Author: Anita Shreve
Category: Literature
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/anita-shreve/page,21,48087-a_change_in_altitude.html
She laid her head back upon the pillow and stared at the ceiling. She had been put into a private room with a window near the bed. It resembled a room one might have encountered in London in 1918: a pristine white-iron bed, capable of being shut off from the rest of the room by a long white linen screen; a porcelain water pitcher on a bedside table; no sign of any technology whatsoever, though there were holes in the wall, which she assumed powered various portable machines. The sisters wore their white nursing habits, and on the wall across from the bed was a large, gruesome crucifix.
The sisters cleaned her up, and her doctor examined her. Margaret was prepped for a D and C. When she woke from the twilight sleep, she had no control over the tears. Another new beginning lost before she’d even known it was there.
She first became aware that Patrick was in the room when he bent down and kissed her. He immediately told her she was young and there was plenty of time later to start a family. Besides, Patrick added, it was for the best.
“How can it possibly be for the best?” Margaret wanted to know.
“It’s better that we wait until we get home,” he explained. “Nairobi is no place for a baby.”
“You don’t believe that,” she said, staring into his pale-blue eyes.
“I do, and I don’t.”
“You’re just saying that to help me through it.”
“Maybe. Is helping you through it such a bad idea?”
“Crying would be a better way to help me through it,” she said.
He took her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I feel.”
A baby would have cemented them, Margaret thought.
Patrick let go of her hand and bent to the floor. “Brought you your favorite thing. A vanilla milk shake.”
“Where on earth did you get a vanilla milk shake?”
“I found the kitchen and talked the cook—a nun, by the way—into it. I had to walk her through the steps.”
Margaret took a sip. “Thank you, Patrick,” she said, managing a smile.
“They’ll keep you here a couple of days,” he said.
“A couple of days. Why?”
“It’s not abnormal. They have to watch out for infection.”
In truth, Margaret was glad for the respite. Though she wasn’t fond of the nuns—they were rough and no-nonsense; not a compassionate bone among the lot—the idea of lying on a bed with nothing expected of her seemed a kind of safe haven. A place where she could finally think.
She noticed that Patrick’s knee was knocking up and down. He was anxious, she thought. Why? Anxious to leave?
“By the way, a lot of people want to visit you,” he said.
“Not today.”
“No, but okay if I tell them tomorrow?”
Margaret turned toward her husband. He smoothed her hair. She closed her eyes. After a time, she heard Patrick push the chair back and stand. He touched her cheek with his finger, and then he was gone.
Margaret rolled in the bed and stared through the window. Outside, it was dark and dry. The rains were late this year and hadn’t yet come. Nearly everything was parched. The mud had turned to dust; vegetation had wrinkled to brown. Bodies were harder to keep clean. Dirt wreaked havoc with engines.
She had been pregnant for six weeks. She tried to figure out the moment of conception, but much of those early weeks had been a blur. She tried to imagine what it would have been like to be told she was pregnant. She imagined joy. Would Patrick have made them leave the country at once?
Margaret thought of Rafiq and his pronouncement. He had been proved right yet again. To be with Rafiq but to be pregnant with Patrick’s child would have been unthinkable. And what if Margaret hadn’t known who the father was? The anxiety of having to wait for the birth to find out would have been all but unendurable. She would have had to tell Patrick in order to prepare him.
And yet she would have undergone all of that. Margaret had never ached to hold a baby, but she did then. She couldn’t sort out whether it was her mind or her body that wanted this. Did the desire come from the body, which didn’t need to be told anything?
Margaret allowed herself to imagine a baby, a boy. She felt what it would have been like to pick him up from a cradle and hold him, his head bobbing at her shoulder. Hadn’t shoulders been designed for that precious purpose?
