‘You are very welcome again. You’re here for business or pleasure?’
‘For a conference.’
‘Everyone is welcome. Have a good trip.’
The passport officer swung his stamp hard down onto the virgin page. The sharp noise ricocheted off the bare walls and concrete floor, triggering a visual overtone, a long ago memory: an unwelcome image of himself standing with his parents in the hall of a railway station in this same country, collecting a ticket for a journey to school. For a moment he stood looking at his passport, held out to him.
He came to as the official lost patience and thrust his passport at him, waving forward the next person in the queue. As he left the room, Michael heard other stampings of passports and papers, and found it pleasing that the terror the country had just emerged from had left some things unchanged – some order remained. In fact, he considered it instructive: it stiffened his resolve. He would hold his remembrances in check whatever the provocation; three days was not long.
Outside the terminal he stood looking for transport. He had declined the offer of a car from his hosts; a small act of philanthropy on his part to save them the trouble and expense.
‘Taxi, sah?’
The beaming driver squatted down and encircled Michael’s padded suitcase with both arms in a reverential manner, as if lifting it by the handle was insulting to such a precious object. They passed a blue Zephyr 6, the car of his childhood dreams. He noticed, with a frisson of excitement, the dead insects in the radiator grille – a colourful massacre – although it looked as if they had deliberately committed suicide: the vehicle could not have sped anywhere in a long time. The sign across the top of the cracked windscreen read like a desperate plea: ‘Jesus Saves’. There was a substantial rope wrapped around the front of the car, holding down the bonnet, and along its doors was scoured evidence of more than one scrape. Rivet holes marked the original run of the chrome side-stripes. It leant back on its rear springs like an exhausted dog. Michael almost collided with the taxi driver as he suddenly stopped at the rear end of the Zephyr, put the suitcase down and went to open the boot.
‘Er, no, I’ll . . .’
It was too late, the taxi driver laid Michael’s suitcase gently in the dusty boot, closed the boot lid on the second attempt by slamming it down with considerable force, and then opened the rear door with opposite, but no less vigorous, exertion.
‘Make yourself comfortable, sah.’
Michael sat on the springy seat, positioned his briefcase flat on his lap and turned to give the taxi driver instructions, but he found the driver had turned his attention to the airport lobby again.
‘Taxi, madam?’
He tried to get out, to tell the driver he had thought the car was a private taxi rather than a bus, but reached in vain for the door handle; it had broken off. Michael sensed an encirclement of his chest again – a gentle squeeze for now, but hinting at a latent strength of hideous proportions.
Ten minutes later the taxi was full. Next to the driver (who was still grinning as if they were about to have the best fun imaginable) sat a Ugandan man in a black suit, Daz-white shirt and sheeny blue tie, making Michael feel that he had noteworthy competition in the tailoring department. A large nun sat next to Michael, and beyond her ballast-like mass a fortuitously thin Indian couple struggled to make themselves thinner still. The seat lost its bounce.
Their driver’s optimism was catching, for the passengers, except Michael, nodded affably at each other. Michael, still wondering if he could get out, swore to himself at the minor loss of control and the forced bonhomie of the cab.
‘Now we’ll go,’ the driver said as his head disappeared under the steering wheel. He fiddled with some wires and the starter motor cranked once, a metallic cough, followed by an ominous silence. He tried four times. ‘Ah, sorry, we’ll have to push.’
‘This is bloody ridiculous,’ Michael said loudly. ‘Is there no other way of getting into town?’
The driver and passengers all pivoted to look at him. The nun clasped a hand to her bosom, while the well-dressed man in the front seat looked hurt and said, ‘I’m so sorry, good sir,’ as if willing to take responsibility for the decrepitude of the car.
The driver said, ‘Sah, we will go soon. You’ll be happy again.’
The nun smiled soothingly at him. Michael saw that he, the visiting white man, had become the problem, not the car. He felt like a child with a temper tantrum.
Sinking back, he muttered with poor grace, ‘I’m all right. Just tired.’
