The moment of crisis is judged to have passed. The first porters advance shyly onto the strip to stack the bags. Clipboards in hand, Jamie and the other assistants take up their positions among them, one to each heap. Some bags have burst. Women with brushes zealously sweep up the loose grain. Lorbeer clutches Justin’s arm while he acquaints him with “the culture of the food bag.” After God invented the food drop, he says with a rich laugh, He invented the food bag. Broken or whole, these white synthetic fibre sacks stamped with the initials of the World Food Programme are as much a staple commodity of South Sudan as the food they bring:
“See that windsock?—see that fellow’s moccasins?—see his headscarf?—I tell you, man, if ever I get married, I’m gonna dress my bride in food bags!”
From his other side Jamie lets out a hoot of laughter which is quickly shared by those next along from her. The laughter is still running high as three columns of women emerge from different points along the treeline on the other side of the airstrip. They are Dinka tall—six feet is not exceptional. They have the stately African stride that is the impossible dream of every fashionable catwalk. Most are bare-breasted, others are in copper cotton dresses drawn strictly across the bosom. Their impassive gaze is fixed on the stacks of bags ahead of them. Their talk is soft and private to themselves. Each column knows its destination. Each assistant knows her customers. Justin steals a glance at Lorbeer as one by one each woman gives her name, grasps a bag by the throat, chucks it in the air and settles it delicately on her head. And he sees that Lorbeer’s eyes are now filled with tragic disbelief, as if he were the author of the women’s plight, not of their salvation.
“Is something wrong?” Justin asks.
“The women, they’re the only hope of Africa, man,” Lorbeer replies, still in a whisper while he continues to stare at them. Does he see Wanza among them? And all the other Wanzas? His small, pale eyes peer so guiltily from the black shadow of his Homburg hat. “You write that down, man. We give food only to the women. The men, we don’t trust those idiots across a road. No, sir. They sell our porridge in the markets. They have their women make strong drink with it. They buy cigarettes, guns, girls. The men are bums. The women make the homes, the men make the wars. The whole of Africa, that’s one big gender fight, man. Only the women do God’s work around here. You write that down.”
Justin obediently writes as he is asked. Needlessly, because he has heard the same message from Tessa every day. The women file silently back into the trees. Guilty dogs lick up the uncollected grains.
Jamie and the assistants have dispersed. Paddling himself on his tall staff, Lorbeer in his brown Homburg has the authority of a spiritual teacher as he leads Justin across the airstrip, away from the hamlet of tukuls towards a blue line of forest. A dozen children vie with one another to stay on his heels. They tweak at the great man’s hand. They take a finger each and swing on it, utter loud growls, kick their feet in the air like dancing elves.
“These kids think they’re lions,” Lorbeer confides to Justin indulgently as they pull and roar at him. “Last Sunday we are having Bible School and the lions gobble up Daniel so fast that God got no chance to save him. I tell the kids: no, no, you gotta let God save Daniel! That’s in the Bible! But they say the lions are too damn hungry to wait. Let them eat up Daniel first, and afterwards God can do his magic! They say otherwise, those lions die.”
They are approaching a line of rectangular sheds at the far end of the airstrip. To each shed a rudimentary enclosure like a paddock. To each enclosure a miniature Hades of the desperately sick, the parched, crippled and dehydrated. Stooped women hunching stoically upon themselves in silent torment. Fly-laden babies too sick to cry. Old men comatose with vomiting and diarrhoea. Battle-weary paramedics and doctors doing their best to cajole and gentle them into a crude assembly line. Nervous girls standing in a long queue, whispering and giggling to each other. Teenaged boys locked in frenzied combat while an elder whacks at them with a stick.
Followed at a distance by Arthur and his court, Lorbeer and Justin have reached a thatched dispensary like a country cricket pavilion. Tenderly pushing his way through clamorous patients, Lorbeer leads Justin to a steel screen guarded by two stalwart African men in Médecins Sans Frontières T-shirts. The screen is pulled open, Lorbeer darts inside, removes his Homburg hat and hauls Justin after him. A white paramedic and three helpers are mixing and measuring behind a wooden counter. The atmosphere is of controlled but constant emergency. Seeing Lorbeer enter, the paramedic looks up quickly and grins.
