Fatboy and the Dancing Ladies

by Michael Holman

  They stopped for a coffee break, and Japer took the opportunity to jot down a few ideas.

  It was not his job, strictly speaking, to prepare a script for the NoseAid presentation of his visit to Kuwisha, but the excursion into the countryside had emboldened, informed and inspired him. Anyway, the notes could always be used for one of his columns in the Clarion.

  He started writing: “Deep in the East African bush, reached after a bone-shaking journey along a potholed track, stands one of Kuwisha’s magnificent rhinos . . . protected from the predations of poachers and politicians alike.

  “Its sheer inaccessibility is a first line of defence against the notorious armed poachers and their cruel search for what they call ‘white gold’, the beast’s fabled horn – in fact a compressed mat of hair.

  “But these extraordinary creatures come under attack from a less well-known source . . . Kuwisha’s corrupt politicians!

  “They love to eat the surprisingly succulent flesh of these ponderous pachyderms . . . beasts that pair for life, and remain attached to their offspring.”

  He knew he should have checked on the last two facts, but what the heck? It would work wonders with the public, and anything that got them digging deeper into their pockets was surely worthwhile.

  The track ran out in a clearing, where there was a wooden palisade, behind which stood a rhino, representative of Kuwisha’s endangered population.

  All involved played their parts competently. A director commissioned by NoseAid, a young man who had made the award-winning TV ad for Crunchy Peanut Butter and was donating his services free, took charge of proceedings.

  Neither beast misbehaved. The rhino had been sedated, the tiny orphan kept his bladder under control, and Japer was not peed on. Japer had taken one look at the infant chosen to represent Kuwisha’s new generation and refused point blank to have it on his lap.

  Far from causing offence, his refusal to handle the toddler was easily turned to the big-hearted columnist’s advantage. The guest from England, it was explained to onlookers, had, the day before his departure from London, been visiting his local children’s hospital. He had been warned shortly before his departure for Kuwisha that one of the toddlers he had embraced was displaying the symptoms of measles. It would be safer, the doctor in London had advised, if Japer had no direct contact with children for the next fortnight.

  The explanation was greeted by murmurs of appreciation. And when Japer suggested that the massive syringe used on the rhino also be applied to the wide-eyed child he had been expected to cradle in his arms, a sympathetic audience laughed heartily.

  The director himself sat with the little boy on his knee. A second photo was taken, this time of Japer looking fondly down on a small sack of coffee beans that he was cradling in his lap. Using computer wizardry it would be a simple matter to transpose the images.

  Now it was just a matter of the last lines, and Japer delivered with a passion that surprised him: “So thanks to this partnership, this unique alliance between NoseAid, the Clarion – the paper with a heart as big as Africa – the people of Kuwisha, and the World Bank, we can help a child, save a rhino.”

  “Or help a rhino, save a child,” continued Japer. “Or help a rhino save a child.” Japer threw his canvas hat on the ground in mock anger.

  “Who fooking cares?” he exclaimed, doing a passable imitation of an Irish accent. “Together we can make Kuwisha a better place, for animals and people alike.”

  It was a wrap.

  36

  There was an awkward moment when the boys arrived at Mlambo’s shelter. He felt obliged to offer his guests something to eat or drink, but the days of sneaking titbits out of the State House kitchen were over. Then he remembered he had a stompie under the mattress.

  “Would you like to smoke?”

  Mlambo lifted his mattress, and retrieved the cigarette stub he had found on the State House drive the day before. He examined it carefully, and taking a razor blade from the same place, trimmed the end, removing the ash and the burnt fibres. He felt under the mattress again and took out a box of matches, made in South Africa. There was one left, and he carefully scraped it against the side.

  It flared into life.

  He applied it to the stompie, made sure the butt was burning and handed it to his guests.

  There was enough tobacco for each boy to have a deep drag, sucking the smoke into their lungs, to hold it there for a few seconds, and then slowly exhale.

  The ceremony over, Mlambo got down to business.

