Blood Diamond Chapter 14

For a while after that it seemed there was nothing to cause Daniel any great concern. But by degrees he became aware that things were changing for him – attitudes were changing. Even as he became more warmly embraced into the circle of the Royals, as he ate with them and spent time in their presence, as he tried out on them odd snatches of words and phrases he was learning, so he became increasingly more uncomfortable in the company of the ordinary people.

Where before there were only warm looks and open expressions, it seemed that his companions became wary around him, their faces more closed. It felt as though eyes watched him when he walked through camp, and Daniel could not shake the sensation of a gathering danger. One day, when he volunteered, as had become his habit, to journey out with the hunting party to kill fresh meat for the evening meal, Daniel could swear he was greeted with reluctance – even hostility. They walked out in the lengthening shadows of afternoon, but there was not the usual pleasant, if incomprehensible, chatter of the other men. They walked in a suppressed silence, a cortege of glances and evasive eyes.

They found their prey easily enough – in that area you didn’t need to step far to find animals. You could stand on a hillside and see the opposite green hill black with browsers and grazers, the sky speckled with circling birds waiting for a feast, willing participants in the relentless, pauseless cycle of life and violence and death. 

Following their usual practice, the hunters surrounded a grove of low bushes in which browsed four or five of the gentle, brown-and-white creatures the tribe favoured, roasted on an open fire. Ordinarily, the procedure was for one of the men to advance and strike at the nearest prey and for the others to take their chance at the fleeing remainder. This time the leader, Dini, beckoned them all to contract the circle, to advance and advance until they made the tightest of rings around the grove. Dini was the advancer. He strode in and, as he struck, the creatures leapt and bounded and scattered in their haphazard fashion. Daniel was concentrating on his chosen target, a small female with black eyes. He had not yet mastered the martial arts of spear and axe, though he had been assiduously trying to learn. It had become normal custom that the easiest and slowest of the prey would fall to his responsibility.

Daniel was following the bounding creature with his eyes, muscles taut, spear hefted at the ready. The animal was panicked. In this direction, then in that, and suddenly it made the smallest and tightest of turns and came bounding toward him. Daniel leant forward into the thrust, but the creature was fast, and agile. At the last moment it changed tack, leaping sideways in mid-bound. Daniel turned with it, trying to correct his thrust. And that turn, that random skitter of the creature he was hunting, saved his life.

Even as he thrust at the darting creature, Daniel saw, almost without realising what it was, a spear, a flung spear, come flashing past his eyes. He heard its whirr as it passed, and the blur of it, and he realised that had he been standing still, the spear would have skewered him. It would have passed through his temples and he would have fallen without ever knowing what had hit him.

Afterwards, after the commotion of the hunt and the kill, when the slain were being disembowelled and prepared for the journey back to camp, he had time to look round the group. Daniel had collected the flung spear himself, and since each man had only one spear with him, it would not be difficult to find the man who threw it. Only one of the men was without his spear – Lelungu. Daniel glared at him and thrust his spear tip in his direction, in the customary Annuba challenge for explanation.

Lelungu came foward, hands held palm-forward and bowing his head until his chin touched his chest in ritual apology – the set formula for settling disputes among the Annuba, by which honour might be satisfied without loss of face on either side. Daniel was compelled to bow his head reluctantly in reply, in acceptance of the apology, but he was not satisfied. Lelungu reached for his spear but Daniel snatched it away and glared at him, his face like thunder. He would give nothing back until he received an explanation.

The others gathered round. With many words and gestures, it was conveyed to Daniel that the circle of hunters had been too small, that the spear had been hurled at a fleeing target and had missed, so almost carried across and into Daniel. Thankfully, they seemed to indicate, the spirits had been smiling and the spear had missed. Lelungu made a show of seizing the offending spear and breaking over a rock, that so cursed a weapon should never again have the opportunity to create mischief.

But Daniel was not so sure. The earlier mood of sullen antagonism, which had dispersed in the flurry of apologies and mimed explanations, seemed to have crystallised and taken physical form in that flying spear. He had seen the hunters often enough to know that there were no armed men in the world so careful and economical with their thrusts and throws. Accidents of this sort were unheard of among the Annuba. It seemed instead to Daniel that the sideways leap of the animal he had been meaning to kill had, instead, saved his life from a deliberate attempt to kill him and leave him for the predators that were just beginning to stir and start their nocturnal hunt.

What he couldn’t understand was why. Had he done something to offend someone? Had he transgressed some inscrutable custom, some invisible boundary? He would have to ask Tregoning.

Copyright Ranulph Moore

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Ranulph Moore describes himself as an explorer, who became a writer to purge himself of the adventures that were crowding his life. He says he has seen it all, in a life spent observing the lives of others. He will travel anywhere – as long as he can make a decent cup of tea and launder a linen jacket. He describes Africa as one of his great loves. He has spent time in every country on the continent. If he can’t find a good champagne, he has been known to resort to gin. He has homes in Paris, Jura and Cape Town. At present, he lives in Madagascar, where he is researching his latest book.

Read an interview with Rannulph Moore.