I Dreamed of Africa Read online

  Paolo’s love for me became almost a worship. He started writing letters and poems for me more often, and asked me to write for him. I had always written poems. For our wedding anniversary he gave me an antique Zanzibar writing box, inlaid with brass. Inside, there were some ancient jewels, a fantastic old silver belt, and this note which I have kept:

  This box is for your poetry, which I love so much. May life allow us never to distract our inner ear from the voice of the soul. Please go on talking to me.

  It was at about that time that I arrived one afternoon up in Laikipia to find Paolo lying on our four-poster bed, staring at a large perfect ostrich egg which he had hung from the central beam with an invisible nylon thread.

  There is a message for you in this egg,’ he said, looking straight into my eyes without blinking. ‘But if you want to read it, you have to break the egg.’ It was as if he wanted to test my curiosity. I did not want to break the egg. ‘You can open it whenever you like. But you do not have to. I just want you to know that there is a message there for you. A very important one. One day you will have to find out.’

  There was no smile in his deep blue eyes, and his hair, dark gold, made him look like a pagan god. The egg remained floating above our bed in the months to come, and I never thought of crushing the thick smooth shell to find out what the message was. Somehow I felt this had to be like an oracle, something you interrogate when there is a real need for an enlightened answer, not just out of curiosity. He did not reply to any of my questions. He just looked at me intensely as he had often done lately, unsmiling, as if he already knew more than he could tell me. In those moments he seemed unreachable, distantly and almost ethereally handsome, his blue eyes transparent like clear water, and I could only love him more. I sat at his side on the bed. He took my hand in his. There had always been something I found irresistible about the touch of his skin, an electric attraction, a dry goldness of hair over the dark tanned skin. He handed me a small book. It was Illusions by Richard Bach. On the first page he had written:

  To the luminous egg, which made my illusions fly high, above death.

  I did not open the egg. It hung there, year after year, until one morning, after the longest night of my life, I suddenly understood what it meant. Then, I no longer needed to open it.

  It was immediately after the kidnapping episode that Paolo asked me to have his baby. It became a fixation, an absolute obsession. He felt his life was soon going to come to an end, and that we should have a child as a living proof of our love. More, as a way to go on living and still being with me. He became interested in reincarnation, and often had premonitions and dreams. One morning in Nairobi, when I opened my eyes, I found him peering at me with an indescribable thoughtful and loving expression. ‘I was waiting for you to wake up to tell you about my dream.’ He had dreamed of his father, who had died a few years before in 1973, and to whom Paolo was much attached; of his brother Franco, who had been killed by the elephant in Kenya; of Mariangela, his first wife, who had been killed in that fateful car crash; and of Chiara Ancilotto, who had died in 1975, also in a car crash. He had seen them standing on a staircase in front of a large carved door which looked like the one in the house at Kipipiri, where he had lived for over a year with Mariangela, during his first time in Kenya. He used to tell me about Kipipiri, a rather splendid house at the foot of the Aberdares on the Kinangop, and how it had a reputation for bringing its owners bad luck. Most former owners had in fact died prematurely in accidents. I had gone to see the place with him once: but an eerie feeling of gloom hanging over it, the dark unhappily hovering mountain, were more overwhelming to me than the magnificent garden with formally cut yew hedges which formed an intricate maze, and I refused to go inside. At that time, as on the few other occasions when these uncanny premonitions occurred to me, Paolo humoured me. He knew I had very strong forebodings at times, and he respected them since he knew they were not dictated by whims. In his dream these people were silently waiting for him, and his father opened the door and beckoned Paolo to enter.

  Soon this dream was followed by another: we had had a baby, and everyone was there to celebrate. There were both his daughters, Emanuele, and of course me. And Paolo? ‘I was there, but at the same time I was not. I could see and hear, and I was my own self, but not as I am now. It was as if I were the baby.’ A still formless premonition quickly crossed my mind: ‘If we had a baby, would you trust me to bring him up on my own?’

