continued on, speed unchanged.
Deaken couldn’t run any more. His breath was wheezing and his body ached and throbbed. He stood, aware he was a long way from the road, vainly waving, and then stopped bothering even with this, to watch the bus become smaller and smaller until it finally vanished from the plain. It took a long time for his breathing to become normal and the pain to diminish. Deaken remained slump-shouldered, feeling the sun burn into him. Then, head bowed, he began to trudge towards the road. Sweat rivered his face, making the bites irritate even more. He was still some way from the road when he saw the air quiver for which he’d been looking while far back among the trees. He was surprised how far from the road the coppice was: it looked very small from where he stood. He must have been very frightened to have travelled that far the previous night. Deaken moved on, coming finally to the storm ditch. It was wide and deep, filled at the bottom with the junk of passing travellers, wrappers and boxes and rotting fruit and the inevitable Coca-Cola can. The bank upon which Deaken stood was sheer but the opposing one was sloped up towards the road. It was wide, but he thought he could jump it. He moved back several paces and then attempted a stumbling run-up. At the last moment he missed his footing, and launched himself into the air with hardly any pace. Arms and legs flailing, Deaken thumped down on the other side, but felt himself sliding backwards into the filthy ditch. His fingers scrabbled to catch a grip, and groaning with the effort, he hauled himself upwards, until he could feel the macadam hot and sticky under his fingers.
Deaken levered himself upright. The road ran black and ruler-straight from horizon to horizon, the cooked air dancing crazily above it. There was no shade in either direction. The sun seemed to be burning into him at the very crown of his head. He took his jacket off again to create a protective canopy and crouched down in the dust at the side of the road. Flicking his tongue against the dryness, Deaken felt his lips were already hard and scaling. Down there among the bottle and the cans there would be trapped water. But it would be stagnant and stale, diseased. His throat felt swollen and gritty. Deaken dropped his jacket to look at his watch. Nine thirty. Still time, if someone were to come along soon. He screwed around, looking back and forth along the road. Nothing. It seemed to be getting more difficult to swallow, as if his throat were closing. He coughed and it hurt. Deaken stood to ease the cramp from his legs.
At first he imagined that it was a trick of the distorted light against the heat of the road. He squinted, squeezing his eyes tightly shut to clear his vision and when he opened them he saw that there was definite movement, a black shape materializing down the highway. Deaken struggled back into his jacket and stepped out onto the road, feeling the heat scorch at once through the soles of his feet. He stood in the very centre, arms raised in front of him. It was a lorry, open-backed with slatted sides to hold its cargo, bulbous wings and a dust-covered cab; the wipers had cleared two semi-circular eyes in the windscreen, which made it look like a vast, metallic insect.
Then he heard the horn sound, strident and impatient. It hadn’t occurred to him that people wouldn’t stop, coming upon him stranded in this deserted savannah.
“Dear God, no!” Deaken moaned.
He waved his arms faster. The engine note didn’t change and the horn blast was more prolonged. He wouldn’t move, Deaken decided. He would stay right where he was. The man would have to halt or run him down. Deaken glanced desperately to left and right, trying to estimate if there were room for the man to swerve around him at the last minute. A hundred yards now, maybe less. The insect face was bearing down, hom screeching, and then suddenly the headlights flared on in a warning flash. Deaken moved sideways, bringing himself more directly into the path of the vehicle. There was a puff of burning smoke from the squealing rear wheels as they locked. The back slid in the soft tar, slewing the lorry towards the ditch. The driver released the brakes, correcting the skid, then braked again. There were fresh spurts of smoke. Cold with fear, Deaken remained where he was, staring up at the lorry, so close now that it towered above him. He could see the driver’s face, black, eyes pebbled with fear. Behind the ballooned wings were rusting running boards, Deaken noticed. He had slowed the lorry sufficiently to leap aboard if he had to dodge at the last minute. He wouldn’t lose the lorry. Couldn’t. It slewed again, slow and controllable. Deaken had to move, but backwards, not sideways, so that he still blocked the road.
