The Blue Taxi (30 page)

The souvenir shop, which had stayed intact and in place as the hotel was rebuilt (even fired-up reformers pick up trinkets
for their children), was not much larger than the Turners’ parlor, but it was stacked and filled to overflowing with exactly
what she’d come to see. Moving through the doorway, Sarie coughed. The man who owned the place, sallow, wrinkled in a short-sleeved
light brown shirt that did nothing for his arms, looked up and nodded vaguely. In a long, exhausted voice, he said, “When
you want to buy, you ask me.” He went back to filling up a scrapbook with interesting stamps.

Sarie didn’t greet him. There was too much to take in. Her big blue eyes were hungry. Could she see them all? She steadied
herself with a hand on a low shelf. Her stomach hurt. Indeed, she felt nearly sick. Here were wooden and carved things from
every region in the country, and even from elsewhere. Sarie lurched and shivered. Was
this
what hovered at her skin and waited to be known? Her eyes adjusted to the light, and in that hazy, variegated shine, Sarie
sensed the future.

The sallow man, she saw, dealt in items of all kinds: not simply statuettes and baskets, but gifts and memorabilia that Sarie,
musing in the bedroom, had not yet considered. Bracelets made of jade; soapstone candlesticks and plates; arrows (neatly labeled
Poison
in typed print); walking sticks in green and scarlet paint; carved, dark busts of grizzled men and those of fresh young girls
(men from brow to throat, girls from head to chest); the cured, weird feet of elephants and zebras; studded boxes from the
islands; carpets; silver rings expressly left unpolished to seem older than they were; copper armbands from Rhodesia; beaded
straps from Swaziland; neck rings from Uganda.
Jewelry!
she thought. How many, many items she could put into one box if only she thought small. There were also wooden animals in
sets, wildebeest and boks of various shapes, lions, hippos, too. Oh! Sarie’s stomach settled.

While Agatha picked up a giraffe and made it walk along a shelf, Sarie fingered necklaces and jade. She eyed the tiny gems
whose blue, she was aware, was precious, mined only in these hills.
Yes
, she thought.
Potential
. They would work their way through statuettes and jewelry to stones, once they could afford it. Oh, she would have a lot
to say to Gilbert! He would be impressed. She was peering at a case of fine transparent stones, imagining the rare and airy
sounds of Gilbert’s admiration, when she had to close her eyes and groan because a real sound had intruded. Oh, would she
always
be there? Behind her, unmistakable and bright, came Mrs. Hazel’s voice.

“Sarie, dear! Hoo!” Hazel wore a polyester sundress printed top to bottom with loud deep purple flowers, black belt tight
around her. Her lips were painted red. She looked, thought Sarie, shocking. Where were her ordinary clothes? Whenever Hazel
showed at the Mchanganyiko flat, she wore white blouses and khaki, long brown skirts, and big, brown, scratched-up shoes.
She came dressed like a
farmer. Even at the garden parties, Sarie had never before witnessed Hazel in such color. And nevermind in lipstick!

Sarie was surprised. She felt oddly betrayed. It made Sarie think that Hazel, on her visits to the flat, thought of it as
labor
, that she intentionally dressed down. And, even more unsettling, that Hazel had, perhaps—though Sarie had the honesty to
think,
As, moi-même, I do, too
—another, secret life that she liked to keep from them. At the Mountain Top Hotel, at the coast resorts, perhaps even in the
high-walled homes of Scallop Bay, Hazel Towson
bloomed
. Sarie had the feeling that, just as she’d been caught by Hazel, Hazel, too, had been uncomfortably revealed. The duplicities
abounding made Sarie feel more patient than she would have otherwise. And careful.

“I was just here having lunch.” Hazel ran her hand across her belly with an appreciative, soft sigh, as if the food inside
that gut were made of down feathers and gold. “That cornmeal, and a pretty little stew. Local food, you know.” Sarie thought
that she had never seen the woman’s hands so gentle, Mrs. Hazel so beatific, so full and satisfied. Yet wasn’t Hazel Towson
hard?
Sarie’s knees felt cold. Did
everyone
have double lives?

