The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

by Dorothy Gilman

Lisa laughed. "That's because you didn't meet me in my executive phase. I've really been quite a trial to Dad, I confess. He's an absolute dear but a great worrier. Heaven knows I've given him cause, though. There was a man, you see, and until he decamped I thought he'd solve all my problems."

  "As no man can, of course," said Mrs. Pollifax.

  Lisa nodded. "Yes, I see that now but for a long time I blamed myself, I felt so—so unlovable, you know? So I went to the opposite extreme and—and amputated every emotion that bubbled up, but of course that was ridiculous. It's taken me forever to understand that I'm still myself, and really a rather nice person, and that I just picked a lemon. I'm glad now," she said, smiling warmly at Mrs. Pollifax. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this—probably because I'll burst if I don't tell someone, and you look so—so human—but Africa's having the most tremendous impact on me. Ever since we arrived I've been having the strangest dreams at night, and seeing life and myself in the most astonishing perspective. This country's returning me to something I lost, it's disinhibiting me. Do you find this alarming?"

  "No," said Mrs. Pollifax, smiling as she considered it. "No, because I've been here just long enough to see what you mean. Time seems very different here, as if it stopped and has only just begun again, and everything's new. And yet at the same time it's very old, pre-Biblically old, as if the world itself began here." She stopped and laughed. "Obviously I can't put it into words."

  "One can't," Lisa said eagerly as they began walking down the path to the river under huge, ancient trees. "Not important emotions. And yet, you know, under the surface there seems to be a great deal going on here.

  I had a very spooky thing happen to me yesterday when I was driving back to Lusaka. I thought I'd deliver this woman and her child directly to their village, which was about a mile off the main road, but after dropping them off I must have made a wrong turn because I couldn't find my way back, not even to her village." She paused and added with a shiver, "I kept driving until I was really lost, and then I came to a road-block on this dusty, deserted road and—really it was terrifying—I was suddenly surrounded by soldiers or police, I don't know which they were."

  "Good heavens," said Mrs. Pollifax, startled.

  Lisa nodded. "About twenty of them, all with rifles. They were terribly nice but at the same time they checked everything, my passport and visa, my luggage, the car. They must have kept me there for nearly an hour answering questions: why I was on that road, and where I was going, where I'd been, how long I was to be in Zambia and why I'd come to Zambia in the first place."

  "Where did this happen?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  Lisa frowned. "Somewhere down in the Kafue Flats area—that's what the map said, anyway."

  "The driver who brought us to Chunga," said Mrs. Pollifax, "spoke of spies—Rhodesian spies—infiltrating Zambia."

  "Probably," said Lisa. "There have been guerilla raids all along the Rhodesian border—except Africans call it Zambabwe, you know—and deep inside the country too. Not by Zambians but by revolutionaries crossing through Zambia, so I suppose the Rhodesians send people into this country as well. But if I lived next door to an apartheid country," she said hotly, "I don't think I'd sit on my hands either. I think it's terribly unfair that a minority of two hundred and fifty thousand white people have absolute power over six million natives and squash them. After all, it's their country."

  "In general," said Mrs. Pollifax mildly, "the Golden Rule seems to be the last rule applied to any situation these days." They had reached the riverbank and she thought how incongruous it was to speak of violence in such a setting. On their left the water raced over great primeval boulders, shooting up plumes of spray and caressing the ear with its stormy descent. Once beyond the rocks the water gentled, sending small ripples to the shore at their feet until on their right it flowed smoothly around an island and became almost a backwash before it continued on its way south, to Chunga camp and beyond. There were several rough chairs placed near the bank, and a circle of them at the empty campfire site. "Rhodesia is very near," she said, sitting down in one of the chairs, "and Zambia used to be Northern Rhodesia, didn't it?"

  "Oh yes," said Lisa, "but until you've visited Livingstone you've no idea how near. Half of Victoria Falls is in Rhodesia. I took one of those sundown cruises out of Livingstone, and one side of the river was Zambian and the other Rhodesian. The guide said we were under observation the entire time, because the river's the only barrier, and people can cross at night. In fact—"

  She stopped as a voice hailed them from the top of the hill: the third Land Rover had arrived and John Steeves was descending, followed by Amy Lovecraft, Dr. Henry and—very gingerly—Willem Kleiber. A multicolored parasol next came into view, with Chanda under it. A moment later Cyrus Reed and McIntosh began descending the hill too, as well as a young man wearing a white linen jacket and carrying a tray of glasses.

