The Blue Taxi (9 page)

A
t the Turners’ own Kikanga building (Mchanganyiko Street, number 698, concrete, pale, and gray), Gilbert was ready to go out.
He considered waiting until Sarie had come home. He liked to say good-bye to her from the doorway while she sat in the kitchen.
If Agatha was in, he also liked, sometimes, to pat her on the head and feel for a quick moment the gloss of her dark hair,
though it was always, he thought, cold, not quite as heads should be. He wondered what had kept them. But waiting—that was
silly. Approximating a
harrumph
of the sort Colonial types had often given out, Gilbert sniffed. Narrowing his eyes, he looked once more into the kitchen,
shrugged, stretched the muscles in his neck, and stepped out of the flat.

As was Gilbert’s custom, he wandered by the seafront at the ragged edge of town. Ahead of him, thick, high jacarandas and
flame trees in full bloom made the avenue a tunnel. Between their arching trunks, the water, a hard metallic blue inlaid with
seaweed black, extended flat and low towards a yellowing sky; farther out, unpeopled islands shimmered, mangroves silver-green
and creamy in the tricky ocean light.

Up the road, the city’s forced activity was ending. Families from nicer places like Uzuri and Matumbo would arrive in pickup
trucks (old and rusted, sure, but given what those days were like, impressive, the best that could be had). In chatty well-dressed
groups, they’d head out for a treat: the Old Empire Cinema, or the
Frosty for a cone. Tired paperboys would make a final round before climbing into buses; custodians and the tea-ladies would
be packing up their things; the High Court’s final case would close, and the wide brass-studded doors would part to spill
the witnesses and others gently down the steps. Gilbert, at his best when things were slow, enjoyed this time of day. And,
while not, as others were, seeking easy times to cap a taxing day at work, he was also hoping to relax. He was headed for
the Palm.

The Victorian Palm Hotel, in the sense of beds and baths and rooms for strangers’ sleep, was not really a hotel. Though some
gentlemen did spend days and nights there doing various things, it was for throats and stomachs only. Gilbert went in the
afternoons and on some evenings to
this
waterfront establishment because, following Independence, the Yacht Club had been moved to the far side of Scallop Bay and,
with all the new-found freedom, he could not afford a taxi. The old Yacht Club had sat just above the harbor and, affording
its fine patrons a wide view of the sea and of the hulking ships that ferried wood, cement, and cashews up and down the coast,
had once been painted white with lyme, so white it hurt the eyes. Oh, it had been frequented by awesome men who did things:
men who went into the interior and emerged with tales about the natives and their ways; Service men who smelled of wind, faintly
of tobacco, and of an enviable, complicated sweat. Men who—Gilbert often thought, with a tingling in his chest—men who’d smelled
of History.

That old clubhouse was now crumbling, and no human had reclaimed it. Gilbert once—and it had made his neck hurt, his hands
go soft and slack—had even seen a cow there, grazing at the tufted grass that had come up in the doorway, and, blade by shiny
blade, was cutting up the floor.
People who made History
, thought Gilbert,
have now been replaced by. Would you look at that. Nothing more than. Livestock
. Considering the old clubhouse too much could bring a twitching to his eyes.

Having receded from the city center just as the real colonials had (ousted from imperial bomas and barred holdouts on the
sea), the current club was now simply out of reach. The moneyed ones who chose to stay and who, destined for abundance, had
had better jobs and pedigrees than Gilbert, Empire-or-no, armed with fat bankrolls and blueprints, Embassies behind them,
resided now, as the relocated Yacht Club did, in the resplendent northern suburbs’ luxuriant repose. Slowly but encroaching
surely on the bush, villas lolled out there—gracious, boxy things, floored with speckled tiles and also rich in windows, surrounded
by walled lots where hardy seedlings grew: hibiscus, jasmine on the breeze, drapes of bougainvillea; somberly patrolled by
braided watchmen, sharp spears in their hands.

Gilbert’s feelings about Independence and the Empire it appeared to have outdone were not particularly straightforward. Like
many small-time men, he desired and did not desire wealth. He thought equality was good, in right measure for himself and,
ostensibly, for others; but, ambivalent, he also felt that there was something indiscriminate about the rattling new times.
His loyalties were scattered. He was given to emotive declarations and to surges of resentment, now aimed here, or there.
When the remaining ex-colonials had picked up and settled out of town, and the local powers with them, Gilbert felt at once
superior and defeated. Bright enough to see he’d never make a mark, he did not try to catch up. So he gathered what he’d saved,
and moved not out but in.

