He would tell me old legends sometimes about Mount Kenya, or about the Menegai Crater, called the Mountain of God, or about Kilimanjaro. He would tell me these things and I would ride alongside and ask endless questions, or we would sit together in the jolting buggy and just think about what he had said.
One day, when we were riding to Elkington’s, my father spoke about lions.
‘Lions are more intelligent than some men,’ he said, ‘and more courageous than most. A lion will fight for what he has and for what he needs; he is contemptuous of cowards and wary of his equals. But he is not afraid. You can always trust a lion to be exactly what he is — and never anything else.’
‘Except,’ he added, looking more paternally concerned than usual, ‘that damned lion of Elkington’s!’
The Elkington lion was famous within a radius of twelve miles in all directions from the farm, because, if you happened to be anywhere inside that circle, you could hear him roar when he was hungry, when he was sad, or when he just felt like roaring. If, in the night, you lay sleepless on your bed and listened to an intermittent sound that began like the bellow of a banshee trapped in the bowels of Kilimanjaro and ended like the sound of that same banshee suddenly at large and arrived at the foot of your bed, you knew (because you had been told) that this was the song of Paddy.
Two or three of the settlers in East Africa at that time had caught lion cubs and raised them in cages. But Paddy, the Elkington lion, had never seen a cage.
He had grown to full size, tawny, black-maned and muscular, without a worry or a care. He lived on fresh meat, not of his own killing. He spent his waking hours (which coincided with everybody else’s sleeping hours) wandering through Elkington’s fields and pastures like an affable, if apostrophic, emperor, a-stroll in the gardens of his court.
He thrived in solitude. He had no mate, but pretended indifference and walked alone, not toying too much with imaginings of the unattainable. There were no physical barriers to his freedom, but the lions of the plains do not accept into their respected fraternity an individual bearing in his coat the smell of men. So Paddy ate, slept, and roared, and perhaps he sometimes dreamed, but he never left Elkington’s. He was a tame lion, Paddy was. He was deaf to the call of the wild.
‘I’m always careful of that lion,’ I told my father, ‘but he’s really harmless. I have seen Mrs. Elkington stroke him.’
‘Which proves nothing,’ said my father. ‘A domesticated lion is only an unnatural lion — and whatever is unnatural is untrustworthy.’
Whenever my father made an observation as deeply philosophical as that one, and as inclusive, I knew there was nothing more to be said.
I nudged my horse and we broke into a canter covering the remaining distance to Elkington’s.
It wasn’t a big farm as farms went in Africa before the First World War, but it had a very nice house with a large veranda on which my father, Jim Elkington, Mrs. Elkington, and one or two other settlers sat and talked with what to my mind was always unreasonable solemnity.
There were drinks, but beyond that there was a tea-table lavishly spread, as only the English can spread them. I have sometimes thought since of the Elkingtons’ tea-table — round, capacious, and white, standing with sturdy legs against the green vines of the garden, a thousand miles of Africa receding from its edge.
It was a mark of sanity, I suppose, less than of luxury. It was evidence of the double debt England still owes to ancient China for her two gifts that made expansion possible — tea and gunpowder.
But cakes and muffins were no fit bribery for me. I had pleasures of my own then, or constant expectations. I made what niggardly salutations I could bring forth from a disinterested memory and left the house at a gait rather faster than a trot.
As I scampered past the square hay shed a hundred yards or so behind the Elkington house, I caught sight of Bishon Singh whom my father had sent ahead to tend our horses.
I think the Sikh must have been less than forty years old then, but his face was never any indication of his age. On some days he looked thirty and on others he looked fifty, depending on the weather, the time of day, his mood, or the tilt of his turban. If he had ever disengaged his beard from his hair and shaved the one and clipped the other, he might have astonished us all by looking like one of Kipling’s elephant boys, but he never did either, and so, to me at least, he remained a man of mystery, without age or youth, but burdened with experience, like the wandering Jew.
He raised his arm and greeted me in Swahili as I ran through the Elkington farmyard and out toward the open country.