  Dr. Henry sat down near Lisa and smiled at her. "We saw a water buffalo, a number of puce and some impala."

  She said, "We saw a leopard."

  "I think," said John Stcevcs, taking the chair next to her, "that if you look very quickly into those palms to your left you can add a monkey to your list."

  "Never mind the monkey," said Amy Lovecraft deflating. "Mrs. Pollifax, Julian asked me to tell you there's hot water now, and because there are so many of us we have to stagger our baths."

  "And he's giving me first crack?" said Mrs. Pollifax. "Except I haven't the faintest idea where the bath is."

  Chanda looked up and said eagerly, "I know where the beta is, I will show you."

  "Good, let's go," she told him, and rose from her chair to follow him up the hill. He chose to ignore the path and to leap gracefully from rock to rock, and for the first time she noticed the long puckered seam of a scar that ran up the back of his leg from the ankle to his thigh. She remembered Dr. Henry saying that he'd been nearly dead when he was brought into the hospital, and she wondered how many more scars there were. At the top of the hill he turned and waited for her, his eyes as luminous as if incandescent bulbs shone behind them.

  "I move fast, like monkey," he said, grinning.

  "You certainly do." Pausing to catch her breath she noticed a small chamois bag suspended about his neck on a string. "What's that, Chanda?" she asked, pointing.

  He looked down in surprise, stuffed the bag quickly inside his shirt again and gave her a thoughtful look. "Como," he said guardedly. Suddenly his enormous smile was back. "You like to see? It is my treasure."

  "Love to," she told him. "Is it secret?"

  "Very secret," he said, and seemed grateful when she opened the door of her room and beckoned him inside. First he gravely returned her parasol to her. "Sand mao-tai," he said, and then he removed the chamois bag from around his neck and knelt beside her bed to empty its contents across the blanket.

  She found herself both touched and amused at what emerged, remembering her son Roger's similar collection at this age, except that a more sophisticated society had rendered Roger's treasures obsolete. In the bush, Chanda's collection still had immediate value.

  "From cifulo," Chanda said, pointing past the wall of her hut. "Mushi. My home."

  "Do you mean your home before you met Dr. Henry?"

  "Before this," he said, pointing matter-of-factly to his scarred leg, and picking up objects from his collection he explained them one by one. "Munga—thorn," he said.

  "Munga," she repeated, nodding.

  "Bulobo—fishhook. Mwele—knife." Mwando was a ball of string. Lino was a tooth—his own, she suspected, although his were white and gleaming. "And cibiliti," he added, holding up two safety matches.

  "Yes, and a snake," she added, pointing to a dried skin.

  "Nsoka," he said, smiling and nodding. "My father give me nsoka. He was hunter, very big man. He track game— Ishanda lonshe nama. He teach me."

  "So you'll be a hunter too?"

  "Already a hunter," he said, grinning. "Very good one." She
watched in silence as he returned his treasure to the chamois bag, his touch loving.

  When he stood up she said quietly, "Thank you, Chanda."

  "You nunandi now," he told her. "Friend. You and Dr. Henry. And now you have beta," he said with his charming smile. "I show you."

  Ten minutes later Mrs. Pollifax was seated in a hot tub in a small thatched hut, contentedly humming a song and reflecting that she was having a very good time on her safari and taking some very good pictures. Twenty minutes later, dressed again, she returned to her room and sat down on her bed to do a little planning about those pictures. Yesterday, for instance, she had completed her first film, tucked away now in her suitcase, and this morning she'd begun her second. That left four untouched cartridges, which meant—she made rapid mathematical computations—ninety-three more snapshots, many of which would have to be spent on animals and scenery. She was quite certain, however, that she'd already captured each of her traveling companions at least once on film, and this pleased her very much. Some of the pictures might not come out well, of course, but statistically it was a good beginning, and she thought that by tomorrow she could relax and become more casual about her filming. She happily touched the four sealed yellow boxes of film lined up in her suitcase and then she slipped her hand into the pocket of her folded bush jacket to check the completed cartridge she'd packed away this morning.

