Deborah drew her legs up and hugged them to her. She bent her head and cried softly onto her knees.
There was a knock at her door.
She raised her head. When she heard the sound of keys in the lock, she jumped up and went to answer it.
A room steward stood in the hall with his cleaning cart and an armload of fresh towels. He smiled apologetically and used gestures to indicate that he wanted to clean her room.
"No, thank you," she said in English, then repeated it in Swahili when she saw that he didn't understand. He smiled again and bowed and pushed his cart away. Deborah searched for a Do Not Disturb sign, found one that read USISUMBUE, and hung it on the outside knob.
She leaned against the door and closed her eyes.
Why am I here? Why did I come?
The noise beyond her windows seemed to come through the glass in urgent waves. She heard Nairobi's call but wanted to ignore it. Suddenly she was afraid.
"You're afraid of something," a voice now whispered in her memory. Jonathan, six months ago, asking, "Why are you running from me? Is it me you're afraid of, Debbie, or are you just afraid of commitment?"
She pictured Jonathan Hayes, tried to conjure him up and make him come to life, body and soul, here in this room. She tried to imagine how he would be at this very moment, getting her to talk, drawing her feelings out, helping her through this twisted maze she had gotten herself lost in. There was solace in thinking about Jonathan, comfort in his imagined presence. But as a specter he was too tenuous. At the sound of loud voices from the corridor he vanished.
Deborah felt as if she were scattered in pieces all over the globe, half of them here in East Africa, the other half revolving purposelessly around Jonathan in San Francisco. Since her early days in California, fifteen years ago, when she had blindly fled a reality too strong for one so young and unforged to face, Deborah had led a piecemeal existence, tacking together an identity when and wherever she could. "Where exactly in Cheshire are you from, Dr. Treverton?" Jonathan had asked the afternoon they had met. Deborah was new to the staff, and she had been assigned to assist him in surgery. And to her own surprise, Deborah had found herself confessing that she was actually from Kenya, not from England.
Looking back, she knew what had prompted the unexpected honesty. It was Jonathan himself. There was something about him, in his large brown eyes, as soul-seeing and commiserating as a priest's, and in his confessional voice, a sort of HAL computer voice, she had thought when she first met him. Everyone felt that way about Dr. Jonathan Hayes. People took their loves and frights to him, and he listened with consummate patience.
That was not to say, however, Deborah had learned in their two years together, that he was a man to display his own heart upon his sleeve. Jonathan was not a demonstrative man. If he had feelings, they were carefully harnessed beneath an even-tempered, easygoing exterior. And that was why his sudden, impulsive kiss at the airport-when? yesterday? the day before?-had so startled her.
Deborah shivered and discovered that she was cold.
Her hair had long since dried, but she still wore only her bathrobe. But the decision of whether or not to get dressed was beyond her ability.
Christopher, she thought at last.
He was not her brother after all.
She had been fighting thinking about him; from the moment she had closed the journal, she had turned her back on what had to be faced. Now it made her feel as if the floor had suddenly dropped away from under her. She clutched the doorknob as if to keep from falling. The very thing she had worked so hard for fifteen years to deny suddenly no longer existed.
She was not David Mathenge's daughter. She did not belong to Kenya's black race.
It took her breath away. Deborah managed to leave the door and make her way into the bathroom. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, at a face she had examined a thousand times for traces of a bloodline she had believed for so long to be there. How often she had studied herself! Scrutinizing every eyelash, every line and fold of her face, searching for the African clues, while at the same time praying that they would never appear, so that no one could suspect.
She groped for the edge of the sink.
I ran for no reason. No crime was committed. I was free to love Christopher. I could have stayed.
The tears rose again. Deborah felt ensnared. Jonathan would have helped her to control herself if he were here; he would have shown her how to master her confusion. But Jonathan wasn't here. Just the mocking image of the white woman in the mirror.
