A Good Man in Africa (11 page)

They had just left. Isaac and Ezekiel had spoken to them and the two undertakers, lugubriously dressed exactly like their European counterparts, had flatly refused to disturb the body until the fetish had been done. They even became quite angry for a while, accusing Morgan of trying to hoodwink them into offending Shango.

In the east the tree tops were silhouetted against a thin gash of pale lemon. It was ten to four. Innocence would be stiffening up now, he thought queasily, her eyes and mouth for ever open, her body permanently twisted round. He had tried to appeal to the servants’ Christianity—they were all Christians, this was no pocket of paganism—but their polite and unconcerned references
to tribal protocol, the required summoning of the fetish priest, the various necessary rites, the obligatory slaughter of a goat, only confirmed to Morgan what he’d always expected: that they could shed their Christianity as easily as a pair of trousers. He stood up and went over to stare down at Innocence. Her death stirred nothing in him now. The fact that he was standing looking down at a dead person, someone whom he had known, raised no emotions in him. She wasn’t a person anymore, she was an object—a thing—effectively deified by that lightning bolt—a thing, moreover, that was turning into a bloody great problem.

He felt very tired and rubbed his jaw, rasping the bristles on his face. It was still quite dark but through the nim trees he could see the corner of Fanshawe’s house. He pictured the family: father, mother and daughter sleeping soundly in their beds. While he stalked about this gloomy compound like some demon insisting on the body that was due to him. It made him sick, he hated every fucking one of them, their stinking bourgeois affectations, their ghastly fake chinoiserie, their prim enclosed little minds.… He felt his face going hot. This was no good, he told himself; there was no point inveighing against the Fanshawes now. Calm down, he advised, calm down. He walked over to the cotton tree. Only half a dozen maintained their vigil now, sitting on the high tangled roots that spread out from the base of the trunk like grotesque varicose veins.

“Isaac?” Morgan said hopefully.

A tall, stooped figure rose up. “I am Joseph, sah. Joseph the cleaner. Isaac ’e done go for sleep.”

Wise man, Morgan thought. “OK, Joseph,” he said firmly—it was like dealing with a gang of Old Testament prophets. “You savvy dis fetish thing?”

Joseph nodded. He had a shaven skull and was very black, almost Nubian in appearance. In the crepuscular light he looked two-dimensional, a hole cut out of the environment. “Yes, sah,” he said. “I go savvy am.”

“Fine,” Morgan said, maintaining his businesslike tone. “Great. Go and get the juju man and we’ll do the fetish.”

“Please, sah. I no fit do it,” Joseph said simply. “The family of this dead woman must do it.”

Oh bloody hell, swore Morgan despairingly, there’s always another hitch. “Alright, you’d better get Maria,” he said. Maybe there would be some way of ending this morbid farce after all. Soon Maria was brought, weeping and swollen-eyed and supported by two women. She was clutching a rosary in her hands. If it wasn’t so serious, Morgan thought to himself, it would be bloody funny.

“Maria,” he began gently, acutely conscious of his terminal fatigue, his frayed nerves and the massed forces of frustration hemming him in. “Maria, you know that before anyone will … move your mother, we have to get a fetish priest along?” She weakly nodded her assent. “Well,” he continued, “it seems that only you can make this possible. You have to get the priest.” At this point Maria let out a great wail of dismay and collapsed into the arms of the two women. Morgan backed off in alarm. “Joseph,” he called out. “Go and see what the matter is.”

Joseph returned shortly with the necessary information. “She is weeping, sah, because she says she has no money.”

“Money?” Morgan said in astonishment. “What does she want money for?”

“To pay for the priest,” Joseph said.

“Well, for Christ’s sake, I’ll lend her a few bob,” Morgan offered impatiently, reaching into his pockets. “How much does she need?”

Joseph did some mental calculations. “She need forty pound. No, but then she must purchase one goat and some beer.” He shrugged, “I think fifty pound, maybe sixty. But there is funeral as well. For Shango killing you must have special funeral. She is crying because she only has fifteen pounds about.”

Morgan’s heart sank at this latest setback. Fifteen pounds was a reasonable monthly wage by Kinjanjan standards. He turned away and roamed the compound wildly, trying to coax his tired brain to come up with more alternatives. A faint greyness of coming dawn now charged the atmosphere. Time was running out for him. Fanshawe would be expecting some results after a night’s work, where in fact things hadn’t advanced one bit; he might as well have ignored Fanshawe’s summons for all the good he’d done. It wasn’t just what Fanshawe would say, though; there was the more serious problem of the effect of the African
sun on Innocence’s body.… He felt like tearing his hair out. What he needed was an organisation not staffed with frigging Shango worshippers, some normal, ordinary people who did an efficient, orthodox job, who’d pick her up and stow her in a morgue somewhere until a funeral could be arranged. He’d done enough pussyfooting around pagan sensibilities, he decided; the time had surely come for some forthright energetic roughshod-riding.