‘Ah, OK,’ the driver said, and then shouted out of the window to a group of men – who were slapping hands in fond greetings – to come and help.
Michael told himself off. Why had he let his feelings explode like that? Everyone else around him was almost deliriously cheerful and he had let a small adventure unnerve him. He put it down to sitting with a corpse on the plane, and the dissociation, effected over many tension-filled hours, between his reliable and regulated London environment and this chaotic attempt to leave the airport. He had wanted his return to Africa to be on his own terms, under his own command. Go in, do the job, get out.
The men pushed with considerable gusto and soon the taxi was being propelled forward at a tidy rate. Just as Michael began to think they were to be pushed all the way to town the driver released the clutch, and the engine engaged with a jerk that threw them all forward. The motor fired and they were vectored against the back of their seats again. Michael turned to see the pushers, choking but happy, in a thick pall of exhaust fumes.
The clouds had cleared and the sun scorched his neck. Several turns of the window winder almost fully lowered the glass before it jammed. He leant out until his face caught the slipstream. He had come back to Africa but now Africa came back to him with an overpowering physicality: the heated air; the little black flying insects stinging his cheek in tiny impacts; the prismatic flashes of colour, poinsettia as red as wounds, purple-bracted bougainvillea, silky-white frangipani; the heat-shimmered sounds, the loose rattle of a worn, poorly tuned engine, the sticky sound of rubber on hot tar. Fragrances swished past, dearly familiar, like old friends met again: honeysuckle, giant granadilla, wild calabash. Starting to feel more at ease, Michael took a deep breath and, somewhere in his chest, the tropical-house air of warm foliage perspiring in the sun charmed away the last lingering of sour London vapours.
The road tunnelled through a forest towards the capital. Michael could not determine where the city began, for such was the feverish power of nature in this fecund belly of the earth (as far from each frozen pole in distance and condition as it is possible to be) that it seemed humanity was unable to fuse the city into a cohesive uniformity of solid slab and structure. Bushes and trees had thrust themselves between the buildings, overhung the roads and seeded themselves in every crack. They passed a run-down suburb of wide bungalows, vestiges of the colonial era, now crushed under heavy weights of creeper and climber, their lawns volcanoed by termite mounds. He saw Marabou storks, urban vultures, in the few open spaces; ugly scavengers finding their niche in the messy tracts of the city.
In a shanty district the car slowed. People were waving them down. What now? More passengers to load? His left leg was numb under the weight of Catholicism beside him. As they came to a halt he saw, in the crowd, two men supporting a young woman. She held her leg in flexion, a bloodied tourniquet made out of someone’s white shirt around her thigh. The car was quickly surrounded by people banging on the metal. It felt threatening and confusing: should he get out and offer to help, or was this some sort of hold-up? Faces filled the window, pressing inwards. He became acutely aware of a closing in of space and tried to wind up the window. The handle came off in his hand.
He turned to the nun. ‘What is it?’
‘Oh! Holy Mother! A lady’s been shot.’
‘Shot? Who by?’
‘By a soldier.’
‘Why?’
The nun looked at him pityingly. ‘They
can shoot.’
‘But why?’
‘They’re saying he was drunk. God have mercy.’ The nun gripped the seat in front and pulled herself forward. She shouted at the driver and then panted at Michael, ‘I’ll get out. I’ll find a lift later.’
She rolled further onto him. He put his hand out of the window and released the handle. Their combined pressure opened the door, and he was swept outwards like a fish at the crest of a burst dam.
The injured woman’s rescuers placed her on the back seat, amidst fierce discussion and shouted instructions from the onlookers. She grimaced, but did not cry out. Several hands shoved Michael back in next to her and then the car was away, the passengers rolling sickeningly from side to side as the driver negotiated the potholed road at a velocity reminiscent, thought Michael, of the glory days of the East African Safari Rally.
He found himself making a rapid assessment. He was alarmed by the amount of blood loss. The tourniquet was soaked.
‘It’s her femoral artery,’ he said (pointlessly, he immediately realised) to the Indian couple, who sat frozen, mouths in a pouting expression of fixed surprise. ‘I need to apply more pressure.’
