Mungo strains against this fish with everything he’s got, all his being focused on this thing extending from his fingertips to scrape the rocks and hug its belly to the deepest recesses of the deepest pools. He can feel every pebble, he can read the whole history of the river there, igneous pillars thrust through the surface, the flat scouring hand of the glaciers, the relentless buffeting of the watercourse, stream without end, draining into the sea and rising again in the clouds. Implacable, determined, he pulls at the mystery with every nerve and fiber of his body, with every ounce of blood and pound of flesh, he pulls.
And it pulls him, it pulls him.
♦ SIDI AMBAK BUBI ♦
Mungo returns from London just before Christmas, the fringe of a tartan muffler peeping out from beneath his stovepipe hat, a small dark stranger at his side. If no one pays much attention to the explorer (familiarity breeds familiarity), the stranger is another story. No one in Peebleshire knows quite what to make of him. At first glance he seems ordinary enough — kneeboots, woollen trousers, greatcoat, cravat — but on closer inspection, the good people of Peebles find themselves confronted with a series of anomalies. For one thing, there is the question of the stranger’s complexion, the hue of which seems to fall midway between the dun of barnyard muck and the cheesy yellow of goat’s milk. For another, there is the question of his hat, which isn’t a hat at all but a strip of linen wound round his head. Not to mention his ritually scarred cheeks, waist-length beard and the gold hoop piercing his lip in the most shamelessly barbaric way. All in all, considering that nothing has changed in Peebles in eight hundred years, the stranger’s sudden appearance is every bit as extraordinary as the birth of a two-headed duck or the discovery of a new comet in the night sky.
They ride into Peebles at sunset, Mungo and his dark companion, the evidence of their dialogue hanging in the chill air like smoke. The denizens of Peebles — retiring types, quiet, half-asleep — are bent over their hearths as the horses clop past their windows, the puissant odors of neeps and potatoes, boiled beef and cockyleekie soup commanding their full attention. Even so, half of them are pressed to their windows or edging out into the street before the explorer has reached his front yard. They are in shirtsleeves, aprons, slippers, some are even barefooted. All look as if they’ve just seen some prodigy, some freak of nature, some walking, talking, insidious illusion they can neither accept nor dismiss. “Did ye see what I seen?” says Angus M’Corkle to his neighbor, Mrs. Crimpie.
“Aye,” she says, slowly shaking her head as if to unplug her ears, “and I’ll be blessed if it wasn’t one of the Magi himself come up for the Holy Day.”
“Nay, nay. It’s clear he’s just some itinerant Jew. . or maybe a Chinese Mongol.”
“Ali Baba,” says Festus Baillie, his jaw locked like a judge’s. “Ali Baba himself.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Sidi Ambak Bubi is neither Jew nor Mongol. Nor is he a freak of nature, a prodigy or an Arabian folkhero. He is, quite simply, a Moor: humble, unassuming, a trifle unctuous. A Moor from Mogador, well connected and educated, who originally came to London to serve as interpreter for Elphi Bey, Ambassador from Cairo. But when Elphi Bey expired suddenly after choking on a wedge of mutton and flushing a deep midnight blue, Sidi found himself out of a job. It would be months before Cairo could be informed of the Ambassador’s death and arrange for a replacement. He began to feel concerned. It was at this point that Sir Joseph Banks stepped in. Would Mr. Bubi be so kind as to come round to No. 32, Soho Square? Sir Joseph had a proposition to make him.
When Sidi was shown into the library at Sir Joseph’s townhouse, he found himself standing before two Englishmen: one elderly and squarish, with a cast of jaw that suggested a bulldog, the other young, fair-haired and muscular. The elderly man, as distinguished and formidable as a ship of the line, proved to be Sir Joseph Banks. He greeted Sidi with an outstretched hand, offered him a seat and a glass of claret (which Sidi, a devout Moslem, politely refused). And then turned to introduce him to his companion, Mungo Park.
Sidi flushed to his lip ring on hearing the explorer’s name, rose awkwardly and stretched himself on the floor at his feet. “Oh Mr. Park, sir, I greatly admire your writings,” he sang out in the high nasal whine of a muezzin at prayer, “and I applaud your efforts to open up our poor backward land to the civilizing influence of the Englishmans, I do, I do.” By this time both Mungo and Sir Joseph were on their feet expostulating with the Moor to get up and behave himself, but apparently he hadn’t yet finished what he intended to say. He lay there a full minute, nose buried in the carpet, before very hesitantly continuing. “But oh Mr. Park, Sir,” he mumbled, “how heartily I deplore the shameful treatment you had from my co-religionists in Ludamar. They are sorry dogs.” Apparently satisfied at having got this out, the Moor crept back to his seat on hands and knees, and perched at the edge of his chair, eyes averted, while Sir Joseph outlined his proposition.
Mr. Park, Sir Joseph explained, was in London for the second time in as many months for the purpose of organizing an expedition to the Niger Basin. The expedition was to have left within six weeks, but for an unforeseen reversal. The government of Mr. Addington had fallen, and the Colonial Secretary, Lord Hobart, had been replaced by Lord Camden. The new Secretary had informed Sir Joseph that the government could not possibly arrange for an expedition before September of the following year.
Mungo sipped moodily at his claret throughout this recitation. He was disappointed, disheartened, disgusted. In the fall, after that idyllic afternoon on the Yarrow, he’d spent two hellish days and nights trying to reassure Ailie that he had no intention of leaving her. She clung to him and screamed like a madwoman, threatened to drown herself, set the house afire, throttle the children in their sleep. He wasn’t going to desert her again — she wouldn’t allow it. She’d poison him first. He broke down under the pressure. “All right,” he told her, “I’ll run down to London and tell Hobart he’ll have to find another man.” She kissed his hands. They made love like newlyweds.
He was lying. Lying to buy time. In London he told Hobart: “I’m your man. Give me the supplies and manpower I need and I’ll map the Niger for you, beginning to end.” Hobart asked for two months to make the arrangements, and the explorer returned to Peebles, on edge, impatient, as guilt-racked as a sticky-fingered altar boy. “Did you tell him?” Ailie asked.
Mungo looked away. “Yes, but. . but he’s asked me to act as technical advisor for a new expedition to be headed up by some. . some young Welshman Sir Joseph has dug up.”
That was in October. In December there was another summons from Hobart and the explorer took the first coach for London. He stepped into the Colonial office, prepared to leave on the spot, already mentally drafting a letter to Ailie: Dear Ailie, I love and cherish you and adore the children, but duty to my country and my God must come before even my sacred duty to my family. Africa awaits, the greatest adventure mankind has ever known, and I am the only man alive who—Hobart’s face stopped him cold. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, Park,” the Secretary said.
“Sir?”
“We’re out.”
Mungo stared at the older man in bewilderment. “Out?”
“Addington has resigned.”