Star of Africa

Chapter 53

The column advanced up the track and marched into the village. Ben and the others could only watch as Khosa led his troops along the path between the huts to where the villagers were gathered. There were cries of fear as they saw the soldiers coming. The crowd scattered, but were quickly herded back together at gunpoint.

Khosa planted himself in the middle of the village square and lit a fresh cigar. Wreathed in a swirl of smoke he shouted, ‘I am General Jean-Pierre Khosa! If there are strong men and boys in this village, they will now have the honour of serving in my army!’

Next, Khosa ordered for all the men and women to be rounded up separately. It was a task his soldiers completed in under a minute, jabbing their rifles and yelling wildly at the terrorised villagers.

‘Only the fittest can fight for me!’ Khosa declared loudly. ‘There is no room in my army for the old and the weak. Kill them.’

‘He can’t do this,’ Tuesday said, and looked imploringly at Ben and Jeff.

But he could do it, and he did. Because nobody had the power to stop him. Moments later, the village echoed to the crackle of small-arms fire and screaming as every man deemed too old, too infirm or in any way unfit for service was gunned down. A one-legged man on crutches, shot three times in the head and chest. A white-haired elder of about seventy, blasted in the back as he tried to escape. And on, and on. When the firing stopped, there were eighteen dead bodies on the ground.

And every one of them, Ben felt as if he’d murdered himself. He was shaking with a rage he could hardly contain. Women wailing, children crying and screaming, Khosa’s soldiers surrounding them with guns and roaring at them to shut up. Sizwe, Uwase and the other men of the village all staring at Ben as though he’d betrayed them.

It was unbearable.

But it wasn’t over. It was just beginning.

Next, Khosa had all the remaining men and older boys lined up for his inspection. He strutted down the line, puffing smoke, the sunlight glinting off the revolver at his side and the mirrored lenses of his shades, and took a long, slow look at each one in turn.

‘This one is big and strong,’ he said, pointing at Uwase. ‘He is acceptable. And this one is even bigger. You! What is your name, cockroach?’

‘Sizwe.’

Khosa nodded with satisfaction. ‘This Sizwe is the strongest of them all. I will take him too.’

Like a flesh trader of old picking out the choice goods at the Zanzibar slave market, Khosa selected four more of the tallest and fiercest-looking males of the village, asking each his name in turn. Ntwali, who owned the four-wheel-drive. Gasimba, his friend. His number five and six choices were named Mugabo and Rusanganwa.

‘These are very good,’ Khosa declared. Then he turned to his soldiers and said, ‘Take the rest and kill them. But do not waste more bullets.’

The soldiers used their machetes.

Ben had heard of carnage like it, and often. In Africa, and especially here in Rwanda, there was a long and depressing record of man’s senseless brutality against his fellow man. He’d seen the aftermath of such slaughter, on one occasion that he had tried very hard for many years to close out of his memory. But to be forced to witness it taking place in front of his eyes felt like being dragged to the brink of losing his mind. Almost the very worst thing was the way the villagers took it, many of them barely resisting as though they accepted their fate with a calm, dignified, almost detached resignation. It was more awful to watch than if they’d fought and struggled.

Ben watched through a stinging, clouding veil of tears until he couldn’t stand it any longer and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t close his ears to the keening screams of the womenfolk and the terrible repetitive chopping of sharpened steel on flesh and bone as Khosa’s soldiers carried out their bloody work.

When the massacre was over and the ground was littered with the severed body parts of the dead, Khosa strolled calmly up to where Ben stood with his head bowed, and revealed his plan.

‘I have thought of a better test for you, soldier.’

Khosa took off his sunglasses. His eyes bored into Ben’s, as though he could read every thought that was in there. ‘Do you see these scars on my face?’

As if it were possible to miss them.

‘These were made when I was just a young boy, to show my courage. Do you know how I earned these marks? By proving myself in combat against two strong warriors from another tribe, who were sent to hunt me in a forest. These men were prisoners. If they killed me and cut off my head, they would be let go. But I killed them both, with nothing but a spear in my hand, and I carried their heads back to my village to show to the elders. This was how a boy became a man. And now, soldier, you will prove yourself to me in the same way.’