  The cartridge wasn't there.

  Startled, Mrs. Pollifax picked up the jacket, turned each pocket inside out, shook the garment, tossed it across the bed and began digging through her suitcase. She could find no metal cartridge. She crawled under the bed and searched and then checked through her purse: no film. Thoroughly alarmed now, she picked up her suitcase and dumped the contents all over the bed and began a frenzied hunt.

  Still there was no cartridge. Be calm, she thought, and sat down on the bed in the middle of bright sweaters, cold creams, slacks and sneakers, but there was no evading the fact that the film was missing. Yet she'd packed it this noon at Chunga camp before coming here, and several minutes later when the boy had come for her suitcase she'd reopened the bag to add her toothbrush, and the exposed film had still been there: she could see it now in her memory, sticking out of the pocket of her folded bush jacket. And since her suitcase had been locked during its journey to Kafwala there could have been no accident that would jar open the suitcase and scatter its contents. The film had been locked inside her suitcase when it left Chunga, and her suitcase had remained locked until she had opened it half an hour ago to extract a bar of soap for her bath. She'd reached inside without looking because she knew exactly where the soap was, but she'd had to unlock the suitcase to do so, and the lock had not been tampered with then . . .

  But if the film wasn't lost—and it couldn't have been, she thought grimly, going over and over it-—then it had to have been stolen, and stolen while she was taking a bath.

  She sat without moving, allowing the shock of this to catch up with her, and it was a very real shock, with implications that left her a little dizzy. How frightfully arrogant she'd been, she thought, dashing about taking her snapshots so openly while all the time someone on this safari didn't want to be photographed. Someone had allowed her to snap as many of them as she pleased, and then her film had been quietly taken away from her. She had been discreetly and firmly put in her place.

  Score one for Aristotle, she thought.

  Brazen, of course, but so easy ... an empty room with only an inside bolt on the door and no way of locking it on the outside, her suitcase unlocked and she in the bathtub ...

  A flicker of anger stirred in her, grew, and at last triumphed over her alarm: it appeared that she now had a definite adversary, faceless, nameless and observant. She could assume that her burglar knew nothing about her except that she preferred faces mixed in with her scenery, but her unknown antagonist was clever, she knew that now. He had moved in early, counting on her not noticing, counting on her being a dithery, rather silly woman addicted to snapshots. He would do better next time, she thought, to leave an unexposed film behind him, because even silly dithery women noticed when too many exposed films disappeared.

  But in the meantime she had lost twenty valuable pictures, and unless she could outthink her burglar she was doomed to see her completed films picked off like flies. It was also disturbing to realize that her collection was reduced to the six or seven snapshots still in her camera ... or had these been tampered with too? The camera still registered seven snapshots on its gauge, and the cartridge looked untouched, but just to be certain she removed the film, put in a fresh one and dropped the half-completed one in her purse. The sealed boxes she hid: one in her totebag, one in the toe of a sneaker, the last inside her purse.

  Defiantly she decided that she would continue her snapshot-taking with an enthusiasm certain to annoy her adversary, but it was time now to turn to her lapel-pin camera. She had worn the latter pinned to her sweater and by now her companions must be accustomed to seeing her wear it, incongruous as it looked with casual clothes. She would continue to wear it doggedly.

  Still shaken by her discovery she repacked her suitcase and locked it. As she left her room she found Cyrus Reed opening the door of the room on the other side of the arcade. He turned, looking genuinely surprised. "You're there?" he said. "Good, we're neighbors."

  Even if it was he who had stolen her film, she thought it might be wise to mention her discovery of its disappearance. "If you've been down by the river," she said, "I wonder if you could tell me—or remember—just who left the group to walk up this way past my room?"

  Reed looked from her to the door behind her and his brows lifted. "Something missing?" he asked quietly.

  She nodded. "Yes, while I was in that building over there taking a bath. But I don't," she added, "want to cause a fuss."

