Idi Amin sat at the head of the table, smiling, expansive, heavy, seeming to be performing some African touring company version of Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
In addition to Sir Denis, at Amin’s right hand, there were nearly a dozen other guests, including Patricia Kamin diagonally across the way, Baron Chase toward the other end of the table, and at Amin’s left the wife Sir Denis had not exactly met the last time he’d been in Uganda. Nor did he exactly meet her this time; though she smiled politely at him when they all went in to dinner, Amin never did introduce her.
The others present included a very nervous middle-aged American white couple, owners of a small air-charter service based at Entebbe and apparently dependent now for their livelihood not on the long-gone tourists but on the scraps from the government table. There was also another of Amin’s white advisers, an Englishman named Bob Astles with a brushy moustache and a hearty beefeater manner; he was apparently a bit closer to the Amin ear than was Baron Chase; at least he was at dinner, being just beyond the unnamed wife and just before Patricia Kamin.
To Sir Denis’s right was a German woman, Hilda Becker, who represented the German manufacturer that had recently delivered several new diesel engines to Kenya Railways; apparently Amin was negotiating with her for similar diesels for Uganda Railways, which unlike the rest of the rail lines of Africa was still run almost exclusively by steam.
Sir Denis would have liked to talk with the German woman, but Amin monopolized him throughout dinner. Gone was the nonsense of translated Swahili; Amin spoke a good and colloquial English, though with quite a pronounced accent: “But the Brazilians will be happy,” for instance, came out “But-a dah Brah-zilians will-ah be hop-pee.” In that slow heavy voice from deep within that barrel chest, with the words forming one by one like bricks and linked by extra syllables, there was an impression of great power, surprisingly lightened by Amin’s laugh and his clear appreciation of the ridiculous. It was as though Henry Kissinger at his most ponderous had been crossed with Muhammad Ali at his most butterfly-and-bee.
Unfortunately, the ponderous side was much more evident than the playful. Sir Denis, to his astonishment, midway through the meal found himself the one-man audience to an Idi Amin lecture on hygiene. “Dis-ah continent,” Amin told him, leaning toward him, lifting one finger from the table to emphasize the point, “dis-ah continent is not ah good place to be dirty. No, is not. You got-ah dah”—and he held thumb and forefinger close together to emphasize their smallness—”bugs. Not like-ah Europe. It’s a cold-ah country, you see. Europe is a cold-ah country. Not-ah so good for dah bugs.” Then he laughed, the hearty boom, and said, “Not-ah so good for dah people, needer.”
Sir Denis might have responded to that, with some dinner-table jest, but Amin became at once serious again, and the lecture swept on, undiminished. “But-ah in Africa, you got-ah to be very careful about how clean-ah you are. You got-ah to look under dah fingernails”—he pointed at his own horny square amber nails on his thick-fingered brown-skinned hand—”you got-ah to look in your hair”—he tapped a middle finger against his great coconut skull—”and you got-ah to look very careful at-ah your private parts.” This time he pointed at Sir Denis.
“Actually,” Sir Denis said, determined to waylay the conversation and take it off to some more pleasant clime, “even in Europe—”
“And-ah your clodes,” Amin told him. “Your under-ah-clodes and-ah your shoes and-ah all-ah your clodes. It’s-ah very important for-ah dah African to keep-ah himself clean. Dis is-ah why when dah European come, dey brought-ah dah epidemic.”
“Yes, I take your point,” Sir Denis said, speaking much more quickly than normal, “but I don’t think—”
“Now-ah dah Nile,” Amin said, leaning closer, as though about to impart an extremely important secret, known to few, “dah Nile is very dangerous for-ah dah water. Also dah crocodile”—here he interrupted himself to chuckle, but swooped back to the lecture before Sir Denis could make use of the opportunity—”but more-ah dan even dah crocodile you got-ah dah microbe. You know-ah dah microbe?”
“Yes, of course, I—”
“It can make-ah you very sick,” Amin said. “In-ah dah stomach, and out-ah dah ass.”
