When Africa cried the jungle seemed to weep in sympathy. I could hear it now as I stood, ears pricked back to the noise. All about me untold sounds echoed – the birds, the insects, all joining in the omnipotent dirge.
I wiped sweat from my brow, trying to figure out what strange sensitivity had made me divert this way. As an aid worker of many years in this pained continent, I had learnt to trust my instinct. It had got me out of trouble on more than one occasion. And as the black workers were stirred up to yet more trouble by this barbarous government, I knew my instincts would be working overtime.
It told me to look behind the tree. Slowly, cautiously, I approached, unsure of what I would find. But to find her like that brought me so much sorrow …
‘So what’s your name?’ I asked an hour later.
In front of me she sat. She was maybe nineteen, blonde hair, pretty if not for the bruising; the ragged, ripped clothes. ‘Petra,’ she said with a typical Afrikaner accent. ‘And yours?’
Even in her state that air of authority was with her. She was obviously of the whites who had ruled for so long, until black rule was forced on them. ‘Saul Jones,’ I said.
‘Well thankyou, Saul Jones. I owe you my life.’
Underneath, I could see she was a wreck. I asked: ‘What happened?’
She sniffed back a tear; thought a moment, sadly. Then told of the attack on the farm, of the gang determined to clear them out, of her mother and father’s stand, of their …
What can you call it? Were they simply murdered, or would butchery be a better term to use?
When night comes to Africa it is impenetrable. And of that I was glad. It soon became clear that the gang was not content with simply her parent’s murder. Their blood was up; or maybe they just didn’t want any witnesses, regardless of how often the government turned a blind eye.
‘There must be twenty of them,’ Petra had told me, ‘armed to the teeth.’
We hid for the third time since I found her. It wasn’t too difficult. I had much experience of Africa and she had been brought up in the area. She could crouch there, not moving, not breathing, even her smell seeming to change to smell like the terrain around her.
When they had passed, we relaxed, sat back. I said: ‘You won’t be able to stay after this.’
‘I know,’ she replied, a sadness in her voice. ‘But I’ll miss it. I have family in England who’ll take me in. But it won’t be the same.’
She took the old, tattered sack off her back which she had clung to for dear life since I found her. Opening it, she took out food and we both ate hungrily. Satiated, she took out an old music box. She stared at it, her eyes seeming to glaze.
‘A strange thing to take with you,’ I said, ‘when you’re running for your life.’
She smiled. ‘It was bought for me on the day I was born; it so much is part of my life. Even as I ran from the farm, I knew it would go with me.’
We were about thirty miles from help, and the following day allowed only slow progress. During our rest periods, Petra spoke of her life before the troubles. Of the way both blacks and their white bosses got on so well. Of how much her father had black interests at heart, both in economic terms and in their welfare. To her, it was only right and proper, and often she would play with the black children. The country could have done so well, if only politics and the desire of certain men to control had been kept at bay.
I wasn’t sure I fully agreed with her argument. After all, I had been in this country a long time, doing aid work. If they had got it so right, why was I needed?
‘But doesn’t the fact you’re here confirm that the white man wanted to do best for this country?’
That second night, I’m afraid I ended up doing things an aid worker and peace loving man shouldn’t. But when their patrols stumbled on us, there was nothing else I could do.
There were two of them, undisciplined and disorganised as any black African gang, be it marauding thugs or a supposedly professional army. And luckily they were as startled to find us as we were to be found.
A moment’s confusion followed. But I knew the moment they fired a gun it would be over. If we were not killed there and then, the noise would bring the rest. So when I took out my knife – for cutting food parcels open; for splaying rope when building shelters for the refugees – I knew blood would now run down its blade. And after the carnage – after I had thrust into those living things, reducing them to corpses – I spent the remainder of the night staring into the darkness. Into the darkness of the continent, and the darkness that had prized itself into the centre of my being.
Morning brought a respite in the efforts Petra made to comfort me. ‘You did right,’ she said. ‘There was no other way.’ But even though I knew she was right, it provided only a momentary respite.
Finally, she sat by me, smiled, her bruises seeming to disappear as that lovely face filled my vision. And soon her arm went around me, pulled me to her breast, comforted.
I don’t think I can recall when I last felt so right; although nearly ten years older than Petra, a sexual excitement took hold. Maybe it was what we had been through over the last couple of days, binding us together, our experiences taking us to the limits of endurance, releasing new, unknown hormones. Or at least, that is what I thought. But as I raised my head and kissed her, her whole demeanour changed.
I was confused as she pulled away, as she began to shake, as tears rolled, uncontrollably, down her cheek.
‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What have I done?’
For a long time she was not forthcoming. But in the end she told me. She told me of how she was made to watch her parents die. And then the leader had taken the music box she was clinging to, opened it, allowing her beloved tune to play as he threw her to the floor and raped her before handing her to the rest.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ‘I should have thought. Oh, Petra, you poor thing.’
Her eyes glazed over. ‘It wasn’t so bad,’ she said, ‘not really. I was somewhere else.’ She took out the music box; held it to her breast. ‘I was with my song.’
The next few hours were quiet as we continued our escape. The forest seemed to work with us for a change, instead of against us. And although I hated it, I felt a new confidence as I carried one of the AK-47s taken from the gang members I had killed. But I should have known it was to be a false optimism. I should have known the rest would realise two of their number had not come back. And it wouldn’t be hard for them to work out what had happened, and where we had been. Which meant they would also know where we were heading.
The ambush, when it came, was fierce. Both Petra and I dived for cover as the rounds whizzed about us. I was no gunman, but I returned fire as best I could, knowing I had to kill some more, and hating it.
Minutes passed, though it seemed like hours. But eventually, calm descended, and a broken voice shouted: ‘Send out the girl. That’s all we want, and you can go.’
As if I would believe that. I turned to Petra in the hope of giving her comfort, but I was amazed to see she had stood up.
It was surreal to watch as she took out the music box, opened it up, allowing her song to play, and walk out into the open.
Slowly she walked, a look of destiny in her eyes, and the gang members seemed to break cover, walk towards her, to surround her.
White farmers often kept explosives on the farms, I knew. It was useful stuff to blow up a tree, dam a stream beginning to flood after the rains. And as Petra and the gang evaporated in a ball of flame, it seemed like a eulogy to the hate which Africa never seems to throw off. And for the rest of my life I knew Petra’s song would also be mine.
(c) Anthony North, December 2007
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