Chapter 9
A Good Life, Promised
It was not a dramatic ending. That was what she could never get over. Sam Kigozi did not shout, or strike her, or throw anything. He did not even close the door.
It happened on a Tuesday in November, at breakfast, over a plate of eggs.
She had been asking him for a week. She had not meant to be a nuisance. She was not a woman who nagged. But the second semester fees had been due on the first, and the school had sent a letter, on cream paper with the blue crest, and she had put it on the table beside his plate and said, quietly, "Sam, about the fees."
"What about them?"
"They're due. It is one million, six. There is a surcharge after the fifteenth."
"Ah." He turned over the page of the newspaper. "Yes. Of course. I'll see to it."
"You said that last month."
"Did I?"
"And in September."
"Did I?" He smiled at her over the paper, with the dimple. "I'm sorry. It's been a mad season. The dealership is slow. Everyone is waiting for the elections. I'll do it this week."
She did not push. She sat with her tea and watched him eat, and a small cold doubt, which she had been carrying for a month, stirred, and sank. It was nothing. It was a delay. A man like Sam had many calls on his money. He would do it. He had always done it.
On Wednesday, he did not come home till two in the morning.
On Thursday, he was out all day.
On Friday, she asked again, and he looked at her for a long moment, over the rim of his glass, and his face did a thing she had not seen before. It went flat. The warmth did not go out of it so much as withdraw, politely, into another room, and what was left was a pleasant, blank, shuttered face, like a shop at night.
"Nabirye," he said. "May I be honest?"
"Of course."
"I am not in a position to pay the fees."
She did not understand. She heard the words, and they went by like foreign money.
"This semester?"
"Any semester."
"But you said..."
"I know what I said." He put down the glass. "I said it with the best of intentions. I meant it. I was in a different place. I have had some reverses. A large order fell through. A buyer in Juba who did not pay. It's put a strain on the cash." He spread his hands, with a rueful smile. "I'm not a rich man, Nabirye. I'm a man who looks like one. It's a very different thing."
"But the house..."
"Is rented."
"The car..."
"Is on a lease."
She stared at him.
"I did not tell you," said Sam, gently, "because I did not want you to worry. And because, to be honest, I did not want you to think less of me. I have been trying to get it back. I have a deal coming in the new year. A big one. If it comes off, I'll do everything I said. The fees. The centre. All of it." He leaned across, and took her hand. "But I can't promise a date. And I don't want to lie to you."
"You've been lying to me for eight months."
"That is not fair."
"You said you would marry me."
"I want to."
"You said you would go to my mother."
"And I will." He did not look away. "In the right time. In the right way. When I can stand in front of her and not be ashamed."
She sat very still in the bright kitchen with the ticking clock.
She wanted to believe him. She could see it, the long, warm, comfortable road. She could see herself saying, It's all right. I understand. I will wait. She could see the house, and the lilies, and the desk with the green lamp, and the sprinkler on the lawn. She could see a future in which nothing at all was required of her except patience.
A man who promises you everything.
"I have to go back," she said.
"Where?"
"To school. To the ward. I have to sort out the fees." She stood. Her chair scraped on the tiles. "I'll ask Shamim. I'll ask my aunt. I'll find the money. I've got to be back by Monday."
"You'll not be able to."
"What do you mean?"
He did not answer at once. He picked up his phone, and put it down. He looked, for the first time since she had known him, uncomfortable.
"I had a call," he said. "On Monday. From a woman at St. Veronica's. A Sister Benedicta. She said you had missed four weeks. That you had not been seen on the ward since October. She said that under the rules, you'd been struck from the register." He swallowed. "I did not want to tell you. I thought I could fix it. I thought if I paid the arrears, and made the case..."
"Struck off?"
"I'm sorry."
"I was there. I was there on Monday!"
"You were at a wedding in Entebbe."
She went cold.
It was true. She had been at a wedding in Entebbe. She had sat in a hall with a glass roof in a cherry-red dress, and eaten duck, and laughed. She had not thought of the ward. She had not thought of the ward, in a week, in a month. She had not noticed.
I did not notice.
She stood in the kitchen, in the clean, bright, sunlit room, with the fridge humming and a vase of lilies on the table, and the whole floor of it dropped away.
"You knew," she said.
"I found out Monday."
"You knew, and you let me..."
"I did not want to hurt you."
