The Blue Taxi

by N. S. Köenings

  Indeed, perhaps the fates colluded here to break a coming blow. Gilbert was in luck. For the price of two kilos of kulfi and a jug of passion juice, or a pair of canvas shoes (so Sarie would have said), he acquired for his collection, dust jacket and all, a rare volume called The Happy Sons of Sindbad: Years of Arab Seamanship in the Very Bluest Sea, by a Dutchman named DeFleur. The Christian man, because he liked to satisfy his customers, and also because Gilbert Turner was not any good at bargaining, beamed, too. Gilbert stepped away, new book shiny in his hand. The vendor tipped his hat.

  Although the city’s Central Post Office rose up just behind the table, Gilbert often visited the bookstand without checking for letters. The one correspondence he engaged in had a proper schedule: once a month, a letter and a wire; he knew when to expect it. Had it not been for The Happy Sons of Sindbad—a russet thing whose dust-coat showed an arty ship in ink, asail on a brown sea, and caused Gilbert to scan the harbor line for vessels like the one that graced his book—he wouldn’t have gone in at all. On the wide and black-hatched water, Gilbert recognized three ngarawa riggers, the ever-present tugboat, a tanker (run aground and still for many years, like the Morris in their yard), and, hulking and cloud-white, a cruise ship in the distance. No dhows or mtepe ships. Nothing. Gilbert sighed. With no Arabian Sons heave-hoing on the rise, he turned, and there it was, before his open, disappointed eyes: the Post Office, an elaborate rose-columned thing behind a row of pines. Unaware that small acts sometimes bear big fruit, Gilbert registered the pillars and thought: Let’s try, why not, for fun, and made his way inside.

  As he entered that cool space, he felt businesslike and free. He liked going to the Post Office, taking up his key chain and moving past the service windows as though he had a purpose. Not seeking stamps or glue, he did not have to stand in line to face a surly teller with the strangeness that had come, it seemed to him, in the wake of Independence. Checking on his private letterbox, bypassing the queues, Gilbert did not have to feel, as he sometimes did, that he was like a party guest who, having stayed well past the end of things, is still, impolite but helpless, begging for his cake.

  With Sons of Sindbad tucked beneath his arm, he sailed past the string of people who were waiting to buy stamps or make additions to their Post Accounts. As he sometimes did, he pretended that he was an archaeologist or a sociology professor expecting correspondence from a European college of repute. Oh, Turner, he thought gently to himself, imitating tones he heard in Kazansthakis on particularly good days, you are a delicate and educated man. The members of an especially long line moved grudgingly apart and made room for him to pass. Feeling wise and gracious, he smiled blandly at the air. Once at the wall of boxes, he located his own with a spare feeling of pride.

  Our PO box! he thought. The sight of it reminded him that they had made a real place for themselves, he and complicated Sarie—and little Agatha, who shared his pallor, and, he dreamed, might when she grew up also share his love of heavy, wordy books. Our box, 32. Other Europeans, the temporary ones, had to get their letters at the Poste Restante, the place for miscellaneous mail that had no significant, no physical, address, no real match in the world. Official visitors, the Finnish engineers, the Chinese acrobatics coaches, German doctors, and the British officers as well (a whole new stash of them, still in charge of things, pretending they were not) picked theirs up at Embassies, forever overseen by gloomy attachés. But this! The Turners’ very own. Our SLP, he thought, trying (like the nationalist he’d once been, for a time) the local acronym for size—the acronym, because the right words were too hard and he could not remember them without making a mistake. But, nonetheless, Our little SLP. And, unexpectedly, to top off Gilbert’s pleasure, there was a letter in it.

  He knew who it was from. Leaving their own box ajar, Gilbert leaned against the others. He tugged at the left thigh of his woolen trousers, bent one leg and crossed its ankle on its mate. He looked nonchalant and poised. Not from any college, this slender aerogramme. But, still, how nice to get some mail. Gilbert smiled and sighed. Dear Great-Uncle James has written on a whim. He thought: We do light up his days. The affection he had felt for his new book and for the coolness of the Post Office, for the three ngarawas in the sea, for his little family, spilled out onto the letter, moved across an ocean, a highly charged canal, a blistering blue gulf, some seas, flat lands (Sarie’s), a final, choppy channel, to rivers and a brook, and settled on the man who had dropped this missive in the post. Uncle James had really been a savior.