She went to the bed and picked up the photographs: Valentine on a polo pony; Lady Rose, looking back over her shoulder; Aunt Grace as a young woman; four barefoot kids standing in the sun. Deborah now looked at the last three pictures.
In her hasty flight from Kenya so long ago she had only packed a few things-Grace's journal; the love letters; a handful of snapshots. She had wrapped them all in paper and string, and there they had stayed for fifteen years. Deborah didn't know what the remaining three photos were of or why she had chosen them, but as she held them up now she felt a strange longing come over her. A longing for the past.
There was Terry Donald, his right foot perched on the carcass of a rhino, his right hand holding a rifle. He was the image of the Donald men: attractive and virile, beaming with confidence and masculinity, sunburned and safari-weary, third-generation Kenya-born.
Deborah next looked at Sarah. She was young in this one, her hair not yet cornrowed, her smile still uncertain and girlish. Sarah was wearing a school uniform; there was a touching aura of innocence about her. The photo reminded Deborah of simpler days, better days.
The last was of Christopher, standing on the bank of the river in dappled sunlight, wearing dark slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and collar open. He was wearing sunglasses. He was smiling. And he was so very, very handsome.
Deborah gazed at him in wonder. The taboo was lifted. She was free to love him again.
And then she thought: What do I do now?
She looked at the telephone on her nightstand. She remembered the mission, that the nuns were expecting her. I should call them and tell them I'm here.
But when her eye fell upon the blue telephone book, Deborah froze.
She stared at it in nameless fear. It was as if her safe and secure hotel room had suddenly been invaded. The closed drapes and locked door were meant to keep the threatening things out. But they were here, after all, in the room with her. In that dog-eared directory.
She reached for it. Thinking of all the people who might be contained in this book, people who were roadways into her past, Deborah felt a curious rush of excitement. It was like taking a journey.
She found a listing for the Donald Tour Agency.
Deborah had cut ties completely when she had fled Kenya. In fifteen years of carefully constructing a new life and a new persona for herself, she had set her face away from the familiar and loved names in Kenya. If she could not have Christopher, she had determined in her immaturity, then she would not have his country or anyone who lived in it. Along with the Mathenges, she had cut the Donalds out of her life.
A search through the phone book told her that Kilima Simba Safari Lodge was still operating in Amboseli; four more Donald lodges were also located throughout Kenya. She came across an advertisement. It showed a Volkswagen minibus gaudily painted in zebra stripes and a line that read "Donald Tours, with the largest fleet of safe buses and drivers in East Africa."
So. They were still here, and apparently prospering. The Donalds. Sprung from Sir James, the man her aunt had loved, whom Deborah had never known.
She was suddenly filled with a desire to see Terry again. And Uncle Geoffrey and Uncle Ralph. Now they seemed to Deborah to be more than just old friends; all of a sudden the Donalds were like family.
Family! she thought excitedly. After so long there was someone she could talk to about the old days, someone who knew her, who would understand.
Deb
orah was suddenly afraid to turn the pages of the phone book. It frightened her to think of seeing Christopher's name printed there, with a phone number. It would place him too close. She had but to pick up the phone and dial. ...
Then she turned the pages. Her hands trembled. She stared down. There were many Mathenges listed; there must be nearly thirty of them. She ran her finger down the list. The Mathenges skipped from Barnabas to Ezekiel.
Deborah read the names again, more carefully. She went all the way down to the bottom and then started at the top again. But there was no Christopher among them.
Did that mean he wasn't in Kenya?
There were three Sarah Mathenges listed. But wouldn't Sarah have gotten married? Wouldn't her last name be different now?
Deborah was overcome. Jet lag combined with two days without sleep, plus eighteen hours since she had last eaten, were exacting their toll on her. Physical exhaustion joined with raw emotion to make Deborah feel somehow defeated. She laid the phone book aside and buried her face in her hands.
She felt caught between nowhere and nowhere, as if she were on a long journey and the train had let her off at a deserted station. She felt as if she must keep on going because she had come so far, but to what end?