"You wanted to keep me here." She heard her own voice, very small and very clear. "You wanted me home. At night. At the table. Not on the ward."
"That is not true."
"Isn't it?"
"I wanted..." He rubbed his face. "I wanted to take care of you."
"With what?"
He did not answer.
It was the silence that told her. It was only a few seconds long, in a sunlit kitchen, with the sprinkler going on the lawn. But in it she saw the whole thing, as one sees the rooms of a house when the lights go on. She saw the dinners, the phone, the dress. The kit that had been paid for once, in February, with a card. The fees he had said he would pay, and had not. She saw eight months of small, warm, generous gestures, each of which had been a nail, and every one hammered neatly into the same shape.
He did not do it on purpose, she thought. He did not plan it.
It would have been easier if he had. A villain can be left. But Sam had not been a villain. He had been something worse. He had been a weak, charming, tender man who liked to be loved, and who had been unable, in the end, to bear the weight of what he had been loved for.
"I'll go," she said.
"You don't have to."
"I do."
"Nabirye, wait. Stay for a few days. I'll find you a place. I'll..."
"No."
"Let me at least..."
"No." She turned. "Don't. Don't say any more. You have said it all beautifully. You say everything beautifully. Please. Let me go."
She went upstairs. She packed. It took ten minutes. She put her clothes in the suitcase, and her books, and her stethoscope. She did not take the dresses. She stood in front of the wardrobe, with its sliding doors, and its row of cream and cherry and gold, and found that she could not touch them. They hung there, soft, expensive, intimate, like the skins of someone she had been.
At the bottom, beneath the shoes, she found the green exercise book. She opened it. A white card fell out, from between the pages. KIGOZI MOTORS. Honest cars for honest people.
She looked at it for a long time.
Then she put it back, and put the book in the suitcase, and went down.
The salon was on a corner in Katwe, in a container painted purple, and when she walked in, at four in the afternoon, with a suitcase and a face like a sheet of paper, Shamim dropped a comb.
"Oh, my friend," she said.
She did not say anything else. She put down the head she had been braiding, a plump woman in a plastic cape, with a face of enormous affront, and she crossed the floor and put her arms round Nabirye's neck. They stood in the middle of the salon, in the smell of relaxer and hot oil, with half a dozen women watching, and Nabirye, for the first time since the kitchen, began to cry.
"I know," said Shamim. "I know. I know. Sit."
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"I didn't listen. You said, be careful. You said it. I..."
"Stop." Shamim pushed her gently into a chair. She crouched in front of her. Her lipstick was smudged and her braids were falling down and she was looking at her with the whole of her round, ironical, loving face. "Listen. You are not to be sorry. It's not allowed. You fell in love. It's a thing that happens. It's not a crime."
"I'm so stupid."
"You are the least stupid person I know." She wiped Nabirye's cheek. "He is a nice man who has no money. That is all. It is the saddest story in the world. It is also the most common." She sniffed. "Come. You will stay with me. The right side is still yours. I have not even moved the wigs."
"I can't pay."
"Did I ask?"
"I'm not going back to school."
"Then you will do something else."
"What?"
"I don't know." Shamim sat back on her heels. "But you will not do it today. Today you will sit in this chair, and Aisha will make you a tea, and you will not think about it at all." She looked over her shoulder. "Aisha! Tea! The strong one!"
A girl with a nose stud brought it. It was thick and sweet and scalding, and Nabirye drank it in the chair, among the hum of dryers, with a stranger's baby asleep on a mat beside her feet, and the afternoon went by in a long fog of chatter and steam.
She did not know that, at that moment, a man was watching her.
He was sitting in the corner by the window, under a dryer, in a white kanzu and a pair of spectacles, with a newspaper open on his knee. She had noticed him in a vague way when she came in, a grey-haired man in his fifties, with a large stomach and a calm, heavy, well-fed face, waiting. She had assumed he was somebody's husband.
He was not. He was a client. He came every second Thursday, at the salon of a woman he had known for fifteen years, to have his beard trimmed by the girl called Aisha, and to read the papers, and to wait, with the patience of a man who owned his time, for a sister-in-law who was always late. His name was Mr. Godfrey Walusimbi. He owned three hotels in Entebbe and a chain of petrol stations along the Masaka road. He was married, with five children, two of them at university in London, and a wife of whom he spoke with grave and genuine respect. He was also a man who had never been refused.
"Excuse me," he said.
She looked up.
