They walked back to the village in silence. The tide was low; hundreds of sand crabs scuttled sideways, their bulbous eyes darting in confusion. Ali chased them, corralled thirty or so into a herd where they danced on the hard sand, creating round little beads with the frantic mechanical scratching of their claws. He ran them in a final dash into the waves and returned, panting and smiling at his mastery over nature.
“Tell me, Ali, have you ever heard stories about an African king? A great leader who lived hundreds of years ago and was the first to bring Islam to the Swahili people.”
“Never,” Ali said, after some thought. “And I know many things.”
“So how do you think the Koran found its way here?”
“The Koran comes from Mohammed, Miss Ingrid. Mohammed brought Islam to the island.” Ali’s tone was annoyingly robotic.
“I don’t suppose you know any Arabic numbers,” she asked offhandedly.
“You are wrong,” he said proudly. “These I learned in school.”
“Do me a favor, then,” Ingrid slowed her pace. “Write them in the sand. I want to see what they look like.”
The idea appealed to Ali, the showman. He pointed his foot as he drew shapes in the hard sand with his toes. “One to ten,” he explained. Behind him, Ingrid had taken out a pen and was copying the numbers on the palm of her hand.
“Is this satisfactory?” Ali asked when he had finished.
“Perfect, Ali. Thank you.”
Ali looked up and down the beach. “Someone might think it strange,” he said, raising his arms. “I give these numbers back to the sea!”
They resumed their walk in silence. Soon they were approaching the hotel. “Where does Finn live?” Ingrid asked.
“Who?”
“Finn Bergmann.”
Ali made a sound with his tongue and kicked the sand with the ball of his foot. “You know him?”
“Not really.”
“Then you shouldn’t care where he lives.”
But Ingrid had decided she needed to find Finn. She decided this with full knowledge that he was taking on the dangerous form of an answer to a question she hadn’t yet fully formulated.
The next day, Ingrid went to the hotel and had coffee and papaya on the veranda. She squeezed a lime over the fruit and ate it slowly with a fork and knife, allowing the sweet astringency to blossom in her mouth. Templeton’s pages were in front of her, still untranslated. Her own attempts had been futile, and Arabic, it seemed, was not widely read on the island.
She had copied Ali’s numbers into her notebook and then compared them to the inscription on the amulet. There was not even a vague similarity. Her hunch that they might correspond to the Koranic verses in Templeton’s notebook had been wrong.
In the afternoon, she left her books to explore the village, parts of which were broken down with crumbling walls and ancient topless pillars. She saw no cars in the narrow streets, only donkeys and cats and the occasional child on a stoop, staring intently, too curious to smile. There were areas of the village that seemed deserted. Houses and streets were empty. Ingrid walked with some fear through these abandoned patches. Soon she was lost in a maze of small alleys that at last gave way to a square full of sun and sky, azure against the whitewash of the stone houses.
Off to the side of the square, a child played with a kitten, a dirty handkerchief tied loosely around its slim neck. Ingrid squatted and smiled, pointing to the handkerchief. “Did a mzungu make this a gift to you?” she asked. The child held the kitten close. Templeton wasn’t the only white man to carry white handkerchiefs, but Ingrid began to study the houses on the square anyway, so she might know it again.
From her roof, Ingrid could see the minaret of the celebrated Friday Mosque rise above the tallest houses, rounded and curving to a point like a spear bound for heaven. At the top, near the point, windows had been cut for the muezzin’s speakers. Below it, most of the village’s tall stone houses had partly thatched roofs laid with pillows or beds, where the wind cooled the hot hours and one could hear the village below, and, beyond that, the soft lapping of a sedated sea. In the best houses, the rag coral had been shaped into decorative porches and an outdoor staircase. Bougainvillea was trained to climb the bright outer walls, its intense pink flowers catching the eye like jewelry.
Ingrid dozed with the rest of the village. She was learning the island’s rhythms: low tide fell in the afternoon, in the hours when heat muted all life. The dance of wind began in the early evening, with flower petals skittering and palm fronds glinting like blades in the sun.
