John Goldbach - It Is an Honest Ghost

When I finished dressing I put on sunglasses before heading out for breakfast.

Only one other man sat on the terrace at a nearby table. He had a greying buzz cut and was drinking a large Tusker at nine a.m. He was also smoking a small cigar. He was thick through the neck and shoulders — the first word I thought when I saw him was mercenary . He was extremely red, with sun, booze and blood pressure. Also, in a brash British accent, he was extremely rude to Robert, the waiter.

‘I need a beer, pronto, and don’t take your bloody time like last time,’ he said to Robert. ‘You hear me?’

Robert said, ‘Yessir,’ and turned on his heel.

This man turned and looked at me spitefully, while spitting tobacco flecks from his lips. He held my gaze. I was the first to look away, even though I was wearing sunglasses and he wasn’t; still, I flinched first, avoiding the menacing fixity of his gaze.

When he seemed satisfied that I was too weak to bother about, he returned his attention to his beer and cigar. I finished my tea and got up, leaving most of my breakfast, the same breakfast as the day before, untouched. The man paid me no mind when I got up to leave.

In the lobby I bumped into Boris, who was on his way to breakfast.

‘Hey man,’ I said. ‘I’m just going to go to my room to take my pills but I’ll be back down soon.’

Sveta picked us up in a hatchback similar to Martin’s, with Alexi and Tanya sitting in the backseat. I got in the back with them and Boris rode up front with Sveta. We were going to the Nairobi Animal Orphanage, Sveta told me, when I asked.

‘It’s not very big,’ she said. ‘But there are monkeys and giraffes and I’ve seen lions there before, too, but I’m not sure if there are any there at the moment.’

‘Cool,’ I said.

‘You can feed giraffes,’ Sveta said.

‘Boris was telling me.’

‘I’m going to feed a giraffe,’ said Tanya. ‘I have before but I’m going to again.’

‘I think I’ll feed a giraffe, too,’ I said.

‘You should,’ said Tanya. ‘It’s free!’

‘Well, with admission,’ said Boris.

The drive took approximately half an hour. The park looked somewhat run-down but I spotted several giraffes right away and was surprised by how excited I was to see them. Tanya and Alexi were excited, too, but Sveta and Boris seemed unimpressed. We pulled up to a gate with a guard and Boris paid, then we parked. We got out and instinctively started walking toward an area where one could feed the giraffes on the other side of a fence, by a gigantic tree — an oak tree, I thought, though I had no idea if oak trees grew on the outskirts of Nairobi.

‘How much do I owe you?’ I said to Boris, as we walked toward the park.

‘Nothing, man. I just paid for a car full of people so it’s not a big deal,’ he said. ‘The petting zoo’s on me!’

‘Ha, well, thanks.’

We walked past a small chain-link fenced-off area, a chain-link cage really, where a solitary ratty hyena drank water from a large brown plastic bowl with the jagged indentations of teethmarks all over it.

By the large tree, there was a handful of people, four or five, with their hands extended, feeding the four giraffes. The giraffes bent their long beautiful necks and ate some form of vegetable pellets right out of the tourists’ hands. Small tusked warthogs ran around at the feet of the giraffes.

There was a large sort of gumball machine that dispensed the pellets, without having to put coins in it, and right beside it was an industrial hand-sanitizing station.

Sveta cranked out some feed for the kids and then I cranked out some for myself. Boris picked Tanya up so she could feed a giraffe, who obediently lowered its neck and lapped up the feed, its inky-black eyes big and shiny and dreamy, amber at the edges, with long lashes and heavy lids. The eyes were mesmerizing in their beauty and sublime docility, I thought. An evolved species.

When its tongue emerged, we all laughed uncontrollably, even Boris.

Next, Sveta lifted Alexi up to feed our friend and I patiently awaited my turn. The little boy smiled when the giraffe took the feed but quickly seemed to lose interest, which pleased me, because it meant it was my turn.

I extended my arm and hand, with the pellets held upward, and the giraffe slowly and fluidly shifted its neck and head toward me, briefly acknowledging me with an all-consuming benevolent gaze, then the giant tongue emerged and lapped up the feed. Its long tongue was black at the tip, like hard plastic, though turned a deep purple and then pinkish and moist the further back it went. I laughed like a fool, a fool drunkenly in love, for a moment forgetting my worries, forgetting myself.

Boris and Sveta both smiled at me. I promptly made my way to the hand-sanitizing station.

Sveta watched the kids as they ran around the large tree and Boris and I sat in wooden chairs by a fire pit with no fire, drinking bottled water.

‘We’ll head back soon,’ said Boris, ‘so we can change before the reading at the Alliance Française.’

‘That’s at five?’ I said.

‘Yes, but we’ll leave around fourish. There are shuttle buses leaving from the hotel.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘It should be good.’

‘Yes and it’ll be a good place to take some photos for the article,’ he said. ‘I should’ve gotten one of you feeding the giraffe.’

‘It’s probably best the moment’s forever effaced,’ I said. ‘I had a moment of existential revelation and angst while feeding the giraffe: I was convinced of its existence, though unsure of mine.’

‘Yes, giant mammals will do that to you,’ he said.

Sveta was in the distance talking to an employee of the animal orphanage. She walked to the fire pit with the children and said, ‘There’re no lions. One’s sick and away, the other died.’

We took a different, circuitous route to the car and walked past another cage. Two monkeys sat on top of some rusty chain-link fencing, crudely layered to make a jungle gym.

Back at the hotel Boris and I split up in the lobby, agreeing to meet back downstairs in forty-five minutes. There were people everywhere but I ignored the crowd and returned to the quiet of my room. I would’ve loved to have lain down for an hour but there wasn’t time. I figured I could get away with lying down for fifteen minutes or so, however, so that’s what I did.

I put in my small white earphones, from my new iPod Mini, a recent birthday/Christmas gift from Stacey, my girlfriend. When she gave it to me, I was shocked and touched. The gift was expensive — more expensive than either of us could reasonably afford — and we’d been growing apart. When I opened the wrapping paper and saw the gift, it was obvious I was surprised.

‘See,’ she said, ‘I love you very much.’

‘You got me an iPod.’

‘I got you an iPod.’

I lay on the bed, with my eyes closed, listening to the first twenty minutes of Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way , then I got up to take another quick shower.

Down in the lobby, festivalgoers waited around for the shuttle buses. Eventually, three mid-sized buses showed up, very modern, air-conditioned, et cetera. I sat beside a poet, Caroline, from Massachusetts, who was writing a collection about Robert Oppenheimer. She’d recently won a prize for her work, she told me.

Caroline was very nice and we talked about Oppenheimer while we drove the ten minutes or so to the Alliance Française. But then Céline Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ came on the bus’s stereo and it really hit me how internationally famous Dion in fact was; in Quebec, I took it for granted Céline’s music played from the clouds but I didn’t expect to hear her in Nairobi. ‘I love this song,’ said Caroline. ‘My mom and I belt it out together!’