Free The Blue Taxi by N. S. Köenings Page B

was the softest, could be
     counted on to make sure that kindnesses were done. “All five of them. For him.”
    As the Turners left, Majid Ghulam walked down the stairs behind them. He was barefoot, still, and Sarie was aware of the light
     shuffling sound his flesh made on the steps, something like a whisper. She thought she felt his eyes fixed on the middle of
     her back. At the bottom, in the doorway, Majid Ghulam behaved like a good host, as a decent person should. He even said to
     Mrs. Turner that he hoped she would return. That she and her small girl could visit any time. Agatha—he smiled at her so that
     the corners of his eyes curved down like two arrows—Agatha, he added, hadn’t seen the parrot.
    Outside it was cool, still light, but promising a heavy evening blue. On the balcony at Mansour House, Bibi craned her neck
     and thought she saw a heavy figure in a dress stumble in the alley. “Orange, yes, I think,” she would later say. “A trampy
     little rag, too short to be believed.”

Four
    A t the Turners’ own Kikanga building (Mchanganyiko Street, number 698, concrete, pale, and gray), Gilbert was ready to go out.
     He considered waiting until Sarie had come home. He liked to say good-bye to her from the doorway while she sat in the kitchen.
     If Agatha was in, he also liked, sometimes, to pat her on the head and feel for a quick moment the gloss of her dark hair,
     though it was always, he thought, cold, not quite as heads should be. He wondered what had kept them. But waiting—that was
     silly. Approximating a
harrumph
of the sort Colonial types had often given out, Gilbert sniffed. Narrowing his eyes, he looked once more into the kitchen,
     shrugged, stretched the muscles in his neck, and stepped out of the flat.
    As was Gilbert’s custom, he wandered by the seafront at the ragged edge of town. Ahead of him, thick, high jacarandas and
     flame trees in full bloom made the avenue a tunnel. Between their arching trunks, the water, a hard metallic blue inlaid with
     seaweed black, extended flat and low towards a yellowing sky; farther out, unpeopled islands shimmered, mangroves silver-green
     and creamy in the tricky ocean light.
    Up the road, the city’s forced activity was ending. Families from nicer places like Uzuri and Matumbo would arrive in pickup
     trucks (old and rusted, sure, but given what those days were like, impressive, the best that could be had). In chatty well-dressed
     groups, they’d head out for a treat: the Old Empire Cinema, or theFrosty for a cone. Tired paperboys would make a final round before climbing into buses; custodians and the tea-ladies would
     be packing up their things; the High Court’s final case would close, and the wide brass-studded doors would part to spill
     the witnesses and others gently down the steps. Gilbert, at his best when things were slow, enjoyed this time of day. And,
     while not, as others were, seeking easy times to cap a taxing day at work, he was also hoping to relax. He was headed for
     the Palm.
    The Victorian Palm Hotel, in the sense of beds and baths and rooms for strangers’ sleep, was not really a hotel. Though some
     gentlemen did spend days and nights there doing various things, it was for throats and stomachs only. Gilbert went in the
     afternoons and on some evenings to
this
waterfront establishment because, following Independence, the Yacht Club had been moved to the far side of Scallop Bay and,
     with all the new-found freedom, he could not afford a taxi. The old Yacht Club had sat just above the harbor and, affording
     its fine patrons a wide view of the sea and of the hulking ships that ferried wood, cement, and cashews up and down the coast,
     had once been painted white with lyme, so white it hurt the eyes. Oh, it had been frequented by awesome men who did things:
     men who went into the interior and emerged with tales about the natives and their ways; Service men who smelled of wind, faintly
     of tobacco, and of an enviable,