Women's Wiles

by Joyce Harrington

  Walter, what story will you make of this? The words shot almost ballistically into his mind, so vividly that he looked up, not certain that they had not been spoken. And his brain and his eyes saw many things: a letter from Ohio, a crossword puzzle on the margin of which was scrawled a single word, a group of people who looked down at him and then slowly away. The girl’s hands were now quite heavy on his own.

  Walter’s heart speeded up and began, again, to skip. His instinct had failed him. He had blundered beyond that dreadful limit at which displayed emotion becomes unsightly.

  People began to speak again, in many separate conversations.

  “Poor dear,” murmured the girl, and drew her hands away.

  Walter rose and moved across the room. Some turned as he passed but he was mindless of their words, and their smiles were like little gates being shut, little signs saying Beware Of The Dog.

  He returned to his apartment and sat among the things he owned and thought of the large empty room that must soon be made into a den. He took three sleeping pills and returned the vial to his bag, his hand brushing against the narcotics case. “No,” he whispered, closing his eyes, “no...”

  He awoke late the next day. In addition to each morning’s panic, he had a hangover. Deciding not to use the car, he left the building by the main entrance rather than through the garage. The mail had already arrived. Taking it, Walter headed for the subway.

  “Sophie,” called Mr. Warbasse, entering his apartment, “have you seen the newspaper?”

  “No,” said his wife, who preferred to glean the world’s news from her television set.

  “There’s an item about that doctor, that Dr. Walter Collins.”

  “What about him?” demanded Mrs. Warbasse, interest plain in her voice.

  Her husband lowered himself into the armchair. “Here, let me read it,” he said, adjusting the reading lamp. “‘Physician Dies Under Subway’ is the caption, and the article carries yesterday’s date. ‘A man identified as Dr. Walter Collins, 38, of 400 East 54th Street, fell into the path of an approaching Independent Subway train this morning at the East 53rd Street Station. Witnesses stated that prior to the fall, the physician had appeared to be ill, and that he had swayed on the platform as though he were dizzy. Because of the accident, service was—’ Well, it goes on about how the line was delayed.”

  “My God!” said Mrs. Warbasse, and her husband looked up at her.

  “I don’t suppose he got the letter,” she continued, “if he left early in the morning. You know how the mails are.”

  “What letter?”

  Mrs. Warbasse shifted in her seat. “His letter,” she said, taking a cigarette and striking a match. “The one his wife Elizabeth wrote to him, the letter he mislaid in that book. I thought he might be looking for it...”

  “Sophie, do you mean to say you returned that letter to him?”

  “Well of course! Did you expect me to keep such a personal thing?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Sophie, why didn’t you just destroy the damn thing? Why rake up—”

  “Oh, what’s the difference?” Mrs. Warbasse demanded in the strong, sure voice of the uncertain. “He couldn’t have gotten it, anyway.”

  “It’s interfering, that’s what’s the difference! It’s meddling in something that doesn’t concern you at all!” Rustling the newspaper, he raised it and held it rigidly before his face, cutting his wife from his view.

  Mrs. Warbasse shrugged and stubbed out her cigarette. Standing, she walked to the door. “Kismet,” said Mrs. Warbasse, who was—in her way—a philosopher.

  The Prisoner of Zemu Island

  Joan Richter

  A needle of light pierced the white blaze of African sun and flickered high in the cloudless sky over Zemu Island. Ras Lazaar stood at the edge of the airfield, in the shade of a jacaranda tree, watching the gleaming splinter of steel sprout wings. A fusion of excitement and sadness held him as he studied the plane’s gradual descent. He had traveled to the mainland by boat many times, but he had never flown. He never would now. The new African government did not allow Indians to leave the island.

  He pushed away the wave of self-pity. Unchecked, it would engulf him in a deep sense of hopelessness.

  Thirty passengers were on board the plane today—twenty-nine Germans on a tour of Africa, coming to spend the afternoon on Zemu Island, and one American woman traveling alone. Since Ras was the Director of Tourism, they were all his responsibility, especially the American. The decision to grant her entry had not been reached without argument and threat. Except for newspapermen whose requests the new government automatically denied, it was a year since an American had sought to come to Zemu Island.

  “If she is not what she says she is—if she brings trouble to the New Republic of Zemu Island—you, Indian, will pay for it!” Prime Minister Masaka’s finger had pointed like a gun at Ras’s head, firing the abbreviated Swahili with the slur of ethnic superiority. Only Ras’s hatred of Masaka exceeded his fear.

  When the plane touched the ground and streaked across the far runway, Ras stepped out of the shade of the tree. His stride showed only a bare trace of stiffness from the now year-old wound. He was taller than the average Indian, with the traditional olive skin and gleaming black hair. His frame was held together by pliant muscles developed by years of tennis and swimming. Since the political coup he had done neither, but at twenty-three his body did not show the year’s absence from exercise. His mind, too, had survived the trauma of the two-day revolution in which the Indian population of Zemu Island had been decimated.

