The Last Time They Met

by Anita Shreve

  I didn’t tell you that Peter came unexpectedly after you had left. I was startled by this second apparition of the day, and I backed away from the door. He took my alarm for normal surprise, which he had intended. You still on my skin. I had to plead illness, exhaustion, anything. Ashamed not of you, nor of us, but of my fear of discovery.

  Oh, Thomas, despite all this, I am so happy.

  Yesterday, I arranged to take the children into Nyeri for a parade in Jomo Kenyatta’s honor. Thirty children crowded into two VW vans and one Peugeot 504 (you don’t want to think about it too much). We stood on a hillside and watched the parade marchers, who were in tribal dress and sneakers and wearing Coca-Cola sunshades, all the while eating Popsicles. We listened to Jomo Kenyatta deliver a speech on harambee and the future of Kenya. Of course, in the presence of the children, one had to be respectful and ignore the irony of the use of the word freedom when men like Ndegwa languish in prison. (Have you heard anything further from your Marine?) Though it must be said that amongst the spectators and marchers alike, tensions were high: Kenyatta, as you know, is not as beloved as he once was. The point of my story is that, quite suddenly and without warning, panic broke out on the hill, and a stampede began. Hundreds of people started running, not realizing they were headed for a barbed-wire fence. The hysteria was infectious. We herded the children into a tight circle and made them crouch down, and essentially we lay on top of them. I thought, Kenyatta has been shot. And then, This is a coup. Peter took a knee to his spine. Soldiers with bayonets kneeled beside us and aimed at the crowd. No one was killed, but dozens were injured as they were crushed into the barbed wire. Later we learned that the panic had been caused by a swarm of bees. Overhead, oblivious to the melee, six fighter planes roared by in a salute to Kenyatta. As we watched, one of them rolled out of formation and crashed on a nearby golf course.

  I write of these events as I once wrote of movies or of trips to the beach. I will not say I have gotten used to them, but they don’t shock me anymore.

  What shocks me is my love for you.

  I would like to think that what we have could exist outside of real time, that it could be a thing apart and not invade. Foolish and dangerous thinking. It has already invaded every part of my life.

  Yours,

  L.

  December 21

  Dear Linda,

  You write of panic and hysteria, but all I can think about is Peter with you on that hillside, Peter surprising you in your cottage (while I was returning to a fuming Regina). Jealous already. Intense, consuming jealousy that reduces me to a petty, twisted, unlovable creature. Did you sleep with him? That night? So soon after we had been together? That I have no right to be jealous is irrelevant. It is a human passion: the sick, white underbelly of love. Worse, I am jealous of your doctor with whom all the women fall in love. Do you include yourself?

  Don’t answer my questions.

  Last night, Regina and I attended the launch of a book called Silence Will Speak by Errol Trzebinski. Essentially a biography of Denys Finch Hatton, Blixen’s lover when she was living on her coffee farm, the book is also about Blixen’s own life and writings about Africa. (Perhaps you know the book already? In any event, I am sending it with this since you said you’d already read all the books in Njia.) The party was at the Karen Country Club — unremarkable anachronism. Virtually everyone at the gathering was white, with one notable exception. An old man wearing a dark suit and an ill-pressed overcoat, with his cane resting on his chair, sat in a corner and sipped tea as he chatted with two “little old ladies” (how women must hate to graduate to that distinction) in plum-colored suits and hats. At first glance, the tableau reminded me of maiden aunts gossiping with a bachelor uncle at a family reunion. But then I was informed that the old man was actually Out of Africa’s Kamante, Blixen’s faithful cook, the man whose story forms a large segment of her book. He’d been only a small boy when she discovered him fifty years ago, alienated and diseased, tending goats on her land; and now he was an old man who had, I assumed, personally witnessed the astonishing transformation of his country. He’d been hauled out for the occasion, I suspect, to lend a certain cachet to the proceedings, and he was something of a guest of honor. Though he seemed, I must say, largely indifferent to the fate that had contrived to position him there in that corner, reminiscing over tea about an Africa that no longer existed with women who, in Blixen’s day, would not have allowed him at their table.

