Binstead's Safari

by Rachel Ingalls

  A stream of talk came out of her. He felt frustrated and maddened. He grabbed hold of her and shook her. She hit him and jabbed him with her knee. He was ready to tear her apart. She said, “If you do, I swear I’ll shoot you. Jesus, all the years I’ve been sweet and kind to you through every damn humiliation you put on me, and this is all you think of me, you bastard.”

  He let go immediately, as if he’d been burned. He had never heard her use such words. He was shocked, more than he could have imagined, to hear her using them to his face, calling him names. He collapsed on to his camp bed, panting. She too was gasping. He had made her cry, but not with sorrow as she used to; with anger and desperation.

  He said, “I’m so lonesome.”

  “We’re in a beautiful country, on a luxury safari, surrounded by hot-and-cold running servants and gross plenty, and you’re on the track of your religious theory. There isn’t any reason to be lonesome. Write a letter to your friend Myra. Or Sally Murchison. Or that Belgian girl who worked in the library, and all the others, even in London. I’m not lonesome. I’ll talk to Ian in the morning about getting a separate tent.”

  “Don’t do that. It’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t see why I should have to put up with this.”

  “Leave it. Better me than somebody else. You move out, and I bet Nicholas would be under the netting before you knew what hit you.”

  “Incredible,” she said. “God, this is incredible. Good night, Stan.”

  She seemed to go to sleep straight away, confident that he wouldn’t try to disturb her a second time.

  *

  He couldn’t sleep for a long while. He kept going over what she had said, and remembering the tone of her voice: it had been level and controlled—dispassionate, as though she were beyond him, standing far away from him and feeling contempt. And now he couldn’t even get through to her in the simplest way. He couldn’t touch her. If they had had children—but maybe she was right about that, too. All he knew for certain was that she must not leave. They had to stay together, no matter what. She had really been prepared to shoot him. Well, he was prepared too, if she tried to leave. He wouldn’t be able to stand it. He couldn’t imagine himself left alone while she went on leading a different existence somewhere else. They belonged together.

  He couldn’t sleep for so long that he finally got up and put his head through the tent flap and then stood just outside the entrance, his jacket over his shoulders. It was cold. He looked up at the stars, not precisely the stars of his childhood, but pretty good. Always good; one of the things in life that was never a disappointment. It was always good to look at the stars.

  He listened to the sounds of the night. The voices of the animals called to each other for food, love, battle. It was as noisy as standing near a highway. He didn’t know how to interpret everything he heard, but he was sure that it included the false threat of the meek as well as the real warning of the killer.

  All of them were out there, acting. And pulling tricks on each other, attacking and eating, the weak going down to the strong and the few to the multitude. It was the way they stayed alive. All the many disguises they had: they made themselves sound different, and they could make themselves look different, too—change colour and size, where a man would need the aid of clothing, make-up, added or removed hair. Even the cat his parents had had at home had been able to transform itself in an instant. They’d found her at the edge of the yard one day, holding her ground against an intruding gang of bigger, rougher-looking cats; she’d been a small, slim and vivacious animal with an affectionate disposition, but when Stan reached her she had swollen up until she was almost round as a ball, and the baleful howls that continued to break from her altered body had made him want to put her down again fast.

  When an animal changed, there was reason for the change. But what was the reason in people deceiving each other? One of the midwestern universities had done research on the subject recently and proven that man had an inborn capacity for deception. The doctors there had studied children and found that from the very earliest years it was characteristic of humankind to justify itself: if you asked children something, they would hand you an explanation—anything, no matter how nonsensical it was.

  That was people being false to each other. And why, as if that weren’t strange enough, did they mislead themselves? They pretended to be different from what they were. They didn’t actually change, because the only real change came from within, but they told themselves that they had. They lied.

  He too had been pretending. All his life he had been pretending not to feel fear. And he’d always been afraid. That was what made people cruel—fear. Only now was it beginning to release him, but he thought perhaps he was losing something else with it as it let go.

  He went back inside and lay down. At some point just before the turn of the night and gradual lightening of the sky towards the pre-dawn, he began to fall asleep. And as he did, he heard someone out in the camp clear his throat and cough. He listened, expecting it to happen again. The sound had left him with an impression of suspense. Someone was out there, keeping watch. But whoever it was didn’t give a second sign and Stan fell asleep waiting for it.

