Green City in the Sun (104 page)

     "I'm going up to Nyeri in a little while. I have a room at the Outspan. And I don't know how much time your grandmother has left."

     Sarah shrugged. "I haven't spoken to her in years. But you can give her my love if you want."

     The chauffeur turned the car down a short drive. He stopped when he came to a chain link fence. There were warning signs posted in big, bold letters: KALI DOGS! DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR CAR! And then an askari, carrying a rifle, appeared from a small kiosk. When he saw the car, he unlocked the gate, rolled it back, and saluted his employer through.

     As the drive curved around a large green lawn and flower garden,
Deborah's eyes widened. There were more guards, holding barking dogs on leashes. "Sarah!" she said. "You told me we were going to your house, not to the President's house!"

     "This
is
my house," Sarah said as the Mercedes pulled up near the front door.

     "It's like a fortress!" Deborah was looking at the fence topped with a curl of barbed wire. It appeared to go all the way around the property.

     "Don't pretend that you don't live like this, too, Deb."

     As Deborah gave Sarah a startled, quizzical look, the front door was opened by an elderly African in an old-fashioned long white kanzu. He was very proper and formal and even wore, to Deborah's surprise, white gloves.

     The interior of Sarah's house took Deborah's breath away.

     It was one of the old colonial mansions once used as retreats for aristocratic settlers, like Deborah's grandparents, when they came into Nairobi for Race Week. But there were no portraits of Queen Victoria or King George here, no regimental swords on the wall, no Union Jack, no animal heads, stuffed and mounted. It was as if, she thought, Sarah had taken a broom, swept out all evidence of colonial imperialism, and brought in ...
Africa.

     Woven rugs covered polished red-tile floors; leather sofas were protected by blankets from India; rattan chairs were strewn with batiked cushions. Every inch of wall space was taken up with carefully hung African masks, carved and painted, some exceedingly old, representing the tribes and nations of the continent. Deborah recognized many of the artifacts displayed around the room: Samburu gourds, a Masai lion's mane headdress, Turkana dolls, a Pokot calabash, spears, shields, and baskets. It was like a museum.

     "I realized about ten years ago," Sarah explained as she invited Deborah to sit, "that African culture was rapidly vanishing. So much was becoming forgotten; old skills were ceasing to be passed along; old ceremonies were being abandoned. So I started to collect certain items that I knew would someday be quite valuable."

     Sarah said something to the elderly servant, then sat on a leather sofa and crossed her legs. But her posture was stiff; she appeared to be a woman on the move even when she was sitting still.

     "It's a beautiful collection, Sarah."

     "I've had it appraised. It's worth nearly a million shillings."

     "Is that why you have guards and dogs?"

     "Lord, no. I'd need those even if my house was empty. The guards and the dogs are there to keep the thugs out. But thanks to my special friendship with General Mazrui, I am quite safe here. Just to be sure, though, I pay a monthly
magendo
to the local police."

     Deborah didn't understand. "Thugs?"

     "Surely you have them in America!" Sarah said with a hard laugh. She glanced at her watch and then in the direction of the kitchen. "There's crime everywhere you go in the world, Deb. You know that. In Kenya we have our gangs of thugs. It's because of the high unemployment rate. The official figure is ninety percent unemployed. Nairobi is full of jobless, restless young men. You saw them?"

     Deborah had seen them. They traveled in pairs or packs, fairly decently dressed youths full of education and energy with no place to go, no jobs to support them.

     "They attack private residences," Sarah explained. "About twenty or thirty of them will single out a house and assault it in the middle of the night with clubs and battering rams. Only last week my neighbor next door was awakened by the sound of an attack. He managed to get his wife and children into a closet upstairs, where they waited while they heard the gang downstairs cleaning out their house."

     "Couldn't he have called the police?"

     "What good would that have done? The man simply refuses to pay
magendo."

     
"Magendo?"

