Borderless Deceit (26 page)

“All of them,” she replies, not hesitating. “Medicine men, shamans, pastors, curates, reverends, rabbis, gurus, swamis…all of them. We bring in the best. We don't question where from.”

A few hundred yards away on the open plain a fire has begun to crackle, sending sparks shooting high into the dark. Silhouettes of villagers surround it. Samson, Nikko and Rachel saunter over to a party in full swing. The sounds of monotonic chanting are interspersed with extensive hissing. To combat voodoo's threats? Rachel wonders. There's a loud cry and long-limbed warriors begin dancing, a vertical dance, a spectacular jumping up and down. The way the white and crimson painted bodies rise off the earth, the ground must be a trampoline. Rachel becomes aware of children creeping up on her, scurrying off when she makes eye contact, but slowly filtering back. They seem as enchanted by her as she is with the narcissistic vaulting warriors. The children are fixated on her chalky skin flickering red-orange in the light of the fire. How do they see me? Rachel wonders. Am I an exhibit, a delicate figure, a piece of porcelain on show in a museum, well-shaped but barren and off limits to human touch? Again she meets the children's eyes; again they scatter. Once more she attends to the proud youths who soar.

Later she declines an invitation to join Samson and Nikko for a late night drink. Not saying much she retires to her tent, slipping into
a protected private space and then inside a mosquito net.

Breakfast before dawn, tea and porridge, to fortify them for a long tour of Samson's constituency. They begin to bounce around as much as he predicted. The road ends and becomes a track which heaves and falls and sometimes disappears entirely. It crosses dry river beds dotted with water holes and flood-strewn boulders. The Landrovers crawl up hills, over and around rocks, and lurch down the other side. Gazelles bound over the same terrain with ease; giraffes sway gracefully with the wind.

“And the lions?” asks Rachel, gripping the handrail on the seat before her. “Where are they?”

“They've heard there's a banker about with a spear,” says Samson, “so they're hiding.”

Nikko grins, but doesn't say much. He's holding on for dear life too.

Brown hills, grey rocks, thin yellow grasses, ochre earth. In the rising heat all Masailand lies shimmering. The hot and dusty ride generates a novel sensation for Rachel, a kind of inner elevation which shuts out the Landrover's engine noise, the vibration, and Nikko's and Samson's intermittent teeth-clenched commentary on the heaving and the rolling. Other stimuli seep in. She hears a voice retelling the story of her great-grandmother Grace travelling to a tough and empty country like this, staying, beating the odds, making a go of it. Rachel has not had such empathy for her forebears before. And another voice observes there's something to be said for being a Masai, coming onto the earth and departing it without much changing it, and living in a way so that time stands still. And now there's a voice which compares static time with moving time. Actually, Rachel hears a quartet of voices talking about time, each one tumbling over the others. They tell her that time is fleeting, that her time is slipping away, that she is squandering it, and that good memories are the return on an investment of time. Yet another voice reminds her that she has some good memories, mostly of Vienna and she reflects that there she apportioned her time properly, with the return on the investment being remarkable.

As the Landrover jostles over the savannah, Rachel gives in again, as the day before on the plane when she replayed the men she had in Vienna. But it goes further now as she not only sees, but also feels the
scenes when love happened. It arouses her. She pulls the safari hat down over her eyes to hide from the world what is happening in her mind. Eduardo is beside her, narcissistic as a Masai the way he adores his nakedness as much as he adores hers. Then Pekka is there, thrusting at her without tiring, seemingly for hours triggering one orgasm after another. And Iain Bruce the teddy bear appears, loving her with his mind as much as with his loins. How often did she couple in Vienna? Three, four hundred times?

In the back seat of the Landrover, a shudder gathers low in Rachel's body and rises. It hardens her nipples. Since no one's looking back from the bench in front, she lifts one hand to squeeze her breasts. Four hundred times in Vienna, she thinks. And since then not once.

“How much longer to Narok?” Rachel half shouts towards the front, sounding annoyed, restoring the brim to a higher position.

“Not so very far now,” Samson answers. “Tortured enough?” “I'm making the most of it.”

