by Roger King
*
I cannot remember how I imagined my future as a child, sitting on the doorstep of the house my father built. My world was so tiny. Did I dream of marrying an Arab prince from the House of Wonders? Riches? A European city called London? Hardly a snowy place called Vermont. Maybe the dreams I had then have nothing to do with the life I’ve led and it was all inevitable—in the nature of the world or in the cocktail of my genes—that I would go to London and then move on from there, continuing west. And maybe it was inevitable, once in London, that I would fall in with the people I fell in with, that I would fall for Benji, who seemed so like me, that I’d bank at the BCCI—“the immigrants’ bank”—the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, known more recently to witty Westerners as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International. Perhaps this path was always set for me, quite possible to predict by those with more knowledge and understanding, and the dreams were of no consequence, my will and industry nothing more than the machinery of fate.
My desk is crowded these days with the details of millennia of human movement: from Africa to Europe to Asia to America to Africa and back again, every connection to everywhere at sometime made. These days I seem to want to connect all parts of the world with each other, all times with the present and all of my life with myself, one huge, expansive web with me held small and safe within it.
I don’t have explanations. But since the market is for certainty, I write academic papers. I’ve just written with a straight face that, “The potential migrant on the threshold of departure balances the cost of giving up his familiar life against the estimated economic benefits of what he knows less well or not at all.” I’ve made the migrant “he” for the sake of convention and for the sake of not being me, and I’ve put him on the shore with a calculator in his hand. In this, there are no devils snapping at the heels, no mad yearnings to be drawn up into the glorious blue, no sticky muck of misery to suck back at the shoes.
THE THURSDAY MORNING BEFORE CHRISTMAS WASimmediately different from the other Thursday mornings. “Miss D’Souza. Please wait one minute.” No “Marcella.” No flirtatious lilt to Omar Khatib’s voice. No eye contact.
He left the room and returned with my file, untied the string around it. “This is your passport. Will you sign here, please?”
I signed. I picked up the passport, gingerly at first, then held it in both hands as if it might transmit messages to me through my palms. “I can keep it?” I asked stupidly.
“Of course.” He was still avoiding my eyes. Something had happened. I thought of the limp figure in his hospital bed, the effort he had made for me.
“Why now?”
He ignored my question. “And this is your application fee, which proved to be unnecessary. Please count it and make sure it is all there.”
It was all there. Omar watched me. I felt him watching me. To think I had considered sleeping with this horrible little man. I hated him. I loved Geoffrey. I wanted to say nothing. A wrong word might change something. I opened the passport. There was my photo. I couldn’t help asking, “There are no restrictions on my leaving Zanzibar?”
“You can travel freely. That is the meaning of a passport.”
“Mr Khatib, why didn’t you tell me this was coming?”
“They sent it over from the mainland by hand. Special delivery.” He paused, then looked me full in the face for the first time. There were tears in his eyes. “You didn’t have to do this. "You think I don’t have a family? You didn’t have to use your VIP friends against me. Why didn’t you tell me you knew such people? I would have gotten you your passport.”
He was on the edge of losing self-control. I slipped the passport into my bag. “Then it’s all worked out. You wanted me to have a passport and now I have one.”
“All worked out. Except I am sacked. I am without a job. I give you your passport and then I go home. What do I tell my wife? That a pretty Goan girl with friends in the government has taken the food out of our children’s mouths because she wants to travel to Europe? Would you like to tell her? You can tell her about how you made me take money and then accused me of taking bribes too.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Haven’t I always treated you nicely? Chatted with you as a friend? Now you get on a jet and I go home to watch my family starve. Maybe you can give my children some of your ice-cream to eat.”
Omar was not the only one to lose his job. There was an epidemic of dismissals. Many of those who suffered were known to support Zanzibari independence and there was talk of a purge prior to a military takeover from the mainland. The normal suspicions were magnified and acquaintances from different communities avoided each other more than ever.
Mrs F was in a fierce mood when we worked together in her kitchen making cakes for the Christmas Eve carol party. “What sort of Christmas can this be? This flour is terrible. No butter. These are our last tins of margarine. Nothing is coming in. Everyone is at everyone’s throat. You have a foreign boyfriend who people want to kill because he makes so much trouble. Your friend the passport officer is telling everyone that the Goans are behind the sackings. Wonderful, Marcella. You are so clever. Yau don’t need any advice from your foolish aunt. Please, the baking tin. And Isabella, give me that. You think you can mix batter by dreaming at it? You know the Danes are coming. Lars’ son is going to play for us. What sort of people are they going to think we are? Christmas without the proper ingredients. Christmas nineteen eighty-three. I’ll remember it.”
On my twenty-yard walk between Mrs F’s house and my house, a boy in a side alley hissed at me. I went over to him and he gave me a note, then ran away.
“I’m home,” said the note. “Just for three days. Can you visit me at my brother’s house? Can you come back to Oman with me?” It was signed, “Your fiance.”
