‘We can’t take Italian airmen from the Regia Aeronautica to the Timkat feast!’ Teo exclaimed. Like me, he was tackling this crazy challenge as if it were an episode of The Adventures, thinking about what our made-up heroes would do. ‘What about eggs?’ Then with a burst of inspiration he suggested, ‘What about Mrs Sinclair’s tin cans?’
Mrs Sinclair’s treasured canned food was a beautiful but dangerous idea. You can’t replace or pay for her sacred cans, and they only come twice a year, for Christmas and her birthday. But some of them are so old and dusty that she’s never going to eat whatever exotic fruit or meat is in them.
‘Me and Emmy will take care of everything,’ Teo said. ‘Momma, all you have to do is talk about flying and look pretty and pilfer some of Colonel Sinclair’s whisky and soda.’
Momma has done that before when there are European or American guests staying here, which the American guests in particular appreciate because up until a couple of years ago they couldn’t get whisky legally back home. She usually pays Colonel Sinclair back one way or another and he is OK about it. She is not good at play-acting, but she is good at pilfering.
So we got busy digging into Mrs Sinclair’s birthday food hoard for supper, and then we had to make up the little girls’ beds and hide their shotguns. I made omelettes with olives and anchovies (out of very old cans – we picked the dustiest because we thought they’d be the least likely to be missed). By the time Teo and I had finished working magic in the dining room with antique maraschino cherries and silver candlesticks, Momma and Papà and Captain Adessi were sitting on the veranda with cocktails, chatting about coffee prices. And I got Momma all dolled up for supper in a pale blue evening dress of Mrs Sinclair’s that left her back entirely bare. She was as nervous as a bride.
‘I will tell them where I got it, you know, if anybody asks,’ she threatened.
‘Oh, for gosh sakes, Momma, Mrs Sinclair let you wear this one last Christmas when you took that senator on a tour,’ I said. ‘You act like you own this place anyway. You’ve been doing all the accounts since Colonel Sinclair’s fraidy-cat secretary left. I am not telling them this is Fiona’s dress I’m wearing.’
Momma noticed for the first time that I had changed. ‘That’s one of her good ones!’
‘She isn’t here and I am!’
Momma wouldn’t let me borrow any of Mrs Sinclair’s jewellery, but I found a sparkly rhinestone barrette of Fiona’s for her, just to suggest the casual idea of jewels. It was very pretty in the candlelight.
It was beautiful to be sharing this great big secret joke with Papà Menotti. It made him feel like less of a stranger. Teo thinks Papà tells everyone Momma runs the place anyway, and he is far enough away that nobody cares whether it’s true.
At any rate Adessi fell for it – or rather he fell for Momma. Everything belonged to her last night – the farm, Papà Menotti, the candlelit dining room. We too belonged to Momma. Teo is my boy now. And Capitano Gianluca Adessi didn’t have any choice but to eat out of her hand. Every now and then she’d pop an olive into Papà Menotti’s mouth, like Sinidu does when she’s being loving, and then sort of as an afterthought she’d give one to Captain Adessi too.
Everything was Momma’s last night, except her airplane.
That was what Papà had brought Adessi along to talk to her about. It took an awful long time to get around to it, because Papà was embarrassed about it, and because Momma was being so doggone charming. The French doors and the windows were open, nice and airy, and we hadn’t lit the lamps so there wasn’t a lick of light apart from the candles. But there were candles everywhere: on the sideboard, all down the table, on the Welsh dresser and on the window sills. Momma was talking about photography.
‘I used to take pictures at air shows in America – it was a sideline and a much more respectable way of making money than parachuting! And we got such beautiful photographs in the air. My partner Delia would do the flying and I’d do the camerawork. I don’t do so much of it now because I haven’t got enough hands. Since I came to Beehive Hill I use the plane mostly for taxiing Dr Ezra around. We do a flying clinic! And I take tourists gamespotting and sometimes they take pictures too. That’s what I’d normally be doing this time of year.’
She narrowed her grey eyes and said coolly, ‘But because of the brawling at Gondar and Wal Wal, both my Timkat tourists cancelled on me this year. They would have paid well too. One was an American journalist and the other a Parisian designer.’
