Mombasa Road Retravelled

by KJ Griffin

  ***

  It must be early evening when I finally regain consciousness under a heap of tartan blankets in the bedroom I've shared with Little Stevie on so many good nights. The curtains are wide open but it's so dark outside that nothing is illuminated in here. I have to listen carefully to make out the soft murmur of a radio set from the living room, and this background buzz blends in harmoniously with the steady croaking of tree frogs out in the garden.

  And then full consciousness returns and a world of grief overwhelms me: I've spent a whole day lying uselessly in here, while Little Stevie must still be stretched out on a cold concrete floor in Nairobi Central Police Station, always abandoned by the whole world and now by his own dad too. I haven't even managed to make contact with Luxmi. Wamunyu's bill remains unpaid today, and what's more, at this rate there's no chance that I will be able to pay it tomorrow either.

  I try the light switch, but there's obviously a power cut. Every coup that has ever hit Africa has been done with the lights out - like newly-weds on a coy first wedding night, there's evidently an agreed etiquette for this sort of thing on this continent of coups.

  So rummaging in the dark, the only garment I can find to dress with is my biking jacket - they must have wiped the leather jacket down but have probably hand-washed all the rest of my puke-soiled gear. Weak and cold, I zip the jacket up tightly, while down below I'm only wearing underpants and bare feet.

  'Brian, how are you feeling?' Laila asks when I shuffle into the living room, cold feet slapping against the stone floor. A shrine of thin candles is burning on every window sill, while something chunkier and scented splutters from a dish in the middle of the antelope-hide coffee table. Lulu and Almas are sitting on the sofa in their nightdresses, and even in the soft flicker of candlelight, Almas is old enough to feel embarrassed by the sight of a semi-naked guest scratching the back of his head in the middle of the living room.

  Then the panic hits and I have to flop into an armchair opposite them, unable to restrain a stifled sob:

  'What's going to happen to Little Stevie? He'll be in there another whole night?'

  At the sound of my voice the fly-mesh verandah door opens and Kiwi John steps inside, tossing a cigarette behind him into the garden. Behind him, there's another shadowy figure. It's Fingers.

  I'm too distraught to give Fingers the recognition he's due, and in any case the conman's face, anthracite dark in the dim light, doesn't betray the merest flicker of white-toothed smile. The tension here is too tight for greetings.

  'Luxmi's place has been raided, Brian,' Kiwi John announces sombrely. 'And there was no way I could have got anywhere near her office myself. Fingers came over to tell us about it this afternoon.'

  Fingers nods:

  'That's right, Mr Brian. We don't know yet for certain where your friends are, but we will find out for you for sure.'

  I bury my face in my hands at Fingers' latest news and just can't think of anything to say. It's so quiet now inside the living room that I can hear the frothy susurrations of the scented candle, plopping away like a small sandalwood geyser in the middle of the coffee table.

  'Wait, I've got an idea, mate,' Kiwi John breaks the silence at last, and as I look up to catch his eyes, I can feel the lump in his throat even if I can't see it:

  'Remember the money that your brother Steve and I stumbled across in northern Kenya all those years back, the money which Steve used to buy the land near Amboseli?'

  I can hardly bring myself to look my old mate in the eye, such is the resonance in his voice, so he drops to his knees in front of me, forcing me to notice the tears in his eyes:

  'I've still got my share, mate,' he whispers, grasping my wrists, 'Or most of it at any rate, nearly $90,000 US in a forex account with Standard and Chartered. My pension money. If the banks ever open again it's yours, mate, for as long as you need. It might not be as much as Wamunyu wants, but if you turn up to the police station with dollar bills in your hand, I'm sure the greedy bastard will swap Little Stevie for cash in the hand. Money talks, eh?'

  There's something of a collective pause for breath after this revelation, and looking around the living room I can see that this is evidently the first Laila has ever heard of her husband's hoard, for she's fixed him a hard, cold stare while Almas and Lulu exchange looks of disbelief, legs all curled up on the sofa. Fingers is standing in front of the doorway rotating a white FC Kenya baseball cap around his head, and dressed in dark clothes from the neck down, that's the only thing about him that shows up in this torpid light.

