She reread the entries, parts of which had started to make sense. F. told him that leaders are sent to mend the tears between men, that his king was not the first and would not be the last—that he could not possibly understand the great pattern God weaves. . . . They were searching for a new leader. And the mysterious Agulhas, not only a current, but a palace, a haven, a warning and a revelation—a revelation. Mohammad’s denial burned in him like a prediction of fire. The place must be protected, with or without his consent. . . . This is a declaration to mankind: a guide and an admonition to the righteous. Take heart and do not despair. Have faith and you shall triumph. Fire, water, enemies, triumph and defeat. Templeton’s notes contained within them a complete moral universe governed not by God but by the will of man.
She turned once more to the early pages from the Koran. He stood on the uppermost horizon, she read, then, drawing near, he came down within two bows’ lengths or even closer, and revealed to his servant that which he revealed. Ingrid rose to her elbows. The inscriptions were some kind of instruction. Templeton’s map and scribbled calculations were an attempt to decipher directions to an actual location. Sitting up and forcing her mind to calm, she began to study the words more carefully, trying to envision them as a place.
He beheld him once again at the sidra tree, beyond which no one may pass. At a distance of two bows’ lengths from the horizon was a tree beyond which it would be difficult to proceed. . . . He has let loose the two oceans: they meet one another. Yet between them stands a barrier which they cannot overrun. Her mind worked feverishly—the two arrows, the current, the river—the intersecting lines on Stanley’s map. But where was he? Where was Templeton in all this?
Ingrid lay back down and studied the ceiling, following a crack to see where it ended. When the crack moved, she suddenly realized it was a trail of ants. Craning her head backward she spotted a bag that had been secured on the ledge above the window. She hopped over to it and pulled it down, instantly exposing a vast and seething army of ants. Somewhere underneath the commotion were chocolate bars. Ingrid threw the bag out the window and returned to the bed, wondering what else she might have missed. She ran her arms under the mattress again and this time found something else. She grasped it, hesitating before pulling it out because she recognized it instantly. It was her left sandal. She held it dangling by its strap. The leather was stained with something. She dropped it to the ground.
By the time Hamilton returned, she was fighting to stay calm. “Where is Fatima?” she asked.
“Which Fatima? There are many Fatimas.”
“The one the professor knew. Finn’s Fatima.”
“Oh. She lives in the village.”
“Take me to her.”
“I can’t take you to her. I am Danny’s boy and she won’t see Danny.”
“Then point out her house.”
“I must first ask Danny.”
“Don’t ask, Hamilton. Just show me.”
“I think this is bad, that we have come here and entered the professor’s room. And now Fatima. It’s not good. Danny must know.”
“Nonsense.”
“No, not nonsense.”
“Well, then, hurry up. My foot hurts.”
“Oh, your foot!” Blood had soaked through her sock.
“Forget the foot, just take me, Hamilton. I’ll never ask you for anything again.”
Hamilton helped her to her feet and then stepped backward. “Excuse me, Miss Ingrid, I cannot take you. You don’t realize what you are asking for.”
Again, she tracked blood into Finn’s house. She searched more carefully this time, looking for anything that might help direct her toward Fatima. She found nothing more than packets of herbs tucked at the back of a drawer. Kip was lying at the base of the bed, on top of the mosquito net. Her kittens lay curled in a basket. When Ingrid approached, Kip opened her eyes halfway and closed them again. Ingrid got beneath the net and scratched the cat’s ears through the material. Finn’s cat. Finn’s Fatima. Even Templeton belonged more to Finn now. She fingered a hole in the mosquito net and lifted the net for Kip, who ignored the invitation. Ingrid lay back on the pillows. She slapped a flea on her arm. Next to her on the white pillowcase were countless hopping flecks. Finn’s fleas. She swore and sat up. “Not fair,” she said to Kip. “Not fair.”
Ingrid found Ali sitting at the outside bar, drinking beer with his brother. “Ali, I need you,” Ingrid said. “Half an hour.”
“Yes, of course.” They walked around the hotel the other way to avoid a dinner party. When they could no longer hear the voices and laughter, Ingrid stopped. “Take me to Fatima’s house.”
