Changa

by Ian McDonald

  ‘If we had one tenth of the resources the West is pouring into UNECTA, we could end the HIV 4 epidemic,’ she insisted. Gaby argued that press coverage of the Chaga focused world attention on the wider issues of Africa. ‘HIV 4 is not a wider issue of Africa. It is a central issue of Africa. Twelve million cases in East Africa: twelve million deaths. Two complete holocausts in a single generation. There are villages up north around Mount Elgon and over into Karamoja in Uganda where there is no one alive over the age of twelve. Entire villages of orphans.’ She would laugh then. She laughed like a Frenchwoman, knowingly and bitterly. ‘It is an African problem in that the West does not want to get involved because it sees Slim as a Malthusian check on African population growth. We exceed the carrying capacity of the land, so the angel of death must pass over us and divide the taken from those who are cursed to stay. It is an African problem in that it is African scientists trying to save African people from an African pandemic. It is not a gay plague here, Gaby. It is an everyone plague.’

  When she spoke thus, in her beautiful, deep whisper of a voice, no one could argue with her. It would be like trying to argue with a Madonna in an icon. When she was beautiful and righteous and untouchable like this, Gaby McAslan would tell herself that all Miriam Sondhai needed was a good hard cock up her. It was because of the frictions, rather than despite them, that the two women became friends. So when the van delivered the dress, Gaby asked Miriam to help her try it on, knowing she would think it decadent.

  The dress arrived in a cardboard case with rope handles and folded in yards of tissue paper. Gaby held the sensuous green silk up against her and Miriam Sondhai softened in admiration. It had come complete with shoes, underwear, hosiery and a clutch bag: Kenya’s watekni fashion-pirates prided themselves that not only were their products faster and cheaper than originals from the Chanel programs they stole, they came with the full range of accessories. The US Ambassador’s Independence Day Hootenanny demanded nothing less than a dress that would turn every head that looked Gaby McAslan’s way. If it did not make people ask, who is that red-haired woman in that dark green dress? it would be a waste of nearly a month’s salary. Given that she was not on the guest list. Given that a junior On-liner had no right to expect to be on the guest list.

  Fuck protocol. Networking mattered. Haran would get her there, by the rocket’s red glare. He had promised when she asked him, her first returnable favour. What she would say to T.P. Costello, that was something he could not help her with.

  Miriam helped her up with the zip and adjusted the waist so that the claw-hammer skirt swung back and the short front-piece fell between her thighs to emphasize the long lean lines of her legs. Longness and leanness was what heredity had dealt the McAslan females. They made the most of it. She caught her hair in a bow and flicked it over her left shoulder.

  ‘You look wonderful, for a m’zungu,’ Miriam said. ‘I hope you do not come off those heels.’

  A car hooted in the drive. Gaby frowned at her reflection in the mirror, grabbed her clutch bag and dashed for the taxi. All the way to the ambassador’s residence she kept asking herself, what if, what if, what if they do not let you in? Then you get back into this taxi and go to the Elephant Bar and get drunk with Oksana. It will not be the end of the world. Oh no it bloody won’t. So why are you doing it? It will earn you nothing but a world of trouble. Because there are people there it might be good to be remembered by some day. Because where there are people like that, and free alcohol, there are stories and where there are stories there is news and where there is news there is Gaby McAslan zooming in on Extreme Close-up. Networking. You probably won’t even have time for a drink, let alone talking to Dr Shepard from Tsavo West with the Paul Newman blue eyes.

  Self-unknowing, Gaby McAslan.

  The cars were lined for a quarter of a mile down the road. Monkey jackets from corporate hospitality had the door-open meet’n’greet to perfection. Gorgeous frocks and rented tuxes went up the stairs to the double doors.

  Do not even think of the theme from Gone With the Wind, Gaby McAslan ordered herself. Fiddle-dee-dee to that. The earth is even red, like the strong red earth of Tara.

  The meeter’n’greeter slipped her a thick, gilt-edged invitation card.

  ‘From Haran,’ he said. Gaby passed him a discreet hundred. He touched gloved forefinger to brow. At the door a frock-coated security person scanned the bar-code on the card and checked the on-screen guest list.

  ‘Gabriel Ruth Langdon McAslan,’ he read. Haran had even got the hated family name right.

  ‘Gaby,’ she corrected and swept in. She passed through the cool, spacious residence with its slow-turning ceiling paddles and went through the French windows on to the patio. Fairy-lights and stars-and-stripes bunting were strung between the trees. Garden candles taller than Gaby had been spiked into the grass and attracted knots of people. The first of the evening’s bands were opening their set on the staging in front of the shrub azaleas, a handy trio of electric guitar, accordion and sax. Gaby felt sorry for them. It was too early, the guests too sober for their brand of vivacious shamba-dance. By tradition, the beer was kept in tin baths of ice; All-American, diplomatic-bagged in from Milwaukee. Gaby lifted a bottle. A waiter appeared and uncapped it with an opener.

  ‘Ms McAslan!’

  ‘Dr Dan!’

  He shook her hand enthusiastically. Somewhere he had found a tall mint julep.