  I lean forward and clasp Kiwi John in a lumpy-throated man-hug, but the tears I'm fighting back are not just in recognition of my dear old mate's unflinching generosity: no, it's because I know that even this incredible offer is no good for me here and now. I haven't got days to wait while banks resume business. Little Stevie must be out from Nairobi Central tonight. It's as simple as that.

  'You're a true mate, John, really you are,' I mumble, relaxing my grip on his shoulders and finally shaking a solemn-faced Fingers by the hand:

  'But there's no time for banks tonight; I've gotta go now, this very minute. Whatever it takes, I must do something tonight to get Little Stevie out. Wamunyu will have to understand that till Kenya gets back to normal, and telephones, internet and banks are working again, I can only give him an IOU. And if he won't let Little Stevie out on those terms, then I'm staying right there back in Nairobi Central next to my son. That's all there is.'

  My insistence leaves a silence around the room while everyone stares at their feet. But when I ask Kiwi John to lend me a change of clothes, Fingers grabs my wrist:

  'You'll never get into town now, bwana. There's a curfew and roadblocks everywhere. It took my all day to walk here across town, Mr Brian. And me, I use the rat paths. You have no chance, bwana.'

  'Then help me all of you by putting together all the spare cash we can find in the house here and now. At each roadblock I'll have to bribe. It's my only hope.'

  Hearing my plan, Kiwi John puts his gnarled, grubby brown fist across the door:

  'If you've got to go, mate, then I'm going to ride you in myself. You're hardly in any sort of shape even to sit on the back of a bike, Brian, let alone ride one halfway across town. You were puking up blood this morning, you know. That's no condition to set out on an SAS mission.'

  Now Laila is on her feet, tugging vociferously at her husband's arm:

  'Are you crazy?' she shrieks, 'You're not going into town at this time of night, either of you! You'll both be killed!'

  She's joined now by Almas and Lulu both standing in their night dresses moaning, Please don't go, Dad! Please don't go!'

  So I do my level best to dissuade Kiwi John, but he's not hearing any of it, either from me or from his family. And as if to show everyone there's no way he's changing his mind, my old mate disappears into the bedroom to find me some clothes.

  Which are all too short, of course, and I'm panting hard as I pull them tight over tired bones, dressing as fast as I can right there in the living room in front of them all. A large collection of bank notes has now agglomerated on the table next to the scented candle, and I realize that most of them must have come from Fingers. It's a poignant role reversal:

  'Thank you, mate,' I murmur, patting his arm and folding the cash carefully into a neat bundle before zipping it inside my leather jacket.

  'You still shouldn't go, Mr Brian,' is all Fingers can say, gently shaking his head to and fro like a Hindu.

  And now Kiwi John has joined me in the living room in his own leather gear, which looks like it hasn't seen action since he last rode with my little brother, Steve, over twenty years ago.

  We all sense the solemnity of the occasion and clasp each other silently. Even Laila has calmed down. There's no emotion on her face any longer; instead, she does her talking in the ferocity of an embrace, which pulls first me, then her husband tight against her ample chest. Almas hugs us both without a word too, but Lulu is wiping tears f
rom the corner of an eye when her turn comes. Only Fingers breaks the silence, muttering, 'Take care, mabwana,' behind our backs when we step outside onto the verandah.

  My teeth are already chattering before I've even sat in any headwind: a combination of nerves, sickness and the soft night chill. Tree frogs are chirruping challenges to anything that's prowling in the near-total dark. Without a shred of moonlight, starlight or streetlight, they're ready to take on all comers - and they must have found the only two men in Nairobi who are daft enough to risk a bullet from the GSU to take them on!

  'Wait here, mate. I'll bring the bike over,' Kiwi John grunts, and I'm just relieved he's taken control of the situation. He's right, of course, I wouldn't have had the strength to do any of this by myself. I'm that far gone.

  Next comes the sound of Kiwi John clicking back the stand of the big Africa Twin, followed by the crunch of tyres over soft gravel. Then something else - a droning of engine accompanied by distant lights, arcing in see-saw sways against the tops of the bushes.

  The engine hums grows closer by the second. Now the beams have stopped swaying and have locked arms to hover motionless on the top of our gates, and a diesel engine adds a menacing rattle of its own.

  Kiwi John is caught wheeling the bike across the courtyard, lit up in ghostly illumination by the fragments of headlight beams that have pierced the gap in the gates. He stops in alarm and rests the bike on its stand. From the other side we hear a door opened, then quickly slammed shut again.

