Bingo's Run Page 2

  “Wolf Sa. Thank you, Boss Sa.”

  Wolf flicked his hand again. It was the command to leave.

  I headed out of the slum. Thomas Hunsa, the artist, lived in Hastings.

  * * *

  * Corrugated iron.

  Chapter 3.

  Thomas Hunsa, the Artist

  I was the only runner Thomas Hunsa let come to him. White had eaten most of Hunsa’s brain; it was like the road out to Hastings: more potholes than tarmac. Hunsa never feared me, perhaps because I was a small man and he had a small brain. Hunsa liked to be called Masta.

  The run to Hastings takes two hours. I chose to bus there even though it took some of the twenty shillings Wolf had given me; I was already forty ahead for the day. Whenever I took the bus, I took Slo-George with me. He was too stupid for Hunsa to fear, just as I was too small. He would sit outside Hunsa’s house and wait in the street until I was done. Then the two of us drank beer at the drink hut by the bus stop. That night, I looked for Slo-George but did not find him. I went to the bus stop alone.

  The buses in Nairobi, called matatus, are shelled-out minivans that are supposed to hold twelve people but hold twenty-five when the roof is used. Most do not have doors. In the day, you know a matatu is arriving by the music thud that comes out of its speakers. The noise also warns people crossing the street, since I have never ridden a matatu with brakes. The owners paint the outside of their matatus, mostly purple and black. Matatu decorations range from church names to cigarette adverts to messages like “Chariot of Death,” “Wheels to Hell,” and “Flyin’ Frenzi.” In the slum, people paint on almost anything. For example, Maloe painted his brother Mason on the wall of his shack to advertise his hairdressing “saylong,” as he calls it. The wall of his salon is made from cardboard and will disappear with rain or a decent riot. Lots of people like to paint, just as Dog likes to kill, Wolf likes to boss, Slo-George likes to eat, and I like to run.

  The matatu to Hastings, the 16B, was purple-and-gold and called Fearlis. It was almost empty, because most workers were already home. There was space to think as the bus thudded west along Ngong. A girl sat across from me, younger than me but a head higher, in dirty jeans and a T-shirt. In the rows in front were an old woman with a blank look on her face and a couple of young men laughing together. The driver, young and drunk, was bouncing to the music. I swung across to the girl and sat next to her. “Jambo. You’z going to Hastin’s?” I said.

  Because I am a growth retard, girls always talk to me, often out of pity. It is good; it gets me the opening. The girl smiled at me, unsure. I used the movement of the matatu to push against her. I smiled back. “I’z goin’ out drinkin’ lata, ya. You want to come for beer?” Her eyebrows got closer. She was confused. I put my hand on her thigh. Heat rose in her face. “Come on, ya,” I shouted over the music. “We have a good time.” She did not trust me a bit. She sensed that I was not a ten-year-old.

  The girl was light-skinned and had a high forehead, like a billboard. Her teeth were crooked. Her eyes were even, large, and dark. Her ears were small but her lips were thick. Her breasts were not bad. In a break between music tracks, she said, “I can na’ go. Motha tell me, be back for tea.”

  Her voice was not as strong as her words. I said, “What’s ya name?”

  “Deborah,” she said.

  “So, Deb-or-ah.” I stretched out her name and stroked her thigh a few times. “You’z a mama’s girl? You alwaze do az Mama say, like a little girl, ya. How old ya, anyway?”

  She looked down at her feet—she had on shoes. Her eyelashes were long. She said, “Fifteen.” If she was fifteen, I was six feet.

  “Well,” I said, “for fifteen, you sure is a mama’s girl.”

  She glared at me. “No! I do what I want.”

  I laughed and waited for her to think. I said, “So come with me and drink, ya?” I knew her answer before she did.

  The matatu music was loud.

  “Okay,” she said to the floor. I pretended not to hear her because of the music. I made her say it again.

  We got off the bus at the far end of Hastings, and I told Deborah I had business first. She looked at me. “What business?”

  I said, “I’z an art deala.”

  I took her hand and we went to the house of Thomas Hunsa.