‘I hate to think that my countrymen have caused you any loss of income, Signora Menotti,’ Captain Adessi said. He had a very round, boyish face with a crinkly, beaming smile which was hard to take seriously – I could see why he tried to hide it. ‘Perhaps we can make it up to you.’
Momma laughed. ‘You’re paying like tourists now?’
‘Ah – no.’
At this point Papà Menotti broke the news to Momma in stammering French about why they had come here in the first place.
Momma sat listening like a statue, her face completely blank except for the worry line between her eyes. The only thing about her that moved was the light in the glittering barrette, and that was only moving because of the faint breeze rippling the candle flames.
Finally Captain Adessi repeated the gist of Papà’s speech in English. But he didn’t stammer.
‘The aircraft you fly belongs to your husband,’ Adessi said gently. ‘It is an Italian aircraft. All Italian aircraft in Ethiopia must be maintained and available to the Regia Aeronautica until relations between the two nations have been restored. Il Duce Benito Mussolini, the Prime Minister of Italy, needs your plane.’
Momma raised her chin a little defiantly and stared up at some dark place in the ceiling. ‘Il Duce,’ she repeated. She didn’t look at Papà Menotti. She said quietly, in English, ‘You mean that pompous, racialist bully Mussolini can’t afford his own plane?’
We knew Momma didn’t like Mussolini or Fascism much, but we’d never heard her call him a ‘pompous, racialist bully.’
‘Mussolini has just launched the fastest seaplane in the world,’ Momma said. ‘He’s got colonies all over Africa, not to mention toeholds across Europe, and nobody ever says no to him because we’re all so anxious not to get into another mess of a war like the last one. What does he need my plane for?’
‘Oh, Signora Menotti, Orsino was afraid you would take this with a bad temper. The plane is not for Il Duce himself, of course, but for the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian Air Force. Good, modern aircraft are scarce in East Africa.’
‘They’re even scarcer in Ethiopia than they are in Italian Somaliland and Eritrea,’ Momma pointed out. ‘Italy’s got ten times as many planes here as Ethiopia. Your Duce’s already mobilising his troops in both those places, and he won’t take Ethiopia seriously in the League of Nations. It looks to me like he just wants to show the world what a heavy he is.’
Adessi hesitated. Then he took a deep breath and repeated most of their last exchange in Italian for Papà Menotti. Teo and I sat tense and scared. That plane is our link to Addis Ababa. The money Momma makes from her photographs won’t be anywhere near as much without it. She’ll never be able to buy a plane herself and she won’t admit it, but I’m not sure she can stay in Tazma Meda without one. At least, she’s never had to think about staying here without a plane before. That plane is our life, even if we can’t fly it ourselves.
I guess we are not as Ethiopian as we think we are.
‘Now, now, now,’ Adessi said soothingly, like Sinidu talking to a little kid who is having a fit in the clinic. He gave us his beaming grin. ‘Don’t talk as though there will be war! There need not be any aggression. This is the new frontier for Italy – our place in the sun! It is excellent land – you’re a farmer, you know how good the land is, and how unspoiled. We are building a new capitol for Eritrea in Asmara, a beautiful, modern city, what Addis Ababa ought to be if the Abyssinian emperor invested his wealth more fittingly. Addis Ababa is shameful! A m
odern city without sewers, hyenas eating rubbish in the streets at night? We can complete the work there exactly as we are improving Asmara. And an Italian labourer in Asmara is paid five times what he makes in Rome. Native Eritreans and Italians work side by side. Imagine what these reforms will bring to Abyssinia! You are a pioneer here yourself, Signora Menotti.’
‘This house is rented from the local landowner, who is Ethiopian,’ Momma said stonily. That is true, even if she isn’t the one who rents it. ‘The profits from this plantation are shared among the villagers who work this farm. There are no colonists here.’
‘And you respect the local population! Of course this is exactly how we approach the hiring of native troops, the askari soldiers. You know how hard it is for young men to find work. And how long have the Abyssinians dragged their feet over abolishing slavery? That a man can still be a slave, in a member country of the League of Nations! Appalling! That would be one of the first things to change if there were more Italian control here. This is a situation where everyone can win, Signora Menotti.’
