A Change in Altitude (24 page)

This last assignment required that Rafiq and Margaret travel to Narok, a distance of 150 miles. Because an overnight would be necessary, Rafiq had engaged a local driver who would act as interpreter. They had two rooms in Narok (Rafiq and the interpreter in one; Margaret in the other) at a hotel no tourist would ever stay in.

“I’m sorry about this,” Rafiq said after he’d surveyed the premises. “But this was the best I could find.”

“It’s fine,” Margaret said, noting the paint peeling from the stucco, the bars on the windows. She dreaded what she might find within.

Rafiq put his hands on his hips.

For the first time, Margaret felt an overwhelming desire to place her palm on the front of Rafiq’s shirt. She didn’t, but she couldn’t remove her eyes from the place where she wanted to put her hand.

“Margaret?”

She raised her eyes to his. Did he know? There was a pause before he spoke, during which she thought he might. “I have to work during dinner to prepare the piece in time, so I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you with David, the driver.” He paused. “Will that be okay?”

“Yes,” she said, still caught in a semitrance.

“Good, then,” he said.

Margaret found Rafiq’s behavior odd and yet not. It was as if he planned to announce to the paper and to the world (and thus to her) that he would be professional on any occasion during which he and she had to stay overnight together. She supposed she appreciated that, but she missed him all the same. Especially at dinner with David, a man whose eyes and heart were elsewhere. The driver/interpreter spent the night with his girlfriend, who lived in the village.

When on day assignments, however, Rafiq and Margaret would often break for lunch or take tea in a shop in Nairobi after all work was done. She came to look forward to these teas. Rafiq had a number of usual spots, but her favorite was the Golden Cup, an unprepossessing storefront that revealed inside a world of Middle Eastern culture: gold tea trays, thick wooden tables with polished surfaces, woven carpets of all colors underfoot, intricate weavings and carvings on the walls.

“This is wonderful,” Margaret said the first time she entered the shop.

“It belongs to my cousin. He’ll come out later.”

“Do you have a lot of family?” she asked as Rafiq led her to a table.

“By Western standards, yes. I have cousins in Pakistan, London, Kampala, and here. If I went to London, for example, and didn’t visit my cousins, I’d never be allowed to forget it. I have cousins who have the highest university degrees and cousins who are bookies. I have female cousins who have taken the veil and unabashed cousins who wear miniskirts and go braless. A great soup of cousins.”

Margaret laughed. “I have three,” she said. “One on my mother’s side, and two on my father’s. I feel impoverished.”

“You are impoverished.”

The cousin from the back room came out to greet Rafiq and Margaret. Rafiq introduced Margaret as a colleague at the paper, though whether that satisfied cousin Safeer was hard to tell. The two men spoke in English for Margaret’s benefit. Before she knew it, an elaborate tea had been set before them.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Rafiq said when Safeer had left.

“What are all these?” she asked.

“This one here is falooda, the other motichoor ladoo, but my favorite is the malai khaja.”

“They all look delicious,” Margaret said.

“They’ll completely ruin your dinner.”

“I don’t think I care,” Margaret said.

“My cousin will take offense if we leave any crumbs.”

The pungent flavors, the incense, the sight of Rafiq sitting back in his chair with his posture relaxed and his collar open, all contributed to a sense of having entered a temple of exotic serenity. Margaret felt a kind of intimacy there she hadn’t felt in some time.

“There’s a story I need to tell you,” she said.

Rafiq turned to her.

“It’s about something that happened to me while I was on Mount Kenya.”

Margaret explained the climb in all its complexity, including the parts about Arthur. She related the last night in the banda, the holding of hands. Diana’s behavior in the morning.

“We had to cross this glacier,” Margaret continued. “It’s called Lewis Glacier. It was steep, and I think we were all a little afraid of it. The guide had to carve footsteps out of the ice for us to walk in. It was probably two hundred feet across. We were all clipped to a rope with the guide at the front and a couple of the porters at the back. I looked down once.”

Rafiq had set his teacup on the table. Why had she felt it necessary to tell this story? she wondered.

“It was terrifying,” Margaret said. “Utterly terrifying. I started to pray then. I kept my eyes glued to the porter in front of me. When he moved forward, I moved forward.”

