The Idol of Mombasa

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Before she reached Majidi’s door, it opened with the tinkling of a bell and then swung with such force that it nearly hit her. From behind it emerged the bluff gentleman who had been on the ship with her and Justin. He was jamming his sun helmet on his head. Obviously, he was in high dudgeon about something. She was sure he mumbled, “Bastard,” under his breath. Then he noticed her, coughed, and lifted his hat in a quick salute. She was about to ask him if he knew Majidi, but now thought better of it. “How do you do, sir,” she said instead. She held out her hand. “My name is Vera Tolliver,” she said. “We spoke aboard ship, but I did not have the pleasure of really making your acquaintance.”

  “Carl Hastings,” he said, and gave her hand a perfunctory shake. “I saw your husband at the Mombasa Club. He’s a policeman.” He uttered the last few words with the usual English upper-class disdain for the men who provided the peace and security in which they lived.

  “That’s right,” Vera said, with pride and a hint of rebellion. “I am sure all of the king’s subjects are grateful to have men like him here, providing law and order.”

  Hastings gave her one of those shocked looks the English put on whenever she had the temerity to express an opinion that contradicted their own. He blinked three times, coughed again, and then pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Majidi’s door. “You don’t have business with this blighter, do you?”

  “He is an acquaintance of a friend of my family’s,” she said, hovering near the truth, not actually lying. “I thought he might be able to advise me on the best place to buy carpets.” A truth of sorts, since—though far from her real purpose—it was what she had meant to ask of him.

  “I wouldn’t ask Majidi about carpets. He’ll only send you to a relative who will cheat you.” He made a show of patting his breast pockets. “Sorry,” Hastings said. “Must go back into the shop. Forgotten something. Best carpet man is Mahmoud.” He pointed around the corner. “All the way at the back and to the left. Make him take the rugs out into the sunlight before you buy them. But once you select a good one, he will give you a good price. You will have to jew him down, of course.”

  “Thank you for the advice.” She turned away, pretending to follow his instructions. But she glanced back and watched while he opened Majidi’s shop door and went back inside. She turned the corner, intending to wait a few minutes and double back once she had heard Hastings leave, but then she saw a familiar face that made her grin from ear to ear.

  “Sergeant Libazo,” she said, certain that using his rank would please him.

  He bent his arm at his waist and bowed. “Miss McIn—Mrs. Tolliver. How happy I am to see you.”

  She stood on tiptoes and looked over his shoulder, thinking she would see Justin.

  “A.D.S. Tolliver is not here. I was actually here on a personal errand. We are going to be on duty nearby in a few minutes, overseeing a crowd attending a speech by the Egyptian visitor. We have to make sure that nothing untoward happens, you know.”

  “Yes, Mr. Tolliver has told me all about that.”

  “On my way to the Baraza Hall, I took the opportunity to stop here to see a friend,” Libazo said. His eyes took on the look Justin’s might have when he was about to blush. But of course Kwai’s mahogany skin did not turn red.

  Vera did not have the nerve to ask him if this friend was a girl.

  “I must go,” Libazo said. “Or I will be missed.”

  “Good-bye, then. We will see each other often, I hope,” Vera said. She was about to go back ’round the corner to Majidi’s shop when she saw Katharine Morley coming toward her.

  Libazo slipped away.

  “Mrs. Tolliver,” Katharine Morley said in surprise, as if she hadn’t known that Vera was coming to the bazaar.

  Vera was about to report to Katharine that she had not yet spoken to Majidi, when the muezzin began to sing out the call to prayer from the minaret of the mosque adjacent to the souk. At once, the place fell silent. Many of the men in the nearby stalls disappeared behind their curtains. Some rolled prayer rugs right in the aisles, knelt, and faced Mecca. The Hindu shoe seller and the man who sold pots and pans disappeared into the backs of their shops. The two women had suddenly become conspicuous. Vera felt it somehow sacrilegious to continue their conversation. She pulled Katharine into a nearby corner, out of sight of the men at prayer.

