A Change in Altitude Read online

  They entered a small slum of badly constructed rooms made from thin wooden boards, with roofs of tin or tires. Nearly every structure Margaret passed had boards through which she could see. The footpath was smoky with the scent of cooking meat. The smell was terrible, and Margaret wondered what the natives here would think of her smell, the mzungu smell. Perhaps it was just as noxious to them. Did James work every day in an environment he could barely tolerate? They passed dozens of children, all smiling, running after them. They were a parade, after all. Margaret had imagined that with her scarf and dark glasses, she would be barely recognizable as white. What had she been thinking? James picked up the pace considerably, and Adhiambo struggled to keep up. Margaret could only imagine how much it must have hurt to walk. But James seemed eager to get to where they were going.

  There were no streets, only footpaths, here and there an alley big enough for a small automobile. Margaret had been told that occasionally there would be a Mercedes squeezed into a similar alley in a similar shantytown, Mathari or Gatina. A member of the cabinet might be visiting his relatives.

  Eventually, James stopped and made a tsk sound. If this was Adhiambo’s home, it was in ruins. A broken door swung from one hinge. They entered the hut. A wooden flap that could be raised with a string from inside served as the only window. On the packed-mud floor was a mattress of pillow ticking. Adhiambo threw her scarf over it but not before Margaret had seen the stains. Glass shards were sprinkled over the marum. It looked as though they had come from a drinking glass. The room smelled of beer. On a wooden shelf was a sufuria exactly like the cooking pot Patrick and Margaret had at home, several mismatched plates, one other glass. Adhiambo’s clothes were on hooks or in a pink plastic basket. There was no rug, no sink, no bathroom, and only two chairs and one table. James indicated that Adhiambo should sit. She covered her face, ashamed again. She hadn’t wanted Margaret to come to her home, and now Margaret knew why.

  James went next door and returned with a bowl of posho, which Adhiambo ate with her fingers. James closed the door as best he could and assessed the damage. He got to work at once, replacing hinges and a shattered board. Adhiambo waved flies away from her food. Margaret unzipped her backpack, unsure of where to put its contents.

  “Adhiambo,” Margaret said. “This packet is to be taken only if you have a fever. This packet is for pain. With both packets, one pill every six hours.”

  Adhiambo nodded. She knew what the box of pads was for, as well as the tube of antibiotic.

  With the door closed, Margaret opened the wooden window to let in some light. She wanted to remove all the shards from the soil. She saw no obvious place for trash and so set them in a pile on the shelf. Where did Adhiambo get her water? Wash herself? Go to the bathroom? Margaret shifted her anger from African men to expats, who paid the most pitiful of wages. Who had probably never seen how their servants lived. To Arthur and Diana, who had felt it necessary to detain James through the breakfast hour and beyond.

  James tested the door and seemed satisfied with his handiwork. He showed Adhiambo the new latch and how to work it. He told Margaret he would go outside, after which she was to close the latch. He would then try to get in. Margaret did as she was told, and James threw his body against the door. Though it seemed to give a little, it didn’t open. Margaret let James back in. Adhiambo had barely said a word or moved from her place at the table. Margaret sensed that she wanted to be alone, and perhaps James sensed it, too. He walked to where she was sitting and handed her a crumpled ten-shilling note. Margaret was furious with herself for not having thought to bring more cash than she’d needed for the bus fare. James turned and nodded to Margaret, then opened the door.

  “If you need anything…,” Margaret said, and left it at that.

  On the way home, James walked very fast. He would be late now for the noon meal.

  On the morning before the climb, Margaret was taking in laundry that James had done and pinned to a clothesline. Mixed in with their own clothes were the ones that Diana had lent to Margaret. Margaret unpinned and folded them. She intended to give them to James, who would iron them to Diana’s exacting standards.

  As she walked toward the Big House, Margaret saw Adhiambo about to enter through the back door. Adhiambo and Margaret stood a moment, looking at each other. They were too far away to speak.

