And then he saw the grenades hanging on the belt of the man that lay beside him. He fastened his eyes on the round polished metal bulbs and he began to pray silently.
“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” He moved again, straightening his body.
“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” His hand crept out into the pool of blood, and the sound of the guns filled his head so he could not hear himself pray.
Walking on its fingers, his hand crawled through the blood as slowly as a fly through a saucer of treacle.
“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Pray for me now, and at the hour. Full of grace.” He touched the smooth, deeply segmented steel of the grenade.
“Us sinners - at the day, at the hour. This day - this day our daily bread.” He fumbled at the clip, fingers stiff and cold.
“Hallowed be thy - Hallowed be thy-” The clip clicked open and he held the grenade, curling his fingers round it.
“Hail, Mary, full of grace.” He drew the grenade to him and held it with both hands against his chest. He lifted it to his mouth and took the pin between his teeth.
“Pray for us sinners,” he whispered, and pulled the pin.
“Now and at the hour of our death.” And he tried to throw it. It
rolled from his hand and bumped across the floor. The firing handle flew off and rattled against the wall. General Moses turned from the window and saw it, - his lips opened and his spectacles glinted above the rose-pink cave of his mouth. The grenade lay at his feet. Then everything was gone in the flash and roar of the explosion.
Afterwards in the acrid swirl of fumes, in the patter of falling plaster, in the tinkle and crunch of broken glass, in the small scrabbling noises and the murmur and moan of dying men, Andre was still alive. The body of the man beside him had shielded his head and chest from the full force of the blast.
There was still enough life in him to recognize Bruce Curry’s face close to his, though he could not feel the hands that touched him.
“Andre!” said Bruce. “It’s Andre - he threw the grenade!”
“Tell him-” whispered Andre and stopped.
“Yes, Andre-?” said Bruce.
“I didn’t, this day and at the hour. I had to - not this time.”
He could feel it going out in him like a candle in a high wind and he
tried to cup his hands around it.
“What is it, Andre? What must I tell him?” Bruce’s voice, but so far away.
“Because of him - this time - not of it, I didn’t.” He stopped again and gathered all of what was left. His lips quivered as he tried
so hard to say it.
“Like a man!” he whispered and the candle went out.
“Yes,” said Bruce softly, holding him. “This time like a man.
He lowered Andre gently until his head touched the door again; then he stood upright and looked down at the terribly mutilated body.
He felt empty inside, a hollowness, the same feeling as after love.
He moved across to the desk near the far wall. Outside the gunfire dwindled like half-hearted applause, flared up again and then ceased. Around him Ruffy and the four gendarmes moved excitedly, inspecting the dead, exclaiming, laughing the awkward embarrassed laughter of men freshly released from mortal danger.
Loosening the chin straps of his helmet with slow steady fingers, Bruce stared across the room at Andre’s body.
“Yes,” he whispered again. “This time like a man. All the other times are wiped Out, the score is levelled.” His cigarettes were damp from the swamp, but he took one from the centre of the pack and straightened it with calm nerveless fingers. He found his lighter and flicked it open - then, without warning, his hands started to shake.
The flame of the lighter fluttered and he had to hold it steady with both hands. There was blood on his hands, new sticky blood. He
snapped the lighter closed and breathed in the smoke. It tasted bitter and the saliva flooded into his mouth. He swallowed it down, nausea in his stomach, and his breathing quickened.
It was not like this before, he remembered, even that night at the road bridge when they broke through on the flank and we met them with bayonets in the dark. Before it had no meaning, but now I can feel again. Once more I’m alive.
Suddenly he had to be alone; he stood up.
“Ruffy.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Clean up here. Get blankets from the hotel for de Sullier and the women, also those men down in the station yard.”
It was someone else speaking; he could hear the voice as though it were a long way off.
“You okay, boss?”
“Yes.”
“Your head? Bruce lifted his hand and touched the long dent in his helmet.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“Your leg?”
“Just a touch, get on with it.”
“Okay, boss. What shall we do with these others?”
“Throw them in the river,” said Bruce and walked out into the street. Hendry and his gendarmes were still on
the verandah of the hotel, but they had started on the corpses there, using their bayonets like butchers” knives, taking the ears, laughing also the strained nervous laughter.
Bruce crossed the street to the station yard. The dawn was coming, drawing out across the sky like a sheet of steel rolled from the mill, purple and lilac at first, then red as it spread above the forest.
The Ford Ranchero stood on the station platform where he had left it. He opened the door, slid in behind the wheel, and watched the dawn become day.
Captain, the sergeant major asks you to come. There is something he wants to show you.” Bruce lifted his head from where it was resting on the steering wheel. He had not heard the gendarme approach.
“I’ll come,” he said, picked up his helmet and his rifle from the seat beside him and followed the man back to the office block.
His gendarmes were loading a dead man into one of the trucks, swinging him by his arms and legs.
Un, deux, trois,” and a shout of laughter as the limp body flew over the tailboard on to the gruesome pile already there.
Sergeant Jacque came out of the office dragging a man by his heels. The head bumped loosely down the steps and there was a wet brown drag mark left on the cement verandah.
“Like pork,” Jacque called cheerily. The corpse was that of a small grey-headed man, skinny, with the marks of spectacles on the bridge of his nose and a double row of decorations on his tunic. Bruce noted that one of them was the purple and white ribbon of the military cross - strange loot for the Congo. Jacque dropped the man’s heels, drew his bayonet and stooped over the man. He took one of the ears that lay flat against the grizzled skull, pulled it forward and freed it with a single stroke of the knife. The opened flesh was pink with the dark hole of the eardrum in the centre.
Bruce walked on into the office and his nostrils flared at the abattoir stench.
“Have a look at this lot, boss.” Ruffy stood by the desk.
“Enough to buy you a ranch in Hyde Park,” grinned Hendry beside him. In his hand he held a pencil. Threaded on to it like a kebab were a dozen human ears.
“Yes,” said Bruce as he looked at the pile of industrial and gem
diamonds on the blotter. “I know about those. Better count them, Ruffy, then put them back in the bags.”
“You’re not going to turn them in?” protested Hendry.
“Jesus, if we share this lot three ways - you, Ruffy and I there’s enough to make us all rich.” “Or put us against a wall,” said Bruce grimly. “What makes you think the gentlemen in Elisabethville don’t
know about them?” He turned his attention back to Ruffy. “Count them and pack them. You’re in charge of them. Don’t lose any.” Bruce looked across the room at the blanket-wrapped bundle that was Andre de