The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (36 page)
My new boss was a charismatic, intimidating man. He was a bulky five-eight, with round jowls, smooth face, and an impressive, deep forehead in the manner of many Kikuyu. I was asked to meet him, following my appointment to his office, at the railway yards in Nairobi. When I arrived he was standing in a group with a few EAR officials, viewing a locomotive; it was approaching under a trail of steam, an ugly hulk of ancient steel emitting shrill, short whistles. He had just been explained the difference between burning oil to fuel a steam locomotive and the combustion process of a diesel locomotive. But the minister was a proud man of science and already knew the difference; the explanation was only stoking an already raging temper. There had been a cock-up, for he had come to view a diesel, one of the older series that had given much trouble ever since their hasty purchase by the colonial administration. The day was hot and the approaching engine belched a great fog of steam, as it gave an ear-piercing screech and came to a halt.
The engineer, one Eddie Carvalho, stepped out of his cabin to report to his superior, who was standing next to the minister. On his way he turned around and shouted to his assistant, Ay! Wipe the engine, you!
A rather rude and foolish mannerism, reminiscent of arrogant colonial attitides.
When Carvalho reached us, the minister asked him why he was treating an African subordinate that way.
Even I have been asked by my superiors to wipe and clean, said Carvalho in a knowing manner, giving a cheeky grin, at which the minister said, White superiors, ndio! and almost leapt upon the skinny dark Indian in a fury, landing a couple of slaps on the unfortunate.
It was a shocking incident by its sudden intensity, and it left in me a deep impression of the power and passion of the man, and a fear of that maniacal temper. My heart was still thumping as I followed him into the black ministerial Mercedes and we were driven to the Norfolk for lunch. He smelt of sweet cologne but his recent exertion had left him breathing heavily, and he wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead with a large white handkerchief. He spoke little on the way except to say that we were meeting to get to know each other and discuss my duties. When we arrived at the hotel, his secretary Rose Waiyaki was waiting for us at the terrace restaurant, and the minister was soon a transformed man. Waiters hovered deferentially behind him, tourists gawked at him. For lunch he had oxtail soup, which he grimaced at, and shepherd’s pie; Rose and I had maize-meal ugali, a local staple cooked specially for the benefit of tourists. You can get better ugali at the kiosks down the road, he told us in good humour. He tasted a couple of white wines and picked one. Over lunch he told me my duties, which amounted essentially to being an assistant to him as required.
Paul Nderi was obviously not the beastly man I feared he might be from that display at the station. He was educated, suave, and had a sense of humour. He could be generous. And as I came to realize, he feared no one except the Old Man of Gatundu, Mzee Kenyatta himself, to whom he was devoted, and—according to rumour—his own wife, to whom he was routinely unfaithful. He had a master’s degree in physics from Rochester University.
Almost from that first day on the job it seemed to me that I had been shunted aside to run petty errands for the minister. I was supposedly the intermediary on railway matters between the PS Ben Oletunde and Paul, but this arrangement was a mere formality, a salve to my ego, for the PS also spoke directly to the minister. In due time this charade was dispensed with. Paul Nderi was active on many fronts. Often I was on the phone setting up meetings. Rose, who was also his distant niece and mistress, was present at the more private and politically sensitive meetings. I was secretary at the innocuous ones. My hands would reek from the perfumed purple ink of the cyclostyle machine that Rose and I used to make copies of notes and minutes. The Olympic Committee met once every two weeks, and the City Transit Commission once a month. One of Paul’s other ambitions (besides the African atom bomb) was to bring the Olympic Games to Nairobi in 1980. Urban planners with rolls of drawings appeared at these sessions and businessmen promised all manner of benefits; the upcoming games in Munich were a subject of many discussions. The afternoon Transit Commission meetings on the other hand were so dreary that two of the senior members present actually snored, and Paul was often late or absent. It seemed to me I had become a sort of Asian batman for Paul Nderi to show around; still, he was the minister and I received the respect and attention due his assistant. As I sometimes stood listlessly about while he dictated a letter to Rose at her desk in the outer office, she would watch me with a thoughtful smile. I was convinced that she felt sorry for me. She was a beautiful, long-legged woman with a soft oval face that she lightened with creams. I found her attractive, but she was the minister’s girl, and also perhaps too tall for me.
Was this job a punishment of sorts? Had my forthrightness in the Lettieri case been viewed negatively after all?
I had left a wonderfully fraternal and challenging working environment; my work had inspired me. I loved trains, I dreamed locomotives. Before I left I had been drafting a report on the feasibility of converting the Mombasa-Nairobi traffic from steam to diesel; the conversion would be expensive, I concluded, especially with the current global oil crisis and tensions in the Middle East. There were already standing orders for Indian steam engines and for a new class of 61 Garratts. But the drive to diesel was led by Nderi himself—man of science—to whom steam spelt Stone Age, irrespective of performance, and he was damned if Africa would remain there. He was already looking to an electric future. I wondered if he had brought me out of harm’s way of his plans. But I was small fry; my report could always be shelved, as no doubt it ultimately was. I could have been transferred to another department, why had he brought me right under his nose? It turned out he had other designs for me.
One day I knocked and entered his office at four in the afternoon, a time we had earlier prearranged for a meeting, and caught him at his large desk with beautiful Rose Waiyaki on his lap, his hand somewhere up her clothing. She stood up and left the room, ruffled but not without a smile, and he too stood up, part sheepish, part arrogant. Such situations, I told myself, would sooner or later land me in hot water. I was, however, as composed as an English butler, impervious to his master’s indiscretions.
I wish I were as cold as you are, Vic, he said to me. You are quite quite the Frigidaire aren’t you? And I bet you take pride in that.
