The secretary, Asoni, came in quickly. “You understand, Colonel, if it had been anybody else it would have been out of the question today, as I said to Mr. Small. There is really no time for private interviews.… We are only just back, and now this other—” The sides of his mouth pulled down, proprietorial, brisk, impulsive. “If it had been anybody else I couldn’t … but I have just managed to fit you in …” It was the manner of the waiter, exacting dependence on his goodwill for a decent table. Small looked round the door: “I’m fascinated by the splendid work you’re doing in the North.” It had all the conviction of a stock phrase; simply substitute “in the South” or “the swamps” or wherever the individual had happened to have been since Small saw him last. “I know the Big Man’s longing to see you, nothing would induce him to miss that, though he’s up to his ears. Unfortunately, it’ll just have to be rather brief, alas, I’m afraid.”
Bray was not forthcoming with any assurance that he would not prolong the visit. Chatting, the two of them escorted him out into the corridor, where they were held up by the passage of a giant copper urn or boiler being shuffled along on the heads and arms of workmen. Wilfrid Asoni turned, with a theatrical gesture to Small.
“What in God’s name d’you think you’re doing?” Small stood his ground before the procession. The men lost coordination under the burden, and their gleaming missile swayed forward. “Why wasn’t that thing brought through the service entrance? The kitchens — why don’t you use the kitchen door, eh? Who allowed these men to come this way?” Servants and explanations appeared. The kitchen doors were too small. “You can’t just bring men through the Residence, you know that. You know that perfectly well, Nimrod. Good God, anybody just walking through the place, anybody who says he’s a workman?” He and Asoni looked to each other. “That’s security for you, eh? — Well, get the thing out of the way, get it in here, come on, come on …” The men backed off through the double doors of a reception room in a bewildered posse, to let Bray and Asoni and Small pass. The two had lost interest in Bray. “Fantastic!” “You’re certainly right, Clive.” “But seriously, eh?” “That’s Colonel Onabu’s security, yes.” “Well, I know who’s going to hear about that.” “I hope so. I certainly hope so.” “I’ll be on that telephone in five minutes. Unless you’d rather do it?” Wilfrid Asoni slipped into the President’s study and closed the door on his own voice switched to the official calm of the doctor entering the ward of an important private patient. He appeared again at once and opened the door for Bray absently. Bray caught a brushing glimpse of his plump sculptured face, the eyes set in the black skin smoothly as the enamelled eyes of ancient Greek figures, already turned to the piece of importance he shared with Small.
Mweta was on his feet behind the company director’s desk, leaning forward on his palms. There was always the second, on first entering his presence, like the pang of remembering the first sight of someone with whom one long ago fell in love. He came round with that smile — a toothpaste — advertisement smile, really, in the associations of Europe, but in Africa the smile of a boy come upon on the road somewhere, biting into sugar — cane — and took Bray’s hands in his elegant dark ones. A kind of current of euphoria went through the two men. “If you’d said to me, who’d you like to be there when you get home, James would have been the answer. Oh but it’s tiring, eh, James? — years ago, you didn’t tell me, you didn’t warn about that. From the moment the plane arrived, three, four meetings a day — and the lunches, and the cocktail parties, the dinners— And twice it happened there was something special to discuss before a conference — the only time was before breakfast or after midnight.”
“Well, you’ve always had the stuff it takes. All those miles on the bicycle; that was the right preparation.”
“Anyway, we got what we wanted. And this is one of the times when a tied loan is an advantage, eh, all the equipment and materials and skilled manpower comes from the financing countries. They’re paying and their men’ll see to it that the job is done. No throwing up your hands over this delay and that. No defaulting contractors to blame, while we pay. D’you know we’ll get six thousand kilowatt hours a year, when it’s fully operative. We could sell to the Congo, Malawi — Zambia, even — who knows, it’s possible they’ll get out of Kariba. Our lake scheme in the North was just one of those dreams, you know, nice dreams we had before Independence. It’s not a proposition, compared with this. The main thing is money — it’s exactly twice as hard to get money for a scheme that benefits a single state as it is to get the same money to benefit two. And you’ve got to try for it alone. I can tell you, James, it’s all the difference in the world, it’s the difference between going as a beggar and going as statesmen. That’s one thing I’ve learnt.”
There was a tea table near the woolly sofa, now, with a couple of black leather airport chairs for talks less formal than those conducted across the desk. They came to rest there.
Bray said, out of the warmth and ease, “That seems to have gone off splendidly. But what bothers me is the other. Last night.” It seemed a piece of cruelty to speak. Mweta’s eyes winced. He folded his arms to recapture the ease. “I don’t understand, James.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
Mweta’s eyes continued to flicker. He said, smiling, “You heard what I said.”
“Oh that. What you had to say. But what you think about it? The real reasons why you’ve found it necessary? I wasn’t coming to talk to you about this at all—”
Mweta made an eager, dismissing gesture; Bray came to see him because he was Bray.
“No — I had a reason”—a rebuff for them both— “there was a young man I picked up on the road to the Bashi last week. I discovered later that he’d been in detention at Gala prison for almost three months — he didn’t need to wait for your new law. I was going to talk to you about him, I didn’t know whether you knew, though of course I could tell that Onabu knew, this sort of authority — I don’t know what to call it — came from up there, from Onabu.… But that’s not what matters. I mean, it matters enormously in itself, but there’s something much more important, and now, since last night, even more important. The boy, the Detention Bill, they’re the effect.”
Mweta sat back in himself, arms still crossed, in the determined, flexed attention that Bray knew so well. His face had smoothed momentarily as if he were to be let off; then the flick in his eyes came again. Bray was aware of it all the time.
“—That’s not what matters. Because it seems clear to me that what happened to the boy, the Detention Bill — they’re inevitable, essential, you can’t do without them, your reason being what it is—”
Mweta came in quickly but distrusting: “Yes, my good reason. I’m not going to stand by and let this country be ruined by trouble — makers.”
“What do you call trouble — makers, Mweta?”
“You get people who see Independence right from the beginning as a free — for-all. Grab what you can … They’re always there. You have to deal with them. You know that. I don’t like it, but I have to do it.”
“You’re better off than most, here. You’ve got a good chance of giving people what they lack.”
Mweta said, “James, that’s not the point. You could give them all a house with electric light and a clean — hands job and you’d still have trouble from some people.”