Out of Africa

by Isak Dinesen

  Esa’s present was a picture, framed and under glass, of a tree, very carefully penned down in ink, every one of its hundred leaves painted a clear green. Upon each leaf, in diminutive Arabic letters, a word was written in red ink. I take it that the writings came out of the Koran, but Esa was incapable of explaining what they meant, he kept on wiping off the glass with his sleeve and assuring me that it was a very good present. He told me that he had had the picture made, during his year of trial, by the old Mohammedan priest of Nairobi, it must have taken the old man hours and hours to print it down.

  Esa now stayed with me till he died.

  THE IGUANA

  In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet’s luminous tail.

  Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.

  Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and I have remembered the one of the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost. It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the duet between the turquoise and the “nègre”,—that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native’s skin,—that had created the life of the bracelet.

  In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: “I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves.”

  In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To the settlers of East Africa I give the advice: “For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana.”

  FARAH AND THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

  Once a friend at home wrote out to me and described a new staging of “The Merchant of Venice.” In the evening as I was reading the letter over again, the play became vivid to me, and seemed to fill the house, so much, that I called in Farah to talk with him about it, and explained the plot of the comedy to him.

  Farah, like all people of African blood, liked to hear a story told, but only when he was sure that he and I were alone in the house, did he consent to listen to one. It was therefore when the houseboys were back in their own huts, and any passer-by from the farm, looking in through the windows, would have believed him and me to be discussing household matters, that I narrated, and he listened, standing up immovable at the end of the table, his serious eyes on my face.

  Farah gave his full attention to the affairs of Antonio, Bassanio and Shylock. Here was a big, complicated business deal, somewhat on the verge of the law, the real thing to the heart of a Somali. He asked me a question or two as to the clause of the pound of flesh: it obviously seemed to him an eccentric, but not impossible agreement; men might go in for that sort of thing. And here the story began to smell of blood,—his interest in it rose. When Portia came upon the stage, he pricked his ears; I imagined that he saw her as a woman of his own tribe, Fathima with all sails set, crafty and insinuating, out to outman man. Coloured people do not take sides in a tale, the interest to them lies in the ingeniousness of the plot itself; and the Somali, who in real life have a strong sense of values, and a gift for moral indignation, give these a rest in their fiction. Still, here Farah’s sympathy was with Shylock, who had come down with the cash; he repugned his defeat.

  “What?” said he. “Did the Jew give up his claim? He should not have done that. The flesh was due to him, it was little enough for him to get for all that money.”

  “But what else could he do,” I asked, “when he must not take one drop of blood?”

  “Memsahib,” said Farah, “he could have used a red-hot knife. That brings out no blood.”

  “But,” I said, “he was not allowed to take either more or less than one pound of flesh.”

  “And who,” said Farah, “would have been frightened by that, exactly a Jew? He might have taken little bits at a time, with a small scale at hand to weight it on, till he had got just one pound. Had the Jew no friends to give him advice?”

  All Somalis have in their countenance something exceedingly dramatic. Farah, with the slightest change of mien and carriage, now took on a dangerous aspect, as if he were really in the Court of Venice, putting heart into his friend or partner Shylock, in the face of the crowd of Antonio’s friends, and of the Doge of Venice himself. His eyes flickered up and down the figure of the Merchant before him, with the breast bared to the knife.

  “Look, Memsahib,” he said, “he could have taken small bits, very small. He could have done that man a lot of harm, even a long time before he had got that one pound of his flesh.” I said: “But in the story the Jew gave it up.” “Yes, that was a great pity, Memsahib,” said Farah.

  THE ÉLITE OF BOURNEMOUTH

  I had as neighbour a settler who had been a doctor at home. Once, when the wife of one of my houseboys was about to die in childbirth, and I could not get into Nairobi, because the long rains had ruined the roads, I wrote to my neighbour and asked him to do me the great service to come over and help her. He very kindly came, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and torrents of tropical rain, and, at the last moment, by his skill, he saved the life of the woman and the child.

  Afterwards he wrote me a letter to say, that although he had for once, on my appeal, treated a Native, I must understand that he could not let that sort of thing occur again. I myself would fully realize the fact, he felt convinced, when he informed me that he had before now practised to the Élite of Bournemouth.

  OF PRIDE

  The neighbourhood of the Game Reserve and the presence, outside our boundary, of the big game, gave a particular character to the farm, as if we had been the neighbours of a great king. Very proud things were about, and made their nearness felt.

