What Am I Doing Here? Read Online Free PDF

zealot started mouthing anti-capitalist formulae until he was silenced by the colonel in charge. The colonel then asked a few perfunctory questions, wearily apologised for the inconvenience, signed my pass, and hoped I would continue to enjoy my holiday in the People’s Republic.
    â€˜I hope so,’ I said.
    Outside the gate, I thanked the German who sat in the back of his air-conditioned Mercedes. He smiled, and went on reading the Frankfurter Zeitung.
    It was grey and muggy and there were not many people on the street. I bought the government newspaper and read its account of the glorious victory. There were pictures of three dead mercenaries – a white man who appeared to be sleeping, and two very mangled blacks. Then I went to the hotel where my bag was in storage.
    The manager’s wife looked worn and jittery. I checked my bag and found the two traveller’s cheques I’d hidden in a sock. I cashed a hundred dollars, took a room, and lay down.
    I kept off the streets to avoid the vigilante groups that roamed the town making citizens’ arrests. My toenail was turning black and my head still ached. I ate in the room, and read, and tried to sleep. All the other guests were either Guinean or Algerian.
    Around eleven next morning, I was reading the sad story of Mrs Marmeladov in Crime and Punishment , and heard the thud of gunfire coming from the Gezo Barracks. I looked from the window at the palms, the hawks, a woman selling mangoes, and a nun coming out of the convent.
    Seconds later, the fruit-stall had overturned, the nun bolted, and two armoured cars went roaring up the street.
    There was a knock on the door. It was the manager.
    â€˜Please, monsieur. You must not look.’
    â€˜What’s happening?’
    â€˜Please,’ he pleaded, ‘you must shut the window.’
    I closed the shutter. The electricity had cut off. A few bars of sunlight squeezed through the slats, but it was too dark to read, so I lay back and listened to the salvoes. There must have been a lot of people dying.
    There was another knock.
    â€˜Come in.’
    A soldier came into the room. He was very young and smartly turned out. His fatigues were criss-crossed with ammunition belts and his teeth shone. He seemed extremely nervous. His finger quivered round the trigger-guard. I raised my hands and got up off the bed.
    â€˜In there!’ He pointed the barrel at the bathroom door.
    The walls of the bathroom were covered with blue tiles, and on the blue plastic shower-curtain was a design of tropical fish.
    â€˜Money,’ said the soldier.
    â€˜Sure!’ I said. ‘How much?’
    He said nothing. I glanced at the mirror and saw the gaping whites of his eyes. He was breathing heavily.
    I eased my fingers down my trouser pocket: my impulse was to give him all I had. Then I separated one banknote from the rest, and put it in his outstretched palm.
    â€˜Merci, monsieur!’ His lips expanded in an astonished smile. ‘Merci,’ he repeated, and unlocked the bathroom door. ‘Merci,’ he kept repeating, as he bowed and pointed his own way out into the passage.
    That young man, it struck me, had very nice manners.
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    The Algerians and Guineans were men in brown suits who sat all day in the bar, sucking soft drinks through straws and giving me dirty looks whenever I went in. I decided to move to the Hotel de la Plage where there were other Europeans, and a swimming-pool. I took a towel to go swimming and went into the garden. The pool had been drained: on the morning of the coup, a sniper had taken a pot-shot at a Canadian boy who happened to be swimming his lengths.
    The frontiers of the country were closed, and the airport.
    That evening I ate with a Norwegian oil-man, who insisted that the coup had been a fake. He had seen the mercenaries shelling the Palace. He had watched them drinking opposite in the bar of the Hotel de Cocotiers.
    â€˜All of it I saw,’ he said, his neck