The Coup by John Updike

red sparks the rungs of an aluminum ladder set against the cliff, the drops of sweat on the American's parasite-gray neck, and the agitated eyeballs of the Tuareg. "Ellellou, Ellellou...." As their murmur had conjured me from the desert, so I must conjure from within myself a gesture of leadership, an action. Our toubab's slavish, hard-breathing, panic-suppressing demeanor begged for cruelty. Scenting a "deal," a detente, he told me, "No kidding, there's a lot of real food value up there, I remember when they unloaded seeing Spam and powdered milk." He clambered up the ladder to look for these strata, while the Tuareg pressed closer, shaking their torches indignantly at such an act of levitation. I could scarcely hear his shouts: "dis.. here you go... Carnation... add three parts water..." "But we have no water!" I called up to him, trying, it seems now in hindsight, to buy time for both of us. "In Kush, water is more precious than blood!" He was swallowed by darkness, between the torches and the stars. "No problem," his voice drifted down. "We'll bring in teams... green revolution... systems of portable trenching... a lily pond right where you're standing... here we go ... no, that's cream of celery soup...." His voice, pattering down upon them like a nonsensical angel's, had become an intolerable irritation to the Tuareg masses. As their torches drew nearer, the source of the voice could be seen, a white blur disappearing and reappearing, ever higher, among the escarpments and crevasses of combustible packaging. Within my numbing orb of responsibility, my arm had become leaden; yet I lifted it high, and dropped it in solemn signal, so that the inevitable would appear to come from me. Torches were touched to the base of the pyramid; it became a pyre. To his credit, the young American, when he saw the smoke and flames rising toward him, and all those slopes beneath him ringed by exultant Kushite patriots, did not cry out for mercy, or attempt to scramble and leap to a safety that was not there, but, rather, climbed to the pinnacle and, luridly illumined, awaited the martyrdom for which there must have been, in the training for foreign service provided by his insidious empire, some marginal expectation and religious preparation. We were surprised, how silently he died. Or were his cries merely drowned within the roar of the ballooning tent of flame that engulfed the treasure-heap his writhing figure for a final minute ornamented like a dark star? When he had stood beside me, I could smell on the victim, under the sweat of his long stale wait and the bland, oysterish odor of his earnestness, the house of his childhood, the musty halls, the cozy bathroom soaps, the glue of his adolescent hobbies, the aura of his alcoholic and sexually innocent parents, the ashtray scent of dissatisfaction. What dim wish to do right, hatched by the wavery blue light of the television set with its curious international shadows, had led him to the fatal edge of a safety that he imagined had no limits? I checked my heart's tremor with some verses from the Book, that foresees all and thereby encloses all: On that day men shall become like scattered moths and the mountains like tups of carded wool. On that day there shall be downcast faces, of men broken and worn out, burnt by a scorching fire, drinking from a seething fountain. On that day there shall be radiant faces, of men well-pleased with their labors, in a lofty garden. The Tuareg and their slaves were in a joyful tumult. Opuku and Mtesa came and guarded me from the confusion. There was a slithering in my palm of another, smaller hand. I saw that Kutunda, her broken lip scabbed, was still with me, that I had replaced Wadal as her protector. Now the fire had taken its first giant draught, and our nostrils acknowledged the quantity of grain our triumphant gesture had consumed, for the scorched air was bathed in the benevolent aroma of baking bread; the desert night, as flakes of