HEARTS AFLAME

by Nancy Morse

  “That is what you said the last time.”

  “Then why are you asking me again?”

  Kibbi exhaled a thin stream of smoke into the air. “Some things are beyond your control.”

  Jonathan arched a cynical brow. “Oh? And what’s beyond my control? Black and Tan? It’s only a matter of time before he and I meet, and then it’s goodbye Mara, hello Serengeti for our ferocious friend. What else? Poachers? I may not get all of them, but the ones I do get never poach again. Thorpe? If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get that bloody bastard.”

  “I was speaking of the woman,” Kibbi said, deflecting the subterfuge. “You cannot force her to remember you.”

  The air went out of Jonathan in a long, low whoosh. Kibbi was right. This was one more hardship for him to endure, one more disappointment. He should have been used to it, living in this wild and unforgiving place. But beneath the crust of his thirty-five years lay a soft, vulnerable core that he kept fiercely guarded, a place occasionally glimpsed only by the understanding eyes of his Masai friend. Kibbi knew how much this was affecting him. There was no need for further talk about it between them.

  Jonathan remained at the table long after Kibbi had left the kitchen. He was tired. His muscles ached from digging the ditch. His mind was weary from worrying about things like Black and Tan and the drought that threatened the destruction of the coffee farm he had inherited from his grandfather. His emotions were numb from all he had heard tonight. Outside, a pitch black night enveloped the land. The steady hum of insects filled the air. With his fingers wrapped loosely around a glass of wine that he kept purposefully filled to help dull the sharp edges of his pain, his head slumped onto his arm that was stretched out on the table, and he fell asleep.

  Chapter Six

  For Julia, sleep would not come. For more than an hour she tossed and turned. Finally, she got up and left the room.

  In the kitchen the lantern was burning low, its chimney smudged with soot, casting a flickering light across the walls. She froze in the doorway at the unexpected sight of Jonathan slumped over the table. His breathing was deep, heavy, and even, the muscles of his back flexing with each breath he took. For several moments she studied the tips of the sandy brown hair brushing the back of his collar and the soft tufts of hair shadowing his forearm. Confident that he was asleep, she tiptoed past him on the way to the ice box for a glass of lemonade.

  She didn’t hear his subtle intake of breath and wasn’t even aware that he was awake until his voice startled her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  His head came up, and his voice was husky with fatigue. “I’m a light sleeper. Did you forget something?”

  She glanced at the almost-empty bottle of wine on the table. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d have a glass of lemonade.”

  In the dim light he could see the shape of her body through the thin cotton shift she was wearing. “Have you changed your mind about Tanganyika?”

  Inwardly, she squirmed under his stare. She hadn’t expected anyone to be up at this hour, so it hadn’t occurred to her to put on a robe. She was sorry for it now. “No, I haven’t.”

  “You know what you’re asking, don’t you? It can get rough out there. Look at what happened to you the last time.”

  Her gaze stuck bravely to his. “If you’re trying to frighten me, it won’t work. There’s only one thing that frightens me, and that’s not remembering.”

  “Look at it this way,” he quipped. “Some people never get to start over again, but you can. New friends, new experiences, no guilt from the past, no regrets.”

  “That’s the kind of response I would expect from others, not from someone like you.”

  Jonathan sat up, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs out before him. “What makes me so different? I have the same moving parts, the same thoughts, the same emotions as other men.”

  “I don’t know. You just seem different somehow.”

  “And you came to that conclusion in the last three days, most of which you spent in a deep sleep? I mean, we’ve only known each other for, three days. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  Jonathan’s heart, and his hope, sank. “And what have you concluded about me in just three days?”

  “That beneath all that posturing and bravado you’re a kind man.” She gave a little shrug in answer to his surprised expression. “Just a lucky guess.”

  “Let’s hope you’re as lucky at finding what you’re looking for.”

