The Idol of Mombasa

by Annamaria Alfieri

  He was gone when she returned to their bedroom.

  As today, she had tried that afternoon to write the truth to her father. But she could not. Her father loved Justin as he loved the son who had run away. It would be too wrong to sully her father’s affections for him. Her father needed to think her completely happy. That meant never revealing to him the chink in the armor of her and Justin’s mutual love—the difference between who they were and who they liked to imagine each other to be. That rift only disappeared when they were together in bed, or out in the wilderness, where what other people might think did not matter.

  She picked up her pen and wrote:

  Oh, Father, you know that I would rather be with you. Won’t you consider coming to us for a nice extended visit? I so long to have you near.

  The loneliness she described wrung her heart. Somehow putting it in writing made it more intense. She loved Justin; she wanted her life to be with him. But he had a place in the Protectorate—his work as a policeman, his teammates and supporters in sport. She was an outsider among the settlers. She had immediately been attracted to him when they met, but she had thought that she—a missionary’s daughter—would never have a chance with a young nobleman, especially one as handsome and dashing as he.

  After he joined the police force, he had often asked her to dance at parties at the Nairobi Club. Still, she had tried to resist an attachment to him, imagining it would only break her heart. But by that time it was too late. She was in love with him. And then his investigation into her uncle’s murder had thrown them into close company. In those difficult times, they had both revealed their love. It had seemed then that being Justin’s wife was all she wanted and that if she could be with him, nothing else would trouble her. Now she knew that was not entirely true. He was hers and she his. Everything about their love was wonderful. But life did not stop at loving.

  She picked up her pen and held it over the paper again, trying to force herself to write less than she felt. She was isolated here. She might be mistaken for an Arab girl in this getup, but she was not one. She could look for friends among the administrative set here in Mombasa, but in attitudes she would certainly never be British enough to satisfy them. Loneliness was crushing her.

  She crumpled the paper she had been writing on and dropped it into the basket beside the desk. She would not write to her father until she had good news to tell him about Joseph Gautura’s murderer being brought to justice.

  Right now she would change into her proper clothing and without hesitation go and find out something about Majidi that would help bring him to justice. She might not belong to any group in Mombasa, but she would do whatever she could to fulfill her father’s wish.

  A noise from the front of the house interrupted her thinking. She started for the door, but then looked down at her silly costume. She could not bring herself, dressed like this, to go and investigate who it was. Within seconds, she heard Justin’s footsteps, and he came through the bedroom door.

  One look at her and he laughed.

  “You’re usually the one who blushes,” Vera said, “but I would now if I had your complexion. I—”

  He held up his hand. “Just stand there a moment,” he said.

  Then he began to unbutton his uniform jacket.

  “It was so hot that I—”

  Again his raised hand stopped her words. He continued to disrobe, in silence, never taking his eyes off her. He did not let her speak until he was down to his bare skin at which point she did not want to say anything, just to let him take her in his arms.

  ***

  At that moment, but for Justin’s delightful distraction of her, Vera would have been making for the bazaar, which as it happened was the goal of almost everyone she knew in Mombasa.

  Seething with anger, Carl Hastings was on his way to give Khalid Majidi a piece of his mind. The English hunter had met with Majidi’s new majordomo, an arrogant black eunuch from Zanzibar named Ismail Al Dimu, who had the audacity to tell Hastings that he was overruling his new arrangements with Majidi. The bloody towelhead had demanded a twenty percent cut for himself, to be taken out of Hastings’s share of the value of what they shipped. This meant that Hastings would now be reduced to only twenty percent for himself, when until now, he had been getting thirty. What was more, Majidi had only just promised him the forty. It would not do. It just would not do for a bastard without balls to make such demands. Hastings charged along the thronged street, sweating as much from his boiling temper as from the torrid air.

  Not many paces behind him, a no-less-sweaty Robert Morley beat the same path. His purpose earlier that day had been foiled by the sight of his sister nearby. He could not allow her to know his secret. There had been nothing for it but to abandon his goal. Now, having assured himself that she was taking her customary siesta, Morley had returned with even greater determination.

  Katharine Morley, however, had also learned her lesson that morning. Fond as she was of her bright blue hat, the one vain indulgence she had ever allowed herself, she left it behind. It was far too recognizable. She followed after her brother, wearing a sun helmet of the sort so ubiquitous in tropical English settlements as to make her invisible. Thus it was easy for her to follow Robert discreetly, close enough not to lose sight of him as he entered the bazaar.

  Katharine seethed with indignation. She had devoted her life to supporting her brother’s work. She had come to this point with perfect faith in his righteousness. Like her parents, she had always considered Robert’s Mission work the most important on earth. For the first time in her life, today, the rock of her faith in him felt unsteady under her feet. He was keeping something from her. What could he have to hide but some betrayal of all they believed in and had worked for? She had never imagined that he would do such a thing. But for weeks now, since Joseph Gautura had run away from his master, Robert had been acting very suspiciously. It was quite possible that he meant to harm—she could not let herself think the words to murder—Majidi.

