Solo

have vanished into thin air, like some kind of sprite or vision. Bond wondered if he had been hallucinating, but he didn’t care any more – he waded out into the centre of the pool and sat down, soaking himself, scooping up mouthfuls of warm cloudy water with his cupped hands. He could press on now, and perhaps see if there was any way of getting some help for those children. He lay back and submerged his head, closing his eyes, feeling weak with relief. When he surfaced a moment later he could hear the distant sound of a car changing gear. His long walk was nearly over.
    Bond stood by the side of the dammed creek, his sodden clothes dripping, in a sudden stasis of indecision. No, he couldn’t just walk on. He made his way back to the village and found an empty calabash and a large tin that had once contained powdered milk. Returning to the creek he filled them both with water and carried them to the mud hut with the dead children. The little boy had disappeared – crawled back inside, Bond hoped, and he set the two containers down carefully at the threshold. Then he heard a cracked shout from behind him.
    A stooped old man stood there at the entry to the meeting square, leaning on a staff. He was incredibly thin, his arms and legs like vanilla pods, wearing a tatter of rags. Bond approached slowly as the old man berated him with hoarse incomprehensible curses. He had a small head with a powdering of grey hair, a collapsed face with white corpse-stubble. He was like something from a myth – or a symbol of death, Bond thought – and his red eyes blazed at Bond with a weary venom.
    Bond pointed at the hut with his two water containers placed in front of the door.
    ‘Children – pickin – inside. Help them.’
    The old man shook his fist at Bond and continued with his spitting maledictions.
    Bond pointed at the doorway again and as he did so saw two tiny claw-hands reach out and drag the powdered-milk tin inside. Now the old man grasped his stave and giddily, powerlessly tried to hit Bond with it. It thwacked painlessly against his leg.
    ‘Help those children!’ Bond admonished the old man for a final time and turned and strode out of the village, his head in a swoon of pressure, feeling as if he’d taken part in some atavistic dumb-show – a stranger’s encounter with death on the road – all the ingredients of some dreadful folktale or legend. He concentrated. He had heard a car, he would be saved – unless the malign spirits of this place were still tormenting him.

·10·
     

WELCOME TO DAHUM
     
    Bond’s ears had not been deceiving him. There was indeed a road at the end of the dirt track leading from the village, the usual potholed frayed tarmac ribbon, along which the odd car raced at full speed as if fleeing from some natural disaster or catastrophe. Two flew past him without stopping. Then there was nothing for half an hour and Bond felt his clothes drying in the hot sun. Finally a third car came into view – a Volkswagen Beetle which slowed as Bond flagged it down and the door opened. Like the other cars that had passed, Bond noticed this one had a large red cross painted on the bonnet.
    A sweaty grey-haired man was at the wheel. He watched in candid astonishment as Bond slid in beside him.
    ‘Where you go?’ he said.
    ‘Port Dunbar,’ Bond replied.
    ‘I go drop you at Madougo. I fear too much for the MiGs.’
    ‘Is that why you have red crosses on your car?’
    ‘Yes. Maybe they think we are ambulance.’ The man glanced skywards, as if expecting a MiG to appear at any moment. ‘If they see one car they come and shoot you. Bam-bam-bam. They don’ care.’
    Bond told him about the village and the dying children.
    ‘They all die,’ the man said.
    ‘No. There are two alive. Maybe more, I couldn’t tell.’
    ‘All village are dead,’ the man insisted. ‘Everybody go to Port Dunbar.’
    Bond kept on and extracted a promise from the man that he would report the presence of starving children in the village of Lokani, or whatever name it had. Perhaps something would be done.
    Madougo turned out to be another semi-destroyed hamlet of mud huts on the roadside but this time there were signs of life. There was, amazingly, a stall set up on the laterite verge, tended by a toothless old mammy. Bond was dropped here and the VW turned off down a track and sped away. The mammy had a small bunch of unripe bananas, a shrivelled pawpaw and a bottle of Green Star beer. Some stubborn undying