  She went to the ice box and took out the pitcher of lemonade. “I keep looking for something that will jar the memories loose,” she said as she poured the lemonade into a glass, “but so far, nothing has. Who knows? Maybe the answer is out there somewhere. Sometimes I wonder what will happen if I never get my memory back.”

  The thin shift she wore showed the outline of her legs when she stood in the lantern light. He remembered those legs as long and lithe, and he knew there were dimples at the backs of her knees.

  Determined to show no embarrassment, Julia carried the glass of lemonade to the table and sat down across from him. Nodding toward the cowrie shell he wore on a leather thong around his wrist, she asked, “Is there a significance in that?”

  “It’s to ward off evil spirits.”

  “I wouldn’t think a man like you believes in evil spirits.”

  “Maybe I’ve been around the natives too long.”

  “You certainly have enough of them working the farm.”

  “They’re Kikuyu. They’re not allowed to buy land, but the government lets them cultivate a few acres on a white man’s farm in return for working for him a certain number of days in the year. I pay them twenty shillings a month. Of that they have to pay a hut tax of twelve shillings to the government. I don’t like collecting it from them for the government, but I have no choice. Some of them were born on this farm. Their shambas—that’s what their cultivated fields are called—are a little way off from here. They grow maize as high as your head and the best sweet potatoes you’ll ever taste. The house-boy is a Kikuyu youth I nursed back to health after he was mauled by a lion. Besides them, there are a few Somalis, and the cook and blacksmith are Indians who came over to work on the railroad and stayed after the railroad was completed.”

  “Kibbi doesn’t resemble the other natives,” she observed.

  “That’s because he’s Masai. He and I grew up together.”

  “You speak his language, then?”

  “Swahili, yes. And Somali. And Punjabi.”

  He felt like a broken gramophone record, having told her all this on her first visit. Growing somewhat impatient at the necessity of having to repeat it, he said abruptly, “Enough about the farm and the natives. What about you? Is there a man waiting for you back home?”

  “No, there’s no one. And you?”

  He replied candidly, if not without a tinge of bitterness. “There was someone, once.”

  “What happened?”

  He gave out with a strained laugh. “Women aren’t exactly beating a path to my door. This may be 1922, but out here it might as well be the dark ages. The farm barely makes a living, and in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a drought.”

  She took a sip of lemonade, and said, “That may be. But the air is clear and pure and the light has a way of spilling a smooth wave across the plain. There’s something about this place. I can’t quite define it, but the sense of anticipation is fierce. It’s as if anything can happen at any time, and yet everything that does happen does so because it’s supposed to. It’s scary, but also reassuring.” She licked the lemonade from her lips with the tip of her tongue in an unconscious gesture, unaware of the gut-tightening sensations it produced inside of him

  “That’s a magnanimous attitude toward the land that nearly killed you.”

  “Maybe I’m just more forgiving
than you are.”

  “If you lived in Africa for as long as I have, and seen some of the things I’ve seen, you might not be so forgiving. I’ve had my fill of the dead and dying. If you’ve ever seen a man come down with blackwater you’d know what I mean. Once he sees the water from his kidneys turn black, he knows a painful end is coming. I’ve seen men trampled by charging bull elephants and fatally mauled by lions. Death stalks far and wide.”

  “Why do you stay?”

  “Because for me, the greatest luxuries in life are space and silence, and the land leading its own life. It’s the wide skies and the clean wind. It’s why no one who visits Africa ever forgets it. It’s why those of us who live here will never leave.”

  There was a subdued passion in his voice, prompting Julia to question, “If you feel that way, why aren’t you doing something about the killing of elephants?”

  “I told you, I do what I can.”

  “How? By growing coffee?”

  His blue eyes flashed brightly and the passion that only moments ago had been a low hum in his voice flared hotly. “How can a person with no memory make judgments of others? How do you know what mistakes you may have made in the past, or what regrets would be tearing at you right now if only you knew what they were?”

  Stunned by his reaction, yet knowing that he was right, Julia rose to leave.

