Trade Wind (27 page)

There were times when Salmé could almost feel that wind on her cheek and smell the scent of those flowers—the garlands of welcome that they had woven when the news came that her father’s ships had been sighted. The palaces had been swept and garnished and a feast had been prepared, and the rich smells of cooking had mingled with the swooning scent of flowers and the heavy perfumes of musk and sandalwood and attar-of-roses that drenched the silken garments of the women. How they had laughed and sung as they put on their finest clothes and their loveliest jewels, and hurried at last into the gardens to stand along the shore, straining their eyes to seaward, and waiting—waiting—

Majid had put out with members of his retinue in two small cutters to meet his father, saying that they would be back before sundown and there would be music and rejoicing and a great feast. But the eager day had drawn towards evening and still the watchers had seen no sails, and as darkness fell lanterns glowed along the seashore and lights glittered on every roof and balcony of the town where the population crowded to greet its returning lord; though it was cold now and the wind was shrill. No one in Zanzibar had slept that night, and when the dawn broke they were still waiting and watching, silent and chilled; straining their eyes to seaward as the sky paled and the sun, lifting at last above the tossing horizon, glinted gold upon the sails of ships…

Recalling that day, Salmé could hear again in imagination the shout of joy that had arisen from a thousand throats, only to change, terrifyingly, to a long, desolate wail of woe as the fleet drew nearer and it was seen that from every prow there hung a mourning flag.

It had not been granted to Saïd to see his green, spice-scented Island again, for in the same hour that the fishermen had sighted his ships off the Seychelles, Seyyid Saïd-bin-Sultan-bin-el-Imam-Ahmed-bin-Saïd, Imam of Oman and Sultan of Zanzibar, had died. His body had been washed and shrouded, and after prayers had been said over it, his son Bargash enclosed it in a coffin made from the planks that had been brought from Muscat, and made haste to leave the ship before Majid could reach it: taking the coffin with him and landing secretly on the Island to bury it by night near the grave of his brother Khalid, the dead Regent.

Bargash, thought Salmé, had always meant to be Sultan of Zanzibar, and when he heard of Khalid’s death it must have seemed to him like the finger of Fate, for he had never had anything but contempt for weak, kindly Majid, and could not have looked upon him as a serious obstacle in the way of his ambition. But Majid had the advantage of seniority, and the chiefs and elders, and the British, supported his claim. So now he ruled in his father’s place and Bargash must be content with being Heir-Apparent. But when had Bargash ever been content with second-best?

Salmé sighed and dropped her small chin on her palm. Her gaze strayed to her beloved half-sister, and rested there; anxious and adoring. Cholé was so beautiful, and she could not remember a time when she had not loved and admired and looked up to her. In the black days of mourning for their father it had been Cholé who had comforted her, and it was Cholé again to whom she had clung when her mother died of the cholera and she had felt orphaned and alone among the sympathetic
sarari
and their noisy, swarming children.

Cholé had taken her into her own little palace, Beit-el-Tani, and had mothered her and petted her, turning her childish admiration for an older sister into adoration for a goddess who could do no wrong. But of late Salmé had been troubled by twinges of anxiety and doubt, for though her love had not diminished, she could not help wondering if Cholé were not letting her emotions overrule her sense of justice, and where all this plotting and scheming would lead them.

It had begun with a quarrel: a trivial difference of opinion between the new Sultan and his beautiful, self-willed half-sister over the ownership of a suite of rooms at Beit-el-Motoni that Cholé desired, but that Majid had already allotted to Khalid’s widow, and an emerald necklace that he had given to Méjé and which Cholé said had been promised to her by her father and should have been left to her in his will. Méjé had refused to give them up, and when Majid had offered Cholé a fabulous rope of pearls in their place, she had thrown them at him and swept out of Motoni, vowing never to return.

In their father’s day such a quarrel would have blown over in a matter of hours. But in the changed atmosphere that Saïd’s death had created it had not blown over. Instead it had stayed and taken firm root, until at length what had started as resentment had turned, on Chole’s part, to a bitter hatred that overcame all restraint and common sense. Caught in the grip of that hatred she had looked about her for a weapon to use against her once-loved brother; and found it in the person of his Heir-Apparent—dashing, handsome, swaggering Bargash, who had always despised his older brother and already made two unsuccessful attempts to snatch his throne.

