Because traffic was light, we got to the restaurant quickly, about fifteen minutes before we were to meet Miro. Ralph parked his van behind another one just like it, but with a different logo on the side. Ralph had been perfectly happy rummaging around inside the mortuary, but now he was morose. The detective had upset him, and I thought that was strange.
Inside the restaurant there were empty tables everywhere, but when a waiter greeted us, Ralph told him that we wanted to sit upstairs, in a section that was normally closed during the day.
“Mama is up there alone,” the waiter said, but Ralph insisted, and we climbed a winding metal staircase and chose a table across the room from the large Italian woman who owned the place. We had to take the chairs down off the table-tops to sit up there. When the woman heard us she welcomed Ralph, waving a big arm and calling out his name. Ralph said hello, but he still had a bad look on his face and when we ordered coffees he finally spoke his mind. “Sometimes we do stupid things for reasons we cannot fathom,” he said, “neither at the time we do them nor afterward, when we try to reflect.”
I thought he was talking about me, that he’d been thinking about my behaviour with Detective Mubia all this time, but Ralph took a piece of folded paper from the inside pocket of his safari jacket and put it on the table between us.
“I think I intended to bring this back to you all along,” he said. “I know I did. I imagined myself showing up with it some night at your home.”
“What is it?” I brightly asked. “What have you got there?”
With Kamau dead and Detective Mubia suspended from his job, I didn’t want a melancholy Ralph on my hands, so I used my most cheerful voice. As I touched the edge of the paper, however, my hand and my voice turned cold.
“It is page number six,” Ralph said. “The important missing part of your husband’s letter. After we left the circle of singers I found it hung up on a thorn.”
I took the paper from the table and opened it, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words. If Ralph had found the missing page of Jules’s letter, why hadn’t he given it back to me at the time? I remembered his being helpful, searching everywhere, running around. The motivations of men were peculiar, to be sure, but this didn’t make sense at all.
Ralph shook his head. “It was a horrible impulse and most unexpected,” he said. “All I know is that it had something to do with our school days, with the way you were then, and with your not recognising me when we happened to meet. Seeing you reminded me of how much I disliked those years, and it occurred to me how little you’d changed. I was invisible to you then, so I guess I thought I’d make your letter disappear now.”
“Did you read this page?” I asked. “Did you learn anything from what it said?” Since there was nobody but the owner in the upper part of the restaurant, I let myself go, this time allowing anger to push my voice up high. Men were bastards, every one. He had kept a page of the letter because it occurred to him how little I’d changed? I was furious with him, but Ralph answered normally, as if I’d asked my questions in a civil way.
“I did read it,” he said. “It was after reading it, and after listening to the detective back there, that I knew I had to give it back now.”
The white border of page six seemed to swell a little when Ralph spoke, so I picked it up and read what it said, while trying to calm down.
…terrible dupes we had been. I don’t know where he got the know-how or how he made everything seem so authentic that night, but I discovered only recently that the tusks we’d been smuggling all these months were real. Think of it, Nora, your father and I have been doing what we detested in others, laughing about it and making money. Your father sold the things all over Europe, Nora, at least he did before he had his stroke, and I shipped them out so confidently and so well! And all the time this man was buying tusks off poachers or poaching himself, amazed at what fools, what easy marks we had been.
I feel terrible about everything, Nora, and too ashamed to express it except in this poor way. When I confronted the man, asking him why he needed to involve us in such a scheme, he laughed in my face, said it was a mere byproduct of his real work, and that he’d done it to get even with your dad. He beat us, Nora, took us both so easily in, but I did do something about it, and aside from confessing my stupidity and guilt, I’m writing you now to let you know what I’ve done. He sometimes kept his tusk supply in an unlikely building, right here in town. I’ve had easy access to that building for months now, and one recent day I stole the centerpiece to everything he was about, the eye of his storm, and I buried the bounty out on our farm. Now here’s the key, told, Nora dear, so that only you will understand. It might seem silly to do it like this, but I really can’t come up with a safer way.
Under our bed
yes, under hot covers,
where the sweet smell of sex
draws the sharp claws of others.
Do you get it, Nora? I hope you do.
That was all, and since I didn’t have the rest of the letter with me in order to place it properly in context, I folded it again and tucked it away. And when I looked at Ralph I not only understood why he’d felt he had to return the page, but a little about why he’d taken it. Something to do with our school days, Ralph had said. Though Julius Grant was gone, two kinds of men had come a little bit into focus for me that day. Ralph and Detective Mubia, two kinds of men that I’d never understood before.
“My God, Ralph,” I said, “this is all so bloody crazy. What am I supposed to do now?”
“First of all, do you get it?” he asked. “Do you understand what your husband’s riddle means?”
I did, without the slightest doubt, and I was about to say so, but right then we heard someone rattling up the metal stairs and in a second Miro came in, grimacing and twisting her mouth and asking why in the world we weren’t eating down below.
“This is Ralph N’deru,” I told her. “You know, Ralph Bunche Road. It was his idea, he likes it up here.”
She and Ralph shook hands and Miro sat down. It turned out they had met before too, and while they were remembering when and where, I took a moment to try to think clearly for a second time that day.