Why I ran at all or with what purpose in mind is beyond my answering, but when I had no specific destination I always ran as fast as I could in the hope of finding one — and I always found it.
I was within twenty yards of the Elkington lion before I saw him. He lay sprawled in the morning sun, huge, black-maned, and gleaming with life. His tail moved slowly, stroking the rough grass like a knotted rope end. His body was sleek and easy, making a mould where he lay, a cool mould, that would be there when he had gone. He was not asleep; he was only idle. He was rusty-red, and soft, like a strokable cat.
I stopped and he lifted his head with magnificent ease and stared at me out of yellow eyes.
I stood there staring back, scuffling my bare toes in the dust, pursing my lips to make a noiseless whistle — a very small girl who knew about lions.
Paddy raised himself then, emitting a little sigh, and began to contemplate me with a kind of quiet premeditation, like that of a slow-witted man fondling an unaccustomed thought.
I cannot say that there was any menace in his eyes, because there wasn’t, or that his ‘frightful jowls’ were drooling, because they were handsome jowls and very tidy. He did sniff the air, though, with what impressed me as being close to audible satisfaction. And he did not lie down again.
I remembered the rules that one remembers. I did not run. I walked very slowly, and I began to sing a defiant song.
‘Kali coma Simba sisi,’ I sang, ‘Asikari yoti ni udari! — Fierce like the lion are we, Asikari all are brave!’
I went in a straight line past Paddy when I sang it, seeing his eyes shine in the thick rass, watching his tail beat time to the metre of my ditty.
‘Twendi, twendi — ku pigana — piga aduoi — pig asana! — Let us go, let us go — to fight — to beat down the enemy! Beat hard, beat hard!’
What lion would be unimpressed with the marching song of the King’s African Rifles?
Singing it still, I took up my trot toward the rim of the low hill which might, if I were lucky, have Cape gooseberry bushes on its slopes. The country was grey-green and dry, and the sun lay on it closely, making the ground hot under my bare feet. There was no sound and no wind.
Even Paddy made no wound, coming swiftly behind me.
What I remember most clearly of the moment that followed are three things — a scream that was barely a whisper, a blow that struck me to the ground, and, as I buried my face in my arms and felt Paddy’s teeth close on the flesh of my leg, a fantastically bobbing turban, that was Bishon Singh’s turban appear over the edge of the hill.
I remained conscious, but I closed my eyes and tried not to be. It was not so much the pain as it was the sound.
The sound of Paddy’s roar in my ears will only be duplicated, I think, when the doors of hell slip their wobbly hinges, one day, and give voice and authenticity to the whole panorama of Dante’s poetic nightmares. It was an immense roar that encompassed the world and dissolved me into it.
I shut my eyes very tight and lay still under the weight of Paddy’s paws.
Bishon Singh said afterward that he did nothing. He said he had remained by the hay shed for a few minutes after I ran past him, and then, for no explainable reason, had begun to follow me. He admitted, though, that, a little while before, he had seen Paddy go in the direction I had taken.
The Sikh called for help, of course, when he saw the lion meant to attack, and a half-dozen of
Elkington’s syces had come running from the house. Along with them had come Jim Elkington with a rawhide whip.
Jim Elkington, even without a rawhide whip, was very impressive. He was one of those enormous men whose girths alone seem to preclude any possibility of normal movement, much less of speed. But Jim had speed — not to be loosely compared with lightning, but rather like the cannon balls of the Napoleonic Wars. Jim was, without question, a man of considerable courage, but in the case of my Rescue From the Lion, it was, I am told, his momentum rather than his bravery for which I must be forever grateful.
It happened like this — as Bishon Singh told it;
‘I am resting against the walls of the place where hay is kept and first the large lion, and then you, Beru, pass me going toward the open field, and a thought comes to me that a lion and a young girl are strange company, so I follow. I follow to the place where the hill that goes up becomes the hill that goes down, and where it goes down deepest I see that you are running without much thought in your head and the lion is running behind you with many thoughts in his head, and I scream for everybody to come very fast.
