Prodigies Read online

  ‘What we need is an ark,’ Daan said, in so serious a tone that Alexine wondered whether he might not really mean it.

  ‘They’ll just have to wade or swim.’ Alexine pulled up her jellaba and knotted it round her thighs. ‘And I’ll have to wade or swim with them.’

  There were shouts, screams of laughter and apprehension, and the constant sound of splashing water, as the animals, some acquiescent and some rebellious, were either coaxed or bullied across. One sheep swam over at once, but the others, to everyone’s surprise, refused to follow, and had to be half lifted and half dragged. The cats in their panniers on the boat set up a tremendous caterwauling. Two dogs suddenly began to fight each other in the water, but Flopsy, head raised, paddled effortlessly across, as Alexine preceded him dragging her horse behind her. Some of the soldiers insisted that they must cross by boat. Others, lifting their muskets high above their heads, waded over. Osman cut an imperious figure, as the waves parted before him astride his whinnying horse. Sunny, who had by now learned to swim, struck out boldly.

  ‘What an adventure!’ Nanny Rose remarked as the porters began to put up the tents, everyone having at last safely crossed the stream. She then turned on Daan: ‘But you were a fool to wade! You could pick up anything in that water. There’s that worm we were hearing about from Lucy.’

  ‘Bilharzia,’ Harriet put in.

  ‘Well, whatever it is. It’s the last thing anyone wants.’

  ‘I laughed and laughed,’ Harriet said. ‘Particularly when the vakeel slipped and went under the water.’ She had never cared for him, suspecting that he often fomented the little mutinies in which he then offered to act as mediator.

  Two nights later, after a day of downpour, the vast, clear sky was blazing with stars. They all craned up at them.

  Sunny pointed at the brightest. ‘Look, look!’

  ‘Oh, if only we could travel there!’ Alexine exclaimed, putting her arms around his shoulders.

  ‘Aren’t you satisfied with travelling as far as we’ve got?’ Nanny Rose asked.

  ‘Nothing satisfies her, Nanny. You know that by now. She must always have more, go farther.’ Harriet grabbed Alexine’s hand. ‘But I’m so glad that you insisted on our leaving dreary old Khartoum. This is a hundred times better.’

  ‘I wonder how Addy is getting on.’ Alexine suddenly realized that she had not given a thought to her aunt for days.

  ‘It’s so sad she’s not with us.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Nanny Rose said. ‘ This isn’t the sort of life for her. Did you know that we’re soon going to run out of soap? Imagine Miss Addy without any soap!’

  ‘Yes, I know, I know about the soap!’ Harriet wailed. ‘I totally miscalculated.’

  ‘If you ask me, there’ve been thieves around.’

  Eleven days later, they arrived in the late afternoon at a mission station, set in what appeared, from far away, to be the idyllic surroundings of a lake ringed with low, wooded hills. A church bell was ringing, the single, tinny note echoing back and forth. They could make out the steeple of the chapel, and around it thirteen straw huts. Beyond it blue smoke drifted up into the air from what must be a native village.

  ‘Oh, it all looks so peaceful,’ Harriet cried out.

  ‘Heaven on earth,’ Nanny Rose concurred.

  But the nearer they approached, the more apprehensive they became. Fields that had once been cultivated were now overgrown. The thatch of the huts looked dishevelled and patchy. A gate to an enclosure hung askew and there were no signs of the animals that once must have been penned there.

  The young man who emerged from one of the tukuls to greet them was painfully emaciated, with a straggly beard, reaching almost to his waist, made up of black and white strands, matted together. At first, they thought that the brilliance of his eyes was due to his delight in seeing them in this place of extreme isolation. Then, as he began to cough, endlessly, on and on, bowing over as he did so, they realized that he was ill.

  He was, they were later to learn, one of the only two French priests left of the eleven who had come out some dozen years ago. There were also five black laymen. He introduced himself, in a soft, hoarse voice, in English, as Père François. His superior, Père Thomas, was taking a service in the chapel. It was for the service that he himself had been ringing the bell.