Why, oh, why is Mama Wachera asking for me?
When the phone rang, she cried out.
She stared at it, panicked, thinking irrationally in her fatigue that those whom she had just looked up in the phone book had somehow been brought back to life and were now haunting her.
Then she sighed and picked it up. "Hello?"
"Debbie? Hello? Can you hear me?"
"Jonathan?" She listened to the crackle and roar of the long-distance line. "Jonathan! Is that you?"
"God, Debbie! I've been worried! When did you get in? Why didn't you call me?"
She looked at her travel clock on the nightstand. Was it possible that her plane had landed only fourteen hours ago? "I'm sorry, Jonathan. I was so tired. I fell asleep...."
"Are you okay? You sound strange."
"It's a bad connection. And I'm jet-lagged. Are you all right, Jonathan?"
"I miss you."
"I miss you, too."
There was a pause, filled with the ebb and flow of overseas lines. "Debbie? Are you sure you're all right?" he asked again.
She clutched the phone. "I don't know, Jonathan. I'm so mixed up."
"Mixed up! About what? Debbie, what's going on? Have you seen the old woman yet? When are you coming home?"
Despite the spontaneous honesty Jonathan Hayes brought out in people, Deborah had never told him her buried secret-of the man she had thought was her brother, Christopher, whose hut she had gone to one night. That awful secret and the guilt it had laid upon her. How to begin to tell Jonathan of it now and somehow to explain her feelings of confusion now that she was back in Kenya?
"Debbie?"
"I'm sorry, Jonathan. I know I'm being emotional. But I've received a bit of a shock. I've found some things out...."
"What are you talking about?"
He sounded so harsh, so unlike Jonathan. Deborah tried to hold on to him. "I'll be going up to Nyeri tomorrow," she said in a composed voice. "I'll rent a car and drive up to the mission. I'm going to try to get a room at the Outspan Hotel."
"So then you'll be leaving Kenya day after tomorrow?"
She couldn't answer.
"Debbie? When are you coming home?"
"I—I don't know, Jonathan. I can't say yet. I've decided to look up a few people. Friends-"
He fell silent. She tried to picture him. It must be very early in San Francisco, she realized. Jonathan had no doubt just gotten up to get ready for morning surgery. He would be in his running clothes; he would jog through Golden Gate Park for half an hour, take a hot shower, put on a sweatshirt and jeans, and go to the hospital. He'd have coffee and a bran muffin in the cafeteria and then go up to surgery and change into greens. Deborah suddenly, desperately wanted to be doing those prosaic things with him, as they did every morning, had done for the year they had been living together. Deborah wished herself back in San Francisco, in the fog and among the comforting familiarity of their daily ritual.
But she had come to Kenya, and she had to finish what she had started.
"I love you, Debbie," he said.
She started to cry. "I love you, too."
"Call me when you know your return flight."
"I will."
He paused again, as if waiting for her to say something. So Deborah said, "Have a good run this morning."
And he said, "I will. Good-bye, Debbie," and hung up.
Deborah kept her bathrobe on as she slipped between the sheets of her bed. She was both frightened and relieved to discover that when she turned out the light, the room was plunged into nearly total darkness. The heavy drapes did a good job of sealing out the sharp, equatorial sun. But they couldn't stop the incessant noise from penetrating the glass-the constant, urgent pulse of East Africa.
Deborah lay staring up into the blackness. She felt every ounce of strength seep out of her body. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her thoughts seemed to break loose from anchors and float up to the surface of her mind, where they drifted in a kind of lazy incoherence. She half dreamed, half remembered.
She went back two years, to the day she first started at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in San Francisco. She was thirty-one years old and fresh out of a six-year surgical residency. It was Deborah's first day on the new job. She was a real doctor at last and completely on her own. She changed into surgical greens in the nurses' locker room and then went to room 8, where she was to assist Dr. Jonathan Hayes on a gallbladder removal.
"Welcome to St. B's, Dr. Treverton," the circulating nurse said. "What size glove do you wear?"