In Narok there's lunch with the Town Council. Rachel, thoroughly professional, inquires into health care, education, life expectancy, infant mortality, the availability of clean water – things like that. Speeches run on about plans to develop the town – great dreams and meagre prospects rolled up into one. There are lightning visits to gaunt structures – a school, an infirmary, a tanning factory and a store with trinkets for tourists. Then the convoy roars off. On the road again, away from the political role, Rachel in the back seat feels liberated.

The afternoon's route is south, then it curves east. Sometimes there's a road, sometimes a track. They progress over dried-out plains speckled with flat-topped acacias. Rocks ping away rhythmically inside the fenders; dust clouds explode from the wheels.

“Are we trying to get somewhere special before sundown?” Nikko asks. Samson nods. He wants to show them flamingoes. The travellers, mostly silent, hypnotised by the twisting, curving, up and over path continuing hour upon hour, watch it transform. It ceases being a line leading; it becomes a living force pulling. It seems to know why they're on it; only it can predict where they'll be arriving.

At last on a bluff the convoy halts, Samson indicating this is the place they'll camp.

With joints stiffened from too much sitting they spill out. Rachel rolling her shoulders, walks forward to explore the edge. Far below, an elongated lake comes into view. Quiet and undisturbed, it fills the valley like a perfect mirror allowing the depth of the sky to reach deep into the earth. On the near side in shallow water, a flock of flamingoes stands thick, forming a sheet of solid pink. Its edges wax and wane as small formations of birds arrive and others take flight. The activity is ceaseless, a welter of patterns. In flight, the birds, in line, just over the water, are twinned by their reflections, until they settle or pass from sight past a rocky outcrop which hides the lake's extension.

Samson and Nikko come up. Rachel turns. “So lovely,” she says. “Like a jewel.”

“Twenty-four carat,” Nikko agrees. “Worth the drive.”

They pick their way along the ridge, Samson explaining the Rift Valley's lakes and why flamingoes favour them. Back in camp, the tents are up and beer comes out. The minister and the banker fall into a discussion on investment in tourism while Rachel, sipping slowly, studies a sky that's discarding the world. That whole evening she doesn't say much.

Early next morning – it's still dark – she awakens. The camp is silent. Unzipping the tent she steps out, takes a camp chair and walks the hundred yards towards the ridge. The chair is set facing east where a strip of intense red on the horizon is widening, the colour thinning – as if being stretched to fill an ever larger chunk of sky. It turns into apricot orange. It licks upwards, transforming into a wall of yellow and finally becomes a silver dome.

There's a rustle in the dry grass. Rachel turns. Nikko's awake too. He halts next to her. “You're like a film director in that chair.”

“I wanted to watch the day begin.”

He sits down cross-legged on the grass. “No finer vantage point than this.”

“Actually,” Rachel confesses, “I'm celebrating. It's my birthday. I'm turning thirty.”

“Your birthday! Congratulations. We'll organise a party.”

“No need. I'm declaring the whole thing over when the sun shows.”

“Well,” he says brightly, “that still allows a couple of minutes.”

“It's all I want.”

“You make it sound as if you're turning sixty. Thirty isn't a bad age.”

“By thirty you'd expect to have something to show for the years.”

Nikko nods. Benign, patient as a Buddha, he's quiet until a sliver of sun peeks over the distant hills. “Well, that was a very jolly party.”

Rachel, appreciating this light touch, smiles. “Thank you, Nikko.”

“A present. There has to be a present. How about I promise to publish a book listing your achievements. It would be a hefty volume, I'm sure.”

“You brought me here. That's present enough. I won't forget it. Sorry to sound heavy before.”

“Don't worry. You know, Germans go overboard celebrating birthdays. I think they want at least one day a year when they're not moody. Maybe the other way around, your way, is better. How did you celebrate last year?”

Rachel says she ignored her twenty-ninth, but Nikko tells her he enjoyed his fortieth two years ago, which was a family outing on a chartered tall-masted sailing ship that did some island-hopping in the South Pacific.

“I once had one hang-gliding in the Alps,” Rachel counters.

“You could do that from here and enjoy a perfect landing down there amongst the flamingoes.” Behind them the camp is stirring. “Can I at least mention it's your birthday?” Rachel shakes her head. It's been shared enough already.