Michael pulled a silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket, folded it into a pad and pressed it hard against the top of the tourniquet where the femoral artery would be finding its way down and around her inner thigh. He touched the top of her foot with the fingers of his other hand, feeling for the dorsalis pedis pulse. It was absent. Her foot was cool. Either the artery had been shot to bits or he had succeeded in occluding it.
Michael looked at the woman. ‘I’m sorry. My pressing may be hurting you.’
Her head was back. She breathed through her mouth (a soft panting), her lips were retracted, revealing pale gums, and her eyes were wide open staring at the roof as if in a trance.
‘This is the second time today my medical skills have been called upon,’ he said in a reassuring tone, ‘although the first time . . .’ he added, under his breath. No one asked him to continue.
The car sped through the streets, its old suspension clonking and its bearings shrieking, its driver making liberal use of the horn – the only part of the vehicle in fine health. Michael kept his grip on the woman’s leg, hoping they would not crash. At least he was working again, he told himself grimly. He would make sure that the woman survived. His grip tightened further as he imagined it was Naomi bleeding to death beside him. He felt now how desperate he would be to save her, but his unexpectedly intense feeling could do nothing to change their unsatisfactory parting. It came to him that she would always perceive something about him as inscrutable; it would inevitably abort their relationship, if it had not done so already, and there was nothing he could do about it.
At the hospital the driver ran in and came out almost immediately with two orderlies and a trolley. Michael released his hand long enough to scoop the injured woman onto the trolley.
‘Damn, it’s still coming!’ he exclaimed, as a fresh rivulet of blood found its way out of the top of the blood-soaked wrapping. ‘You must press here; exactly here,’ he instructed.
The orderly tried to take over but the woman twisted her head forcibly away from him and pushed against his hands. The orderly shouted at her. She closed her eyes and released his hands but spoke in a rush of emotion, tears welling.
‘What’s she saying?’ Michael asked.
‘She says she’s already died. She knows her leg is finished.’
‘Maybe – but her life is saved. Tell her she’s lucky. Not many people would have known precisely where to press to stop the bleeding.’
The woman spoke again in short, weak gasps.
‘She says her life is gone,’ the orderly said, as Michael took the man’s hand and moved it an inch higher up her leg.
As the orderlies tried to move the trolley the woman took hold of the hem of Michael’s jacket, and looked at him for the first time. Her voice came in high-pitched rapid bursts. The orderly translated as he tried to prise open the woman’s grip.
‘She thanks you anyway. Her life is gone because without her leg she’ll not be given in marriage, so she’ll never have children. She’ll be barren.’
The woman released Michael, collapsing into a flaccid state. The trolley party disappeared through the hospital doors, and was left holding his bloody handkerchief. He let it fall to the ground, dropped back into his seat in the taxi and stared at the crescents of dried blood under his fingernails; he noticed his fingers were trembling.
‘Welcome to my country,’ he muttered.
The Indian woman turned to him and made a silent offering, with both hands, of a British Airways face wipe. She nodded at him when he thanked her, looking relieved to be of some help and then said, ‘I don’t know why we’ve come back. We were expelled in 1972. My husband wants to see what has become of his shop. Big mistake, I told him, big mistake.’ She dabbed at the inner side of her eye with her finger. Her husband sat stone-faced.
They drove on, into the unknown, the driver and his front seat passenger taking it in turns to shake their heads, and competing with other to make the loudest tsch-tsch sounds.
When they reached the heart of the city Michael saw that its citizens colluded with the ways of nature, swarming about like ants so that he feared the taxi would be engulfed. The driver stopped to let his other passengers out. Michael stayed in the vehicle and the driver leant on his horn, revved the engine and set off at a pace, even though the road teemed with pedestrians. The crowd gave way as if it were a shoal of fish aware of a predator passing through its midst, re-forming as soon as they had passed.
