Fatboy and the Dancing Ladies

by Michael Holman

  The journalist nodded.

  WorldFeed, the Oxford-based development agency, had lectured him often enough. Taxes on goods processed in Africa, such as coffee, imposed by Western governments, made it difficult for locals to compete.

  Spare me, he thought, but braced himself for a homily. It wasn’t forthcoming. Instead: “One lump or two?”

  “One lump, please.”

  “Scone? You realise, Pearson, that you have finished that kitchen toto once called Mlambo?”

  Suddenly Pearson felt physically ill. Surely they hadn’t killed the boy?

  “And not only Mlambo. You finished many people who were depending on that ex-toto.”

  Pearson lacked the energy to respond and the cut on his head continued to throb.

  “More tea? I gather the ex-toto has at least seven brothers and sisters; his parents had their siblings as well. They all depended on him.”

  Puna sat back in his chair.

  “We in Africa believe in power sharing. This is why Mobutu lasted so long in Zaire. He shared the benefits of power.”

  He laughed. “What does this have to do with Mlambo?”

  Puna answered his own question.

  “Being close to people with power can be very useful, very profitable, like having power itself. Now the poor boy is finished, and many, many people who lived off him, like ticks on a dog’s back, will find life harder. Don’t meddle, Mr Pearson, if you don’t understand.”

  “But Mlambo’s not dead?”

  Once again Puna looked shocked.

  “Why would we kill him? There are worse punishments for people who abuse the president’s trust . . .”

  The comments fanned a spark of rebellion in Pearson’s soul. He wanted to say that corruption and bad government affected a million Mlambos; that Kuwisha’s politicians did more harm than good, and a lot more harm than any Western journalist . . . but he lacked the energy.

  Puna stood up.

  There were still some scones left on the tray. Puna wrapped one in a paper napkin, and offered it to Pearson.

  “Take it,” he ordered. “A present for your Lucy.”

  They left the office, and together walked to the main entrance of State House, where two ancient stuffed lions guarded a pair of elephant’s tusks, taken from a beast shot by “Flogger” Morland’s father, M.Q. ‘Tubby’ Morland, in 1936 according to the engraved brass plaque.

  As they exited the building, the heat of the day almost overwhelmed Pearson, and his eyes took a few seconds to adapt to the sun. He stumbled, and would have fallen but for Puna’s steadying hand.

  Much to Pearson’s surprise the press secretary stayed with him until they reached the gate. Proximity to power, he thought. In a country where symbolism counted, was it Punabantu’s way of indicating that he was being forgiven?

  “Get someone to take a look at that cut. And please, Pearson, write your article about debt and rhino. Stick to what you know and to what your people really care about. No more politics. Greetings to Rucy,” smiled Puna, deliberately transposing the L and the R, in the way that was characteristic among most residents of Kuwisha.

  “You should marry that woman, she is very tough. I phoned before you came, to tell her you will be waiting for her.”

  11

  A battered brown Jeep with ‘WorldFeed’ stencilled in white letters on the door panels drew up just before the sentry box outside the red-brick main entrance to State House. The driver ignored the soldiers on duty, and sounded the car horn. Pearson emerged from the guard house, looking sheepish. As always, the sight of the fair-haired, blue-jeaned figure of Lucy Gomball made his heart beat faster.

  “Tit!” she said, and kissed his cheek. “Get in, I’m driving. And you can’t stay with me. Sorry!”

  The soldier, who had been obliged to move aside smartly or risk being run over, acknowledged Lucy’s apology with a snappy salute.

  “Isn’t he sweet? The house is absolutely chocka. Protect the Pastoralists and Save the bloody Nomads. Just out from Oxford. I can’t stand them, and they can’t stand each other. Booked you at the Milimani. Told the paper you’re OK. Cecil who, they asked . . . Joke. Message from the foreign desk. Need a new photo for your by-line. And ring the Outspan, ask for accreditation. Puna told me you could stay for the donors’ do, by the way. Pooh! You need a bath!”

  Pearson didn’t respond immediately.

