by Isak Dinesen
Because of Berkeley’s knowledge of, and friendship with, the Masai, a most imposing ceremony came to take place on the farm.
When the Great War first broke out, and the Masai had news of it, the blood of the old fighting tribe was all up. They had visions of splendid battles and massacres, and they saw the glory of the past returning once more. I happened to be out, during the first months of the war, alone with Natives and Somali, with three ox-waggons, doing transport for the English Government, and trekking through the Masai Reserve. Whenever the people of a new district heard of my arrival they came round to my camp, with shining eyes, to ask me a hundred questions of the war and the Germans—was it true that they were coming from the air? In their minds they were running breathless, to meet danger and death. At night the young warriors swarmed round my tent, in full warpaint, with spears and swords; sometimes, in order to show me what they were really like, they would give out a short roar, an imitation of the lion’s roar. They did not doubt then that they would be allowed to fight.
But the English Government did not think it wise to organize the Masai to make war on white men, be they even Germans, and it forbade the Masai to fight, and put an end to all their hopes. The Kikuyu were to take part in the war as carriers, but the Masai were to keep their hands off their weapons. But in 1918, when conscription had been introduced in regard to all the other Natives of the Colony, the Government thought it necessary to call out the Masai as well. An officer of the K.A.R., with his regiment, was sent to Narok to procure three hundred Morani as soldiers. By this time the Masai had lost their sympathy with the war and refused to come. The Morani of the district disappeared into the woods and the bush. In the pursuit of them the K.A.R. troops by mistake fired on a manyatta, and two old women were killed. Two days after, the Masai Reserve was in open revolt, swarms of Morani swept through the country, killed a number of Indian traders, and burned down more than fifty dukhas. The situation was serious, and the Government did not want to force it. Lord Delamere was sent down to negotiate with the Masai and in the end a compromise was set up. The Masai were allowed to take out the three hundred Morani themselves, and they were let off with a joint fine in punishment of their devastation in the Reserve. No Morani appeared, but by that time the Armistice put an end to the whole matter.
During the time of all these events, some of the old big Masai chiefs had made themselves useful to the English military, by sending out their young men to scout on the movements of the Germans in the Reserve and on the border. Now that the war was over, the Government wanted to show their recognition of their services. A number of medals were sent out from home to be distributed amongst the Masai, and as far as twelve of the medals were concerned Berkeley, who knew the Masai so well and could speak Masai, was asked to deal them out.
My farm bordered on the Masai Reserve and Berkeley came to ask me if he might stay with me and give out the medals from my house. He was a little nervous about the enterprise, and told me that he had no clear idea what was expected from him. On a Sunday we drove together a long way down into the Reserve, and talked with the people in the manyattas, in order to summon the chiefs in question to the farm on such and such a day. Berkeley in his very young days had been an officer in the 9th Lancers, and he was then, I have been told, the smartest young officer in his regiment. Still, as, towards sunset, we were driving home again, he began to speak to me of the military calling and mentality, and to develop his ideas upon them, in the manner of a civilian.
The distribution of the medals, although in itself of no special consequence, was an event of great dimensions and weight. So much wisdom, sagacity and tact were displayed in it, on both sides, as to make it stand for an act in the history of the world, or a symbol:
“… His Darkness and his Brightness
exchanged a greeting of extreme politeness.”
The old Masai had arrived, followed by retainers or sons of theirs. They sat and waited on the lawn, from time to time discussing my cows grazing there, perhaps they had a faint hope that, in reward of their services, they were to be made a present of a cow. Berkeley kept them waiting a long time, which was, I believe, to them in the order of things, in the meantime he had an armchair carried out on the lawn in front of the house, in which to sit while he gave out the medals. When in the end he came forth from the house he looked, in this dark company, very fair, red-haired and light-eyed. He had now the complete brisk cheerful carriage and expression of an efficient young officer, so that I learned that Berkeley, who could let his face express so many things, could also in the hour of need, make it an absolute blank. He was followed by Jama, who had on a very fine Arabian waistcoat all embroidered in gold and silver, which Berkeley had let him buy for the occasion, and who carried the box with the medals.
Berkeley stood up in front of his chair to speak, and so active was the uprightness of his slight small figure that the old people got on to their legs, one by one, and stood facing him, their eyes in his, gravely. What the speech was about I cannot say, as it was in Masai. It sounded as if he were briefly informing the Masai that an unbelievable benefit was to be bestowed upon them, and that the explanation of the happenings was their own incredibly praiseworthy behaviour. But seeing that it was Berkeley who spoke, and that from the faces of the Masai you would never learn anything, it may have contained something quite different, of which I should never have thought. When he had spoken, without a moment’s pause he let Jama bring up the box, and took out the medals, solemnly reading out, one after another, the names of the Masai chiefs, and handing them their medals with a generously outstretched arm. The Masai took them from him very silently, in an outstretched hand. The ceremony could only have been carried through so well by two parties of noble blood and great family traditions; may democracy take no offence.
