As she embraced me I was drowned in a swamp of odours. A bitter tang of sweat concocted with the smell of fresh fish, rancid oil, mothballs and an almost extinct trace of an expensive perfume – inherited, as I guessed, from the former owner of the cataract. The situation was dangerously close to chemical warfare. Perdita protected herself from that olfactory assault with her perfumed hanky. Only her eyes were left uncovered and they were already turbid and bulging in her efforts to suppress retching.
‘Jason must have a stomach of a whale to have had it off with her,’ she whispered to me.
I tried to say a couple of words as a formal introduction but my new sistah did not allow me. She was still holding me in her embrace while chanting something in vernacular. All I could understand was ‘White Ma is my big sistah!’ Jason finally intervened and we were allowed to proceed towards the compound. The black monolith showing us the way.
Perdita’s presents were a total fiasco. Or even worse; they were a disastrous shock. The big trunk was loaded with books. And mind you, not ordinary books but with the CPCP’s notorious manifesto Blacks of All Countries Unite! At that moment I was grateful to God that the residents of the compound were illiterates.
Jason lifted one of the books and his eyes virtually popped out with fury. ‘Perdita, you should have kept that junk for your home use. Here in West Africa we do not share your inferiority complex and we don’t want it imported. We have enough of our own misery.’
To my biggest surprise, the reaction of my neighbours was quite different than any one of us might have expected. First, they were puzzled; and then they were happy.
However, Perdita was a fast thinking kid. She might have had a lack of understanding for Gluck’s music, but she definitively had acumen to handle political matters! She took one of the booklets, went to Scintilla’s fireplace and put it on the embers. A jolly flame came up dancing around the large frying basin. She addressed then Jason, ‘Tell them to use the books instead of charcoal.’ I saw tears in her eyes. ‘That pompous monkey of my father did not bother to tell me the nature of the presents. I am sorry Jason; that was not my fault.’
The compound was impressed. Blacks of All Countries Unite! was after all a very valuable gift, having in mind the price of charcoal. They screamed with joy. Almost a hundred pounds of paper – a gift to be appreciated and remembered.
Over the tumult of our voices now we heard a new outburst of merriment coming somewhere from the alleys. Chanting, laughter and screams were approaching at a fast pace. Then suddenly a cloud of breezy, hilarious children poured into the compound. In their wake was Petra! Two local employees of the German Embassy followed her carrying between them an even bigger treasure chest! The residents were benumbed and so were we from the Party number one.
If I had ever seen Jason panic – it was at that moment. Party number one greeted Party number two with respect and the well-developed diplomatic cordiality among NATO allies.
The chest was opened. Loads of washing powder and soap. At least a two months supply. The compound exploded. All the residents were dancing and screaming with joy. Perdita was fuming. Jason was praying. Only Cromwell stuck to his usual role of the late Pharaoh Tutankhamen, unconcerned and overall professional.
‘For Chrissake, Alex, do something! We can’t allow this Kraut to beat us.’
There was no need of reminding me that the prestige of the United States of America was at stake. I opened my bag and took the only money I had there. That was a ten thousand Cowry banknote, the largest denomination in Ebonyland. With flourish I handed it to my sistah and said that it should be shared for the common benefit of all the residents of the compound. Everybody fell silent. Even the children stopped their caper fascinated by the extraordinary sight. A TEN THOUSAND BILL! Scintilla lifted it slowly holding it high with both her hands. Her arms were lifted in the fashion a priest would bear the Eucharist. All were mutely admiring the piece of paper which could buy them a truckload of charcoal, or a year’s supply of soap, but the value of which could hardly cover a dinner for two in a second-class New York restaurant. Still supporting the bill in the same fashion Scintilla began to chant. Slowly, step by step, shuffling her feet, she went into a dance. The others joined in. In a long queue they circled the hearth falling gradually into a semi-trance. At that moment it appeared that this Wednesday was to be remembered as the happiest day of their lives.
Unfortunately, it was not so.
According to what Corporal Cromwell reported a day later, the sequence of events was as follows.
The two parties evacuated the compound simultaneously and in the fashion of mutual respect. After the residents had seen us off, they deflated and began to discuss how to share the gifts. The Black Manifesto and the soap were shared and allocated among the residents in a fraternal way. But the ten-thousand-bill was an entirely different case. Hard words were exchanged and an inevitable quarrel started. The landlady insisted that the money be invested into further electrification of the compound but the others opposed the idea. They already were in financial difficulties. Electricity would only increase their expenditures. Scintilla wanted a proper bath to be installed; with two showers. (I was happy to learn that she was aware of the need.) As it was to be expected no one else agreed. Her sister proposed that the money should be invested into building a chop-bar where everyone could work and which would generate money. Even that was refused with an avalanche of insults. And then the fight started.