Sarie clutched her purse and nodded. Hazel stepped in close and smiled, peering at her as though through a magnifying lens,
as though she, too, had just discovered something. “Then I thought: is it? It can’t be. Not
here
. Not at the Mountain Top Hotel.” She gestured with her shoulders at the shop, the neat tiles of the lobby, and the buzzing
ceiling lights. “But then it was. It was. And look, Sarie!” Hazel patted Sarie’s arm as if to show her what Sarie didn’t know.
Looked at her as though she might, one day, right there, ask Sarie to lunch. “I’m right. It’s you, just as I suspected.”

Sarie blinked at Hazel’s hand. While she didn’t like the word “suspected,” part of her did warm to the approval she could
sense
in Mrs. Hazel’s voice. And the sound of
Yes, it’s you
. Hadn’t she been a little less than sure, herself?
Yes, yes. It is me
, she answered silently. She smiled a little, shy, hoping Mrs. Hazel would not ask too many questions. Hazel Towson
was
persistent; surely, even softened by a meal and with a gloss on her thin lips, she could still sniff out a secret. While
Agatha watched her mother from behind an ebony woman with a basket on her head (taller than she was), Hazel, softening even
more, spoke the next thing quietly: “How’s it been, my dear?” She moved her eyes to Sarie’s hips, then back up to her face.
“You know.”

Sarie looked away and almost, almost, blushed. “Oh…” Sane shook her head. “Mrs. Hazel.” Hazel thought that Sarie was finally
being prim, patted her to show that she approved. “Nevermind. I’m glad to see you’re better.” Sarie nodded, and, quite truthfully,
she said, “Yes. I am. Yes, I really am.”

She was. She did not know what she would say if Hazel asked her why she’d come across her so far from Kikanga, of all places
at the Mountain Top Hotel. But women with a vision often fill things in. Hazel had ideas of her own. “Stones,” she said, “are
such a good investment.” In fact, she’d bought stones here for fledgling children, too. Most recently for a grandniece who’d
come into the world three months before, in Devon. Although she was thinking,
Where on earth will Sarie find the money?
she felt called upon to be polite and kind: Sarie did seem to be coming round, at last; and though the rubber band and pencil
really wouldn’t do, that pink dress was all right. At least she was exhibiting the right kind of desire. Hazel added, “Small
ones can be quite affordable.” She cast a skeptical and knowing eye at the gray man behind the counter. “If you can bargain
with them.” The salesman snapped his stamp book shut and frowned. He looked into a drawer. Hazel patted
Sarie’s hand. No, it didn’t matter if Sarie Turner had no money for the stones. Desire mattered most.

In the silence that came next, Sarie sensed that Hazel wanted something from her, a reward for being gracious. It was one
thing staring Hazel down in the safety of her own apartment on Mchanganyiko Street—but here at the Mountain Top Hotel, where
Hazel and not Sarie seemed to be in charge, Sarie felt unsure. “Stones,” she said. “
Bien sûr.
”

Hazel nodded, pleased. Maybe it did take something shocking, like a baby at her age, to set Sarie Turner straight. “That’s
wonderful.” She was satisfied, for now. So, turning on her heel, she waved. And said, “You
will
be there on Friday, won’t you? For our meeting, as we said.”

Relieved that Mrs. Hazel was going on her way, Sarie said yes very quickly. “
Absolument
. Yes, Mrs. Hazel. Yes, I will be there.” To vaccinate the babies. Indeed, what could be more important? “I will come,” she
said. “Yes, yes.” Hazel Towson smiled. They would talk more about the stones in a few days, and of course, disease.

Sarie, peering out into the parking lot between two shelves of soapstone boxes, the clever lids of which concealed a frog
to show a snake, noted with some awe that Hazel Towson climbed into a taxi. She took her daughter’s hand. She was ready to
go, too. She’d seen enough to know that she was thinking the right thing. And Mrs. Hazel had confirmed it. What she’d said
about the stones, that they were a good investment! That’s what they would do, eventually. Start out with the crafts and end
up with the stones. She and Gilbert would do far better in the end than even this shopkeeper had, she thought. Oh, yes, they’d
outdo this little shop with
exports
. She smirked a little, pleasantly. They’d make themselves a fortune. On the way back home, she thought about what she’d say
to Gilbert. And how grateful he would be.

