The Blue Taxi Read online

  They walked. Nisreen had never seen Sugra really soft, or crushed, before. It wouldn’t have occurred to her that Sugra, glowing, funny Sugra, could be sad, like this. Sugra talked a little less. She focused on the crutches, setting their ends down beside her and pressing with her weight, just lightly, each time she took a step. She sniffed. Plumped her weighty chest. “It won’t be so hard as that. I’ll show him. This.” She paused on the left crutch and delicately lifted up one foot. “And this.” She set the next foot down and followed with the crutch. “Like this.” It was not quite the right way, but Nisreen didn’t say so. Strange, she thought. It’s me now who must do the cheering-up. It occurred to Nisreen, too—an odd thought, one that she had never had—that perhaps Sugra and Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee had been cut from the same cloth. If Sugra got unhappy, Nisreen thought, desperately unhappy, would she short-circuit, too? Weren’t laughing-laughing and such friendliness just the underside of vast hostility and tears? Weren’t they both unstable, in a way? And what if it were me?

  At Libya Street, Sugra made as if to turn. But Nisreen, thinking about sadness, and that she ought somehow return the kindness she felt Sugra had done her by appearing at exactly the right time, had the germ of an idea. Yes, they’d come this way for a reason. Taking on a shadow of her friend’s ordinary brightness, borrowing from her, she said how nice it was to have seen Sugra these days; and if she was taking, after all, a break from work, which she so rarely did, it might at least be special. Wouldn’t it be sweet to go up to the Park and have a fruit ice in the shade?

  Mbuyu Mmoja Park, with its avenues of bushes, benches, and dry fountains, was shimmering and busy. The men who transformed neckties into guavas and briefcases to baskets were holding their best shows, entertaining groups of children and adults who were also taking breaks from offices and school. At the edges of the crowd, young men sold crackling dubbed cassettes of country music from the U.S.A. and Germany, rally songs for youth, local church recitals, and qasidas from Malaysia. Coffee vendors clicked their cups and litter women rose and bent and men with palm brooms swept. The Emmanuel Revival Tabernacle House, with its pretty, shady grounds, was milling with the faithful. Boys rode by on bicycles, trailing boxy freezers filled with fruity ice. Beneath three ancient flame trees, at one remove from all the buzz and hum, the doctors from the islands tended to their patients; roots and powders passed discreetly from proffered hand to hand.

  Sugra and Nisreen found a cement bench beneath a frangipani, the pink flowers of which, Sugra told her friend, reminded her of sweets. Nisreen stopped a cycling boy and bought four orange pops. Each of them ate two. The freshness tugged Nisreen and Sugra from their sorrows—Sugra a bit faster, because she was resilient, and Nisreen rather jaggedly; but with each gritty lick and swallow, Nisreen was more certain that leaving work at noon had been a good idea, that Issa needn’t know, that she’d done the right thing. That there might be a pattern to this day, that her tears had been a wet but necessary step towards something in particular. That ending here, at Mbuyu Mmoja Park, just might be significant.

  Sugra told old stories they both knew from their bright student days. As she spoke, Nisreen thought about how she’d heard Bibi say to Issa that Sugra was a woman and that Nisreen was not. She didn’t think this jealously. She pondered. In some ways it seemed true: how Sugra, with a lightness, pleasure, that Nisreen didn’t have, took other people’s news to heart; how Sugra swelled with kids (was it two, now? three or four?). Oh, yes, for Bibi, Nisreen thought, tongue flat at her teeth then in farthest corners of her mouth, Sugra would be fine. Nisreen smiled. But Bibi doesn’t have her. She only has me.

  At one o’clock, muezzins made their calls. Sugra tossed the fruit-ice wrappers to the side and rubbed her hands with sand, picked the crutches from the bench. The heavy skirts of her green dress shifted as she stood, rippled in the light. Nisreen walked with Sugra to the far edge of the park. At the curb, she hovered. Sugra, who had stepped into the road, looked at her in surprise. “You’re not going back to work?” Nisreen’s limping leg was hurting just a little. Her glasses had slipped far down her nose from heat, twin distorting orbs at rest almost on her cheeks. But Nisreen felt determined. Hadn’t Sugra been so brash as to walk five blocks with crutches at her arms, as though she were a cripple? She looked around her with increasing certainty. “Not yet,” Nisreen said, mouth set. She pushed her glasses up, looked firmly at her friend. “There’s something I should do.”