  A matatu driver, his passengers so tightly packed that arms and heads poked through the open windows, like straws from a bale, was on the point of pulling out. He thought again, moving closer to the road verge rather than risk a clash with a woman who drove as creatively as any of his fellow matatu drivers.

  Lucy and Cecil flew past the taxi van, with its slogan, hand-painted in green and yellow, “Death Leads to Everlasting Life”, and with charms and tokens dangling from the driver’s mirror, including a long-expired air freshener in the shape of a fir tree.

  Lucy took her hand off the horn, and waved.

  The driver waved back, grinning broadly.

  His matatu boy, collector of fares, crammer-in of passengers, hung from the side-step of the van, shouting out the name of the next stop, negotiating passenger prices and propositioning pretty girls in between exchanging badinage with rivals and cursing drivers who had the temerity to exercise their right of way. He too caught Lucy’s eye, and smiled.

  How did she do it, Pearson wondered. Any other civilian, male or female, black or white, pretty or plain, young or old, that came between a matatu driver and his destination did so at their peril. Any hint of doubt about directions, or any display of indecision about when to turn, and they would be greeted at best by a prolonged blast on a powerful horn, followed by a longer blast of scorn and invective – and at worst, forced off the road.

  In the tough competitive world of matatus, time was money; and if aggressive driving and a powerful horn saved enough minutes, enough to allow an extra journey in the day, well, why not? The extra cash would not be declared to the owner of the matatu, as likely as not a fat-cat politician or official from the ruling party.

  There was a price to pay for the risks taken – an accident rate as high as anywhere in the world, but even that brutal reality could be cushioned.

  There was always religion to fall back on.

  “Love the Lord and cheat Death,” otherwise known as the Kireba Express, “First class service, economy fare”, roared on its noisy, fume-ridden journey through the city to the slum, the driver exchanging hoots and waves with Lucy when she turned down the road that led to the Hotel Milimani.

  “Bloody cheat. Three all. I’ll get him next time!”

  And Lucy flashed Pearson a conspiratorial smile that melted his heart, at about the same moment he realised that she had been racing the matatu.

  “S’pose you’re pleased with yourself . . .”

  “I feel such an arse,” said Pearson.

  “Perhaps that’s because you are an arse.”

  “At least I don’t race with matatus. Bloody dangerous.”

  “Prig!”

  She thumped his thigh. “By the way, you know the new toilet designed in Zimbabwe? The type that Charity has been asking WorldFeed to finance?”

  Pearson nodded.

  Charity’s campaign to instal the cheap and ingenious design which trapped flies and thus saved lives in Kireba had been unremitting.

  “Well, we have the go-ahead for six. First goes in tomorrow. Charity thinks it’s Christmas!”

  The journey from State House to the Hotel Milimani took them past the Uhuru Park with its monument to Kuwisha’s founding president – built to resemble a flaming torch, his party symbol – and into the city centre.

  The traffic was dreadful.

  Alongside modern four-wheel drives ran ancient cars and old buses which belched clouds of acrid exhaust fumes; the fact that they were still on the road a tribute to the ingenuity and skill of the self-trained mechanics who worked from open air garages, rudimentary tools set out o
n oily canvas sheets spread out under the jacaranda trees planted during the colonial era.

  The number of old bangers was carefully monitored by the police. The more there were on the road, the more the number of fines that could be levied at the numerous check points in and around the city – the proceeds going into police pockets, of course.

  Lucy swerved to avoid a pothole.

  “Puna said I could stay to cover the donor meeting. The rhino-debt swap seems on.”

  “I know. Just said. He told me.”

  “What do you think?”

  He well knew that Lucy did not share his enthusiasm for budget deficits, exchange rates and World Bank development programmes, subjects that made him go weak at the knees. But external debt, surely that did interest her?

  “Will they really let me stay to cover the meeting?”

  Lucy shrugged.

  “Don’t see why not – though don’t see why they should.”

  “The FN is the only paper that has followed the story.” Pearson ran his forefinger along the grizzled snout of Shango, Lucy’s dog, who wagged his tail.