  I write to you from home now, having lost my scruples (jealousy having set them adrift). Our house sits amidst manicured gardens and acacias and eucalyptus trees that rise above the stone cottages of Karen, smoke curling from their chimneys, the four green humps of the Ngong Hills in the background. Imagining I am in England is not hard to do. The hedges create mini-fortresses, reaching twelve feet high, and are impenetrable, connected by gates with guards to watch them. Children play by appointment only. It is an odd thing, all this beauty, all this ordered loveliness, all this soft prettiness of landscape — for it is hard not to think of it as a malignant tumor that will one day have to be excised.

  No, I don’t believe in your hospital and will have to come to see for myself. Write me and tell me I may come. Or meet me somewhere. I can’t stand not seeing you. When are you coming to Nairobi?

  The U.S. has lodged a formal complaint about the Kenyan government’s detention of Ndegwa. I flatter myself if I think I had anything to do with it. And delude myself if I think it will help. I have written to Amnesty International, but will not receive a reply for several weeks. How agonizingly slow the mail is! Do you have a telephone? I forgot to ask. We do not. I resisted having one installed after the robbery (another long story), but Regina has been lobbying for one for some time. And I, faithless husband, would do it in an instant if I thought it would connect me to you.

  I make light of this, but our situation is a painful one. We do not discuss the future. Do we have one?

  There are rumors of a mass grave with fifty students in it. I find it hard to credit, but it may be true.

  Christmas approaches. Weird in the heat, don’t you think? How I wish I could spend it with you.

  Yours,

  Thomas

  P.S. Today’s headline: LEOPARD ATTACK IN KAREN.

  January 4

  Dear Thomas,

  Peter and I have just returned from Turkana, where we went for Christmas week. We drove through rivers and were nearly defeated by the 100-degree temperatures. We passed through a landscape of such desolation one cannot imagine how the Turkana, walking from one deserted area to another, manage to survive. The lake, to our astonishment, resembled the seashore, with palm trees and miles of sandy beach lining it. We ignored the threat of parasites and crocodiles and body-surfed in the 80-degree water. In the morning, we woke to a blood-red sunrise — a swath, hundreds of miles long that, despite its awful beauty, promised blistering heat for the rest of the day. The landscape is beautiful, violent and menacing — like stepping onto another planet where one breathes poisonous gases in splendid colors.

  Thomas, we are linked together, however much we might not wish it. As to the future, I cannot say.

  So much has been left unsaid.

  I could hear you calling my name when they took me away. I was in shock and couldn’t speak, or I’d have answered you. My aunt arrived at the hospital shortly after I did. To her credit, she cried once and then spent the rest of the time telling me she’d told me so. Her distrust of you has always puzzled me. Perhaps she hates all men. I’d have thought she’d have welcomed someone to take me off her hands.

  I was in the hospital for five days. The uncles and cousins were vigilant, and I was never left alone. Strange treasure they were protecting, one that had already been stolen.

  I went home for a day and then was sent by car to New York, Uncle Brendan driving (we hit three bars in Connecticut alone). The drive was an agony as I recall, since one whole side of me was raw. (All of me raw inside.) The days passed. They to
ok the dressings off sometime in March. Eileen was working as a massage therapist and was gone all day. I walked the streets when I was able to. I thought of you. I used to sit for hours looking out the window, thinking of you. For several days after I was able to get out of bed, I called you repeatedly. But there was never any answer. Later my aunt wrote that you and your family had gone to Europe for a trip. Was this true? I forgot to ask you on Sunday. Then my aunt wrote that you were going out with Marissa Markham (and good riddance and so forth). Her motives were entirely transparent, but I couldn’t know for sure that it wasn’t true. People change, don’t they? You might have been angry I’d gone away without telling you where. My aunt might have lied to you as well.