‘“A situation where everyone can win,”’ Momma repeated. ‘So what prize will Il Duce award me in exchange for my airplane?’
Adessi glanced at me, and then took a longer look at Teo. ‘Can I count on your discretion?’ he asked politely.
I’m kind of making it sound like Papà Menotti wasn’t even there. In fact he might as well not have been because he did not contribute a thing to the conversation except to gaze at Momma with his eyes full of pain and adoration. He’d pushed his plate aside with half my inventive, bootleg olive omelette getting cold, and he was leaning his long torso across the table with his hands clenched in nervous fists against the table, desperate to understand her. In any language.
‘I’ll say so!’ Momma answered. ‘We’re all counting on discretion! Oh, I guess you mean can you count on the children’s discretion? If we’re going to lose the Romeo, they’ll be in the same boat as me, so you darn well better include them in whatever you have to say. I was just giving Teo a flying lesson. He’ll be disappointed something fierce not to have another.’
Whatever else you say about Capitano Gianluca Adessi, you can’t say he isn’t polite.
‘We have not come to take your plane away,’ he said patiently. ‘We’ve come to offer you an exchange. Your husband has shown me some of your aerial photographs – the view of the walled city of Harar in the American scientific magazine is magnificent! You are being modest when you say the work is more difficult without your partner. You have an excellent camera mount attached to the aircraft.’
‘It’s twenty years old,’ Momma said.
‘Indeed! Well-made ex-military equipment! I saw the same apparatus mounted on US Air Service aircraft during the Great War. And you are lucky enough to have an unrestricted permit for your air photography. If you could take photographs for us, the Italian government would have good reason to allow you to continue using this aircraft.’
You know, when he first said it, I didn’t even think there was anything fishy about it. Momma takes photographs for anyone who will pay her.
Momma held her statuesque pose. ‘“Unrestricted” probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. It means I can take pictures anywhere I go, as long as I don’t take pictures of trains or government officials or anything in Addis Ababa,’ she told Adessi. ‘Also, my permit may be “unrestricted” but it isn’t unlimited. I have to renew it every year. And every time I renew it they have the opportunity to restrict it. So, what kind of photographs?’
‘Reconnaissance,’ Adessi said. ‘You are perfectly positioned between the Eritrean border and the Abyssinian capital at Addis Ababa. The amba tablelands in the north are inaccessible from the ground, but many of them would make ideal airfields. Scout for us. Make suggestions. There is nothing sinister in it.’
Momma turned to Papà Menotti quietly. ‘When, Orsino? Quand? How long will we play this game until they take the plane away? How long have I got?’
He answered her in French. She told us later that his answer was, more or less, till May or June. Sometime between the rains. Not this season, but either after the Little Rains or before the big ones, when it is easy to fly. Nobody goes anywhere when it’s raining.
‘Does that mean Italy won’t move until summer – just gathering weapons and information for when the Big Rains end?’ Momma asked Adessi.
‘You must not talk like that,’ Adessi said. ‘You must not worry like that!’
Then Momma collapsed across the table and reached for Papà’s hands. Mrs Sinclair’s pale blue silk cast shadows down her décolletage and the candlelight sparkled in Fiona’s rhinestone barrette. Momma said something to Papà, ignoring Papà’s friend.
‘Of course we will bring you warning again closer to the time,’ Captain Adessi said smoothly.
After a moment Momma shook herself a little. She straightened up, but she was still holding on to Papà Menotti’s hands. She gritted her teeth and then said evenly, ‘Be an angel, Em, and clear the table. Take care of Fiona’s dress, sweetie-pie.’
Oh, whoops, Momma.
Teo smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. She really does have the world’s most terrible poker face.
I glanced at Adessi. He didn’t know who Fiona was and I realised he might not have even thought Momma was talking about the dress I was wearing – she could have meant ‘Go pack up a dress to send Fiona’ or even ‘Go finish your sewing project’. So I did what White Raven would do: I just brazened it out. I completely ignored the Fiona comment. ‘Gimme a hand, Teo,’ I said.
