“No, they’re not here.”
Emmanuelle gave the quick nod of someone who reminds herself of something that hasn’t interested her very much. “Oh my God — you were in that awful accident, weren’t you?” She was mildly curious. “What happened to Colonel Bray — he was beaten up?”
“He was killed.”
“How ghastly.” She might have left Ras but she was still armed with his opinions. “Of course, he was with Shinza and that crowd. Poor devil. These nice white liberals getting mixed up in things they don’t understand. What did he expect?”
Chapter 24
The two airlifts of troops who were flown in at Mweta’s request for help from Britain succeeded in bringing order to the country for the time being. It was the same order of things that had led to disorder in the first place. But Mweta was back in his big house and Shinza was in exile in Algiers and Cyrus Goma, Basil Nwanga, Dhlamini Okoi and many others were kept in detention somewhere and — for the time being — forgotten.
Hjalmar Wentz was unharmed in the house in Gala and it was he who packed up Bray’s things after Bray’s death and sent them to his wife, Olivia.
No one could say for certain whether, when Bray was killed on the way to the capital, he was going to Mweta or to buy arms for Shinza. To some, as his friend Dando had predicted, he was a martyr to savages; to others, one of those madmen like Geoffrey Bing or Conor Cruise O’Brien who had only got what he deserved. In a number devoted to “The Decline of Liberalism” in an English monthly journal he was discussed as an interesting case in point: a man who had “passed over from the scepticism and resignation of empirical liberalism to become one of those who are so haunted by the stupidities and evils in human affairs that they are prepared to accept apocalyptic solutions, wade through blood if need be, to bring real change.”
Hjalmar Wentz also put together Bray’s box of papers and gave them over to Dando, who might know what to do with them. Eventually they must have reached the hands of Mweta. He, apparently, chose to believe that Bray was a conciliator; a year later he published a blueprint for the country’s new education scheme, the Bray Report.
A Note on the Author
Nadine Gordimer’s many novels include The Lying Days (her first novel), The Conservationist, joint winner of the Booker Prize,
Burger’s Daughter, July’s People, My Son’s Story, None to Accompany Me, The House Gun and, most recently, The Pickup, winner of the 2002 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Africa. Her collections of short stories include Something Out There and Jump. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She lives in South Africa.