  He was out of his chair with the speed and agility of a big cat, blocking her path to the doorway. His eyes burned into hers, their color a vivid contrast to the dim light of the lantern. His voice was a low rasp against her cheek as he reached forward and snaked an arm around her waist.

  “If you’re so forgiving, can you forgive this?”

  The unexpected wrapping of his arms around her, the unyielding wall of his chest, the smoothness of his lips that were suddenly upon hers, rendered any reply mute.

  He was hard and soft at the same time. The muscles that locked her to him were rigid, but the skin at the back of his neck, where her hands somehow came to rest, was incredibly soft, the tips of his hair like silk between her fingers. The thrust of his hips forced a rock-hardness against her.

  She made a half-hearted attempt to pull away, but her whole body caught fire as his hand slid over her, cupping her breast through the thin fabric of her shift. She felt herself drowning in a sea of feelings and sensations, all vaguely familiar. The murky vision of the faceless lover of her dreams sprang suddenly to mind. Those phantom hands of her dreams caressed her with the same heat with which Jonathan’s caressed her now. His lips were kissing her the way the man in her dreams kissed her, deeply, powerfully, sucking the breath right out of her lungs. It was becoming harder to tell what was a dream and what was real, and suddenly, she felt confused and uncertain…and scared.

  The lantern wick had burned itself low, and the light in the room from the moonlight slanting through the window cast her face in a pearly glow when he released her and took a step back. Her lips were wet from his kiss. Her eyes were dark and beautiful…and blank.

  Disappointment tore at him, and he struggled to regain his composure. In a ragged voice, he said, “Is that what you want to find Roger Thorpe for?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Julia’s confusion was mounting. His kiss had been so wildly hot she thought she would go up in flame. But what troubled her more was her own reaction to it. She had clung to him shamelessly, urging him on with her own heated response. What was it about this man that sent her into a tailspin? She needed him to guide her to Roger Thorpe, that was all, wasn’t it?

  The roar of distant thunder drew her eyes upward. Moving nervously away from him, she said, “Did you hear that? Rain.”

  “That storm isn’t coming anywhere near here,” he curtly replied.

  “How can you tell?”

  “By the feel of the air, the sounds of the insects, the movements of the animals.” Smalltalk seemed somehow ridiculous after what had just happened between them, and so unnecessary. “Turn the lantern out when you leave.” Muttering a barely audible, “Good night,” he walked from the room.

  He sat in the darkened parlor until he heard her footsteps head back to the bedroom and the door close softly behind her. Then he went to the telephone. He couldn’t wait until morning. He had to know now.

  His fingers tightened around the thin candlestick when he lifted the mouthpiece to his lips and held the receiver to his ear. Shifting nervously from foot to foot he waited for the attending physician at the hospital to come to the phone. He knew not to ask questions if he didn’t want to hear the answers, but this was different. This was something he had to know. He kept his voice low as he explained the situation. “I see. Yes. Yes. I understand. No, I won’t. Thank you.” Replacing the receiver in the fork of the switch hook, he resisted the impulse to fling the phone across the room. With a muffled oath, he left the house.

  Outside, he stood alone at the edge of the veranda, gulping in the crisp night air in an attempt to gather his strength. From out of the darkness that stretched beyond the compound an animal shrieked. Somewhere in the black African night the lions hunted and fed and night-feeding bats sipped the blood of sleeping Masai cattle.

  He hated the illusive rain almost as much as he hated himself for thinking that a kiss might spark a memory of him in her eyes. Her body remembered him, oh yes. He’d felt it in those precious moments when she’d been pressed against him. But her mind was blank, all trace of him erased from its reality. More and more he was feeling like the drought-stricken land, parched, hungry, thirsting for the one thing that would bring him back to life—recognition of himself in her eyes.

  He was in no hurry to cram his six foot frame onto the sofa in the parlor, so he remained outside long into the night, his thoughts carried like dust on a dry wind back in time.