He had put down the newspaper. He was looking at her over the rim of his glasses, with a mild, courteous, appraising expression, like a man examining a piece of cloth. He did not smile.
"I could not help overhearing," said Mr. Walusimbi. "I am sorry. I did not mean to intrude. But I understand you are looking for work."
"I'm not."
"Of course." He nodded. "Forgive me. I misunderstood. I thought I heard that you were a student of nursing. And that circumstances had changed."
"I don't know you."
"No. That would be a pity." He folded the paper, with a neat small movement. "I will introduce myself. I am Godfrey Walusimbi. I run the Lake Victoria Palm Hotel in Entebbe. I am always, always short of good people. Intelligent, reliable, honest people. People who know how to care for a guest." He laid emphasis on the word. "A nursing background is exactly what I need. In the hospitality trade, you understand. A nurse understands the human body. She understands distress. She is, in a way, the perfect receptionist."
"I'm not a receptionist."
"Of course not. I would not insult you. I'm thinking of a position in the office. Guest relations. A salary of two million a month, to begin. With accommodation. And a vehicle." He said it flatly, as one gives the time. "I would pay for you to complete your studies, if you wished, in the evenings. I have a connection at a good school in Entebbe. Your fees would not be an obstacle."
The salon had gone quiet.
She felt it, rather than heard it. The dryers still hummed. But the women round her, the one with the baby, the girl with the nose stud, the plump customer in her plastic cape, had stopped, very slightly, as one stops on a stair when a floorboard creaks. And Shamim, at the counter, with a comb in her hand, had turned her head, and was looking at Mr. Walusimbi with an expression of frozen, tender, absolute dismay.
"That is a very generous offer," said Nabirye.
"I am a generous man."
"I don't know why you would make it."
"Because I know quality when I see it." He rose, slowly, from under the dryer. He was a big man, taller than she had thought, with a stately, ponderous grace. He took a card from the pocket of his kanzu, and held it out between two fingers. It was cream, thick, embossed with a gold palm tree. "I am not asking for an answer. Take your time. Come and see the hotel. Bring your friend, if you like. She seems a person of sense."
"Thank you."
"Good afternoon, ladies." He bowed, to the room. At the door he paused, with his hand on the frame. "Miss Kibirige."
She had not told him her name.
He smiled, for the first time, a small, slow, almost tender smile, and she saw that his teeth were very white and very even. "I asked Aisha," said Mr. Walusimbi. "I hope you will forgive me. I have a weakness. I like to know the names of people I am going to help."
The door shut behind him.
For a moment nobody spoke.
"No," said Shamim.
"What?"
"No. Don't. Do not even think."
"It's a job."
"It is not a job." Shamim put down the comb with a click. She came across the floor. "Nabirye. Listen to me. I have been in this city for six years. I know that man. Not him, but the type of him. I know that voice. I like to know the names of people I'm going to help. Eh!" She flung up her hands. "Do you know what that sentence means? It means, I have a house, and a wife, and a bed in a room, and you will fill it."
"You don't know that."
"I know it in my skin."
"He said it was an office."
"They always say an office."
"I need a job."
"Not that one."
"Then which?" Her voice cracked. She was on her feet. "Which one, Shamim? Show me. I have no school. I have no money. I have a suitcase and a tin of groundnuts and a mother who thinks I'm in a ward. I can't go home. I can't. Not like this. I told them everything was fine." She was crying again. "What do you want me to do? Wash heads? Wait tables? I'm trained to hold a catheter, not a comb."
"You will find something."
"I have."
"No." Shamim took her by both shoulders. Her face, under the smudged lipstick, was suddenly stripped of all its comedy, tight and frightened and old. "You have not found a job. You have found a hand. And it is a big warm hand, and it will feel like a rescue. I know. Because I took one, when I was seventeen. And I have been holding it ever since."
Nabirye stared at her.
"Do not do it, my friend," said Shamim, very low. "Please. I am begging you. Do not do the thing that I did."
But Nabirye had already seen the card.
It lay on the arm of the chair, where he had put it, small and cream and gleaming, with its gold palm tree. She saw it as one sees a lit window from the bottom of a well. It was warm. It was bright. It said, Two million a month. It said, Accommodation. It said, Your fees would not be an obstacle.
She thought of a bare room in Katwe, with a pink curtain, and a bulb that flickered in thunder. She thought of a letter on cream paper. She thought, with a sudden fierce flare of animal despair, of a green exercise book in which she had written, at the age of nine, I want to build a place where nobody has to be carried.