"Six."
The nurse reached up into the glove cupboard, then said, "Oops, out of sixes," and left the room.
As Deborah stood looking around the operating room, which, since such facilities are universally the same, was familiar and yet unfamiliar, a tall, brown-eyed man came in, tying a mask behind his head.
"Hi," he said. "Where's our gas passer?"
"I don't know."
He smiled at Deborah through horn-rimmed glasses. The rest of his face was hidden behind the mask. "You must be new here," he said with a smile in his voice. "I'm Dr. Hayes. I'm told that I'm easy to work with, so I'm sure we'll get along just fine. I have a few idiosyncrasies that you should know about. I use two silk ties to tie off the cystic duct, and I like them both on one tonsil clamp. Please have that ready for me. Also, four-by-eights on sponge sticks. Can't stand those other little things. Have a lot of them lined up for me, please."
She stared at him. "Yes, Doctor."
Jonathan walked over to the back table, which was already set up with instruments and supplies. He looked it over and nodded. "Good, good. I see you've already anticipated me. Where's the Bacitracin? Be sure to have some on your table."
He went to the door, looked up and down the busy hallway, then said, "By the way, I have a new man assisting me this morning. A Dr. Treverton. So I'll be relying on your help extra specially, okay?" He gave her a wink. "Give me a holler when the patient arrives. I'll be in the doctors' lounge."
Deborah was still staring after him when a young woman came hurrying in, tying up her mask and smelling faintly of cigarette smoke. "Was that Hayes I just saw? Good, we can get this show on the road. You must be Dr. Treverton. I'm Carla. What's your glove size?"
Fifteen minutes later Jonathan Hayes was at the sinks, finishing his scrub. Deborah was at a sink behind him, also finishing up. He turned off the faucet and went across the hall into room 8, hands held upright, elbows dripping. Deborah came into the room as he was drying his arms. When the scrub nurse stepped up with his gown, he gave her a brief, puzzled look. And when he turned around for the circulator to tie it, he blinked at Deborah.
"Have you met Dr. Treverton, Dr. Hayes?" the scrub nurse said as she handed Deborah a sterile t
owel.
"Dr. Treverton?" he said. Then, suddenly realizing his mistake, he turned red.
"No," Deborah said with a soft laugh, "we haven't been introduced."
Then Jonathan also laughed, and they began the operation.
62
D
EBORAH FOUND HERSELF STARING AT EVERY MAN WHO CAME into the restaurant. Any one of them could be Christopher.
She was eating an enormous breakfast. Two hours earlier Deborah had awakened to discover that she had slept for fourteen hours; she was surprisingly refreshed and rested and also ravenous. A hot bath had restored her vitality, and now she was down in the Mara Restaurant, off the Hilton lobby, where green-uniformed hostesses with cornrowed hair escorted African businessmen to tables. While Deborah ate generously of croissants and English jam, slices of papaya and pineapple, and an omelet folded around mushrooms, onions, olives, ham, and cheese, she surreptitiously looked over every man who came in.
The majority were Africans in business suits or tailored tropical outfits of pale green or pale blue cotton. They carried briefcases, had gold rings and wristwatches, and shook hands with one another before sitting down to eat. They spoke a variety of dialects, and when Deborah listened in, she found that she understood much of the Swahili and Kikuyu.
Surely Christopher would not be in Kenya, she thought as she sipped her coffee, if he was not listed in the telephone directory. Then where was he? Why had he left?
He went in search of me, fifteen years ago, she thought.
But then Deborah realized that if that were the case, he would have gone to the college that had granted her the scholarship, and he would have found her.
Whatever he had done, wherever he had gone, Deborah knew that she could not leave Kenya without finding out what became of Christopher.
After breakfast she went to the main desk, where she settled her Hilton bill, asked for a reservation to be made at the Outspan, and ordered a car with a driver. When she was told that it would be some time before the car would arrive, Deborah looked around for a place to wait.
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