The young engineer gripped the rock, felt the world spin beneath him. He closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. He pulled himself forwards and looked out over the edge, down into the canyon. Far below, the Blue Nile, dark and scattered with stars. And beyond, across the divide, a million cooking fires strewn like glowing coals across the darkened sweep of the Eritrean plain.
‘Somewhere out there,’ whispered Teferi, ‘is my home.’
And a million and a half Eritrean troops waiting to cross the river and crush Mengistu. ‘Family?’ said the young engineer.
‘My wife and three children, God bless them.’
It was the first time in the eleven weeks they’d spent together that Teferi had spoken of such things. They lay still for a time and peered across the river.
Teferi touched his arm, said, ‘Wait here. I will be back soon.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Do not move from this place. Do you understand?’
In the distance, how far away he could not judge, a string of tracers arced red across the plain. And then the sound came, the raptor trill of automatic gunfire. He turned to answer, but Teferi was already up and moving away, towards a draw in the valley. The young engineer watched him until he disappeared.
For a long time, he lay among the rocks and gazed down into the canyon at the dark surface of the water. He could hear the river coursing through the rocks, feel it cutting its way down into the flesh of the highlands on its way to meet the White Nile at Khartoum and then on to Egypt and the great delta and the Mediterranean. In this, he felt insignificant and small. And then he thought about the soldier in the bar, and if he was OK, and if he would report what had happened, and if the police would be waiting for him when he returned to the dam.
When Teferi returned more than an hour later, he was very quiet and would not answer any of the young engineer’s questions. They walked back to the car and drove to the dam in silence.
Three days later, they arrived in Addis Ababa. Abandoned vehicles choked the roads. Smoke veiled the city, pillared hot into the sky from the hulks of burning tanks, smashed buildings. Dead animals littered the roadside, bloated carcasses of horses, goats, dogs. Soldiers streamed into the capital, many without weapons or leaders. Children wandered naked and aimless, lost in the confusion, crying for their parents.
The young engineer sat in the front passenger seat, stared out of the open window at the world gone crazy. Before leaving the dam, he’d supervised the installation of the last drainage gallery, stayed another day, testing its performance and evaluating the data. There had been no trouble, no sign of the police, no mention of the soldier in the bar. The next day, he’d reported his findings to the dam manager, proclaimed the penstock safe. The dam manager had thanked him and advised him to leave the country immediately. The rebels had crossed the Blue Nile that morning and were bearing down on Addis. Mengistu’s troops were in full retreat.
Teferi guided the car through the melee towards the airport. ‘Not far now,’ he said, easing past an abandoned fuel truck.
‘That soldier, the one who hit his head.’
Teferi said nothing, kept driving.
‘He died, didn’t he?’
Teferi shook his head. ‘Do you have your tickets, passport?’
The young engineer patted the breast pocket of his jacket.
‘Thank you for helping my country,’ said Teferi. ‘It has been good to know you.’
‘Likewise,’ said the young engineer, meaning it, feeling something else too. It felt vaguely like cowardice.
Teferi reached into the back seat, produced a small package, handed it to him.
The young engineer opened the newspaper wrapping. It was a small, stringed musical instrument, like a crudely made ukulele.
‘It’s a kra,’ said Teferi. ‘The instrument of my people.’
The young engineer plucked one of the strings. ‘Thanks, Teferi. It’s not necessary. But thanks.’ Yes. Cowardice.
Ahead, an army checkpoint, the airport terminal building a couple of hundred metres beyond. The sound of a jet powering up for take-off. Car horns blaring. Teferi slowed the car, stopped at the barrier. A harried-looking officer peered inside the car, checked their documents. He’d just handed the young engineer’s passport back to Teferi when he looked up in the direction of the city and froze. The young engineer just had time to spin in his seat before the shock wave hit. The blast knocked him back, sucked the air from his lungs, blew out the windows in the building across the street. He caught his breath, looked back towards the city. A huge pillar of brown smoke mushroomed into the sky.
‘Jesus,’ he said, turning towards Teferi. ‘You alright?’
