Annoyed, suspicious, perplexed, I stood on the porch watching my pantherine visitor retrace his path to the metal gate. Here he pivoted and waved, his plastic scarab glowing almost incandescently.
“I can scarcely wait to meet your daughter,” he called. He pushed through the gate and strode nimbly toward the butt end of the retaining-wall walkway back to the hotel. I wished that a lion would fall upon him, a crocodile leap from the water to seize him.
Monicah and her regal galley slaves were no longer on the lake. Why had Dirk Akuj brought her into our little talk so frequently? This question frightened me because I thought I knew the answer.
* * * *
Nearest the orchestra pit (from which the strains of “Born Free” had been emanating for twenty minutes) were the tables reserved for Zarakali cabinet ministers, the commanding officers of the bases at Bravanumbi and Russell-Tharaka, and the representatives of every country in the East African Confederation. Monicah and I shared our table with Vice Admiral Cuomo and the Tanzanian representative, a handsome Arusha woman who clearly disapproved of the festivities.
A table away sat Dirk Akuj, vaguely sinister in a phosphorescent lime-green tuxedo jacket. His name, I had discovered after returning to my suite, did indeed appear on the official guest list, but I had never supposed that any African invited to our grand opening would also be a shill for White Sphinx. I tried to
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avoid the man's glance, but he kept ogling Monicah and giving me enigmatic smiles, and I was hard pressed to ignore him.
Admiral Cuomo was something of a help because he had engaged the Arusha woman and me in animated small talk about his favorite subject, ice hockey, about which he supposed us intensely curious because of our lack of exposure to the sport. Monicah sat silent, encouraged in her moroseness by the chilly attitude of Rochelle Mutasingwa, the Tanzanian. She was unaware of Dirk Akuj's interest in her, and I was grateful for her failure to notice the man. As Admiral Cuomo faithfully recounted the high points of last year's Stanley Cup finals, the evening seemed to stretch out before us like a deathwatch.
The dying strains of “Born Free” at last fell captive to silence, and the Marakoi Pops struck up a fanfare.
The expectant nattering of the crowd faded away, the stage was brilliantly spotlighted, and the American singer-composer Manny Barrelo emerged from the wings beside the self-propelled wheelchair of President Mutesa Tharaka.
As one person, everyone in the hall rose to accord our aged President a standing ovation. Without whistling, foot stamping, or unseemly cries of praise or thanksgiving, it was nevertheless thunderous. Even Monicah was moved, for this was the first time in nearly three years that Mzee Tharaka had made a public appearance. On most state and ceremonial occasions Vice President Gicoru acted in his stead, and no one had anticipated a change of these arrangements even for the long-awaited grand opening of the Sands. Our applause lasted nearly five full minutes.
Nodding and smiling, Barrelo quieted us by raising his hands and addressing us to the effect that we were all “eyewitnesses to history.” The President, meanwhile, sat slumped in his chair like a well-heeled scarecrow, the gilded skull on his crown staring out into the dark with a threat that everyone implicitly understood but nervously disregarded. The roar of the leopard stalking the left-hand balcony was audible even through the bullet-proof plastic of its diorama, and Barrelo saluted the creature without interrupting his remarks.
“...lots of fine live entertainment for you this evening, folks, and continuous gaming in the casinos just off the lobby.” Whereupon he squinted down into the footlights at the tables just beyond the orchestra. “Is Joshua Kampa here this evening? Of course he is, what a ridiculous question. Josh, c'mon, Josh, stand up, please. President Tharaka wants you to take a bow for making Zarakal's beautiful Lake Kiboko resort genuinely competitive with Vegas and Monte Carlo. Stand up, stand up. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man whose mind conceived the Sambusai Sands Convention and Recreational Centre!”
Numbly I got to my feet, stood blinking in a white-hot spot, and sat back down to the dovetailing applause of hundreds of fellow
Homo sapiens
. The Centre, I wanted to tell them, was not entirely my fault.