When I tracked my reaction to this message, I noted that my stomach had dropped when my heart should have risen.
Somehow, with little basis, I had connected my newly possessed passport with London. And, with little basis, I had connected my travel to London with Geoffrey. We had not talked since he left the hospital and went to convalesce at Lars’ house. Now Ali was here and his long-standing promise to ask me to join him was real. This was a basis. I had told people for years that he was my fiance. This was a basis. He was in business in Oman and there would be work for me to do. Another basis. Each time I reached one of the landings on the stairs up to our fourth floor flat, I discovered a new basis. I decided to sleep on it, hoping that sleep would turn base bases into gold. I made myself think of Ali when we first made love, when we were both sixteen. It was a sweet, foalish lovemaking: his lithe boy’s body, the amazing number of times he could come. Five times in a session. My first lover. Nearly ten years ago. How perfect to marry the man to whom you gave your virginity. We looked well together, him an Arab and me a Goan, both of us outsiders on socialist Zanzibar, both annoyances to our families, both of us with business in our blood, knowing where the other came from.
The next day I decided to go to the four o’clock carol party first, then visit Ali afterwards. I just felt like doing it in that order. Mrs F had set up twenty or thirty chairs like a schoolroom. On each chair was a piece of tissue paper, crowded with the words of Christmas carols. A bowl of punch was on a table, along with trays of fairy cakes and a trifle. The iced Christmas cake without its proper ingredients was held back in the kitchen. At the front of the room the upright piano had its lid open, like a threat. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” declared Mrs F.
Her house was old, the walls two feet thick, the windows high and narrow, shaded outside by shutters that opened upwards and inside by curtains. Even so, Zanzibar could not be excluded. The afternoon heat insinuated itself and chinks of daylight burned the eyes. From this top floor room the view was all Moslem: Arab architecture, narrow alleyways, dhows on the water, the tower of a mosque. Inside there were ceiling streamers and old Christmas cards with snow, holly and robins on them. Som
e plastic mistletoe was pinned above the doorway to the kitchen where Mrs F could keep a cold eye on it.
The Danes were on time, seven of them and Geoffrey too. Mrs F led Lars to the seat she had specially reserved for him and took his ten-year-old son to the kitchen for a treat. Geoffrey came over to me and, before he could speak, I said, “Geoffrey, I’ve got my passport. I could kiss you.”
He looked around, as if considering how we should do this.
“I said ‘could,’ not will. Mrs F would have a fit.”
“Of course.” He went back to his awkward self.
Mrs F started to play and the room filled with people and song. “Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen ...” The Danish men boomed and the Goan women shrilled. “... deep and crisp and even.”
None of us thought anything strange in all this, though we had never seen snow, and I doubt if any of we Goans could have said what King Wenceslas had to do with Christmas, or who he was, or where he lived. King of the Czechs would have been a surprise. Instead, there was reassurance for us in brazenly broadcasting our voices to the scorching rooftops of a silent Zanzibar afternoon. The Europeans were with us. Mrs F was looking radiant. She was even polite to Geoffrey.
Between the carols, drinks flowed. The punch was finished and bottles of spirits were found. “So, your English Boy is leaving tomorrow,” Mrs F said as we cut the cake and transferred the pieces onto little plates. “Has he told you?”
I leaned over the cake to hide my face. “I haven’t had the chance to talk to him.”
“I hope he’s thanked you for helping him.”
“He helped me. He helped me get my passport.”
She stopped working. “You didn’t tell me that. How?”
“It doesn’t matter how.”
“It doesn’t matter how! Stupid, Marcella. Stupid. All this fuss for a passport, and where are you going to go? France? I haven’t heard much about France recently. Maybe you think you are going with The English Boy —except he didn’t even bother to tell you he was leaving.
“I don’t think any such thing. I’m going to Oman. With Ali. My fiance.”
It worked perfectly. She dropped the knife, stood upright, looked at me. The kitchen was suddenly quiet. “You are not serious, of course.”
“He’s here. He’s invited me.”
“He’s Moslem.”
“So?”
“My god! Blood will out.”
“What?”
“Your mother..
“My mother what?”
“Nothing. Ask your mother. Ask Isabella.”
“Ask her what?”
“Mmmm.” Mrs F had closed her mouth tighdy and was shaking her head. She picked up some plates and left me behind in the kitchen. I heard her say, “Lars, will Peter play something for us now? I taught him ‘The Holly and The Ivy.’ ”
I looked around for my mother but found Geoffrey instead. He was sitting on his own while the others had gone forward to surround the piano and little Peter. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving tomorrow?” I hit him on the chest. “Were you just going to go and say nothing? Like nothing happened.”
“Of course not. No. I couldn’t help it. I only knew they were sending me back yesterday. And I’ve been staying with Lars since I left the hospital. "You haven’t got a telephone. There’s no one I could send a note with.”
He had a point. “Sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. Something’s upset me. You look terrible. You’ve gone white.”
