Based on a True Story Read online

  BASED ON A TRUE STORY

  three novellas

  by Hesh Kestin

  Dzanc Books

  1334 Woodbourne Street

  Westland, MI 48186

  www.dzancbooks.org

  Copyright © 2011, Text by Hesh Kestin

  All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  The Merchant of Mombasa first appeared in Commentary Magazine, August 2006.

  Published 2008 by Dzanc Books

  Book Design by Steven Seighman

  eBook Design by Matt Bell

  Cover photo: “The Couple, Vienna,” 1935 by Trude Fleischmann, 14”x10 1/2” Vintage gelatin silver print from the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection

  06 07 08 09 10 11 5 4 3 2 1

  First edition September 2008

  Print ISBN-13: 978-0979312359

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1936873319

  Printed in the United States of America

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Merchant of Mombasa

  The Man Who Killed Stalin's Wife

  Based on a True Story

  For Leigh,

  ever my love,

  whose ardor and patience,

  kindness and courage

  have gotten us through a lifetime

  of adventure, danger, hardship and

  —that most perilous to romance—

  the surreal minutiae of the day-to-day.

  I would lie to suggest

  words could not attempt

  the depth and complexity

  of what we share.

  However inadequate,

  they follow.

  “Life knows us not and we do not know life—we don’t even know our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth, and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow.”

  —Joseph Conrad, in a private letter

  “Fiction... demands from the writer a spirit of scrupulous abnegation. The only legitimate basis of creative work lies in the courageous recognition of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous—so full of hope.”

  —Joseph Conrad, in a published essay

  THE MERCHANT OF MOMBASA

  * * *

  In converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork.

  —William Shakespeare

  BETWEEN THE HINDU CREMATORIUM AND THE INFECTIOUS-DISEASES HOSPITAL, Sergeants Mess was partially hidden by a stand of coconut palms and a large sign that seemed to have been imported directly from Trafalgar Square:

  LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS

  AND WILL RESULT IN

  SEVERE DISCIPLINARY ACTION.

  By order: Braithwaite, CO,

  East Africa Command (Kilindini).

  Just beneath the sign was a smaller version in Swahili, which I had been cramming since first we got word of J Group’s transfer from Bletchley Park, home of His Majesty’s Inter-Branch Cipher Command. With the fall of Singapore, the beginning of attacks on Ceylon, and India in line to be the next target of a seemingly unstoppable Japanese onslaught, one hundred fifty naval vessels of the Eastern Fleet had left the East to find shelter in and around Mombasa under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Hoddings Lord Braithwaite CBE, one of a raft of aristocrats who had become, by dint of birth and the exigencies of war, senior officers in His Majesty’s service.

  Lord Braithwaite may have been a bit of a stickler for what we in the Royal Canadian Air Force, from which I was on loan, called EBBU—Every Button Buttoned Up!—but when he had steamed into Kilindini Harbour aboard his flagship, HMS Warspite, and felt for himself the tremendous wet heat of Mombasa, he did have the good sense to revise previous orders and permit tropical kit: sleeves rolled to a regulation one inch above the elbow, knee-length trousers, calf-height cotton stockings, and one pair of dark glasses—or clip-ons for those who already wore spectacles.

  The joke in Kilindini was that any spies in the vicinity would hardly have broken a sweat to identify the boffins from Bletchley Park: we were the ones wearing the clip-ons. Aside from a Dutchman named van Oost, who was so athletic he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro two weeks after we set up in Kenya—I quit a thousand feet from the summit: as in code-breaking, the last steps in mountain climbing are the most difficult—we tended to look precisely what we were. With the exception of our group CO, who was a career officer, our ranking major, who had been something or other in CID, and Bailey, a sergeant like myself who had been in one of those spectral prewar cipher agencies, most of us were a mixed bag of prematurely balding, ill-at-ease types, quite a few with rather bad skin. It was as if the entire teaching staff of an English public school had been redeployed to East Africa. As the single Canadian, I was arguably odd man out, except that—along with Jenny Singleton and Amanda Hobbes, our company clerks—I could hardly claim the privilege.