Dust billowed in the air around them like fog, as if the ground were an old rug that someone had picked up and snapped.
Teferi nodded and jutted his chin towards the roadblock. ‘Look.’ The soldiers were picking themselves up from the glass-strewn tarmac and walking away. ‘They are going home. It is over.’
A convoy of Mercedes Benz sedans flashed past towards the airport, four cars in all, police escort front and back. Teferi handed the young engineer his passport, slammed down on the accelerator, sent the car hurtling after the convoy. They pulled up in front of the terminal just behind the last Mercedes.
Teferi turned to him. ‘Go quickly,’ he said. ‘The airport could close at any time.’
People were piling out of the Mercedes, big men in superbly tailored suits, gold flashing against dark fingers and wrists, equally big women swathed in multi-coloured cloth and elaborate headdresses, half a dozen overweight children. Porters loaded mountains of luggage on to waiting trolleys.
Teferi spat. ‘Our government.’
The young engineer hoisted his pack and stepped on to the pavement. He looked out across the city, counted eleven, twelve, thirteen columns of smoke rising into the sky. A jet screamed by overhead. He wanted to remember it, all of it.
He closed the car door, leaned back in through the open window. ‘Where did you go, Teferi, that night at the river?’
His driver looked at him a moment, clenching his fist around the steering wheel. ‘We are a poor country, my friend,’ he said. ‘The dam is very important. No one else could have fixed it.’
The young engineer nodded, understood.
Teferi smiled. ‘This,’ he said, waving his hand towards the city, ‘is the beginning, God willing.’
March 14th. London
As soon as I walk into the place, I know it’s going to be bad. I am fifteen minutes late. I blame the Tube, but I didn’t try all that hard to be on time. I can hear the rebuke already, delivered with that half-sigh and twist of the head, accented by the slightest upward roll of the eyes. She’s chosen the ground carefully. A coffee shop in the open, marble-vault foyer of the big Canary Wharf tower that is home to her esteemed merchant bank. All traces of 2008 are long gone. As I walk through the big rotating doors, I can smell the money, feel the power here, the sheer disdain. Now this is entitlement.
I look around the place, my eyes adjusting to the glare of the polished surfaces – all that expensive cut stone and moulded chrome. Maria is waiting near the reception desk, looking impatient. It’s Maria the hotshot banker, severe in a navy-blue suit with her dark hair pulled back and no make-up. Troy is with her, his pudge squeezed into a pair of super-tight light-blue jeans and a pink shirt – to show confidence in his reconstructed masculinity, no doubt. He completes his ensemble with a short fawn sports jacket that looks two sizes too small. The effect is one of a fabric designer off on a Caribbean cruise. Except for the swollen, busted nose and the dark swathes under his eyes.
As I approach them, I can’t help cracking a smile, but it withers almost immediately under the blowtorch of Maria’s scowl. It’s that scowl. The you’re-late-you’re-inattentive-and-stupid-and-inconsiderate-and-childish scowl that she wields with martial precision and devastating effect. I can’t imagine working for her.
‘This is t
he man who was late to his own wedding,’ she says to Troy as soon as I am close enough to hear. ‘It’s true.’
Troy smirks at me.
‘Turns out I shouldn’t have shown up at all,’ I say, immediately regretting it.
‘You see, I told you,’ she says, still speaking to Troy. ‘Can you imagine if Rachel heard that? For a child to know that her father wishes she had never been born.’
‘That’s not what I said, Troy,’ I say, addressing myself directly to Fuckwit – I prefer calling him that. ‘Children can be produced out of wedlock these days.’
‘I told you,’ she continues. ‘He’s like this all the time. Everything is an argument.’ She has yet to look at me, acknowledge my presence in any way.
‘Yes, it’s true, Troy. I should have been a lawyer. But then again, the world doesn’t need another parasite.’ I lock Fuckwit’s gaze a moment, watch him squirm. He does that puff-up thing, sucking in his gut, standing a bit taller.
‘Just ignore him,’ Maria says, reaching for Troy’s arm and pulling him back.
