Softly Calls the Serengeti

by Frank Coates

  ‘The Maasai—Their Land and Customs by Charlotte Manning,’ he reminded her. ‘M Sc (Oxford), BA Lit (Oxford).’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘No need to be shy about it. In your line of work you need impressive credentials. A popular fiction writer, on the other hand…well, publication is credit enough.’

  ‘How did you get into fiction?’

  ‘I worked as a journalist for a few years before making a start on my first novel. Part-time.’

  ‘A journalist. That must have been interesting.’

  ‘Not really. Endless column inches on petty theft, social events and stock sales. My boss owned and ran the Sunshine Coast Sun. Had done for years. His idea of investigative journalism was a good lost dog story.’

  She laughed.

  Mark became more thoughtful as he talked about his path to writing his novel. ‘Queensland, in fact all of Australia, was focused on Eddie Mabo’s native title claim at the time. Mabo’s home—an idyllic speck of an island in the middle of nowhere—became the public’s perception of Eddie Mabo’s cause—to win ownership of his ancestral land. After a ten-year battle, he won the case in the High Court.’ He explained that the key point in the court’s decision was the Murray Islanders’ strong relationship with their land. ‘In my mind, I believed they regarded their island as a paradise lost. It inspired me to make a start on my novel, based on Eddie Mabo’s personal story.’

  ‘Was the book a success?’

  ‘Amazingly, yes. It was published in 2001 and the Australian sales took me to number twelve on the bestsellers list.’

  ‘Congratulations! And did you follow up with another?’

  He folded his napkin and placed it before him on the table. ‘No. I mean, yes, but it was a totally different novel.’

  ‘What was it about?’ she asked, leaning forward.

  But Mark seemed to have lost his enthusiasm and Charlotte’s question hung in the air. She wasn’t sure whether to press the issue. They’d had an enjoyable conversation and she didn’t want to spoil it.

  ‘It must have been so difficult to hold down a day job and tackle the second novel,’ she offered sympathetically.

  He was holding her gaze, but his mind was far away. He seemed to be debating how much to tell her. It was similar to their exchange on the edge of the Rift Valley earlier that day; he was there, but strangely disconnected.

  She tried to ease the situation for him. ‘I can understand if you don’t—’

  ‘Melissa and I decided to follow up on our luck,’ he said. ‘We married the year after my book was published and decided to go to Bali for a holiday.’

  His mention of his wife came as quite a surprise.

  ‘You’re married?’ she asked.

  ‘We met in Surfers in 1999. I wasn’t bad, but she could really surf. And a good tennis player too.’ He was absorbed in his recollections. ‘It wasn’t a honeymoon as such—we’d been living together for three years—it was more of a working holiday, for me at least. I was researching my second book, which would be set in Indonesia. And I loved the place,’ he said, reliving the memory. ‘Can you believe that? Loved it. I’d taken Bahasa at uni. Learning a language gives you such an insight into a country’s psyche, don’t you think?’

  She nodded, unsure if any other response was needed.

  ‘The Balinese are very friendly people. Who could have imagined such an atrocity happening on Bali?’ He stared into the candle flame, which was struggling to stay alight in a pool of wax. ‘The death of a loved one is always incredibly painful. Their death in such freakish circumstances—a one-in-a-million chance—is like…like a theft. My wife…my life…just disappeared in the instant my attention was diverted.’

  The candle light succumbed to the wax with a waft of smoke.

  ‘A bomb, for chrissakes! A bomb in paradise. It was an impossibility.’ He ran both hands through his hair and dropped his eyes towards the table to collect himself. ‘The blood. Body parts in the debris. The stench of burnt flesh. Nobody could understand.’ He slowly shook his head. ‘Melissa didn’t deserve to die. We weren’t over there fighting for a cause. We were on holiday. Why did they do it?’ He looked up and gazed intently at her. ‘Why?’

  The mood of the evening changed as Mark was drawn back into the past and a time that had plainly been devastating for him. He talked about his wife as if she had only just died. It had been five years, but the pain was clearly still raw. In his uncharacteristic frankness, Charlotte glimpsed a side of Mark that she never would have suspected existed. He had obviously loved his wife dearly, and Charlotte felt moved by his need to explain his life with her.