  'Who's there?' Kiwi John growls.

  'It's me!' comes the reply, and we both recognize the voice.

  'Yasmiin!' Kiwi John shouts in relief. 'Wait, I'll let you in.'

  And in his rush to do so, his feverish hands twice drop the keys on the gravel.

  And when the padlock is opened and the corrugated iron gates are finally thrown back on their grating hinges, the diesel engine is pumped a couple of times, before a Land Rover Discovery shoots through the gates towards us, almost clipping the Africa Twin off its stand.

  Yasmiin walks in quickly behind the vehicle.

  'What??' I stammer in bewilderment, but Yasmiin doesn't look my way at all. Instead she's pulling open the rear passenger door and I can hear her soft coaxing:

  'It's all right, Little Stevie. You can come out now.'

  'Stevie! Stevie!' I shriek, almost knocking Yasmiin over in a lunge towards the Land Rover.

  My boy is standing stiff, rigid and ghoulishly silhouetted on the gravel drive in front of me by the time I'm upon him, pressing him so tightly to my chest neither of us must be able to breathe. The tears are streaming down my cheeks and I'm sobbing uncontrollably, but Little Stevie remains an unflinching column of brick in my arms, his eyes trained straight past me towards the house.

  Despite the intensity of the moment, Little Stevie's cold rebuttal is just too much to take, so I grab hold of his neck instead, trying to force him to look me in the eyes, but he just turns away. And that rebuff makes me brush the side of his cheek with the back of my hand, which is really stupid because I know he has always hated being touched around the face, and so in the brush off I get, my dear, dear son shows me the depth of his despair at being left alone and abandoned in Nairobi Central Police Station.

  But now there's pandemonium right behind me. I can hear Lulu and Almas jumping up and down, chorusing Little Stevie's name over and over again like he's a pop star. Next Laila streaks past me too, trying even less successfully than me to get a reaction out of Little Stevie with a full-bosomed embrace, while Kiwi John stretches out his hand for a high-five that goes low-zero.

  So there it is, none of us can make any impression at all, and it's only when Yasmiin breaks through this welcoming party, puts a hand around his shoulder and whispers 'Come,' in a gentle command, that Little Stevie finally leaves the pool of light cast by the headlights and walks vacantly towards the house.

  I ought to be right there by my son's side clinging on to him every step of the way; but I can't. I can't even bring myself to go inside the house. Not yet.

  Instead, I stagger back towards the old wooden bench on the edge of verandah, where I flop down, rocking backwards and forwards, while tears the size of raindrops splat against the wooden floorboards. This unexpected deliverance is everything, of course, a relief beyond description. But there's something else too. Something new and unexpected: Right here and now I think I almost hate Yasmiin!

  I sit far longer this way than I should, listening to all the joyous commotion running riot inside the house, where I too should be bobbing around centre-stage. But I just can't find the right emotion to match the mood of everyone else save Little Stevie. I'm too drained. I've done a lifetime of giving, and how I wish that just for once in my life Little Stevie would reverse the roles, step outside here onto the verandah, throw an arm around me and say, 'It's all right, Dad, it wasn't your fault. We'll be fine now.'

  Sadly, there's more chance of me working out how the hell Yasmiin managed to winkle Little Stevie out of Nairobi Central and what's the story with this Land Rover Discovery.

  Before long I hear shouts of 'Brian! Come on in, Brian!' from inside the house, so I wearily dry my face with the back of my hand and stand up.

  But as soon as I move, the Land Rover's engine is suddenly cut, though the headlights stay on. In all this emotion I had completely ignored the driver of the Discovery, sitting directly across the courtyard from me with his engine idling.

  But now the driver's side door opens and then is slammed quickly shut. I hear feet stepping onto the gravel, walk a couple of paces then pause, hear the flint-click of a lighter, a heavy draw on a cigarette, and then the scrunch of boots moving slowly towards me.

  The figure stops a few feet from the verandah and I can feel the stranger's eyes firmly on my own, though the face is lost in shadow. A plume of smoke wafts towards me, careening with curls and twists in the glare of the headlights. Then comes a voice:

  'I'm told he wanted half a million from you, Brian! Wanna know how much I paid Wamunyu?'

