Mona looked down, stunned, at the barefoot little girl with tanned limbs and masses of black hair who now lifted her face up to the light like a nut-brown sunflower. "Hello, Mummy," the child said.
Mona couldn't speak. Nine years ago she had closed this door and turned the key in the lock, sealing inside all her unbearable memories and private demons. She had walked away from this terrible room with its dusty secrets, a woman free of the past, feeling safe as long as the devils were never let loose.
But now the room stood wide open and menacing, its security breached by a little girl who had been created only because David had died.
"How dare you!" Mona said.
A look of bewilderment crossed Deborah's face. "I was just showing my new friend—" was all she had a chance to say before her mother swooped down, seized her in a painful grip, and dragged her to her feet. Startled, Deborah cried out. When her mother started to slap her, she tried to protect herself with her free arm.
"No!" shouted Christopher in Swahili. "Stop!"
Mona looked up. The light from the hallway fell over the African boy. She stared at him. Her grip loosened on Deborah.
She frowned. "David?" she whispered.
And then memories flooded back—the older, more deeply buried ones: the burning surgery hut; the necklace from Uganda.
The room seemed to tilt. The cold pain returned to her chest, and it rose in her throat, choking her. She groped for the doorjamb.
Deborah, who stood rubbing her arm and trying not to cry, said, "This is my best friend, Mummy. His name is Christopher Mathenge, and he lives with the medicine woman who's his grandmother."
Mona couldn't breathe. She pressed her hand to her chest. David's son!
Christopher's wide, terrified eyes watched the woman in the doorway. She was looking at him in a strange way, her eyes filling with tears. When she took a step toward him, he retreated.
"David," she murmured.
He thought of the passbook in his waistband.
Mona reached out, and Christopher stumbled backward, bumping against one of the bedposts.
She came closer. The two children watched in fear and fascination, the way her arms went out to him, the tears streaming down her face. When she was within inches of the boy, Deborah and Christopher held their breath.
And then Deborah was astonished to see a tender smile come to her mother's face, a face the girl had only ever known as hard and unchanging.
"David's son," Mona said softly, a tone of wonder in her voice.
Christopher, pressed against the bedpost, steeled himself when her hands came up and took gentle hold of his face.
A marveling look came into Mona's tear-filled eyes as she studied those sweetly familiar lines: the furrow between the brows; the almond-shaped eyes; the forward slung jaw that was the legacy of Masai warriors. Christopher was still just a boy, but the man he would one day be could be seen. And, Mona saw, he was going to look very much like David.
"David's son," she said again with her sorrowful smile. "He lives in you. He is not dead after all..."
Christopher's heart raced as the woman came even nearer, her cool hands on his cheeks, until her face was inches from his.
Then she bent and kissed him very gently on the mouth.
When Mona drew back, her face seemed to collapse, and a sob escaped her throat.
She touched him one last time—to trace a fingertip along the crease from his nose to the corner of his mouth—then turned and ran from the room.
54
A
FTER ALL THESE YEARS GEOFFREY DONALD STILL DESIRED Mona Treverton.
As they sped along the highway into the brilliant equatorial sun, the Land-Rover startling herds of zebra and antelope on the roadside, Geoffrey glanced frequently at the woman sitting next to him. Mona was in the front seat between Aunt Grace and him, her expression fixed behind enormous sunglasses. She had lost weight and grown pale in the past few weeks, for reasons unknown to Geoffrey, but he liked her that way. At forty-four Mona was just as appealing, he thought, as she had ever been.
His anger and bitterness toward her, spawned on the night of his father's death, had faded. The years had mended his grief and had allowed his old appetite for her to return, especially as his wife got plumper and more indolent with each passing year, since the birth of Terry, their last child. It was not, of course, as if Mona gave him any encouragement or even really seemed to be aware of him beyond a purely superficial, almost afterthought relationship. But that was part of what made her fascinating—her aloofness and unavailability. Geoffrey Donald was, at fifty-one, ruggedly lean and sunburned, with silver in his hair and a charm that appealed to his female clients. His conquests were too easy and many; he had become bored and jaded in the area of romance. But Mona's apparent uninterest and her nine years of celibacy made the chase suddenly fresh and exciting. When she had agreed to come along on this safari into the Masai wilderness, Geoffrey's blood had raced with renewed lust and hope.