She spent the evening at the bar with Danny, who told her tales of the island and its strange population. He himself was an islander. But was he? “It is my home and I will die here I suppose. Perhaps what I like is that it is so definitely not my home. It couldn’t be a worse place for someone like me. That’s what makes it so perfect.”
“It’s far from your parents.”
“Blessedly so. They can’t stand the climate here, which is an added bonus.”
“Have you always avoided them?”
“They’re not my true family. My true family is here.”
The French doors let in a late-night breeze. The great wooden fan circled lazily, mingling the new air with the smoke and heat of their bodies. Drinking three drinks to her one, he told her the story of Henrik Bergmann. “You’ve got to consider that a northerner built this place and he built it to escape. What drove him all the way here, God knows. Whatever it was, he wanted to forget every last bit. I can testify as a fellow northerner, that’s what the island is best for. But things worked out badly for him.” He smiled privately into his glass. “We watch his son’s progress with hope and fear.”
“Finn is Henrik Bergmann’s son?”
Danny nodded. “Don’t be fooled by the European features,” he told her. “Finn is African.”
“I gather he’s a fisherman.”
“He catches all the fish for the hotel. This time of year he’s stocked the freezers and is off chasing game fish. Marlin, and the like. There’s a whole fleet of these ninnies competing against each other to see who can catch the biggest fish.”
“Does Finn live here in the hotel?”
“God, no.”
“Where, then?”
“So many questions, Miss Muffet. Before it’s too late, you should know it’s quite common for women to fall in love with Finn.”
“I’m not in love with him. I’ve never met him.”
“You’ve seen him, though.”
“I think so.”
“Well, it’s a dull and predictable fate.”
Ingrid raised her glass and tilted it as if about to drink. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to lie. “Why is that?”
“The only place you’ll find Finn is at the hotel and the only thing Finn likes about the hotel is the bar. What he likes about the bar is the booze. You will always find him drunk. Me too, for that matter. These are our limitations as men. It’s strengthened our friendship enormously. The point is, for Finn to approach any significant emotion he has to be sober, and you and your kind will never catch him sober. He’s too quick.”
Danny drained his tumbler. “As for the other man you’re after, the older gent, you might not catch him either. As I said, he rarely comes here to Salama.”
“Where else is there to go?”
“Nowhere as far as I’m concerned. But there are other settlements on the island. Nothing as friendly as what we have here. Jackson, come over here. Tell our girl Friday what goes on over in Kitali.”
Jackson ran a soft rag over the gleaming wood surface of the bar. “Which part, Mister Danny, would she like to know?”
“What the old mzungu Templeton might be doing over there.”
“I have heard stories only.”
“What stories?” Ingrid asked.
“That he was there.”
Danny pointed again to his glass. “That’s a brief, unsatisfying story, Jackson.”
&n
bsp; “That he is often there.”
“Have you heard anything else?” Ingrid asked.
“Just stories.” Jackson moved down the bar to serve a lone hotel guest.
“Why doesn’t he want to talk about it?”
“These people are very superstitious. Maybe your professor is bad luck.”
Ingrid waited until Jackson returned before she asked about Templeton’s king. “Stories, fables, anything you might have heard about such a man would be helpful.”
“My memory is short on African kings,” Danny said. Jackson simply shook his head and turned away.
On her way back, Ingrid found the beach down in the village where the fishing dhows rested on the sand at low tide. A tribe of cats sat in the wet sand and watched impassively as a fisherman painted shark’s liver oil on the bottom of his boat. The smell was rank; the fisherman tied a scarf around his face. The cats waited patiently. Another dhow approached the sloping beach and the cats pivoted to face it. Ingrid sketched them sitting fearlessly on the shore. They were shaped like Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, thin and royally arched. Their fur was a motley blend of tortoise, calico and tabby and every variation in between. They made absolutely no noise. Off to the side, a particularly regal cat sat facing the sea.
