A Girl From Zanzibar

by Roger King

  I walked into this swamp of Zanzibar uncertainty, all stated in Mrs F’s definite voice, while carrying a heavy bowl of bottled beer into the Elephant Bar. It was early evening, before we were officially open. Mrs F was standing over the old ice-cream cabinet she used to cool the beer, talking to one of the Goan men who had nothing better to do.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The English Boy.”

  “Geoffrey? What about him?”

  “Someone banged him over the head. He’s in the V. I. Lenin.”

  I turned away to stack the bottles. My heart had jumped. “Is he badly hurt?”

  “Lars says he was knocked unconscious. It’s a nuisance for Lars. He’s responsible for UN visitors here, you know.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was in Africa House. In the old billiard room. Someone hit him and a visitor from Dar found him in a pool of blood. Or maybe he just fell. He’s the sort of person who always gets into trouble. Is he as foolish as he seems, Marcella? You know him better.”

  “I had dinner with him once. No, he’s not foolish. He’s intelligent.”

  “Intelligent! So we have to find another reason. I don’t think theft will do. His money was still in his pocket.”

  “Mrs Fernandez, Geoffrey is a nice man. Why are you so horrible about him? He’s our guest here. He’s all alone. I’m going to visit him.” Somehow he had become mine.

  “You should stay away. We can’t afford to be friends with someone who has enemies.”

  “In case your beer supplies are stopped? Because we’re the only Europeans here and have to be careful? I’m going.”

  Mrs F’s mouth became a thin line. “Stubborn. Stubborn and proud. Like your mother.”

  “Mummy? Proud?”

  “Never mind.” She looked away. “Well, I suppose I’d better give you this. Your English friend left you a letter. Left you a letter, then went away to get hit over the head. I’ve warned you before, Marcella, don’t attract people’s attention.”

  “But you do. Everyone knows you.”

  Her lips tightened again and she banged open one of the lids to the refrigerator cabinet to peer at the beer inside.

  “I’m going, then,” I said to the top of her head.

  The note read:

  Dear Marcella,

  I’m off to Pemba Island for a few days. I really should have gone before, since it’s so important agriculturally. Hope to see you when I get back.

  Oh, I thought a bit about your passport problem. I’ve sent a letter to the FAO Res. Rep. in Dar-es-Salaam, who knows some influential politicians. I said I wanted to hire you to interview women and that you might need to visit headquarters in Rome sometime, but there was a passport problem. Hope that’s OK. It might help but I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much.

  I enjoyed our time together. See you when I get back.

  Love, Geoffrey.

  The writing got smaller towards the end and the word ‘love’ was the most cramped of all. In the three or four days since our dinner we had managed to avoid each other; now he was running away to Pemba, Zanzibar’s other island. Except he had not made it.

  I read as I walked to the V. I. Lenin Hospital. I read the note, then I kissed it. Whether this was for the love of Geoffrey, or for the prospect of a passport, or for the kindness of his trying to help, I could not have exactly said. Then I remembered that, Mrs F’s offhand report notwithstanding, his injury might be serious. I thought, with a turn of my stomach, that it might be because of me. Maybe someone had heard about us on the beach. A fundamentalist Moslem. A Zanzibari who thought Zanzibar women should be just for them. Worse, something more personal—a relative of Ali, my absent fiance, with some Arab idea of upholding family honour. Maybe I should be afraid for myself. And even more frightening, Mrs F would be proved right about the dangers of my reckless independence. I probably should not be going to the hospital. But my feet carried me on. And then there was Geoffrey’s letter to Dar. I could imagine what Mrs F would say about a foreigner approaching top mainland politicians for special treatment of a Zanzibari Goan. I imagined her wrath. I imagined the wrath she feared: the other Zanzibaris turning on us, bearing down on our defenseless little group. By the time I reached the Russian embassy—these days quiet—my simple impulse to visit a sick friend had turned into something much more complicated.

  The handsome white hospital next to the embassy looked deserted. I walked up the steps and in through the front door, then up the central stairway and along a corridor. Still I had not seen anyone. Then there was an open door and inside an African in a crisp short-sleeved shirt bent over the room’s only bed.

  “Excuse me. Are you a doctor?”

