Borderlines

by Michela Wrong

  We walked out of the restaurant courtyard and I stopped dead, so abruptly Brett careered into my back. He exclaimed, then went quiet. He had felt it too. Liberation Avenue was still dotted with pedestrians, but a wave of invisible unease seemed to be rippling along it, freezing everyone into position as it rolled towards us. The music jangling in the nearby bar was stilled. Traffic halted. Even the swifts that swooped around the mock-Renaissance cathedral seemed stopped in flight. The only objects that continued moving were a grey sedan followed by a dark blue Land Cruiser. Every head turned to watch as they purred along the avenue. The drivers and passengers were all male. Some were moustachioed, one was bearded, all wore sunglasses. They looked neither left nor right. The shimmer of tension snaked through and past us, like a nail drawn across water. And then, as though a magician had snapped his fingers, people were walking and talking once again, a taxi gingerly pulled out from the pavement, and a mustard-coloured dog swallowed and yawned.

  Brett smiled. ‘Your first glimpse of the Prez?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was speechless for a moment. ‘Only two cars? No armed police outriders, no wailing sirens? No backed-up traffic for miles around?’ But that’s not it, I thought, not the point of what just happened. There had been nothing laid back or approachable about that motorcade.

  He shrugged. ‘They do things differently here.’

  ‘I’ve noticed there are no photographs of him around town. I thought African presidents went in for portraits behind every shop counter.’

  ‘So last century, Paula,’ he teased me. ‘Way too crude for these guys. You don’t need a magic cane and a leopard-skin hat to be the Man.’ He put one finger to his temple and nodded to where two of the waistcoated waiters who had served us were still standing, eyes warily following the disappearing convoy. ‘It’s what goes on inside people’s heads that matters. And, believe me, these guys have got that nailed.’

  When I got back to the office, Winston shot me a quizzical look over the top of his screen. ‘So?’

  ‘The Americans love us, positively adore us and everything we do. If you ever need any help, photocopiers, transport, technical support, just say the word.’

  He snorted. ‘Ever study any Latin? No? What do they teach youngsters, these days? “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” Virgil’s Aeneid. A weasel use of the word “et”,’ he mused, showing off. ‘“I fear Greeks even” – or perhaps “especially” in the case of your American friend – “when they bear gifts.” Did he go so far as to ask you to copy all our files for their perusal?’

  ‘Not in so many words. But I felt in my bones the offer was on the table.’

  ‘Well, I’d have been disappointed if he hadn’t tried. Whenever you find yourself feeling well disposed to our – or, rather, my – brethren in that monstrosity of an embassy, remind yourself that their counterparts across the border are being just as pally towards the other side’s legal team. Equal-opportunity schmoozing.’

  ‘Good point.’

  I typed solidly for the next few hours, trying to recoup lost time. There was an email from Francesca, which began discussing maps but ended up reading like a diary entry, confessing her fears for the relationship with her boyfriend. ‘If he leaves, I don’t know what I will do. I am too tired, Paula – troppo stanca – to start again.’

  The office slowly grew quiet as, one by one, staffers switched off their laptops, locked their drawers, and Ribqa did some final shredding. I gave my papers to Barnabas to stow in the office safe, and signalled to Abraham, who was patiently perusing a newspaper in the corridor, that I was ready to go.

  Winston looked up. ‘Off home? Good idea.’ He yawned like a cat, then looked at me meditatively. ‘You know, there isn’t an embassy in this shockingly diplomatically under-represented town that wouldn’t like to know what goes on here. We’re under very close scrutiny. I’m sure you’re going to partake in Lira’s famous nightlife, but I would confine your conversation to the banal. This is a small and very nosy town. Half the residents are related to each other and the other half fought alongside one another during the liberation struggle. They loathe or love each other, often simultaneously. Best not make any close friends while you’re here.’

  Well, I thought, that really shouldn’t be a problem.

  ‘One last piece of fatherly advice. In conversation, I’ve learned never to source anything.’

  ‘As in?’

  ‘Never relay to one Lira resident the views of another. It just feeds the general paranoia. If you learn something you need to double-check, never, ever say where you heard it or who told you. You’ll find the phrases “I gather that”, “I understand that”, or “We know” all come in very useful in Lira. Keep it nice and vague.’