  First, he lifted the mattress once more, took out two silver needles, and pushed them carefully into two small paw-paws on each side of the mattress.

  He positioned himself between them, and cleared his throat. His friends sat cross-legged in front of him, and when Rutere had stopped searching for head lice and Ntoto had taken a quick look outside to make sure that no-one was in sight, Mlambo began.

  “This is my plan . . .”

  Ntoto and Rutere listened intently.

  Five minutes later he had finished: “. . . and then, when it is over, I will run to hide at Harrods, if you will help me.”

  It was a masterful performance. Ntoto and Rutere had been won over. But there was still work to be done, and critical calculations to be made, on which the success of the plan depended. It was not yet nightfall, and there was time for a quick recce of the route to the dam.

  Mlambo led the way, and pushed aside the branch that concealed a hole in the State House fence. He looked around. The coast was clear. The boys climbed through, examined the stepping stones laid by Mlambo, and then returned to his den, inspecting the surface of the overgrown path.

  Laid in the days of British colonial rule, when it was used to get access to what was now little more than a stagnant patch of weed and water, it had survived years of neglect. Mlambo’s plan was straightforward, but putting it into practice required split second timing and a clear run.

  Mboga, Mlambo told the boys, was due to address the State House staff the next day. This, he stressed, was a regular event. Attendance was compulsory. And it was to be on this occasion that he would be subjected to public humiliation at the hands of Mboga.

  “In front of staff,” said Mlambo solemnly, “I will be given the name I do not want to say, because it hurts me, and I will lose my family name and no longer be Ferdinand Mhango Mlambo.”

  “What if he is not there; what if he is with the president?” asked Rutere.

  Mlambo shrugged.

  “Never has Mboga missed this meeting. But if he cancels, then we try again, next week.”

  The boys looked again at the distance from the portable podium – assuming it was placed in the usual position when used by Mboga – to the hedge behind which Mlambo would be hiding. It was thirty-three paces. This was the critical measurement. From the hedge to the edge of a copse, beyond Mlambo’s shelter, it was around seventy paces. At this point the overgrown path to the abandoned boathouse started.

  A further hundred paces and one emerged from the trees, and it was another fifty paces to the carefully concealed hole in the State House fence, made by Mlambo.

  Once through that, there was a curving run that went through the city park, and past the parking lot used by university workers. From there the route followed the road that ran past the Outspan, where the lobby opened onto the pavement.

  All three agreed on the distances. Now Ntoto and Rutere needed to know what Mlambo would say to his adversary. What jibes would be used to lure the State House steward? They had to be as tempting to Mboga as a fly to a trout.

  Mlambo had given this much thought. And as he recited his script of abuse, Ntoto and Rutere made suggestions which Mlambo promised to consider.

  “If Mboga does not chase, he is not a man,” said Ntoto, and Rutere nodded in agreement.

  Ntoto still needed a question answered.

  “What if the security men shoot you?”

  Mlambo could not deny this was a risk. But if there was sho
oting to be done, Mboga would want to do it himself; and if he was really cross, said Mlambo, he would want to break the toto with his own hands.

  Anyway, only for the first ten paces would the security people have a clear shot – after that trees and buildings would come between them and their target, not to mention onlookers. There was nothing a Kuwisha crowd enjoyed more than watching a cheeky street boy get a good hiding.

  Finally Rutere, who had been bottling up the obvious question, gathered the resolve to ask it: “What is to be your new name?”

  Mlambo thought carefully, and beckoned Rutere closer. It was a risk, but a risk worth taking. Premature disclosure of a desired new name could prejudice its chances.

  He whispered in his friend’s ear, who in turn whispered it to Ntoto.

  The response could not have been more pleasing.

  “Phauw,” said Ntoto, echoed by Rutere.

  “That is a very fine name, very fine indeed.”

  Already, it seemed to Mlambo, they looked at him with more respect, and his resolve hardened.