It went on like that.
After dinner, in a rustic unfinished-looking room—rather like the lounge in a small unsuccessful family hotel in the mountains—there was entertainment. Amin, showing another side of his personality, stood by the Ping-Pong table and described with vast enjoyment an epic game of table tennis between himself and a young Ugandan Air Force colonel. Amin mimed the great sweeping forehands and intricate little sneaky shots, his mobile face ranging from comic triumph to comic despair. He gave a running commentary—a quite funny running commentary—mixed with quotes from himself and from the colonel. He imitated the colonel as a very upright, very British, very old-school-tie sort of young chap, and he imitated himself as a clumsy but game bear. At the end, when all hope seemed lost, the bear delivered a series of massive backhand smashes—”A highdrogen bomb! Boom!” Amin cried, and lashed his arm around as though to demolish the wall—and the bear won.
Sir Denis was surprised to find himself laughing, along with the rest of the guests. The man could truly be quite funny, quite charming and personable. The only reminder that this wasn’t the total Amin was the fact that the American couple with the government-dependent airline laughed much too loudly and too long, and twice they even led applause. The odor of their panic was a subtle but effective antidote to Amin’s playful charm.
After the recitative, music. A band dressed irrelevantly in Mexican-style outfits—sombreros, small bullfighter jackets, black trousers with intricate silver designs down the seams—stood at one end of the room with horns and guitars and played tinkly popular music accompanied by the rattling of a lot of gourds.
Amin started the dancing, his first partner being Patricia Kamin and the second his wife. Sir Denis watched Patricia, small and graceful in the arms of big lumbering Amin, and then he looked away.
There was a bar at the opposite end of the room. Sir Denis went there and asked for a brandy. They had none, so he took gin-and-tonic, and was turning away when Baron Chase came over, saying, “Wait for me. Beer,” he told the barman, accepted it, and strolled with Sir Denis down the side of the room.
The obedient American couple were now dancing, awkwardly, their elbows sticking out. Bob Astles danced with the German woman. Chase said quietly, “If I heard you right this afternoon, you’re a neutral.”
They were moving closer to the band, and it was hard to hear Chase over the trumpet and saxophones, which was undoubtedly the man’s idea. Sticking close to him, Sir Denis said, “I’m not sure I take your meaning.”
“You have no stake in this,” Chase said. “You don’t have opinions. You just do what you’re told.”
“I suppose that’s a fair description.”
“You don’t carry tales.”
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. I don’t understand the statement.” Amin was dancing now with his wife; Patricia was at the bar.
“I mean,” Chase said, frowning at the trumpet player, “if you found out the Brazilians were cheating Grossbarger, just as a for instance, you wouldn’t squeal to Grossbarger. You’re neutral.”
“Oh, I see.” Sir Denis thought hard about that. “I’m not sure that’s right,” he said. “Morally neutral? I wouldn’t want to do anything to destroy a fair and equitable negotiation, but if one party were engaged in fraud, wouldn’t it be my obligation to bring that into the open?”
Chase suddenly smiled, as though that were the answer he’d been waiting for, all along. “Fine,” he said. “We’re all safe with you, our secrets are safe, our prospects are safe, as long as we’re all good boys.”
“An odd way to look at it.”
“Oh, very good!” Chase cried, but now he meant something else. He was looking across the room, and now he started to applaud. So did the Americ
an couple. The band hurriedly finished their number.
Amin was coming forward, grinning and nodding, carrying in one hand a small accordion-like instrument. A band member dragged over a folding chair from the side wall. Amin nodded his thanks, sat down in front of the band facing the audience, and called out, “Now you goin tah hear sometin! Now you goin tah dance!” He thumped out the rhythm with his right foot and started to play a bouncy little tune. Raggedly at first, but then more professionally, the band gave him accompaniment.
Patricia was standing beside Sir Denis; tapping his arm, she said, “Care to dance?”
“I’d love to. I am a bit rusty.”
“We’ll lubricate you.”