  Though her distrust felt like an act of betrayal, how else but by spying on Robert could she put to rest her doubts about the purity of his intentions? And what if he was contemplating a terrible sin? She must stop him before he reached the brink of perdition. She must.

  Just then, a tall African policeman sped past her. Though she was distracted for only a second, when she looked back, Robert was gone.

  ***

  Kwai Libazo took no notice at all of the tall English lady with the bright blue eyes. He knew no English people in Mombasa other than A.D.S. and Mrs. Tolliver. Kwai’s quarry was the only person in the town that he cared to know better—Aurala Sagal. He had two hours’ respite before he would have to take up evening guard duty at the police station at the entrance to Ndia Kuu. He wanted to make love to her, but not as part of a transaction involving money. He had no idea how much such a service might cost. Or whether an African man would be welcome as a customer. He worried a great deal about these questions. He was certain, though, that he wanted to be near her and that the more they knew about each other, the better things would become between them.

  Without taking any notice of who was walking in the same street, he rushed past first Katharine, and then her brother, and finally an Englishman with a drooping mustache who was mumbling obscenities under his breath like a man who belonged in a hospital for the insane.

  When Kwai arrived at the silk shop, he noticed that the bookstore across the way was shuttered. It satisfied him deeply that the man he had chased down and the bookseller who had harbored him were in jail.

  Unlike the first two times he had come to this part of the bazaar, Kwai did not find Aurala Sagal standing in front of the silk shop. A wave of upset washed over him. Was she inside making sex with another man?

  Kwai had been on raids of the brothels in the Indian market in Nairobi. Whenever he and his fellow askaris entered those places, they would cause a panic among the lowlifes hanging about. This place might be the same. But the women who work
ed in houses of ill repute in Nairobi were tribal girls who, as A.D.S. Tolliver described them, “had gone wrong.” None of them seemed to him remotely like the lovely, graceful girl whose company he sought. He paused only momentarily. He could not resist her. He went in.

  As soon as he did, he heard a gasp and a flurry of activity coming from the back. There were bolts of silk, one below another, suspended from chains attached by hooks to the ceiling. The bright display of cloth hung down at different lengths and screened what was behind it. Within a few seconds Aurala herself emerged. She was dressed as usual, but today in a golden color.

  “Sergeant Libazo,” she said. Her eyes smiled at him, but her voice was too loud. She was not only speaking a greeting to him but also a message to someone behind the curtain of cloth.

  Kwai Libazo had been raised in the tribal way, without the European romantic fantasies that seemed to have entered his heart in the past twenty-four hours. It took half a minute for Sergeant Libazo the askari to win out over Kwai Libazo the lover. He took a deep breath and moved swiftly and silently behind the fabric screen.

  The rear portion of the shop stretched back for about ten yards. There was a narrow aisle at its center that led to a door at the rear. On either side of the aisle were walls of various colored draperies that seemed to delineate three rooms on each side. Kwai had no idea whether the door at the back might lead to the street or to another room.

  The space in which he stood held a large table to his left. Sitting at it were a Swahili boy of about nine and a woman who looked quite like Aurala but about five or six years older and dressed, not in the colors of the sunset, but all in black—like a woman in mourning. They both gave Libazo shocked and then frightened looks, glancing at what lay on the table before them—an unsheathed Arab dagger. It had a deadly-looking curved blade. The handle was silver inlaid with ivory and had embedded in it an emerald the size of Libazo’s thumbnail.

  He looked from one of them to the other. He saw fear in Aurala’s eyes and defiance in her sister’s as they glanced at the knife and back at him. “Why is it that you did not want me to see that thing?” Kwai demanded of Aurala, pointing at the dagger. He knew very well that up in Nairobi the brothels at the rear of Victoria Street were places where thieves stored and sold their stolen goods, but those were squalid places, not at all like this, which resembled the inside of a silken tent.

  When no one answered, he took the child by the elbow and stood him up just roughly enough to frighten the boy further. He wore only dirty khaki shorts that might once have belonged to a household servant, but now were ragged and missing a button on the fly.

  “I found it. I swear I did not steal it. It was in the mangrove forest. Just lying there. I picked it up. I only picked it up. I go there and look for things to eat. I found this. I—”

  Libazo patted the air in front of him. “Be quiet,” he said sternly, though he pitied the poor filthy child. “Why did you bring it here? If you found it, why did you not bring it to the police so we could locate its proper owner?”

  The boy looked up at the woman in black seated next to him. “The child is starving,” she said with a weary air, as if she had had this exact conversation many times before.

  “What is your name, please?”

  “I am Leylo Sagal,” she said. She had Aurala’s beauty of face and form, but she did not glow with it. She seemed beaten down, powerless. Her dark eyes were lifeless.

  Aurala stepped forward. “She is my older sister.”

  “I thought so,” Kwai said, though he did not know why he bothered to tell them. He turned back to the boy. “And you, boy. What is your name?”

  The urchin folded his arms across his chest and raised his head, staring Kwai in the eye and pursing his lips. He was a brave little scamp, refusing to answer a policeman.

