Mrs. Pollifax on Safari Page 4

  "No," said Mrs. Pollifax, and introduced herself.

  "Oh. Yes. Well." He extended a thin dry hand and shook hers. "Kleiber here. Willem Kleiber." He did not exactly wipe his hand after touching hers but she had the impression that he wanted to, and that the gesture was aborted only because he thought better of it.

  "German?" she asked.

  "No, no, Dutch," he said firmly.

  If Mrs. Pollifax had feared that all bush outfits might look alike, this idea was quickly dispelled now as Homer escorted a third member of the safari to the bus. The woman walking beside him made Mrs. Pollifax feel suddenly dowdy and not at all swashbuckling. In her forties, she wore her long platinum hair tied in the back with a scarlet silk kerchief. Her bush jacket and slacks were cut out of pale-beige gabardine that very nearly matched the color of her hair, and they had been tailored to outline every curve of her figure. Diamonds glittered on several fingers, and a stunning turquoise was pinned to her black turtleneck shirt. Everything about her was striking, from her outfit to her cool sapphire eyes, the clear-cut features, pale-pink mouth and subtly tanned face.

  ". . . very nearly didn't stop, you know, and I was afraid I'd not be here in time, and then—oh, two already here, isn't this super," she said, stopping by the bus and smiling at Mr. Kleiber. "I think we'd better introduce ourselves, don't you?" Her voice was caressing, with a somewhat affected British accent, so that the word better emerged as baytor, spoken through the nose with a not unattractive nasal quality. "I'm Mrs. Lovecraft," she said. "Amy Lovecraft."

  At this moment a tall, good-looking young man walked out of the hotel, shouted to Homer and then strode toward the bus calling, "I say, is this the transportation to Chunga camp for the KT/3 safari?"

  "What a lovely man," murmured Mrs. Lovecraft appreciatively.

  "Yes, yes," said Homer. "You are—?"

  "John Steeves." He was dressed very casually in a heavy turtleneck sweater and shabby twill slacks; he looked, thought Mrs. Pollifax, like a man who would know that African mornings were cold. He looked seasoned. His voice marked him as an Englishman, the patina on his boots marked him as a hiker. His face was long and intense, with a thick brown mustache and interesting dark eyes.

  Homer's face lighted up at the name. "Of course—yes, I was inquiring for you. Have you luggage?"

  "A duffelbag, but Tom's bringing it. He's one of the party, too, we met in the Coffee Hut. Tom Henry." He turned and gestured vaguely toward the hotel entrance. "There he is," he said.

  Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw a solid-looking young man walk out of the hotel carrying a suitcase and a duffelbag, followed by a barefooted black boy carrying a second suitcase. Tom Henry looked cheerful and uncomplicated, with sandy hair and a pair of level, candid gray eyes. No nonsense about him, thought Mrs. Pollifax, liking him at once; relaxed, stable and efficient. The boy walking beside him suddenly looked up at him and smiled. It was, thought Mrs. Pollifax, the most adoring glance that she'd ever seen a child give an adult, and she realized that the two belonged together.

  "Henry?" said Homer, puzzled, and then, "Ah, this is Doctor Henry? Dr. Henry from the mission hospital?"

  "And Chanda," the young man said firmly. "Chanda Henry."

  The three men and the boy moved to the back of the bus to stow away their luggage, and Mrs. Lovecraft climbed in beside Mr. Kleiber, saying, "Isn't this fun?"

  Glancing toward the hotel Mrs. Pollifax saw Cyrus Reed walk out, looking vaguely concerned. He had exchanged his seersucker suit for a pair of new bluejeans that made his legs look very long indeed, and over this he wore a shirt and a shabby jacket. After noticing the bus he came toward it, and looking extraordinarily pleased at seeing her in it, he leaned over and spoke to her through the window.

  "She's five hours late now," he said. "Difficulties mount."

  At that moment a small red Fiat raced into the drive of the hotel and came to a sudden stop, its tires protesting shrilly. A voice called, "Dad!" and a young woman as petite as Reed was enormous jumped out of the car and waved. "I'm here, Judge!"

  "That," said Cyrus Reed resignedly, "is Lisa."

  "Judge?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Retired."

