He tried to sound casual.
You lived alone? You had a roommate?
—
I had a boyfriend for a time.
He willed himself not to ask about the boyfriend.
I used to try to talk to your aunt when I’d see her around. For about six months, I was in Hull after I graduated. She wouldn’t speak to me. Wouldn’t even acknowledge I was standing there.
—
She’s very good at that.
—
I went to grad school trying to evade the draft. Then my number came up and it was a good one, so I dropped out. If you add it all together, there are probably a couple of years I can’t account for very well. I spent a lot of it drifting. I went to Canada for a while. Then to San Francisco. I was pretty heavily into drugs.
—
Which?
—
Dope. LSD. I still smoke dope from time to time.
She set her hairbrush on an end table.
I’ve always been grateful to you,
she said.
I’m glad you’ve come, because I’ve always wanted to tell you that. I don’t know what would have happened to me . . .
He let her thought trail off. He did not deny the gratitude. He’d always had a keen sense of how easy it might be to lose oneself.
—
Would you like some food?
she asked.
Something to eat?
—
Something,
he said.
Not a meal.
She went into the kitchen. He spoke to her back as she moved from counter to fridge to counter.
You have electricity?
he asked.
—
Sometimes.
The cottage was so dark inside they might have turned a light on.
—
Have you ever eaten giraffe?
he asked.
—
No, but I’ve had antelope. And crocodile.
—
Crocodile isn’t so bad. It tastes like chicken.
She put bread and cheese on a plate. Something that looked like jelly. He had a sudden craving for sugar.
—
I sometimes feel like the wrong person in the right place,
he said. His unease was so great, he was grasping at ways to explain.
Or vice versa.
—You’ve always been that way.
The kanga a second skin knotted at her hip. The cloth moved easily about her calves as she worked.
—
Living here is like watching an endless documentary,
he said.
She laughed.
—
Tell me about Peter,
he said.
She thought a minute.
No.
Thomas was daunted by her refusal, though he admired the loyalty. A loyalty he hadn’t quite been able to manage himself.
—
It’s exhilarating,
he said.
Talking to you. It must be a form of blood-letting, this desire to pour the soul into another person.
—
You don’t believe in the soul.
She brought food to the table, gestured for him to sit. He put a generous amount of cheese and jelly on a piece of bread.
—
We have no good word for it, do we?
—
Spirit?
she suggested.
He shook his head.
Too religious.
—
Ghost?
—
Too supernatural.
—
Personality?
—
God, no.
—
The word
life
is too broad, I suppose.
—
I need another fucking thesaurus,
Thomas said.
Mine was stolen while I was having a beer at the Thorn Tree.
She laughed.
What a funny thing to steal,
she said.
She had made tea. The mention of beer made him want one.
I have an overwhelming urge to spill myself messily at your feet,
he said.
Her hands froze as she poured the tea.
—
Sorry,
he said.
You should ignore the sexual implications of that remark.
She shrugged.
—
You look wonderful,
he added.
I should have said that sooner.
—
Thank you.
—
Do men follow you in the streets?
he asked.
She put the teapot down.
Kenyan men are normally very respectful of women that way,
she said. She paused. The rains had suddenly ceased, as if someone had turned off the faucet. Their voices were now too loud.
Wouldn’t your wife have told you this?
—
My wife might want me to think they did,
he said without hesitation when he should have hesitated. Linda turned her face to the window. It was the most disloyal thing he’d said about Regina. Doubly disloyal, implying not only that his wife would lie to her advantage, but might also want to make him jealous.
—
I’m sorry,
he said. To whom or about what, he wasn’t sure.
—
Do you have children?
she asked.
—
No.
He paused.
Regina was pregnant once, but she miscarried when she was five months along.
—
I’m sorry.
—
It was a hideous miscarriage that ended in the delivery room. It was a week before our wedding.
He didn’t add that backing out of the marriage would have been unthinkable, though, miserably, the thought had crossed his mind. Since then
—
fit punishment
—
Regina had not been able to conceive, a fact that sometimes made her sad and paradoxically maternal. The way she carried on with Kenyan children
—
any child
—
was heartbreaking to watch. It had been three years, and it was time to take the tests, but she, who would know, had little faith in Kenyan medicine. She wanted to wait until they got home. Which was fine with him.
—
You don’t have children?
he asked.
—
Oh, no.
No more than he had expected, but he felt relief all the same.
I feel like someone just hacked open my chest with a machete,
he said.
—
Another scar,
she said lightly.
There was a long silence between them.
—
Rich is coming,
he said after a time.
—
Rich?
she asked, brightening.
How old is he now?
—
Sixteen.
—
Imagine!
She shook her head slowly back and forth.
What’s he like?
