Devil’s Harvest (12 page)

Gabriel tried to detach his thoughts from the notion of the ungrateful poor of Kenya producing substandard excrement due to an insistence on eating whatever was available, with no regard for the sensibilities of shit-farmers from Ontario. But the woman persisted. No, he had not experimented with faeces in his work. No, he did not regard such research as vital to the sustainability of the planet. So what was it that he actually did?

He answered by rote rather than consideration: ‘I work on genetically modified crop production involving—’

He could get no further. Stupidly, he hadn’t anticipated the effect of his answer on the crystal-worshipper seated next to him. The dreadlocks flapped, all but slapping him across the face, and the breasts hmphed and jiggled in outrage. Oh no, no that is not good, that is so not cool, what are you thinking, you are the Devil incarnate, do you burn children for warmth at night, you Antichrist of hell. The madness alongside him spewed and ranted and protested and quoted endless reams of apocalypse testified to by gurus with Indian names that were perfectly foreign to him. Apparently GM stood for ‘global moguls’ or perhaps ‘mongrels’ and it was to be the death of everyone in the world, by means as yet uncertain but as surely as beef would putrefy your brain and poultry would grow men mammaries.

‘Do you know that they fed rats GM corn for a month and they all developed rashes all over their bodies?’

‘It sounds terrible,’ he replied, trying not to sound patronising, but then could not resist adding: ‘Though if you kept me in a laboratory and fed me carbohydrates all day I might also get a bit itchy.’

Carrie gave him a withering look. ‘Everyone thinks the world will end in a big explosion. They’re wrong, it’s not war that’s going to wipe the planet out. It’s a little “oops” and the clatter of a Petri dish on a laboratory floor.’

Gabriel had to give her some credit for the image, but he refused to be drawn out from his defensive shell. Faced with an increasingly stony wall of unresponsiveness, after a few pips and squirts, she gradually subsided like a cooling volcano, until she was reduced to an occasional shake of the head and a self-absorbed mutter. Once Gabriel was sure the worst was over, he pulled out the
Annals
and started paging deliberately, looking for the article with the most obvious technical tables and illustrations. But his thoughts wandered far from the results of chromosome mutation in peas conducted by the University of Wisconsin. Though he rejected Carrie-the-poo-farmer’s onslaught out of hand, he remained troubled by her impression of him. She made him feel old, ensnared in the past. She pouted her succulent lips and pointed her brassiereless chest out into the world, young and fabulous, while he sat alongside her, the dried husk of a once sentient being studying his parchment. Leaving Paddington Station on the Heathrow Express he had caught the face of his father in a homeless drunk on the platform; he imagined the same ugliness in his own face now, tired and drawn in the pressurised cabin.

Finally, his companion lost all interest in him and took out a sleek iPad. She connected up a pair of pink earphones and started watching some cheap-looking soap opera. From what Gabriel could see, most of the activity took place in a tiny apartment in some over-dense American city, with characters entering and leaving at regular intervals. The young woman gave snorting little laughs under her breath, distracting him and enticing him to turn to look at her screen, staring unknowingly as the storyline unfolded for her.

Once supper was over – a nondescript assortment of melted cheese and carbohydrates – the lights were turned off. His fellow traveller bedded down like a contented bear, her unwashed locks providing her with more comfort than Gabriel’s inflated travel pillow, curved like a mutated bean around his neck. After a while he gave up his attempt at sleep and looked around him more carefully. Carrie had slumped over the barrier formed by the arm rest and her beige airline blanket had spilt across him. The interior of the plane looked more like a crime scene than a mode of transport, food cartons, blankets, headsets scattered across the unmoving bodies, collapsed over one another in apparent mortality. The flight was dominated by Africans, apart from an incongruous group of Buddhists in matching light-grey flannel outfits who had somehow all managed to fall asleep while remaining perfectly upright. It was quiet now, save for the rumble of the engines and the slight vibration that one got from travelling at a thousand miles an hour through a vacuum. Outside, Gabriel could see the end of the wing, lit up by a flashing strobe light; apart from that it was dead black and still. The interior of the plane was half-lit, one or two passengers reading with their lights on. It felt secure, and yet quite dangerous, like a hospital ward at night.