Margaret thought of Rafiq and his face, of his wonderful brown eyes, his Welsh jaw. Of the body she had barely had a chance to touch. Of the sound of his voice, the British accent strangely comforting. She wondered if he knew, if Solomon had told him. Or if he’d overheard the news from a nearby desk. She wondered if, when he’d heard, he’d turned his face away. Or whether he had thought of her and wished the child his.
Margaret thought of Patrick, who’d laid a thin blanket over his feelings. Who saw his role as her protector, her medical manager. In the face of helplessness, he wanted control.
And Margaret thought, as she stared out the window, of Africa, of the country just beyond the screen. It had been her constant companion for nearly a year, teaching her, scolding her, enveloping her. It was in her lungs and blood now. She’d thought she wanted to absorb Africa, but the continent had absorbed Margaret. She could not imagine ever wanting to leave.
Margaret lay parched like everything else in Kenya. She drank a lot of water, on nurses’ orders and on her own. Nothing could slake the thirst. She thought of how everyone would be searching the sky each day, waiting for a telling breeze or a drop. There would be celebrations during the first good soaking rain—muddy festivities marked by dancing, the roasting of goats, drinking, and giving thanks to whomever they felt grateful to.
Flowers came, and cards. The next day, Solomon Obok arrived bearing books: three novels by Kenyans about Kenya, one of them by Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o, the author Margaret had once photographed. During Solomon’s visit, the sisters brought tea, a remarkably kind gesture Margaret hadn’t anticipated, one that encouraged Solomon to sit and talk. But though they spoke of many things—his wife and children; a recent article about Thomas Oulu, who was still being held without benefit of trial, that was causing a stir; and even of people in the office—he never mentioned Rafiq, a sign that Solomon knew, that perhaps he’d known all along. He told her a Kenyan proverb about seeds that didn’t sprout and of seeds sowed later, and about how this second set would always be the stronger of the two.
Margaret laughed. She told Solomon he’d made it up, and he sheepishly confessed. They spoke of weather conditions in which the first seeds wouldn’t take, but the second set would.
“You must come back to work,” Solomon said as he was leaving. “Jagdish is lonely without you.” This produced another good laugh. It physically hurt Margaret to laugh, but it was worth it.
Moses surprised Margaret that afternoon with a basket of avocados from the garden of the Karen house. Margaret marveled at the speed of the bush network. She was moved by his visit and said so, and he was pleased. She worked out that it would take him, to and fro, at least two hours’ traveling time, and she thanked him for making the journey. She asked him how life in the burgled house had been after she and Patrick had gone, and he said that much of the furniture had been recovered from a shop in Eastleigh. In its “visit” away from home, the furniture had been polished and even repaired. The relationship between the Australian mistress and Moses had improved markedly once the pieces had been returned.
Patrick came with necessities: a nightgown and new bathrobe; a mirror and a tube of lipstick; that morning’s edition of the Tribune. The miscarriage had followed so close upon that period of Margaret’s lassitude that she believed Patrick had begun to blur the two events. He was confident that when she was up and about, she would regain her strength rapidly. To that end, he had signed them up at the tennis club. He had a hankering to take up the old sport again.
At dinner, she tried to locate her feelings for her husband, but they eluded her. Though she knew Patrick to be a good person, she couldn’t help but wo
nder if damage hadn’t been done by both of them.
The next morning, Margaret was surprised by a visit from James and Adhiambo. She thought about their journey to the hospital and back, one that would have been even more difficult than Moses’s. As they came closer to the bed, Margaret saw that they were holding hands. Her eyes must have widened, because they both began to laugh. James looked as though he had a canary fluttering inside his chest, and Adhiambo couldn’t stop smiling. They pulled up chairs beside the bed and handed Margaret a package wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with twine. They wanted her to open it before they’d even settled in for a visit. As she unfolded the cloth, she searched for the line drawing beneath the beads and seeds. It took a few seconds to register, but when it did, Margaret gave a little yelp. It was of a woman with a camera to her eye. In the distance was the outline of a city.