He put his glass on a side table next to hers, and they joined most of the other guests in the middle of the floor. He wasn’t quite sure whether he was doing a waltz or a polka or a fox-trot, but it didn’t seem to matter; high spirits had taken over, and from an extremely unpromising beginning, an actual party was coming to life. Also, it was delicious to feel the slender athletic body of Patricia Kamin in his arms.
Amin played two tunes, then played both of them again, then stopped. Patricia smiled at Sir Denis, told him how well he danced, said she would love to squire him to a dance someday in London, and when Amin stopped playing she said, “It must be very lonely for you, spending so much time far from home.”
He didn’t have a home, not since the death of Alicia, but that didn’t seem the right topic for conversation at the moment, so he merely said, “Well, I have my work. I do enjoy that.”
“Still. They gave you the pretty room, didn’t they? The one with the great big bed?”
“That’s right.”
“I get lonely, too, sometimes,” she said, astonishing him. “If I get lonely later tonight, may I come see you?”
“But of course,” he said, flabbergasted.
“Till then.” Her smile, so warm and friendly and yet at the same time so loose and seductive, beamed on him like a golden light. She touched the tip of his chin and left the room, picking up her drink on the way by.
I’m sixty-one, Sir Denis thought, but he was only astonished by his luck; he didn’t doubt the luck.
Across the room, Amin was showing the American wife how to play his musical instrument, which he called a melodeon. Her husband was displaying so much fear and humiliation that Sir Denis couldn’t bear to look at him.
Baron Chase came over, and clearly he had at last made some sort of decision. “I have something for you to tell our mutual friend,” he said, again speaking under the party sounds: the melodeon and Amin’s booming voice and the slightly hysterical laughter.
“Of course,” Sir Denis said.
“Tell him,” Chase said, “that I am very interested in making a personal business deal with him, one that’s very much in his interest.”
“Certainly.”
“However,” Chase said, and was interrupted by a white-coated servant. Chase gave the man an irritable frown, but stepped away to listen to him. Sir Denis couldn’t hear what the servant said, but he heard Chase say, “Now? What could be so urgent at this time of night?”
The servant obviously pleaded ignorance, but with a further explanation, to which Chase replied testily, “Then he can go right back to Kenya.”
The servant waited, unsure whether he was to stay or go, or what message he was to deliver. Chase was very annoyed, but also fatalistic; at last he sighed and said, “All right, if I must.” Turning back to Sir Denis, he said, “Tell our friend I can’t discuss the details with neutrals. He must send me somebody of his own.” Then he was gone.
Lights gleamed in the windows of the pink building. Sir Denis, on the point of closing the green draperies over the glass wall facing the terrace, looked down through the tame jungle and saw the office lights on, and was amused: the bureaucrats of the State Research Bureau never sleep. He closed the drapes.
He was wearing a maroon silk robe, one of his oldest possessions. He had left the party almost immediately after Patricia, had showered in the small rusty bathroom adjoining this room, and now he was waiting, jagged with anticipation.
He waited more than an hour. After two failed attempts at putting down tonight’s activities for his journal, he merely paced the room, fretting, his mind full of worries. Would she actually come? Had he been right in thinking the invitation a sexual one? Would he be able to perform acceptably?
The knock on the door was so gentle he barely heard it. Then he stood for several seconds, merely staring at the door. Don’t be a fool, he told himself, and corrected it at once: Don’t be an old fool. You’re sixty-one, you are rich in years and wisdom and the things of this world. There is nothing vital at stake in this room tonight, nothing for you to be afraid of. At the very worst, you’ll make a fool of yourself in the eyes—and perhaps the arms—of a woman young enough to be your granddaughter, and if that does happen, you won’t be the first sixty-one-year-old ever to be in that position.
There. Feeling better, more secure, even laughing at himself a bit. Sir Denis finally opened the door.
She was dressed as she had been at the party, which made him instantly believe he’d misunderstood the whole thing, but even as he was trying to phrase the apology for his own informal garb, she smiled that lascivious smile and said, “Oh, I love this room. And I love that big bed.” And he knew it was all right.