  Sugra understood when certain limits had been reached. She herself had crutches to deliver. “All right, then,” Sugra said.

  “Till soon, God willing, yes?” Nisreen squeezed her school friend’s hand, then raised her own up to her mouth and kissed it with a happy snap, a sweetness at her lips. Sugra did the same. “God willing, yes, oh, yes.”

  As Sugra and the crutches crossed the busy road, headed off to Libya Street, Nisreen nodded to herself. For sure, my business is with God. She spun on her good heel and, confidence inspired, made her way towards the children and the magic men, one of whom, as she arrived, announced that he was going to call a monkey from a yellow bar of soap. Just beyond that magical assembly, Nisreen saw another: flame trees, bottles, white gowns glowing in the sun.

  Although it wasn’t Saturday or Sunday, Maria, having made a special trip, was waiting just outside of the Emmanuel Revival Tabernacle House. Brother Ewald Matting, the ruddy man from Texas, U.S.A., had spoken every weekend for a month to eager audiences so large, so vocal and impassioned, that not all of them could hear. His success had been complete. The healings and salvations he had brought about (a daily 40-Healing cap) had not satisfied demand. Seekers? In Vunjamguu, a surfeit, yes, a glut. From the kindness of his corn- and pork-fed heart, Brother Ewald, just back from a soul-search in the highlands, had thus returned for extra days in that seaside town: Vunjamguu, whose people, he had said, were special and made all of him feel warm.

  Maria was among those who, when Brother Ewald had first come, had had to sit outside the meeting hall, perched on a high wall above the heads of taller worshippers who’d filled up the church grounds. She hadn’t heard him well nor even really seen him. But having caught the highlights from the lucky few who’d gotten there so early they had found seats in the front, she was not about to let him leave for Texas (via Ghana) without trying one more time to get a decent look. So she had oiled her arms and legs, put on the violet gown, tightly done her hair, left the Jeevanjees to their own Tuesday selves, and gone out for some grace.

  The meeting was at three. She got there so early that the Tabernacle doors were not even open. And she was further pleased to note, beside her favorite tree, the very boy she dreamed of. He’d come just as he’d promised! Seated happily beside him, she let handsome Idi Moto stroke her arm and back, while she tried to think of new ways to convince him that Brother Ewald Matting was a man worth listening to, a man who brought salvation. Wouldn’t he come with her and sit nicely through it all? While Idi Moto played with her hot hands, Maria scanned the park for a glimpse of Brother Ewald. She was so wound up about the meeting she had come for that even Idi started looking at the passersby, the crowds, wondering how the famous preacher looked. He thought it would be nice to spot him first, then take Maria’s arm and say, “There! Just there! Is that the man you mean?” Maria’s pleasure, if not her drive for his Salvation, was steadily infectious. Moreover, perhaps he’d learn something today that he could use for profit, or something small that would amuse his ma. Indeed, did he not recognize a face or two, a racketeering nod, the posture of a figure by the toilets—or, yes, perhaps even a slim and limping figure there, or there, or there?

  Gilbert, hoping for another manual, perhaps, and also for a letter, was making for the harbor. On the way, he thought about the methods Kazansthakis had suggested of smuggling spare parts into the country. He considered, at first, the most extreme of ways. Just for fun, Gilbert imagined: hushed negotiations with dark men on wet ships made of wood, tethered among mangroves, nocturnal me
etings at a lonely border post where the air, adrone with fabled insects, would be humid, cling to him like a coat. At the thought of such adventure, Gilbert smiled. Surely, I won’t do that myself? An assistant would, not he. A lackey. Like the coastal kingpins, Gilbert thought, he would have retainers. Wouldn’t he? He reveled for a moment, then remembered that he was, as yet—if it was to be at all—entirely alone. He frowned. Thinking practically was hard.

  Head awhirr, he moved forward in a daze. But as he passed the mirrored doors of the People’s Bank, he tripped on his own feet. He stopped. With the air of someone who can’t hear very well but knows that something, somewhere, is reaching out to him, Gilbert looked around. Yes. “Hoo-hoo!” Standing on the stairs, big backside reflected in the doors behind her so that she looked to be arriving and departing all at once, Hazel Towson called to Gilbert with a wave. Her voice, indeed, her very being on the steps, was bright, and loud, and shrill. Hoo-hoo. “Hoo-hoo!” she said. “Oh. Hello there! Mr. Turner!” Gilbert’s insides curdled. Oh, didn’t she just—didn’t she just have a way of being there when one really didn’t want her?

