by Paula McLain
I wondered if she meant Denys, but she didn’t elaborate. Instead, she showed me to a small guest room so I could wash, and then we met again on the veranda for tea. Her houseboy, Juma, held the china pot and poured for us, white gloves flapping around his thin black wrists. He passed a plate of biscuits and sweets with a formality I hadn’t seen in many servants, not in these parts.
“I’ve come to ask a favour,” I told her when Juma had gone. “But maybe you’ve already guessed that.”
“You’ve come to stay then?” Her accent rolled and swooped. Her dark eyes were pretty, but I found myself squirming under them a bit. She seemed to watch rather than simply look at things.
“Not exactly. My mother is returning to Kenya after many years away. I thought your house might do if it’s still empty. She’ll pay you a fair price, of course.”
“Why, yes. There hasn’t been anyone in it for so long. It will be nice to have her here, and for you, too.”
“She’s not actually…” I had no idea how to explain it all. “We don’t know each other that well.”
“I see.” Again her dark eyes fixed on me, making me want to fidget in my chair. “It’s very kind of you to help her in that case.”
“I suppose so,” I said, not wanting to say more. Above her house on the ridge, five deeply blue hills cut a rising and falling line. They drew my eye back and forth.
“Aren’t they wonderful?” Karen said. “I love them indecently.” She held up her fist to model how the shape of the ridge was like the knuckles of her hand. “There’s nothing like them in Denmark. Nothing like any of what I have here.” She drew a slim silver case from her pocket and lit a cigarette, shaking out the match and plucking a thread of tobacco from her tongue, all without taking her eyes from my face. “Your browned skin looks so wonderful with your hair, you know,” she finally said. “You really are one of the most beautiful girls I’ve seen in these parts. And I read about your racing successes in the Nairobi paper. That can’t be an easy life for a woman, and the society isn’t terribly gentle here, is it?”
“Do you mean the gossip?”
She nodded. “It’s such a small town, Nairobi. So provincial—which is funny considering how vast Kenya is. You’d think we were all crouched up next to one another, whispering between windows, instead of hundreds and hundreds of miles apart.”
“I hate it. Why do people hunger to know every nasty thing? Shouldn’t some things be private?”
“Does it trouble you that much, what others think?” Her face was sharply and darkly beautiful—and her deep-set onyx eyes had an intensity I hadn’t seen very often. She was older than me by ten or fifteen years, I guessed, but her attractiveness was hard to ignore.
“I just feel a bit over my head sometimes. I think I was too young to get married.”
“If it were another man, the right man, age might not be an issue. The rightness of the match changes everything.”
“You’re a romantic then.”
“A romantic?” She smiled. “I never thought so, but lately I don’t know. I’ve come to think differently about love and marriage. It’s not a proper philosophy. I don’t want to bore you, in any case.” She fell quiet for a moment, and a small speckled owl glided towards her from an open window on the porch, as if she’d called it silently. It settled on her shoulder. “This is Minerva. She always turns up for company…or maybe it’s the biscuits.”
The name of Karen’s farm was Mbogani, meaning “house in the woods.” Out past her wide lawn, frangipani trees bloomed yellow-white and deep pink. There were palms and mimosa trees, stands of bamboo and thorn trees and banana groves. Six hundred acres of the lower slopes of the ridge had been groomed and tiered for bright green coffee plants. Another portion of her farm was native forest, more was rolling, fragrant grassland, and still more was home to Kikuyu shambas, native squatters who tended cattle and goats and grew their own maize and pumpkin and sweet potato crops.
We walked along a trampled footpath through shoulder-high plants and tangled vines to Mbagathi, the house she would be offering Clara. It was only a small bungalow with a tiny veranda, but there were plenty of windows, and around the back stood an arbour and clustering mimosas to keep things cool. I tried to imagine my mother there, resting in the shade, but found I couldn’t conjure her at all without a shiver of anxiety.
