by M G Vassanji
Thus the Old Man. Only he could do that. And I could have bet that Julius was shaking in his dripping wet pinstripe trousers at that very moment.
And what else can I do for you, said Mzee, watching me with benevolent amusement.
Thank you my father, I said, you have been kind and fair. You have given me of your precious time, for which I am immensely grateful. I stood up and presented him with a jewellery box. Please accept this token of friendship from my in-laws.
The goldsmiths, hmm, your in-laws. He smiled, opened the box with mild curiosity and observed for a moment the brilliant necklace and matching earings inside. Yes…they give what they value, the shiny things. But it is good. And what token have you brought for your father?
If it doesn’t sound like an affront, my father, Dilip has requested that you accept a ten percent partnership in Mermaid. Just like the British manufacturers say, By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, et cetera.
He stared at me craftily, then said, That is good—by appointment. I accept.
In gratitude Dilip offered me also a ten percent partnership in Mermaid.
In contrast to his ilk, the Javeris pre-empted extortionist demands through gifts and politic partnerships. Their duty-free airport shops were owned partly by the redoubtable Mother Dottie and did a brisk dollar business on the side.
My prestige round about town was large though somewhat shadowy. I was the famous facilitator, with access to the powerful and the immeasurably wealthy. I was not in any business for myself, yet I gained a stake in many enterprises that I had helped to make a success. A year and three months after Paul Nderi dismissed me, I was put on the President’s New Year’s Honours List and was awarded the Order of the Burning Spear (second class). I was touched by the Old Man’s gesture. When I went to receive the honour at a State House outdoor function, he gave my shoulder a warm, affectionate squeeze. Mother Dottie, incidentally, received the Order of the Golden Heart, the country’s highest honour, at the same time. Paul Nderi, as far as I know, was never publicly honoured.
Shobha exulted in our status as members of the country’s elite. She who wrinkled her nose and smelled meat on me if I had consumed even a sliver of turkey on a canapé (and scrupulously avoided me for a day or two while I became cleansed through abstention) could not herself resist a garden party at the American, French, or Saudi embassy, or a dinner-dance courtesy of the Koinanges or Njonjos, all serviced with mounds of beef and other meats and alcohol. She would come elegantly attired in lavish silk saris, winsomely coiffed and laden with gold and diamonds. Her dark, smooth skin was an asset and her silken, melodious manner of speech was seductive. She was considered smart. When someone asked her at a party why she wore foreign clothes, she answered that the men who were present in suits were not in Kenyan dress, nor were the women clad in London and Paris designs.
My wife and I had moved a tolerable distance apart so that the household still functioned. After every carnal—which was her word—party, she would go to temple and beg forgiveness; her donations to the temple funds were generous. Your Bhagwaan seems to forgive readily, I would say. She of course had her own opinions of me. One day our daughter Sita asked her, as a test, what a figure with zero sides was called, and Shobha answered, with a sweet smile, Darling, ask your father, he is one; paradoxically, he is also a man of many sides. She also called me the Thin Man. Whatever I was, she continued to thrive on it.
One day the president of the National Bank called me up and told me overseas aid money had arrived for the drought-stricken northern district of the country, but it was in dollars and the Bank did not have enough shillings in hand to convert them in an emergency. Could I help. Immediately, my brothers-in-law, whom I set to the task, began scouring the shops of Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, and Kisumu, offering dollars for shillings, new currency for old, and the shopkeepers emptied for us their safes and trunks and turned over their mattresses. The required currency was made available in two days. Later the Bank needed to buy back some of the dollars from us. In this way Aladdin Finance Company—now vilified across Africa—was born. I have not denied, when challenged, that our charges to the Bank in such instances have been high; I have argued, in reply, for the morality of the marketplace, adding moreover that our slippery local currency needs large commissions as a buffer to absorb dealers’ risks. What I have not revealed, though obvious to anyone with a head, is that with every transaction a certain percentage worth of service charge—in other words, a bribe—was demanded in private by officials and was happily paid.