Smarting, I recalled my hectic deflowering at the hands of the Italian beauty Sophia and said in an affected Jeevish tone, No, I don’t believe so, sir. Only, I prefer to keep things under control.
Yes, you are a cold tilapia, he said emphatically, adding: I on the other hand, much to my own embarrassment sometimes,
am white-hot underneath. In any case, I apologize for putting you through that…that…nani, show. But the damned woman is so finger-licking good, you see.
He beckoned for me to sit on the long cane sofa on the far wall across from his large desk, and stepped out of the room, returning a few minutes later wiping his hands in his handkerchief. He came and sat beside me, the cane of the sofa groaning under his bulk, his expensive cologne as strong as ever, and said gravely: I am going to bring you into my confidence, Vic Lall. I am going to give you an important assignment, of vital necessity. Our country is in great danger from the communists, as you no doubt are aware. As you have read in the papers, arms have been discovered now and then in the hands of the opposition, money flows constantly into their coffers, from Moscow and Peking. All they have to do is win an election once—yes—and bingo, we are a one-party socialist state like our neighbour Tanzania to the south—where they have nationalized the banks and the private properties of your Asian brothers, I don’t have to remind you.
This was totally beyond me. Like any ordinary citizen I had read the news reports he mentioned and assumed that, if correct, they would be acted upon by the government. I did not know how they concerned me, specifically. I looked at him expectantly. I realized now that he had placed an attaché case on the coffee table before us, over the strewn copies of current newspapers and magazines. He flicked the two end locks of the attaché case open, flung the top back in a quick motion, and watched for my response.
Stacks of American twenty-dollar bills met my astonished eyes, neatly and exactly fitted in rows into the cavity of the case, and looking strangely unreal—a foreign and very potent object with their dull green colour, their narrow size compared with our own large and flamboyant legal tender.
By now my palms had broken into a cold sweat. Dollars, I said lamely, flatly, inwardly recoiling from them, wondering desperately to myself: Why is he showing me these?
He said softly: these are donations to our party from well-wishers abroad. If the opposition found out, they will yell blue murder, call it bribes—foreign interference, American imperialism. But they are honest-to-God donations from private individuals. I would like you to find your Indian contacts and have them change this money and stash it; like in a bank. You with your brilliant mind will keep track of the account. And when our different constituencies need money for their operations, they will be paid by those Indians. Umefahamu? You understand?
Dumbfounded, I simply gaped back at him. What would have happened if I had refused the assignment? I would have been sacked and warned off. Nothing else, though could one be sure?
I was sworn to secrecy, yet I couldn’t do the job without seeking help; what did I know of Indian merchants who traded in dollars? And so I called up my father and we met at a coffee shop below his office. There I took him into my confidence. He was mortified.
Baap ré, you are not meant for this kind of shady business, this looks dangerous, son.
What could I do, Papa?
He took a long moment, drumming a finger on the glass-topped table, before replying calmly, You can quit your job—but later, in the future. Now you have this attaché case, and you have to get rid of it.
That night after dinner we went and saw Harry Uncle. He immediately understood what was required: Go to Narandas Hansraj first thing tomorrow. I will call him meanwhile and tell him you are coming.
And so Narandas Hansraj, of Muindi Mbingu Street, dealer in curios who came into frequent contact with tourists, became the banker for this foreign currency. He was a short thin man with a small moustache and round glasses—a typical banyani of modest habits, shrewd mind, and accumulating wealth, whom I must have seen a dozen times in the past in his little
storefront across from the market, staring out in the way of all such shopkeepers at the world passing by. This was business for him only a shade out of the ordinary.
Don’t worry, bhaisahib, he assured me genially. Fikar nahi, we’ll handle it, discretion guaranteed!
I had made his world a little more exciting.
The beneficiaries of the fund simply had to identify themselves to Narandas, who would have received a prior phone call from me, and money would change hands.
In those days Njoroge and I would meet at the Coffee House on Mama Ngina Street, and Deepa would on occasion join us, coming over from the pharmacy. The three of us worked within ten minutes of each other, in the bustling hub of Nairobi. I sensed that Deepa decided to meet us the first time in order to test herself with Njoroge, and it seemed to me that she could deal with his presence. She had a mature, controlled manner with him now. She was no longer the headstrong girl of before, after all, but a woman in her own right, and married. She sported a Sassoon hairstyle, with short, straight hair at the sides and back, and liked Indian cotton shirts over blue jeans or jean skirts and wooden beads and bangles. She drove a red MG convertible. And yet as they sat across from each other at the low wooden table in the crowded coffee shop humming with business and political têtes-à-têtes, it was impossible not to sense the electricity between them, charged with the memory of that previous relationship; it escaped in the occasional spark in her banter with him. Her repeated assertions of the fickleness of men, or how happy she was, could not go unnoticed by him. Attired like me in the bureaucrat’s grey or blue suit, he would sit straight and upright, watch her with a smile on his long face and a gleam in his eye. I was a little frightened for them. But I knew that my sister was an Indian wife, she would not do anything indiscreet to jeopardize her husband and her children. How carefully she had been held together following that devastation she suffered in love. I would always
remain aware of it, in her presence. She had shown exemplary courage and resolve to emerge out of the chaos of a mental breakdown. Njoroge never mentioned that episode, but his pointed avoidance of coming to our home was indication enough that a lot remained unsaid. There was an element of unhappiness in his own marriage. His father-in-law, after a falling out with the ruling party, had been denied a seat in the last elections and was now a plain businessman minus the privileges of office. Mary had had a couple of miscarriages, and they had no children. Therefore when Deepa brought along her family pictures, picked up apparently from the studio down the road, I thought perhaps the scene was contrived to take a stab at him.