Jimfish, though moved by the story of his teacher’s plight in Russia, was dismayed by his unseemly liaison with Deon Arlow: ‘But by joining his morris-dancer coup, you collaborated in an invasion of another African state, the islands of the Comoros. And that, surely, was completely counter to your socialist faith?’
‘Not at all,’ said Soviet Malala. ‘Are you familiar with Marx’s Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach?’
Jimfish was sorry to admit he had never heard of it.
‘It concludes that all individuals are elements of the social collective, and since all freedom is determined by history, this means I was predestined to join Superior Solutions and thus to invade the Comoros Islands.’
‘But you were free to refuse to do so, surely?’ Jimfish cried.
‘In Marxist terms, freedom means facing the fact that we are historically determined,’ said Soviet Malala, ‘and in any event, it was of the first importance that I return to South Africa by any means possible, so as to speed the coming revolution and energize the masses.’
‘And what about you?’ Jimfish turned to Deon Arlow. ‘When I last saw you, you were undisputably dead — and I should know, because I was the one who shot you through the heart.’
‘Certainly you shot me though the heart and, in other circumstances, that would have been fatal. But remember, Superior Solutions is a proudly South African enterprise and heart transplants were pioneered by South Africans, and the procedures are well tried and tested. We had in our medical team some of the best surgeons in the world. What slows down the number of transplants is the lack of heart donors, but luckily the carnage of Sierra Leone’s civil war meant there was never a problem in finding me a good young heart. Better by far than the one I lost to you.’
‘Are you telling me that your transplant involved an African heart?’ asked Jimfish.
‘Exactly so,’ said Deon Arlow. ‘I leased my sister Lunamiel to the Zairean Minister of Mines to show that white South Africans are open to constructive business across the Mother Continent. And what better proof that old prejudices are over than the fact that, inside here’ — he touched his chest — ‘beats a true, new African heart.’
CHAPTER 28
Pretoria, South Africa, 1994
After the coup attempt by Deon Arlow’s troupe of fake morris dancers, air travel from the Comoros, always intermittent, was even more irregular than usual, and Jimfish and his party were forced to wait weeks before a flight would be available to take them back to South Africa.
It was during this time that Jimfish made a discovery. Besides vanilla, spices and military coups, for most Comorians fishing was the only way to earn a scant living. Anglers paddled their dugout canoes close to the shore and used long hand-lines of plaited cotton, cunningly baited and dropped deep. It was an uncertain, risky livelihood and earned fishermen barely enough to feed their families.
However, they told him of a particular catch so valuable that to hook one was like winning the lottery. They called this fish the ‘gombessa’. It was coloured a beautiful steely blue, shading into mauve, with dabs of white, sported four little legs and lived hidden in deep sea caves. The gombessa grew as tall as a man of average height, weighed about the same and had wonderful powers: it could stand on its head and swim upside down or backwards, using its four little legs.
Jimfish knew instantly what this fish was. His mind went back to Port Pallid, where the old skipper had found him on the harbour wall, and to those blissful moments he had spent with Lunamiel in the orchard of Sergeant Arlow, only to be violently driven from the policeman’s garden to wander the world for ten whole years, never managing to land on the right side of history. How strange to come so far, to these islands, in the Mozambique channel between Tanzania and Madagascar, only to find himself hearing of the same fish as the old trawler skipper had once caught off the Chalumna river mouth. A fossil that everyone believed dead for millions of years turned out to be alive and swimming. Here it was again, close beside him, in the waters of the Comoros, and it meant things couldn’t be too bad.
‘A fish out of water, like me,’ Jimfish repeated to himself.
The islanders suggested to Jimfish that with limitless wealth in his bag of rough diamonds he could invest in a flotilla of dugouts to comb the known coelacanth fishing grounds. They were sure to strike lucky. At present just two or three coelacanths were hooked each year, the price was steadily rising and a fisherman could earn as much as three years’ income with a single sale. International aquaria, trophy hunters and marine museums vied to own a coelacanth. In Asia a market was opening up for the golden fluid from its spinal cord, which was was rumoured to add years to life.
Jimfish listened politely, but declined. For a man who had been tortured in a shipping container in Matabeleland, confined in a Soviet penal colony, locked up in East Berlin, captured by Somali kidnappers and netted and nearly sliced to pieces in an albino auction room in Tanzania the very idea of hunting down another living creature to supply demented hypochondriacs in the Asian market with the spinal fluid of a fish said to be the elixir of life, was more than he could bear.
Besides, he had other things on his mind. From Deon Arlow he had heard alarming news of Lunamiel, who he had left to fend for herself in the terrible civil war in Liberia. Deon Arlow reported that just before he had set off to topple the government of the Comoros he had seen his sister, and it was a sad tale he had to tell.
‘My sister has not had an easy time. If you remember the recent wars in Liberia you will know that President Samuel Doe was done to death by Prince Johnson, who in turn was ousted in the race to be president by Charles Taylor, whose election promise — “I killed your ma. I killed your pa. Vote for me or I’ll kill you too!” — was one of the most effective slogans in living memory. After these elections, Brigadier Bare-Butt suddenly declared himself celibate and gave up my sister. He renounced politics for religion, put aside his naked ways, threw away his AK-47 and dissolved his Small Boys Unit, in their fright wigs and wedding frocks, to go on the road, preaching the gospel of charity and forgiveness to the war-weary people of Liberia.
‘My dear sister was reduced to begging in the streets of Monrovia, and would still be there but for an amazing stroke of luck. A visiting businessman — hearing her accent when she asked for bread — knew instantly that she was one of us. This good Samaritan turned out to be an important official in the party which will soon form the new government of South Africa. He rescued Lunamiel, flew her home and gave her a job in his Johannesburg mansion, where she works today as a cleaning maid.’
Hearing this, Jimfish had one thought in his mind: to get home and find Lunamiel — and when he heard that regular flights to South Africa had started again he was overjoyed.
The Comorians were sorry to see Jimfish and his friends leaving and a big crowd accompanied the four travellers to the airport, where the Mayor thanked each of them personally for their help and advice in showing his compatriots how things were done in the wider world. He praised Jimfish for sailing a United States warship to the Comoros Islands on a first official visit; he complimented Soviet Malala for his uplifting lectures on rage, rocket fuel and how to land on the right side of history; he commended Zoran the Serb for suggesting the Comoros Islands should splinter into a constellation of micro-states along ex-Yugoslavian lines, each with its own flag, army and dictionary; and he promised to bear in mind Deon Arlow’s offer to fly in ‘conflict control contractors’ by helicopter gunship at the first signs of a fresh army coup.