  ‘Absolutely. I have often wished I had a mother like you.’

  Paolo kept dreaming and talking about the baby, and it had to be a girl. In a letter he wrote me at the end of June 1979, before flying up to Laikipia with his new aeroplane, named ‘KUK’ after me, he noted uncannily: I am going to fly with that little girl of ours: don’t forget to plait her hair.’ At the time, I was not even pregnant.

  Paolo’s daughters had long been back in Italy and Switzerland to complete their studies. The elder, Valeria, then seventeen, had bloomed into a beautiful and sunny young woman, gifted with captivating manners, successful at school and popular with her friends. Just at that time, however, to everyone’s surprise and to Paolo’s consternation, she decided to abandon her studies to elope with Mario – my first husband and Emanuele’s father – with whom, we learned, she had been madly in love since her early teens. Mario was going through a spiritual and religious stage, and they went to live in an ashram in India. Although they were not blood relations, and although Mario appeared to be genuinely fond of Valeria, Paolo had been shocked and had felt betrayed at the discovery.

  This episode made me decide to agree to Paolo’s desire. Furthermore, if I wanted another child I could not afford to wait too long. I was thirty-six years old. It was a major decision, but I loved Paolo. I agreed, and in a few weeks our child was on its way. Paolo was beside himself with joy, and I looked forward to having such a ‘wanted’ baby.

  Preparations were started, and Paolo decided that he wanted a crib made in the shape of a canoe, ‘for the baby to sail the sea of life’. He loved the sea and he loved boats. He ordered one in Shimoni, where he was going fishing in his boat ‘Umeme’ for the high season of March.

  Fetching the crib for the baby was the reason why he drove down to the coast instead of flying, in that March 1980. The small canoe, carved out of a mango tree trunk, was too long to fit in the aeroplane.

  21

  The Premonition

  There are more things in heavens and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

  Shakespeare, Hamlet

  It was a lorry which suddenly crossed into his lane at the petrol station in front of Hunter’s Lodge, on the Mombasa road. It happened so fast, a screech of brakes, a crunching noise of metal against metal, a silence, people running towards the wrecked vehicle: it occurs every day. Trapped between the dashboard and the contorted seat, his face crushed against the steering-wheel, in the tremendous impact his neck snapped and broke.

  Paolo was dead.

  The crib remained intact. Only a tiny crack, almost invisible, on the prow. What were his last thoughts, I will never know in this life. Did he see who stole his money, frantic hands fumbling through his pockets, tearing away his watch, robbing his defenceless body of all they could, even before the police came, like a swarm of hungry careless safari ants? Only the wedding ring I had given him remained hidden by his cracked Greek god’s head, reclining on the slim tanned hands with the fine blond hair I had loved to touch, covered in blood. Did it really matter? He was no longer there.

  Back at home in Nairobi, at the very same moment, with a pang of anguish I saw the accident in my mind and felt his overpowering presence, as tangible as the hot sun of March on my tear-stained cheeks.

  I had been thinking that the bougainvillea seemed to be the only flower which did not suffer from the drought. In the garden I sat, waiting for Paolo. He was coming back from Shimoni with the crib for the baby. We were due to go out to dinner. The vision came suddenly, and I could not
dismiss it. With the eyes of my mind, and with bewildering clarity, I saw Paolo’s car as a twisted wreck, people gathering, running, and I knew he was dead. The vision changed to a sunny scene of scalding heat, faces of mourning friends, an open grave surrounded by banana leaves, a coffin. To the ears of my memory his deep voice said again: I would like you to hold my hand when I die. But I know I will die alone. Remember the music. Promise you will remember the music of Venice.’ How could I ever forget?

