Out of Africa

by Isak Dinesen

  Upon the matter the High Court was set in Nakuru, in the Railway Institute, on the 1st of August.

  The Natives who gathered and sat round the Railway Institute, will have been wondering what it was all about. To their mind the case was plain, for Kitosch had died, of that there was no doubt, and, according to Native ideas, a compensation for his death should now be made to his people.

  But the idea of justice of Europe varies from that of Africa, and, to the jury of white men, the problem of guilt and innocence at once presented itself. The verdict in the case might be one of murder, of manslaughter, or of grievous hurt. The Judge reminded the jury that the degree of an offence rests upon the intentions of the persons concerned, and not upon the results. What, then, had been the intentions, and the attitude of mind, of the persons concerned in the Kitosch case?

  To decide upon the intention and attitude of mind of the settler, the court had him cross-examined for many hours a day. They were trying to make up a picture of what had happened, and brought in all the details that they could lay hands on. It is in this way written down that when the settler called Kitosch, he came, and stood three yards away. This insignificant detail in the report is of great effect. Here they are at the opening of the drama, the white and the black man, at three yards’ distance.

  But from now on, as the story advances, the balance of the picture is broken, and the figure of the settler is blurred and grows smaller. It cannot be helped. It becomes only an accessory figure in a great landscape, a pale puny face, it loses its weight, and looks like a figure cut out in paper, and it is blown about, as by a draught, by the unknown freedom to do what it likes.

  The settler stated that he began by asking Kitosch who had given him permission to ride the brown mare, and that he repeated this question forty to fifty times; he admitted at the same time that nobody could possibly have given Kitosch any such permission. Here his perdition begins. In England he would not have been able to ask a question forty to fifty times, he would have been stopped, in one way or the other, long before the fortieth time. Here in Africa were people to whom he could shriek the same question fifty times over. In the end Kitosch answered that he was not a thief, and the settler stated that it was as a result of the insolence of the answer that he had the boy flogged.

  At this point the report has got a second irrelevant, and effective, detail. It says that during the flogging, two Europeans, who are designated as friends of the settler, came over to see him. They looked on for ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, and walked away.

  After the flogging the settler could not let Kitosch go.

  Late in the evening, he tied Kitosch with a rein, and locked him into his store. When the jury asked him why he did so, he gave an answer that he had no sense, he said that he wanted to keep such a boy from running about on the farm. After supper, he went back to the store, and found Kitosch lying unconscious a little way from where he had tied him up, with the reins loosened. He called in his Baganda cook, and with his assistance tied up the boy tighter than before, with his hands fastened to a post at his back, and with his right leg tied to a post in front. He left the store, locking the door, but half an hour later went back there, got hold of his cook and the kitchen-Toto, and let them into the store. Then he went to bed, and the next thing he remembered, he said, was that the Toto came from the store, and told him that Kitosch had died.

  The jury kept in mind the words that the degree of an offence rests upon the intention, and looked for an intention. They went into a number of detailed questions about the flogging of Kitosch, and about what happened after, and as you read the papers you seem to see them shake their heads.

  But what now had been the intention and the attitude of mind of Kitosch? This, when gone into, was found to be a different thing. Kitosch had had an intention, and in the end it came to weigh in the scales of the case. It can be said that by his intention, and his attitude of mind, the African, in his grave, saved the European.

  Kitosch had not much opportunity for expressing his intention. He was locked up in the store, his message, therefore, comes very simply, and in a single gesture. The night-watch states that he cried all night. But it was not so, for at one o’clock he talked with the Toto, who was in the store with him. He indicated to the child that he must shout to him, because the flogging had made him deaf. But at one o’clock he asked the Toto to loosen his feet, and explained that in any case he could not run away. When the Toto had done as he asked him, Kitosch said to him that he wanted to die. At four, the child said, he again said that he wanted to die. A little while after, he rocked himself from side to side, cried: “I am dead!” and died.

  Three doctors gave evidence in the case.

  The District Surgeon, who had done the post mortem examination, pronounced death to be due to the injuries and wounds that he had found on the body. He did not believe that any immediate medical attention could have saved Kitosch’s life.

  The two doctors from Nairobi, called in for the defence, were, however, of a different mind.

  The flogging in itself, they held, was not sufficient to have caused death. An important factor came into the matter, not to be ignored: that was the will to die. On this point, the first doctor stated, he could speak with authority, for he had been in the country twenty-five years, and knew the Native mind. Many medical men could support him that the wish to die, in a Native, had actually caused death. In the present case the matter was particularly clear, for Kitosch had himself said that he wanted to die. The second doctor bore him up in this point of view.

  It was very likely, the doctor now went on, that if Kitosch had not taken this attitude, he would not have died. If, for instance, he had eaten something, he might not have lost courage, for starvation is known to reduce courage. He added that the wound on the lip might not be due to a kick, but might be just a bite by the boy himself, in severe pain.

  The doctor, furthermore, did not believe that Kitosch would have made up his mind to die till after nine o’clock, as by that time he seemed to have tried to escape. Neither had he died till after nine o’clock. When he had been caught in the attempt to escape, and had been tied up again, the fact of being a prisoner, the doctor said, might have weighed on his mind.