“Bror and I lived here first,” Karen explained, “just after we were married. I’m still very fond of it.”
“I met your husband once in town. He’s charming.”
“Isn’t he?” She smiled a complicated smile. “It’s kept me from strangling him any number of times.”
Inside, there were three small bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a sitting room furnished with lamps and a leopard-skin rug. The sofa was like a bed squeezed into one corner, forming a cozy nook. She showed me a pretty French clock on the mantelpiece, a wedding present. Dusting the top of it with her sleeve, she said, “No doubt you’ve heard whispering about my marriage as I have yours.”
“Only a little.”
She shook her head doubtfully. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter. No one really knows how it is with anyone else. That’s the truth. That’s our only real retaliation when the gossip starts to churn.”
I thought of the humiliating jokes and rumours that came with the final days of Green Hills, and how they had seemed to ruin even what had been good. “Maybe that’s the secret to surviving all sorts of trouble, knowing who you are apart from it, I mean.”
“Yes.” She picked up the clock, turning it over in her hand as if to remind herself of its significance. “But like many things, it’s so much easier to admire that stance than to carry it out.”
—
We left Mbagathi for a tour of her factory, where dozens of Kikuyu women raked through long, narrow tables of coffee cherries that were drying in the sun, going from red to chalk white.
“This whole structure burned to the ground last January.” She plucked up a coffee cherry and rolled it between her palms until the skin split and fell away. “One of God’s little cruelties. I thought it would finish me off at the time, but here I am still.”
“How do you manage? Farming is so difficult.”
“Honestly, I don’t know, sometimes. I’ve risked absolutely everything, but there’s everything to gain, too.”
“Well, I admire your independence. I don’t know many women who could do what you’ve done.”
“Thank you. I have fought for independence here, and freedom, too. More and more I find they’re not at all the same thing.”
It began to rain on our way back. By the time we reached the edge of Karen’s lawn, we were slick and streaming, our boots caked to the knees with red Kikuyu mud. Laughing at the sight of each other, we came around the veranda, beginning to loosen our wet things. There sat Blix, unshaven and covered with dust. He’d raced ahead of the rain, apparently, and now had an uncorked bottle of brandy at his side.
“I’ve arrived just in time. Hello, Beryl. Hello, Tanne, dear.”
Karen said, “I see you’ve made yourself comfortable.”
“It is still my house.”
“So you keep telling me.”
Their teasing had a wicked edge, but under the surface there was more. Some part of whatever had stitched them together was still alive and well. That was obvious even to me.
Karen and I went in to change, and when we reappeared, Blix had settled himself more comfortably and was smoking a pipe. His tobacco smelled exotic, like something he’d found only by belly-crawling through the far reaches of the continent. “You look well, Beryl.”
“So do you. Dr. Turvy must be earning his keep.”
“He’s got you enlisted in that silly game?” Karen turned to Blix. “Where have you been this time?”
“Uganda and then back through Tanganyika with a Vanderbilt—after rhinoceros. I nearly lost him, actually.”
“The Vanderbilt or the rhino?”
“That’s funny, da
rling. The Vanderbilt. Two lethal-looking males charged straight at him. The man’s very lucky I had the right gun on me.” He turned to me. “A rhino isn’t something you want in your back yard. It’s like a massive snorting locomotive encased in unconquerable hide. When threatened, it will crash through anything, even steel.”
“Weren’t you afraid?”
“Not really.” He smiled. “I had the right gun.”
“If you sit at the Muthaiga Club long enough,” Karen said, “you’ll hear any number of hunters making their kills again. The stories grow bigger and more harrowing with every telling. Bror is the only one I know who makes mountains into molehills instead of the other way round.”
“Except for Denys, you mean,” Blix corrected.
“And Denys. Yes.” She didn’t seem remotely flustered at hearing Denys’s name roll from her husband’s lips. And Blix had said it so easily I couldn’t imagine that Denys was Karen’s lover. Still, the whole dance was fascinating. “Did you see him out there?” she wanted to know.
