They shared a single reader between three of them, but all their hands were raised eagerly to the young black teacher's questions and all their faces lit by the burning desire for knowledge it was all there, a complete record of hope and despair, of abject poverty and great riches, of savagery and tenderness, of unrelenting elements and bursting fruitfulness, of pain and gentle humour. Craig could not bring himself to look at her again and he turned the stiff glossy sheets slowly, savouring each image and delaying the moment when he must face her.
Craig stopped suddenly, struck by a particularly poignant composition, an orchard of bleached bones. She had used black and white to heighten the dramatic effect, and the bones shone in the brilliant African sunlight, acres of bones, great femur and tibia bleached like drift-wood, huge rib-cages like the frames of stranded ocean clippers, and skulls the size of beer barrels with dark caves for eye sockets. Craig thought of the legendary elephant's graveyard, the old hunters" myth of the secret place where the elephants go to die.
"Poachers," she said. "Two hundred and eighty-six carcasses," and now Craig looked up at her at last, startled by the number.
"At one time?" he asked, and she nodded.
"They drove them into one of the old minefields." Involuntarily, Craig shuddered and looked down at the photograph again. Under the table-top his right hand ran down his thigh until he felt the neat strap that held his leg, and he experienced a choking empathy for the fate of those great pachyderms. He remembered his own minefield, and felt again the slamming impact of the explosion into his foot, as though he had been hit by the full swing of a sledgehammer.
"I'm sorry," she said saO. "I know about your leg."
"She does her home*ark,"Ashe said.
"Shut up," Craig thought furiously. "Why don't you both shut up." He hated anyone to mention the leg. If she had truly done her homework, she would have known that but it was not only mention of the leg, it was the elephants also. Once Craig had worked as a ranger in the game department. He knew them, had come to love them, and the evidence of this slaughter sickened and appalled him.
It increased his resentment of the girl; she had inflicted this upon him and he wanted to revenge himself, a childish urge to retaliate. But before he could do it, the late guest arrived, diverting them into a round of Ashes introductions.
"Craig, I want you to meet a special sort of guy." All of Ashes introductions came with a built-in commercial.
"This is Henry Pickering. Henry is a senior vice-president of the World Bank listen and you'll hear all those billions of dollars clashing around in his head. Henry, this is Craig Mellow, our boy genius. Not even excluding Karen Blixen, Craig is just one of the most important writers ever to come out of Africa, that's all he is!"
"I
read the book," Henry nodded. He was very tall and thin and prematurely bald. He wore a dark banker's suit and stark white shirt, with a little individual touch of colour in his necktie and twinkly blue eyes. "For once you are probably not exaggerating, Ashe." He kissed Sally-Anne's cheek platonically, sat down, tasted the wine that Ashe poured for him and pushed the glass back an inch. Craig found himself admiring his style.
"What do you think?" Henry Pickering asked Craig, glancing down at the open portfolio of photographs.
"He loves them, Henry," Ashe Levy cut in swiftly. "He's ape over them I wish you could have seen his face when he got his first look loves them, man, loves them!"
"Good, Henry said softly, watching Craig's face. "Have you explained the concept?"
"I wanted to serve it up hot." Ashe Levy shook his head.
"I wanted to hit him with it." He turned to Craig.
"A book, he said. "It's about a book. The title of the book is "Craig Mellow's Africa". What happens is you "A rite about the Africa of your ancestors, about what it was and what it has become. You go back and you do an in depth assessment. You speak to the people-" "Excuse me," Henry interrupted him, "I understand that you speak one of the two major languages Sindebele, isn't it of Zimbabwe?" Fluently, Ashe answered for Craig. "Like one of them."
"Good," Henry nodded. "Is it true that you have many friends some highly placed in government?" Ashe fielded the question again. "Some of his old buddies are cabinet ministers in the Zimbabwe government. You can't go much higher." Craig dropped his eyes to the photograph of the elephant graveyard. "Zimbabwe," he was not yet comfortable with the new name that the black victors had chosen. He still thought of it as Rhodesia.
That was the country his ancestors had hacked out of the wilderness with pick and axe and Maxim machine-gun. Their land, once his land by any name still his home.
"It's going to be top quality, Craig, no expense spared.
You can go where you want to, speak to anybody, the World Bank will see to that, and pay for it." Ashe Levy was running on enthusiastically, and Craig looked up at Henry Pickering.
"The World Bank publishing?" Craig asked sardonically, and when Ashe would have replied again, Henry Pickering laid a restraining hand on his forearm.
"I'll take the ball a while, Ashe," he said. He had sensed Craig's mood; his tone was gentle and placatory. "The main part of our business is loops to underdeveloped countries.
We have almost a biltiori4invested in Zimbabwe. We want to protect our investritnt. Think of it as a prospectus, we want the world to know about the little African state that we would like to turn into a showpiece, an example of how a black government can succeed. We think your book could help do that for us."
"And these?" Craig touched the pile of photographs.
"We want the book to have visual as well as intellectual impact. We think Sally-Anne can provide that." Craig was quiet for many seconds while he felt the terror slither around deep inside him, like some loathsome reptile. The terror of failure. Then he thought about having to compete with these photographs, of having to provide a text that would not be swamped by the awesome view through this girl's lens.