  “I followed Robert here,” Katharine said in too loud a voice.

  Vera put her index finger to her lips and pulled Katharine farther into the corner.

  “Sorry,” Katharine whispered, “of course, we don’t want to be accused of blasphemy.”

  “I thought you and the Reverend Morley were going to let me find out more about Majidi.” Vera did her best to keep her voice even, but it miffed her that Katharine might be seen with her, which would spoil her hope to approach Majidi anonymously. How would she be able to get anything out of him if he knew she was in league with the missionaries?

  Katharine closed her eyes and shook her head. “I am keeping my part of that promise, but I am afraid Robert will not. He has been acting very strange in the past few days. Away from home more than he ever was. Always letting his emotions run away with him. I wanted to make sure he would not do anything foolish, so I followed him when he went out. His trail led me here.”

  “I did not see him,” Vera said. She wondered if Katharine always spied on her brother, but of course she could not ask that.

  “He entered from the side. You know what a rabbit warren of twists and turns this place is. I lost him in the crowd, so I was making for Majidi’s shop when I saw you.”

  “He did not come this way,” Vera said. “I have been here near Majidi’s shop for some time, and I have not seen him.”

  “What did you find out about Majidi?”

  “Nothing as yet.” As soon as she answered Vera realized that she did know two things she had not known before—that the trader did business with Carl Hastings and that the boy and his grandfather in the shop across the way intensely disliked him. But these things did not have any bearing on his relationship with Robert Morley.

  The praying men were beginning to move about again, but Vera could not approach Majidi now, with Katharine in tow. She would have to come back later, though she despised the delay. She was more curious, and more determined than ever to find out about Majidi. “Why don’t we just go to the club and have tea? Ladies are allowed in the tearoom during the day.”

  As before, the mention of tea brought a light of desire to Katharine’s lovely blue eyes. Conspiratorial talk about how they would get information from Majidi occupied their walk to the club, but once they’d arrived, Katharine began to inquire about how Vera’s father was faring alone these days, a subject that grieved Vera. She was sure her father felt lonely, and she felt guilty that she was not there to keep him company.

  7

  While Vera and Katharine Morley lingered over tea at the club, Kwai Libazo stood guard at the front entrance of the Baraza Hall. On the other side of the broad double door was a Somali policeman whose rank was only corporal, but still, though he obeyed Libazo’s orders, he assumed an air of superiority that clearly said rank mattered less to him than his race’s assumed precedence over the darker-skinned tribesmen from the interior. It was a circumstance that nearly elicited an audible sigh from Kwai. In the few days he had been here on the coast, he had developed an intense dislike for Somali men. But he kept his feelings to himself.

  That morning, in a quiet corner of the souk, he had had only a few minutes to introduce himself to the first Somali woman he had ever spoken to: Aurala Sagal. My, she was lovely. He was moved by everything about her. The warmth of her smile. Her pretty teeth. Her voice, low and soft, but sweet. Her eyes that gazed at him and made him feel important. The way she moistened her lips with her tongue. Even though he could not see her body, he knew that he wanted it. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, in her silky wrap that was the color of a tamarind blossom and matched the little s
hoes on her delicate feet.

  He did not want to think about the fact that she sold her love for money. He just wanted to think about her.

  He paid attention to his work now, scanning the crowd of men streaming into the hall to hear the Egyptian priest, alert to any trouble. He had to be ready to respond to any disturbance, but he could not help recalling Aurala’s soft, lilting voice that sounded as if she were going to break into laughter at any moment.

  “You are not Swahili,” she had said to him, the merriment leaving her eyes for a few seconds. He hoped that did not lessen him in her eyes. All the tribes of Africa seemed to look down on all the others.

  “No, I am from up-country,” he said.

  When her eyes scanned his body, she seemed to be deciding whether she wanted him. Everything he knew about the Somali people’s beliefs told him that no girl of theirs was supposed to be so brazen. “You do not look to be Kikuyu or Luo,” she said as if she could not make up her mind if she liked him.

