The older Masai led them around the village’s boma, stopping after a time to point at the thorn wall. Jeremy assumed the man was explaining the details of the fortifications, the width of the wall or the technique with which the branches had been woven.
“Last time the lions killed one of their people was a week ago,” Otombe told him in English. “They do not know how the lion got into the boma. No lion had ever tried before. It was night. The animal just appeared, grabbed a woman from her hut and dragged her away. She was screaming. Her husband chased after her with his spear, but was not fast enough. He watched the lion tug her right through the wall here.”
“What?” asked Jeremy. “Where?” He squatted down and tried to peer through the thorn wall. Angling his head from side to side, he could see only the smallest pinpricks of light.
“Here,” Otombe said.
Looking closer, still unable to find any sign of a tunnel or even a thinning in the woven wall, Jeremy noticed on some thorns a few tatters of hair and a wrinkled flap of what might be skin. “But that is impossible. The wall must be two feet thick.”
“Three feet,” Otombe nodded. “The husband says he has never seen another animal do such a thing. It was as though the lion was not made of flesh. The animal tucked his head down and just backed through. The wife, as she was pulled through, tried to grab hold of even the thorns.”
Otombe added, “Some of the people believe these lions are not physical beings. They think if we do shoot them, the bullets will pass right through, in the same way the lion passed through this wall.”
On the walk back through the savannah, Otombe said, “You are limping, you have been all morning.”
Jeremy admitted, “A few insects appear to have bitten the soles of my feet.”
Otombe asked, “Is there a lump left within each bite?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“They are worms who lay eggs. You must get the eggs out before they hatch. Take off your shoes and socks. I will cut them out.”
“Cut?”
“Shallow cuts. Just enough to scoop out the eggs.”
Jeremy looked down at his feet. They were the least favorite part of his anatomy, pale and spindly as the appendages of some cave creature. He explained with embarrassment, “In the heat my feet are rather fragrant.”
“Because you make them swelter in tight leather. Take off your shoes.” He waited for Jeremy to respond. “The worms, when they hatch, they burrow through the body, eating. Their favorite organ is the brain.”
Jeremy sat right down in the dirt to tug off his shoes and socks.
Squatting down and cupping Jeremy’s ankle in his hand, Otombe made no face at the smell. His fingers were hard with calluses. He pulled his knife from his leg sheath; the blade was beaten steel, three inches long and glittering. Jeremy did not wish to appear a coward in front of this man. He closed his eyes, forced his attention on the sounds around him, breathed deeply. A bird’s trill, the wind rustling through the grass. From somewhere behind him he heard the lightest tap-tap, like salt being shaken over a leaf. Glancing that way, he saw an eight-foot-tall termite mound. Inside, the tiny insects drummed busily.
The knife cut so fast he felt the pain only afterward. He jerked back to face Otombe. He was alone in the forest with a near-naked savage, his knife scooping a parasite’s eggs from his flesh, the man’s fingers wrapped tenderly round his heel. This was not, he thought, the life his mother had imagined for him. He stared hard at Otombe’s face, those cheekbones outlined by famine, the man’s concentration.
The knife sliced a second time. Its searing pain almost a relief.
He wished so much he were fashioned in some other way.
“Tonight,” Jeremy said, “I have to sleep in my own bed. This is all too much for me.”
Head down, Otombe nodded.
During tea, in front of his tent, Jeremy found Alan unusually reticent. After a minute or two of silence punctuated only by the clink of spoons on teacups, Jeremy said, “It is strange, is it not, that everyone assumes an engineer like me should be the one to hunt the lions. You know, crawl into the bushes after the creatures and all.” Alan nodded, but seemed uninterested in responding further. Jeremy added, “It was not exactly the subject of my schooling.”
The WaKikiyu cook brought sandwiches over and placed them on the table. Aside from the scent of the fresh bread, there came with her the smell of the cooking fire and the goat grease she used on her hands. She headed back toward her fire without once having glanced at the men. Jeremy did not know her name and had yet to hear her voice.
