Green City in the Sun (102 page)

     There were three Sarah Mathenges listed. But wouldn't Sarah have gotten married? Wouldn't her last name be different now?

     Deborah was overcome. Jet lag combined with two days without sleep, plus eighteen hours since she had last eaten, were exacting their toll on her. Physical exhaustion joined with raw emotion to make Deborah feel somehow defeated. She laid the phone book aside and buried her face in her hands.

     She felt caught between nowhere and nowhere, as if she were on a long
journey and the train had let her off at a deserted station. She felt as if she must keep on going because she had come so far, but to what end?

     
Why, oh, why is Mama Wachera asking for me?

     When the phone rang, she cried out.

     She stared at it, panicked, thinking irrationally in her fatigue that those whom she had just looked up in the phone book had somehow been brought back to life and were now haunting her.

     Then she sighed and picked it up. "Hello?"

     "Debbie? Hello? Can you hear me?"

     "Jonathan?" She listened to the crackle and roar of the long-distance line. "Jonathan! Is that you?"

     "God, Debbie! I've been worried! When did you get in? Why didn't you call me?"

     She looked at her travel clock on the nightstand. Was it possible that her plane had landed only fourteen hours ago? "I'm sorry, Jonathan. I was so tired. I fell asleep...."

     "Are you okay? You sound strange."

     "It's a bad connection. And I'm jet-lagged. Are you all right, Jonathan?"

     "I miss you."

     "I miss you, too."

     There was a pause, filled with the ebb and flow of overseas lines. "Debbie? Are you sure you're all right?" he asked again.

     She clutched the phone. "I don't know, Jonathan. I'm so mixed up."

     "Mixed up! About what? Debbie, what's going on? Have you seen the old woman yet? When are you coming home?"

     Despite the spontaneous honesty Jonathan Hayes brought out in people, Deborah had never told him her buried secret-of the man she had thought was her brother, Christopher, whose hut she had gone to one night. That awful secret and the guilt it had laid upon her. How to begin to tell Jonathan of it now and somehow to explain her feelings of confusion now that she was back in Kenya?

     "Debbie?"

     "I'm sorry, Jonathan. I know I'm being emotional. But I've received a bit of a shock. I've found some things out...."

     "What are you talking about?"

     He sounded so harsh, so unlike Jonathan. Deborah tried to hold on to him. "I'll be going up to Nyeri tomorrow," she said in a composed voice. "I'll rent a car and drive up to the mission. I'm going to try to get a room at the Outspan Hotel."

     "So then you'll be leaving Kenya day after tomorrow?"

     She couldn't answer.

     "Debbie? When are you coming home?"

     "I—I don't know, Jonathan. I can't say yet. I've decided to look up a few people. Friends-"

     He fell silent. She tried to picture him. It must be very early in San Francisco, she realized. Jonathan had no doubt just gotten up to get ready for morning surgery. He would be in his running clothes; he would jog through Golden Gate Park for half an hour, take a hot shower, put on a sweatshirt and jeans, and go to the hospital. He'd have coffee and a bran muffin in the cafeteria and then go up to surgery and change into greens. Deborah suddenly, desperately wanted to be doing those prosaic things with him, as they did every morning, had done for the year they had been living together. Deborah wished herself back in San Francisco, in the fog and among the comforting familiarity of their daily ritual.

     But she had come to Kenya, and she had to finish what she had started.

     "I love you, Debbie," he said.

     She started to cry. "I love you, too."

     "Call me when you know your return flight."

     "I will."

     He paused again, as if waiting for her to say something. So Deborah said, "Have a good run this morning."

     And he said, "I will. Good-bye, Debbie," and hung up.

     Deborah kept her bathrobe on as she slipped between the sheets of her bed. She was both frightened and relieved to discover that when she turned out the light, the room was plunged into nearly total darkness. The heavy drapes did a good job of sealing out the sharp, equatorial sun. But they couldn't stop the incessant noise from penetrating the glass-the constant, urgent pulse of East Africa.