He had a surprise for her at the end of the road.
They were heading for Kilima Simba Safari Camp, a lonely outpost nestled in an outcropping of rock about twenty miles from the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. It lay in the heart of the Masai Amboseli Game Reserve, a vast tract of wilderness owned and overseen by the Masai tribe, whose grazing land this was. The road along which Geoffrey now drove in the heat of the day, with Deborah and Terry bouncing around in the back of the Rover like sacks of grain, was barely more than a ribbon of dirt through flat, yellow savanna. In the distance, mauve and snow-capped, Mount Kilimanjaro rose to a cloudless sky. As far as the eye could see, there were no signs of civilization; flat-topped thorn trees dotted the landscape; impalas and bushbucks grazed among the grasses; giraffes loped in graceful insouciance; a pride of lions basked under a tree. This was one of the richest game areas in Africa, and Geoffrey Donald was going to capitalize on it.
"A game lodge!" he had explained to Mona. "Tents just aren't appealing to everyone. Few of my clients find the camp pleasurable after a day or two, what with cots and mosquitoes to deal with, and no proper toilet facilities. I tried to think of ways to improve things, to get more tourists out here, and then it came to me. A resort, right in the middle of the African bush!"
Only a handful of Geoffrey's friends thought the idea had any worth. Most thought it would fail, reminding him that tourism was going to vanish from Kenya after independence. "This won't be a safe place for whites," they said. "The whole world knows what savagery this country is going to descend to after Her Majesty's government pulls out."
But Geoffrey saw things differently. "Old Jomo isn't crazy or stupid," he argued. "He knows he needs us. Europeans still monopolize all the large corporations, the banks, the hotels in Kenya. He knows he has to keep us on and keep us happy if he expects to maintain a stable economy. Without us and our connections and our capital and know-how, Kenya would collapse like a house of cards, and the wogs know it!"
It was something that was starting to prove true. In the five months since Kenyatta had taken over as prime minister, none of the vengeful reprisals the settlers had feared had come to pass. Indeed, to everyone's surprise Kenyatta was calling for moderate policies and peaceful coexistence between the races, and he had demonstrated the sincerity of his words by initiating a partnership with the European Farmers Association.
Nonetheless, Geoffrey's friends argued, Kenya was not yet fully independent. British troops were still here. Wait until next month, they said, when the government was officially handed over to the Africans, then see what happened.
But Geoffrey was determined. Sensing the direction of the "wind of change," he had sold the Donald cattle ranch near Nanyuki and had set himself up in Nairobi as a tour agent. When not dividing his time between his luxurious Parklands residence and his house in Nyeri, where Ilse lived with little Terry, Geoffrey met his few intrepid vacationers at the airport and escorted them all over Kenya in a convoy of Land-Rovers.
Despite M
au Mau and settlers' fears about independence, tourists were starting to come to East Africa, but in a trickle. Geoffrey wanted to convert that trickle into a flood and therefore had been working on ways to make his safaris more alluring. Camps smacked too much of hardship, no matter how many Africans were employed to pitch the tents, cook gourmet meals, make the beds, or do the tourists' laundry. The romance wore off quickly, and few went home believing they had gotten their money's worth.
That was when he had hit upon the idea of a resort hotel out in the bush, a "safari lodge," he called it, the first of its kind anywhere, complete with proper bedrooms, a dining room, a polite and friendly staff, and a cocktail bar from which the lazy adventurer could watch the wildlife.
