URS FREI

THE GODSEND

IN THE ONE-ROOM TERMInal the heat was intolerable. An air conditioner resting in
a window licked at the pavement outside with a tongue of rust, while its
blackened vents inside made one surmise an ancient rupture. The attendant was a
black man in gray dungarees, small and hard, as if kiln-dried in the line of
duty. He seemed oblivious to the heat, and confirmed placidly that the air
conditioner was out of order. Fortunately noon was still an hour away, and on
the west side, the runway side of the terminal, was a strip of shade wide enough
to wait in. Half an hour later, when it had shrunk by half, the attendant came
out to confirm that the plane would be late, and at that moment Arthur Nkobe
savored the unusual clarity and certainty of his premonition that everything
would become much worse before the day ended. This would only be in keeping,
after all, with the general deterioration of things since his arrival from
Khartoum two weeks ago to administer drought relief in the southern Sudan. He
had found awaiting him in Juba a suite of air-conditioned offices, a
well-prepared staff -- but no supplies. The French, British, and Americans had
promised aid, but the French supplies had never left Paris, the British supplies
were lost among shipments to Ethiopia and the Sahel, and now the Americans,
instead of aid, were sending their own administrator to decide how it should be
distributed.

He was affected strangely by the heat. Several times already he had been sure
that he could see the plane; twice he had turned to his assistant, Cecil Deng to
point it out, only to find when he turned back that it had disappeared. He was
so affected that he felt no embarrassment; he felt only now and then winds of
irritation. He had no one to vent them on, and Cecil was too experienced to give
him an excuse. Cecil wore a frown of concentration and held his head cocked
toward the six Dinka chieftains conversing several yards away, in their even,
musical and slightly female voices. Arthur Nkobe was irritated again, since his
assistant, who had been hired primarily as an interpreter, hardly understood a
word of what they said.

And yet he was a Dinka himself, his name originally Kiir Jal, and could be
distinguished from the chiefs only because his suit happened to fit. He had
moved north when he was a child. Arthur Nkobe could not decide whether Cecil's
unease in their presence meant fear or contempt, or something of both. Certainly
he had been taken aback to find that for this meeting with the representative of
America the Dinka had decided to wear suits. Perhaps they embarrassed him, but
to Arthur the tall slender chieftains with their prominent bones managed in
their innocence, in spite of the sleeves that came halfway up their forearms,
not to look ridiculous. But he did not understand why, with their people in such
a plight, they had made the effort to be here. Cecil Deng could only shrug.

The plane appeared at last out of nowhere in the middle of the sky, and in a
minute landed on the runway in a cloud of heat and stopped a hundred feet away.
A door opened near the front. Two black men struggled with a ladder which they
hooked onto the doorframe. The ladder swayed as they came down one-handed,
carrying luggage in their free hands, and at the bottom they made adjustments to
fix it to the tarmac. Then the American, a white man, appeared in the door. He
was so large that Arthur Nkobe wondered for a moment if he were seeing two men.
Cecil Deng snorted with astonishment. Nkobe held his breath until the American
had reached the bottom, for the plane seemed to sag as he climbed down. The
American stood for a minute in the shadow of the plane, panting. The Dinka had
become silent as he descended. Then as he began to cross the tarmac their voices
rose in alarm and they set out in his direction. When they had reached him one
of them took off his jacket and all six held it up as a screen for him to walk
under. Arthur Nkobe shook his head at the sight of the stately, comical
procession. Cecil, when Arthur caught his eye, could only shrug. At the terminal
door the American shook their hands.

"David Johnson," he said. "Call me Dave. Now get me out of this damn heat, will
you?"

In the restaurant of the European hotel all three air conditioners were turned
to full. Their noise made conversations at other tables inaudible and gave an
air of imminent disaster to the normally placid interior, with its paneled
walls, Parisian lampshades, and portraits of the contemporary European monarchy.
Arthur Nkobe and Cecil Deng waited at one of the tables for David Johnson to
finish washing. They discussed the Dinka languidly but without broaching what
was still puzzling them.

The American had changed into loose white cottons which slightly disguised his
corpulence, and sat down with a sigh. He was astonishingly, almost pitifully
ugly. Whatever expressiveness his face might have had was lost in fat; the shape
of his mouth reminded Arthur of the head of a fish he had once been served in a
hotel on the Red Sea. His eyes in contrast to those of the fish were almost
invisible. He wore a gold ring embedded with diamonds, and so embedded in flesh
that the very idea of trying to remove it was unpleasant. His voice was smaller
than himself and seemed condemned to eternal complaint.

"Another one of those damn places where you can't get a proper shower," he said.

"Water rationing," Arthur Nkobe said. "We're--"

"Oh please. Don't tell me it's different any other season. Where did you go to
school, Oxford or someplace?"

"London."

"For some reason all you people go to Oxford or Harvard or someplace like that.
God am I hungry. Service!" he called, turning as far as he could. "Where did
that waiter go.?"