  12

  So, of course, I ignored Winston’s advice. I didn’t deliberately set out to defy him, I somehow slipped sideways into it.

  Sumbi’s Café was not the nearest bar to the office, or the most salubrious: a leaden miasma permeated the alley outside. My natural destination would have been either Ristorante Torino or the Italian Club, where I’d met Brett. But Ristorante Torino meant eating with the same man I spent eight hours a day working alongside and the Italian Club proved to be the favoured watering-hole for Lira’s diplomats, NGO staff and UN officials. On my second visit there, the Israeli ambassador hovered at my table making idle chit-chat and the UN’s press officer invited himself over for coffee. On my third, I found my path to the toilets ostentatiously blocked by the Concern representative and a woman from Save the Children, who had been holding a whispered conversation while casting glances in my direction. When I finally tapped Concern Man on the shoulder, he looked at me in hostile silence, moving the requisite inch.

  After that I set off in the opposite direction. Sumbi’s was hidden between a cobbler’s and a fruit shop, its entrance screened by a curtain of jangling plastic beads. I’d order an espresso at the ancient Gaggia coffee-machine, settle myself on a chocolate-brown sofa that sighed as I sat down, light a cigarette – invariably remembering how Jake hated me smoking indoors – and read another excerpt from Captain Lewisham’s diary.

  I was sprawled there when a customer tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up, flushing with irritation.

  ‘Excuse me. You’re new here, aren’t you? This is going to sound rude, but what you are doing right now is considered very offensive.’

  He was certainly someone you noticed. An acrylic Jimi Hendrix shirt that screamed Oxfam, top buttons undone to expose a jangle of metal: one CND pendant, one skull and crossbones, a silver Playboy bunny – peace, death, love. Like many of the local men, he was surprisingly petite. He had a messily tailored beard that strayed high on his cheekbones, doleful spaniel eyes, and a Medusa nest of hair. His hair, I was to discover, was always an indicator of mood. When it was clipped and combed, things were going well. It was when he resembled a Don King that you had to watch your step: it was a sure sign that he was somehow off-kilter, disordered.

  He was gesturing towards my crossed feet, which I’d propped on a stool; the soles, caked with Lira’s fine white dust, were pointing at Sumbi’s entrance. ‘To show someone your feet like that. In my culture, you are disrespecting every man who comes into this bar.’

  My heels hit the floor, a little harder than I’d intended, and I flinched. ‘I’m sorry. A misunderstanding. In my culture, this position means I’m a slob, but not intentionally rude. Point taken.’ I inclined my head, gave him a fake smile and lifted the newspaper as shield. He’d won, I’d ceded, and now I wanted this censorious prick never to talk to me again.

  He didn’t move. ‘To make up for my own rudeness, can I now buy you a coffee?’

  ‘Oh, no, that won’t be necessary.’ Big smile again.

  He looked at the barman, who was watching the exchange impassively, summoned a second espresso with a raised eyebrow, then sat not far from where my feet had been a moment ago, leaning forward with his hands spread on his thighs.

  ‘You work for the gov
ernment’s legal office up the road, yes? You’re the new hot-shot American lawyer who will represent us in The Hague, yes? Mr Peabody’s right-hand woman. We were expecting a man, originally.’

  ‘British, not American. It seems everyone knows my business.’

  ‘Lira is a small town. In a few weeks’ time everyone here will know what you feed your cat and which pizza topping you prefer.’ He took out a cigarette packet, lit up, then studied the glowing tip. ‘And that,’ he said, with slow, careful articulation, ‘is what I hate about this place.’

  That was how my relationship with Dawit began. Looking back, I’m not sure exactly why we hit it off. He was chippy, resentful and as petulant as a grounded teenager. He could rarely resist trying to get a rise out of me with some staggeringly offensive sexist remark; he drank and smoked far too much and frequently smelt. None of that mattered. I think I was drawn by a bone-deep cynicism, an apocalyptic acceptance of adversity tinged with a hint of hysteria that matched my own. His negativity made me feel safe. And he possessed another quality I was beginning to value in a city where everyone seemed to feel the need to explain, expound and tell me what to think about Africa. He rarely lectured.

