The Henchmen's Book Club (7 page)

“Brigadier,” I reminded him.

Captain Bolaji’s expression tightened up
around his eyes. “Brigadier,” he reluctantly concurred.

He turned and headed out through the
double doors and once more into the African heat. I kept pace with him step for
step but Bolaji didn’t look at me. He just rattled off the usual list of dos
and don’ts that always gets rattled off whenever you join an organisation such
as this one. ie. eight hour guard shifts, alternate night duties, no shooting
the local wildlife, my shampoo’s the one with the A on it, that sort of thing
until I had a general idea of what the daily grind was all about. The only
thing that was still a mystery was the mission itself, but I didn’t worry about
that. I never do. That was the adjutant’s department as despite the higgledy saluting
order he looked like the brains of the operation. All I had to worry about was
guarding my bit of the fence and watching my back until the first opportunity
came to slip away. I had no intention of being here for the long haul.

Still, there was no reason to fritter
away the time twiddling my thumbs so after Captain Bolaji allocated me a bunk
in the main barracks block, I decided to ask about recreation time.

“Recreation time?” he stared.

“Yes, what do you do when you’re not on
duty around here?”

The Captain mulled this question over
from all angles before asking me why I wanted to know.

“No reason. Just wondered, that’s all.”

“You just wondered?” he glared.

“Yes, if you read at all.”

“If I what?”

“You know, read. As in books?”

Now the Captain was truly confused.

“Read?”

8.
SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

“I do not understand how he made the perfume out of dead people. Dead people do
not smell good,” Savimbi said.

“Yes, they smell bad,” Beye agreed.
“Especially the women,” which was a curious statement and one worthy of
Grenouille himself.

“He wasn’t making the perfume out of the
dead women, he was just extracting one ingredient from their bodies,” I argued,
but the overall consensus was that nothing about dead people smelt nice so how could
anyone make perfume out of them, least of all the most powerful perfume in the
world.
 

“I think it is a metaphor,” Captain
Bolaji said.

“A metaphor?”

“Yes, all the women he killed were
beautiful, the most beautiful women Grenouille could find.”

“I would not have killed them, I would
have fucked them,” Mbandi grinned, slicing open a big papaya with his bayonet
and sinking his pink-yellow teeth into the pink-yellow flesh.

“Then you would have had to kill them
first, Mbandi,” Savimbi quipped, prompting chairs and papaya to go flying in
all directions as the third meeting of the Special book club descended into yet
another punch-up.

Captain Bolaji knocked the bayonet out of
Mbandi’s hand while Savimbi’s mates pinned him to the ground until he’d calmed
down, then once order was restored we retook our seats and continued discussing
Patrick Süskind’s
Perfume
.

I don’t know what it was with African
men, particularly your typical African bucks. They loved – and I mean
absolutely lived for – ripping the piss out of each other’s virile
inabilities but had a paper thin sense of humour when it came to jibes about
their own lack of sexual prowess. Perhaps it was a tribal thing; an ancient
marker of accord, that their ability to pull virgins, impregnate them with a
single thrust and leave the countryside dotted about with single mums reflected
their position in society. So bigging themselves up as God’s gift while dissing
their mates as seedless grapes was all part and parcel of this primeval
tradition. Locking antlers across the Serengeti, that’s all they were doing.
Locking antlers.

Of course, blokes in Britain did this
too, only with Turtle Wax and Ford Mondeos.

Still, as quaintly ritualistic as this
was, it did somewhat hack into the cut and thrust of our debate and turn our
Friday morning meetings into African Gladiators. But on the plus side, they’d
all read the book.

“Sorry Captain, you were saying?” I
invited.

“Yes, I was saying it was a metaphor.”

“A metaphor? For what?” Beye asked.

“For God’s finger; that this mysterious
ingredient, which was distilled from the most beautiful women in all of France,
was not a smell at all, but an alchemic. Grenouille’s perfume, as beautiful,
hysterical and intoxicating as it was, was life itself.”

Captain Bolaji attended every book club
meeting. At first I figured it was just to keep an eye on me to ensure I didn’t
try to insurrect the men, but over the weeks he’d really gotten into the spirit
of things and always made a key contribution, be it picking holes in Dan Brown’s
Angels & Demons
or wrestling the
pin back into Mbandi’s grenade. Accordingly, I thought he made a good point
here but Jaga wanted to know if life was so beautiful, why did Kasanje’s feet
smell so much?

Chairs went flying again.

Captain Bolaji looked to the rafters and
rolled his eyes.

This time the fracas was interrupted by
Vice-President General-Brigadier Admiral-Colonel Dembo, who’d been making out
like a bandit in the promotions stakes in recent weeks.

“What is this? What is this” Africa’s
highest ranking soldier cried as he waded into a twisted knot of arms and legs.
“Captain Bolaji, call your men out immediately! We have visitors.”

This caught the Captain’s attention so he
pulled a whistle from his top pocket and gave it two blasts, ending book talk
for another day. The troops rushed to their bunks and collected their hats and
rifles (which had been banned from book club after the first meeting) and we
all filed outside into a scorching hot dust storm. Across the compound a large
Soviet helicopter was blowing His Most Excellent Majesty’s daisies around and
settling just in front of the main building.

The Admiral quickly arranged us into some
sort of welcoming committee and found a suitably convincing smile for his face.
A moment later the door on the side of the helicopter slid back and sixteen
pairs of the very latest Russian issued army boots hit the ground and formed an
honour guard of their own.