  He turned to me with a gracious smile. “I’m sorry, but I’m not a doctor. I think you might have difficulty finding a doctor in this hospital.”

  “I’m looking for a patient. An Englishman, a Mr Sutton.”

  The man moved aside to show me the patient, as if displaying a valuable item for sale. “I think you’ve found him.”

  Geoffrey was entirely covered by a sheet, except for his face, which was very pale. Without his red complexion, his glasses and his usual fidgety manner, he was more handsome. His face had planes I had not noticed. One side of his head had been shaved and there was a line of stitches that looked like a railway map drawn by a child. The man followed my thoughts. “A Danish missionary came in and did the stitches. I think he’ll be all right.” I turned to look up at him. He was soft-spoken, neatly dressed, pleasing. I couldn’t remember seeing him before. “I’m David. I’m the one who found him. You must be ... his wife?” He chose the most diplomatic of his options.

  “Marcella D’Souza. No, just a friend. An acquaintance. Has he been conscious?”

  “He was conscious for the stitches. No anaesthetic in the hospital, I’m ashamed to say. But he couldn’t remember much. I think he’s sleeping now. Of course he lost a lot of blood.”

  I followed his look to where his own trousers were stained with blood. “Do you know what happened?” “No, I just found him lying on the floor in Africa House when I came in for dinner. There was a big pool of blood. At first I thought he was dead. He may have been there for hours. Who would do such a thing? It is a shameful thing for Tanzania. Is he a tourist?”

  “No, he works for the United Nations.”

  “Terrible. Then he was here to help us. I brought him to the hospital, found the missionary, brought him this to drink.” He indicated ajar of amber liquid with a lid fashioned from newspaper. “Tamarind juice. It’s all I had. There’s no food or drink here.”

  “You’ve been very kind. Ym may have saved his life.” His gesture said it was nothing.

  When I returned from the hospital with David, Mrs F was commanding her bar. She was the only one allowed to stand. If all the seats were taken, she refused new customers. She was always finding reasons to refuse customers; acceptance by her was highly valued.

  “This is David.” I led him to her. “He’s the one who took Geoffrey to the hospital.”

  She gave him an unsmiling look. “How is The English Boy?”

  “I think he’ll live. You must be the famous Mrs Fernandez. I’m very happy to meet you.”

  She gave him a second hard look. David was impressively poised, tall, smiling, soft-spoken, an African who was not in the least intimidated. Even though he had untucked his shirt to cover the blood on his trousers, it was clear that his clothes were expensive, probably foreign. He moved easily. He was fit. “You’re visiting us on business?” she asked.

  “Oh yes. Official business. Another boring bureaucrat, I’m afraid.” He turned away from her to look around the room. “But your bar is too popular. There’s no room for us.”

  Mrs F turned her look from him to me, found no answers in my face and shifted her attention to two young Africans with empty bottles between them. In Swahili she told them briskly that it was time for them to leave, and they meekly got up to go as if they had been
waiting for the order all along.

  “No,” said David in mild protest, “that is unfair.”

  “Sit down.” She ignored his politeness. “Marcella, I don’t need to serve you. You know where the beers are.” When I sat down to talk to David, I talked too much. He was so calm, his eyes so willing to receive and I was, I suppose, in shock. He nodded sympathetically; his shoulders were broad. I told him what I knew of Geoffrey, omitting the fact of our brief affair, though not, I suppose, the hint of it. I told him about the life in Dar I’d lost and my hopes. I told him about Omar Khatib at the passport office, my weekly meetings, how he flirted with me but did not deliver my passport.

  “Have you tried paying him something?”

  I gave him a quick look but there seemed to be no guile in the question. The truth was I had given Omar some money only the previous week. I had put it in a file marked “Application Fee” which at first he refused. Then he changed his mind and allowed that the payment of fees might help with his superiors in Dar.

  “I gave him something.”

  “Enough?”

  “Five thousand shillings.”

  “Well, that should be enough.”

  Mrs F was unexpectedly at our side, drawn there by whatever sixth sense for peril she possessed. She addressed David: “We’re having a Christmas party next week. A carol party. Just for the Christian community of course, if you are interested. Will you still be here? Marcella, your mouth is open.”

