'Wait. Wait wait…I am sleepy,' said Miguel. His breath was visible in the cold night air. 'We can wait. Bukatu dut! The American will warm us in the morning.'
Angus gazed at the terrorist.
Miguel gave orders for his men: Angus, Amy and David were tightly chained to an acacia tree, with their backs to the trunk. Guards were allotted. Then the terrorist very suddenly bedded down: so fast it was as if he had fainted. He was now lying deadweight on a canvas sheet, by the dying fire, faintly warmed by the glowing body of Alphonse.
'Klein Levin,' said Angus, blankly, and quietly.
David whispered to Angus, who was right beside him, chained with his back to the same tree.
'What?'
'The syndrome, Garovillo's condition…Hypersomnia, facial tics. Violence. I think it is Klein Levin.'
'And?'
'It's just…interesting.'
Silence. Then Amy spoke. Her voice tremulous with emotion:
'Angus. Whatever. We need — need — need to do something — just something — '
Angus nodded. 'I know. But…what? What can we do?'
No one spoke.
It was a cold and grotesque night, twisted with agony. David couldn't sleep. His thoughts stared down a black tunnel at one singular horror: he was going to be burned in the morning. At dawn. He was going to suffer like Alphonse. He hoped that death would come quickly.
He was the only one who didn't sleep. Angus and Amy whispered words of comfort to him, but in the end the sheer exhaustion weighed too heavily: they nodded out. Heads sagging.
David stayed awake. Staring into the desert black. Bitten by mosquitoes. Moths flickered against his face like tiny frightened ghosts. Even they departed as the night grew ever colder.
But then, in the grey weary hour before dawn, something moved. Something human. David stared.
Miguel was surreptitiously approaching the almost-dead bonfire. The accomplices were all asleep. Miguel had replaced the guard, and taken over the duty. Now he was creeping towards the sad smoking heap of the bonfire.
The ETA terrorist looked left and right, to make sure he was not being observed. David was in the shadows, beneath the tree, away from the lanterns. Miguel evidently didn't realize that David was watching.
But watching what? What was Garovillo doing? There was something simultaneously awkward, and terrible, in the lonely drama.
Jose Garovillo's son crawled up to the bonfire and reached out a hand, across the charred and smoking embers. And he pulled at the roasted body of Alphonse. Tugging at the sagging dead meat of the man.
He was pulling on a leg. The broiled thigh of the poor Namibian youth — it came away easily from the hip bone. Like a chicken leg from an overcooked bird. Miguel laid the roast leg on the sand. Then he reached in his pocket, and he unclasped a sharp big knife. He was drooling now, a line of silvery spittle caught in the moonlight; David watched as the terrorist sliced and dug with the knife, carving a chunk of the charred and broiled flesh, from Alphonse's leg.
Miguel glanced left and right one more time: the Wolf Nocturnal, guarding its prey. Then he stabbed the meat with the blade and lifted it greedily to his dribbling mouth, the salivating maw of the wolf.
Otsoko.
David retched.
Miguel looked up at the noise. The terrorist saw David. Saw that his attempt at cannibalism was observed.
A flash of guilt seemed to cross his face, inexpressible shame and guilt. The terrorist dropped the knife to the dust as if he had never meant to be holding it. Abruptly he stood, and disdainfully kicked the meat and bones into the dirty embers of the fire. Then he wiped his face with a sleeve, and sneered at David. Silently. But the sneer was unconvincing; the shame was still there. Terrible shame.
Miguel retreated into the shadows, dragging his blanket. And slept again.
David stared. Transfixed by the horror of what he had just witnessed.
Alone in the wilderness, he gazed at the desert sky. Dawn was summoning the worshipful earth to life. It tinged the horizon with green and cool blue, and the palest apricot. Faint dark shadows began to stretch across the canyon floor. The slender trees bowed like courtiers in the freshening breeze. David was still the only person awake.
He squinted, watching a big cat a few hundred metres along the dry river valley; the cat was tawny and gracile, with tufted ears and a long pert tail, prowling between the camelthorns. A caracal.
Further down the shallow canyon, he could make out large moving black shapes. Desert elephants. Making their unique pilgrimage, across all the thirstlands of Namibia, searching for water.
He wanted to cry. Because he was about to die. And the world was so beautiful. Cruelly beautiful. Savage and deathly and beautiful. He had never felt so vividly aware of everything. Every beetle, ebony black on the golden sand, every chirp of every desert bird that trilled in the soft green acacias. And he was about to die.
Miguel's voice echoed across the camp.
'OK. Come on. It is fucking cold. We need to burn him. Come on! Egun on denoi! Wake up.'
Suddenly the clearing was alive with people. Shivering men waiting for their orders.
'We need wood, Miguel?'
'Get them to do it.' Miguel barked at his men. 'Use Amy and Nairn. Let them gather the firewood to roast their friend. We can brew coffee on his brains.'
'Alright.' Alan was nonchalantly pointing a pistol at them. 'As he says. Don't see why we should sweat. You go and gather some wood. We'll be right behind you.'
Amy and Angus were unchained. A jabbing motion of the pistol gave them the direction. David watched from his bonds. The two prisoners shuffled down the canyon; Amy bent and picked up a small dead acacia branch. The men were smoking and laughing, swapping obscene jokes about the upcoming execution.
He noticed that Angus was talking to Amy. Whispering. Alan barked across the dust at the toiling captives: 'Shut the fuck. Just collect the wood.'
Angus turned, and apologized, then stooped to the sand and wrenched at a small dead tree, with a few remaining green leaves. Amy copied him: wrenching at a similar tree, a few yards away.
The day and the task had begun. Angus and Amy did their slow and sombre duty, piling the wood high in the clearing; a chilly breeze was kicking across the wastes, the sun was already shining, but it was still cold.
Miguel's voice was loud in the dawnlight.
'Alan, get the fire lit. It's freezing. Put our friend in the middle.'
'Yes, Mig…'
David felt himself torn apart by the accumulating horror. Even though he had been preparing himself all night, the reality was too appalling to bear. This mustn't be. This mustn't be. But now they came for him. He fought and writhed, but he was one and they were many; he tried to bite one of his captors, but they slapped him into silence. Inevitably and inexorably, he was dragged across the dust to the waiting heap of wood.
'Got the ropes?'
With brutal force he was half lifted, half shoved — hoisted into the middle of the firewood. For a moment his hands were unlashed and he tried to use his fists to hit out, hit someone, anyone — but the men grabbed his flailing fists: he felt them knotting his wrists behind the stake, and then the same happened to his ankles: they were roping his ankles too. Roping him to the big wooden stake.
Wood was stacked all around him, he was knee deep in distinctive grey desert wood. Dry and waiting.
He stared at Amy; she stared at him. Tears were running down her face, yet she was silent. David sought out her blue eyes: he was searching, in his final moments, for a confirmation, some proof that she loved him. And there was something in her expression, something distantly gentle, and wistfully pure. But what was it?
'Basta!' said Miguel. 'Let's go. Breakfast. Torrijas. Kafea.'
'Wait.' Amy spoke: 'Let me kiss him goodbye.'
Miguel looked at her, sceptical and wry — almost laughing. The sun was up and David could feel the first real warmth on his face. Soon he would be boiling, the blood would boil in his veins.