“I’m still a bit weak. Of course I wanted to see you, Marcella. It wasn’t that. You can come and visit me in England now you’ve got your passport.”
I laughed. “I’ve heard that before.”
“No, really.”
“With my husband? I’m getting married.”
“Oh ... the one in Oman?”
“Ali. He’s here.”
“Oh. So... you’re happy?”
“Yes. No. I never wanted to go to Oman. I wanted to go to Europe.”
“You can come with me, then.” His voice was faint. “Don’t be stupid, Geoffrey.”
He was sliding down in his chair. “It’s the heat,” he murmured as I halted his decline. “I need to lie down.” Geoffrey leaned on me while I led him down the four flights of Mrs F’s stairs and up the four flights of ours. By the time he flopped onto our sofa my shoulders ached with the weight of him. This was the room we did not use, containing the furniture we did not use: the dining table, the two easy chairs with drinks tables next to them, the sofa. The walls and floor were painted a deep red, the curtains and upholstery were richly patterned. Mummy’s painful, garish pictures of saints decorated the walls. In the dim of dusk Geoffrey was the only light thing in the room: khaki trousers, olive shirt, white face—all pale and unpatterned. After I had arranged him on the sofa and he had closed his eyes, I stood staring at him, unable to get over how out of place he seemed.
“Peaceful,” I heard him murmur.
Faint sounds from the party reached us. I noticed that the piano had taken up a wild boogie-woogie. Uncle John with too much to drink. I let myself smile at the thought of him. The music came to a crashing, premature end. Auntie Stella, I thought, and imagined Mrs F tearing my feckless uncle from the piano stool. After an interval, I heard, “Silent night, holy night ...” drifting down the street to us.
I should have been going to see Ali. Instead I found myself sitting in a chair, watching Geoffrey, sharing in his tiredness. I remembered that I had been angry and went back from that to Mrs F’s words: “Blood will out.” Something I had to talk to my mother about. Something I maybe needed to talk about before seeing Ali. I was frightened.
I heard her humming a vague confusion of carols as she climbed the stairs. “Mummy,” I called out. “I’m in here.”
She came in and looked at Geoffrey asleep on the couch. “The English Boy,” she said.
“He should stay tonight. He’s sick. He has to fly to Dar tomorrow, then on to England.”
“Christmas Day,” she said.
“Yes. Come and sit down.”
She was obedient. She found it easier and was used to it.
“Mummy, Mrs F said something strange to me tonight. She said I should ask you.”
“Me?”
“Your blood?” Her eyes fled inwards like small animals diving into their holes.
“Yes. Daddy was Goan, wasn’t he?”
“Daddy? Goan? Oh yes, very old Goan.”
“And he was my father. I’m not from somewhere else.” “He was your father.” She shook her head. “Marcella, my love, you’re my daughter.”
I took in this gratuitous piece of information, then saw that her attention had drifted away to Geoffrey. “There hasn’t been a man in this room for years,” she said.
“Mummy! What did Mrs F mean?”
Her attention returned from her reverie too quickly for thought and she said, “Your mother. Your mother was Arab.”
“You’re Arab? What do you mean?”
“Your other mother. Your father’s mistress. She was killed. They were killed. They were killed in the riots because she was an Arab.” Her voice was impatient, as if it was annoying of me to ask her to repeat something so obvious.
“You’re not my real mother?”
“I’m your mother. You never stayed with your birth mother. Your father decided to bring you up here as soon as you were born.”
“My nose”…My hand went to it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s all a very long time ago. Too long ago. You must know all this. Someone must have told you by now. It’s very long ago. You’re my daughter.” But her voice was tentative as if it now sounded strange to her.
“Who was she ... Daddy’s girlfriend?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think I ever knew. Don’t ask me, Marcella. It’s all confused. It was a secret.”
We fell into silence. I had a thousand questions. While I
watched, Mummy’s eyes dissolved into vagueness and I wondered where her mind was travelling. Back, I thought, to the time of the lively young woman in the photos, before her husband died, maybe before she knew he had a Arab mistress, before he brought another woman’s child home for her to care for. When she broke the silence it was with a small seeping voice that at first I could not make out. Then I realised she was softly singing, rejoining the faint voices of the carol party as if she had never left and we had never talked. “God rest ye merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay...” “Mummy, you should rest. Go to bed.”
She nodded, pleased to be released.
I was one big headache of confusion. I walked backwards and forwards the length of the room, my arms folded. So, who was I? I tried Arab and it seemed impossibly strange. Ali was Arab and Ali was not us. I had liked it that he was not us. I couldn’t imagine telling him I was half-Arab. We might be related! I tried ‘orphan.’ My parents are both dead. I’m an orphan. I don’t belong to anyone. What am I?
I must have asked the last question out loud because Geoffrey answered. He made me jump and my hand went to my heart. I had forgotten him completely. In this new confusion there was no role for an unlucky, out-of- place Englishman.