скачать книгу бесплатно
—Lions still up there, bloke.
This was Masai country parcelled up and sold to Kikuyus who didn’t already have an ancestral plot in the bush. Narrow strips of land still shadeless between rough homesteads. Umbrella thorn and clumps of candelabra where Masai cattle grazed on the unenclosed land. Grey-black cotton-soil sloped up to the hills patrolled by kites and eagles.
In Austen’s compound the rainwater tanks were empty and the earth was cracked. Wanja was in the shamba tying strips of cloth and ribbon to withered stalks. She wore an anorak despite the heat, hair uncombed and dusty. An ex-prostitute Austen had ‘rescued’ from the tourist bars, now she was singing a Kikuyu hymn as a big old white drake with goiters and sores stumbled round her.
Austen told her he’d got the chickens but she just stared and shrugged. He untied them and they ran round the compound. Wanjiku looked like a mission-school house-girl with dusty knees, short white socks and grey cotton frock. No one knew the identity of her father, just that he was one of Wanja’s Johns from the Starlite days. Wanjiku curtsied and helped us unload the truck. There was a gas fridge in the storeroom and I guzzled cold water from glass bottles.
—Don’t forget to boil the water first, bloke. Comes from a standpipe in the village.
It tasted of flouride and Wanjiku’s teeth were stained from it. Inside, the hut was baking because there was no ceiling under the pitched tin roof. Austen said there were love birds nesting up there once, but the chatter drove him nuts so he’d chased them away. Wanjiku started sweeping the bare concrete floor round the tatty sofa and dusted Austen’s desk which rocked against the shiplap walls. There were stacks of blue flimsy foolscap, a huge grey typewriter, a paraffin lamp, some rare books on a single shelf reserved for Africana.
I dozed in a corner all afternoon while Austen was away. Wanjiku crept about, peeled potatoes, filled the paraffin lamps. The roof clanked and the smell of baked creosote fumes gave me a headache. The sunset didn’t linger into evening and Wanjiku lit the oil lamps and put the potatoes on the bottled gas stove. Austen came back with two oil drums full of water and I helped him drain them into one of the rainwater tanks which were sunk underground. I said I needed a shave and a wash.
—Piss on the saplings, bloke, and waste-water on the paw-paw tree.
Wanja came in to eat the fluffy boiled potatoes and bean stew with fragments of goat’s leg. She started singing Kikuyu hymns and Wanjiku joined in.
—The Spirit of Zion Church, Austen said. I could throttle the fucker who put that up. Just a tin duka with a cross on it by the water tap. I say we go out bloke. Bring a sweater, it gets chilly.
He really wanted to take me to the Starlite or the Pub, but he was being protective because he said Zanna wouldn’t approve.
—First day, bloke. Take it easy, ha.
We headed out through Masai country and came to the Craze which was supposed to be an out-of-town nightspot and hotel. The bar was empty and there was one white couple on the disco floor, dancing like it was a game of blind man’s buff. Me and Austen sat on twirly iron chairs with red, heart-shaped, leather upholstery. On the menu was chips, fried eggs, fried bread and baked beans: sixteen bob. There was tomato sauce on the table and waiters in red jackets lined up to shake our hands. When the white couple saw us they came straight over and the disco was turned off. They were brother and sister, the bloke a slightly younger version of Austen, tanned and wiry with a clipped voice like he’d been shouting at natives all his life. The moustache was 1901. He was repatriating himself, that’s what he said. Eleven years in Zambia. He banged his fist on the table.
—Why should I bother with that man? Eh? Tell me that.
—Who? Kaunda? Austen said.
—Of course. The man’s a fool. KK’s done nothing in eleven years. Just sacrificed his socialist ideals for a kilo of fucking sugar.
He was just as bitter about the Craze too. He’d wanted a last fling, a stop-over in whore country, but these Indian bastards had conned him into staying at the Craze. They’d offered transport and said these out-of-town weekend nightspots were trendy with the new middle-class African and enlightened Europeans. His sister had come out to meet him for the week and they were flying back together. She wore an orange kaftan and kept saying: it’s alright Robert, it’s cool.
She got the disco turned back on. The light show was a bloke shaking a coloured bulb in each hand like maracas. The four of us danced till Austen said it was fuckin ridiculous and we left.