I hold my ground. ‘Yeah, Troy, you don’t want that nose broken again, do you?’ I am enjoying this now, my earlier trepidation fading as I hit my stride.
‘I want you to know that I will be pressing charges,’ Troy says.
My stomach flutters. ‘Is that why you asked me here?’ I hear myself saying. ‘Well, press away,’ I say, trying to look unconcerned. ‘As I recall, you were the aggressor. You came at me. I was only defending myself. See you in court, asshole.’
Troy looks as if he is being strangled. His face has turned the pulsating, blood-filled shade of an erect dick. He’s a dickhead. The realisation makes me laugh. It’s part nerves, of course, but it drives him crazy.
‘That’s not true,’ he says, looking back at Maria. ‘I have a witness. You hit me.’
‘Self-defence.’
‘We’ll see what the judge says.’
Maria pulls him back again, a dog on a leash. Lapdog. ‘Stop it, Troy,’ she commands. ‘That’s not why we’re here, Warren,’ she says, looking right at me for the first time. Her gaze stops me dead. She hasn’t called me by my name for years. She has my attention, and she knows it.
‘The bank has offered me a senior vice-president role,’ she says. ‘I’ve decided to accept.’
I exhale. ‘Congratulations.’
She glances over at Troy. ‘I’ve decided to accept,’ she says again. Her look softens a moment, hardens again, a momentary lapse. ‘The position is in New York.’
She pauses there, lets it hang. Her timing was always impeccable.
‘I’m taking Rachel with me,’ she continues. ‘Troy is coming, too. He will be looking after her while I’m at work. There will be a lot of travel.’
I don’t know how long I stand there, mute, but it’s a while, a minute or two at least. By the time I speak, Troy’s face is almost a normal colour again and that smug grin has returned. ‘I have visitation rights,’ I blurt out. ‘You can’t take her away.’
‘Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be,’ Maria says. ‘I am going, and Rachel is coming with me. There is nothing you can do about it.’
Anger rises inside me, bitter hot. ‘Did you ask her what she wants?’
‘Yes, I did.’ She stands a moment, jerking me on a wire. ‘She wants to come to New York. She’s excited. I have already enrolled her in an excellent school. Besides, she doesn’t want to see you anymore.’
It’s as if I’ve been hit by an NFL linebacker. I stagger back, dazed. ‘She’s ten years old, for Christ’s sake,’ I manage, choking on the words. ‘You can’t expect her to make decisions like that.’
‘She’s very mature. Not that you would notice. I respect her views.’
‘Look,’ I say. ‘Being late for a school play doesn’t warrant—’
But Maria cuts me off before I can finish. ‘Is that what you think this is about?’ she hisses. ‘The play? You really have no fucking idea, do you?’
‘It’s pretty hard to be Superdad on alternating weekends,’ is the best I can come up with. Lame.
I can see her soften a moment. If you didn’t know her you would never know. ‘You should have thought about that sooner, Ethan.’ She checks her ladies’ Rolex, jams her hands on her hips. ‘Anyway, I’m done here. If you want to fight this, go ahead. See you in court, as you say. But I don’t think the judge is going to side with a physically abusive father.’ And then she pivots on her heels and strides towards the elevators.
Troy smiles at me, mouths the word ‘loser’ and hurries after her.
New Year’s Eve
Helena was four months pregnant. You couldn’t really tell. She carried well, on that tall athlete’s frame of hers.
It was cold, minus twenty-five, and it hadn’t bottomed out yet. They piled into a taxi, the engineer and Helena and one of her friends, a ditzy brunette they called Planet (Janet), and headed south along Macleod Trail, the strip-mall ugliness softened under a smother of still-falling snow. Helena looked fabulous. Under her floor-length winter coat, she wore a tan mini, black stockings, glamour heels and a black scoop-necked blouse. Her hair was up, the way he liked it. She was beautiful. He was already glowing, knowing that she would be the best-looking woman in the place, some party that a friend of Janet’s – a restaurateur – was throwing.