Ben said nothing.

‘You and you,’ Khosa said, motioning at Jeff and Tuesday in turn. ‘You are his comrades in arms who will join him in this test. Three against six is the same as one against two. This is why I have chosen the six strongest men from this village. They will be given weapons to fight with. If they wish their women and children to be spared from the blades of my soldiers, they must kill you in combat.’

Khosa smiled his demon smile at Ben.

‘But if you kill them, soldier, you will save the life of your boy. Lose, and his head will be the next to be cut off.’

Ben said nothing. He could feel the tension coming like waves of heat from Jeff and Tuesday.

‘Clear this space,’ Khosa commanded with an imperious sweep of his arm. ‘The contest will take place here, before me. Let the fighters be given their weapons.’

Then Khosa paused, and rubbed his chin, and his eyes narrowed, and he nodded and chuckled to himself. ‘No, I have a better idea. Yes, yes. Much better. This will make the contest more interesting, I think.’

He pointed at the thicket of scrub and thorn bushes just beyond the edge of the village.

‘There is where you will hunt and kill each other,’ he announced. ‘Where the lion awaits its prey. To be a true warrior, one must confront many different dangers.’

Ben found the words to speak.

‘The biggest danger is you, Khosa. I can’t decide whether you’re a lunatic or just evil. But I promise you one thing. Whatever happens to me, my friends or my family, the worst end will be the one that comes to you. Sooner or later, you’ll be looking it right in the face. And no man would deserve it more than you.’

‘It is not a matter of who deserves,’ Khosa said. ‘It is only a matter of who wins, and who loses.’

‘I won’t fight,’ Ben said. ‘Not like this.’

‘Think carefully, soldier. You should not forget that you have much to lose.’ Khosa pointed at Jude. ‘His life is in your hands. He is your son. Look into his eyes and tell him that his life is not worth the lives of six poor villagers? Six strangers who are nothing to you?’

Ben didn’t reply.

‘If you will not fight, soldier, it means that you are a coward. And I have no use for a coward in my army. Refuse my command, and it is the same thing as if you fail the test. I will have the boy’s head cut off. Is this what you wish for? I do not think so, soldier.’

Ben still didn’t reply. He looked over at Jude. Jude was looking at him. Two of the soldiers were holding him by the arms. A third was pointing a gun to his head. A fourth was standing behind him with a machete, poised and ready for the swing. Its blade caught the sunlight.

Jude shook his head. ‘Don’t do this for me,’ he called out. ‘I can’t have six innocent men die on my account. Let the bastard do to me what he has to do. Let go.’

But Ben would not let Jude go.

Sizwe, his brother and their friends stood shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed, eyes averted from the slaughterhouse that was all that remained of the rest of the village menfolk.

‘We will not kill,’ Sizwe said. ‘We are not animals.’

At a signal from Khosa, the nose picker and another of the soldiers stepped up to the huddled, whimpering crowd of women and children. They homed in on Sizwe’s wife, who was clutching their injured son tightly against her, his blood soaking into her plain cotton dress. The boy howled both in terror and in pain as they tore him out of his mother’s arms. The nose picker drew a blade and held it to the child’s throat while the other held his squirming body down. A third soldier restrained Sizwe’s wife as she flew at them, screaming in anguish. He used his rifle butt to slap her hard across the face, then kicked her to the ground and pointed the weapon at her.

‘This little cockroach is bleeding all over my uniform,’ the nose picker said with a grin, just itching for the command to make him bleed some more.

‘I will count to three,’ Khosa said. ‘Then we will add his head to the pile. One.’

Sizwe said nothing.

Khosa said, ‘Two.’

Sizwe remained silent. He glanced at his wife, then at his son, then at Khosa, then at Ben. Uwase, Ntwali, Gasimba, Mugabo and Rusanganwa were all looking to him, their eyes wide and white and bulging.

Khosa said, ‘Thr—’

But Sizwe spoke before he could finish.

‘We will kill.’