Salmé was fond of Majid: as Cholé too had been until Bargash and a foolish squabble had come between them. But now that Cholé hated him, her friends and partisans must hate him too, and she had forced Salmé to choose—herself or Majid: there could be no half measures. Salmé had wavered and wept and attempted to avoid a decision, but Cholé had been implacable and in the end she had won, and Saïd’s once happy and united family split into opposing camps; intriguing, scheming, spying and being spied on.

Their enmity had by now reached such ridiculous proportions that if a member of one faction wore a new jewel, a member of the other must have a similar or a better one, and if a rumour arose that some supporter of Majid had decided to buy a horse or a house or a plot of land, then a supporter of Bargash would forestall or outbid them for spite. Even the nights were no longer peaceful, for it was by night that they held their secret meetings, and by night that spies and mischief-makers carried tales between them; scratching at doors and casements to whisper scraps of conversation overhead or that moment invented, and to hold out greedy hands for a reward of gold coins, thrust uncounted into the waiting palms.

Money was slipping away like water into parched ground, and wisdom with it, for the Arabic love of intrigue had them fast in its grip and it was as though they were the victims of some illness; a fatal malady that inflamed their brains and ate away their reason, and which they could neither cure nor control.

Chole’s little palace, Beit-el-Tani, was separated by no more than the width of a narrow alleyway from the house in which Bargash lived with his sister Méjé and a small brother, Abd-il-Aziz. And almost as short a distance away stood another owned by Salmé‘s two nieces, Schembua and Farschu, who had followed her into Bargash’s camp. But although the proximity of the three houses had assisted the work of intrigue, it had led to other troubles, for Méjé had become jealous of her brother’s attentions to Cholé, and conceiving herself slighted by his neglect, she complained of Cholé to anyone who would listen, and took to warning her brother and his fellow-conspirators that they were rushing on disaster and that no good would come of this dangerous plotting. The result had been more quarrels and still more bitterness. Yet in spite of her jealousy and doubts, Méjé had been too fond of her brother to leave him, and so she had stayed with him; wringing her hands and prophesying disaster, but still loyal and devoted. Unable to change her allegiance even when Bargash and Cholé horrified her by courting the aid of white foreigners.

The small white community in Zanzibar had, theoretically, no power to interfere in any family dispute concerning the succession. But they were not without influence, and Cholé and Bargash, looking about them for any means that might further their cause, decided that they must enlist sympathizers from among them. Hitherto Bargash had always effected to despise the foreigners, while Cholé had refused to meet their women: but now the wife of Monsieur Tissot, the sister of Mr Hubert Platt, and the daughter of Mr Nathaniel Hollis were encouraged to call at Beit-el-Tani.

Cholé hated their visits and endured them only for the sake of the use that might be made of them. She considered the “white women’—whose skins were barely whiter than her own—to be ignorant and uneducated. For although the two older women spoke passable Kiswahili and more than a little Arabic, their limited knowledge of these languages frequently led them to make gross errors of taste which had to be excused on the score of ignorance, but which were none the less unpalatable for that. As for the American girl. Miss Cressida Hollis, her Arabic was still too limited to enable her to sustain a conversation, and her stumbling efforts exasperated Cholé. But though the visits of these foreigners continued to be an ordeal to her, her young half-sister found them fascinating as well as alarming.

Salmé would watch and listen and smile shyly, envying these women their freedom, and Cholé did not know—no one knew or even suspected—that they were not the only foreigners whom she watched and listened to and smiled at: or who watched and listened and smiled at her! For close to Beit-el-Tani and separated from it only by a lane as narrow as that which divided it from Bargash’s home, was a house owned by Europeans, and from her lattice Salmé had often watched the gay dinner-parties given by Herr Ruete, a handsome young German who worked for a firm of Hamburg merchants, and whose unshielded windows faced her own not-always-discreetly screened ones with nothing between them but the meagre width of a cramped Zanzibar street.