He helped her across the frozen, ice-packed parking lot from the taxi to the glass-fronted restaurant. That great feeling was going through him, of her leaning on his arm, of being strong and capable and of her trusting him. He held the door open for the two ladies, helped them with their coats once they were inside. He’d been brought up that way, and he was glad.
The place was packed. Planet led them through the crowd towards the bar, introduced them to the host. He was a short guy, broad and gym-muscled, slightly off-kilter, as if he’d worked the front of his body – the part you could see in a gym mirror – to the exclusion of the back. His dark, narrow eyes seemed far too small for his fair, broad-boned face. He kissed Planet, eyes open, not interested, then looked Helena up and down, smiled wide and offered her his hand. He said something cheesy like and hello to you, beautiful. She towered over him. She shook his hand, withdrew hers quickly. He was still staring at her when Planet introduced the engineer as Helena’s husband. That got his attention.
‘Warren’s an engineer,’ she said. ‘He’s just got back from Ethiopia.’
‘Well, isn’t that great,’ said Restaurant Owner, booze breath wafting over them. ‘Where the fuck is Ethiopia?’ He smiled at Helena. The engineer was about to explain just where the Horn of Africa was when Restaurant Owner leaned forwards and stared into his eyes and said: ‘Who gives a shit, right?’
There was no figuring some people. What they think will impress others. Still, this was Calgary.
‘Nice guy,’ the engineer said after Restaurant Owner left.
Helena poked him in the ribs, frowned. He ordered drinks at the bar, paid cash. Rum and Coke for Planet, ginger ale for H, a beer for him. They drank. After a while, Planet wandered off. They didn’t know anyone there, and they didn’t care. Just stood close and sipped their drinks and held hands and swam in each other’s eyes, the rest of the guests just flowing around them, as if they were a rock in the middle of a river.
Until the screaming started.
At first, they ignored it, and after a while, it died down. They kept talking, finished their drinks. He was about to go to the bar to order another round, when a high-pitched wail split the room, followed quickly by a loud crash, like pots and pans clattering to a tile floor, and then a man’s voice, deep and angry, bellowing. The commotion was coming from the back of the restaurant, where the kitchen was. Everyone in the place stopped dead, listening as the tirade continued.
‘What the hell is going on back there,’ said Helena.
‘Who knows,’ he said. ‘Drunks.’
Then another shriek came, louder than before, higher-pitched still, a different voi
ce, fear and pain there. Before he could stop her, Helena was striding towards the kitchen. He followed her as she rounded the door and disappeared around the corner. She was always like this, Helena. Never could leave any injustice unchallenged, turn away from any cruelty, trust that someone else would act. If it matters, you don’t wait for someone else, she always said. It was one of the things he loved about her. One of the many things.
Actually, he loved everything about her, even the things he hated.
When he caught up with her, she was already in the kitchen. Drunk Restaurant Owner was there, at the end of the service run. His poorly developed back, strangely slack under his tight T-shirt, a protein-powder arm raised above his head, he seemed unaware of their presence. He was brandishing some kind of stainless-steel kitchen implement. Beneath him, wedged back against the far wall, curled on the food-strewn floor, a small Asian man dressed in a chef’s smock cowered on his knees, whimpering. Blood streamed from his face.
The engineer grabbed Helena’s arm just as she yelled out ‘STOP!’ at the top of her voice. The owner did exactly that, pulled up the spatula in mid-stroke and spun around to face them. For a moment, he stood there staring at them, eyes wide, hyped-up. A mist of blood covered his face and the front of his shirt.
‘What the fuck?’ he screamed, recovering now. ‘Get the fuck out.’
The engineer was shaking his head now, knowing what this guy was going to get, talking to H like that.
‘Stop what you are doing,’ she said, her voice even, authoritative. ‘That man needs medical attention.’
‘Fuck off, bitch, and mind your own business,’ the owner shouted back. ‘Get out of my fucking kitchen.’ And then, as if to emphasise the point, he spun and let go a withering kick that caught the cook in the jaw, sending him crashing head-first into the steel panelling. The cook slumped limp to the floor.
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