"A place where tourists can be clean and drunk and safe," he declared, "where they can feel like Allan Quatermain without being threatened by animals or natives. Sort of like being on the inside looking out. A lodge that's set far away from Nairobi and from where Mau Mau took place, far away from any hint of politics or hostilities. My clients will taste the Kenya of fifty years ago. They will experience it as our parents did, when it was primitive and unspoiled and when the white man enjoyed a life of graciousness and elegance. And they'll pay top money for the opportunity, I guarantee it."
Geoffrey had then set out on a scouting safari in which he explored every corner of Kenya, observed each patch with the eye of a tourist, felt the wind, followed the game, and talked with local headmen. He had settled upon Amboseli for its beauty and abundant game and had leased from the Masai the site upon which his tent camp now stood. In the beginning of the new year construction on the hotel was going to start.
He couldn't wait to reach camp. He was going to install Mona in the tent next to his, and later tonight, while everyone else was asleep, he was going to pay her a special call.
With each bound and jolt of the Rover, as it hit holes and boulders, the two children in the back held on and screamed with delight. Deborah and Terry rode on the side benches, facing each other. The canvas sides were rolled up so that they sat in the full force of the wind as Terry's father pushed the car at top speed. Deborah's unruly black hair had escaped its rubber band and now flew about her head in stinging whips.
This was her first safari; she could hardly control her excitement. As the Rover plunged through zebra herds, scattering the horselike creatures and making them bark, Deborah laughed and clapped her hands. She turned this way and that on her seat, watching giraffes run alongside the Rover, seeing startled rhinos suddenly turn and trot off in a trail of dust. She couldn't take in enough of it: the hawks in the sky; the vultures riding air currents; the lions drowsing; the weaverbirds building nests in the thorn trees. She had never before seen so much wildlife, such an endless expanse of land and sky. It took her breath away. She had had no idea Africa was so big.
They also passed herds of domestic cattle and Masai men whose bodies were painted red all over, each standing on one foot. They leaned on their spears—tall, angular men with long, plaited hair and crimson shukas knotted over one shoulder, flapping in the breeze. When the Rovers sped by, they raised their hands in generous, full-arm salutes. Deborah and Terry waved back, thinking them terribly foreign and exciting compared with the Westernized Kikuyu among whom they lived, and then they waved at Uncle Tim and Uncle Ralph, who rode behind in the supply Rover.
Deborah envied her ten-year-old friend in an almost physical ache. Terry was so lucky. His father led the most thrilling life! And he took his son on safaris with him, now that the white school in Nyeri was closed and Terry was still too young for boarding school in Nairobi, where his brothers and sisters were. Terry had been to Kilima Simba Safari Camp before, and he had gone leopard hunting with his father. Deborah wished Christopher and Sarah Mathenge could have come along, but when Deborah had asked her mother if she could invite them, she had received a dismissive silence.
Deborah decided that when she got back to Bellatu, she was going to tell her two new friends all about this wonderful adventure and give them some of the photographs she planned to take with her Box Brownie.
By the time they reached the camp, weary and hungry and covered in red dust, the sun was on the horizon. Geoffrey's resident staff, young Masai in khaki shorts and clean white shirts, welcomed the travelers as they stumbled to the ground and stretched aching limbs, and then began the hasty unloading of supplies and luggage.
Deborah held her arms out and spun in a circle. It was glorious! The biting air, the long shadows, the unimaginable silence that stretched all the way to the flat horizon. It was a world with no walls, a land with no orderly rows of trees, a wilderness promising surprises and adventure. And Mount Kilimanjaro, she decided, was a thousand times more beautiful than her old Mount Kenya! She wished again, more desperately than ever, that Christopher Mathenge were here to share it with her.
"You see," Geoffrey explained to the grown-ups as they strode over the uneven ground toward the tents, "part of my advertising campaign will be that this was once the site of a Hemingway encampment. Moreover, this was where the film Snows of Kilimanjaro was made and also parts of King Solomon's Mines. That native village we passed back there—those huts were props for the film. Now, over here, contiguous with these giant boulders, is where I plan to locate the main lodge...."