  He was a regular at Sumbi’s, which he had nicknamed Zombie Café because, he joked, ‘It’s full of the living dead, just flesh walking’, smoking, picking over a bowl of peanuts (to the barman’s increasing annoyance) and nursing cappuccinos till they turned stone-cold. ‘It’s not about the money,’ he assured me. ‘The flavour is stronger.’

  After that first meeting, he always seemed to be there. Lunchtime, mid-afternoon or late at night (‘I suffer from amnesia,’ he explained, so categorically I didn’t dare correct him. ‘I cannot sleep at all’). Sometimes he’d be arguing with another regular, but usually his head would be bowed low over the newspaper. He’d look up, catch my eye and point at a headline, a tobacco-stained, gap-toothed grin spreading across his face. ‘Such bullshit, Paula,’ he’d say (he always pronounced it ‘boulesheeet’). ‘Total, first-class boulesheeet!’ Only The Economist was not boulesheeet. He got it third hand, from the cousin of a friend, and not a paragraph went to waste. He read it from cover to cover, including adverts and economic indicators, squeezing every morsel of text until it had given up its intellectual juice. ‘This is why we fought in the Struggle,’ he said. ‘For the freedom to be intelligent. One day, I will go to your country, shake hands with Mr Bill Emmott and say, “Thank you for fighting the boulesheeet. And he will look around him and say,’ he rocked with laughter, ‘“Call security! Who is this hairy little man?”’

  Sumbi’s was never full, so we did as we pleased. Whenever I couldn’t face the awkwardness of a meal at the villa with Sharmila, I’d stay and play chess with him on a board fished from behind the bar. We tried to humiliate one another at bar football, screaming and cursing as we spun the heavy handles. He taught me Italian card games, whose rules appeared to change with every session, until I refused to play and we returned to chess. Occasionally, he’d offer an impromptu seminar on 1960s rock, reggae and soul – Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Prince Buster – artists whose cassettes, he claimed, had taken so long to reach Lira they were still considered cutting edge. When I looked sceptical, he slapped the table and exclaimed, ‘Anyways, they will always be super-best!’ His favourite, though, was Frank Zappa – ‘My moustache is my tribute’ – and sometimes he would freeze, cock his head to one side and quote the master: ‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’ then chuckle in delight when I played along, narrowing my eyes, hardening my face and muttering: ‘I’m in it for the money, baby, only the money.’

  Initially I was puzzled by Dawit’s seemingly endless free time. He showed neither resentment nor unease when a military patrol descended on Sumbi’s for a spot check of ID cards and leave permits, taken as a signal by other customers to hit the road. ‘Oh, that guy has nothing to worry about from the patrols,’ Abraham explained, when I asked him. ‘He’s seen more military service than a T-55, and everyone in Lira knows it.’

  ‘How come? He can’t be much more than, what, thirty-five?’

  ‘Take it from me, Dawit’s older than he looks. In any case, he was recruited into the Movement as a child, one of our famous Revolutionary Cubs. We used to joke that their mothers were always losing them out in the field because they were born wearing camouflage. Ask him to show you his scars. And, Paula, be careful. Dawit seems very interested in what happens in this office. Too much so. He could be a spy.’

  ‘A spy for whom?’

  ‘Who knows? The other side, the UN, the Americans, the Europeans, the Chinese, the government itself … Lots and lots of nosy people in Lira.’

  ‘So you don’t trust him?’

  ‘I fought with him at the front. I would trust him with my sister’s honour and my life,’ Abraham said implacably. ‘That doesn’t mean he can’t be a spy.’

  ‘I have an expedition planned this weekend,’ Jake announced one Friday. ‘I think it’s time you met my aunt Julia.’

  ‘That sounds like a test.’

  ‘Sure is. She’s the closest thing I’ve had to a mother most of my life. If she doesn’t meet with your approval, I don’t know what I’ll do.’

  I laughed. ‘You know that’s not what I meant. I’d be honoured.’

  ‘OK. Dress code is what you Brits would call “smart casual”. You be smart, I’ll be casual. It works best that way. And … well, there’s a property I’d like to inspect while we’re over there.’

