The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (35 page)

Straight after smashing successes in London, Cape Town, and Madrid, so the promotions assured us, Pamela Jones was entertaining at the Sombrero nightclub on Duke Street. Alluringly attired in a shimmering black swimsuit costume, with matching lace veil, boots, and top hat as accessories, she had a husky voice and an arrogant manner, and, as was the general consensus around our table, was as big and meaty as Africa likes its women. There were ten at our table, six from the Ministry of Transport and the rest from an Italian firm seeking business. Wine and beer flowed freely, and a lavish course of starter foods preceded the steaks and pizza. We don’t mind friendly, generous gestures from our richer friends, PS Oletunde had more than once reminded us at the office, but we make our business decisions with a calm and studied neutrality; we shall not be bought. The Italians were
the most friendly of the foreign business visitors who entertained us, and the most fun, any veneer of formality peeling off at the sight of the first drink or woman. The others preferred genteel lunches or lavish, formal dinners. Eyes popped up as Miss Jones favoured our table, stopping by for tips, and the gaunt PS attempted to reach out and put a handsome baksheesh into her revealing and tempting white bosom, but she archly straightened up, caught his hand with a smack, and pushed his bills in her hat instead.

At that moment four women, having just entered, were spotted by one of our Italians; he called out in happy recognition, waved, shouted, and invited them over. We moved chairs to accommodate them among us. That was how I came to meet Sophia; she was the petite one who sat next to me and introduced herself.

Sophia, like Loren, I smiled with a brave effort, intimidated by her closeness, the smell of her perfume, the low cut of her tight-fitting white dress.

Like Loren, she agreed, returning the smile. She had short black hair and ivory-white skin; an upturned nose, a cherry-red small mouth.

The four girls were all Italians working for the airline Alitalia. In such circumstances the women are always prey, and in those times race was always a factor. White women were even then, some years after independence, the exotic and forbidden fruit, and reputedly freer in their manners than our own local girls. But we handled ourselves quite honourably at our table, subtle and not-so-subtle hints notwithstanding, and the women left together appreciative and unoffended.

The next afternoon Sophia D’Albertini phoned me at the office and asked me if I would accompany her to a dance at the Italian Club on Saturday. I said I was not really much of a dancer but would be delighted to accept her invitation. We had hit it off well at the dinner and needless to say I found her very very attractive. Before that Saturday of our date arrived we had already met a few times. She was an airline stewardess,
on vacation. She was charming and demonstrative, prone to draw attention wherever she was. (Spicciati, Vittorio, vieni o non vieni? Haraka! And she halts on the Kenyatta Avenue sidewalk, arms at the waist, all eyes taking her in before coming to rest enviously on me.) She had appeared like a genie and transported me spontaneously and magically into a youthful ecstasy I had not known before. She came home for lunch once and met my parents, who were delighted by her informal ways. It turned out that Sophia and I did not go to the Italian Club on the Saturday but went to the Drive-in instead, where a rather comically dubbed Italian western was being played. It was here where we first made love. I did not go home that night but spent it with her at her hotel. I had been a virgin so far, and that first experience of sex was—well, what such an experience always should be. It was wonderful to be alive and I was in a state of thrill; it was wonderful to be so physically intimate with, so bound into, another for a moment that is eternity, and then feel emotionally close afterwards, the heart brimming with happiness.

The following day, Sunday, when I returned home already showered and shaved and sat in the living room, my face still glowing, as I imagine it, Papa said, So you spent the night with the Italian girl, hunh?

I nodded, in embarrassment.

Shabash! he said, Well done!, with such a boisterous warmth in his enunciation as to totally flabbergast me. His son had become a man, but so untraditional was that response that I started uncontrollably and silently to snicker, tears streaming down my cheeks, and he did likewise. Mother of course knew what I had been up to, how could she not? Surprisingly, she had not objected to Sophia—not to her different race and culture, not to her occupation—though her inquiries on my behalf and her pressures upon me to settle down, meaning to get married, were well under way.

I took some days off from work, and Sophia and I spent an extended weekend at a beach resort in Mombasa. This was
her treat, she having access to special rates and favours through her airline. Where were we headed, Sophia and Vittorio? Precisely nowhere, of course, though I would have been loath to admit that. Deepa had already warned me that if knowledge of my loose moral conduct, that is, being constantly seen with a beautiful white woman, were broadcast among Nairobi’s Asians, I would find it hard to settle down. But did I want to settle down the traditional way anymore? I was smitten, and so it seemed was Sophia. We couldn’t stay away from each other.

It turned out that Carlo Cortina of Lettieri, the company which had hosted the outing at the Sombrero and whose tender to my ministry was currently under appraisal, was also in Mombasa that weekend. Carlo was a darkly handsome, athletic man in his forties, always flamboyantly dressed: a red or black shirt open at the neck, white duck pants, a light jacket and a panama, is how I remember him then. We met him under a Cinzano canopy for lunch on the porch of our hotel by the sand, the sun hot and glaring, a Goan band playing jazz, the waves chasing each other in quick ripples in the distance, crashing gently on the shore. Grilled meat and fish of more than a dozen varieties were offered us, with the better wines from France and Italy. After we had eaten and chatted awhile, Sophia stood up to go for a nap, ruffling my hair and caressing the side of my head as she left. I held on to her hand a moment, then watched her fine behind as she alluringly walked away to our room. She wore a colourful khanga wrapped round her waist, with just a bikini top above. There followed an interlude of silence, during which Carlo and I sipped our coffee, our eyes briefly on the sea and the sand, before he turned and casually inquired if everything was in order regarding the Lettieri application. I said it was, just as he raised a hand in apology, saying, No business talk, sorry. And then he asked me if, regardless of the outcome, Sophia and I would be willing to join him and his wife at a holiday resort in Sardinia.

