A Change in Altitude (4 page)

From where she was seated, Margaret heard five languages she could identify: English, Swahili, Urdu, German, and French. She thought there must have been at least four or five others just beyond her hearing and comprehension.

Margaret examined the menu. The prices were impressive. Didn’t the tourists realize they were being fleeced?

At the next table, a foursome explained their dining instructions in exaggerated detail to the waiter, as if he might not understand English. When the waiter left, a woman at the table rolled her eyes.

At Margaret’s left, two African students spoke in excellent, if accented, English. She missed most of the conversation but heard something that unnerved her. The government had rounded up fifty students at the university, one of them said. The students had been massacred and tossed into a mass grave.

Margaret was stunned. Was this a rumor, or was it true? If it was true, why didn’t Patrick and she and everyone else know about it? Why wasn’t it on the front page of the newspapers? Margaret sat still and listened for more, but the students had gone silent. Possibly one of them had seen her cock her ear in their direction. Maybe the other had cautioned silence.

*   *   *

Margaret searched for the boot shop and twice missed it, its discreet sign not intended to lure customers. She entered through a polished wooden door and took off her sunglasses. She guessed the enterprise to be as close to a bespoke shop as one could find in Nairobi. The men behind the counters and on the small floor were white. She saw immediately that women’s clothes were displayed as well as men’s. She wouldn’t mention Arthur’s name, even though, at dinner, she might have to say she had and had therefore received excellent service.

Margaret was allowed to browse before being accosted. In the end, she had to ask for help. She needed hiking boots, she explained. She was to climb the mountain in ten days’ time and wanted something sturdy but flexible so that her feet wouldn’t hurt. The slender young salesman snapped his fingers. An African associate brought out a device meant to measure her foot. She took her sandal off, exposing dust-covered skin.

“May I have a cloth?” Margaret asked.

It seemed not to be an unusual request. Two cotton cloths, one damp and one dry, were presented to her on a brass tray. After she washed, the African disappeared and the British salesman gently took her right foot and placed it in the measuring device. His hand on her heel and sole felt soothing. He asked her to stand up, and he recorded her size, a number she didn’t understand. She was asked to sit and did so. When the man returned, he had a pair of silk socks that he gently pulled over Margaret’s feet. It felt like a brief massage, and already she was wondering if she might not need another pair of shoes. The lambskin lining of the boots caressed her leg to midcalf. Patiently, the salesman tightened and tied the laces. The procedure was repeated with the second boot.

“I think you should walk around the store now,” the salesman suggested. “Take your time. The fit of the boots is critical on such a climb.”

Margaret walked the narrow aisles of the shop as if floating. She doubted she had ever owned a more comfortable pair of boots, or even shoes. Once, she bent down to touch the soft leather, and when she stood up, the salesman smiled.

“They’re wonderful,” Margaret said.

“They’re sturdy in the soles and around your ankles. You could easily climb Mount Kenya in those.”

Margaret gave a slight nod.

“You don’t want to make the climb, do you?”

She was surprised. “No.”

“You’ve been talked into it.”

“Kind of.”

“You’ll do fine. It will be hell, but it will end, and you’ll have done it, and you’ll never have to do it again.”

“How did you know that I didn’t want to do the climb?”

“Women often come into the shop needing hiking boots. They all more or less have the same expression on their faces.”

“And what would that be?”

“Fear.”

He took off the boots and then the socks, and Margaret’s feet felt as though they’d been plunged into cold water. When she reached the counter, the salesman handed her a piece of engraved letterhead with the price discreetly written in pencil. Why pencil? Was Margaret meant to bargain? The sum made her swallow, but she had no hesitation as she wrote the check. Patrick would understand.

The salesman concluded the transaction, coming around the counter with the package in which the boots had been neatly wrapped and tied.

“It has been a pleasure serving you,” he said with a slight bow.

“Thank you.”

“Are you a tourist?”

“My husband is with Nairobi Hospital.”

The salesman smiled. “Then I hope either you or your husband will return to our shop.”

“I think we might.”

