But he decided to follow them, at a distance.
On the suspension bridge he saw some tanks. He hoped they had been immobilized. Bodies were being thrown over the side into the Danube. He hoped they were Russian bodies. He began to look for the cars. A new Citroen, green, one of the tourists had told him, and a Volkswagen. He peered through the gaps in the ranks of the running men. He began to run himself.
And then the automatic cannon started once more. This time it was directly ahead and it was joined by the guns of the tanks. The freedom fighters fell down. Some got up and crawled into doorways, firing back. Karl fell flat, rolling to the railings and looking to see if there was a way down to the river. He might be able to swim the rest of the distance. He looked across the Danube. He could still make it. He would survive.
Tanks came towards him, he made a vain attempt to get through the railings and then lay still, hoping they would think him dead.
More rifle and tommy-gun fire. More Russian gunfire. A shout. A strangled scream.
Karl opened his eyes. One of the tanks was on fire, its camouflaged sides scorched, its red star smeared with blood.
The tank's driver had tried to get out of his turret and had been shot to pieces. The other tanks rumbled on. The fighting became more distant. Karl glanced at his watch. No more than five minutes before the cars left.
He got cautiously to his feet.
A Russian's head appeared in the turret behind the corpse of the driver. The man's flat features were tormented. He was doubtless badly wounded. He saw Karl. Karl put up his hands to show that he was unarmed. He smiled an ingratiating smile. The Russian aimed a pistol at him. Karl tried to think what to do.
He felt the impact as the bullet struck his skull. He went back against the railings and collapsed without seeing the Danube again.
— You seem to think I'm trying to corrupt your morals or something. You've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I was simply talking about expanding your range of choices. I don't know what to make of you Karl.
— Then we're even.
-I might have to change my mind about you. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. If I'm to adopt you, it will be on very strict terms. I don't want you to embarrass me.
— That goes for me, too.
— Now don't be insolent, Karl.
You live in a poor country, though you yourself are comparatively rich.
There is a famine in the country and many of the people are starving. You want to help them. You can afford to give the local people in the village about fifty pounds. But the number of people in the village is at least two hundred. If each receives part of the money you have, it will buy them enough to live on for perhaps another four days.
Would you give them the money on condition it was spent on the people most in need? Or on condition that it was spent on the children? Or would you select a handful of people you thought deserved the money most? Or would you hand it over to them and ask them to divide as they saw fit?
16
Camping In Kenya: 1959:
Smoke
Here is the grim record as far as it can be added up in figures: more than a thousand Africans hanged for serious crimes, 9,252 Mau Mau convicts jailed for serious offences, and 44,000 "detainees", guilty of lesser Mau Mau offences, in rehabilitation prison camps. In these camps, in carefully graded groups, Mau Mau adherents are reeducated as decent citizens... To make return possible mental attitudes have to be changed... Perhaps "soul-washing" is not too strong a word for an organized process aimed at teaching civilized behavior and the duties, as well as the rights, of citizenship...
Soldiers and police have won the long battle of the bush against ill-armed men fighting for what they believe to be a good cause. All but the broken remnants, under their broken leader Dedan Kimathi, have been killed or rounded up. The battle to turn Mau Mau adherents into decent citizens goes well.
But the battle to remove the underlying causes, social and economic, of the anti-white hate that created Mau Mau, will go on for long years. There, too, a 'hopeful beginning has been made. Princess Margaret's visit marks not just the end of a long nightmare, but the beginning of a new era of multiracial integration—and of fairer shares for the African—in lovely Kenya.
If the Malayan and Korean campaigns had drawn most attention during the early part of the 1950s, the British Army had had much to do elsewhere. In Kenya the Man Mau gangs, recruited from the Kikuyu tribe, had taken to the dense rain forests from Which they made sorties to attack Europeans and Africans. The Kikuyu were land hungry. Their discontent was used to further the aspirations of urban Africans for political independence. Over eight years, 1952-60, British battalions, batteries and engineer squadrons, supported by small but intensely-worked Communications and administrative teams, broke the movement in alliance with a devoted police and civil government organization, many of them Africans or Asian settlers. Only when this had been done was the cause of Kenyan independence advanced.
—You're right. There's no such thing as innocence, says Karl.
— Absolutely. It's as abstract as "justice" and "virtue"—or, for that matter, "morality".
— Right. There's certainly no justice!
— And jar too much morality! — They laugh.
— I didn't realize you had blue eyes, says Karl, astonished.
— They're only blue in some lights. Look, I'll turn my head. See?
— They're still blue.
— What about this? Green? Brown?
— Blue.
Karl has reached his majority. He's twenty one. Signed on for another seven years' stint in the Mob. There's no life like it!
— You're just telling me that, says his friend anxiously. How about now?
— Well, I suppose you could say they looked a bit greenish, says Karl kindly.
— It's envy, old chap, at your lovely big bovine brown ones.
— Give us a kiss.
Twenty one and the world his oyster. Cyprus, Aden Singapore. Wherever the British Army's needed. Karl is a sergeant already. And he could do the officer exam soon. He's used to commanding, by now. Twice decorated? No sweat!
— Where?
— Don't make me laugh.
KARL WAS TWENTY-ONE. His mother was forty five. His father was forty seven. They lived in Hendon, Middlesex, in a semi-detached house which Karl's father, who had never been out of work in his life, had begun to buy just before the war. His father had been doing indispensable war work and so had not had to serve in the Army (he was a boiler engineer). His father had thoughtfully changed his name to Gower in 1939, partly because it sounded too German, partly because, you never knew, if the Germans won, it sounded too Jewish. Not, of course, that it was a Jewish name. Karl's dad denied any such suggestion vehemently. It was an old Austrian name, resembling a name attached to one of the most ancient noble houses in Vienna. That's what Karl's grandfather had said, anyway. Karl had been called after his granddad. Karl's father's name was English—Arnold.