Alison's Pretty Little Diary: A Short Story by Sara Shepard (EPUB)

When Prince Wilhelm of Sweden was coming for teato the farm, in his honour I wanted to make a kind ofSwedish cake called Klejner, for which you need alittle bit, what the cookery-books call a pinch, ofcardamom. As Farah was going to Nairobi I added thecardamom to his shopping list. "I do not know," I said,"whether the white grocers will have it. But if youcannot get it with them you must go to the Indians." Thegreat Indian tradesmen, Suleiman Virjee and AllidinaVisram, were personal friends of Farah's and ownedmore than half of the native trade-quarter, which wascalled the Bazaar.

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Abdullahi's period of service in the house was markedby one dramatic event. I had been ordered by the doctorto take six drops of arsenic in a glass of water with mymeals. When one day at lunch I had forgotten to do soand sat reading in the library, I asked Abdullahi toprepare and bring the dose, took the glass from him withoutlooking up from my book, and at the moment when Idrank down its contents realized that it must have beenfilled with pure arsenic. I asked Abdullahi about it, andhe told me, stiffening, that it was so. I did not feel ill atthe time, only strangely stunned, as if I had received ablow. "Then I think that I shall die, Abdullahi," I said,"and you must send Farah in to me." Later on, Farahtold me that his little brother had come rushing intohis house, had cried out: "I have killed Memsahib! Goin to her, you! And goodbye to you all, for I am goingaway and am never coming back," and with these wordshad vanished. By the time when Farah came, I myselfhad really begun to believe that I was going to die. Imade him carry me on to my bed, and my agony theregrew worse and lasted for more than twelve hours. Ihad no knowledge of arsenic poisoning and no instructionsin my books of how to treat it. But after a while Ibethought myself of Alexandre Dumas' novel La ReineMargot, which I had got in the house. This book tellsof how treacherous enemies of King Charles IX smearthe pages of a book on stag-hunting with arsenic, so thatthe King, continuously wetting his finger to turn them, isslowly poisoned, and it also mentions the remedy bywhich the physician-in-ordinary tiles to save the King'slife. I had Farah find Queen Margot on my bookshelf,managed to look up the cure of milk and white-of-eggused, and started upon it, Farah lifting up my head sothat I might swallow the medicine. In the midst of thetreatment I remembered having been told that greatquantities of arsenic will turn the patient a livid blue.In case it was really so, I reasoned, it was hardly worthstruggling for life, so I sent for Kamante and had himstand by the bed, from time to time holding up mymirror to me. About midnight I began to think that I mightafter all remain alive, and about dawn to wonder abouthow we were to get Abdullahi back. Only after threedays did the Masai scouts set on his track bring him in,the picture of a run-down, stunned scapegoat pardonedback from the desert.

In those days it was difficult to get a book to read inNairobi. My bookseller would tell me that he had justgot a beautiful consignment of books out from home,and then place before me a pile of such poor printedmatter as seemed a shame to have good, seaworthy shipsbring out. All the same it has twice there happened tome to pick up a book by an entirely unknown author,and the day after to write home telling my people tonote down the author's name. The first of the two wasAldous Huxley's Crome Yellow, the second ErnestHemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Now Huxley's LittleMexican was published. Among the tales of this book is thestory "Young Archimedes," telling of a little boy with agenius for mathematics, by a vain and silly adoptivemother prevented from studying it and driven into suchdespair that in the end he throws himself from abalcony and dies. The night after I had read it I woke upalmost as terrified as when I had left the baby bushbuckLulu to her fate in the hands of Kikuyu totos. Withinthe following week I managed to scrape moneytogether, and had Abdullahi sent off to the high schoolof Mombasa. He was very happy there, and histeachers wrote me that he was progressing steadily andbeautifully.

As a former book clerk this intrigues me. I am sure there is still enough in common for a fun comparison of customers and book selling in general of the 1930s vs those of the 1980s and 1990s. However, we clerks were a pretty odd and entertaining bunch, as well, as I witnessed working in bookstores in four states of the US! I would enjoy those comparisons, too :)

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