  The two doctors from Nairobi summed up their view of the case. The death of Kitosch, they held, was due to the flogging, to starvation, and to the wish to die, the latter being the subject of special emphasis. The wish to die might, they considered, have been caused by the effects of the flogging.

  After the doctors’ evidence, the case turned upon what was called in Court “The wish-to-die theory.” The District Surgeon, who was the only one who had seen Kitosch’s body, rejected the theory, and gave examples of cancer patients of his practice who had wished to die, but all the same had not died. These people, however, were found to have been Europeans.

  The Jury in the end gave a verdict of: Guilty of grievous hurt. The same verdict was applied to the Natives accused, but it was considered that as they had acted under the orders of their master, a European, it would be an injustice to imprison them. The Judge imposed a sentence of two years R.I. on the settler, and of one day on each of the Natives.

  It seems to you, as you read the case through, a strange, a humiliating fact that the Europeans should not, in Africa, have power to throw the African out of existence. The country is his Native land, and whatever you do to him, when he goes he goes by his own free will, and because he does not want to stay. Who is to take the responsibility for what happens in a house? The man who owns it, who has inherited it.

  By this strong sense in him of what is right and decorous, the figure of Kitosch, with his firm will to die, although now removed from us by many years, stands out with a beauty of its own. In it is embodied the fugitiveness of the wild things who are, in the hour of need, conscious of a refuge somewhere in existence; who go when they like; of whom we can never get hold.

  SOME AFRICAN BIRDS

  Just at the beginning
of the long rains, in the last week of March, or the first week of April, I have heard the nightingale in the woods of Africa. Not the full song: a few notes only,—the opening bars of the concerto, a rehearsal, suddenly stopped and again begun. It was as if, in the solitude of the dripping woods, some one was, in a tree, tuning a small ’cello. It was, however, the same melody, and the same abundance and sweetness, as were soon to fill the forests of Europe, from Sicily to Elsinore.

  We had the black and white storks in Africa, the birds that build their nests upon the thatched village roofs of Northern Europe. They look less imposing in Africa than they do there, for here they had such tall and ponderous birds as the Marabout and the Secretary Bird to be compared to. The storks have got other habits in Africa than in Europe, where they live as in married couples and are symbols of domestic happiness. Here they are seen together in big flights, as in clubs. They are called locust-birds in Africa, and follow along when the locusts come upon the land, living high on them. They fly over the plains, too, where there is a grass-fire on, circling just in front of the advancing line of small leaping flames, high up in the scintillating rainbow-coloured air, and the grey smoke, on watch for the mice and snakes that run from the fire. The storks have a gay time in Africa. But their real life is not here, and when the winds of spring bring back thoughts of mating and nesting, their hearts are turned towards the North, they remember old times and places and fly off, two and two, and are shortly after wading in the cold bogs of their birth-places.

  Out on the plains, in the beginning of the rains, where the vast stretches of burnt grass begin to show fresh green sprouting, there are many hundred plovers. The plains always have a maritime air, the open horizon recalls the Sea and the long Sea-sands, the wandering wind is the same, the charred grass has a saline smell, and when the grass is long it runs in waves all over the land. When the white carnation flowers on the plains you remember the chopping white-specked waves all round you as you are tacking up the Sund. Out on the plains the plovers likewise take on the appearance of Sea-birds, and behave like Sea-birds on a beach, legging it, on the close grass, as fast as they can for a short time, and then rising before your horse with high shrill shrieks, so that the light sky is all alive with wings and birds’ voices.

  The Crested Cranes, which come on to the newly rolled and planted maize-land, to steal the maize out of the ground, make up for the robbery by being birds of good omen, announcing the rain; and also by dancing to us. When the tall birds are together in large numbers, it is a fine sight to see them spread their wings and dance. There is much style in the dance, and a little affectation, for why, when they can fly, do they jump up and down as if they were held on to the earth by magnetism? The whole ballet has a sacred look, like some ritual dance; perhaps the cranes are making an attempt to join Heaven and earth like the winged angels walking up and down Jacob’s Ladder. With their delicate pale grey colouring, the little black velvet skull-cap and the fan-shaped crown, the cranes have all the air of light, spirited frescoes. When, after the dance, they lift and go away, to keep up the sacred tone of the show they give out, by the wings or the voice, a clear ringing note, as if a group of church bells had taken to the wing and were sailing off. You can hear them a long way away, even after the birds themselves have become invisible in the sky: a chime from the clouds.

  The Greater Hornbill was another visitor to the farm, and came there to eat the fruits of the Cape-Chestnut tree. They are very strange birds. It is an adventure or an experience to meet them, not altogether pleasant, for they look exceedingly knowing. One morning before sunrise I was woken up by a loud jabbering outside the house, and when I walked out on the terrace I saw forty-one Hornbills sitting in the trees on the lawn. There they looked less like birds than like some fantastic articles of finery set on the trees here and there by a child. Black they all were, with the sweet, noble black of Africa, deep darkness absorbed through an age, like old soot, that makes you feel that for elegance, vigour and vivacity, no colour rivals black. All the Hornbills were talking together in the merriest mood, but with choice deportment, like a party of inheritors after a funeral. The morning air was as clear as crystal, the sombre party was bathing in freshness and purity, and, behind the trees and the birds, the sun came up, a dull red ball. You wonder what sort of a day you are to get after such an early morning.

