A Change in Altitude (21 page)

James went into Adhiambo’s hut first while they stood in the pathway outside her door. Margaret watched as Rafiq looked around and took notes. She saw that Adhiambo’s wooden window was gone, replaced by a canvas shade that rolled up and down. How on earth did she have any security?

Rafiq and Margaret stood silently side by side, trying not to attract attention. Margaret was counting the seconds until James emerged.

“She will see you now. But first I must present the money to her, and you must tell me now what name you are using. In the story.”

“Teresa,” Rafiq said without hesitation, as if he’d prepared for this. He pulled the five hundred shillings from his breast pocket.

James nodded and went inside again.

“That’s an African name?” Margaret whispered to Rafiq as they remained outside.

“As much as James is an African name.”

James opened the door. The interior was so dark that at first Margaret couldn’t find Adhiambo’s face. The only light was filtered through the canvas at the window. When she could see, she walked toward Adhiambo. “How are you?” she asked.

Adhiambo nodded.

“You’re okay with this?” Margaret noted that the money had already been tucked away. She hoped Adhiambo hadn’t put it under her mattress.

Adhiambo nodded again.

Margaret saw that she had cleaned up for the interview. A newish quilt lay over her bed. She had borrowed three chairs and set them around her table. On the wall next to it, she had a hanging Margaret hadn’t noticed before. Margaret saw another one by the bed. She was certain the wall hangings had not been there before. Adhiambo wore a colorful head scarf and a plain, shapeless dress.

“Thank you for agreeing,” Margaret said. “This is Rafiq Hameed, the man who will ask you questions.”

Rafiq extended his hand, and Adhiambo shook it. Even this small gesture seemed like a victory of sorts.

“Do you want me to sit here or to wait outside?” James asked.

“No, no,” said Rafiq. “We should all sit around the table and just think of this as a conversation. James, you should feel free to add anything you want.”

Adhiambo studied Rafiq, as though judging whether or not she could trust the man. Even James had tilted his head. Margaret could smell smoke and the scent of meat cooking, probably from the hut next door. She looked to see if Adhiambo had replaced the drinking glass that had been broken. She had.

James suddenly grinned. “Adhiambo, she is making these,” he said, pointing to the hanging on the wall near the table. Margaret examined the cloth. In the gloom, she could just make out a batikish sort of print, studded with brass and black beads.

“They are very nice,” she said. “When we are done, may I take them outside to see them properly?”

“You will love them,” James said.

“Your name is Teresa,” Rafiq began.

Margaret had decided not to take any pictures until the interview was finished. She tried to frame the shots. She knew that nothing inside would work because of the lack of light, but she might be able to get Adhiambo standing at the threshold of her door. Either that or get her face through the window opening.

Margaret learned that Adhiambo was twenty-four, that she had left her three children with her mother in Kericho so that she could travel to Nairobi and make money for her children’s school fees. She said that she had had a good job where she made 360 shillings a month with a family, but the family had gone away. Of that 360 shillings, she had sent 160 back to her mother. She paid 90 shillings for her single room, which was without electricity or running water. She also had to pay for the pots of water she used for bathing and cooking from a common tap. She had a simple diet of posho and vegetables. She made only one reference to the rape: she often worried at night, she told Rafiq, because drunken men from nearby bars tried to force her door. Shortly after that, Margaret heard her say, “I’m just all right. I have no bad luck.” Margaret was certain the phrase would make it into Rafiq’s piece.

An hour turned into two hours, which turned into three. Adhiambo boiled water on the stove as she talked and then served them tea. Margaret took from her basket a packet of shortbread cookies she’d brought to prevent hunger pangs in the event that the day went on longer than was expected. For a few minutes, around the table, Margaret forgot her surroundings. The chatter was convivial, and she could have been at any friend’s home having tea. Rafiq scrupulously addressed Adhiambo as Teresa, so much so that Margaret wanted to call her Teresa, too. The woman seemed a happier person as Teresa than she had as Adhiambo. Perhaps all the talking about her troubles or the attention paid to her had lifted her burden somewhat.