His Most Excellent Majesty, the
Commander-in-Chief of the First Lumbala Special Army even made a rare excursion
away from the air conditioner, making me realise that the money men must’ve
flown into town. Sure enough a couple of high-ranking Europeans in incognito khakis
leapt from the bird and strode towards their host for a handshake. Naturally,
His Most Excellent Majesty bemused and amused them by trumping their handshake
with one of his newly learned salutes (these Commander-in-Chiefs, they grow up
so fast don’t they?), but they were good sports and played along to His Most
Excellent Majesty’s delight.

Words were exchanged and lost in the roar
of the engines, then the money men played Santa and ordered a couple of their
pink and sweaty troopers to drag a crate off the helicopter and plonk it down
in front of His Most Excellent Majesty’s smile. A crowbar knocked the lid off
and a shiny black M16 was handed to His Majesty. Bullets were quickly found and
a nearby bin dispatched, all to His Most Excellent Majesty’s immense
satisfaction, before the leading lights decided they’d had enough fun in the
sun for one day and headed into the house for shadowier discussions.

The Admiral ordered those of us not
invited to help offload of the rest of the crates so half a dozen of us
mule-trained the remainder of cargo to the weapons bunker.

Being the only white soldier in a black
African army was always likely to earn me a few looks, though one particularly
tough-looking trooper eyed me with deep-set misgiving. His eyes narrowed
further when a chrome lock-box came off the troop carrier and made its way to
our bunker, followed closely at heel by a couple of white-coated boffins.

When all was unloaded, the Admiral
ordered most of his men back under the carpet, but the most photogenic of us
were posted outside the bunker to guard His Most Excellent Majesty’s newest toys.

My tough-looking friend and a couple of
his Russian comrades were given equivalent orders and a dozen of us formed up
facing each other under the murderous African sun while the brass sloped off to
change shirts.

My tough-looking friend’s face cracked
into a warm smile.

“Mr Jones!” he said.

I returned his smile with interest and
stuck out a hand.

“Mr Smith!” I declared, beaming to see my
old American friend again.

Mr Smith shook my hand warmly and we
slung our rifles over our shoulders and jawed for a couple of minutes on old
times.

“What are you doing here?” Mr Smith
finally asked.

“Just trying to scrape a few pennies
together to pay the bills,” I explained.

Mr Smith wasn’t convinced though. “You
didn’t get this job through The Agency.”

“No, work on spec – ‘situations
vacant’ sign hanging on the gate post.”

Mr Smith decided against scrutinising
that one too closely and asked me if I was being well treated.

“Well enough, I can’t complain,” I said,
complaining as much as I could with my eyes out of view of my Special brethren.
Mr Smith noted it and frowned in acknowledgement. Troopers on either side of us
were staring with suspicion so we explained to our respective comrades that
we’d served together before.

Captain Bolaji decided we’d caught up enough
and reminded us of our orders. After a token glare of protest, I unslung my
rifle and resumed my post, but Mr Smith stayed right where he was. I thought
for one moment they were going to get into it with each other but in the event
Mr Smith just asked me what I was reading.

“We’ve just finished Patrick Süskind’s
Perfume
,” I told him, rolling up the
sleeves of my tunic to show him the bruises.

“You’ve got a book club going?” he
delighted.

“Of sorts. Just something to pass the
nights.”

“
Perfume
?”

“You’d be surprised what we’ve been able
to get delivered from Durban,” I told him.

“What did it score?”

“We haven’t scored it yet. But
End of The Affair
got two point nine
last week, while Alan Bennett’s
Untold
Stories
did very well with four point two.”

“Really? That surprises me,” Mr Smith
said.

“Well, it was a bigger book, wasn’t it?
And in hardback. Better for fighting with,” I explained.

Mr Smith understood. He thought for a
moment, looking like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it,
before asking me if I’d read
Papillon
.

“Henri
Charrière yeah?” I said. “No, I haven’t read that one yet.”

“We just read it a few weeks back.”

“We?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a little book club of
our own going, like before,” Mr Smith told me.

“Hey that’s great. Are you scoring and
nominating and everything?”

“Yeah, same as we did back on the island.
It’s working out really well,” he said, and several of his comrades nodded in
agreement behind him.

“What did you give for
Papillon
?”

“I
gave it four and it scored four point four overall. Went down very well with
the chaps,” Mr Smith beamed, letting me know whose nomination that had been.
“Easily our best scorer. And you know what, that’s for a book that’s almost
forty years old,” he added.

“Perhaps
we’ll do that one next, because my choices don’t seem to be going down at all
well,” I said, as the door of the bunker swung open and the white-coated
scientists emerged, rubbing their necks with handkerchiefs and checking their
watches.

We
whipped our hands out of our pockets and snapped to attention but the
scientists were too preoccupied with their own cleverness to notice. The lead
scientist, who I recognised as having also been on Thalassocrat’s island with
us, radioed in that they were all done and a minute later the Euro players were
stepping out of the house and walking back to the bird, matching His Most
Excellent Majesty salute-for-salute.

Mr
Smith looked at me and gave me a formal nod. I returned his nod and said I’d
catch him in the bookshop some time. Mr Smith held his retreat for just one
moment and fixed me in the eye.

“Don’t
bother with
Papillon
. Try
The Fourth Protocol
instead. You’ll like
it, particularly the ending,” he said, ladling on as much emphasis as he dared.

“But…”
I started, but Mr Smith repeated his recommendation before sprinting away to
catch up with the others as they climbed into the helicopter.

The
whipping blades kicked up His Most Excellent Majesty’s yard all over again and
most of the guards ducked into doorways and behind buildings to shelter from
the stinging hot dust.

But
not me.

I
stayed right where I was, staring up at the ascending helicopter in silent
alarm.

Because
I’d already read
The Fourth Protocol
.

And
so had Mr Smith.

It
had been one of the first books we’d all read together on the island.

It
had scored four point one.

And I
remembered only too well what had happened to Valeri Petrofsky at the end of
it.