As he thought about the options and courses open to him the answer came with a slow inevitability, like a tune in his head whose title he’d soon guess, given enough time. An efficient organisation, unaffected by the Shango cult—there was only one in and around Nkongsamba which fitted that description and was suitable for the delicate task in hand. Only one. Murray. Murray and his University Health Service. Murray, with his loyal, well-drilled staff and his gleaming white ambulance. They could drive here, pick up Innocence and whisk her away before anyone had a chance to get hot under the collar.

The inevitability of the choice didn’t dispel all his doubts, however, nor the vaguely shaming irony of calling on the man he planned to bribe to help get him out of a sticky situation. As he strode through the dew-slicked grass back towards the Fanshawes’ house he tried to convince himself that he was doing the right thing, silence that warning bell which was persistently ringing somewhere at the back of his head. If you couldn’t ring a doctor about a death, he argued, what could you ring one about? And besides, Murray wasn’t just a doctor, he was
his
doctor. What was more he was a white man, and white men in black Africa helped other white men in need. Damn it, Murray was practically a friend he told himself; weren’t they playing golf next Thursday? He felt a sudden warm glow of friendship towards the doctor, which he assiduously stoked up. Murray was a firm, unbending sort of man but the remarkable thing about him was that you knew where you stood. You took him as he was and that was how he took you. Yes, for all his unyielding ways he was a decent honest man. All inconvenient thoughts of the impending bribe were banished from his head as, buoyant with fellow feeling and sympathy and happily confident that this dreadful state of affairs would soon be a thing of the past, he leapt up the front door steps and quietly let himself in to
the Fanshawes’ sitting room. He leafed through the telephone directory until he found the university exchange’s number. He dialled.

“Hello,” he said. “Will you put me through to Dr. Murray’s house, please?” He heard the clicks of the connection being made. The phone rang. And rang. He was about to ask the exchange to check if they had the right number when he heard the receiver being lifted.

“Yes!” The gruff venom in the voice disturbed Morgan.

“Erm, Dr. Murray?” he inquired tentatively.

“Yes.”

“Oh good. Morgan … Morgan Leafy here. From the Commission. I’ve got a problem here and I …”

“Medical?” Murray’s terse Scottish voice had lost none of its hostility despite the fact that Morgan had identified himself. He was a little surprised at this and made a further effort to quell powerful second thoughts that suddenly rose up in his mind. It was too late for them now, he had to go on.

“Why yes. You don’t think I’d ring you if I …”

“Have you phoned the university clinic?” There was a note of resigned fatigue in Murray’s voice as he interrupted for the second time. It made Morgan feel a fool, cretinous.

“Well no. But this is an emergency.”

“The clinic is fully equipped to deal with an emergency,” Murray said patiently. “My staff then make the decision whether to call me or not—it allows me to get a full night’s sleep from time to time. Ask the switchboard for the number. Goodbye.”

“Just a moment,” Morgan said, beginning to get angry himself at such peremptory treatment; the man was a doctor for God’s sake. “If you’d let me explain … I’ve got a dead woman on my hands and I … I need your help.” Morgan could swear he heard Murray’s muffled oaths in the background.

“Did you say dead?”

“Yes.”

“I take it it’s not Mrs. or Miss Fanshawe.”

“God no,” Morgan said, surprised. “It’s a Commission servant actually. Why do you ask?”

“Because Mrs. Fanshawe and her daughter are the only women at the Commission entitled to call on the University Health Service. We are forbidden to treat non-members of staff.
We are
expressly
forbidden to operate outside the university boundaries apart from the British members of the Deputy High Commission. The duty sister at my clinic could have told you that, Mr. Leafy. Now perhaps you’ll let me get some sleep.” Murray’s Scottish accent imparted real harshness into his last words.

Morgan felt his frayed nerves begin to send off sparks. “For God’s sake,” he exclaimed. “I don’t give a hoot about your rules and regulations; I’m asking you to help us out of a jam. This woman’s been struck by lightning; she’s quite dead but nobody’ll touch her because of some bloody mumbo-jumbo about some Shango-god or something.” Morgan paused, this new upset was too dreadful to contemplate. He saw his last option disappearing as a result of Murray’s ridiculous intransigence. He felt desperation building up inside him. “It’s an appalling problem. I need you to take the body away. No one else will.”

