by Wilbur Smith
‘You think your father despises you?’
‘No. He loves me but he doesn’t respect me. I want his respect more than anything else in the world.’
‘You’ve just taken a bigger rhino than he has.’
They looked across at the enormous carcass, the horn glinting in the firelight.
‘That’s a start.’ Kermit nodded. ‘However, knowing my father, he’d put much more value on an elephant or a lion. Find one of those for me, Fairy Godmother.’
Manyoro was sitting at the other fire with Ishmael, and Leon called across to him, ‘Come to me, my brother. There is something of importance we must discuss.’ Manyoro got up and came to squat across the fire from him. ‘We need to find a big elephant for this bwana.’
‘We have given him a Swahili name,’ Manyoro said. ‘We have named him Bwana Popoo Hima.’
Leon laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ Kermit asked.
‘You have been honoured,’ Leon told him. ‘Manyoro at least respects you. He has given you a Swahili name.’
‘What is it?’ Kermit demanded.
‘Bwana Popoo Hima.’
‘That sounds disgusting,’ Kermit said, suspicious.
‘It means “Sir Quick Bullet”.’
‘Popoo Hima! Hey! Tell him I like that!’ Kermit was pleased. ‘Why did they choose that name?’
‘They’re very impressed by the way you shoot.’ Leon turned back to Manyoro. ‘Bwana Popoo Hima wants a very big elephant.’
‘Every white man wants a very big elephant. But we must go to Lonsonyo Mountain to seek the counsel of our mother.’
‘Kermit, the advice I have from Manyoro is that we go to a Masai lady witch doctor on a mountaintop. She will tell us where to find your elephant.’
‘Do you really believe in that sort of thing?’ Kermit asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, it just so happens that so do I.’ Kermit nodded seriously. ‘In the hills to the north of our ranch in the badlands of Dakota there lives an old Indian shaman. I never hunt without going to see him first. Every real hunter has his little superstitions, even my father, who’s the hardest-nosed guy you’ll ever meet. He always carries a rabbit’s foot when he goes out into the field.’
‘It pays to give Lady Luck a wink and a nod,’ Leon agreed. ‘This lady I’m taking you to meet is her twin sister. She’s also my adopted mother.’
‘Then I reckon we can trust her. When can we leave?’
‘We’re more than twenty miles from the main camp. We’ll lose a couple of days if we take the rhino head back there first. I plan to cache it here and Manyoro will pick it up later. That way we can leave at once for the mountain.’
‘How far?’
‘Two days, if we push along.’
The next morning they hoisted the rhino head into the high branches of a pod mahogany tree and wedged it in a fork where it was well out of the reach of hyenas and other scavengers. Then they headed east, and camped only when it was too dark to see the ground ahead. Leon did not want to risk one of the horses breaking a leg in an antbear hole. During the night he woke and lay for a minute listening for what had disturbed him. One of the horses whickered and stamped.
Lions! he thought. After the horses. He threw off his blanket and reached for his rifle as he sat up. Then he saw an alien figure sitting at the smouldering ashes of the fire. It was shrouded in an ochre-red shuka.
‘Who is it?’ he demanded.
‘It is me, Loikot. I have come.’
He stood up and Leon recognized him at once, although he was several inches taller than he had been when they had last met only six months before. In the same period his voice had broken and he had become fully a man. ‘How did you find us, Loikot?’
‘Lusima Mama told me where you were. She sent me to welcome you.’
Their voices had roused Kermit. He sat up and asked sleepily, ‘What’s going on? Who’s this skinny kid?’
‘He’s a messenger from the lady we’re going to visit. She sent him to find us and bring us to the mountain.’
‘How the hell did she know we were on our way? We didn’t know ourselves until last night.’
‘Wake up, Bwana Popoo Hima. Think about it. The lady is a sorcerer. She keeps her eye on the road and her foot on the gas. You wouldn’t want to play poker with her.’
In the middle of the morning they raised the flat top of Lonsonyo Mountain above the dreaming blue horizon ahead, but it was late in the day when they stood under its towering mass, and dark before they rode into the manyatta and dismounted in front of Lusima’s hut. She had heard the horses and stood tall in the doorway with the firelight behind her. She was naked except for the string of beads around her waist. Her skin had been freshly anointed with fat and ochre, and polished until it gleamed.