  The sudden appearance of women caused two problems, one immediate: as we clambered down the gangway of AMC Alaunia, wolf-whistles, accompanied by certain clearly understood gestures, could be heard from the deck of HMS Royal Sovereign docked alongside. Neither Singleton nor Hobbes seemed to know how to react; both were on the plain side, and this may have been the first time they were exposed to the undifferentiated lust of massed males. Perhaps less homely, I had been through it before.

  The second problem was housing, which eventually solved the first.

  It appeared no one had given the slightest thought to where to billet a collection of mathematicians. Tents were out of the question: although our brains were fit, many of us were past service age or otherwise frail. Our commanding officer, Paymaster Col. Moseley, who knew his way around a regiment, immediately paid a visit to HQ, where it was determined we should put up at a small hotel, the Lotus, and the next week move both our working and sleeping quarters to Allidina Visram School, an Indian boys’ academy about a mile up the coast.

  There remained the problem of security, both because of the presence of women—aside from a contingent of nurses, East Africa Command was almost entirely male—and because of our work. Though Bletchley Park, where we had undergone training, was sealed tighter than Downing Street, our quarters in Mombasa were wide open. In the end a detachment of the King’s African Rifles was dispatched, the result of which was not so much to keep others out as to lock us in. Our days in the duty room were dedicated to monitoring Japanese wireless transmissions in the Indian Ocean, our nights spent mostly in a curry-scented prison where all the beds were three-quarter size and all the bathrooms held rather low-hung urinals, both something of a hazard for the taller men.

  This was the least of it. Our duty room was full of flying creatures, from gnats and mosquitoes to a dependency of bats that lived in the rafters and preyed on a madrassa of praying mantises, each as long as a hand. For variety, the occasional snake slithered in to escape the heat, and a troupe of aggressive spider monkeys infested the grounds outside. Boredom was endemic. We quickly burned through most of the reading matter in the school library—there is only so much one can do with The Hardy Boys’ Missing Chums and Hopalong Cassidy’s Rustler Round-Up. With most of our working hours spent listening through earphones to wireless broadcasts, few of us had much patience for tuning in to the rare bit of music that reached us, weather permi
tting, from Nairobi. The work was demanding, often exciting when we made a breakthrough, but our leisure hours were no fun at all.

  That is why when I received word to report to Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite’s residence the next day for high tea, I was as much delighted as I was terrified: both my uniforms were a sight. Singleton generously lent me her new skirt, and Hobbes did what she could with my hair, which had not been cut for a month and hung about my ears like a shapeless dirty-blonde mop. It simply was not made to stand up to the tropical heat, so heavy with humidity we often found it necessary to change our undies twice a day.

  What was this high-tea business about? Neither my immediate superior, Lt. Fahnstock, nor our commanding officer, Col. Moseley, had a clue—or so they pretended.

  II

  Compared with our billet at the Indian boys’ school, and the functional squalor of Sergeants Mess, to say nothing of the inadequately ventilated room we worked in eleven hours each day—one of our crew, Lammings, who had grown up in East London, likened it to a sweatshop, with mathematicians in lieu of Cockney sewing-machine operators—anything decent for tea would have been a godsend. Lord Braithwaite’s official residence was more than decent. It was spectacular, a breathtaking white-marble cross between a stately home and a tea pavilion.

  Apparently that is what it had been: the stately home of a principal tea grower, an Indian of some sort who had volunteered its use to His Majesty’s Forces. After innumerable entry halls and foyers, each leading into the next like a series of Chinese boxes, I was escorted through a set of double doors that opened to reveal the stage-set drama of a veranda looking out over Kilindini Harbour, a table set for three, and two very different gentlemen standing by the alabaster balustrade and conversing so closely they might have been hatching a plot.

