Epilogue
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Two years later, on a Friday morning in June, Nadia woke before the alarm and lay listening to the sound of a man trying to find his other shoe.
"It is not under the bed," she said, with her eyes shut.
"I looked."
"It is not in the cupboard."
"I looked there too."
"It is on the roof of the shed."
There was a short, thoughtful silence from the other side of the room.
"How do you know?" said Eli.
"Because Tina threw it there on Tuesday, when you said her weld was interesting." She opened one eye. "You have been wearing the grey ones since. You're hopping."
"I am not hopping."
"You are doing a sort of..." She waved a hand. "A dignified limp."
"It is an old injury." He appeared in the doorway with one canvas shoe on and the other in his hand, a lean brown man of twenty-seven, in a faded blue shirt with the sleeves rolled and a pencil behind each ear. He looked, she thought, with the same helpless small tug that she had felt every morning for two years, exactly like himself. "I found it. It was in the bucket."
"Why was it in the bucket?"
"I don't ask the questions. I only wear what I'm given."
She laughed, and sat up in bed.
It was a small room. It was on the second floor of a squat block in Kireka, in a compound with a green gate, a ten-minute walk from the shed. A double bed with a blue cover. A table by the window piled with paper. A shelf with a biscuit tin, a pencil stub in a glass, and a laminated certificate, propped on its edge, which they had decided, after a long argument, was too embarrassing to hang. On the wall was a photograph of Mr. Kiggundu's staff in front of a printer, and a postcard of a crayon sun, and a framed brass plaque, small and slightly crooked, that Eli had bought at a market in Owino for twelve thousand shillings.
It said, in curly letters, Poa.
"It is the first of many," he had said, when he hung it. "I have a plan to buy the whole wall."
"Plaques of what?"
"All the stupid things I have said."
"That will be a very large wall."
"I have a long lease."
She looked at it now, in the early light, with a sort of warm detached affection, as one looks at a dog asleep on a step.
Outside, the compound was waking. A radio was playing a hymn. A woman was scolding a child. Somewhere below, in the yard, a goat that did not belong to anyone was eating a bush.
"What time is it?" she said.
"Ten to seven."
"We'll miss it."
"We will not miss it. It never leaves on time."
"It's a Friday."
"It is a Friday," said Eli. "That's why."
They did not need the Matatu any more. That was the joke.
Eli had a second-hand motorbike, a small red Honda with a rack on the back, bought with the first real money from Poa Boxes and named, for no reason, Gerald. Nadia had a desk in a shared office on Kampala Road, four minutes from the old taxi park, with her name on the door, in Hassan's handwriting. There was a small blue sign. EARLY STUDIO. Words and pictures for people who get up before dawn. Under it, on a piece of card, in marker: Please knock. Sandra is on the phone.
Sandra worked there. So did Hassan, on three days, and a girl named Brenda who was nineteen and could draw anything. They had eleven clients. They had Mama Joyce's women, who now supplied nine supermarkets and sold their yoghurt under a label with a round woman and a wooden spoon, in a cold box with POA stamped on the lid. They had a coffee cooperative, a girls' school, a woman in Masaka who made soap, and a bank that had asked for a pamphlet on savings and been told, politely, that it would be a short one. They had a long waiting list. Nadia paid herself eight hundred thousand a month, which was, she sometimes reflected, nearly twice what she had earned at Brightside and not nearly enough to feel safe.
She had decided, by now, that she was never going to feel safe. It had been a surprising discovery. But she had also found that it was possible to be unsafe and happy at the same time, as one can be wet and warm.
She sent four hundred thousand home on the first of every month.
It was not an obligation. It was something they had worked out, on a Sunday in the shop, over a ledger, in a long, noisy, tearful, practical argument that had ended with her mother saying, "Fine. Fine! But you will not send it if you are short," and Nadia saying, "I'll tell you," and her father saying, quietly, from the corner, "I think that is a very good arrangement." Ivan had a place at university in Nairobi, on a partial bursary and a stipend from his sister. Racheal wanted to be a marine biologist. Her mother had sold the second freezer and bought a third.
On Sundays, at eight, she called. She said, "Poa," or "Not great," or "I am so tired I cannot chew," and her mother said, "Then sit down, I am here," and did not make a speech.
It was a very different way to be close. It was slower, and quieter, and better.
The shed had grown.
It was no longer one shed. It was three, in a row, behind a bigger gate, with a painted sign and a proper loading bay and a forklift that Tina drove like a chariot. There were twelve people on the payroll. There was a foam press and a moulding line and a small, stubborn, extremely loud office, in which a man called Moses, who had once been a boda rider and now did logistics, shouted at suppliers on two phones at once. Ivan came on school holidays and learned to weld. Poa Boxes had sold eleven thousand units in fourteen markets. They cost twenty-four thousand shillings. They paid for themselves in a month.