  Thomas Hunsa’s house was about ten minutes from the bus stop at Salome Road. It was upscale, built from concrete block, the third house in a row of three blockhouses that stood out from the wooden shacks. It was obvious which one was Hunsa’s; it had pictures coming out of every hole and cans of paint scattered about. As usual, there were children sitting around the outside of his house. They painted with Hunsa’s thrown-away paint. Some painted pieces of wood; others painted on bits of cardboard. Most used pieces of rags or sticks instead of brushes. Some used their fingers. The children would paint anything. Once when I came out of Hunsa’s house, Slo-George had fallen asleep and two children had painted on him.

  Hung over the door was a sign painted on a scrap of wood:

  HUNSA—MASTA HOUSE PAINTA

  GOOD PRICE, GOOD JOB

  This was how he paid for his white.

  I did not knock—I pushed past pictures to get in. Deborah followed behind me.

  Thomas Hunsa stood in the middle of the crowded room working on a painting. When he saw me, a giant grin exploded on his face. “Jambo, Meejit. What you’z have for me?”

  Hunsa had on an open brown robe. His chest was bare and he wore brown paint-smeared trousers cut above the knee. The robe was marked with pigment and dirt, and the house smelled of the same. A rope cord hung from his hips. He held a bone-handled brush in one hand, a reefer in the other. Apart from a mattress on the floor against the far wall, a low faded orange armchair, a small wooden table with paint jars, and Thomas Hunsa, the room was filled with paintings. At least a hundred of them were crammed in there with him. They leaned against the walls and the furniture, the piles reaching all the way up to the mabati roof. Paintings stuck out of both windows.

  “What is ya workin’ on, Masta?” I said.

  “None of ya’s business,” Hunsa said.

  Deborah shuffled in the doorway. She had to wait; I was working.

  I looked at the painting on the stand in front of him: a giant turtle, its arms stretched out like Jesus. The turtle was so yellow that it looked electric. Behind it was a pale purple sun. I knew it was a man turtle, because it had a thick bright-red bhunna that dropped right to the bottom of the picture. The bhunna’s head was the face of a Kalenjin girl. Shapes and animals—brown, light green, and orange—came out of the turtle’s body. I looked close. I rubbed my eyes. It was true: the turtle breathed slowly in and out. It lived in the Master’s art.

  But the turtle picture was like a person; not one bit of it was finished. The yellow shell had patches of white showing through. The purple sun had smudges of brown lines. The Kalenjin girl had no expression, as if she didn’t care that she was stuck at the end of a turtle’s bhunna.

  “Runna, you have my bags?” Thomas Hunsa said. His voice snapped me back to the real world. The paint and piss fumes must have got me drunk.

  Hunsa balanced the brush on the painting stand, pushed his hand into a pocket of his gown and handed me money. The notes were smudged with dirt and paint. They smelled of him. I counted them and gave him the two bags.

  “Bus fare, Masta?” I said. He gave me a coin from his pocket.

  “Masta,” I said, “tha paintin’s is good. You eva sell any of them?”

  The Masta dropped the bags of white into his pocket and picked up his brush again. “Years ago I sell paintin’ to tha touris’. Touris’ love ma paintin’s, but tha American art deala screw me.” Hunsa sucked on his reefer. “Tha touris’ buy ma paintin’ for seventy thousan’ shilling, but tha deala give me jus’ five thousan’.” He looked at me wide-eyed. “Five thousan’! Da fookas. So I sayz screw ya. I’z keep ma paintin’s. No one cheat Thomas Hunsa.” He threw open his arms, and paint an
d ash flew into his dirty gray dreadlocks.

  I said, “So why not sell to someone else, maan. A deala who gives ya’z betta monay?”

  He smiled and said, “I got me in trubel.” He nodded, then repeated, “Trubel.”

  “What trubel?” I said.

  He cut the air with the bone handle of his brush. “I sliced a deala boy—the one who work for tha American deala.” His eyes opened wide. “I’z cut him. Cut him up!” Hunsa’s voice got louder. “But tha basta’ Chief Gihilihili neva find tha Masta. Neva find me!” He turned back to his painting, and shouted at the turtle, “Neva!”

  Everyone knew that Gihilihili was the one-legged chief of police. Even Dog feared him. When I was little, Senior Father told me about the flycatcher. When the eagle hunts, it flies in the sky, and when it rests, it sits on a high branch so that it cannot be attacked. If the flycatcher comes, he snatches the eagle’s fly feathers and the eagle ends up in the mud. Soon the eagle is dead from the other animals ripping it apart. Often, Gihilihili killed you, though sometimes he did not. It did not matter, because Gihilihili was the flycatcher; he could take away from a person what he was.

