God of Hunger Read online

  “Phokion. Please undo it.”

  He undid and unwrapped yards of stained bandage only to reveal a penis in perfect condition.

  A loud cheer went up outside and in rushed the medics. Clapping and cheering; in tune with Theo’s sense of humour. Brave. Brave boy.

  The next day, after ‘phoning Phokion to tell him that he “felt a little under the weather”

  Theo lay dying.

  Phokion rushed to the hospital and found the consultant, glass in hand, sitting dejectedly in his small cleaners’-cupboard sized room. There was dampness to his face which told of a good heart mourning a brave heart.

  Phokion now saw the truth. At each previous request to see the X-rays, he was shown the least clouded. Now he was shown the totality. Tumours everywhere. The fact was that the dying Theo had become a guinea pig. He was never going to survive and while in hospital he underwent trials of the very latest procedures; gold injections included. Should he have been cremated a tiny nugget among the ashes would have revealed.

  As it was, he was interned in the ground.

  *

  KK was called to London just before Theo died. His wife stayed at home but he took with him Phaedra and Father Gabriel.

  On arrival at Heathrow they went straight to the hospital and were taken immediately to see Theo. Or, what remained of him; a small skeletal figure. On his sides there were blisters and also around his mouth and eyes. And his nose bled lightly as he exhaled. Not enough to flow away; the red fluid went back into the nose when he breathed in.

  Father Gabriel examined Theo and later, outside, he told KK and Phaedra how he had often seen, and much more so recently, the same symptoms amongst the dying in his congregation. It was a wasting disease that had no cure.

  Theo died in the night.

  Phaedra, asleep in her hotel, knew immediately it happened because of the howl of dogs in her dream in which she rushed, lantern in hand, out of bed into his room. There was no cover on his body which was sufficiently arched to allow her to see the opposite wall under the hollow of his back. His mouth was wide open as were his eyes. His hands and arms ran straight down the bed like two sledge blades providing support for the body domed down to his ankles. The horror of his dying was intensified by the shadows cast by the lantern; the tiny distorted skeleton became a roving giant on the white washed walls.

  She screamed in terror as she flew out of the door into the star-lit compound teeming with howling farm dogs and by now the awakened night-watch men, two of whom she dispatched to fetch the priest. She dared not go back into the house until his arrival. By then dawn was breaking.

  They entered the room together. “Sister, hush yourself. He is with God. You must prepare him for burial. I will contact Kokopoulos.”

  Together they tried to flatten the body. It was not easy since, in her dream, rigor mortis had set in.

  “Look away’, he said to her, as he placed a pillow on the hollow of Theo’s stomach and pressed hard. The spine in the small of the back snapped, the sound muffled by the pillow. Gabriel was a practical priest.

  Next he said “Go and fetch lemon leaves. Lots.” And when she returned he stuffed them in the pillow case of the muffler which he discarded to use as a seat for the body. The lemon-stuffed pillow case he put at an angle on the bed-head and placed Theo against it.

  ‘The body must now be dressed and the room filled with flowers. Flowers every where.

  Get the gardener to bring in whatever he may find, including lemon blossom from the orchard.

  She gave instructions and proceeded to attend to the body. This she did with distaste. No longer a son to her, the cadaver was a thing to fear. Cold and damp. Puss and water ran from blisters and ulcers. She wiped his body down as best she could, urged by the priest to use methylated spirits first, followed by kolonya, Yardley’s cologne, so favoured by women folk in the tropics. His nose and ears she stuffed with cologned cotton wool which she also pressed to the back of the corpse’s throat. The mouth now took on the form of an open-laugh greeting, the kind a dog makes at the first sight of the master. The eyes, wide open in their sockets stayed open wide. A fresh white shirt found amongst her former husband’s belongings and it matched the new sheet covering the rest of the torso. The tableau was completed with flowers arranged around the lace bedspread and around the bed head. …

  *

  The wake up call came through at that moment. She awoke bathed in cold sweat. She showered and met the two men at breakfast and they told her that Theo was dead.

  “Yes I already know. I saw it all in a dreadful nightmare.”

  They waited a week for formalities to be complete and then took Theo back with them for burial in Arusha.

  There his mother demanded to see him.

  “Zee, zee to paithee mou”, the mother cried when she saw the body propped up at the undertakers. ‘He lives!’ There followed wails, beating of breasts and hair pulling as only Anatolians could perform; outperforming mothers in mourning throughout the great crescent of Levantine motherhood.

  The funeral saw similar scenes. Added to which the Father attempted to leap into his Son’s grave, saved from falling only by Gabriel holding onto the great belt around Kokopoulos’s large waist. The belt that had so often scourged the son now became the Father’s lifeline in a tragi-comedy of truth and hypocrisy enacted around Theo’s grave. Gabriel intervened in loud voice to end the charade: “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Amen.

  *

  After Theo died and was taken back to Africa for burial, Phokion packed a rucksack for himself and one for Sheila ready for the trip to Rhodesia.

