The Blue Taxi (21 page)

With
Sons of Sindbad
tucked beneath his arm, he sailed past the string of people who were waiting to buy stamps or make additions to their Post
Accounts. As he sometimes did, he pretended that he was an archaeologist or a sociology professor expecting correspondence
from a European college of repute.
Oh, Turner
, he thought gently to himself, imitating tones he heard in Kazansthakis on particularly good days,
you are a delicate and educated man
. The members of an especially long line moved grudgingly apart and made room for him to pass. Feeling wise and gracious,
he smiled blandly at the air. Once at the wall of boxes, he located his own with a spare feeling of pride.

Our PO box!
he thought. The sight of it reminded him that they
had
made a real place for themselves, he and complicated Sarie—and little Agatha, who shared his pallor, and, he dreamed, might
when she grew up also share his love of heavy, wordy books.
Our box, 32
. Other Europeans, the temporary ones, had to get their letters at the Poste Restante, the place for miscellaneous mail that
had no significant, no physical, address, no real match in the world. Official visitors, the Finnish engineers, the Chinese
acrobatics coaches, German doctors, and the British officers as well (a whole new stash of them, still in charge of things,
pretending they were not) picked theirs up at Embassies, forever overseen by gloomy attachés. But this! The Turners’ very
own.
Our SLP
, he thought, trying
(like the nationalist he’d once been, for a time) the local acronym for size—the acronym, because the right words were too
hard and he could not remember them without making a mistake. But, nonetheless,
Our little SLP
. And, unexpectedly, to top off Gilbert’s pleasure, there was a letter in it.

He knew who it was from. Leaving their own box ajar, Gilbert leaned against the others. He tugged at the left thigh of his
woolen trousers, bent one leg and crossed its ankle on its mate. He looked nonchalant and poised. Not from any college, this
slender aerogramme. But, still, how nice to get some mail. Gilbert smiled and sighed.
Dear Great-Uncle James has written on a whim
. He thought:
We do light up his days
. The affection he had felt for his new book and for the coolness of the Post Office, for the three ngarawas in the sea, for
his little family, spilled out onto the letter, moved across an ocean, a highly charged canal, a blistering blue gulf, some
seas, flat lands (Sarie’s), a final, choppy channel, to rivers and a brook, and settled on the man who had dropped this missive
in the post. Uncle James had really been a savior.

Since Gilbert’s postcolonial stash (relatively lavish, for a very little while) had finally expired, the inflows had been
small: modest honoraria for some (rather clever, Gilbert thought) written meditations that had been taken by the History Club,
and sums he charged occasionally if someone who remembered him wanted their accounts done. Sarie had once tried to give piano
lessons, but she wasn’t all that good, the students had been few, and Sarie was impatient. She had, as a matter of principle,
not been interested in
work
. Hadn’t getting married meant she would be cared for? What really kept them going, financed Gilbert’s library, put beans
and soap and now and then some dresses in their cupboards once the bank account was dry, was a small but regular stipend from
Gilbert’s only living relative in England: dear old Uncle James.

Uncle James had a special weakness: fond of the Geographical Society, he adored reports from what he called “the regions.”
As if it were something that a person without extraordinary means could easily take up, like
that
, as a hobby or a wish, Uncle James had wished as a young man to take up exploration. But real life had prevented him. In
a family of gardeners, schoolteachers, and clerks, grand-nephew Gilbert Turner had come closer than anyone to braving the
frontiers. Still, not
everyone
could say they had an adventurous relation in the wilds of Africa. Particularly one who’d
stayed
, after the great exodus, after all the Kenyans had come back with fear of Mau-Mau in their eyes, after the Ugandans snuck
across the borders in such (so thought Great-Uncle James) grand, delicious fear. Not to mention those who bubbled up, more
and more these days, from the southern end of that dim continent of blight! A relation who’d
withstood
. How
brave
of Gilbert Turner. And so he had responded to Gilbert’s initial, desperate query with alacrity and pride.

His letters were reliably well written. The handwriting, as though he’d slipped a guide sheet beneath the aerogramme to keep
his words in line, was always regular and neat. The sameness of these letters was a fundamental part of Gilbert’s current
life, which Gilbert understood as immutable and steady. As long as Uncle James wrote to them once a month, the Turners’ lives
would be as regular—not swank, not fine, but predictable and tidy.