My husband and father had been dealing in real tusks, not acrylic ones, and when Jules discovered how easily and thoroughly he’d been tricked, he took something from Mr Smith and hid it on our farm. Mr Smith hired Kamau, a man who’d worked for us for years, to get that something back, and Kamau proceeded to shoot Jules and then go into his hospital room and smother him with a pillow. When Mr Smith punished him for the mistakes he had made, Kamau followed Mr Smith to the Norfolk Hotel and was himself then killed, stabbed through the heart with a bread knife, wielded by his own hands and those of Detective Mubia, whose skill in self-defence had cost him his peace of mind and his job. And now here was Ralph, the fellow for whom Miro had said I should look out, giving me back a page of my husband’s letter that he had kept for deep-seated reasons of his own. And on top of all that, though I did understand the poem that was on page six, though I did know where Mr Smith’s stolen property was, I still didn’t know what it was. I only knew that I had to go and get it, and that I had to give it back to the unspeakable man if I ever wanted this ordeal to end. I also knew that I couldn’t give it back if I wanted to honour my husband’s dying words.
Miro and Ralph were ordering their lunch by the time I looked up. Miro, who set up this luncheon with her own odd phone call, didn’t seem miffed that Ralph was there, nor did she appear to be in any hurry to say whatever it was that had made her call. Ralph, on the other hand, was relieved and had come completely back to himself. And since they both seemed content with small talk, I went along. If it weren’t for small talk, after all, how would I ever find time to pause?
The woman who owned the restaurant delivered our food herself, kissing Ralph when she put it down. Her English was cooked in a thick Italian sauce, but she told us that Ralph was the only man in town for whom her second floor was never closed. A few years back Ralph had taken this woman’s mother, visiting from Italy, on a wonderful safari, and since that time she’d been forced to think of him as family. And family always ate upstairs.
I had no memory of ordering anything, but the food that came was good, and by the time we finished eating, Ralph had told Miro about the murder and about everything that had happened at the hospital, leaving out only the part about my husband’s letter’s sixth page. His tone was serious and quiet, full of respect for the complicated situation and a desire to continue to help. When the owner came back with more coffee and our bill, Ralph excused himself for a moment, insisting that the lunch was on him, and when he was gone Miro was all business again. “I thought you’d be alone,” she said. “It doesn’t seem so ominous now, but look at this, look at what that waiter gave me last night.”
It seemed to me that the pain of Jules’s death and the difficulty of my present life was unveiling itself in a series of letters and notes and coincidental meetings. This time, however, not only was the little square of paper unimpressive, compared with the solid sheet of Jules’s good bond, but its message was paltry too. It was clumsy and snide, calculated only to upset Miro. “The woman you are with is a dangerous woman,” the note said. “She has violated one of Kenya’s sacred laws.”
I laughed and handed the note back, saying only, “Awkward phrasing.”
“But listen,” said Miro, “I know your heart is broken, but you better try to remember whatever it is you know about African men. Don’t be frivolous, don’t be flip, and above all don’t assume that in the end you’ll win. Awkward phrasing or not I almost took this thing seriously. I nearly believed it, I worried about it all night long.”
“Well, if you almost took it seriously, then he almost achieved his goal,” I said. “He wants me to remain alone in this. If I build up a circle of friends, he worries that I’ll find the strength to go on.” I then somehow told her about Ralph’s returning page six. I also said that the three holes in Kamau’s body looked like slots for coins.
Miro touched my arm and said, “My dear, Nora, you’re not listening to me. Be careful of this man. You have lived here all your life, I know, but you’re a white girl who has floated around on the cream, and he is fighting you in purely African ways. You think you have a foot in both worlds, but maybe you do not. Remember this, there is no nuance in the things he says, no double entendre, no sarcasm, and no underneath side. He has taken away your husband and killed your foreman and ruined your detective’s career, and though Ralph seems very nice, what is he doing but playing like a schoolboy? Go back, my dear, to your childhood, remember what you know of this place and this man. Otherwise you will not beat him at his game.”
Ralph came back just then and said, “I have to go. I pick up my tourists at four.”
When we stood to leave I told them both about the wake, but I was looking only at Miro. “You have to come,” I said. “I need you there. Otherwise I really will be alone.”
Opening night at the opera was Friday, but Miro said her Saturday performance wasn’t until eight o’clock. She promised she would come to the wake and after that, when Ralph went over to say good-bye to the owner, Miro and I wound our way down the stairs. “Let me catch a taxi,” she said, and just as Ralph appeared her cab pulled away from the curb.
When we got into his van I already knew what I would ask Ralph, and I wondered whether or not he would be surprised.
“I want to go with you today,” I said. “I want you to drop me at my farm.”
“I’ve got three British tourists,” he said.
If he had only three tourists, there would be plenty of room in the van, so I wasn’t sure whether he was agreeing to take me or not.
“Surely your tourists would like to see a farm,” I said. “Or, if you must, just drop me off in Narok and I’ll catch a ride the rest of the way up the hill. When I’m finished doing what I have to do I will bring our lorry back to town.”
It was clear that Ralph didn’t want me along. Since he’d taken part of Jules’s letter, however, it was impossible for him to say no. So what he said instead was “I leave at four. What are you going to do with your car?”
The Trattoria was only a few minutes from the Norfolk, and since Ralph’s safari office was in Westlands, I asked him to drop me at the car and told him I’d be at his office, ready to go, before his customers arrived.
“I’m picking them up at the Hilton,” said Ralph.
I had got out of the van and was looking back inside. “I won’t cause you any trouble, Ralph,” I said.
When he left I didn’t waste time watching his van depart. I jumped into the Land Rover and drove away fast, before it was properly warm. Down Kijabe Street I went and into the roundabout that led me up by the museum and onto the sports-club road.
And though it must have been there all along, I didn’t see Detective Mubia’s faded red station wagon in my rear-view mirror until I was out of Westlands, almost home.