As they awaited his meal the American recounted the horrors of his journey: six
hours delay in Cairo, the incompetence of immigration officials in Khartoum, a
plane that should have become scrap iron twenty years ago. He was served a full
chicken and two plates of vegetables, and while he ate, nimbly dissecting the
chicken, he did not speak, seemed to have forgotten that he was in company and
to be unconscious of being watched. Whenever he looked up Arthur Nkobe would
glance pointedly at his watch, but the American seemed not even to see him but
to be gazing within and savoring the unison of his internal organs. At length
when he had eaten everything, he covered his mouth and said:

"Those six men -- those chieftains -- do they always do that kind of thing? With
the jacket."

"No."

"Now I don't mean to seem suspicious, you understand, but did you put them up to
it?"

Arthur Nkobe smiled faintly. "That would have been difficult."

Johnson nodded. "I want to meet them this afternoon."

"I'm sorry, I thought you knew. They have already gone home."

"I see." Johnson stared at him without expression and Arthur wondered what he
was thinking. "Now I don't like to throw my weight around," the American
continued, and Arthur could not help smiling, "but I think I should make it
clear that I've been given full authority over the distribution of American aid.
So--"he sighed--"if things don't go as I say, there won't be any aid. I also
have to tell you that over in America there's a new philosophy concerning
foreign aid, and that is: help people until they can help themselves. Now I
happen to know that you've got quite a little piece of swamp here, which I guess
isn't any use to you, and I happen to represent some investors who'd like to see
a little tobacco come out of that swamp. Do you follow me? You've already got a
canal half built to drain the thing what's it called--"

"The Jonglei."

"Jonglei canal. It's a disgrace." Arthur Nkobe nodded, though he knew the
disgrace Johnson meant was that it had never been finished, not that it had ever
been undertaken. "As I understand you have the single biggest machine in the
world sitting there rusting away." He shook his head, and the way his lips came
together conveyed deep sorrow. "Our plan is to feed your natives, put them to
work, and put that machine to use. The aid is the first step, but we aim to see
that they never starve again."

"By turning them into good American niggers?" said Arthur Nkobe mildly.

The American seemed to see him for the first time. Then he shrugged and looked
away.

"I'll need an air-conditioned jeep for four days starting tomorrow. I'll need a
translator. I want a good sidearm and some ammunition -- they kept my Colt in
bloody Khartoum. I plan to tour the canal site and visit a few of the tribes."

"You should not," said Cecil Deng suddenly. "Many are holding feast days. They
will have no outsiders."

"Feast days?" said Johnson sharply.

"Yes."

"These people are about to starve and they're holding feasts?"

"Oh yes. Yes."

The American shook his head. "No. No. I'll put a stop to that."

"I think it would not be a very good idea for you to visit them at this time,"
said Arthur Nkobe softly, feeling that it was futile but that he had to say this
much at least.

"They've never held a suit jacket over you have they?" said the American, rising
from the table. Arthur Nkobe shrugged.

The next day was filled with work. He let Johnson have Cecil Deng as his guide
and translator, and after seeing them off in the morning Arthur Nkobe returned
to his office and applied himself to a mound of neglected paper. There were
letters and telegrams from London, Paris, Khartoum and Addis Ababa which
required tactful yet pointed replies. This took the whole morning for he could
manage well enough in English but was terrified of even attempting it in French;
on top of this someone had misplaced the French dictionary. At lunch he met for
two hours with officials of the Red Cross, who smiled sympathetically at his
description of Johnson. The rest of the afternoon he wanted to spend composing
letters to New York City and Tokyo, but found himself distracted by a thought
which after the meeting had begun more and more to impose itself upon him: that
the American and Cecil should not have gone without him. Repeatedly he made the
same arguments, managed to soothe his conscience with the same extremely valid
excuses. But in the middle of the afternoon and a letter to the Japanese foreign
ministry he stopped working and began to pace behind his desk.

He thought, At least I should have tried harder to change his mind--even though
it would have done no good, he added to himself ahead of the voice of his
reason. And slowly he began to realize that what distressed him was that behind
that voice was hiding another, an obscure and secret reason, the result of which
was that he had not wanted to go or wanted to change Johnson's mind. He thought
of the Dinka chieftains holding the jacket over the American's head, and felt
cold and sick.

But eight hours had passed since they had left, and evening was approaching. The
nearest tribe was a hundred miles away, and although there were two other jeeps,
Cecil Deng was the only man he could trust to guide him at night. Nothing could
be done until morning. He thought briefly of asking the Red Cross to send a
helicopter, but wouldn't they think his reasons were absurd? And what if they
were right?

But he could not assure himself. He had no appetite that evening and later in
his hotel room could not sleep. After midnight, while it was still some distance
away, he recognized the roar of the jeep, sprang out of bed and reached the
lobby before it had pulled up to the hotel. Cecil Deng was alone. They met on
the front steps and in the dim light he tried to interpret Cecil's expression --
he though t he had never seen one like it. Cecil held up between his thumb and
forefinger a large gold ring embedded with diamonds.

"They would not let me into the feast," he said. "But they said to keep this."
He was trying to keep from laughing. "Mr. Johnson was very surprised."

Arthur Nkobe stared. Cecil's face was contorted, and to his dismay, and although
he managed to show nothing and make no sound, but imagining vividly the
American's surprise, he found himself struggling against his own desire to
laugh.