     Sarah rubbed her fingers together. "Bribe. Money is the only language that people understand these days. And money is the only way you can survive."

     She clapped her hands sharply together and said, "What is taking that old fool so long? Simon!
Haraka!"

     The elderly servant in the kanzu appeared at that moment with a tea cart. Under Sarah's keenly watchful eye he poured from a silver samovar
with all the finesse and flourish of a servant from the old days, and Deborah wondered if he had once worked for a British master. It also surprised her that Sarah had adopted that system.

     As Sarah invited Deborah to help herself from the plates of sandwiches and biscuits, fruits and cheeses, she said, "How long will you be in Kenya, Deb?"

     "I don't know. Until four days ago I hadn't even known I was coming!"

     "What's your life like in California? Is your medical practice profitable?"

     Just then a young girl in a maid's uniform came into the room and waited to be acknowledged. Seeing her, Sarah waved her over, said to Deborah, "Pardon me a moment," and looked at the sheet of paper the maid held out. "No, no," Sarah said with a trace of impatience. "Tell the cook I want cold cucumber soup, not leek! And the Cabernet Sauvignon instead of the Chardonnay."

     Sarah spoke in Swahili, and Deborah listened. "The seating plan is all right, except for ..." Sarah took a pencil from the maid and wrote on the paper. "Put Bishop Musumbi on the ambassador's right. Place General Mazrui here, next to the foreign secretary. And tell Simon the dancers are to be assembled and ready to perform at nine o'clock sharp."

     When the maid was gone, Sarah turned back to Deborah with apologies. "If I don't keep right on top of them, things don't get done right. These girls from the country are so slow!"

     Deborah found herself staring at her old friend. Was this sharp-edged Nairobi socialite the same Sarah who had once sat barefoot on the bank of the Chania, wishing for a miniskirt? Deborah felt the colonial mansion shift around her, as if it, too, were suddenly uncomfortable.

     "Don't you ever get lonely, Sarah? Living in this big house all by yourself?"

     "Lonely! Deb, I don't have time to be lonely! There is always something going on at my house—nearly every night. And the weekends are taken up with houseguests. And over the holidays, of course, my children visit."

     "Children!"

     "I have two boys and three girls. The boys are in school in England, and the girls are in Switzerland."

     "But you said you never got married."

     "How provincial of you, Deb! I thought you were a liberated woman. Marriage isn't necessary for a woman to have children. I wanted babies, not a husband. You know, Deb, the Kenya male is a very macho male. If ever I married one, I would be subservient to him. He could even take over my business! My children had five different fathers. That was the way I wanted it. And now they're receiving European educations. When they return to Kenya, they'll have assured places in the proper society."

     Deborah looked down at her tea. Something was wrong. Sarah seemed so hard around the edges, so competitive. She talked about women's liberation and used words like
macho
and had reverted to a system of master and servant that she had once denounced. When Sarah had come through that plain doorway back at Mathenge House, Deborah had been overjoyed with relief to think that her old friend hadn't changed. But Deborah realized now, sadly, Sarah had changed. With each passing minute, the woman sitting across the room from her was slowly turning into a stranger.

     In another room a telephone rang. Simon came in a moment later and murmured something to his mistress. She replied in Swahili, which Deborah could understand: "Tell them I am on my way."

     But Deborah needed to know something first, before she left Sarah's house. "What happened?" she asked. "After I left? What did you do?"

     "What could I do, Deb? I survived! At first I used my grandmother's money to buy Mrs. Dar's old sewing machine. I made a few dresses and took them around to the Nairobi shops. But when that money ran out"—she paused to replace her cup in its saucer, a graceful, measured gesture—"I had no choice but to go back to the Nairobi bankers who were willing to deal with me for certain 'favors.' And I found out after a while, Deb, that there was nothing to it. Such a bloody silly thing pride is!"

