Ingrid did not see how this was important. “What about women? What does he say about the women?”
“In Islam there is no blaming anyone else. To me, that’s a better god than some.”
She stood and dusted the sand from her legs. “Maybe God has nothing to do with it. Maybe Templeton wanted to punish me with you.”
“For what?”
“Who knows.” Her thoughts were clear: this man was a confused drunk, a fundamentally crippled human being. He could not think, feel or talk. She smiled as politely as she could. “I’m sorry to have caught you in my confusion.”
“Don’t concern yourself with my opinion of you,” Finn said. “I have none.”
Ingrid put her hands together in a mute clap where they stayed, clinging to each other as Finn returned to his net. There was nothing to do but walk away.
That night she finished her bottle of whiskey and jotted a sloppy course outline in her notebook. By the time she finished, she had reclaimed enough of her dignity to fall asleep.
She woke the next morning with a dry mouth and a headache and for one terrible hour she was too weak to force her shame into anger. I’m worn out, she thought. Since she had arrived, every direction she had pushed on this island had shoved her back. How could one expect so little and still be so hellishly denied?
She rolled out of bed and swore as a mosquito bit her arm. Ending its miserable life with a slap, she decided she’d had enough of bullying and evasion. Templeton could continue on his mysterious path alone; his king would remain a figment. She had enough material for her course to leave the island that day. She got dressed and combed her hair. How surprised Finn would be if she just up and left. The idea was irresistible. She was now convinced that every moment of grace she had witnessed in him had been made possible by her own deluded generosity, that he knew nothing of her.
“I need to get to Nairobi,” she told Ali when she found him at the hotel. “Tell me how.”
“You are leaving us already? No more professor?”
“He doesn’t want to be found. In any case, not by me. And I think I’ve seen enough of this island.”
“There are no planes for a week, at least.”
“Why not?”
“The runway is under repair. There is an office for buses in town, by Friday Mosque. But the buses are not regular and to get to where they come you must take a dhow if the tide is high, a donkey if it is low. It takes time. They say the rains are coming early and soon the roads will be bad. A bus is not the best way to leave. Better to wait for a plane.”
The bus office consisted of a single room with a desk and a calendar on the wall. The man sitting outside was either petulant or stupid and despondently denied any association with the office. Flies collected on his unflinching face. Yes, the office was open. No, no one was there. Do you know where the man is? When he’ll be back? You’re useless, Ingrid told him. The man’s mouth curved into a smile as he reached beneath his kikoi and scratched his groin. Ingrid turned and stalked to the hotel bar.
“I can’t seem to get off the island,” she said to Danny when she sat down.
“The only thing to do is take a dhow to Tomba in a week and wait on the airstrip. Something will turn up before too long. But the rains are coming early this year, which is bad luck. Maybe you could stay for those too.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Well, the airport giveth, the airport taketh away,” Danny mused, lighting a cigarette. “Do you know who said that? I can’t remember at the moment.”
“You’re all so useless,” Ingrid said.
“All but Finn.”
Ingrid did not respond. She was doing her best to put herself into a trance by watching the smoke from Danny’s cigarette rise into the air and curl back on itself when Stanley Wicks walked in through the French doors. “Ingrid! I was beginning to think you’d left us!”
“Unfortunately,” Danny said, “she can’t.”
“Oh, dear.” Stanley seemed genuinely distressed. “Trapped by the rains.”
“I’m sure you’d like to devise traps of your own,” Danny said. “Poor little rabbit.”
Ingrid rose. “I was just leaving.”
Stanley took her elbow. “I’ll walk with you.”
“Now, now, Stanley,” Danny warned. “No touchy-touchy.”
Stanley stared at Danny.
“Thank you, Stanley,” Ingrid said, pressing his hand with hers. “I’d love the company.”
They walked in the general direction of Abdul’s guesthouse. “I spend too much time in there,” Ingrid said.
“We all do.”
“I wish I could get off this island.”
“Well, until you can, I find a project helps. Since I started work on my hotel, I haven’t had the time to be homesick. I haven’t even had time to think.”
“I’m envious. My projects have all run out.”
“A good book, then. That can do the trick.”
“That’s an idea,” Ingrid said without enthusiasm. They had reached her guesthouse. “Thanks for the suggestion.”
“Yes, well, not at all.” Stanley held out his hand for a formal handshake, which, for some reason, warmed Ingrid’s heart. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“You too, Stanley.”
Ingrid dozed into the afternoon with a T-shirt wrapped around her head. Sari woke her to announce that Stanley Wicks was downstairs. A spirited, henna-painted hand danced into the air and seemed to cradle the question before it was asked.
“Your hands look beautiful, Sari.”
Sari responded with an elaborate curtsy that featured more lovely hand movement. “Then I tell him to come up?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve brought you some Forster,” Stanley said, leaning a long cardboard tube against the wall. “Forster is good for this place. I find him a comfort when I’m feeling far from home. You could always be farther, you know. You could be lost in the Marabar Caves. Are you feeling any better?”
Ingrid flipped listlessly through A Passage to India. “I’m not sure I could survive here the way you have.”
