Jimfish by Christopher Hope

Author:Christopher Hope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

CHAPTER 16

After inspecting the fleet of limousines in the presidential garage, they chose – on the advice of Lunamiel’s knowledgeable servant – a Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman. It was a vast black vehicle with creamy leather seats, walnut dashboard and a bar stocked with pink champagne. Its passenger windows were hung with heavy curtains that gave it the look of a catafalque on wheels.

The dark lady knew all about these splendid machines and their reputation for reliability amongst self-respecting leaders, who risked their lives to bring peace and stability to their often ungrateful peoples.

‘Nicolae Ceauşescu it was who told Marshal Mobutu that if he wished to travel in a style commensurate with his majesty, then only the Mercedes Pullman would do. It is the limo of choice among serious big men around the planet, from Marshal Tito and Mao Zedong, to the Shah of Persia. Colonel Gaddafi, Guide and Leader of Libya, hands them out as gifts, and my own President Samuel Doe, liberator of Liberia, owns half a dozen. I’ve even heard that Erich Honecker of East Germany liked to hunt deer by the strength of its headlights.’

Jimfish was dumbfounded by the sheer immensity of the limousine. ‘If we’re using it to escape, why not take something a bit less conspicuous?’

‘Size isn’t everything,’ the lady agreed. ‘But this Mercedes is also bullet-proof and that’s very important indeed.’

She turned out to be even wiser than Jimfish had imagined. On their journey through Zaire they were fired upon several times by gangs of soldiers who roamed the countryside, demanding bribes, robbing, raping and pillaging, but their armour-plated automobile shrugged off bullets as a buffalo does flies.

As they rolled along the potholed roads, in between attacks and ambushes, Lunamiel’s attendant told them her story.

‘You wouldn’t think so to look at me, but I am a princess of the Krahn tribe. Our people were local and truly at home in a part of Africa which later came to be called Liberia, when American settlers arrived, unasked, and took over. These new arrivals never amounted to more than a fraction of the original people of Liberia, but they ran our country as a one-party state. They saw to it that Americans and only Americans ruled the roost, and treated us as dunces or domestic servants.’

Jimfish remembered how things were done in Port Pallid, where Sergeant Arlow’s wife Gloriosa – so unfortunately blown to smithereens as she and her husband attended Sunday service – had kept not just a retinue of retainers for everything from cooking to the act of conception, but had even assigned separate servants to each hand when her fingernails needed care. Did he at last feel stirring within him the elements of what he hoped might be the heat that ignites to form the rage that is the rocket fuel of the lumpenproletariat? Certainly a painful longing for home took hold of him.

‘I know exactly what you mean! We had the very same in my country. In our case it was whites who ruled the roost, though they amounted to a fraction of the population.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.