The Idol of Mombasa

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Vera was no snob. Her desire, he was sure, was not to raise his social standing by turning him into a cattle rancher or a coffee grower, what he had wanted to become in the first place. Now, with her granny’s wedding gift, he had the means to do so.

  But he was not ready to. Not yet.

  Vera stood on tiptoes and tried to see who was descending from the other ship. “Very likely a German count of some sort who’s come on a shooting safari.” She spoke with a bit of the dislike most British settlers harbored against their neighbors to the south.

  “You are quite mistaken, my dear.” This from a nearby portly Englishman in a sun helmet, who sported a drooping ginger-and-gray mustache. “It’s the Grand Mufti of Egypt, don’t you know.”

  “We didn’t know,” Justin answered before Vera had the chance. “Quite an occasion.”

  Vera giggled. “I knew the band and the bunting were not for us.”

  Their neighbor on the deck harrumphed. “All humbug! Great lot of folderol over a heathen, if you ask me. You’d think King George himself were arriving, what?”

  The ship’s boatswain came up behind them. “Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen. Captain had hoped we would be ashore before the ceremony began. I am afraid it will be the better part of half an hour before all the formalities are completed. I apologize, but we must wait.”

  The grumpy Englishman’s ears turned red and he bit on his mustache. Vera smiled to herself. The man was holding in a string of swearwords, she was sure, and it was costing him dearly. She hoped his sun helmet would not catch fire with the heat of his anger.

  “At any rate, we have the best vantage point from which to observe the festivities,” she said as soothingly as she could.

  The big man then pushed forward, completely blocking the view of a girl of about ten standing nearby with her nanny.

  Silently, Vera invited the child to stand in front of her.

  “Oh, look,” the girl exclaimed, pointing at a man disembarking from the other ship. “He looks like Father Christmas.”

  The stately figure descending the gangplank of the German steamer did indeed resemble Santa Claus. He was tall and broad, with a beautifully groomed long white beard. He wore a black robe and a white conical hat that flared out and up and added to his considerable height. As he reached the shore end of the gangplank, they could see that the crown of his impressive headgear was bright red.

  “Father Christmas, my foot,” the man beside them grumbled. “He’s here to get gifts, rather than to give them.” No one nearby had the nerve to contradict him.

  A great deal of tiresome and largely inaudible speechifying ensued by the district commissioner and then by various white-turbaned Arab dignitaries dressed in beautifully colored, elaborate brocades. As predicted, many gifts were presented to the Grand Mufti, among them a long, curved gold-mounted sword, its scabbard encrusted with precious stones.

  Justin leaned over and whispered in Vera’s ear: “Exactly the kind of thing a devout Anglican would give a visiting bishop, wouldn’t you say, darling?”

  At that moment the ship’s first officer made his way through the onlookers at the railing. “Mr. Tolliver, sir,” he said. “This letter just arrived for you.”

  Tolliver took the envelope the man offered. “Excuse me, dearest,” he said to Vera with a bow, and made his way to the back of the crowd.

  By the time Vera arrived at his side, the band on the shore had begun to play “God Save the King.” Justin was standing at attention and singing in his lovely baritone voice. She wanted to pry open his fingers and fetch out the letter, but she dutifully stood and sang the anthem.

  “What is it?” she asked as soon as the music stopped.

  He shoved the now crumpled paper into his pocket. “I’ll tell you once we have disembarked. Nothing to worry over, really, darling.”

  She did not believe him, but she had no choice but to move with the mass of passengers now pressing forward down the gangplank to the wharf.

  ***

  Early that same afternoon, at the Wesleyan Mission on the mainland at Nyali just north of Mombasa Island, Joseph Gautura stood with his back against the missionary’s house and listened at a window covered only with mosquito netting. The loud voices of the men arguing in Swahili inside made it easy for him to hear. Robert Morley, the missionary, trumpeted his angry words. The ivory trader Khalid Majidi shouted back in kind.

  “Bwana Majidi, I have nothing but respect for your religious beliefs,” Reverend Morley said in a tone that seemed to Joseph anything but respectful. “I must remind you, though, that you have been keeping Joseph as a slave, which has been against the law in this country for over five years.”

  “I remind you, Mchungali Morley, that you British can say what you like. We Arabs have been trading on this coast since before Christ was born. The Sultan of Zanzibar has said we may not trade in slaves anymore because he has given you British charge of this place, but you cannot tell me what I can and cannot do in my own house. By keeping Joseph from my service, you are stealing my property. Whatever you say, that is what my law tells me.”

  Joseph knew that neither man was being completely honest. He had lived in Majidi’s household for nearly thirty years, starting when he was taken into slavery as a boy of nine. Since then he had served Majidi every day of his life, was his overseer until six days ago, when he ran away. Majidi was selfish and hardly ever honest in his dealings, especially with the British.

  Father Morley had been kind to Joseph, and only this morning, at breakfast, Joseph had heard him tell his sister, Katharine, how he hated slavery so much that he found it nearly impossible not to hate people like Majidi, who insisted on practicing it.

  “I have an assistant district superintendent of police who is going to help me with this,” the missionary now said to Majidi. “Then we shall see what your rights are.”