Supper was no less than excellent, everyone decided, served by waiters in kanzus and white gloves, on china and silver, in the romantic light of a watercolor sunset. Because there is no twilight in equatorial Africa, lanterns were promptly lit, filling the compound with a comforting glow. The dining tent was huge, with three gauze walls enabling those within to enjoy the panoramic view without having to battle mosquitoes. As they went through the consommé, the gazelle cutlets and new potatoes in gravy, and the lemon sherbet, Geoffrey continued to enlighten his companions about his plans.
"I've several investors," he said, signaling for a second bottle of wine. "One of them is a famous disc jockey."
Grace looked up from her food. "What's a disc jockey?"
Ralph said, "An American," and everyone laughed.
Including Mona, who had suffered the eight-hour journey from Nyeri in silence. She had taken the short tour of the camp without speaking a word, had washed and freshened up in her tent, and had come to the dining tent for sundowners with the guarded expression on her face that everyone had come to know. But now, after a few glasses of wine and the intimacy of the group, she, too, felt the immenseness of the plains, the otherworldliness of the isolated savanna, and she was starting to drop her defenses.
Geoffrey was the first to notice.
"We'll have what I call 'game runs,'" Geoffrey said, lighting a cigarette and sitting back. As he heard the noise of the night—the constant din of crickets, the roar of lions near by—Geoffrey congratulated himself once again on what he considered an exceptionally wise move. By selling his father's cattle ranch to Africans who had been eager to buy, Geoffrey was able to invest in a venture that he was certain was going to turn a huge profit. If he was going to be a white in Kenya, he decided, then he wanted to be a wealthy white.
"We'll get the tourists up at dawn and trot them around in Rovers, looking for game to photograph, which is always very active and visible in the early-morning hours. Afterward it's back to the lodge for a big breakfast and a day spent around the swimming pool. In the late afternoon, when the animals are waking up and on the prowl, we trot the people out again on another game run in Rovers fitted with brandy and sandwiches. In the evening we'll require formal dress for the dining room and put on a good show with local Masai dancers."
"It certainly sounds appealing," his brother, Ralph, said. "If old Jomo keeps the country stable, there's no reason why we can't make a go of this."
Ralph had come back to Kenya the year before, when Uganda had achieved its independence. President Obote had decided that the British system of provinces was no longer needed in his country, so he had dismissed all white civil servants. Ralph Donald, who was still
a bachelor at forty-eight, had been a provincial commissioner and had been given, as the local slang called it, the "golden bowler"—compensation for his years of service to the Crown. After briefly operating a control post for receiving convoys of white Belgian Congo refugees coming through Uganda, Ralph had come to Kenya to join his brother in the new tourist business.
Silver-haired and ruddy of complexion, a man who had built a reputation for himself as a crack elephant hunter, Ralph Donald was the second person at the dinner table who had an eye on Mona.
"The way I see it," he said now as he filled and lit his pipe, "with so many Europeans getting out of Kenya, we few who are left are going to rule the roost. There will literally be rich pickings for us. The wogs will look around themselves, realize they haven't a bloody notion of how to run a country, and they'll come running to us for help."
Grace, who had hardly touched her food, gave Ralph a look. It was inconceivable to her that this self-centered man with the haw-haw voice could be James's son. "What baffles me," she said, "is where the Africans are getting all the money to buy up white farms. I heard that the Norich-Hastings plantation went for an astronomical sum!"
"It's no mystery, Aunt Grace," Geoffrey said. "The money isn't African; it's British. When Her Majesty's government as good as abandoned us all here by saying it wouldn't send in another army if Mau Mau broke out a second time and then agreed to turn complete rule over to the blacks, it had to find a way to assuage its feelings of guilt and assist the very people it had betrayed. It's this way: Money from Britain goes through the World Bank, through African middlemen, and into settler hands. That settler, having unloaded his farm, packs up and goes back to England, taking his money with him. In some cases, I've heard, the money never even leaves England!"
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