I said I would love that, if Sophia was game. We left it at that.

It was Monday night when I left Mombasa with Sophia, provoked and bothered. The following day was the meeting with the PS regarding the Lettieri application, and I looked forward to that conclusion, to bring to an end those lingering doubts I had begun to feel regarding the legitimacy of Sophia’s and my relationship.

Lettieri, better known for their sports cars and their jet engines, had proposed through their coach division to supply sleek ultramodern first-and second-class carriages, chair cars, and observation cars to service the Kenya portion of the railways. They also proposed new kitchen and dining cars. But there were obvious drawbacks to the proposal. First, the level of traffic on the railway, even if a tourist boom were to take place, did not warrant spending on new luxury-type passenger coaches, however stylish and sleek their appearance. Moreover, the proposal did not come with attractive loans attached, the company proposing to acquire development rights to some beach property in Mombasa in lieu of partial payment. And finally, Lettieri’s prototype models had been developed for Europe and not Africa, where steep gradients and narrow gauges were the norm, raising concerns about the stability of their product. I had diligently consulted with mechanical engineers at Nairobi University regarding this matter and even written to retired EAR engineers in England. A team of us put these arguments forward with all the earnestness of young people having been assigned an important project involving our country’s development and scarce financial resources. The financial expert, a man also recently from university, and I had met a couple of times and carefully thrashed out our reservations. His name was Juma Omari and he revealed to me that Carlo Cortina had taken him to the Nairobi Casino a few times, offering to pay for his excesses, but being a Muslim Omari declined to gamble.

Lettieri was sent the letter of rejection stating our reservations. The next day Carlo left for Rome and I never saw him again. I spoke with Sophia briefly over the phone, immediately following that afternoon meeting, before I headed for home. She seemed a little taken aback at the news, but we promised to meet tomorrow, as we had previously planned. The next day however I could not reach her in her hotel room. I called every hour from my office, left messages, and later called her from home. It was midnight when I stopped dialing. I recall my humiliation, sitting by the phone pretending nonchalance, idleness, Mother pottering about the vicinity with obvious though unstated concern. The following morning Sophia finally picked up the phone and to my anxious inquiries, said simply, Vittorio, caro, I have been having second thoughts about us. I don’t think it is a good idea for us to see each other any more. We are too different, no? So please don’t call me again. Ciao.

Just that. I smarted from hurt and humiliation. It seemed that everyone at the office was aware of my situation, looked up and down at this smart young bureaucrat who had been taken for a ride by the Italians. Had I been so utterly toyed with? Was Sophia no more than an expensive prostitute, who had been used in an attempt to buy me? There were no answers, because she had none to give me, and she too disappeared from Nairobi.

I saw the PS’s wife in a tiny brand-new Lettieri 650, the Bambina Sports as it was called, not long afterwards, cruising around downtown’s Kaunda Street desperately searching for parking, as one tends to do there. I don’t think Oletunde had accepted a bribe, he was always an honest man; he had acquired the vehicle, I presume, the same way I had come upon Sophia, as a bit of unbelievable good luck; but his green Bambina Lettieri did not drive away. His wife would use it well into the next decade.

One day Oletunde called me to his office and said, Minister Paul Nderi has been rather impressed by your integrity in the
matter of the Italians and he wants you as his personal assistant. To my look of confusion, the PS said pointedly, That’s a promotion. You have done well.

But there was a wariness in his long look at me. I knew I did not have a choice.

Well, well, said Njoroge when I gave him the news. You certainly are going places, Vic. Personal assistant to Paul Nderi himself—high up there, in the Inner Circle, close to Mzee and possible successor to the throne! But then Njoroge turned serious and said:
Refuse the offer.

Why? And turn down my chances? I could become a PS myself, one day, for heaven’s sake!

You don’t know what Nderi’s like for one thing. And it’s wiser to keep out of the way of the top brass. It’s dangerous and murky up there. What’s not wanted is thrown away and falls a long distance.

I’ve been posted—I don’t have a choice. But this is Vikram Lall, remember—I am the least political person you know.
I survive.

He grinned. You’re right. Remain that way. Just stick to railways. And finance. Stay away from politics.

Neither of us could have known what irony lay embedded in that advice.

TWENTY-THREE.

Africa’s Anglican ministers had gathered in Nairobi at the city’s new pride and joy, the Kenya Conference Centre; church observers from other countries of the Commonwealth were present, and the meeting which had hitherto been dull and routine suddenly erupted in an uproar. A motion had been put forward recommending that Africa should resolve never to develop nuclear weapons, hands were up for the formality of a unanimous vote, when Paul Nderi, the country’s Minister of Transport and self-styled Minister of Science, leaned forward into the nearest microphone, tapped it a few times for attention, and dissented: Mr. Chairman, Archbishop, if I may put in a word here…Let’s not be in a hurry, my dear reverends. The motion is pointless, surely…And then, his voice rising, the round-faced minister exploded into proclamations: Africa must and will have nuclear weapons! We should leave behind the
ridges and the forests of our fathers, eh my dear sirs! Come out into the world! I will go so far as to predict that we will explode a nuclear device, namely a bomb, by the year 2000!

When calm prevailed, the motion nevertheless passed. And the government minister had once again left his controversial stamp on a public proceeding.

I choose to introduce Paul Nderi this way—perhaps presumptuously—to highlight how expectations and self-image have changed with time. What confidence and pride our new country had then (what cheek the minister showed), whereas now like a waif in a poorhouse it awaits handouts from the rich “Donors” who regularly raise stern fingers of admonition at it, as at a naughty boy.