She called softly for Sari and when she did not come, crept to the stairs, where she could see down to the courtyard. Someone was cooking lunch below. The aroma of food brought moisture to her mouth and then, like a mirage, the memory of food. The hunger came after, intense and urgent. She folded and refolded her mother’s letter. Somewhere she had money. She could send Sari out to get a chapati. Thinking about where her money was and how much she had left and if it was enough to get to Nairobi, and if she actually could get herself to go to Nairobi money or no money, she leaned her head against the wall and dozed off in the sun.
When she awoke, Sari was standing below her on the stairs. “You are sick?” she asked.
“Sari, can you get me scissors? A knife?”
“If you return to your bed. Abdul would not like to see you here.”
Ingrid went to her bed of pillows on the roof and lay on her back, trapped under a dome of blue.
Sari returned with scissors, a glass of water and something folded into a small piece of paper. “Finn has brought these pills for you, for the malaria. He says you must swallow them with water. They will make you very sick but then you will be better.”
Ingrid swallowed the three pills. “It’s my birthday,” she announced and she began to cut off her hair. It dropped in hunks to the ground where it stirred in the breeze.
“Why are you doing this?” Sari’s voice rose sharply in pitch as she knelt to gather the bright hair in her skirt.
“It is my gift to myself. Take it and burn it,” she said. “No, bury it. Then I need you to help me.”
With Sari’s help, Ingrid made her way to Fatima’s house. Sari was frightened and left before the door opened. Fatima was barefoot. Ingrid leaned painfully in the doorway, staring at the spread of her toes, the ridges of tendons running to the arch, the stability of their surface area and the toughness of the soles uncompromised by shoes.
“Where is your hair?” Fatima asked. “You look like a plucked chicken.”
“Where is Finn?”
“You can’t follow him.”
In the rohani’s chair was Templeton. He looked strange, not quite like himself. Ingrid looked at Fatima. “Where has he been?”
“Who?”
“The professor.”
“The professor?”
“He’s sitting in your rohani’s chair.”
Fatima laughed. “See what the island has done to you?”
Ingrid turned to the chair. “I wasn’t smart enough to find you,” she said to Templeton’s image as he became transparent and the fabric of the chair showed through his loden coat. “I think he’s cold.”
Fatima stepped forward and slapped Ingrid across the face. “Stop it, now. Finn has gone. There is no one in that chair.” Ingrid stared at Fatima as her eyes filled with tears. “What are you looking at, you crazy girl? Why are you here?”
“I wanted to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye, then. You should have left weeks ago.”
“To Finn.”
“Well, you can’t. As you can see, he’s not here.”
“Tell him good-bye for me, then. Tell him thank you. I would thank you, too, except I think your teas made me worse.”
“Off!” Fatima shooed Ingrid toward the door. “Not only crazy but ungrateful!”
Ingrid held her hand to her cheek and silently shook her head. She limped back to Abdul’s, where the thick door was closed to the street. She grasped the metal ring to free the latch, but it was locked. She knocked and when there was no answer, beat the door with her fist. He had locked her out. “Bastard!” she yelled, wanting Abdul to hear.
Sari’s sweet, cautionary voice came from above. “Take this,” she said. Ingrid visored her eyes and watched as Sari dropped a bui-bui from the window in Ingrid’s room. It caught the air and floated to the ground, like a bird that had been shot but not killed. “My money, Sari. Throw out my money. There is a bag with my passport and money.” Sari put her finger to her lips. Her head shook imperceptibly in refusal. “Please!” Sari’s head disappeared from the window and was replaced by a curtain. Outraged, Ingrid went back to the front door and pounded. “You can’t do this!”
When it was clear she was never going to gain reentry, Ingrid put on the bui-bui and forced herself to walk to the hotel. The bones in her body ached with a searing sharpness; she could feel the fever spreading inside her, burning and looting in its path. Her foot, thankfully, was beyond pain. It was not even a part of her anymore, she thought bitterly. She had surrendered it. Though it made her hotter, Ingrid attached the veil over her face.