“President Tharaka wants everyone here tonight to know that the revenues generated by this complex will fund schools, agricultural programs, cultural exchanges, and technological progress for everyone in East Africa. Already ZAPPA—the Zarakali Administration for Peace and Prosperity through Astronautics—has been revived, and you can bet your ostrich feathers that an African will walk on the moon before this decade is out. That's what President Tharaka and Minister Kampa had in mind when they made construction of this complex a top national priority only six or seven years ago. Why, Mr.
Kampa gave up a place on the lucrative American lecture circuit just to return to Zarakal and run for a seat in the National Assembly. He's a credit to his country—
both
his countries—and I think he deserves another round of applause.”
We got it, Manny Barrelo and I, a bigger round than we had received before (even though Barrelo had
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grossly muddled the facts about my desertion of the “lucrative American lecture circuit"), and Admiral Cuomo patted me on the back. At the adjacent table Dirk Akuj smiled at me cryptically.
“But enough talk. It's time for these festivities to begin, and our opening act, our overture, is a tribute to Mr. Kampa, his beautiful daughter Monicah, and the emergence of Zarakal as a potential space-age power.... Ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure,
Lisa Chagula and the Gombe Stream Chimps!
”
Manny Barrelo gestured toward the right-hand wing, then spun the President's chair around so that they could exit stage left. The Marakoi Pops broke into an up-tempo version of
Thus Spake Zarathustra
, and applause again filled the hall.
The zebra-striped curtains parted to reveal a back-lighted scrim upon which a convincing, two-dimensional replica of a volcano was erupting over a muted pastel landscape. A many-pronged bolt of lightning flashed against this scrim, and about the trunk of a papier-mâché baobab, streamers of red and orange crepe paper danced like flames. Wearing African garb from the Lake Tanganyika region, Lisa Chagula entered and positioned herself on the outer apron of the stage. Then she whistled.
Five chimpanzees swaggered in from stage right, one of them having been shaved to simulate a quasi-human nakedness. I saw through the chimp's imposture immediately, and so did everyone else who knew the details of my legendary trip into the distant past, i.e., everyone in attendance. The ape was supposed to be me. A further clue to its assumed identity was the pink plastic doll cradled in its arms, a surrogate for Monicah in her original incarnation as the Grub. The chimps quailed from the “flames”
surrounding them.
“Oh, God,” murmured Monicah, and my heart misgave me.
For two years after the trauma of my involvement with White Sphinx, I had made a good living in the States recounting my adventures for college students, television talk-show hosts, and the readers of Sunday magazine supplements. Because the Air Force and the U.S. government routinely ridiculed my claims, and because I would allow no one with a degree in physical anthropology to examine Monicah, I had been widely regarded as an amusing crackpot. For a time my notoriety grew, bringing me more money, an unwanted retinue of hangers-on, and the curse of instant recognition on any street or side road in my readopted homeland. Then the bottom had fallen out, and I had gone the way of yesterday's superstar, straight down the lonely cul-de-sac of media neglect to the crumbling brick wall of oblivion.
My mother and my sister's testimony dismissed as worthless, my amusement value squandered, my livelihood compromised, I had dropped from the semireputable status of a psychic or a newspaper astrologer to the pathetic one of a palmist or a flying-saucer nut. Too proud to accept my mother's charity, I had briefly, and altogether seriously, considered going back to work for Gulf Coast Coating in the Florida panhandle—whereupon, through a consular official in Washington, D.C., President Tharaka had publicly confirmed my story, chastised the United States Air Force for making me out a liar, and invited me to return to Zarakal. “
I have important work for you to do,
” read the portion of the communiqué addressed directly to me; “
please come home.
” Grateful for aid from this unexpected quarter (President Tharaka and Alistair Patrick Blair had maintained an impregnable silence for two years), I made haste to emigrate, leaving behind a thoroughly bewildered American public and a rancorous congressional debate about abuses of power in the Pentagon and the executive branch.