—
He’s a good kid. He likes boats. He works at the yacht club during the summer, ferrying the launch.
—
He was seven when I knew him. Such a sweet boy.
—
Well, maybe if you’re in Nairobi, you’ll come to dinner and meet him.
The insanity of the dinner invitation was like a boy’s voice breaking in mid-speech.
—
I’m sure he remembers you,
Thomas added.
Well, I know he does. He still talks about what a good ice-skater you were.
—
It seems like so long ago,
she said wistfully.
—
It seems like only yesterday.
He studied her arm on the table. The hair there was nearly white as well. She seemed to notice his scrutiny, for she withdrew her arm. Perhaps she was still self-conscious about her hands.
—
Tell me about your work,
she said.
He thought a moment.
No.
She looked up and smiled.
Touché.
He knew the work was good. It was a simple fact that never left him. And he knew that one day someone else would see this if only he could be patient. He sometimes marveled at his confidence and wondered where it had come from. And though he seldom talked about it, he never mistrusted it.
She rose.
Would you like to go for a walk? I could show you the school.
He felt he could have sat in her cottage forever.
His legs were weak as she led him through the back door. He had expected her to put on sandals, but she didn’t, and he noted the toughness of her feet. The path through the bush was narrow, causing them to have to walk single file, making conversation all but impossible. The low grasses, wet from the recent rain, soaked his trouser cuffs, and he stopped for a moment to roll them. They walked through a pale yellow chrysanthemum field and past what appeared to be a small cluster of huts. True huts, with grass roofs, not the sophisticated version with the tin roof and the red vinyl furniture of the Ndegwa shamba. He watched her back, her drying hair. It was chilly after the storm, though the sun was strong, and as they walked through shady patches, they passed from cool to warm to cool again. Occasionally, Linda waved at a woman or a child. He might have noticed the scenery, but he could hardly take his eyes off her. Her walk strong, the cloth of the kanga swaying languidly as she moved. Her hair growing lighter by the minute. They edged a dense forest, and he grew momentarily nervous about encountering another buffalo or an elephant, but she moved without concern, and he chose simply to follow her lead. The forest opened to a village with a dusty duka, a bar, a school
—
all made of cement. It might have been the Wild West, for its lack of adornment and its isolation.
He meant to catch up to her as soon as they had left the path, but on the road she was immediately surrounded by children, calling to her, reaching out to touch her.
Jambo. Miss Linda. Habari yako? Mzuri sana.
She scratched the tops of their heads, bent down to hug them. They spoke to Linda in a rapid patois of Swahili and English, and wanted to know, shyly, the identity of the man with her, pointing at him with one hand and hiding their mouths with the other. She introduced Thomas as a friend, and he shook hands all around, their happiness infectious. But then a boy asked Linda where Peter was, and Thomas felt the happiness drain from his body. They began to walk on, the children like grasshoppers beside them. Thomas wanted to take Linda’s hand, ached to do so. She told him that once the village had been a thriving community, but that most of the men had gone into the city, looking for work. Some came back to their women and children on the weekends; others would never come back at all. Women with babies wrapped in slings at their chests waved at Linda from doorways, the ebullience of the children not in evidence there, the waves friendly but somber: the women knew too much, or their men had left them.
Heat radiated from the road. Thomas took off his jacket, threw it over his shoulder. His clothes were now as dusty as the dirt and gravel. Linda opened the door to the school, and the children squeezed past them. It was unexpectedly cool inside the building, the walls solid until shoulder height, where, just below the tin roof, there were open windows with no glass.
—
When it rains, the sound on the roof is so loud, we have to stop the class.
—
The kids must love that.
—
They don’t, actually. The children want to go to school. It’s not just this school. It’s the same everywhere.
Some attempt had been made at cheer. Colorful drawings hung from the walls, one or two of them bold and very good. The children tugged at Thomas, and he happily went where they led him. He wished he had treats for them inside his jacket
—
lollipops or cookies or small toys. Something. There were no desks, except for Linda’s.
—
What do they write on?
he asked her. She sat with a spindly boy on her lap. Disease appeared to have made bare patches on his scalp.
—
Their books.
Behind her desk was a charcoal grill. She noticed him looking at it.
—
I feed them when I get here in the mornings. I make them eggs and give them milk. I get deliveries once a week from a farm, and I bring the food down to the school each morning. There’s no way to keep it refrigerated here.
Which explained the muscles, he thought.
The boy on her lap coughed, spit onto the floor. Linda thumped his back.
The women sometimes besiege me for medical treatment,
she said.
They bring me their babies, and they cry, and, of course, I can’t do anything. I sometimes think this is a test from God. That I’m supposed to go to medical school and come back here and practice.