Echoes From a Distant Land

by Frank Coates

  It was now Hungerford who frowned. Studying the tripod, he asked, ‘What kind of weapon do you mount on such a stand, Mr Ketterman?’

  Ketterman grinned. ‘A very special one.’

  He signalled to Wangira. ‘Young man, come.’ And he walked to a box at the end of the stack of supplies. Pointing to it, he said, ‘If you please.’

  Wangira carried it behind Ketterman, who opened it beside the tripod.

  There was a box within the box.

  Wangira was familiar with rifles. There had been times when hunting safaris had passed near his village, and every boy within a half-day’s walk had gathered to catch furtive glances of the white men and their equipment. But this contraption was something quite new to him.

  ‘A camera,’ Hungerford said.

  ‘A 35mm Simplex Motion Picture Camera, to be precise,’ Ketterman said, slipping his thumbs into his belt and leaning back on his heels.

  ‘You’re a photographer.’

  ‘A mere amateur, Mr Hungerford, but — dare I say it — a damn good one.’

  Wangira watched Hungerford move his gaze from the camera to Ketterman and back again.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re not a hunter at all.’

  ‘Quite the contrary. I’m a hunter of interesting subjects to immortalise on 35mm moving picture film. And occasionally, if the subject demands it, also on still film.’

  At this he hurried to his stack of belongings and returned with a wooden case from which he withdrew a small black box.

  ‘This is Eastman’s Folding Pocket Brownie. The model 2A.’

  Hungerford nodded his head slowly. ‘Cameras.’

  ‘Quite a few.’

  ‘And with no guns and all these cameras, why did you hire N&T? I assume you have no interest in big game hunting at all.’

  ‘Wrong again, Mr Hungerford. Why else would I come to Africa? There are more ways to hunt the wildlife than by killing it. With these cameras I shall capture the animals and preserve them for posterity. Posterity, Mr Hungerford. Think of it! All the excitement of a big game safari that you know so well, but without the need to kill the poor beasts. And I can entertain thousands with my films. I intend to shoot twenty reels out here and, with your assistance, they will be of your usual quarry: lion, elephant, buffalo. I want to capture all the excitement that presently only the privileged few can experience.’

  ‘In that case I could have saved you the cost of two first-class gun bearers.’

  ‘Then call them camera bearers if it makes you feel better.’ There was no animosity in Ketterman’s tone. He seemed to be enjoying the banter.

  ‘I can’t ask a good gun bearer to carry a box. They may appear to be ignorant savages to you, but my gun bearers have their pride,’ Hungerford said irritably. ‘I’ll find you a couple of men to carry your cameras and whatnots.’

  ‘This young man right here seems to be strong enough,’ he said, pointing at Wangira. ‘Why not him?’

  ‘As you wish, Mr Ketterman,’ Hungerford said with a sigh of resignation, and then appeared to realise they had become the centre of the porters’ rapt attention. ‘Ali,’ he said brusquely. ‘Get these boys back to setting camp.’

  ‘Get on with it!’ Ali said in Kiswahili. ‘All of you, back to work.’ He began to shout his orders.

  Wangira turned to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ Ketterman said to Hungerford. ‘Let me take a picture of him.’ He indicated Wangira. ‘To demonstrate the camera, I mean.’

  Ketterman fumbled with the controls, twisting a knob and turning a wheel.

  Hungerford shrugged and walked off.

  ‘Very well,’ Ketterman said, satisfied. ‘I’m ready. Now stand with your arms by your side.’

  Wangira stood bolt upright, and waited.

  Ketterman, realising that Wangira had obeyed, looked up from the viewfinder. ‘You speak English?’

  Wangira nodded. ‘Yes. Bwana.’

  Ketterman appeared pleased at the news. Again there was a pause before he turned his attention back to the camera.

  ‘Hold it!’ he said.

  The request was unnecessary. Wangira had already stiffened with a sense of unease. Having heard the description of the functions of a camera he didn’t quite know what to expect.

  He heard a faint click.