Gilbert was not the sort of man who recalls with any clarity what he has dreamed of in the night. Nor did he put any stock
in images that, now and then, inexplicable and strange, did nag him when he had come awake. He’d often claimed, in fact, whenever
Sarie talked about the things that came to her in sleep—face creams, porcelain bedpans, spears, or shining pairs of shoes—that
he never, ever dreamed; as though the nighttime nothingness he swore by made him wise. In the void of his own sleep, he’d
found a kind of pride.
His
dreams, if one could call them that, came to him during the day, when his faculties were sharp, when he was in control.
My little hopes
, he called them, as when he told Kazansthakis that he’d like to be in business or wished to spend his old age by the sea.
But it hit him as he tied the final shoelace and stood up. Something
had
come in the night. Something sleek and smooth, disturbing and familiar.

Unlike Bibi, with her roses, pineapples, and taxis, unlike Majid, with the things he saw in half-light, and also unlike Sarie,
who could recount her dreams with a remarkable precision that Gilbert found exhausting, he didn’t quite know what he’d seen.
What had come to him as he was bending down, aware of a little itching in his back and a pain along his hip, was more specifically
a feeling. Something he’d once known. Or something that would come. Absurd. What kind of thought was that? He jiggled the
heels of his hands against his ears to shake it off, cleared his throat, and made his way downstairs.

In the sandy courtyard that was the stomach of their building sat, as always, the quiet Morris Oxford, shapely, smooth, and
still. The damson fruits had left dark marks on the boot, like pepper or like mud.
Mr. Suleiman’s taxi
, Gilbert thought. He had seen it
many times, of course. And just the other day. But—was there… something different? Perhaps. Perhaps indeed there was. Gilbert
looked at it, in fact, as though he never had before. It was regal, really. Handsome. Quite a vehicle, he thought. That blue
paint, so durable, was also pleasant to behold. Not unlike a sky. Gilbert cocked his head. Felt quiet. Unnerved and transfixed.
What was tugging at his throat, the corners of his eyes? What was stirring in him? Looking at the Morris still, Gilbert noted
how its trimmings shimmered in the sun, how clean the windows were, the hubcaps, too, their spokes, despite the city dust.
Did Mr. Suleiman polish it at night?

He sniffed. He narrowed his brown eyes and tapped his closed mouth with two fingers. And, vaguely but more surely with each
step, he sensed that whatever had awoken while he slept had had to do… with cars.
With cars!
Gilbert almost laughed. How very, very odd. He cocked his head again. He cracked a knuckle in his pocket, took a step towards
the street. And swore that with a drink (to fuel the thinking process, finances be damned), seated at the Palm, he’d mull
the feeling over before turning to the plan.
The plan
, he thought. He pulled up his loose trousers and, vigorous, rubbed his forearms. He threw back his head and felt a springing
in his stride. Perhaps!
What if?
he thought. Indeed.
What could be more manly?
Here Gilbert thought of Sarie, smiled:
Something for the cars
.

At first, Kazansthakis thought Gilbert was mad. While he could be counted on for stories and peculiar facts and was not bad
to drink with, Gilbert was in Mr. Frosty’s estimation perfectly incapable of doing anything demanding or original himself.
It was the place of men like Gilbert Turner, Kazansthakis thought, to endure the strange new times in a not undignified, but
permanent, poverty—
never reaching, voicing a discomforting desire, or asking, for too much. He had no business making business. The very thought,
Kazansthakis found, to his surprise, was nearly—just—offensive.

Men like Gilbert had a special place in History’s bright march: they served as a reminder, Mr. Frosty thought, of what had
been the case and wasn’t any longer. Empires, he thought, were fueled by men who couldn’t do much and whose prime task was
to provide the bulk. Foot soldiers, like Gilbert. Yes. Gilbert was the very stuff of over-rule: not too bright, a little dreamy,
interesting in his own idle, silly way, but, all told, rather weak. He was not bold, he lacked imagination, was not meant
for center stage; he was brick, not mortar. And when Independence came—when loosed from those who might have led him—Gilbert
had, exactly as required, shrunk, dried up, and gotten used to struggle. And from that struggle, Kazansthakis thought, he
could never rise. He hung on, as others like him did, a barnacle, affixed by unknown glue to the changing world’s new walls;
but he was not—as the Frosty King had said himself!—a
doer
.