He didn’t insist on continuing the drive according to schedule; was content to study, as one standing back in a museum from a canvas whose conception he could not share but was fascinated by, her greedy pleasure in the post-colonial kitsch of the place — a Holiday Inn pervasion of piped music over poolside bars and buffets composed of a German-Swiss chef’s attempt at reproducing his kind of food out of unidentifiable flesh and fowl decked with hibiscus flowers — all housed within a facsimile, as Udi informed her, of the 13th-century palace of Sultan al-Hassam Ibn Sulaiman. She ate the food with appetite. She had seen there were boats for hire and did not want to waste time accompanying the Arabian Nights-garbed black boy who would show them to their rooms. Under the sun of two in the afternoon, that was not in the sky but was the sky, had consumed both sky and sea in a stare of pure and terrible light, the black boat with the thin black oarsman slid away into dazzling evanescence. They sat side by side in the stern. The only detail to cling to in this total blankness of light was the legs of the oarsman, dark and sparsely hairy as the dried skin of a mummy. But when they reached the limit of the reef, heard the ocean open the roar of its surf at them, and the boat turned back, he, Udi, saw in the distance the entrancing pleasure palace she had been able to see all along, a mirage of the coast’s past, shimmering there.
He took his hetaira to see something he could show her, even if she wasn’t interested in Bagamoyo. They drove along narrow parallel tracks with grass stroking the underside of the car and thick shrubs running screeching thumbnails along the windows. Wind-maimed trees closed over, and they left the car. He led the way. At first she saw only the butterflies, so many they softly pulsated the still, dense air. Small white flowers scented it. She buried her face where the butterflies did. The competitive selection of nature — shiny, thick-tongued trees that had starved scrub from beneath them to make a clearing for plants and grasses; creepers and lianas closing off arbors where other trees had made the mistake of flourishing too close together — had created what seemed a garden; or there was the pattern of a human rearrangement of nature, far back, still faintly discernible under the natural aesthetic of growth, as the outline of a lost city may be traced from the height of an aircraft. Then she saw the pieces of china among the green; who had lived here, once, and owned beautiful things that got broken and were thrown away? But these were not broken vessels — they were tiles? Their azure, their unfaded brilliant designs were not designs but fragments of Arabic script? She had seen it, in her adoptive city. Wait, wait; he took her hand. With his other, he pushed aside creepers, lianas and webs: gravestones were sunken there, leaning; they were faced with the tiles, ornately embellished by their scrolling colours, like the pages of an illuminated manuscript. What was written? But he did not know the language, he couldn’t tell her. — Nothing out of the ordinary, I’m sure. Christians have a line from the bible on their tombstones, these will be the same sort of quotation, consolation from the Koran. The only interesting thing to make out would be the dates, if there are dates. I’ve always meant to come with someone who could read Arabic … This cemetery is probably six hundred years old. Under the Imams of Muscat in the Persian Gulf, this whole coast from Mogadishu to Mozambique was ruled by the Sultan of Zanzibar.—
The butterflies mistook the ceramic colours for those of flowers, they touched at the hands of the two humans as the hands touched the stones. She tried to read the braille of the past: —They lived here, there was a real palace? A town? It must have been lovely!—
— For them, yes. Many palaces. Not necessarily lived in; they moved from one to the other. They traded, in slaves principally. It wasn’t lovely for the blacks. And after the Arabs came the Germans, and then the British. No more slaves taken, but not much difference otherwise: Now Teacher — he’s about to join this country to the island as one republic. God knows what will happen. Zanzibar is still Zanzibar; the people who rule don’t have the same ideas as Teacher, the Arabs there are still the rich and the blacks the poor. I think the blacks are ready to kill the rich and try to take over… I don’t know how the combined republic’s going to work, if they don’t. But you see how it all looks as if it’s buried, like this, in another few years these elaborate tombstones of powerful people will be covered entirely, like many others, we won’t be able to find this place if ever we come back here—
— Oh I’d keep it clear, if I were the government, it’s so beautiful — the most beautiful place I’ve seen—
— For picnickers, yes? For people like you and me, out for a drive? The only monuments preserved in Africa are those of people who conquered Africans; no-one wants to keep such memories. But they will only be buried … the old patterns of power, which were based on eternals like trade winds, that have no influence in the technological world, they remain as some kind of instinct from long ago, far back. Strange, uh? So that little island and this country will be called one again, under his African socialism, as they were by the old invaders, the Imams of Muscat.—
She sat on a tombstone. — They could be taken away from here, put in a museum, at least.—
He spread his hands. — No-one wants to interfere with a site that may have religious significance for some people.—
— Then why don’t they keep it up?—
— It’s here. So long as nobody disturbs it. That is what matters. It’ll always be here, even when it’s completely overgrown. It’s not only the religious ones. We all have things like that, that will always be there. So long as nobody touches. But you are still too young.—
Immobile as the stone she rested on, she was hoping for a butterfly, hovering nearer and nearer, to land on her bare knee.
— You’ve been here often, then.—
— Yes. But not recently. And this will be the last time.—
If he wanted her to ask why, he swiftly changed his mind. — Come. We are thirsty.—
— Can I take just a small chip? — The fragment a half-stroke of script, in deep orange and blue.
— No. Take nothing. — But he laughed. — You want to make a museum out of this and yet you steal its treasures.—
They drove away, lost the site in a wake of swaying branches and stripped leaves. As they reached the main road, she called out. He braked for her. — Oh look! They’re feeding on something! — There were the butterflies again; dozens of them, settled on a splatch in the road. — It’s cow-shit! I always thought they lived on flowers.—
That was what he had brought her along for, her eager responses, her lack of pretension — to amuse him. — My poor Hillela! The most beautiful place she finds turns out to be a graveyard full of slave-dealers, and her wonderful butterflies eat dung! — But he saw that irony and disillusion could not tarnish her; pessimism a pleasantry, a manner of speaking associated with him. She was innocent: that is all anybody has ever been able to draw out of him when he has been approached by the curious as one who apparently knew her, once — rather well. He says it with a sense of discovery, adamant and unexplained.
Now at the hotel she was ready to go to her room and change into the yellow knit rag for a swim. The pink heels of the black boy in Arabian Nights dress led the way; there was one room, a large, beautiful room on two levels, with keyhole openings onto the sea, sofas, lamps, a bar corner, and one bed. Udi’s bag and hers were already in place on a luggage rack.