Margaret was almost out the door when she decided.

“Is your name Tommy?”

The salesman looked surprised but answered, “Yes.”

“Arthur sent me,” she said.

Margaret returned to Crystal Ice Cream and ordered a pair of vegetarian Samosas and a Fanta. When the Samosas were handed to her on a paper plate, she took her food to a small table with a red Formica top. Next to her were two Asian men—Pakistani or Indian—who were sucking the marrow out of chicken bones and then eating the bones themselves.

Margaret took her plate back to the counter and asked for a bowl of ice cream. As she sat again at her table, one of the Asian men looked over. She wondered if it was odd to see a grown woman eating ice cream. In a city with so many different cultures, it might take years to learn the proper mores. As she slipped the banana-coconut onto her tongue, she knew there wasn’t a chance of cream in the icy concoction. The name
Crystal
took on new meaning.

Margaret walked back to the place where she had left her car and was startled to note that there was no Peugeot where it was supposed to be. She thought she must be disoriented and examined each of the twenty vehicles parked along the side street. The boy to whom Margaret had paid eight shillings to watch her car was sitting on a fence—in her sight but ignoring her.

“Excuse me,” Margaret said in English. “Aren’t you the boy I paid to watch my car?”

The boy seemed not to have heard her. She repeated the request in Swahili.
“Nataka gari, tafadhali.”

“No, miss,” he said quickly. “No, miss.”

Margaret examined his face, his small body, his bare chest. She couldn’t say for certain that he was the boy, though she trusted her instincts. “I want my car,” she said calmly.

Again, he appeared not to understand her. Impatient now, Margaret repeated the sentence in Swahili.

“No, miss,” the boy said, shaking his head. “No, miss.”

Margaret thought she saw something of fright in the boy’s eyes and made the statement again, this time in a slightly louder voice. An older and taller boy, muscled and fingering a baton, emerged from an unmarked doorway.

“You have problem, miss?” the larger boy asked. He had on a white undershirt and a pair of dark-blue trousers and seemed to possess an unexplained authority.

Margaret felt her hands go cold.

“Yes,” she said as calmly as she could. “Around ten o’clock this morning, I parked my car, a white Peugeot, just here, and I asked this boy to watch it. I gave him eight shillings to do so.”

The older boy spoke to the younger boy in a language Margaret didn’t understand. The older boy turned toward her with exaggerated politeness.

“No, miss. Though I do not doubt that you believe you are correct, you are much mistaken. There has been no white Peugeot of your description on this street all morning. My brother is extremely certain.”

The taller boy took a step toward Margaret. Would he hit a white woman?

“This is infuriating,” she said, her heart beating as if she were already climbing Mount Kenya. “I know what I did. I need that car. What’s the point of paying eight shillings to someone to watch the car if it’s not going to be here when I return?”

The street was empty. Margaret knew the older boy had seen her glance around. He turned toward the younger boy and argued with him in an angry voice. The young boy looked down at the sidewalk, seemingly repentant.

“My brother is very sorry to be infuriating you. I apologize for him since he is too stupid to do so himself. But I urge you on to find your white Peugeot, a kind of automobile which has not been seen on this street since before five o’clock this morning.”

Margaret knew he wouldn’t tell her what had happened to the car. She didn’t have enough money in her straw bag for that kind of information.

She stood her ground for a minute, maybe two, and then walked away. She knew that they were smiling and that the minute she rounded the corner, they would put their hands over their mouths and laugh.

Margaret meant to go directly to the police station. But first she investigated all the side streets off Kimathi in case she hadn’t been paying attention when she had parked the car. She found two white Peugeots, but neither of them was hers. She thought about what might turn out to be an hours-long rigmarole at the police station and felt exhausted. She walked on until she reached the New Stanley Hotel. She went into the Thorn Tree Café and used the telephone attached to the message board. She bent her head to the pole, the flat of a tack making a small dent in her forehead. She called Patrick at the hospital.

“The car’s been stolen,” she said.