By the time she reached Salama, the blood in her veins felt like fire. Finn’s pills, she realized, were working their destruction inside her, killing everything, good and bad. Taste the torment of the fire, in which you did not believe . . .
There was no one she recognized at the bar. She moved past patches of bleached-white napkins to a solitary chair at the edge of the terrace, overlooking the water. Behind her, an English couple laughed over a game of backgammon. Their drinks clinked with ice.
“Should we swim after lunch or take a nap?”
“I don’t care, darling, I’m happy just where I am.”
“A little on the warm side for me.”
“That’s just to help you relax. Think of the heat as having hundreds of tiny fingers working on your muscles and joints. Soon you’ll feel no pain at all.”
Thoughts were coming to her slowly and out of order. To make the situation worse, she was surrounded by what she needed and could not have; no money for food or drink, no way to fortify her body to stop her mind from its dangerous flutter. She couldn’t even judge how awful it would be to ask the people behind her for a cube of ice.
She had to find out the time. At five o’clock, there would be Henry to help her. She stood and took a step toward the couple playing backgammon. They grew quiet and averted their eyes. The woman angled her chair slightly and the man raised his hand for the bill. Ingrid suppressed an impulse to laugh at them and returned to her chair. She would wait for Jackson. In the mindless babble of voices behind her, she waited for one she could recognize. When it came, it addressed her firmly in Swahili. “This terrace is for hotel guests only, mama.”
Ingrid looked up and slid the fabric back from her head. A moment after the surprise, something else registered in Jackson’s face. “Is Danny here?” she asked.
“Danny is going to Nairobi.”
“Where is Finn?”
“Finn is not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I know he is not at sea,” Jackson said. “I think maybe he has gone to the other side.”
“The other side?”
“To Kitali.”
“And Stanley?” Ingrid lay back in her chair and put her hands over her face. Nausea was inching its way up to her throat. “Is he there too?”
“Miss Ingrid, you are not well.”
She was drawing stares from other guests. “I’m sorry.”
“Your foot,” Jackson began. “You should not be here.”
Ingrid saw that her foot lay outside the cover of the bui-bui. Fluid oozed from the thin, torn bandage. Ingrid rose. “I’m leaving, Jackson. Don’t worry. Just tell me the time.”
It was two o’clock.
In the harbor, Uma looked lonely on the water, the only vessel not at sea. Ingrid sat on the sand and imagined Finn moving on her deck, his bare feet meeting her warm planks. She imagined being in his body instead of her own, feeling sun and not pain pressing in on her.
Inside the hot prison of her bui-bui, her limbs grew damp. She realized the sun was falling on her the way it sometimes fell on Sari; she was absorbing every ray. If you stay out too long in these black robes, Ingrid thought, you cook.
Down the beach a few lifeless female bodies sunbathed topless. It seemed better to poach in a bui-bui than to fry naked. At least a bui-bui protected the private domain of a woman’s body. Was it a kindness that the island women
did not have to endure the stares and judgments of men? If the body was like land that could be either raped or revered, maybe wrapped in bui-buis the island women were able to preserve the moisture of their fertile soil.
Protect yourself! Ingrid wanted to yell down the beach to the naked women. The sun will bake the water out of you until you are weightless and barren. If anything is to grow, if God is ever to take root, you must keep yourself irrigated. She felt the heat sink into her, chasing the moisture out onto her skin. She was about to ignite, to burst into flames. If she continued to sit there, how long would it take for her to vanish, to disappear into rank-smelling smoke. At least I would move then. At least I would rise above this island.
From nowhere came Colin and his Gideon Bible: And if I am to offer my body to be burned, I gain nothing . . . if I have not love.
She was pulling her bui-bui over her head, fighting the soft corners so she could climb out. Underneath, her once white dress stuck to her body. She tore at buttons that seemed to have melted into their holes. Air first, she thought. Then water. I will swim to Uma. Then I will swim back to the quay to meet Henry at five o’clock. Then I will go to Nairobi and see a doctor.