The police intervened promptly.
The twin sisters and some others were incarcerated for the night and the banknote was impounded with a large quantity of subversive ‘imperialistic’ propaganda. Cromwell knew that first hand because he had been put in charge to gather evidence and to disperse the rioters. For his extraordinary efficiency he was recommended for promotion. That same evening he became Sergeant Oliver Cromwell and added proudly the third chevron on his sleeve.
But that did not close the case. The big trouble started only the next morning. Before seven o’clock, on the day of my birthday, a group of irresponsible individuals stoned the building of the Embassy of the United States of America! The marines on duty, following the emergency routine, lowered the metal shutters, activated the electric fence, took their action stations and informed the Ebonian military authorities.
By the time I came to my office and before Mr. Holly gave me my birthday peck, the evacuation exercise had already been under way. The inhabitants of the slum were rounded up and at gunpoint escorted towards army trucks to be taken to unknown destinations. All that brutality, I could not watch. I was shaking with anger and impotence. At eleven a.m. during our tea break, three bulldozers rumbled in and began to raze shacks and makeshift shelters to the ground. Soon, nothing was left. There was only a vast waste of ugly emptiness where life had previously been at home. How strange it looked now. While there had been all that motley carpet of roofs under my eyes, the slum appeared much larger than after it had been pulled down. Now I could see the place where we had left the motorbike not farther than one could throw a stone. A completely new panorama opened, dull and sterile.
‘Didn't I tell you?’ It was Furness. Following his routine, he entered my office without knocking. His face gleamed with satisfaction. ‘And it was about time too. What’s the point of having central air-conditioning when your view is polluted?’ After a while he broke into a wild laugh. ‘Do you know what date is today? Today is the Day of the Great October Revolution. Kostov really has a weird sense of humour.’
Why was I born on the seventh of November? Or was that yet another mean trick of my mother’s? I went home heartbroken, desperate and with a guilty conscience. I should have never followed Perdita’s impatience and given that banknote.
My birthday party turned to be a congregation of Jason’s admirers. Except for me and a dull half-caste, George was now moving with, all others were under Jason’s spell. Hillary was his tender and concerned sister; Perdita – his willing prey; Petra – his doting mama (however, that evening she did not look like a nursing sow, she looked rather like an oversized jelly-fish); a completely mesmerized Olga and finally my Elisabeth. Only Scintilla was missing. I really felt sorry that she had been deprived of being one of my guests. Not only for the reason that without my sistah, the ‘fan club’ was not complete but because I genuinely missed her. Now, as I write these lines, I deeply regret that my earlier description of Scintilla had been centred mainly on that rich scent which trailed in her wake like the tail of a comet. Instead, I should have stressed the greatness of her heart and, her generosity and selflessness. In fact, even then, when I could not dream that she would save my life during the Civil War, I already felt some kind of tenderness towards her; as though she had really been my sister. I always wanted someone with Scintilla’s heart and temperament to be my family. Someone who would sing and dance; someone who could freely show her feelings – someone who would have feelings in the first place! If I had to choose a woman for Jason, I would definitively settle for my new sistah. I would send her to school, I would improve her taste and I would build her a beautiful bathroom. But I would never interfere with her heart.
‘Cheer up, Alex!’ Gustav invaded my privacy. ‘I know what troubles you. But don’t worry; they’ll be fine. By now they must have already arrived at their new village. They are going to be allocated neat pavilions, land, tools, free education. Ribeira may be mad, he may be a corrupt and hated dictator, but the man has some sort of vision.’
‘I know, Jason told me. But, Gustav, tell me how could you guess that I was thinking about them?’
‘No matter what you think of yourself, you are basically a very emotional person. Your face is like an open book.’
I was shocked and offended. I could be taken for stupid, uncouth, conceited and unnecessarily serious – but never emotional! If there was anything that I despised and that I still despise, those are emotions and other soapy reactions usually attributed to women. I closed my eyes and started to breathe deeply to suppress my anger.
Gustav saw my reaction and immediately changed the subject. ‘Hillary tells me that she sold you the story about Euridice. For your knowledge, Gluck was merely an excuse. The real reasons are much deeper.’
‘So what was the real reason?’
‘Her pathological ambition. I told you the other day that I had never had such a keen listener. But now I feel sorry that I revealed so much. She might misuse the knowledge. Perdita is the type who would easily kill her own father only to acquire power.’
I shrugged in disbelief. In those days I only disliked that presumptuous tart but I was still far from seeing her true face.