  Since Gilbert’s postcolonial stash (relatively lavish, for a very little while) had finally expired, the inflows had been small: modest honoraria for some (rather clever, Gilbert thought) written meditations that had been taken by the History Club, and sums he charged occasionally if someone who remembered him wanted their accounts done. Sarie had once tried to give piano lessons, but she wasn’t all that good, the students had been few, and Sarie was impatient. She had, as a matter of principle, not been interested in work. Hadn’t getting married meant she would be cared for? What really kept them going, financed Gilbert’s library, put beans and soap and now and then some dresses in their cupboards once the bank account was dry, was a small but regular stipend from Gilbert’s only living relative in England: dear old Uncle James.

  Uncle James had a special weakness: fond of the Geographical Society, he adored reports from what he called “the regions.” As if it were something that a person without extraordinary means could easily take up, like that, as a hobby or a wish, Uncle James had wished as a young man to take up exploration. But real life had prevented him. In a family of gardeners, schoolteachers, and clerks, grand-nephew Gilbert Turner had come closer than anyone to braving the frontiers. Still, not everyone could say they had an adventurous relation in the wilds of Africa. Particularly one who’d stayed, after the great exodus, after all the Kenyans had come back with fear of Mau-Mau in their eyes, after the Ugandans snuck across the borders in such (so thought Great-Uncle James) grand, delicious fear. Not to mention those who bubbled up, more and more these days, from the southern end of that dim continent of blight! A relation who’d withstood. How brave of Gilbert Turner. And so he had responded to Gilbert’s initial, desperate query with alacrity and pride.

  His letters were reliably well written. The handwriting, as though he’d slipped a guide sheet beneath the aerogramme to keep his words in line, was always regular and neat. The sameness of these letters was a fundamental part of Gilbert’s current life, which Gilbert understood as immutable and steady. As long as Uncle James wrote to them once a month, the Turners’ lives would be as regular—not swank, not fine, but predictable and tidy.

  He didn’t stop to think: this letter was early. But once the tight, sealed thing was spread out in his hands, Gilbert felt the world tilt. This was not like all the rest. The words on this blue aerogramme were wrought of thick and angry ink. Gilbert could already see the exclamation marks. Aleap! At every other line! Exclamation marks. From a man who dealt in modest commas and light periods, and limited his questions, gentle and polite, to two lines at the end (How are the rains this year, then? or, Look in on the plains of Mbugakuu, will you, and tell me how they are. It’s said they host spectacular migrations) before signing himself off with an unobtrusive Fondly, or a Yours. What could have overcome him?

  Gilbert felt hot and cold at once. He wished to bring his free hand to his cheek, but first he had to find a place for all of Sindbad’s sons. He tried to press the book into the Turners’ SLP, and couldn’t (the box was narrow, small); he thought of holding it under his arm, and then between his thighs, but his arms and legs were weak. With a surge of irritation, he dropped it to the floor—an action which, though he didn’t see it, raised some brows among the people who were standing in the line. Rocking slowly back and forth, he restrained the shiny volume with the instep of his shoe. His helpless tongue grew large. He shook.