  His final task in London was to settle accounts with the Royal Marsden. He was given access by Theo’s father to KK’s bank in the City and had his authority to pay outstanding bills.

  Theo’s treatment each month was settled in this way. But Phokion refused to pay for the last. In a letter to the consultant he simply said that in his opinion Theo had paid by giving his body up for research. The point was not challenged. KK who was sent all copies of correspondence with hotel and hospital in London sent Phokion a cheque for the last demand. “Good luck in the future and thank you for your kindness in looking after my son.”

  *

  The money came in handy for the flight to Salisbury and the rent for a flat there.

  Phokion’s office was in the same courtyard as Ian Smith’s. They often met crossing the lawn and exchanged greetings. Neither at the time had much to do. Rhodesia was in the calm before the storm and Phokion had only one commission for a school out in the sticks. He drew the project out for all it was worth and occupied his enormously spare time drawing and painting. He entered a competition to produce pictures for the recently opened headquarters of a mining company. And he won. At the unveiling ceremony of paintings, he was approached by a professor of art at a South African university who told him he had real talent. Would he like to join the department?

  “Yes. Thank you.. But not until my son is born.”

  *

  When Benjamin appeared war had just broken out and Phokion was called up.

  His duty was to set up a ‘keep’ around a village on the border with Mozambique. A keep was a protective fence patrolled by himself and two other privates armed with the Rhodesian arsenal’s most ancient Lee Enfield .303’s. The other task of the trio of untried soldiers was to man a radio station and a landing strip for the Rhodesian Light Infantry’s Allouette helicopters which had just made it from France under the noses of sanctions-busting frigates off the port of Beira.

  It was the helicopters that made Phokion famous in his locality.

  The thing was, a helicopter coming in for refuelling would only be given virgin paraffin. No risks could be taken with any possible contamination. Once a barrel was open, it was pumped into the chopper’s tank and any left would remain in the compound as condemned fuel. There was so much of the stuff that each hut in each village for miles around had cooking and lightin
g guaranteed for the duration. Not only that, out going choppers returning to base would take the sick and infirm to hospital in Salisbury. Such was Phokion’s war. A good one. But it all got a bit much as tours of duty were extended and extended to the point he only saw his beloved family one day in each month.

  Stuff that. As British subjects, the Phokions took the chicken run south. And south to university.

  There he taught first year drawing and painting and supplemented his pay by transcribing readings from the university’s seismograph, the biggest in the southern hemisphere. On one crucial day when the world awaited its readings with baited breath, Phokion had decided to give the machine a good clean. So none of us really knows whether or not South Africa had the bomb, which, it was rumoured, had been successfully tested in Antarctic waters due south of Capetown.

  Choco

 

  News of Theo’s funeral in Arusha filtered through to the Tanganyikans left in London. Almost everything that happened ‘back home’ surfaced in conversation at watering holes in Earls Court. And in the night clubs in the vicinity owned by wealthy Jews from Persia who had settled in that part of London after the fall of the Shah.

  Angie was the main attraction at La Boom Boom. She was a friend of Helena van der Merwe, Theo’s squeeze of last resort. Angie on the other hand was a girl of the first resort; sought out by most clients and yearned for by Borisov Zakran, who believed that Angie was a friend to all but a lover to just one.

  Zak, if you recall, was a habitue of no. 41 Sinclair Road, Tanganyika House. He was the ten-second man.

  Still unbeaten in the opinion of his school mates who, when intending to wind him up, recalled the aid of the Adidas spikes.

  *

  At school Choco was Zak’s equal as an athlete and surpassed him in many events when he returned from holidays with a pair of his own spikes.

  The two-twenty yards was his forte. No one could catch him on the bend. Could that be because he dressed to the left? Certainly it was that swerve to the left that allowed him to avoid ever being tackled in rugby. He would walk off as immaculately turned out as when he went on.

  Onto a pitch that had to be harrowed before each game so that the surface had some give;

  unploughed it was hard bare red- earth, abrasive as sand-paper and ‘hard as iron’.

  Hard men talking. Zak, Choco and Adi.

  Choco was the showpiece. Especially at rugby. Posing especially for the girls; at a co-educational boarding school, posing was an essential skill in the art of attracting attention from the sidelines.

  And what better than kicking a try:

  First, the head, presented in profile. Eyes looking out to the middle distance to forty five degrees off the horizon. Brylcreemed hair brushed into a boukla in front and a duck’s arse behind, a la James Dean. Jaw muscles clenching and relaxing at heart pump speed. Next the neck. Tensed to allow tendons and blood vessels to show prominently. If in a rugby shirt, collar up, Adam’s apple to the fore. If in a vest the upper arm facing the fancied girl was to be kept in view at all times. Biceps in profile. Pumped up to reveal as large a ball as possible short of getting cramp. Shorts? Rolled up to the crutch exposing the thighs, all tensed up to display a ridge running right down each leg.

  Then, the timing. So important to take your time before the throw or the attempt at a conversion.

