She excused herself and departed under the archway. I saw her a few moments later striding across the garden. I was her slave. As if seeing Nairobi was not enough, to find oneself under the same roof as such a lovely girl . . . I would only worship from a distance of course, feast over her smell when she came too near, hope to coax a smile from her now and then.
A man entered the room through the archway and I rose to greet him. He was too young to be my uncle, perhaps about thirty or so. He was very thin, his eyes popping out of his face, his arms dangling by his side. My first thought was that he was a relation.
‘Ahlan,’ I said in greeting.
‘Good morning, sir,’ he said in English.
He lowered his head, hunched his shoulders and clasped his hands together. He came forward with his head lowered and tilted a little to one side. He bent down and picked up my bag. I reached out to retrieve it and he moved a step back, hand raised palm upward. I guessed that this performance was ironic.
‘Mr Hassan, let me show you your room, sir,’ he said. He sounded a little offended, sharp, but in his eyes, I thought I saw suppressed laughter. And fuck you too. He indicated another door, across the room from the archway. He strolled on ahead of me, did not bother to look back to see if I was following. They were all so mighty with poor country boy. I wondered what had been said about me before my arrival. It was hard to believe that this thin, well-dressed man was a servant. Servants wore rags during working hours. He led me down a short corridor, with rooms going off on either side. He stopped at the last door on the left, opened it and motioned me into the room ahead of him.
The room was large and airy. The sun was pouring in through the window. The white walls and white furniture made the room look brighter, cleaner. I was overwhelmed by the idea of such comfort, such privacy. What I had seen of the rest of the house should have prepared me, but I had never dreamed of sleeping in such a room. The bed was tucked away in the corner, and a large wardrobe stood at the foot of it. Opposite the bed was a desk and chair. A reading lamp on a stand leant over the easy chair under the window.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘It’s the best guest-room. I hope you like it,’ he said. ‘If you want to have a wash, I’ll unpack for you.’
He was still carrying my bag, and with those words he raised it a little and glanced at it. ‘No, no,’ I protested. He seemed to wince. ‘I haven’t got much to unpack,’ I explained. He waited for more, not yet mollified, not yet feeling that he had drawn enough blood.
‘It’s only a small bag,’ I said.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, putting my bag down.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said, indicating the room.
He bowed! He bowed. ‘The bathroom is next door,’ he said softly, standing at the door. ‘My name is Ali.’ And I am Genghis Khan. How are you? I guessed that Ali was the servile sobriquet, his professional title. ‘If there is anything you require just ask me for it. I hope you enjoy your stay with us, Mr Hassan.’
He closed the door softly behind him, and no doubt his face broke into a smug grin as soon as the door was between us. I bowed at the closed door and tried to think of an obscene gesture but my heart was not in it. I would probably have done the same. I took out a clean shirt and put my bag away in the wardrobe. There was no point unpacking just to give bleary-eyes a good laugh. I laid the shirt on the bed and went off in search of the bathroom.
It fulfilled all expectations. I took off my plimsolls and walked barefoot on the blue tiles. I inhaled the perfume of the toilet disinfectant and tested the small extractor fan above the window. While I ran the bath, I ransacked the contents of the mirrored cabinets. I felt certain I could hear soft music in the air.
Bwana Ahmed bin Khalifa came home for lunch.
I was lying on the bed, luxuriating in my pampered solitude, and feeling remorse that I had deprived Ali of his name, when a knock on the door informed me of the master’s arrival. I put on my clean shirt, tried a couple of smiles on the mirror, selected the more humble and went off in search of a future.