I left Gustav and asked that Moslem guy whose name I still cannot recall for a dance. George and his new girlfriend joined us, Mike invited Hillary, while Perdita, taking the advantage of Petra’s somnolence, snitched Jason from her lap. When the German girl felt that the pressure of Jason’s head had eased, she woke up. After the first flash of surprise, fury settled in her eyes. Instead of a harmless jellyfish she turned into Medusa. Yet, she managed to put her anger under control and rested seated as if nothing had happened.
When my birthday party was at the full swing, a strong gust of cold air hit my garden. Distant rumbling was heard too. I was sure we would soon have a tropical storm. Sparse raindrops began to patter upon the terrace tiles. We glided into the hall and continued to dance among the crowded armchairs and other pieces of furniture.
‘Leave it!’ Hillary’s voice came sharp above the music. Expecting the worst I turned around and saw her scowling at her husband. While we had been out on the terrace, Gustav took his chance to have a couple of tokes in peace.
‘OK, OK.’ Gustav obligingly wasted the cigar. But that did not end the matter. Perdita took a deep breath evidently in order to fight for the rights of smokers. Jason realized the danger, grabbed her firmly and whirled her around in one of his dancing stunts. Perdita lost her breath and her readiness to start hostilities. I thought that the bellicose atmosphere had been extinguished.
I was wrong!
‘Jason, I don’t think that this young lady enjoys your way of dancing!’ It was Petra.
‘Jason, tell that woman over there that I do not need protectors, especially not ...’
‘You may not need protectors, but you need someone to teach you how ...’
‘I am fed up with such paternalistic behaviour! Your attitude of racial superiority gets on my nerves, you empty, stupid cow!’
Everybody froze. Caught by the embarrassing surprise we looked like members of a rock-group when arranged for a publicity photograph.
Gustav said, ‘Ladies, ladies, hold your horses! I think that a short silence may improve our conversation.’
His wife said, ‘Oh, shut up!’
Perdita exploded. ‘Shut up yourself! Is that the way one treats her husband!’
A strong squall hit the terrace and the garden beyond. Dust, dry leaves and twigs invaded the hall. In a last minute before the cloudburst started, Elisabeth negotiated the already wet terrace bringing my birthday cake from the store. Her acrobatics took our breaths away. She skidded over the wet tiles balancing the three-tier-masterpiece loaded with cream and sugar-coated apricots. All candles were already in their places and ready to be lit. In the fashion of a great master of the ice rink, she finally reached the safety of the living room and triumphantly placed the cake on the table. We all applauded with enthusiasm. Her grand performance averted the war once again.
After a while the rain eased, drinks were sipped and a casual conversation restarted as though there had not been any hostilities at all.
‘Hey, let’s lit the candles!’
‘Yes, the candles!’
‘Gustav, you do it!’
Using his lighter, with patience only old men have, Gustav went around the table and lit the candles. The sight was beautiful. Everybody applauded and screamed with joy.
But then, a new shock! Attracted by our loud merriment, Elisabeth’s little monster Prudence made a lightening fast run over the lake of water which covered the garden and even a part of the terrace and came to join us. That would be nothing unusual, had the girl been dressed normally. But the shock we had when we saw her attire transformed us once again into a rock-group. Her hair was done in a fashion which made my birthday cake, with all those twenty-seven candles, completely outclassed. On top of her head there were at least four dozen pike-like tentacles, plaited in a very intricate way and adorned with a riot of fancy beads. One could suspect that she was equipped with some high-tech spying gear. A heavy layer of lipstick, shade and liquid powder, (she must have snitched all those from Perdita’s room during the days my guest had spent with the ‘playful walrus’), enhanced her eyes to the size of anti-aircraft searchlights. She wore a denim mini-top, spangled with golden sequins, half unbuttoned and showing freely her ripe olives. Under the waist she had nothing but an electric blue cycling stretch.
Her mother almost fainted. ‘Get out! Get lost! Back to your room!’ She screamed and then choked. Gustav jumped to offer her help and gave her a glass of something. That ‘something’ choked her even more!
‘Elisabeth, please, it’s my birthday. Let her be with us at least until we cut the cake.’
She only goggled back, unable to utter a single sound. I took that as her permission.
While everybody’s attention was arrested on Elisabeth’s recovery, Gustav went calmly back to his armchair and lit a fresh cheroot. With a blessed face he was about to inhale his fifth toke when Hillary saw him and in an acrobatic splits-jump found herself right above her husband! ‘Oh, no!’ She screamed and confiscated the cigar.
‘Oh, yes!’ Perdita performed the same ‘black-swan-jump’ (my inundated terrace – the right backdrop setting) and snitched the cheroot out of Hillary’s fingers.
