‘Gaby McAslan.’
The blonde woman stuck on the surname glottal several times.
‘Well, I am pleased to meet you, however you say your name. I am Oksana Mikhailovna Telyanina, of Irkutsk.’
The barman lined up two more elephants. They clinked bottles and drank to Siberian/Ulster friendship. She drinks and dresses like a gay man, Gaby thought.
‘You are here for Chaga, yes? Of course, everyone is here for Chaga, one way or other. Tourist or worker?’
‘Worker. I’m with Sky Net. Start tomorrow.’
‘Good people. Jake Aarons, he is good man. Good man. Big waste. Ah, they are all good. Better than fucking UNECTA – well, Administration who tell us where we can and cannot fly.’
‘Death to administrators.’
‘And accountants. Up against wall, boom boom boom.’
They drank to the mass liquidation of the administrative and accounting classes. The empty bottles lined up along the bar. Glass elephants on parade.
‘What do you think it is?’ Gaby asked, ‘the Chaga?’
The little Siberian woman shrugged expressively.
‘You mean, another planet? I don’t know. Easy to talk about other planets, other worlds out in cosmos, make stories about them, make movies when they are far away. When you can see it, touch it, walk through it – fly over it – is harder to believe. Too close, understand? Maybe is one big big movie set. Industrial Light and Magic, all that. I tell you, right here in this place, is very hard to believe in aliens and other worlds, yes? Oh, meant to say, I love your hair.’ She gently stroked Gaby’s hair.
‘Blood of the Celts flows in me,’ Gaby said, touched.
‘Blood of Finno-Ugarics flows in me. Well, my father’s side, generation or so back. Mighty people, long before damn Russians. Proud people. Look.’ She pulled down the ragged neck of her Sibirsk T-shirt to reveal a tattoo of two intertwined circles on her right breast. ‘Apprentice shaman. Or should it be sha-woman?’
‘Sha-person? No shit?’
‘No shit, Gahbee UmmicAzlan. Father had no sons, so passed on mysteries to eldest daughter. Me. Oksana Mikhailovna. Already, I can fly. No problem! In time, I will heal the sick, see into human hearts, speak with voice of forest, take on spirits and shapes of animals. See.’ She moved the stretched neckline. The left breast bore a wolf-mask tattoo. ‘Maybe is why I cannot believe in aliens, other planets, colonization, all that. I know earth is still strong, can still surprise us. Most of all here in Africa, where everything is born. Ah! Moses! You are great man. What you doing afterwards?’ The great Moses set them up and kept setting them up and the two women kept drinking them and they talked men and money and football and tried to teach each other mouthfuls of Finno-Ugaric and Irish which of course ended in beer spitting and laughing because they only taught each other to say dirty things.
‘Go to bed, Gaby McAslan,’ Oksana Telyanina said as the line of bottles reached the end of the bar. ‘You have big day tomorrow: new city, new job, new workmates. Need sleep. Me too. Have to fly tomorrow, early.’
‘After all this?’
Oksana turned her right forearm up. She tapped a swelling under her wrist.
‘Diffusion pump. Cleans it out of blood as fast as I drink it. Piss pure alcohol. Tomorrow I fly to Ruwenzori sober as judge. Soberer.’
Ruwenzori. The Mountains of the Moon. The white on the map of Darkest Africa. Terra Incognita. Since the Kilimanjaro Event, the cartographers had been forced to redraw those unknown regions marked Here be Dragons.
‘We do this again, yes?’ Oksana said. ‘When I get back, God knows when. Me, I am only here because I am babooning. Moving out of place so friend can fiki-fiki, yes?’ She made thrusting gestures with thumb. ‘You on EastAf Teleport?’
‘SkyNet’s fixing it. You’ll have to leave a message so I can find you; I’m only booked in here for a couple of days. After that, I don’t know where I’ll be.’
‘I will find you. You’ll see. Ah, damn. Moses, are you closing that thing up already? Is too soon. Maybe we have one more, yes? Moses!’
His gleaming teeth showed no obvious signs of distress at having uncapped fourteen bottles of Tusker.
‘Big cocks and vodka!’
‘Big cocks and vodka!’ Gaby McAslan agreed.
5
She woke bright, sober and decided to walk to work. Any town she visited, she needed to walk over, claim it like an animal marking its territory with a rub of musk. She crossed Uhuru Park and the highway, steering by the open flower of the Kenyatta Centre rising out of darkness into the morning light. Something growing, Gaby thought.
She videoed the big bronze UNECTAfrique horns-and-mountain colophon in the centre of the plaza. People of all colours and races and nations hurried past her, all on the business of the Chaga. As she was. All part of this magnificent machine, unfolding the heart of a great mystery.
She walked on.
In three intersections she was lost. Every turning she took brought her back to the same Indian bookstore. Time was ticking away. Taxis would have been flagged down but they did not seem to prowl these streets. Nor were there any policemen to bribe for directions. It would have to be a choice between the homeboys in street-fashionable flares and patch leather jackets hanging around their good friend’s shoeshine stand, or the smart-casual, studenty types waiting for the pedestrian lights. She remembered T.P. Costello’s pointed warnings about HIV-infected hypodermics.
‘Excuse me, could you tell me the way to Tom M’boya Street?’
The tallest of the student-types smiled broadly.
‘Certainly. In fact, we are going that way ourselves. We could walk with you; it is not really safe for a white woman to be on the streets on her own.’
As they walked they asked her questions: was she on holiday or was she working here, where did she come from, how long had she been here, had she ever been to Africa before, what did she think of Kenya so far? Gaby’s answers were interrupted by the arrival of a friend every hundred metres or so, necessitating lengthy greetings and handshakings. Within half a kilometre, what had been three were now six. They did not seem to be making very fast progress in the direction of the SkyNet offices.
‘This is a quicker way to go,’ said the tall, bearded one with the expensive clothes who asked all the questions. Friend number eight joined the party. ‘I am wondering,’ the bearded one went on, ‘if maybe, like we are helping you, you can help us. You are a journalist, an educated woman, you will understand our problem.’
The problem unfolded over the next half kilometre. A good friend of theirs, a political science student, had got himself into trouble by speaking out against corruption in UNECTA. ‘As you know, the Americans clap their hands and our beloved government dances. They will not allow any criticism of the UN presence in our country – and so our friend is in grave danger. His life has been threatened, his wife and family have been visited, if you understand what I mean. Even we are taking a grave risk in talking to you. You will be all right, you work for a Western news agency, they will not touch you.’
‘What do you want me to do? Run a story?’
‘That would put him in more danger, I am afraid,’ said the bearded student. ‘His only chance is to get away with his family, go south to Mozambique where he will be safe to carry on the struggle. There is a boat he can catch from Mombasa; unfortunately, these days, no one goes anywhere without magendo.’ He rubbed fingers against thumb, the universal gesture of black money. ‘He needs five thousand shillings to get his family out. Only five thousand shillings for a new life.’