  “His name is Haki,” Leylo Sagal said. She stood up and faced Kwai squarely. She was even taller than her sister, nearly eye to eye with Libazo. “Many people believe that all establishments like ours also serve to buy and sell stolen goods. The people who told him to bring the thing here thought we were one of those, but we are not. It is the Indian-run establishments that do that. He did not know this. He thought he could get money from us for this janbia.” She pointed to the dagger.

  “What were you advising him to do when I arrived then?” Kwai suddenly saw that he had been assuming Aurala was as good as she was lovely.

  Suppose she was a thief as well as a prostitute. Perhaps wanting her was making him a stupid policeman.

  “I believe the boy is telling the truth, that he found the dagger,” Leylo said. “If he had stolen it, he would have taken the sheath as well. It would have far more jewels than the hilt—certainly the more valuable of the two parts.”

  “I looked for it,” the boy said sullenly.

  “And?” Kwai spoke sharply, pretending he felt no sympathy for the waif.

  “The mangroves are very thick there. You can’t move around. You can’t. Only because I am small and skinny, I can go inside the swamp. It was early in the morning. The sun was still coming from the ocean. It was the sun that showed me the shiny thing. I almost got stuck trying to find the rest of it. I didn’t find it.” The boy spoke as if he were afraid of being scolded for not doing his chores.

  Kwai believed his story. “What are you going to do now, Haki?” Kwai leaned over and picked up the knife.

  “Go to jail.” The boy looked into Kwai’s eyes as if daring him to make his fear come true.

  Kwai forced himself not to smile. “No, you will not go to jail. But I will take this dagger to the police station. I will look into the record to see if anyone has reported it stolen or lost. If someone claims to have lost it, nothing at all will happen to you. The police will give it back to the owner, and I will ask the owner to give you a gift as a reward for finding it. If it was stolen, that will be another matter. You may be accused.”

  Haki showed no fear of being charged with theft. “And if no one says he has lost it? If it has been there for many years, dropped there by some pirate?”

  Aurala Sagal smiled. “That cannot be. If it had been in the swamp for a long time, it would be very tarnished, black as all silver turns when it has not been polished for a long time. It is too clean to have been in the sea for a long time.”

  “I wiped it off on my pants,” the boy said.

  “That would not have been enough to make silver shine,” Aurala answered.

  This impressed Kwai. She was better at figuring out such things than many who called themselves policemen.

  “If no one claims it in a period of time, it will be yours to do with whatever you want,” Kwai said.

  “How long?” the boy demanded.

  “I do not know the law about this,” Kwai answered. “It may be half a year.”

  Haki pouted. “What am I supposed to eat while I wait?”

  “Whatever you have eaten until now,” Leylo Sagal answered in a tone of resignation.

  Kwai took the boy’s hand. “No,” he said. “You will come with me and take a bath. You will earn decent clothing and food by polishing my brass buttons and cleaning my shoes. And you will steal nothing. If you do not do exactly as I say, you will find yourself crawling through the swamp again looking for something to eat. If I have reason not to trust you, you will never get back this knife. Even if no one claims it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” the boy answered, fighting but failing to keep the defiance in his eyes.

  “Good,” Kwai said. “That way I will not have to take you up-country to the Athi Plain where I come from and feed you to the lions.”

  At that moment, Aurala Sagal gave Kwai Libazo the smile he wanted from her. One that said she liked him in a way that had nothing to do with wanting him to give her money in return for her love, which made him want her more than ever.

  8

  Later that afternoon, in the Tollivers’ bungalow bedroom, Vera’s exotic costume was still strewn on the floor. Justin was delighti
ng in the softness and warmth of her skin and the satisfaction he felt in being married to a girl who wanted to make love to him as much as he wanted her. Vera’s hunger for him was born of love, as much the giving of herself as the taking of pleasure from him. If a genie came into the room at this moment and offered him a wish, he would not be able to think of anything more he wanted than to be with her, like this. He hated the wretched idea of having to get up and go back to the station and deal with all the complexities of enforcing the law in this city. He had been clear about how to do his work in Nairobi: taking in European drunks who were out of control, solving burglaries against and by every variety of resident, arresting vandals smashing other people’s possessions in fits of temper. Here nothing was clearly right or wrong. He wanted to do his job well, but—

  A loud knock at the front door dispelled any notion that he might take a nap before returning to his duties. In a few seconds, Miriam was in the hall outside the bedroom calling out, “It is your sergeant, Bwana. He says it is very urgent.”

  “Minute,” he called, hearing a huskiness in his own voice.

  Vera opened her arms and let go of him.

  He kissed her naked shoulder and leapt up, pulling on his clothing with all possible speed.

  “You are perfect,” Vera said.

  “We are perfect.” He leaned over and without stopping his fingers from buttoning his shirt, kissed her mouth. “I have to go, dearest love,” he said, grateful that the emergency, whatever it was, had not arisen earlier. He tied his tie, smiling a bit smugly, he thought, over how happy he was about what had arisen the moment he laid eyes on Vera in that harem outfit.