When she finally decided to head back to Abdul’s, Ingrid ran into a cluster of beach boys watching a soccer game in the sand. The sand changed the dynamic of the game, deadening the bounce of the ball. The legs of the players were taut as they dodged and feinted, effortlessly trapping and controlling the ball’s erratic movement. A particularly young player wove his way around a less agile defender and tapped the ball through two pieces of driftwood. He let out a victorious whoop before he was tackled by the eluded defender.
As she continued to walk, Ingrid almost tripped over Finn. He had been sitting a few meters down the seawall, watching the same game. She was so startled by the sight of him that instead of passing him by, she stood, catching the hair blowing in her eyes so she could see him. Finally he looked up. “Hello.”
“I think we met in Nairobi.”
“Yes. The Chichester.” He smiled distantly as if the memory were insufficient to warrant more. He squinted up at her. “You here alone?”
“Yes. I’m looking for someone. The man I asked you about at the Chichester. He was my professor.”
A sudden, brief smile and a clear look at his eyes. “I hope you find him.”
Ingrid smiled back, paralyzed by his disinterest. “Thank you.” She walked past him and the beach boys, whose conversation had halted as soon as she had approached and now resumed behind her, their laughter carried forward by the wind.
She followed the seawall back to the hotel, where the stone terrace was deserted, and sat alone above the bright ocean. She ordered tea and, when it arrived, hypnotically dipped the teabag. She couldn’t forget what she had seen in Finn’s eyes—pride, loss, something like pain—any more than she could decide if he had chosen to show it to her or if it was just there, for everyone to see.
Ingrid pushed away her now undrinkable tea. In her notebook, she wrote: I’ve finally found Finn. She couldn’t love a man she didn’t know. Desire, she thought, was another thing.
CHAPTER
12
An Obvious Enchantment
Ingrid could not sleep in her room for the four or five hours of the night when the air was completely still. That night, the heat drove her outside to a bed of pillows. She was woken before dawn by Abdul, whose sinewy hand was grasping her shoulder like a claw. He wanted her to return to her room. It wasn’t safe to sleep outside. Or proper. He sat on his haunches, waiting for her to get up. In the darkness, she could see his bare feet gripping the smooth ground. From downstairs came the sound of wailing; mournful, weeping female tones. “What is it?” she asked his silhouette.
“It is Sari, my wife. She is singing.”
“That’s a strange sort of song. It sounds like crying.”
Abdul didn’t answer. Ingrid watched him in the dark. Finally he said, “Maybe it’s just a song you don’t know.”
“You can leave now, Abdul,” she said. “I will go inside.”
She stepped into her room and reemerged a few minutes after he had gone. A candle in a hurricane lamp allowed her to continue reading even as the breeze picked up. She flipped restlessly through the Koran, impatient with the endless invocations and the disturbing sense that language was scattered by these repeated mentions of the Lord, like clouds parting around a mountain. The text both defied the power of words and depended on them. A paradox, Ingrid thought, that would have appealed to Templeton. Unlike the Bible, the text of the Koran did not build into stories. There were no escapes of narrative. Just as soon as a story began, it was leveled by an injunction of faith and the always lurking threat of admonition. She searched its pages anyway, copying characters of the Arabic script into her notebook. Her hand formed the soaring loops awkwardly and paused with uncertainty at the unclosed circles. Templeton had traveled this road, she thought, considering the passage in front of her: Humankind is made of haste. I will show you all My signs, so do not try to hurry Me.
The word Allah, she found, was like a breath that barely disturbed the lips . . .
Abdul woke her just before dawn, when she had again fallen asleep on the pillows. This time she told him in Swahili she was not afraid. Allah would protect her. The old man was stubborn but she waited him out. She lay with her eyes closed until finally he left and she drifted off until the first call to prayer.