  She turned to look again at the young woman who was now opening the door of the car. She was slim and long-legged and difficult to overlook because her hair was bright auburn, the color of a new penny, and her face was round and pixie-like, with a dimple in the chin. Mrs. Pollifax said, "She doesn't look at all cold and businesslike."

  "She doesn't, does she," said Reed. He looked surprised. "Something's different. Like you to meet her. I'll bring her back."

  Mrs. Pollifax watched as Lisa spoke to someone inside the car, and then from its confining interior crept a woman with a baby in a sling over her shoulders, followed by a small black man in a business suit and spectacles, three grinning barefooted boys, a bent old man carrying a crutch, and at last a young man in purple slacks and pink shirt. It was rather like that old circus act, thought Mrs. Pollifax, where dozens of people kept emerging from a tiny car, and she wondered how on earth they had all fitted inside. Lisa shook hands with each of them and then allowed herself to be led off to the minibus by her father.

  "... a flat tire," she was saying, "but Kanyama helped me change it and Mbulo was carrying firewood when I picked him up, so we had a jolly fire by the side of the road and cooked a breakfast. Really neat—and you should have seen the Falls!"

  "I suppose you had to give rides to everyone?"

  "Well, but wasn't it providential that I did? Otherwise I'd still be down near Penga somewhere with a flat tire. It's not at all like the States, Dad. Nobody asked for a ride, but how could I drive by them when I had a car and they didn't? Hello," she said, smiling warmly at Mrs. Pollifax. "Hello," she added, nodding to Mrs. Lovecraft and Mr. Kleiber.

  "Well, you've not made it with much time to spare," said her father, sounding like fathers everywhere.

  "Yes, but I made it, didn't I?" said Lisa, grinning. "And who's holding us up now? See you all later," she called over her shoulder, and began propelling her father toward the hotel.

  On the way to the entrance they passed Homer carrying luggage for another guest. The Reeds stopped to speak to him, leaving the newest member of the party waiting patiently, a faint smile on his lips. He was a man of average height, perhaps fifty, carrying an attach6 case and a battered trench coat over his arm. He was still dressed for traveling, Mrs. Pollifax noted, in a light suit that must once have been well-cut but was wrinkled now.

  He wore his hair rather long; it was jet black, with streaks of pure white.

  The group abruptly dissolved and Homer came toward them smiling. "We now have Mr. Mclntosh," he said, gesturing at the man beside him. "We go. Gentlemen, if you will be so kind as to get in the bus now?"

  The two men and the boy Chanda climbed into the seat in the far rear, next the luggage. Mr. Mclntosh crawled past Mrs. Lovecraft to sit in the space between her and Mr. Kleiber. Homer closed and locked the doors and a moment later they were off, driving on the left side of the road like the British.

  They passed the National Assembly building with its roof sheathed in copper and gleaming in the sun. They passed neat rows of government housing and then a shantytown with thatched-roof huts, and finally, leaving the city behind, a satellite station that had been built by the Japanese, Homer told them. As the traffic thinned they sped past fields of cotton, sunflowers and maize, and the pedestrians along the side of the road increased: women walking with loads of firewood balanced carefully on their heads, a few men wheeling bicycles. Then these, too, vanished and they settled down to the long road ahead, moving steadily toward the Mungwa mountain range. The sun began to look surprisingly low on the horizon to Mrs. Pollifax, and when she commented on this she was startled to learn that in Zambia the sun set at six o'clock. She began to understand some of the urgency behind Homer's driving; certainly he drove like a man pursued by something, and now it was heartening to realize the somethin
g was darkness, because she had no desire to be caught among wild animals in the dark either. The excessive speed rendered conversation almost impossible, however; everything rattled and it was necessary to cling to one's seat.

  An hour later Mrs. Pollifax was still clinging to her seat when Homer placed his foot on the brake and nearly sent her through the windshield. Up ahead she saw a roadblock, a gaily striped red-and-white pole extending from one side of the road to the other.

  From the rear Mr. Kleiber called, "And what is this?"

  The bridge," said Homer. "All our bridges are guarded by the police."

  "Good heavens why?" asked Mrs. Pollifax, turning to look at him in surprise.