  He would never forget the day two years ago when she knocked on his door. Sunlight sparkled through the open weave of her broad-brimmed straw hat, falling across the bridge of her nose like translucent freckles. She had come to ask him to guide her into Tanganyika so that she could take pictures of the ivory cache she’d read about in the newspaper. Her former guide had brought her to him, having wanted no part of it. He, too, should have turned her down right then and there, but there was something about the way she looked at him, brown eyes clear and forthright, and the sound of her voice, with its delightful little scratch, that made him pause. And in that fraction of time, he was lost.

  Admittedly, it was more than a hormonal reaction that had persuaded him to help her. He reasoned that her photographs would generate attention to the ivory trade and the poaching of elephants. He never expected to fall in love with her spirited and inquisitive nature and the intelligence that brightened her eyes. Like a kid of seventeen, he fell hard, with all the topsy-turvy feelings that accompany first love.

  In Tanganyika they had stopped at the town of Arusha to spend the night before heading deep into the bush country. When he awoke the next morning, she was gone.

  She had complained that it was taking too long to get to the cache. He understood her eagerness, but in a land as violent and unpredictable as this, he had to take every possible precaution, and considering what they were looking for, stealth was paramount. No one in Arusha remembered seeing the dark-haired American woman. In Nairobi his questions went unanswered. She had quite simply vanished. His mind swam with questions and his heart ached with what he soon began to perceive as betrayal. He had returned to the farm feeling used and hating himself for the ease with which he had allowed her to slip into his heart. In the end, he was left with the painful realization that she left simply because she wanted to.

  Six weeks. That was all the time they spent together. Six weeks in which to discover a love unlike any he’d ever known. And two years in which to wonder if it had ever really happened and if his instincts about her could have been so wrong. He’d never felt that way about a woman before, so stupidly in love that he would have believed any lie he was t
old. Now, having learned the truth, he was sick to think that there was nothing he could do about it. The doctor at the hospital had cautioned him against attempting to force her to remember so as not to cause more trauma. But it was more than that. What if he told her about their past and she did remember, and it turned out that she never really loved him at all?

  Chapter Seven

  The sweat-streaked faces of the workers shone like black glass as they worked in the noon-day heat beneath the African sun. Lazy dogs sprawled on the yard in front of the house. Huts of mud and daub fringed the outlying areas. Native forest rose in dark waves behind the house. The valley sloped gently downward in front.

  An old steam engine powered the mill that ground the maize from the natives’ fields. The Kikuyu men grunted under the heavy bags of ground yellow grain they loaded onto carts, and the air split with the cracks of their whips over the whip-scarred backs of the oxen that pulled the carts down the narrow, beaten road leading to the Nairobi railway station.

  Jonathan sat on the veranda, sipping coffee from last season’s crop, his nostrils filling with the bitter scent of it as he contemplated what he would do if he lost the trees planted on the hillside.

  In an ordinary season, when the coffee beans ripened and were gathered and thrashed by the women, the big coffee-dryer would rumble to life, tumbling the coffee in its iron cylinder with a sound that echoed like drumbeats through the hills. Then, hulled, graded and sorted, the coffee would be packed in sacks and loaded onto bullock carts for the ride to Nairobi where it would be put aboard railway cars headed to Mombasa and Kisumu. But this was no ordinary season, and none of that would happen if the rains didn’t come soon.

  He’d grown up on this farm, and the memories were deep and long-lasting—memories of waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of the workers taking the coffee out of the dryer, of shuffling his feet through the coffee-husks littering the factory floor, of the hurricane lamps throwing soft light through the factory windows out into the African darkness, of the zebra foal he raised as a pet that was killed by a lion, of the years of drought, although none as bad as this one, of his father, who the natives called Bwana, working hard to salvage plants decimated by thrips, and of his mother, who the Indians had called Memsahib and the Kikuyu called Msabu, who had longed for England and died in Africa. In those days elephants lived in the hills, but they had wandered away, and these days on his rides he saw buffalo, eland and rhino, but few of the enormous tusked beasts lifting their trunks to bellow a warning.