Blix shook his head. “They say he’s gone west, into the Congo.”
“What’s that country like?” I asked him.
“Very, very dark.” He sipped at his brandy. “They have every kind of snake there, and some say cannibals.”
“Are you trying to scare me?” Karen narrowed her eyes.
“No, inspire you. Tanne scribbles stories all the time, did you know, Beryl? She’s quite good, actually.”
“I’ll tell you one by the fire some night.” She waved away his praise. “I’m more of a storyteller than a writer in any case.”
“Denys mentioned you loved stories here.”
“Oh, we do,” she insisted. “And Bror is awfully skilled at them as well. Perhaps he’ll play Scheherazade for us tonight.”
“If I don’t have to pretend to be a virgin,” he said, and we all laughed.
—
That evening we had dinner on the veranda. The Ngong Hills went plum coloured and almost hypnotically still as Blix treated us to more tales from his Vanderbilt safari. One rolled easily into the next. He had dozens and dozens of them and didn’t fall silent for more than a few minutes at a time as Karen’s cook, Kamante, brought us a string of dishes. There was lightly breaded chicken in a cream sauce, roasted vegetables with herbs, a corn pudding studded with mushrooms and thyme, ripe cheese, and oranges. Blix kept our glasses filled, and by the time we reached the final course, I was floating because of the wine, and also surprised at how very much I liked these two. There wasn’t anything simple about them, and I preferred that, and trusted it. My life wasn’t simple either.
When a hooked moon had risen into the sky, and we’d had our pudding and our Calvados and our coffee, Blix said good night and began his journey back to town.
“Isn’t he a little too tight to be driving?” I asked her.
“I don’t think he can drive any other way.” She was silent for several minutes, looking out into the dark. “He’s asked me for a divorce. That’s why he came.”
I knew from Cockie he’d asked more than once, but also that it would be cruel to let on. “Will you give him one?”
She shrugged. “How would it be to have two Baronesses Blixen in the colony? There’s not room, you see. One would be elbowed out and forgotten.”
“I can’t imagine anyone forgetting you,” I said. I wasn’t flattering her. I truly couldn’t.
“Well, we shall see.”
“How is it you’ve managed to stay friends?”
“We were friends before we were anything else. It was his younger brother Hans I was taken with. This was long ago, in Denmark. Bror became my confidant when Hans married another.” She paused and shook her head so that her long silver earrings tinkled.
“Younger brother? He couldn’t have offered you a title then?”
“No. Only love.” She smiled darkly. “But it wasn’t to be. And then Bror thought of this, a new start in Africa. If only it hadn’t brought a mountain of debt.”
“Do you still love him?”
“I wish I could say no. But Africa sets you up to feel things you’re not prepared for. I came to believe we could have everything…children, devotion, fidelity.” She shut her eyes and opened them again, the pupils flaring black. “Maybe he’s not capable of loving just one woman. Or perhaps he is, but not me. He was never faithful, not even in the beginning, and that’s what I keep coming back to, how I thought I knew what I had bargained for when I married Bror, when actually I had very little idea of any of it.”
I took a bolstering swallow of Calvados. “You could be talking about my marriage. That’s just how I feel.”
“And will you get your divorce, do you think?”
“I hope so. I’m afraid to apply any pressure just now.”
“We’re all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren’t your own person at all—are you? The real question is whether or not you will risk what it takes to be happy.”
She was referring to Jock, but her words made me think of other things, too.
“Are you happy, Karen?”
“Not yet. But I mean to be.”
Through a series of telegrams, everything was settled with Clara very quickly. The house was going to be perfect, she insisted, and fell over herself to thank me. But even this much intimacy felt confusing. I hadn’t had a mother for more than sixteen years, and didn’t have the slightest idea how to behave with her, even on paper. I struggled with every line, wondering how affectionate I should be, or how aloof. I had no practise with any of this—there wasn’t even a word for what we were now, not mother and daughter, but not utterly estranged. It was bewildering.
