One For You One For Me Read online

He took his time but he got the figure right. The men were truly well-greased and their pockets well-lined with cash. How do you deal with such characters? First you create a scene. Then you sort the scene out. The cops went to work. The two freshmen were thrown into the cells and forgotten there. Every now and then a policeman would appear at the door to the cells and ask whether prisoner so and so was present. And every so often they got the man they wanted. They took him away to court. Whichever way the matter ended, the man was bound to be brought back to pick his items and head either to the prison or to freedom!

  The immediate problem was to deal with the inmates. Many of them were hard-core criminals. Others were petty offenders who could not raise bail. All were trapped in a human den of unwanted social outcasts. Those who thought otherwise soon discovered that nobody cared. They were among their brethren who had crossed the path of the law in one way or another. They had a common identity, a common enemy and no friends. Friends were a luxury they could ill-afford!

  When lunch hour came, soup and beans were served, but not for the pair.

  “We did not know that you were here,” said the cook. “We work with the register. Your names were not on the register. You have to wait for the evening meal, by which time we expect to have a new register with your names included.”

  “That is totally unfair,” said Oliver.

  “You should have booked yourselves in earlier, mister. We follow order. If you do not like it you can make your own feeding arrangements!”

  After that cook left, the other inmates turned to the newcomers. The way they had addressed the cook had ruffled the air in the room. How could they be so arrogant?

  “Hey, man,” said one prisoner, “what crime are they charging you with?”

  “We were found in the park,” replied Luka.

  “With what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, you can tell us! We are on your side. Nobody can charge you with being in the park if you had no weapons?”

  “We had none? We had merely lit a fire.”

  “What were you roasting?”

  “Nothing. It was to keep away snakes and the cold.”

  “Snakes love fire. They love warmth.”

  “We were not aware of that.”

  “But they say you had killed two snakes! Do you eat snakes?”

  “We had killed one snake. They must have killed the other themselves. But, no, we do not eat snakes. What should we have done with the snake, chase it?”

  “Take it easy, man. We just got curious! Have you tried to talk to them?”

  “We have been trying since dawn!”

  “Talk to the officers; not to the juniors. We deserve to be here. But you, if what you say is true? No!”

  A while later, a policeman called out their names. The door swung open and they were led out to another room.

  “We have to take your fingerprints,” said the cop.

  “But, sir, we have not even had our statements taken,” said Oliver.

  “That will be done later!” said the cop curtly. “Any problems with that?”

  “Yes,” said Oliver. “We want to talk to the chief!”

  “What about?”

  “We don’t deserve to be here!”

  “Where, in your estimation, do you deserve to be?”

  “We are absolutely innocent!” said Oliver.

  “The court will decide that.”

  “But, please, we want to talk to the chief.”

  “Very well, I will check whether he will talk to you.”

  They were taken back to the cells. An hour later, they were taken out again and taken to the chief. He studied them as if he suspected they were dissidents. Then he looked again at the Occurrence Book before hi m and appeared to be making a mental note of something scribbled in there. In fact he was looking at the amount of money they had been found with.

  “Is it true you were found with all this money?” he asked pointing at the note in the Occurrence Book.

  “It is our money, sir,” said Luka.

  “You want me to believe that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What had you sold in the park, leopard skins?”

  “No, sir, we had it before we got lost in the park.”

  “So you had sold the trophies to the hides-and-skins merchant and then melted into the bush to hunt for more!”

  “We had no weapons, sir.”

  “You hid them elsewhere. The rangers will unearth them soon. But if you want to get a quick trial, you should tell me where you hid them.”

  “We got lost, sir. We had no weapons. We had no skins or any trophies whatever! We were misled by morans when we asked for the route to the main road.”

  “How had you got out of the main road in the first place?”

  Luka decided to tell the truth. If the truth will set one free, as claimed by some philosopher, then so be it.

  “Actually, we are from Mbeya. We have never seen the Masai in real life. So, we asked the driver to let us know when we reached Masai country. That is why we went into the bush. Then we encountered morans, who threatened to kill us, but we explained ourselves and they let us go. We asked them for directions back to the main road and they gave us. But we made a mistake and got lost. We then decided to sleep in the bush and resume our journey the following day. We did not know we were in the game park. That is the truth.”

  “And the money?”

  “That was for business. We wanted to buy Masai braids and beads to sell in Lusaka.”

  “Is that what you told the morans?”

  “The morans do not know about the money.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That we were going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro!”