  “No,” was all he answered. His background and his feelings about it were not what he wanted to talk about. “You are Somali.” He made it a statement. Only Somali girls were tall and graceful, dressed like this—in Arab fashion—and had such exotic hair dressings. She might not behave like a girl of her tribe, but people did not always follow their customs, especially if they lived in cities instead of villages. This was true even of the English.

  She smiled with her mouth but not with her large, glistening eyes. “I am from there, yes. And you? Tell me.”

  “My mother is Kikuyu. My father was Maasai.”

  She reached out and touched the sleeve of his uniform. Her demeanor had turned serious. “Then you are like me. Not fit to belong where you ought to belong.”

  He had wanted to say that perhaps they belonged together. But he did not. He did not think that a man said such things to a girl who did what she did.

  “I think I will see you again,” she said after a silence.

  “I think so too.” He did not want her to read his thoughts, but it seemed she could, and he could not hide them from her.

  “Smile,” she said, and when he did, she giggled. “I knew your smile would be beautiful.”

  Kwai was reveling in his memory of her beauty as she tripped away from him, but then a sudden hustle and bustle inside the Baraza Hall dispelled his reverie.

  The noise came from just behind the door. Kwai slid his rifle off his shoulder, at the ready. At that moment, A.D.S. Tolliver emerged, followed by an Englishman with a photographic camera and the important Egyptian priest, who always dressed in black with a towering white hat. He was as tall as Kwai and the captain, even without that hat. Soon the photographer was making a great show of setting up his machine and arranging the Grand Mufti with some other people—one was an old man in a dark blue kanzu. He had a long salt-and-pepper beard. Beside him walked a boy in white whose eyes and eyelashes put Kwai in mind of Aurala Sagal’s.

  Tolliver came and stood next to Kwai. “Evidently,” he said, “the boy has been chosen to go to Cairo to study with the Mohammedan teachers there. It is to be a great honor for his family. They are going to put this picture in the paper.” It was surprising that the captain spoke such things to Kwai Libazo. None of the English officers in the police force did so. Kwai knew, also, that he was the only one on the force, black or white, to whom Tolliver spoke in such a forthcoming way. He felt pleased with himself because of that. And because of the way the girl Aurala had looked at him.

  ***

  That afternoon, taking a rest from her gardening, Vera sat down with the newspaper and was amused to see on the front page a photo of the Father Christmas Grand Mufti with the boy who had sold her dried apricots. She was leafing through the news trying to persuade herself to take an interest in the doings in the city that would be her home for the coming months when she noticed that, down the hill from her veranda, the white flag had gone up at the post office. It signaled to the town that the mail was ready for distribution. Though it was the hottest part of the day, she decided to walk the quarter-mile to fetch the post. Perhaps there would be a letter from her father.

  She was not disappointed. As soon as she arrived back at home, she put aside three other envelopes—letters for Justin from his mother and his sister and one from her granny in Glasgow—and read her father’s news. He said nothing of how much he missed her. But she knew he did.

  She wanted to answer him immediately, but she needed to cool off first. She went to her room and, after sponging herself, could not bear the thought of re-donning the typical Englishwoman’s twill ensemble, which was supposed to protect her from the sun. She had no intention of going out again in this afternoon, when even her lightest frock would smother her. European women in Africa had given up their corsets. How many decades would it be, she wondered, before they adopted the mode of African dress, more comfortable in this climate, especially here at sea level, where the air made her feel as if she were floating on a raft in a pot of soup. Even without stockings and in bare feet, she wished for the comfort of a simple Kikuyu shuka, just a light cotton cloth tied at the shoulder, the likes of which she had sometimes borrowed from her tribal playmates when her mother was not watching.

