Gone to Timbuctoo by John Pearson

Author:John Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

I woke to the slow swish of water, and thought for a moment that we were becalmed. Sunlight streamed through the slats of the door making a bright grid on the ceiling, but there was no throb of engines or sense of movement. Nor was anyone about, and when I opened the door and peered out, I could see a low line of river bank in the distance. It was covered with green scrub, and was moving slowly and undeniably past.

It was only when I had walked towards the bows that I discovered how a boat could travel so comfortably without an engine. For there, a hundred yards ahead, heeling slightly to the right as she turned with the river, was an old, grey Seine tug. Black smoke belched from her ungainly funnel, flags fluttered from her mast, and from the stern dipping out of sight into the coffee-coloured waters of the Niger, snaked a long, black tow-wire. We were on the end of it.

For strictly speaking, the boat to Timbuctoo is a barge. Some time in the last century it must have been fitted with a couple of decks, and from the side it looks like a floating verandah. Under the verandah itself are the strange little coops with their flimsy steel doors that serve as cabins for the first- and second-class passengers. On the open deck below live the Africans who make up the third- and fourth-classes.

According to my watch it was nearly eight, but nobody was up on my deck. From below came muffled voices as the Africans prepared for breakfast. But as I walked back to my cabin every other door was shut, and there was no sound of life from the deserted first-class deck.

It was nearly an hour before I caught sight of my first fellow passenger. To be exact I heard him first. I had just finished shaving, and was sitting in the cabin with the door open when I heard the voice coming along the deck. It was a dapper, unconcerned voice, humming an aria from Pagliacci, and balancing gymnastically on each trill of the chorus. It stopped abruptly before reaching my cabin.

There was a faint sniff. A throat was cleared self-importantly, and then with the bird-like nervousness of an old-time comedian taking his first peep at an audience, a round pink face peered past the door.

“I,” announced the face, “am Lebègue.”

I nodded.

No more of the body appeared, and for several moments we stared at each other.

“I am from Toulouse,” the face said at last. “I am a construction engineer. Awful country this. Frightful.”

The face whistled sadly through its teeth.

And then M. Lebègue revealed the rest of himself. It was short and splay-footed with red shirt and cheerful paunch. We shook hands.

“Have you eaten?” he inquired politely. “Not that it’s worth trying, but it passes the time.”

He led the way along the deck. The cabin doors were still closed, but the first-class saloon was at the front of the boat, and breakfast was being served inside.

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