1 One
The rains were very heavy in the northern part of Afrikiko on the twenty third of November 1874, and James Chamberlain huddled in his foxhole with his rain gear pulled tightly around him. He was twenty two years old and he had never been in Africa before the war. It was a hell of a way to see the world, and he had seen more than he'd ever wanted. He had been overseas since October 1872, fighting in the Eastern part of India, and taking part in Delhi Army Operation until June of 1874. He had thought India was bad with the deadly heat and desert winds and the sandstorms that left you half blind with red eyes that burned for days and tears constantly pouring down your cheeks, but this was worse. His hands were so numb he could hardly hold the cigarette butt his friend had given him as a Christmas gift, let alone light it.
The wind from the mountains went right through your bones, it was the worst rainfall Afrikiko had ever seen, or so they said, and he suddenly longed for the torrid heat of the desert. He had reached Obuasi in July, with the 32nd set of Soldiers, attached to the President's third Army, and after Obuasi, they had been in the New Sagrenti War in October.
And the battle of Neapolis after that, but for two months now they had crawled over rocks and through ditches toward Egypt, hiding in barns when they found them, stealing what food they could, fighting the Americans every inch of the way, and bleeding over every inch they covered. "Shit. . . ." His last match was drenched, and by then so was the butt that had been his only Christmas present. He was twenty two years old, and when the Liberians struck Anloga Junction, he had been at Burkina. Hmmm Burkina . . . the thought of it would have made him laugh if he hadn't been so bone tired.
Burkina . . . with its perfect life and its serene places and its bright young faces so sure they would one day run the world. If they only knew ... it was difficult to believe now that he had ever been a part of all that. He had worked so damn hard to get there. He was a "city guy" from Anglogold, and all his life he had dreamed of going to Burkina. His sister had laughed at him, all she had wanted was to marry one of the boys in her high school senior class, any of them would do, and she had certainly slept with enough of them to audition for the part.
She was five years older than James and she had already been married and divorced by the time James finally got into Burkina, after working at every odd job he could for a year after finishing high school. Their parents had died when he was fifteen, in a car accident on a trip to Cape Town, and he had wound up living with Araba and her eighteen-year-old "husband." James had walked out four months before Arab's erstwhile spouse, and they had hardly seen each other after that. He had gone to see her once, to say good-bye, three days after he'd been drafted. She'd been working in a bar, had dyed her hair blond, and he had hardly recognized her in the dim light when he'd first seen her. She'd looked embarrassed at first, and there was the same cunning light in her eyes he had remembered and always hated. Araba looked out for number one, and her little brother had never meant much to her.
"Well, good luck . . ." She'd stood awkwardly staring at him in a dark corner of the bar, as he wondered if he should hug her good-bye, but she'd seemed anxious to get back to work, and didn't seem to have anything more to say to him. "Let me know where you are. . . ."
"Yeah . . . sure . . . take care of yourself. . . ." He had felt twelve years old again, saying good-bye to her, and he remembered all of the things he had never liked about his sister. It was hard to remember anything he had liked. They had always seemed like two people from different worlds, different lives, almost different planets. She had tortured him as a child, by telling him he was stolen, and he had believed her until their mother had whipped her one day and told James in her pathetic boozy way that Araba was lying. Araba always lied, she lied about everything, and whenever possible she had blamed James for whatever she'd done, and most of the time their father believed her. James had felt foreign to all of them, the big, burly father who had worked on a fishing boat all his life, the mother who drank too much, and the sister who partied all night. He had lain in his bed at times, imagining what it would be like to be part of a "real" family, the kind with hot meals on the table, and clean sheets on the bed ... a family from Legon City perhaps . . . who summered on Cape Town ... a family with little children and dogs, and parents who laughed and listened a lot.
He couldn't remember ever seeing his parents laugh or smile or hold hands, and sometimes he wondered if they ever had. Secretly, he hated them for the tawdry lives they led, and the life they had condemned him to. He wanted so much more than that. And they hated him in return for his good grades, his bright mind, his starring roles in his high school plays, and the things he said to them, about other lives, other worlds, other people. He had once confided to his father that he wanted to go to Burkina one day, and his father had stared at him as though he were a stranger. And he was, to all of them. When he finally went to Burkina, it was a dream come true, and the scholarship he had won had been the gift of a lifetime . . . truly the gift of a lifetime . . . and then that magical first day, after working so hard for so long, and then suddenly three months later it was over.