He didn’t stop to think: this letter was early. But once the tight, sealed thing was spread out in his hands, Gilbert felt
the world tilt. This was
not
like all the rest. The words on this blue aerogramme were wrought of thick and angry ink. Gilbert could already see the exclamation
marks. Aleap! At every other line!
Exclamation marks
. From a man who dealt in modest commas and light periods, and limited his questions, gentle and polite, to two lines at the
end
(
How are the rains this year, then?
or,
Look in on the plains of Mbugakuu, will you, and tell me how they are. It’s said they host spectacular migrations
) before signing himself off with an unobtrusive
Fondly
, or a
Yours
. What could have overcome him?

Gilbert felt hot and cold at once. He wished to bring his free hand to his cheek, but first he had to find a place for all
of Sindbad’s sons. He tried to press the book into the Turners’
SLP
, and couldn’t (the box was narrow, small); he thought of holding it under his arm, and then between his thighs, but his arms
and legs were weak. With a surge of irritation, he dropped it to the floor—an action which, though he didn’t see it, raised
some brows among the people who were standing in the line. Rocking slowly back and forth, he restrained the shiny volume with
the instep of his shoe. His helpless tongue grew large. He shook.

Uncle James, of all amazing things, was
sending out a warning
(underlined).
I have, I fear, grown impatient
(darker)
with your stipend. After all
, Uncle James explained,
I am now retired
(a heavy period, gouged). Yes, Gilbert knew all that. Uncle James, a man whose hands and eyes and back had dealt in borders,
beds, and hedges for over forty years, had in his retirement turned his knobby hands to painting things in oils: not the verdant
scapes he’d managed, no, but—seas.
A hobby!
Gilbert thought. He’d even found it sweet. But suddenly it seemed that Uncle James
envisioned a career
. Gilbert, who had started to believe that he and only he could be the center of his uncle’s sunset years, was shocked to
read that Uncle James was preparing for a
show
. The newborn artist wrote:
I’ve been painting, as you know, and I am delighted
(softened hand, right here, the letters lighter than the rest)
to announce that I am having some success. But materials for this art, dear Gilbert
(deepening again, and dark)
are prohibitive, and for reasons that you must surely understand
—he did, he did—
not quite within my reach
(this underlined, again). Gilbert’s eyes
went round. Though he stood very still, he felt as if his face were being slapped, on one cheek then the other. He read on.
I don’t suppose you know
, he read,
the cost of Damar varnish or of sable rounds, but they are very
(exclamation)
dear. And
(underlined)
even more so copal
(more exclamations here). Gilbert imagined his old uncle, whom he had not seen in thirty years, now small and hard and mean,
in overalls in a dark room, surrounded in the fading light by a fleet of ocean pictures, brackish, sharp-legged easels rearing.
The current work, in Gilbert’s mind, was just an underpainting, but already it depicted sinking ships. And was that a distant
fire, licking angry trees? He blinked. He took, to calm himself, a conscious breath of cool administrative air. His own thoughts
were triple-underlined:
An artist? My stipend gone for paints?

The intent of Uncle James’s letter seemed all at once to Gilbert to be gushing like a hemorrhage from a wound that his own
trembling fingers could not hope to stanch. He pressed one palm over the sheet and for an instant closed his eyes before looking
down again. Unless Gilbert could show, Uncle James was saying now,
that there are reasons
(dash)
let me be perfectly
(in capitals)
explicit
(dash)
that there are
(underlined again)
quite compelling reasons
… Gilbert’s eyes grew wide. As if he had been stuffed by unseen hands into a sturdy woman’s corset, he felt his chest constrict.
That “compelling” had been underlined three times caused Gilbert to shiver. His uncle’s previous letters had been so regularly
sweet, forgettable! So mild! But this feisty uncle was indignant:
Unless there are convincing reasons for you to keep your dear, courageous wife and children in the darkest continent of all,
where things, we hear, are bad to worse each day, I will have no choice, dear boy
, (more lines)
but to suspend support
.

