Jim Crace - Continent

THE FIRST to arrive is the Minister’s Secretary. His black Peugeot has been dusted grey by the journey over bad, dry roads. He has seen maned deer, quibbling flocks of ground-thrush, a mesmerized bandicoot caught mid-carriageway by the engine roar. He sees gnawed gourds and damaged saplings — the work of Baird tapirs and their comic snouts. All good pot animals, and sitting targets, too. The thought of land here becomes more attractive. The comfortable family lodge with a small gourd farm transforms into a hotel for hunters, weekend marksmen keen on game but untempted by treks and danger and patience. Is there profit here, good business? When he first sees the Rest House he becomes more certain. This is no competition for his hotel: it is a timid, wind-swept little coop in wood and plaster, badly situated and poorly equipped. What idiot arranged for the Minister to switch on the current from there? Tin-pot town. Tin-pot people.

The Minister’s Secretary waits in his car a field’s distance from the Rest House. Soon the army jeeps will arrive with the soldiers and ceremonial equipment.

The Secretary is free to scheme. Later that day he will investigate Nepruolo land and select a good site, close to the road and the police station, but wind and neighbour free. Electricity has come; the gourds will fatten. Nepruolo will be kept to his promise. Landowner and Secretary, as ever, will see eye-to-eye — particularly as they now share interests in the same town. A newly surfaced road — now, that would benefit both. Remove those potholes. Lay that dust with tarmac. Weekending huntsmen, purses full and game bags empty, speed to the country: they pass brimming convoys of Nepruolo trucks delivering plump-as-dove candy gourds to city wholesalers. The Secretary can see it all. He will speak dreams to his colleagues, the secretaries of appropriate ministries.

Once the jeeps and the black car draw up outside the Rest House the crowd begins to gather. They will wait all day for the Minister to arrive. They babble and laugh and miss nothing. The Minister’s Secretary is perplexed. He turns to the commander of the six soldiers for explanations. ‘What are they doing?’ he asks.

‘They’re shaking their backsides and snitching their noses.’

And who is this?’ Awni has come out onto his veranda and begun an oration.

‘Honoured Minister and friend,’ he says. ‘We welcome you…’

‘Not yet. Save your prostrations. I am not the Minister. I am his Secretary.’

Awni beams and clasps the visitor by the elbow. ‘Then we have corresponded,’ he says, and points to his gallery of documents. ‘I am Warden Awni. Here is my petition for electricity, you remember? And here, today, is the outcome.’ He raises his arms in self-congratulation and swings the newly hung glass lanterns in yellow, green and orange. ‘But I cannot claim all the credit. The Minister, too, deserves our thanks…’

The Minister’s Secretary begins to wonder whether he is the victim of some subtle irony. ‘These people?’ He indicates those few in the crowd who are still racing bums and noses. ‘What is the point which they are making? Who are they?’

‘Townspeople, Secretary. They have come to admire the electricity and the Minister.’

‘Yes, but what is this shaking?’

‘Ah,’ says Awni, happy to provide the simple explanation. ‘They are sending messages from their brains. No sooner sent than received. Like electrical power!’

Now the Secretary is convinced that his hotel will have no competition. The Warden of the Rest House is as mad as a mongoose. Perhaps it would be politic — just for the day — to lock him out of sight. The Minister is a man not keen on aberrations. But the Warden has hurried off, busy with preparations and self-esteem. The Minister’s Secretary is left to deploy his soldiers (‘Subdue those shakers. Let no one pass’) and then spy out his land. Soon the ceremonial will be over and business can begin.

THE MINISTER has arrived in a motorcade of limousines, windscreen-wipers rinsing the dust. This town has never known so eminent, so punctilious an assembly. But why so quiet? All that the townspeople can hear — they are roped off and distant — is the commotion of Awni’s servilities. He introduces his guests: he indicates his fan, his table lamps, his icebox, the coloured veranda lights, bright with polish. He applauds his foresight and planning: there is the liquidizer already filled with unmixed cocktail, its sweet gourd, mint-water, cheap Korean whisky, salt and sayoot powder, impatient for a powered whisk.

But except for Awni the inner room is stiffly silent. The guests are tightly packed. They cannot circulate and chatter. They do not like to jostle and shout to friends with the Minister so near. What can electricians say, in whispers, when pressed so close and warmly to the president of their company? How can the policeman’s wife amuse the unsmiling pressmen and photographers when she cannot stretch her arms and sing? How intimately, how cunningly, should landowner Nepruolo address the Minister’s Secretary now that they are wedged shoulder to shoulder: as a neighbour, colleague, friend, partner, collaborator? As a stranger? Schoolteacher, policeman, barrack captain, town doctor, bullock-gelder, merchant’s wife — all are close tongued.

‘Let us get on,’ the Minister commands an aide. The Minister is not impressed by fans and liquidizers. What he loves most is the privacy of his limousine.

It is now night. The townspeople stand, roped off in moonlight. The last wild flames are snuffed on candles and oil lamps in the Rest House. The Minister makes a brief speech. He has had the personal satisfaction, he says, of fighting and winning the political battles for the electrification of forgotten communities in the Flat Centre. It is a project close to his heart. How he wishes that government business was less exacting — then he could act with lizard-impulse and accept Warden Awni’s generous offer of a few days’ rest amongst the fine people of the town. (Here the Minister discharges a smile for the policeman’s wife.) But, no, he must settle for the lesser pleasure of service and duty. He must return shortly to the city. But first … ‘Let me leave you with a fond memory of your Minister.’ He grasps the ceremonial power-switch and pulls.

It is startling how light can shorten distance. The Rest House — now a grid of hard white with a diadem of coloured lamps — has leapt towards the townspeople. Every face at the window of the inner room is distinct. Every word is clear. Even the far fields have closed in, defined by the stipples of illumination at the school, the hospital, the police station, and on Nepruolo land. The town has shrunk. Only the sky and dawn seem more distant.

Awni’s guests are a little startled, too, though not by electricity. Most of them have stood before in false light on visits to the city. No, they are startled by Awni’s liquidizer, which slices into action almost before the lights have penetrated to the corners of the room and thrown shadows over blinking faces. They all turn to stare at the liquidizer, labouring them a cocktail, and there is laughter. Applause, too.

It is a magic charm. Tongues are loosened. Electricians shake their President’s hand. Pressmen smile at tradesmen. The merchant’s wife — ‘not for the first time’, it is whispered — offers her cheek to the bullock-gelder. The Minister discharges more smiles for the policeman’s wife. Nepruolo and the Minister’s Secretary embrace. It is a celebration.

‘Now we are remembered!’ calls Awni through the open window.

Bald men, and women with naked arms, are the first to notice that the wind is rising. The room shivers. Cigarette smoke speeds back at the smoker. Cocktail glasses rattle. ‘There will be rain’ or ‘The moon is belching’ or ‘Expect a birth in town tonight’, comment the superstitious. The rest button their jackets and send Awni to close the shutters.