Divinity Road by Martin Pevsner Page B

loss, poisoned with the virus of our separation. Every knock at the door, every car horn beep, every time the phone rings, my heart skips a sweet-sour beat. That is what I mean.
     
     

Greg 2
     
    His first reaction is to stand up, drop his rifle and run, screaming and waving, down the hill. He takes a step and checks himself. Some instinct, a voice in his head, whispers to him to stay put, to return to the flat ledge of rock concealed behind the bushes, to be patient. He crouches down, scrambles from boulder to bush, taking care to keep himself hidden. He reaches his refuge, digs out the binoculars from his backpack and lies down flat behind a thick bush.
    He watches the approach of the vehicle through his binoculars. As it reaches the crash site, it slows, weaving between the debris and scattering the regiments of pillaging vultures. The creatures are only momentarily put off and soon return to their feast.
    The vehicle pulls up about fifty metres from the tent. Through his binoculars he can see that it is some kind of pickup converted for military use, a heavy-calibre machine gun manned by a shaven-headed youth in khaki battle fatigues, the weapon welded to the vehicle’s bodywork. The driver, sporting a flat peaked cap, is dressed in a similar outfit. The back of the pick-up is crammed with six other African men, all armed, several dressed in ill-matching army garb, others in loose robes and wound cloth headgear. From a distance it’s difficult to distinguish detail, but two of them look no older than teenagers.
    The cavalry, he thinks, but there’s a small question mark in his mind, enough to stop himself from rising to his feet and waving.
    The soldiers clamber out of the vehicle and the leader, short and slight despite his camouflage uniform and military boots, barks an order, points to various points around the theatre of death. Casually, he lifts the automatic rifle he’s holding and fires several bursts into the nearest group of vultures. The birds squawk and flap in panic, the unscathed ones taking to the air leaving three or four carcasses strewn around the crash victim they had been gorging on moments before.
    The commander reminds Greg of someone he can’t quite place. He strains to recall and is about to give up when the memories slot into place and the connection is made: it’s the head teacher at the small rural school in Zimbabwe where he first worked as a volunteer all those years ago, a petty man whom the other local teachers had nicknamed Pol Pot due to his bullying style of management.
    Greg watches as two of the soldiers approach the body. For an instant he thinks they are going to cover it, return to it something of its dignity, but is shocked to see one of them bend down to remove its watch. Already two other soldiers have located the wreckage containing the store of baggage and are emptying the suitcases, removing electronic equipment and other valuables.
    He watches as one of the youths grapples with the body of the air hostess, pulling off her necklace, watch and bracelets. Another soldier whoops with joy as he pulls a handful of banknotes from a besuited corpse. The youth has now moved on to an elderly woman lying near the section of a wing, struggles to remove some rings from her swollen fingers, pulls a machete from his belt, puts his foot on the lifeless arm to steady himself, slashes down on the fingers two, three times, then bends to pull off the bloodied jewellery.
    It is a systematic and cruelly efficient looting. Every so often one of the soldiers fires his rifle at the vultures to gain access to a body, but the birds are only fleetingly deterred. For some minutes Greg watches the ruthless progress of the marauders, but when one of them uses his rifle butt to extract the white farmer’s gold teeth he can bear it no longer. He looks out to the empty plain, to the mountains in the far-off distance and the dying embers of the sunset sky, trying to cleanse himself of these visions of