‘But tonight,’ said Calvin, leaning closer, ‘you’ve got to help me.
That pinhead is driving me mwenye wazimu. I want special coffee.
Got it? I want extra special coffee.’
‘It is not so easy—just like that—to make special coffee.’
‘You have powerful witchcraft,’ he said in her ear. That must have been when he first kissed her—without, Eleanor imagined bitterly, that exasperating passivity with which he still kissed Eleanor herself.
He did admit to lingering in the kitchen a long time.
‘Sorry,’ he’d explained to Lisa, the door swinging jauntily behind him. ‘Trouble with the staff. Bloody difficult to get your hands on a good servant.’
Panga brought coffee; Lisa might not have been in Kenya long, but she would already have mastered the art of looking straight through black help. The Frenchwoman sipped the better part of the cup without incident, until it looked as if
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Calvin was stuck with another two hours of elephant stories over brandy while she waited for him to make a pass. It was going to take a fair bit of yawning and knee-slapping to encourage her departure—‘though I could always resort to my secret weapon,’ said Calvin.
‘Telling her you’re celibate and “don’t do that any more” and she’s to imagine you like someone who’s had a terrible accident?’
‘ Demography. I find the least census compelling, but mortality/fertility ratios turn most women to stone.’
He had been readying a good diatribe on Philippine population policy when Lisa yelped. He had to turn away, because he was smiling.
Calvin tipped her cup. Nice Lisa took it black, providing the fat white slug the proper venue to be appreciated.
‘So what happened to Panga? What did you mean about a morgue?’
‘Oh, we had an idyllic life for a couple of years. She stopped cleaning altogether, and the house looked exactly the same. Disappeared regularly to Angola or Rwanda for a month or two. It’s always healthy when the woman has a career of her own, isn’t it?
‘Meanwhile I soldiered for USAID, though with a moderation I now find foreign. These days, I don’t think about anything but population. Back then I had hobbies, of all things.’
‘Population is all you think about now? All day long?’
‘Mm,’ he hummed. ‘I will entertain the prospect of a cup of tea, and usually discard it. Decide whether a shirt is clean enough to wear a second day. That’s about the extent of my diversions, yes.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
He laughed. ‘I haven’t begun to stretch your imagination yet, my sweet. You have a way to go.’
Eleanor was getting impatient with his coy warnings. ‘Your secrecy is pathetic, Calvin. It just makes me feel sorry for you.’
‘Does it?’ His eyes glittered. ‘The side lined has-been with his delusions of grandeur. You go right ahead and feel sorry for me, then.’
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Eleanor seemed incapable of annoying or insulting him in the least. ‘Panga,’ she commanded.
‘She’d return from the bush, caked. Slept for fifteen hours. She didn’t explain much. A few stories, but she left out the worst. We were both involved in population control. In hindsight, Panga’s methods were the far more effective.
‘I always expected that one day she’d never come back. No one would ever tell me what happened. Because the real story is inappropriate. Perhaps if Panga had a proper death—under an acacia with her eyes pecked out, a hole in her head—she wouldn’t still loiter about this house.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Come, come,’ he tut-tutted. ‘Surely you’ve heard that hackle-raising scrape. Her knives are never sharp enough. At times it’s impossible to get any work done.’
It was the same tone he used—come to think of it—with everything he said. Martini-dry, he was either having you on or dead serious; either droll or a lunatic. To cover herself, Eleanor had to strike a returning tone that could pass for both keeping the joke going and humouring him.
‘It is nerve-racking,’ she concurred. ‘But how did Panga die?’
‘Some other time,’ he yawned. ‘My past is of no concern now, least of all to me. Did you see that Harrison book? By 2100, humans will infest four million extra square miles of virgin forest, savannah and everglades. An aggregate area larger than the United States, and twice as much land as all of the earth’s national parks and nature reserves combined…’
Eleanor suddenly began to feel rather sleepy herself.
