“People don’t always need to know everything. Discretion is the better part of valour, as they say. You don’t like secrets?”
“I hate secrets. They remind me of Zanzibar.”
“Well, I don’t have secrets, anyway. I have confidences. It’s part of doing business. You can ask me anything and I’ll answer. Try me.”
“OK. Where are you from?”
“Ah, that’s complicated.”
“You see! You’ve failed already.”
“All right. I’m from Singapore. But after Singapore I was from Italy. And before Singapore my family came from India. Tamil Nadu. Except for the ones who came from England and Portugal. Is that simple enough?”
“Yes, that’s simple enough.”
“It is?”
“Except for the Italy part.”
“Oh, a job there. And a wife.”
“And ... what have you done with the poor woman?” “I’m divorced. She’s still there. With my two sons. And you? What’s your family background?”
“None of your business.”
But of course I relented. I even told him of my newly revealed Arab mother and orphan status, and how odd it felt to think of myself in this new way. He summed up as we worked to fit the last of the plates into the overcrowded cupboards: “So, we’re both godless business Indians with Portuguese names, once displaced and twice removed.”
“Both from little islands too.”
“Despotic little trading islands run by people not like us.”
“Who’s like us?”
“Good question.”
“And there’s no trade on Zanzibar these days. Not since the Arabs were chased away.”
“Well, you’ll find them all in London. All the Arab business is done in London now. You should feel at home. Look,” he added, wiping his forearms dry, “we’re the same colour.” He held his arm next to mine, touching from wrist to elbow, and I pretended to study them, while thinking, “Oh, god, oh god,” reason lost to the tingle of it.
They were a match: identical in colour, his the perfect male version of mine, the same fine bones but shaped with more muscle and covered with a coarser version of the same black hair.
“'You see,” he said, “the same.”
“Almost,” I lied, and tore my arm away, an act of will equivalent to stripping it of surgical tape. I added, “We’re finished. Let’s go and join the others.”
DEAR BENJI, IF YOUR REASON FOR KEEPING PEOPLE INthe dark is to make them think of you more, you are doing a good job on me. There’s nothing in Vermont to remind me of you. You would hate the quiet and the snow. Well, maybe not the snow. I don’t know about the snow. I should be thinking about you less, but I’m thinking about you more.
This letter is being written only in my head.
I’ve taken out the letter to Gabrielle, reread it and returned it to its envelope. Something is not quite right. Or it may be that the low, dark clouds of recent weeks have caused me to be listless and unable to act, a prey to obsession. I’m tired of putting on layers of clothes just to go outside. Zanzibar keeps appearing in the flames of my fire, Mrs F among them. “It may have been the Moslems who killed her ...” I wonder if she was already dead when they burned the bar. I don’t like the way my mind insists on putting her and Benji together, among the dead ... Benji and his stupid mysteries.
And his stupid tendency to vanish. I was pleased not to see him the day after we first met, and the day after that. I was happy to be left alone to find my bearings, and grateful that he did not immediately come to claim me, because I was not sure I would say no. The flat was busy with visitors and no one mentioned Benji’s absence. During the following days my relief at his restraint turned to annoyance until I casually asked Monique about him.
“Oh, Benji! He is always going off without telling us. Maybe he’s in Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Abbi Dabbi, Rub- a-dubbi—one of those places. Sometimes it’s weeks before he turns up. But he always does. Like a bad penny— isn’t that what they say? Oh,” she added, “did you like him?”
“Not especially, but he seemed to know a lot about London.”
“Benji. We love Benji. But he—you know—slips through your fingers.” She wiggled her lovely fingers to show how.
While Benji went away, Geoffrey didn’t. He called me twice a week, until I insisted that once was plenty, if not too much. He offered to come to London to see me and I replied, not yet. Geoffrey had been a mistake. I was ashamed that I had made my escape from Zanzibar through him and that he was unhappy. What sort of dim bimbo would confuse a passport with love?
“How’s your cough?” he asked.
My cough was so much better that I’d forgotten I had ever had one. “Oh, my cough. It must have been something to do with Reading.”
“I miss you.”
“Please don’t start, Geoffrey.”
“No? OK. Well you know you can come to me whenever you need help, don’t you? I know it’s not easy for new immigrants to get work. Have you applied for your political refugee status yet? I may have a friend who can help you. You can get deported, you know.”
I told him not to worry, that I’d tell him when I was in trouble. Geoffrey was too interested in my difficulties. I felt he wanted me to fail so that he could rescue me.
Something strange has happened to the world. The theories of migration no longer fit the facts. My new friends in London, far from being poor and miserable, were exuberant, happy and busy, while Geoffrey, living in his own country, was ill at ease and crushed. The immigrants were better adapted to England than the natives. Geoffrey, on the other hand, had impressed me with his confidence and vision when he was in