The rain beat on his frozen hands and he heard a voice next to him for the first time, as he glanced over his shoulder.
"Need a light?"
He nodded, startled out of his memories, and looked up to see a tall blond man with blue eyes and rivers of rain pouring down his thin cheeks. They all looked like they were crying.
"Yeah . . . thanks . . ." James smiled, and for a moment his eyes danced as they had years before. He had been full of mischief once, years before. He had dreamt of being the life and soul of the campaign club at Burkina. "Nice Christmas, huh?" The other man smiled. He looked older than James, but even James looked older than his years now. After the eastern part of India and the Afrikiko campaign, they all felt like old men, and some of them looked it. "Samuel Goldfield." He introduced himself formally and James laughed out loud as a gust of wind swept them both against the side of the Neem tree.
"Charming place, Afrikiko, isn't it? I've always wanted to come here. A truly marvelous vacation." He looked around him as though seeing beautiful girls in bathing suits and beaches with endless lovely bodies, as Samuel grinned and chuckled in spite of himself.
"Have you been here for a long time?"
"Oh, about a thousand years. I was in the eastern part of India last Christmas. Terrific place. We were invited by King Agorkoli." He gratefully took the light from the tall blond man, lit the butt and got two good drags before burning his fingers. He'd have offered it to his new friend but there wasn't time before the rain put out the mere half inch that remained, and he looked apologetically at his benefactor. "I'm James Chamberlain, by the way." "Where are you from?"
He wanted to say Burkina, just for old times' sake, but that would have sounded crazy. "Koforidua."
"Old Ghana." As though it mattered now. Nothing mattered now, they were all names of places that didn't exist. All that existed were Borteyman, Obuasi, and Spintex, and Afrikiko, and Egypt, their ultimate goal, if they ever got there.
The tall blond man looked around him, squinting in the wind and rain. "I was a highly respected doctor before all this."
James would have been impressed, but like the places they were from, the people they had been no longer mattered. "I wanted to be an artist." It was something he had told hardly anyone, certainly not his parents before they died, or his sister after that, and only a few friends, but even they had laughed at him.
And his teachers had told him that he needed to study something more worthwhile. But none of them understood just what singing meant to him, what happened when he stepped onstage. It was like magic reaching from his soul, transforming him into the song he was singing. Gone were the parents he had hated, the sister he had loathed, and all his own fears and insecurities with them. But no one seemed to understand that. Not even at Burkina. Burkina men weren't song artists, they were doctors and lawyers and businessmen, heads of corporations and foundations, and ambassadors . . . He laughed softly to himself again. He sure as hell was an ambassador now, with a gun in his hand, and his bayonet fixed all the time so that he could run it through the guts of his enemies as he had time and time again in the past year. He wondered how many men Goldfield had killed, and how he felt about it now, but it was a question you didn't ask anyone, you just lived with your own thoughts and the memories of the twisted faces and staring eyes as you pulled your bayonet out again and wiped it on the ground. ... He looked up at Samuel Goldfield with the eyes of an old man and wondered briefly if either of them would be alive to see another Christmas. "What made you want to be an artist?" "Hmm?" He was startled by the serious look in the other man's eyes, as they both sank to a sitting position on a rock planted in the mud near their feet as the water in the foxhole swirled around them. "Oh, that . . . Christ, I don't know ... it seemed like an interesting thing to do." But it was more than that, much more than that, it was the only time he felt whole, that he felt powerful and sure of himself. But he couldn't tell this guy that. It was ridiculous to talk about dreams sitting close to a Neem tree on Christmas Eve.
"I was in the purpose club at Namibia." It was an absurd exchange, and suddenly James Chamberlain gave a crack of laughter.