He took Sarie and Agatha to the small streets of Kikanga, where they would be, he’d said, “in the thick of things.” That he
did not wish to be, exactly, in the thick of anything was well beside
the point. Gilbert, reader that he was, could talk. It was a Gesture for the People, he had told his family. Not for rich
ones or for white ones. At the time inspired by the banners that promoted national love, he had felt that in committing to
Kikanga and its throbbing streets and shops, he might stake a small claim of his own on how things would develop. He would
turn his back on those who’d moved to Scallop Bay, on the hierarchies of Empire, and would, he said, declare himself a local.
As the new government advised, he would be self-reliant; he would make himself
belong
. One result of this move inward (which was also, though he didn’t like to say it, all he could afford) was that when the
Yacht Club snuck away from the main harbor, it also snuck from him. And so he justified the Victorian Palm Hotel, where lesser
men would gather. And though it was not what he’d been used to, and not really first-class, Gilbert had, in time, come to
love the place.

There by the seafront, those who lived in town, those who still had aspirations but didn’t have a car (or did but could not
find or pay for petrol or for parts), came to consume beer, a variety of spirits, pallid chicken stews, and, now and then,
kebabs. Office men from Vunjamguu came, fountain pens like flowers at their pockets, brassy watches on their wrists; others,
stiff in new Kaunda suits, flanked by women in bright gowns like those of Jackie O. and the soon-to-be Queen Noor. City men
whose lives unfolded in the heart of Vunjamguu, who ran shops or managed buses, came now and then in pressed white shirts
and achingly creased pants. Russians came, with sad light eyes and purple faces; clusters of gray-suited men from China, shiny
pins on their lapels.

Because Gilbert knew most of them by sight, he was convinced that they must know him, too. Indeed, at the Victorian Palm Hotel,
Gilbert felt, almost, that if he could only
cut a figure
, he might someday fit in. Someone there—he smiled shyly at himself,
smoothed his hair and checked the buckle of his belt—someone there, one day, might see him for what he really was and offer
him a drink.

Sometimes he would find another man who, like him, had not gone after the end came, a man whose fortunes, modest all in all
but better than his own, might be a source of hope: Rathke, for example, who with a little capital would any day now fund
a passion for rapid photo printing, or Göethe Bienheureux, who dreamed of raising pigs along the seashore and of producing
delicate spiced sausages he would call Bienheureux Coast Joy. But Gilbert’s favorite, the only one he would have called a
friend, was Mr. Kazansthakis. Kazansthakis, known also as the Frosty King, ran the Frosty-Kreem, which his father and
his
father had made and run before him. It was Vunjamguu’s oldest and most famous ice-cream shop, where developments were sweet
and romance filled the air.

The truth: Kazansthakis had met his final darling in that very place. A clever, well-built Polish girl (youngest child of
prisoners of war who had, after another, earlier end, likewise found themselves still there while others raced back home),
she had come in with her sister and ordered up a tricolored helping of cold stuff which she then asked him please to cover
in a coat of chocolate syrup—this with such great charm that young Kazansthakis winked. The smiling girl winked back, and
he fell steamingly in love. They wed. At the party, a towering ice-cream cake that
did not melt
was served. The lovely business bloomed. Oh, how locals flocked to them for sundaes and for cones! People of all ages, colors,
and persuasions. A bustling, bristling business that brought people together!

Gilbert, despite the need ajitter in his stomach, his fear of dissipation, could not help but admire their success; he was
not jealous of the Frostys. The ones who’d been born rich, who now had homes in Scallop Bay, he could easily resent: the Greenleafs
and the
Thorntons, who sent roses and carnations all over the world; ruddy Mr. Remington, with his throaty, booming voice, who ran
a hunting outfit from the bar of the Ambassador Hotel and spent his days procuring kills (and the trinkets that announce them:
lion skins and heads, stools on zebra feet, the choicest rhino parts) for princesses and magnates; nervous, dull Jim Towson,
with the exclusive beachfront lot, whose big wife Hazel, redoubtable, effective, ran Committees as though the British had
not left (the woman also had, to Gilbert’s horror, a soft spot for his Sarie). But Gilbert couldn’t, even at his smallest,
bring himself to think unkindly of the Frostys. His approval of the pair was made possible in no small part by their goodwill
(they both treated him quite genuinely, he thought). But more important was the fact that they weren’t real colonials in the
first place, not as
he
, he liked to think, had been. History had not so much put them on the top of things or nursed their dreams of grandeur as
it had thrust them to the side and shoved them through the cracks. And, thriving, they’d popped through.

