Hjalmar seemed in a state of happy alarm over his arrival. They went into the bar and he appropriated an order of Danish beers meant for someone else. The bar was full, even if most of the rooms were empty. The fan on the low ceiling churned voices that it seemed had not stopped since Bray had left the capital last time. “If the Czechs can turn them out at five pounds a thousand, there’s nothing in it for us….” “He used to be down in Zambia, with the R.S.T. crowd, little plump Scotsman, you remember …” “… played to a five, but that was when I was a lot younger …” “… yes, but what’s the point, you can’t work on less than twenty — five per cent, a waste of time …” “… at head office in Nairobi, I said, you might get away with that sort of attitude … stupid bastard …” White men in bauxite, in road construction, in mining equipment, in technical aid, textiles and tin, black men from Agriculture, Public Works, Posts and Telegraphs — the Ministries down the road. The black ones were more carefully dressed than the white and most spoke a back — slapping, jolly English instead of the local language. They were youthful and good — looking, with their little ears, round black heads, and black hands, among the bald pale heads and drooping, gin — flushed ears. “I was at his home yesterday, my dear chap, I know him well, ever since we were at teacher — training in Salonga …” “… very inconvenient, the wife said to me, ‘How was it Mr. Mapira didn’t see you at Chibwe’s place’—oh yes — there’s nothing you can keep from a wife, good Lord—” “… have a chat with the Minister next week, yes that’s what I intend …” “… these garage chappies, man, something should be done about them, I mean they charge a person what they like….”
The tiny Viking ships of the mobile above the bar spun slowly in the sluggish draft; Hjalmar was plunged into an account of the Silver Rhino’s finances and the terms of sale under which the place had been acquired. His voice burrowed through the babble with the obliviousness of a man for whom everything around him is a manifestation of the problem that possesses him. He could never sell so long as the legality of the original sale was not settled, meanwhile the first mortgage wasn’t met and the bank refused to give a second mortgage because of the dispute about ownership. The builder was “getting impatient” over the alterations he had done when they took over; everything would be all right if the brewery would advance money in exchange for a share, but now with the new legislation the breweries weren’t supposed to advance to people who were resident aliens and not citizens of the country.
Living alone, remote from the demands of friendship for the past few months, Bray had become unaccustomed to this European intimacy, this steamy involvement in other people’s lives. All he could do was prompt with the sort of brief questions that enabled Hjalmar Wentz to unburden himself — though it was an unburdening only of the facts: Bray could sense that they construed a kind of front— “Margot and I think …” “… all we really need, then, is, say, another year to get straight”—out of a more private struggle that could not be talked about. Wentz was saying, after a pause, “The thing to do, I suppose, would be to talk to Ras Asahe….” The haggard, handsome Scandinavian face seemed to be waiting, as if for a blow. The cuts of strain slashed across the cheekbone under each eye. “He has an uncle on the board — you know.” All large white companies had a token black man on their boards. “A word from there, and everything … well. It would get us out of a hole for the meantime.”
“Yes, if the brewery were to be persuaded—”
Wentz was still waiting, ready not to flinch. He said, “But Emmanuelle is not easy to deal with. My wife — Margot — we don’t know how Emmanuelle would react. And apart from that, what would it look like, I mean to the man? Up till now, we’ve never encouraged it, this friendship with Emmanuelle.”
Now that he had delivered the slap himself, he was in some way released. “How do you think things are going?”
“I should ask you. I’m too far away from the centre.”
Wentz opened his hands at the room, interlocked them under his chin. “What? This? The black ones have got the government jobs they wanted, and the white ones are in business as usual—they are happy, nothing’s changed. He’s been very clever. You should hear them: what a marvellous chap he is, what a stable government … Oh he’s been very clever. When you think what they said about him before, eh? All that business about flight of capital is forgotten, they want to stay put and get good quick returns. Of course the honeymoon isn’t over. I only talk about what I see. The black people — after all, who are they, here? — the people who have moved up into administrative power, the white — collar people who aren’t somebody’s clerk any more, and the mine workers who are moving up into the jobs they could have done before and were kept out of because of the white man. So I say it’s going very well. He’s doing very well. What it’s like for the rest of the country — I never get farther than the vegetable farm where Margot gets the stuff for the hotel, I drive there with the van twice a week, and that’s what I know of the country!” He laughed at himself. “What’s happening up there?”
“Well, there’s a bit of industry beginning around Gala itself — but the new agreement over the fishing concessions leaves the whole lake area just as it was, and the Bashi Flats need about everything you can name before one could think of resettlement schemes there — roads, control of flood waters — everything.”
Hjalmar objected. “The royalty on the fishing rights is increased by about twenty per cent, I think. The money’s not all going out of the country any more.”
“But wages in the fish industry haven’t gone up one penny. Of course there’s the Development and Planning Commission — something may come out of that, for the lake people. And the Bashi — they need it even more. But the potential of the fishing industry is there for the taking….”
“Schemes, commissions, plans — well, poor devils — it’s their affair, isn’t it,” said Hjalmar Wentz. “It’s not for you and me, it’s not our life, they have to work it out for themselves.” He took a deep breath and held it a moment: his eyes were following the movement of someone across the room, and then he gave an anticipatory smile as his daughter came up. “Emmanuelle, you remember Colonel Bray? He’s staying with us this time—” She was saying with the inattentive correctness of one performing an errand, “Someone called Thomson — Waite is here to see you. He has a black attaché case with initials. The hair in his nose is dyed by nicotine.” “Good God, Emmanuelle.” Her father laughed, showing her off to Bray. The girl, perfectly serious and distant, bit at a hangnail on her thumb. “So you can decide whether you will see him or not. I should say he comes from a bank or a health department; he’s sniffing about after something.” “Oh God. I better go. Did you put him in the office?” Hjalmar went ahead of her with his head thrust before him anxiously. Bray saw him look round to ask her something but she had turned away through the tables.
Bray had a shower and sat in a broken deck — chair in the garden, waiting for lunch. He read in the morning paper that Mweta had returned from his state visit. Unity had been reaffirmed, useful proposals had been made, the 50-million-pound hydro — electric scheme to serve the two countries jointly had been agreed upon in principle … the leading article questioned the economics of the scheme, as opposed to its value as a demonstration of Pan — African interdependence. There is no doubt whatever that this country sees its destiny always as part of the greater destiny of the African continent … no doubt that President Mweta, the day he took up the burdens of office, has taken along with responsibilities at home the ideal of an Africa that would present an entity of international cooperation to a world that has so far signally failed to resolve national contradictions. But we must not waste our own resources in order to foster cooperation across our borders. We have, in the lake that forms our northern border, a potential source of electric power that renders unnecessary any such scheme in the South, a scheme that by its nature would place our vital industrial development ultimately at the mercy of any instability that might manifest itself in our neighbour’s house….