‘There is old Dumayami!’ said Coitala, pointing ahead through the drapes of bright sunshine.
‘It can’t be,’ Soames said; but it was. He stopped the car and leant out of the window. They had come to a fordable river. A shack stood nearby, its roof overhung by trees, an immense cacophony of chickens coming from behind it. On the one mud steps sat Dumayami. He had seen them; he came slowly down into the road, walking steadily towards them, his wrinkled face expressionless.
‘I am frightened. Please not speak!’ Coitala said. ‘Leave him ’lone.’
‘Nonsense, trust the President!’ Soames said airily; it amused him to refer to himself in the third person in this way. Disengaging Coitala’s hand, he sat watching Dumayami till the old man had come close. Jumping out of the car, he went forward with his hand outstretched, consciously the white man doing the white thing.
‘Dumayami!’ he cried. ‘It really is good to see you. This is a chance to say how much I hope you’ll let bygones be bygones. You were quite right about me, you know! Here I am, still here, just as you said I would be!’
The old witch doctor took the proffered hand. Though dressed only in a loin cloth, he seemed for a moment oddly European. He had, Soames thought, the self-consciously triumphant air of a friend who has just discovered something nasty about you.
‘You must come in my home, take one drink with me,’ he said, ‘accept one fowl.’
‘Fine,’ Soames agreed. He signalled to Coitala that he would not be long. ‘I’d be glad to. In a way, indirectly, I owe you a great deal, Dumayami, and I hope we’ll be friends in future. A man’s life turns in many strange and unexpected ways.’
‘All is in the gods’ hands,’ Dumayami said.
‘I sometimes wonder if it isn’t a matter of how he reacts from moment to moment – a matter of luck if he is feeling silly or sane at any particular crisis.’
‘Much is debatable,’ Dumayami said.
They walked side by side towards the shack, Soames with his hands in his pockets. His new self-confidence was amazing; only an enemy would equate it with conceit. Feeling wonderful he wanted everyone to feel the same: had he not personally proved that you had only really to want to live and you could live?
‘You know, the first thing I did when I got into office,’ he said conversationally, ‘was to get to the bottom of that business about the railway engine. You remember? We traced the injured driver through the old bowler hat you gave him. He confessed that you and Turdilal Ghosti had planned the whole thing to get Deal Jimpo out of the way – and if I had gone too, so much the better.’
Dumayami made no reply.
‘So,’ Soames continued, ‘Turdilal is now serving a life sentence. We thought it better to let you go free; you are an old man now, and harmless. It was my decision not to have you shut away, so you need not bear me any grudges, need you?’
‘Carrion birds at last eat all grudges,’ Dumayami said.
‘Exile is not so bad, is it?’ Soames said. ‘The air’s good here, anyway! Is your daughter looking after you? I’m sorry I never married her, by the way, but you see what a little pet I got instead.’
The sun heavy on their shoulders, they walked in silence through the dust to the shack. By the single mud step, a snake lay motionless in the shade.
‘That’s the first snake I’ve seen since I came to Africa,’ Soames confided, inspecting it with cautious interest.
‘Black mamba. Very deadly; one bite – death come at once,’ the witch doctor said gravely. ‘This fellow I kill this morning. Kick him, make you feel better, prove your new power.’
‘All right,’ Soames said, humouring the old man. ‘Take that, you sinister-looking –’
The kick never landed, As Soames’ boot moved, the casual coils of snake twisted and launched themselves with deadly accuracy. The fangs sank into the flesh just above Soames’ ankle. Dumayami, without delay, turned and went up into his shack, as Soames rolled among the oleander bushes.
About the Author
Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories, many of which are being reissued as part of The Brian Aldiss Collection.
Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society and in 2000 was given the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Aldiss was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2005.
Also by Brian Aldiss
The Brightfount Diaries
Interpreter
The Primal Urge
The Monster Trilogy
Frankenstein Unbound
Moreau’s Other Island
Dracula Unbound
The Eighty-Minute Hour
Brothers of the Head
Enemies of the System
The Squire Quartet
Life in the West
Forgotten Life
Remembrance Day
Somewhere East of Life
Cretan Teat
Jocasta
Finches of Mars
Comfort Zone
The Complete Short Stories: The 1950s
The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Part One: 1960-62
The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Part Three: 1965-66
The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Part Four: 1967-69
Poetry
Songs from the Steppes: The Poems of Makhtumkuli
Non-fiction
Bury my Heart at W. H. Smith’s
The Detached Retina
The Twinkling of an Eye
When the Feast is Finished
Essays
This World and Nearer Ones
The Pale Shadow of Science
The Collected Essays
And available exclusively as ebooks
The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy
50 x 50: The Mini-Sagas
Supertoys Trilogy
About the Publisher
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, SE1 9GF, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
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