  "Rhodesian spies," he said with a shrug. "They try to bomb our bridges. We have three in Zambia, all of them over the Kafue River." He pronounced it Ka-jooey.

  "Rhodesian spies!" repeated Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Yes, spies. They are everywhere." With a jerk of his head to the left he added, "The police live over there."

  Mrs. Pollifax glanced to the left and saw a cluster of corrugated tin houses down near the river, shaded by a circle of acacia trees. She started to speak but Homer's attention had turned to the guard who walked toward them, looking very official with a rifle strapped across his back. He wore a felt cavalry hat, blue khaki shorts and tunic, and around his legs a wrapping of heavy cloth from ankle to knee that could only be puttees, decided Mrs. Pollifax, remembering Kipling. He peered into the car and then shook hands with Homer and began talking in an incomprehensible language that Homer seemed to understand. At last the guard saluted, the bus was put into gear and they moved across the modest bridge over the river. "What language was it that you spoke back there?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Nyanga," said Homer. "I speak Tonga, he speaks Luvale but we both know Nyanga. All the government people know Nyanga."

  'Those spies you mentioned," began Mrs. Pollifax, and then found it even more difficult to be heard as they turned off the paved highway onto a dirt road marked by a sign that read chunga camp. "Those spies," she shouted above the rattles and bumps, hanging onto her seat with both hands to keep from hitting the roof of the bus.

  "What?" shouted Homer.

  "Spies," she shrieked. Just as she decided that the road had been cut out of a pitted lava bed it changed to brown dust beaten hard into corrugated stripes that placed her more firmly in her seat but vibrated her spine like a massage.

  Homer neatly steered the bus around a hole and shouted back, "They spy on freedom fighters. In the Southern Province they used to cross the border from Rhodesia and kidnap people, set land mines and kill. There is not so much there now, but still they sneak in. A month ago they set a bomb in Lusaka, at private home, and killed Mr. Chitepo, Rhodesian black nationalist in the African National Congress."

  "Who did?" shouted Mrs. Pollifax. "Who would do such a thing?"

  Homer shrugged. "Mercenaries. Rhodesian police agents. Spies."

  Mrs. Pollifax rested her voice while she attached this diverting piece of news to certain facts casually mentioned in the pamphlets that Bishop had deposited with her last week. She remembered that until recently Zambia bad been a lonely bastion of black independence in the center of Africa, bounded on the east by Portuguese-ruled Mozambique, on the west by Portuguese-ruled Angola, with Rhodesia flanking its southern border, backed up by South Africa below it. That had been Zambia's situation when it finally threw off the last shackles of white rule in 1964.

  At the time of its independence, however, Zambia had found itself still bound to Rhodesia by roads, electric power, rail routes and economic ties. A man who loathed apartheid and who dedicated himself to working against it, President Kaunda had set out at once to loosen those ties, enlisting the help of the Chinese to build a railway to the north, and the Italians to build a new dam. The price of rejecting any dependence on Rhodesia had been severe: during one crisis the country had been forced to export its copper by trucks over a road that came to be called the "Hell Run." Zambia had survived, however, and she supposed that it was proof of President Kaunda's genius that it had not only survived economically but had remained involved in and supportive of the liberation movements in her neighboring countries. Those were the words the pamphlet had used: involved and supportive. Embroiled sounded more appropriate, she thought dryly; certainly nothing had been said about spies, land mines and kidnappings.

  Now of course, both Mozambique and Angola had won their independence after years of guerilla warfare and bloodshed, and Rhodesia and South Africa stood alone as rigid defenders of white supremacy. But she had forgotten—it came back to her now—that sometime during the worst of the infighting Rhodesia had angrily closed her borders to Zambia, precipitating even more strains on the Zambian economy. A pity, she thought, that taking a stand on moral issues had to prove so lonely these days, but apparently the closure was only a formal one if spies streamed back and forth. She remembered that the phrase "freedom fighters" had been mentioned, too, in one of those pocket histories.

  "Freedom fighters," she shouted at Homer's profile. "Who are they?"

  "Liberation leaders," he called back at her. "Refugees. They escape to Zambia with a price on their heads, or prison sentences. They stay, they train, they go back. Quietly, you understand?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding. "I just didn't realize it was still—uh—continuing."