  “Unfortunately, I think not. If I am, I will certainly come. It’s a generous invitation. "You are quite correct that I’m a Christian.”

  She left us as decisively as she arrived. David smiled at me and raised his eyebrows. I said, “’You’ve been honoured. Usually she only invites Europeans. Goans, and Europeans if she can get them. She must think you’re important. Of course we don’t have a lot of Christians here.” “Then I should try to come. But I think now I should leave, don’t you?”

  The next morning I took Geoffrey breakfast. Rice, chicken and tea. There was no food at the hospital. He was awake and looked at me through lazy eyes.

  “Where am I?”

  “'You can’t remember? Zanzibar. You’re in hospital in Zanzibar.”

  “Car crash?”

  “No. Someone hit you. Can’t you remember anything?”

  He was silent for a few seconds while thoughts passed slowly and painfully across his face. “Who am I?”

  “You’re Geoffrey, Geoffrey Sutton. Geoffrey, you really don’t remember?”

  He nodded. “I’m not sure. It’s like ... I’m a stranger. Are you a nurse?”

  “No, a friend.” I took his hand and held it.

  “A friend.” He slipped back into sleep without having eaten any breakfast.

  I spent the next hour or so holding Geoffrey’s hand, looking at Geoffrey’s face. He was so pale. It was a peculiar intimacy, holding the hand of a man whose identity had passed into my sole possession, who might, for all I knew, have a blood clot on his brain and be about to die in this empty hospital. A little like motherhood, perhaps, enough to let you believe you might be in love.

  When he woke, there was more life in his eyes. He tried to push himself up in bed and he reached to the chair next to him to find his glasses.

  He looked at me. “What’s your name?”

  “Marcella.”

  “You’re my friend? Girlfriend?”

  “Not really. Well, sort of. We only met a few days ago.” It occurred to me that I might be in a position to perma- nendy erase our evening on the beach from his memory, and that it might be prudent to do so.

  “I hope you are my girlfriend.” He managed a wan, gallant smile. Brain damaged, he was better at compliments than he had been undamaged.

  “I brought you some breakfast. You should try to eat something.”

  He waved it away as if the sight made him nauseous. “I’m Geoffrey Sutton.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m in Zanzibar?”

  “Yes.”

  “I came here by plane from Dar-es-Salaam?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I arrived in Dar-es-Salaam from London?”

  “I think so.”

  “Yes, I think I did. And I arrived at London Airport by bus from... Reading. My home is in Reading. I work at the university there. I’m here doing research. A consultancy. Evaluating development projects. For the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. I’m staying at a hotel.”

  “Africa House. That’s where you were hit.”

  He closed his eyes and slid down in the bed. “I want to rest now. Will you stay?”

  “I’ll come back. We have to find a place for you to go. There’s nothing for you here. You shouldn’t go back to Africa House.”

  “Go with you?”

  I laughed. “People would talk, Geoffrey. One of the Danes from the United Nations team will find you a place, I’m sure.”

  “I’d like to go with you.”

  I removed his glasses; he was already back in sleep.

  DAVID'S VOICE WAS IN MY DREAMS LAST NIGHT: "ITmight have been the Moslems—because of the alcohol. It might have been a thief. Or just someone she offended, someone she refused to serve. Or it might have been something personal. Or political—she was a woman of influence. It might have been jealousy.” This was not Mrs F’s voice wondering aloud at the tedious mystery of the English Boy’s bang on the head, but David wondering at the blows that crushed her own.

  The wind has been blowing—a storm—and the trees around my house have been bending to brush and scrape the roof throughout the night. In my upstairs bedroom the noise seems close by, part of my thoughts and I’ve spent the night anxiously, half asleep, half awake. The branches creaked and scraped above me and voices played through me. I heard, “It might have been ...,” a thousand times, matched by the mocking refrain, “You never know in Zanzibar,” and my mind scampered between Geoffrey, Mrs F and Benji. I imagined that a tree would fall and cut my wooden house in two, easily crushing it and me. All violence. I imagined that Benji was dead. “It might have been ... it might have been ... He’s foolish enough for that, don’t you think, Marcella?” I heard this in Mrs F’s voice, though she never knew Benji, and he had never gone to Zanzibar. But, yes, he is foolish enough, my Benji. And he has been gone for so long.