Rafiq nodded.

“We were doing fine, and then we were in the middle of the glacier. I became aware of something odd happening, and then several people began shouting. Diana had unclipped herself from the guide rope and had gone above us and was carving out her own footsteps.”

“She was completely unhooked?”

“Yes. Her intention, as always, was to get moving. She was exasperated with the guide’s pace. By the time I looked up and understood what she was doing, she was just overtaking the guide but was about ten feet above him.” Margaret shook her head. “And then she lost her balance and missed her footing. I can’t even say what I saw and didn’t see. I’m pretty sure I saw the guide reach forward to grab the edge of the hood of her jacket, and I can’t believe it even now, but he missed it. Diana just slipped through his grasp. It was horrible, Rafiq. Horrible. We all went down on our knees, and Arthur was howling with grief. He was so crazed, I was sure he would jump and take us all with him. We watched Diana spiral away from us. She just kept on going. It was like being in the room of a tall building with a group of people when one of them decides to open the window and stand on the sill, and before you can barely tell her to stop, she jumps.”

“I heard about this,” Rafiq said.

“You did?”

“It was in the papers. It just said that a white Kenyan woman had died on a glacier while climbing Mount Kenya. I assume it was the same woman.”

“When was the story?”

“Last—I don’t know—January, February?”

“It’s the same person.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I felt I had to tell you this story,” she said. “I believe I caused Diana’s death.”

Rafiq was silent.

“Diana was impatient, and she couldn’t stand the guide’s careful pace. Fine. But I don’t believe she would have unclipped herself if she hadn’t been in a rage.”

“A rage?”

“About what she thought she had seen between Arthur and me. Yes, he’d been hovering. And, yes, I let him take my hand. But there wasn’t anything between us. Far from it. I was always a little afraid of him. He could be mercurial—with you one minute, then dripping with condescension the next. I let him take my hand. I didn’t pull away. Diana saw that.”

“Thus the rage.”

“Yes.”

“I think this is all in your head, Margaret. I really do.”

“No, Rafiq, it’s not. There are others who blame me as well.”

“Who?”

“Saartje did. She as much as told me so right there on the mountain.”

Rafiq poured hot tea into their cups. “Then I think you should have another talk with her about this.”

“I can’t. She left the country. So did Arthur. But after the memorial service, which was the last time I saw him, he looked at me. It was a meaningful look. We didn’t speak, but I believe he was trying to say that we were both to blame.”

“And your husband?”

“Well, that’s the terrible part,” Margaret said, realizing she was crossing a line in revealing something of her marriage. “On the mountain, Patrick howled, too. The cry was meant for Diana, but the rest was meant for us, for our marriage. The next morning at breakfast, he made it plain that he considered me responsible.”

“Margaret.”

“It’s complicated, and I don’t want to imply that Patrick didn’t have perfectly good reasons. He did. That’s what was so awful about it.”

“But surely that is behind you now.”

“I don’t know,” Margaret said. “It did something to the marriage. I’ve been trying to fix it, and I think Patrick from time to time tries to fix it, too. But it’s gone so deep, and it’s been so poisonous, I don’t know if we can.”

“A marriage can founder but still be worth the effort to save it,” Rafiq said.

“How do you know that? Have you ever been married?”

Rafiq shook his head. “A lot of cousins. A lot of marriages.”

Margaret nodded.

“Listen,” Rafiq said. “If one particular cousin weren’t spying on us right now through a certain tiny window that is behind us, I would hold your face in my hands and I would tell you that you are a wonderful, complex woman. I watch you on every assignment. Your heart is very big.”

“We’re being watched?” Margaret asked, a smile forming.

“Most assuredly.”

“Why?”

“Safeer didn’t believe me when I told him you are ‘just’ a colleague.”

Margaret blushed and eyed the sweets set before them. “I think we’d probably better start eating,” she said.

Rafiq and Margaret lingered there long into the afternoon. Sometimes they chatted, and at other times, Rafiq was silent. Though Margaret yearned to know his thoughts, she didn’t ask for them. When finally they left that room of wonders for the bright bustle of the street, Margaret felt the sunlight as a punishment.

