and pristine chandeliers, the churchly doors and windows topped with wooden arches. Sibilla eyed the fringed rugs sceptically – that just made them harder to clean. Black and white photographs lined the corridors, depicting the hotel’s famed history.
Walking down one of those corridors after a tipsy night at the Rainbow Room bar, rubbing their stubbly faces against each other, Sibilla finally learned the truth about her family. She and Federico were drifting from frame to frame, staring at the photographs, trying to parse the captions in English beneath – neither of them were fluent yet. They were going backwards, so first came the boring conference rooms – ‘Where the Federation’s fate was decided,’ Federico said. Here was a bejewelled woman – Princess Elizabeth in 1947. Here was a sleepy-eyed Indian man – he must be the Maharaja. Here were trolleys carting guests in floppy white hats to the Falls. Here was a train, the original Cape-to-Cairo.
Federico swayed ahead in his wrinkled suit and paused.
‘Sibilla, Sibilla,’ he called urgently. She approached, trying not to scratch her itchy face.
‘Look.’ He pointed at the portrait. Sibilla smiled at the man’s vest and hat – so charmingly old-fashioned! Like Alba. She read the caption. The first hotelier. Gavuzzi.
She frowned. ‘Was that not the name of…?’ She turned to Federico and they shouted out at the same time:
‘The Signora!’ she said.
‘It’s your grandfather!’ he exclaimed.
They both laughed and stumbled on down the corridor. But after a moment, Sibilla grabbed her husband’s shoulder and turned him towards her. ‘Wait. What did you say?’
Nobody had ever told Sibilla that Signora Lina was her aunt, or that the Signora’s brother Giacomo was her father, or that this man – Pietro Gavuzzi, who had apparently run this hotel in the middle of Africa – was her grandfather. Standing frozen before his portrait, trying to see her face in his, staring at the hat on his head, Sibilla was speechless as Federico explained her illegitimate life to her, insisting all the while that he’d assumed that she already knew.
Only later that night, as she lay with her back to Federico in their fancy hotel bed, did the tears come, the stubble on her face deviating their path. Sibilla didn’t care that her father had abandoned her or that her aunt had made her work as a scullery maid. She didn’t even care that her mother had kept all of this from her. She cared that Federico had known, and that she hadn’t. Of all the torturous secrets between them, this was the one she could not brook – her husband had blithely let her believe that she was a bastard child with no past.
* * *
‘What does this have to do with me, Mr Smith? I’m in charge of the dam, not the natives.’
‘Yes, of course. We just thought it might help if they could set eyes on it.’
District Officer Smith was a tall Scotsman with a craggy face and a painstaking manner. He had once told Federico that he came from a family of fishermen, and Federico couldn’t help feeling that it was beneath his dignity to report to him.
‘The Tonga see the dam every day,’ Federico shrugged. ‘They certainly hear it.’
The two men were silent a moment, listening to the fray of construction on the dam: the thudding drills eating away at the rocksolid gorge, the creaking of the cranes, the rumble of the water coming through the diversion tunnel, the pitter of dust against metal, the droning worksongs of the blacks.
‘Not all of the Tonga,’ said Smith. ‘These ones from Chipepo do not understand even the basic workings of a dam. They don’t believe their village will be flooded. A demonstration—’
Federico laughed. ‘Did they not see the riverbanks overflow after the rains last year?’
‘The river floods every year, up to a point. They’re quite used to that. But they have not been persuaded that within the next few months, this entire valley will be underwater.’
‘Persuaded? The dam is already happening!’ Federico pointed at the scurry of work beyond the window. As if in response, rain spattered feebly against the glass. ‘Why do you not just round them up and move them again?’
Smith’s pointy chin clenched. This was a sore spot for the British colonial officers. ‘That was a last resort. The black nationalists agitating for independence – you’ve heard of the African National Congress?’
‘Sì, I know them,’ Federico snorted. ‘They organised the dam labour strike last year.’
‘Well, they told the naïve villagers that if they stayed put,