The Blue Taxi (42 page)

She had liked the feeling that the present would go on, like this, forever, but now it wore her down. She thought about the
baskets and the spears she’d seen at the Mountain Top Hotel. The jewels. Such sparkling, colored things! Such comforting,
dear trinkets. As if to will the business and her future into being, she focused on them, thought:
Arrows, bracelets, stones
. She saw them clearly in her mind. Oh, if she could step into that future, Sarie thought, the present, so unknowable, suddenly,
couldn’t cause her grief. She worried about Gilbert’s silence, then told herself she shouldn’t. She wanted, and she did not
want, to know. And so she told herself:
Gilbert has been quiet because he wants to be so certain we are fine before we really start. He does not want me to hope.
When he has an answer, he will want to talk. We’ll discuss it all. I will try to wait
.

But not knowing made her anxious. She went to find her husband, who was dozing on the sofa. “Gilbert?” Gilbert grunted in
his sleep. She sat down at the piano. “Gilbert.”

He was dreaming about Fiats and about Hungarian buses. The sound of her voice stirred him. “Mm?” he said.

Sarie plucked a note from the piano. Two. “Gilbert.” The dream-sights disappeared. Sarie said, to herself, almost, but to
her husband, too, and loud enough to pull him out of sleep, “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it? Isn’t it? It
is.
” Gilbert stretched his legs, pushed his toes against the pillows. “What?” He opened both his eyes, just barely, peering at
his wife beneath a folded arm. “The business,” Sarie said, voice softer now, as though she was afraid. “The baskets and the
sculptures.”

Gilbert smiled at her in half sleep. “Come,” he said. He unfolded one arm, he beckoned, and was pleasantly surprised when
Sarie came towards him.
She seems a bit worn
, he thought.
And tired
.
All this waiting and the worrying have my little Sarie down
. Sarie knelt beside him. He could hear her breathing, shallow, saw a flutter at her eyes. He was touched.
My dear
. He thought again how pleased Sarie would be if Uncle James agreed and when he told her what he’d planned. How she would
see that cars were far better than statues, much more sturdy and exciting than gaudy souvenirs; that they shouldn’t (Gilbert
almost laughed, thinking of how Sarie spoke)
put their eggs in baskets
. When he placed a hand on Sarie’s shoulder and looked into her face, she didn’t flinch, or push his hand away. Gilbert felt
confirmed.
See how she needs me
. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “You’ll see.”

Sarie fixed her eyes on his, tugged with one hand at his shirt. “You will go to look?” she asked. “You’ll go to find the Post?”
Oh, he would be her soldier, would defend her, life and limb. “Indeed, my dear. Indeed. And if there’s no letter today, I
will go again tomorrow. And the next day, and the next.”

He yawned. It was time, wasn’t it, that Uncle James replied? He’d go out in the afternoon. Gilbert took hold of Sarie’s fingers,
closed his eyes again. He thought about Judge Hewett and Kimbuga. And giraffes. In a moment he’d have
really
woken up, feeling fine; and perhaps, perhaps, once he ventured out, there would be a letter. Lolling, Gilbert sighed. Sarie
took her hand from his, sniffed at it, and, sadly, wiped it on her dress. She went back to the piano. Without thinking, Sarie
did what she had not done in years, what she had not liked doing, and what the Sisters had always said would save her, if
she would only try: she bent her head and prayed.

At last. On the Thursday when it happened, Gilbert had the wherewithal to close the Post Box door and step out from the wall
so that any men could reach their letters without having to push Gilbert around as that historian had once done. Tearing at
the aerogramme (all blue, not pink, with
Airmail
stamped in English), he felt a little sick. He’d grown, admit, accustomed to the waiting. To the sense of possibility. To
maybe yes or no, a feeling of perhaps. “Perhaps” was easier than other things, of course. Easier than certainty. And pleasant.
Maybe yes and maybe no: all maybes, nothing to confront. Gilbert’s mouth went dry. His fingers shook a bit. That letter held
the future, everything; could hold, he thought, obscurity or greatness, a decision—between a life and something else, something
too familiar, worse. He took a deep, deep breath and told himself to think about the sea—the one thing, Gilbert thought, he
really shared with Uncle James. Each man by a shore, each aware that on the unknown side of dangerous waters there lay all
sorts of potential. A great, blue kind of peace.
I’m ready
.