Ali led me into the living-room, then ushered me into the garden, standing aside to let me pass. I went out through the open glass doors on to the oval-shaped terrace. As I walked down the steps to the lawn, a cool breeze raced towards me, sniffed at me and raced past. The trees and bushes shuddered for a moment, and then were still. I could see a short, well-built man standing under one of the trees, talking to the girl. The sweat was running down my back and my arms were trembling a little. I felt I was about to make a fool of myself, but there was no helping it now. They were too engrossed in their affairs to notice my approach. I stopped a few feet away, and after a moment, I turned to admire the garden. I was obviously to be kept waiting. Lines of chalk were drawn on the lawn, faded by the sun and rain but still clear. The thorny bougainvillaea was garishly in flower, bright reds and purple mingling with rustic yellow and faded pink. Under the terrace were large hibiscus bushes, their waxy blooms leaning leeringly towards the ground. Jasmine and rose bushes filled the borders to the hedge. The bougainvillaea ran all the way down one side of the garden, viciously twisting on itself to form an impenetrable barrier. The passion-fruit bushes at the bottom of the garden were trained along the wires of the fence. Heavy, yellow fruit was hanging off the branches, some spotted by the beaks of feeding birds. I felt ridiculous standing there in the sun while the sweat ran off me.
I sensed them turning to look at me, and heard a sharp intake of breath. What! Is it you? I didn’t see you standing there, dear fellow . . . I suppose that is what it was meant to suggest. I walked over towards them, right hand extended, a glad smile on my face and in my eyes. No glum looks from me! I was out to charm. Bwana Ahmed bin Khalifa came forward to meet me, walking with short measured steps, deliberately taking his time. There was an amused smile on his face. I assumed it was the one he reserved for poor nephews. His hair was flecked with grey, and his trimmed moustache bristled with steely lines of white metal. I pounced on him with my wide-open hand, caressed his reverently, gulping for air in my excitement, and then returned the limp appendage to him. To my horror I found that I was enjoying this self-abasement. I could not feel my face smiling. Perhaps the muscles had returned to their usual glum repose. I swung my lips wider apart, and threw in a powerful chuckle for good measure. They both laughed heartily, assuming that I was clowning.
‘So,’ said my uncle Ahmed bin Khalifa. His sister would have been proud to see how he had turned out, would have quailed at his musk of power and charisma. I remembered Moses and his prayers for a Stalin. ‘You made it all right then. Did you have a good journey?’
Did I detect a hint of disappointment in his voice? Was he hoping the lions of Voi would savage me? Did he think the white-slavers would get me and flog me off to the porn shops of Amsterdam? He was holding the hand I had shaken a little away from his body, as if he were being careful not to soil his clothes. He saw me glance at it, and he plunged the hand into his trousers pocket. He unbuttoned his jacket and gently stroked the crease of his trousers. He stroked for a moment his thin well-groomed moustache. His eyes were still amused, with just a shade of irritation in them. His face still smiled – I see that smile now, assured, patient. He turned to the girl and exchanged a quick flash of eyebrows with her. She smiled openly, looking curiously at the two of us. Did they think I was blind?
‘Well, we’d better get out of this sun. Shall we go and see what the chef has got for our lunch?’ he asked. ‘How’s your mother? Is she well?’
He led off ahead of us, talking in careful, correct tones over his shoulder. This was not a man to be taken in with greasy smiles. He did not seem the kind of man to be taken in at all. He was forbidding, and I imagined him to have a whole list of things that were not allowed in his presence, and a whole range of manners and courtesies whose function was only to swell his own dignity. I had walked into a lion’s den, into the cyclops’ cave. Where was the fierce temper? I was going to do my best not to find
out. Who could imagine this calm, self-assured money-bags bursting forth with invectives and obscenities like my dear father. This was not one to weaken with tales of an idealistic love of knowledge. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than to curl up under the glow of a 15-watt lamp in the hallway of my father’s house, discovering the jewels of man’s imaginings. I was blessed, sir, with an insatiable curiosity . . . since when I have been a ferocious reader.
The girl was lagging behind us. I stopped to allow her to catch up. She stopped too, and so did he. They looked at me expectantly.
‘What tree was that you were standing under?’ I asked.
The girl shrugged, he shook his head. I felt better for that. ‘It has little black berries on it when it’s in fruit,’ she said. ‘They taste really sour, like milk that’s gone off. I’ve been meaning to find out. I’m sure the gardener will know.’ Her eyes were grey. I hadn’t noticed that before.
