‘It’ll be this week, but I don’t know when. Wash the sheets after I go to the clinic tomorrow, all right, Emmy? And Teo, don’t try to put the empty cans back. If you stack her shelves with empty tin cans she’ll find them some day. But if you make them vanish she might not ever notice. They’ll make beautiful buddy burners for camping if we fill them up with beeswax.’
We spent the evening after the Italian pilots left covering our tracks – Momma pressing gowns, Em and I making up beds and moving furniture back into place. We couldn’t do a thing about the burned-down candles in the dining room, but it was Timkat and we did have unexpected visitors, and it’s not the first time we’ve used Sinclair stuff when they’ve left us in charge of the Big House. We filled all the woodboxes. And – this is lucky – Papà Menotti gave Momma a bottle of Chianti which she left on Colonel Sinclair’s desk. The Sinclairs never ask any questions about where Momma’s thank-you presents come from, European wine being rarer than fuel around these parts.
So then we spent the next three days working on landing. Neither me nor Em has satisfied Momma’s high standards for solo flight, but she’s let me land by myself (and she hasn’t let Em, which Em is surprisingly stoical about). I can land now with Momma’s hands completely off the controls. At first she had to prompt and coax me every second – ‘Little bit more power, sweetie-pie – little more power there – Hear the wires singing? That’s the right note for landing.’ Em watched it all from the back seat and said that Momma was holding her hands up in the air over her head the whole way down. She never touched the controls. After we were on the ground she and Emmy both burst into applause, clapping like crazy. And the next time Momma didn’t say anything, just let me do it by myself.
Now we are here in Addis Ababa so Momma can renew her photography permit. It was the Italian pilots’ visit which made her think about it. She dug it out and discovered that it expired about six months ago. Getting any kind of paperwork done is always a pain in the neck, and nobody ever checks for permits in Tazma Meda, which is why she did not do it sooner.
I got to fly the whole way here, with Momma sitting behind me telling me what to do, and Em will get to fly back. I have a feeling she’s not going to like it. She’s surprisingly crabby about flying. She makes a big fuss about the checks and the fuel and the oil and stones on the runway, delaying take-off as long as she can, then hanging on to the stick for grim life (I know ’cause I have to sit in the back and it is scary when she lands). And two solid hours of flying is exhausting. That’s twice as long as any lesson Momma’s given either of us up to now.
Although apparently Em did find the way here herself. She was giving Momma directions from the back seat and Momma was passing the headings on to me. I didn’t realise it till afterward. I must have made Em work hard – I kept forgetting to watch my heading and drifted off course about twenty times. Every time Em had to put me right.
The most panicky thing about landing at the new airfield at Akaki, which is about a dozen miles outside Addis Ababa, was how many people were watching. A strange airplane always attracts hordes of people. I kept thinking of Colonel Augustus, back when we were first here for the coronation, and what a fool he made of himself in front of everyone. So then I got nervous and circled the field about four times to check the wind – of course that was just long enough to give everybody within about a mile a chance to come out and stand there, staring up, and wonder who in the world would be flying into this new Imperial Ethiopian Air Force field in an Italian aircraft without the Regia Aeronautica flag painted underneath its wings.
Eventually Momma yelled at me: ‘If you don’t line up and land this time I’m going to do it myself.’
I glanced back at her and, right behind her, there was Em smiling encouragingly and waving her hands with her thumbs linked together to make wings – the Black Dove, White Raven secret greeting. Momma gave me her firm ‘We’re going to do it’ nod. So I lined up and came floating down.
Momma sat there absolutely silent – she didn’t say a thing to me as I landed. I wasn’t using any power and all you could hear was the sweet song of the wind in the wires. The wheels just kissed the ground in a cloud of red dust, and we all coughed and spluttered. Of course I had to weave back and forth to see around the Romeo’s high nose as we taxied to the aircraft sheds at the other end of the field, and Em waved at everybody on both sides of the plane more like a strutting rooster than a White Raven.