In one message from Clara, I learned that my brother, Dickie, had been in Kenya for many years and was currently up north in Eldoret, jockeying for a good stable there. I couldn’t quite believe it. Dickie had been here, in my world, without my being aware of it? What did it mean? Would we all somehow come to know one another as a family again? Did I want that? Was it even possible?
I was still tumbling with conflicting feelings when Clara arrived at the tail end of May. As I set off to meet her at the Norfolk Hotel in a motorcar I’d borrowed from D, my hands shook and my throat felt full of knots. Sweat sprang up under my arms and behind my knees like a bout of mysterious fever. It was all I could do not to run for cover when she and the boys came down and met me in the tea room. I had tried to remember what she looked like, wondering if I’d even recognize her, but I needn’t have. We had the same face, with identical high checkbones and foreheads, the same pale-blue eyes. Looking at her gave me a strange, lurching feeling—as if I were meeting myself as a lost ghost—and I was glad the boys were there to pull me out of the sensation. They were seven and nine, blond and clean and combed and shy at first. They half hid behind their mother as she took me in her arms. Unprepared, I bumped her hat with my elbow and pulled away, feeling stung and confused. I didn’t want her embrace, but just what did I want?
“How was the voyage?” I managed.
“The waves were bigger than anything,” Ivan, the older one, said.
“Ivan was sick all over the side of the boat,” Alex broke in proudly. “Twice.”
“It was a trial,” Clara confirmed. “But we’re here now.”
We moved to a narrow table, where the boys fell on plates of biscuits as if they’d been caged. “You really are too beautiful,” Clara exclaimed. “And married now, I understand.”
I didn’t know how to answer her, and so only nodded.
“Harry was the joy of my life.” Clara’s mouth trembled. Her eyes silvered with tears. “You’ve no idea how hard it’s been, with the debts and the uncertainty. And now I’m alone again.”
As she dabbed at her tears with a handkerchief, I stared at her, feeling slightly stunned. For some reason, I thought she might try to explain herself or apologize. That she might ask regretfully about Clutt, or want to know ho
w things had really been for me. But she was very much caught up in her own sad story, this recent one, as if there weren’t any other.
“Mbagathi is beautiful,” I said, making an effort to plunge ahead. “The boys will love it there. They can run around to their hearts’ content, and maybe even go to school. The baroness has found a teacher for the Kikuyu children on her land.”
“You really have been my saviour, Beryl. I knew I could count on you.” She sniffed loudly. “Isn’t your sister marvellous, boys?”
I was their sister, and also a stranger, a fact that didn’t seem to rattle them as much as it did me. Ivan ignored Clara completely. Alex glanced up with his lips covered in biscuit crumbs, and then dived back in.
—
Two hours later, I drove them away from the hotel, the boys spitting over the open sides of the borrowed car into the dust. Clara chided them distractedly, and then said, “I just can’t get over how much Nairobi has changed. It’s a proper town now. You should have seen it back then.”
“Well, you’ve been gone a long time.”
“In those days you couldn’t walk for the goats. A postal office no bigger than a can of beans. No proper shops. No one to talk to.” She swatted at the still-spitting boys with her handkerchief, and turned around. “I just can’t get over it.”
She didn’t seem embarrassed to be speaking of the past with me. She didn’t seem to remember I was a part of her past in the colony, in fact. Though maybe that was best, when I thought about it—if we could treat each other more impartially, as if there were nothing to apologize or make amends for. As if nothing had been lost. Then perhaps there might not be any further pain ahead. I hoped not as I squeezed the steering wheel with my gloved hands, pointing us out of town on the rutted road and towards Mbogani.
—
It had been more than a month since my last visit to Karen’s. I went to the main house first. Karen was up the slope at the factory but heard the motor and came running, her hair windblown, a fingerprint of coffee dust on her cheek. There was no sign of Denys anywhere. Perhaps he was away still—or again.