“This is wonderful,” Margaret said with genuine awe. “It’s a treasure. Thank you.”
“We have news,” James said.
“I guess so,” Margaret said, glancing at their hands.
“We are living in my house in Lavington, and Adhiambo is making the cloths all the hours of the day and selling them on Kimathi Street.”
“On Kimathi Street,” Margaret said with surprise.
“In a shop with crafts,” Adhiambo explained. “A woman is seeing your picture of the cloth in the newspaper and is finding me. She is with…”
She turned to James.
“The Women’s Collective,” James said.
“And she is offering to sell everything I make.”
“The Collective is taking thirty percent,” James said, “but they are making good prices for Adhiambo’s work.”
Margaret could hardly believe she’d inadvertently done something that had helped another person—though the credit had to go to Rafiq, who’d asked to do the story.
“You will tell Mr. Rafiq,” James said.
“Yes,” Margaret said without missing a beat. “I will tell him. I’m so happy for you.”
Margaret guessed that the Germans had decided that one woman in James’s small house was better than a woman with four children. James might sometimes have access to extra food, she thought, and he could go home each night to a companion. Margaret wondered about the wife in Kitale but remembered she and the children visited once a year, so perhaps that would not be a problem. In any event, it wasn’t Margaret’s problem. As for Adhiambo and her children, maybe her visits home would be more frequent now that she was making money again. Margaret hoped that she was earning more than Arthur and Diana had paid her. Most of all, she was thrilled to see her so happy and out of that dreadful slum in which she had been imprisoned. Margaret had a strong urge to call Rafiq immediately and tell him the good news, an urge she ignored.
She told James and Adhiambo that she would show the cloth to Patrick that night, and he would take it back to the flat for safekeeping. By the time she returned home, it would be on the wall in their living room.
Margaret sat alone in a chair by the window. Patrick had come and gone. By hospital time, it was late, well past visiting hours; in real life, it was just before nine o’clock. The air smelled slightly different than it had the previous night. She couldn’t identify the scent, and after a few moments, it went away. She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up and was reaching for one of the books Solomon had brought her when she saw a shape in the doorway.
He walked to the bed and stood over Margaret. He had on a jacket and tie and held a bouquet of long, straight yellow roses.
“I stole them from Parklands,” he said.
Rafiq handed the flowers to her, and she realized he’d dethorned them as well. Eight stems of perfect roses.
“You got another knife,” she said.
Rafiq emptied a vase of drooping lilies and filled it again with fresh water from the sink. He set the bouquet on the nightstand and took the chair beside the bed.
“I am sorry for the loss of your baby,” he said. “I had to say this to you in person.”
She put her hand over her eyes and tried to gain control of herself. “It’s hard to comprehend,” she said. “Not there before I even knew it.”
He nodded. The echo.
Rafiq would have waited for Patrick to leave the parking lot in the Peugeot. She wondered how he’d managed to slip past the nuns. She didn’t know what, if anything, his visit meant.
“I need some water,” she said.
Rafiq rose and found a glass and filled it to the brim from the pitcher. Margaret drank it.
“The whole country is thirsty,” he said.
“I thought I smelled something different in the air,” she said, nodding toward the window.
“They say the rains will come tonight.”
“I’ve never felt this before,” she said. “The yearning for rain.”
“No one can escape it. For many people, it is already too late.”
“Farmers.”
He nodded.
The lights in the corridor went dim, signaling lights out. Rafiq got up and closed the door. The nuns had been by earlier to check Margaret’s vitals, and she prayed they wouldn’t feel the need to drop in again.
“I have to dim my own light,” she said, “or they’ll come in to see what I want.” She turned on the reading light close to the bed and had Rafiq flip the switch for the overhead.
He took off his jacket and slid it over the back of his chair. He rolled his sleeves and sat down.
“I have some news,” Margaret said in a whisper. “James and Adhiambo were here earlier. They were holding hands.”
Rafiq tilted his head.