I have got the hang of it. I really do. It is the first time I’ve landed anywhere but Beehive Farm and it was perfect.
The problem with being a crackerjack is that you attract just as much attention as you do if you are a clown. I caused more of a sensation when I climbed out of the cockpit than even Em and Momma did, which is unusual because they are white women. But now I am a flying Ethiopian – even rarer than a white woman in Addis Ababa.
And no one flies in Ethiopia except the Italians patrolling the borders, and the French instructors at Akaki, and the five dozen young Ethiopians they are training.
I think all the flying Ethiopians in Addis Ababa were there at the same time. The French instructor Pierre Ferrand came shoving forward to shake my hand. ‘Beautiful!’ he cried out in Amharic. ‘Ready to join us?’
Momma laughed. ‘Not till he learns to find his way here himself,’ she said firmly.
Everybody helped us push the plane across the airfield, and we were all coated head to foot with dust by the time we’d finished. The plane too.
Momma and Ferrand had a very serious conversation in French, which Em and I couldn’t understand. Then we took all our gear – me with our clothes in a bundle on a stick, Momma with her German camera over her shoulder and a waterskin on her head, and Em with the maps and compasses and china pencils and all the other equipment that you need for a longish flight – and we set out to walk the twelve miles to the city because there is only one train a day and that came and went a long time ago. Fortunately that is all we had to carry because most of our cargo on a long flight is just extra water, in case we have to land in the middle of nowhere for some reason.
It was dark before we got to the middle of the city, but in spite of everything being covered with dust it was cool. There are actually more trees closer to the city, because the Emperor Menelik started planting them in the nineteenth century when Addis Ababa was first built, to make up for them cutting down all the native trees. The eucalyptus trees smell beautiful. So did the smell of cooking we passed every now and then – berbera spices and coffee and injera bread frying.
‘Were you talking about fuel with the Frenchman?’ I asked. We are supposed to put in an order for the Sinclair farm while we are here.
‘We were talking about you,’ Momma said, sounding grumpy. ‘Ferrand wanted me to leave you there to do some ground school with the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force while I go into the city.’
‘Wow,’ Em and I let out in one breath. Ground school with the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force. That just doesn’t sound real. When you think of how hard it was for Momma and Delia to get flying instruction back home in the US of A – but of course here, where there are only about a dozen aircraft in the whole country, it’s a completely different kettle of fish.
‘You should have let him!’ Em said, always loyal.
‘Maybe I would have, if they’d have taken you too, Em,’ Momma said crossly. ‘But I didn’t even ask. You’re a white girl. I can’t leave you there alone with a couple of French soldiers of fortune, oh là là, not to mention dozens of young Ethiopian flyers. Can’t expect Ferrand to take that kind of responsibility.’
‘How old was Delia when she went to France with you?’ Em asked boldly.
Momma didn’t answer right away.
Finally she said, ‘You hush up. Older than you. OK, not much. Only a couple of months older than you. But she’d already been working in her momma’s beauty parlour for two years. I’m not saying I don’t trust those young pilots. They’re from the best families and they ar
e the most educated young men in Ethiopia. But I don’t trust those Frenchies, I know them too well myself, and you have no experience of men outside Tazma Meda.’
‘Well, what about Teo?’
‘He is not joining the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force!’ Momma said explosively. ‘That is not what we’re here for.’
She hitched the waterskin more comfortably on its pad on her head. I could see her long white fingers tightening in the fold she used to hang on to it. She can do it as easily as Sinidu now, part Ethiopian countrywoman and part ferenji flyer.
‘I didn’t have any trouble getting that permit in the first place because of Ezra, but now that people are talking so much about war I am worried I will have trouble renewing it because of being called Menotti, and also . . . Gosh darn those Italians.’
She trailed off, shifting her grip on the water skin again. We waited, walking through the unfamiliar dog barks and murmurs of the scented city darkness.
Emmy exclaimed, ‘Jumping cats, Momma, are you going to renew your Ethiopian photography permit so you can take pictures for the Italians? Someone is going to accuse you of spying! How are you gonna get away with that? You have the most terrible poker face in the world!’