Leon walked across to her and went down on one knee. ‘Give me your blessing, Mama,’ he asked.
‘You have it, my son.’ She touched his head. ‘My motherly love is yours also.’
‘I have brought another petitioner to you.’ Leon stood up and beckoned Kermit forward. ‘His Swahili name is Bwana Popoo Hima.’
‘So this is the prince, the son of a great white king.’ Lusima looked closely into Kermit’s face. ‘He is a twig of the mighty tree, but he will never grow as tall as the tree from which he sprang. There is always one tree in the forest that grows taller than any other, one eagle that flies higher than any other bird.’ She smiled kindly at Kermit. ‘All these things he knows in his heart, and it makes him feel small and unhappy.’
Even Leon was amazed at her insight. ‘He longs desperately to earn his father’s respect,’ he agreed.
‘So he comes to me to find him an elephant.’ She nodded. ‘In the morning I will bless his bunduki and point the way of the hunter for him. But now you will feast with me. I have killed a young goat for you and this mzungu, who does not drink blood and milk, and prefers cooked meat.’
They gathered at noon the next day under the council tree in the cattle pen. Big Medicine lay on the tanned lionskin. The blued metal was freshly oiled and her woodwork shone. The sacrificial offering of fresh cow’s blood and milk, salt, snuff and glass trade beads had been set out. Leon and Kermit squatted side by side at the head of the lionskin with Manyoro and Loikot behind them.
Lusima emerged from her hut, magnificent in her finery. She came to the council tree with her regal stride, her slave girls attending her closely. The men clapped with respect and called her praises: ‘She is the great black cow who feeds us with the milk of her udders. She is the watcher who sees all things. She is the mother of the tribe. She is the wise one who knows all things on this earth. Pray for us, Lusima Mama.’
She squatted in front of the men and asked the ritual questions: ‘Why do you come to my mountain? What is it you seek from me?’
‘We beg you to bless our weapons,’ Leon replied. ‘We importune you to divine the path that the great grey men take through the wilderness.’
Lusima rose and sprinkled the rifle with blood and milk, snuff and salt. ‘Make this weapon as the dreadful eye of the hunter that it may slay whatever he looks upon. May his popoo fly straight as the bee returning to the hive.’
Then she went to Kermit and, with the giraffe-tail switch, sprinkled the blood and milk on his bowed head. ‘The game will never escape him, for he has the heart of the hunter. Let him follow his quarry unerringly. May it never escape his hunter’s eye.’
Leon whispered the translation to Kermit, and after each sentence she spoke, they clapped and said the refrain to her prayer: ‘Even as the great black cow speaks, let it be so.’
Lusima began to dance, whirling in a tight circle, her bare feet like those of a young girl, her sweat mingled with the oil and ochre until she glowed like a carving of precious amber. At last she collapsed on the lionskin and her face contorted. She bit her lips until blood ran down her chin. Her whole body juddered and shook, her breath sawing and rasping in her throat, froth
coating her lips and mingling pinkly with the blood. When she spoke her voice was as thick and hoarse as a man’s: ‘The hunter makes his way homewards. The clever hunter listens to the cheeping of the small black birds in the dawn,’ she grated. ‘If he waits on the hilltop the hunter will be thrice blessed.’ She gasped and shook herself as a hunting spaniel does when it clambers from the water on to the riverbank.
‘Well, your mama’s clues were fairly cryptic,’ Kermit remarked drily, as they ate the dinner of roasted porcupine, as tender and juicy as a sucking pig, that Ishmael had provided. ‘Was she telling me to give it up and go home, do you think?’
‘Didn’t your Indian shaman teach you that when you’re dealing with occult prediction you have to consider every word for its possible associations? You cannot take anything literally. To give you an example, last time I asked for her help, Lusima told me to follow the sweet singer. This turned out to be the bird called a honeyguide.’
‘She seems to be something of an ornithologist, but she gave us black birds instead of honeyguides.’
‘Let’s start at the beginning. Did she tell you to go home or to go homewards?’
‘Homewards! My home is in New York, USA.’
‘Well, that would give us a bearing of north-west by north and a touch north, I reckon.’