“Fatima?”
“The Fatima the professor knew. The Fatima Finn knows.”
“For what reason, may I ask? She is not someone to disturb, especially without warning.”
“Just show me her house. Then you can leave. Please, Ali.”
“It’s late.”
“It’s only eight o’clock.” Ingrid took his hand. “Come, show me.”
CHAPTER
24
The House of Fatima
Fatima’s house was ordinary from the outside. Ingrid’s courage swelled slightly at the doorstep; if no one was there, she would go home to bed. Ali vanished as soon as she had knocked. Was one knock enough? She knocked again and a voice sounded from inside. “It’s Friday. Friday.” Two beats of deep resonating timbre. An instrument more than a voice.
“I’m sorry,” Ingrid said. Her voice sounded like a child’s. “I’m so sorry.”
Silence and the smell of roses. Ingrid had never seen a rose on the island. There were no flowers, indeed there was no growth at all, around Fatima’s door. Yet roses and more roses seeped out of a crack in the door. “Excuse me,” Ingrid said to an eye in the crack. “Hello.”
“Who are you?”
“Ingrid Holtz. I know Professor Templeton. I know Finn.”
“Do I care who you know? No!”
“Please, will you let me in?”
“I don’t want to let you in. I am entertaining.”
“Just for a moment.”
“A moment! One such as yourself could not understand the importance of a moment to my guest.”
“Well, then, I’ll come back. But I only have one question.”
“I don’t believe you.” Ingrid didn’t move. Then, “You can stay for five minutes.”
Ingrid entered the cave of Fatima’s house. Candles were lit on a table set for two. Pillows of rough silk covered a carved chair that looked like a throne. Across from it sat a simple wooden chair. “You may not sit,” Fatima said.
“Standing is fine,” Ingrid complied. “I’ve just been sitting anyway, sitting for hours. You see”—she motioned to her bandaged foot—“it’s become hard for me to stand.”
Suddenly Fatima was laughing, her round form shaking with mirth. “What a day has arrived. That I have something a mzungu woman wants, what a day.” Fatima continued to laugh. “Forgive me if I am amused.”
Ingrid stared at her. “What do I want?”
“You ask me this? We are strangers. I have had a joke with myself only. Allah knows what you want.”
“Where is Nick Templeton?”
“Who?”
“You know him. Finn’s legal guardian. I imagine you raised him together.” The mirth left Fatima’s face. “Where is he?” Ingrid demanded.
“Gone.”
“Gone where? To the sacred site at Kitali?”
“That you think I know such things . . .” Her voice crackled into silence. Then she resumed, almost in a whisper, as if to herself. “We cannot follow them. It is not meant. I have a son, my soul, my pepo, I cannot follow him.”
“Follow him where?” Ingrid spoke quickly so she would continue.
Fatima gestured impatiently to the ceiling. “You are not as stupid as you act. I cannot help you, miss. I cannot change the path of things. All I do is watch. You see there are no windows here, but I watch. T
o me you look sick. Go to bed and stay in bed for three days. Drink this tea and take this. Take it all. Make yourself strong.” Fatima stood close to Ingrid and peered into her face. “Yes, there is a battle going on.” Fatima took a pen and a jar of ink and sat down at the table and made quick, precise movements with her hand. Ingrid listened to the hypnotic scratching of pen on paper. Before the ink dried, Fatima ripped the words from the page and dropped the scrap of paper into a glass of liquid. The ink left the page and floated up in the glass in feathery yellow clouds. “Here, drink this.”
“What did you write?”
“Something that will make you remember, if there is any memory left in you.” Fatima retreated to a shadowy corner of the room and sat on a stool.
“Where is your guest?”
“He is right in front of you, smiling because, unlike me, he is too kind to laugh.”
“I don’t see him.”
“Because you are one of the blind. I see you are gaining in numbers.”
“You say that because I am white? A Westerner?”
“Any number of reasons.”
“You don’t think I understand you. Does Finn?”
“What did you say?”
“I’m asking about the boy you raised.”