The surreality of his situation dawned on him: a young hippy asleep on his shoulder, a plane full of strangers, and he, a botanist from Bristol, on his way to Sudan. What did he really know about the place? Of course, he read the news and had studied its climate and flora, but the people remained a mystery to him. He felt, for the first time, a bolt of concern for his safety. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t really like travelling to the Third World. He found the cities, and their inhabitants, chaotic, dirty and simple. But his recent personal turmoil had shown him that his understanding of the place he regarded as home was flawed in its own way. His night remained restless and uncomfortable; he had never had the ability to sleep on planes and he was, at the best of times, a reluctant traveller.

Before dawn broke, just the glimmer of light at the furthest edge of the earth’s curvature, the lights were unceremoniously switched on and breakfast was announced. Gabriel felt nauseous and picked at a solidified roll but could not bring himself to lift the tinfoil lid that kept the congealed eggs and other horrors at bay. Carrie appeared to wake up from a deep fog, yawning and rubbing and gesticulating with far more exuberance than the situation warranted. By the time they had touched down, the vast savannah still awaiting the dawn, he had more than had his fill of his neighbour.

‘Good luck with the poo farming,’ he said, unable to contain his grumpiness as they finally exited the plane.

‘Yeah right, thanks. Good luck with destroying the planet, old man.’

* * *

Nairobi made little impact on Gabriel initially, probably as a result of his fatigue and the early-morning half-light as the yellow Toyota taxi drove him through the already congested streets. He was aware of the oddity of longhorn cattle being herded along the island in the middle of a highway, the arbitrary traffic rules and the diesel fumes, but it was little different to Delhi (where he had attended a conference on radiative CO
₂
forcing) or Rio de Janeiro (carbon sequestration) or Mexico City (radiational cooling). He was struck, perhaps more than anything else, by the unusual trees that lined the sides of the road and squashed up against each other in the islands – thorn trees with flat tops and luminous yellow-green smooth bark, large-leafed trees that hung heavily upon one another, and a sapling with upturned cupped yellow blossoms that reminded him of a Chanukah candle.

They passed a large park with rolling lawns and neatly demarcated pathways. People were sitting on benches or lying on the grass, figures dotted across the park as far as the eye could see. The city didn’t look too Third World, he noted optimistically. The park was well kept and well used – even at this early hour. Not too different from some of the Bristol city parks.

‘Uhuru Park,’ the driver commented, before advising him that he was offering a safari trip to see the gnus migrating. ‘Now is the right time,’ he proclaimed definitively, as if Gabriel should impulsively abandon his travel plans and head for the Masai Mara before the drama was over. He persisted for a block and a half of grinding traffic, before Gabriel managed to persuade him that he wasn’t a candidate for an informal trip into the hinterland in a rickety taxi cab. Once they reached the hotel he thanked the man, who smiled with wildly crooked teeth.

‘Uhuru Park is nice during the day,’ he said. ‘Just don’t take photographs of the homeless people sleeping there; the police will take your camera away.’ With another riotous smile he drove off, leaving Gabriel cringing at his error.

The rooms in the Nairobi Safari Club were underwhelming, given the ostentation promised by the gold-balustraded foyer, complete with the hides of unfortunate zebra and buck. The safari theme continued throughout the lobby and lifts – woven tapestries depicting savannah scenes hung about like drying skins at the abattoir – but was jettisoned once you stepped inside the insalubrious rooms. At least they provided a clean-sheeted bed, Gabriel thought, although the mattress was on the thin side. He collapsed and slept for several hours, waking confused by the noise of traffic blaring through the open windows from Kenyatta Boulevard close by.

He spent the afternoon pleasantly enough, browsing in the Stanley Bookshop on Kaunda Street. Each book had been quaintly covered in plastic and was put on individual display, rather like an expensive perfume. After that, Gabriel visited the more chaotic Book Point on Moi Avenue, where the attempt at Dewey Decimal Classification indicated some fundamental fault lines. He was, however, mildly surprised at the wealth of books about Africa and its various ailments, all examining the underlying reasons for the hardships its people faced. Gabriel knew little about the origins of postcolonial collapse. He had always assumed states failed because of some inherent deficiency. He bought a slim book titled
The Scramble for African Oil
by an American professor of international relations and diplomacy, simply because the word Sudan appeared in the blurb on the back cover. He had no idea whether he would read it, but buying it made him feel as if the day in Nairobi had been worthwhile.