In Marakoi I was served with a subpoena hailing me before a Senate investigative committee, but with Mutesa Tharaka's blessing I ignored it and began laying the groundwork for my campaign for a seat in Zarakal's National Assembly. After a parade through the capital and a hero's build-up in the East African press, I ran unopposed. Only two weeks after my election I received an appointment to the cabinet.
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Since that time, by hard work and a scrupulous avoidance of the WaBenzi image, I had won the complete respect of my constituents and had reestablished my credibility with American officials in Zarakal.
Although I had long since concluded that President Tharaka had played his Kampa card to win American concessions of which I was still unaware, this suspicion did not compromise my gratitude to him. Monicah and I had finally found our place in the sun. I was the man who had traveled in time, she was a diminutive African Eve, and, as Dirk Akuj had noted that afternoon, we were celebrities whose story had inspired international controversy. Indeed, upon his death, the flamboyant mantle of Alistair Patrick Blair had passed to my daughter and me.
Now, in the dinner theater of the Sambusai Sands, the Gombe Stream Chimps were reenacting one of the final episodes of the Joshua Kampa legend. This “tribute” having been kept a secret from Monicah and me, I had had no chance to approve it beforehand. That was bad. The champagne we had been drinking, along with my own embarrassment, made the mimicry of Lisa Chagula's chimpanzees seem especially intrusive, a violation of something sacred. I gripped the edge of the table and said nothing. The reenactment would be over soon, and quickly forgotten as other performers and divertissements succeeded it. No point in disrupting the evening with an indignant outburst.
Only the ape impersonating me remained in view, sheltering its baby doll from the myriad swirling tatters of crepe paper. The other chimps had hurried off stage-left when projectors mounted all about the hall threw holographic images of several spotted hyenas into their midst. To the oohing and ahing of the audience these hallucinatory creatures advanced on my pongid counterpart, their eyes scintillating like topazes. Lisa Chagula, on the apron of the stage, pantomimed her sympathetic horror, covering her eyes with her forearm and crouching away to one side. At which point a gaudy mock-up of a lunar module descended from on high—on wires—to rescue Monicah and me. This contraption contained a pair of chimpanzees in show-business spacesuits, who jumped from their craft and began pulling bright yellow fire hoses out its hatch.
“I can't stand this!” Monicah exclaimed, loud enough to be heard over the clamorous music.
“Do you feel your dignity is being assailed?” asked Rochelle Mutasingwa, as if it were rather late to worry about the matter.
“Not mine, the chimpanzees'.”
“Lisa Chagula and the Gombe Stream Chimps have been Tanzania's good-will ambassadors for years.
Their dignity has never been questioned.”
“Maybe not,” Monicah replied. “But this is a vulgar exploitation of the little chaps.”
“Exploitation!”
“You heard me. Those chimps are your niggers, Miss Mutasingwa, and the late President Nyerere would never have approved anything so mean and disgusting.”
“Ladies,” said Admiral Cuomo. “Ladies.”
“Your daughter's remarks go beyond the bounds of adolescent irresponsibility,” Rochelle Mutasingwa told me angrily. “I wonder if they have your approval.”
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“No, of course not. Monicah hasn't been—”
“For God's sake, Daddy!”
On stage, the Grub and I were climbing into the lunar module with the chimps in the sequin-covered pressure suits. Doused, the crepe-paper streamers lay flat on the floor, while ancient Mount Tharaka, delicately backlit, continued to mutter and spew. Monicah did likewise, using vivid American expressions that I would have thought alien to the vocabularies of her affluent classmates. The lunar module, meantime, ascended on paper flames—and wires—into a canvas empyrean.
When Lisa Chagula and all seven chimps returned from the wings to exult in their triumph, Monicah abruptly stood up and swept her champagne glass to the floor. More monkey business appeared to be in the works, and she was going to have none of it. Fortunately, the darkness cloaking the hall concealed her distress from everyone but those in our immediate vicinity.