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7
Dog Days of Millennial Dread
She opened the first letter from Peter with foreboding, but what could be so fearsome from the poor? Tea and beans, and now this harmless, engaging note:
Dear Merritt,
Hallo to you! here is hoping everything is well to you.
we have good weather in Nairobi in this season, God willing. much greetings from Mum and members of the family.
Merritt, here is hoping that when you come again to our plot you will say hallo to your old friends. mum says you should be coming to be eating with our family with all God’s power.
Our plot is still slum condition, as you did see. mum is facing against the city commision coz of that plot (houses) that they are supposed to pay every month. others have build permanent house the black ones but we still hope one day we shall also with the Lord on our side.
Merritt, here is praying that this does find you in good health. I am eagerly wait that we see you soon.
Yours sincere,
PETER NDUMBA
She did not quite understand about the City Commission, skimming only for what she neither found nor formed in her mind precisely. She wondered if he had confused her Christian and surnames.
The ‘Merritts’ gave the letter a sporty, intimate tone. She penned him a warm reply, on a postcard of the Nairobi Hilton, crass but destined to please. When she told
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Calvin she had had a very nice letter from Peter, he said, ‘Oh, I’m sure you did’, with a cynical edge that made Eleanor feel she had something to prove.
Second letter: just lovely. More about Mum and weather and school and a lot of Jesus. Eleanor felt triumphant, she wasn’t sure why.
The third letter, however, came quickly on the first, a bit too. The earlier trepidation visited once more, and Eleanor did not respond to the familiar painstakingly neat print with enthusiasm.
Dear Merritt,
Here is hoping all is going on well for you. we have wait and you are not come to visit your friends every day I look down on the road where I did lead you. are you forget that day when I show you where Mathare Family planning is and did make all the children move for your automobile? Lord be praised I come by you that day coz these children can problems.
Merritt, I will ask you to bring or send me some few things to me first shoe number ‘9’, long trouser 44cm waist 32 and shirt or even jacket long 27cm Mum also had requested you if you can please send her shoe number ‘8’
for Easter celebration. Wish you a nice time in your work in the name of Christ our lord.
Yours sincere,
PETER NDUMBA
This time she put off sending a card. She didn’t mention she’d heard from Peter to Calvin.
The fourth letter was only two days later. It was all about basketball shoes. She didn’t read it carefully; her eyes wilfully blurred the little block letters—something about sport and a particular brand and more about housing. She put it to the side of her desk and massaged her temples. Through the week she didn’t reply. The flimsy brown envelope nagged until she responded just to get it out of her sight, though there was bound to be another flimsy brown envelope to replace it by return post.
Eleanor hadn’t meant to tell Calvin, but while trustworthy 92
with other people’s secrets she couldn’t keep the slightest of her own. Walking down Kenyatta Avenue, she showed him the petitions, by which time there were three more. H
e shuffled through them quickly, as if he already knew what they said.
‘Why in God-with-all-his-power’s name did you give him your address? What did you expect?’
‘It seemed the least I could do at the time.’
‘The least you can do is nothing, not become a private mail-order business. You’re not telling me this surprises you?’
She sighed. ‘No. But it’s still disappointing.’
They ambled on to Uhuru Highway, passing the corner where some hundred men perched on buckets and old tyres huddled around jikos turning maize on grates. Their gaze was milky and many were not attending the cobs with care; the air stung with burning corn. In over-large trousers tied up with string, some laceless brogues but never socks, these same men roasted and conferred with one another in this waste-ground every day. Heading for grilled squid at the Toona Tree, strolling before them in her ironed white blouse, polished heels and neatly combed brown hair, Eleanor felt superimposed, like a cutout from a detergent advertisement pasted on to a news photo. Sometimes it was hard to feel real in this town.
‘You didn’t imagine that urchin was writing to you because he liked you?’
‘No,’ she squirmed. ‘But I wish someone on this continent would do something once—because they liked me.’
