“Well done, Andre,” applauded Wally, looking at the girl’s body.
She wore high heels and a short pink dress that flared into a skirt from her waist but did not cover her knees.
“Come here, cookie.” Wally held out his hand to her and she crossed the room without hesitation, smiling a bright professional smile. Wally drew her down beside him on to the bed.
Andre went on standing in the doorway. Bruce got up and shrugged into his camouflage battle-jacket, buckled on his webbing belt and adjusted the bolstered pistol until it hung comfortably on his outer thigh.
“Are you going?” Wally was feeding the girl from his glass.
“Yes.” Bruce put his slouch hat on his head; the red, green and white Katangese sideflash gave him an air of artificial gaiety.
“Stay a little, - come on, Bruce.”
“Mike is waiting for me.” Bruce
picked up his rifle.
“Muck him. Stay a little, we’ll have some fun.”
“No, thanks.”
Bruce went to the door.
“Hey, Bruce. Take a look at this.” Wally tipped the girl backwards over the bed, he pinned her with one arm across her chest while she struggled playfully and with the other hand he swept her
skirt up above her waist.
“Take a good look at this and tell me you still want to go! The girl was naked under the skirt, her lower body shaven so that her plump little sex pouted sulkily.
“Come on, Bruce,” laughed Wally. “You first. Don’t say I’m not your buddy.” Bruce glanced at the girl, her legs scissored and her body wriggled as she fought with Wally. She was giggling.
“Mike and I will be back before curfew. I want this woman out of here by then,” said Bruce.
There is no desire, he thought as he looked at her, that is all finished. He opened the door.
“Curry!” shouted Wally. “You’re a bloody nut also. Christ, I
thought you were a man. Jesus Christ! You’re as bad as the others.
Andre, the doll boy. Haig, the rummy. What’s with you, Bucko? It’s women with you, isn’t it? You’re a bloody nut-case also!” Bruce closed the door and stood alone in the passage.
The taunt had gone through a chink in his armour and he clamped his mind down on the sting of it, smothering it.
It’s all over. She can’t hurt me any more. He thought with determination, remembering her, the woman, not the one in the room he had just left but the other one who had been his wife.
“The bitch,” he whispered, and then quickly, almost guiltily, “I
do not hate her. There is no hatred and there is no desire.”
The lobby of the Hotel Grand Leopold 11 was crowded. There Were gendarmes carrying their weapons ostentatiously, talking loudly, lolling against walls an dover the bar; women with them, varying in colour from black through to pastel brown, some already drunk; a few
Belgians still with the stunned disbelieving eyes of the refugee, one of the women crying as she rocked her child on her lap; other white men in civilian clothes but with the alertness about them and the quick
restless eyes of the adventurer, talking quietly with Africans in business suits; a group of journalists at one table in damp shirtsleeves, waiting and watching with the patience of vultures. And everybody sweated in the heat.
Two South African charter pilots hailed Bruce from across the room.
“Hi, Bruce. How about a snort?”
“Dave. Carl.” Bruce waved. “Big
hurry now - tonight perhaps.”
“We’re flying out this afternoon.” Carl
Engelbrecht shook his head. “Back next week.”
“We’ll make it then,” Bruce agreed, and went out of the front door into the Avenue du Kasai.
As he stopped on the sidewalk the whitewashed buildings bounced the glare into his face. The naked heat made him wince and he felt fresh sweat start out of his-body beneath his battle-suit. He took the dark glasses from his top pocket and put them on as he crossed the street to
the Chev three-tanner in which Mike Haig waited.
“I’ll drive, Mike.”
“Okay.” Mike slid across the seat and Bruce stepped up into the cab. He started the truck north down the Avenue du
Kasai.
“Sorry about that scene, Bruce.”
“No harm done.”
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that.” Bruce did not answer, he was looking at the deserted buildings on either side. Most of them had been looted and all of them were pock-marked with shrapnel from the mortar bursts. At intervals along the sidewalk were parked the burnt out bodies of automobiles looking like the carapaces of long-dead beetles.
“I shouldn’t have let him get through to me, and yet the truth hurts like hell.” Bruce was silent but he trod down harder on the
accelerator and the truck picked up speed. I don’t want to hear, he thought, I am not your confessor - I just don’t want to hear. He turned into the Avenue I’Etoile, headed towards the zoo.
“He was right, he had me measured to the inch, persisted Mike.
“We’ve all got our troubles, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.” And then, to change Mike’s mood, “We few, we happy few. We band of brothers.” Mike grinned and his face was suddenly boyish. “At least we have the distinction of following the second oldest profession - we, the mercenaries. “The oldest profession is better paid and much more fun,” said Bruce and swung the truck into the driveway of a double-storeyed residence, parked outside the front door and switched off the engine.
Not long ago the house had been the home of the chief accountant of Union Mini&e du Haut, now it was the billet of V section, Special
Striker Force, commanded by Captain Bruce Curry.
Half a dozen of his black gendarmes were sitting on the low wall of the verandah, and as Bruce came up the front steps they shouted the greeting that had become traditional since the United Nations intervention.
“U. N. - Merde!”
“Ah!” Bruce grinned at them in the sense of companionship that had grown up between them in the past months.
“The cream of the Army o Katanga I He offered his cigarettes around and stood chatting idly for a few minutes before asking, “Where’s Sergeant Major?” One of the gendarmes jerked a thumb at the glass doors that led into the lounge and Bruce went through with Mike behind him.
Equipment was piled haphazardly on the expensive furniture, the stone fireplace was half filled with empty bottles, a gendarme lay snoring on the Persian carpet, one of the oil paintings on the wall had been ripped by a bayonet and the frame hung askew, the imbuia-wood coffee table tilted drunkenly towards its broken leg, and the whole lounge smelled of men and cheap tobacco.
“Hello, Ruffy, said Bruce.
“Just in time, boss.” Sergeant Major Ruffararo grinned delightedly from the armchair which he was overflowing.
“These goddam Arabs have run fresh out of folding stuff.” He gestured at the gendarmes that crowded about the table in front of him.
“Arab” was Ruffy’s word of censure or contempt, and bore no relation to a man’s nationality.
Ruffy’s accent was always a shock to Bruce. You never expected to hear pure Americanese come rumbling out of that huge black frame. But three years previously Ruffy had returned from a scholarship tour of the United States with a command of the idiom, a diploma in land husbandry, a prodigious thirst for bottled beer (preferably Schlitz, but any other was acceptable) and a raving dose of the Old Joe.
The memory of this last, which had been a farewell gift from a high yellow sophomore of U. C.L. A returned most painfully to Ruffararo when he was in his cups; so painfully that it could be assuaged only by throwing the nearest citizen of the United States.
Fortunately, it was only on rare occasions that an American and the necessary five or six gallons of beer were assembled in the same vicinity so that Ruffy’s latent race antipathy could find expression.