One afternoon, after a particularly trying day of attempting to capture the success story of Ruaraka Enterprises (a vast auto-parts complex) in words and pictures (the photos were unsuccessful; Ruaraka had to submit a line drawing of the complex), Rafiq and Margaret felt as though they’d been bludgeoned by the heat, the brutal glinting sun, and piles upon piles of scrap metal. The task had been physically exhausting and intellectually numbing. Rafiq shook off his jacket, tossed it into the back of the Citroën, and said, “Let’s go look at the animals.”

“Great idea,” Margaret said. “Perfect antidote.”

“We’ll just look,” he added as she got into the car. “We don’t even have to talk.”

“Sounds like heaven to me,” she said.

On their way to Nairobi National Park, Rafiq stopped and went into a duka and returned with cold sodas and bags of crisps.

“How did you know that a cool drink and salt were just what I needed?” Margaret asked.

Fortified, they drove into the park and paid the entrance fee. Margaret tried to contribute, but Rafiq wouldn’t let her. “My idea,” he used as an excuse.

When Patrick and Margaret had been in Boston, one of their favorite pastimes had been to take drives into the countryside on weekends. The idea was to get out of the city but, more important, to relax the eyes, have no agenda, and stop to eat whenever they felt like it. They would drive to prime tourist attractions (Concord and Lexington, for example) but not actually get out of the car. On the other hand, they might stop beside a farm and take a hike in the owner’s field. They might find a cozy inn and eat a ploughman’s lunch by the fire, or they might stumble upon a diner in a mill town that served greasy hamburgers and thick milk shakes. Those drives almost always worked to remind Margaret and Patrick that there was life outside of hospitals and congressional meetings.

It had been a while since Margaret had gone to “look at the animals,” which had never, oddly enough, been a high priority for either Patrick or her while in the country. It wasn’t that Margaret didn’t like them (they were often thrilling, and the pictures she sent Timmy thrilled him in turn); it was that the safari Land Rovers they inevitably encountered reminded her that the creatures existed for the tourists.

Still, the animals were magnificent, and even if the occasional picture Margaret took looked like a cliché, she never failed to be excited by the sight of herds of wildebeests or elephants, or a lone cheetah.

Rafiq drove at the slow speed demanded on the sign at the park gate. The idea was to look, not to race around the mostly deserted roads. Though it was not advised, they kept their windows open for air.

Rafiq steered with one hand, occasionally eating a crisp or taking a sip of a cola that was no longer cold. For the most part, they were silent. Margaret had ample opportunity to examine the man when a giraffe or a zebra was to the right of them, outside his window. Something tense in his face and posture had relaxed. Again, she wondered at his thoughts. There was, beyond his affable and intelligent demeanor, something inscrutable she might never discover.

She held a camera in her lap and wanted from time to time to snap a few shots but was unwilling to disturb the lazy, hot peace inside the Citroën. Taking a picture would inevitably remind them both of work, a subject they’d gone to the park to avoid.

Rafiq let a giraffe get close to the car. He held out his hand with the remainder of the crisps, but he couldn’t get the animal to bend that far and lick the salt away. Still the giraffe eyed them with perfect calm, more intrigued by the funny-looking yellow vehicle, Margaret thought, than by the inhabitants inside. Once, Rafiq stopped to view, through her window, a small herd of elephants about a hundred feet away. Margaret felt that she had license then to take a few pictures. They both knew how fast an elephant could charge and that a yellow Citroën would be no obstacle to the animal’s rampage. Rafiq was as alert as she to any sudden movement or trumpeting in their direction. The herd, however, seemed to want a little peace and quiet as much as they did, and hardly moved from the small pond they had found.

The savanna was arid—they were nearing the end of the dry season—and there were many animals in the park looking for water. Margaret and Rafiq drove so slowly as to be standing still. If Margaret let her eyes relax, she could see the heat shimmering above the earth, the flat-topped acacias spreading outward as if for water. A herd of dik-diks scampered in front of the car, and she felt as if she were watching a Cinerama from her childhood. All around them were the sounds of insects, but Rafiq kept just enough speed to prevent the bugs from entering the car en masse. Occasionally, Margaret had to swipe at a curious fly. The smell of the place reminded her of hemp.