‘Impossible. You’re white. You will never stop being white. White equals rich. Rich equals gimme. Go back to DC if you want someone to like you.’
‘I sometimes think the nicest thing about a just world is it wouldn’t mangle relationships like this. I know his asking for presents is inevitable, but his growing shopping list is depressing.’
‘What are you going to do? Tell him to bugger off or just wait for the entreaties to dwindle? You’ll find his persistence impressive.
Just don’t come across with so much as a sweetie or you’ve a pen pal for life. From the sound of the last one, he’s working up to a Mercedes.’
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Eleanor stared off interestedly at Chester House.
‘Eleanor?’ He turned her chin back to face him. ‘You didn’t.’
She scuffed at condoms and corn cobs, admitting with a groan, ‘I sent the shoes.’
It had been when buying Peter’s basketball shoes that Eleanor reached for her VISA card and found it missing from her wallet.
After combing her office and New Jersey in vain, she’d reported it lost. She thought the absence odd, for she was neurotically responsible about finances. Credit cards made her feel both flattered and unworthy, being trusted like that, and she always paid the bill in full.
When the bill arrived the next month—along with one more letter from Peter, including measurements for a suit—she opened it with a cursory glance, unable to recall any charges on her account.
The bill was for $1,208.31.
As she unfolded an impressive list of Nairobi restaurants and boutiques, a little memory that at first had tickled now began to itch.
About six weeks earlier Eleanor had left for lunch without her wallet.
She’d returned and walked in on her messenger, who had no call to be in Eleanor’s inner office having already picked up the mail.
Florence peered in the empty Outgoing basket, smiled and hurried away. There was a funny gnarling in the air Eleanor chose to ignore.
Later at lunch, when she thought she had nearly 2,000 shillings she found only 500.
Eleanor had gone out of her way to hire Florence in the first place, for most Kenyan messengers were men, though the job entailed only the nominal responsibilities of running post, fetching sandwiches and scanning local papers.
Naturally Florence was not merely a messenger, for no one survived as a faceless lackey in Eleanor’s orbit for long. They had long talks. Florence’s daughter was HIV-positive and Eleanor was keen to discourage her from spending her meagre resources on witchdoctors. Her employer had insisted that the first-name basis work in both directions, not the form, to dispel any impression of being a superior. More than once Eleanor had ‘lent’ the woman several hundred shillings to finance her
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latest misfortune. And now Eleanor was sponsoring a 220-dollar spree at Wild Orchid and a binge at the Tamarind…
Eleanor was seething. At ten, Florence delivered a cup of coffee, chatting about how Jennifer was gaining some weight. Eleanor was cryptic. Florence didn’t notice, flashing the bright flowers of a new silk shift.
‘What a pretty dress,’ Eleanor hissed in English.
‘ Asante sana!’ Florence chirped. It was a tribute from her eldest son, for a few young people still gave their mothers respect…
Eleanor couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t. Her eyes hurt. Her breath whinnied through her nose. ‘ Kwa heri.’ She dismissed the woman abruptly, her clipped quality wasted on Florence, who would only fully comprehend, ‘You stinking thief’ or still better, ‘You’re fired.’
Florence left early to take her daughter to a clinic, leaving Eleanor to collect a package at the post office herself. A full afternoon’s work, customs. Eleanor presented her yellow slip to one desk, where the man painstakingly took down its number in a ledger, stamped it, sent her to a second desk to pay a fee, where they sent her to a third…At the seventh station she chafed, ‘And what is this fee for?’
The gentleman responded with a smile. ‘To pay my salary.’
By the time she got her hands on the parcel, however, it had been opened and hastily taped together again. She scanned down an en-closed note. Most of the treats Jane mentioned that Eleanor must miss in Africa—American peanut butter, pesto, not to mention Jane’s belated birthday cheque—had mysteriously disappeared. Consequently Eleanor spent two hours of her time and hundreds of shillings in duty on one can of lychees, a tube of olive paste and a jar of satay sauce.
