T. Boyle - Water Music

Dassoud had met each of these challenges in his own fierce and summary way, but in the process he had lost valuable time. Each distraction maddened him to the point of frenzy as it deflected him from his goal. Each annoyance — whether it was the obligation to turn aside and slaughter three hundred Foulah men, women and children or the fact that his goat was overcooked and his kouskous mushy — so enraged him he felt his skull would burst, and he chalked up another strike against the explorer. To eradicate the Nazarini became a seething obsession, an obsession that broiled his soul day and night with a fire that burned all the hotter for each obstacle thrown in his way. But now, after two and a half months of maddening delays, Dassoud was on his way, roaring through the streets of Sansanding like a demon possessed.

♦ ♦ ♦

There are coots on the water, and spur-winged plover. The surface heaves and boils with the last furious runoff from the monsoon, and a few attenuated native dugouts glide like the wind through lingering patches of morning fog. “Is everybody in?” Mungo shouts, feeling like a boy on the Yarrow, as he and Ned Rise wade into the current, their shoulders flush with the hull of the H.M.S. Joliba . And then, merry as a bridegroom proposing a toast, he breaks a calabash of fou over the prow and gives the order to shove off.

Martyn, looking twice his nineteen years with his beard and drink-debauched eyes, is at the tiller; the rest, including Amadi Fatoumi and his three retainers, are lounging about, their paddles in a casual heap. With the river in flood, propulsion should be no problem: heavily laden though it is, the Joliba bobs like a twig and maneuvers like a sailor’s dream.

Ned Rise hops nimbly aboard as the current catches the elongated craft and swings it round, but Mungo lingers a moment, officious, the water to his chest, steadying the boat after it is no longer necessary. It is at that moment that the first gunshot echoes over the water. Startled and confused, the explorer looks first at Martyn — the lieutenant’s mouth is hanging open, gaping as if to swallow an orange or an egg— and then over his shoulder at the dusty roadway leading down to the river’s edge. The sight rivets him like a nightmare come to life. Bearing down on him, weapons held aloft, jubbahs flapping, is a countless host of Moors, their sweat-slicked horses pounding over the earth in furious stampede.

None of this has been lost on the others. Whereas a moment previous they’d been lounging about like hemophiliac princes, they are suddenly up and working furiously at the paddles, as the explorer, feet streaming in the wake, clambers aboard. Inspired by the grim prospect of their own imminent demise, the men have burst into swift, concentrated action — even the whiskery M’Keal, slick Fatoumi and frail Frair stroking away as if they were trying out for the Oxford crew. Mungo has suddenly caught fire too. Unable to locate a paddle in the confusion, he crouches low to the water and begins churning at it with his cupped hands, as if he were trying to part the waves or dig a watery burrow. “Heave!” Ned shouts beside him, and the Joliba begins to pick up speed.

They are less than a hundred yards out when the first Moor hits the water, a big fellow in black, lashing at his charger’s muzzle and shrieking obscenities in Arabic. Within seconds the water is alive with Moors, hundreds of them, firing the odd musket, flinging spears and yabbering their war cry. Mungo, splashing wildly, risks a look over his shoulder at his arch enemies, their horses swimming like seals, their eyes on fire and nostrils dilated with the scent of blood, weapons flashing red in the rich meaty light of dawn. And then suddenly the strength goes out of his arms. The nearest Moor — sixty yards off, his horse nearly exploding with exertion — he knows him. He knows the blocky shoulders straining at the seams of the jubbah, he knows those eyes, that scar, that maniacal leering mask of hatred. .

Dassoud’s pistol is extended, his horse flailing, the Joliba drawing away. Desperately, the Moor sights down the gun barrel and fires, one more puff of smoke in the confusion of whirling jubbahs , clattering spears, shouts and billows of dust rising from the shore behind him. The smoke and dust are so thick and the noise so all-enveloping that the explorer can’t be sure whether the Moor has fired or not, until all at once there is something warm and wet on his arm and a weight forcing itself down on him. Whirling round, he looks up into the stricken face of Abraham Bolton, who had been making his way to him with the missing paddle. Now, his right eye shot away, the private lurches over him, wagging the paddle in mid-air and fighting for balance. Mungo’s reaction is instinctive: he ducks his shoulder, and Bolton, poor sot, tumbles past him and into the river like a sack of stones dropped from a bridge.

When Mungo looks up again he’s staring into Dassoud’s eyes across an ever-narrowing stretch of water, the Moor gaining, so close now his charger’s agonized gasps tear at the explorer’s lungs until he can barely catch his breath. Vaguely — as if in a dream — Mungo reaches for Bolton’s paddle, but the Moor’s eyes lock on him like grappling hooks and he can feel the walls of his throat constricting, all he can do to keep from bursting into tears at the unfairness of it all. Mesmerized, he cannot think of the ninety loaded muskets beneath the canopy or the silver-plated pistol tucked inside his shirt. He can only think of failure, ignominy and death.

But then Ned Rise’s voice sweeps up out of the din, muscular and hortatory—”Pull boys! Pull!”—and the tableau begins to dissolve. Dassoud drops back and the Joliba is suddenly rushing with the current, far out into the cleansing river, far from the blood and terror and the grim grasping fingers of captivity, far out onto the broad back of the Niger. Transfixed, Mungo kneels there like a supplicant, unable to move or think, as he watches his bitterest enemy recede in the distance until the black spot of his head is lost in the pulse of the waters.

♦ AND QUIET FLOWS THE NIGER ♦

It is like descending into the body, this penetration of the river, like passing through veins and arteries and great dripping organs, like exploring the chambers of the heart or reaching out for the impalpable soul. Earth, forest, sky, water: the river thrums with the beat of life. Mungo feels it — as steady and pervasive as the ticking of a supernal clock — feels it through the searing windless days and the utter nights that fall back to the rim of the void. Ned Rise feels it, and even M’Keal. A presence. A mystery. A sense of communing with the eternal that drops a pall over everything, silencing the long-necked birds, the river horses, cicadas, crocodiles, coots, kingfishers and snipe, the great silver fish that leap clear of the water and fall back again without a splash. It is almost as if they’ve fallen under a spell, the explorer and his men, as if their blood were flowing in sympathetic confluence with the river and the river washing them clean of all the guilt and horror and hardship of the overland journey. Persuasive, gentle, the current pulls them through those first hushed weeks with a force and logic all its own.

But then the crew wake one morning under a sky like dried blood and it is as if their ears have been newly opened. Sounds boom at them, unbearable, from the squeak of the tiller to the rattle of the bullock hides in the cruel hot wind that seems to have snuck up on them during the night. Great Nubian and griffon vultures wheel overhead, and the men can hear the flutter of the wings. Hippos snort like blaring cannon and crocodiles bark like dogs. Suddenly the whole universe is shouting at them.