A Change in Altitude (7 page)

“I’d like to see the spot, too,” Patrick said, rising. “But I hope I’m allowed to take a leak without the team,” he added, walking toward the nearest stand of trees.

“We’ll send the girls to watch,” Willem called, and chuckled at his own joke.

Girls,
Margaret thought.

No one seemed eager to leave the picnic. When Patrick returned, he took from his backpack a kite of teal and yellow and red. He tied on the tail and let out a bit of string from a spool. He started to run sideways to give the kite a lift, and within seconds, the wind from the Rift caught it and took it aloft. It stuttered wildly as it tried to stabilize itself, but then it lifted into a different altitude and settled in with long, lazy swoops. They all watched, necks straining. Patrick returned and hitched the string to a leg of his stool.

“Marvelous,” Arthur said. “The children would love it. Wouldn’t they, Diana?”

“Love it,” she repeated.

For fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty, Margaret photographed the kite, the landscape, the assembled. Around them, there was an easy silence. Patrick watched the kite, occasionally letting out string. Arthur sat, staring out into space, his elbows resting on his knees. Willem, who was slightly too big for his canvas chair, appeared nevertheless to be in the same trance as the rest of the group. He picked up a wine bottle and poured the dregs into his glass. Saartje, chin resting on hand, seemed to be trying to take in the Rift in one glance, which couldn’t be done. Diana was simply resting, her posture loose and gentle.

A moment of perfect compatibility and ease. The last the six of them would have together.

Without warning, Diana stood. “Leave nothing. No food, no utensils, no trash.”

Patrick reluctantly reeled in his kite.

“We’ll do it again,” Margaret said, reflecting, not for the first time, that Patrick would make a great father. He genuinely liked to play.

Margaret’s backpack was considerably lighter; the bottle empty, the bread gone. She carried her own canteen now, not having realized that Patrick had carried it for her on the way up. Prior to the big climb, she vowed, she would spend the entire day drinking water. She might have to pee constantly, but she didn’t ever want to experience that kind of urgent thirst again.

The oilcloth removed, Margaret stood, ready to carry on, while Willem and Arthur collapsed the stools and then tried to return them to their backpacks, an activity that proved more difficult than taking them out. As Margaret let her eyes roam over the Rift, she felt the first sting on her leg, the initial bite followed within seconds by dozens of others, as if she were being pricked hard by needles.

“Oh,” she said, slapping at her jeans.

The men looked puzzled, but Diana, running in Margaret’s direction, knew exactly what the problem was. “Shit!” she shouted. “Fire ants. She’s standing in a nest.”

Margaret swatted frantically. She looked down. A red mass was moving around her feet.

“Run!” Diana commanded. “Get your clothes off and run!”

“Oh,” Margaret said, and then again. Ants had invaded her boots and her jeans and were nearing her crotch. She felt as though she were being assaulted by Africa itself, the ground rising up to sting her to death.

“I need a towel, someone!” Diana shouted.

Margaret peeled off her clothes, unbuckling her belt and slipping the jeans to her calves, while Saartje and Diana tried to get her boots off. Red welts had already risen on her legs. There were dozens of trails of the red ants, some of which Margaret could see through the nylon of her underpants. She tried to fetch them out but then realized it would take too long. She pulled the underwear down and ran away from it. After that, her blouse, her bra. Diana and Saartje brushed off every ant they could find. They inspected her hair.

“Oh God,” Margaret said as they flicked ants from her back and neckline.

“Saartje,” Diana said. “I have extra clothes in my pack.”

Margaret wanted to levitate so that her feet no longer touched the ground. She knew that her clownlike antics would have seemed funny had the situation not been so painful. She noticed, in her nakedness, that Willem had turned away (Diana and Saartje seemed to have the situation well in hand) but that Arthur and Patrick were looking straight at her. Her husband, she understood, but what was Arthur up to? She shook the towel with a hard snap and wrapped herself in it. Arthur swiveled his head away but not before Diana saw the move.

Diana’s clothes were too small on Margaret, the shorts tight, the blouse not long enough.

“What do I do about these?” Margaret asked, pointing to her clothes, strewn in a nearly straight line as she had danced away from the nest of red ants. They reminded her of garments abandoned on the way to a bed.