  Tears swelled my eyes, my throat ached with choking pain. In a dream I walked back to the house. With slow movements, as if performing a ritual many times rehearsed, I chose the cassette, inserted it in the tape-recorder. Soon the waves of music filled the room, louder and louder, as I sat dazed, my heart heavy with unbearable agony. I kept putting back the music until the garden darkened with the shadows of the evening, and, as on all evenings, the house servant brought the ice, and started pulling the curtains. Paolo’s presence was hovering, closer than he had ever been, yet I felt and knew he had forever gone from my life. I acted as if guided by an invisible force. When the room became dark and Bitu came in to light the candles, I slowly stood up and went up to my room to put on a dark maternity dress. Soon, I knew, they would come to tell me Paolo had died, and I had to be ready.

  When the first car arrived, I was waiting.

  It was Tubby Block, the friend of happier days. The distress lining his face changed to bewilderment when I told him in a voice which did not sound like mine: ‘I know. Paolo has gone. He told me.’ I touched my stomach. ‘But, really, he is not born yet.’

  22

  The First Funeral

  A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.

  Richard Bach, Illusions

  I will not forget the smell of gardenia, and the feel of the fleshy petals on my clutching fingers, the day we flew Paolo’s body back home, to bury him.

  It was a hot, dry late morning. I left the house knowing that I would be very different when I came back. That nothing I had so far known would ever be the same again. I was acutely aware that my perceptions were accentuated, my senses heightened, and every detail of what I felt and saw was going to be forever engraved in the depth of my being, as if I were born anew.

  I wore a white cotton maternity dress, and for a time I stood alone on the doorstep, looking up from the door at the cascade of purple bougainvillea, and at the many cars parked out in the sun – so unusually … The dense perfume of gardenia came strong to me from the large bush, almost run to tree, which grew close, and I felt dizzy with memories and grief. With the heat, and the baby.

  Never again would Paolo pick a gardenia for me, holding it out in a sweeping gesture, as if gently attacking with his fioretto. Paolo was as supple as a dancer of flamenco, elegant and handsome in an unusual way. I used to think he looked like one of the apostles – but without the beard – or a Roman emperor with his head of curls, or a Renaissance prince. He could have been a warrior of any tribe in the world, a fisherman in any sea. There were many persons in Paolo. He was one of those rare people who are at ease and make an impression wherever they happen to be. There had been around him an aura of intense liveliness and awareness. An unforgettable depth. Our life together had been full, and I knew I had been luckier than most just in being able to accumulate all the memories, to share in all the adventures, to walk with him to the end of his road: yet I felt the agony of not having been there when he died, as if, unwillingly, I had let him down. I picked a gardenia, and stepped out in the sun. A silence descended on all the people as they turned to look at me. They moved towards me, and in the serious faces, in the puffy eyes which had not slept, I read my grief reflected.

  Somebody held my elbow: a young, hot hand which, giving me support, was also trying to steady his own bewildering agony. I turned and looked into my son Emanuele’s eyes. They were red and they were dry, they were as deep and as sad as they had always been, but they now contained new shadows, a new solitary determination to hide his pain with dignity. Even if he was just fourteen, I knew Paolo’s death had already made a man of him.

  I did not know yet what it had done to me. In my agonizing sense of loss, of ‘never again’, I too felt as if a new strength had descended over me during the night he died. The knowledge that I was not alone. I had been Paolo’s friend, lover, companion, wife: now there was still the baby I was carrying. It all made sense: I would now be his mother.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said squeezing hard the brown hand which offered and asked help. ‘Andiamo a seppellire Paolo.’

  Golden particles of dust were suspended in the still air. It must have been hot, but my hands felt cold and clammy.

  In his coffin Paolo lay, long-muscled legs in short khaki trousers, a clean striped shirt rolled at the elbows, bare slim feet in sandals. Somebody had composed his hands on the stomach as if he were asleep, his curly rich hair stuck out in a halo, as still as a statue’s, and I could not see his wasted face, as a scarf had been placed on it. In the aseptic room nothing moved. It was unnaturally cool, and the strong smell of disinfectant could not cover the smell of death.