Money was pouring into the country, liberally sloshing around, benefiting those it touched, and pouring out to private banks and investments overseas. A well-placed, discreet finance company like Aladdin could work miracles for its clients and for itself. The sums I had been handling for Jim and Gerald (the former was now in Dar es Salaam, the latter in Lusaka) were mere loose change in comparison.
Meanwhile, the popular Member of Parliament J.M. Kariuki continued to condemn corruption in the country. As did the students and faculty at the University, but more noisily and in the streets; frequently the GSU would rush up to State House Drive to meet the demonstrations and whack heads and throw bodies into the paddy wagons. The writer Ngugi went into exile, never to return. And rumours began to circulate of that Dissenters’ Hotel, the basement torture chambers of Freedom House, right behind JQS Tower, where I had my office.
Says Seema to me: In my estimation, half of that aid money you and your in-laws handled for the Bank went into your pockets—money that could have gone to feed starving children, those poor kids with their bellies distended with kwashiorkor, those little hearts caged inside naked skeletons…Her imagination, I tell her, sounding annoyed, has obviously been fed by too many sensational images of poor babies on television. Not that there is no starvation in the world. But does any aid ever wholly reach the poor, without the aid of middlemen? I spare her my brother-in-law Chand’s thesis about hongo tax and service charges. But I do ask her, How right is it for the fat people of the world to consume ten times what the poor of the world consume—and then preach to others on morality? And are you sure you know exactly where your retirement funds are invested? Perhaps you own a bit of Aladdin Finance after all, with all its sins. I have offended her; perhaps my manner was brash and contemptuous. I did not intend to draw attention to her stoutness, which in any case is only slight and rather becomes her. She leaves, red in the face, and I am sorry to see her drive off into the night, engine purring, headlights catching the shrubbery across the road before fading away. I return to my own lonely vigil.
I think of Sophia, who succeeded in completely engaging my soul. After she had left me, as I lay awake beside my wife in that loneliness that only couples know—while she lay deep in a sleep that dare not be disturbed—I would dream of Sophia…her embraces, her sweet smell, the kisses from her small cherry mouth, the tender Italian endearments. I believe she meant them. I would wish then that I had made more of that relationship; but it was too late, and in any case I was caught in a web of family relationships with their many expectations. It would take years for that web to finally break.
I think Seema and I could make something out of our relationship, take it further—we see each other often enough and she does take care of me, as an Indian woman is wont to do with a single male—but her moral qualms about me stand in the way; and I have kept my distance because I know not how long I will remain here. I call her the next day to apologize for my rudeness; she says it’s all right, maybe I had a point. And so we make up.
Deepa calls in the evening. Bhaiya, I’m worried about Joseph, she says. All he speaks of when I call him is the massacre in Nakuru…and revenge, and war. He seems totally consumed by these thoughts, Vic. What shall we do?
Leave him alone, Deepa. He’s not a child. He’s not likely to run off to Nairobi seeking revenge, is he?
But this is exactly what she fears. And she wants desperately, more than anything else, to keep Joseph safe—f
or Njoroge’s sake, who died, and for Mary’s sake, who was betrayed.
You know he is headstrong, she says softly, like his father was…
The last time Njoroge went with his wife Mary to Deepa’s pharmacy, Mary was pregnant again, this time carrying Joseph. Thereafter he went alone, on Saturday around closing time. He would pick out what he needed, the two shop assistants would quietly leave, and then Deepa and Njoroge would be alone.
We held hands, Vic, she said once, but there was nothing more…nothing much more.
Much more? Meaning exactly what? This was not a question I could ask my sister, and it did not really matter any more.
I did not know of his visits to Deepa at the time; we rarely saw each other, but we arranged to meet one Sunday afternoon at my parents’, when he came to visit my mother.
Mother had had both her breasts removed and the cancer seemed to have been arrested. The disease had brought my parents together once more in a rather touching manner. Once Mother was home, Papa doted on her. He made breakfast for her, returned from work early whenever he could. I know I shouldn’t treat her like she’s sick, Vic, but I can’t help it—I feel I want to be nice to her, share moments with her. Didn’t we share some precious moments when you were little, in Nakuru—weren’t we in love, Vic, your mother and I?