  The adjutant who had taken me this far, quite dashing in that vacant way of the British landed gentry, turned silently on his heel just as we passed through the carved teak doors, and disappeared.

  Lord Braithwaite was a massive figure in khaki whose gray mustache covered a good quarter of his pink face. The other gentleman seemed by comparison even frailer than he actually was. Balding, and wearing the kind of pince-nez that university dons liked to affect so that they might stare over them and dress you down for some horrid academic fault, he was attired in seriously out-of-date civilian clothes, including a cravat, something rarely seen in the steam room that was Mombasa. As though a bell had rung, both looked up abruptly.

  “And you are, eh, sergeant, is it?”

  I snapped a salute and held it. “Ferrin, sir. Sergeant, Royal Canadian Air Force, late of Bletchley Park, seconded to His Majesty’s Navy, Kilindini. Sir!”

  “Very good, Ferkin,” Braithwaite said, smiling graciously under the broad whiskers that plumed out over his yellow, rather crooked teeth. He returned my sharp salute with something like a wave; he seemed almost to be scratching his head. Behind him the sun descended toward the horizon and mainland Kenya—the residence was situated on a spit of land jutting west into the harbor like a thumb surrounded on three sides by water. In the gardens sloping to the sea, its bright blue-green now tinged with gold, Royal Marine sentries in full dress paced like clockwork figurines. On either side, guard towers framed the view. “Needn’t be so all-fired military, must we? Come and have a drink, sergeant. And do say hello to Mr. Albright. What are you these days, Cyril? Political adviser, what? Africa walla, that kind of thing.”

  “Political adviser, sir, if you wish,” Albright said. Next to Braithwaite’s energetic beefiness, he looked the very image of academic inutility, his suit, drab brown or olive or gray, hanging on him like a shroud. “So nice to meet you, sergeant. Canadian, you say.” It was not a question. “Good people, the Canadians. The Frenchies amongst you can be a bit difficult, though. You’re not...?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “From Alberta, really. Very few French there.”

  “I’m told you’re something of an mswahili, is that true, sergeant?”

  “Trying to learn it, sir. Out of a book. I’ve been practicing on the streets.”

  “Siku hiyo alikuja afisa mmoja Mzungu.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Albright. I don’t—”

  “On that day a European officer came.”

  “I meant to say—I did more-or-less understand the phrase—but wouldn’t it be sajini, sir? I’m not an officer.”

  “Do they drink champagne at high tea in Alberta, Ferkin?” the vice admiral asked. He held out a flute already filled—I don’t think I had seen a glass so delicate in my life. “Do relax, sergeant. Come and have a drink, a bit of smoked salmon. You do eat smoked salmon, don’t you?”—he did not wait for a reply—“or there’s some of this goose-liver paste. With the Jerries in France, a bit hard to come by these days.”

  “Unakula nyama ya nguruwe?” Albright asked.

  “No, sir.” I said. “I don’t eat pork. But goose is fine.” Fine? After the unidentifiable meat of Sergeants Mess, it was paradise.

  “That you are, in fact, of a certain persuasion—Myahudi?”

  “I am, sir. But I don’t quite understand—”

  “The vice admiral thought you might not be comfortable with victuals that would place you in a sticky spot.”

  “What do your people do?” Braithwaite said. “If you don’t mind my asking, Ferkin.”

  Now I was thoroughly confused. Was he talking of my people, or my people? Never mind. I was to answer. “My father is a rancher, sir. Mum teaches. Mathematics, sir.”

  “Brothers, sisters?”

  “No sisters, sir. One brother. RCAF. Missing over Burma, sir.”

  “Very sorry to hear,” Braithwaite said, clearly not. “Know something of horses, do you?”

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Horses,” Albright jumped in, seeking to clarify by translating into a language I barely understood. “You know, farasi.”

