‘Excuse me,’ Strebel said, tapping lightly on the door. The driver made a low moan and opened his mouth. Then his eyes. He stared at the ceiling of the Toyota for a long moment, so long that Strebel’s eyes were also drawn to the spot. But there was nothing there. In a series of movements — was it possible to be so slow and still considered moving? — the driver sat up, yawned, adjusted the seat, sniffed, scratched his neck, lifted his hands so they floated slowly, slowly down onto the steering wheel.
‘Are you a taxi?’ Strebel ventured.
‘Taxi, yes,’ the driver replied, scratching his crotch. ‘You want hoteli?’
‘Yes.’
‘Twenty dollar.’
Strebel got in the back. It looked as if a wild animal had attacked the seat in a fit of pique. Nowhere did the seat retain its integrity, and Strebel was forced to straddle a crevasse in the foam that could swallow a child whole. But what were his options? He glanced out of the window into the white furnace, the grass wavering in the oily heat. What was he doing here? Tanga. Tanga?
The driver started the car and they crept away from the airstrip. Ingrid’s arthritic grandmother could have outpaced them.
* * *
‘This best hoteli.’ It didn’t look like much: a six-floor cement block with obtruding balconies. Strebel handed over the twenty dollars and got out. The driver came after him, talking excitedly. He was a large, bald man with hands the size of Christmas hams. He was shouting now, something in Swahili, and waving the money. Gauging the distance from the taxi to the hotel entrance at about ten feet, Strebel smiled a calm, traffic-stop smile; and, as if on smooth wheels, moved quickly to the door. Inside, he did not look back.
It took a moment for his pupils to dilate. The receptionist was a pretty, smiling girl. She wore a name tag identifying her as Alice. Her skin was perfect — smooth and clear so that it shone like polished wood. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said in careful English. ‘How may we help you today?’
‘I’m hoping I have the right hotel. A friend of mine is staying here. She recommended it.’
‘What is her name, sir?’
‘Pilgrim Jones.’
Alice eschewed the large gray desktop — blind and silent. She flipped through a battered Guest Registry book. On the wall above hung a notice promising ‘Wi-Fi in every r
m!’ Who had drawn the smiley faces? Alice?
She triumphantly closed the book. ‘I remember her! A very pretty lady. She was here for only a few days. And then she went with Mama Gloria.’
‘Mama Gloria?’
‘She is very kind. She is trying to help the AIDS orphans.’
‘I see. That’s good of her. How could I contact Miss Jones?’
Alice thought a moment, then opened a door to a closet-sized office. Inside, a young man hunched over a table of accounts. They conferred.
‘Miss Jones we don’t know. But Mama Gloria. All the drivers know her. We all know her,’ she waved a hand prettily, then pushed a registration form toward him. ‘You are staying with us now? In-suite room is fifty US per night, breakfast included.’
‘I’d like the same room as Pilgrim. If that’s possible.’
Nodding, she selected a key and delivered it to him with a bright smile. However, this changed when she saw his money. She took one twenty and handed the other bills back. ‘Oh, sorry, sir.’
‘What?’
‘These dollars. Pre-millennium we cannot accept.’
‘Why not? They are legal tender. I got them from a bank in Switzerland.’
‘Do you have others? We cannot take these.’
‘I don’t understand. Switzerland is the banking capital of the world.’
She smiled, a lovely smile that he realized was a wall. He could bash his head against it to zero effect.
Strebel rifled through his wallet and found notes that met her requirements. ‘Please be comfortable,’ she said.
In his room — Pilgrim’s room — he removed his clothes. He peeled them, for they stuck like eggshell to the damp, pale egg of his body. He strode hopefully to the shower in the small bathroom — the ‘in-suite.’ There was a single tap. He turned it. The shower head sputtered, emitting a brief, violent jet the color of cola. Strebel wanted to shout and hit it, but there was nothing at hand except his bottle of shampoo.
Then the water came, cold and clear and steady. He stepped into it with deep gratitude that allowed him to comprehend the miracle of a tap. Why had he never considered how few people on the planet had experienced a shower?
* * *
He awoke later, abruptly, a copy of Newsweek stuck to his bare chest. He recalled only lying down, the overexcited squeak of the bed springs. Reading? An article about Sudan. Or was it Somalia? Terrible things, he couldn’t comprehend — even as a policeman. The scale of atrocities frightened him because it implied original sin, rather than tightly contained circles of abuse. In Switzerland, specific excuses could be made: bad parents, mental illness. He had managed to fall asleep, mid-atrocity: gangs of men with mirrored sunglasses and guns committed the most gruesome genocide to court international attention.
Ingrid had recently told him that horror was inconvenient, coming at you on the TV news before dinner. You resent it, she’d said, and you feel bad resenting it, and wonder what you should do to not feel bad. But the only solution is to undergo some kind of fundamental change in how you live your life, to become a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières or a social worker for abused kids. At least stop buying goods made in Chinese sweatshops. It’s so big, she’d continued, so impossible and awkward, and the easiest thing — therefore — is to feed the cat instead or make a note to buy more washing powder. And we always do the easiest thing, don’t we?
She’d said this without looking at him, as if — he thought — she was talking to someone else. In fact, as if she was someone else talking to someone else, not Ingrid and Paul who talked of very little except, occasionally, the dunderhead son-in-law in a concerned, vaguely judgemental way. They never spoke to each other like this. She’d never ask him about his work. Long ago, they’d realized it was no subject for conversation.
After this odd outburst, she’d turned from him and quietly served up the sausages and spätzle.
Now he debated that she had meant something else when she’d said, ‘And we always do the easiest thing, don’t we?’ The don’t we seemed specific rather than general. Seemed to be woman-speak for: I know you have this big moral code that you live by out there, Mr Policeman, but you always do the easiest thing at home.
Recently, he’d noticed she had bunions. She’d had lovely feet when they’d first met. He’d seen that right away, her delicate, neat, high-arched feet in sandals. The elegance of her bare footprints in the Greek sand. Did bunions appear overnight, or grow slowly? And when? And why? What, exactly, were bunions?
He was overdue to contact her. He turned on his phone, but it did not work. He turned on his computer, but could not find a connection. He dressed quickly and went downstairs to ask Alice.
‘I am sorry, sir, the Wi-Fi, it is not working.’
‘Yes, I know. But when do you think it will be working?’