The Strange War Page 8

power plants to go there too. He gave a speech to the workers, and then he said that there would be electricity in two hours. The officers gave commands, and the soldiers supervised, and the power plant workers ran back and forth and did exactly what the officers told them to do. Of course the result was terrible chaos and no electricity.

  Then the High and Mighty called the officers back and said to the power plant workers, “If there is no electricity in half an hour, you’ll all be shot!” And behold, in half an hour there was light. And the High and Mighty said, “You see, you bums, I just have to put the heat on you!” and with his soldiers he then went over to the gas works to do exactly the same thing.

  But the next day there was again no electricity. The High and Mighty was infuriated, and when he and his specially trained liquidation troops, marched up to the power plant to wipe out all of the workers, the power plant was empty, and the workers and staff had blended in with the people who were in the factories and offices.

  The High and Mighty then ordered his soldiers simply to gather up a thousand people from the street and shoot them.

  But because the people of Over There had been treacherous and cunning by always being friendly with the soldiers, the morale of the troops was so low that no one was prepared to just pick out a thousand people who hadn’t done anything and shoot them. So the High and Mighty gave the order to the special liquidation troops. But his officers let him know that the ordinary soldiers were already very unhappy and that it could even come to a mutiny, if a thousand people were shot.

  And the High and Mighty received letters from the people in powerful positions at home, who wrote: “Highest of the Mighty! You have proven your gift as a field marshal and shown your military genius, and we congratulate you on your innumerable, magnificent victories. But now we ask you to come back and leave those crazy Over There people to their own devices. They’re costing us too much. If we have to place a soldier with a sub-machine gun behind every worker and threaten to shoot them, and an engineer who tells them what to do, then the whole conquering business is somehow not worth it all. Please come back home because our beloved country has already been deprived of your shining presence for too long.”

  So the High and Mighty packed up his army, ordered them to confiscate whatever valuable machines and other expensive objects they could transport, and returned home cursing.

  “But we gave it to them!” he growled. “Those cowards. What will the fools do now? How are they going to figure out who’s an engineer, who’s a doctor, and who’s a cabinetmaker? Without certificates and diplomas! How are they going to determine who’s going to live in a villa and who in an apartment, if they can’t prove what belongs to them? How are they going to manage without deeds to property, without police records or driver’s licenses, without titles or uniforms? What confusion they’ll have! And all of that just so they don’t have to go to war with us, those cowards.”

  Arobanai

  Arobanai lifted her head out of the water in the river. In front of her lay Apa Lelo in the afternoon sun. Thunder could be heard in the distance, but the rain wouldn’t come until later. That left enough time to set up the huts. In the grassy clearing, the children were already playing; here and there lay bundles in the grass. The men, who had been there earlier, had left the bundles lying at the spots where they wanted to have their huts and had then gone straight to the hunt. The women who had children had allowed themselves more time during their journey because they wanted to gather mushrooms and roots on the way. Arobanai rubbed down her body in the water. It was lovely to walk into a new camp and to wash off all the dust and sweat of the trek and of all the earlier camps. A new camp was always a new beginning, full of new possibilities and prospects. She shook the water out of her short, curly hair and waded back to the riverbank. Then she lifted her bundle high over her head and carried it through the river to the other side. She knew, when she lifted her arms that way, that her hard breasts protruded even more forcefully, and the water from the river made her body shine, and all its shapes appeared even more beautiful. On the other side, the first boys stepped out of the forest with their kill.

  Apa Lelo was the nicest camp that Arobanai knew. The Lelo made a loop at this spot, so that the camp was almost an island. In the middle of the island the trees stood far apart and formed a natural clearing, but way up in the top, their crowns almost touched one another, so there was plenty of light but it was still never in the full glare of the sun. Just about in the middle of the island, a group of trees divided the clearing into two almost equal halves. The children had already claimed their playground under trees on the riverbank, a little removed from the clearing where the huts would be standing, but still near enough to be safe.