 

  This, the conversion, was the most dramatic opportunity ever afforded for a bloke to impress a spectating dame.

  One of your team-mates, usually the scrum-half, (small enough not to steal the show) - lying flat out on the ground steadying the ball. Take three or so paces back and to the left. Strike a pose again. Relax. Pick up some dirt and release it to test the breeze. Start pacing back once more. Pause in prayerful mode and, even if not that way inclined, make the sign of the cross like Pele before a penalty. Not a big show of it. A little quick finger movement around the centre of the breast bone while stealing a glance of your babe or hoped for babe. Stand still. Absolutely still. Head profiled in the manner described. Relax. Run. Kick. And follow through all the time keeping your eyes on curving path of the oval projectile until it returns to earth. Not moving back to join your team-mates until it does. Then, if it fails to score, say shit into the back of your hand and look away from the sideline. If it makes the distance look straight at her and run your fingers through your hair and with the other hand rearrange your crotch.

  *

  Prowess at sport was everything at school; swots had no hope, no chance to attract the girls in the sure fashion of he-man sporting heroes.

  School life was almost entirely un-academic; anti-academic; risibly so, as instanced by the stock answer to the question, ‘Define The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Answer: “The angle of the dangle depends upon the heat of the meat.’’ So it went on. In French and Latin all questions were served by the statement: “We had one of those but the wheels fell off. And in Geography, boys never got beyond the Japanese city of Kumamoto, which, in Swahili, means hot vagina.

  It was only after school that the Cambridge Higher School Certificate had any currency with the girls. It was when the question of the best provider arose and that is why the dwellers of no.41 Sinclair Road faced two choices. Make your way in the world of work in London or go to college or university. This is where Zak and one other went. Adi and Choco were left behind and eventually returned to Africa. Adi went south to run a petrol station and that was the last that was heard of him.

  *

  Choco returned home to Dar-es-Salaam. It was where his parents ran a small run-down hotel in the run down capital of a run down country run down by ujamaa socialism.

  *

  Choco paid little attention to applied ideology. He was good at the personal variety of politics and soon made contacts in government.

  His mother also had influence. She was a Swahili; people with lateral roots in Arabia. Her clan were the Obamas. Originally these were wild Hejaz Bedus who had become darker and darker skinned through intermarriage with Africans.

  Rich and important on Zanzibar these Swahilis had made their fortune as agents of slave traders back in the nineteenth century when the house of Muscat played the pipes to which everyone from the coast to the lakes danced. Now, post-genocide and allied to the mainland, Zanzibar was itself being gradually exploited by the exercise of policy in the spirit of the Swahili saying: Haraka Haraka Aina Baraka (There is no virtue in hurrying.

  … All in good time.)

  Choco’s mother was a woman to be humoured; in a town where there was very little of anything and nothing remotely luxurious, she found ways of supplying to the Dar-es-Salaam elite objects of their desire: wine, women and song.

  Choco joined her in this trade in which he came to excel quite independently of his mother’s contacts.

  *

  He arrived by Comet from London. The name of the ill-fated jet had special meaning for Tanganyika Greeks who were photographed regularly, every seven years by John ‘The Comet’ whose return was as regular as any in the night sky.

  Every Greek in Africa quickly spied an opportunity to make a living. And hardly off the aircraft Choco spied his - a ship which had, just that day, been impounded against a debt owed to the government by its owners. It was anchored a mile or so out of the harbour.

  In a matter of one-week, Choco had access to serviceable motor boats at the Dar-es-salam sailing club where he found favour amongst expatriates by his outlandish behaviour; in their nautical bunks and terrestrial bedrooms. He was Europeanised enough to mix easily with Europeans on a social level and exotic enough to attract invitations home and aboard by women growing bored with life in Dar. Whom he bored with his outlandishly large tool.

  One of his early conquests, a Swede who had come to help a good cause in the sun agreed that, on condition he spent more time with her, he could use her cruiser which had come out with the Johansens all the way by freight from Stockholm. (The container in which i
t was delivered was itself worth a princeling’s ransom in Dar-es-Salaam and was traded for a large delivery of diesel which kept propellers turning at the club.)

  Choco headed out to sea in company with the club’s security guards modelled on the President’s honour guards’ uniform. These were supplied in exchange for penicillin, provided courtesy of the Swedish charity ran by Mrs. Johansen; antibiotics were virtually unobtainable in the country; in contrast to aspirins, which were prescribed for all illnesses. The aspirins came from a factory in Somalia in exchange for fish from Zanzibar purveyed by Misha Feingeld who had cornered the market for cloves through his Swahili partners on the island. The trade was fuelled by the illicit export of gems to India and the Middle East. The gems trickled through from the diamond mine in Mwadui and more recently from a new source of new gems up in the north.

  These gemstones originated on a German’s former ranch on the Sanya Plains, not far from the Armenian’s castle gates and just a long stone’s throw from KK’s farmstead: Tanganite; the new gemstone. Found only in the plains below Kilimanjaro. There and nowhere else. Nowhere else in the world.