  ‘Over there’ was the famous Wentworth estate, in Orange County. A ninety-minute trip along the turnpike, followed by twenty minutes on a winding rural road fringed with thick forest. He drove saying very little. He was one of those men who become instinctively more cheerful when driving and this was a route he could have traced blindfolded. I watched his hands on the steering-wheel with a kind of lecherous wonder. They were the hands of a man built for physical labour, to wield a pickaxe and dig ditches. Or perhaps to scoop out a cave from the rock and mud, like some troll-like Tolkienesque creature. ‘I always advise interns to recognise their competitive edge and capitalise on it,’ he once joked. ‘My competitive edge is that I can open any jar I choose. I’m just not too sure where to go with that.’

  ‘Here we are,’ he muttered, drawing up outside a bottle-green, wrought-iron gate. We were buzzed in and crunched up a looping gravel drive for a couple of kilometres, Jake taking the bends with laborious, exaggerated care, laughing when I nudged him impatiently in the ribs, building up the anticipation. The estate gradually opened before us, as it had been designed to do: carefully mown terraces, layered flowerbeds dotted with lichen-covered urns, pollarded fruit orchards, a lily-pond, all a visual appetiser for the main course – Griffin House. He braked well short of the entrance, watching my face, enjoying my incredulity.

  ‘Holy cow. This is a bit Citizen Kane, isn’t it? I knew you were a poor little rich boy but I never thought you were in this league.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, you know Americans, we never do anything halfway. Actually, as my aunt could tell you, it’s a bitch to heat, the hot water only works occasionally and the bathrooms in the west wing probably haven’t flushed for fifty years.’

  ‘Who built it?’

  ‘A rifle manufacturer, one of our first tycoons, who made a fortune selling the US Army weapons to clear the Indians off the plains. He then lost his fortune during a card game and shot himself, leaving behind a young, very pretty wife called Betty. It went up for auction and my great-grandfather bought it and married the grieving widow. All very neat.’

  ‘I’m guessing your aunt employs a small army of staff.’

  ‘Yeah, this place needs them. But Julia’s never been exactly short of cash. She does a lot of the gardening herself, though. It seems to have become a growing obsession with the passing years.’

  From the driver’s seat, he picked out individual features with a stubby forefinger. ‘The gatekeeper’s lodge – a house in itself – t
he coach house, sleeps four, the gardener’s cottage, very modest, up on that little knoll, the dovecote. No dove has ever roosted there, but my ancestors were obsessed with all things English and liked to pretend they were living in an ancient country manor. Around the back are the tennis courts and the croquet lawn. Over there you find Lake Lacombe and Betty’s Forest, christened after the famous widow. Quite a few deer, raccoons and woodpeckers in there, some wild turkey, too, and there was a time when we bred pheasants, and local grandees were invited on the Wentworth shoots. The whole estate was once thirty thousand acres, but my family have been donating tranches of it to the county for decades. There are only about three thousand left now.’

  ‘Only …’

  ‘You can imagine what it was like growing up here. Tennis, skinny-dipping in the lake, ponies to ride, learning to shoot, canoeing, camping on the estate. Paradise on earth, really. We were out in the open most of the time, and I think having all that space meant we just didn’t mind as much that my father was drinking and my mother hysterical with rage. The first sign of tension, and us kids would head out the door. I think the relationships we forged with the gardeners, the gamekeeper and estate manager filled the hole left by a dysfunctional family. I love it here, and I know my sister feels the same way.’

  He parked the Jetta, rang the bell and a dark-haired, olive-skinned young man opened it. He wore a white linen shirt and dark trousers. No tie or jacket, but somehow it was obvious that he was in uniform. ‘Mr Jake. Very good to see you. Your aunt is having a drink on the terrace. Would you care to join her? Let me take the bags to your rooms. I put you and Ms Shackleton in the east wing. Good afternoon, Ms Shackleton, I’m Miguel.’

  ‘Rooms’, plural. So we were observing the social niceties that weekend.

  Julia had her back to us, as we walked onto the terrace, gazing out. It was certainly a view worth savouring: the lawn unfurled before us, a green tongue fringed with dark teeth. The woodlands behind stretched to the valley below, where a grey ribbon of highway, glinting with the flash of passing cars, could just be glimpsed.