As he was picking his way along the uneven sidewalk on Moi Avenue, a man with blue-black skin and red-flushed eyes accosted him, holding on to his wrist with a warm hand. He had strange lumps on his face and all the teeth between his canines were missing, giving him a gaping look when he spoke.

‘Where are you from? Are you from Europe, you look English, are you British perhaps?’ His English was impeccable, pronounced with perfectly formed vowels and consonants, but his ravaged face belied any education.

‘Bristol,’ Gabriel answered, breaking free and hoping the obtuse reference to his home town would silence the man.

‘I do not know Bristol. But I have heard about Birmingham. I hear there are race riots there again. Your government is trying to pass those laws to make immigration hard for us.’ He paused as if waiting for Gabriel to defend his country or to ask him about his own origins. When no reply was forthcoming, he continued: ‘It is the same with Australia. It is everywhere. I am from Sudan, from a village in the east. We escaped death by a whisper, by a whisper, sir.’ At that, he rolled up his sleeve to show his arm, deep weals and scar tissue marking his skin nearly to the bone. Then he pointed to the yaw of his mouth, the empty gums moist and discoloured. ‘We struggled to get here, to Kenya, to safety, yet here we are still treated like animals.’

Gabriel nodded, trying to prevent the man from gripping his forearm again. People were walking around them, paying them no attention. There was something not credible about the man, the language usage, the knowledge of current affairs; it all conflicted with his ragtag clothes, bloodshot eyes and personal urgency.

‘But we are hungry. That is our problem, sir. My family have no food. And you have money to give us, to help us. You need to give us something, not money, we can go together to the shop over there’ – he pointed across Moi Avenue – ‘and we can buy rice for my family.’

Gabriel felt disappointed, perhaps, that the conversation, one-sided as it had been, had inevitably been directed towards this point, confirming his initial suspicions. He sighed and pulled out his wallet, turning slightly away from the man so that he wouldn’t see the wad of notes sticking out of the top. He gave him a two-hundred-shilling note and put his wallet away. The man looked down, his jaw agape, and flapped the note about unashamedly.

‘No, sir, I cannot buy rice with this. I need more than this. This does not buy my family rice. You need to give me another hundred, at least. I cannot take less.’

Gabriel felt his ire rise at the presumption.

‘We are hungry. We need rice, just rice. I cannot buy food with this. This is too little.’

There was no contrition, no sense of apology, just a direct sense of entitlement. ‘I’m not the bloody United Nations,’ Gabriel protested. ‘I’ve given you two hundred; it’s more than enough. Now just … goodbye.’

The man looked genuinely hurt, his eyes glistening. ‘It is not necessary for you to be rude as well as not generous.’

The response was so unexpected that Gabriel found himself apologising as he hauled out his wallet again and gave the man another two-hundred-shilling note. The man accepted the note and appeared to be weighing up whether to say anything more. There was a long pause, the silence stretched between them on the noisy street, until he carefully folded the note together with the other.

‘Thank you, I shall not trouble you further.’

Gabriel headed back to the hotel, thirsty and conflicted. The exchange had felt abusive, but he was unable to identify the perpetrator and the victim. Four identical Land Rovers were cluttering the small drop-off area, ‘Scenic Africa Tours’ emblazoned across their doors. Slightly bewildered-looking Caucasians sat patiently, kitted out in khaki clothes and wide-brimmed hats complete with buckskin headbands. Touring Africa required the preparedness of camouflage outfits and possibly a trusty hand-knife. The local driver, uncamouflaged in a smart pink shirt and black tie, was paying close attention to his cellphone as he punched in a message.

The hotel was a carefully constructed haven for Westerners, hermetically protected from the hubbub of central Nairobi by a phalanx of black-suited security personnel and a maître d’hôtel in resplendent purple tailcoat and top hat. The rest of the staff wore mustard-coloured suits or waistcoats, covering crisp white shirts: none wore gloves but Gabriel was sure they must be on the way. The establishment was populated by a few well-to-do Africans, but in the main one brushed shoulders only with overweight Americans toting the entire gamut of Canon’s retail offerings strapped like bandoliers across their chests, and more reserved Europeans, their conversations conducted in whispers when compared to the brash pronouncements of their North American counterparts. The cuisine was African-chic, catering for a Western palate but offering risqué alternatives like venison pot-stew and crocodile that had the US contingent even noisier than before, though none ultimately made it their choice. The wine came from Chile and South Africa and was quaffed liberally despite its staggering prices.