“Excuse me?”
“This is where they used to stop. Slavery’s now illegal.”
“No. There was a caravan three days ago. Over there.” He pointed across the river to an open spot under the trees. “Perhaps the Mohammedans will not bring them through while you camp here. They do not like the spot already because of the slaves that disappear.”
“The slaves that disappear?” He thought even though both of them spoke English, so many other things separated them: knowledge, assumptions and stations in life. Him, the Africans, the Indians and Persians, even if they all used the same language, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, there would still be misunderstandings, confusions, and fights.
Otombe watched him. “A few disappear every night the caravans are here. Perhaps they run away or animals kill them. I do not know. Our priest, she says the spirit of the river takes them.” He shrugged. “Tsavo, it’s always been like that. The word means . . . ” He rubbed his thumb along the shaft of his spear, thinking. “Death? Murder? It is hard to translate. Also, in the morning any slaves who cannot walk at the caravan’s pace, they are left for the animals.”
Jeremy looked across the river to the open spot under the trees. He tried to understand. “Left here? Isn’t that good? Do they not escape then, head back to their villages?”
Otombe smiled—not that his lips moved, but his eyes, regarding Jeremy, seemed to hold slightly more warmth. “They are killed, as an example to the others. Their necks are cut. The animals here, the hyenas and lions, they are used to the taste of humans. They prefer it. The whites with guns, I have heard them say Tsavo lions are the best to hunt. The greatest challenge. They have no fear of people.”
“In two nights,” Otombe continued, “it will be the full moon. We can go hunting then, perhaps for hippo. After sunset, I will meet you at the path leading upriver from your camp.”
That first day, the shade of the trees along the riverbank was wonderful to work beneath. The Indians began to dig a canal that would serve as a temporary detour for the river. Digging it would take them at least a week. Once the water flowing down the river was rerouted to the canal and the river bottom had a chance to dry out, they could sink the bridge’s stone feet quickly and deeply into the ground. When the bridge was completed, they would reroute the river back into its original bed and start laying the railroad tracks on toward Lake Victoria.
It was a delight, while working, to be drinking as much water as desired, for here, boiled from the river, the water was so clear and fresh. Jeremy had gotten used to even his tea tasting of brine, mud, and creosote. The brine and mud came from the overworked water filtration system back in Mombasa. The creosote came from the railway ties that the Indians handled all day, the preservative rubbing itself deep into their hands and arms and legs from constant contact, then—as soon as the train’s daily water car arrived—the men would jump headlong into the water to slake their thirst and fill the jerry cans of others.
“Indian tea,” Alan Thornton called it.
That afternoon, after a full day of digging, the entire camp bathed in the cool river with riflemen posted along the shore, vigilant for crocodiles and hippos. In the water, the Indians sounded happy, calling out jokes, splashing water at each other, and scrubbing their laundry. During the workday, the simple act of watching a line of fifty or a hundred of these men swinging their shovels in the full sun exhausted Jeremy. He thought it possible, since they had never known life except in equatorial climes, that this work was easier for them than it would be for him. Still, he felt joy watching the Indians standing up to their chests in the river and dumping buckets of water over their heads. He hoped the bridge took months.
As the sun sank, the serenity of the moment vanished. The mosquitoes rose, creating a cloud so thick they nearly obscured the opposite bank of the river. Everyone quickly fled back into the tents, but even inside, the insects’ buzzing was insistent enough to be heard clearly. Though Jeremy had worked to tie his tent flaps completely shut, a few mosquitoes managed to slip in. They flew frustrated outside the netting around his camp cot. As the night progressed, the buzzing became louder. He tried to lie in the exact center of his bed, keeping his limbs away from the netting.
Earlier that afternoon, drinking tea with Alan, watching the Indians hike back from the river carrying their tools, Jeremy had lightly sworn and got up to retrieve his grains of quinine. “Forgot this earlier.”
Alan looked over.
