Changa

by Ian McDonald

  The skateboard kid flipped up his board, caught it with one hand and jumped into the back of the car beside Gaby. The Plymouth smoked away from the shattered pickni. There was blood, glass, and shotgun cartridges all over City Hall Way, and Faraway standing in the middle of them in his bright orange colour-of-the-day jacket. The Lambretta picked up its passenger and wove off through the traffic.

  The man with the bald head and the drooping moustache in the leather coat turned in his seat to Gaby.

  ‘Good morning Ms McAslan. Sheriff Haran’s regards, and he wishes you to come with us discuss your account.’

  ~ * ~

  60

  They took her up the front stairs. At some time a bullet had killed one of the neon waterfalls flanking the door. The bouncer did not stand outside any more, but scrutinized the street from a metal slit.

  The balcony bar smelled of sweat, stale cigarettes and the high-end tang that remains when the characteristic chemicals of expensive perfumes neutralize each other. The main ceiling lights were on. You could see the cigarette burns on the carpet. Down in the white tiled pit, rows of shower heads sprayed steaming water over twenty naked men languidly soaping each other. Gaby wondered, as she always had, where the Cascade Club bought its water.

  Haran was on his throne in his glass-floored office at the top of the stairs marked ‘private’ in two languages. Leathercoat and the Skateboard Kid sat Gaby in a chair facing him and stood by the door. They did not think she might try to escape. They just wanted to look scary. Haran had one of them give her a moist wipe to clean the blood and brain off her face. When her condition no longer nauseated him, he spoke.

  ‘I’m disappointed. Really. I have to hear from others that you are back in my country. Gaby, I would have thought you would have called on your old friend and ally before now.’

  ‘You killed those Black Simbas. You fucking murdered them. They never stood a chance.’

  Haran sat back in his ebony throne and contemplated the woman before him.

  ‘We are at war, Gaby. You yourself have realized this, by choosing sides.’

  Gaby turned in her chair to accuse the Skateboard Kid.

  ‘He wanted to shoot Faraway. He wanted to blow his fucking head apart.’

  ‘He is tribe,’ Leathercoat said. ‘I would not let him do it.’

  ‘But it was exceedingly unmannerly of him,’ Haran said. ‘My own tribal brother. Flesh of my flesh. Would you like me to have him killed, by means of apology?’

  He would, she knew. It would be a cheap price for Gaby’s moral anguish.

  ‘I don’t want any more killing. I’m sick of killing and dying, do you understand? I’m sick of it always being the easy option.’

  ‘There, Simeon,’ Haran said. ‘Now you owe the m’zungu your life.’

  ‘What do you want, Haran?’

  ‘Always to the point, Gaby. Very well. The posses are finished. The East African teleport is in tatters. The network of agents, operatives and enforcers has collapsed. There is no demand for the commodity I supply any more. Therefore, according to the laws of economics, I should relocate my industry to a place where materials and markets are plentiful.’

  ‘You want out.’

  ‘I speak to you without shame or guilt. I want out. I will get out.’

  ‘So you’re leaving Mombi to face the shit.’

  ‘Mombi thinks there is a place for the likes of us in the new Kenya. I have always lacked her patriotic fervour. Perhaps I lack her vision too. But what I know is that there is no place for Haran in this new nation. I will get out. You will get me out.’

  ‘You blow people away in the middle of City Hall Way on the long shot that I can somehow take you out as hand luggage? Sick joke, Haran.’

  He rippled his fingers. Gaby could hear the joints cracking.

  ‘Excuse me if I do not laugh, Gaby. The news agencies have been getting their local people exit visas from the UN. I believe it should still be possible to make a late application directly to East Africa Command.’

  ‘If you know so much about it, then you’ll know it’s impossible without an affidavit from the station chief.’

  ‘Gaby, I have refrained from mentioning this so far, but I feel I have to remind you that you were forced to leave this country with your affairs unsettled. You will recall the considerable investment I put into opening the way for you to break the Unit 12 story; an investment for which I do not think it is unreasonable to expect a return.’

  ‘You’re calling in your marker.’

  ‘You owe me, Gaby. I anticipated there would be a problem with obtaining a new visa, so I will settle for a visa that has already been issued to someone else.’

  ‘Now you are joking.’

  ‘Shall I show you how my sense of humour works? I believe I shall.’ Haran nodded to Leathercoat. He and the Skateboard Kid left the glass-floored room. They were gone some minutes. Haran sat unmoving, looking at Gaby over the tips of his touching fingers. If Gaby had had a cigarette, she would have stubbed it out in his eye socket. When she heard the enforcers’ feet on the stairs, they sounded heavy, burdened.

  They came into the office with Missaluba, the Black Simba bodyguard, between them. They had stripped her down to panties and epoxied her to a large sheet of melamine. They leaned her up against the wall of the office. She struggled, but the adhesive bond was permanent. Her lips had been glued shut.

  ‘Remain in your seat, Gaby,’ Haran said. Leathercoat moved behind her chair to ensure her obedience. Haran opened a drawer and removed an object which he set on the top of the ebony desk. It was a heavy-duty staple gun. Gaby had seen her father use such to staple wire fences. It could drive a half-inch staple clean into a solid pine post.