  ‘Do you have a big congregation?’ Harriet asked.

  He gave a small, sad smile. ‘People come. A few people. Why do they come? For God? For food?’ He shrugged. ‘But people who first come for food sometimes later come for God. We hope.’

  ‘Are the local people ever hostile?’ Alexine asked.

  ‘Oh, no! They are kind, good, helpful.’

  By now they had moved from the overgrown garden, with its pungent odour of mint crushed under their feet, into the tukul that served as a dining-room and living-room. There were only five chairs, which the priest indicated that the three women, Daan and Sunny should take.

  ‘No, no,’ Alexine protested. ‘Sunny can sit on that step over there. Or I can. You must have a chair.’ It was essential, she thought, that sick as he was, the priest should be comfortable.

  ‘We heard you were coming.’

  ‘Heard? How is that possible?’

  ‘Some Arab traders passed through. And an Englishman. They told us. They brought us some supplies. And letters.’ He jumped up. ‘Tea. They brought us some tea. We have had no tea for five, six months. Now you can have some tea.’

  He moved stiffly, like an old man, into an inner room, from where they heard him giving orders. After what seemed an extraordinarily long time, a barefoot male servant pattered in, carrying a tray with the tea on it.

  ‘If you’re still short of any supplies, do tell us,’ Alexine said. ‘We can probably help you.’

  As they were sipping their tea, Père Thomas entered the room. ‘You’ve arrived.’ He was a tall, elderly man, as emaciated as Père François, with a totally hairless skull. His collar was loose on him, and his habit was tattered. He gave each of them a formal greeting.

  ‘You will have some tea, Father?’ Père François asked.

  Père Thomas shook his head.

  The laymen now entered. Having been introduced, they squatted on the floor, leaning their backs against the wall. For the most part they were silent, staring at the visitors with a dazed, bewildered curiosity. All of them were little more than gawky boys.

  Unlike his colleague, Père Thomas spoke with a sardonic edge to his slow, quiet voice. They were travelling like royalty, he told them. Even the Governor-General on his rare visits did not travel with such a vast retinue. So many people had never before been congregated in their little mission station. ‘We are honoured, truly honoured.’ His eyes glittered in his yellow, drawn face. Accommodation was, as they could see, limited to a few tukuls. But they would be happy to put one at the disposal of the ladies.

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’ It was Harriet, not Alexine, who answered. ‘But we have our tents and our beds – and everything else that we need. We don’t wish to put you to any trouble. We’d– we’d like to invite you to join us for dinner. All of you.’

  ‘But we have a duty of hospitality to you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s talk of duty. We have plenty of provisions and an excellent cook. Shall we meet in, say, three hours?’

  They ate out in the overgrown garden. The laymen dragged out some trestle tables and benches, and then added some chairs. Some of the expedition servants set out the cutlery and crockery. When the visitors returned, they had all bathed and were wearing formal clothes. Priests and laymen gawped at them in amazement.

  ‘We try to make our own wine,’ Père Thomas said. He raised his glass: ‘But this of yours is much better.’

  ‘I’m afraid so much travel hasn’t improved it.’ Harriet sipped from her glass. Then she raised it: ‘A toast to the mission.’

  They all raised their glasses.

  Père Thomas was draining glass after glass in rap
id succession. Red spots appeared on the high cheekbones above his sunk-in cheeks, and his speech was getting slurred. Harriet, who was seated on his right, began to ask him about the mission.

  He mumbled his answers, his head now sagging on his neck, as his hand circled the stem of the glass. It had been there for nine years now, and he himself for seven. Père François had arrived two years ago. At first things had gone well: they had built the tukuls, they had created the gardens, the animals brought by them had multiplied. But now … ‘It’s as though God decided that he’d had enough of us. And why not? The animals fell mysteriously ill and most of them died. And then we fell mysteriously ill and most of us died. My younger brother was with us. He died – for me most terribly of all.’ Again he gulped wine. ‘We expect that, any day now, we will be recalled and this little station will vanish, as though it had never been. But by then will there be any of us left here to recall?’ He raised a bony hand and hiccoughed behind it.