  There was a fly, one only, which buzzed around unsettled, and I concentrated on it, staring at it, following its flight to the high ceiling, almost landing on Paolo’s hands, almost out in the sun again. Nobody said a word while I walked to the coffin, and for the longest minutes I looked for the last time at the body of the man I loved. Slowly I ran my hand, like an uncertain butterfly, lightly over his legs, his hair. I held on to the red scarf, winning the urge to uncover his face, but somebody – was it our friend Amedeo? – shook his head in warning. Before bringing me there, they had all begged me not to look at it now, to remember the baby: Paolo’s face was no longer his face. I wanted to keep the memory of the handsome face I knew, yet I felt I could have coped, I could have coped with anything. I forced our wedding ring back on to the rigid finger, and put there gently one of the two gardenias. For timeless moments I held his hand, then I bent to kiss it. The fingers were ice-cold, and dry like snakeskin.

  Somebody sobbed, somebody left the place. Again, a last time, I let my hand touch him, I caressed his arms, his legs, I squeezed once the foot, as cold as metal.

  Even last times must end.

  I tried to talk to him with no words, to communicate beyond that squalid, bare room where he did not belong. Where was he gone? Was he looking at me? Could he feel how much I loved him? Could he? I looked at him, and around and up, and everywhere: the fly had disappeared.

  Wherever Paolo was, he was not in that room at the mortuary. The stronger me took over. I let her talk. ‘He is here no longer. Let’s bring him home.’

  The friends looked at me, mute, and followed me out.

  The sun hit me as if I had surfaced from an old tomb.

  Flying up to Laikipia on a sunny day, leaving the Nairobi skyscrapers behind, is always an extraordinary experience. The air was blue, with golden clouds, and a flock of pelicans joined us at Naivasha and flew with us as far as Ol Bolossal. Paolo would have loved that.

  The Aberdare Mountains and the deep forests of bamboo and cedar gave way to yellow plains dotted with acacias and small shambas with mud huts; tin roofs gave way to thatched roofs, little herds of scrawny cows and goats, waterfalls, brown fields waiting for rain, and the shimmering of Lake Nakuru with all the pink flamingoes.

  The tarmac road to Nyahururu and to Kinamba, silver-grey, with toy cars and trucks, rare, more rare, dwindled into nothing. Lake Baringo appeared like a magic vision behind the green hills of the Mukutan Gorge.

  The plane was a Cherokee 6, and the pilot who was a friend, cried all the way. I clutched the gardenia to my face. Its perfume could not hide the smell of death.

  The stifling sweetish scent of the bunches of dying flowers filled the air. It was hot in the aeroplane, and my stomach felt swollen, my mouth very dry: when was the last time I had drunk anything? Everything practical was pervaded by the ethereal unreality of a bad dream which never seemed to e
nd. I was confused, yet well aware that nothing could ever again be as before. Paolo was dead. Paolo was dead and his body was dissolving inside that coffin, made of shiny wood by some uncaring stranger. It lay on the skin of a large eland, memento of a long-gone hunting adventure.

  Almost abruptly the fields were giving way to the thick leleshwa country. We were descending now. I could see the big dam, and there were elephants drinking; I recognized the red tracks, the labour lines, Colin Francombe’s garden with the tall gum tree. A herd of eland kicked up the dust, jumping in scattered leaps. The shadow of the plane, like a large bird, scared away families of warthogs, while Egyptian geese and herons took off from the Nyukundu Dam.

  We were there. The other aeroplanes had all landed. They were parked on the airstrip in a neat row of twelve or more. The people were out, and they were all looking up at us. I had flown with Paolo many times before. Now I was flying him home to bury him.

  I could not bear it that there was nothing left for us to do together.

  Before landing, once more, one last time, I decided to fly with him over the land he had loved. I looked out at the beloved hills of Ol Ari Nyiro, bathed in the gold of noon, waiting for Paolo. I reached back and put my hand on the coffin as if to touch his hand. I looked at the pilot’s devastated face and moved my finger in a slow circle. He understood instantly, as if he too was thinking of how to postpone the landing. We were descending. He now flew over the upturned, surprised faces, out off the runway, and we were up on the hills.