  When Margaret returned to her own cottage, Patrick was in a hurry to leave.

  “They’ve found the car in Machakos,” he said. “It’s been driven three hundred fifty miles.”

  Relegated to positions of lowest seniority, Patrick and Margaret bounced along in the back of the Land Rover. Margaret wondered if this was how they were viewed by the others, as inferior first to the Brits and then to the Dutch. The thought rankled. Or maybe it was only that Patrick and she were Americans, who were known to be good sports.

  From time to time, Patrick smiled at her. His eyes would then shift away from her face to a distant image beyond the window. Already he had begun a beard, having not shaved in three days, signaling that he couldn’t be bothered with shaving while on the climb. The beard was lighter than his hair and somewhat disconcerting. He had on a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled and a down vest that he had brought with him from America. Margaret could feel the slight chill of the altitude as they ascended.

  The four in the front laughed often, and when Margaret and Patrick could hear the joke, they did, too. There was, however, a muffled curtain between them and the others. It was partially a European curtain, Margaret thought, or possibly only a matter of physics.

  Margaret snapped a close-up of Patrick on fast film.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I think attending to a camera all the time makes you miss out on the true experience.”

  “Such as this drive?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  “I could argue that the person with the camera is the best positioned to truly enter the experience.”

  “But so much of it is smell, touch, sound,” Patrick argued.

  “I can smell and hear at the same time.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re not going to forget this trip,” he said. “Are you afraid?”

  “No. Maybe. A little.”

  Margaret nearly hit her head on the roof. It was the first of ten speed bumps leading to the lodge. More luxurious than Margaret had imagined it to be, the main building, flanked with a sprinkling of cottages among several acres of manicured gardens, had a stone facade and many regularly spaced windows, all with leaded mullions—a common feature of middle-class African architecture, inherited from the British. Off to one side and hidden by a tall hedge was a pool with lounge chairs surrounding it.

  “It used to be a lodge for hunting and fishing,” Arthur explained, “back in the day when a bloke could hunt. Now it’s mostly for climbers and tourists.”

  The six arrived just after lunch, already having had a picnic in the Rover. As Diana emerged from the driver’s seat, she stretched and said she was off to play tennis. Saartje immediately asked to join her. Willem announced he was headed straight for the pool and wouldn’t return until the sun went down. Arthur suggested fishing to Patrick, who, after a moment’s surprise, said yes with enthusiasm. He turned to Margaret as if for permission, but she held a smile, not wanting to grant or deny permission to anyone, least of all to her husband. The river was stocked with trout, Arthur explained. They’d rent equipment from the lodge.

  Margaret didn’t mind that Patrick and the others had made plans without her. She wanted to be alone and to wander.

  In their room, large windows overlooked the gardens. They had a private bath and a fireplace, and Margaret had visions of sitting with Patrick in the overstuffed chairs that flanked the hearth, a half bottle of red between them, enjoying the fire as the temperature dipped precipitously. The room was infused with a sense of old Kenya.

  Patrick and she had packed with care the day before, consulting and rechecking lists each of them had made. Margaret was scrupu
lous about the meds, which she had assembled into a small carton. In the living room, Patrick had spread most of the food the six of them would need for the climb: a mix of dried soups and stews, coffee, oranges, dried fruit, dried beef, packages of crackers, cans of tuna fish and peaches, a bag of meal, and Tetra Paks of ultrapasteurized milk that didn’t need refrigeration. Margaret hoped Patrick had thrown in a bag of dried banana chips, her favorite African snack.

  The porter stacked the cartons in an out-of-the-way corner, for which she tipped the man generously. He had the wide face and nose of a Kikuyu, so very different from the lean profile of James. If she stayed long enough in the country, Margaret thought, she might learn to identify any number of tribes simply by sight. She wondered how many mixed marriages there were and if that was the norm or the exception. Did Luo and Kikuyu intermarry? Embu and Masai?

  She drew her hair up into a knot, found a sweater in her suitcase, and settled it over her shoulders. She was eager to get outside and walk. Though the ride had been relatively short, she’d felt claustrophobic and confined during the journey.