     Deborah lay staring up into the blackness. She felt every ounce of strength seep out of her body. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her thoughts seemed to break loose from anchors and float up to the surface of her mind, where they drifted in a kind of lazy incoherence. She half dreamed, half remembered.

     She went back two years, to the day she first started at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in San Francisco. She was thirty-one years old and fresh out of a six-year surgical residency. It was Deborah's first day on the new job. She was a real doctor at last and completely on her own. She changed into surgical greens in the nurses' locker room and then went to room 8, where she was to assist Dr. Jonathan Hayes on a gallbladder removal.

     "Welcome to St. B's, Dr. Treverton," the circulating nurse said. "What size glove do you wear?"

     "Six."

     The nurse reached up into the glove cupboard, then said, "Oops, out of sixes," and left the room.

     As Deborah stood looking around the operating room, which, since such facilities are universally the same, was familiar and yet unfamiliar, a tall, brown-eyed man came in, tying a mask behind his head.

     "Hi," he said. "Where's our gas passer?"

     "I don't know."

     He smiled at Deborah through horn-rimmed glasses. The rest of his face was hidden behind the mask. "You must be new here," he said with a smile in his voice. "I'm Dr. Hayes. I'm told that I'm easy to work with, so I'm sure we'll get along just fine. I have a few idiosyncrasies that you should know about. I use
two
silk ties to tie off the cystic duct, and I like them both on one tonsil clamp. Please have that ready for me. Also, four-by-eights on sponge sticks. Can't stand those other little things. Have a lot of them lined up for me, please."

     She stared at him. "Yes, Doctor."

     Jonathan walked over to the back table, which was already set up with instruments and supplies. He looked it over and nodded. "Good, good. I see you've already anticipated me. Where's the Bacitracin? Be sure to have some on your table."

     He went to the door, looked up and down the busy hallway, then said, "By the way, I have a new man assisting me this morning. A Dr. Treverton. So I'll be relying on your help extra specially, okay?" He gave her a wink. "Give me a holler when the patient arrives. I'll be in the doctors' lounge."

     Deborah was still staring after him when a young woman came hurrying in, tying up her mask and smelling faintly of cigarette smoke. "Was that Hayes I just saw? Good, we can get this show on the road. You must be Dr. Treverton. I'm Carla. What's your glove size?"

     Fifteen minutes later Jonathan Hayes was at the sinks, finishing his scrub. Deborah was at a sink behind him, also finishing up. He turned off the faucet and went across the hall into room 8, hands held upright, elbows dripping. Deborah came into the room as he was drying his arms. When the scrub nurse stepped up with his gown, he gave her a brief, puzzled look. And when he turned around for the circulator to tie it, he blinked at Deborah.

     "Have you met Dr. Treverton, Dr. Hayes?" the scrub nurse said as she handed Deborah a sterile towel.

     "Dr. Treverton?" he said. Then, suddenly realizing his mistake, he turned red.

     "No," Deborah said with a soft laugh, "we haven't been introduced."

     Then Jonathan also laughed, and they began the operation.

D
EBORAH FOUND HERSELF STARING AT EVERY MAN WHO CAME
into the restaurant. Any one of them could be Christopher.

     She was eating an enormous breakfast. Two hours earlier Deborah had awakened to discover that she had slept for fourteen hours; she was surprisingly refreshed and rested and also ravenous. A hot bath had restored her vitality, and now she was down in the Mara Restaurant, off the Hilton lobby, where green-uniformed hostesses with cornrowed hair escorted African businessmen to tables. While Deborah ate generously of croissants and English jam, slices of papaya and pineapple, and an omelet folded around mushrooms, onions, olives, ham, and cheese, she surreptitiously looked over every man who came in.