Momma laughed. ‘It’s just pictures of mountains.’ Then she added, ‘The Italians aren’t paying for them, though, so I thought I would sell them.’
‘To the Ethiopians?’
‘Sure. Then everybody will be happy. It’s not like I ever get my salary paid at the clinic. I bet they are more likely to pay me under the table for photographs that give them a jump on Italian military strategy than for my legitimate job. No official paperwork involved except the permit renewal.’
‘Wow,’ Emmy breathed.
‘I don’t like to do it,’ Momma admitted. ‘But we’re burning too much fuel and I can’t afford to take pictures that I’m not being paid for. Between your flying lessons and those double-crossing Italians, we need somebody to pay us for something.’
It was a terrifically long walk after that. The cooking smells began slowly to drive us insane after about ten miles.
Emmy finally broke Momma’s sober silence with, ‘I’m praying that Mateos still has the same cook.’
‘Mateos doesn’t even know we’re coming,’ Momma pointed out reluctantly.
Addis Ababa is a sprawling camp, a city of mazes, thousands of them, and they change. In Tazma Meda you always know where everybody lives. People always come back to the same house eventually, even if they are out among the coffee trees or up Beehive Hill with the goats or hunting all night. But in Addis Ababa a lot of people move around, looking for work or following some noble in the hope that he needs another retainer, and so people’s makeshift houses move around too.
In the dark, among a thousand half-made huts, it started to feel dreamlike – unfamiliar but familiar in its own way – and it smelled so good, of eucalyptus and pepper and manure. Em grabbed my hand. I knew we were all worrying a little about hyenas.
It is a real shock the first time you figure out that some grown-up can’t always be relied on. That you have to do some things for yourself.
I squeezed Em’s hand three times the way Delia taught us when we were little. Are you scared?
She squeezed back bravely: I am not scared.
I whispered in her ear, ‘Momma’s lost. Can you find the way?’
Oh, Momma would have done something – she would have asked someone for shelter or led us to the American Legation eventually. But she was not going to find Mateos’s house that night on her own.
Em stopped walking. She said in English, a little loudly, ‘Momma, I know how to get to Mateos’s house from the spice market.’
Momma stopped. She hitched the goatskin up again. ‘We’ll have to go back out to the main road.’
‘But I can find it.’
Momma sighed. By now we were all ready to fall over and go to sleep right there, starving or not.
‘That’s what you said to do in the air, right, Momma, if you’re “uncertain of position”? Go back to the last point where you knew where you were. You get me to the spice market and I will get us to Mateos’s house.’
Momma laughed softly. ‘Right, Em! OK. Better late than never. Back to the main road this way. How the heck did you know I was lost?’
‘I didn’t. Teo knew.’
I don’t actually know how Em does it. She must have a little collection of landmarks stored in her head somewhere. We haven’t been to see Mateos for about a year and a half. But she got us there right away once she oriented herself in the right direction.
I have never been so tired. And I never slept so well anywhere as on the floor next to Mateos’s fire pit last night.
We made our real greetings in the morning.
‘Ah, Teodros, my brother’s son!’ Mateos held me by the arms and flashed his bright, earnest grin. He kissed me on both cheeks. ‘You are so tall! Old enough –’
‘– to carry a spear,’ we all chorused, and then we all laughed nervously.
‘Yes. Are you worried about it? Do not worry!’
Mateos was glad to see us, but soberly quiet, even for him. We don’t see him very often, but he knows us well, and he started setting out all the food he keeps in the house. His house is even smaller than ours – maybe if he had a wife he would live somewhere more substantial. As it is he has practically nothing but his sleeping mat and one mesob basket table for storing injera bread. He sleeps in his shamma and carries his spear and rifle with him when he goes out in the morning. He does still have the same cook, but she hadn’t turned up yet the next morning when we all woke up ravening over last night’s left-over soggy injera. But she got a beautiful meat feast of sega wat, chicken and lamb both, all ready for us the next evening – probably the last lamb we will get before Lent. It was a real treat after an unholy day hanging around waiting for someone in a new government building to put a stamp on Momma’s photography permit.