Closing the door, turning the switch to lock it, he said, “I’m delighted you’re here.”
“So am I.” Putting down the small bottle of wine she’d brought, she put her hands on both sides of his head, drew his face down to hers, and kissed his mouth.
Over the years, Sir Denis had read in books or heard in stories about women who were tigresses in bed, but he had never known one from personal experience.
A tigress can be a frightening thing, even when she is loving you. Patricia, long tawny body, strong breasts, supple legs, ravenous belly, was the tigress, and he was the veldt on which she prowled, insatiable, hungry, demanding.
He had never in his life tasted a woman’s genitals, but she would not be denied. Against his mouth she ground herself, insisting on his tongue and his teeth, pulling his hair, while his nose filled with her juices and he found himself laughing into that mask of bone and flesh. He wanted to do more; he wanted to do things he’d never heard of. And he did.
When his climax came he was spread-eagled on his back on the huge bed, she straddling him, her hard hands pressing his bony shoulders down, her sleek belly pumping as he lunged upward into her, crying out, gasping, craving that wonderful warm grotto, cave painting with his semen on its yielding walls.
He thought then that he was finished, and had nearly fallen asleep when she came out of the bathroom to insist they shower together. The tigress still prowled.
In the warm water she soaped his body, then arched and preened and laughed as he soaped hers. They tickled and played and she rubbed against him, but when he saw her smile change again to that intense look he said, “Oh, my dear, I’m not as young as I used to be. I couldn’t possibly do that again tonight.”
“Oh, yes, you could,” she said.
She dried his body with the rough-textured towels, pinkening his flesh and making him wince away, saying, “Gently. Gently.”
“Not gently,” she said.
Still, for a long time he remained unready, no matter how she crawled on him on the bed, how she engulfed him. She had to no effect taken him into her mouth, and he was about to apologize once more and suggest they sleep for now, start over in the morning, when all at once she shoved a finger deep into his rectum. “Ow!” he yelled, shocked and hurt, and she pulled it halfway out and rammed it in again.
It hurt! He tried to arch away from it, but that merely pushed him against her mouth, the tongue and teeth and lips working on him like busy mice at a sack of grain, and suddenly it seemed as though a steel rod were running painfully through his body from the tip of that probing finger directly into his co
ck. It stirred, it swelled, it stood, aching and vibrating but absolutely solid, and she laughed in triumph.
“Take it out!”
“No!” she shouted, jabbing him with real savagery. “Put it in!” she demanded, and raped him, first in this position, then that, but always with the damnable finger there, urging him on. Deep inside one another, they clawed and tangled on the bed, Sir Denis biting hard at her shoulders and breasts, trying to draw blood from her buttocks with his nails, even at one point clutching her by the throat and strangling her while pumping away below with the desperation of the driven beast.
He thought he was dying; he thought he’d exploded, had a stroke, had a heart attack, was already dead. There had never been an orgasm like it, something beyond pleasure, even beyond pain, extending into some alternative universe of inside-out wrenching unreality. It was like being thrown into flames, or into ice water. Pain lanced up from his scrotum and out the tip of his cock, and even she screamed from it, grinding down, pressing for more, insisting on every last drop of agony, while he thrashed on the bed, his muscles knotting, his bones shattering, his empty tortured belly draining out of him and into her.
And this time the tigress was satisfied. While he panted, sweat running on his body, she stretched like a well-fed cat. Then, laughing, lightly slapping his cheek, she tripped away to the bathroom, and when she came back, she poured out two small glasses of sweet thick local wine from the bottle she’d brought. She cut his with water from the bathroom sink, saying, “No Englishman likes this without water.”
It was still too sweet, but he was in too much rapture to deny her anything. In this bed tonight she had made him a thirty-year-old, and his aching, quivering, trembling body was in seventh heaven. The combination of gratitude, delight, and lust with which he looked at her could fairly be called love. He drank the wine.
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