  With Hazel on the steps above him and his own feet on the sidewalk, Gilbert found himself looking right into her buttoned, heaving chest; his first thought was that Hazel was not simply personally colossal but physically enormous. Huge. Even bigger than before. Had she grown since her last visit? What a formidable woman Jim Towson’s Hazel was! How able Hazel was to transform a person’s day! Gilbert would have tripped on his own feet again had she not placed her square hand on his arm. “Be careful, now,” she said. “Goodness knows the sidewalks aren’t what they once were.” Capably holding Gilbert up, she stepped down to his level, where he was relieved to find that, no, he hadn’t shrunk, nor had she really grown. He was instead confronted with her ruddy, horsey face at the level, as it should be, of his eyes. Hazel Towson looked back at the bank. “Coming for some money, are you?” She smiled at him with her great teeth, and Gilbert blinked at her. He wished to scratch his back, to rearrange his trousers, but did not.

  “No, no,” he said, leaning, still, though he didn’t want to, on her arm. Hazel Towson ably ascertained that he could stand, and let go of him gently. He found his wobbly footing. “Well,” she said. “I shouldn’t think so.” She reached up to her head, smoothed her big brown bun. “To the Post, then?” When she fixed her narrowed eyes on him, Gilbert had the feeling that she looked at him as a person might a small and helpless, unloved thing—a lizard or a bird—who has been tricked into a corner.

  “Expecting something? Sending something off?” She smiled. Gilbert felt her breath and with it sensed a pointed shriveling in his gut. His nervous bowels shifted and he squeezed his legs together. It was true that he had nearly told her, that first day, had almost, with daring and enthusiasm, said, We’re going to start a business. But now, with the any-day potential of Uncle James’s answer at the forefront of his mind, he didn’t want to say. He didn’t want to ruin it. If Hazel Towson knew, he thought, she’d laugh, she’d jump for joy. She’d tell me I was sweet. That I was coming round. “No,” he said. “No, no.”

  As Hazel spoke again, Gilbert noticed that, as though not trusting him to answer on his own, as if giving him some options, she ended every statement with a question. “You’re just walking for a lark?”

  Gilbert had always been aware of something fierce at work in Hazel Towson’s manner, but on that afternoon he felt her powers trebled. Indeed, it was as though, if she kept going, she might hit on the right answer, say, “Hoping your relation has agreed to send you one last wire? For the business you’ve been dreaming?” Before her he was helpless. Pinned by her acuity, he would have to nod, and say, “Well. Why, yes. Yes, how did you know?” And that wouldn’t do at all. He clenched his stomach like a fist and pressed his teeth together. “No, no,” he said. He tried to step a bit away from her but found it hard to do.

  To every side of him, unyielding streams of people headed in and out of buildings and competed for the buses. Far beyond them, he could see the ocean, undisturbed, slate blue and indifferent. He gave its distant vastness a mildly desperate look, thinking that the ocean didn’t care about Jim Towson’s wife, or even Uncle James, or him, for that matter, at all. How lovely it would be to be like that, to heave, to move away unblamed for being impolite, not being good enough. To be, simply, far away.

  Hazel, talkative, for sure, but not blind to other people, did perceive his wretched look. How disconsolate expectant men could be! Understanding, so she thought, she patted Gilbert’s arm. “You’re out clearing your head, of course, I see. Come to rest your mind and give Sarie some peace.” Gilbert took the opportunity to nod, to step away from her a bit. “That’s right,” he said. “Er, yes.” Hazel felt, again, that she alone knew exactly what was what. What would people do without her to lay out for their perusal the conditions that impelled them? But it was a nice exasperation, comforting to her. What a lucky woman. She smiled at Gilbert Turner, and more kindly, conspiratorially, she said, “I do understand, you know. I’ve been there myself” She too looked at the sea, as if for confirmation, as if that enormous body were not different from hers. “A woman who’s expecting isn’t always easy to be near, now, is she?”

  Woman who’s expecting. Mother-to-be. Gilbert felt his skin burn in the sun. He’d nearly forgotten all about his and Sarie’s baby! At the idea of the baby, the little subterfuge that had prevented him from spilling all the news, the real news, Gilbert blushed, blushed brightly. And Hazel knew that she was right. How powerful she was. With just a little sympathy, she thought, a man would open, like a book.