“Hi, Brandt. Who’s your handsome friend?” she asks, in a brisk Scots accent.
“Helen, meet Peter. He’s a journalist and he’s going to tell the world you’re a lot of lazy layabouts.”
“Hi, Peter.”
“Hi.”
“Helen’s a nurse from Glasgow.”
On the shelves, many-coloured cartons and glass jars are packed roof high. Justin scans them, affecting a general curiosity, hunting for the familiar red and black box with its happy logo of three gold bees, not finding one. Lorbeer has placed himself before the display, assuming once more the role of lecturer. The paramedic and her assistants exchange raw smiles. Here we go again. Lorbeer is holding up an industrial jar of green pills.
“Peter,” he intones gravely. “Now I show you the other lifeline of Africa.”
Does he say this every day? To every visitor? Is this his daily act of contrition? Did he say it to Tessa too?
“Africa has eighty per cent of the world’s Aids sufferers, Peter. That’s a conservative estimate. Three-quarters of them receive no medication. For this we must thank the pharmaceutical companies and their servants, the US State Department, who threaten with sanctions any country that dares produce its own cheap version of American-patented medicines. OK? Have you written that down?”
Justin gives Lorbeer a reassuring nod. “Keep going.”
“The pills in this jar cost twenty US dollars apiece in Nairobi, six in New York, eighteen in Manila. Any day now, India’s going to manufacture the generic version and the same pill will cost sixty cents. Don’t talk to me about the research and development costs. The pharmaceutical boys wrote them off ten years ago and a lot of their money comes from governments in the first place, so they’re talking crap. What we got here is an amoral monopoly that costs human lives every day. OK?”
Lorbeer knows his exhibits so well he doesn’t need to search for them. He replaces the jar in the shelves and grabs a large black and white box.
“These bastards have been peddling this same compound for thirty years already. What’s it for? Malaria. Know why it’s thirty years old, Peter? Maybe a few people in New York should get malaria one day, then you see if they don’t find a cure pretty damn quick!” He selects another box. His hands, like his voice, are trembling with honest indignation. “This generous and philanthropic pharma in New Jersey made a donation of its product to the poor starving nations of the world, OK? The pharmas, they need to be loved. If they’re not loved, they get scared and miserable.”
And dangerous, Justin thinks, but not aloud.
“Why did the pharma donate this drug? I’ll tell you. Because they have produced a better one. The old one is superfluous to stock. So they give Africa the old one with six months of life left in it, and they get a few million dollars’ tax break for their generosity. Plus they are saving themselves a few more millions of warehousing costs and the costs of destroying old drugs they can’t sell. Plus everybody says, look at them, what nice guys they are. Even the shareholders are saying it.” He turns the box over and scowls contemptuously at its base. “This consignment sat in a customs house in Nairobi for three months while the customs guys waited for somebody to bribe them. A couple of years back the same pharma sent Africa hair restorer, smoking cures and cures for obesity, and collected a multi-million-dollar tax break for their philanthropy. Those bastards got no feeling for anything but the fat god Profit, and that’s the truth.”
But the full heat of his righteous anger is reserved for his own masters—those lazy bums in the aid community in Geneva who roll over for the big pharmas every time.
“Those guys who call themselves humanitarians!” he protests, amid more grins from the assistants, as he unconsciously evokes Tessa’s hated H-word. “With their safe jobs and tax-free salaries, their pensions, nice cars, free international schools for their kids! Travelling all the time so they never get to spend their money. I seen them, man! In the fine Swiss restaurants, eating big meals with the pretty-boy lobbyists from the pharmas. Why should they stick their necks out for humanity? Geneva’s got a spare few billion dollars to spend? Great! Spend it on the big pharmas and keep America happy!”
In the lull that follows this outburst, Justin ventures a question. “In what capacity did you see them exactly, Brandt?”
Heads lift. All but Justin’s. Nobody before, apparently, has thought to challenge the prophet in his wilderness. Lorbeer’s gingery eyes widen. A hurt frown creases his reddened forehead.