Alan grunted and announced, “I know I’ll have been here too long when she begins to appear attractive to me.”
Jeremy glanced after her, not knowing how much English she might comprehend. Her pace did not falter. Personally, he did not understand why Alan would say this. Yes, her head was shaved and her race Nilotic, but her body was young and strong and she carried herself with some grace. From what he had observed of the tendencies of other men, this seemed to be all that was required to regard a woman with interest.
“About the lions,” Alan said, “Shooting a few pesky predators is an integral component of the colonization process. I have seen it work time and again. The tribes immediately become more pacified, convinced we whites offer certain benefits.” He bit into a watercress sandwich. “Since these lions have plagued so many tribes in such a large area, if you successfully shoot them, it will do more to tame this colony than years of our railroad running through its heart.”
Jeremy heard a loud crack from somewhere in the forest outside the boma, like the smack of a hammer on rock.
A new silence fell between the men. Normally Alan chatted about all the hunting he had done. Today, however, he seemed to have little to say and his eyes kept returning to Jeremy, something in his expression puzzled.
He heard the sharp crack again. It came from the direction of the bonfire, its dark smoke rising in the air.
“What was that sound?” Jeremy asked. He stirred his tea, conscious of Alan’s eyes following his hands, watching the way he handled the spoon, the way he picked up his cup. Jeremy began to feel a distinct unease.
“That sound like snooker balls hitting?”
“Yes.” In Jeremy’s late teens and early twenties, one by one his family had begun to study him, appearing a trifle confused as Alan did now. Each person would stare, examining the way he walked, as well as his expression when he looked at the farm hands, observing him whenever they thought he might not notice.
“Three patients died last night. I had the remains tossed on the fire. During the cremation process, there’s a point when the skull cracks open, from the heat.” Alan took another bite of the sandwich, his teeth white against the blistered red of his face. “The coolies believe it a good sound, the soul released to heaven.”
Trying to move his mind away from that information, Jeremy said, “I visited a Masai village today.“
“Really?” Already Alan sat with his chair pushed farther back from Jeremy, his legs angled away. “I’ve just been reading an article about that tribe. A missionary who has lived among them for two decades has data to suggest the rate of births is decreasing, as well as the number of marriages and their overall health. It started years before this recent famine. The man suggests this decline might be endemic to many of the less-civilized tribes.”
Jeremy remembered Otombe saying half of his tribe had died. “Why would that happen?”
Alan served himself another sandwich. “Well, first off, let us be objective about this. You have to question if it’s true. The man is no scientist. The data is far from ironclad. It covers such a short period, just a few villages, primarily one tribe. Still, it piques the interest. Before now, no one has bothered to survey these people.”
Jeremy nodded, not trying to make his gesture overly firm or masculine. He knew acting would never work in the long run, not with someone who was around him extensively and who already had suspici
ons. Instead, he kept his eyes on the smoke of the bonfire, endured Alan’s gaze, waited for the man to be sure.
Alan continued, “If it is true, you must wonder at the timing of the Masai. We are here bringing technology, religion, and modern comforts. Things are finally looking up for this bloody continent. Why would they decide to exit now?”
Jeremy knew he and Alan would not be having tea together for much longer.
For the first time in four nights, he lay down to spend the night in his tent. Rolling the mosquito netting down around his bed, he was surprised at how uneasy he felt to be here. Laying down on a cot, even in the center of a boma, now seemed like an unnatural act, attempting to sleep at the level of the lions, thin canvas walls between him and the night. He placed his rifle across his chest and felt utterly defenseless. The Masai’s boma had stood at least fourteen feet high, its walls three feet thick. At each sound, he startled slightly. He craved the safety of a bench high in a tree and the solid darkness of Otombe by his side.