“Leave them where they are,” Diana said. “Don’t go near them. They’re still full of ants.”

Patrick ran and snatched the hiking boots, holding them out in front of him, shaking them, tossing away the socks. He slapped at his wrists. The boots had to be saved.

The welts on Margaret’s body began to swell. She had them on her face and arms, torso, legs, and back.

“They’ve been known to kill people,” Diana said, putting her hand to Margaret’s forehead as if she expected fever already. “Good thing you weren’t alone.”

The image of herself alone in the Ngong Forest was one Margaret dismissed at once.

She thought about Arthur’s face and wrapped the towel around her waist as if it were a khanga. She put on the hiking boots that Patrick had so painstakingly inspected. Margaret walked with care, never looking up, wary of another sting from a hiding ant. Her lips swelled, which required a stop, during which Patrick inspected them. He asked if anyone had any Benadryl, but no one did. “Add that to the list,” Willem said, but all Margaret could do was nod. It was too painful to speak. Patrick let her lean on him as they made their way back to the Rover. There would be no visit to Finch Hatton’s grave that day.

Diana, tight-lipped, led them off the Ngong Hills. Arthur, Margaret noticed as they made a turn, was bringing up the rear.

Later, there was talk of postponing the big climb. But Margaret was adamant. They would go. Diana insisted as well. “She’ll be fine,” she predicted. “Perfectly fine.”

When she had returned to their own cottage, ants invaded Margaret’s dreams as they would a picnic lunch: the giant brown euphorbia tree outside her bedroom window seemed to be coming through the screen and poking her from time to time. Patrick gave her pills. The welts began to itch, and then to bleed when she scratched them. Patrick covered her with bandages to keep her from scratching the welts raw. At night, she was terrified by what might be under the bed. She wore only platform shoes and watched her feet incessantly when she began to venture out of the house. She thought to herself that she wouldn’t be able to see the summit of Mount Kenya because she wouldn’t dare take her eyes off the ground.

On Wednesday night, when Margaret was, as Diana had predicted, perfectly fine, Patrick and she heard banging on the front door. Patrick grabbed a thick stick he kept in the closet. He told Margaret to go to the bedroom and lock the door, but she didn’t. How would Patrick survive if she locked him out? Patrick called through the door, and even Margaret could hear Diana’s voice. Diana stepped into the living room just as Margaret came around the corner. With Diana was Adhiambo, the children’s ayah, holding a cloth over her mouth and nose, trying in vain to cover her face.

“She says she’s been raped,” Diana announced. One had only to look at the young African woman to know that something terrible had happened to her. Her blouse was torn, and her pink-and-red khanga had a long mud stain running from her ankle to her hip.

“She came to us for help,” Diana said. “But I can’t have her in the house when the children wake up. I simply can’t. Not in the state she’s in now. I’d like to leave her here with you, if that’s all right. Well, it has to be all right. In the morning, James will walk her home and make sure her room is securely locked.”

“Sure,” Margaret said, reaching out her hand to beckon Adhiambo in. Margaret stopped, aware of the terror Adhiambo might feel at a stranger’s touch. Or would a woman’s touch be welcome?

Diana wiped her brow with the back of her arm. “Trouble comes in threes,” she said.

It wasn’t until Margaret had shut the door that she wondered what number Diana was on.

Adhiambo wouldn’t speak. Patrick wanted to get her to a hospital, but she shook her head vehemently when he suggested it. The cloth she was using to hide her face was bloody, and Margaret noticed a swelling at her eyebrow, nearly an egg. She gave Adhiambo a glass of water. Margaret wanted to ask her what had happened, but she already knew the woman wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. Patrick, frustrated, picked up the phone.

“No,” Margaret told him, and he put it down.

“At least let me take a look at her.”

Margaret explained to Adhiambo that Patrick was a doctor and that he just wanted to check to see if she was all right. Again, Adhiambo shook her head and headed for the door.

Margaret raced around and stood in front of her. “No one will touch you,” she said. She turned and backed through the living room, encouraging Adhiambo to follow her. Margaret urged the woman into the bedroom.

“I will run you a bath,” Margaret said. Adhiambo stood still. There were small bloody smears where she had walked. Margaret saw the scene: the broken window, the bits of glass underfoot.