They climbed a hill, failing to avoid the erosion gullies in the murram road. Michael bounced on the now-restored convexity of the seat. When they had climbed enough to rise above the mêlée of the city the road levelled off, and a thin coating of tar smoothed their way past white walls, manicured hedges of pink hibiscus and cropped grass verges. Here at last was a place with references to a predictable, more familiar world.
Michael was left, exhausted – more than that, he told himself: battered – at the high wrought-iron gates of a large bungalow, which nestled under a green roof with deep eaves. Birds flew in and out of a sprinkler on the lawn, its soft hiss welcoming and benign, its chill refreshing the air. He could see a wicker chair with thick cushions on the shaded veranda, a book resting on an arm. Thwarted by the padlocks on the gate he stood waiting, both hands gripping the fretwork, unsure whether to shout for attention. Two Alsatian dogs lay on the grass. One picked itself up in a half-hearted fashion, barked once – more through duty than conviction – then flopped down again and stretched itself out with a wide toothy yawn, tongue lolling. Michael was envious. Passing the time he checked his pockets to ensure that his passport and wallet were still there, and found himself holding the feather he had picked off the dead businessman’s lap. He released it but then gripped it again, pulled it out and inspected it. The barbs had broken. He twizzled it in his fingers. A strong urge came over him to arrow it into the hedge but, setting his jaw, he stuffed it back into his pocket.
A man in a green overall appeared from along the side of the house.
‘Good afternoon, bwana. I’m Winston.’
His winning smile did not fade as he opened the gates and took Michael’s suitcase. When he set out for the house Michael hesitated, tempted to make sure that the padlocks were fully clicked home.
Before they reached the front door it flew open, and a wiry man burst out.
‘My dear fellow! Dr Lacey, I presume! Welcome. I’m James McCree. Glad you’ve got here safely.’
His sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms and his handshake was so energetic that Michael braced his shoulder to protect it from dislocation. McCree had a narrow face which swept back from a sharp nose. His skin appeared seared, as if he had spent years in a merciless desert wind; the deep lines that radiated back from his eyes could have buried grains of sand. Michael wondered what travels and postings had
scoured such marks.
‘None the worse for wear, I hope?’
With weary effort Michael fought a desire to sink to his knees, but said, ‘One or two incidents, but I’m here.’ He rallied himself. ‘It’s most kind of you to have me to stay. I dare say you’ve been terribly overworked with the organisation of an affair like this – in a place like this.’
James was signalling to Winston to leave Michael’s suitcase on the veranda, and then moved to pick it up. He seemed the kind of man who was never still, although perpetually and purposively active rather than fidgety. ‘Och, we wouldn’t live here if we wanted the quiet life. It’s a grand opera in Africa and anyone can be big on our stage – although,’ his tone darkened, ‘we have to accept that, as in opera, high drama is the norm.’
‘I’ve had a little drama already,’ Michael said.
He turned out his wrists to show the blood on the sleeves of his shirt. One of his cufflinks was stained.
James froze for just long enough to take that in. ‘My dear fellow, come straight in. What happened? On second thoughts, have a clean up before I debrief you.’
He led Michael across a tastefully furnished hallway: a Persian rug on the teak floor, a rosewood sideboard, a shower of pink flowers in a blue porcelain vase, silver photo frames with Celtic-patterned edgings, a dark oil of some plethoric tartaned landowner-ancestor, and a mounted deer head of a curious bonsai dimension to fit the modest size of the room. It was a hallway that a retired well-to-do couple – Edinburgh solicitors, say – might aspire to in their Highland cottage. There were no African curios. The only reminder of location was the window to the side: heavy burglar bars were welded into its metal frame.
James took him through to his room. ‘You’re not hurt, are you?’
Michael wanted to spill his story straight away, and told James about the death on the aircraft. James returned his smile when he heard how the man believed himself to be cursed, but then said, ‘What nonsense, but don’t tell Audrey, my wife. She finds all that very credible.’
Michael told James about the injured woman. When he described her ingratitude James nodded and said, ‘It’s true – about her marriage prospects, and if she’s poor it’ll be disastrous for her economic prospects.’
The Ghosts of Eden Page 19