It was not a fortune. Eli was fond of saying that it was the first time in his life he had been poor on purpose, and he was good at it. He took a small salary. He ate lunch at Mama Gonja's. He wore the same grey jacket, patched now at both elbows by a woman in Kireka who did it for two thousand shillings, and carried the black notebook, and drew in it on the taxi. He still said interesting when he meant terrible. He still went quiet, sometimes, at the end of a long week, with his jaw tight, and she would say, "What is it?" and he would say, "I'm not ready," and she would say, "Okay," and make tea.
And his father came on Thursdays.
That had been the strangest part. He had come to the shed two years ago, on a hot Saturday in July, without a driver, in a dark suit and polished shoes, with a gold watch on his wrist and a face like a closed door. He had stood in the yard under the eucalyptus for a long time, and looked at the sign. Then he had walked into the shed, where fifty boxes stood in rows on the concrete, and picked one up. He had turned it over. He had rapped the side with his knuckle.
"The hinge is wrong," he had said.
"I know," Eli had said.
"It will split in the second year."
"I know. I'm working on it."
"Hmm." The old man put it down. He had looked, without a word, at the whole long, cluttered, noisy, foam-smelling space, at Tina on her bucket, and the drill, and the sheet on the wall with its circled number, and a young man with a pencil behind each ear standing very straight in the middle of it, with his hands at his sides.
"Is there tea?"
There had been tea. They had drunk it on upturned crates in the doorway, in a silence that had gone on for twenty minutes, in which neither of them said one useful thing. At the end, Gerald Mugerwa had set down his cup. He had taken a thin brown envelope from his breast pocket, and held it for a moment, and put it back.
"I will buy forty," he said.
"Papa."
"For the fish counters. At the full price." He rose. "Not as a favour. As a customer. I would like an invoice."
"You will have to pay in thirty days."
"I always do."
He had come back the next week, and the next. He did not say much. He brought a flask. He sat on a crate and watched Tina weld, with an expression of great stern interest, and now and then said, "That corner is not straight," and was told, by Tina, that it was. He had never again mentioned the board, or the chair, or the account. He had said, once, on a day when Eli was sure he would say nothing, "I used to carry a box," and had been silent for a long time. Then he had said, "It was heavier than I thought."
Last month, on a Thursday, he had put his hand on his son's shoulder. He had not said anything. He had only left it there, for about four seconds, lightly, like a man testing a stair. And then he had taken it away, and gone and looked at a hinge.
Eli had told her that night, in the dark, in a voice that would not hold still.
"It's all right," she had said.
"I know."
"You're allowed to cry."
"I'm not crying," said Eli. "It's a very persistent smoke."
The Matatu was waiting at the Banda stage at ten past seven.
She saw it as they came round the corner, and her heart did the small, absurd, familiar thing. It had been repainted. That was the surprise. Someone had taken a brush to the white sides, and given it a fresh coat, and along the door, in bright red letters a foot high, with a great deal of loving care, had written THE MATATU. There was a new windscreen. The sign on the dashboard, once faded, had been renewed. MATATU EXPRESS, it said, in gold. It stood at the stage, gleaming in the sun, with its engine running, like an old man in a new suit, slightly embarrassed.
"He has been to the barber," said Eli.
"They've done the roof."
"Tosh did it. He painted it himself, on a Sunday. He says it is a celebration."
"Of what?"
"Of being made the driver." He gave her a sideways grin. "Mzee Kasozi retired in April. He sits in the back."
"He what?"
"He rides. As a passenger. With a newspaper. He says he has driven this road for thirty-three years and would like to see what it looks like from the other side."
She laughed so hard that she had to hold his arm.
It was true. When they climbed in, the old man was there. He was in the last row, by the window, in his flat cap and a clean white shirt, with a small thin newspaper open on his knee, and he did not look up. But as she went by, in the aisle, he put out one finger, without lifting his eyes, and touched the brim of his cap.
She touched hers, which was not there. It was a joke they had.
In the driver's seat sat a broad young man of about twenty-five, in a baseball cap, with a very large grin. He had a new cassette player, taped to the dashboard. It was playing the old rumba, the long, rippling guitar. A boy of perhaps sixteen, thin as a bean, hung from the door in his place, with a cloth round his head, and as they got in, he shouted, in a clear sing-song voice, "Banda, Banda, Kireka, Nakawa! Move in, move in!"
"There's space," said Tosh, from the front, over his shoulder.
"There is always space," said the boy.
"That is the philosophy."
"I know. I'm learning."