James spoke at length as well—about his life before he finally got work as a cook with a family. In the thirteen years he had lived in Nairobi, he had held a series of jobs ranging from dishwasher in a hotel to a guitar player in a band. His wife and four children tended a six-acre shamba back home in Kitale, and because of the demands of that work, they visited him only once a year for a week, a fact Margaret had known but one that still staggered her.

When the interview was over, Margaret asked Adhiambo if she could take a couple of pictures of her.

“You must not show my face,” she said.

Margaret thought.

“I can shoot you doing an activity that shows you but not your face.”

Adhiambo smiled. Her bottom teeth were crooked, and there was a gap between the two front teeth, but when she smiled, she was beautiful.

Outside, a group of children, all about five or six years old, had gathered around James, who had squatted to tell them a story. Three of the children held babies. Margaret called to James and asked if she could take his picture with the children. He said yes and told the kids, and Margaret adjusted the lens to get them all in the shot. Though they had been laughing and giggling a second earlier, they immediately turned somber when Margaret aimed the camera at them. She noted, as she continued to shoot, that Rafiq was scribbling on his pad.
Careful, Rafiq,
she was thinking. When an adult passed by, Margaret lowered the camera and pretended to be in conversation with James. She asked Adhiambo to bring out her wall hangings so that she could see them better, which Adhiambo did. Adhiambo laid them on the top of a bush in front of her hut. In the light, they were something entirely different. “You put the beads on this cloth?” Margaret asked her.

She nodded.

“And you bought the cloth?”

“No, no,” she said, waving her hands. “I am making the cloth.”

Margaret was impressed. The cloth was not a batik, she discovered, but rather hand-painted. With broad but strategically placed lines, Adhiambo had painted scenes of women cooking and of children tending other children. At first the eye thought the lines abstract. The positioning of the brass and black beads further confused the viewer. All of which made the surprise of the figures more exciting. “You learned this where?” Margaret asked.

“I think I am inventing it,” she said.

“These are terrific.”

Margaret took several shots of each, and two with Adhiambo holding the larger of the wall hangings in front of her. In the pictures, her face was turned away, but one could still make out her profile.

Margaret was reluctant to have Adhiambo take the cloths back inside the hut.

“Hang on a second,” Margaret called.

Adhiambo stopped.

“I’d like to buy one if I could.”

Adhiambo seemed bewildered and looked to James for guidance.

James grinned. “She is selling them for one hundred shillings each,” he said.

Twelve dollars. A bargain. Margaret reached into her basket and retrieved the notes. She had brought five hundred shillings with her in case Rafiq had been unable to get the money from the
Tribune
. If only there were a place outside the hut for Adhiambo to display her work for all to see. James leaned closer and said, “We must go now.”

“Have you told Rafiq?” Margaret asked.

“Yes.”

They said elaborate good-byes to Adhiambo. Margaret wished she had had Moses cook some meat to bring to her. They all bowed and turned back on the path.

“The askaris who live here are coming home soon,” James said. “They will not like our presence here.”

Once again, they walked on the path, this time Rafiq ahead of Margaret, with James behind. Rafiq had removed his suit jacket; his shirt was soaked to the skin in the back. They had stood in the noonday sun for at least an hour while James told stories and Margaret took pictures. Rafiq, during that time, had interviewed a neighbor who had walked him to the pump from which Adhiambo got her water and then had given Rafiq directions to the latrine. It was almost three o’clock, and James reminded them that three was the time when the day shift of askaris returned home and the evening shift went out.

“Those hours aren’t so bad,” Margaret said. “What? Seven to three? Eight-hour shifts?”

“No, no,” James explained. “There are only the two shifts. The askaris are working twelve hours.”

Margaret drove James home first, because he said he had to prepare the evening meal. Then Rafiq and she headed to the
Tribune,
where Rafiq had left his car.

“That was wretched,” Rafiq said when they were alone. “Ghastly.”

Until that moment, Margaret hadn’t seen him express intense emotion of any kind. Even when he’d been chronicling his ouster from Uganda, he’d been calm.

“You’ve never seen conditions like those before?” she asked.

“I have, but from a distance. Never this… intimate.”

“Your piece should be good,” she said, “if you feel this way.”

