Jupiters Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph (20 page)

T am not insuring for pig falls or snakebites in the Kibwezi region,' Pius said wildly. 'Definitely.'

‘I
hope you explain all this to your clients,' I said.

'Absolutely. They like it very much,' he said.

The silliness stopped and we sank back into the peace of the Kenyan night. More Tuskers came. It seemed possible to drink any amount of beer without much effect. The table was almost invisible now under the empties, but I felt only a comfortable affection for the company and a frequent urge to visit the charcoal bed.

They were sad that I was leaving. We had come to like each other quickly because there was no obstacle to our friendship. All we wanted from each other was time and respect. Of course they were flattered by my attention, and it would bring out the best in them. I, who had come so far already on such an unimaginable journey, had stopped and given my undivided attention to three men whose entire lives were described within a hundred mile radius of Kibwezi. This would be no time for mean or petty behaviour.

The Spirit Incarnate of the Great World of Dreams meets with the Three Wise Men of Kibwezi, and for forty-eight hours all is light and truth. A man could live up to his ideals for that long. And they did have ideals, these three, so we were equals, and they showed me true courtesy and paid for their share of the beer. And they shed a tear for the moment when the great bird would fly on.

I was becoming a carrier of the dreams of men. I gathered them like pollen, fertilizing as I went. But I had not yet quite realized my power, nor its transforming effect on people, and I still thought they were as I saw them.

Paul had relapsed into mild mournfulness. 'Tomorrow you are leaving, isn't it,' he said. 'Yes. I have to go on to Mombasa.' He came to a decision.

'Tonight you must have a girl,' he said, and called to the nearest bar

girl. He was talking rapidly in Swahili and she came towards us giggling a bit and protesting, but she took several good looks at my grinning face. There were further skirmishes over the next round of Tuskers, and then Paul said, 'The matter is settled. She will come.'

It was too dark to see her face clearly. I saw only that she was small and seemed to be rather fat. I did not worry because I was sure that like the night before, the fear of the dreaded M'zungo would frighten her away.

Soon after, there was no room left on the table for more bottles and it was time to stop. My friends wandered off and I went into my room and lit the hurricane lamp. It was very warm even at midnight and the air was still. Happily there seemed to be no mosquitoes. I took off all my clothes and lay down on the sheet, ready to sleep like that. I thought for a moment about the girl and, although I knew she would not come, the idea excited me. There was a tap on the door. Repeated. I stood up and looked for something to hide my erection. Then I thought 'to hell with that' and walked over to the door as I was and opened it cautiously.

The girl stood there, and she came in and looked at me with an expression of slight wonder. Then she tapped my stiff prick approvingly a couple of times with the knuckle of her forefinger. It stood the test. I was utterly amazed at my own behaviour and enjoying it enormously.

She had a nice young face, though I could not tell how young. She put her finger to her lips, appearing to be listening for sounds.

'Mama,' she whispered. ‘I
am coming back soon,' and she disappeared into the night.

When she returned she walked straight into the room and took off her blue overall and sat on the edge of the bed looking a bit shy and uncertain. She was not at all fat. The arching of her back was so pronounced that her firm breasts thrust the big overall out in front, and her prominent behind pushed it out at the back and between the two it seemed to conceal a huge tummy. In fact her body was lithe and lovely. She still had the half slip on, but soon that was off too and another bastion of racial prejudice collapsed, for we seemed to fit each other perfectly well and nothing I did seemed to surprise her terribly either.

My first concern was whether or not to kiss her, but she didn't seem to expect it, and I kissed her body instead because it felt like a nice thing to do.

The main obstacle was not between us but beneath us. The sheet slipped and slid on the plastic mattress cover, and we glided back and forth on the sheet in an ecstasy of unpredictable motion. Perhaps it was like making love on skis. One way or another it seemed that we were bound to wind up in a tangle of limb
s on the ground. Several times I
saved us from sailing over the edge to disaster, but the voyage was finally and
successfully accomplished. After a while she got up, trailing her hand lightly on my face, and left the room without a sound.

I never saw her again. I meant to look for her next morning but I was in great confusion then and did not know what to do. I was very taken with her, but I knew I had to leave and it seemed foolishly sentimental to make a fuss. She had not asked me for anything, not even a hint of it. I wanted to give her something and had nothing to give but money. In the end I simply emptied my pockets and piled what was there on the table. It came to seven shillings and some pennies. I wanted the arbitrariness of it to seem less like a payment, but it never felt right, and I left the hotel unhappy with myself.

I felt a fool for being afraid to look like one, because I wanted to find her and hug her.

How I do tie myself in knots, I reflected sadly.

Riding down the road to Mombasa I saw my first wild elephants.

There were ten of them, about three hundred yards away, gathered close together under a tree. They were quite still. The tree was a Baobab, and its smooth fat trunk rose well above the animals before narrowing abruptly and sprouting a broad fan of branches. The Baobab is also called the Bottle Tree; its young leaves are used for soup, and its fruit makes a drink.

I stopped the bike and watched the elephants in silence for a long time, my heart bursting with emotion, not quite knowing why I was so profoundly affected. Although they were some way off there was nothing to obstruct my view. The land was savannah, grassy and lightly wooded.

The sight of those elephants touched me with a yearning that seemed to stretch back for ever. I could even believe that I was seeing again something once observed through a remote ancestral eye.

The elephants were brown, and I did not question the colour at the time. It seemed quite right, it matched my image perfectly, and only afterwards did I remember that elephants were grey. Evidently they had sprayed themselves with dust. They were nuzzled up to each other, wonderfully satisfying shapes, smooth and solid, superimposed in a cluster of curves; all the more alive for being so utterly still.

Elephants sheltered under a Baobab tree, a familiar sight on this earth for millions of years, and one I had waited all my life and travelled so far to see.