  The Flamingoes are the most delicately coloured of all the African birds, pink and red like a flying twig of an Oleander bush. They have incredibly long legs and bizarre and recherché curves of their necks and bodies, as if from some exquisite traditional prudery they were making all attitudes and movements in life as difficult as possible.

  I once travelled from Port Said to Marseilles in a French boat that had on board a consignment of a hundred and fifty Flamingoes, which were going to the Jardin d’Acclimatation in Marseilles. They were kept in large dirty cases with canvas sides, ten in each, standing up close to one another. The keeper, who was taking the birds over, told me that he was counting on losing twenty per cent, of them on a trip. They were not made for that sort of life, in rough weather they lost their balance, their legs broke, and the other birds in the cage trampled on them. At night when the wind was high in the Mediterranean and the ship came down in the waves with a thump, at each wave I heard, in the dark, the Flamingoes shriek. Every morning, I saw the keeper taking out one or two dead birds, and throwing them overboard. The noble wader of the Nile, the sister of the lotus, which floats over the landscape like a stray cloud of sunset, had become a slack cluster of pink and red feathers with a pair of long, thin sticks attached to it. The dead birds floated on the water for a short time, knocking up and down in the wake of the ship before they sank.

  PANIA

  The Deerhounds, from having lived for innumerable generations with man, have acquired a human sense of humour, and can laugh. Their idea of a joke is that of the Natives, who are amused by things going wrong. Perhaps you cannot get above this class of humour, until you also get an art, and an established Church.

  Pania was Dusk’s son. I walked with him one day near the pond, where there was a row of tall, thin blue-gum trees, when he ran away from me up to one of the trees and came back again half-way, to make me come with him. I went up to the tree, and saw a Serval-cat sitting high up in it. The Serval-cats take your chickens, so that I shouted to a Toto walking by, and sent him up to the house for my gun, and when I had it brought, I shot the Serval-cat. She came down from her great height with a thump, and Pania was upon her in a second, shaking her and pulling her about, very pleased with the performance.

  Some time after I again came by the same road, past the pond; I had been out to shoot partridge, but had got none, and both Pania and I were downcast. All at once Pania flew up to the farthest tree of the row, barking round it in a state of the highest excitement, then rushed back to me, and again back to the tree. I was pleased that I had got my gun with me, and at the prospect of a second Serval-cat, for they have got pretty, spotted skins, I ran up to the tree. But, when I looked up, there was a black domestic cat sitting, very angry, as high up as possible in the swaying top of the tree. I lowered my gun. “Pania,” I said, “you fool! It’s a cat.”

  As I turned round to Pania, he stood at a little distance, looking at me and splitting his sides with laughter. When his eyes met mine he rushed up to me, danced, wagged his tail, whined, put his feet on my shoulders, and his nose to my face, then jumped back again to give free course to his laughter.

  He expressed by pantomime: “I know. I know. It was a tame cat. I knew all the time. Indeed, you must excuse me. But if you only knew the figure you cut, rushing up to a tame cat with a gun!”

  All that day, from time to time, he went through the same agitation of mind, and the same behaviour, expressing the most overwhelmingly friendly feelings towards me, and then withdrawing a little to have an unhindered laugh.

  An insinuating note came into his friendliness. “You know,” he said, “that in this house i
t is only you and Farah that I ever laugh at.”

  Even in the evening when he was asleep, in front of the fire, I heard him in his sleep groaning and whimpering a little with laughter. I believe that he remembered the event a long time after, when we passed the pond and the trees.

  ESA’S DEATH

  Esa, who was taken away from me during the war, after the armistice came back and lived on the farm peacefully. He had a wife by the name of Mariammo, a thin, black, hard-working woman, who carried firewood to the house. Esa was the gentlest servant I ever had, and quarrelled with nobody.

  But something had happened to Esa in his exile, and he had come back changed. Sometimes I was afraid that he might imperceptibly die on me, like a plant that has had its roots cut through.

  Esa was my Cook, but he did not like to cook, he wanted to be a gardener. Plants were the only things for which he had preserved a real live interest. But while I had another gardener I had no other Cook, and so held back Esa in the kitchen. I had promised him that he should go back to his garden-work, but I kept him off from month to month. Esa on his own had dammed in a bit of ground by the river, and planted it as a surprise to me. But as he had been alone at it, and was not a strong man, the dam was not solid enough, and in the long rains it went away altogether.

  The first disturbance of his quiet non-existence came upon Esa when his brother died in the Kikuyu Reserve and left him a black cow. By then it became evident how much Esa had been sucked out by life, he could no longer stand up to any strong manifestation of it. In particular, I believe, he could not quite stand happiness. He asked me for three days’ leave to go and fetch the cow, and, on his return, I saw that he had been stirred and harassed, like the hands and feet of people who have been benumbed by cold, and brought into a warm room.