  Father Morley said the words as if he truly believed them, but Joseph knew that the missionary was not as sure as he tried to seem. Joseph had heard both Morley and his sister complain that, in this part of the Protectorate, the British Administration did not care about the fate of Arab household slaves. Given a choice between freeing the slaves or turning a blind eye to what the local traders were doing, their countrymen preferred to keep the peace between the English and the Muslim populations. The brother expected the A.D.S. to be helpful. The sister doubted anyone would help them.

  The brother and sister had spoken of this in English, which they thought Joseph did not understand. Bwana Majidi also imagined, when he spoke Arabic to the men who bought ivory from him, that Joseph did not understand. Joseph had never let on that he could speak and understand both languages. He could have been more useful to Majidi if he had admitted this fact, but he did not care to be more useful to a man who valued nothing but money.

  Beyond the window, within the missionary’s parlor, the scrape of a chair against the bare wooden floor and the rustle of silk brocade signaled that Majidi was getting ready to leave. “I came here to claim my property,” he said. “You will give him to me immediately.”

  “I will not!”

  “If you refuse, I will find a way to take him back.”

  There was a crash that must have been a chair overturning, followed immediately by the missionary’s voice booming out, “Over my dead body!”

  “Yours or his.” Majidi’s voice was quiet and cold, and Joseph knew that when he used that tone nothing would stop him from having his way.

  Joseph did not want to be the cause of harm to the kind English priest. But neither did he want to die himself at the hands of the master whom he had feared since he was taken as a slave. Now that Majidi had found out Joseph was here, this British Mission could never be the safe haven he had hoped for.

  There was no choice. He would have to steal away in the night. His only trusted friend was his tribesman, Juba Osi. But Juba had refused to let Joseph stay with him. Juba had only recently bought his own freedom, and he still feared his forme
r master. Harboring a runaway would draw attention to Juba and might give his old owner an excuse to take him back.

  Joseph knew a British man, Carl Hastings, who had been away but was supposed to be returning to Mombasa this very day. Hastings had dealings with Majidi. Joseph understood that in his heart the Englishman despised the Arab, who paid him too little for his ivory. Hastings lived at the club where the British went to drink alcohol and play games with balls and sticks. Joseph would appeal to Bwana Hastings to save him from Majidi, a man they both knew to be evil.

  ***

  After dark that night, Carl Hastings waited, hidden at the base of the battlements of Fort Jesus, the historic citadel on the edge of the sea. He longed for a stiff gin and quinine. He scratched at the mosquito bites that tortured him and imagined that any one of them could bring him malaria, which would lead to blackwater fever and a horrible death. Bloody savages who lived here never seemed to get anything.

  Joseph Gautura, that bastard Majidi’s servant, had sent him a message and chosen this benighted place to meet. The blighter had said to come after dark, the hour when an army of insects went on the attack.

  The only good thing about the time and place of this meeting was that no one would know of it. If Gautura had come to see Hastings at the Mombasa Club, the entire membership would have been wondering what dealings they had and nosing about in Hastings’s private business. And certainly Majidi would have gotten wind of their meeting. Miserable as the Arab was, Hastings needed him. He had debts that would land even an Englishman in prison. Without the income from his arrangements with the ivory trader, Hastings would drown in what he owed.

  In his message, Gautura said he had bolted, and he begged Hastings’s help. Much as he would have preferred to ignore the plea, Hastings could not. Now that Gautura was out of Majidi’s control, he was dangerous, knew far too much—not only about Majidi’s dicey deeds, but also about Hastings’s part in them. Besides which, the letter had been written in English, which in and of itself had taken Hastings’s breath away. The slave, who knew no English, must have dictated the message to someone who wrote it for him. That scribe now knew that Hastings provided more to Majidi than just elephant tusks.

  Hastings paced along the wall of the bastion. Vasco da Gama had built this great pile to keep invaders out of his harbor. Now Hastings’s own countrymen had made it into a prison, and it was here he could end up if he did not gain control of his situation.

  He reached into his pocket for his watch, but there was not enough light to read it. He could not go out into the street, where there were electric lamps. Out there, trolleys clattered along, full of his countrymen. He could not risk being spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where was that bloody nigger?

  Hastings wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His sweat came not only from the heat, but also from the horror of rotting in jail because he could not overcome his money problems. He was sure the moisture attracted the mosquitoes. A picture dropped into his head of that poor English chappie—what was his name?—who had been caught passing bad checks. No doubt that sod was somewhere behind these walls being eaten alive by insects at this very moment. Hastings imagined himself sharing that cell.

  A rustling of the weeds along the wall spun him in its direction. Two figures approached. They were practically on top of him when a girl giggled. They were silhouetted against the pale light out on the street. Clearly, neither of them was Majidi’s slave. Just two blackies here to fornicate.

  Hastings pretended he had come out of the light to relieve himself. He marched off and left them to their sin. He would have to find the slave, wherever he was, and deal with him before the night was over. And he would also have to find whoever had written that note in English and take care of him too.

  But first he needed to stop in a bar. At this moment his survival seemed to depend entirely on a double dose of quinine water with a triple dose of gin.