Of course you were, Papa, it was nice and comforting to watch the two of you, it meant a lot to Deepa and me.
She still desired to return to India, and he had told her he was ready to go with her whenever she was ready; but meanwhile here they were in Nairobi. Mother seemed to have realized that in spite of her past quarrels with Papa, he was what she truly had in her life, and moreover he loved and cared for her.
Njoroge had seen Mother at the hospital after her second operation, but this was his first visit to our home in many years. It was Sunday, tea time. The sight of frail Mother sitting on the straight-backed chair in the living room, strands of greying hair loose on her forehead, overwhelmed him as he arrived, and as he gave her a hug in her chair, he couldn’t hold back a sob. She told him: It’s my job to cry, William.
She used his other name and that made the moment even more intimate. She had made gulab jamun that day, which had been his favourite since our childhood. For some while he sat beside her holding her hand, telling her about his wife and daughter. You should take some gulab jamun for them, she told him, and he said he would. She said she had some Indian medicines that would ease Mary’s pregnancy; he smiled.
She seemed gay and detached that day, and not quite among us, as if she now belonged to a different, more fragile existence, a limbo to which Papa had more access than we children. She was still under medication. I longed for her to return to her more normal self, as we had been assured she would by the doctors, who had also told us she had many more years to live. She was still the precious centre of our small family, and Njoroge’s presence now beside her seemed appropriate, he had been so much a part of us.
Vic—Njoroge said, as we departed my parents’ home and stepped out into the front driveway—Vic, my brother, mind where you tread these days…who your friends are. The present regime may not last long, and you may find yourself out on a limb.
I looked at him, surprised. Njoroge’s mentor J.M. Kariuki, it was said, was rooting for the succession to the presidency when the Old Man died, but so were the several others of the Inner Circle. And I had heard nasty exchanges on the subject of Kariuki—who had said famously that ours was a country of ten millionaires and ten million destitutes. It seemed to me that if anyone it was J.M. who should exercise care. He had powerful enemies opposed to his populist ideas regarding the redistribution of wealth. He had mass support, but at the top, he was an isolated man, and marked. I told Njoroge this, and he looked away, his face clouding, as if I were confirming what he already feared.
A cool spring breeze blows in a dark and clear night; a low susurrus of waves fills the background as they roll and ripple onto the shore a hundred yards away under the cliff. And out here on the porch, looking out on the water as I like to do, wrapped in a Kulu shawl that is a present from Seema, I think of the country I have left behind.
A small war ravages the north, Somali shiftas ambushing vehicles and attacking drought-stricken villages; in fact, the entire belt of land from northern Kenya through Sudan and Uganda into Congo cries out in an agony of rape and abduction, war and pillage. An ethnic war, a politically inspired cleansing, threatens the Rift Valley. In Nairobi’s South Sea, Muslims and Christians, including perhaps youth from the MuKenya movement, or perhaps simply the idle and unemployed, of whom there are plenty, have gone at each other, burning mosques and churches. AIDS has decimated villages in the Lake Victoria region. Throughout the country rains have failed to come in their usual abundance, for which blight rampant deforestation may be the cause. In the midst of all this I made my millions; tens, hundreds of them. It would appear then that something is wrong with me. But that is too easy a judgement, surely.
I ask, would it have made a difference if I had declined the fortuitous role that happened my way? Surely there would have been another to fill my place. The game of money requires the presence of someone such as me, the neutral facilitator.
Does a bank need be moral? Or a croupier? Or indeed a genie of the fabled lamp, as I sometimes saw myself?
I have said that I could not engage morally in my world. Without actually looking for it, or even desiring it very much, for I am not one of extravagant habits or needs, I found myself on an easy path under the patronage of he who mattered most in our land. My friend Njoroge, on the other hand, had a conscience that engaged; but if anything, his life only proves the quixotic nature of that engagement. Our world functioned according to its own rules that no one—perhaps not even he who mattered most—could control.