  ‘There,’ said Ketterman, lowering the camera.

  Wangira swallowed, and for a moment didn’t comprehend that whatever was supposed to happen, had happened.

  Wangira waited a moment, then moved off to join the others erecting tents, setting the cooking fires and sorting through the mountain of packs. He felt vaguely disappointed to have been only momentarily the centre of attention and because the moment had quickly turned out to be uneventful.

  But it did not extinguish his burning desire to know all about the boxes called cameras.

  Within the muted light of his developing tent, Ira Ketterman slipped his hands into the armholes of his lightproof bag and unravelled enough celluloid to safely snip the section of exposed film containing the young porter. He then replaced the remainder of the reel in its container.

  Before placing his hands into the armholes to the washing tanks, he checked the thermometer and set the stopwatch.

  He found working with the portable processing equipment far more cumbersome than using his darkroom back in New York, but he had no other options. He couldn’t afford to risk a camera failure going undetected, causing him to arrive home after three months’ work only to find he had five hundred feet of useless celluloid.

  He had practised with the portable equipment many times at home in New York and soon adapted to the constraints.

  After a final wash, he removed the negative from the lightproof bag and swung up the tent flap to examine it. The negative was sharp.

  He grabbed his pipe and headed for the black tent he used to make prints and enlargements. It contained a pressure lamp and a complicated set of mirrors and lenses — the most delicate pieces in his entire suite of laboratory equipment.

  At the end of the process he took the pressure lamp from the enlargement equipment. The blackened tent filled with light. Ketterman studied the print.

  He fumbled around in his coat pocket to find his pipe, filled the bowl with tobacco and slowly tamped it down. The match flared and, when the centre was glowing red, he took a long and satisfying pull of smoke into his lungs. His tension eased. The porter’s body appeared in sharp contrast. The print was perfect.

  He sat for a long time until the air in the black tent had become almost unbearably hot. But he stayed on, staring at the Adonis captured so perfectly in the print.

  Ira Ketterman was sixty-seven years old, and in love.

  Wangira was returning from the central storage tent to where Ali was organising the distribution of packs, equipment and crates, when he found Ira Ketterman looking at him.

  There was a moment when Wangira thought he wanted to speak to him, but it passed and Wangira continued on his way.

  ‘Wait,’ Ketterman said.

  Wangira turned to him.

  ‘We need to have a talk, you and I.’

  Wangira looked around for Ali, who was known to have a particular dislike of porters fraternising with Hungerford or the client.

  ‘Me, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, you, young man. I’m sure you heard me ask Mr Hungerford for your services yesterday. And he agreed. What do you say?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do you want to work with me?’

  ‘With the cameras?’

  ‘With the cameras and all the other equipment I use. You seem an intelligent lad. Are you interested in working with cameras?’

  Wangira was still uncertain whether he understood, but nodded vigorously. ‘I … I am.’

  ‘Then, come,’ Ketterman said. ‘Come to my tent and I will teach you all you need to know.’

  Ketterman’s tent boy had set a number of lanterns burning in the corners of the interior and flung the flaps over the side
s to let in the cool evening air.

  ‘Thank you, Babu,’ he said. ‘That will be all for today. Come in,’ he added, waving his guest forwards.

  The porter took a tentative step into the tent.

  Ketterman indicated a canvas chair. ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘By the way, what’s your name?’

  ‘I am Sam … Samson Wangira, sir.’

  ‘Samson. Very well. I am Ira Ketterman.’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘Sit down, Samson,’ he repeated, and then went to the back of the tent to retrieve one of his cameras. He chose one that he felt would be simple enough to demonstrate the basic principles.

  He placed the camera on the folding table between them.

  ‘This,’ Ketterman said, ‘is my Hess-Ives Hicro.’ After first pausing for effect, he added, ‘My colour camera.’

  He offered it to Sam, who, after a moment’s hesitation, took it carefully into his hands.

  ‘As you can see, it’s not coloured at all. Merely black like all the rest.’

  The joke escaped the young Kikuyu, who was scrutinising the camera in great detail.