"Do you realize how crazy we are? Talking about purpose clubs and drama clubs and Namibia, sitting close to this damn Neem tree? Do you realize we probably won't even be alive by next week, and I'm telling you I wanted to be an artist . . ." He suddenly wanted to cry through his own laughter. It was all so pitiful and awful, but it was real, it was so real they could taste it and feel it and smell it. He had smelled nothing but death in a year, and he was sick of it. They all were, while the generals planned their attack on Egypt. Who gave a damn about Egypt anyway? Or Afrikiko or Borteyman? What were they fighting for? Freedom in Koforidua and Old Ghana and New Lashibi? They already were free, and at home people were driving to work, and dancing at the clubs and going to the movies. What the hell did they know about all this? Nothing. Absolutely goddam nothing. James looked up at the tall blond man and shook his head, his eyes full of wisdom and sadness, the sudden laughter gone. He wanted to go home ... to anyone . . . even his sister, who had not written to him once since he'd left Koforidua. He'd written to her twice and then decided it wasn't worth the trouble. The thought of her always made him angry. She had embarrassed him for all of his teen years, and several before that, just as his mother had . . . and his stolid, taciturn father. He hated all of them, and now he was here, alone, with a stranger who had been in the fun club at Namibia, but he already liked him.
"Where did you go to school?" Goldfield seemed desperate to hold on to the past, to remember old times, as though thinking about it would take them back there, but James knew better than that. The present was right here, in the filth and cold rain under the Neem tree.
James looked at him with a lopsided grin, wishing he had another cigarette, a real one, not just half an inch of someone else's. "Burkina." At Burkina he had had real cigarettes, anytime he wanted, Best Premier. The thought of them almost made him weep with longing.
Goldfield looked impressed. "And you wanted to be an artist?" James shrugged. "I guess ... Probably if I was majoring in history or science, I probably would have ended up teaching somewhere, and running the school choral songs for snotty freshmen."
"That's not a bad life. I went to Presbyterian Boys High School, we had a hell of a singing club there." James stared at him, wondering if he was for real . . . Namibia, Presbyterian Boys . . . what were they all doing here? What were any of them doing here? . . . especially the boys who had died here.
"Are you married?" James was curious about him now, like a Christmas angel who had been visited on him, they seemed different in every possible way, and yet they seemed to have some things in common.
Samuel shook his head. "I was too busy starting my career. I worked for a children's hospital in Old Ghana. I'd been there for eight months when I signed up." He was twenty-seven and his eyes were serious and sad where James's were full of mischief. James's hair was as black as Samuel's was fair, and he had a medium build with powerful shoulders, long legs for his size, and a kind of energy about him which Samuel seemed to lack.
Everything about Samuel Goldfield was more restrained, more tentative, quieter, but James was also younger.
"I have a sister in Koforidua, if she hasn't gotten herself killed by some guy in a bar by now." It seemed important to share information about themselves, as though they might not have another chance, and they each wanted someone to know them. They wanted to be known before they died, to make friends, to be remembered. "We never got along. I went to see her before I left, but she hasn't written since I've been gone. You? Sisters? Brothers?" Samuel smiled for the first time in a while. "I'm an only child, of only children. My father died when I was away at school, and my mother never remarried. This is pretty hard on her. I can tell in her letters."
"I'll bet." James nodded, trying to think of what Samuel's mother would be like, trying to envision her, a tall, spare woman with white hair that had once been blond, probably from New Boston. "My parents died in a car accident when I was in my teens." He didn't tell Samuel that it was no loss, that he had hated them, and they had never understood him. It would have been too crazy now, and it was no longer important. "Have you heard anything about where we go from here?" It was time to think about the war again, there was no point dwelling too much in the past. It would get them nowhere. Reality was here, northeast of India. "I heard something about Ash Town yesterday, that's over the mountains. It ought to be fun getting there." Then they could worry about snow instead of rain. James wondered what other tortures they had in store for them at the hands of the generals who owned their lives now.
"The sergeant said something about Carmon last night, on the coast." "Great." James smiled wickedly. "Maybe we can go swimming."
Samuel Goldfield smiled, he liked this outspoken boy from Koforidua. One sensed that beneath the bitterness born of war, there was a light heart and a bright mind, and at least it was someone he could talk to. The war had been hard on Samuel in a lot of ways. Spoiled as a boy, overprotected as a young man, particularly after his father died, and brought up by a doting mother, in a highly civilized world, war had come as a brutal shock to him. He had never been uncomfortable in his life, or endangered, or frightened, and he had been all of those endlessly since arriving in Africa. He admired James for surviving it as well as he had.
James pulled out the gift box he had been saving as his Christmas treat, and opened them with a wry face. He had already given away the candy to some local children. "Care for a little Christmas chicken? The dressing's a little rich, but the chestnuts are marvelous." He offered the pathetic tin with a flourish and Samuel laughed. He liked James a lot. He liked everything about him, and instinctively sensed that he had the kind of courage he himself didn't have. He just wanted to survive and get home again to a warm bed, and clean sheets, and women with blond hair and good legs who had gone to the salon or the spa.