  He had stopped asking why he had lived when so many had died, what instinct had sent him to the ground at the unfamiliar sound of gunfire, by what lucky accident a bullet had struck his leg and not his heart. The Africans had not killed him afterward, when they found him wounded and unconscious; instead they had put him in the care of the Cuban doctors who had come with the revolutionary force. Later, when he was given the position of Director of Tourism, he began to understand. The Africans needed him—he could read and write both Swahili and English.

  It seemed without reason that Masaka should see a threat in the visit of the young American schoolteacher. Yet the attitude was in keeping with the Prime Minister’s frequent rages and bursts of irrationality. The pressures of ruling a country were heavy on a man, even when he had the support of his people. Masaka had had that support for only a short time. Suspicion had quickly eaten at the edges of black unity when word spread that the revolution had been the organized effort of a foreign power that had chosen Masaka as its island leader, and not the spontaneous rebellion of Africans against a repressive Indian government.

  Sober Africans began to ask questions. Some had begun to demand answers. Yukano was one of them.

  Differences between Masaka and Yukano were evident even physically. Masaka was six feet tall, with a round head and enormous hands that were forever washing one another. Yukano was slight with a thin face and narrow shoulders, and he spoke softly.

  At a meeting where Masaka had announced his opposition to the American teacher’s visit, Yukano had risen and talked convincingly of Zemu Island’s need to reinstate tourism as a source of revenue and prestige. Many were stirred by this argument, but others were unconvinced until Yukano spoke again. “The American June Hastings asks to come not just as a tourist, but as a scientist interested in Zemu Island’s marine life. Do you recall the prestige that came to Tanganyika when Dr. Louis Leakey made his excavations at Olduvai Gorge and found evidence of prehistoric man? How do we know what there is to be found in the waters of Zemu Island?”

  Masaka had acceded to the majority, but Ras knew it was a defeat the Prime Minister was not likely to forget. Ras worried about the kind of action Masaka would take to soothe his wounded pride.

  The plane came to a stop, and the airfield sprouted life. Africans in ragged shorts and bare feet appeared to unload baggage. Airport officials of the same skin color, wearing starched uniforms and hat
s decorated with gold braid, stood at attention to some unseen authority. The sun streamed down and the concrete airfield glistened with the running of dry rivers and shimmering pools.

  The first person to disembark was the German tour leader, with whom Ras shook hands. “Lunch is waiting for your group at the Manga Hotel,” Ras said. “Afterward, the drivers will take you on a tour of the island.” The balding pink-cheeked man mopped his forehead and managed a smile, then went off to tend his flock.

  Ras’s attention steadied on the young woman who appeared in the plane’s doorway. A border of embroidery fluttered at the hem of her dress, the saffron-pink color of a ripe pomalo. A graceful sweep of bronze hair fell across her cheek. He was struck by the expression of expectancy in her eyes as she scanned the horizon of palm trees, then started down the steps.

  “June Hastings?” he asked when she reached him.

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “I am Rashid Lazaar. We have corresponded. I am with the Ministry of Tourism.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Lazaar.” She offered her hand. “Thank you for arranging for my entry permit.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, a phrase he realized he had not used with any real meaning in a long time. “I think if we go directly to immigration we will save time.”

  She fell in step beside him. “What about my luggage? Your customs people will want to check that.”

  “That will be delivered to another place—we must go there after we have finished here.”

  Though her eyes were veiled by sunglasses he could see that they were a pale brown, almost golden. There was a question in them. Her bronze head tossed. “Does someone from your office always meet a new arrival?”

  “It is the policy of the new government.”

  “But I must be someone special to be entitled to the Director of Tourism himself.”

  The mischief in her voice was clear. It surprised him, and reminded him of his sisters and their playful jibes.

  “You are special, Miss Hastings. You have not only chosen to visit Zemu Island, you have come for an unusual purpose. Zemu women and children have gathered shells for years and made necklaces of them, but no one has ever thought them of scientific interest.”

  “Maybe it’s time someone did.”

  “Some in the government are doubtful, others are puzzled. Others still have suggested that you will give Zemu Island prominence by discovering something as important as what Dr. Leakey found at Olduvai Gorge.”

  She stopped and stared at him. “They don’t really think that?”

  “It is what has been said.”

  “By whom?”

  Ras shrugged. “A man named Yukano.” The name would mean nothing to her—Yukano had become prominent in island politics only a short time ago. But Ras thought he saw a flicker of recognition move across her face. “Have you heard of him?”

  “The name sounds familiar, but maybe it’s my Western ear. Even now many African names still sound alike to me.”

  He nodded, assuming she was referring to the last two years she had been teaching school in Kenya. “It is a funny thing. I have the same difficulties with British names—like your own. But Indian names are hard for Westerners, I think.”

  “Ignorance contributes to the confusion. People of one culture imagine those of another are all alike. Masaka and Yukano, for example. To a person unfamiliar with Africa, they simply are both Africans. No thought is given to the possibility of great differences between them, that they are of different tribes and different persuasions—totally different personalities.” Her voice lowered as they approached the Immigration Building, and fell silent when they reached the steps.

  Ras did not speak either, but his mind was churning. She was well informed, typical of the emancipated American women he had read about. He must be careful not to be guilty of the very thing she had just described. She was more than simply an American. She was an individual who had chosen to visit Zemu Island for a special reason. What that reason was, he suspected he had yet to find out.