“Before you get into the bath, please check your feet. You might have stepped on glass. Wait until the bleeding stops before you get in. If you need plasters for after, I have some in the medicine cabinet.”

Margaret entered the bathroom and opened the taps in the tub. From a shelf, she took two fresh towels, which she set upon a dressing table. Before she let Adhiambo in, she found a set of clean underwear, a khanga, and a blouse. Adhiambo and Margaret were roughly the same size. She set the clothes on the dressing table as well. She nodded, and Adhiambo entered the bathroom. For a moment, Margaret wondered about suicide. She found Patrick’s razor and the pair of scissors in the cabinet and muttered something about needing them. The woman seemed too beaten down to have the energy to take her own life. Margaret left and shut the door.

She stripped the bed and made it with clean sheets. Again, she took certain personal or harmful items of Patrick’s and hers from drawers and gave them to Patrick to stash elsewhere. She asked him to get out the air mattresses they had purchased for the climb and start blowing them up. Margaret sat at the edge of the bed, then nervously got off it to put her ear to the door. She heard no crying. Only the occasional swish of water. Margaret couldn’t even begin to imagine what the woman was thinking.

When Adhiambo emerged in Margaret’s clothes, her hair wrapped in a towel, she was carrying her own dirtied clothing in a neat ball made by her blouse. Margaret held her hands out to take them, but Adhiambo quickly moved away from her. Instead, Margaret gestured to the bed. She put her hand on its taut blanket. Adhiambo nodded, unable to demur or refuse. She was beyond all niceties now.

Before Margaret left, she turned down the bedspread, exposing the sheets. She had an image of Adhiambo lying on top of the blanket, trying to disturb the bed as little as possible. Already the woman was shivering. Margaret wanted her under the covers.

When Margaret shut the door, Patrick was finishing with the second mattress. His face was red. He pinched the nozzle and took a breath. “This is going to be a bitch at higher altitudes,” he said. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

Margaret’s hands, always the first indication of shock, started to tremble.

“You should have let me call for help,” he said.

“She wouldn’t have gone.”

“Maybe she’s really hurt. Internally. I could have examined her.”

“You saw her. She almost left. Then what state would she be in? And where would she have gone?”

“Fucking hell,” Patrick said.

“We’ll let her sleep. In the morning James will come, and she’ll talk to him, I think. Then he’ll tell us what happened. At that point, we may be able to get her to go to a clinic.”

“You think so?” he asked.

“No. She’ll never accuse anyone. She’d be a pariah, perhaps ostracized from her family. You saw her face.”

“Shamed.”

“Yes, shamed. It isn’t like at home.”

Patrick shook his head. “There,” he said when he had finished blowing up the second mattress. He collapsed onto his back.

They unrolled the sleeping bags. They had no pillows. Patrick found their down jackets and punched them into pillows. Not a perfect arrangement, but good enough.

“I have to pee,” Margaret said, “but I don’t want to disturb her. She might scream, seeing someone open the door.”

“A bucket, then.”

“Do we have a bucket?”

“We have a cooking pot.”

“I’m not using a cooking pot. I’ll have to go outside.”

Margaret put on sandals. The welts were ugly, but they no longer itched. She was barely off the kitchen stoop when she squatted to one side. Dozens of moths, some as big as small birds, beat at the panes of glass in the door, trying to get to the kitchen light. When Margaret finished, she ran into the kitchen as if being chased. She extinguished the lamp. With the moon to guide her, she made her way to the makeshift beds. The sleeping bag was slippery and cool.

“I meant to zip them together,” Patrick said. He reached out and touched her neck. She snaked her hand up from the sleeping bag and held his.

“Diana said trouble comes in threes,” Margaret told him.

“You believe that?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.”

“Then what number is this?”

“From whose point of view?”

“Diana’s. She’s the one who said it.”

“I have no idea,” Margaret said. “Do the ants and Adhiambo make it two? Or does the plumbing fiasco, the ants, and Adhiambo make it three? Or does Diana have troubles I know nothing about?”

“I’d love a back rub,” he said sleepily.

“I can’t. You’re too far away.”

“I can move closer.”