In the morning, there was no water. A lukewarm trickle escaped from the tap. Ingrid cupped her hands underneath it and splashed the brackish warmth on her eyes. Downstairs, in the courtyard, were signs of washing: a bucket of precious water, soaked rags hanging over its rim. Sheets blew in the slight breeze of the sheltered space, suspended from a cord tied to two pillars. The smell of laundry was trapped in the enclosed space and, somewhere, someone was cooking: a sweet, sugary smell of dough, possibly the source of the unfamiliar pastry shapes that had begun appearing on her doorstep, wrapped in clean white cloth.
Passing through the courtyard, Ingrid paused and smiled at Abdul’s young wife. Ali had told her that Sari was Abdul’s second wife, come from down the coast. Other than Abdul and his family, she was alone here on the island. A mail-order wife.
Ingrid discovered that Sari stayed in a room by herself, a room not unlike Ingrid’s own, but with no windows. No light. Sari would sit at her door sewing, bent over the fabric she was mending as the sun fell on her hair and the cloth of her bui-bui, disappearing like water into a sponge. Her movements were economical to the point of being imperceptible. Ingrid watched her sitting, still as a root, and wondered how many times she had passed by without seeing her at all.
When Abdul was gone, the energy in the courtyard took flight like a helium balloon cut loose. Ingrid tried to smile encouragingly when she walked in on the unchecked laughter of these women left alone. Don’t stop, it sounds wonderful. Sari was rarely among the merrymakers. It was Abdul’s daughters who formed a phalanx around their mother, whispering between bursts of laughter and stories related with theatrical gesticulation. Ingrid slowed her step so her eyes could adjust to the shadows of the courtyard. She could not see beyond the threshold of Sari’s door, but from time to time, she heard her singing inside.
Sari—Ingrid said her name softly because it was as soft as her own name was harsh. From the fear in Sari’s eyes, Ingrid knew that Sari had been instructed not to talk to her. She bent down next to her and smiled. There were things she needed, Ingrid explained in broken Swahili. Washing powder. She held a soiled dress in her hands.
No. Sari shook her bare head. Me. She pointed to herself. Me. I will wash it. And then her fingers, long and thin, went out to the cloth of the dress and her mouth opened slightly at the shape of it as she held it before her in the air. Ingrid shook her head and took the dress back. No. She smiled in apology. Me.
When Ingrid was certain
that neither Abdul nor his first wife was around, she unfolded one of Templeton’s pages from her copy of the Koran and held it up. “Can you read this?” she asked, watching Sari carefully. “It’s very important.”
Sari took a quick step back and glanced quickly around the courtyard before continuing in halting English. “It is not possible for me to read,” she announced, and turned as if to go.
Ingrid held on to her wrists. “I am worried a friend of mine may be in danger and this is all I have to find him. Please, Sari, I need your help. I know you know Arabic—I have been listening to your singing.”
Sari hesitated before answering. “Maybe I know someone,” she said at last, holding her hand out for the page. “You let me take it to him?”
Ingrid removed the rest of the pages from the book. “Take these too. Be careful with them—and please tell no one about this.”
“Of course,” Sari said, tucking the pages into her bui-bui. “No harm will come. My friend is a good man, a teacher. I will bring them tomorrow.”
The next afternoon, Ali made his daily trip to the roof of Abdul’s guesthouse to visit Ingrid. “You are working. I will just sit here in the shade for a moment.”
Ingrid wasn’t working. She was sketching rooftops and palm trees, waiting for Sari to deliver her translations. While she continued, Ali sat and stared at her until he broke her concentration. She gave him a brief, ferocious look and then chewed on the end of her pencil. She had found that nothing but time could make him leave.
“Now are you finished with the work?”
“It’s not the kind of work you can finish.”
“No? How terrible. How tragic. How terribly tragic.”
“You’ve learned a new word.”
Ali grinned. “There is a nice British lady at the hotel. She is teaching me.”
“I’ll bet she is.” Ingrid went back to her sketch and shaded the fronds of a palm tree. She wanted Ali to go away.
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