“Who are you to speak to me of this?” Ingrid watched Fatima’s face as the expressions changed. Finally it settled into an expression she had seen on Finn. “I know who you are,” she said, her face a wall. “I knew before you came to this island.” Fatima turned to the throne at the end of the table. “Are you listening, rohani? It’s disgraceful.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“My husband. We were having dinner.”
“You have a rohani?” Ingrid stared at the throne and saw nothing. “What does he look like?”
Fatima snorted. “Just drink what I have prepared for you.”
“Tell me what I’m drinking.”
“Words. May they find a place inside you. Now go. A splendid man awaits me.”
Ingrid was light-headed walking through the village. She could no longer feel her foot. She felt only a vague texture beneath her. She watched villagers approach from a great distance and then rapidly pass. Instead of looking down as she had trained herself to do, she met their eyes. It did not matter: she was unfaithful. There was nothing to hide. We’re all unfaithful, she thought. Full of ghaflah and shame.
At the guesthouse, Abdul followed her up the stairs, chattering behind her in Arabic. She did not turn until she reached her door. His face was pinched with anger. She closed her eyes and backed into the room, feeling the vibration of his voice push her away. By the time she bumped up against her bed, he was gone and the world was silent.
CHAPTER
25
Death at Sea
For the third night in a row, Finn found Jonah sleeping on his doorstep. He shook him out of sleep and together they rowed out to Uma in the blue-gray stillness of dawn. “Jonah, aren’t you ever sleeping at home anymore?”
Jonah shook his head sullenly. “You know why not?” he asked. “Because I have the mark of the devil.” He unzipped his pants and held his limp penis in his hand. At the base of the shaft was an open sore. “If I’m lucky it will kill me.”
Finn stopped the oars mid-stroke. They hung, dripping bright tears of seawater. “What is it?”
“A disease from Europe. A disease from sex.”
“You’ve been with a mzungu.”
“Like you, brother. A beautiful white woman.”
“I use protection. Never without. Never.” Finn took up the oars again and slammed them into the water.
“A rubber stocking on your penis?” Jonah laughed. “Not very nice.”
“But look at you, Jonah.” Finn pulled the oars too hard and wished he had farther to row.
“At least I am honest. Listen to me tell you what I have done. I had sex with a white woman. A guest. Something you do all the time but you cannot say it. It may kill me but I have time to beg Allah’s forgiveness.”
“You’re stupid, Jonah. And you’re not going to die.” They had reached Uma, but neither made a move to board her. “Tell me what happened.”
Jonah put his head in his hands. “She was far down on the beach. She had no clothes. I was returning from the reef and she saw me. I looked away—I was sorry to have seen her, sorry for the shame she must feel—but then she waves to me to come to her. I thought maybe she had questions, a problem. So I kept walking and stood not far, looking at the sand. ‘Come closer,’ she said, ‘kneel down. Don’t be afraid. We’re perfectly alone.’ Perfectly alone, she said. I could do nothing. She was very hungry and then I was hungry too. Never before have I been with a woman in this way. She was a stranger to me, like a whore. I prayed the next day for Allah’s forgiveness. I was sick twice in my stomach—food will not stay in me.” Jonah looked up at Finn with tears in his eyes. “I am afraid of what I have done.”
“Jonah,” Finn said. He could find no words of comfort. “You’ll be okay. Time will go by, you will forget.”
Jonah spat over the side of the boat, suddenly angry. “She gave me money.”
“Did she?”
“It makes me feel like a bait fish. I am not worthy of my wife. I cannot walk into my house. I cannot sleep with my own wife because now I am the whore.”
“I’m sorry, Jonah.”
“How is it with you and all these women? How can it be in your soul?”
Finn looked at the water so Jonah could not see his face. “It is nothing.”
The next night, Finn drank at the bar with Nelson but not as much as Nelson. After walking him home and listening to his maudlin manifesto on his new rods, Finn again found Jonah sleeping on the doorstep of his house. Jonah’s wife had locked him out this time, leaving him a thin blanket. Jonah explained it was better for him to sleep outside when he was drunk.
“Sometimes I confuse my two selves by speaking to my wife as I speak to you. Not only this, but when I am in bed with my wife, she puts her hand on my chest to invite me to touch her body and she knows something is wrong because my desire for her does not harden.”
