“That’s the line the morning paper took, I saw.”
“I know. Just coincidence. I don’t think Sesheka has any influence there. That’s just Evan Black wanting to keep the circulation up by being provocative.”
Vivien said, “Unfair, Neil. You know Evan thinks the people up north are being forgotten.”
“But if it were someone more forceful than Sesheka, would Mweta have to worry?” Bray asked.
Neil belched, shaking his head, and when he could speak: “Aha! But that’s another story, James. That’s always something to worry about; if it were to be a Tola Tola, for instance, even if there isn’t any genuine grievance for him to climb up by.”
“You don’t think there’s any genuine grievance?”
“No I don’t. By genuine grievance I mean that Mweta would have to be failing to make use of what is available to him for this country.”
“Hjalmar tells me industrialists are paying fifty pounds just to dine with him.”
Neil grinned. “My God, he’s a glutton for punishment, old Mweta.”
They talked of Bray’s work and Bray told an anecdote or two about Gala — how his name had been up at the club for weeks until the bold draper seconded it. Vivien was in conversation with a friend on the telephone; she came back after a while and said, “Did you know Mweta’s going to speak over the radio at midnight? Apparently it’s been announced every hour all afternoon.”
Neil opened another bottle of wine. “The contract’s been given to the Chinese. France, West Germany and America have called off the loan. Or they’re going to build both dams — the lake one as well. My, my. We can’t go to bed.”
Vivien looked at Bray. She said, “He’s tired, he’s driven hundreds of miles.”
He was feeling embarrassed for Mweta. Why midnight? Who advised him about such things? Perhaps he didn’t know that Hitler used to choose odd hours of the night or early morning for his speeches, entering through the territory of dreams, invading people’s minds when blood pressure and nervous resistance are at lowest ebb. “Certainly midday would be a pleasanter time to report back on his dam.”
“Joy says he’s never in bed before three, anyway.”
Neil began to scratch his neck restlessly. “Shall we phone Jenny — penny and Curtis and get them to join the vigil?” Vivien said mildly, since nothing would stop Neil if he felt the need of company, “We haven’t seen James for months, I want to talk to James. Rebecca writes she’s got a house quite near you? — thank heaven she’s out of the hotel. I do think your Aleke should have seen there was somewhere for her to live before getting her up there. What sort of man is he? You know, with Rebecca, people just exploit her.” She looked for reassurance.
Bray was saying, “Half a house. She’s sharing with some people—” while Neil gave his short laugh and said fondly, “Poor old backwoods Becky, we must write to her.”
“But Aleke — you think he’s all right?”
“Darling, of course he’ll make a pass at her, if that’s what you mean.” Neil cut across. “What else do you expect? She has that effect, our Becky.”
Defending her against Aleke, Vivien said, “It’s not right that this idea should’ve somehow … she’s quite the opposite, if you really know her — she doesn’t try for men at all. But it’s just a kind of awful compassion …”
Neil said aggressively, “Oh really, is that what you females call it.”
“Oh I know you don’t like the idea. That there could be anything about you.” She was talking to her husband, now; slowly they were beginning to pick up words like stones.
Bray felt unimportantly ashamed of his casualness. But all he said was, in the same tone, “Aleke’s a good chap to work for, I should think. Her children have got in to the local school.”
At midnight Mweta’s voice filled the room. They sat dreamily still, not looking at each other. Vivien’s right hand was pressed against the side of her belly to quiet the only movement in the room, stirring there. Mweta announced the immediate introduction of a Preventive Detention Bill.
Chapter 9
It was all there, set out again in the morning paper. As he read he heard Mweta’s voice, as if it were addressed to him. Emergency regulations had been invoked to bring the Bill into force immediately without the usual parliamentary procedure. The step had been “taken with the greatest reluctance” but “without any doubt of the necessity.” “I would be betraying the people, the sacred trust of their future, if I did not act swiftly and without hesitation. … Certain individuals have begun to gnaw secretly at the foundations of the state which the people have laid down so firmly through their work and dedication. Certain individuals are incapable of understanding the transformation of personal ambitions, petty aims, into the higher cause of securing the peace and progress of the nation — a cause that even the humblest people of our nation have shown themselves equal to in the short time since we have had our country in our own hands. Certain individuals are ready to destroy the general good for the sake of petty ambitions. They are weak and few, and so long as you trust and support your leaders, you need not fear them. They are small as ants. But they are also greedy as ants; if we say, oh, it’s only a few ants, we may wake up one day and find the floorboards collapsing beneath all we are building. We must take the powers to stop the rot before it starts, to act while there is still time to turn these people from the mistakes they have fallen into, and to show them where their true interest, like yours and mine, really lies—”
The paper reproduced across five columns the picture of Mweta smiling from the doorway of the plane as he arrived back in the country a few days before, and the leading article, suppressing the question mark, pointed out that there was no cause for confusion and alarm; the President would not have left the country if he had not felt fully in control of the situation.
The waiters shouted to each other as they went about the rondavels at the Silver Rhino, banging on the doors to deliver early morning tea and newspapers. (Between finger and thumb, Bray pinched off a couple of ants that had quickly found the sugar.) A boiler was being stoked up. The off — key musical gong that was played up and down corridors and garden to announce meals drew close and faded, as the girl’s recorder had done the day before. Footsteps clipped over the concrete paths with the purpose of morning. The taps on the washbasin began to creak and fart as the plumbing was taxed. Bray was taken by the flow of these things — bathroom ritual, clothes put on, breakfast eaten — and brought to the point where, five minutes before eleven — fifteen, he had the door opened to him under the portico with the white pillars to which he had come a number of times in his life: to pay respects as a D.C. newly appointed; to plead for Mweta’s release from confinement; to answer the complaints made against himself by the white residents of Gala province.
Out of the trance of commonplace that had brought him here, Bray in the waiting room of the Presidential Residence became intensely alert. He could feel the rapid beat of his heart in the throb of the hand, on the chair — arm, that held the cigarette burning away. He distinguished the quality of the room’s silence, and the displacement of his own presence there, like the rise in the volume of water when some object is lowered into it. At the same time he was going over rapidly and fluently, in words instead of those surges of imagery and emotion with which a meeting is usually rehearsed, what was to be said. He was possessed with the calm, absolute tension of excitement. It was the first time for a very long time. He opened the windows above the window — seat and the park out there — thin trees standing quietly in the heat, a pair of hoopoes picking on the grass — existed within a different pace, like a landscape seen through the windows of an express train.