In spite of his misgivings, he must have fallen asleep because he was jarred awake by the first of the lions’ roars. He blinked around confused, not sure how much time had passed. Five minutes? Five hours?
The answering roar came from a mile to the south, somewhere around the nearly completed canal. The lions seemed to regard all the torn-up earth as their playground. He looked at the bright flame of the kerosene lamp by his side. With it lit, the lions would be able to see shadows through the tent walls, have a better idea of what lay inside, where to attack. He blew it out, then—shocked at the absolute darkness—hurriedly lit it again.
The lions roared intermittently, gradually getting closer. Around the time they reached the railroad tracks, their roaring stopped. He waited, counting, forcing himself not to hurry. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. A fox yipped by the far end of camp. Three Mississippi, four. Not a sound from the lions. He reached twenty Mississippi and blew out the wick again. The darkness around him was complete. He lay on his cot in it, staring up at the ceiling and attempting to control the slight hiss of his breath. The waiting began. For the first time he began to comprehend the depth of the Indians’ terror.
The men’s voices, tight with fear, soared from boma to boma throughout the camp. Some yelled in English; the rest yelled foreign words he did not know. Jerry cans clanked and rattled. Slowly his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. He shifted his grip on his rifle. A faint illumination came from one of the askari’s bonfires twenty paces away, the glow flickering across the roof and walls of his tent. He watched for the shadow of anything moving.
Lying here, Jeremy considered all the children in the villages nearby, attempting to sleep curled tight against the sides of their parents, the thin doors of their huts barricaded as well as possible. He imagined in the morning all those mothers lugging their laundry down to the river, uneasily watching the bushes lining the sides of the path. He pitied the fathers stepping out of their bomas to hunt, holding tightly to their spears.
As time passed—twenty minutes, half an hour—numb with the monotony of fear and from four nights with little sleep, he found himself drifting into a state he had never experienced before. Each sound struck him strongly and clearly. He could identify each and even locate it in space. The frightened squeal of a hyena near the quarry, the chuff of a hippo on the river, the low whispers of the men who had bedded down for safety on top of the water tower. Meanwhile, his breath deepened, his eyes closed.
His viewpoint gradually floated up in the air, rising slowly to a point far above his body. Spread out below him, he saw the landscape of Tsavo, the trees and animals and Indians and Africans, rocks and river and the railroad. And beneath all this, the skin of the continent oozed its red mud, the laterite dirt binding it all together, discoloring clothing, coating tents, dyeing any hand that touched it with a bloody stain.
In this half-conscious state, floating gently above camp, Jeremy could feel the animals out there, probing the base of the bomas, sniffing, seeking weaknesses with those huge tawny eyes, testing each possibility. Determined and smart, nature’s perfect hunters, in the wide curve of their skulls they had capabilities he could not even imagine.
Hour after hour passed. Strangely, the lack of any sudden screaming did not reassure him. He could almost see the animals tucking their heads down and pressing forward into a subtle weakness in a boma. They had no long manes to get snagged. The thorns jabbed and sliced, but sinuous as snakes, the lions twisted through.
Silently appearing in the firelight beside a tent full of Indians.
Soon men would bellow and die once again, shots would be fired and pans clanked. In the pandemonium, the lions would vanish into the darkness all around. And tomorrow evening he would climb into a hunting perch, forced up there by the Indians’ expectations and his own emotions.
Until this was all over, he would spend his nights in the trees, beside Otombe. He could not stand it any other way.
TWENTY
December 24, 2000
In her nightmare, she saw her aunt’s pale dress walking toward her through the darkness of the cabin, the floral pattern as oversized as on upholstery.
Frozen with fear, she lay in bed, her limbs heavy and unmoving.
Then, as the dress moved into the light of the window, four feet away, she saw it hung loose on a man’s skinny body.
Dahmer took a step forward, pushing his glasses up on his nose with one finger. Good-looking and blond, his thin lips holding tight to all his secrets, he stood as close as she’d always imagined the right man might be able to do. He leaned tenderly down over her bed, bit into her cheek and began to chew.