Applause. Too long and strenuous a defence, you say. And perhaps you are right. You see, the woman who comes to talk to me in the evenings under the stars, over tea and whisky or wine, has found a way of gently but persistently needling me, probing that cold hard carapace over my heart that I have come to see as my strength.
Perhaps Seema is right in her liberal attitudes; they may be simplistic but contain a germ of Gandhian truth. If enough people cared, she explained to me…Cared, and did what, I challenged. She blushed, then said cautiously: Cared and did little things that perhaps could add up?
Do I feel at last the stirrings of a conscience?
TWENTY-NINE.
The outspoken J.M. Kariuki, as predicted, was murdered. An unclaimed mutilated body which had lain on the slabs of the city morgue for at least a day was finally confirmed by one of his wives to be that of J.M. It was March, 1975.
The previous two days the man who was seen as a saviour of the country’s poor, the politician who had become Njoroge’s mentor and his friend, had been declared missing, and our newspapers had dutifully reported a planted story that he had been sighted in faraway Lusaka. But we all knew, all Nairobi whispered, that the Old Man’s emerging nemesis, the antagonist in the sidelights, had been got to by his enemies. A cloud of foreboding lurked over the country as it awaited news about J.M. The university students were restless, and it became fearsome for motorists from the suburbs to come down State House Drive, where the seething, angry dormitories lurked; army and GSU jeeps prowled the City Centre and the slum areas. The body of the beaten and shot politician meanwhile had been discovered by a Masai herdsman in the Ngong Hills, where it was dumped in the hope perhaps that the hyenas would get to it. It arrived at the morgue badly mutilated; had someone from Kariuki’s supporters not checked at the morgue in time, the MP would have been buried anonymously and his disappearance would have remained a mystery. When the news of J.M.’s killing broke, as expected there were riots in the streets and calls for the President to resign.
There was a story going around, which is still repeated in the country to this day, of a secret meeting at the President’s home in Gatundu. At the meeting, according to this vers
ion, J.M. Kariuki, who had been the Old Man’s secretary once, was strongly told off by his former boss and idol for his scandalous speeches against the government; in a fury, the Old Man lashed out at J.M. with the top of his ebony walking cane. The top of the much-celebrated Presidential cane was a carved elephant head with gold trim; it knocked out three of J.M.’s front teeth. As he went reeling to the ground, the President said to those around him, Take care of him. Which is what they did. J.M.’s body, when found, had the front three teeth missing. And, the story concluded, the Old Man’s cane now had a telltale dent on the gold trim, where J.M.’s teeth took the hit.
What are you looking for, Lall-jee? the Old Man said to me in his gravelly voice, a twinkle in his eye.
It was only a week since J.M.’s body was found, and I had come to see the President on a mission. I had not seen him in six months. He looked gaunt, his cheeks withdrawn, eyes sunken; his sparse white hair looked woolly and unkempt. There had been a rumour of a heart attack, and a bad fall, and the newspapers were said to have long readied their obituaries, which apparently lay locked away in editors’ safes.
I did not believe the story of the President knocking off J.M.’s front teeth in a fury, yet I couldn’t help peering at the cane now leaning against the bookshelf next to his desk. The gold band didn’t show a blemish from where I sat, the gleaming white ivory tusks of the elephant head curved to their ferocious tips without hitch.
I’m sorry, Excellency…I was distracted…
He knew well what I was looking at and why. Whenever he called me Lall-jee, I took that as a sign that there was a formal tone to the relationship that day and accordingly called him Excellency, which did not meet with the contempt he had thrown at it before. The President was extremely preoccupied these days, and this meeting had not been my idea. But, at this precarious time following the Kariuki murder and with the ongoing rumours about his delicate health, I had been sent by a group of Kenya’s worried business elite to affirm their undying support of him. As a token of good faith I had come bearing gifts—some local handcrafts, a cheque for a leprosy hospital, and a briefcase full of cash donations. I detested the crudity of that last offering, stacks of hundred-shilling notes, but today I was simply the messenger. He was in any case appreciative.