How is it, Jeremy wondered, these British managed to convey such disapproval through the raising of a single eyebrow? Around people like Alan, so confident in their understanding of the world and their place in it, Jeremy tended to keep his eyes turned just a few degrees off, worried that if someone looked into them too deeply, the person might sense some of the more shocking images his mind had conceived.
“As your physician,” Alan said, “I’d advise you not to make a practice of forgetting your quinine.” He took a sip of the tea, his face permanently reddened from exposure to the sun. Before Africa, he had served in India. A single drop of sweat trickled down toward the end of his nose. “For the railroad, I’ve been logging the mortality of us Caucasians. The biggest killer isn’t construction accidents, heatstroke, or animals. It’s the tiny mosquito: malaria. First year here, 30 percent die.” He raised his teacup and said, “Good luck.”
Jeremy froze there for a moment. “Are you sure? That percentage seems terribly high.”
Alan reached for another crumpet. The provisions for the railroad were shipped in from London: a preponderance of marmalade, tripe, and boiled beef. “Oh yes, quite. The figures are dreadful. I’ve checked them thoroughly.”
Jeremy let his eyes slowly wander the landscape as he tried to think this through. He wondered if it were possible his mother and Grandpapi had known of this statistic when they had agreed to his traveling here. At the thought, he blinked and forced himself to look at the workers instead, walking up the road. “What about them?”
“Who?” Alan asked, spreading the quince jam.
“Them, the Indians. Do they catch the disease as quickly?”
“Oh.” Alan paused, the crumpet held in front of his mouth, surveying the men. The only other white for twenty miles, Alan was not the kind of person Jeremy would naturally take to. “Rather interesting question.” He took a slow bite and began to chew reflectively. “My first guess would be—without having the numbers to back it up—yes, they seem to contract it bloody easily.”
Each night they spent by the river, the mosquitoes rose from the banks to cover the tents. The Indians’ tents were not in very good repair, had divots and tears, many of the men had no mosquito netting round their beds. None could afford the quinine Jeremy took.
Three days from now, forty men would be shivering and delirious, the hospital tent beginning to reach capacity.
The day of the hunt with Otombe, Patsy began to wheeze even when standing motionless, her head lowered and ribs working. At sundown, Jeremy left her with the groom rubbing her down, a hot bran mash in her feedbag. He did not look back. She will be fine, he thought, fine. The symptoms of rinderpest were diarrhea and discharge from the eyes, not panting. It was not rinderpest, it was not.
Waiting at the edge of camp were the seven Indians he had arranged to help with the hunt. They stood restlessly in the dark, waving their arms at the mosquitoes and stamping their legs.
When Otombe stepped out of the jungle, he paused at the sight of all the men, then shook his head. “No, a night hunt must be quiet. Just us two.”
Jeremy looked at him in surprise. In the moonlight, the man’s dusky features were hard to read. He thought about walking through the jungle at night alone with this one African holding a spear, a man he barely knew. Violent, his mother had said, sooner or later you will see these savages bloody and violent.
Otombe took a step back, looking toward the path, ready to disappear. With every day Jeremy woke here in Africa, his desire to see more of it in
creased. At this moment, in the dark of the night, on the edge of this hunt, all its mystery seemed close enough he could almost wrap his arms around it. Here, it stood in front of him, backing up another step.
Jeremy said, “Alright.”
Because Jeremy was not riding this time, Otombe walked rather than ran. To Jeremy, it felt very different this way, striding under the darkness of the trees. Trying not to slow Otombe up or look unfit, he hurried along, legs stretching out. At this speed, he was incapable of being quiet, his feet not so clever. Even with a full moon, under the trees it was close to pitch black, lumpy shapes leaning in on all sides. He had no idea how Otombe managed to decipher it all into bush or tree, rock or animal. Perhaps he did not. Occasionally some creature crashed away through the underbrush.
On his feet like this, without a horse’s height for protection, Jeremy felt exposed. After a while, rather than have his rifle slung over his shoulder, he shifted it forward and kept both hands on it. Held this way, the strap occasionally snagged on passing branches, jerking him to a halt.