“That’s why I’m building my own place—so I can set up different rules. No drunken debauchery in Kitali. Well, limited debauchery, anyway. And a good library.” Stanley surveyed the tiny room, his gaze pausing on a small stack of books. “My wife doesn’t read.”
“What’s in the tube?”
“Oh, I brought some drawings of the hotel, in case you were interested.”
Stanley spread the blueprints out on the bed. They knelt on the floor and as he described what was to go where, Ingrid realized with amusement that a possible key to what she had been looking for had fallen in her lap. As she studied the plans, looking for a familiar landmark from the maps she had already seen, she could smell Stanley’s clean skin beside her, his freshly laundered clothes. She stole a look at his smoothly shaven cheek. Stanley noticed and a blush spread beneath his tan. His voice softened as he described his designs. “You see, here’s the main dining room. It’s got a retractable roof, which will close during the rains. Otherwise it will stay open to the sky, even at night.”
“How lovely,” she said, and then motioned to the far corner of the map. “What’s this?”
“These are the guest bungalows, all on the ground level. They don’t like building higher than that in Africa. They feel it’s unnatural.”
“Are the rooms round?” she asked, struggling to engage him long enough to find what she was looking for.
“Yes, isn’t it brilliant? There will still be private bedrooms extending from the main communal area. But don’t you think it would be grand to have windows all round?”
“And no corners to sweep.” Beyond the bungalows, just outside the property lines of Stanley’s estate, was a river intersected by a few quick lines. Ingrid glanced at the map long enough to make a mental picture of this demarcation she thought she had seen before.
“I’m convinced that life is wondrously altered by roundness,”
Stanley continued. “The experience of living in a round structure. I can’t wait to see how they turn out. You really should come and see it when it’s ready.” He was looking at her now. “I would love to take you round.” Ingrid shifted her position so she could see him as he spoke and noticed his eyes, which were kind. She was, she realized, vaguely attracted to him. This did not change when he touched her face and then leaned forward to kiss her. The kiss was so tender it felt more like a blessing. Stanley took her hand in his and held it tight, bringing it to his lips before returning it to her.
“Can I show you something?” He fished into his back pocket for a folded, soiled envelope and gave it to her. “From your professor.”
“From Templeton?”
“I carry it around with me. I don’t know why. Finn told me he’s not quite right in the head.”
Ingrid held the letter in front of her. The handwriting caused something inside her abruptly to shift. To Stanley Wicks: Do you know about the power of belief? Here they believe in witches and ghosts and curses, and more than any of it they believe in the existence of evil. Not devils with forks but invisible wisps that easily pass through solid matter. These innocuous little wisps begin to cloud the soul. It is when God is no longer visible that the presence of evil is known. Evil takes the form of an obstacle. A roadblock. We in the West would not necessarily recognize it, but for these people, evil is as frightening for what it takes away as for what it can become. It is surprising what can become evil. . . . Do not continue to build . . .
Templeton’s tone was alarming. She tried to keep her expression neutral as she read; the ominous wording made Stanley’s agitation a studied underreaction. She smiled at him over the letter. This is a friendly warning but I would suggest you heed it as a threat . . .
She handed the letter back reluctantly and sat back so she could again see Stanley’s face. “I don’t blame you for being frightened. He’s very convincing when he wants to be. If it’s of any comfort, I received one of these too.”
“From him?”
“Anonymous. More or less telling me not to meddle.”
Stanley smiled. “Part of me thinks it’s just smoke and mirrors, these letters and curses. The island is changing. It’s the way of things. While it may be hard for some, there’s nothing they can do.” He began rolling up his plans. “I suppose threats and letters are their only recourse. Maybe Templeton is their scribe.”
After Stanley left, Ingrid lay on her bed, struck by Stanley’s last statement.
At sunset, Ali touched her shoulder and laid a plate with a chapati and beans next to her. The sky was a glorious electric pink, the air between them so infused with color that it seemed possible to touch it, to shape it into something you could hold. Ali sat cross-legged and ate from his own plate, folding beans into the chapati and eating with his fingers. She copied him, eating quickly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Ali nodded. “It’s better to eat with your hands,” he said. “Food tastes better when it’s closer, not delivered with cold metal utensils. This is how we eat in the village. It’s how the prophets ate. After, we can go have coffee on the street. Maybe you will like our coffee, too.”
The men in the village sat on wooden benches outside the coffee hut. Ingrid was an object of general interest as she sipped the thick, sweet liquid. Some of the men nodded in her direction, others stared openly. One of them left his bench and sat next to her. Ali introduced them. “Habib wants to read your fortune. Give him your cup when you are finished.” Habib’s smile flashed gold and rotten teeth when she handed him her empty cup. He took it, turned it upside-down on its saucer, and waited for the residual grounds to drip a pattern down the sides of the cup. Habib turned the cup over and then around and around, speaking in rapid Swahili. He finished the reading with a look of consternation and what seemed to be explicit instructions.
“What did he say?” Ingrid asked Ali.
“He said you will be a teacher when you are finished with your current business. Then you will go home and have many children.”