I will do it, she thought. I will do it for a year. I will save. I will pay the fees myself, and go back, and finish. It's only a job. It's only until I'm on my feet.
It is only a dinner.
"I'm just going to look," she said.
"Nabirye."
"Only look. I'll go to the hotel. I will see. I won't do anything I don't want to."
"Please."
"I'm not a child, Shamim."
"No." Shamim let go. She stood with her hands hanging, in the middle of the purple salon, among the dryers and the combs, with an expression that Nabirye would see, at night, for a very long time. "You are not. That is exactly the problem."
The Lake Victoria Palm Hotel stood on a low hill above the water, a handsome white building, with a red roof and a long veranda, surrounded by lawns and palm trees. Inside it was cool, and quiet, and smelled of polished wood and fresh flowers. A fountain played in the lobby. A young man in a bow tie bowed. A pianist, in the corner, was playing something slow and golden on a white piano.
Mr. Walusimbi received her in his office.
It was a large, beautiful room on the first floor, with a view of the lake. A great desk of dark wood. A leather sofa. A bookshelf of leather-bound volumes, and a bar in the corner, and on the wall, framed, a photograph of a young man in a suit at the opening of a hotel, shaking hands with a president. He rose when she came in. He took her hand in both of his. He did not hold it too long.
"You came," he said.
"I wanted to see."
"I am glad." He gestured at the window. "Look. This is the lake. It is the finest view in Uganda. I chose the site myself. It was a swamp, you know. Nobody wanted it. They said I was mad." He smiled. "I have always liked a thing that other people could not see."
She looked. The lake lay below her, wide and blue and shining, with a long green island on the horizon and a fishing boat on the water. The sun was going down. It threw a path of gold across the surface, from the hotel to the edge of the world.
"It's beautiful," she said.
"It is. And it could be yours." He said it softly, at her shoulder. "I mean the view. Of course. Not the lake." He laughed, a low, warm, comfortable laugh. "I have a house, you know. On the hill behind. It is small. Four bedrooms. I built it for my mother, God rest her, and then she died, and nobody lives in it now. I thought it might suit a young woman who was beginning her life."
"I couldn't."
"It would be for you. Only you." He did not touch her. He stood looking at the water, with his hands behind his back. "I am a man with a very great deal, Miss Kibirige. And a very small amount of company. I have a wife, whom I respect. We have been married thirty years. I will not insult you by saying more than that. But I am fifty-two, and I find that I am tired of being alone in a large house. I should like to help someone. Someone with a dream. And I think, from the moment I saw you, I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That you are not like the others." He turned his head. His eyes behind the spectacles were soft and sad and a little moist. "You did not ask me for anything. In the salon. You were crying, and you said no. A girl who says no to a good offer is a girl who has self-respect. I find it so rare."
She stood with her hands clasped, in the beautiful office, with the lake gold behind her.
Look at his hands, said Ssenga.
She looked. They were large, soft, brown, very clean. He wore a gold ring, a thick one, on the third finger of the left. He moved them with a slow, gentle, deliberate care, like a man handling porcelain. They did not shake. They did not reach. They hung at his sides, still, the hands of a man who had learned, a long time ago, that he did not have to take what would be given.
He doesn't need to say so, she thought.
It was the wrong lesson. It was the exact opposite of the truth. But it was a sentence in her aunt's voice, and it fitted, and she was so tired.
"What would the job be?" she said.
"Whatever you wished." He smiled. "I think you should start with a rest. A fortnight. At the house. A few weeks to find your feet. Then, if you like, the office. Or the school. Or nothing at all." He lifted his shoulders. "I am a patient man. There is no hurry. You have a whole life."
"A good one?"
"The best."
It was what he said. It was what Sam had said. It was what everyone, in that long bright year, had said, in one voice or another, in different rooms. A good life. It had become, for her, a kind of music, a continuous sweet drone in the back of her head. She was no longer listening to the words. She was listening to the tune.
She looked at the lake. The gold path had begun to fade.
"Yes," said Nabirye.
Mr. Walusimbi bowed his head.
"You will not regret it," he said.
It was the most truthful thing that anyone had said to her in a year. But she did not hear the other half. She did not hear the clause that followed, silent and invisible, like a signature at the foot of a page. You will not regret it, because you will not be permitted to.