Blood and Ink by W. W. Chaplin

Author:W. W. Chaplin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789122398
Publisher: Borodino Books
Published: 2018-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Spurning formality and all its dullness the blacks took note of the occasion by going on as beautiful a bender as you’d care to see. The old fashioned hired man who went to town every Saturday night could have learned a lot about alcoholic consumption and what to do then from these black boys.

Before the Marshal, a strikingly dignified figure in white uniform, arrived from his steamer at the White-Icing residence several hundred blacks had got themselves well-oiled with tetch, the beer they make out of honey.

As the Marshal came across the harbor in a motor launch tom-toms began to beat, a bamboo jews harp buzzed musically. And an ancient whose neat white jaw beard was touched up with bright ochre strummed an enormous lyre shaped harp of David adorned with feathers and broken looking glasses.

Tetch and rhythm combined to rouse the usually lethargic natives to increasing frenzy of activity and one after one they sprang into frantic dances, springing in air, brandishing spears, waving swords. With every leap they make the sound of “sh” and this with the weird music and the rhythmic clapping of hands was Marshal Badoglio’s welcome to the war zone.

After brief ceremonies in the domed residence the Marshal left for Asmara, but the natives were just beginning to have fun. Hundreds of them snake-danced along the waterfront, barefoot, turbaned but otherwise almost naked, the dancing men whirling and cavorting in front.

Through the day the excitement lasted and the tetch flowed freely. Now it is almost midnight and the noise goes on. The natives have retired to their ramshackle dhows which clutter the harbor with rakish cargo masts cutting the sky into starry strips. But in every dhow is a fire, and round these fires the dozen or so inhabitants of each craft dance drunkenly and clap their hands and chant their monotonous but somehow stirring songs.

The natives little realize it, but if Italy’s purpose in this war is achieved and the white man’s civilization is imposed on the blacks, it is the swan song of savagery, the death rattle of barbarism, which is sung tonight.

***

NOVEMBER 29, 1935

MASSAUA....I stepped over two ragged blacks sleeping in the dusty sunlight and entered a waterfront saloon as an angry voice yelled for beer.

“Come along with it,” shouted the burly man in sweat stained whites, fanning himself with a worn brown sun helmet, “and come a-galloping.”

I signalled a black boy comfortably garbed in a dirty towel caught around his waist. He thumped two frosted bottles and thick glasses on an iron table and I touched the verbal trumpeter on the arm.

“Have a beer with me,” I invited, and he grabbed my hand in two great fists and began pumping as though the ship of sanity was foundering under his feet.

“Glory be,” he shouted, “an Englishman or something like it. I’ll drink your beer and I’ll listen to you talk and I don’t know which is the pleasanter. I can’t make these blighters understand me, black or white, no matter how loud I talk.

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