‘In the absence of any other suggestions we’ll have to give that a go,’ Kermit agreed.
Leon navigated on the army-issue compass he had liberated when he left the KAR, and they camped that first night under the lee of a small rocky kopje. Just before dawn they were drinking coffee while they waited for the sun. Suddenly Loikot cocked his head and held up his hand for silence. They stopped talking and listened. The sound was so faint that it was only fitfully audible when the morning breeze dropped a little or veered favourably.
‘What is it, Loikot?’
‘The chungaji are calling to each other.’ He stood and picked up his spear. ‘I must go up the hill so I can hear what they are saying.’ He slipped away into the darkness, while they listened to the distant sounds.
‘They don’t sound like human voices,’ Kermit said, ‘more like the piping of sparrows.’
‘Or the cheeping of little black birds?’ Leon asked. ‘Lusima Mama’s little black birds?’
They burst out laughing.
‘I think you have it. Loikot will have news for us when he comes down the hill.’
They heard him calling, closer and clearer than the other voices, and the exchange of news on the Masai grapevine continued until after the sun was well clear of the horizon. Then, at last, there was silence as the wind and rising heat made further discourse unintelligible. Soon after this Loikot returned. He was puffed with self-importance. It was clear that he was not going to speak until someone pleaded with him to do so.
Leon humoured him. ‘Tell me, Loikot, what did you and your brothers of the circumcision knife speak about?’
‘There was much talk about the safari of ten thousand porters and many wazungu camped on the Ewaso Ng’iro river and the great killing of animals by the king of a land called Emelika.’
‘After this what did you speak about?’
‘There has been an outbreak of red-water disease among the cattle near Arusha. Ten have died.’
‘Is it possible that you also discussed the movement of elephant in the Rift Valley?’
‘Yes, we spoke of that,’ Loikot replied. ‘We all agreed that this is the season when the big bulls come down into the Rift. In recent days the chungaji have seen many in the land between Maralal and Kamnoro. There was talk of three travelling eastwards in one herd, all very big.’ Then, at last, he broke into a smile, and his voice took on an urgent cadence. ‘If we are to catch them, M’bogo, we must go quickly northwards to cut them off before they move on into Samburuland and Turkana.’
Manyoro and Loikot ran ahead of the horses with the long loping stride they referred to as ‘gobbling up the earth greedily’. The two horsemen trotted behind them, then Ishmael, further back, riding one mule and leading the other on which were loaded all his pots, pans and supplies.
Kermit was in his usual irrepressible mood. ‘A good horse between your legs, a rifle in your hand and the promise of game ahead! Son of a gun, this is the life for a man.’
‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing,’ Leon agreed.
Kermit reined in suddenly and shaded his eyes with his hat to look out to one side at a patch of grey thorn scrub. ‘That’s a big kudu bull over there,’ he said. ‘Bigger than any that Mellow got for me.’
‘Do you want another kudu, or do you want a cracking hundred-pounder jumbo? Make up your mind, chum. You can’t have both.’
‘Why not?’ Kermit demanded.
‘The big bull elephant with your name branded on his backside may be just over the next rise. You fire a shot here and he’ll take off at a rate of knots. He won’t stop running until he gets across the Nile.’
‘Spoilsport! You’re as bad as Goddamned Frank Mellow.’ Kermit kicked his horse into a canter to catch up with the two Masai, who had pulled well ahead.
In the middle of the afternoon a line of low hills pushed their crests over the flat horizon, resembling the knuckles of a clenched fist. They camped that night below the tallest. Before dawn the next morning they drank coffee around the fire, then left Ishmael with the horses to break camp and pack his mule while they climbed to the summit of the hill. When they reached it Loikot sang out across the valley. He was answered almost immediately by a similar but distant cry coming out of the remaining shreds of the night. The exchange went on for some time before he turned to Leon. ‘That one I was speaking to is not Masai. This is the border between our land and the Samburu,’ Loikot told him. ‘He is half a Samburu, the tribe who are our bastard cousins. They speak Maa but not as we do. They speak it in a funny way, like this.’ He rolled his eyes and made an idiotic hee-hawing sound, like a demented donkey. Manyoro thought this was hilarious and staggered around in a circle, slapping his cheeks and repeating the imitation of a Samburu speaking Maa.