  Poor Mrs F is long dead. Killed. Murdered. She was found in the burned-out remains of the Elephant Bar, her skull smashed. The danger was real after all. Now she comes to me in storms, bringing Zanzibar, where there is no bottom of things to get to, just layer after layer.

  David’s voice is gentle and articulate. “You never know, in Zanzibar,” he says in conclusion. When I look past David’s face in this recollection, I see two London taxis, stuck in traffic because the Iraqi owner of Le Cafe has illegally parked his Toyota on Westbourne Grove while he brings in trays of pastries.

  Mrs F, Mrs Fernandez, Stella Fernandez, Auntie Stella. She looked after everyone, was never sentimental. She was the only one of us who was exactly sure of how things should be, what was right or wrong, what each of us should do with our life, what would make a profit and what wouldn’t, who we were, we Goan immigrants from India, converted, miscegenated, removed, no history in common with our neighbours, not even a common history among ourselves. Unfortunately, her calculations, though brave, proved false.

  “A cesspool of wickedness ...” went the description I found of Zanzibar in an old edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.“A cesspool of wickedness, Oriental in appearance, Mohammedan in its religion, Arabian in its morals ... a fit capital for the Dark Continent.” I can remember the name of the smug author they quoted, an Englishman, Henry Drummond. I can remember the occasion I discovered the quotation, the first time I thought to research Zanzibar among the donated books of Cookham Wood Library. It was notable: the first time I ever felt a loyalty to home.

  The night—through the storm, through Geoffrey, through Mrs Fernandez—left me in London, and Lon
don left me with Benji. A cesspool of wickedness and Benji in it. A memory of multi-cultural faces, intent in a hotel room. Talk of large sums of money. Benji is foolish enough, don’t you think? In the morning I came to, sweaty and anxious, to find the storm entirely gone, the trees still standing and the question of Benji left fresh and urgent in my mind.

  When Julia arrived, uninvited, I was in no mood to aid young Americans take baby steps towards complexity. Any charm to be found in snow angels or innocence had been scoured away by the night’s dark stream.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked to my back while I concentrated on making coffee, a hurt in her voice.

  “Julia, it’s too early. You really mustn’t just drop in like this.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s sort of on my way. I thought ... I wanted to make sure you were all right. The storm ... You’re alone here.”

  “As you see, I’m fine. The storm was nothing.”

  “And I wanted to talk to you about something. You don’t sound fine.”

  I turned and tried a measured smile. “Since you are here, do you want some coffee?”

  “I don’t drink coffee. It’s bad for you.”

  “Oh, God, Julia, is that the most serious thing you have to worry about? Coffee?”

  “No. It just doesn’t suit me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not awake yet. Last night was full of anxieties and bad dreams. The storm, I expect.”

  She gave me her shrewd look that I thought not sufficiently earned in life. “Were they something to do with love?”

  At this I needed to turn away again. She had no business being so astute. “Well, in a way they do. I was missing someone. Worried about him.”

  “Not Ron Murdoch. Professor Murdoch.”

  This released me into laughter. Julia hesitated, then joined in. At last, I managed, “Oh, bless you, Julia. No, I am not worried about Ron Murdoch. Someone with a more interesting life than Ron.”

  Now she was earnest again. “Love is the most important thing, don’t you think? I don’t just mean romantic love. I mean living your life so that you are able to love the people you love.”

  “If you are right then I don’t seem to be doing very well. Oh, is this what you wanted to talk to me about?” Julia told me then about the boyfriend who wanted her to leave Moore to live with him in Ohio. She loved him, she thought, but did not really want to move. He had been her first lover, she said, and I wondered if he had been the only one. I let myself enter her world a little and leave my thoughts behind. There was a future in her mind composed mainly of a disorienting blaze of choice. She was talented in various ways, and there were various places she might live. Being tied down too early did seem wrong if she wanted to travel, but she thought she might love this boy, and she did not want to be one of these rootless single girls, unserious and forever dating, wasting their energy on acquaintances. I realised, at last—not good at this—that she wanted me to tell her to stay, complete her studies at Moore, that love would wait, that I thought highly of her and believed in her future. And so I did, my feelings mixed, caught between affection for the girl and impatience with all this privilege.