  ‘Hurt her,’ Haran said.

  The Skateboard Kid took the staple gun and went to the woman glued to the board. He pressed the muzzle of the gun to her left nipple. He pulled the trigger. The woman grunted and tried to thrash on the melamine board, but the glue held her immobile.

  ‘I will get out, Gaby. You will get me the visa.’

  ‘Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. Haran, I can’t give you anyone else’s visa, they’ve got photographs.’

  ‘Hurt her some more.’

  The Skateboard Kid pierced the other nipple and put a staple into the palm of each hand. Gaby wailed as if the staples had been driven into her own meat.

  ‘Why will you not help this woman?’ Haran said. ‘Is it because she is black? Or is it that she is African, and her life is cheaper than a European’s? Or is it because she is a woman that has not had children? You must hate her very much to let her suffer such pain.’

  She matters, Gaby thought, head bowed. But so do the people you are asking me to betray. All I have is a choice of evils, and I am too white, too European, too sterile in my womb, to be able to decide between them.

  She looked at her feet and shook her head. Her hair fell around her face, a covering veil.

  ‘So. Hurt her a lot.’

  Smiling, the Skateboard Kid put a neat row of staples, two centimetres apart, into the woman’s body from forehead to pubic bone. Gaby surged from her chair, roaring and raving. Leathercoat pushed her back. The Skateboard Kid was meticulous in his work. When the Black Simba girl tore the skin off her lips in a cry of agony he stopped what he was doing to staple them together. Gaby threw every name and curse at him but the Skateboard Kid kept stapling, kept smiling. He had a hard-on. When he finished the vertical line, he started on her breasts. He swore when the gun ran out of staples after the first breast and he had to reload. The Black Simba girl had stopped screaming, She hung silently from the melamine board, insane with pain.

  ‘Stop it,’ Gaby whispered. She could not look at the thing on the white melamine board. ‘Save her. Help her.’

  ‘I am afraid you have left it a little late for that,’ Haran said. He had watched the slow crucifixion impotent of interest or arousal. ‘All you can do is determine when it will stop hurting. Her death is yours. I hope you have
the courage to give it to her quickly.’

  Gaby looked at the young woman’s eyes. Look what you have let happen to me, Missaluba’s eyes said. Look at this good body of mine, that I loved to live in, that was so fine and useful; look at how it has been ruined because of your cowardice, so that all it can do is die. All this that has carried me through my twenty years of life is spoiled and wasted, all the things it wanted and hoped for are sold cheap, because of you.

  ‘Kill her!’ Gaby shouted. ‘For the love of God, kill her. I’ll get you your visa. I’ll get you Faraway’s visa. Oh Christ, forgive me.’

  ‘That is good, Gaby, but it is not adequate. I must have my faithful deputies to manage my new operation. There must be someone in your organization who has a group visa. Dependants? A family? Relatives?’

  Gaby buried her face in her hands.

  ‘Tembo,’ she whispered. ‘He’s taking his family out. Oh Jesus God, what am I doing?’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  She wrote the address on the slip of paper Leathercoat offered.

  ‘Don’t hurt them. You hurt them, you bastard, and I will hunt you down and kill you as slowly as you killed her.’

  Haran looked at the slip of paper and gave it to the Skateboard Kid.

  ‘Do not be melodramatic,’ Haran said to Gaby. ‘You will do nothing.’ To his deputy, he said, ‘This is a family man. He will be easily persuaded. You do not need to use force with him or his loved ones. The threat is sufficient.’

  The Skateboard Kid left on his mission. Gaby threw her head back, imploring any God at all to burn up her soul that had been torn out by the roots. She closed her eyes.

  ‘Haran. Your end of the bargain.’

  She heard two shots in rapid succession. They were shattering in the confined office. When she dared to open her eyes she was alone in the glass-floored room.

  They left her there with her horror and fear and guilt. The doors were not locked. Her guilt kept her prisoner. She thought of the life she had ended. She had killed that woman when she let the first staple be driven into her body. She had always thought she was one of the brave and the pure, who hated violence so much they would rather die than kill. How simply her illusions had been revealed. You can kill by inaction as much as action. You can kill by silence as easily as words. You kill by good intentions and the love of friends. You can kill by deluding yourself that the devil keeps sloppy accounts.

  She thought about the Skateboard Kid coming to the crowded house two streets from terminum. She saw Mrs Tembo and Sarah and Etambele and After-the-Rains. She saw the Skateboard Kid standing among them and promising hideous things, and the children shrieking in fear.

  She vomited on the glass floor. She willed herself to die, if it would do any good. But it would not. Dying never did any good. Nothing came from violence but more violence. Judgement was given on Gaby McAslan: traitor and murderer.