“That’s not all he said.”
“No, but it’s nonsense anyway.”
“Tell me.”
“He says you should be careful with your health.”
“My health?”
“He prescribed teas and such, probably he wants to sell them to you himself and make a little money.” Ali smiled dismissively at Habib. “But these old men are charming, no?”
“It seems they have an act,” Ingrid said. “Like you.”
“How else can it be? But I like you, Miss Holes. You are so far my favorite American.” These words, accompanied by his eyes and slow, raffish smile, made her want to slap him.
The next night, Ingrid went down to the street alone. She had been entertaining the idea that Templeton’s letter to Stanley was a harmless scare tactic. The letter, after all, had been written weeks ago and nothing had happened to Stanley or his hotel. She was not convinced that Templeton was the force behind these communications. She had never heard him expound on the question of good or evil—or God, for that matter. If Stanley was right, and he had become a voice for someone else, the tone and content of the letter made more sense. The question was, how deeply was he involved in this resistance and why.
Ali found her eating on her porch. He fell into a hammock. “I want you to stop coming,” Ingrid told him.
Ali was silent, considering this. “You will eat?”
“Of course I will eat. Now go.”
“When can I come again?”
“I don’t know. A few days.”
“Very well. I will pray for you.”
“Nonsense, Ali. You don’t pray.”
“You are wrong about that.” He hoisted himself out of the hammock. “May peace find you.”
The afternoon rains had started in earnest. There was constant talk about their early arrival—it was generally thought to mean bad luck. The holes in the airstrip yawned and filled with fresh water. Mud overflowed on the tarmac. Dry cement for the repairs was creeping its way up by dhow, from Mombasa, but no one expected it for a week or more. Ingrid stayed on her porch during the day and picked up the Koran frequently, persisting against its bizarre verse in an attempt to draw closer to the thinking behind Templeton’s notes. The letter he had sent Stanley had revived her interest in this maddening puzzle—and Stanley’s blueprints had given her a missing piece. She took out the map and her sketch of the amulet, and turned again to the first entry from the Koran:
In the water which God sends down from the sky and with which he revives the earth after its death, disposing over it all manner of beasts; in the disposal of the winds, and in the clouds that are driven between sky and earth: surely in these there are signs for rational men.
This must have been what Templeton had been waiting for, she thought, looking out to sea. Something would happen with the coming of the rains. We opened the gates of heaven with pouring rain and caused the earth to burst with gushing springs, so that the waters met for a predestined end.
At sundown, she dressed and went down to the street for chapatis and beans. When her candle burned down to nothing, she left the guesthouse for the bar to look for Stanley Wicks.
The bar was empty except for Finn, who was nursing a warm beer. She sat down beside him, feeling remarkably calm. “Still here, are you?” he asked, without looking up from his beer.
“I seem to be stuck.”
“You must be getting lots of work done.”
“Have you seen Stanley?”
“Now why would you be wanting him?”
“You’re drunk.”
Finn looked at her, his eyes dead. “And this surprises you?”
“No. Jackson, can I have a breeze?” Ingrid asked, her calm leaving her for a sensation of heat. “Seeing that you can still construct a sentence, why don’t you tell me why you came to my room in the first place.”
“Because the professor asked me to look after you.”
Ingrid fel
t her chest constrict like a fist. “Did he say why I needed looking after?”
“You were naive. I didn’t think so at first, but then I saw it.”
“Why did he pick you?”
“He thought it might come naturally.”
“But it didn’t?”
“I’m not a watchdog.”
“It didn’t cross your mind to say something like, ‘Be careful, Ingrid, this island can be a dangerous place for a woman’? It would have been much simpler.”
“Wouldn’t have worked.”
“Because it’s common knowledge that I don’t heed warnings? Because everyone knows I am perilously naive?”
“Because the island’s more complicated than that. And a woman like you needs protection no matter what you think you know.”
Ingrid found self-control by looking at his feet. “What is a woman like me?” she asked deliberately.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t. Tell me.”
“A good-looking white woman.”
“Oh, please. How wonderful that you’re all trying to protect poor white me. So tell me, why don’t I feel protected?”
“Also,” Finn said into his glass, “Kip dropped her kits. I’ve given her and the little ones the run of the house. The place is crawling with cats. I needed a place to sleep.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Finn’s eyebrows raised. Still he did not look at her.
“You’re a bad liar, Finn.” Ingrid took his face in her hands and turned it toward her. Jackson dropped something behind the bar. “The only reason you lie is because you’re afraid.”
He leaned close to her so the heat of his face touched hers. He whispered, “I am a little afraid of you.”
“Well, that makes things much better. What a hero you’ve turned out to be. I thought you were going to help me.”
“Are you listening?” Finn’s voice was hot and gritty. “I am going to help you now. On the island there is something we call ghaflah. It is a great sin. It means forgetting your divine origin. Losing your self-respect. Ghaflah makes a man dangerous. A man who thinks he is innocent. But when he has lost his sense of divinity, he no longer acts with responsibility. He becomes dangerous to everyone.”
An Obvious Enchantment Page 23