‘Everybody comes very fast, but the large lion is faster than anybody, and he jumps on your back and I see you scream but I hear no scream. I only hear the lion, and I begin to run with everybody, and this includes Bwana Elkington, who is saying a great many words I do not know and is carrying a long kiboko which he holds in his hand and is meant for beating the large lion.
‘Bwana Elkington goes past me the way a man with lighter legs and fewer inches around his stomach might go past me, and he is waving the long kiboko so that it whistles over all of our heads like a very sharp wind, but when we get close to the lion it comes to my mind that that lion is not of the mood to accept a kiboko.
‘He is standing with the front of himself on your back, Beru, and you are bleeding in three or five places, and he is roaring. I do not believe Bwana Elkington could have thought that that lion at that moment would consent to being beaten, because the lion was not looking the way he had ever looked before when it was necessary for him to be beaten. He was looking as if he did not wish to be disturbed by a kiboko, or the Bwana, or the syces, or Bishon Singh, and he was saying so in a very large voice.
‘I believe that Bwana Elkington understood this voice when he was still more than several feet from the lion, and I believe the Bwana considered in his mind that it would be the best thing not to beat the lion just then, but the Bwana when he runs very fast is like the trunk of a great baobob tree rolling down a slope, and it seems that because of this it was not possible for him to explain the thought of his mind to the soles of his feet in a sufficient quickness of time to prevent him from rushing much closer to the lion than in his heart he wished to be.
‘And it was this circumstance, as I am telling it,’ said Bishon Singh, ‘which in my considered opinion made it possible for you to be alive, Beru.’
‘Bwana Elkington rushed at the lion then, Bishon Singh?’
‘The lion, as of the contrary, rushed at Bwana Elkington,’ said Bishon Singh. ‘The lion deserted you for the Bwana, Beru. The lion was of the opinion that his master was not in any honest way deserving of a portion of what he, the lion, had accomplished in the matter of fresh meat through no effort by anybody except himself.’
Bishon Singh offered this extremely reasonable interpretation with impressive gravity, as if he were expounding the Case For the Lion to a chosen jury of Paddy’s peers.
‘Fresh meat’ … I repeated dreamily, and crossed my fingers.
‘So then what happened …?’
The Sikh lifted his shoulders and let them drop again ‘What could happen, Beru? The lion rushed for Bwana Elkington, who in his turn rushed from the lion, and in so rushing did not keep in his hand the long kiboko, but allowed it to fall upon the ground, and in accomplishing this the Bwana was free to ascend a very fortunate tree, which he did.’
‘And you picked me up, Bishon Singh?’
He made a little dip with his massive turban. ‘I was happy with the duty of carrying you back to this very bed, Beru, and of advising your father, who had gone to observe some of Bwana Elkington’s horses, that you had been moderately eaten by the large lion. Your father returned very fast, and Bwana Elkington some time later returned very fast, but the large lion has not returned at all.’
The large lion had not returned at all. That night he killed a horse, and the next night he killed a yearling bullock, and after that a cow fresh for milking.
In the end he was caught and finally caged, but brought to no rendezvous with the firing squad at sunrise. He remained for years in his cage, which, had he managed to live in freedom with his inhibitions, he might never have seen at all.
It seems characteristic of the mind of man that the repression of what is natural to humans must be abhorred, but that what is natural to an infinitely more natural animal must be confined within the bounds of a reason peculiar only to men — more peculiar sometimes than seems reasonable at all.
Paddy lived, people stared at him and he stared back, and this went on until he was an old, old lion. Jim Elkington died, and Mrs. Elkington, who really loved Paddy, was forced, because of circumstances beyond her control or Paddy’s, to have him shot by Boy Long, the manager of Lord Delamere’s estates.
This choice of executioners was, in itself, a tribute to Paddy, for no one loved animals more or understood them better, or could shoot more cleanly than Boy Long.
But the result was the same to Paddy. He had lived and died in ways not of his choosing. He was a good lion. He had done what he could about being a tame lion. Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?