Africa.

The road was easy, with no traffic. I could watch the country as I went. I saw more giraffe. Then an abandoned petrol station apparently inhabited

by a tribe of baboons. I stopped again, to watch them; the mothers nursing their babies, the older children playing boisterously, the fathers preserving their dignity. They were oblivious to me, couldn't give a damn.

Aren't they supposed to be vicious? What would I do if they rushed me?

The road dropped to sea level. Clouds formed overhead, and I brought the first rain of the season to Mombasa, a few fat drops in the dust.

I stopped in the middle of town and an open Mini with a tasselled canvas top drew up beside me. The driver was a Dane called Kaj, teaching at the polytechnic. We went to the Castle Hotel for lunch, a seven-course blow out for fourteen shillings with enough hors d'oeuvres to choose from to make the other six courses redundant. Afterwards I got a cheap room at Jimmy's. Everyone was saying how hot it was but I didn't feel it for the first two days. Then it got very sticky.

Kaj took me to the Sunshine Club on Kilindini Street. The moment I stepped inside my senses began to tingle, and I knew why I never went to night clubs. It had what clubs in London and New York can never have, however much they spend trying to simulate it, because it's illegal. The Sunshine had Life. Lusty, licentious, disgusting, decadent life. It was a big, untidy place full of people and happy noise. There was a bandstand and a band going full blast behind a soul singer. There was a floor and tables and a long polished bar, all under a high roof, and at the end of the room there was more stuff going on that you couldn't quite see. The place had depth and intrigue, and a hint of danger.

There were sailors and tourists and hustlers and bar girls. For all I knew there were arms dealers, ivory poachers, currency swindlers, slave traders, Cuban military advisers and agents of the IMF. There were even men who just came for a beer.

The bar girls did not even pretend to serve beer at the Sunshine, they had waiters to do that. The girls swanned about in outrageous wigs and long slit gowns of silver lame, or fishnet tights or whatever other glamorous junk came their way, drumming up interest and heating the atmosphere. Kaj knew most of them. He lived in the Sunshine Club the way Toulouse-Lautrec lived in the Moulin Rouge, and the comparison was not too far-fetched. When the girls had no pressing business, they would go back with him for pleasure. He said the girls had fun there. They came from Nairobi or somewhere round there, leaving their kids with the other wives, and spent a few months in Mombasa having a good time and making some money to send home. Nobody was interested in telling them it was wicked, and they did not look as though they thought it was either. They had their blood test every week, and got their green health cards stamped. As far as I could tell, they were free agents and nobody had the bite into them, but I couldn't be sure, and anyway it was obviously going to change and get nastier.

A big German travel agency had already discovered 'Sun and Sex' in Mombasa. With revolting Teutonic logic it was running a package tour for 'bachelors' with a hotel on the beach and a black girl thrown in. There was bigger money in it, and the girls went, but they hated it. They hated losing their freedom to those creepy bachelors.

'And if I give that man a dose, that's my pleasure and he just gettin' what he's payin' for, isn't it!'

Mombasa is a great trading port on a beautiful coast, and seemed the ideal of what a tropical city should be. Since ancient times, Arab, Indian and African worlds had mixed here. The Portuguese called it Mombaca and planted a massive fort, and later the English provided order and a minimum of amenities.

It had a genuine cosmopolitan life and you could find it in the faces, the food, the music, the buildings and the stores. It was far less infected than Nairobi by the trashy images of international business, credit card culture, banker's baloney,
ersatz
ethnic, Hilton hybrid, and the rest of the fungus that spreads from the airports to rot away the world's capital cities. The sea trade kept the spirit of Mombasa alive.

Kaj drove me round the port one night, under the lights. A Kikuyu guard in a sentry box said 'You can pass'. We drove for a mile among the sheds and sidings, weaving among piles of copper ingots from Zaire, drums of oil from Kuwait, sacks and crates and long lines of Yugoslav trucks and trailers. Brilliantly lit freighters bristled with derricks, unloading under floodlights. A locomotive with one vast Cyclopean eye pursued us for a while.

Later we went along the coast to Fort Jesus and walked around it in the moonlight. It loomed above us, too massive to comprehend, huge and black and cruel, staring out into the Indian Ocean, and four hundred years were wiped away without trace.

Going home that night, under the street lamps, an African boy with a bright, appealing face came up to me, dragging a twisted leg.

T am not asking for help,' he said. T merely want to find a kind-hearted person to appreciate my problem. I have certificates in Maths, Geography, History, English, Woodwork, and I have to look for help where I can. I believe God will look after me. You cannot understand now, but one day when you are in trouble you will see. Do not offer me a cigarette. How can I want a cigarette when I am starving? Even though I have not a cent in my pocket I will not ask for money, only some food. But if I had
my
fare to go back to my shamba I would not be forced to look here for help. Four shillings and fifty is all I need.'

I appreciated his talent more than his problem and gave him a shilling.

'Now give me a cigarette,' he said.

I did, and he lit it, and limped away smoking. A few yards down the road his leg became miraculously untwisted, and he began to dance.

The coast of Kenya is irresistible. I rode up to Malindi, and hopped on a small plane to Lamu. There I met the first motorbike traveller who had gone anything like the distance I meant to cover. Meeting him was intensely interesting to me. He was a young New Zealander from Hamilton, called Ian Shaw. In four years he had moved through South East Asia, India and Africa, doing some sixty thousand miles.

He had had one bad accident. A high speed wobble in Thailand had sent him rolling a hundred feet on a dirt road and skinned him
l
ike
a potato'. A Thai hospital had stretched him out and
poured salt over him,
then washed him, put on mercurochrome and sent him off. He rode as fast as he could for Malaysia hoping to get to more tender care before he set rigid.