  Could she find the spot on the river where Arthur and Patrick would be fishing? Perhaps they’d hired a guide. Margaret liked the idea of Arthur and Patrick participating in an athletic activity. Their relationship so far had consisted of cool glances and verbal jousting.

  Her camera slung over her shoulder, Margaret skirted the pool, not wanting to confront the Dutch burgher in his bathing suit. She followed a path that led out from the gardens. Occasionally offering the shade of a camphor tree, the path meandered through meadows. Changes in altitude produced different vegetation. In addition to the tea plantations, they’d driven through farms of coffee, banana, wheat, and maize. Along the walking path, she saw wild yellow blossoms that might have been witch hazel. Once, under the shade of a juniper, she came upon a rich half acre of orchids that stopped her. Never had she seen so many of the rare and delicate flowers in one place.

  The trail broke out into tall grasses, dotted here and there with lobelia and rosewood. Not too sure when she’d left, she checked her watch. Three o’clock. She thought about heading back to the lodge when a soft snort put her on alert. She scanned the meadow ahead of her, her hand shading her eyes. When she found the impala, nearly buried beneath the height of the tall grasses, she saw only a head with lyre-shaped horns, a slight curve, and perhaps a tail. The impala faced her as a deer might, waiting for her to make her move. There was rustling in the grasses, and she saw the female and then two, three, four, five, smaller impalas making quick motions. The buck, as if a sentinel, stood guard, watching her every move, while the rest of the small herd twitched and scampered, sometimes revealing themselves but more often providing only a sensation of motion within the meadow, as if a stiff breeze disturbed the grasses.

  What are you thinking? Margaret silently asked. Can you think at all? Or are you merely waiting for a change in scent, listening for the tiniest disturbance in the air, preparing yourself for flight? Not many years ago, Margaret might have been a member of a shooting party. They would have halted at this very point. Perhaps the kill would have been given to a woman, the prey too easy and too small for a man. Was it in the animal’s DNA to watch for a flash of metal?

  Margaret had a desire to take a step forward simply to see the herd in motion. She imagined the backs of the impalas rising above the grasses like dolphins from the sea. Instead, she remained still, gazing into the eyes of the buck. How did he regard Margaret, with her white sleeveless blouse and navy sweater slung over her shoulders? Would he read her hair as an indication of another species, one to be wary of?

  When Margaret realized she’d been standing in the sun for too long, she remembered that she’d just passed beneath a camphor tree. She locked eyes with the buck as she slowly and reluctantly backed into the shade. Just as she reached it, which must have altered the look of her, the impala bolted and, with him, the entire herd. It was, for the brief seconds Margaret was permitted to witness this ordinary movement in an African meadow, an exhilarating sight, yet one she might keep to herself, even from Patrick, who loved the African animals but who likely would remain unimpressed by such a small event. A zebra would have provoked a raised eyebrow; a leopard, a tilt of the head and a “Really.” Patrick’s body might then have become alert and perhaps even alarmed, eliciting something from his own DNA. But an impala? Not fit for retelling, though wondrous to Margaret.

  When she arrived on the terrace at six thirty, Margaret found Saartje and Diana in sundresses and sandals, their brown bare legs prettily crossed at the knees. Having not showered since they’d left Nairobi, Margaret had missed the cues about the dress code. She still had on her jeans, the sleeveless blouse, and the sweater. The only bare parts of her were her feet in her sandals and the V of her neck, which always got too much sun and was the first place to burn. She touched the tender skin, remembering her long vigil in the meadow.

  “Sorry,” she said to the two women. “Didn’t realize.”

  “You look fine,” Saartje said as one might to a teenage girl who had yet to learn how to dress like a woman. A wrist full of silver bracelets slid and tinkled as she reached for her drink, something exotic the color of salmon. Margaret thought about the prohibition against alcohol, and Diana, noting her stare, explained.