If Gilbert envied Kazansthakis and his wife, it was for what he saw as the uniqueness, the freshness, of their suffering,
and for all their work and vigor: she had been a prisoner, after all, born behind barbed wire, and the Frosty King had come
from quick, smart people who had once run for their lives. The Frostys, Gilbert felt, were in a completely separate league,
distinct from him and all his kind: he found that he could love them.

Kazansthakis was, in fact, well-disposed towards Gilbert. The Frosty King liked knowing things, and, though he didn’t care
for books, he admired those who did. He frequently stood Gilbert Turner drinks while Gilbert told him what he’d read. After
he had spoken, the Frosty King would never fail to say, “Mr. Turner, you were meant for greater things than this. Tell me
something else.”
And Gilbert would produce another anecdote, another, and another, until the Frosty King’s green eyes grew soft and it was
time for him to go.

That evening, the Frosty King was at his usual patio table. “Ho! Gilbert! Mr. Gilbert Turner!” Gilbert sat down gratefully.
Kazansthakis motioned to the waiter for a thick bottle of beer. “What’s cooking?” he asked Gilbert, with a wink. The Frosty-Kreem
was just beside the Cinema, of course, and, despite the hard work needed at the parlor, Kazansthakis often left things to
his sweetheart so he could daydream in the dark. He liked foreign expressions and was given when intoxicated to mimicking
the moves of kung-fu stars, cartoon men, and cowboys. “What’s up, Doc?” he said.

Today, thought Gilbert, pleased, he might tell Kazansthakis about the Dawoodis in the pamphlet, whose Holiness had met with
ministers and shopkeepers at several fashionable places and who, Gilbert had been interested to see, encouraged all his followers
to contribute to whatever nation pressed its laws upon them (those Dawoodis, Gilbert thought,
knew
how to fit in). He smacked his narrow lips, rubbed his hands together, and began. He told the Frosty King about the fete
for Dr. Saheb at the great Jubilee Hall. “A quiet man,” he gravely said, while Kazansthakis drank. He would have liked to
say a little more—how fine the beard was on the fellow, how pleasant the walled gardens—but Kazansthakis had not yet had enough
to drink. “No beards and little diplomats for me, my friend. No stories of the State. Or God.” The Frosty King was rather
spiritual, in truth, but he did not like Religion. “What else? Give me something better.”

Gilbert’s drink arrived, and, while a quick boy popped the cap, he thought about the accident. “Well, here’s an odd thing.”
He told the Frosty King that Agatha and Sarie had come upon an accident
the week before—an Indian boy hit by a bus, relieved of half a leg. And that instead of leaving well enough alone, today they’d
gone on an adventure. “Wouldn’t give it up. Said she had to go.” Gilbert looked down at his wrist the way a person with a
watch might. Then he sighed, and looked out at the sea. “She’s still there!” he said. “She hasn’t come back yet!” It was more
a show than a display of real feeling. His impatience had passed and, once settled at the Palm, he wasn’t really curious.
But he felt a little snubbed, had expected Kazansthakis to support him in his disapproval, even his disdain. But the Frosty
King, Gilbert was unsettled to discover, was not on his side.

“Of course, of course,” he said. “She found him in the street! She should not let him go.” The Frosty King went on to say
he thought that people linked in accidents were joined by holy forces quite regardless of the distances between them. Hadn’t
Gilbert seen the films? Did he not believe in Providence, or Fate? Gilbert did not care for whimsy. He had not considered
such a possibility before and, sipping his thick beer, decided that he didn’t think much of it. That was very well for all
the groups described in Gilbert’s books, with all of their
beliefs
, and perhaps for kung-fu fighters, too, whose codes of honor were apparently remarkable, but he himself could not subscribe
to such a view, interesting as it might be. Sarie was not joined, in his opinion, to any legless boy. He said so.