  ‘That little circle of glass at the front is the lens,’ he continued. ‘And that knob just there moves the back plane to and fro to change the —’

  ‘It is not the camera you used to take my photograph.’

  ‘No, it is a different one. That was an Eastman Kodak. I could have used the Hess-Ives but I thought a black and white study might be … Oh, would you like to see the photo I took of you?’

  Sam’s eyes lit up.

  Ketterman went around the table to his desk. The enlargement was in a folder and as he slipped it out, he again admired it. The strong lines of Sam’s face, his high cheekbones, his square jaw with just a hint of a cleft in his chin. His wide intelligent eyes. The camera had captured them perfectly, but the portrait had an elegance as portrayed in the subtle skin tones, and the afternoon light had softened his body’s contours and muscles to give them a grace and beauty that was otherwise concealed by his masculinity. Sam was not yet a cameraman’s assistant, but he was an excellent subject.

  Ketterman moved a lamp to the table as he slid the print across. ‘It’s quite a good shot, actually,’ he said modestly, watching Sam’s delight spread across his face.

  Finally, Sam looked up from the photograph. ‘It is beautiful,’ he said in wonder, then dropped his eyes in embarrassment. ‘I mean, it is a very nice photograph.’

  Ketterman laughed. ‘Thank you. But it is you who have made it beautiful, not I.’

  Sam squirmed.

  ‘Now … Are you ready to begin your education?’ Ketterman asked.

  The young Kikuyu nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Very well.’

  Ketterman started at the beginning, opening the camera and pointing out the various components and their part in the process of forming an image.

  By the time the drum sounded to announce the evening meal, Ketterman had begun a simple description of the focus mechanism.

  Sam had done extremely well and Ketterman was both pleased and impressed with his progress. The young man was clearly quite intelligent. It was another characteristic that attracted the older man to him.

  Ketterman rose but Sam remained at the table, turning the camera around in his hands.

  As he stood above him, Ketterman lifted his hand to pat Sam on the shoulder, but withdrew it. Ketterman was afraid he could not touch that skin, that gleaming muscular shoulder, without wanting more than he could dare imagine.

  He cleared his throat and said, ‘Come on, young man. You have your dinner to attend and so do I. Tomorrow you will see how to make use of a camera to capture a wild animal on film.’

  CHAPTER 6

  As Bill Hungerford led his safari through the Loita Hills, to the Trans Mara and finally on to the Serengeti Plains, Sam’s knowledge of the technical requirements of photography grew until Ira was able to delegate much of the routine work to him, leaving him free to concentrate on the creative side of his growing collection of wildlife scenes. Ira could relax and enjoy his hobby, but in other ways, every day was a struggle.

  Ira tried to avoid Sam as much as possible, thereby reducing the relentless temptation of his presence, but it wasn’t practical. He should never have chosen the young African as his assistant.

  Having Sam nearby was a blessing and a curse. The blessing was the feast Sam’s body gave to his eye; the curse was the effort it required to keep from casually brushing against him while passing in the close confines of the tent, or letting his hand linger on the burnished brown skin of Sam’s shoulder after giving him a congratulatory pat for a task well done.

  If the attraction had been merely physical, if it were only Sam’s firm body and wide smile — a smile that made everyone within his orbit want to share whatever joy had prompted it — then Ira might have been able to put the emotion aside as mere lust. If it had been only his gentleness and kindness, then Ira might have simply been appreciative, but Sam had the characteristic so highly valuable in men of any race — intelligence.

  Ira felt that beauty was a waste if the body was essentially an empty shell. It was intelligence that added the lustre to beauty; it was the stimulant to conversation. It was an enquiring mind, not mere good looks, that brought personalities into alignment.

  He had managed to avoid temptation for the last two months on safari, and now there were only a couple of weeks remaining before he could retreat from Sam’s influence.

  As Hungerford found more and more exciting scenes for his cameras to capture, Ira’s ambitions climbed to new heights. His collection of wildlife pictures had the potential to become a successful commercial venture, but now he wondered about entering the nascent movie business on his return to New York or to even go west to where some of the movie companies had set up operations in a little place called Hollywood.

