I closed my eyes and time ceased to have any conventional meaning. History had been repealed, the future indefinitely postponed.
Then I opened my eyes and beheld around me a grayness pulsing with the promise of light. I was alone, but in a place with neither substance nor dimension. My hands had no body, my body no hands. Then a door swung inward, and my long-lost Helen was standing in this doorway, radiant in an immaculate white dress and apron. She was even wearing shoes. Her feet looked enormous in shoes, like monument pedestals. Tears freshened my cheeks, and I hurried to draw her out of the pale rectangle of the doorway.
“You shouldn't be wearing these,” I told Helen, kneeling in front of her. “It's demeaning for you.”
Her shoes were cheap blue sneakers with heavy rubber soles. I began unlacing them. My tears made it difficult to see what I was doing, but I got the laces undone and slipped her feet out of the sneakers one after the other. I stood, embraced her for an infinite moment, just to feel her body against mine, and rocked her in my arms like a father holding his child. Her starched clothing began to annoy me, too, and I loosened the knot supporting her apron, expertly unbuttoned her dress, and swept these items down her flanks to the floor, there to join my V-necked T-shirt and my beautiful Fruit of the Looms. She regarded me with tender puzzlement, but did not scold me for returning us to the innocent nakedness of beasts and Minids. Instead she closed my eyelids with her fingertips and settled one gnarled fist on my heart.
I opened my eyes again. The hotel suite had rematerialized around my double bed, which I was sharing with Helen Habiline. Praise be to Ngai and the mysterious potion of Dirk Akuj!
“Mr. Kampa—Mr. Kampa, sir, may I go now, please?”
The face staring down at me was that of a matronly Sambusai woman with intensely bright eyes and a full, healthy mouth. Astonished, I slipped out from beneath her gaze and over the edge of the bed. The woman was dressed in white, the costume of a hotel maid. I tried to sort out the implications of her presence. Looking around, I saw Timothy Njeri unconscious on the floor beside my teakettle—he was still in his skivvies, while I was buck naked—and Daniel Eunoto slumped in a corner sleeping the sleep of the sledgehammered. Monicah and Dirk Akuj were nowhere in sight. The sky beyond the picture window was a chastening blue.
“What are you doing here?”
“No one answer when I knock, Mr. Kampa.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “I came in to clean.”
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“Before dawn?”
“Oh, no, sir. Much after. It's nearly noon.”
A little more questioning revealed that she had been in my suite for almost two hours and that she was disastrously behind schedule. If I did not let her go, the manager would fire her, and she would have to return to a desolate mission outpost southeast of the Recreational Centre, where life was both hard and very dull. I wrapped a sheet about myself, gave her the equivalent of nearly fifty American dollars, and told her to catch up as much of her work as she could. I would protect her from the ire of the Sands management. The woman departed, thanking me.
I dressed and stalked about the suite trying to sort out my emotions. Dirk Akuj had hoodwinked us. His
ngoma
ceremony had been a cunning scam. Or had it? Timothy and Daniel would come round soon enough, I could tell by their breathing, but in the meantime I wanted to collect my thoughts without their help. Was it possible that for a moment—a brief moment, at least—my Helen's
ngoma
had inhabited the comfortable body of the hotel maid? In spite of everything, I felt pretty good.
Monicah had left me a note. It was written on the back of the birthday telegram from my mother: Dear Daddy,
You can give me your permission to do this by not trying to bring me back, okay? We're crossing Lake Kiboko into Uganda in a motor launch, and if you want to catch us you probably can. I really, really hope you won't try. You had your turn, this is mine, and maybe one day Dirk and I can point everyone toward their tomorrow by stepping out of it back into today. Tell Grandma Jeannette and Aunt Anna I love them. Lots and lots o’ love to you too.
Your daughter,
THE GRUB
I rode the elevator down to the lobby, then walked out to the marina in the strength-sapping heat. In spite of the heat several vacationers were out on the lake in paddleboats; a light breeze fluttered the fringes on the colorful parasols beneath which these hearty tourists labored. Despite my daughter's note and her conviction that we could catch up with her if we tried, she and Dirk Akuj must have already reached the lake's western shore. Although it might still be possible to overtake them in the treacherous hinterland between Zarakal and Uganda, I was not going to blow the whistle on their escape.
In spite of this decision, I returned along the pierlike arm of the marina to the walk running north and south along the lakeshore. Here I turned north and made my way to the water-purification plant servicing the entire complex. My keys admitted me to the fenced enclosure surrounding the plant, and my status in the Zarakali government short-circuited the objections of a pair of uniformed guards who clearly wondered what business I had in their little bailiwick.
I hiked through a maze of metal tubing, pressure gauges, and wheels to the clean sandy area where an immense water tower rose up into the desert sky. I climbed the narrow iron ladder on one of the tower's colossal legs and from the catwalk looked over Lake Kiboko after my daughter. The guards and several other plant personnel watched me ascend, dumbfounded by my audacity.
Then I leaped out and caught a support rod with both hands. The plant personnel gasped. When I began a long slide inward, my feet dangling like window-sash weights, they cried, “Be careful, Mr. Kampa!
Please be careful, sir!” Their shouts were reassuring hosannas. I slid the rod to an intersection beneath the tank, then hung there in the arid breeze gazing westward after Monicah. For the duration of my stunt, at least, I was a very happy man.
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