The bandage unwrapped itself in the sea. She opened her eyes to the sting of salt and saw it swirling below her, trailing her like a tail of kelp. She swam down, away from it, amazed at her strength and speed, at the infirmity she had eluded. She swam up for air and then down again, traversing like a drunken sea snake to the wooden vessel she felt was either a casket or a crib, pulling herself with her arms and legs up and down, toward and away from the darkness, hugging the water and then pushing it away.
It took the last of her strength to climb over the back of the boat. When she could raise herself again, she stayed low, moving on her hands and knees because it hurt less. Her soggy bandage followed her, catching on corners.
She found whiskey and Detol and a crumpled kikoi. No key. She held the kikoi in her hands—Finn’s kikoi, its colors bleached from the sun. Rip it, she thought. Rip it into three pieces. Soak one part in Detol and rewrap your foot. Wrap the thickest strip around your torso. Cover yourself. Dip the last strip in the sea and wind it around your head, so you remember what it was like down there.
She almost choked on a gulp of whiskey before she lay down to watch the sky, clouds and birds turning overhead like an enormous mobile. She felt she was for the moment safe, though the crib she lay in was not her own.
CHAPTER
30
Kitali
Finn laid his head on a piece of driftwood and watched the sky. The ocean was loud this morning, the waves angry—as angry as the island had become. To divert the anger he felt for Wicks, he ran his offending products through his head. Wire lines, aluminum rods, guns. Products conceived for a different people—people like Wicks, who wanted the reward most; a bullet instead of a fight.
The beach stretched out before him, curving like a gently bent arm, patiently holding the water that crashed against it. The ocean alone provided no relief, no instruction. Today it was cruel. Finn could smell it: the water and life that was churned up from the deeps and hurled roughly onto the sand; bits of men and boats the ocean had swallowed without a murmur of regret, without a blink of recognition.
Finn rose. As he walked, he thought about what he was capable of doing. Taking life, certainly. He had done that before. There were different ways to take life. One could do it by looking the other way; he had been guilty of it for years. I am ready to leave the man I have become, Finn thought. That man would not feel death even if it came with a blunt and jagged blade. And if some other man is brought to life in his place, I will grant him more respect. I will not watch the foundations of his life be worn away until the walls come down around him. I will not do it again. We are all guests, even within ourselves.
The layout of the village of Kitali was something like a solar system. The shelters radiated out from the communal eating hut, linked to one another by a weblike system of pathways. Finn guessed that there were about thirty huts. He arrived shortly before sunset and as he navigated his way through the huts looking for Mohammad, he noticed that some of them had small gardens, with flowers he recognized from the old village. On that day, more than a few shelters had their makute siding in place. Only a handful were open to the elements. In the past, Finn had been easily disarmed by the inhabitants of Kitali, who looked at him differently than the people of his own village. There was no veiled misgiving, no misplaced trust. Here he had the unusual sensation of being just another human being. Today, though, his eye went unmet. It made him uneasy.
The villagers seemed unusually active. The cooking hut was like a fragrant beehive, children skipping in and out carrying baskets of fresh fruit and gourds of papaya juice. Mohammad was standing over a circle of women weaving wreaths of flowers for the children to wear.
“Ah, Finn,” Mohammad said, greeting him. “I was hoping you might come. I even made a little prayer for it.”
“Why, what’s happening?”
“It’s the day of our beginning. What do you call it? Our birthday. Maybe you didn’t know in here,” Mohammad tapped his temple. “But you might have known in here,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest.
“You overestimate me, Mohammad.”
“I don’t think so. Templeton is here.”
“Is he?”