  2

  The following morning, in a cottage isolated in a charming cove, under the bare, twisted limbs of an enormous baobab tree, Justin Tolliver awoke as soon as the pale first light of dawn entered their room. He blinked and wondered—not even a gentle rocking of the ship? This bed? The stateroom was—and then, fully awake, he realized where he was: back in Africa at last.

  He turned to Vera, asleep beside him, her dark hair half covering her face. She hugged her pillow as if it were a child’s teddy bear. He took her in his arms and breathed in the warm, spicy scent of her skin. She stirred. Her lashes fluttered. As soon as her eyes opened and looked at him, she smiled and kissed his mouth. “Good morning, my love,” she said, and he marveled. She spoke as if a woman’s passion for her husband were the most natural thing in the world.

  Tolliver had been raised to believe that good women would barely tolerate the act of love. Indeed, Vera had told him, during their recent visit to her granny in Glasgow, that that ultra-traditional lady had told Vera that as a dutiful wife she must bear his needs as best she could for the sake of having children. Yet Vera hungered for him nearly as much as he did for her.

  Last month, during their sojourn in Yorkshire, Justin’s brother had remarked on Vera’s “affectionate nature.” He had bounced his eyebrows as if he were talking about a music-hall actress. Justin had been torn between offering to punch his brother’s nose and pretending not to know what he meant. Typically, John had taken his momentary silence for permission to go on. “I suppose,” he said, “having had a native nurse, she drank in the tendency with the blackie’s milk.”

  Then John blithely put some chalk on the tip of his cue and took his shot in snooker, as if he had just made some bland remark about Vera’s dark eyes or small stature.

  Justin had not responded. Frankly, he had not known what to say. He and John had both been brought up to regard an attitude like Vera’s as the sign of a dreadful character flaw, but he refused to believe that. Vera loved making love. To her it was natural. And joyful. And he had learned to long for the thrill of her. He could not imagine that John got any satisfaction at all from that chilly, aloof wife of his.

  Very likely John, like their father, visited the higher-class brothels of London.

  For all that John, or his father for that matter, might feel superior to him in his choice of wife, making love to Vera made him feel more of a man than they were.

  He began to kiss her warm skin, her neck, her shoulders. “These will be the last days of our honeymoon,” he said. “I want to make them wonderful for you.”

  She laughed, a silvery sound. “That is a policy I heartily embrace.” She began to run her fingertips over his chest, his shoulders, his back.

  All other thoughts left him for a while.

  Later, when he and Vera threw aside the mosquito netting and arose, they drew on bathing costumes, went out the back door, and crossed the veranda to the beach. Justin ran across the patch of fine white sand and dove into the tranquil blue sea. Out beyond the reef, foamy white breakers were sending up rainbows. A dhow under an orange sail made for Kilindini Harbour. To their right, atop a rocky cliff, rose the black-and-white-ringed lighthouse.

  Vera, not knowing how to swim, waded in hip-deep and splashed water over her shoulders. As always, after making love, her skin felt extra sensitive. The cool droplets sent little chills down her back. She licked the salt from her lips and watched as Justin rose and shook sea water from his hair and arms. Droplets gleamed in the light of the sun behind him. The sight of him moved her and not only because of his physique. Unlike other British settlers, Justin loved Africa very much the way she did. He did not understand it as well as she, but he wanted to. And he was learning and growing to respond to it with something very like the passion she felt. Married to him less than four months, she still found it hard to believe that he was hers.

  She was about to shout a demand that he teach her how to swim when he ran toward her and with the palm of his hand sent a splash of water that drenched her hair.

  “I will make
you pay for that,” she said with a giggle as she raced him back to the house, her sopping skirts flapping against her thighs.

  She got her revenge. Standing behind a screen of vivid greenery, they had rinsed away the salt with buckets of fresh water. Just as Justin finished drying off, she emptied a full one on him. He scored his own vendetta by embracing her and getting her wet again in the process.

  It was not until they were seated at the breakfast table that they took up again the difficult subject of the message Justin had received yesterday.

  Last evening he had revealed the contents of the letter delivered to him just before they disembarked. She had been dismayed, tried to get him to see reason about continuing to serve on the police force. All she wanted was for them to collect their belongings and take the next train up-country to her father, away from the wet heat and the sour smell of the crowded streets, and from the other administrative wives, who would shun her for being the daughter of a missionary—the clergy, with their staunch defenses of the natives’ rights, being a thorn in the sides of the king’s empire builders. And because of Justin’s flawless accent, his Harrow-Cambridge education, and his ancestry, most of the administrators and their wives, she was sure, would do what similar women in Nairobi had done just after their wedding—call her “My lady” in the archest possible tone of voice and apologize for the plainness of their tea service.

  So she had spent most of yesterday pleading with Justin to quit the police force. She had tried to speak sweetly, like a proper English wife, but she had lost her temper and raised her voice. They ended up in a row. Before bedtime, she had burst into tears with remorse over her shrewishness, but still his good-night kiss had been perfunctory for the first time since their wedding. She was determined that, this morning, she would control herself. There would be no histrionics.