  She smiled once more, leaning closer in so that Gilbert smelled that scent again, of rich earth and manure. Surely nothing bottled could provide that kind of fragrance—What would such a thing be called? Settler Days, or Empire’s Green Time? She didn’t any longer have a thing to do with farms. Whence did that smell arise? Hazel Towson seemed to him all bust and heave and muscle, a prodigious figure on the prow of a great ship, undisturbed by swelling tides or squalls. She closed her eyes a moment, as if taking in the spray, then fixed him with a look. “I could say a lot about such things, Mr. Turner. My mother—” Here Hazel gave her handbag a coy tap, as though—he winced—she’d trapped the woman there. “My mother couldn’t bear the smell of liver the whole time she was down. My sisters”—the buckle of her purse aglint—“both ate butterscotch like mad. Couldn’t get enough. And you couldn’t say a word, or look at them cross-eyed, without their bursting into tears. Like babies. Like the babies they were making.” Hazel’s voice had softened at this last. She tapped Gilbert on the forearm with something not unlike approval, gently.

  She might not be sanctioning the pregnancy, no, certainly not that; indeed, Hazel thought repeatedly, At her age! How is it even possible? But there was nothing cruel in her; she could see what people needed. Once trouble had arrived and could not be sent back, there was nothing for it, one made the best of things, faced the facts head-on. Gilbert Turner, Hazel thought, was in need of understanding. For his part, Gilbert, impressionable, susceptible to certain kinds of women, had a vision: an enormous farmer’s wife hurling liver from a window; behind her, two whopping, swollen girls fought bitterly for sweets. He blinked, felt hot. How far away the sea was!

  When Hazel suddenly fell quiet, Gilbert felt required by the moment, that he should pay attention. Indeed, Gilbert had the odd impression that, despite her blustery talk, her questions, nothing had been said yet—that the stories and the sympathy had, rather, been a pretext, a prelude to what she’d really meant to say. He waited. “Sarie,” Hazel said at last. Then, with surprising force she pulled away from him, stepped back onto the lowest step of the People’s National Bank as though to see him clearly. Or, he thought, to make certain he saw her. From a height, with Gilbert’s eyes meeting her throat, Hazel said the following: “She must be having a hard time. And that’s why she didn’t come that Friday. So unfortunate, you know. We were all expectin
g her, and we wondered how she was. Poor Sarie, we all thought. In fact, we were afraid that something had gone very wrong,” she said. “That there had been, you know…” Hazel’s round, protruding eyes grew rounder and protruded even more. Had Gilbert not been looking up into her face, he would not have understood what she said next, because Hazel’s energetic voice dropped away completely as she mouthed the final words: “An accident.”

  Gilbert, covered by her shadow, shivered. Friday? A luncheon? An accident? For an instant, he felt hot and cold, and hot, and Hazel’s face was red, like meat, her tight hair was slick gold. The skin of his worn back went brittle and then slack. Hazel leaned towards him and away. Gilbert gave his head a shake and frowned, then everything was usual again, and Hazel, turning up the volume, averred that she, herself of course, would be very much taken aback if there was something wrong with Sarie, because Sarie was so strong. And more than that, she’d seen her, hadn’t she, with her own eyes a few days before the meeting. Let’s see, where was that? Oh, yes, at the Mountain Top Hotel. And wasn’t she robust? “So I’m supposing, Mr. Turner, that everything’s as right as rain, then. Just as it should be. Our Sarie’s a brave girl, and she is perfectly all right. Am I right? I am right, aren’t I, eh? I must be.”

  On the far blue slice of sea, a tiny dhow showed up; it bobbed and bobbed and dipped. As Gilbert watched it with one eye, he felt himself come loose from Hazel Towson. Sweet ships, those, he thought. And felt something that had flattened in him struggling to rise. Was it? Yes. He recalled the splendid sons of Sindbad. Bearded, full of song. The book he had purchased then set down. So long ago, it seemed. Had he even read that volume’s inside flap? Perused even the foreword, the acknowledgments, at all? Making for the harbor, the ship swelled a bit in size, and Gilbert found his feet. He echoed Hazel’s words, but curt. “Oh, yes. A strong girl. Brave. Just fine. Thank you, Mrs. Towson,” Gilbert said. “I’m sure.” He was thinking about mangroves. Hazel’s face receded. He couldn’t hear exactly what she said; nor was he aware, precisely, of his own replies. Things like, perhaps: Oh, yes. I’ll tell her that I saw you, certainly. Rather like the ebbing of a song, each word softer than the last. Wobbling but determined, he found an opening in the crowd, turned away from her, and finally slipped free.