the Union Mini&re offices.

General Moses was there, sitting alone at the desk in the front office.

There was nothing sinister about him; he looked like an elderly clerk, a

small man with the short woollen cap of hair grizzled to grey above the

ears and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. On his chest he wore three

rows of full-dress medals; each of his fingers was encased in rings to

the second joint, diamonds, emeralds and the occasional red glow of a

ruby; most of them had been designed for women, but the metal had been

cut to enlarge them for his stubby black fingers. The face was almost

kindly, except the eyes.

There was a blankness of expression in them, the lifeless eyes of a

madman. On the desk in front of him was a small wooden case made of

unvarnished deal which bore the seal of the Union Mini&e Company

stencilled in black upon its side. The lid was open, and as Andre came

in through the door with his escort General Moses lifted a white canvas

bag from the case, loosened the drawstring and poured a pile of dark

grey industrial diamonds on to the blotter in front of him.

He prodded them thoughtfully with his finger, stirring them so they

glittered dully in the harsh light of the petromax.

"Was this the only case in the truck?" he asked without looking up.

"Oui, mon general. There was only one," answered one of Andre's

escorts..

"You are certain?"

"Oui, mon general. I myself have searched thoroughly." General Moses

took another of the canvas bags from the case and emptied it on to the

blotter. He grunted with disappointment as he saw the drab little

stones. He reached for another bag, and another, his anger mounting

steadily as each yielded only dirty grey and black industrial diamonds.

Soon the pile on the blotter would have filled a pint jug.

"Did you open the case?" he snarled.

"Non, mon general It was sealed. The seal was not broken, you saw that."

General Moses grunted again, his dark chocolate face set hard with

frustration. Once more he dipped his hand into the wooden case and

suddenly he smiled.

"Ah!" he said pleasantly. "Yes! yes! what is this?" He brought out a

cigar box, with the gaudy wrappers still on the cedarwood. A

thumbnail prised the lid back and he beamed happily. In a nest of cotton

wool, sparkling, breaking the white light of the petromax into all the

rainbow colours of the spectrum, were the gem stones. General

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