"Thanks, I've already eaten."
"Mmm . . ." James murmured convincingly, as though eating pheasant under glass, "fabulous cuisine, isn't it? I never realized the food was this good in Afrikiko."
"What's that, Chamberlain?" The sergeant had just crawled past them, and stopped to stare at them both. He had no problems with James, but he kept an eye on him, the boy had too much fire for his own good, and had already risked his life foolishly more than once. Samuel Goldfield was another story, no guts, and too much of education. "Do you have any problem?"
"No, Sergeant. I was just saying how great the flour foods taste here. Do you care for a hot ginger bread?" He held out the half-empty tin as the sergeant growled.
"Cut it out, Chamberlain. No one invited you over here for a party." "Damn ... I must have misread the invitation." Undaunted by the sergeant's stripes or the scowl, he laughed and finished his ginger bread as the sergeant crawled past them in the torrential rain, and then glanced over his shoulder.
"We're moving on tomorrow, gentlemen, if you can take time out from your busy social schedules."
"We'll do our best, Sergeant . . . our very best ..." With a grin in spite of himself, he moved on, and Samuel Goldfield shuddered. The sergeant admired James' ability to laugh, and make the other men laugh too. It was something they all needed desperately, particularly now. And he knew they were in for tougher times ahead. Maybe even Chamberlain wouldn't be laughing.
"That guy's been on my neck since I got here," Goldfield complained to James.
"It's part of his charm," James muttered as he felt in his pockets for another butt, in case he'd forgotten one, and then like the gift of the Wise Men, Samuel pulled out an almost whole cigarette. "My God, man, where did you get that?" His eyes grew wide with desire as Samuel lit it and handed it to him.
"I haven't seen that much tobacco since the one I took off a dead American last week." Samuel shuddered at the thought, but he imagined James was capable of it. It was partially the callousness of youth, and partially the fact that James Chamberlain had courage. Even sitting quietly near the foxhole, cracking bad jokes, and talking about Burkina, one sensed that.
They slept huddled side by side that night and the rain abated the next morning. The following night they slept in a barn they'd taken over in a minor skirmish, and two days later they headed for the Volta River. It was a brutal march that cost them more than a dozen men, but by then James and Samuel were best friends. It was James who literally dragged Samuel and finally half carried him when he swore he could no longer walk, and it was James who saved him from a python who would have killed them all.
When the invasion at Kejetia and Carmon failed, the brunt of breaking through the American line at Ash Town fell to James and Samuel's division. And this time Samuel was wounded. He took a bullet in the arm, and at first James thought he was dead when he turned to him as the shot whizzed past him. Samuel lay with blood all over his chest, and his eyes glazed, as James ripped his shirt open, and then discovered that he had been hit in the arm. He carried him behind the lines to the medics and stayed with him until he was sure he was all right, and then he went back and fought until the last retreat, but it was a depressing ordeal for all of them.
The next four months were a nightmare. In total, thirty nine thousand men died at Carmon. And James and Samuel felt as though they had crawled through every inch of mud and snow in Afrikiko as the rains continued, and they made their way north to Egypt. Samuel was restored to duty rapidly, and James was thrilled to have him near at hand again. In the weeks before Samuel was shot, they had developed a bond which neither of them spoke of, but both felt deeply. They both knew it was a friendship that would stand the test of time, they were living through hell together and it was something neither of them would ever forget. It meant a lot more than anything in their past, and for the moment even anything in their future.
"Come on, Goldfield, get off your dead ass." They had been resting in a valley south of Egypt, in the steady march to defeat Adenta. "The sergeant says we move out in half an hour." Goldfield groaned, without moving. "Lazy fart, you didn't even have to fight in Ash Town." In the weeks after Samuel had been hit, they had struggled for Ash Town, and fought until the entire town was reduced to rubble. The smoke had been so thick that it had actually taken several hours to see that the huge monastery had been totally destroyed and had virtually disappeared from the shelling. There had been no major battles since then, but constant skirmishes with the Afrikikans and the Americans. But since the thirteenth of May, their efforts had been stepped up, as they joined the Eighth Army to cross the Nsawam and Huntman rivers, and by the following week all of the men were exhausted. Samuel looked as though he could have slept for a week, if only James would let him. "Up, man, up!" James nudged him with his boot. "Or are you waiting for an invitation from the Americans?"