“They’re living together in James’s house. Adhiambo has had the best luck, and she asked me to tell you because she thinks you and I made it happen. A woman read your article and saw the picture of the wall hanging. She located Adhiambo and asked her to become part of the Women’s Collective.”
“I know that organization.”
“She makes as many wall hangings as she can and gives them to the Collective to sell. The Collective takes thirty percent. I’m dying to go in and see what they’re asking for Adhiambo’s work. The best part is that she’s out of that hellhole.” Margaret paused. “We did good, Rafiq.”
“Sometimes it happens when you least expect it.”
“I’ve been wondering about James’s marriage.”
“James said he sees his wife only once a year. A marriage of convenience in the city is not so uncommon.”
Margaret nodded.
“He’s a smart guy. He’ll figure it out.”
Margaret looked away, through the open window. The leaves fluttered as if a wind had picked up.
“You are wondering why I have come,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t stay away once I heard the news,” he said. “I kept telling myself it wasn’t any of my business. And it isn’t. But I wanted to tell you in person how sad I am for you.”
Rafiq wouldn’t tell Margaret it was just all right. He wouldn’t gloss over the pain and skip immediately to the future where she would still be young and could have many children. Even James and Adhiambo, no matter how welcome, had tried to be a distraction. Rafiq would always tell the truth.
He stroked Margaret’s arm with the backs of his fingers. Everything inside her that had been tense began to loosen. She wondered what his touch meant. And then she thought that it might mean nothing. She was learning to live like the Masai. When something was there, it was there. When it left, it was gone.
The loosening became a yearning, deeper than the desire for rain.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
“Don’t say anything.”
He ran his fingers up the inside of her arm and then let them drift down to her hand, which he held.
“Don’t go,” she said.
“No.”
Despite Margaret’s desire to stay awake and talk to Rafiq, she could feel herself driftin
g off. The nuns had given her a sleeping pill. “Stay here until I fall asleep,” Margaret said. “I don’t think I could stand having to watch you walk out that door.”
“I’m going to turn out your reading light now.”
After he did, he bent over and kissed Margaret lightly on the lips.
Margaret lay in darkness. The dim light in the corridor had been switched off as well. In Africa, there was seldom any ambient light, particularly when there were clouds, as there were that night. She tried to make out the features of Rafiq’s face, but she could see only his shirt, a ghost settling itself. He still held her hand. She knew that if they were caught, the nuns would tell Patrick. She didn’t care. She just wanted Rafiq not to leave.
Sometime during the night, while Margaret was sleeping, the rains started. She woke early, flooded with a sense of tremendous relief. She sat up and looked around. There was no Rafiq and no note.
He had been there, and now he was gone.
The rains soaked the earth, and the country celebrated. Everywhere, there were smiles, even on the faces of the nuns. Though the heavy rains created impassable roads and caused filthy footprints everywhere, the earth now had its long-awaited drink. The change in the landscape was almost instantaneous. When Margaret walked out of the hospital, a panorama of green buds greeted her. The world had been rinsed and felt clean again.
Patrick was solicitous, cutting back on his workload for two weeks. He stayed home on weekends. She was allowed to be—just be—for which she was grateful. She was trying to swim her way up from the bottom of a pool. On many days, she was successful; on other days, the lost days, she couldn’t get out of bed.
Later, when the lost days became fewer and fewer, Margaret began to mark out her life in milestones. First good walk. Check. First drive into the city. Check. First day back at the office. Check. First visit to the tennis club. Check. When she dared to hit a ball around a court and then swiftly wanted a match, she knew her body was physically healed. Patrick had been waiting for that moment. Not only did he return to his routines but, a few nights later, he asked to make love. Margaret didn’t feel ready, but she had no good excuse. Her doctor had given her the all clear, and Patrick knew that. All of which might have been fine had Patrick not said, as he was unbuttoning Margaret’s blouse, “You’re sure you took your pill today?”