The Seersucker Whipsaw (13 page)

“Dr. Kologo,” I said.

“Doctor, lawyer, merchant-chief,” Shartelle said. “Maybe I can keep them straight that way.”

“So what was the consensus?”

“The consensus, boy, was that they just don't give much of a shit one way or another because they—the little old plump gals—think they're all crooked and just out for the quick buck.”

“We should be able to work that to our advantage.”

“You know I told you yesterday I figured we'd have to whipsaw it, but I hadn't quite figured it out and I thought it was nudging around in the back of my mind?”

“I recall.”

“Well, it came to me last night and after I got the big one, then the rest of it sort of fell into place. I think I've got it, but it's going to cost a packet and its success'll depend upon the venality of some and the patriotism of others. But successful politics usually does. I'll be needing some fancy writing.”

“Such as?”

“Used to be an old newspaper boy that worked on one of these combination morning and afternoon papers that were supposed to be rivals, but are really owned by the same outfit?” He made it that kind of a Southern rhetorical question, the inflection rising until it keened out on the last word.

“Uh-huh.”

“This old boy would get up in the morning and go down to his typewriter and whang out an editorial knocking hell out of FDR and Harry Hopkins and all that New Deal crowd. That was for the afternoon paper. Then he'd go out and get a couple of belts into him and come back and whang out another one—this time hoorahing it up for Mrs. Roosevelt, Jimmy, John, FDR, Jr. and calling down the wrath of God Almighty on their enemies and detractors. Now he was what I would call a versatile writer.”

“I wonder which editorials he believed?”

Shartelle shoved back his hat slightly and looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Why, he believed both of them, boy. Wouldn't you?”

I sighed and leaned back on the mohair. “You're right, Clint, I probably would.”

“Well, I figure you're going to be doing some writing something like that old newspaper boy used to do.”

“I'm your man. Just put the paper in the typewriter and I'm off. Either side.”

William slowed the Humber, turned around and looked at us. I winced as a truck called “It Pains You Why?” nipped by us a couple of inches away.

“Mastah want beer?” William said and redirected his attention to the road.

“Beer?” I asked.

“Yas, Sah, we stop for beer always at halfway house.”

“Well, I never had anything against
beer
in the morning,” Shartelle said. “Let's stop.”

“Fine.”

It was a combination roadhouse and gasoline station. It was built of whitewashed mud and inside it had deep wooden chairs with wide arms that looked like Midwestern porch furniture. The chairs were gathered around low wooden tables. A bar stood near the door, conveniently placed underneath the only ceiling fan, which spun at a leisurely and useless pace. A sign painted in an attempt at old English script hung outside over the door. It said the name of the place was The Colony. We sat at one of the tables. A man came over and in a flat American accent asked what our pleasure was.

“Three beers,” Shartelle said. “Nice and cold.”

“Nice and cold,” the man said. He walked back to the bar and uncapped three quart bottles of Beck's. He put them on a tin tray, got some cold glasses out of a refrigerator, the kind that had the coils on top, and brought them over.

“Nice and cold, gentlemen,” he said and served the beer. “That'll be twelve and six.”

I gave him a pound. Shartelle said: “You're an American, aren't you?”

The man looked at him. “I lived there for a while.”

“Whereabouts?”

“You name it.”

“Pittsburgh?”

“For a while.”

“You own this place?” Shartelle asked.

The man looked around and smiled faintly. “No,” he said. “I don't own it. I'm just helping out a friend.” He stood waiting for more questions, a not-too-tall man, about five-eleven, flat-bellied and lithe. When he moved he moved very much like Shartelle. He had a naturally olive complexion which a lot of sun had burned dark. His hair was cut short and it had some gray in it just over the ears.

“My name's Shartelle, and this is Upshaw.”

“They call me Mike,” the man said.

“You been here long?”

“Not long; I'm just touring.”

“And you're helping out a friend,” Shartelle said.

“That's right. A friend.”

Shartelle poured his beer into the glass carefully. The man called Mike stood waiting with the tray in hand, patient and poised. “We haven't met before, have we, Mike?” Shartelle asked, talking it seemed to his glass of beer. “A long time ago—maybe twenty years back?”

“You meet a lot of people, but I don't think so.” He put the pound note in his pocket and placed my change on the table. “Anything else?”

I said no and the man called Mike went back behind his bar, picked up a copy of the
Times
of London and smiled at the personal ad columns.

William drank his beer out of the bottle, belched his enjoyment, and then went out to talk to the men who ran the gas pump. Shartelle and I leaned back in the porch furniture and drank the beer slowly. When we got up to leave, the man called Mike didn't say goodbye or come back again. He didn't even look up as we left.

Shartelle slumped into his favorite position in the back seat. “You know, Petey, I think I know that old boy and I think he knows me.”

“He didn't seem to.”

“It was in France during the war … when I was with Duffy and Downer. He was a sight younger then.”

“You all were.”

“That boy could talk French though—he could fair rattle it off just like he was born there.”

“You sure he's the same man?”

“I'm sure, but if he's not sure, then he must have a damn good reason. And he didn't seem to think that his reason was any of my business so I think I'll just let it drop.”

The car was back on the road. The traffic was light except for the trucks and an occasional passenger car. I looked out at the rain forest and wondered where the animals were.

I asked William. “Where are all the animals, William?”

“Animals, Sah?”

“Monkeys, elephants, lions, baboons.”

“No animals, Sah. Just goat.”

“I mean wild animals.”

“No wild animals, Mastah. They go long time for chop. We eat them!” He exploded into a fit of giggling.