  Alexine leaned across the table. ‘ Is there nothing that we can do to help?’

  ‘Help?’

  ‘Is it a question of money?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Of God’s will.’ He got the words out with difficulty. Again his gaunt, totally bald head swayed on his long, thin neck.

  At the far end of the table the laymen were more cheerful. Daan, who had brought a pack of cards with him in the back pocket of his tailcoat, was performing some tricks for them. ‘How did you do that? How? How? Tell us.’ But he shook his head triumphantly, smiling to reveal his crooked, yellow teeth. Sunny, in the same group, grabbed the cards and performed a trick of his own, learned from Daan. ‘ This is your card! Yes? Yes?’ he shouted in triumph.

  Nanny Rose raised a hand to her mouth, yawned behind it and said to Harriet, who was looking over to her, to see if she was all right: ‘I’m ready for Bedfordshire. That was a long journey today. We started so early.’

  Alexine had had her bed placed not in her tent but out under the stars. She gazed up at them, amazed, as she constantly was, by their multitude and brilliance. A lamp gleamed from the half-open doorway of the tukul inhabited by Père François. She had sat next to him at the dinner, and in the course of their conversation they had begun to speak of French literature. ‘Oh, I wish my aunt were here,’ she told him. ‘She reads so much and she would have been able to pass on so many books to you.’ She added that she herself had some books with her, now read, which she would be happy to give him. There was a resigned desperation about him, as there was a savage one about Père Thomas, and it had filled her with sadness. Everything in the mission seemed to be dying – the animals, the men, the men’s faith in God and in themselves and in the world around them. She suddenly thought that she would like to hold Père Thomas’s body in her arms, like a child’s, her lips to his fevered forehead or cheek, to comfort and console him. He would be as light as one of her cats, she thought, and far more fragile.

  Again she stared up at the sky, until she began to feel dizzy and confused by all that illimitable recession of stars beyond stars. She shut her eyes. She fell asleep.

  Père François walked with Alexine down through the garden. His soutane and her full skirt constantly brushed against long, reed-like grass and overgrown bushes. The morning was clear and cool. From time to time he stopped and, bowed over, hands on knees, gave his dry, interminable cough. On more than one occasion, having straightened after coughing, he banged on his breastbone with a fist, as though furious with his own body for letting him down.

  At the bottom of the garden, some vegetable beds still survived. ‘We still work these. Tomatoes. Aubergine. Maize: A few other things. You can see. Père Thomas was interested in such work – his father was a farmer – but now … We are all weak.’ He sighed. ‘There has been so much sickness among us – as though we were cursed.’

  ‘Are you taking quinine? I have a lot with me. We find it wonderful.’

  ‘Quinine? Yes, yes!’ He nodded wearily. ‘Of course. Quinine all the time.’

  They now came to a wall built of irregular blocks of stone, with creepers cascading down it. Père François told Alexine that, when the mission had first arrived, full of hope and ardour, Père Thomas had decided that they would build a chapel not of wood, like the present one, but of stone. With the aid of some men recruited from the village, they had all set to work. The chapel had begun to grow out of the ground, like a sapling, constantly spreading itself. Its fame even reached Khartoum. Then a rainy season of unusual ferocity had swept in over the distant mountains. The torrents, often accompanied by lightning and thunder, had fallen remorselessly for days on end, terminating all work on building the chapel and cultivating the fields and the vegetable garden. Suddenly, one night, everyone had been woken by a strange, subterranean rumble, like a Grain travelling at speed through a tunnel, followed by what sounded like a huge explosion. The missionaries had all run out to investigate, and had found that the chapel was now no more than a heap of rubble.

  The village workers refused to take part in any rebuilding. They said that the gods were angry, and that it was they who had brought about the destruction. For many months there was no chapel at all, and the missionaries used one of the tukuls for their services. Then they had built the wooden chapel, with its metal steeple like a bent needle, tilted to one side.