  The immigration check was routine, even to the insolence of the African clerk who looked at Ras and yawned widely. In the past year, Ras had learned to ignore such petty insults, but with the young woman at his side, he found it difficult to hold back a rebuke. He was glad when they were outside again and he could lead her to the car he had left parked near the jacaranda tree. “Your luggage is being delivered to a building at the other end of the airport—it is just a minute’s drive.”

  As he helped her into the front seat, he thought of warning her that this would be no ordinary customs check. Two of the Prime Minister’s own men would be in the banda, and their instructions were to go through her belongings with exactness. If they found something they did not like, she would be put on the next plane leaving Zemu Island.

  Ras decided to say nothing. A warning would serve no purpose but to alarm her. He hoped her luggage cleared. He wanted her to stay. There was very little he had wanted so much in a long time.

  Perhaps he would even take her to Pwani Pwani—he had not been back since the day the guns had fired. He had thought he could never return, to walk over those sands where his mother and his sisters and the girl he had loved had played ball and gathered shells. How pretty they had looked, strolling along the beach, their brilliantly colored saris catching the breeze, like butterflies in flight. Sunday after Sunday they had gone to picnic at Pwani Pwani. One Sunday all of them had died...

  “Tell me about the Manga Hotel,” he heard June Hastings say. “Is it as nice as it used to be?”

  He glanced at her quickly, torn from his reverie. “You know it?”

  “I heard of it from someone who had been there years ago, when the Norberts owned it. They aren’t still here, are they?”

  Ras smiled. Anyone who had stayed at the Manga would remember the Norberts. “They’re still here. They run the hotel for the government now.” He was certain she was aware that the new regime had confiscated all private lands and possessions. “They have kept things up. It is a handsome building, white stone and coral, built around a courtyard that is always in bloom.”

  Purposely he did not mention the door. For some reason he wanted her to see it for herself, unprompted. He was tempted to add that a building, no matter how beautiful, did not make a hotel—only guests could give it life. There had been no guests for a year. The few boarders were foreign technicians who had come in the wake of the revolution, from Cuba and Russia and China. They had come to work, not to play. The lanterns that had always hung in the flame trees, lighting the terrace on Saturday nights, had not been lit in a year.

  They had reached the end of the concrete runway where a wall of tropical forest faced them. Ras found the narrow dirt track that led to the banda and parked beside a car already there. It was Masaka’s car. His heartbeat quickened, but in a moment resumed its even beat. How else would the two men assigned to check her luggage get to the airport, if not by car? But it was not like Masaka to let anyone use his.

  The shade of the trees was deep and blinding after the brightness of the sun. Inside the banda it seemed darker still.

  Two Africans in army uniforms stood behind a table on which her luggage lay—a blue suitcase and one small metal trunk. Their black faces shone in the glow from a pressure lamp whose eerie light did not reach into the far corner to make distinguishable the figure standing there. But a familiar movement of hands washing one another told Ras who it was. A cold stillness touched his heart, and did not go away.

  June Hastings unlocked the blue suitcase, and the two men began pawing through the layers of pastel-colored clothes, looking into pockets, peering into the toes of shoes. Before opening the metal trunk, she removed her sunglasses and put them in her purse. The glance with which she touched Ras was fleeting, but in the strange light her eyes looked to him like warm gold. Once before he had known someone with eyes of that color—in Dar es Salaam.

  Several times he had gone there by dhow with his fa
ther, sailing first to Zanzibar and on to what was then Tanganyika. They would always stay two days—one to sell the copra they had brought from their plantation, another to visit a man named Benji, an old friend of his father. The two men would sit together in the shade of a mango tree, sipping tea, their voices hushed, their heads bent in serious talk. On the other side of the garden Ras would play with Benji’s youngest son, named after his father. They drank orange Fanta and stuffed themselves with sweet cakes and played marbles. Sometimes the girl who lived in the house on the other side of the garden wall would join them. Though she was the same age as they, rarely could she beat them in a marble game. Her hair was the color of dark honey, her eyes pale gold.

  Each time they left Benji’s house, the packet of money his father had received from the sale of the copra would be smaller than when he had first received it, but the expression on his father’s face would say that things had gone as he had wished. Ras was always tempted to ask what business his father had with Benji that took so much money, but he did not, knowing that when his father wanted him to know, he would tell him.

  Then that time came. “Someday things will not be good on Zemu Island, and you and your mother and your sisters will have to leave. Benji is sending money for me to a bank in Switzerland. It is in my name and in yours. Should something ever happen to me, you will know what to do.” Ras remembered how frightened those words had made him, and how little he had understood their full meaning.

  Now he understood, but what good did it do? Those careful plans his father had made in Dar es Salaam, under the mango tree, while the sound of marbles clinked in the warm still air, had died on the beach at Pwani Pwani...

  June Hastings turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid of the metal trunk. The two Army men looked up from the blue suitcase and turned to stare at the contents of the trunk, their eyes growing round and then narrow. They leaned closer and then straightened, muttering in Swahili to each other and to the man in the corner of the room.