“I seen them, man, I tell you. With my eyes.”
“I don’t doubt you’ve seen them, Brandt. But my readers may. They’ll be asking themselves, ‘Who was Brandt when he saw them?’ Were you in the UN? Were you a diner in the restaurant?” A small laugh to signal the unlikely circumstance: “Or were you working for the Forces of Darkness?”
Does Lorbeer sense the presence of an enemy? Do the Forces of Darkness sound threateningly familiar to him? Is the blur that was Justin in the hospital less of a blur? Lorbeer’s face has become pitiful. The child-light drains out of it, leaving a hurt old man without his hat. Don’t do this to me, his expression is saying. You’re my pal. But the conscientious journalist is too busy taking notes to be of assistance.
“You want to turn to God, you gotta be a sinner first,” Lorbeer says huskily. “Everybody in this place is a convert to God’s pity, man, believe me.”
But the hurt has not left Lorbeer’s face. Nor has the unease. It has settled over him like an intimation of bad news he is trying not to hear. On the walk back across the airstrip he ostentatiously prefers the company of Arthur the Commissioner. The two men walk Dinka-style, hand in hand, big Lorbeer in his Homburg and Arthur a spindly scarecrow in a Paris hat.
A wooden stockade with a log boom for a gateway defines the domain of Brandt the food monitor and his assistants. The children fall away. Arthur and Lorbeer alone escort the distinguished visitor on a mandatory tour of the camp’s facilities. The improvised shower cubicle has an overhead bucket with a string attached to tilt it. A rainwater tank is supplemented by a stone-age pump powered by a stone-age generator. All are the invention of the great Brandt.
“One day, I apply for the patent on this one!” Lorbeer vows, with a too-heavy wink that Arthur dutifully returns.
A solar panel lies on the ground at the centre of a chicken run. The chickens use it as a trampoline.
“Lights the whole compound, just with the day’s heat!” Lorbeer boasts. But the zest has gone out of his monologue.
The latrines are at the edge of the stockade, one for men, one for women. Lorbeer beats on the men’s door, then flings it open to reveal a foul-smelling hole in the ground.
“The flies up here, they develop resistance for every disinfectant we throw at them!” he complains.
“Multi-resistant flies?” Justin suggests, smiling, and Lorbeer casts him a wild glance before he too manages a pained smile.
They cross the compound, pausing on their way to peer into a freshly dug grave twelve feet by four. A family of green and yellow snakes lies coiled in the red mud at its base.
“That’s our air-raid shelter, man. The snakes in this camp, they got bites worse than the bombs,” Lorbeer protests, continuing his lament against the cruelties of nature.
Receiving no reaction from Justin, he turns to share the joke with Arthur. But Arthur has gone back to his own kind. Like a man desperate for friendship, Lorbeer flings an arm round Justin’s shoulder and keeps it there while he marches him at light-infantry speed towards the central tukul.
“Now you gonna try our goat stew,” he announces determinedly. “That old cook, he makes stew better than the restaurants in Geneva! Listen, you’re a good fellow, OK, Peter? You’re my friend!”
Who did you see down there in the grave among the snakes? he is asking Lorbeer. Was it Wanza again? Or did Tessa’s cold hand reach out and touch you?
The floor space inside the tukul is no more than sixteen feet across. A family table has been banged together from wooden pallets. For seats there are unopened cases of beer and cooking oil. A rackety electric fan spins uselessly from the rush ceiling, the air stinks of soya and mosquito spray. Only Lorbeer the head of the family has a chair, which has been wrested from its place in front of the radio that sits in stacked units under a bookmaker’s umbrella next to the gas stove. He perches in it very upright in his Homburg hat, with Justin on one side of him and on the other Jamie, who seems to occupy this place by right. To Justin’s other side is a ponytailed young male doctor from Florence; next to him sits Scottish Helen from the dispensary, and across from Helen a Nigerian nurse named Salvation.