  There was no one in the house. The gardener had gone off to eat and nap, so she need not worry who would see her. She went to her bedroom cupboard and found the blue-green filmy silk harem pants she had bought on a whim in the bazaar. She pulled them on. They were as light as sea foam. She tied an oblong piece of matching silk around her bare chest and put on over it a cunning little embroidered and beaded vest of bright yellow. She regarded herself in the mirror and laughed. If she had had another scarf to tie around her head and to use as a veil she might have passed for an Arab girl. Her hair and eyes were that dark. As it was, she looked as if she were on her way to a costume ball, not that any proper Scottish girl would ever be seen in public in this getup. But she was so much more comfortable than she would have been in her ordinary clothes.

  She sat down at her desk in an alcove of her bedroom to answer her father’s letter. A thought of her mother brought her a wave of embarrassment over her relative dishabille. Her mother would never have done anything this frivolous.

  Grief soon drove away any thoughts of unseemly attire. Her mother had been dead for less than a year and in the intervening months Vera’s thoughts had often turned to her, to how little love she had felt from her mother until nearly the time of her death, to the confusion and terrible sense of loss she had felt after her mother was gone. Now, as a young wife in Africa, she thought often about her mother, who within just a few months of coming here had given birth in what was then a completely wild country, without another white woman nearby for company. Her mother had borne her under such circumstances, with the help only of tribal women with whom she did not share even a language and to whom she could not relate as friends. What courage that must have taken! A terrible regret washed over Vera, that she and her mother had never been close. And now there was no way to rectify that loss.

  She glanced down at the writing paper on the table in front of her. What would she say to her father? His letter was full of reasons why Justin must help Robert Morley to keep Joseph Gautura free. Papa was busy with his converts and the harvest on his coffee plantation outside of Nairobi, where no newspaper would bother to report the death of a runaway slave in Mombasa.

  Her father had come to Africa to bring the natives to Christ but—in his mind anyway—his real purpose had been to save the Africans from slavery by making them Christians. White Christians, he had thought, would not have the heart to buy and sell African Christians like so many bales of cotton or sides of beef. He had been so heartened when it had seemed that Britain had stamped out slavery worldwide. She could not bring herself to tell him that his pleas to free Joseph Gautura were too late.

  She preferred to write him a chatty letter, pretending she had not received his that lay on the desk in front of her. She picked up her pen and w
rote:

  Dearest Papa,

  You will be happy to know that Justin and I are now ensconced here in a simple but comfortable bungalow. I wanted Justin to buy his way out of the army so he might leave the police force, but he is determined to do his bit for King and Country for a little while longer…

  She put down her pen. How bland was her description of what had transpired between her and Justin in their bedroom at his father’s estate. It was the same argument they had had before and since. The only one they ever had, really. The one she could not give up, though she could not find a reason to convince him, perhaps because she herself was not sure of the reason. She only knew in her bones that he must not.

  That chilly day in Yorkshire, Justin had stood the whole while, staring out the window at the snow-covered terrace. The marble statues on their ornate pedestals had looked like men frozen in place. And that was what Justin had been—unyielding, unwilling to speak the heated words she was sure were in his heart. No more alive, no more warm than the stone men silhouetted against the dark, distant pines, he spoke only in whispers, through clenched teeth. While she could not control her temper.

  “Why? Just explain to me why you won’t leave the police force and free us from having to live where they tell us, and me from having to be without you while you do your duty day and night?”

  “Lower your voice, Vera.”

  “Why should I? If you can be so cold to me, why can I not be heated with you?”

  “This sort of thing is just not appropriate,” he had said as if he were quoting the local ordinances to a criminal.

  She had opened her mouth and closed it over again, humiliation and guilt warring with anger and despair within her. She had promised herself that she would not misbehave while they were under his parents’ roof, that she would never give his family the slightest reason to disapprove of her. She was the right wife for him. And he was the right husband for her, whatever they might think of her lack of breeding, of her grandfather having been in trade. She wanted to punch him in his stiff back. But all she could do was bite her lip till it bled and burst into tears. She had turned away and gone into the dressing room, to not let him see her weep, to not allow him to imagine that she would use tears to change his mind.