Bingo's Run (17 page)

“Fine, ya,” I said. I smiled at her. She did not smile back.

“Sir, I am checking to see that you have enough towels.”

“Jambo, Charity,” I said, and smiled again. She gave me a you're-a-tourist smile.

“Towels, sir?”

“I'z fine for towels,” I said.

Charity disappeared behind her cart and then popped back up. “Oh, one thing, sir. I thought you might need this.” She smiled sweetly as she held a bathrobe out to me. “I heard that one of your bathrobes walked away this morning.”

I grabbed it and slammed the door shut on the cleaner's laugh. “She drive me mad,” I said to the bathrobe.

I waited five minutes and then I went down the corridor and knocked on Mrs. Steele's door. “Hi, Bingo,” she said when she opened it. She wore a dark blue woman's suit (tight at the waist), a white shirt, and a pearl necklace. Her gold hair hung in waves down to her shoulders. I thought of the hair dryer. Her lipstick was bright hooker. Her left hand held a Bloody Mary as if her fingers were carved to hold the glass.

“You'z look pretty,” I said. I held out the copy of the contract. “Here, tha contrac',” I said, and smiled false.

“Come in,” Mrs. Steele said. Her voice was as cold as ice in vodka. She sat down on a sofa the color of egg yellow and patted her hand on the cushion. “Bingo, come and sit next to me,” she said.

I sat. The Hunsa painting I had given her was propped against the table opposite us. Mrs. Steele stared at it. “It's magnificent,” she said. At first, I was not sure if she meant the Masta's giant bhunna, but she was staring at the woman looking over Hunsa's shoulder with the bark skin and the leaf-green eyes. As I looked at the painting, I could swear the tree-woman blinked.

Mrs. Steele spoke to the picture in a soft voice:

She looked at me and smiled. “Bingo, that's Wordsworth,” she said.

I thought, Those words are worth nothing, but I did not say it.

She said, “Now let me take a peek at that contract.”

As Mrs. Steele read the paper, I watched her eyes run across the lines. She read slow. The more she read, the more she smiled. She said, “Bingo, may I ask you who your lawyer is?”

I said, “Kepha Kepha wrote it—she famus, bes' lawyer in Nairobi. It cost me four thousand shilling.”

Mrs. Steele patted my leg. “Bingo, I am really sorry to tell you this.” Her smile did not say sorry at all. “I am not a lawyer, but I have seen hundreds of art contracts—and this is not one of them.” Her smile dripped with chang'aa.

“I know,” I said. “The real one on special yellow legal papa in my room. This jus' a copy from tha business centa.”

She kissed my cheek cold. “Bingo, I am afraid to tell you that what is written here is nonsense.” She did not look afraid. She said, “Apart from the opening paragraph, this contract is gibberish. This Kepha lawyer took advantage of you.”

The Kepha was legend. How could a legend come from nothing? I breathed hard, stopped the tears, grabbed the paper, and ran. I ran out of the Lyle Suite and almost straight into the cleaner's cart, which was now parked outside. I tripped. Tak! I got up and ran back down the corridor, through a cloud of cleaning-fluid smell, back to my room.

I slammed the door to Room 349 so hard that the walls shook.

Then I ran across the room, lay on the bed, and cried. I had been ripped off before (mostly by hookers). I had lost money before (mostly to friends). But losing to Mrs. Steele crushed me. Unlike the sugarcane, the liquid that came out of me was not sweet but bitter.

Enough time had passed for the bitter to become sad when the door opened by itself. “Sir?” Charity called.

I rubbed my wet face against the sheet. I looked over at her. “Why ya not knock?” I shouted.

“Jambo, sir,” she said. “I wanted to see if you should need anything.”

“I need nothing,” I shot back.

Charity walked toward me. She tilted her head. “Sir, I was informed that there was a water leak in this room.”

I looked up at her from the bed. “Wha'?”

She went on, her tone mocking me. “Number one, the bathroom was flooded; number two, your so very important legal contract was soaked; number three, the sheet is wet through,
and, number four, your face is wet. It is most obvious, sir. There must be a water leak.”

