I went back to my hammock on the porch and closed my eyes against the light while he circled the chair I offered him.
“Did you find it exotic?”
“As a matter of fact I did think it was pretty exotic.” I smiled and his voice took on a defiant tone. “There’s probably nowhere else like it in the world. An old stone city in Africa. Arab dhows. The mixture of people. I’d say it’s exotic on most counts.”
“Many tourists?”
“Quite a few. Not the usual types, though. More adventurous. I met a group searching for Captain Kidd’s treasure.”
“Oh, that old story. So did you go to park on the waterfront like everyone else?”
“Jamituri? Of course. It’s the scene. I thought of you a lot while I was there. Tried to imagine you as a little girl.”
“When I was a little girl I spied on the last remaining Englishman with my sister. We had a theory that Englishmen didn’t pee and he never did anything to prove they did. Did you have an ice-cream?”
“What?”
“An ice cream. There was a stall selling soft ice-cream, wasn’t there? With plastic cones on top of the awning?” “Sure. It had a line a mile long. But I didn’t have one. I had coconut milk from one of the vendors. Much better. In any case I wouldn’t trust ice-cream in a place like Zanzibar.”
“No, Ron, you shouldn’t.”
So, my ice-cream stall was still there doing its job without me. I wondered who owned it now. Maybe Louis. Goodness, he would be thirty. Maybe if I’d stayed in Zanzibar and waited for the tourists I would have become rich anyway.
“And you, Marcella, how have you been? How was summer in Vermont in my absence?” He was pacing. His shadow passed across me.
“Ron, please settle down. Summer in Vermont has been very quiet. Lonely, actually.”
“'You’ve missed me?”
“Maybe I need someone to argue with.”
Questions rose in me, contended, fell. I did not want the answers through Ron’s tourist eyes. A poor messenger after all these years. I wanted to talk my mind, of London and Zanzibar, of Benji, my fears and the puzzles I could not solve. Ron was all I had, and lying there, my eyes closed, I wondered where to start and which thread might unravel things.
Ron finally sat and took my hand. I opened my eyes. Before he left he would not have presumed to take my hand. His eyes shone. He was emboldened. He said, “I asked some people if they had known you.”
“What?”
“I just said I had a Zanzibari friend in America and mentioned your name. I asked Indians mostly. Some remembered you. They seemed to think you had married an Englishman.”
“Well, they were wrong. Who said you could do that, anyway? What makes you think I want people to know what I’m doing? Or that I don’t want to be the one to tell them?” I pulled away my hand.
“What harm could it do? They didn’t mind. I guess your family was quite prominent. There was something about your aunt. Being killed.”
“Yes, Ron. There are always lots of stories on Zanzibar. I hope you didn’t gossip about me. Respected my privacy.”
“I didn’t gossip. What’s to gossip about anyway? "You live so quietly. I told them you were a college professor of multi-cultural studies, that’s all. I didn’t think you’d mind that. You should go visit. I think people would like to see you.”
I considered this man, with his blundering affection, and bloated self-regard, my closest colleague at Moore. The anger that welled up in me was out of proportion to his offense. It drew on all that was in my head. The way his arrival was not Benji’s arrival. The presumption of returning me to Zanzibar with so little understanding of the place. I could not imagine who his Indians might have been, how they might use the information, or how the Goans I had left behind would feel to hear of me that way. Supposing he had some drinks and talked of prison. Zanzibar should have been left alone, left separate, completely separate from Vermont. All the distress accumulated in me during the lonely summer was tapped and mixed with the disappointment of Ron simply being Ron, and not being the friend I needed. Five minutes of company in the last two weeks and it was already too much.
“Actually, I do mind. You’ve no business ... Tell me what they said!”
“Not much. They were interested. Polite. I didn’t think you’d take it like this.”
“You didn’t? Of course they didn’t say much. What do you think words like ‘Professor of Multi-cultural Studies’ mean to them? They were wondering what you wanted, how to make use of you. You probably scared them. They probably thought you were crazy. Look, you must be tired. We can talk some other time.”
“I don’t feel tired.”
“Well, I do. Just thinking of you in Zanzibar makes me tired.”
THERE WERE MORE COINCIDENCES IN MY BAYSWATERlife. One summer evening I was lingering over dinner with Benji and Ashraf, a purposeful ordinariness, when Kamara dropped in. I had come to see him less frequently with time. A sort of embarrassment had entered our friendship. I had become prosperous through property, while he, though also prospering in a smaller way, still claimed to be a socialist. He drank more heavily and we both knew that his job in local government had enmeshed him in corruption. His voice had stayed strong and the ironic laugh was the same, but he was less at ease and always ready to depart. I would try to make him stay longer, sorry to lose that part of my beginning at Hereford Road.
On this occasion, he embraced me in the doorway, moved to Benji to shake hands, then stopped dead, his eyes on Ashraf.
I said, “Oh, you haven’t met Ashraf, have you? Ashraf, this is Kamara.”
Kamara said, “Do I know you?” with an uncharacteristic quiet and intensity.
I looked to Ashraf, who leaned back in his chair and conceded, “I