  In fact the morans had reported to the rangers the presence of the two strangers in the game park. For all they knew, the strangers could have been hiding lethal weapons somewhere in the park. Weapons like the AK47 rifle and others. Maybe they were just surveying the territory with a view to deciding where to strike. One did not take chances with such crooks! They knew that poachers were the enemies of the Serengeti heritage from which the community benefited.

  “You will explain all that to the court in a few months’ time,” said the officer.

  “Please help us, sir,” said Oliver. “We are telling you the whole truth.”

  “A year ago,” said Luka, “we were officers ourselves. We retired. That money is our gratuity. We are businessmen!”

  “This is a sensitive matter. Many officers are involved. What shall I say to them?”

  “That we are telling the truth.”

  “How will they know that you are telling the truth?”

  “We will show our gratitude! We shall not forget them.”

  “How much is your gratitude?”

  “You will see!”

  The inspector was satisfied as to their innocence. He set them free. In appreciation, they parted with a respectable sum.

  “Forget your beads, okay?” said the officer as they left. “You are marked men.”

  They went into town and booked in at the Kilimanjaro Guest House. There, they talked the manager into parting with a Masai simi (sword) and sandals which were displayed on the wall of his office. He could not resist their offer. The next morning they were on their way back to Mbeya and to Professor Zima Moto. They presented the sword and sandals.

  “And the hair?” asked his wife.

  “We have a request to make,” said Luka. “We tried our very best, but we could not get the hair. Can the professor help?”

  She consulted.

  “Yes,” she said. “It will cost you 600 000.”

  “Couldn’t you do it for less?”

  “Do you want to dilute the potency of my medicine?”

  “No, sir!”

  “They paid the money and as usual the interpreter went into the hut to hide it. When she came back she consulted with the mganga and announced that Luka and Oliver were to return
in a week’s time. That would give the ‘professor’ time to procure the Masai hair.

  When they went back, he had a beautiful head of long moran hair fully treated with red ochre. Luka and Oliver were very impressed. Their project was proceeding very well!

  “You are lucky,” he announced through his interpreter. “Three Masai morans were here for consultation and I was able to secure their cooperation. It cost me more than you paid me but that is another matter. We cannot dig up old skulls!”

  “We cannot adequately express our gratitude for that concession,” said Luka.

  “That is a great favour, indeed!” observed Oliver. “You are very kind.”

  “We shall now move on to the next stage!” said the woman.

  “May we know how many stages are left?” asked Oliver.

  “That depends!”

  “On what, sir?”

  “On your cooperation!”

  “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “So far so good!”

  “Thank you. I thought…”

  “It is wiser not to think too much.”

  “Thank you again.”

  “Have you seen a white woman?”

  “Where, sir?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “You are to bring me a white woman’s blonde hair.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. The longest you can find.”

  “A wig?”

  “No wigs.”

  Oliver was stupefied. Luka was flabbergasted. They looked at each other in disbelief. They had escaped from a lion’s den and now this dumb fool was asking them to enter into a den of lionesses. There were no white women in Mbeya. The best they could do would be to travel a thousand kilometers to Dar es Salaam! Surely this was totally unreasonable. Even if they got there, how were they to convince a white woman to part with her hair? And not just a tuft of hair but a full head of hair!

  They looked at the old cripple. He was busy making signs and mouthing utterances that they could not understand. His wife followed the movements with wide-open eyes and a fox’s ears. Then she turned to them.

  “You have two weeks to do as he has directed,” she said. “The matter cannot be left too long, now. All your efforts would go to waste. We shall see you on the fourteenth day of this month. Go!”

  They got as far as the gate and stopped. They argued for almost five minutes- Oliver insisting that they go back and tell the mganga that it could not be done and Luka saying that they should at least try.

  “If we give up even before we try, what do you think will happen to our project?” Luka asked. “We cannot put one foot in the water and the other on the river bank. How can we swim without getting into the water?”

  “I know I can get into those tourist hotels and befriend a tourist,” said Oliver. “But how do I persuade her to cut her hair and give it to me? She will think that I’m a witchdoctor, or something!”

  “You do not have to persuade her,” said Luka. “I will get you something to use.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry! Let’s get to Dar first.”

  “I will not move an inch before you tell me what I should use!”

  “Then I will leave you behind and you can try your luck with back-packers. They pass through here every now and then on their way to Malawi.”

  “That’s a mighty long wait! I’ll come with you, but at least give me a hint.”

  “I will give a hint on the way.”