“Yes, I’m eager to get at it. It will take some work, though, to make that place as real to the reader as it is to me.”

“Some of the people who live in such conditions will read your piece,” Margaret said. “James, before he ever got hooked up with a family as a cook, had eight years of school and spoke English very well. I often saw him with a newspaper when I was living on the same grounds as he.”

“And where was that?”

“Langata.”

“Really?” Rafiq seemed surprised.

“Long story,” she said. “We lived in a small one-bedroom cottage on the property of a larger house. We used to get invited to dinner a lot at what we called the Big House. There was an incident during which James and I got to know each other better.”

“What incident?”

Margaret was sorry she’d brought up James. “It’s something you can’t write about, even though you’re going to want to.”

“Now I’m completely intrigued.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Adhiambo was raped by two men. She was brought to our cottage to spend the night. In the morning, James came to collect her, and we all walked back to the place you saw today. She’d been beaten, too, and was deeply ashamed.”

Rafiq nodded his head slowly. “I wondered about that. Her reference to men trying to get through her door…”

“Even if you’d pursued it, she never would have told you.”

Rafiq sat back in his seat for the rest of the way to town. Margaret wondered if he was composing sentences or thinking of Adhiambo and the rape.

“I can’t thank you enough,” he said, putting his hand on hers for just a moment. Even his palm was hot.

“Someone in my debt,” Margaret said. “A novel sensation.”

The following Friday, Margaret flew to Lamu. She’d been given precise instructions. Drive herself to Wilson Airport, collect her tickets from the agent, and then she’d be told which aircraft to board. When she arrived on Manda, she’d be led to a dhow that would ferry her to Lamu, a brief journey. Patrick would be waiting for her at the town landing.

Margaret had seen small planes at air shows and on television, but never had she seen one with the intention of actually flying in it. There were three passenger seats—two behind the pilot and one beside him. She didn’t know the make of the aircraft, but she did note the propellers. She sat behind the pilot, who had on a mod suit—gray, slim-fitting, short-sleeved, Nehru collar. The two other passengers were a South African couple with thick accents. The man was deeply tanned and had stiff blond hair, as if he’d done a lot of swimming in a chlorinated pool. The woman was a petite brunette. “Hi. I’m Kathleen Krueger. This is my husband, Gary.”

They asked Margaret why she was headed to Lamu, and she told them she was meeting her husband, who’d gone ahead of her. Margaret asked them the reason for their journey. They were in the start-up phase of a jewelry business and wanted to meet with a pair of brothers who made extraordinary silver bracelets. “You’ll love Lamu,” Kathleen said with assurance. “Everybody does. Where are you staying?”

Margaret answered Petley’s.

“Good hotel,” Kathleen said. “Don’t drink the water—even the ice cubes in the drinks.”

“Oh God,” her husband said, obviously remembering an unpleasant event.

The pilot turned on the engine. Several instruments lit up. He spoke to a pilot in another plane that they could see. Apparently they were to follow the first plane to Lamu. Margaret wondered if Kenyan aircraft routinely flew in pairs. To be able to instantly call in the site of a crash?

Margaret had always been a white-knuckle flier until she got bored enough to relax. On the flight to Lamu, however, she never relaxed.

Had she not been so frightened, she might have said the liftoff was thrilling. The South African couple kept up a steady chatter and pointed out what seemed to be important moments of their personal history.

“Remember, darling, when we were returning from Mombasa in Drew’s truck during the rains, and the road had washed out?”

“We almost died that night. I don’t know how Drew managed to come to a stop where he did.”

“We spent the entire night there, didn’t we? Until it got light enough to figure out how to avoid falling to our death?”

“I’ll never forget it.”

“No, me neither.”

Immediately, the city fell away to endless plains. Hadn’t Finch Hatton crashed his plane over Tsavo, a town they would soon fly over? Margaret tried then to just think of Patrick, of his arms around her and the feel of her face against his chest. Before the trip to Mount Kenya, that would have done the trick, but now it only made Margaret anxious. She had no idea what she would find when she arrived. Would they be as they once were, or would they fall again into that murky no-man’s-land, the aftermath of a disastrous expedition?