  Uncle James, of all amazing things, was sending out a warning (underlined). I have, I f
ear, grown impatient (darker) with your stipend. After all, Uncle James explained, I am now retired (a heavy period, gouged). Yes, Gilbert knew all that. Uncle James, a man whose hands and eyes and back had dealt in borders, beds, and hedges for over forty years, had in his retirement turned his knobby hands to painting things in oils: not the verdant scapes he’d managed, no, but—seas. A hobby! Gilbert thought. He’d even found it sweet. But suddenly it seemed that Uncle James envisioned a career. Gilbert, who had started to believe that he and only he could be the center of his uncle’s sunset years, was shocked to read that Uncle James was preparing for a show. The newborn artist wrote: I’ve been painting, as you know, and I am delighted (softened hand, right here, the letters lighter than the rest) to announce that I am having some success. But materials for this art, dear Gilbert (deepening again, and dark) are prohibitive, and for reasons that you must surely understand—he did, he did—not quite within my reach (this underlined, again). Gilbert’s eyes went round. Though he stood very still, he felt as if his face were being slapped, on one cheek then the other. He read on. I don’t suppose you know, he read, the cost of Damar varnish or of sable rounds, but they are very (exclamation) dear. And (underlined) even more so copal (more exclamations here). Gilbert imagined his old uncle, whom he had not seen in thirty years, now small and hard and mean, in overalls in a dark room, surrounded in the fading light by a fleet of ocean pictures, brackish, sharp-legged easels rearing. The current work, in Gilbert’s mind, was just an underpainting, but already it depicted sinking ships. And was that a distant fire, licking angry trees? He blinked. He took, to calm himself, a conscious breath of cool administrative air. His own thoughts were triple-underlined: An artist? My stipend gone for paints?

  The intent of Uncle James’s letter seemed all at once to Gilbert to be gushing like a hemorrhage from a wound that his own trembling fingers could not hope to stanch. He pressed one palm over the sheet and for an instant closed his eyes before looking down again. Unless Gilbert could show, Uncle James was saying now, that there are reasons (dash) let me be perfectly (in capitals) explicit (dash) that there are (underlined again) quite compelling reasons… Gilbert’s eyes grew wide. As if he had been stuffed by unseen hands into a sturdy woman’s corset, he felt his chest constrict. That “compelling” had been underlined three times caused Gilbert to shiver. His uncle’s previous letters had been so regularly sweet, forgettable! So mild! But this feisty uncle was indignant: Unless there are convincing reasons for you to keep your dear, courageous wife and children in the darkest continent of all, where things, we hear, are bad to worse each day, I will have no choice, dear boy, (more lines) but to suspend support.

  His courageous wife and children. Well, Sarie could be brave, indeed. But “children”? Had he, Gilbert wondered, then felt his stomach sink, allowed his uncle to believe that there were two, or three, perhaps, at least one of them a son? He groaned. And perhaps he had even—had he?—allowed his uncle to believe a dreamed-up son was also James, in honor of the man who corresponded so reliably from a cold city by the sea. Ashamed and frightened, he whimpered and read on: What income I do have cannot be spent so freely on your supper without (a dash) hope of returns. Gilbert found it hard to breathe. Does he think our lives are easy here? he thought. Out here in the… colonies? He stopped himself a moment. There were no colonies, not any longer, quite, but didn’t Uncle James rather wish there were? And hadn’t he imagined himself now and then as just the dashing and besieged adventurer his Uncle James would so have liked to see? Had he not done the man a service?

  Gilbert was upset. Was a woman in the thing? A brazen one who bared rouged breasts for the sad old man when he wanted to paint mermaids, a crass, low girl with insalubrious designs on Uncle James’s pension? Was his uncle being had? In short: Uncle James requested of his nephew that some proof of the value of my too-generous support be provided me in your next letter. I suggest a business in which, should I be fully satisfied, I might (those capitals, again) perhaps invest. But I shall expect returns. The skin of Gilbert’s brow and cheeks went slick with perspiration. His mouth hung open, closed, and opened, like a fish behind a glass. He felt as though his heart (not pumping, and not thumping, as people said could happen) had simply left his body.

  As he stood, a corpulent jaggery-colored man in a well-pressed navy suit stepped towards him, aiming for even-numbered SLP 48. He gestured towards the wall, which Gilbert’s head and torso now obscured. “Excuse me,” the man said. But Gilbert’s ears were filled with wind. He stayed. The suited man (this Gilbert did not know) was, in fact, a real university professor. A populist at heart, with strong ideas about hierarchy and the nature of oppression, he had authored several essays on socialism’s real, non-European roots and was not a man to cross. He said again, “Excuse me!” Gilbert, looking up at last, was momentarily confused. The professor’s British accent was more refined and rarefied than any Gilbert could have aped, in drunkenness or jest. He stared. The suited man stared back. “Excuse me, sir,” this author said, making it quite clear that he, and not the shivering figure holding to the aerogramme, was worthy of the title. Gilbert’s feet were locked; his spine a spike that reached the belly of the earth. He did not move aside. Finally, the professor nudged him roughly with his shoulder and reached out with some force for the door of his own box.