  Two days later they were in Dar es Salaam. Oliver booked himself into Cascades Hotel as a businessman from Kenya; Luka into a guest house in the Ngomeni area. They had agreed to stay separately just in case. That night Oliver danced at the Cascades until closing time at midnight. The second night, he danced with other tourists until 11. Then a lovely woman from the Netherlands agreed to go dancing in town with Oliver. He had been eyeing her hair from a distance, but she thought he was falling in love with her at first sight! They went into the …club. He was buying drinks like he had no respect for money. And although the woman protested, he handled her with extreme care, persuading her to keep on drinking.

  “The drinks from here are next to useless,” he said to her at one time. “No matter how much I drink, I don’t seem to get high. I mean what is the point of a holiday if one cannot get into the mood? Are the drinks like that in Oslo?”

  “I don’t come from Oslo,” protested the woman.

  “Oh, I remember now,” said Oliver. “You are from The Netherlands. Are the drinks strong in Copenhagen?”

  “I don’t know. That is in Denmark!”

  “So which is your capital city?”

  “Guess!”

  “Amsterdam?”

  “No; guess again!”

  “Ah, The Hague, eh?”

  “You are so brilliant!”

  “One more drink, then?”

  “Sure!”

  Each time she went to the toilet, Oliver spiced her drink mildly. He did not want her to realize what was happening too soon. He wanted the ‘bottle to take effect slowly,’ as he told his friend later.

  “Are you a Masai?” she asked Oliver. This came quite out of the blue, as they say. He almost jumped out of his skin.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “The way you dance!” she said. “You stepped on my toe twice! And I thought only a Masai had that privilege.”

  “Why only the Masai?”

  “Because they jump while dancing!”

  “Well, I’m in fact half a Masai. We have them in Kenya, you know?”

  “Wao! Let’s go dance!”

  They became instant friends. She drank from his glass and he did likewise. They danced and kissed and sweet-talked each other. They were indeed very happy. If Oliver was looking to get into the holiday mood, Sinja was the perfect choice to guide his spirits!

  At last it was time to go. They got into a taxi and were dropped at the Cascades. They walked or rather wobbled out of the car holding each other like old buddies. Oliver helped her climb the stairs to the first floor and then persuaded her to ‘come and see my room.’ Once inside, all her limbs seemed to lose control and she collapsed on the bed. That happened as planned. Somewhere at the back of Oliver’s mind he was very happy. So happy that he did not notice when his own limbs began to give way. He, too, collapsed on the bed beside Sinja.

  He remembered thinking or dreaming about the clipper in his suitcase; how he took it out discreetly and oiled it so that it would not make any noise. Then he walked to the sleeping beauty and noiselessly turned her head to face the light on the ceiling. How he skillfully manoeuvred the clipper from the hairline on the forehead, over the top of the head up to the nape taking with him a third of her lustrous long hair. How he turned the head to the right and to the left as he cleared all the hair leaving her looking like a mannequin.

  Then he woke up to find that she was gone. Her flight out of Dar es Salaam was for 11 o’clock in the morning and he was waking up at twelve thirty!

  She, too, had been adventuring all night. Each time he went to the toilet, she exchanged their glasses! Or she emptied most of her drink into his mug.

  “All that money just for a dance!” shouted Luka after he heard the story.

  “Can’t you see we went as far as my room?” answered Oliver. “I tell you I almost clipped her hair off. It was just that… she did something to my drink. Otherwise it was a done deal, I tell you. You have to trust me. I came that close. I couldn’t believe it myself!”

  “And that’s why it never worked! You never believed in it right from the start. That’s why you bungled it. Had I not told you to vomit each time you went to the toilet?”

  “Yes you did.”

  “Had you followed my advice you would have been as sober as a Sunday school teacher!”

  “I was sober until I got to the room.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I thought I told you!” said Oliver, raising
his voice a decibel. “I just went blank! I could not see or hear or feel. I thought I had died!”

  “What you say makes no sense to me,” observed Luka, “but let us not cry over spilt milk. You had your chance and you blew it. The question now is what we should do. I should like to hear your views on that.”

  “As you know we are now literally broke. I mean the fund we set aside for this kind of thing is almost over. I think we should ask the professor to procure the hair for us.”

  “That will cost another 600 000 or more!”

  “It is better to pay that money than to sink two million into a bottomless hole.”

  “You know what I think? Professor Zima Moto is the bottomless pit!”

  “You want us to abandon the project?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “What did you say?”

  “That the eye that has seen is the one that believes!”

  Chapter Four: Professor Zima Moto