  They found her lying on her back on the glass floor next to the dried vomit, staring at the ceiling. Leathercoat and the Skateboard Kid pulled her to her feet. She went meekly with them down to the main bar and through the back ways to the terrace cafe around the courtyard garden. There were no customers today. The waiters in white jackets with silver trays were all gone. The slow ceiling fans were still, the fountains in the garden silent. Haran was sitting at a large, glass-topped bamboo table on which stood an Ethiopic scripture case; the very fine one that had cost Gaby half a month’s wages, with half a month’s wages stuffed inside it, five years ago. Mombi sat opposite him, flanked by possegirls in lace and black leather. In the between years, Mombi had grown from enormous to monstrous. She was a moon now, a satellite swathed in black silk. She nodded to Gaby as the deputies seated Gaby at the table. Leathercoat stood at her shoulder, the Skateboard Kid took a seat beside Haran.

  ‘You will be pleased to know that the piece of data was extracted and is currently undergoing image processing,’ Haran said.

  ‘So whose face did you have to stitch up the middle?’

  ‘As I told you, family men possess wisdom. You should have known that I would not hurt a child.’

  Then what had Missaluba the Black Simba been? You are old when the wasteland warriors start looking young.

  ‘I have what I require.’ Haran smiled his reptile smile. ‘Your debt to me is discharged. Our relationship is ended. You are free to go.’ The Skateboard Kid held the scripture case out to Gaby.

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘You know what he’s planning to do,’ she said to Mombi. The big woman looked sideways at Gaby, but did not speak.

  ‘Gaby. Be wise. Be thankful. Be free. Please leave,’ Haran said. Still the Skateboard Kid held out the scripture case.

  ‘You know what this piece of data is that he wanted from me?’

  ‘Gaby; while you were my client, you enjoyed my protection. Now you are not, and that obligation is ended. Jackson, please escort Ms McAslan from the premises.’

  Leathercoat swung back the tail of his leather coat to free his gun. Gaby was quicker. She hit him in the balls with the side of her fist and as he doubled up, she pulled out his gun. She found the safety, cocked the hammer, pointed it, two-handed, at Haran’s head. The Skateboard Kid dropped the scripture case and drew his weapon. It was big. He was cool, and smiling. He could hold it on a white woman one-handed, without trembling. But he was that second too slow and that made it a stand-off and not a clean blow-away.

  ‘Haran, tell him to put it down. Tell him to put it flat on the table. I can kill you. I will kill you.’

  ‘I am pleased to say that you have surprised me, Gaby. I am impressed. But what does this prove? Maybe I will die. You certainly will. More deaths, Gaby. Needless deaths.’

  Gaby licked her lips. Her tongue was so dry it clung to her lower lip.

  ‘You know he’s going to run out on you,’ she said to Mombi. ‘That piece of information he wanted from me; it’s an exit visa. He made me betray a friend and his family to get it. He’s going out of this place tomorrow, Mombi, on the last plane. He’s leaving you, to sink or swim. He doesn’t give a fuck, Mombi. Everything you’ve worked together to achieve, all the trust you’ve built up, it doesn’t matter to him. His own hide does. He’s getting out and you can go to hell.’

  ‘Gaby, you are boring me,’ Haran said. Leathercoat climbed to his feet, face contorted in testicular agony. Haran waved him away from Gaby, away from the Skateboard Kid’s line of fire. ‘She is lying, of course.’

  ‘Why should I lie, Mombi? He let me go, why should I stay and put myself in front of his bullets for a lie? He’s running out on you, Mombi. You can’t trust him.’

  The Skateboard Kid held the gun as steady and sure as death and justice. Haran looked at the beautiful Ethiopic scripture case on the glass table.

  ‘Kill her,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Mombi’s leather girls were hideously fast. One stood off the Skateboard Kid, the other covered Leathercoat. Gaby’s arms ached but she held the bead on the bridge of Haran’s nose. ‘I will not allow it. Give her back the visa of her friend,’ Mombi said.

  ‘You believe this white bitch over me?’ Haran said.

  ‘Yes,’ Mombi said. ‘Get her her paper or I will kill your men and the m’zungu will shoot you where you sit.’

  Haran smiled. It was like the skin peeling back from a skull.

  ‘Fetch the visa,’ he said to Leathercoat. To Mombi he said, ‘Now you show yourself for the fool you have always been. There is nothing here for us, can you understand that?’

  ‘The fool is the one who thinks he can run from the Chaga forever,’ Mombi said. ‘It will catch you in the end. That is why you will stay with me, Haran. You will come with me into the Chaga. There is a new network growing in there; its mesh is fullerene carbon, not optical fibre, but it can still feed fisherman with the skill to cast it and trawl its rich catch. You will work with me, Haran. We will reclaim everything that has been taken from us. We will succeed beyond all our dreams of greatness.
It is the future in there. To stay out here is to be pushed into the past. You will not make it out here, Haran. There is nothing left out here but more and more of this. You should thank me, that I still offer you this after you try to betray me.’

  Leathercoat cautiously placed two sheets of paper on the glass table top.

  ‘Put them in the box,’ Gaby said. ‘Give the box to me.’

  ‘Go now,’ Mombi said. ‘Get your friend out of the country, since he has decided he must go. Haran will not harm you. You are under my protection now.’

  Gaby lifted the Ethiopic scripture case one-handed and cautiously backed along the balcony. The gun was fluttering now. The pain in her right arm was incredible.

  ‘Go!’ Mombi ordered.