  Still clutching the letter but now, at last, uncoupled from the floor (his spine dissolved, his frozen feet came free), Gilbert shifted over, thinking, That push was accidental. Surely, Gilbert told himself, looking down still, unable to focus on his feet or on the tiles, no violence had been intended? He mustered an “Excuse me!” of his own, a weak one. He let the big man by, but the historian was not through. He scowled. Pointed to the volume on the floor. “And by the way, sir. I say. I say, that”—the socialist professor was referring to Gilbert’s book on seamanship, which Gilbert’s shoe had scuffed—“that is not how one ought to treat a book.” Gilbert looked up at the owner of SLP 48 with a feeling of dismay, all his skin atingle. Sons of Sindbad, far less sunny now than their author had proclaimed, lost most of their charm. Post Office Box Number 32 was no longer aglow. He closed it. Conscious of the dark historian’s eyes like knives along his back as he bent to take the book, Gilbert pushed the aerogramme into his pocket, where it began to boil.

  As might have been expected, Gilbert ended up at the Victorian Palm Hotel, where he ordered what he feared might be the last beer of his life. As he reread and reread the odious aerogramme, he made the Congo Pilsner last, and called upon his brain. Think, old man, now think! He recalled that he had meant to purchase ointment for his back, and this time almost wept: I can’t afford it now! The thought of looming poverty raised a triple itching in his skin. He sniffed. But with a sense that he was shriveling, growing very small, he did find, in a small place near his heart, the strength to tell himself that he must somehow, somehow, shape up and stand straight. What would the Mastersons and Brickmans think of him, Gilbert asked himself, like this?

  Ten

  At Kudra House, Tahir, assisted by the science book, explained to Agatha that planets moved around the sun, and the moon around the earth. “Equinox,” he said. She brought a chair into the center of the room and helped him out of bed. “You sit down right here,” she said. “I’m going to be the planets.”

  In the parlor, Majid and his guest had forgone tea. They were shyly sipping water from matching metal cups. Each of them felt hot. Majid Ghulam began to look at her and then away, and then at his own hands. Sarie felt her heart shake. Something had to happen. She couldn’t bear staying like this. Taking, perhaps for the first time, her destiny in hand, she touched him on the arm. And next she asked her host if she could look into his bedroom. “I have seen your pleasing balcony,” she said. “And also your nice parlor. But Majid,” she said, turning her big head slightly towards the hall, “could I—do you think?”

  Majid, as if making certain he was where he thought he was, touched his mustache, then his hair. It w
as happening at last! What movies did not show. What he’d asked dead Hayaam to sanction. He breathed in from his toes up to his hair and brushed his shirtsleeve slowly. “Of course,” he said. “Yes, of course you may. Come now.” With a shining in his eyes as bright as Sarie’s blue, he held her elbow in his palm and ferried her along. “Come now.” Majid Ghulam pushed open the door and let Sarie cross the threshold. As shameless as the siren Gilbert had dreamed up for his uncle, she turned down the bent nail on the door frame and enfolded Mad Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee decidedly into her broad but very tender arms. The pressure was returned, and something in her sang.

  The contract, wet, sincere, and cold, was sealed between them quickly, each one crying “Oh!” and “Oh!” as though continually surprised by their joint presence on the bed. Oh! They did it sitting up, not even hidden by a blanket, not even shielded from the green eyes of the room by a drawn mosquito net. The two took on their coupling as if, sitting close together, they had discovered four trapped birds among their clothes and, in a rising frenzy, tried to set them free. Oh! Happy, ragged exhalations! And then, the final ohs, much softer, quiet, still. A fattened, final silence and a series of small shudders, each gentler than the last, a look right in the eyes, no shyness. They rolled quietly apart.