  ‘How good it is to see you, Ms McAslan. You have been much in my thoughts since our interesting night together.’

  ‘And how was the wedding?’

  ‘Alas, my forebodings were proved right. He was a worthless man. He abandoned my daughter after six nights for a woman wrestler. A Kikuyu woman wrestler, indeed. I fear my chances of getting my cattle back are remote; the rude boy. He has undoubtedly sold them. My daughter is pretending to be distraught but I think she is secretly relieved. She is one who likes the idea of marriage more than the state of being married. Now she has the chance to do it all again.

  ‘But you, my friend. You have been making a name for yourself. I very much enjoyed the “And Finally ...” stories. I could tell you one myself that I have from the very best authority, about a magical condom tattoo that protects the recipient from all known sexually transmitted diseases.’

  ‘I’ve moved away from my source, Dr Dan, and I’m working on more mainstream, investigative material now.’

  ‘Ah yes. The Werther interview. Most illuminating. It is a pity that his disappearance was not considered as newsworthy as his appearance.’

  ‘What do you mean? I know he’s hiding from the media.’

  ‘Is that what they have told you? Peter Werther did not disappear. He was disappeared.’

  Guests pushed past to the bar, inspired by Dr Dan’s mint julep. Gaby recognised Der Spiegel’s On-line editor. She nodded curtly to him.

  ‘Disappeared by whom?’

  Dr Dan smiled, shrugged.

  ‘UNECTA?’

  ‘Remember where you are, Ms McAslan.’

  ‘The Americans? The Ambassador knows about this?’ The Ambassador was talking by the balustrade with an animated staffer from the French embassy. Mr Ambassador was a small, impeccably dressed black man; from Georgia, Gaby recalled, which incongruously reinforced the Gone With the Wind imagery. His children were running around in their best clothes looking for excuses to set the fireworks off early. His wife stood some paces from him with an expression of diplomatic boredom. She was dressed African-style and tended more to the Maya Angelou than the Diana Ross.

  ‘UNECTA, Americans, what’s the difference?’ Dr Dan asked.

  ‘What happened?’ Gaby wished there had been room in her ludicrous little clutch bag for a PDU, or even an old-fashioned dictation machine.

  ‘They came at night. Helicopters, with night-imaging cameras. They were following in military spy-satellite thermal photographs. Your video footage helped them as well, but you must not blame yourself, please. It is not your fault
, you did not finger him - I believe that is the expression? He made himself a target by coming out of the Chaga, for anything that comes out of the Chaga is theirs.’

  ‘UN troops?’

  ‘A joint US-Canadian force.’

  ‘Jesus. And Peter?’

  ‘I do not know. I am trying to find out. If I do not, I shall ask for an enquiry in the National Assembly. Despite the United Nations, this is still our country.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I have always believed that the wise politician cultivates friendships in unlikely places. I count you my friend, Ms McAslan, likewise, I count many in the Traveller community. They could not go to the press directly, for they had been threatened that to do so would result in their residency permits being revoked and them being deported from Kenya.’

  Gaby saw the upward glance of his eyes an instant before the hand fell heavily on her shoulder. She squawked, imagining US-Canadian air cavalry abseiling down from helicopters to take out the Irish woman with the big mouth. Her bottle smashed on the patio. The Ambassador looked across, irritated, but the serving staff were already moving to sweep up the debris.

  It was worse than US-Canadian air cavalry.

  It was T.P. Costello.

  ‘Sorry to butt in on your conversation, Dr Oloitip, but I need to have a small creative conference with my junior On-line reporter. What do I need?’

  ‘A small creative conference,’ Gaby said. ‘With your junior On-liner.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘We will talk!’ Dr Dan called as T.P. marched her toward the rhododendrons.

  ‘T.P., T.P., listen, I’ve got something very very hot; listen, T.P., they’ve vanished Peter Werther.’

  ‘Frankly, my dear,’ T.P. Costello said, ‘I don’t give a damn.’

  The design of the gardens provided many private places for those whose party quirks precluded spectators. A fat man in a too-small tuxedo came crashing from the shrubs, fumbling at his pants. A woman Gaby knew as a senior editor at ITN fled in the opposite direction, unaware that the back of her skirt had got hitched into the waistband of her panties. T.P. dragged her into the alcove they had so hastily vacated.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here? I cannot turn my back for five minutes but you’re hatching some fuckwit scheme or another. What is it with you, woman? What gives? I cannot do a thing with you.’ T.P. shook her hard by the shoulders. Gaby slapped his hands away from her.

  ‘You do not touch me like that, Thomas Pronsias Costello.’

  He looked at the ground, shamed.

  ‘What is the problem here, T.P.? I’m only doing what any journalist with an ounce of nous would have done, making contacts, getting stories, T.P. I’ve only gatecrashed a party -Jesus, in ancient Baghdad they had entire guilds of licensed gatecrashers - it’s not like I raped the Ambassador’s brown-eyed boy.’

  T.P. Costello did an unthinkable thing. He sat down on the grass with his head in his hands. All the confidence and competence and ability drained from him like water into a dry river bed. He seemed on the verge of tears. He patted the ground for Gaby to sit beside him and gallantly swept a handkerchief from his breast pocket and spread it out to protect her lovely dress.

