Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн бесплатно полностью без .TXT) 📗

It crushed his nose and broke his teeth; it cracked his ribs and bruised his limbs.

Then suddenly, it left him and rushed back into the forest from whence it had come.  Its voice had changed, the rage was gone out of it.  It wailed and lamented as though it mourned the death and the poisoning of the forest and the sins of the tribe that had brought disaster upon them all.

Slowly it retreated and its voice became fainter, until at last it faded into the distance.

Pirri picked himself up slowly.  He made no effort to gather up his scattered treasures.  He took only his bow and his quiver of arrows.

He left his elephant spear and his machete.  He limped away into the forest.

He went alone.  His wives did not go with him, for they were widows now.

They would find new husbands in the tribe.  Pirri was dead.  The Molimo had killed him.  No man would ever see him again.  Even when they met his ghost wandering amongst the tall trees, no man or woman would acknowledge it.

Pirri was dead to his tribe for ever.

Will you help us, Daniel?  Victor Omeru asked.  Yes, Daniel agreed.

I will help you.  I will take the tapes to London.  I will arrange to have them shown on public television in London and Paris and New York.

What else will you do to help us?  Victor asked.  What else do you want of me?

Daniel countered.  What else is there I can do?  You are a soldier, and a good one, from what I have heard.

Will you join us in our fight to regain our freedom?  I was a soldier, long ago, Daniel corrected him, in a cruel unjust war.  I learned to hate war in a way that no one can until they have experienced it.

Daniel, I am asking you to take part in a just war.  This time I am asking you to make a stand against tyranny.  I am no longer a soldier.

I am a journalist, Victor.  It is not my war.  You are a soldier still, Victor contradicted him.  And it is your war.  It is the war of any decent man.  Daniel did not reply immediately.  He glanced sideways at Kelly, on the point of asking for her support.  Then he saw her expression.  There was no comfort for him there.  He looked back at Victor, and the old man leaned closer to him.  We Uhali are a peaceful people.  For that reason we, alone, do not have the skill necessary to overthrow the tyrant.  We need weapons.  We need people to teach us how to use them.

Help me, please, Daniel.  I will find all the young brave men you need, if only you will promise to train and command them.  I don't want - Daniel began, but Victor forestalled him.

Don't refuse me outright.  Don't say anything more tonight.

Sleep on it.  Give me your answer in the morning.  Think about it, Daniel.  Dream of the men and women you saw in the camps.  Dream of the people you saw killed or deported at Fish Eagle Bay, and the mass grave in the forest.  Give me your answer in the morning.  Victor Omeru stood up.  He paused beside Daniel's chair and placed his hand on his shoulder.  Good night, Daniel, he said, and went down the steps and crossed in the moonlight to his own small bungalow beyond the gardens.

What are you going to do?  Kelly asked softly.  I don't know.  I really don't know.  Daniel stood up.  I'll tell you tomorrow.  But right now, I'll do what Victor suggested, I'm going to bed.  Yes.

Kelly stood up beside him.

Good night, he said.

She was standing very close to him, her face tilted up towards him.

He kissed her.  The kiss held for a long time.

She drew back only a few inches from his mouth and said, Come.  And led him down the verandah to her bedroom.

It was still dark when he woke the next morning under the mosquito net with her.

Her arm was thrown over his chest.  Her breath was warm on his neck.

He felt her come softly awake.

I'm going to do what Victor wants, he said.

She stopped breathing for a few moments then she said, It wasn't meant as a bribe.  I know, he said.  What happened between us last night is a thing apart, she said.  I wanted it to happen from the first day I met you, no, from before that.  From the first time I saw your images on the screen, I was half in love with you.  I've also been waiting for you a long time, Kelly.  I knew you were out there somewhere.  At last I've found you.  I hate to lose you so soon, she said, and kissed him. Please come back to me.  Daniel left Gondola two days later.  Sepoo and four Bambuti porters accompanied him.

He paused at the edge of the forest and looked back.  Kelly was on the verandah of the bungalow.  She waved.  She looked very young and girlish, and he felt his heart squeezed.  He did not want to go, not yet, not so soon after he had found her.

He waved and forced himself to turn from her.

As they climbed the lower slopes of the mountain the forest gave way to bamboo, which was so dense that in places they were forced to their hands and knees to crawl through the tunnels which the giant hog had burrowed.

The bamboo was solid overhead.

They climbed higher and came out at last on to the bleak heath slopes of the high mountains, twelve thousand feet above sea level, where the giant groundsel.  stood like battalions of armoured warriors, their heads spiked with red flowers.

The Bambuti huddled in the blankets that Kelly had provided, but they were miserable and sickening, totally out of their element.

Before they reached the highest pass, Daniel sent them back.

Sepoo wanted to argue.  Kuokoa, you will lose your way on the mountains without Sepoo to guide you and Kara-Ki will be angry.  You have never seen her truly angry.  It is not a sight for any but the brave.  Look up there.  Daniel pointed ahead to where the peaks showed through the cloud.

There is cold up there that no Bambuti has ever experienced.  That shining white is ice and snow so cold that it will burn you like fire.

So Daniel went on alone, carrying the precious tapes inside his jacket close to his skin, and he crossed below the moraine of the Ruwatamagufa glacier and came down into Zaire two days after leaving Sepoo.  He had frostbite on three of his fingers and one of his toes.

The-Zairean district commissioner at Mutsora was accustomed to refugees coming across the mountains, but seldom with white faces and British passports and fifty-dollar bills to dispense.  He did not turn this one back.

Two days later, Daniel was on the steamer going down the Zaire River and ten days after that he landed at Heathrow.  The tapes were still in his pocket.

From his Chelsea flat Daniel telephoned Michael Hargreave at the embassy in Kahali.  Good Lord, Danny.  We were told that you and Bonny Mahon disappeared in the forest near Sengi-Sengi.  The army has had patrols out searching for you.  How secure is this line, Mike?  I wouldn't stake my reputation on it.  Then I'll give you the full story when next we meet.

In the meantime e, will you send me that packet I gave you for safekeeping?  Get it to me in the next diplomatic bag?  Hold on, Danny.

I gave the package to Bonny Mahon.  She told me that she was collecting it on your behalf.  Daniel was silent for a beat as he worked it out. The little idiot.  She played right into their hands.

Well, that settles it.

She's dead, Mike, as sure as fate.  She handed over the package and they killed her.  They thought I was dead, so they killed her.  Nice and neat.