His courageous wife and children. Well, Sarie could be brave, indeed. But “children”? Had he, Gilbert wondered, then felt
his stomach sink, allowed his uncle to believe that there were two, or
three, perhaps, at least one of them a son? He groaned. And perhaps he had even—had he?—allowed his uncle to believe a dreamed-up
son was also James, in honor of the man who corresponded so reliably from a cold city by the sea. Ashamed and frightened,
he whimpered and read on:
What income I do have cannot be spent so freely on your supper without
(a dash)
hope of returns
. Gilbert found it hard to breathe.
Does he think our lives are easy here?
he thought.
Out here in the… colonies?
He stopped himself a moment. There
were
no colonies, not any longer, quite, but didn’t Uncle James rather wish there were? And hadn’t he imagined himself now and
then as just the dashing and besieged adventurer his Uncle James would so have liked to see? Had he not done the man a service?

Gilbert was upset. Was a woman in the thing? A brazen one who bared rouged breasts for the sad old man when he wanted to paint
mermaids, a crass, low girl with insalubrious designs on Uncle James’s pension? Was his uncle being had? In short: Uncle James
requested of his nephew
that some proof of the value of my too-generous support be provided me in your next letter. I suggest a business in which,
should I be fully satisfied, I might
(those capitals, again)
perhaps invest. But I shall expect returns
. The skin of Gilbert’s brow and cheeks went slick with perspiration. His mouth hung open, closed, and opened, like a fish
behind a glass. He felt as though his heart (not pumping, and not thumping, as people said could happen) had simply left his
body.

As he stood, a corpulent jaggery-colored man in a well-pressed navy suit stepped towards him, aiming for even-numbered
SLP
48. He gestured towards the wall, which Gilbert’s head and torso now obscured. “Excuse me,” the man said. But Gilbert’s ears
were filled with wind. He stayed. The suited man (this Gilbert did not know) was, in fact, a real university professor. A
populist at heart, with strong ideas about hierarchy and the nature of oppression, he had authored several essays on socialism’s
real, non-European roots and
was not a man to cross. He said again, “Excuse me!” Gilbert, looking up at last, was momentarily confused. The professor’s
British accent was more refined and rarefied than any Gilbert could have aped, in drunkenness or jest. He stared. The suited
man stared back. “Excuse me,
sir,
” this author said, making it quite clear that
he
, and not the shivering figure holding to the aerogramme, was worthy of the title. Gilbert’s feet were locked; his spine a
spike that reached the belly of the earth. He did not move aside. Finally, the professor nudged him roughly with his shoulder
and reached out with some force for the door of his own box.

Still clutching the letter but now, at last, uncoupled from the floor (his spine dissolved, his frozen feet came free), Gilbert
shifted over, thinking,
That push was accidental
. Surely, Gilbert told himself, looking down still, unable to focus on his feet or on the tiles, no violence had been intended?
He mustered an “Excuse me!” of his own, a weak one. He let the big man by, but the historian was not through. He scowled.
Pointed to the volume on the floor. “And by the way, sir. I say. I say, that”—the socialist professor was referring to Gilbert’s
book on seamanship, which Gilbert’s shoe had scuffed—“that is not how one ought to treat a book.” Gilbert looked up at the
owner of
SLP
48 with a feeling of dismay, all his skin atingle.
Sons of Sindbad
, far less sunny now than their author had proclaimed, lost most of their charm. Post Office Box Number 32 was no longer aglow.
He closed it. Conscious of the dark historian’s eyes like knives along his back as he bent to take the book, Gilbert pushed
the aerogramme into his pocket, where it began to boil.

As might have been expected, Gilbert ended up at the Victorian Palm Hotel, where he ordered what he feared might be the last
beer of his life. As he reread and reread the odious aerogramme, he made the Congo Pilsner last, and called upon his brain.
Think, old man, now think!
He recalled that he had meant to purchase ointment for his back, and this time almost wept:
I can’t afford it now!
The thought of looming poverty raised a triple itching in his skin. He sniffed. But with a sense that he was shriveling,
growing very small, he did find, in a small place near his heart, the strength to tell himself that he must somehow, somehow,
shape up and stand straight. What would the Mastersons and Brickmans think of him, Gilbert asked himself,
like this?