Feeling deft for once, he worked the complicated creases without tearing the paper. He smoothed the light thing out and closed
his eyes before determining to look. His knees knocked. He felt a coldness at his spine, a tingling; as if a smaller version
of himself, coiled and tight, hands across its ears and eyes, had hidden there, prepared to fall or cry so that, should the
letter bear bad news, his larger self would not. But as he opened his eyes slowly, the bigger, life-sized Gilbert, too, small
one notwithstanding, almost, almost, wept.

Dearest Gilbert
, Uncle James began.
I see you have grown up! Thank you for your prompt and, shall I say, inspiring, response to my last letter. I have considered
your proposal
. Gilbert closed his eyes again. Could he bear to read on? The letter trembled in his hand. The huddled little man at the
base of Gilbert’s spine stretched his arms in wonder. Gilbert read a little farther, felt something like a song.
You have gone some distance towards restoring, or securing, rather, my confidence
in you. Some of us, it seems, take longer to mature than others but shape up after all. And for you it is high time. I grant
you my—provisional—approval. I will wire necessary funds. But, dear Gilbert, before-warned that without certain proof of progress
I cannot be relied upon to furnish further monies, and that, following this wire, I will discontinue your allowance. Any future
wires are to be treated as investments. Do recall, as I explained in my last letter, that I shall expect returns. I have paints
to buy
.

Had he been a looser man, Gilbert would have jumped for joy or hooted. Instead, he hugged the aerogramme tightly to his chest
and rubbed his hands across it as he walked, blindly, to the street.
Further monies
. How stuffy Uncle James had grown! How pompous! But how dear! Oh, yes, it was going to be all right. Just as he’d told Sarie.
He had intended after stopping for the post to pass by the Victorian Palm to look for Kazansthakis. But this was news for
Sarie, wasn’t it? For Sarie, first of all.
Let Kazansthakis wait!
Feeling like a husband, Gilbert hurried home to number 2, where Agatha and Sarie, bent over the
Adventures
, were reading about pirates.

Sarie took one look at him and knew. Oh, some things did turn out! Nevermind Majid Ghulam’s Sugra. Nevermind her lover’s absence.
She’d work it all out later. She took in Gilbert’s blush, the glitter in his eyes. Gilbert, speechless, nodded on the threshold.
Without stopping to think, impelled by her relief Sarie hurried towards her husband and thrust her arms around him. Small
in her embrace, Gilbert, shocked, mouth muzzled by her shoulder, muttered, gasping, “Yes. Great-Uncle James agreed.” Sarie,
seeing trays of precious stones, crates abrim with bracelets, spun around the parlor with her only legal man clutched tightly
to her chest. Gilbert, like an inexperienced girl in the hands of a good dancer,
felt his two feet leave the floor. Just as he had held the letter, Sarie lunged and lurched, pressed him hard against her
breasts, and cooed into his ears.

She’s happy!
Gilbert thought, and because he could not recall the last time Sarie had held on to him with so much strength and focus—or
indeed, if she had ever done so—he let her squeeze and turn him until he felt a little dizzy. “Sarie, Sarie, stop!” he said.

He pulled himself away while Sarie laughed out loud. She jumped into the air and landed with a hearty, solid
thunk
on the red settee, where she kicked her feet before her like a swimmer. “Oh, Gilbert!” Sarie said. “You wrote him a nice
letter! We must thank your uncle James.”

Steadying himself at the piano, still undone from the surprise of Sarie’s—so impulsive!—arms, he beamed. “It worked, my dear,
it worked.” Gilbert wiped the sweat from his bare brow and stood there, panting, trying to collect himself again. Agatha,
who had retreated to the kitchen while her mother pulled her father up into the air and made circles with him on the floor,
looked warily into the parlor and wondered what had happened.