  “One. To be consumed before seven o’clock. Followed by a half gallon of water. Alcohol totally out of my system by morning.”

  “A well-thought-out plan. I’ll have one, too. How was the tennis?” Margaret asked, helping herself to a handful of macadamia nuts among an array of appetizers. “And where are the men?”

  “Just saw Arthur and Patrick,” Diana said. “Heading up the hill. I’m guessing they’ll probably have showers and dress for dinner.” A quick half glance at Margaret in her jeans. “I’m told they caught over a dozen trout that the chef will fry up.”

  “Really?” Margaret said, not having previously thought of Patrick as much of a fisherman. She hoped that some of the catch had been his doing.

  “Willem is showering,” Saartje said in her distinctive and lovely Dutch accent. “Stayed at the pool until the mosquitoes started biting.”

  So far, Margaret had managed to keep at bay the image of the Dutch burgher in his bathing suit lying on a plastic lounge chair, but now it flooded in.

  “Do you have children?” Margaret asked Saartje.

  It seemed an innocent question, though she knew at once it was a thoughtless one. Saartje raised her chin and was about to speak.

  “She doesn’t,” Diana said quickly, with a warning in her brow.

  Later that evening, out of Saartje’s hearing, Diana informed Margaret that Saartje had once had a seventeen-month-old baby boy who had died of sudden infant death syndrome while the couple had been stationed in Bombay. Willem had since refused to try for another; the experience had been too awful for him. Margaret was mortified to have asked, but she did come to think of Willem as an enormously selfish man. Was it his decision to make? Unilaterally? And how strange not to want children in a country where children were so highly valued, were the basis of so many of the rituals and ceremonies of the various tribes. Did Saartje and Willem argue about it in private, or was it one of those decisions that, once pronounced, could never be brought up again? Not for the first time, Margaret reflected that it was impossible to know the truth about the marriage of another couple.

  The children of Kenya were beautiful. They were also remarkably well behaved—polite, obedient, and almost always smiling or laughing. Margaret seldom saw a sad child, unless that child was ill or malnourished. She was often puzzled as to how Kenyan parents had accomplished this remarkable achievement. When she could, she watched the native mothers and their toddlers in an attempt to intuit the secret.

  Margaret was almost at the point at which she might want her own children. She could feel it coming on, like a vague hunger. She was, after all, twenty-eight, and many of the married women she knew at home were pregnant o
r had recently had babies. Here, the rural mothers had five, six, seven, eight, children—the more, the better. African children were the future. Children were social security.

  Patrick arrived, flushed and distinctly happy. He had managed a clean plaid shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He was bursting with the desire for someone to ask him how the fishing went, and so Margaret obliged.

  “Amazing,” Patrick said, and she could see that he’d become a convert to the sport. “Arthur has the final tally. A shame we aren’t able to do this on the climb itself. We’d welcome the fish, I’ll tell you. As it is, Arthur gave the trout to the cook, but I doubt we’ll see it on the menu this evening. Went right into the freezer, I’m guessing, or home with the help. Doesn’t matter. It’s the sport that counts.”

  Obviously eager for Arthur to emerge and repeat the glorious story, Patrick looked up toward the end of the veranda. Margaret could see this might be a topic of conversation for a considerable part of the cocktail hour. She would not disturb Patrick’s moment of pride, but Diana would.

  “Dodgy tennis court, but we managed, didn’t we, Saartje?”

  “Managed quite fine.”

  “How was the pool?” Saartje asked Willem, who was now looming over her, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of a cocktail. His face was alarmingly pink. Dress shirt. Tie. Margaret felt like asking at the lobby if there was a gift shop, since she was pretty sure she could put together a dress from two khangas.

  “So what’s this?” Patrick asked, eyeing Margaret’s drink.

  “It’s a plan. Diana can explain. One drink, followed by buckets of water.”

  “Sounds like a clever excuse to me.”

  Willem immediately ordered drinks for himself and Patrick. Apparently his previous advice had been a case of Do as I say and not as I do.