  For the last time they explored the path to the outer fence. Rutere, who had been counting the paces aloud, looked worried.

  “It will be touching go.”

  Ntoto nodded.

  “Very close. But Mboga is not stupid. If he is not touching go, he will not chase. He must be able to smell Mlambo.”

  Had the circumstances been less serious, it would have been a signal for ribald exchanges. But such was the gravity of Mlambo’s situation that the boys did not smile. Instead Ntoto and Rutere took it in turns to stand downwind of Mlambo, beginning at twenty paces and moving closer, a step at a time, nostrils flared.

  They settled on eight paces. As Rutere had rightly noted, it was going to be touch and go.

  Before they broke up, Ntoto drew attention to a serious hazard.

  “When people see you running” – Ntoto ran on the spot, arms flailing, looking over his shoulder, panting heavily – “people will see a street boy running like a thief. And they will lynch you,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Mlambo had already thought of this.

  The distance across Uhuru Park to the entrance of the Outspan was just less than two hundred paces. And if onlookers took it into their heads to intervene?

  “Flying toilets,” Mlambo said simply. Rutere could have kicked himself. It was obvious.

  There was, however, one more element in Mlambo’s plan that concerned both Rutere and Mlambo, and which they had raised earlier with Ntoto.

  “You won’t forget the . . .”

  Mlambo tailed off. It was a matter of some delicacy.

  “I will get them,” promised Ntoto. “Tomorrow morning. For sure.”

  “Certain?” asked Mlambo anxiously. The more he thought about exposing himself to the general public, the more uneasy he felt.

  “Certain sure, certain sure,” replied Ntoto, and with that promise Mlambo had to be satisfied.

  Dusk was now falling. There was time for a final check of the first stages of the route from State House to the Outspan Hotel. Mlambo had a last practice run, sliding through the hole he had cut. There was no reason for Ntoto and Rutere to hang around.

  Mlambo exchanged the street-boy salutation, making a fist, punching his heart, and meeting the reciprocated gesture in mid-space, first with Rutere and then with Ntoto.

  “Don’t forget the flying toilets,” said Mlambo.

  Back in his den, Mlambo whiled away the time, talking to his gran and caressing the needles, their points newly sharpened. He practised throwing them, and discovered that up to five paces he could control their flight, provided he had attached tiny wings of plastic, cut from an abandoned Coke bottle. Any greater distance and there was no guarantee that the needles would hit the target.

  After an hour or so of practice, Mlambo covered himself with his blanket, curled up on the mattress and was asleep in minutes.

  It was too late for Ntoto and Rutere to make the journey all the way back to Harrods. But they were fortunate. They found a refuse container, full to the brim with rubbish. They climbed in, burrowed halfway down, where the heat generated by the rotting contents helped send them to sleep. Ntoto looked up at the sky, spread like a warm blanket over the city.

  “Look, Rutere, look! A star for Christmas! It is good luck, Rutere.”

  But Cyrus was already lost to the world, his mouth open, and snoring. Within a couple of minutes Ntoto had followed suit.

  37

  An early morning mist still hung over the dam as Titus Ntoto and Cyrus Rutere set off and made their way via Furniver’s flat, where Ntoto returned a packet of sugar Charity had borrowed.

  Rutere waited outside, picking a scab on his knee, until Ntoto reappeared, and the boys continued on their way to Mlambo’s den, over the stepping stones and through the hole in the fence.

  By mid-morning the sun was blazing. Charity looked at the cloudless sky. It looked like it would be one of those hot and breathless Kuwisha days.

  “More water, more juice,” she ordered the duty Mboya Boys, just as Edward Furniver ambled up with the day’s newspapers.

  “Don’t want to make a thing of it,” he said to Charity, “but um, ah, a pair of my, er, smalls, um, underpants is missing,” he said. “Do you think . . . ?”

  She interrupted him.

  “Furniver, if you think that Mr Kigali . . .”