  “I grew up on a horse.” Consciously I omitted the sir. Instead I turned to the vice admiral, himself turned away to peer out over the bay. The lights of Mombasa were just coming on—how different from England, where under threat of German air raids the night brought only darkness and fear. “Vice Admiral Braithwaite, sir,” I said to his back. “I’m a bit confused. I’m RCAF on loan to His Majesty’s Navy for the purpose of assisting in code-breaking operations under supervision of Bletchley Park. I am a mathematician. I have no idea what my religion and, and... horses have to do with my work. Should I be offended, sir?”

  That was the closest I could get to a complaint. There were two other Jews in our group—why was I being singled out? Was it because I was Canadian? That made no sense. And the horse business... I watched Braithwaite turn slowly to face me, his lips pursed beneath his mustache as though in consideration of some great question of naval strategy upon whose outcome hung the fate of the Empire.

  “Sergeant, effective immediately, I am promoting you flight lieutenant. As such, you are hereby attached indirectly to my staff. You will be my principal adviser on matters equine and Judaic. As of tomorrow morning, I want you to begin work on securing for me a number of horses.”

  “I’m a code-breaker, sir.”

  “Code-breaker, horse-breaker, all the same, what. As I say, you will help me to secure at least two horses. If possible, seven.”

  I could not stop myself. “Jewish horses, sir?”

  Albright looked down at me over his pince-nez and tapped the champagne flute in his hand as though it were a school bell. “Not Jewish horses, Ferrin,” he said with a mixture of kindness and exasperation. “Horses from a Jew.”

  This left me no more enlightened. “Sir, I’m afraid I—”

  “Afraid?” Braithwaite snorted, at once avuncular and all-powerful, as though he had adopted an orphan whom he would protect, but only so long as she behaved. “I don’t know about you, Ferkin, but I do get a bit peckish at this hour, and would so like to eat. Mr. Albright hardly ever appears hungry, expected from a vegetarian—I believe they teach th
em that at Oxford, from which he’s come to educate me on the native scene—but I’ll wager you could do with a change from Sergeants Mess.”

  “Yes, sir. I think so, sir.”

  “So there’s nothing to be of afraid of, really, is there? Now, come and sit, and we’ll tell you all about it.” He smiled more deeply as I stepped toward the table set with silver and china and Irish linen, all marked with the admiral’s crest. “Jewish horses. Very good, wouldn’t you say, Cyril? Imagine the circumcision. Jewish horses, indeed.”

  III

  The owner of said Jewish horses, and of much of Mombasa, was one A.S. Talal, also proprietor of Talal General Stores, the Selfridges of Kenya, with large branches here and in Nairobi and smaller outlets in Kisumu and Nakura; Talal Transport, the principal bus company—one traveled to Nairobi by rail, but TT was the virtual monopoly within the main towns; and Talal Brewers, producers of Green Tiger Lager, Black Circle Stout, and a line of non-alcoholic beverages including, under license from Schweppes, bottled waters, fruit juices, and an intensely sweet potion called Ken-Kola that was popular with His Majesty’s Forces because it could be readily fermented. Startled newcomers to Mombasa often took cover from the sound of Ken-Kola bottles exploding in the night.

  Talal was clearly profiting from the military invasion. Officers smoked his Kilimanjaro-brand cigarettes—packaged to look like Players—while other ranks tended to roll their own from the locally grown Royal Virginia Estates Blend, also Talal’s. When uniforms wore out (women’s excepted—I had mine made up by a local dressmaker) as they did with amazing rapidity in the moist climate, off-the-peg replacements were available from cloth woven by Talal Mills and sewn by Talal Tailors Ltd. The ferries that moved in the harbor were Talal’s, the plantations of coconut in the lowlands and, of conspicuous value, tea in the highlands were Talal’s, and—I was given to understand—the same individual had at one time played a significant role in the business of betting, which was the nonwhites’ chief hobby, followed closely by adultery and alcohol. (Among the European residents the order of preference was said to be reversed.)