I was about to shout at her, but she threw a packet of light blue Walkers at me—Salt 'n Vinegar. The packet hit my head. I wanted her to leave right then, but instead I sat up, opened the crisps, and ate.

“So, how's that very important legal contract going?” Charity said.

I shook my head, crunched, and swallowed. “Don' even ask. Disasta!” Then I told her about Hunsa, the contract, and Mrs. Steele. I finished: “Tha' paintin's worth millions. Tha' American try to scam me. She neva beat me. You see!”

Charity laughed. “Well, stick with it, sir. In Kikuyu we say,
Munyaka wi mbere ya kajinga
.” She did not know I understood, so she added, “Good fortune lies after the tripping block.”

I said, “Ya,” and ate another crisp. I said back, “
Ciakorire wacu mugunda
.”

She laughed. “Sir, I would not rely on God to make you rich. If being a successful businessman like you just needed some prayer, then everyone would pray and be successful.”

She had a point. I thought about the scrawny Jesus-lover-hag at St. Lazarus. She was as poor as rags, but she prayed a lot. “Ya, business is tough,” I said. Every year at seed time Senior Father would give me a handful of tiny two-leaf seed-yams to plant in an empty corner of the field. He said, “You make a trench like this.” I dug the soil with my hands like he showed me. He said, “You put tha seed this far after tha last one.” I used my knife to make a hole and planted the seed like he told me. He said, “Cover the seed with mud when you are done.” I did that, too. I did exactly what Senior Father said. “Remember,” he said, “every man is mud. No man is higher than another. Worm eat every man back
to earth so that life can grow.” So I planted the tiny two-leaf plants one by one. After I planted each seed-yam, I said to it, “Goodbye, seed.” I covered it with mud and patted it down. Then I ran to the water jug, cupped water in my hands, and sprinkled it over the mud. I placed my lips on the mud and said, “Grow big.” After I had planted twenty seed-yams, I tasted the sharp red mud on my lips all night.

I licked my lips clean of the Salt 'n Vinegar crisps. Charity watched me, close-lipped and peaceful. For a second I thought she was the sun, I was the seed, and water had leaked onto my face from hands above. A slow drum began to beat inside me; it was from a deep place, a place nothing had lived in before, from an empty corner of my field.

Charity scrunched her mouth. “Sir, it is a funny thing,” she said.

“What?”

“The art dealer business.”

I ate a crisp. “Why that?”

“Well, sir, it is something the American art dealer lady just said. You see, just a short while ago I did turn-down service in there.”

“Ya?” I asked, casual.

She shook her head, “No, sir, it would be very wrong for me to say any more. I have told you far, far too much already.” I said, “Come on, Charity, you and me—we are frien's.”

She looked at me. “We are?”

“Ya,” I said. “Go on, tell me. What the American say?”

“Well, it is strange,” Charity said, and tilted her head. “You being so sad and the art dealer lady, she is so happy. You see, I heard the art dealer lady say to her husband on the telephone, ‘I got him. The boy has no idea what those paintings are worth.
Once I get those paintings I am going to dump him.' ” Charity smiled and watched her words fill me. “Have an excellent night, sir,” she said, then turned and left.

Her husband. Charity had said “her husband.” All the words Mrs. Steele said to me by the pool about feeling bad about Mr. Steele, the divorce contract, the mirrors, and being alone. It was all garbage—all hustle!

I drank four vodkas from the little fridge in my room, but they did not help me at all. I put on the TV and watched football. Arsenal beat Liverpool 2–1. The loser gets nothing.

The next morning, Mrs. Steele telephoned me and asked if I wanted to have breakfast with her. I snapped back, “No.” But this was anger's word. I thought fast. It was critical that she did not know I was onto her scam. Anyway, I was hungry, and what idiot says no to a free meal at the Livingstone? “Okay, ya—I can do that,” I then said.

I went downstairs and into the restaurant. Mrs. Steele wore a white dress that looked as if it had been made from bandages wrapped around her body. Her hooker shoes were red, and she carried her shiny black bag under her arm.

We ate, both wearing the mask of false happiness. She said, “Bingo, I have to go out in a minute. I am guessing that you don't want to come.”