They sat in the fourth row, on the right, by the window. It was the same seat. The vinyl had been patched in two places, with brown tape. The window had been mended, and now it closed. She regretted it, a little, and was surprised that she did. The Matatu pulled out of the stage into the sun, and the long road lay in front of them, grey and gold, with the dust blowing up in the morning wind.
She took his hand.
It was at Kyambogo, just past the gate, that she noticed the girl.
She had got on at the last stage, with a crowd of others, and had been standing in the aisle with a folder held against her chest, rocking with the movement of the vehicle. She was about twenty-three. She was thin and straight, with her hair in a tight bun and a good dress and a pair of new shoes that did not quite fit. In her free hand she held a slip of paper. She was looking at it, with an expression of intense, careful, slightly desperate concentration, as if it were an exam.
The corner of her thumb was in her mouth.
Nadia watched her. A strange feeling went through her, soft and complicated and very old.
"Eli."
"Mm?"
"Look."
He looked. He lifted his pencil. He watched the girl for about a second and a half, with the steady look, the one that listened to two things at once. Then something in his face changed, and she felt his fingers close on hers.
At the next stage, a seat came free. It was in the third row, on the left, by the window. The girl looked at it. She hesitated. She looked round, and her eyes, which were large and brown and very frightened, met Nadia's across the aisle.
"Is this seat taken?" she said.
She said it to the woman beside it, in a low voice, with great politeness.
The woman did not answer. She was asleep. It was a woman in a church hat, with her mouth open.
"Not yet," said Eli.
He said it very quietly, with the corner of his mouth moving. The girl turned. She looked at him, startled, and he gave her a small, crooked, perfectly serious smile, and then looked away, out of the window, like a man who has said nothing.
She stood a moment longer. Then, with a faint, uncertain, wondering look, she sat. She smoothed her skirt. She put the folder on her knee, and put the paper carefully inside it. She put her hands flat on the cover, and noticed that they were shaking.
Nadia looked at her for a long time.
She did not say anything. She did not need to. She sat in the fourth row of the old white minibus, with her hand in Eli's, and saw a girl who had come from somewhere with a folder and a list and a pair of new shoes, who was afraid of something and was not going to say. She saw the whole long road, with its dust and its lanes and its cracked tarmac, and the potholes with their private names, and the hands held out on the back of seats. She saw a man in a flat cap, in the last row, with a newspaper, who had carried the same passengers for thirty-three years, and a boy at the door who would one day carry others.
It struck her suddenly how very ordinary it all was.
A vehicle with a dented side, in a queue, on a Friday. A woman with a baby. A schoolboy with groundnuts. A man who made boxes, and a woman who made labels, and a girl who did not know yet what she would make. It was nothing. It was a bench on wheels, at two thousand shillings a seat.
And yet it was the whole thing. It had always been. It was the place where two strangers who did not know each other had sat for forty minutes in the morning, beside each other, in silence, with nothing in their hands, being slowly, carefully, unknowingly kind.
She had thought, once, that it was the road that mattered. That it was a thing you travelled, to get somewhere better. A way out. A way up. A route to a life. She had thought of the Matatu as a means, as one thinks of a ladder, and had been grateful for it, in the way one is grateful for a ladder, and had hoped to leave it behind.
But the Matatu had not been important because it took them somewhere.
It had been important because it brought them to each other.
That was all. That was the whole thing. It had taken her two years, and a flood, and a roundabout, and a thousand and one I'm fines to see it. It was not the road. It was not the city. It was a seat, and a hand on the back of it, and a question asked in a low voice on a crowded morning. Is this seat taken? It was somebody saying, Not yet, and meaning, There is space.
There had always been space. It was only that you had to try.
The Matatu rolled on into the sun. The rumba played. At Nakawa, it went over the Canyon, which had been filled, at last, in March, by a municipal contractor, with great ceremony, and which Mzee Kasozi, from the back, had solemnly declared a disgrace. Everybody in the vehicle said, in the same flat voice, "Kasozi's Canyon," out of habit, and then looked at each other, and laughed. The girl in the third row looked round, wide-eyed. Somebody leaned over and explained it to her.
Nadia put her head on Eli's shoulder.
"Did you get home?" she said.
He did not answer at once. The morning light was coming in through the mended window, gold and clear. His arm came round her. He smelled of pencil shavings and foam and warm cotton.
"Every day," said Eli. "That's the thing. Every day, I do."
She smiled, and closed her eyes.
Outside, the city was waking, as it always did, in its loud, brave, tangled, imperfect way. The boda men were drinking their tea. The women were opening their stalls. A boy was sweeping the front of a shop with a bundle of twigs. A thousand white vehicles were rolling out of a thousand compounds, in the long, golden, unmistakable light of Kampala, toward a thousand stages, carrying a million people who had each been told they would be fine.
And the Matatu went on, with its new paint and its old engine, toward the edge of the morning, carrying them all.