‘Come,’ said Bwana Ahmed, turning back towards the house. He flicked at an insect, then began to hum something under his breath. His hands searched around in his jacket pockets. He took his jacket off, holding his wallet in one hand. As I followed him up the steps I kept looking around with wide-eyed interest, the knowledge-seeker.
‘Did you say your mother was well?’ he asked from the darkness of the house. The girl walked past me to stand by her father, still silent, as if out of habit. I saw that she had changed out of her sleeveless blouse.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They’re both very well, thank you. They asked me to give you their very best wishes.’
He seemed shorter in the house, and without his jacket he looked more plump. Ali appeared briefly at the archway, to check that we were there, and then disappeared again. My uncle motioned for me to follow him. We went through the archway into a small, bright room. A door led off into the kitchen. For this observation I relied on my sense of smell. A large, oval table, covered with a brown cloth, was laid with shining spoons and forks. I had feared this. One look at the house and I had known they would be fork-wielding people. Then there was that Daddy.
‘You have a lovely house,’ I said.
Bwana Ahmed smiled. ‘You don’t have to use all these tools if you don’t want to,’ he said, waving a languid hand at the array of metalwork. ‘Ali enjoys laying the table as if we were at a banquet, even if he’s only offering us some soup.’ He sat at the top of the oval, sighing deeply as he sat down. The girl glanced at him, and he smiled to reassure her. She sat down opposite me, her eyes lowered. I was ready for anything, but I did not expect the softness of the chairs nor the firmness of the back-rest.
They went to town together and left me to rest. I lay on the bed in my room and tried to think of what I would have been doing if I had been at home. It was an attempt to encourage myself, but it only made me feel homesick. I thought of my parents and their excitement at my departure. I wondered if at that moment they were also thinking of me, wondering what things were like where I was, imagining triumphs for me. I had felt myself becoming a little ironic about the treatment I was receiving from my uncle and his daughter. I lay on the bed and went over my first meeting with them, determined to identify irony in my behaviour, note it and expunge it from my future dealings with them.
I fell asleep, something I never did in the afternoons. It was getting dark outside when Ali came to wake me. He went on knocking even after I called out that I was awake.
‘Come in,’ I yelled. He opened the door, switched on the light and giggled. There was no question about it. He stood by the door, smiling and beckoning like a conspirator. He opened and shut his mouth, chewing slowly. He continued the pantomime by rubbing his hands together and then hurling the empty air at his face. I nodded to show that I had understood. Food was ready and could I go and wash. Was he drunk? He waved goodbye, articulating his wrist the way a little child would. He showered me with large smiles and then left, shutting the door gently. I hurried to the bathroom. Having slept so long in the afternoon, I knew I would find it impossible to sleep at night. I must have been more tired than I realised.
I changed into a clean shirt for the third time in a day. I would have to do some washing before I went to bed. The plimsolls were nowhere to be seen. I found them outside the door, cleaned and coddled, the side-flap mended, the canvas brilliant and stiff, the hole in the toe-cap gaping black and jagged like a nasty wound.
They were waiting in the living-room, sunk in the deep, crimson chairs. The radio was playing softly. My uncle rose to greet me, smiling and ushering me into a chair. He had changed into a baggy, white, short-sleeved shirt, its pockets bulging with tobacco pouch and pipe.
‘Did you have a good rest?’ he asked, laughing at me. ‘Not used to travelling, eh? It’s more tiring than you think, isn’t it?’
He sat opposite me, smiling and being friendly. This was how I had imagined him in my better moments, down to the baggy shirt, bulging pipe and tobacco, the very picture of the prosperous merchant genially at play. The radio was next to his head, and he leaned over and switched it off. The girl stirred at that and looked quickly away before her irritation showed. He saw it, though, and smiled at her averted face. She had changed again, and was now wearing a loose cream-coloured blouse. It had a dull, expensive-looking sheen and I wondered if it was silk. She looked beautiful, composed and in control. There was unmistakable pride in the way her father glanced at her. She looked at my shoes and smiled.
‘Chinese,’ I said, thinking to excuse their dilapidation with this explanation.