Who was the first to hit, I did not notice. Slaps were exchanged in the rhythm of an enthusiastic applause that even a Nureyev should envy. Petra immediately joined in. No one should have any doubts whose side she had taken. Before anyone could intervene, Perdita found herself completely overrun by the joined African-German forces. Her head was now between Petra’s knees while Hillary was left free to drum upon her back. And then, out of the blue, Prudence entered the war. Was her engagement merely an attempt to demonstrate how unjustly she had been omitted from the ‘Jason’s fan-club’, or it was only her belated revenge for that hitherto dispensed slap by Perdita, I could not guess. What we witnessed though was a professional volley executed by her left foot right into Perdita’s bottom. The kick was so strong that both Perdita and Petra fell down. After having drummed a couple of beats into empty air, Hillary lost her balance too and joined the heap on the ground.
I reacted in the good, old American peace-making tradition. Automatically and violently. I slapped the small girl with such force that she was sent reeling in a double right-turn pirouette towards where her choked mother stood. Elisabeth, who by that time had recovered her breath, administered an even stronger slap in which, I am sure, her maternal anxiety played only a negligible part. The smack was so powerful that her daughter went into a triple pirouette; this time anticlockwise. Jason tried to act the Prince Charming and catch the whirling beauty, but he was late. Driven by all the force her mother had invested into the slap, Prudence continued reeling and finally landed face down among my candles. The impact was so strong that at least ten candles went off. She stood up and began to clean her face throwing dollops of cream and apricot filling all over the room. The largest chunk flew straight towards Gustav who was in the process of enjoying the first puffs of yet another freshly lit cheroot. My big apricot surprise smashed right into his mouth.
Elisabeth was the first to come back to her senses. She jumped, lifted the remaining two thirds of my birthday cake with the good intention to save it from further depredation of the Blitz. Unfortunately, in her haste, she stepped upon a splotch of apricot filling and skidded. In a vain effort to restore her balance, she lifted both arms with such speed that the cake got a momentum stronger than the force of gravity and continued its way through air quite independently. Spinning slowly and with the remaining twenty candles still flickering, it missed the ceiling fan by inches and in the fashion of that luminous spacecraft from the Close Encounter of the Third Kind maintained its course towards the far end of the living room. At that same instant, as though lead by an evil goblin, the newly promoted Sergeant Cromwell, drenched like a rat, entered the room, stood attention and saluted. His Buster Keaton face did not twitch for a nanosecond when the ‘spacecraft’ crash-landed upon it.
Perdita was taken to hospital to spend the night there. In the morning, after a series of tests, the doctor suggested we should take her to a hairdresser. Petra was given sedatives and sent home. Oliver Cromwell was forced to spend the night in the boys’ quarters. Elisabeth washed his new uniform and I believe did her best to restore his self-esteem. As for Prudence, I was asked to kindly accommodate her for the night in my study. ‘She should feel that she is punished!’ Her mother explained. Hillary and Gustav went home like newly weds. He was finally given permission to restart smoking.
Jason and I were left alone to celebrate my birthday. Never before in my life had I cried like that night. Jason tried to calm me down with pecks on the cheek and with similar expression of tenderness until he lost patience and slapped me.
‘Stop it!’ He shouted.
I slapped him back then he slapped me again. In the end we both started to laugh and decided to get drunk. And so we did. We polished off a three-pint-bottle of Palynka (Gustav’s present) and then fell asleep in the middle of the battleground.
But the true epilogue of my birthday party was yet to come. And it was not pleasant.
On Friday I had such an imperial hangover that I did not go to work. Saturday and Sunday I spent recovering and gossiping with Perdita. I was surprised that she did not bear a grudge against me, or perhaps, she only masterly concealed it. Anyway, her father was to come on Monday to take her back to the safety of our homeland. On Monday morning when I was leaving for the embassy was the last time I addressed her as Perdita. Our next encounter was to be under quite different and dramatic circumstances of a real war. And then, her name would already be Titilayo Telaubu.
That same Monday, as soon as I entered the embassy building, Olga escorted me straight to that room which is now my office. There, that moron (my predecessor’ predecessor) was sitting at the desk, while his deputy and Gordon Furness were standing at the sides of his armchair. (That armchair, I discarded. I simply could not stomach to sit on the same chair where his fat ass had been accommodated.) The three of them looked like the Holy Inquisition. And that was exactly what they were. Without asking me any questions they passed the verdict. From that place I was to be taken home to pack my things and within a week I was to leave Ebonyland for good.
Mr. Holly and Gordon were the only ones to see me off at The Redemption International.
‘Alex,’ Gordon asked me belatedly. ‘What was the real cause of that row in your house?’
‘Mrs. Kubrick and Miss Williams fought over Mr. Kubrick’s cheroot.’