— I, excuse me… she caught at the advantage of his efforts engrossed now in scaling down from the heights of the bookshelf, two more books in one hand and the other out grasping his balance on the table corner, wiping away cobwebs, looking over to her as though startled to see these features he'd lost sight of looming dumb over him suddenly redrawn, refined, restored in the same frail strength of her hand's restraint on the doorframe.
— No no no, it's all right yes come in Mrs Booth, come in… banging dust from one of the books and handing it over, — this will interest you too yes, come in…
Instead she sneezed. — No, I… she sneezed again.
And as though to oblige he picked up the smouldering cigarette to add to the cloud and sank back in the chair banging dust from the other book against the edge of the table — here, it's mostly statistics but you'll get the idea… brandishing it till he was disarmed — same damned thing Billy. Over there sitting on half the world's diamonds and chrome, ninety percent of its cobalt, half the gold, almost half the platinum, the whole length of the copper belt and that huge bauxite deposit at Boké in Guinea while they're starving to death who's going to buy it. Three or four centuries their main export was slaves now all they've got to sell is their minerals, they want our money, they want our investment and they want our technology call their politics any damned thing they please. Who's been guarding Gulf Oil's installation in Angola where they're pumping out millions of barrels a day, the US Marines? Cubans, Cubans, you want to see what's keeping the whole cycle of corruption and starvation poverty in business go over to Zaire and watch those South African Cl3Os taking off at night from Kinshasa's airport packed with diamonds and cobalt, our great bulwark against the, what was it? aggressive instincts of an evil empire? the cause of unrest anyplace in the world you find it no, take a look at every country bordering South Africa you'll see who's doing the destabilizing. They've got no damned rights at all in Namibia but who's making them leave, diamond fields running up the west coast but that's not why they're there oh no, no no no they're holding back the powers of darkness up in Angola going right in there and shooting to kill. This great global Marxist conspiracy behind every insurgent movement, who recruited these wretched Ndebele for this secret Matabele brigade to destabilize Zimbabwe handing them over to rape, torture, murder by the Shonas. Who set up the Mozambique National Resistance Movement in the Transvaal when Rhodesia went down, want to write to them they're at Clive Street, Robindale, Randburg, want to see a reign of terror see them raiding into Mozambique beating, raping, disfiguring the locals, teachers, health workers all the forces of darkness and the whole rickety thing collapses, Mozambique's brought to its knees like Lesotho, there's a country as big as your hat and they've ground it right into the dirt but a hundred and fifty thousand of them cross the border to work in the mines and it's that or starve. Keep their neighbors crippled and set up twenty million blacks of their own in these homelands of poverty, disease, families broken up like they were in the good old slave trading days, walk out of their Dutch Reform Church apartheid ringing in their ears and they've got as nice a slave empire as any good Christian could ask for, talk about having business with the Bible and we're right in there cheering them on. Good church going people aren't they? bulwark against this great global Marxist conspiracy aren't they? Vanadium, platinum, manganese, chromium they sell these four key minerals to our industry and defense don't they? think they're going to hand that over to the blacks? No no no, hand them the Survival Handbook and look the other way, talk about harvest time and here comes your missionary bringing Africa to the foot of the Cross with his trucks carrying the dynamite of the Holy Spirit, plundering hell and populating heaven's going to be so damned crowded it will look like the Green Pastures, here come de…
— Please… She was back with a paper napkin crushed to her face — it's, it's Paul he… and she sneezed.
— Like didn't I just tell you it's Paul? I mean Paul with this whole crusade for Little Wayne Fuckup over there harvesting souls Paul the bagman, he…
— No no no, no it's not just starting Billy it never ended, hasn't ended for five hundred years since the Portuguese heard about those great silver and gold and copper mines in the kingdoms running up the Zambezi valley and came in with a few missionaries and a free trade monopoly from the Pope, a missionary's killed and it's war for anybody opposing propagation of the true faith pouring into Mombasa and plundering the east coast, evangelism and slave trading if you want that nice line between the truth and what really happens, fighting their way up the valley five years later when they've reached the Rhodesian plateau they've been wiped out by death and disease but that doesn't end it. Here comes Doctor Livingstone opening Africa to Christianity and commerce and the British gunboats steaming up the river Niger, white missionaries in Buganda howling for protection and the British East Africa Company storming African kingdoms for trade monopolies right up to the headwaters of the Nile. Free trade and Christianity, it's the German East Africa Company, it's French Equatorial Africa, it's the Belgians cutting down the Congo's population from twenty million to ten in barely twenty years, by nineteen fourteen there's nothing left to plunder in Africa so they go to war with each other in Europe instead that's what the whole damned first world war was all ab…
— Please! will you, just let me…
— No come in, come in we…
— I can't come in! The smoke and the, the dust and the smoke I just want to tell you that, to tell Billy that Paul called that he's on his way from the, from someplace Billy… speaking to him, looking past him where her eyes were met through the petrifying drift of smoke and dust — his plans changed he's, he'll be here by…
— Man I don't believe it. I mean I don't fucking believe it Bibbs. I come in here I think no Paul, I think finally there's no big rush we can just hang out and maybe even have supper later but in comes fucking Paul with his…
— I can't help it! She broke away — if you, I don't think Mister McCandless has to lis…