  Lucy prodded the animal, stretched out under the passenger seat, with a pink toe. “He’s only pleased to see you because you dish out dog biscuits.”

  “He’s a dog,” said Pearson, as if this explained everything.

  “Why on earth do you want to stay? Nothing will change.”

  “The donors’ meeting,” said Pearson wistfully. “It will coincide with NoseAid and that rhino project. The IMF and the bank will be there. They’re bound to discuss debt relief. Save-a-Child is sending someone out to lobby for a complete write-off.”

  “So are we,” said Lucy. “Some deal with the Clarion.”

  She pursed her lips and flicked back a strand of fine blonde hair that had escaped the faded blue sweatband around her forehead.

  “Nothing will change,” she said again. “You underestimate Nduka. Always have. And overestimate the editorials you write. The FN pretends that they make a difference; the donors pretend to get cross, and lay down the law; and Kuwisha pretends to put things right. Everybody happy. ’Cept the bloody wananchi, the povo, the people, the masses . . . whatever you call them.”

  There was relish in her voice, but Pearson either failed to notice it or ignored it. Instead he said again, but quietly, more reflectively: “I am an arse . . .”

  He flicked through the local newspapers Lucy had brought with her.

  The stories they carried said as much about Kuwisha as effectively as anything he filed.

  There were examples of corruption; the environment was deteriorating; coffee production was falling; and the government seemed to place the interests of its Western allies above its own.

  Fish eagles had been found dead on Naiva Lake, having eaten fish poisoned by pesticides used by the flourishing horticultural ventures on the edge of the lake, which were running down the water table.

  Meanwhile British soldiers, on a training exercise in Kuwisha and who had allegedly been involved in the theft of a car, had been released without explanation; and US marines arrested during a bar room brawl at Kuwisha’s main port had been allowed to rejoin their ship.

  Parliament had begun another long break, but not before awarding members a further salary rise which left them the best paid legislators in the world.

  Pearson finished reading the headlines to Lucy.

  “It’s a mess. But I can’t help caring. I’ve really got Africa in my blood,” said Pearson. Although he was in the jeep, and out of the sun, he recovered his floppy cotton hat from the jaws of Shango, wiped off the dog’s saliva, and put it on.

  “Don’t say it!” he warned Lucy.

  “Say what?”

  “That I look like a condom when I wear this hat.”

  “You said it,” said Lucy, and sniggered.

  “I love Africa, I really do.”

  “Rot. If you have anything African in your blood, it’s bilharzia. And you are not in love – you’re just infatuated.”

  Pearson appeared not to have heard.

  “Thanks for your help in getting me out,” said Pearson. “Puna told me to marry you, by the way.”

  Lucy just grimaced.

  She parked the car next to the Milimani, and the exchange continued as they climbed the stairs to the third floor of the hotel, where Pearson would be staying until there was a spare bed at Lucy’s home in Borrowdale, one of the city’s suburbs favoured by aid workers and diplomats.

  The Milimani sat hunched on a hill, not far from State House, in slow, idiosyncratic decline, a 1960s concrete block, brooding and scarred like a retired boxer remembering old glories, lost in the past.

  Over the three years he had been based in Kuwisha, Pearson had got to know the place, adapting to its ways, and tolerating its eccentricities.

  He had learnt how to jiggle the key to get into his room – always 339 – thanks, he suspected, to the Central Intelligence Organisation. He had mastered the manipulation of the handle required to flush the toilet. He had come to terms with the mysteries of the hot water system. He now hardly noticed the stains on the green-grey carpet; he no longer speculated about their origins.

  True, he had failed to track down the source of a curious smell from one of the cupboards, and some late night noises had been alarming. And he had yet to discover if those wires that trailed by his door were live, or how the television worked.

  Nevertheless, he felt at home in Room 339. It had not always been thus.

  At first Pearson had needed to overcome his distaste at the state of the room’s carpets, and cope with a journey that made him squeamish.