“Never thought I'd be in Africa and not see any animals,” Shartelle said. “Hell, you can see more wild life on a Kansas highway than you can around here.”

“Maybe they aren't as hungry in Kansas. Speaking of being hungry, are we invited to lunch at Chief Akomolo's, or is this a purely business call?”

“Lunch, I understand,” Shartelle said. “He's having some of the key political supporters in. It's a major policy meeting. I figure on doing a lot of listening, but if I'm called on to say something, don't be surprised at what comes out. Just be ready to back me up—with figures, if need be.”

“Figures?”

“Make 'em up as you go along. I'll correct you a pound here and a shilling there to make them seem authentic. You and me might even haggle a bit.”

“In other words, you want me to backstop you?”

Shartelle pulled his hat down lower over his eyes and slumped even farther down into the seat. “Petey, that's what I like about you. You don't ask no goddamned fool questions and you don't want to be elected to anything. You just keep that attitude and we're going to be real good friends.”

“By the way,” I said. “I ran into an army major from Ubondo last night. He's invited us to dinner on Friday. I accepted, for both of us.”

“That might be right interesting. You just keep on accepting all the invitations you can get. Then we can throw a couple of cocktail parties and get some mixing and mingling going. I'm afraid it's part of the job.”

I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes and thought about Anne. Shartelle fell asleep for a while under his hat and I didn't have to talk much until we rolled up into the gravel driveway that curved through the acre or so of grounds that formed our compound, and met the five other members of the household staff who were to do our bidding.

Chapter

10

To get to Ubondo you leave the crowned asphalt strip and turn off onto a four-laned concrete highway called Jellicoe Drive. It winds up a slight rise and at the crest you get a panorama of the second largest all-black city in Africa. It's a million people living in a sea of tin-roofed houses with one skyscraper, white as a pillar of salt, shooting up out of the rusted roofs that cluster about it. It's the Cocoa Marketing Board building and it rises twenty-three stories into the African sky.

Ubondo is built in a valley and through the middle of it runs the Zemborine River west on its way to the sea. Small boats can navigate the Zemborine during the rainy season and some of them still do, chugging up the 154 miles of meandering river, powered by their tubercular outboard engines.

The Zemborine provides no demarcation between the rich and the poor of Ubondo. The poor are on both sides and the hovels and fine houses stand cheek by jowl on the twisting streets. Thirty years ago Ubondo got its main thoroughfare when a drunken Irish contractor cranked up his bulldozer, took aim, and smashed a weaving line through the town from the top of one hill to the top of the other. He let nothing stand in his way and since the damage was done, they built the main road along the path he plowed through the town that hot August afternoon in 1935. His name was Diggins and the road is called Diggins Road. He stayed in Africa until he died. He had five wives, all at once, and countless children.

I woke Shartelle up for the view and he shook his head in admiration. “Now, boy, that's what I call Africa. Look at all that squalor. Ain't that something?”

“I never thought of squalor in just that way,” I said.

“The old caravans ever get this far down south?”

“No. They stopped farther up north—five hundred miles or so.”

“I'd admire to see one coming over that hill with the camels chewing their cuds and the bells jingling from their necks and the Arabs riding up on top of them carrying those long-barreled rifles.”

“Shartelle, you've got the goddamnedest preconception of a country of anybody I ever knew.”

“Hell, Petey, this is Africa. I've been reading about Africa since I was six years old. I read Mungo Park and Stanley and Livingston and Richard Halliburton and Hemingway and old Osa Johnson and her husband. What was his name—Martin? You remember that story they wrote about the giraffes? They called it ‘The Creature that God Forgot.' Now that was one hell of a story. If I was a writer, that's the kind of stories I'd write.”

We were winding down through the city itself, past a running ditch in which women were washing clothes. The goats and chickens were thick. The people moved quickly with a jaunty, almost strutting air. William hailed several, waved and they waved back. The street was narrow and the shopkeepers displayed their cloth and cigarettes and snuff and nails and hammers and pots and pans. The stores were about six feet wide and the shutters that locked them up at night served as display racks for the goods.

“I never saw so many little general stores right smack up against each other in all my life,” Shartelle said.

“They all seem to sell snuff to each other.”

We passed a bank and beauty shop and a drycleaners that looked as if it were going into bankruptcy. Next was a Christian Science reading room, deserted; a bar, packed; a restaurant called
The West End,
and a lonely shack with a closed door that read “Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

We came to a stop sign and a policewoman in white shirt, blue cap, black skirt, sturdy black boots and immaculate white gloves, directed traffic in a performance of solemn grace that would have done credit to a dancer. Her movements were slow and deliberate, but with a measured rhythm that should have been accompanied by a drumbeat.

There was the noise again, the African noise of shouts and screams, and cries that seem to be of pain but end in shrieks of laughter. The mechanical noise of Radio Albertia blared from five-inch speakers that seemed to be attached to every shop. “That's some Muzak,” Shartelle grunted. It was insistent noise—or music, depending upon your ear—backed with a hard beat; and when the beat was strong enough, some of the pedestrians danced to it in curious shuffling steps that reminded me of the march back from a New Orleans funeral that I had seen a long time ago.

Ubondo was no sleepy African village. It was thirty square miles of wide-awake, vibrant, magnificent slum with all of a slum's cynical disregard for self-improvement. It was dirty, dog-eared urban sprawl, rotten at the core, and rotten at the edges. It had been that way when New York was new and it wasn't changing because of the way any wind of change was blowing.