This hunt was also different because he was not wearing his flannel spine protector. He figured the sun was not out at night, the danger of radiation must be gone, so he had left the device lying on a chair in his tent like the discarded brace of a cripple, its elastic shoulder holders twisted and empty. Without it, he felt so much cooler. If it were not for the mosquitoes around at the moment he would be tempted to undo his shirt further than the top two buttons. He could comprehend how the Africans ended up nearly naked on this continent. Give him a few years here and he would find even Otombe’s goat-skin cloak too confining.
After at least a mile, the path they were on joined another much larger one. From the width of the trail, he guessed elephants might come this way. He had heard that because of the elephants’ thick skulls, they could not be killed if they charged you face on unless your bullet hit exactly the dollar-bill-sized weak spot above their eyes. Perhaps this was why the colonists brought many men on hunts, as a crowd to bolster their courage, as simple numbers to decrease their risk of being the one the elephant chose to crush.
The last time he had hunted, he had wished to stumble into some large creature. Now in the dark, he found himself wishing the whole forest magically emptied of anything larger than a mouse.
After perhaps two miles, they reached a wide swampy bay in the river. Otombe slowed down, held a finger to his lips. Twenty feet from the water, he located a tree that hung out over the path and, with practiced ease, swung himself up into the branches. Jeremy waited below, surveying the limbs with dismay. When Otombe paused in his climb to look down at him, he handed his rifle up and then reached for a branch. Attempting a pull-up, he scrambled at the trunk with his toes. With a wheeze he managed to hook his knee over a branch. From here it was easier to ascend, climbing up the branches. Fifteen feet up, with a good view of the path and the river, they rested their backs against the trunk and waited. He tried to keep a certain amount of space between himself and Otombe. His mother, when considering his responsibilities in Africa, had never imagined him sitting in a tree at night next to a nearly naked native. This close to the river the mosquitoes immediately descended. Even in this heat, he rapidly buttoned his shirt all the way up, tucked his pants into his socks. The insects landed on his face and hands, wiggled their way up his sleeves and down his collar. In all the accounts he had read of the dangers of hunting in Africa—of rhinos charging, leopards clawing and elephants stomping—no trophy hunters had waxed eloquent on the dangers of mosquitoes biting. Otombe, beside him, pulled his cloak a little tighter and settled into stillness under the buzzing onslaught, watching the river. Jeremy tried to do the same. He thought the Africans must be more immune to malaria than other races or they would be long extinct from the number of mosquitoes and the length of their own exposed limbs.
Otombe leaned his mouth close to Jeremy’s ear. “A hippo will walk up the path,” he mouthed more than whispered, “probably within the hour.” Jeremy could feel his breath against his cheek and backed away to create a more appropriate distance.
Struggling to ignore the mosquitoes wriggling into his hair, to stay motionless, he concentrated on listening to the jungle. Hundreds of frogs made pinging noises like rubber bands being plucked. An animal nearby chewed determinedly on wood; Jeremy hoped it was not at the base of this tree. Some creature to the left of him hooted.
“Is that noise an owl?” He tried to make his voice as quiet as Otombe’s had been.
“What?” asked Otombe.
“Is that noise an owl?” he whispered, leaning closer but still maintaining what he felt was a proper six inches between him and the hunter.
“Civet,” Otombe whispered back, his mouth nearly touching Jeremy’s ear.
Jeremy backed away again. Africans seemed more comfortable with physical proximity than white men were. Several times, he had been surprised to see tribesmen casually holding hands as they watched the railroad crew work. “What is a civet?” he inquired.
Otombe thought for a moment. “Cat,” he added, this time without leaning quite as close.
Jeremy imagined a cat, sitting high in a tree, pursing its hairy lips to let go a bird’s sweet hoot.
A creature flapped by, the beating of wet sheets, wings wide enough to be prehistoric, a single sobbing laugh and the animal was gone.
Jeremy looked to him. “Bird,” Otombe mouthed, less than helpfully.