I still have the sears of his teeth and claws, but they are very small now and almost forgotten, and I cannot begrudge him his moment.
VI
Still Is the Land
THE FARM AT NJORO was endless, but it was no farm at all until my father made it. He made it out of nothing and out of everything — the things of which all farms are made. He made it out of forest and bush rocks, new earth, sun, and torrents of warm rain. He made it out of labour and out of patience.
He was no farmer. He bought the land because it was cheap and fertile, and because East Africa was new and you could feel the future of it under your feet.
It looked like this at first: It was a broad stretch of land, part of it open valley, but most of it roofed with the heads of high trees — cedar, ebony, mahogo, teak and bamboo — and their trunks were snared in miles of creeping plants. The creeping plants rose to heights of twelve and fifteen feet and, from the ground, you never saw the tops of the trees until they fell from the blows of axes and were dragged away by teams of oxen handled by Dutchmen with whips that cracked all day.
People called Wanderobo lived in the forests and hunted in them with bows and poisoned arrows and poisoned spears, but they were never a threat to any of my father’s men or to us. They were not quarrelsome people. They hid in the creeping vines, in the trees, and the underbrush and watched the work of the axes and the teams of oxen and moved deeper into the growth.
When the farm began to acquire an atmosphere of permanence and the yard in front of the first few huts was trampled hard and dogs sprawled on it in the sun, some of these Wanderobo would come out of the forest bringing the black and white skins of Colobus monkeys to trade for salt and oil and sugar. The skins were sewn together to make soft rugs for the beds, and I remembered them long after they were worn out and forgotten and Colobus monkeys were no longer easy to find — and the farm had become almost an industry.
By then there were a thousand Kavirondo and Kikuyu working on it instead of ten or twenty, and hundreds of oxen instead of just a few. The forest had fallen back, giving ground with the grim dignity of a respected enemy, and fields were cleaned of the rocks and bush that had lent them the character of wilderness for centuries. Huts had become houses, sheds had become stables, cattle had cut paths in the prairie.
My f
ather bought two old steam engines and anchored them to make power for a grist mill. It was as if there had never before been a grist mill anywhere, as if all the maize in the world waited to be ground and all the wheat ever grown needed only to be made into flour.
You could stand on a hill and look down on the dirt-track road that went to Kampi ya Moto, where the maize was so tall that the tallest man seemed like a child when he walked in it, and you could see a ribbon of wagons, each drawn by sixteen oxen, coming loaded with grain to the farm. Sometimes the wagons followed so close upon one another that the ribbon seemed motionless. But at the entrance to the mill, you could see that it almost never stopped.
The mill never stopped, and the crew of Kavirondo who unloaded the heavy bags and reloaded them again, the coarse grain ground smooth and yellow, moved from dawn until dark, and sometimes after dark, like the lesser members of a great ballet set to the music of steam and turning millstones.
Nearly all the produce of the mill, the flour, and the posho, went to the Government to feed the labourers of the Uganda Railway.
This was a good enough railway as far as it went (from Mombasa to Kisumu), but it had an unhappy youth. As late as 1900 its trains were afraid to go out in the dark — and with reason. Lion infested the country it traversed, and a passenger or an engineer was either a brave man or one with a suicidal phobia to disembark at any of the outlying stations unarmed.
A telegraph line followed the rails to Kisumu about 1902 — or it was intended that one should. The posts were there, and the wire too, but rhino take sensual and sadistic pleasure in scratching their great hulks against telegraph posts, and any baboon worthy of his salt cannot resist swinging from suspended wires. Often a herd of giraffe found it expedient to cross the railroad tracks, but would not condescend to bow to the elevated metal strands that proclaimed the White Man’s mandate over their feeding grounds. As a result, many telegrams en route from Mombasa to Kisumu, or the other way around, were intercepted, their cryptic dots and dashes frozen in a festoon of golden wire dangling from one or another of the longest necks in Africa.
West With the Night Page 6