The Blue Taxi (43 page)

Others were old residents whose families had built the firmer parts of town. Among them, Theosophists and Hindus, Sikhs and
Catholics, too. Others from the offices: the girl who worked, he thought, reception at the corner clinic, and her husband,
the meteorologist with a mustache, who did something in town. Evening moviegoers, who could fill him in on what had happened
on the screen if he couldn’t get away and see it for himself; and also the expatriates, the fresh post-Independence folk who
gave the place new life. (“The expats,” he would say, while Mrs. Frosty rolled her eyes at him. “Their wives don’t pat them
anymore!”) There were Danes and Swedes and Finns, serious men who tirelessly initiated roads, the plans for which had been
drawn up in countries full of snow; doctors, German and Chinese, who bemoaned the state of things; some inscrutable geologists.
He also saw a good deal of the airline people: Hans, the German, with his lean wife Greta and two fat boys who liked strawberry
ice; a never-married Dutchman (Jan?) with pearly, vacant eyes who ordered huge banana splits but did not like whipped cream.
And, of course, most regular, the family from France.

Xavier and Madame Celeste, a small and shapely couple with four anxious little girls, came, almost without fail, every other
afternoon. Xavier had no real taste for ice cream, but he liked to talk with Kazansthakis while his girls sat by the window,
where they pointed shamelessly at people on the other side of that clean glass with motions of their spoons. They liked vanilla
scoops awash in chocolate sauce, which Madame Celeste, with a nervous giggle and a flash of creamy teeth, always very loudly
called “a Negro in a shirt.” Indeed, while outside poorer folk bought orange ices from the cyclists when they could, or only
dreamed of sharbat, juice, and yogurt shakes that they could not afford, in safer circles the Frosty-Kreem was central, and
Kazansthakis knew it. If he listened closely while he worked, he could acquire new connections, and could
stay as up-to-date as nearly anyone in power, or more. And though he didn’t like to do it, he could ask for favors now and
then. In the wake of Gilbert Turner’s outlandish proposal, at the urging of his wife, Kazansthakis had put out a single feeler
to help things come out right.

The Air France troop came into the parlor, as expected, on a Thursday afternoon. Casting nervous glances at the Frosty King,
his wife, and his own hands, Xavier had waited by the register until the girls, with Madame Celeste presiding, were seated
at the window. Impatient, tugging at his sleeves, he watched Kazansthakis for a while, until he had no choice but to go through
with what he’d come for. He slicked down his light hair; moving closer in, he raised his arms so that the counter’s edge was
tucked into his armpits. His hands reached out to Mr. Frosty. Kazansthakis, occupied, saw the air man wink and wondered whether
Xavier had something in his eye. “Are you all right?” he asked. Xavier crooked his finger. “Kazansthakis,” he said in a whisper.
“Those things you wanted,
man ami.
” Kazansthakis wiped red syrup from his hands and frowned. Xavier looked lugubrious. “What you asked me for. They’ve come.”

“Ah?” At first, thinking about cones and sprinkles, the Frosty King did not understand. He rubbed idly at a silver scoop,
checked his white apron for stains. “Hmm?”

Xavier brought his head so low that the counter glass fogged up with his breath. “Those things you wanted.”

Kazansthakis, who had so many things to keep track of, couldn’t think what Xavier meant. He looked the Frenchman in the eye
and waited. A sigh was building in his mouth, a tapping in his foot. Xavier brought his face even closer to the Frosty King’s.
He cast a glance over his shoulder at the girls, and Kazansthakis for a
moment thought that Xavier, who’d gone red, might be suffering from sunstroke or be about to tell the Frosty King his latest
dirty joke. “The spark plugs!” Xavier whispered.

Kazansthakis stilled his raised foot in mid-tap and brought it down around his other ankle, like a serpent at a tree. He squeezed
the unsighed sigh back down into his throat. “Ah,” he said. “Ah. Hah.” The spark plugs. He remembered now. The Air France
flight had come in on the Monday. “Ah, hah. Very good.”

Xavier, whose whisper had the sound of sand, said he would go get them. He gestured, like a mime,
They are in the car
. “I’ll be back,” he said. Kazansthakis rolled his eyes, thinking that unless Xavier grew accustomed to acting more discreetly,
he’d not call on him again. How could a secret be a secret if one treated it so strangely? “So go,” he said. “You think they’re
good to me out there?”

