“I had dinner with him once. No, he’s not foolish. He’s intelligent.”
“Intelligent! So we have to find another reason. I don’t think theft will do. His money was still in his pocket.”
“Mrs Fernandez, Geoffrey is a nice man. Why are you so horrible about him? He’s our guest here. He’s all alone. I’m going to visit him.” Somehow he had become mine.
“You should stay away. We can’t afford to be friends with someone who has enemies.”
“In case your beer supplies are stopped? Because we’re the only Europeans here and have to be careful? I’m going.”
Mrs F’s mouth became a thin line. “Stubborn. Stubborn and proud. Like your mother.”
“Mummy? Proud?”
“Never mind.” She looked away. “Well, I suppose I’d better give you this. Your English friend left you a letter. Left you a letter, then went away to get hit over the head. I’ve warned you before, Marcella, don’t attract people’s attention.”
“But you do. Everyone knows you.”
Her lips tightened again and she banged open one of the lids to the refrigerator cabinet to peer at the beer inside.
“I’m going, then,” I said to the top of her head.
The note read:
Dear Marcella,
I’m off to Pemba Island for a few days. I really should have gone before, since it’s so important agriculturally. Hope to see you when I get back.
Oh, I thought a bit about your passport problem. I’ve sent a letter to the FAO Res. Rep. in Dar-es-Salaam, who knows some influential politicians. I said I wanted to hire you to interview women and that you might need to visit headquarters in Rome sometime, but there was a passport problem. Hope that’s OK. It might help but I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much.
I enjoyed our time together. See you when I get back.
Love, Geoffrey.
The writing got smaller towards the end and the word ‘love’ was the most cramped of all. In the three or four days since our dinner we had managed to avoid each other; now he was running away to Pemba, Zanzibar’s other island. Except he had not made it.
I read as I walked to the V. I. Lenin Hospital. I read the note, then I kissed it. Whether this was for the love of Geoffrey, or for the prospect of a passport, or for the kindness of his trying to help, I could not have exactly said. Then I remembered that, Mrs F’s offhand report notwithstanding, his injury might be serious. I thought, with a turn of my stomach, that it might be because of me. Maybe someone had heard about us on the beach. A fundamentalist Moslem. A Zanzibari who thought Zanzibar women should be just for them. Worse, something more personal—a relative of Ali, my absent fiance, with some Arab idea of upholding family honour. Maybe I should be afraid for myself. And even more frightening, Mrs F would be proved right about the dangers of my reckless independence. I probably should not be going to the hospital. But my feet carried me on. And then there was Geoffrey’s letter to Dar. I could imagine what Mrs F would say about a foreigner approaching top mainland politicians for special treatment of a Zanzibari Goan. I imagined her wrath. I imagined the wrath she feared: the other Zanzibaris turning on us, bearing down on our defenseless little group. By the time I reached the Russian embassy—these days quiet—my simple impulse to visit a sick friend had turned into something much more complicated.
The handsome white hospital next to the embassy looked deserted. I walked up the steps and in through the front door, then up the central stairway and along a corridor. Still I had not seen anyone. Then there was an open door and inside an African in a crisp short-sleeved shirt bent over the room’s only bed.
“Excuse me. Are you a doctor?”
He turned to me with a gracious smile. “I’m sorry, but I’m not a doctor. I think you might have difficulty finding a doctor in this hospital.”
“I’m looking for a patient. An Englishman, a Mr Sutton.”
The man moved aside to show me the patient, as if displaying a valuable item for sale. “I think you’ve found him.”
Geoffrey was entirely covered by a sheet, except for his face, which was very pale. Without his red complexion, his glasses and his usual fidgety manner, he was more handsome. His face had planes I had not noticed. One side of his head had been shaved and there was a line of stitches that looked like a railway map drawn by a child. The man followed my thoughts. “A Danish missionary came in and did the stitches. I think he’ll be all right.” I turned to look up at him. He was soft-spoken, neatly dressed, pleasing. I couldn’t remember seeing him before. “I’m David. I’m the one who found him. You must be ... his wife?” He chose the most diplomatic of his options.
“Marcella D’Souza. No, just a friend. An acquaintance. Has he been conscious?”
“He was conscious for the stitches. No anaesthetic in the hospital, I’m ashamed to say. But he couldn’t remember much. I think he’s sleeping now. Of course he lost a lot of blood.”
I followed his look to where his own trousers were stained with blood. “Do you know what happened?” “No, I just found him lying on the floor in Africa House when I came in for dinner. There was a big pool of blood. At first I thought he was dead. He may have been there for hours. Who would do such a thing? It is a shameful thing for Tanzania. Is he a tourist?”
“No, he works for the United Nations.”
“Terrible. Then he was here to help us. I brought him to the hospital, found the
