The Constant Gardener

The floor space inside the tukul is no more than sixteen feet across. A family table has been banged together from wooden pallets. For seats there are unopened cases of beer and cooking oil. A rackety electric fan spins uselessly from the rush ceiling, the air stinks of soya and mosquito spray. Only Lorbeer the head of the family has a chair, which has been wrested from its place in front of the radio that sits in stacked units under a bookmaker's umbrella next to the gas stove. He perches in it very upright in his homburg hat, with Justin on one side of him and on the other Jamie, who seems to occupy this place by right. To Justin's other side is a ponytailed young male doctor from Florence; next to him sits Scottish Helen from the dispensary, and across from Helen a Nigerian nurse named Salvation.

Other members of Lorbeer's extended family have no time to linger. They help themselves to stew and eat it standing, or sit only long enough to gulp it down and leave again. Lorbeer spoons his stew voraciously, eyes flicking round the table as he eats and talks and talks. And though occasionally he targets a particular member of his audience, nobody doubts that the principal beneficiary of his wisdom is the journalist from London. Lorbeer's first topic of conversation is war. Not the tribal skirmishes raging all around them, but "this damn big war" that is raging in the Bentiu oil fields of the north and spreading daily southwards.

"Those bastards in Khartoum, they got tanks and gunships up there, Peter. They're tearing the poor Africans to pieces. You go up there, see for yourself, man. If the bombardments don't do the job, they got ground troops to go in and do it for them, no problem. Those troops rape and slaughter to their hearts' content. And who's helping them? Who's clapping from the touchlines? The multinational oil companies!"

His indignant voice is holding the floor. Conversations round him must compete or die and most are dying.

"The multis love Khartoum, man! "Boys," they say, "we respect your fine fundamentalist principles. A few public floggings, a few hands cut off, we admire that. We want to help you any which way we can. We want you to use our roads and our airstrips just as much as you like. Just don't you go letting those lazy African bums in the towns and villages stand in the way of the great god Profit! We want those African bums ethnically cleansed out of the way just as bad as you boys in Khartoum want it! So here's some nice oil revenues for you, boys. Go buy yourselves some more guns!" You hear that, Salvation? Peter, you writing this down?"

"Every word, thank you, Brandt," says Justin quietly to his notebook.

"The multis do the devil's work, I tell you, man! One day they will end up in hell where they belong, and they better believe it!" He cringes theatrically, his great hands shielding his face. He is acting the part of Multinational Man facing his Maker on the Day of Judgment. ""It wasn't me, Lord. I was only obeying orders. I was commanded by the great god Profit!" That Multinational Man, he's the one who gets you hooked on cigarettes, then sells you the cancer cure you can't afford to pay for!"

He's the one who sells us untried medicines too. He's the one who fast-streams clinical trials and uses the wretched of the earth as guinea pigs.

"You want coffee?"

"I'd love some. Thank you."

Lorbeer leaps to his feet, seizes Justin's soup mug and rinses it with hot water from a thermos as a prelude to filling it with coffee. Lorbeer's shirt is stuck to his back, revealing billows of trembling flesh. But he doesn't stop talking. He has developed a terror of silence.

"Did the boys down in Loki tell you about the train, Peter?" he yells, drying the mug with a piece of tissue plucked out of the rubbish bag beside him. "This damned old train that comes south at walking speed like three times a year?"

"I'm afraid not."

"It comes down the old railway that you British laid, OK? The train does. Like in the old movies. It's protected by wild horsemen from the north. This old train resupplies every Khartoum garrison on its route from north to south. OK?"

"OK."

Why is he sweating so? Why are his eyes so haunted and questing? What secret comparison is he making between the Arab train and his own sins?

"Man! That train! Right now it's stuck between Ariath and Aweil, two days' hike from here. We got to pray God to make sure the river stays flooded, then maybe the bastards don't come this way. They make Armageddon wherever they go, I tell you. They kill everyone. Nobody can stop them. They're too strong."