He stepped away from Xavier and attended to a schoolgirl who’d come in with a little less than the right change. “Just this
once,” he said to her, though he didn’t really mean it. While the Frosty King scooped lemon ice into a cone, Xavier went out
to his Citroën and came back with a box that bore the label
Fins Pâtés de France
. Mrs. Frosty, who’d come out from the storeroom, said she loved pâté and showed him where to put it.

The next day, the Frosty King stepped out of his parlor and, unaccompanied, excited, yes, despite himself, headed for Kikanga.
What he held was too important to hang on to, too interesting to take to the Victorian Palm without knowing for certain that
Gilbert would be there. He’d put Gilbert Turner down, it’s true, had never thought he’d do a single interesting thing—but
now that Uncle James had come so brightly through, what if the plan worked?

Hoping that no police or party chairman on the prowl would stop to ask him how or who he was, or where he might be going (or,
indeed,
what was in the box
), the Frosty King stuck close to the buildings. He did not much care for sun. He infrequently took walks so far from his
own shop. He hated, hated, sweat. But he wanted very much to see—was looking forward to!—Gilbert Turner’s face when he showed
him what he had.

Upstairs, in number 2, Sarie was staring out the window and biting at her lip. Gilbert, at the kitchen table, sat looking
at a picture in
The Everyman’s Car Handbook:
a watercolor image, delicate and soft, showed a man in steel-blue coveralls scratching at his head with one pink hand while
a spotted dog lay loyal at his feet. More attracted by the painting of the man than by the efficient diagram of a standard
carburetor on the facing page, Gilbert found his own pink fingers moving to his head. When Sarie, passing close to him, tried
to look over his shoulder, he’d said, “Not quite yet, my dear. Not yet,” and covered up the picture. She’d drummed her fingers
on the table, bored her worried eyes into his naked brow for almost a full minute, then turned her back to him.

When Kazansthakis came, she was pleasant and polite. Like her husband, she believed in Mr. and Mrs. Frosty. She thought,
He’s come to help, give us some advice
. Gilbert stood to greet the Frosty King. Without asking what it was, or understanding that it was meant for him, Gilbert
took the package. Sarie shook Mr. Frosty’s hand. She asked after Mrs. Frosty, and Kazansthakis winked. “She’s fine, just fine,
Mrs. Turner. But she asks after you, and you we do not see.”

Sarie smiled at him, felt that she could trust him. Wished to please him, very much. “I will make you grenadine!” she said,
which was special, rare, and of which they were almost out. She slipped into the kitchen feeling, hoping, that at any moment
now,
the quivering in her stomach might go still. The Frosty King must make everything come right. Gilbert would shape up at last,
speak out and
get going
.

Gilbert didn’t understand at first. While Kazansthakis described circles in the air to loose his shoulders from the walk,
Gilbert said, “What’s all this, then?” Kazansthakis pursed his lips and sent his nose to one side of his face, looking for
a moment like a trickster at Mbuyu Mmoja Park. “You shall see, my friend!” Kazansthakis cracked his knuckles, rubbed his chest,
and grunted. “A gift. Something I am giving you. For your grand and new beginning.” Kazansthakis raised his brow; he winked.

Gilbert, mesmerized, watched as Kazansthakis pulled a handsome pocketknife from his belt loop, knelt, and sliced the box lid’s
lips. The cardboard flaps came open like a double door, and Kazansthakis motioned with his head that Gilbert ought to come
and see.

Gilbert did not like to kneel or squat. His legs, he’d often felt, were not designed for such an awkward, native posture.
But the Frosty King was waiting on the floor. Gilbert, one elbow propped on a splayed knee, tried to look as comfortable as
he could; he kept losing his balance. Holding himself up with a palm flat on the carpet, he looked into the box.

With all his reading and his notes, Gilbert should have known exactly what they were. Cylindrical. A dull, flat-headed tip.
They looked almost familiar, yes. Did not the pink man have some? A central, bulbous bolt extending into porcelain.
What are they?
Gilbert frowned.
I’ve seen these things before
. Five regular, fine grooves. The Frosty King, at Gilbert’s curious silence, took on the air of a highly trained magician
who has pulled a rabbit from a tiny hat but hears no audience clap. “Turner!” he said. “Well? Turner. Tell me what you think.”