A medal is an inconvenient thing to give to a naked man, because he has got no place to fix it on to, and the old Masai chiefs kept standing with theirs in their hand. After a time a very old man came up to me, held out his hand with the medal in it and asked me to tell him what it had got on it. I explained it to him as well as I could. The silver coin had on the one side a head of Britannia, and upon the other side the words: The Great War for Civilization.
I have later told some English friends of the incident of the medals, and they have asked: “Why was not the King’s head on the medals? It was a great mistake.” I myself do not think so, it seems to me that the medals should not be made too attractive, and that the whole matter was well arranged. It may still be that it is this sort of thing which we shall be given at the time when our reward is great in heaven.
When Berkeley was taken ill, I was about to go to Europe on a holiday. He was then a member of the Legislative Council of the Colony, and I telegraphed to him: “Will you not come and stay at Ngong for the sitting of the council bring bottles.” He wired back: “Your telegram straight from heaven arriving with bottles.” But when he came to the farm, his car all filled up with wine, he did not care to drink it. He was very pale, and even sometimes quite silent. His heart was bad, and he could not do without Jama, who had been taught to give him the injections for it, and he had many worries that lay on it heavily; he lived in great fear of losing his farm. Still, by his presence, he turned my house into a chosen, comfortable corner of the world.
“I have come to the stage, Tania,” he said to me gravely, “when I can only drive in the very best of cars, only smoke the finest cigars and only drink the most exquisite vintages of wine.” While he was staying with me then, he told me one evening that the doctor had ordered him to go to bed and stay in bed for a month. I said to him that if he would follow the order, and stay in bed for a month at Ngong, I would give up my journey to remain there and look after him, and go to Europe next year. He thought my offer over for a little while. “My dear,” he said, “I could not do it. If I did it to please you, what should I be afterwards?”
I said good-bye to him then with a heavy heart. While I was sailing home,
past Lamu and Takaunga, where our dhow was to have found her way, I thought of him. But in Paris I heard that he had died. He had dropped down dead before his house, as he was stepping out of the car. He was buried on his farm, where he wished to be.
When Berkeley died, the country changed. His friends felt it at the time, with great sadness, and many people came to feel it later. An epoch in the history of the Colony came to an end with him. In the course of the years many things were reckoned from this turning point, and people said: “When Berkeley Cole lived” or “Since Berkeley died.” Up till his death the country had been the Happy Hunting Grounds, now it was slowly changing and turning into a business proposition. Some standards were lowered when he went: a standard of wit, as it was soon felt,—and such a thing is sad in a colony; a standard of gallantry,—soon after his death people began to talk of their troubles; a standard of humanity.
As Berkeley went away, a grim figure made her entrance upon the stage from the opposite wing,—la dure nécessité maitresse des hommes et des dieux. It was a strange thing that a small slight man should have been able to keep her from the door, for so long a time as he drew breath. The yeast was out of the bread of the land. A presence of gracefulness, gaiety and freedom, an electric power-factor was out. A cat had got up and left the room.
8
WINGS
Denys Finch-Hatton had no other home in Africa than the farm, he lived in my house between his Safaris, and kept his books and his gramophone there. When he came back to the farm, it gave out what was in it; it spoke,—as the coffee-plantations speak, when with the first showers of the rainy season they flower, dripping wet, a cloud of chalk. When I was expecting Denys back, and heard his car coming up the drive, I heard, at the same time, the things of the farm all telling what they really were. He was happy on the farm; he came there only when he wanted to come, and it knew, in him, a quality of which the world besides was not aware, a humility. He never did but what he wanted to do, neither was guile found in his mouth.
Denys had a trait of character which to me was very precious, he liked to hear a story told. For I have always thought that I might have cut a figure at the time of the plague of Florence. Fashions have changed, and the art of listening to a narrative has been lost in Europe. The Natives of Africa, who cannot read, have still got it; if you begin to them: “There was a man who walked out on the plain, and there he met another man,” you have them all with you, their minds running upon the unknown track of the men on the plain. But white people, even if they feel that they ought to, cannot listen to a recital. If they do not become fidgety, and remember things that should be done at once, they fall asleep. The same people will ask you for something to read, and may then sit all through an evening absorbed in any kind of print handed them, they will even then read a speech. They have been accustomed to take in their impressions by the eye.
Denys, who lived much by the ear, preferred hearing a tale told, to reading it; when he came to the farm he would ask: “Have you got a story?” I had been making up many while he had been away. In the evenings he made himself comfortable, spreading cushions like a couch in front of the fire, and with me sitting on the floor, cross-legged like Scheherazade herself, he would listen, clear-eyed, to a long tale, from when it began until it ended. He kept better account of it than I did myself, and at the dramatic appearance of one of the characters, would stop me to say: “That man died in the beginning of the story, but never mind.”
Denys taught me Latin, and to read the Bible, and the Greek poets. He himself knew great parts of the Old Testament by heart, and carried the Bible with him on all his journeys, which gained him the high esteem of the Mohammedans.