There was a moment of dust-settling silence. Deaken recovered first. He went immediately to the passenger side, hauling at the door, not thinking until he was framed at the opening that the man might have a weapon. He didn’t. From his startled expression it was obvious he expected Deaken to have one. The lawyer smiled, splaying his hands.
“I need help”, he said in English. “Transport.”
The driver looked blankly at him but there was a discernible relaxation in his attitude.
“Assistance,” he said, attempting French. “Aid.” There was still no comprehension. What was help in Swahili? Fervently Deaken tried to recall the long-unused words, remembering at last. “Saidia,” he said. Still nothing.
Deaken pointed to the road. “Dakar?” he said.
The man’s face cleared. He said something Deaken could not understand, nodding and smiling agreement. Deaken indicated that he wanted to sit in the adjoining seat, repeatedly pointing ahead and repeating “Dakar.” Smiling, clearly relieved, the man met the request with a further nod of agreement. As an afterthought, Deaken indicated the way from which the lorry had been travelling and said. “Dakar?” again. Once more there was a nod of agreement.
“Shit!” said Deaken.
The driver nodded and smiled, apparently now enjoying the encounter, a relief from the boring, lonely drive.
“Dakar?” said Deaken again, not offering an opinion this time. He was given another smiling, acquiescent nod.
“Which…?” started Deaken and then stopped, realizing the hopelessness. “Shit!” he repeated. Another nod.
He got in, slamming the door. It was movement, whatever the direction. At the first township or hamlet he would inquire again, get it right. Maybe find a taxi. Ten fifteen, he noted. The driver ground the gears into mesh with a shudder of cogs, snagging up through the gate in a ritual flourish which Deaken realized he was supposed to appreciate. When the speedometer needle registered seventy-five kilometres, the man hunched forward over the wheel, arms encompassing the rim.
Surely this hadn’t been the speed at which he had approached, horn blaring, fast enough to burn the tread off the tyres when he braked? Deaken stared at him and the Senegalese answered the look, smirking at what he believed to be admiration. There was nothing he could do, Deaken accepted. At least he was moving, he tried again to reassure himself, not stuck in some wasteland, being gradually dried in the sun.
The oblong of the rust-framed window gaped behind him; dust drifted in, fashioned in weaving snakes. Beyond he saw the load, a haphazard pile of vegetables and fruit. Deaken groped for an orange. It was green and unripened, hard under his hands. He gestured for permission to the driver, who shrugged and nodded. The fruit was as hard as its outer skin. Deaken bit into it, face twisting at the sourness, his mouth stung by it. He gulped at the orange, devouring the flesh almost without awareness, snatching back through the hole for another orange as soon as the first went. The rear window was not the only entry point for the dust. It seeped in wedges through the floor and ill-fitting doors and Deaken became aware of the vehicle’s age. The cab, he realized, was more than the driver’s workplace, it was his home, as well. Two jackets jostled from a peg immediately behind the man and, level with the back of his head, there was a shelf containing two shirts and a pair of shoes. Deaken looked down and saw that the driver was barefoot, skeletal legs jutting from the frayed ends of greased trousers. The plastic bench seat upon which he was sitting was covered with a plaid blanket which Deaken assumed was the man’s nighttime sleeping protection. Deaken eased forward uncomfortably.
Deaken followed the driver’s example, and wound down the side window to get some air. He tried resting his arm on the sill but hurriedly pulled back, the underside of his elbow burned by the heat of the metal. The plain stretched unbroken and unending, proof that the world was flat. They passed more gazelle and then a group of stunted piglike animals, which gazed back without fear but with ear-cocked curiosity. Around a distant anthill black birds wheeled in maypolelike flight; crows, Deaken thought, and maybe vultures. He wondered what the unseen carrion was. It could easily have been him.
Anxious to please, the driver groped beneath his feet with one hand for a small battered portable radio. One dial was missing and the plastic frame was supported by strips of tape and sticking plaster. The man extended an aerial and looked carelessly from the road while he selected a station. There was a blurred fuzz of interference from the unsuppressed engine, beneath which it was just possible to detect the monotonous ululating of what Deaken