  When Mark had finished, there didn’t seem to be anything Charlotte could say. Conversation flagged, and shortly thereafter Mark left, saying he needed to sleep. Charlotte remained at the table alone, touched by his confidence, by his faith, in her.

  CHAPTER 23

  It wasn’t Joshua’s wish to succumb to sleep, but he did. When he awoke with a start about an hour before dawn, he lay on his bunk listening. Beyond the snoring and grunting of the Kikuyu drivers arose the indistinct sounds of a world he had never heard before, where the wildlife fought or fed or did whatever creatures of the night did. He invented an unlikely menagerie of beasts to fit the myriad sounds. Between the grunts and shrieks, there were periods of profound silence.

  He slid out of his bunk and pulled on his trousers, shirt and sneakers.

  Viewed through the sparse foliage of the fever trees, the stars had lost a little of their immediacy and a hint of dawn colour suffused the sky above Lion Hill. Free of the bungalow’s fusty air, the delicious scent of foliage dampened by dew filled Joshua’s lungs. He took a dozen steps and the hair on his arms bristled with the excitement of just standing there, feeling like the only person on earth.

  The scrunch of gravel under his feet seemed deafening as he made his way down the driveway towards the lake circuit road. He paused to listen. Silence. It was as if all the gathered dawn invaders held their breath preparing for the departure of the night. The intense silence rang in his ears until, minutes later, a faint whispering came from the hill. It was the sound of birds, surely thousands of them, on the other side of the rise—the first to sense the coming of the sun, singing like a multitude of angels in their faraway heaven.

  He picked his way across the stock grid, where a sign forbade guests to proceed beyond that point on foot, and was soon on the circuit road where he padded in silence on the soft dirt.

  He’d walked only a hundred paces when he heard a very slight sound from the grassy area at the side of the road. Through a break in the bush he saw a large animal. His heart stopped. It was an antelope of some kind, watching him. The word ‘impala’ came to mind, although he had no idea how he knew it. Its long, curling horns drew the eye. Joshua tried to imagine how it would feel to wear such a beautiful crown; the power it would confer. As he watched, barely daring to breathe, the animal sent a shiver down its flanks, rippling the rich russet felt of its coat. It turned its magnificent head and trotted away.

  Suddenly there was the woof of a car engine and through the foliage came the headlights of an approaching car. Joshua slipped into the bush, taking delight in the idea that he and the impala shared the same need to be hidden from the impositions of the outside world.

  Riley eased off the handbrake and let the Land Rover roll silently from the car park until it came to a stop at the lake circuit road, two hundred metres from the lodge. On the hill behind the collection of bungalows the sky was dusted in lavender-pink.

  Riley wasn’t intending to go anywhere in particular. The only reason he had for leaving his bed at such an ungodly hour was to put an end to the nightmares that had troubled him for most of the night. In the most recent, he’d been seated at a table under a cherry red bougainvillea drinking coffee with Omuga. His wife and eight children were gathered around. A horseman wielding a wicked scythe came galloping along the road and removed Omuga’s head with a vicious swipe as
his wife and children screamed hysterically.

  Through the thin stand of lanky acacia trees he could see Lake Nakuru—a sheet of black glass reflecting the shadowed line of hills bordering the far shore.

  A troop of vervet monkeys crossed the road to his left. When he drew alongside, they scampered off, watching him pass from the safety of the scrub at the side of the road.

  After some time driving through the forest, the road with its covering of crushed quartz became a luminous pink. He came out of the acacias onto the grass flats along the lake shore and saw a squadron of flamingos skimming low over the water, stirring the morning air and setting up tiny ruffles in the silver-grey shallows. They wheeled and banked, catching the dawn sky’s colour and turning their feathers from pastel to fuchsia pink. They landed, almost in unison, on the water’s edge. A moment later, the water was still again.