  “Absolutely not. Trust the man with my life, let alone my thingies. It was Mr Kigali who told me that one lot was missing. Keeps a sharp eye on the things. Counts them out, counts them in. Ever since that jipu business.

  “One pair’s definitely missing. And the only visitors to the flat have been Ntoto and this chap Mullivant from London. Certainly there when Ntoto came by this morning. Saw them myself. Mr Kigali put them out on the kitchen table.”

  Charity gave him one of her looks, which struck fear into the heart of the toughest of street boys.

  “So, Furniver. You think that Ntoto is a boy who steals underpants.”

  She raised her eyebrows and waited for him to respond.

  “Well, it’s either Ntoto or Mullivant. You tell me which one is more likely to be guilty? It’s got to be one or the other,” said Furniver.

  Charity was silent. He was right.

  “Say again, Furniver, what happened?”

  Patiently and methodically, Furniver went over the events of the past few hours. There was no doubt that there had been only two visitors to the flat. Ntoto, who according to Kigali had been twice, once when Furniver had seen him sobbing, and saying something about wanting to be a pirate, and then early that day, when he returned some sugar.

  “That is right,” said Charity.

  “Well, when I came down this morning to collect the laundry that Mr Kigali had ironed, I noticed that a pair of my, er, smalls was missing. So I asked Mr Kigali . . .”

  “My um, smalls, seem to be one short.”

  He anticipated Kigali’s concern.

  “Ironed properly . . . Absolutely first rate. No problems there.”

  Kigali went to the kitchen table, where the freshly ironed shirts, sheets, skirts and trousers were neatly piled. In a separate pile were Furniver’s underpants. He counted them.

  “Six. Suh.”

  “There should be seven of the blighters.”

  “Suh.”

  Kigali did a weekly wash in the kitchen where he also did the ironing. Furniver would collect the neatly arranged shirts, trousers and socks, together with the underpants, kept in an adjacent pile.

  Kigali double checked.

  “Six. Suh.”

  The two men looked at each other. Neither Ntoto nor Mullivant seemed deserving of suspicion.

  “The bird that cleans the crocodile’s teeth does not defecate in the crocodile’s mouth,” observed Kigali.

  That seemed to rule out Ntoto.

  But surely it could not be Mullivant? It seemed unlikely that the UKAID expert might have an unhealthy interest in another chap
’s underwear.

  Kigali kept his counsel. Any dispute between white men was not one that should involve a steward in any way, and woe betide the steward that did not heed this wisdom. After nearly fifty years of domestic service, Didymus Kigali had observed the spectrum of human behaviour, and had encountered many deviations and aberrations. But the thought that a mzungu might have an irresistible urge to steal a pair of underpants was somewhat far-fetched.

  It was a mystery. The two men had exchanged looks.

  “At least they were ironed.”

  “Suh,” said Kigali.

  Podmore had been true to his word.

  The application form for a minor’s travel certificate, valid for only one journey but quicker to obtain than a passport, arrived the day after his conversation with his contact in the Kuwisha Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Ntoto and Rutere sat down at a table at Harrods, and with Furniver’s help, began filling in the form.

  “So which of you is going to London? Who is the lucky blighter?”

  “Rutere goes,” said Ntoto.

  “Right . . . when were you born, Rutere?’

  Rutere was prepared.

  “Four years after the wet season of the great flood, in the month of the first rains, on the day before Ngwazi’s return from exile,” he replied.

  Charity looked up.

  “That is foolish, Cyrus Rutere, very foolish. I have taught you your birthday. Now tell Furniver . . .”

  “December 23, 1991.”

  That Rutere, he was a sharp boy, thought Charity. Between them, Ntoto and Rutere were capable of outwitting most adults. Something was afoot. She could not put her finger on it, but something definitely was going on.

  Furniver moved on to the next question:

  “Now, schools attended – easy enough. None.”

  Rutere interrupted.

  “St Joseph Primary School.”

  “Rutere, that is simply not so,” Charity scolded him. “I know you didn’t go to school because your father could not afford the uniform.”