  ‘Ah God,’ he sighed. His voice shuddered. ‘Why did you have to come here?’

  ‘I told you, T.P.’

  ‘This country. This Chaga-thing.’

  A new act had taken the stage. A minimal spattering of applause greeted it. Gaby had listened to enough Voice of Kenya radio to recognize one of the most promising new praise singers.

  ‘You’re so like her. Not to look at; she was dark; dark hair, dark skin, but like you, she couldn’t be said no to. She had to enquire, she had to push it just that little bit too far. She was ambitious, like you. She was writing a book. Oh, it was going to be the first and last word on the Chaga and the people who study it. She never finished it. I’ve got the material at home. Reams and reams of notes, photocopies, faxes, typescripts. She told me her name once, but I’ve forgotten it. Everyone called her Moon. Langrishe gave her the name. Dr Peter Langrishe. He was an exobiologist, down at Ol Tukai, before UNECTA went mobile. He was as mad as she was. You know where they met? A place like this. The Irish Embassy St Paddy’s Day ceilidh. They were insane, both of them. Jesus, Gaby, I met her off the night flight, just like you, I went through the same bloody catechism, just like you. Do you know where she lived?’

  ‘I can guess. The Episcopalian guesthouse. T.P., I’m not her.’

  ‘I know. But you do the things she did. You go to the places she went. You say the things she said.’

  Gaby McAslan said nothing, but sat with her knees pulled up to her chin and her arms folded around them.

  ‘You loved her, didn’t you?’

  ‘That was the thing. No one loved the right way round. I loved her, but she loved him and he loved the obscene great thing down there. If only everyone had been able to turn around and see the thing that loved them.’ He grimaced. ‘She couldn’t hold him. I could have told her that - should have told her that. She was down on the coast putting a draft together and word came that he’d gone down in a microlyte crash over Amboseli. But she wouldn’t believe he was dead - she had me convinced she would have known if he were: mystical union or crap like that. So she decided to go after him. Last I saw of her was the microlyte I gave her taking off from the Namanga road. I should have taken an axe to the thing. But you never saw what she was like without him. You never saw her depressions, the violent rages, the hours she would spend in her hotel room, staring at the lizards on the wall. I gave her a diary the day she left to search for Langrishe. I made her promise she would get it back to me, somehow. Odds are it’s rotting with her in that green hell; but it could have made it back to shore.’

  ‘I could find out. At least you would know for certain, T.P.’

  ‘And Gaby McAslan would have the story of the decade. Gone With the Wind bangs Out of Africa. These are real lives, Gaby; real hurts, real histories, real wounds. Tread carefully around them.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re a good woman, McAslan. It’s just you’re so like her. Who are you like?’

  ‘Moon,’ Gaby McAslan said.

  Sudden fear darkened T.P.’s face.

  ‘Don’t say that word. It’s too strong a word for a night like this. Do you believe in magic?’

  ‘I know a Siberian pilot who does.’

  ‘Speak a name and it will cross heaven and hell to come to you.’

  ‘Or silence you.’

  ‘Even from the dark heart of the Chaga.’

  The music ended and there was more applause. Next on stage would be the St Stephen’s Church choir under Tembo’s directorship. It was a great honour to be asked to perform at the Ambassador’s Hootenanny. All week Tembo had gone about the office glowing with a modest, Christian pride. Gaby thought his achievement warranted blatant boasting, but wished him hugs, blessings and break-a-legs anyway. She could not understand his religion, but admired the quiet strength of his faith. She left T.P. to go and hear the set.

  All the women wore long skirts, white blouses and headscarfs. The men wore blue kitenges over black pants and played the instruments: two drums, kiamba, sticks and what looked like a piston ring from a truck that you hit with a nine-inch nail. Their four-part harmony was electrifying.

  ‘Up here singing songs of Jesus while down here folk gossip, get drunk and sneak into the shrubbery for a quickie or a snort.’

  Gaby had seen him approach but reckoned cool was the way to play it. In his rented suit he looked like Jimmy Stewart in Philadelphia Story, impatient to rip off the stupid, choking bow tie; or Sean Connery - the only James Bond - with his wetsuit under his dinner jacket rather than the tux under the black rubber.

  ‘You remember?’

  ‘I remember the T-shirt. And the hair.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let me in in a T-shirt with a masturbating nun on the front. The hair tends to go with me. So, how are your buckyballs bo
uncing?’

  ‘All over the global newsnets, thanks to you.’

  ‘You did say I could. As you can see, I made it here after all.’

  ‘So you did. I like your dress. Suits your hair. And your eyes. Can I get you something to drink?’

  They moved between clusters of people on nodding terms with Shepard to one of the gingham-covered tables. The waiter straightened immaculately ironed cuffs.

  ‘I’ll have one of those mint thingies, please.’

  While he mixed it, Gaby pretended to be on nodding terms with people she only knew from photographs.

  ‘So, buckyballs.’

  Shepard had a beer. Gaby thought it was very him.

  ‘What do you want me to tell you about them?’

  Anything.

  ‘Whatever’s new.’