I drank cane juice and smiled as sweet as the brown. “I love to come.” I needed to be right on Mrs. Steele, as if I was Jesus and she was my cross. If I was that near, she could never scam me.

Manager Edward opened the hotel door. “And where to this morning, Mrs. Steele?” he said.

“The National Gallery,” she said back. I followed her out.

The second we walked out of the hotel, the morning sun hit me like a hammer; it was extreme even for Nairobi. The sun is the boss over all people. Senior Father had worked under that sun, his long body sweating all day. “Mboya the Mutha of Everything. The sun is her cook pot,” he would say.

Mr. Edward waved down Kenyatta Avenue and a polished black Mercedes drove up with The Livingstone written in white on its side. The window slid down and Mr. Edward shouted to the driver, “Mr. Alex, take Mrs. Steele's party to the National Gallery of Art.” The driver's cap bobbed. Before I followed Mrs. Steele into the car, Mr. Edward put a hand on my shoulder. “Mr. Mwolo, the Somalian philosopher Elazar once said, ‘Love thy precious cooking bowl whilst you have it, even if it is to be broken the next day.' ” His philosophy seemed shorter in the heat. I got into the car. Mr. Edward closed the car door so softly that the noise of Kenyatta Avenue stopped as if a flame had gone out.

I knew that the National Gallery was in Chiromo but I had never been there—it was Sinja Smith's territory. At the main entrance, Mrs. Steele told an old white-haired, face-creased woman that she had an appointment with the chief curator, Mr. Desono-Mgani. The old woman said, “Second floor,” and pointed with a shaky hand at the lift.

When we left the lift, a woman even older and slower than the one before showed us into the curator's office. “Wait here,” she said. “He comin'.”

The room was larger than Boss Jonni's whole apartment, and everything in the place was old. Most of the room was filled with a long red wooden table. In the middle of it was a wooden fruit bowl carved with faces. Mangoes, apples, pears, and oranges filled half the bowl. A hungry army of flies filled the air above it.

Mrs. Steele looked at the walls and gasped. They were crammed with paintings. A picture of Jesus was next to a painting
of a naked woman with fat white children at her feet. There was a painting of a yellow flower, and one of a boy with a blue horse. There were three large pictures painted by children—one had red and green shapes, one was dark stripes, and the third was just colored boxes. There were pictures of farmers, dancers, thin men, and one of a naked fat woman climbing out of a trough. There was a painting of people in longboats on a river. There was also a poster for soup. Mrs. Steele prayed to Jesus as she walked around the room.

A painting caught my eye and I went straight there. The painting was larger than me. It was of a tree. The leaves—there were hundreds, bright red and yellow—were the faces of children. The tree's trunk was a giant crazy blue bhunna. Painted into the trunk, at the top, was the shape of a man. His face, hair, and beard were in the creases of the bark. No question—it was Thomas Hunsa. In the middle of the bhunna tree trunk was his model's soft face. I could swear that she breathed. Her light blue skin was smooth against the rough creases of the man's body. Her eyes were electric green. I stared into them and saw a riot of fire inside. The tree was planted on a large yellow mound with four turtle feet and a head.

I felt heat on my neck—Mrs. Steele stood behind me, staring. I stretched out my hand and pointed at the bottom right-hand corner, where “Masta” was painted, as clear as day.

“Magnificent,” Mrs. Steele said. “The painting is utterly beautiful.” I looked up. “Bingo, there were only fifteen known canvases by the Masta,” she said. “You gave me the sixteenth, and this is the seventeenth. When the original pieces were first displayed in the United States twenty years ago, art critics around the world referred to the Masta as the da Vinci of Africa, the first true genius of the modern era. Then the Masta vanished. Some said he was in Kenya, others said Paris, there were spottings in London,
and most said he was dead. Hundreds of dealers searched for him, but the Masta had vanished.” She looked down at me. “Bingo, that was until you rediscovered him and his hundreds of unseen canvases.”

I knew from when I first ran white to him that the Masta's paintings were good. This one me and Mrs. Steele stared at was better than the one next to it, a rubbish yellow bedroom with flower pictures in it. I wondered if the artist was an old friend of Thomas Hunsa's, and if “Vincent” needed a dealer. “So I'z a good deala?” I said.