What Am I Doing Here? Read Online Free Page B

then gave me a glass of water and, after that, he helped me into my clothes.
    â€˜You passed out,’ he said.
    â€˜Thank you,’ I said.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They are only playing games.’
    It was late afternoon now. The corporal was in a better mood and allowed us to sit outside the guardroom. The sun was still hot. My head was still aching, but the crowd had simmered down and fortunately, for us, this particular section of the Benin Proletarian Army had found a new source of amusement — in the form of three Belgian ornithologists, whom they had taken prisoner in a swamp, along with a Leica lens the shape and size of a mortar.
    The leader of the expedition was a beefy, red-bearded fellow. He believed, apparently, that the only way to deal with Africans was to shout. Jacques advised him to shut his mouth; but when one of the subalterns started tinkering with the Leica, the Belgian went off his head. How dare they? How dare they touch his camera? How dare they think they were mercenaries? Did they look like mercenaries?
    â€˜And I suppose they’re mercenaries, too?’ He waved his arms at us.
    â€˜I told you to shut your mouth,’ Jacques repeated.
    The Belgian took no notice and went on bellowing to be set free. At once! Now! Or else! Did he hear that ?
    Yes. The subaltern had heard, and smashed his fist into the Belgian’s face. I never saw anyone crumple so quickly. The blood gushed down his beard, and he fell. The subaltern kicked him when he was down. He lay on the dirt floor, whimpering.
    â€˜Idiot!’ Jacques growled.
    â€˜Poor Belgium,’ I said.
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    The next few hours I would prefer to forget. I do, however, remember that when the corporal brought back my things I cursed, ‘Christ, they’ve nicked my traveller’s cheques’ — and Jacques, squeezing my arm very tightly, whispered, ’Now you keep your mouth shut!’ I remember ‘John Brown’s Body’ playing loudly over the radio, and the Head of State inviting the population, this time, to gather up the corpses. Ramasser les cadavres is what he said, in a voice so hoarse and sinister you knew a great many people had died, or would do. And I remember, at sunset, being driven by minibus to the Gezo Barracks where hundreds of soldiers, all elated by victory, were embracing one another, and kissing.
    Our new guards made us undress again, and we were shut up, with other suspected mercenaries, in a disused ammunition shed. ‘Well’ I thought, at the sight of so many naked bodies, ‘there must be some safety in numbers.’
    It was stifling in the shed. The other whites seemed cheerful, but the blacks hung their heads between their knees, and shook. After dark, a missionary doctor, who was an old man, collapsed and died of a heart-attack. The guards took him out on a stretcher, and we were taken to the Sûreté for questioning.
    Our interrogator was a gaunt man with hollow temples, a cap of woolly white hair and bloodshot slits for eyes. He sat sprawled behind his desk, caressing with his fingertips the blade of his bowie-knife. Jacques made me stand a pace behind him. When his turn came, he said loudly that he was employed by such and such a French engineering company and that I, he added, was an old friend.
    â€˜Pass!’ snapped the officer. ‘Next!’
    The officer snatched my passport, thumbed through the pages and began blaming me, personally, for certain events in Southern Africa.
    â€˜What are you doing in our country?’
    â€˜I’m a tourist.’
    â€˜Your case is more complicated. Stand over there.’
    I stood like a schoolboy, in the corner, until a female sergeant took me away for fingerprinting. She was a very large sergeant. My head was throbbing; and when I tried to manoeuvre my little finger onto the inkpad, she bent it back double; I yelled ‘Ayee!’ and her boot slammed down on my sandalled