“Benji, what are you saying? Are you in trouble with the police?”
He gave a crooked little smile. “The police? I don’t know. The police may not be the worst sort of trouble.”
I looked at him. He picked up a sports bag from the floor and started to fill it with anything that caught his eye. This was serious, somehow we had drifted into seriousness. This was my Benji—my teacher, my smiling, naughty boy—grey-faced and panicking. I took the bag. “I’ll do that. Go and get some clothes. Where are you going? What shall I tell the police, if they come?”
The doorbell rang and we froze. It rang again. Gabrielle called out from the living room, “Shall I answer it?”
“No, leave it,” said Benji.
A key scraped in the lock and we heard the door swing open.
“What sort of welcome is this? Hello, I’m Ashraf. I think I know who you are. You’re Gabrielle, aren’t you? Monique’s sister. Family resemblance. The famous sisters. I know your brother-in-law.”
We emerged from the spare room, me carrying the bag, Benji with a fist full of papers.
“Marcella. And Benji. What is this? Are you running away from home?”
“What happened?” asked Benji, anxious and impatient. “Why did they arrest you?”
“Arrest? I wouldn’t exactly say arrest. It was our friends from British Intelligence. They were just messenger boys for the Americans. It was nothing. Don’t look so worried, Benji. Marcella, if I go to the refrigerator, will I find anything?” Ashraf was already there, the effortless speed of his movements still disconcerting. “I think I did not tell them what they wanted to hear. So the hospitality wasn’t too good.”
“Did they know about our business?”
“Our business? Oh, that’s why you’re so worried. Why should they care about that? The Americans want to help Pakistan. We’re allies, you know. Against the Russians.” Ashraf found this funny. Benji had put his finger to his lips for Ashraf’s benefit, but Ashraf was looking in the fridge. “And they secretly want to help the South Africans too. So why would they worry about a bit of uranium going between the two? They should be pleased.” “Ashraf! Quiet!”
“Sorry, Benji.” Ashraf looked his most innocent. “I thought Marcella would already know? And Gabrielle’s family, isn’t she? Adnam’s sister-in-law.”
“It’s dangerous for them to know.”
“Dangerous?” Ashraf turned it around his mouth like a strange and interesting sweet. “Perhaps.” Then, full of mischief, he turned to me, “You have dangerous knowledge, Marcella. We’re selling South African uranium to Pakistan.” He lowered his voice to a mock whisper in my ear. “For the bomb.”
I found I could not evaluate this information. I looked towards Benji, instinctively hoping for explanation or reassurance, but he seemed unmanned by Ashraf’s antics, caught between anger, apology and a wish to match Ashraf’s insouciance. He was floundering in the same waters that were making Ashraf so buoyant. “Then why did they arrest you?” he finally asked, almost pleading.
“Oh, the Americans wanted to offer me a job. I was head-hunted by the CIA. They want me to go to Nicaragua to help their Contras. They’re desperate.” He laughed. “Marcella, can I have this chicken?”
I nodded.
“Anyway I turned them down. Too dangerous.” His eyes sparkled with the irony. “I have a rule. Never fight a guerilla war when the population is against you.”
Benji turned to take the papers back to the spare bedroom. He used to be the one with all the rules.
IN THE UNPREDICTED CONNECTIONS AND COLLISIONSof those days there was a closing in, a sense that my world had again become small and the scrutiny of me more intense. Mrs F said of the walls pressing in on Zanzibar’s alleys, that they had ears, and in London the talk was now of tapped phones. I learned to become brief and cryptic, once again uneasy with my inability to correctly gauge the need for caution.
When I met David at Le Cafe he was as aptly dressed for London as he had been for Zanzibar. A light check sports jacket, woven tie, raincoat draped over a vacant chair.
Like Ron now, David had just arrived from Zanzibar and Dar-es-Salaam. He told me, though I had not asked, that my mother and my sister were well and that my mother was living with Maria in Dar. The considerate manner was the same. “I thought you’d like to know,” he said, as if apprised of my failure to keep up with the past. Then he had added, “Probably for the best since Mrs Fernandez passed away,” watching my face as he said it. “She was your aunt, I believe.”
“Mrs Fernandez? Dead? Mrs Fernandez with the Elephant Bar?” I made a quick calculation in case I had been away longer than I thought. No, she was only about fifty-five.
“Yes, your aunt. I’m sorry. You didn’t know? Over a month ago now.” He was waiting for me to react, but I wanted to keep it all inside until I knew how I felt. I kept my eyes away from him. I did not know him well enough. “I’m sorry, Marcella,” he said at last, “I imagined someone would have let you know by now.”
I said that it was all right, that I was all right, and asked him how she died.
“Actually, I’m sorry to have to say that she was slain.”
“Slain? Murdered?” Something in me lurched dizzily.
“I’m sorry. I believe you were quite close. A person or persons came to her bar and hit her over the head. Then burned the bar.”
“The bar is gone? Who?”
Then he said, “We could not find out. You never know in Zanzibar. It might have been the Moslems—because of the alcohol. It might have been a thief. Or, who knows, just someone she offended,