  He nodded vigorously. "But the leaders begin to talk now. South Africa grows very worried, she fears a race war in Africa and pushes Rhodesia to talk, loosen up. We have a saying: 'Ukupangile nsofu kano uli ne fumo. Before you can talk of killing an elephant you must first be equipped with a spear.'" He grinned and slowed the minibus. "And speaking of elephants, there is your first elephant, everyone. You wish pictures?"

  Exclamations rose from the rear, but Mrs. Pollifax could only gasp and stare. Her first elephant stood scarcely fifteen feet away, grazing contentedly on the leaves at the top of a tree, his huge gray frame bleached by dust, his flaplike ears cocked as if he knew very well they were there. Slowly he turned his ponderous head and looked at the minibus with beady interested eyes. Mrs. Pollifax was certain that he stared directly at her. She gave him a delighted, grateful smile before she lifted her camera and snapped his picture.

  They drove on, reaching another road barrier, this one manned by an amiable young park guard. After slowing down to allow a family of baboons to cross the road, Mrs. Pollifax glimpsed the thatched tops of buildings ahead. They entered a clearing, passed a gas pump, a cluster of rondevaals with thatched roofs, and coasted to a stop near a sloping riverbank.

  "Is this Chunga camp?" called Mrs. Lovecraft.

  Homer shook his head. "This is noncatering section, for weekend campers only. We wait now for the boat. There should be a boat," he said, frowning, and climbed out and stared across the river at what looked to be an island.

  Mrs. Pollifax opened the door beside her and jumped down to stretch her legs. The others stirred too, and climbed out, smiling at each other a little uncertainly. Mrs. Lovecraft strolled over to join Homer, and after a moment Mr. Mclntosh and Mr. Kleiber followed her. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, draining all color from the landscape, and Mrs. Pollifax felt suddenly very small under the huge silvery sky as she waited for a mysterious boat that showed no signs of appearing on that vast flat expanse of silky gray water.

  'There," said Homer suddenly, pointing. "The boat."

  A small speck had appeared on the gray water, looking almost spectral as it rounded the point. It veered, grew larger, became an object totally unlike a boat, and then as it moved toward them, one man at the stern, she began to hear the sound of its motor and she realized it was a pontoon boat, nearly flat and propelled by an outboard motor.

  "Good, let's help with all this luggage," Dr. Henry said, and walked around to the back of the bus and began handing suitcases to Chanda. There was a whispered discussion between them and then he said, "No, no, you give it to her." Holding up Mrs. Polli
fax's gay umbrella he said, "Chanda tells me this is yours?"

  "Yes, but how on earth did he know?" she asked in surprise.

  Dr. Henry laughed. "I couldn't possibly tell you, but he always knows these things. He says he looked inside of you and saw colors to match. Mukolamfula was the word which, if the little Bemba I've learned is right, means rainbow."

  "I'm very touched," she said, smiling at Chanda.

  The boy handed her the umbrella, grinned, ducked his head shyly and went back for another suitcase. Behind her the boat had just landed, the slant of its bow dovetailing perfectly with the slant of the riverbank. Homer said, "The boat will come back for the luggage, it is very safe here. You will get in now, please?"

  They distributed themselves on packing cases; the boat was pushed away from the shore, the motor sputtered, they turned and began the trip toward the distant shore, any conversation rendered frivolous by the awesome silence of the river. The only sounds were of the water streaming past the bow, leaving a frothy wake behind them, and the murmur of Homer's voice as he spoke quietly to the boy at the wheel. The air was cool, full of fragrances, and as they chugged their way toward the opposite bank the smell of a wood fire became distinct.

  Suddenly the sun reappeared, very low on the horizon now, and as the boat rounded the point Mrs. Pollifax had her first view of Chunga camp. She saw another sloping riverbank cut out of the trees, with a narrow wharf jutting into the water. Smoke from a campfire drifted lazily across the clearing, threading its way through the palms. Off to the left there was a long white building with a thatched roof, and behind this, spaced at intervals up and down a gently sloping hill, stood narrow cabins built of reed and thatch.