Momma got the permit, though she didn’t seem very happy about it afterward. The worry line was there between her eyebrows the whole way back to Mateos’s house. But then she brightened up when Hirut, the cook, jumped up from where she was frying injera to welcome us and kiss everybody. Momma had brought honey and tej from Beehive Hill as presents, and Hirut ate with us. After supper when things were a little calmer, Momma asked Mateos in a low voice, ‘Is Ras Assefa going to be all right?’
Ras Assefa is Mateos’s boss. He is the younger brother of the man who was my own father’s boss: Mateos worked for one brother, my father worked for the other. Ras Assefa, Mateos’s boss, is a very highly placed railroad official.
‘Of course he is all right!’ Mateos answered in surprise. ‘Why are you worried about Assefa?’
‘We had to do a lot of waiting in the parliament building today, and that means we did a lot of listening. People say that in the last League of Nations meeting, the French gave a big chunk of the Ethiopian railroad over to Italy. So what does that mean for people who work for the railroad? Maybe Italy will come and ask if that pompous racialist bully Il Duce Mussolini can borrow their trains.’
Mateos laughed. ‘Ras Assefa will be all right. He is a landowner, a ras, a lord. Words on a page three thousand miles away are not going to make a difference to his status in the emperor’s eye. It is kind of you to ask.’
‘Well, here is a question for you, then.’ Momma took a deep breath, hesitating. The worry line suddenly got deeper. She dropped her question like a bomb falling from an airplane.
‘Could Teo come along with you and meet Assefa tomorrow?’
Em and I stared at her.
Mateos looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Ras Assefa can certainly give your boy work, Rhoda. You’re lucky you’re here this week – for Timkat last month we were in Aksum, Assefa’s home.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to leave Teo here, but maybe if he could meet Ras Assefa himself –’ She cut her words off, going red. Em is right about her terrible poker face. Not one of
us had any idea what she was getting at, but Em and I both knew she was not trying to get me a job as a foot soldier.
‘Let Teo come with me tomorrow and he can have a taste of a soldier’s work,’ Mateos said agreeably. ‘There are boys his own age in Assefa’s guard. It will be a better afternoon for him than filling out forms.’
At this point Em exploded, ‘Momma! That is not fair!’
I was more baffled than outraged – now what was going on? ‘But you wouldn’t let me stay with the Ethiopian pilots!’ I pointed out.
Momma leaned over to me and said sharply in English, ‘Listen, Mr Invisible, I have a mission for you. And I am not talking about it in front of the cook. So just smile and say yes.’
I glanced over at Em, begging her silently for her opinion on this strange suggestion. She had her lips pressed together like she didn’t trust what would come out if she tried to say anything.
‘Emmy!’
Her hands were in her lap. She twisted her thumbs together and made wings. It was an invisible push.
‘Well?’ Mateos asked. ‘Will you come with me tomorrow and meet Assefa’s soldiers?’ His quick, bright grin is hard to resist. I wonder if I do that – suddenly make people notice me by smiling at them. I will have to watch it.
Em’s hands closed and spread open again in her lap, daring me.
‘All right,’ I said.
Momma explained what was going on after we’d gone to bed, whispering low in my ear once we were all snuggled down on the carpets behind a curtained off partition of Mateos’s tiny house.
‘I got my permit back because of those pictures I took for the Italians. The Ethiopians want them too, so I am going to give copies of everything to Haile Selassie, and the Ethiopian government will pay me for them. And I think that’s fair. I said they could pay me through Ras Assefa, but they said you have to deliver the pictures because I am too conspicuous. We don’t want the Italians to notice anything. So that’s what I want you to do tomorrow.’
‘I’m not really invisible,’ I protested.
‘You mostly are,’ she said. ‘You are quiet and polite, like Mateos.’