  The barbarian loves his own pride, and hates, or disbelieves in, the pride of others. I will be a civilized being, I will love the pride of my adversaries, of my servants, and my lover; and my house shall be, in all humility, in the wilderness a civilized place.

  Pride is faith in the idea that God had, when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards a happiness, or comfort, which may be irrelevant to God’s idea of him. His success is the idea of God, successfully carried through, and he is in love with his destiny. As the good citizen finds his happiness in the fulfilment of his duty to the community, so does the p
roud man find his happiness in the fulfilment of his fate.

  People who have no pride are not aware of any idea of God in the making of them, and sometimes they make you doubt that there has ever been much of an idea, or else it has been lost, and who shall find it again? They have got to accept as success what others warrant to be so, and to take their happiness, and even their own selves, at the quotation of the day. They tremble, with reason, before their fate.

  Love the pride of God beyond all things, and the pride of your neighbour as your own. The pride of lions: do not shut them up in Zoos. The pride of your dogs: let them not grow fat. Love the pride of your fellow-partisans, and allow them no self-pity.

  Love the pride of the conquered nations, and leave them to honour their father and their mother.

  THE OXEN

  Saturday afternoon was a blessed time on the farm. First of all, there would now be no mail in till Monday afternoon, so that no distressing business letters could reach us till then, and this fact in itself seemed to close the whole place in, as within an enceinte. Secondly, everybody was looking forward to the day of Sunday, when they would rest or play all the day, and the Squatters could work on their own land. The thought of the oxen on Saturday pleased me more than all other things. I used to walk down to their paddock at six o’clock, when they were coming in after the day’s work and a few hours’ grazing. To-morrow, I thought, they would do nothing but graze all day.

  We had one hundred and thirty-two oxen on the farm, which meant eight working teams and a few spare oxen. Now in the golden dust of the sunset they came wandering home across the plain in a long row, walking sedately, as they did all things; while I sat sedately on the fence of the paddock, smoking a cigarette of peace, and watching them. Here came Nyose, Ngufu and Faru, with Msungu,—which means a white man. The drivers also often give to their teams the proper names of white men, and Delamere is a common name in an ox. Here came old Malinda, the big yellow ox that I liked best of the lot; his skin was strangely marked with shadowy figures, like starfishes, from which pattern perhaps he had his name, for Malinda means a skirt.

  As in civilized countries all people have a chronic bad conscience towards the slums, and feel uncomfortable when they think of them, so in Africa you have got a bad conscience, and feel a pang, when you think of the oxen. But towards the oxen on the farm, I felt as, I suppose, a king will be feeling towards his slums: “You are I, and I am you.”

  The oxen in Africa have carried the heavy load of the advance of European civilization. Wherever new land has been broken they have broken it, panting and pulling knee-deep in the soil before the ploughs, the long whips in the air over them. Where a road has been made they have made it; and they have trudged the iron and tools through the land, to the yelling and shouting of the drivers, by tracks in the dust and the long grass of the plains, before there ever were any roads. They have been inspanned before daybreak, and have sweated up and down the long hills, and across dungas and river-beds, through the burning hours of the day. The whips have marked their sides, and you will often see oxen that have had an eye, or both of them, taken away by the long cutting whip-lashes. The waggon-oxen of many Indian and white contractors worked every day, all their lives through, and did not know of the Sabbath.

  It is a strange thing that we have done to the oxen. The bull is in a constant stage of fury, rolling his eyes, shovelling up the earth, upset by everything that gets within his range of vision,—still he has got a life of his own, fire comes from his nostrils, and new life from his loins; his days are filled with his vital cravings and satisfactions. All of that we have taken away from the oxen, and in reward we have claimed their existence for ourselves. The oxen walk along within our own daily life, pulling hard all the time, creatures without a life, things made for our use. They have moist, limpid, violet eyes, soft muzzles, silky ears, they are patient and dull in all their ways; sometimes they look as if they were thinking about things.

  There was in my time a law against bringing a waggon or cart on the roads without a brake, and the waggon-drivers were supposed to put on the brakes down all the long hills of the country. But the law was not kept; half the waggons and carts on the roads had no brakes to them, and on the others the brakes were but rarely put on. This made downhill work terribly hard on the oxen. They had to hold the loaded waggons up with their bodies, they laid their heads back under the labour until their horns touched the hump on their backs; their sides went like a pair of bellows. I have many times seen the carts of the firewood merchants which came along the Ngong Road, going into Nairobi the one after the other, like a long caterpillar, gain speed down the hill in the Forest Reserve, the oxen violently zig-zagging down in front of them. I have also seen the oxen stumble and fall under the weight of the cart, at the bottom of the hill.