To please the Frosty King, Gilbert said, “Oh!” and, “Ah.” Wobbling on his heels, uncomfortable, he waited for knowledge to
descend.

Kazansthakis was not fooled. He sighed. “Oh, Mr. Turner, what
will
we make of you?” he finally said. “You are a dreamer from the start, with your hair high in the clouds. Look again, my friend.
Look hard. I got them from Japan!” Kazansthakis parted the brown flaps and held them firmly down.

Gilbert wished the Frosty King would give him just a moment, just some time to think. Feeling small and trapped, he reached
out towards the box and placed his hands inside. The shiny necks felt cool and smooth and round. He knew what these things
were, he did. But what could they be called?

The Frosty King went on in disbelief: “You must be joking, man,” he said. Gilbert was horridly ashamed. Would the Frosty King
abandon him, disgusted? His face went deeply red. He sensed a headache rise; his scalp twitched. Kazansthakis sat back on
his heels. His voice was not
too
hard. “Oh, Mr. Turner. Too many storybooks for you, I think! You can’t see a single thing that isn’t written down.”

Gilbert raised a little cylinder into the air and peered up at its gleam.
Longer than my thumb
, he thought. He struggled, closed his eyes.
I know
, he thought,
I know
. It was important that he say the correct thing. What would Kazansthakis think if he couldn’t name them—these items that
(this much he understood) were intended for the business? But, yes. The answer came to him. He pulled on his friend’s arm;
his tugging caused the Frosty King to lose his balance and land rolling on his back. “Yes, of course!” At last! “They’re spark
plugs!” Oh, he
had
learned something after all, from that marvelous, valuable book. He was laughing, on the floor.

“They’re spark plugs,” Gilbert said again, and Kazansthakis
rolled over and hugged him. “That they are, my friend!” Gilbert felt as tightly held as when he had come home from the Post
Office and Sarie’d swung him round. But in Kazansthakis’s strong, thick arms, he felt a certitude he hadn’t in his wife, a
wave of manly pleasure. That he was not alone.

“Spark plugs!”
It’s going to work!
he thought. The car handbook was difficult, indeed, but with such a friend as this—! The Frosty King
would
help him. He
would
learn what each thing was, in time. And wouldn’t people shopping for spare parts themselves explain exactly what they needed?
They
would tell him what was what. And he would write it down and find it. Gilbert hid his face in the crook of Kazansthakis’s
shoulder, where the Frosty King was moist and rich from his long walk. The Frosty King was ticklish, and Gilbert’s breath
there made him giggle; next, spark plug burning in his hand, Gilbert giggled, too.

When Sarie came out from the kitchen and said, “What are you men doing?” Gilbert, in his happiness, thought that she was lovely.
The most magnificent thing on earth. So beautiful! Blond and rosy, graceful! So deserving of his love! He was laughing, still,
and happy. “Look!” he said. “Look what he has brought us!
Spark plugs!
” Sarie looked suspicious, wary of the happiness collecting in her husband and also in the Frosty King, who, still giving
the odd giggle, was looking Gilbert over with a proud, approving look, shaking his big head as though Gilbert had performed
an admirable feat.

“Spark plugs?” Sarie frowned. She set down the tray she’d come with, approached them. Softly, Sarie said, “But, Mr. Frosty,
why? Do you mean for our business?”

Something in her shifted from one foot to the other. Sarie, who had welcomed him so freely, sensed something go dark and felt
suddenly indignant—for herself and for her husband.
How like the
Frostys to imagine they know best
, she thought. How like them to act without permission. Who did they think they were? Spark plugs? What for, what for? The
front parlor seemed to shimmer. “You have committed a mistake,” she said. “Though of course this is very nice of you to think.
But has my husband not explained?”

Kazansthakis did not rise. With a dainty flourish and a bow, he reached over to the table and took his grenadine. He sipped,
licked his upper lip. “Thank you, Mrs. Turner.” He raised the glass, which glinted in the light. And, thinking that she, perhaps
not unlike her husband, was a little
slow
, revealed what Gilbert had not thought to, what Gilbert had been saving up for last. “I have brought your husband, this Automotive
Turner, his first box of spare parts.” He held the glass up in the air as if making a toast. “To get the business going. Spark
plugs. My little gift to you.” He twitched his generous lips, a moue. “Do we like those apples, eh? What do you say to that?”