‘Now that you two clowns have had your little joke, will you tell us what your bastard cousin the Samburu had to say?’
Still gasping and hiccuping with merriment, Loikot answered, ‘The Samburu donkey says that last evening as they were driving the cattle into the manyatta they saw the three bulls. He says that every one of them has very long white teeth.’
‘Which way were they heading?’ Leon demanded eagerly.
‘They were coming straight up this valley, towards where we are now.’ Quickly Leon translated this news to Kermit, and watched his eyes light up. ‘So if I’d let you shoot that kudu yesterday you would have blown away any chance we ever had of catching them.’
‘I’m covered with shame and remorse. In future I promise to listen to the words of the Great One who knows all.’ Kermit gave him a sardonic salute.
‘Go to hell, Roosevelt!’ Leon grinned. ‘I’m sending Manyoro and Loikot down into the valley to check that they didn’t pass during the night. However, it’s new moon at the moment, so I doubt they would have kept moving after dark. I’d bet good money that they rested during the darkest hours and that they’re only now starting to move again.’ They sat and watched the two Masai go down the hillside and disappear among the trees in the gut of the valley.
‘So far we’ve followed Lusima’s advice about little black birds cheeping in the dawn. What was her next suggestion?’ Kermit asked suddenly.
‘She spoke of the hunter who waits on the hilltop being thrice blessed. Here we are on the hilltop. Let’s see if your three blessings are on the way.’
As soon as the sun poked its fiery head above the horizon Leon unslung the strap of the binoculars from his shoulder, and settled with his back against a tree-trunk. Slowly he panned the lenses across the valley below. Within an hour he picked out the figures of Manyoro and Loikot coming back up the hill, but they were walking at a leisurely pace and chatting to each o
ther. He lowered the binoculars. ‘They’re in no hurry, which means they’ve had no luck. The bulls haven’t passed this way. Not yet anyway.’ The two Masai came up and squatted close by. Leon looked a question at Manyoro, but he shook his head.
‘Hapana. Nothing.’ He took out his snuffbox and offered Loikot a pinch before he helped himself. They sniffed and sneezed, closing their eyes, then whispered quietly together so that their voices would not carry down into the valley. Kermit stretched out on the stony ground, pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and, within minutes, was snoring gently. Leon kept the binoculars moving over the valley, lowering them every once in a while to rest his eyes and polish the lenses on his shirt tail.
Over the ages a number of large round boulders had become dislodged from the hillside and had rolled down on to the valley floor. Some resembled the backs of elephant, and more than once Leon’s heart tripped as he picked up a massive grey shape in the field of the binoculars, until he realized it was a grey rock and not elephant hide he was seeing. Once more he lowered the binoculars and spoke softly to Manyoro: ‘How long should we wait here?’
‘Until the sun reaches there.’ Manyoro pointed to the zenith. ‘If they do not come by then it is possible they have turned aside. If so, we must go down to the horses and ride to the manyatta where the Samburu saw them yesterday. There we can pick up the spoor and follow it until we catch up with them.’
Kermit lifted his hat off his eyes and asked, ‘What did Manyoro say?’ Leon told him and he sat up. ‘I’m getting bored,’ he announced. ‘This is a game of hurry up and wait.’
Leon did not bother to reply. He lifted the binoculars and resumed the search.
Half a mile down the valley there was a patch of greener growth that he had noticed earlier. He knew by the colour and density of the foliage that it was a grove of monkey-berry trees. The fruits were purple and bitter to human taste but attracted all varieties of wild game, large and small. In the centre of the grove lay one of the huge rolling boulders, its rounded top showing above the monkey berry. He picked it out again and was about to pass on when his nerves jumped taut. The rock seemed to have changed its outline and grown larger. He stared at it until his eyes swam. Then it changed shape again. He caught his breath. An elephant was standing behind the boulder, half hidden by it, so that only its rump and the curve of its spine were exposed. How the animal had reached that position without any of them seeing it was another demonstration to him of how silently and stealthily such a large creature could move. He felt his chest closing until he was breathing asthmatically. He kept staring at the elephant but it did not move again. There’s only one, so it can’t be the herd we’re looking for. Probably it’s a stray cow or a young bull. He tried to fortify himself against disappointment.