“You must stay for dinner. Tonight we tell the story of how we came to be as we are now. I do not think you have heard this story. I do not know if even Fatima has heard it. No doubt she thinks she has.” Mohammad smiled. “It’s become important because it seems our food has become desirable to those who know nothing of its origin.” Mohammad lowered his voice. “If we tell the story loud enough, maybe even Wicks will hear it.”
Finn sat down and began steeling himself for Templeton’s arrival. He did not know what to say to this man. As a boy, Finn had been entranced by the phenomenon of Templeton’s words—how they led from one thing to another, like a stone skipping across the water. Templeton had appeared not long after Finn’s father had died, stepping off the boat in a suit and leather shoes. Finn was still like the other island boys, who would run from their game of beach soccer to surround a man who might pay them to run errands. But Templeton had nothing to offer in the way of money. All he had to offer was the strange consolation of talk, talk that eventually evolved into an education about Salama Hotel, which, Finn was made to understand at a young age, would one day become his responsibility. He wasn’t around long enough to provide guidance, and Finn came to think of him simply as the man who talked too much about things he didn’t want to hear. Years later, when the memory of his father had been corrupted by stories, Finn wondered if his father had been like Templeton in this way. Once he had asked. Templeton had laughed. “Suffice it to say, Finn,” he had said at last, “you are your father’s son.”
Finn saw him from afar because he was dressed all in white. He walked contemplatively, holding his cane behind his back and tapping it along the sand, making dashes between the imprints of his shoes. When he came closer, Finn noticed that he had shaved and looked again like a respectable European.
“Hello, Finn,” Templeton said, his face coming to life. “Mohammed told me you might come. I was pleased to hear it—for many reasons. It seems the time has come for us to converge, for history to stagger forward. I am glad you will be here for it.”
Templeton bent down to take off his sandals. “Let me tell you something about your island. One knows where the land ends and where the water begins. There is boundary and containment. This I love.”
Finn pushed his feet into the sand. Lately, he could not find a place for Templeton in his psyche where he would rest peacefully. He seemed to rile and threaten everything around him.
“Where have you been?”
“Not so far away.”
“People have been waiting for you,” Finn said. “Some in particular have been very concerned.”
Templeton
chose to respond to this indirectly. “I have a story for you, Finn,” he said. “Not a long one.” He sat down in the sand and crossed his legs. “Centuries ago, a Persian man lost first his heart and then his mind,” he began. “He was a poet, a man wedded to the word. He went into the desert to forget his love, Layla, who was given to another man.”
Finn’s expression was indifferent. Templeton continued. “His pilgrimage, like Moses, like Christ, like Mohammad, was to the desert to purify his soul, to seek an answer, a sign. But there was none. There was only the word Layla and the sun and the terrible isolation of his voice. Over and over he repeated his desire, her name. He was alone for days and then weeks, with only the sun and the word, this poet who loved Layla, lovely Layla, another man’s wife.”
Templeton dug into his pocket and pulled out a pipe. He tapped the pipe against his knee and looked out to sea. “When the miracle occurred and she finally came to him, it was too late. Layla the woman, the idea and finally the word evaporated. When she called out to him, he clamped his hands over his ears. ‘Leave me in peace,’ he told this awful vision. ‘Leave me.’
“She stayed the night, sleeping on the sand. Before the stars faded into morning, she left him, following the trail he had written to her about in his poetry. He had told her that the stars would take her to him, if she followed them.
“They died alone, he in the desert, she back in the city where her husband imprisoned her only days after her return.” Finn studied the man sitting opposite him, who he had known for so long and yet did not know. He thought briefly of where Ingrid might be at that moment as her professor talked of fruitless searches, love and madness. “And the meaning of this story?” he asked.
“There are many meanings.” Templeton almost smiled. “You more than anyone know how I have relied on words. I have been like the poet, ranting to myself about a king. For ten years I searched for him, I abandoned my life. And when I finally found him, when I finally saw him, I also saw his journey. I saw his and then I saw my own—and I realized that all I was left with was the shell of my desire. God’s justice, I suppose.”
An Obvious Enchantment Page 30