as though they were experienced pole dancers, though their bums never touched.
Master nodded and smiled ruefully but said nothing, retreating to the cemetery of his mind where memories unfurled. He wanted to absorb as much as he could from the land, a sudden burst of emotion clogging his throat. It was hard to imagine the space they were gliding through with such swiftness had been a blistering crawl that had taken them four years to complete. Four years in the wilderness. What had partly kept him going was the anticipation of the triumphant maiden ride. That moment had finally arrived, but Master felt somewhat deflated, the memories of his difficult past keeping him from fully enjoying the celebrations.
As if reading his mind, Reverend Turnbull bellowed, “Rejoice!” as the train approached a new township, which, like many other settlements they had encountered, seemed to have sprouted up out of the steps of the train station. On either side of the compartment, Indian and African workers, traveling in second and third class, made music from anything they could lay their hands on, rattling bottles with spoons, clapping, ululating. The walls that separated the different races were still up, just as they had been through the years of construction. The different racial groups, Master had written in one of his dispatches to London, remained separate like the rail tracks. Yet the rail was the product of their collective efforts—of black and brown and white hands.
The African and Indian workers on the train danced jubilantly and Reverend Turnbull joined them, nodding his head and waving excitedly. But Master remained unmoved through the razzmatazz. Still unable to savor the moment, he was still distracted, lost in his thoughts. He found it strange that he was starting to miss the land before even leaving it. He had anticipated this moment for four years, but now that it had come, the longing that he’d harbored fizzled into knots of anxiety—not just about the future and Sally’s place in his scheme of things, but also about the present that would soon become the past.
Trying to rid himself of his anxiety, Master glanced outside. “That’s where we left that Indian bastard,” he said to Reverend Turnbull, his forefinger arching into a crooked arrow that pointed to a spot where rows of mud-and-wattle rondavels stood. The walls were plastered with white clay and the shingles on the roofs were aligned neatly, like rows of corn.
“The runaway father?”
“Yes, the f—the bastard,” Master replied, checking himself just in time before cursing in front of a man of God.
“We have all come short of the glory of God,” Reverend Turnbull said quietly, glancing outside, the rondavels almost out of sight. “I’m glad I took the baby into my care.”
“Was our suspicion borne out?”
“What suspicion?”
“That it was his child?”
Reverend Turnbull shook his head quietly.
Master turned to face him. “What does that mean?”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“That’s a secret only known to the child’s mother.”
Master opened his mouth, then sighed and shrugged. “Was the child Indian or Caucasian?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hair? Nose? I thought it was pretty obvious . . .”
“Nothing in life is that obvious.”
“So, are you confirming the child was Indian or Caucasian?”
“What does it matter?”
“It does.”
“Why?”
Master opened his mouth, flashed a wan smile. “Because . . .”
“What’s done is done,” Reverend Turnbull said. “I’m now the girl’s father. I will raise her as my own.”
Master opened his mouth again but kept quiet. He had burdened the man of God with enough secrets.
Both men returned to gazing out the window. Their arms were tangled around the shiny pole and their faces nearly touched as they craned their necks to peek outside—their bums still as far from each other as possible—stretched out at awkward angles so that they resembled ducks. The lake was almost out of view, only a sliver of light visible where it stood, and the clouds above the hot water spring appeared to have shifted.
“Reverend,” Master said, facing him, “I know your Bible says heaven is somewhere else, but I think it must be close by.”
Reverend Turnbull smiled, loosened his collar, and responded, “I’m afraid so.”
“Why are you afraid?”
“Because God shouldn’t live so close to heathens.”
HOUSE OF MUSIC
1
God’s Country was how Reverend Turnbull described the land in 1893 when he wrote his first pastoral letter to the mother church in England. He wrote about the marvels that he had witnessed during his travels—from the gentleness of the sands on the pristine coastal beaches, to the stunning lakes that seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the middle of forests, to the dramatic plunge of what European geographers had named the Rift Valley.
Although the natives do not know God, the perfection of their land raises serious doubts as to how this could have been created by heathen deities, Reverend Turnbull confided in his letters. What he failed to elaborate on was whether or not it was his mere presence that elevated the heathen land to God’s dominion—but then again, it was pointless to state the obvious. In that age, God and the white man were one and the same; in fact, even the locals had an expression for it: Muthungu na Ngai no undu umwe.
When Reverend Turnbull started preaching in Nakuru, he liked to refer to his mission as God-ordained, for he was not destined to be there in the first place. He used the locals’ idiom of the train as a snake to recall the story of Jonah, God’s servant who had defied His call only to be swallowed by a whale and spat out in the city of Nineveh, where he was meant to be in the first place to spread the word of God. Reverend Turnbull told his congregations that Nakuru was his Nineveh, where he had emerged from the belly of the iron snake.
The Nineveh narrative was a white lie. Reverend Turnbull simply appropriated a line that Master had used to describe the dramatic events that followed upon reaching Mombasa to commence his return trip to England. The letter of Master’s discharge from the colonial service was there all right, but it contained an unexpected gift. He had lobbied heavily for a knighthood for his service to the empire, and the letter from London indicated his bosses had acquiesced to his request and had granted him a title. But when the letter elaborated upon the details of his title, he realized his was a different kind altogether: it was a title deed to a parcel of land of his choice, anywhere in the colony. The only condition was that the portion of land had to lie between two natural boundaries for easy demarcation.
Master instantly recognized this as a bureaucratic slip that would be corrected