  The footage he’d captured to date was interesting and technically competent, but if it were to become a movie, Ira knew he needed a dramatic finale.

  He explained his ideas to Hungerford, who at first would not consider it. Ira persisted and the white hunter eventually conceded, although with the condition that he could not be held responsible if a man chose to engage wild animals in such a manner holding naught but a camera for his protection.

  Ali was in one of his notorious moods. During the morning march he stormed up and down the line of porters, verbally lashing them for indolence.

  Sam was no longer required to act as a pagazi, his work now confined to driving the wagon carrying Ira’s equipment. So when they stopped to rest at the height of the day, he went looking for his friend Kitunga, whom he had not seen for a day or so.

  He found him among a group of porters watching Ali continue his harassment of a handful of men who Kitunga said had earlier displeased the head man. Ali had them carrying the heavy water canisters from one of the wagons to be refilled at the spring.

  ‘It is not right,’ Kitunga told Sam as they watched the men struggle from the waterhole. ‘We use the oxen to take the canisters. Not men. And the noon time is for rest. These men cannot carry water, and then their loads until evening, if they work so hard at this time.’

  ‘They are all new men,’ Sam noted. ‘Two of them from my village. Ali knows he can push them harder than the others.’

  ‘You are correct, my friend. The older men would not stand for it, and Ali knows it.’

  ‘I believe Ali is a man who likes to push people around. Nobody can respect such a man. I will speak to him.’

  Kitunga put a hand on his arm. ‘There is one thing I have learned in my time as a pagazi, and that is to let others look after themselves. There is no need to interfere. When the white hunter hears about this, he will have something to say to Ali. Leave it.’

  The notion didn’t sit well with Sam, but in deference to his friend’s request, he let it be.

  Not so later in the day. Sam was helping two of his tribesmen erect Ira’s tent. Ali pushed one of them, w
ho had blocked his path, to the ground.

  When the young porter rose to complain, Ali smashed the back of his hand across his face, knocking him to the ground again.

  Ali gave him a sharp kick in the ribs. ‘Get up, you lazy Kikuyu. Get up or I’ll give you something more to think about.’ He raised his furled whip.

  Sam grabbed his arm.

  Ali swung towards him, staring in surprise, but his surprise quickly turned to rage. With a roar he threw Sam from him and unfurled his rhino-hide whip.

  Sam ducked under Ali’s raised arm and grabbed the head man around the midriff, but Ali was also quite powerful and again broke Sam’s grip. As he stepped back he flicked Sam on the shoulder with his lash.

  Sam lowered his head and charged into Ali’s torso, knocking him backwards to the ground, making him gasp.

  The two men rolled in the dust, each trying to gain the advantage.

  A loud explosion ended the scuffle.

  Bill Hungerford stood in the circle of porters, his handgun raised.

  ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Get up, the pair of you.’

  He looked from one man to the other. ‘You,’ he said to Sam. ‘I knew you young bloods would get up to mischief.’ Turning to his head man, he said, ‘Ali, what have you got to say?’

  ‘This stupid Kikuyu,’ Ali snarled, pointing at Sam, ‘he attacked me. Leave him to me, Mr Hungerford, I will see to him.’

  ‘Thank you, Ali, but I’ll be the one to take care of any punishment hereabouts.’

  ‘I’m not sure any punishment is deserved, Mr Hungerford.’

  It was Ira, who had pressed his way through the crowd of spectators to speak.

  ‘Is that so, Mr Ketterman?’ Hungerford said, then turned to the crowd of porters. ‘You lot! Go on! Get back to work. This is not a bloody circus. Ali, you stay.’

  He turned back to Ira. ‘What say you, Mr Ketterman?’

  ‘I saw it all,’ Ira continued. ‘Your head man is a bully, sir. He was about to thrash one of the young porters for no apparent reason, and Sam here simply restrained his arm. No more than Christian charity would demand.’