After work as she marched to her car, Eleanor’s regular parking boy ran in the opposite direction. The door had been jimmied. Of the five in the glove compartment, three cassettes were missing: Phil Collins, Neil Young and Peter, Paul and Mary. One of those days.
‘Well,’ Calvin drawled as she slammed her portable computer on his dining-room table, ‘how much did she rack up before you reported the card missing?’
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‘Maybe 500.’ The software took ages to load.
‘You were lucky, then. You must have a credit limit of at least 3,000. The rest VISA swallows. I’ll give you the five if you’re short.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ she said icily, beginning to tap an irate disclaimer that she had ever been to Wild Orchid in her life. ‘I pay for my own guillibility, thank you.’
‘Why so angry?’ he purred, and she could not work out why the incident pleased him so. ‘Is it the money?’
Eleanor kept typing, but made so many mistakes that she finally slammed the computer shut. ‘I’ve been nice to her! Treated her like a human being! Professional counselling! A Christmas bonus and a box of home-made shortbread! An endless string of loans, not that I’ll ever see two bob of that again. Still—OK, I bargained for that, fine! But now at the first opportunity—’
‘She’s supposed to be grateful? That you treat her like a human being?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that and you know it. But, yes, grateful, damn it! Very grateful!’ Eleanor raged about the room, unable to sit down.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What I’d like to do is turn her over to the police. I want her arrested.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Oh, don’t say it! I know the police are a joke, I know that with 200 bob she’d be out again, and besides which I don’t have any evidence. At least, if I have anything to say about it she’ll lose her job.’
‘Eleanor!’ he exclaimed. ‘With her ailing daughter?’
‘Damn straight with her ailing daughter, I don’t care. And don’t look at me like that. Panga would take off her hand, if not her head.’
He tsked. ‘So vindictive. It’s not like you.’
‘What’s like me is to treat peo
ple decently and expect to be treated decently in return.’
‘It’s not in the least like you to expect decency in return. What’s like you is to go out and charge up 1,200 dollars to buy your messenger dresses and dinners yourself.’
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‘Exactly. That would be different. I don’t mind generosity, but I revile stealing.’
‘How much does she make a month?’
‘About 4,000 shillings,’ said Eleanor grumpily. ‘but that’s more than the going rate by far, and you can’t fight the local economy, we can’t pay her like the United States—’
‘Say, 160 bucks, then. What do you make?’
‘3,000.’
‘Dollars?’
‘But that’s before taxes—’
Calvin laughed.
‘Stop it!’
‘Isn’t your salary, in international terms, a kind of theft? Who deserves 36,000 dollars a year? How can you blame her?’
Eleanor stamped her foot. ‘I can blame her and I will! I give a huge proportion of my income away. Isn’t that enough without involun-tary contributions? It’s one thing to say that distribution of wealth is unjust, but it’s another to condone pickpocketing and fraud!’
Calvin’s mouth kept twitching with a suppressed smile. Malthus, in collusion, displayed a rare and exasperating equanimity, neatly tapping a raw egg, first a little hole in one end, then one at the other, finally sucking it dextrously from the top.
‘What is wrong with you?’ she exploded. ‘I thought you of all people would say, yes, Eleanor, it’s pretty depressing when people you trust betray you at the drop of a hat; yes, Eleanor, you don’t owe Africa everything; and yes, giving money away is a very different experience from being ripped off.’
He pulled her to the sofa with both hands. ‘Young lady,’ he began,
‘what do you think we talk about all day? Do you think it’s all on paper? Yes, they steal from you at their first and every chance, and they will keep stealing. Moreover, they deserve everything they manage to swindle and a great deal that they don’t, and the only thing that will deter them is not stern moral instruction that you don’t touch what isn’t yours but a high electric fence and a very large dog. As the years go by, the fences will make the Great Wall of China look like a tennis net and the dogs will be crossed with Tyrannosaurus rex, but some of the rabble will still claw their way over and