She was aware that he could have caught an occasional glimpse of her, for once the lamps were lit in Beit-el-Tani, the delicate carving of the wooden shutters made it easy enough for a watcher to see into the rooms they were designed to conceal—a fact that the women were apt to forget because they themselves could not see out into the darkness, and on hot nights the curtains were often left undrawn. But it was only when he took to coming to his window to bow and smile when she peeped at him through her lattice during the daylight hours, that Salmé realized that young Wilhelm Ruete must indeed have seen her, and been watching her with as much interest as she had watched him.

Once he had even leaned out from his sill and tossed a rose across the narrow canyon that divided them. It was so short a distance that he had been able to throw it accurately through the fretted wooden screen so that it fell at her feet. And when she had summoned enough courage to pick it up she found that there was a scrap of paper tied about its stem, on which he had written in Arabic a verse from a song that she herself had often sung to the strains of a mandolin, and which he must have listened to her singing…”

Visit those you love, though your abode be distant

And clouds and darkness have arisen between you.

For no obstacle should restrain a friend

From visiting often the friend he loves.

Salmé had put the rose in water, and when it wilted at last she had collected the fallen petals, and carefully drying them, wrapped them in a little square of silk and hidden them in the bottom of her jewel box. They had become a talisman against fear and anger, and sometimes when the fever of hate and intrigue that infected the very air of Chole’s little palace became more than she could bear, she would take them from their hiding place, and holding them pressed to her cheek, think of such things as love and peace and happiness; and of a young man’s openly admiring eyes and smiling face. A kind face. Her father had been kind. And Cholé too, and Majid But she must not let herself remember Majid’s good qualities, because that would be disloyal to Cholé, who refused to concede any virtues to her once-loved brother.

Love and kindness…Once there had been so much of both, but where had it all gone? Of all the sisters and brothers and cousins she had laughed and played with, only a handful now remained her friends—those few who had elected to side with Bargash. Would she ever be happy again, wondered Salmé? Would any of them, as long as Majid sat on the throne that Bargash coveted, and Cholé nursed her grievance against one brother and espoused the cause of the other?

Bargash would never give up; never rest until he had obtained what he desired—he had always been like that, and Salmé knew that he could not change: any more than Majid could change, or beautiful, embittered, unforgiving Cholé. Yet she had to admit that until a short while ago she herself had found the emotional, semi-farcical atmosphere of plot and counter-plot exciting and stimulating, for it had helped her to forget the sadness of her father’s tragic home-coming and the death of her beloved mother. Bargash and Cholé together had snatched her up out of her grey, twilight brooding into a brightly-coloured world of conspiracy and high romance that seemed more than half playacting, and she had found the whispering and scheming and the tense, uplifting sense of being involved in great affairs wildly exhilarating and as heady as the fumes of bang. She had thought it all a great adventure until…until the intrusion of the foreign women.

Salmé lifted her chin from her palm and spoke to her sister; her soft voice unexpectedly loud in the quiet room:

“Why do they come here, Cholé? Why do you encourage them to come, when you don’t even like them?”

Cholé turned her lovely head, and it seemed that she too had been thinking of the foreign women, for she laid down the embroidery with which her hands had been busied and replied instantly: “Because we need help and they can give it.”

“How? How can that possibly help us?”

“In more ways than you would think. For one thing, they talk; and their talk often tells us a great deal about how their menfolk think, which is very useful to us. They also hear things that we don’t, and carry news to our friends by ways that would be much too dangerous for us to use. And as they support our brother Bargash, they…’ She hesitated, and then shook her head and picked up her embroidery again.

Salmé said urgently: “They
what
? What else can they do for us?”

“Nothing else,” said Cholé shortly, and turned to address one of her waiting women, when a mischievous childish voice spoke from the far end of the room where little Abd-il-Aziz lay on his stomach among a pile of cushions, eating sugared almonds and playing with a marmoset: “Of course there is something else: I’ll tell you, if Cholé won’t.”