     The majority were Africans in business suits or tailored tropical outfits of pale green or pale blue cotton. They carried briefcases, had gold rings and wristwatches, and shook hands with one another before sitting down to eat. They spoke a variety of dialects, and when Deborah listened in, she found that she understood much of the Swahili and Kikuyu.

     Surely Christopher would not be in Kenya, she thought as she sipped her coffee, if he was not listed in the telephone directory. Then where was he? Why had he left?

     
He went in search of me, fifteen years ago
, she thought.

     But then Deborah realized that if that were the case, he would have gone to the college that had granted her the scholarship, and he would have found her.

     Whatever he had done, wherever he had gone, Deborah knew that she could not leave Kenya without finding out what became of Christopher.

     After breakfast she went to the main desk, where she settled her Hilton bill, asked for a reservation to be made at the Outspan, and ordered a car with a driver. When she was told that it would be some time before the car would arrive, Deborah looked around for a place to wait.

     The lobby was monstrously busy. It appeared that several large groups of tourists were arriving and departing at the same time, causing a jam of people at the desk, a jam of luggage near the double glass doors, and a jam of safari vans at the curb. Harried tour guides shouted orders in English and Swahili, while weary travelers found seats on the many sofas that were arranged around the spacious lobby. Deborah had heard that tourism was big business in Kenya. She surmised that it must rank just after coffee and tea as its main source of income.
Thanks
, she thought as she made her way to the glass doors,
to men like Uncle Geoffrey.

     She paused on the front steps to catch her breath.

     The light!

     Deborah had forgotten how crisp and buoyant the light of Kenya was. It was as if the air weren't made up of oxygen but of something indescribably light, such as helium. Everything was so clear, so sharp. Colors seemed to be more colorful here than anywhere else; outlines and details seemed to stand out. Although the air smelled smoky and fumy, it was wondrously thin and fresh. This was one of the reasons, Deborah had read in her aunt's journal, why her grandfather, the earl of Treverton, had so fallen in love with East Africa.

     Deborah liked that thought-that she shared something with the man who was responsible for her having been born in Kenya. It gave her a sense of inheritance, of family lineage.

     She struck off in the direction of Joseph Gicheru Street, which had once been Lord Treverton Avenue, and came, a few minutes later, to Jomo Kenyatta Avenue, where she found herself standing in front of the main office of Donald Tours.

     Deborah was hesitant to go inside.

     So she retreated to the curb, where a tree, growing out of the cracked and buckled sidewalk, provided shade from the slicing sunlight. The doorway into the agency seemed like a doorway into her past. Uncle Geoffrey might be in there, in his seventies now but just as vigorous and robust, Deborah had no doubt, as ever. Or possibly Terry was in there, arranging a hunting safari. Was he married now? she wondered. Had he settled down, had children? Or was he possessed of the restless, adventurous spirit that was the legacy of his forefathers? Deborah recalled what her aunt had written in the journal, back in 1919: "Sir James tells me his father was one of the first men to explore the interior of British East Africa. He had hoped to achieve lasting fame and immortality by having something named for him, after the fashion of Stanley and Thompson. Sadly he was killed by an elephant before the realization of that dream."

     
Immortality
, Deborah thought as she gazed up at the modern sign over the large plate glass window. The dream of that first, intrepid Donald had come true after all.

     She went inside.

     The door opened upon a tastefully decorated office with a counter, plush carpeting, and seats with magazine racks. When the door closed, the noise of Nairobi was shut out and Deborah heard soft music. A young woman looked up from a computer terminal and smiled. "May I help you?" she said.

     Deborah looked around. Murals-panoramic views of the elegant Donald lodges and their breathtaking vistas-covered three walls. On the counter-top was a display of glossy, colorful brochures, a separate one for each lodge, and of individual pamphlets describing a variety of tours. The young African woman was pretty and well dressed, and she wore an elaborate hairdo. The whole Donald operation, it seemed to Deborah, spelled prosperity and wealth.