Wanjiku came running out the shack when we pulled up. As Austen switched the engine off we could hear a commotion, a wailing and crying in the distance. It was too dark to see my hands. I could make out a dim glow here and there half a mile off.
—Where’s Wanja? Austen said.
—Oh Austen, Wanjiku said and started crying. She say to tell you she has gone to Tanzania.
—Shit and derision! What’s going on up there?
—I do not know.
Austen locked me in the shack with Wanjiku and gave me an airgun. He let the Ridgeback loose and set off on foot with a panga. I blew the lamps out but what with the fear, the jet lag, the heat and the sudden change of diet, my guts gave out. I had five seconds to get to the long drop only we were locked in. I could’ve gone through the window but the dog would’ve shredded me. Austen came back and found me washing my trousers in a bucket and needing somewhere to stash the soiled pages of yesterday’s Daily Nation.
—Bloody drunkard, mshenzi. Not you bloke. Up there. Josphat bloody Githinji. Chang’aa gang war. Four women with kids after Githinji’s son start stoning old Mama Githinji. Whole family’s running all over the shamba yelling like dogs. God! The police car’s outside the bar. Two police, dead drunk, say they’re not assigned.
He wanted to sit and talk now, to map out my career, to get me stringing for the BBC Africa Service. Him and Zanna had all the contacts. I didn’t booze back then, or talk much. I just listened and gulped down Austen’s Roosters, short lethal fags made of uncured tobacco with no filters. Austen shuttled between the sofa and the crate of Export Guinness in the storeroom, small bottles brewed under licence in Kenya. One flick of his well-worn Swiss Army knife and the bottle tops rattled to the floor. One Rooster, one Guinness, six or seven swigs a bottle till he became louder and maudlin while Wanjiku slept soundly on a mat on the kitchen floor.
Everywhere I suggested going for a story he said was too dangerous.
—Stay out of Uganda for the moment bloke. The Ministry of Defence just announced it: guerillas gonna resume bombing campaign in Kampala.
So I flicked through the Daily Nation. Teenage girls at Lamu jailed for idleness.
—Trouble there too, bloke. Three hour shootout between bandits and police. Killed two of ’em and arrested the truck driver. Indian smugglers. Three hundred and forty elephant tusks. God! Right fucking shambles this Wildlife bloody Army. Kenyatta’s bloody wife still flies about in an army helicopter massacring zebra with a machine gun.
I said I’d just hitch out to Naivasha then. A dispute between neighbours had turned into the serial buggering of chickens by rival gangs in Kakamega. Austen said I couldn’t sell a story like that so why didn’t I go interview a dentist about flouride in the water. And if Wanja came back I could ask her about skin-lightening creams. He said all the prostitutes used them to make their skin go pale. He reckoned it was the mercury in the cream that had turned Wanja mad.
My idea was different. I wanted to visit Joy and do a story on gold panning and cattle rustling. But I wanted to be something first, get the red dirt on my boots and find some connection for myself. Maybe my character would form itself in parallel to the story I found. I didn’t tell him those bits, and I didn’t ask him about Joy either, but I didn’t have to wait long before he mentioned her:
—Hey bloke, I’ve got it. You must go and see this woman Joy up in Amolem …
I could’ve asked him what she was like but he was ratted on Guinness now and I wanted to preserve her welcome like it was a real memory, not a guess or a hope.
The Rooster smoke was coming out his ears as he banged the chair and shouted:
—D’you know what that cunt Mengistu does to the Ethiopian people? Charges the fuckers he shoots for the bullets.
I wasn’t interested enough to listen now. I was picturing Joy in her long months between visitors, the airmail envelopes crisp and yellow and filling with insect pepper, her despair if a guitar string snapped, sewing up the holes in her mosquito net with raffia, listening in the night for cattle raids and aeroplanes, snakes and shooting stars … Listening out for me.
—Hey bloke, Austen said. Zanna give you that bloody jacket for Schick?
It was in the bottom of my pack, a heavyweight camouflaged Barbour which I’d agreed to deliver, new and oily.
—Christ almighty, Austen said when I gave it to him. Bloke’s gonna wear that down the Starlite? Mad bastard.
—Who is this Schick? I said.
—You don’t wanna know bloke. Man should wear a Keep Away sign round his neck.
It took seven bottles of Guinness before Austen was pissed enough to go to sleep.
