“It is true,” Balim said (Ellen couldn’t tell now if he was annoyed or amused), “that the sale of art objects previously made of ivory from elephants slaughtered in the unenlightened days of yesteryear has also been banned, and that whatever ivory the government can find has been impounded, and that rumors have drawn a connection between Mama Ngina and the warehouses in which these confiscated treasures are stored.”
Ellen said, “Who is Mama Ngina?”
“Forgive me,” Balim said. “I forget that my part of the world is a mere unimportant corner. Mama Ngina is the first lady of Kenya. The wife of Jomo Kenyatta.”
Ellen said, “It’s illegal to own ivory in Kenya?”
“It is illegal to own it for a commercial purpose,” Balim told her. “Or to sell it.”
“You want me to deliver ivory for you?”
“Oh, my dear lady, no!” Balim seemed truly shocked at the idea. “I would never offer to place you in such jeopardy. And certainly not at the salary I am paying you.”
Ellen laughed despite herself. “I was thinking the same thing.” She was to be paid seven hundred dollars a week plus expenses; six hundred of it to be deposited directly into her bank in San Francisco.
“You are a pilot,” Balim insisted. “You are not responsible for what your passengers may be carrying on their persons. Nor, if your passengers experience legal difficulty, will that difficulty extend to yourself.”
“You’re sure of that.”
“I guarantee it.”
“It’s all right, Ellen,” Frank said, as though he and she were old comrades and she would know she could trust his word. “This whole ivory scam stinks so much the government wants it kept just as quiet as we do. If I’m stopped, and I’ve got a little ivory statue in my ditty bag, all they’ll do is confiscate it and tell me don’t do it again.”
“With a Kenyan national,” Balim said drily, “there might be a bit more difficulty. But not with whites.”
“Besides,” Frank said, “there isn’t that much ivory to trade any more.”
“Unfortunately,” Balim agreed. “In fact, the goods you will transport are much more likely to be mundane matters indeed. Medicine, for instance, or industrial diamonds, or merely great thick clumps of documents.”
“I’m used to all of those,” Ellen said. “When do I start?”
Frank said, “Today.”
“Good. Where am I going?”
“Today’s a little different,” Frank said. “Today we’ll just take a joyride. Do a little sightseeing.”
“Where?”
“Uganda,” Frank said.
“I’ll just stop by my place for the cameras,” Frank said. He had thrown a couple of filthy blankets over the filthy passenger seat so Ellen could sit there, saying, “If Charlie were an American Indian, his name would be Running Sore.”
Ellen laughed, but said nothing, and looked with envy at the little yellow car that Frank had pointed out as Lew’s transportation for today.
He started the engine, and she watched the exertions with which he forced the Land-Rover to do his bidding. Did all things for him require that much effort?
Frank’s place was a neat stucco cottage on the fringe of town. A low openwork concrete wall bordered the property and was nearly obscured by a profusion of flowers. “Beautiful,” Ellen said.
“It’s a great country for flowers,” Frank agreed.
Getting out of the Land-Rover, Ellen walked along the front wall, looking at the colors. “That’s a delphinium. Is that jasmine?” She pointed to a thorny bush with hard-looking leaves and starfish-shaped white flowers.
Frank had walked along behind her. “No,” he said. “But it smells like it. In Swahili it’s mtanda-mboo. You can make a pretty good jelly out of the fruit. See that one?” He was pointing at a tall knobby shrub with clusters of dry-looking orangy-yellow flowers. “In Swahili it’s utupa. A very tricky plant. You can get a tough poison out of the leaves, and the antidote for it out of the roots.”
“Really?”
“Honest injun. The Masai use little doses of the poison for a laxative. The Luo dip the flowers in water—that makes it holy water—and sprinkle it around the house to keep off the evil spirits. Come on in; we just sprinkled this place yesterday.”
Whitewashed rocks neatly flanked the packed-earth walk to the front door. “Bibi!” Frank yelled, opening the stained wood door. “Eddah!”
The entrance led directly into a wide shallow front room, filled with cool-looking sunlight. Ellen looked around at bare white plaster walls, stone floor, heavy rustic furniture, everything extremely neat and tidy, two vases at opposite ends of the room filled with a mixture of the flowers from out front.
A short giggling black girl in her twenties entered from the rear, swathed in the native style in bright-colored cloth. Her hair was done up in more cloth in a tall gaudy knob on her head, looking like a model of the Guggenheim Museum covered with graffiti. “Eddah gone,” she told Frank, nodding and giggling as though it were a great satisfactory joke. “Gone store.”
“Bibi, Ellen,” Frank said offhandedly, and told Bibi, “Make sandwiches. Beer. Picnic.”
The idea delighted her. Her teeth were large and crooked and very white; her eyes were filled with laughter; she kept nodding and nodding her whole body as though each moment of life increased her ecstasy. “Okay yes,” she said. “Double-quick.”
“Good sandwiches, now,” Frank warned her, and held out his big hand in a threat to spank. “Good thick sandwiches.”
“Yes, yes,” she assured him, laughing at the idea that she could do anything less than totally please him. Patting the air, laughing, throwing some of her laughter and quick sparkling glances in Ellen’s direction, she hurried from the room.
“Come take a look at the place,” Frank said.
This of course was the seduction scene. Knowing there wouldn’t be calm between them until Frank had been allowed to do his mating dance, Ellen said, “Sure,” and went with him to see the place.
It was some sort of adolescent clubhouse dream: the counselor’s hut in the Boy Scout camp, plus pinups. The entire house was neat and sparkling, which was clearly not Frank’s style, but within the tidiness he had made his presence felt.
The kitchen, in which merry Bibi sawed away at bread with a serrated knife, was modern and tended heavily to brushed chrome. The dishware was all orange plastic, and one cabinet shelf was filled with jars of dry roasted peanuts. A small white plastic radio quietly played reggae-sounding music, as though for its own enjoyment. Visible through an aluminum screen door was a small kitchen garden, and beyond it, a wire enclosure containing chickens.
Frank opened the refrigerator, which was of course full of beer, and took out two bottles, but Ellen said, “Too early for me; I just got up. Besides, I’m supposed to fly. You don’t want me to drink at the wrong time, remember?”
“You win,” he said, grinning, meaning that round but not the fight. “Seven-Up or Coke?”
“Coke.”
The hall, which had a few attractive unframed batik pieces on the walls, led one way to the maid’s quarters and the other to Frank’s bedroom, which was dominated by a king-size bed covered with a scarlet spread, on which a medium-size brownish dog of no particular breed lolled at his content. “Goddamit, George,” Frank yelled, “get the fuck off that bed!”
George, midway between boredom and cowed sullenness, slowly rose, yawned, stepped down to the floor, and slunk from the room. Ellen said, “Washington?”
“Patton.”
“Of course,” she said, laughing at him. So the second round was his.
There were Playmate centerfolds on the white walls, of course, plus a poster of two ducks screwing in midair over the caption “Fly United.” The female demurely smiled, while the male showed a devilish leer. That must be the way they want to see themselves, she thought. And the way they want to see us. “Which way do your windows face?”