  I thought: He’s forgotten me so soon.

  I never got the letters you sent. Not hard to imagine what was done with them. Read and then disposed of, I imagine. How dearly I would love to have those letters back. I feel we are the blood and bone of one person. I love you with your hair grown long. I love you.

  Please send me your poems. I hope it is absolutely true that only you collect the mail.

  Lovingly,

  Linda

  P.S. Thank you for the Trzebinski. I read it in a day. Wish I were a slower reader so that books would last longer.

  January 10

  Dear Linda,

  I am in agony thinking that you imagined I had forgotten you.

  Never.

  If only I had ignored your aunt and kept trying. If only I had called Eileen. If only I had gotten in the car and driven up to Middlebury. I can’t think about this anymore. It is making me ill, literally.

  And it is making it hard to enjoy my news, however wonderful it seemed only an hour ago. I received a letter yesterday (it took seven weeks to get here) from an editor at the New Yorker who wants to publish two of my poems. I was in a panic that the editor might have thought I wasn’t interested because it had taken me so long to reply, so I drove into Nairobi and found a telephone and called him straightaway. He was a bit taken aback that I should call all the way from Africa (clearly this was not as important to him as it was to me), but I explained the mail situation. In any event, the poems will be published, and I will actually be paid for them (astonishing in itself). Regina is quite happy about this. I believe she thinks this justifies my existence. So do I, for that matter.

  I have other news as well. My embassy official has dropped me a note saying that he plans to put together a party at which several influential people will be (including Mr. Kennedy), and he wonders if I might persuade Mary Ndegwa to come as well. He thinks this is my best chance of promoting her cause, and I was actually cheered to see that the “Ndegwa matter” was still on his mind. (Kennedy will, of course, not remember me, and it will doubtless be embarrassing; but I can’t care about that now.) I don’t have a precise date yet for this event, but when I do, I will let you know. Perhaps you and Peter could attend? (Is it insane to imagine we could be in the same room and not touch each other? Surely, we’d have more self-control? Perhaps not.)

  Rich is coming on Tuesday, and we will be going on safari for a couple of weeks. I was looking forward to this (and I suppose I still am), though I am distraught at the thought of not being able to receive a letter from you. (You should perhaps not write to me for two weeks. No, do write, just don’t send them until I’m back. I hate this fucking subterfuge. It demeans us as well as Peter and Regina. But I don’t see how it can be avoided, do you?)

  I followed a tip from a friend (acquaintance) and went to visit a man in Nairobi who runs a magazine to see if he would want to publish any of my poetry. It was a long shot, but I was in Nairobi anyway (making my twelve-dollars-a-minute phone call to the New Yorker — probably spent all of forthcoming check), and I thought I’d give it a try. It’s a strange hybrid of a magazine, something between McCall’s and Time (interviews with high-ranking politicians next to recipes), but I liked the editor. He was educated in the States — in Indiana, as it happens — and he invited me to lunch. He will publish several of the poems. (Actually getting paid there, too. An embarrassment of riches.) An offshoot of this visit, however, was that he said he was desperate for reporters, and he asked if I would do one or two pieces for him. I told him I’d never been a journalist, but that didn’t seem to bother him — my qualifications chiefly, I gather, that I am available and can write in English. I thought, Why not? and so said yes. As a result, I am to leave tomorrow to cover a siku kuu (literal translation: big day) at the Masai bomas in the Rift. Accompanied by a photographer. I don’t see how it can’t be interesting on some level.

  Linda, I am dying. I must see you soon. Is there any chance you could get away for a few days? I am thinking (probably hopelessly) about meeting somewhere on the coast. Regina, who will be with us on safari, will go back early after we get to Mombasa (she can’t tolerate humidity). I could persuade Rich to go back with her (he’ll have had more than enough of his big brother by then and will probably be desperate to be alone). To be with you in Lamu would be heaven. Have you ever been there? Alternatively, forget the coast and just come to Nairobi. Or tell me that I can come to Njia. Could we meet in Limuru? My body is aching.