  Riley cut the motor and sat watching the wading birds, their lowered heads skimming the caustic soup for the small crustaceans that comprised their food source. Their number grew as more came wheeling in to join the flock. Soon there was a multitude lining the banks in both directions.

  Riley became aware of a low, trilling sound that puzzled him for some time. Eventually he realised it was the sound of perhaps a hundred thousand flamingos sluicing the bitter waters of the lake through their beaks. It had a soporific effect and, to clear his mind, he opened the car door and stepped onto the soft mud of the lake shore, which was now coming to life as the eastern sky shifted from red to golden.

  There was a muffled sound like the muttering of an enormous football crowd as a pink cloud lifted from the warm alkaline water. A rush of foetid lake air hit him in the face as the sky filled with thousands of flamingos ascending in panicked flight, leaving behind a large hole in the pink frieze that a moment ago had skirted the lake.

  Riley wandered along the edge of the water, sending more and more flamingos into the air. He also startled a number of gazelle and other grazing animals unaccustomed to the sight of a human on foot. They galloped off into the taller grass towards the trees. He passed within a hundred paces of a rhino without noticing it, only seeing it when it trotted away, having caught his scent on the wind.

  The sun was well above the confinement of the surrounding hills before he became sufficiently uncomfortable to realise it was burning into him like a blowtorch. He had let his thoughts carry him too far in time and space. The Land Rover was now so far away it was out of sight. When he reached the car an hour later, he was in a lather of sweat and feeling quite light-headed.

  He searched for the water canister and cursed himself. He had taken it to his bungalow the previous night for a refill and had forgotten to put it back. He wasn’t ready to return to the lodge, but now he had no choice.

  He turned the ignition key. The starter motor gave a plaintive snarl and fell silent. Riley turned off the ignition key, waited a moment and tried again. This time there was only the alarming click of the solenoid, indicating the battery was flat. He checked the instrument panel and found he had forgotten to turn off the headlights before he went for his walk.

  He slapped both hands onto the steering wheel before flinging the door open and stepping out of the cabin. The sun’s heat immediately assaulted him. It seemed to have doubled in intensity in the few minutes since he’d returned from his walk.

  He was reasonably sure the lodge was not too distant, but the warning made to every cross-country traveller in Australia’s dry heart came to mind: don’t leave the vehicle. He decided to ignore it, believing that a vehicle from the lodge taking guests on a pre-breakfast safari would find him before he went too far. He had no container, but as a precaution he removed his shirt and clambered under the car to soak the cotton in radiator water.

  He pushed along the grassy verge of the lake, expecting to find the road before too long and a safari vehicle. With nothing but his hot, soaking shirt and the poisonous water of Lake Nakuru to quench his raging thirst until he reached the lodge, he hoped his prediction was accurate.

  The shrill, melancholic call of a fish eagle caused him to look aloft to find it, but his eyes burned under the blazing sunlight.

  Kazlana checked her bearings and looked below to confirm she was now over the Great Rift Valley. The huge Menengai caldera was to her left and beyond it lay Lake Nakuru.

  She flipped on the plane’s internal intercom. ‘There’s our destination,’ she said to Antonio, who was sitting beside her.

  He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Well done. What happens when we land?’

  ‘I’ve arranged some transport to take us to the lodge. Tomorrow I begin my search for the person Papa visited.’

  ‘I should go with you, cara mia.’

  ‘No, I can do this alone. And you have family to see.’

  Antonio had been born and raised near Nakuru—the son of an Italian prisoner-of-war in World War II. With his many comrades, his father had built the road that crept down the Kikuyu escarpment to Kijabe, on the floor of the Great Rift Valley. After the war, Antonio’s father had returned to Kenya with his new wife, where they set about raising a family of four on the fertile hills above Nakuru. The Diconza vegetable farm was still there, now run by Antonio’s three brothers.

  ‘I should come with you,’ he insisted. ‘You never know what you will find.’

  ‘It’s an orphanage, Antonio. Don’t be so dramatic.’

  He shook his head. Kazlana knew what he was thinking. He had never won an argument with her after she’d made up her mind.