“Jesus Christ,” he heard Murray expostulate. “(a) It’s five o’clock in the morning, (b) as I’ve told you I can do nothing for anyone who’s not a member of the university and (c) I do not run my health service on the basis of private favours. You’re asking me to violate the statutes of the University of Nkongsamba and betray official undertakings made to the City of Nkongsamba Health Authority on the grounds of so-called personal friendship. No, Mr. Leafy. It is your problem; there is
no
way you can make it mine. Contact the proper authorities; that’s what they are there for. Now kindly leave me alone!”

Morgan sat shivering in his chair during this hectoring tirade. The enormous strains of the last twenty-four hours finally proved too much for him and without for a second thinking of the consequences he burst out, “And what about the fucking Hippocratic Oath, eh? You’re a fucking doctor, aren’t you, you sanctimonious Scottish bastard.…”

Murray slammed the phone down. Morgan tailed off, still muttering racist imprecations. The unmoving, the stubborn, the beam-headed … He threw back his head and bared his teeth in a silent scream of pent-up anger, frustration and hostility at the universe.

He staggered towards Fanshawe’s drinks cabinet and poured himself half a tumbler of gin. He walked out on to the back verandah and took a mouthful. His eyes streamed with tears
and he shuddered as it went down. His view of the southern precincts of Nkongsamba bathed in a peachy matinal light shivered and went soft at the edges. He set down his glass with a rattle on the concrete balustrade at the edge of the stoop. He shook his head fiercely; a manic, berserk anger seemed to be rampaging there, like a lunatic in a padded cell. The bastard, he breathed out acid rancorous bile at the dawn, the dirty rotten filthy bastard! He went on, giving his imagination free rein. It seemed to help, at least minimally. He sensed overloaded systems responding to gentle tender hands at control. He felt like a skilled pilot nursing a grievously stricken airliner into a crash-landing. But as his anger began to subside and ratiocination asserted its dominance over the passions once more, the consequences of his fury slowly brought themselves to his shocked attention. Oh no, he said haltingly to himself, oh no,
the golf.
That was away now. Gone, irretrievable. And Adekunle, he thought too, what would Adekunle say? He contemplated Adekunle’s wrath and shivered. How could he bribe Murray now? he asked himself. And Fanshawe? The body was still there. What was Fanshawe going to do when he found Innocence baking in the morning sun?

He threw the rest of the gin into a flowerbed. He felt sick, exhausted and grimy; it seemed as though some malicious person had prised apart his eyelids, lifted them up and emptied small phials of fine sand there. He’d handled everything so badly, misjudged and miscalculated all round. Par for the course, he thought cynically, no point in breaking the pattern. He knew in his heart that shit creek had claimed him this time. Full fathom five. He looked up through the brown water hoping for a flicker of sun. But it was all murk.

The new day burst cool over Nkongsamba with its usual display of crisp breathtaking beauty. Motionless smoke-threads rose from a thousand charcoal fires into pale blue skies. The green of the trees tested the gold of the kind morning sun like a bride discovering her trousseau. Ectoplasmic wisps of mist clung possessively to the meandering paths of creeks and streams and shrouded the taller hills. Africa at her most gloriously seductive.

But Morgan knew that Innocence lay not two hundred yards away. The jelly of her eyeballs dry and opaque. Her pink tongue
contracting in her gaping mouth, mites and insects patrolling her body for moisture, her blood stagnant and pooling, her muscles and limbs stiff and unpliant.

He gazed blankly at the progress of the new day, indifferent to its splendour. Murray
could
have helped him if he had wanted to, he realised; if he had an iota of concern, a jot of feeling for him. But he didn’t give a fuck, that much was plain; he was more worried about his rule book, observing the letter of the law. Morgan squinted at the landscape, watching its contours blur and elide. He was on his own as usual. He knew then that he wanted to bribe Murray, tarnish his gleaming image, foul his perfect reputation more than anything else in the world. More than he wanted to get rid of Innocence; more than he wanted to marry Priscilla; more than he wanted to sleep with any number of beautiful women. He felt quite weak with the power of his desire. Something drastic had to happen to that man’s conception of himself—it was long overdue, and he, Morgan Leafy, would make it his business to see that it occurred, especially now that Murray had deliberately struck him down in this way. So brutally—almost as Shango had felled Innocence.