He also gave me my gramophone. It was a delight to my heart, it brought a new life to the farm, it became the voice of the farm.—“The soul within a glade the nightingale is.”—Sometimes Denys would arrive unexpectedly at the house, while I was out in the coffee-field or the maize-field, bringing new records with him; he would set the gramophone going, and as I came riding back at sunset, the melody streaming towards me in the clear cool air of the evening would announce his presence to me, as if he had been laughing at me, as he often did. The Natives liked the gramophone, and used to stand round the house to listen to it; some of my house-boys picked out a favourite tune and asked me for it, when I was alone with them in the house. It was a curious thing that Ramante should stick, in his preference, with much devotion to the Adagio of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in G-Major; the first time that he asked me for it he had some difficulty in describing it, so as to make clear to me which tune it was that he wanted.
Denys and I, however, did not agree in our tastes. For I wanted the old composers, and Denys, as if courteously making up to the age for his lack of harmony with it, was as modern as possible in his taste of all arts. He liked to hear the most advanced music. “I would like Beethoven all right,” he said, “if he were not vulgar.”
Denys and I, whenever we were together, had great luck with lions. Sometimes he came back from a shooting Safari of two or three months, vexed that he had been unable to get a good lion for the people from Europe whom he had taken out. In the meantime the Masai had been to my house and had asked me to come out and shoot a certain lion or lioness which was killing off their cattle, and Farah and I had been out, camping in their manyatta, sitting up over a kill, or walking out in the early morning, without as much as finding the track of a lion. But when Denys and I went for a ride, the lions of the plains would be about, as in attendance, we would come upon them then there at a meal, or see them crossing the dry river-beds.
On a New Year’s morning, before sunrise, Denys and I found ourselves on the new Narok Road, driving along as fast as we could go on a rough road.
Denys, the day before, had lent a heavy rifle to a friend of his who was going South with a shooting party, and late in the night he remembered that he had neglected to explain to him a certain trick in the rifle, by which the hair-trigger might be put out of action. He was worried about it and afraid that the hunter would come to some sort of harm by his ignorance. We could then think of no better remedy than that we should start as early as possible, take the new road and try to overtake the shooting party at Narok. It was sixty miles, through some rough country; the Safari was travelling by the old road and would be going slowly as it had heavy loaded lorries with it. Our only trouble was that we did not know if the new road would have been brought through all the way to Narok.
The early morning air of the African highlands is of such a tangible coldness and freshness that time after time the same fancy there comes back to you: you are not on earth but in dark deep waters, going ahead along the bottom of the sea. It is not even certain that you are moving at all, the flows of chilliness against your face may be the deep-sea currents, and your car, like some sluggish electric fish, may be sitting steadily upon the bottom of the Sea, staring in front of her with the glaring eyes of her lamps, and letting the submarine life pass by her. The stars are so large because they are no real stars but reflections, shimmering upon the surface of the water. Alongside your path on the sea-bottom, live things, darker than their surroundings, keep on appearing, jumping up and sweeping into the long grass, as crabs and beach-fleas will make their way into the sand. The light gets clearer, and, about sunrise, the sea-bottom lifts itself towards the surface, a new created island. Whirls of smells drift quickly past you, fresh rank smells of the olive-bushes, the brine scent of burnt grass, a sudden quelling smell of decay.
Kanuthia, Denys’s boy, who sat in the back of the box-body car, gently touched my shoulder and pointed to the right. To the side of the road, twelve or fifteen yards away from it, was a dark bulk, a Manatee taking a rest on the sands, and on the top of it something was stirring in the dark water. It was, I saw later, a big dead Giraffe bull, that had been shot two or three days before. You are not allowed to shoot the Giraffe, and Denys and I later had to defend ourselves against the charge of having killed this one, but w
e could prove that it had been dead some time when we came upon it, though it was never found by whom or why it had been killed. Upon the huge carcass of the Giraffe, a lioness had been feeding, and now raised her head and shoulder above it to watch the passing car.
Denys stopped the car, and Kanuthia lifted the rifle, that he carried, off his shoulder. Denys asked me in a low voice: “Shall I shoot her?”—For he very courteously looked on the Ngong Hill as my private hunting-ground.—We were going across the land of the same Masai who had been to my house to bewail the loss of their cattle; if this was the animal which had killed one after the other of their cows and calves, the time had come to put an end to her. I nodded.
He jumped from the car and slid back a few steps, at the same moment the lioness dived down behind the body of the Giraffe, he ran round the Giraffe to get within shot of her, and fired. I did not see her fall; when I got out and up to her she was lying dead in a big black pool.
There was no time to skin her, we must drive on if we were to cut off the Safari at Narok. We gazed round and took note of the place, the smell of the dead Giraffe was so strong that we could not very well pass it unknowingly.
But when we had driven a further two miles there was no more road. The tools of the road-labourers lay here; on the other side of them was the wide stony land, just grey in the dawn, all unbroken by any touch of man. We looked at the tools and at the country, we would have to leave Denys’s friend to take his chance with the rifle. Afterwards, when he came back, he told us that he had never had an opportunity to use it. So we turned back, and as we turned we got our faces to the Eastern sky, reddening over the plains and the hills. We drove towards it and talked all the time of the lioness.