could have twisted his head and looked through the large windows into
the lounge at what they were doing to the women, but he
did not. He could hear what was happening; by noon the screams had
become groans and sobbing; by midafternoon the women were making no
sound at all. But the queue of shufta was still out of the front door of
the lounge. Some of them had been to the head of the line and back to
the tail three or four times.
All of them were drunk now. One jovial fellow carried a bottle of
Parfait Amour liqueur in one hand and a bottle of Harpers whisky in the
other. Every time he came back to join the queue again he stopped in
front of Andre.
'Will you drink with me, little white boy!' he asked.
'Certainly you will,' he answered himself, filled his mouth from one of
the bottles and spat it into Andre's face. Each time it got a big laugh
from the others waiting in the line.
Occasionally one of the other shufta would stop in front of Andre,
unsling his rifle, back away a few paces, sight along the bayonet at
Andre's face and then charge forward, at the last moment twisting the
point aside so that it grazed his cheek. Each time Andre could not
suppress his shriek of terror, and the waiting men nearly collapsed with
merriment.
Towards evening they started to burn the houses on the outskirts of
town. One group, sad with liquor and rape, sat together at the end of
the verandah and started to sing.
Their deep beautiful voices carrying all the melancholy savagery of
Africa, they kept on singing while an argument between two shufta
developed into a knife fight in the road outside the hotel.
The sweet bass lilt of singing covered the coarse breathing of the two
circling, bare-chested knife fighters and the shuffle, shuffle quick
shuffle of their feet in the dust. When finally they locked together for
the kill, the singing rose still deep and strong but with a triumphant
note to it. One man stepped back with his rigid right arm
holding the knife buried deep in the other's belly and as the loser sank
down, sliding slowly off the knife, the singing sank with him,
plaintive, regretful and lamenting into silence.
They came for Andre after dark. Four of them less drunk than the others.
They led him down the street to the Union Mini&re offices.
General Moses was there, sitting alone at the desk in the front office.
There was nothing sinister about him; he looked like an elderly clerk, a
small man with the short woollen cap of hair grizzled to grey above the
ears and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. On his chest he wore three
rows of full-dress medals; each of his fingers was encased in rings to
the second joint, diamonds, emeralds and the occasional red glow of a
ruby; most of them had been designed for women, but the metal had been
cut to enlarge them for his stubby black fingers. The face was almost
kindly, except the eyes.
There was a blankness of expression in them, the lifeless eyes of a
madman. On the desk in front of him was a small wooden case made of
unvarnished deal which bore the seal of the Union Mini&e Company
