Just beyond the village, the ground fell on its knees, a sharp drop into a korongo where once there was a waterhole for cattle but now it was just a dry pan. A massive dust devil was hurling about, and the drumming was in the middle of it. It took us a moment to figure out that the dust came from the dancers.
They were all kitted out in masks, their feet stamping up the earth as they prowled and shook. They weren’t singing, they weren’t making any noise, there was just the sound of the drum. The dust cleared in brief moments so we could see the drummer in the middle, some old guy hammering hammering on a big cowskin drum with his big pink-palmed hands. And then the dust would occlude him again, and the dancers would be coming in and out of it, so we were seeing and not seeing.
I cannot deny that the sound of the drum, the pounding of it, went right into me and fucked with my heart, like the rhythm was just similar enough that my heart was all excited to have found a soulmate, but it was a seduction, because the drumbeat was just a fraction off, and it made my heartbeat change. Something was going on inside me, something was shifting about.
Also, WTF were these people doing here dancing and carrying on? Clearly, bad things had happened quite recently. And yet they were dancing.
Franco looked uncomfortable, too, shifting his weight like he had very bad indigestion, which he got after Juba. ‘You happy now?’ I turned back toward the village. ‘Can we go?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Fine. I’ll wait at the car.’
Everything was all wrong. I knew absolutely that everything was all wrong and would therefore get more wrong. We should not have been there, we should have turned around in the middle of that goddamn creepy forest and gone back to the hotel and had the teacher bring us beers. This wasn’t our war. Any more.
I was not at all surprised to find four gentlemen standing around the car. Draping themselves like male models in Ukrainian Vogue over the open door, the hood, one posing in the side-view mirror. They had the mirrored shades and the camo gear, bits of it scavenged along the way, the bandanas, the AKs. I’ve noticed that the fashion sense of rebels hasn’t evolved since the early nineties. They’ve missed the whole gangsta baggy trouser thing. But, having your trousers around your ass maybe doesn’t work when you’ve got looting, burning and killing to do.
The leader of the foursome stepped forward and I noticed his Italian loafers right away.
‘Good day. How are you?’ I figured this was Remy J.
‘Fine,’ I said, although he wasn’t really asking. ‘And you?’
‘I keel you. Quick if you pay. Slow if you do not.’
‘Can you kill my friend first?’
Remy J laughed. They all laughed. I laughed. I love Africa, you can make a joke about anything and it will actually be funny. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You like to watch?’
‘Oh, definitely.’
Two of them went away and in only a few minutes came back with Franco. They were chatting and smoking cigarettes. ‘So, they’re going to kill us,’ Franco said, offering me one.
‘I didn’t know you’d started smoking again,’ I said, taking one.
‘This pisses me off. I was enjoying the drumming.’
‘Where do you want us?’ I asked Remy J.
‘First, you pay for quick keel.’
‘Of course.’ Franco and I handed him our wallets. There was a couple of hundred dollars. He seemed satisfied. Then pointed to a wall about twenty yards away from the car. This had a number of bullet holes in it, and rust-colored smudges, like kids had been playing paintball. Only they hadn’t.
Franco shook his head. ‘No, no, that’s not right. The light is terrible.’
Remy squinted. ‘The light?’
‘I was hoping you could take a photograph.’
‘Of your keeling?’
‘Sure,’ nodded Franco. He took out his iPhone. ‘Would you mind?’
Remy gestured to one of his mates. The mate took the iPhone and Franco showed him how to take a picture. We positioned ourselves against the wall close to the car, put our arms around each other and said ‘Cheese!’ We ended up taking a bunch of photos with Remy and the others, smiling, joking around. Remy had a real talent for posing.
But when Franco put two fingers behind Remy’s head like bunny ears, he got serious. He gestured for the phone, and Franco sighed and started to hand it over.
Then, as if he wanted to be incredibly helpful to this fucking coon who was going to kill us, Franco said: ‘Hey, man, I gotta unlock it for you. Disable the security code. Or you won’t be able to use it.’
‘Thanks,’ Remy said and handed the phone back.
Franco pressed a code into the keypad.
DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH! BLAM BLAM!
Wagner. Sound of gunfire. DOOSH DOOSH. A crazy mad storm like a million bullets and people screaming AAAAHHHH with a couple of Apache choppers coming in TUKKA TUKKA and some explosions DOOSH PSSEWWWW DOOOSHH. Incoming!!! Franco and I jumped in the car while Remy and his crew dived for cover.
They were completely freaked out.
‘Wahoo!’ said Franco, flooring the Cruiser as we got the hell out of there.
We drove for three minutes before we started laughing. Franco reached over and squeezed my cheek. ‘You are a genius!’
The recording had been my idea, sound clips scavenged from Apocalypse Now and a couple of episodes of Band of Brothers. We hadn’t tried it until now.
Let me tell you, we thought we were shit-hot, so clever. And then the car started going fug-fug-fug. One of those cunts had managed to hit the carburetor.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’
We were maybe fourteen miles from the hotel and in the middle of that fucking forest. We got out and started jogging. If we were lucky Remy J would give up on us. If we weren’t he’d be coming after us. We hadn’t seen another vehicle, but even on foot those guys were younger than us and they were pissed off. Because not everyone can take a joke.
Franco and I, we were not aging well. Smoking is terrible for lungs and all the burning tires we’d inhaled in Tripoli and tear gas in Kinshasa. Franco’s guts hadn’t been put back in very well in Juba; there was still a big tear in his abdominal muscles. And I still had that bullet in my lower spine.
There was not a breath of wind, not even the sound of leaves rustling. Like the trees were not real, but some kind of painted set. Something Stalin would come up with, a pretty field or village street, and then behind it piles of bodies, most of my baburya’s family. I kept listening and it was so crazy not to hear anything. We walked because we couldn’t run any more. I was just tired, I really couldn’t be bothered, like being out in the snow, that feeling you just want to lie down and go to sleep. I almost said to Franco that we should just give up, what did we really care about living?
Then we heard the bicycle bell, a bright little brriiing! We ducked into the trees. Fucking Remy was on a bicycle. They were all on bicycles, the four cyclists of the apocalypse. We stayed low and very still until they passed. But they were looking for us, they knew we weren’t far, they were trying to smell us. Franco and I crept away, deeper into the forest.
We walked east, for no reason other than that it was away from the road and Remy, and we needed to pick a steady direction. We walked until it was too dark. We had to stop because the canopy of trees was so thick we couldn’t see the stars. Of course, if we still had Franco’s iPhone, we could have used the compass app. What a fucking genius.
After three days of walking we were not doing well at all — that fucking forest — and when that third night came we were thinking we were done. Franco, especially. But then we saw a light. Just one little point of light. And we started on, losing the light for a moment or two as we staggered on through the trees.