  Bed to bathroom was but a few early-morning barefoot steps, but it was not just the variety of stains on the threadbare carpet that deterred him. It was its top soil ingredients, trodden in by many guests over many years: a mulch of skin flakes and toenail cuttings, gravy from countless take-aways, cigarette ash, crumbs and crisps, a veritable compost in which exotic varieties of athlete’s foot and other fungi surely flourished.

  But the hotel was cheap, and the staff were friendly. Once upmarket, the Milimani now catered for a different clientele. There were still back-packers from Europe, but most of the guests were from Kuwisha, or business travellers from Sudan or Somali, who had come with families, and rented long-stay apartments.

  Of course, the Outspan, up-market, venerable and redolent with nostalgia, was still his favourite hotel in Kuwisha; no doubt about that, but if you didn’t book well in advance, you wouldn’t get a room.

  “Lift!” Lucy said bitterly. “Never bloody works.”

  She was showing signs of the expatriates’ notorious three-year fever, switching from deepest pessimism to boundless optimism, and through to angry cynicism. When these emotions were contained in the same breath, when scepticism and hope followed hard on each other’s heels, like a dog chasing its own tail, it was time to leave. Soon she would start talking back at ministers when she heard them on radio or TV.

  “There is something about Africa you just don’t get in Europe,” said Pearson wistfully.

  “Intestinal worms, jiggers, river blindness, malaria . . .” Lucy responded, and snorted.

  “I love Kuwisha. I love Africa,” said Pearson again.

  “Balls!” said Lucy. “I told you. You’re infatuated. Not in love. You’re just in love with the white man’s lifestyle. Not really, really in love. Love involves pain. You haven’t felt pain.”

  Pearson ploughed on.

  “Such friendly people . . .”

  “Now you sound like a diplomat. You’ll be calling them ‘impressive’ next.”

  Their words were buried beneath the rumble of the lift, as it came creaking and wheezing back to life. And while they moved together, climbing stair after stair, their conversation seemed to pull them apart, as they talked about the same subject but to different audiences long-converted.

  Snatches of their exchanges carried through the air, distinguished by tone and pitch as w
ell as content – sometimes aggressive sometimes defensive. Verbal punch was followed by counter-punch, attack by defence, sally and retreat, each going over familiar ground that led them to different destinations.

  “Wonderful music . . .”

  “Leadership dreadful . . .”

  “They’re dying of Aids . . .”

  “Traumatised by their past . . .”

  “Badly led . . .”

  And so it went on.

  “Aid is wasted . . . donors are duped . . . the collapse of the state . . . blame WorldFeed . . .”

  “You really do sound like an apologist, and a Scandinavian one at that,” said Lucy.

  Below the belt, thought Pearson, but he stayed silent.

  They reached the door to his room.

  Overhead, the day flight from Kuwisha to London cut through the blue sky, still gaining height.

  The sound of children frolicking in the hotel’s outdoor swimming pool carried upwards, and a hawk, wheeling in the blue sky, high above the garden, was eyeing the skinny cats that prowled the grounds.

  “That rhino and debt relief scheme,” said Pearson, “it could just work . . .”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake . . .”

  “Really no need to be like that, Lucy, it’s not such a bad idea.”

  Lucy looked at him coldly.

  “Saving the rhino could be the basis of world peace for all I know. But at the moment, I don’t give a fig. They have given us the wrong bloody room key.”

  Lucy stormed off in search of the right key, and returned in an even worse mood. Her office had rung to change the time of her briefing for a WorldFeed ambassador called Geoffrey Japer, due to arrive that morning.

  “See you at Harrods. Thank you again. I thought of you,” said Pearson.

  “And I thought of you.”

  Pearson was still recovering from Lucy’s unexpectedly warm reply as he waved her good-bye from the balcony of his room.

  The sounds of the city rose towards him. The local church choir, in fine voice as ever, was practising for the Christmas service. Their hymns drifted through the morning air, up to where he stood. Inspired, Pearson took out a notebook from his jacket and jotted down what would become the opening sentence of the novel he was working on: “Africa sings like the rest of the world breathes.”