“It’s not supposed to be like this,” Patrick insisted, fists hard on his thighs. He sat across from Margaret at a table at the Thorn Tree. She knew he meant that the thieving wasn’t part of his participation in Kenya, his hope for Kenya. That it had happened to them—and four times—hurt him. Patrick’s anguish, which was real enough, had turned his skin blotchy. They were drinking Tuskers, which were not delivering on promised consolation.

Patrick raised his eyes to hers. “You all right?” he asked. Earlier, when he’d made his way to her table, she’d stood and embraced him, and he hadn’t let her go until she’d stopped shaking.

“I am now. I’m just wondering what they’d have done if I hadn’t backed off.”

Patrick took in a sharp suck of air.

“I just dread the red tape at the police station,” Margaret said, trying to change the subject. “You must have gone through it with the tires.”

Patrick nodded. “I’ll call Arthur from here. He’ll give you a ride home.”

“He can’t,” she said. “I gave him a ride in.”

“You gave Arthur a ride to town?”

“His car wasn’t working. Diana needed the Land Rover for the kids.”

Patrick took a long pull on the Tusker. “What do you think of Arthur?”

Margaret was surprised by the question. It seemed literally to be out of order, something they might have discussed in fifteen minutes’ time. She assembled her answer, unsure of Patrick’s reason for asking.

“He’s smug and a bit arrogant. I can’t tell if he’s like that around us because we—I—am a naive American. Though I suspect that’s his nature. Sometimes I think he means well, and sometimes I think we’re a kind of plaything for him—a dog’s squeaky toy.”

“But the fact is,” said Patrick, “this country needs the Arthurs of this world in order to stay afloat. They need his company’s capital, too. It’s common knowledge that when Kenyatta goes, the tourism will collapse. They’re desperate for some kind of industry—not just coffee or the distribution of crafts.”

“So you like Arthur,” Margaret said, somewhat amazed that her husband could so quickly make a cost-benefit analysis of a human being. She wondered if he had ever done the same with her but then dismissed the idea.

“I reserve judgment on pretty much everyone until he or she has done something egregious.”

“What about Diana?” Margaret asked.

“Diana’s elitist and deeply preoccupied.”

“With what?”

“Her dogs.”

Margaret laughed. She took a sip of Tusker and leaned back into her chair. The café was half full, the expats having the edge.

“Come back with me to the hospital,” Patrick said, opening his wallet. “We’ll get you a ride from there, and then I’ll tackle the police.”

She glanced at a nearby table and saw what looked to be a student drinking a cup of tea and reading a textbook. She thought about the rumor she’d overheard just hours earlier. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Patrick, do you know anything about fifty students being massacred and thrown into an unmarked grave?”

Patrick’s body went still, as if each muscle were shutting down, one by one. “Where did you hear that?” he whispered.

“Here. I overheard two students talking at the table next to me.”

Patrick moved closer. “What else did you hear?”

“Why?” She studied Patrick’s face. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

He looked away.

Margaret reached out and grabbed his arm. She felt something like aftershocks on the surface of his skin.

“Why hasn’t it been reported in the press?”

Patrick was silent for a time. “No newspaper in this country would print that story.”

“Why not?”

“The press, Margaret, is controlled by the government. Anyone who printed something like that would be out of a job and probably arrested.”

“Couldn’t
we
get the story out, then?” she asked, having no clear idea of what she was suggesting. “Feed it to the
New York Times
? Or anyone? I mean… this… this is huge, isn’t it? Fifty students in a mass grave?”

“We’d immediately be deported. Or worse.” He did not define the
worse
. “I have only hearsay myself, and I can’t reveal who told me, for obvious reasons.”

“It doesn’t feel right,” Margaret said, shaking her head. “This is crazy.”

“It feels crazy if you’re an American on American soil. It’s easier to understand if you’re sitting at a café in Nairobi.”

Margaret wondered if that was true. “Isn’t it worth it to be deported in order to bring this thing to light?” she asked. “Why were they killed?”

“They’re rumored to be part of a student group protesting the arrest of the novelist Thomas Oulu. He’s being held without benefit of trial.”

“Why?”