Finn paused before he asked, “Why not?”
Jonah shook his head. “She would see my shame. When I am away, at the hotel or at sea, I forget her.” Finn was silent, listening. “She no longer speaks to me, she just looks. I think she is searching for what has been taken from her. What has been stolen.”
“How long has it been this way, Jonah?”
“More than a year. I don’t think I want a child anymore. I would not know how to raise it.”
The two of them rowed out to Uma in the darkness, Jonah half asleep with his arms wrapped around his torso and his chin tucked to his chest as if he were a sleeping gull.
They headed southeast. Finn steered until the sky lightened. When he woke Jonah they were a mile off the coast, just above Malindi, and heading straight east for deeper waters. Jonah took the wheel while Finn fixed breakfast and tossed up a sweatshirt. Jonah was afraid of the cold; he tensed his thin body against it, which, Finn said, only made it worse. You must try to relax, Finn told him, imagine the sun at noon soaking into your bones.
Jonah stood next to him by the wheel. “Where are we going, the Seychelles?”
“No. Just farther than normal.” Jonah was silent. “I want to see something new. Those islands Boni spoke about.”
“Boni’s islands? You must be joking.”
“I believe him.”
“In any case, we don’t have the fuel.”
“We have the fuel.”
Jonah crossed his arms. “So this is what we are doing. We are looking for Boni’s islands.”
“Yes.”
By dawn, they had lost sight of land. The air smelled different with the briny warmth chilled out of the water, which was now black and bottomless. Hanging over the edge, Jonah reported he could see nothing.
The first deep red smudges of dawn appeared in the swirls of clouds low on
the horizon behind them. In front, the sky was empty and pale. Jonah was certain they had lost their way. When Finn encouraged him to climb to his roost, he refused, lying down instead with his arms wrapped around him. Finn let him sleep until late morning, when he threw some line out for bait, nudging him to wake and watch the rods. Jonah shivered, his arms around his knees. When one of the lines began to sing, he was slow to reach it. Finn reeled the line in from the wheel. A bonito flopped onto the deck. “Look, Jonah, a female.”
Jonah scowled and began preparing a rod for marlin. “We’ll see if women are still good for something,” he said, gouging the live bonito with the hook and tossing it over the back. The fish flipped and sank into the frothy top of a white cap.
They motored until noon, when Jonah came down from his roost and demanded they turn around. “We are tempting Allah. Besides, there are no fish.” Finn nodded to the east, where one gull and then another flew above the waves. “Birds.” Jonah spit over the side of the boat. “What do they know.”
“Go back up,” Finn said resolutely.
Jonah waved wearily from his roost, indicating a direction southeast of their course. Finn pushed the throttle forward and whistled for Jonah to come down. He set up another rod with a konahead while Jonah steered. They could see the birds now. Finn tied his leaders quickly, his eyes on the water. “There are two flocks,” he said. “Did you see them?”
“Where?”
“Circle around, hit the right first and then come back for the other.”
“They may not be marlin,” Jonah said.
“What else would they be?”
“Allah knows.”
“You and Allah are keeping close company these days. Where is he—below, napping?”
“Don’t be disrespectful. We have enough trouble as it is.”
“What trouble?” Jonah stood at the wheel impassively. He wrinkled his brow skeptically at the flock of gulls in front of them. “Are you sick?” Finn asked, leaving him for the back of the boat. He called from the harness. “If you’re sick, you better tell me.” Jonah didn’t respond. Finn faced the water behind the boat and braced himself as Uma rode a sizable swell into the trough where the gulls were fluttering. “Nothing!” He yelled to Jonah. “Get closer.” Whatever the birds were focused on wasn’t moving. One of them appeared to be standing on the water. As they came closer, Finn caught the reflective gleam of a creature floating just below the surface. “Jonah,” Finn said. “Slow down.” Jonah craned a look over the edge at the fish and whistled through his teeth. “He’s hooked,” Finn said. “Jesus, he’s hooked.” He reeled in one rod and then the other and then moved to the port side to where the other flock was hovering. It was almost a kilometer away. Ramming the rods into their holders, Finn picked up the wheel and yanked it west.
An Obvious Enchantment Page 26