Other members of Lorbeer’s extended family have no time to linger. They help themselves to stew and eat it standing, or sit only long enough to gulp it down and leave again. Lorbeer spoons his stew voraciously, eyes flicking round the table as he eats and talks and talks. And though occasionally he targets a particular member of his audience, nobody doubts that the principal beneficiary of his wisdom is the journalist from London. Lorbeer’s first topic of conversation is war. Not the tribal skirmishes raging all around them, but “this damn big war” that is raging in the Bentiu oilfields of the north and spreading daily southwards.
“Those bastards in Khartoum, they got tanks and gun-ships up there, Peter. They’re tearing the poor Africans to pieces. You go up there, see for yourself, man. If the bombardments don’t do the job, they got ground troops to go in and do it for them, no problem. Those troops rape and slaughter to their hearts’ content. And who’s helping them? Who’s clapping from the touchlines? The multinational oil companies!”
His indignant voice is holding the floor. Conversations round him must compete or die and most are dying.
“The multis love Khartoum, man! ‘Boys,’ they say, ‘we respect your fine fundamentalist principles. A few public floggings, a few hands cut off, we admire that. We want to help you any which way we can. We want you to use our roads and our airstrips just as much as you like. Just don’t you go letting those lazy African bums in the towns and villages stand in the way of the great god Profit! We want those African bums ethnically cleansed out of the way just as bad as you boys in Khartoum want it! So here’s some nice oil revenues for you, boys. Go buy yourselves some more guns!’ You hear that, Salvation? Peter, you writing this down?”
“Every word, thank you, Brandt,” says Justin quietly to his notebook.
“The multis do the Devil’s work, I tell you, man! One day they will end up in Hell where they belong, and they better believe it!” He cringes theatrically, his great hands shielding his face. He is acting the part of Multinational Man facing his Maker on the Day of Judgment. “‘It wasn’t me, Lord. I was only obeying orders. I was commanded by the great god Profit!’ That Multinational Man, he’s the one who gets you hooked on cigarettes, then sells you the cancer cure you can’t afford to pay for!”
He’s the one who sells us untried medicines too. He’s the one who fast-streams clinical trials and uses the wretched of the earth as guinea pigs.
“You want coffee?”
“I’d love some. Thank you.”
Lorbeer leaps to his feet, seizes Justin’s soup mug and rinses it with hot water from a thermos as a prelude to filling it with coffee. Lorbeer’s shirt is stuck to his back, revealing billows of trembling flesh. But he doesn’t stop talking. He has developed a terror of silence.
“Did the boys down in Loki tell
you about the train, Peter?” he yells, drying the mug with a piece of tissue plucked out of the rubbish bag beside him. “This damned old train that comes south at walking speed like three times a year?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“It comes down the old railway that you British laid, OK? The train does. Like in the old movies. It’s protected by wild horsemen from the north. This old train resupplies every Khartoum garrison on its route from north to south. OK?”
“OK.”
Why is he sweating so? Why are his eyes so haunted and questing? What secret comparison is he making between the Arab train and his own sins?
“Man! That train! Right now it’s stuck between Ariath and Aweil, two days’ hike from here. We got to pray God to make sure the river stays flooded, then maybe the bastards don’t come this way. They make Armageddon wherever they go, I tell you. They kill everyone. Nobody can stop them. They’re too strong.”
“Which bastards are we talking about here exactly, Brandt?” Justin asks, jotting again in his notebook. “I lost the plot there for a moment.”
“The wild horsemen are the bastards, man! Do you think they get paid for protecting that train? Not a bean, man. Not a drachma. They do it for free, out of the goodness of their kind hearts! Their reward, that’s the killing and the raping their way through the villages. It’s the setting fire to them. It’s kidnapping the young guys and girls to take back north when the train is empty! It’s stealing every damn thing they don’t burn.”
“Ah. Got it.”
But the train isn’t enough for Lorbeer. Nothing is enough if it threatens to bring silence in its wake, and expose him to questions he dare not hear. His haunted eyes are already searching desperately for a sequel.
“They told you about the plane then?—the Russian-made plane, man, older than Noah’s ark, the plane they keep down in Juba? Man, that’s some story!”