  I guessed that Gihilihili and the police had forgotten the slicing artist long ago. Death in Nairobi is a way of life. But, because of his fear, the Masta only let me run white to him; no one else was allowed. I liked that. Me and him were private. I said to Hunsa, “Oh ya, Masta. Gihilihili speak about Hunsa tha artis’ every day, but I say’z NOTHING!” I watched Hunsa remember the fear for the flycatcher and I smiled into our private silence.

  I put the coin in my pocket, turned to leave, and almost bumped into Deborah. I’d forgotten she was there; she had vanished into her nothingness. Me and Deborah walked back to the main street. As we walked, Hunsa’s paintings made me think. What if a tourist really paid seventy thousand shillings for a painting of a turtle with a giant bhunna? Here was money that begged a keeper.

  On the street, in front of the matatu stop, was a red-and-blue drink hut. Next to it was a bright pink shack with a sign for SYLVIA HAIR STYLIN’ and a picture of a large-lipped woman painted on the side. I bought Deborah a beer from the drink hut and we sat on a wooden bench looking at the street. My mind had not stopped its thinking. If each of Hunsa’s paintings was worth even fifty thousand, the whole houseful was worth at least seven million. Deborah seemed happy not to talk, but whenever I remembered to look at her she was staring at me. She made me feel lonely, I guess, because she was lonely. Her voice spoke into the cool, empty night air. “Ya have a smoke?”

  I answered, “Na. It stop me growin’.” Deborah laughed. “Your teeth are crooked,” I said. Her eyes fell like dropped balls. “I like that,” I said. “You’z beautiful, you like a film star.”

  She looked up and smiled.

  “So grown up,” I said.

  She smiled again, and I took her behind the hut and plowed her. I plowed her until I was a shadow of her darkness. Then I caught the 16B matatu back to Kibera.

  I got back to Kibera after midnight. The slum was silent except for the scratch-scurry of animals, occasional screaming, and dog barks. I headed home to Mathare 3A. I walked through the alleyways slowly, because I was tired and not working. Some people were still drinking, some snored, and others sighed in their sleep of hope.

  Most Kibera homes are frames made from scraps. Some have walls made from cardboard, cloth, or wood. Roofs are board, mabati, or sky. Between the huts are pathways; they were not put there on purpose—they just mark where people are not. Ditches were cut into some of the paths to carry away human and dog filth. The smell was strong, but not as strong now as in the day.

  At my home, Cousin Festa was asleep. I was not surprised to find Slo-George there, too. He snored louder than Festa. I was tired, but not ready to sleep. I sat at the entrance and listened to the night. I had thinking to get done: Hunsa, a hundred paintings, seven million shillings.

  I smelled Deborah on me and wanted more of her emptiness—she had calmed me. She had written her mobile number on a cigarette pack, but I did not have a phone.

  Chapter 4.

  Maasai Market

  My home did not have a roof, and so Kibera’s sun woke me. The giant red ball crawled up the sky like a lazy spider. I still had money in my pocket, and so Slo-George and I walked to the market to get food. “Georgi, what ya do las’ night?” I asked him.

  Grunt!

  I wondered why I even bothered talking to him. His replies were only grunts or silence. I said, “Afta food, ya wan’ a throw rocks at Krazi Hari?” It was our standard morning activity.

  I bought Maandazi, coffee, and five mangoes. We sat in the open area and watched children play football with a rusted can. An old bent blind man hobbled over to us balanced on a stick. He was the beggar Dafosa Warrior. “Pearls from heaven,” he shouted out again and again like a goat. I threw a mango and hit him. He found it with his stick, took it, and hobbled on. It felt good to help him out.

  Slo-George said, “Can I’z be a runna?” You see, Slo-George could speak when he wanted something.

  I laughed. “No, you can’t, you fook-brain. You’z too fookin’ slo’ an’ you’z too fookin’ stupid.” Question closed. I said, “Georgi, let’s go throw stones, ya?”

  We left Kibera through the East Wall entrance. The garbage mound was in front of us. Already eight children, eleven scarf-headed women, and seven dogs sifted through the waste. The garbage mound grows forever. On its throne sat its king, Krazi Hari.