The grown-ups were back on the veranda by the time we’d finished the dishes, trying to act like Europeans. They spent the evening cordially admiring pictures of me and Teo that Momma has taken over the past couple of years. In the morning they all acted like nothing uncomfortable had happened. They are on the veranda now, recovering from their tourist trip up to St Kristos Samra hermitage this morning.
Maybe Capitano Adessi is right about the good intentions of the Italians. He gave Habte Sadek his dark glasses – just pressed them into the old priest’s hands and patted them, smiling his beaming, crinkly smile. (Habte Sadek thanked him coldly. He is suspicious of foreigners giving him presents.) Adessi and Papà Menotti will leave pretty soon because it’s about a three-and-a-half-hour flight back to wherever they came from in Eritrea. Teo and I have not heard Momma say, ‘Yes, I will take your pictures for you,’ but we are both pretty sure she will do it. She’ll do whatever it takes to hang on to the Romeo.
Doggone it, I don’t think I will let her read this either. It will just make her mad. And I have been scribbling here for hours. I am going to give up.
I don’t think anyone has told Papà Menotti I am learning to fly too. But he gave both me and Teo tiny French glass compasses for Christmas, so he must be hoping, or expecting it to happen soon. I don’t think I’ll tell him. Well, I can’t tell him. I guess he’ll find out when he sees me flying.
The compasses are beautiful. Like something out of The Adventures. Each one is only as big as a shirt button, a clear glass disc set in a brass ring, a sky-blue arrow like an eyelash in each rose. One for each of us. I love that they are exactly the same.
Flight Log Entry
Date: Feb. 5 and 7, ’35 (Tarr 28 and 30, 1927)
Type of Machine: Romeo Ro.1
Number of Machine: I-STLA
Airfield: Tazma Meda to Akaki, Addis Ababa (and back)
Duration of Flight: About an hour and a half both times. Momma is annoyed that I didn’t keep track.
Character of Flight: Cross-country
Pilot: Momma
2nd Pilot or Pilot Under Training: Me (Teo)
Remarks:
Wow, I am tired of hauling fuel – not firewood, but aircraft fuel in kerosene cans. The Italian pilots made off with all the fuel at the aircraft shed so we had to carry down more from the Big House. Sinidu’s niece Hana helped us, but Momma wouldn’t let Sinidu because of the baby.
Papà Menotti paid for their fuel, but we’ve burned a lot ourselves since then, and we owe Colonel Sinclair for it, so I’m writing it down: 35 gallons owed = 105 Maria Theresa dollars.
I shouldn’t complain about hauling fuel because that’s what is keeping me in the air, and I will do anything to stay in the air. I can’t believe it is finally real – I am finally learning to do something that will get me somewhere.
But I am not happy about the chain of events that is driving Momma to turn me and Emmy into pilots.
Since the Italians left, Momma has spent every single spare second teaching us to fly. Possible invasion and a deadline have really changed her tune. By the time we’d finished fuelling up that Sunday evening it was getting dark and she apologised because she couldn’t take us flying right away.
‘It’s back to work tomorrow as usual, but let’s not tuck our baby to bed,’ said Momma. ‘We can tie her down outside on the field and then she’ll be all ready to go tomorrow morning.’
‘Where are you going tomorrow morning?’ Em asked.
‘I’m not going anywhere. I want to bring you both up to scratch with landing this kite before those clowns come back and try to take her away.’ Nobody wanted to admit it wouldn’t matter whether or not we could land if we didn’t have a plane any more. ‘Ezra’s expecting me at the clinic first thing and no doubt all the Timkat casualties will start turning up, but we’ll get in about an hour of bumping up and down on the airfield before I have to go. When I can trust one of you to nail it every time you land, I can sit in the back and you can take turns at the controls without us having to come back down and swap with me every half an hour. And then we can really get to work on navigation. The Sinclairs will not be happy about us using so much of the farm fuel, so we better make sure we put their house back together.’
‘When do they get back?’ I asked.