Next day I set off for Naivasha, fifty miles north, reaching Dagoretti by clapped-out bus. For the settlers of Karen/Nairobi, Dagoretti was where Africa began, with the last white homestead in sight of the township.
The streets stank of raw sewage and barefoot women carried bundles of firewood. Kids queued for water with twenty-litre cooking-oil tins. There were mud houses in the lanes, roofs made of flattened tin cans, doors from packing cases. There were barber shops in the market square and radio repair shops, charcoal sellers, bars and cafes. Women in brilliant white dresses walked home from church.
A few kids followed me up the long hill towards Kikuyu.
—Hey you. Mzungu. Liverpool, Liverpool. Where are you going?
At the top there was open pasture rising to a coffee grove. A gutted white mansion behind the spiked muigoya hedge. A boy was collecting the leaves in a basket so his family could wipe their arses.
—Good morning sir, he said. Have you come to live?
—No, I said, and he was crestfallen.
There were buses and taxis in the shabby township. I asked the boy which bus for Naivasha.
—Hey you, he said. You stay here and eat paw-paw. You go that way and those thugs there are the bad men. They will steal your bag.
—I must go to Naivasha, I said.
It was the middle of the afternoon and the township men were already drunk. Over the road, two North Yemenites were getting into a Datsun Cherry. I guessed they didn’t live out here so I waved and ran across.
—Salaam.
They greeted me back, we shook hands. They wore brown nylon and smelled of tea rose, their teeth were brown and one of them smoked an imported cigarette.
—Which road are you taking? I said.
—The road to there.
The driver pointed out of town.
—Away? I said.
—Yes, away from here.
—Will you take me?
—Welcome, they said.
They’d been chewing mirrah and were cake-eyed, judging by the pile of stalks on the floor in the back of the car. They asked the usual questions, like was I a tourist? A German? Why did I go to Kikuyu Junction? For the girls? The beer? Had I read the Koran?
In situations like those I usually kept it quiet, head down. I’d met too many travellers on the overland route who turned up the volume and tried to make the cross-over. They chewed the mirrah, grooved on the Koran, in for the ride like pocket Kerouacs, but it always turned bad.
If I was undecided about being in Africa anyway, it was best to keep to dignity, respect, and manners. That was my travelling creed. It avoided confrontation.
My gift, my real talent, was to go through life invisibly. I could be the only white man seen for twenty years but still dilute any interest in my existence. Other travellers were like the Pied Piper or the UN turning up with a lorry-load of aid. The whole district flocks out the bush to see and touch them.
It was my first real day back in Kenya. Since I’d last passed through a couple of years back, an attempted coup had sharpened security. Now I had a year’s open ticket, eighty dollars cash, and a couple of hundred shillings bummed off Austen till the end of the week. Khalid was a careful driver; his friend translated the Day-Glo quotes from the Koran on the fringed pendants hanging round the inside of the car. But we were only three miles out of Kikuyu Junction when Khalid said:
—Police. Alhamdulillahi.
It was a roadblock five hundred yards ahead, a blue Land Rover with light flashing, spikes across the road, rifles in the air. Without a second’s pause, Khalid opened the glovebox, took out two small packets and tossed them onto the back seat beside me.
—I give you one hundred United States dollars for putting these into your pocket and for the talking. In English. No Swahili. Is very important. English. The police are scared of good English. I know this for ten years I live in Kenya.
I put them in my pocket because Khalid’s logic was impeccable. There was no risk to me, whatever happened. I wouldn’t be beaten up, jailed or face extortion, but they would. If the police searched me I’d tell the truth and be believed. The point was, we all wanted to get to Naivasha and this was the best solution. I needed a hundred dollars and they knew it.
The police waved us down. I leaned out.
—Jambo, the policeman said.
—Good afternoon, I said. How are you?
I didn’t give him a chance to answer. He tried to lean in and take a look. He stank of millet beer too.
—How are you? he said.
—Very well, thank you. What’s the problem? I’m taking my two friends to Naivasha to have tea with my mother. We’re already late.
—Okay, he said. Go to Naivasha.
—Thank you. Goodbye.
The Yemenites were deadpan for a mile then praised Allah the Merciful. I handed back the packets and didn’t ask what they contained and they didn’t tell me. I saw one contained foreign exchange because they paid me from it, one hundred and fifty dollars US, a bonus of fifty.