  Arobanai looked for the bundle that belonged to her father, Ekianga. Her mother hadn’t arrived yet, and the first thing she did was untie the bundle of leaves in which she had wrapped a glowing ember. She placed a few dry twigs on it, blew at the red-hot coal, and the flames reached for the kindling.

  Gradually, more and more people started showing up. Some of the men brought meat and then went off again to cut sticks and leaves. The women lit fires and began to cook. Almost all of them had gathered mushrooms and roots – the children brought them in by the armful – and a sauce was cooked in the pumpkin bowls, and pieces of meat were tossed in.

  When the men came back with poles and big bundles of broad mongongo leaves, the women began to build the huts. They pushed the poles into the ground forming a circle; then they lashed the tips into a dome with liana vines. Thinner twigs were woven into the frame, and the broad, heart-shaped leaves were fastened to this wreathwork. People who had set out later or who had interrupted their journey to look for whatever delicacies they could find were still arriving. And the women who were already working on their huts laughed and called to them, telling them how wet they would get, because the rain clouds were getting closer and closer.

  But the men who had supplied their women with building materials, ran back into the forest and cut down poles, sticks, and leaves for the latecomers. Relatives and friends built their huts close to each other. Families that didn’t get along very well with each other, settled down on opposite ends of the camp from each other, and if that wasn’t possible, they set up their huts so that the entrances were pointing away from each other.

  The storm clouds caused the evening to come early, the fires were brought into the huts, and time and again the position of a leaf had to be corrected where a little bit of water was leaking through into the hut. But the rain didn’t last long. The fires were soon burning again in front of the huts. The women made some improvements to the roofs, and the men sauntered once more into the forest with their bows and arrows, maybe to bag one more bird or monkey before it got too dark. Smoke was coming out of the huts, and a blue haze lay over the camp, which suddenly turned orange and gold and red when the clouds separated and the sun shot its last ray across the sky.

  Arobanai lay on her back in her parents’ hut, and held her little brother by one arm, while she lifted the little giggler by his legs. From the huts all around the families could be heard chatting with each other, and now and then an uninvited listener chimed in with a comment that caused an outburst of laughter.

  Kenge, a still unmarried young hunter, had built one of the neighboring huts. A majority of the young boys were crowded in with him. Arobanai heard them telling each other about the animals they would hunt from this camp and the girls they wanted to flirt with. When she heard Kelemoke say her name, she called over to him, “Your legs are too crooked for me. You need to become a hunter first, you little pup!” They replied with roaring laughter. The boys beat their chests and thighs and shook helplessly with laughter. Kelemoke was one of the most skillful runners and, after all, had already killed one buffalo by himself.

  Ekianga, without shouting, simply said in a loud voice, but in such a way that it could be heard five huts away, “A man’ll get a headache from all this shouting. Let’s
have some peace and quiet, so we can get some sleep!”

  That at least caused the boys to tone it down to a whisper, and only now and then could they be heard snickering and chuckling. Arobanai smiled. This would be a good camp, she felt. She would have a lot of fun here.

  But in the morning, sorrow filled the camp. Arobanai was awakened by a long, drawn-out, horrible scream, the dreadful lament of a person who has fallen into total gloom. They all rushed out of their huts. Balekimito, one of Arobanai’s father’s aunts and the mother of Amabosu and Manyalibo, was dead, very dead. The old woman, who was greatly respected by all and a grandmother many times over, had already been sick before the move to the new camp. Her sons, Amabosu and Manyalibo, didn’t want to leave her behind. They would have stayed with her until she got better, but the hunting had been bad in the old camp, and Balekimito had insisted on going with them when everybody moved. But the trek had weakened her, and now she was very dead, and would soon be dead forever. Her relatives crowded into her hut. Her sons were pacing back and forth, with tear-streaked faces. Her daughter Asofalinda tried to comfort her brothers but kept