  It's Vic Hanson's voice of course, and that's soon confirmed by the jet of long blond hair and the patches of trademark red bandana caught in the side-swipe glare of the headlights. And as Vic narrows the distance between him and me, pools of light jump fiendishly around him, thick with frenzied moths and mouthfuls of Vic's cigarette.

  I don't care to answer his question and refuse to name a price, but it's obvious Vic is going to tell me anyway:

  'Fifty thousand!' he sneers. 'US.' 'Assholes like Wamunyu always talk big. But if you wanna stay out here in Africa as long as I have, pal, you gotta learn to see through the crap you get from fat-ass mouths likes Wamunyu's.'

  'I'll give you your money back,' I grunt, but whether it's from Vic's pathetic attempt at humiliation, the chill of the night air or Little Stevie's rejection, I feel suddenly weak and have to sit down again.

  'No, no you've misread me, pal,' Vic cuts back, surprisingly softly. 'We're cool on the money, Brian. It's Yasmiin's blood money, see. And I guess it's up to her if she wants to spend it on your son.'

  Then Vic exhales sharply and I can see his face pucker up painfully in the full beam:

  'Oh she told me all about her father, all right. Shit, I sure as hell never hired anyone to kill the old fucker! But no way Yasmiin was ever going to believe that simple truth! I'm telling you, man, fifty thousand was cheap. Much better than her cutting my balls off the first night I get her sexy black ass in the sack.'

  Vic with his molesting hands all over Yasmiin's inviolate naked beauty is an image too repugnant to contemplate. But thankfully, my attention has been distracted.

  So that explains it. Now I know where Yasmiin rushed off to first thing this morning. But there's too much stuff suddenly swirling around in my head right now: Little Stevie's reaction, the debt of gratitude I owe Yasmiin, and in a warped kind of way, Vic Hanson too, I suppose. But there's also a slight worry in the way Vic Hanson is talking, a quiet assumption in his voice that
now that the awkward business of Yasmiin's father's murder has been dealt with, he can just pick up with Yasmiin where he left off. That must never happen in my plans. For though Yasmiin has plainly told me that she and Little Stevie will never be the lovers we so nearly became down in Mombasa, something stubborn inside me is holding out for just that result.

  But right now the kitchen door opens and Yasmiin steps onto the wooden verandah floorboards in noisy shoes:

  'Vic, you can go now,' she calls out, waving him imperiously back to the car. 'Brian, why don't you come inside? Little Stevie will be fine soon. He's drinking sweet tea and already looking a lot more relaxed.'

  In our separate ways both Vic and I have unquestioningly accepted Yasmiin's authority. Vic looks up, expecting Yasmiin to go to him; of course, I'm delighted when she doesn't, and she stays in the doorway instead, with one foot propping the fly-screen door open.

  'I'll call you,' Vic tells her. 'When the phones are back on, at least.'

  Then he throws his cigarette butt towards the askari's shack and turns for the Land Rover. I hear the door open but before it closes again, Vic stops and calls out to me:

  'Hey, Brian. I hear Dismas Mosiro is your best buddy. Mosiro's gonna be running this joint soon and I wanna get to know him. If you or Mosiro need anythin' doin for you, anythin at all. Just have Yasmiin call me. I can help, you know.'

  And I'm sure Vic probably can, but right now I don't care. Instead, I take to my feet and stumble towards Yasmiin in the doorway, and in the confusion of my feelings towards her I try to push straight past, but Yasmiin grabs my hand.

  We hear Vic rev the engine, blink as his headlights arch right over us, then mutually cringe as he toots the horn for the askari to open the gates.

  'Don't be upset with Little Stevie,' Yasmiin whispers. 'He'll be fine.'

  I just grunt at this, secretly smarting from the way Yasmiin has elbowed past me to my son's heart.

  But before I can make it to the kitchen, Yasmiin grasps my chin and pulls me to her.

  We're close now. So close. Just as we were on the beach that night in Mombasa. She runs a hand through my hair:

  'You look so weak, Brian. Don't leave us yet. I don't want you to go. Nor will Little Stevie.'

  And she kisses me unexpectedly on the lips, full and long, and with the touch of her lips, all the rancour inside me evaporates:

  'Come on,' I say, squeezing her hand. 'Time for me to go to him.'