6 July. This situation certainly has a tendency to unravel. This afternoon Kalash phoned and asked me to come to his room. When I arrived he told me that he had just been visited by Chief Inspector Qasim (“a cousin of mine who is some sort of policeman”) who had asked him to get in contact with the Anointed Liberation Front as an agent provocateur. This man wants me to play spy to a lot of Communist cutthroats,” said Kalash. “He told me it was my duty to Sudan. He has already taken the liberty of getting my father’s permission. I suppose my father thought it would be a good substitute for war. He certainly doesn’t have much interest in the fate of Sudan. I’m too old now to go out and kill lions with a spear as I was made to do when I was a boy. Really, Paul, these people never tire of their games.”
I asked if he had agreed to help Qasim. “Agreement doesn’t enter into it. He handed me a letter from my father. I am ordered to go through with this nonsense. It’s most inconvenient.”
Then Kalash dropped the following bombshell: “I think it will be better if you and the others go back to Europe at once. Have a sail on the Nile if you like, but then get a plane to London. I shall be occupied with plots and disguises, I expect. There will be no time for hospitality, and my father is certain to be in a mood over this. I can’t think what he might say if I showed up with a Cadillac full of foreigners at a time when he’s arranged for me to help kill these Communists. Best for you to leave.”
I told him I wanted to stay. Maybe I can be of some help to you, I said. “After all, I owe you something for that wonderful ride you gave me across the Czech frontier.”
Kalash stared at me and laughed. “I suppose you do,” he said. “We both seem to be the playthings of fools. Has it not struck you how very odd our friendship has become? We have progressed from a weekly luncheon to an hourly mystery. I was raised in the belief that white men are amateurs of intrigue-my father used to go to the Governor General’s mansion on the Queen’s birthday and talk loudly in dialect about slitting the throats of all the Englishmen there. They would smile at him through their sweat and talk about building a school in some benighted village. Because they didn’t understand our language, he thought they didn’t understand our intentions. They understood that we had no power to carry out our intentions; you can’t slit a throat without a knife. Now they’ve hardly gone and we’re back where we were before Gordon was beheaded-slicing up each other. One of the bigwigs of this Communist band-they call themselves the Anointed Liberation Front, if you can imagine that-is a bastard brother of mine. I don’t know him, my father got him on some woman someone gave him. But my father wants him dead. He’s an insult to the blood, you know, throwing in with a lot of Russians in order to kill his relations. Father should have sent him to Oxford. I’m afraid I’ve lost stomach for all this medieval nonsense.
Since the matter was out in the open, I advised Kalash to be very careful in his dealings with the ALF. The thought that he might be harmed had not occurred to him. Kalash has the idea that his person is untouchable in Sudan. Of course he may be right. But I don’t think that his half brother is likely to have much respect left for the old traditions after his training in Moscow, not to mention the fact that Kalash and the Amir are the principal obstacles between him and whatever his notions of power and self-esteem may be. “I suppose he may have some idea that he can take over the family,” Kalash said. “It’s happened before. Illegitimate sons are the curse of our system.”
It took a great deal of persuasion, but in the end Kalash agreed that we can finish the journey to El Fasher with him. Unless his cousin the chief inspector is as indiscreet as Kalash, there should be no trouble. “It will be rather interesting to see which way old Miernik shoots if the Communist camel corps falls on us along the way,” says Kalash. So it will.
Kalash has agreed not to discuss his conversation with Qasim with any of the other members of our group. He seemed mildly insulted that I thought he might do so: “It’s not the sort of thing one would discuss with Miernik or the girls, you know. One merely tells such people to go when the time comes. One is less ready to be rude where you are concerned, Paul. It’s a great convenience having you about-you’re so willing to be kind to Miernik. That gives the rest of us the freedom to be annoyed all the time, which is the only natural response to such a man. In the end, you know, it will all burst out. You’ll be the one to strangle him.”
Kalash gave me one of the notices posted by the ALF after they carried out their crucifixions. When we met for drinks this afternoon, I had Miernik translate it in Ilona’s hearing. (Kalash did not join us in the bar.)
Later I invited Ilona to go shopping with me on the pretext that I wanted to buy some amber for my mother. In the taxi I told her that a classmate of mine, now some sort of official in our embassy in Khartoum, had told me a story about the ALF. Its leader, a Sudanese named Ahmed, was in fact working for the Americans. “It’s shocking as hell to me,” I told Ilona, “that the United States should be mixed up in such a thing. My friend said that diplomacy is more interesting than most people imagine. He’s always been an ass. I don’t suppose the story is true, but all the same…”
Ilona showed no special interest in the information. She advised me not to disturb myself over what governments do. “They have nothing to do with us, Paul,” she remarked. “They won’t abolish themselves as they should-but we can ignore them.”
She held her forearm in front of my eyes so that I could read the blue numbers from Belsen tattooed on her skin. “Of course,” she said, “ignoring them is not always easy. They have ways of getting one’s attention.”