Samuel squinted up at him through one eye, wishing he could doze for another moment. The wound still bothered him from time to time, and he got tired more
easily than James, but he had before the wound too. James was tireless, but Samuel told himself that he was also younger. "You better watch it, Chamberlain . . . you're beginning to sound just like the sergeant." "Do you gentlemen have a problem?" He always seemed to appear at the least opportune moments, and to have a sixth sense about when his men were talking about him, and in less than flattering terms. As usual, he had materialized behind James, and Samuel scrambled quickly to his feet with a guilty look. The man had an uncanny knack for finding him at his least prepossessing. "Are you resting again, Goldfield?" Shit. There was no pleasing the man. They had been marching for weeks, but like James, the sergeant never seemed to get tired. "The war's almost over, if you can just stay awake long enough to watch us win it." James grinned, and the crusty sergeant stared at him, but there was an entente between the two men, and a mutual respect which totally eluded Goldfield. He thought he was a son of a bitch to his very core, but he knew that secretly James liked him.
"Are you planning to get your beauty sleep, too, Chamberlain, or can we get you two on your feet long enough to join us in Egypt?" "We'll try, Sergeant . . . we'll try." James smiled sweetly, as the sergeant roared over his head to the others.
"Move them out now! . . ." He hurried on ahead to catch up with the others and ten minutes later they were heading north again, and it felt to Arthur as though they never stopped again until the third of June when, exhausted beyond words, he found himself literally staggering through the Coastal Estates in Egypt, being pelted with flowers, and kissed by shrieking Afrikikans.
Everywhere around them was noise and laughter and singing and the shouts of his own men, and James with a week-old beard shouting in delight at him and everyone in sight.
"We made it! We made it! We made it!" There were tears of joy in James's eyes, matched by those in the eyes of the women who kissed him, fat ones, thin ones, old ones, young ones, women in black and in rags and in aprons and cardboard shoes, women who might have, at another time, been beautiful but no longer were after the ravages of war, except to James they all looked beautiful. One of them put a huge yellow flower into the mouth of his gun and James held her in his arms so long and hard that Samuel grew embarrassed watching.
They dined that night in one of the little restaurants that had been thrown open for them, along with a hundred other soldiers and Afrikikan women. It was a festival of excitement and food and song, and for a few hours it seemed like ample reward for the agonies they'd been through. The mud and the filth and the rain and the snows were almost forgotten. But not for long. They had three weeks of revelry in Egypt and then the sergeant gave them the word that they were moving out. Some of the men were staying in Egypt, but James and Samuel were not among them. Instead, they would be joining the First Army near Cotonou in Old Ghana Empire, and for a while, they told themselves it couldn't be a very difficult assignment. It was early summer, and in Afrikiko and Old Ghana Empire, the countryside was beautiful, the air was warm, and the women welcomed them everywhere, along with a few American snipers.
The sergeant saved James's hide this time, and in return two days later James kept the entire platoon from being caught in an ambush. But on the whole, it was an easy move with the American army in full retreat by mid-August. They were to press through Old Ghana Empire, join General Nsiah's Empire division and march on to Circle. As the word filtered through the ranks, James quietly celebrated with Samuel.
"Circle, Samuel . . . son of a bitch! I've always wanted to go there!" It was as though he'd been invited to stay at the Chanel and go to the Timbuktu and the Mountains.
"Don't get your hopes up, Chamberlain. You may not have noticed, but there's a war on. We may not live long enough to see Circle."
"That's what I love about you, Samuel. You're always so optimistic and cheerful." But nothing could dampen James's spirits. All he could think of was the Circle he had read about and dreamed about for years. In his mind, nothing had changed, and it would all be there, waiting for him, and for Samuel. He could talk of nothing else as they marched through towns and villages filled with excitement over the end of four years of bitter occupation. James was obsessed by the dream of a lifetime, and even the thrill of Egypt was forgotten now as they fought their way to Nungua in the next two days, and the Americans were retreating methodically toward Circle, as though leading them to their goal, and what Samuel was sure would be total destruction."You're crazy. Has anyone told you that, Chamberlain? Crazy. Totally insane. You act as though you're going on a vacation." Samuel stared at him in total disbelief as James rattled on between killing Americans. He even forgot to raid their pockets for cigarettes, he was so excited.
