THE MINISTER has arrived in a motorcade of limousines, windscreen-wipers rinsing the dust. This town has never known so eminent, so punctilious an assembly. But why so quiet? All that the townspeople can hear — they are roped off and distant — is the commotion of Awni’s servilities. He introduces his guests: he indicates his fan, his table lamps, his icebox, the coloured veranda lights, bright with polish. He applauds his foresight and planning: there is the liquidizer already filled with unmixed cocktail, its sweet gourd, mint-water, cheap Korean whisky, salt and sayoot powder, impatient for a powered whisk.
But except for Awni the inner room is stiffly silent. The guests are tightly packed. They cannot circulate and chatter. They do not like to jostle and shout to friends with the Minister so near. What can electricians say, in whispers, when pressed so close and warmly to the president of their company? How can the policeman’s wife amuse the unsmiling pressmen and photographers when she cannot stretch her arms and sing? How intimately, how cunningly, should landowner Nepruolo address the Minister’s Secretary now that they are wedged shoulder to shoulder: as a neighbour, colleague, friend, partner, collaborator? As a stranger? Schoolteacher, policeman, barrack captain, town doctor, bullock-gelder, merchant’s wife — all are close tongued.
‘Let us get on,’ the Minister commands an aide. The Minister is not impressed by fans and liquidizers. What he loves most is the privacy of his limousine.
It is now night. The townspeople stand, roped off in moonlight. The last wild flames are snuffed on candles and oil lamps in the Rest House. The Minister makes a brief speech. He has had the personal satisfaction, he says, of fighting and winning the political battles for the electrification of forgotten communities in the Flat Centre. It is a project close to his heart. How he wishes that government business was less exacting — then he could act with lizard-impulse and accept Warden Awni’s generous offer of a few days’ rest amongst the fine people of the town. (Here the Minister discharges a smile for the policeman’s wife.) But, no, he must settle for the lesser pleasure of service and duty. He must return shortly to the city. But first … ‘Let me leave you with a fond memory of your Minister.’ He grasps the ceremonial power-switch and pulls.
It is startling how light can shorten distance. The Rest House — now a grid of hard white with a diadem of coloured lamps — has leapt towards the townspeople. Every face at the window of the inner room is distinct. Every word is clear. Even the far fields have closed in, defined by the stipples of illumination at the school, the hospital, the police station, and on Nepruolo land. The town has shrunk. Only the sky and dawn seem more distant.
Awni’s guests are a little startled, too, though not by electricity. Most of them have stood before in false light on visits to the city. No, they are startled by Awni’s liquidizer, which slices into action almost before the lights have penetrated to the corners of the room and thrown shadows over blinking faces. They all turn to stare at the liquidizer, labouring them a cocktail, and there is laughter. Applause, too.
It is a magic charm. Tongues are loosened. Electricians shake their President’s hand. Pressmen smile at tradesmen. The merchant’s wife — ‘not for the first time’, it is whispered — offers her cheek to the bullock-gelder. The Minister discharges more smiles for the policeman’s wife. Nepruolo and the Minister’s Secretary embrace. It is a celebration.
‘Now we are remembered!’ calls Awni through the open window.
Bald men, and women with naked arms, are the first to notice that the wind is rising. The room shivers. Cigarette smoke speeds back at the smoker. Cocktail glasses rattle. ‘There will be rain’ or ‘The moon is belching’ or ‘Expect a birth in town tonight’, comment the superstitious. The rest button their jackets and send Awni to close the shutters.
BUT THE breeze does not abate. Now it buffets the inner walls and hammers a passage between the guests. The squall is growing from within.
‘My fan!’ says Awni. ‘I had forgotten.’
How could he forget his centrepiece, his gift to the town? It has responded slowly to power — its wooden arms too broad and heavy to rotate freely. It has spun like a seed mast, gradually picking up speed, gradually herding and pocketing the air in the Rest House. Now it is in command.
‘That is a large fan,’ says Nepruolo. ‘It’s as wide as the room…’ All conversation has stopped and Awni’s fan is the centre of attention.
‘Minister,’ demands Awni. ‘Have you ever seen such a fan before, in all your travels, in all the fine buildings you have visited…?’
‘Never,’ says the Minister, thinking of the discreet, silent air-conditioning in his own office, home and car. ‘I believe this fan to be unique.’
‘I dedicate this unique fan to the Minister,’ declaims Awni, ‘in thanks for the provision of electrical power…’
The guests — their faces chilled and rosy from staring windward — feel obliged to applaud both Minister and fan.
Still the giant blades are gaining speed. They shovel air from the heights of the room and pitch it at the heads of honoured guests.
‘See, see!’ cries Awni, blocking all escape through the veranda door. ‘Now everyone is cool. Feel how cool we are!’
The fan’s shadow, cast darkly across the ceiling by electric light, beats and flaps, reaches and dips, like a flail-dancer, spinning faster and giddier. The fan has outstripped electricity: it is self-propelled, driven by its own turbulence. Clothes tug tightly on bodies, eyes are lashed with tears, plates and glasses tumble from shelves and shatter, as squall gusts into gale and gale into cyclone. Who there does not fear the electrical storm?
‘One place is safe,’ says the Minister, putting his arm around the policeman’s wife with the intimacy of an uncle. ‘At the hub.’ They labour against the blast and stand as close as doves in the narrow column of stillness directly beneath the fan.
‘It is simple physics,’ explains the Minister, relishing the plump songstress in his arms. ‘Locate the eye of the storm and escape all turbulence. Here, we are quite safe.’
Their fellow guests recede further from them, flattened and crouching against the Rest House walls. Those who dare watch the ceiling, but they can see no fan. It is moving so fast that it has disappeared. They cup their eyes against the wind and look again. But no, nothing. Only the faint smell of scorched wires, and a cloudy smoking of the air.
The first indication that the storm has peaked is a crack in the ceiling. The second is a shower of crumbled plaster: half settles lightly on the Minister and his ward, half is pulled into the windy vortex and turned into stinging grapeshot. The third is a sharp detonation. The ceiling can no longer withstand the weight and pressure. It releases Warden Awni’s fan. A blade hits the Rest House wall and splinters into a thousand needles of best tarbony. The cyclone is armed.
‘Switch off the current,’ commands an electrician. (He and his comrades are squashed safely behind the restaurant counter.) But too late. The jagged vanguard of needles reaches the guests. Splinters of tarbony slice flesh and chip wall-plaster; missiles of wood lacerate the New York skylines of table lamps and shatter bulbs; a salvo strikes the icebox; a single, knotted bolt of timber finishes the cocktail, showering electricians in mint-water, whisky and liquidizer. What remains of the fan kicks and cracks against the ceiling and then, snapping its wiring, falls. The Minister and the policeman’s wife — those two doves at the eye of the storm — receive the great weight of the wreckage. One by one, the mangoes on the veranda smoke, burn and fail. Now the only light is the occasional flash of a pressman’s camera.