  Love always,

  Thomas

  P.S. I hate the way letters close — either too tepid or too sappy for the occasion.

  P.P.S. Today’s headline: RAMPAGING ELEPHANTS DESTROY CROPS.

  January 17

  Dear Thomas,

  I am very sad today. David died this morning at Mary Magdalene. Dr. Benoît did everything he could, but the pneumonia had invaded both lungs, and David hadn’t the strength to fight it. I have just come from telling his mother, who herself is gravely ill; she seemed hardly to hear my news. What is this terrible disease, Thomas? Dr. Benoît is furious with himself and with Brussels; they took too long to send back the results of the culture. They, too, are baffled, however, and have sent the samples to the CDC in America. Dr. Benoît says he has seen other, similar, cases and is concerned about the disease spreading before he can discover what it is.

  David was a brave boy. There will be a funeral tomorrow. Yes, it may be possible to meet you on the coast. I would have to arrange either to go with Peter or return with him, but it might be possible to find two days to be with you. I, too, am aching, though I am fearful of seeing you again. Perhaps it is my disheartened mood today, but I see no good outcome to our being together. None. Someone — and I believe we have to hope it will be us — will be desperately hurt.

  I am glad for your news from the New Yorker. You must send me the poems they are going to publish.

  Thomas, I love you beyond anything I thought possible. It makes me sad for Peter, for what he never had from me.

  I will omit the tepid closing. No words are adequate.

  Linda

  P.S. I took the chance of writing you the one letter before you leave for the coast. I pray it is you who retrieves it.

  January 26

  Dear Linda,

  I am so sorry about David. I hope he didn’t suffer. In a strange way, I am glad the mother is not completely aware of what happened. That has always seemed the worst part of any child’s death: that the mother should suffer the intolerable loss. I wish you did not hate your God so passionately, since you might take comfort in the thought that David is with Him now.

  Such extraordinary emotions in the space of paragraphs. I was delirious with the news that you might be able to meet me at the coast. Would Lamu be possible? I will send you the dates tomorrow, and I will find a place for us to meet. My God, Linda, this has to happen. Another man might be able to put scruples above want and need, but not I. Sometimes I tell myself we owe this to ourselves for all the days and nights that were lost to us, even though I know that makes no moral sense whatever. Another person (your nun perhaps) would simply say too bad, that we have made commitments to others and will have to honor them. But I wonder: did you and I not make a stronger commitment nine years ago in front of a blue cottage by the ocean?
Am I to pay for the rest of my life for a careless moment on a slippery curve? Would I understand this if it were happening to Regina? God, I hope I would.

  I have just finished writing my first article for the magazine I told you about. The siku kuu was an extraordinary event after all — a ceremony during which a thousand Masai men gathered to anoint their women with honey beer to ensure the continued fertility of the tribe, a spectacle that takes place every twenty years — and I hope I have done justice to it. I would rather have written a poem, but that’s hardly what the editor wants right now. I won’t bore you with a travelogue, but I’ll give you the highlights: Dawn coming up faintly as we reached the Magadi Road. Sleepy conversation with my photographer companion. Two hundred and fifty manyattas, two thousand Masai all in one place. The red-and-brown cloth of the women, their Maridadi, their earrings with perpendicular appendages, the film canisters in the ear holes. Hundreds of children — curious, touching, friendly, laughing. A biblical-looking man named Zachariah, who patiently explained the ceremony to us. The women, some resigned, some solemn, some half-crazy in catatonic states and epileptic-like fits. Deep, agonized groans. Wearing a kid’s hat to keep out the sun since I’d forgotten my own. Passing out cigarettes. Going off to take a leak and wondering if I was pissing on sacred ground. Handing out plums. The cruel faces of some of the younger men, like decadent Romans. The long negotiations for the women, who seemed frighteningly passive, considering their fate.