  "Quite right," he said. "Very sensible. And you want to know who left the party . . . Have to say nearly everyone," he said regretfully. "Let's see . . . good lord, even I left. Spilled some beer on my slacks, came up to change. Steeves ran out of film—passed him coming up as I went back. Mclntosh left to take a nap—still gone. Kleiber came up for a map to prove some point or other, Lisa for a sweater. Chanda went with you and didn't return. Yes, I'd say the only two who stayed by the river were Mrs. Lovecraft and Dr. Henry. Nothing too valuable, I hope?"

  "Fairly so, yes. To me."

  "Don't like to hear that. You gave a thorough search? But of course you would." He placed the emphasis on you very flatteringly.

  She gave him a smile and took a few steps toward the path. "A very efficient list, Mr. Reed. Thank you."

  "No," he said firmly.

  She turned in surprise.

  "Not Mr. Reed. Call me Cyrus."

  "Oh." She hesitated and then nodded. "And my name's Emily." As she descended the hill, leaving him behind, she realized that she felt obscurely better and was even smiling. A rather fatuous smile, she guessed, but still she was smiling.

  By half-past six there was a crackling fire down by the river, the sole illumination except for a lantern hung from a post. They sat in a circle around the fire, drawn closer by the darkness beyond them and by the feeling of being very small under the huge trees and beside the roaring river. They sat and talked and sipped beer. The only activity came from two people: one the grave-faced young man in a white jacket who came down the hill bearing silverware, napkins and plates, then went up again and returned with cups and saucers, more beer and glassware. The other was Mrs. Pollifax who, with a flashcube attached to her camera, knelt, hovered, stood, sat and wickedly took picture after picture.

  "Why do you bother," asked Mr. Kleiber curiously, "when you don't have a good German camera like Mr. Mclntosh or Mrs. Lovecraft?"

  "Oh, but this camera is just fine for an amateur," she said. "I snap pictures just for my children, you know. They'll be fascinated, and then of course my grandchildren will love seeing the animals. I always try," she told him firmly, "to create a total backgrou
nd, so that they can step into the adventure and experience it too."

  "And do you," asked Cyrus Reed dryly, "show slides?"

  She gave him a level glance and without batting an eyelash, for she loathed slides, said, "Of course."

  "Incredible," he said, staring at her.

  On an inspired note she added, "As a matter of fact after dinner I'll bring down pictures of my grandchildren to show you. They're very lovely grandchildren."

  "Really?" said Amy Lovecraft coldly.

  The young waiter had just arrived bearing a large tray, followed by two young men carrying steaming dishes, and he chose this moment to announce that dinner was served. Mrs. Pollifax jumped up immediately and became the first to approach the food spread out on the table. She was not surprised when she returned to her chair to find herself something of a pariah after her announcement about snapshots. Mr. Kleiber chose a seat as far removed from her as possible, and Mrs. Lovecraft, who had shown no real interest in Mr. Kleiber before, eagerly took the chair next him. Lisa, assuming a more neutral corner, was joined by Steeves as usual. Tom Henry found a seat not far from Lisa, and Mclntosh, still smiling enigmatically, sat beside Julian.

  Only Chanda and Cyrus Reed showed signs of not being infected. Chanda sat down cross-legged on the ground beside Mrs. Pollifax and gave her a dazzling white smile. "I sit here. You nunandi."

  "Damn awkward eating from one's lap," growled Reed. "Try a corner of this little table," suggested Mrs. Pollifax. "After all, the word safari means camping."

  "Touché" he said, smiling. "Thanks. Incredibly good food. Can't imagine how they do such a cordon bleu job out here without electricity."

  "There is big wood stove," Chanda told him eagerly, "and very fine cook. Julian calls him a—a chef."

  Reed nodded. "That's it, then. Saw you up there poking around. Anyone else speak Bemba here?"

  "Cimo," said Chanda, holding up one finger. "There is good life here in park, maybe I not be hunter."

  "Tom said you're damn good at hunting and tracking and only twelve years old," pointed out Reed, deftly spearing a piece of steak. "Said you went off to see what's left of your old village on the Angolan border this spring, and hiked fifty miles through the bush alone."