The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [45]
He took a seat at the Thorn Tree, the outdoor café of the New Stanley Hotel, and ordered a Tusker. He opened the newspaper and gave it another glance. MALARIA SWEEPS NORTHERN PROVINCE. KILLER LION MAULS PARTY CHIEF. His eyes glazed over an article about land disputes. He noticed the word brother in a piece about a Luo businessman who’d been murdered by his and was reminded of his own brother, Rich, and of the fact that he was coming in a month. They would go on safari together to Ngoro Ngoro and the Serengeti, Thomas promising to take him to the coast, where you could buy the most powerful dope he’d ever smoked. In Malindi, even the women chewed miraa, a twig that was a sort of natural speed. He wouldn’t tell Rich about the bhangi or the miraa or about the prostitutes, either, who were cheap and beautiful and dangerous with disease.
A shadow passed across his table. Thomas took it for a cloud, but, glancing up, he saw a man hovering over him, the man smiling, waiting to be noticed.
—Ah, Mr. Thomas, you have lost yourself.
Thomas stood. No, Ndegwa, it is you who have been lost, but now you are found again.
Ndegwa, his teacher, his age mate, chuckled. Thomas’s attempts to mimic the African idiom never failed to amuse Ndegwa, even in the early days, when Thomas had taken a poetry class at the University of Nairobi, the only white student in a roomful of younger Africans and Asians. Privately, Thomas had thought the quality of the work poor, though he’d have been the first to admit to an inability to criticize art produced in another culture. Queried, the other students would doubtless have said his work was self-indulgent, that it lacked political content. Ndegwa, however, had not felt that way. Indeed, he’d seemed almost to favor Thomas, a remarkable feat of literary impartiality, particularly considering Ndegwa’s Marxist views.
Thomas shook hands with the massive Kikuyu, Ndegwa’s bulk shot forward in a tight-fitting gray suit, his purple-black skin dusty with a patina that wasn’t dust at all, but rather color added to the color. He was a big-shouldered and big-bellied man, someone who, indeed, seemed cut more from a political or financial cloth than from that of a literary poet.
—You know what it is they say about a Tusker? Ndegwa asked.
Thomas smiled and shook his head.
—Sit down my friend, and I shall share with you my story of a Tusker.
Thomas sat, and Ndegwa leaned toward him conspiratorially.
—The first day you are in my country, you look into your Tusker and you find a worm. You are disgusted, and you give the beer to the street.
Thomas smiled, knowing that a joke was coming. Ndegwa was heavy-lidded and sensual, his shirt a thick, rough cotton Thomas had seen often in the country.
—After the first month you are in my country, you look into a Tusker and you find a worm. And you say, “There is a worm in my beer.” And you calmly pick it out and put it on the street and then you drink your beer.
Ndegwa chuckling already, his teeth stained pink. Around them German and American tourists were drinking, the decibel level rising as the hour moved toward noon. Thomas saw a journalist — Norman something — he knew from a London paper.
—But after a year, my friend, you look into your Tusker and you see the worm, and you say, “There is a worm in my beer.” And you take it out and eat it for the protein. And then you drink your beer, and you give nothing to the street.
Ndegwa laughed loudly at his own joke. Thomas made a show of looking into his beer, which made Ndegwa laugh even more.
—Time to eat the worm, my friend. You have been in my country how long?
—Just over a year.
—Is it so much?
Ndegwa managed elegance, even with his bulk, even on the tiny metal café chair. Kimathi Street was thick with shoppers on the Saturday morning. Ndegwa glanced at the African women while Thomas looked at the white women. Although just then, a cocoa-skinned