  The oxen thought: “Such is life, and the conditions of the world. They are hard, hard. It has all to be borne,—there is nothing for it. It is a terribly difficult thing to get the carts down the hill, it is a matter of life and death. It cannot be helped.”

  If the fat Indians of Nairobi, who owned the carts, could have brought themselves to pay two Rupees and have the brakes put in order, or if the slow young Native driver on the top of the loaded cart, had had it in him to get off and put on the brake, if it was there, then it could have been helped, and the oxen could have walked quietly down the hill. But the oxen did not know, and went on, day after day, in their heroic and desperate struggle, with the conditions of life.

  OF THE TWO RACES

  The relation between the white and the black race in Africa in many ways resembles the relation between the two sexes.

  If the one of the two sexes were told that they did not play any greater part in the life of the other sex, than this other sex plays within their own existence, they would be shocked and hurt. If the lover or the husband were told that he did not play any greater part in the life of his wife or his mistress, than she played in his own existence, he would be puzzled and indignant. If a wife or a mistress were told that she did not play any greater part in the life of her husband or her lover, than he played in her life, she would be exasperated.

  The real old-time men’s story that was never meant to get to the ears of women, goes to prove this theory; and the talk of the women, when they sit amongst themselves and know that no man can hear them, goes to prove it.

  The tales that white people tell you of their Native servants are conceived in the same spirit. If they had been told that they played no more important part in the lives of the Natives than the Natives played in their own lives, they would have been highly indignant and ill at ease.

  If you had told the Natives that they played no greater part in the life of the white people than the white people played in their lives, they would never have believed you, but would have laughed at you. Probably in Native circles, stories are passing about, and being repeated, which prove the all-absorbing interest of the white people in the Kikuyu or Kavirondo, and their complete dependence upon them.

  A WAR-TIME SAFARI

  When the war broke out, my husband and the two Swedish assistants on the farm volunteered and went down to the German border, where a provisional Intelligence Service was being organized by Lord Delamere. I was then alone on the farm. But shortly afterwards there began to be talk of a Concentration Camp for the white women of the country; they were believed to be exposed to danger from the Natives. I was thoroughly frightened then, and thought: If I am to go into a ladies’ Concentration Camp in this country for months,—and who knows how long the war is going to last?—I shall die. A few days later I got the chance to go, with a young Swedish farmer, a neighbour of ours, to Kijabe, a station higher up the railway line, and there to be in charge of a camp to which the runners from the border brought in their news, which had then to be telegraphed on to Headquarters in Nairobi.

  At Kijabe I had my tent near the station, amongst stacks of firewood for the railway engines. As the runners came in at all hours of
the day or night, I came to work much together with the Goan Stationmaster. He was a small, mild man, with a burning thirst for knowledge, unaffected by the war around him. He asked me many questions of my country, and made me teach him a little Danish, which he thought would at some time come in highly useful to him. He had a small boy of ten, named Victor; one day as I walked up to the station, through the trellis-work of the Verandah, I heard him going on teaching Victor his grammar: “Victor, what is a pronoun?—what is a pronoun, Victor?—You do not know?—Five hundred times have I told you!”

  The people down by the border kept on demanding provisions and ammunition to be sent to them; my husband wrote and instructed me to load up four ox-waggons and to send them down as soon as possible. But I must not, he wrote, let them go without a white man in charge of them, for nobody knew where the Germans were, and the Masai were in a state of high excitement at the idea of war, and on the move all over the Reserve. In those days the Germans were supposed to be everywhere, and we kept sentinels by the great railway bridge of Kijabe to prevent them blowing it up,

  I engaged a young South African by the name of Klapprott, to go with the waggons, but when they were all loaded up, on the evening before the expedition was to start off, he was arrested as a German. He was not a German, and could prove it, so that only a short time afterwards he got out of the arrest and changed his name. But at that hour I saw in his arrestation, the finger of God, for now there was nobody but me to take the waggons through the country. And in the early morning, while the old constellations of the stars were still out, we set off down the long endless Kijabe Hill, with the great plains of the Masai Reserve,—iron-grey in the faint light of the dawn,—spread at our feet, with lamps tied under the waggons, swinging, and with much shouting and cracking of whips. I had four waggons, with a full team of sixteen oxen to each, and five spare oxen, and with me twenty-one young Kikuyus and three Somalis: Farah, Ismail, the gun-bearer, and an old cook also named Ismail, a very noble old man. My dog Dusk walked by my side.