The rest of the day has the muted feel of a theatre after a show when the curtain is down. Camp is broken; the convoy winds its way along a trail down to the lake for a closer look at the flamingoes, then swings north to Nairobi. Miraculously the road turns tarmac, a signal for Samson to ask how they liked Masailand. Nikko's answer comes quick. “Hated it,” he says. “Every minute was tedious. Except for the bouncing. That was the good part. It taught me how to keep change in my pocket. No small feat that, seeing I had a finance minister beside me.”

Samson, grinning, swings around to Rachel for her opinion.

“Masailand was perfect,” she says, “except for the spear. Too bad someone gave Nikko that spear. It scared off the lions.”

The minister clasps a huge hand on the banker's shoulder. “You see my cleverness,” he says. “You have to come again. Next time to see lions.” At the airport, raising his staff like a baton, he completes the thought. “Next time we'll go on a real safari. Next time the roads will be very bad, so very very bad. The next time even the best banker will have to let go of the change in his pocket. I guarantee it.” The staff comes down indicating it's decided.

Once the jet is up and cruising, Rachel and Nikko take stock. The Rift, the Masai, the campsites, the flamingoes, how Samson waving his magic wand made everything happen. There's a lull and Nikko, pulling out a leather binder thick with papers, remarks casually, “I've been thinking about you turning thirty.” Rachel, waiting, watches him dig out reading glasses, breathing on them, rubbing the lenses with a cloth. “I've been wondering,” he continues, “whether you've always had it all, or whether you learned quicker than the rest of us how to hide your flaws.”

Rachel studies his mannered way of cleaning glasses. She breaks into a slow smile. “Hide my flaws? I told you this morning. I'm stuck. Isn't that a big enough flaw?”

Nikko seems surprised. “Stuck?” He positions the glasses on his nose with both hands, carefully, like racers adjust their goggles. “Being stuck isn't your problem. Your problem is the opposite.” He bends his head forward, studying Rachel over the top of the lenses. “You're doing at thirty what others get around to at fifty, or sixty. Your problem is living too quick.”

The eyes above the lenses have frozen into a dead stare. Rachel mocks their coldness with a smirk and in this asymmetric lock she sees Nikko's intensity switch get flicked to
on,
as during the lunch on the boat and the meetings of the committee when she caught him studying her from a distance. His coal-black eyes are spewing fierceness. Coming at her, Rachel feels, is a will bent on penetrating hers. “If living too quick is a problem,” she says calmly, “you've got it too. What's your solution? I'd like to know.”

Nikko snorts. His head moves, a few times up and down, then back and forth. Ambiguous movements. An expression of admiration that his will was reflected? Or is he admitting he's been found out? Or both? Rachel interprets it simply as an indication that his thoughts are
moving on to other matters, for he begins rifling through the stack of documents, sizing them up, taking deep breaths, readying himself for an assault on his work. Rachel takes out a book and begins reading, intermittently stealing glances at the banker beside her.

The way he adjusted his spectacles, like goggles against the wind, it really did signal the beginning of a contest, because he's racing through the papers as if he wants to go faster than the jet screaming through the atmosphere at thirty-thousand feet. Behind the rimless lenses, lips pursed, chin jutting out, Nikko is the perfect image of an implacable, no-shades-of-grey businessman. He devours in an instant the contracts, agreements, letters, and memoranda. There are swift judgements and abrupt executions. His tools? Swirling signatures, or notes of dissatisfaction scrawled violently onto margins, or strokes of pure contempt ripped down the pages diagonally from top right to bottom left. Rachel observes the pen from which this flows. An elegant instrument, heavy, made of gold. It lies in his hand as threatening as the Masai spear. The banker's notations, she suspects, are stabs into the breasts of underlings, and each brutal diagonal slicing represents a goring of some poor sod's soul. Rachel reflects on this. Violence on paper. Is that a cause or an effect of running a bank? Or are such habits acquired by all who live life in the fast lane? Staring at her open book, not flipping any pages, Rachel requires an audience for her thoughts and begins to write a letter in her mind. Soon enough she'll put it down on paper and send if off.