John Goldbach - It Is an Honest Ghost

‘What time are we leaving?’

‘Around noon. It’s about an hour or so out of the city, on the road to Nakuru, basically, and we’ll be gone a bit.

‘Sounds like fun,’ I said, and a little down the bar I spotted MC Karen on her own, waiting to order a drink. ‘Hey, man, I’m going to ask MC Karen if she has any CDs. Do you think I should?’

‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘Say hello — find out about the CDs!’

I felt somewhat foolish but I’d been drinking so also felt a little brave. Besides, my intention was to tell her how much I enjoyed her music. Standing beside her at the bar I said: ‘I loved your shows, both here and at the Alliance Française. You and DJ Flora are great.’

‘ Asante sana ,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Karen.’

‘John,’ I said, holding her hand. She didn’t have a drink yet so I said, ‘Can I get you a drink? I need another beer, anyway.’

‘Sure,’ she said and smiled. ‘I’ll have a beer. Thanks, John.’

I ordered two Heinekens and asked her if she had an album.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘We’re recording now. Tonight, even — after this beer I need to get going to our studio in Westlands.

‘Oh, right on. Are you far along, like almost done?’

‘We have a few more tracks to do but it’s getting close,’ she said.

She asked where I was from and what I was doing in Nairobi and I told her I’m a writer and a journalist covering the festival for a magazine in Canada, writing about East African artists.

‘You should come to our studio,’ she said. ‘We’ll have these beers and then go. Do you play any instruments?’

‘I play guitar.’

‘Perfect. We need bass and six-string, anything!’

‘That sounds like fun but I think I’m expected to stick around here tonight.’

‘Well, can you come tomorrow night? We’re recording late tomorrow, like nine or ten, but we’ll see. We share the space with a bunch of other musicians.’

‘Yeah, I’d do tomorrow night. Sure.’

‘Do you have a phone?’

‘I do!’ I said.

‘Give it to me,’ she said, and I complied and she typed her number into it, texted herself, and she said, ‘I’ll SMS you.’

A new band started playing and Karen said, ‘I love this song,’ and pulled me down onto the dance floor. She danced wonderfully, naturally, and I stood awkwardly on the floor holding my beer bottle. The writer from Esquire , Elizabeth, was dancing beside us with her husband and it looked like they’d taken lessons from Uma Thurman and John Travolta’s choreographer for Pulp Fiction . This increased my self-consciousness with respect to my bad dancing. I put the bottle down on the side of the dance floor. MC Karen laughed and took my hands and we danced.

MC Karen left with DJ Flora for their studio and I sat back with Boris, silent, fantasizing about spending time with MC Karen. I thought about dancing with her, even though I’m not a good dancer. I thought about playing on her tracks, discovering her Nairobi, basking in the light of her beauty, confidence and virtuosic talent.

My reverie was interrupted by Kenneth, who was with a tall slim man who had a slim moustache, and he said, ‘Guys, I want you to meet my friend Richard Onyango. One of the greatest painters to come out of Kenya.’ The slim man stood smiling, and Kenneth continued, ‘Richard, this is Boris, the Russian photographer I was telling you about, and John, a very good writer from Canada.’

‘It’s an honour to meet you two,’ said Richard Onyango. ‘It’s an honour to meet fellow artists.’

The band stopped playing and Kenneth took the stage. He thanked everyone for coming, for being part of the festival, for celebrating African art, specifically East African art, and in the spirit of celebrating art, he said, he wanted to introduce all of us to a very special artist, in fact, one of the best, a true original, Richard Onyango. I took out my small notebook and pen. Onyango stood beside Kenneth — Onyango smiling, tall, hair pomaded, in a silky shirt, a leather jacket, a silver-studded belt, tight jeans and pointy silver-toed black-and-grey crocodile-skin boots. ‘Onyango’s story is quite miraculous,’ said Kenneth, ‘the story of an artist finding his form, or forms, and his muse, or muses, rather. But I’ll let him tell you his story,’ said Kenneth, ‘a short version of a remarkable life.’