Forty minutes later, something in the river moved. The water swirled, mud sucked at its feet as it clambered out. The night amplified every sound. Wet stones ground against one another. After a moment Jeremy understood this sound was the guts of the animal grumbling. The rising stench of mud and algae. The cracking of the brush. A dark hill appeared on the path, lumbering closer. Otombe held up his hand to wait. Perhaps he had doubts about Jeremy’s ability as a marksman. Perhaps he worried a bullet-stung hippo could push down their tree, mangle them both. He waited until the shadow was fifteen feet away, wider than the single bed Jeremy slept in at home. Otombe let his hand fall. Jeremy’s rifle cracked. Bright sparks from the barrel.
The hill fell down.
For a moment, he almost believed he had killed a hill, shot part of this landscape, pierced a hole in it for all this humid African air to whistle out of. Perhaps this was what the British were doing from the trains, not killing animals but slaying hill after ditch of Africa until the vibrant rolling landscape was deflated enough, dead enough, that England’s neat hedges and tidy roads could be built over whatever remained.
He shook his head. The late hour and the heat were taking their toll on his thoughts.
“Shoot once more to make sure,” Otombe said in a normal tone of voice, no need to whisper after the bark of the rifle. Jeremy acceded with a careful shot.
And as soon as the second shot stopped reverberating and the dying animal had grunted that one last time, he realized there was no way to carry the body back. It must weigh at least a thousand pounds: two miles, two men, no horses.
He whispered his worry to Otombe.
“I will come back with men for the meat tonight.” Otombe said, continuing to speak in a normal voice. “No matter how quickly the crocodiles eat, there will be some left. It is too large even for them. I will drop the meat off for you at your camp.”
“But I shot it for the head, the trophy.” The head alone would weigh several hundred pounds; they had no way to cut it off. The skin would be mauled. He felt irritation at his own lack of foresight. “Fine. It is useless to me. Keep the meat for yourself and your village.”
Otombe went still for a moment at this, seemingly surprised, then nodded and swung down from the tree, walking away. Reluctantly, Jeremy followed. Before they were sixty feet down the path, he heard the wet clap of teeth into meat. They walked on. Behind them came a scuffle and a roar as two crocodiles jousted over the remains.
It started to rain again. He was not sure what he thought of this role of white hunter that had
developed for him, seemingly of its own power. He wanted to ask Otombe simply to take him for walks out here, to explain to him the ways of this wilderness, the people here and the animals. These talks did not have to be contingent on death. However, it seemed somehow unmanly to extend such a request.
On the way back, Otombe headed along what Jeremy believed was a different path, one not as close to the river. In the rain, he found it difficult to walk quickly, his wet clothes rubbing at his heat rashes, the mud sucking at his feet. The rain hissed harder all around, obscuring other sounds, limiting visibility. He followed with his head down, water running off his nose and brow. He did not bother to hold his rifle in front anymore; instead he entrusted himself to Otombe. After several turns and forks, the path gradually widened, the undergrowth receding. Through sheets of rain, Jeremy noticed the vegetation seemed different, more uniform, and he wondered if they could be proceeding through crops of some kind. Soon he could discern a large lump ahead, twelve or thirteen feet high, at least thirty feet long. He smelled wood smoke. A wall, he realized, a village inside. Lightning flashed and the many thorns on the wall glittered. He had heard these protective fences were called bomas, that the tribes wove them from the thorny nyika branches, built them around any place they camped, even if only for a night, a cheap version of barbed wire.
Otombe followed the path around the village. As they rounded the curve, an object appeared a few feet out from the wall. Too short for a tree, too tall for most animals, too wide for a human. Jeremy peered at it with some uncertainty, wiping rain from his eyes, noting Otombe was edging subtly aside without changing pace. When they were twenty feet away, lightning jagged the sky. A frozen diorama of wiry hair, solemn eyes, and sagging breasts. Only in the blinded aftermath did he comprehend this was not one creature, but three older women, shoulders touching. The glittering eyes of all three staring at him as though they had been waiting. In approaching the village, Otombe and he had not been making much noise, certainly not enough to rouse these women from their beds, to give them time to take their places outside, settling into a stillness as deep as if they had been waiting their whole lives for this moment.
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