     Sarah paused. She glanced at her watch, then continued. "I eventually became quite successful. I bought out smaller firms and reduced my competition. When I saw there was no profit in making dresses for the typical Nairobi secretary, I gave that up and went into designing originals, which brought me a lot more money. It was a very smart move for me." Sarah twisted the copper bracelets around and around on her wrist. "Now my dresses
are sold all over the world. There's a shop in Beverly Hills that carries my line, and another on the Champs-Élysées in Paris."

     "I'm happy for you," Deborah said quietly.

     "And are you a success, Deb? I seem to recall you had a rather quaint idea of running your aunt's mission after she was gone. I hope you gave that up!"

     "I'm in practice with another surgeon. We're doing well."

     They fell silent, awkwardly, avoiding each other's eyes. Finally Deborah asked about Christopher. "He's doing well," Sarah said rather perfunctorily, and followed it by asking after Deborah's mother.

     Deborah didn't tell her the truth: that she had felt so sick fifteen years ago, thinking that she had made love to her own brother—she had been so angry with her mother for having never told her the truth—that Deborah had written a terrible, hateful letter to her mother, venting all her sickness in it. Two weeks later she had received a reply in the mail, but Deborah had torn it up without reading it. After that several more letters came from Australia, all thrown away without being opened, until finally the letters stopped coming.

     "Sarah," Deborah asked, "do you know why your grandmother is asking for me?"

     "Haven't a notion. She probably wants to rattle some chicken bones at you or something." Sarah rose, graceful and stately, like a queen dismissing an audience. "I'm sorry, Deb. But I really must get going. You're sure about tonight?"

     "I'm positive. I have to get up to Nyeri." At the door Deborah paused to look at this stranger who had once been like a sister to her. "Where is Christopher, Sarah? Do you ever hear from him?"

     "Where is he? Let me see. What day is it today? I imagine he's at Ongata Rongai."

     "You mean he's in Kenya?"

     "Of course. Where else would he be?"

     "I looked him up in the phone book—"

     "He's listed under the name of his clinic. Wangari. My fool brother found Jesus a few years back, after his wife died. Now he is a lay preacher as
well as a doctor. He does charity work among the Masai. As if they would ever be grateful! I've told him he's just wasting his time."

     A silence descended; it seemed to roll out from behind the African masks, from under old tribal drums, from calabashes and elephant grass
irua
skirts. Deborah imagined the colonial house shifting again, as if it were as bewildered and lost as she, and the whispered footsteps of Sarah's many unseen servants seemed to be saying,
The past is dead, the past is dead....

D
EBORAH'S DRIVER WAS A FRIENDLY YOUNG
S
OMALI NAMED
Abdi, who wore slacks and a Beach Boys T-shirt and, on his head, a white knitted cap indicating he was a Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

     "Where do we go please, miss?" he asked as he placed her suitcase in the trunk of the small white Peugeot.

     "To Nyeri. The Outspan Hotel." Deborah paused. Then she said, "I would like to stop first at Ongata Rongai. It's a Masai village. Do you know where it is?"

     "Yes, please, miss."

     It took them some time to inch their way through the traffic congestion and onto one of the major roads leading out of the city. Deborah rode in the back seat, looking out at Nairobi.

     She wondered what the population numbered now; it seemed so much more crowded than when she had left. And she counted so few white faces in the ceaseless tide of pedestrians that she wondered how small a minority they were now.

     Because of a traffic accident up ahead, they were stalled for some minutes on Harambee Avenue, in front of the Kenyatta Conference Center. Deborah was afforded a more careful look at the beautiful new edifice, and she saw what one didn't see on the postcards—the signs of neglect, the lack of repair and upkeep, the overall
seediness
of an otherwise remarkable piece of architecture. Here, as everywhere else in the city, she saw the street people: cripples; beggars; little girls holding starving babies. But on the other side of the fence, in the parking lot of the center, there were lines of shiny limousines.