  She lowered the Cessna’s nose and they glided in over the lake towards the airfield at the southern end of the park. On the west side, she saw a Land Rover with the door open and nobody within sight of it. She thought it curious as it was strictly illegal for a tourist to leave a vehicle.

  She skimmed over the strip to startle off a herd of zebra and checked the condition of the half-kilometre she needed to land the Cessna. When she was satisfied all was well, she banked to again approach from the north.

  On her second pass over the lake, Antonio nudged her. ‘What’s wrong with this guy? Is he crazy?’ He pointed to a man below them, walking through the grassland between the lake shore and the road.

  Kazlana shook her head in disbelief. ‘Some of these tourists think they can just go for a walk in the park. I saw an empty Land Rover down there. That must be his.’

  Antonio shrugged and ran his forefinger across his neck in a cutthroat sign. ‘He’s looking for trouble, no?’

  She nodded. ‘And if he’s not careful, he’ll find it.’

  Kazlana gave the man one last glance before she turned her attention to the landing strip. Tourists were always taking stupid risks, but she and Antonio would have to pass the southern end of the lake on their road to the lodge. They would try to find him before a buffalo or lion did.

  Soon after leaving his car, Riley’s throat was so constricted that he could hardly swallow his own spit. A short time later there was no spit to swallow.

  He knew the lodge was on the hill on the other side of the lake so he had no concerns about the direction he needed to take, but the ignominy of arriving at the lodge, whether by foot or in one of the lodge’s vehicles, dishevelled and thirsty would be an extreme embarrassment.

  A boggy reach of the lake forced him to take a diversion into the taller grass beyond the alkaline foreshore. It was heavier going and the grass trapped whatever slight breeze played from the lake. He sweated profusely.

  A pair of waterbucks bolted from a thicket, stopping a short distance away to peer back at him in wonder before they again moved off. Riley paused to reassess the wisdom of proceeding on foot. The rhino he’d seen had given him a wide berth, but he wondered if the other animals in the park would be so obliging.

  He ran his eyes over the terrain ahead and to the landward side of the lake. Stunted, drab shrubs pock-marked the blond grassland, but on closer inspection he realised that some of the shrubs were in fact antelope of some kind. Wildebeest,
he said to himself hopefully.

  When he checked the shapes again, they appeared to have grown in bulk.

  Remain calm, he counselled. Whatever they are, they’re not in your path and they’re some distance away. At the moment.

  In his mind he searched for all the information he’d ever heard or read about buffalo. Just in case.

  Joshua looked into the white-hot sky. Not a single cloud offered relief from the cruel sun. Around him was a sea of grass and, somewhere beyond that, the lake, which had seemed tantalisingly attractive in the early hours of morning, but an hour later had become the door of a furnace. He vaguely recalled from his primary school geography classes that the Great Rift Valley was much lower than Nairobi and therefore much hotter. The knowledge gave him small comfort now that he was hot, thirsty and quite possibly lost.

  When he’d left the grassland surrounding the lake to seek the shelter of the acacia forest, he’d felt he could quite easily retrace his steps, find the lake and return to the lodge. But once he’d reached the trees, he came upon a herd of zebra, which he followed for a time before they led him to a small group of giraffe. They were impossibly tall on their long, elegant legs, far taller than any he’d seen in the tourist posters and far more graceful. They sailed through the tall grass like fishing dhows with gold and black sails. In every shaded alcove among the acacias were many more golden-brown impala, who watched him pass with wide-eyed curiosity. Guineafowl dashed, head down and serious, into the security of the reeds.

  In the process of these discoveries, he’d somehow managed to misplace the lake.

  He was now out of the forest and in tall grass, which was reassuring since it was the landscape that he’d initially followed when he’d taken his meandering path from the lake. There was no shelter. Only a few stunted shrubs poked above the metre-high grass.

  Suddenly one of the shrubs moved and a large, dark head with angry brows knitted beneath an enormous spread of horns loomed from behind it. The beast was ruminating when Joshua first spotted it, but when he stopped to stare at it, its jaw became still, it lifted its wet and running nose in his direction, sniffed and then let out a low, assertive grumble.