  All that now remained of the stone chapel was this wall – he pointed – with its arches. He lifted some of the fleshy, dark-green creepers with a hand. ‘ Look!’ In the arch, there was a headstone, also covered with creepers, leaning so far forward that it looked as if it were in imminent danger of falling. Now it was Alexine who lifted up the glossy leaves, starting back as a vast, hairy spider emerged from the centre of them and then retreated again.

  ‘Père Thomas’s brother.’

  The clumsy carving of an inscription was now, even after so short a space of time, almost indecipherable.

  In the other arches, there were other headstones, all carved from the same friable sandstone and all similarly difficult to decipher. Sometimes a headstone stood alone, but more often two or three leaned towards each other. Alexine was appalled.

  ‘How did they all die?’

  ‘How do people die in this country? Suddenly. With fevers and chills. With pain. With delirium. With terror.’ He was briefly lost for words, swallowing twice with apparent difficulty and raising his emaciated arm in a wide sweep. ‘This continent doesn’t want us. Why do we force ourselves on it?’

  ‘Because it has what we want.’

  ‘They were all young. Except for one father – an old man. He had lived in South Africa, he had travelled with Livingstone. He died of old age. This continent had accepted him. The only one. He was never ill.’

  Flopsy, who was with them, began to root around in the undergrowth by one of the graves. Alexine stooped and tugged at his collar. ‘Stop that!’

  They walked on, down a narrow path to the lake. Like the mission station, it had looked so beautiful from afar; but now Alexine saw that the water was murky and that this end was choked with mangroves.

  The priest pointed. ‘That tree has berries that one can eat. Look! Up there!’

  The berries looked like huge mulberries, a purple colour shading to black.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know the name in French. The natives have a name for it.’ He said a word.

  ‘You speak their language?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m trying to translate the Bible for them. That was my task when I came here. Another father helped me but … Gone. Père Thomas isn’t a scholar. He’s something more important here. He can do practical things and show others how to do them.’

  Alexine was on tiptoe, trying to pick one of the fruit. The sun was in her eyes, piercing through the branches. She reached and reached again. Each time she had the illusion that, just as her fingers were about the close on the fruit, the branch sprang away from them.

  ‘Let me pick.’

  He reached up, also
on tiptoe. Then he was again convulsed with coughing. He put a hand first to his chest and then to his mouth. He swayed, extended the hand seemingly towards her, and toppled forward.

  She knelt beside him, not caring that she was soiling her dress with the faeces-like mud. She put fingers to the side of his neck and felt the trembling pulse. So he hadn’t died, as, in terror, she had at first assumed. She waited beside him for him to recover consciousness but he did not do so. ‘Father! Father!’ She took his hand in his andsqueezed it. There was no response.

  She looked around her. There was no one in sight. The dog sniffed at the priest’s extended hand and then put out his tongue to lick at one of his hollow temples.

  ‘Stop that! No!’

  Alexine scrambled to her feet and, on an impulse, bent over and scooped the body up in her arms. She had expected that his weight would prove too much for her; but, as in her reverie of the previous night, she might have been holding one of her cats. Lurching from side to side, sweat streaming down her face, she mounted the narrow, slippery path with the body in her arms.

  Eventually she came on a wooden bench, presumably once placed there so that the priests could sit and enjoy the view of mountains and lake. By now she was exhausted. She set him down on the bench, his body occupying most of it, his legs dangling, and gasped for breath. Then she saw the blood that was trickling out of one of his nostrils. She stared down at it, a scarlet thread that became two threads and then three. Suddenly she thought of the Colonel’s map, with those erratic scarlet threads constantly dividing, subdividing and joining up again. She was both fascinated and terrified.

  Slowly she put out her hand and extended a forefinger. Even more slowly she placed the forefinger against the nostril from which the blood was trickling. She put the forefinger in her mouth and sucked on it.

  She thought: I am tasting his life.

  She thought: I am tasting his death.

  Alexine and Nanny Rose emerged from the tukul in which Père François was lying. It was the heat, he had kept insisting, nothing more. He had fainted from the heat. He seemed even more eager to persuade himself of that than to persuade his visitors.