Kenneth and Richard exchanged smiles and Richard slowly came to the microphone, smiling benevolently, looking super-cool. ‘Thank you all,’ he said, ‘thank you very much,’ as we applauded, the whole nightclub, though we were all bewildered, too, for this wasn’t what anyone was expecting, especially late into the evening, after several hours of music, dancing and drinks. ‘I’m very honoured to be with so many artists,’ said Richard, ‘from all over the world — Boris and John,’ he said, pointing at us, ‘and Ed,’ he said, pointing at a poet standing near us. Boris and I laughed, surprised he mentioned us from the stage, in front of so many people, when he’d met us only minutes before. ‘And thank you, Kenneth,’ said Richard, ‘for this festival.’ Kenneth smiled from side-stage. ‘I was a drummer,’ said Richard, ‘a drummer playing in Mombasa, at a hotel, a very nice hotel,’ he said, ‘and people would come from all over the world to visit Mombasa, and to drink and dance at the hotel.’ Richard slowly walked to the side of the stage and produced a portfolio and walked back to the microphone. He produced a print of a painting of himself drumming, with a band, but from behind the kit, behind himself, an action painting, his arms in motion, drumsticks in the air. ‘One night I saw a blond woman enjoying the music, enjoying the music very much, with her friends, and she was very, very fat,’ he said, ‘and very, very beautiful.’ He lowered the painting he was holding back into the portfolio. ‘Her arms were thick, her waist like an hourglass, and her buttocks were big, very big,’ said Richard, ‘and she was very, very beautiful. We played and at the end of the night she tipped me a hundred shillings, which was a lot, at the time,’ said Richard, ‘and more than anyone else in the band got. I thought about her all the time,’ said Richard, ‘and a few weeks later, I was playing in a nightclub, playing my drum set, when I saw the fat woman again, sitting on her own this time, and I was very excited to see her. After the set she bought me a drink and I went to thank her,’ he said, ‘and when I talked to her, my heartbeat went rapid, for she was very beautiful, the most beautiful woman I had seen. My name is Richard, I told her,’ he told us, ‘and my name is Drosie, she said back. Drosie found me playing in the nightclub and it surprised me greatly,’ he said, ‘but I was delighted. I grew up in Kisii, Kenya, and even as a child I made pictures, instead of taking photographs,’ and he made like he was snapping a picture. ‘When I saw the Mitsubishi trucks I’d draw them,’ he said, and produced from his portfolio a print of a painting of a large Mitsubishi truck, a lorry, on a dusty highway, ‘and I’d drum always, too,’ he said. ‘Drosie took me into her life,’ he said, ‘and she was very rich and I lived with Dr. Souzy Drosie as her husband.’ He produced a print of a large woman, Drosie, sitting at a table with a glass of wine, her shoes off and to the side of her naked feet, her bosom ample and her gaze like a lioness’s. The painting was erotic, in a way, and certainly compelling; he then produced a print of Drosie nude, only wearing bikini-style underwear, her breasts free, her foot on an ottoman or small upholstered stool. Richard smiled out at the crowd, radiating a strange kind of light. ‘I grew to love Drosie very much,’ he said, and he produced a print of her kissing him against a Mercedes-Benz outside a nightclub, her largeness pressing him tight against the car. ‘We were lovers,’ he said, ‘and I lived as her husband,’ he said, ‘but Drosie was very jealous. I was no longer allowed to play music with my friends,’ he said, ‘because of the other women who came to the shows. But I didn’t want other women, I told her, and I didn’t want young girls,’ he said. ‘I liked that Drosie was older than me,’ he said, ‘older and wiser. But, as I said, I missed my drums, so one weekend I devised a lie so I could go play drums, saying I was seeing family, but Drosie suspected I wanted to play in nightclubs. So she went looking for me,’ he said, ‘and she found me and at the end of the set, she pulled me from behind my drum set.’ He produced a print of Drosie pulling him from behind the kit. ‘She was very mad at me,’ he said, ‘but we went home. Then,’ he said, ‘I started having nightmares about Drosie. I had premonitions,’ he said, ‘that she would soon die. I had dreams that angels were trying to take her from me,’ he said, ‘and I held on to her legs, not letting the angels take her away, and we were both wearing only light clothes. I woke Drosie from her pleasant sleep with sweating and shaking and screaming,’ he said. He produced a print of an angel flying high in the sky, carrying Drosie, as he held on to the unravelling fabric she wore. ‘Later,’ he said, ‘she went off driving her Mercedes-Benz and collapsed and the car drifted to the side of the road. She was taken to hospital,’ he said, ‘and I arrived and she died.’ He produced a print of a painting of Drosie in a hospital bed, doctors around her, life having left her. ‘I wept bitterly,’ said Richard, ‘and the doctors told me she died of bad blood pressure and a heart attack. The clock in this painting says six o’clock,’ said Richard, pointing to a clock on the hospital room wall in the painting, ‘which is the time she died,’ he said. ‘Drosie changed my life and I will love her forever,’ he said. ‘And when I became an artist, now I paint my life with Drosie and often paint other very fat women, very fat beautiful women.’ He smiled out at the crowd. ‘Thank you for having me here, I’m very grateful, thank you very much,’ he said, and we all applauded and Kenneth took the microphone.