In the afternoon Titus climbed a tree. Generally the gorillas stayed on the ground or on the branches only a few feet up. Like humans, they were heavy and ponderous, not aerial long-limbed monkeys meant to fly from tree to tree. The branches rustled and creaked as he pulled his four-hundred-odd pounds gingerly upward, ten feet, then twenty, his expression concentrated.
Max moved back to survey the tree. It was vaguely oak-like, the leaves cordate and serrate, intermittent clusters of small blue fruit. Thirty feet up, Titus stopped and began to pluck at something she couldn’t see from down here, half of his body obscured by leaves. She couldn’t tell if he were eating part of the tree—the leaves or berries.
Or perhaps some vine growing on it.
This was the only time she’d seen Titus climb a tree to eat something. The other gorillas waited patiently below, as though they’d been through this routine before. None of them made a move toward this food source he’d found. She remembered Stevens telling her that only silverbacks touched the beta-blocker vine, the vine they used as medicine.
She knuckle-walked to the trunk and looked up. If she got a large sample now, she could do a crude extract tonight. Assuming the results demonstrated enough beta-blockers—proving this was the vine—she could leave with the remaining sample tomorrow, hire a car in town, wait in the capital until a flight out was available. It would be safer there. Once home, she could work on transforming this plant into a medicine to save lives.
The first branch arched off the trunk just three feet from the ground. She put one foot on it.
“Hey,” whispered Yoko from a few feet away. “What are you doing?”
Max didn’t answer. She began to climb the staircase of branches around the trunk, concentrating on the placement of her feet, the grip of her hand. She slid her dislocated arm out of the sling in order to use it, but it felt weak. Her hand didn’t want to reach any higher than her shoulder and she didn’t trust its grip. Within a few feet, the climbing got more difficult, the branches uneven. Her hands were too small to span the branches. She understood why humans exited the trees.
“You are a Great Ape,” she thought to herself. Changing the inflection, she repeated, “Great ape.”
“Pssst, Tombay,” whispered Yoko from down on the ground. “Get the fuck down here.” Uncle, the second silverback, coughed at her for talk
ing, and she didn’t say anything more.
Max held as tightly to each branch as she could, picking each step with care. In the tree, she found her boots a hindrance. In them, her feet were unable to grip the branches or feel for traction. She figured she only had to climb high enough to see what Titus was putting in his mouth. Probably twenty feet up, maybe twenty-five.
One of her feet slipped. She threw her good arm round a branch to catch her balance.
Holding tight, she kicked off her left boot and let it fall, then her right. The distance she’d climbed was all too clear from the many thuds the boots made hitting branches on the way down. Titus jerked around. He was only ten feet above her now and a few feet to the side. She sensed him staring in the direction of his family for a moment, listening intently. When nothing else happened, his head swiveled toward her.
If he wanted to, he could move through these branches much faster than she could. He could push her out of the tree, no matter how tightly she tried to hold on.
When his head turned away, she flash-glanced at him. He was looking off in the distance, chewing mechanically. She tugged off a chunk of nearby Sphagnum and pretended to eat it, for the slow count of thirty. Then she eased herself up onto the next branch.
She looked down. It was clear what a fall from this height would mean. Her body a fleshy water balloon.
She imagined death. It would be gray and spacious. No bodies to touch, no faces to avoid. She climbed up to the next branch.
From this angle below, Titus’s hip blocked the view of whatever plant was in his hands. She was close enough now that tiny chunks of leaves and stems were pattering onto her head, too small and chewed up to tell what kind of plant they came from. With Titus, she didn’t normally get closer than ten feet.
Still, he continued to eat, didn’t act particularly bothered by her proximity. Perhaps, with his family at the base of the tree, further away, he had no need to act the tough guy, no need to scare anyone. Or maybe he’d just grown accustomed to her as the others had.
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