The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [61]
The town of Njia was larger than he had thought it would be. He drove along a street called Kanisa, past a clock tower and a bar called the Purple Heart Pub. He stopped at the Wananchi Café and asked the proprietor, an old woman with scattered teeth and one bad eye, if she spoke English. She did not, but agreed to speak in Swahili, which reduced Thomas to words and phrases that could not be put into sentences. He said mzungu and Peace Corps and manjano (yellow) for the color of her hair and zuri for beautiful. The old woman shook her head but beckoned for him to follow her next door to another duka, where he bought a bottle of Fanta, his mouth parched, from nerves or from the drive. The woman and the man spoke in their own tribal tongue and seemed to argue extensively about the matter. As they gestured, Thomas listened to a group of street musicians with soda bottles and bottle caps. The air was cool and moist, like an early June day at home. Finally, the woman turned to Thomas and said, in Swahili, that there was a mzungu just off the Nyeri Road who was a teacher. Thomas thanked the pair, finished the Fanta, and left them.
At a small church on the Nyeri Road, he needed only to say the words mzungu and Peace Corps to a sexton who was sweeping the steps. The man himself supplied the word beautiful.
* * *
The way was not so simple, after all. The road diverged twice, and Thomas had to guess at the correct fork, not having been given any clues at the church. As he drove, he ascended into a landscape washed clean by a recent shower. Water droplets from macadamia trees overhead sometimes stormed across his windshield. The air was so crisp he stopped the car to get out and breathe, just to taste it. And to slow his racing heart. He practiced the beginnings of conversations, preparing for all contingencies. The man named Peter would be there. Or Linda might be leaving to go elsewhere. Or she’d be frosty, not welcoming his visit. I was in the area, he rehearsed. I thought I’d just stop by. I forgot to ask you. Regina and I would like.
In his electrified state, it seemed to him that the very road itself hummed and vibrated. Beyond his destination, a purple backdrop advanced, signaling a cataclysmic rain. He had seen these deluges before, the rain pouring straight down, as though someone had simply pulled a plug and let down a lake of water. The sun, behind him, lit up fields of chrysanthemums, vast improbable plains of yellow and mauve, and then, at the end of the road, the white stucco of a cottage, bright geometry against the blackened sky. A beacon, if he had chosen to see it that way. Rusty-red tiles made a pattern on the roof, and around the door and windows frangipani and jasmine climbed. An old Peugeot was parked in a driveway, and he left his own car behind it. Announcing himself to anyone inside the cottage, as isolated as a hermitage on an Irish cliff.
She opened the door as he reached the steps, having had ten, maybe twenty, seconds to prepare herself, which was as good as no preparation at all. She had bathed or had been swimming, her hair in long ropes down her back. She wore a halter top and a kanga, a different-colored one than before. She did not dissemble, made no pretense that this was normal. She merely watched him. Standing face-to-face on a doorstep somewhere at the end of the world.
Thomas said hello.
Her face unreadable, her eyes searching his. Hello, Thomas, she said.
In the light of the doorstep, he saw her more clearly than he had yesterday in the gloom of the market. Her face was washed clean, without artifice, a spray of freckles across her nose. She had sun wrinkles at her eyes, tiny commas at the sides of her mouth. Her lips were full and pale, with