Hands flat on her thighs, knees bent, like a diver at a pool, Sarie asked, “What shall we do now?” She was imagining Gilbert
and herself bent over the kitchen table, Gilbert’s notepad at the ready, pencil in the air. Gilbert listening to her, writing
what she told him to. She imagined herself shining. But Gilbert tucked his shirt into his trousers and adjusted his old belt.
“I think,” he said, “that I’ll go see Kazansthakis.” Wasn’t that what he’d intended from the start? Shouldn’t he be there
right now, on the patio of the Palm, waiting for a toast? Kazansthakis, after all, together with the little dream, Gilbert’s
little hope, was the reason for this plan—the brains, so far, behind Gilbert’s new idea. The Frosty King would know exactly
what to do. Oh, he’d go there right away.

It was not what she had hoped. But Sarie held her tongue. She did think,
He should stay right here and make the plan with me
, but she also felt, magnanimous, that she should grant her husband a little space for joy. For feeling that he’d done something
important. As he had. With Majid she had learned the place of intermittent silences, and she had also come to see that certain
questions were right on, and others were too quick. Why not treat her Gilbert to a little kindness, too?
It’s true
, she thought. Kazansthakis had been in business for a while, had lived through Independence, and the parlor was aboom. He
would have some contacts, too. Why should she imagine selfishly that she would be this thing’s only heart? Why not be generous,
for once? “All right,” she said, adjusting. “Mr. Frosty will help us with the baskets, then. He will give us counsels.” Proud
of her own kindness, Sarie nodded at her husband, then bent to rearrange the crocheted headrests on the chairs.

“The what?” asked Gilbert, already heading for the door. He had quite forgotten. Had she not held to him so well, so beautifully,
when she’d first heard the news, he might have loosed a laugh. He didn’t. No, a wave of tenderness engulfed him. “The baskets?
Oh, Sarie!” His fingers lingered on the doorknob; his heart beat warmly in his chest. Poor big-boned, helpless, misguided,
funny, darling Sarie. Would she not give up? Her persistence charmed him fiercely. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Of course he will.
The Frosty King, indeed!” As he left, before Sarie could dissuade him or push him from herself he grabbed her face with both
his hands and planted on her damp, soft, open mouth a loud and smacking kiss.

He did not find the Frosty King at the Victorian Palm. Instead, he drank with Göethe Bienheureux (who talked about his sausages)
and bought a Danish engineer a drink. The engineer, impressed by Gilbert’s tenure in the country, was thrilled by Gilbert’s
anecdotes. “It’s an honor,” the man said. Gilbert talked about the Sikh shrines on the railway, and the King of Kudra’s wives.
He also named the disparate places where body parts reputed to belong to Dr. David Livingstone had been diversely laid to
rest. The engineer applauded. “Not really? You don’t say? I’ll remember that one, sir,” he said, “so I can tell my friends.”

Twenty

I
n its part of the city (beside the Old Empire Cinema, just by the new harbor, and not far, either, from the People’s Bank,
the Post Office, the dead clubhouse, and the Court), the Frosty-Kreem was a significant attraction. All kinds of people went
there on a sunny day and had done so for years, and others, when it rained, sought shelter and dessert. At the Frosty-Kreem,
Kazansthakis saw, coming in for cold things after hot lunches of stew, smartly done-up office men with lipsticked women on
their arms; independent ladies ordering fancy sundaes, ateeter on high heels; saw ministers, officials, people from the Customs
Office, others from the Bank. In the afternoons, schoolchildren in groups came—a crush of blue or green topped with white
and satchels; boys with tender Adam’s apples, girls with hardening limbs. He saw the stalwart Vunjamguu types who, after Independence,
had had nowhere to go, and also the new immigrants, the people who had once lived on the islands, and their children. A few
of these were Europeans, teachers, most of all: a bony, quiet woman who had run a Sewing Program (once Livery-Jones had died);
a now-wrinkled Mr. Pursewarden, who had taught literature out there and now wrote poems over chocolate mounds with nuts; and
also solemn Mr. Suleiman, who the Frostys knew had suffered, had had narrow escapes, and who, though he had once driven a
cab, was sometimes brought on foot by nieces, not for ice cream but for shakes.