Ivan Vladislavic - 101 Detectives

DAY 1

17:30

Pleasantly surprised to see ‘Mr Wu’ on the board at the airport. Accustomed (almost) to being called Mr Jing. The climate is hot, yeasty, overspiced. No doubt the place would seem filthier without the vegetation, profuse greenery everywhere, enormous leaves and vivid blooms — ‘flamboyants’ — in which the litter looks floral.

We took the coastal road to the destination, with the sea behind the dunes most of the time, smelt rather than seen. The driver wanted to chat but I shut the partition. As you know, I like to keep my marketing eye open. Papa’s face everywhere in the terminal, as expected, on gantries and signposts, and on billboards advertising the Trade Fair along the highway. No sign of bandits.

The Ambassador is one block back from the beachfront — fine views though — within walking distance of the Convention Centre. Or it would be if one could brave the streets, which I am advised against. Rickshaws are recommended. The taximan said I should summon him, day or night, if I want a ‘good time’. We’ll see about that. Keyed in the number of the control room just in case.

The hotel façade is solid Papa, a gigantic head-and-shoulders, from breakfast terrace to roof garden. A projection with no evident source and very impressive on this scale. One of his best-loved expressions, benevolent and stately, but not overly friendly. Crowned by his unmistakable homburg.

Let me start on the ground floor. The drop zone had a pair of Papas — no handiwork of ours — on either side of the door. Twin commissionaires with the awning resting on their heads, at a scale of 3:1, in ferroconcrete with a marble finish. The airlock lined with smaller versions of the same in alcoves, these from our factory. Gratifying to see our merchandise in situ for the first time. Fixtures, I think, not just hauled out for my arrival. The whole space bathed in red light and that unquestionably for my benefit. It’s amazing what they think in these backwaters. I know you find it sweet , but you don’t have to experience it at first hand. The lobby rosy too, but not as garish, thank God. Ambient, almost certainly chameleonic — sensed it cooling perceptibly as I checked myself in.

A voice message in my earpiece: words of welcome from Mr Booty Khuzwayo, Convenor of the Trade Fair, and an invitation to join him for breakfast in the Parrot Parrot Room tomorrow morning (if I so wish).

Saw my first flesh-and-blood Papa in the elevator on the way up to my room. Not a professional here for the Convention, as you might imagine, but a waiter! He was lugging a tray of cocktails and I held the door. In truth, he resembled Papa only slightly: if there was a likeness at all it was an effect of the homburg and doublet and a certain solicitous, fatherly bearing.

(I remembered your wise counsel, Fei. The eye is the most fallible organ. I’m sure the people here are as various as people anywhere on this green earth and if they all look somewhat alike to me it is the fault of my untutored eye.)

When the waiter got out of the lift on the seventeenth floor, he inclined his head in a regal bow, and I took the costume and the mannerisms — it really did not go much further than that — as an allusive tribute to Papa, who did so much to foster economic and cultural exchange between his people and ours, or a small gesture of gratitude to the delegates at the Fair, of whom I am self-evidently one, for the welcome injection of credit and know-who into the local economy. Unless of course there was something ironic or even facetious in his attitude — a possibility signposted in your helpful briefing papers — and he was registering his displeasure at my presence. I must remember that they do not like foreigners.

Couldn’t resist opening the window of my room (know you advised against) to see where I am in the full-face façade. Can you guess? In the bag under an eye! Might have wished to be ‘the pupil’…

22:45

Just back from dinner. Fascinating outing. Decided to bypass the taximan and summoned a rickshaw with the bedside beeper. ‘Rickshaw’ is just a manner of speaking. The rickshaw man was nothing like the quaintly costumed porter I expected (we must update our files on the transport sector). He was plainly but elegantly dressed in a leisure suit, silk shirt and loafers; but for some light body armour, discreetly toned to match the suit, he might have been another delegate to the Fair. The only sign of his occupation was a traditional headdress with beaded horns which he discarded as soon as he entered the cab of the buggy.

He took me to an eatery in the neighbouring mixed-use development. Neighbouring being not quite the right word as we had to traverse a dull intermediate zone to get there. I expected rusty shacks, dark alleys and muddy ditches, but instead it was drably uniform, block after block of small, unexceptional houses nestled in extravagant foliage like knick-knacks in packaging material. Almost hyperbolically mundane. Tree ferns and rubber plants with leaves the size of sails. Everything outsize and superabundant. Must be something in the water. I put my eye close to the glass to make sure I wasn’t being hoodwinked by some picture window (don’t say I haven’t learnt my lesson) but it was definitely real world. People here and there, passing quickly through cones of lamplight, but overall an air of abandonment. I wonder who lives in these catchment areas, as they call them? Then we came to a sector where the pavements were busier although still not crowded, and we passed through an archway into a small square with a tavern where people sat eating and drinking at round tables with lanterns on them, while an orchestra played on a thatched bandstand. The place looked run-down and its patrons poorly dressed, but it seemed welcoming, it had a meagre sort of cheer I found appealing. It made me homesick — so early in the trip! — and I wished the driver would stop, but we bowled straight across the square and out through another archway. I would have opened the window to hear a snatch of the music, but your advice not to breathe too much unprocessed air made me pause, and in any event the driver took no notice of my questions and remarks. I gathered that he spoke the third of the languages and that not very well.

Just as I began to think the fellow was lost, we came into a broad, well-lit avenue that marked the start of the next development. The Cockatoo Cockatoo Grillhouse was in the lobby of a hotel like my own, so much like my own that for a moment I wondered whether we hadn’t returned by a circuitous route to the Ambassador. Even the Papas flanking the doorway were the same. I might as well have eaten at my own lodgings — or so I thought until the meal came. It was exceptional. Medallions of protein with the texture of pork, a peppery lime-green rind and a berry sauce, scattered with enormous trumpet-shaped flowers and blood-red petals, the latter edible. Heavenly. (No one will say where the protein comes from. Apparently there are clandestine eateries in the catchment areas where it is served raw, a practice much frowned upon by the authorities.)

Three sightings of Papa during the course of the evening:

— Waiter who brought the protein — homburg and doublet, of course, and the characteristic Papa intonation

— Market vendor — fruit? — glimpsed from the window of the buggy

— Bandleader of the orchestra in the square

Is this average? I expected more.

My guess is that the music was martial and unmelodious. Nothing to go on but the attitudes of the musicians. Much beating of timpani and blowing of horns.

Drank the local digestif after dinner, a viscous liquid flecked with clots of fruit. Felt drowsy immediately. Actually dozed in the buggy on my way back to the hotel. Not myself — you know I like to keep my wits about me.