‘Aaah,’ she said. Her neck was taut with effort as she stretched forward to take a close look at my shoes. I caught a glimpse of the mound of her breasts, and quickly dropped my eyes. ‘A work of art,’ she said, mocking my nervousness.
The father, too, leant forward with a look of serious attention. ‘Does the hole come with the shoe or did you have it put in specially?’
I joined them in their smiles, taking this teasing as a kind of welcome. I tried to think of something clever and self-deprecating to say, but all I felt was a resentment that I was forced to talk about shoes at all. ‘They’re in a terrible state, aren’t they? They were good value, though.’
‘Do you have a lot of Chinese things at home now?’ he asked. ‘The only Chinese things I’ve seen here are of very poor quality.’
‘They’re cheap,’ I said.
‘Buy cheap, pay later,’ said my uncle, grinning at his own wit.
‘Whatever you pay for shoes like that, I can’t imagine that they are worth it,’ said the girl. ‘You should give them to somebody.’
She did not smile as she said this, but looked away a moment later with just a hint of shame in her averted face. Ali appeared to call us to dinner, and to let my poor shoes out of purgatory. The food was already on the table. Ali hovered at the kitchen door, with the idiot grin on his face. Uncle Ahmed winked at me to show me that he knew that the servant was behaving in a strange way.
‘What do we have today, Ali?’ he asked. ‘I hope you remembered that we have a guest. What have you prepared for us?’
I could have told him that. I had been smelling it from the moment I opened my eyes, and my nose registered the unmistakable aromas of a biriani. Ali did not reply, but lined the plates in front of the large earthenware pot. When we were all seated, he lifted the lid and grinned triumphantly at all of us.
‘It is biriani,’ yelled the girl, clapping her hands with delight.
I struggled not to drown in the rivers of saliva that were pouring into my mouth. Who was the pantomime for? They must have known it was biriani. Who could mistake the aromas of that noble dish? Ali heaped spoonful after spoonful on the plates. The yellow grains glistened on the plates like pieces of quartz. Large lumps of meat squatted among the rice, dripping juices and fat. He served me last, at my insistence, and I let him pile up the plate until I felt that to ask for any more would be to advance from the childish clown to a greedy boor. He showed me his gums with a cook’s delight. My hand slipped
and slid among the meat and the rice. I took a mouthful and chewed slowly, surrendering to the sweetness of the marrow-soft meat. Ali was watching with open-mouthed pleasure. I sighed with contentment and they all laughed. Ali gave me another piece of meat as my reward. This is more like it, I commended myself. The poor relation who is too much of a clown to realise what a cunt he’s making of himself Country boy comes to town and drools like a rehabilitated rag-picker over every mouthful of decent food.
‘You like it?’ Ali asked with patronising glee. He spent the meal by my side, asking me questions about my progress, adding a little historical information about the development of the meal, from its constituent lumps to the creation that was undermining the very fibres of my provincial self-identity. I warned myself not to overdo it, or else they would think I was laughing at them. Every now and again Ali would discover a morsel buried under the tumbling grains, and with a cry of delight he would drag it out and lay it on my plate. Was I being fattened for . . . ? Every time I paused he became anxious, waiting for me to resume. He dominated the conversation with anecdotes about food. I was surprised that my uncle let him carry on so, and I began to wonder if he was part of a complicated private joke that I did not understand. Ali was a different man from the supercilious servant who had served us lunch. Perhaps this was his real self, I thought. Perhaps the disdainful man I had seen earlier was more a victim of gloomy thoughts and tragic prognostications than a man at his best. There was something out of control about the way he was jigging beside me. Bwana Ahmed showed no impatience, indeed he smiled, interested and amused by Ali’s performance.
I heard him address his daughter as Salma. Salma with the beautiful grey eyes! It was, naturally, important that her name had not been given to me. I was not to see her as somebody I could address willy nilly as the mood took me. She said little, content to follow the conversation with her eyes. The attention she paid to my clowning was amused, but she was distant and preoccupied, as if dissociating herself. A stray smile appeared now and then, the way it does when one is watching a tiresome child playing. When my gluttony was sated I leant back in my chair, ashamed of my evening’s work.
Memory of Departure Page 10