—You, lucky charm, Khalid said.
—You could be professional, Jamal said.
—Will you do it again, one day? For us?
I knew exaggerating my own immunity would be dangerous, only the money was a good reason to consider it and I’d be free of Austen’s political hand-me-downs. I still needed a source of foreign exchange to act as a reserve against local shillings. And I’d been given a value by these two Yemenites, the threads of self-definition, the first contour in my personality. I felt anonymous, but anonymity didn’t just mean blending in with the wananchi. And it wasn’t only my skin colour which was opposite, it was my polarity. I always seemed to be travelling or just flowing in the opposite direction to everyone else. I emanated this lack of interest, this laissez-faire. It could’ve made me the perfect smuggler, if I wanted to be one. But my vocation was to drift. I could wait five days sitting on my rucksack at the bus station in Dar es Salaam for the bus to Zambia. Or five hours for my rice and beans in the New World Eating Bar in Wethefuckarwe. I didn’t need profit to eat githeri, just five bob here, five bob there.
So what else made me the perfect smuggler’s lucky charm? I could fake a plummy accent which wouldn’t fool anyone in London but could strike notes of authority in Africa. I failed to interest people, even prostitutes and beggar boys ignored me. And I knew every border, road, dive and dodge in East Africa, or would do soon enough. I could multiply the briefest details into facts, like my whole being was a vacuum that sucked in single experiences rapidly and completely, expanding them by intuition. In this way, places I’d never visited were familiar; places arrived at never confused or disoriented me. Yes, I was ready to accept I was the perfect smuggler’s lucky charm.
I wrote my name on a piece of paper with Austen’s PO box number. I said I’d do it again if they needed me, as lucky charm, that is. There’d be no compromise in that. Then Khalid said:
—You want to sell your passport? One hundred dollars?
—Yes, I said, why not.
—Hey man, Jamal said. You know Mr Schick? You do good business with Schick because he want lucky charm …
Three weeks and one expensive fever later I went to pick up some new passport photos in downtown Nairobi. Embassy Jagger, photographer. His studio was a tin hut behind the market place, beside a ten-foot pile of rotting fruit skins. His choice of backdrop was either a grey sheet or plastic shower curtain. It wasn’t my face on the photos. It looked like a carrier bag drying on the line, or a police identikit. I stared at the likenesses again for some sign of recognition. It was like he’d lost the film, or the camera hadn’t worked so he’d taken a negative of a long thin Luo’s face from his drawer, overexposed the print and tinted up the grey. My big lips and flat nose, fluked eyes, pocks and a scar. My first ever photograph, hence the fear, pride and perplexity.
I sat in the New Protein Best World Cafe and forged Austen’s signature on the back of the photographs then rushed to the High Commission to report my passport stolen and apply for another.
—Must we always have to tell people we close at 11.30 when it says so on the door!
—I need a fuckin passport.
He wouldn’t even let me leave the photographs.
I was meeting Schick for the first time at three, against all Austen’s advice. Schick needed a ‘passenger’ for a run into Uganda and I’d had a good recommendation from the Yemenites.
I thought I could kill some time in the park so I ran across to the traffic island, sprinting with the crowd as the buses heaved down. A packet fell from someone’s back pocket and bounced on the ground. A split second and the haze and clutter of legs left it behind. I was at the back. My instinct was to scoop, lift and keep going in one movement like nothing had happened and no one had noticed. But my balance was barged sideways by a man who fell on the packet, a fluke snatch which made us both lose momentum. By the time we’d saved our skins and backtracked out the road and onto the island, the crowd had left us and we were alone.
He was grubbier than me in his cockeyed cowboy boots and twenty-eight-inch flares with the linings dragging on the ground. His wide-lapelled pin-striped jacket was ripped to shreds and had red plastic pockets sewn on to the old ones. The stiffeners in the butterfly collars of his flower shirt were slipping out like false finger nails. His teeth were brown. His eyes bloody pink.
—Run after him, I said.
The crowd began to disperse on the other side. The man hesitated, holding the brick-shaped envelope. I could see a five bob note through its cellophane window, then slowly he began to slide the packet under his shirt. We were now alone on the traffic island in Kenyatta Avenue. Two hundred Kenyans were gathering each side for the next rush across. They must’ve all been watching us. People shouted at me from bus windows.