  Krazi Hari read a half-eaten magazine. He nodded and mumbled to himself. I picked up a palm-size rock. Slo-George had a pebble. We threw. Despite being a growth retard, I am strong. The stone flew past Krazi Hari’s left ear. Slo-George’s pebble was short by four feet. The reader did not move from his magazine. We threw again. This time Slo-George hit Krazi Hari on the chest. The king of the garbage leaped up. He wore an unbuttoned black shirt and shredded black trousers. He yelled, “Ya dumb sheet, brainliss retard. Ya have nothin’ betta to do than dis. Take da Meejit and piss off ya half-brain fook-head, go fook da Meejit.” Krazi Hari threw his arms about and danced. He liked our daily visit. We wandered off as he continued to scream at our backs and shake his rolled-up magazine.

  “Hey, Georgi, ya wan’ ta do Maasai Market?”

  Slo-George’s grunt was excited.

  Going to the Maasai Market meant a morning of lipping, which, because of my size, I was particularly good at. Slo-George was lookout. He loved it.

  Some of the older thieves use thieving tricks, but I think they are rubbish because they have no class. One of these tricks is to trip a woman tourist, push her down on the floor, grab her bag, and run away before she can get up. You see: no class.

  I had my own three lipping rules. Rule One: Make risk pay; do not steal junk. There is no point in stealing Maasai jewelry—it is worthless. Watches that look like gold are usually tin and are not worth the risk. Rule Two: Be patient. Better to wait for a bulging wallet that hangs off a fat foreign ass than lip a skinny Kenyan. Rule Three: Stop when you succeed. Do not get drunk on greed; the Maasai Market is every week. Once you win, you are done.

  The Maasai Market was on a hill at the edge of the business district, by the old Euro Hotel. Years ago the hotel housed rich foreigners, but now it gets scruffy white tourists dressed worse than me. The market was well under way when we reached it. I left Slo-George at the entrance, with orders to be a lookout for a police raid that would never happen.

  I walked through the stalls patiently and watched. The Maasai sold everything: food, jewelry, furniture, clothing, medicine. I walked up behind some white tourists, but one of them, a beady-eyed woman with gold glasses, spotted me and clutched her bag to her chest. I thought about lipping an old white couple buying antique tribal masks but passed them by; they had been ripped off enough for one day. Then I saw my target: safari tourists.

  Safari tourists are special. They feel mighty after the animal parks. Then they spend a day in Nairobi before heading to the ai
rport. They buy a lot and they are careless with their wallets. They feel as if they are hunters when in fact they are hunted. There were four of them, three men and a woman. They crowded round a hat seller, haggling over knitted hats. The woman got my attention; she was the only one not wearing safari clothes, and she had huge breasts. To lip tourists like them takes less brains than even Slo-George has.

  I chose to use a Bingo Special, the Camera Grab, not because I needed to but for sport. I waited for the hat seller to complete his performance. The seller dropped his shoulders and looked sad; his act was almost over. He once told me, “The performance is what they pay for.” The wallets came out. One of the tourists (a man; large, gray, and heavy) was about to push his thick wallet back into his front trouser pocket. I ran and grabbed at the camera dangling from the neck of the younger man next to him. The younger tourist saw me (he was meant to) and swatted me down. I landed on the ground and the three men grabbed at me, like I was safari catch. I let them push me about, and I cried out; my act for them. I fell hard against the left hip of the fat man and, in a second, lipped his wallet. One of the men gripped my T-shirt, which ripped like paper. I ran. It had been a perfect Camera Grab. Three minutes later, I sat in a torn T-shirt at the entrance to the market beside Slo-George. I woke him up and we sifted through the fat man’s fat wallet.

  There was no time to chat. I had less than an hour to get downtown and sell the six credit cards. The driver’s license for one Peter Guttenberg of Iowa, U.S.A., might, at best, fetch ten shillings. There were four hundred and sixty shillings in the wallet, and eighty-six U.S. dollars. I gave Slo-George forty shillings for his work and said I would see him later. He slid the folded notes down the front of his pants as I’d taught him. He grinned, happy, and left.

  I ran to the business district, where I took Guttenberg’s credit cards to a man named Joe-Boy, although he had not been a boy for forty years. He owned a tailor shop on DuCane Street and wore a small silver cross on his left lapel. He wanted to know how long ago I had lipped the cards, and then we argued over the price. The questioning and the haggling were rituals; he always bought the credit cards, and always for fifty shillings apiece. He did not want to buy the driver’s license, but I gave it to him for free—good business.