  *

  Millie was up before the rest of the camp. She washed, dressed and slipped away from the tent, out into the morning. She smelled food. The calling and answering of voices in the cookhouse came to her as a vague murmur from the far side of the camp. Then, closer, she heard someone cough.

  She walked a couple of steps forward. In front of her, a few yards away, a shape moved against the background and stopped.

  It was a lion. Right in the middle of the camp and looking straight at her. It wasn’t a young or immature one—it was what everyone had in mind by the phrase “The King of the Jungle”: a magnificent animal in its prime, large and with an enormous shaggy head framed by a superb mane.

  Behind her she heard a tiny click and Nicholas saying softly, “Don’t make a sudden movement. Back off very, very slowly and to your right. That’s good. A bit more.”

  She moved to her right again in a slow-motion stretching walk.

  “Just a bit more,” Nicholas whispered, but at that moment the lion turned quickly and rushed away. Millie too turned and ran, bumping into Nicholas, who put his arm around her. He kissed her on the cheek.

  “Extraordinary,” he said. “I thought he was coming on, and then he just pushed off like that, had a change of heart.” He kept his arm around her waist.

  She said, “It was like something out of a dream. I didn’t know lions ever grew that big.”

  “Not often, no. That was a splendid specimen. First-rate. Perhaps the best I’ve seen.” He took his hand from her waist, placed it on her shoulder and walked towards the cookhouse tent with her.

  “I thought it was a person,” she said. “I heard somebody cough.”

  “That was the lion. It’s one of the sounds they make. It’s not always the growling one hears at the beginning of the pictures, or the roaring.”

  They drank tea in the small tent. She asked him about growing up in Africa, about school, friends, family.

  “I’ve never been one to brood over past history,” he said, “but now there are memories that keep coming back to me. I don’t know why they should. They seem to have no connection with anything. I can’t understand it.”

  “It’s because you’re worried. You’re worried about your family.”

  “I suppose that’s it. It’s good of you to listen.”

  “It’s good of you to talk to me.” She put her hand on top of his.

  Pippa called from outside. She lifted the entry flap and joined them. The others didn’t wake for nearly an hour.

  Stan was the last up. He had woken feeling light-headed and taking in everything at a distance. When he saw Millie walking past the painting tent, he said, “Did you hear? Somebody shot a lion here in the camp.”

  “No, it was Nicholas, and the lion suddenly just turned around and
ran away. He was coming straight at me.”

  “You? Tell me from the beginning.”

  He kept looking at her as she talked. She looked all right. It was hard to believe she might have been hurt. All at once it was hard for him to believe anything. He felt drugged.

  Breakfast helped a little. And afterwards he went to talk to Ian. He found him checking the rifles.

  “I thought we were going to that village.”

  Ian turned, said, “Oh,” and looked exasperated. Something had gone wrong with the plans. Or maybe he’d just forgotten. “I told Amos I’d help him with something, go shooting later. Nick can take you.”

  “Millie might want to come too, just for once.”

  “Oh?”

  “We almost never see each other in the daytime any more.”

  “Your work may not get any forrader if the people you interview decide to keep mum. You know what it’s going to be like. They expect one guest, male, and one interpreter, ditto, who has the right references. No tourists, no women.”

  “Sure. The real authentic stuff.”

  “Not in English, perhaps uncomfortable, and both of you will undoubtedly be forced to sit through hours of speeches, not to mention what you’ll have to eat and drink for the sake of courtesy.”

  “Fermented milk and stuff like that?”

  “And the odd eyeball floating in muck. I’ve known it happen.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Stan said. As soon as he saw Nicholas, he asked about the eating and drinking.

  “No, no. I’ll see to that. He’s in a foul mood today. We’ll be all right. The usual drill. But it’s a fair distance. It’s going to be a long day. We should have started earlier.”

  “Was that you out walking around so early, when it was still dark?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I heard you coughing.”

  “That wasn’t me,” he said. “That was the lion.”

  *

  The two women stayed in camp. Pippa had a headache—or perhaps, she said, just possibly a hangover—and thought she might rest till the afternoon. She had also had for the past two days a persistent feeling that there was something in her eye; an eyelash might have worked its way down under the lower lid, to keep touching the eyeball as she blinked. Ian had tried to find it, but hadn’t been much help and was then hurt at her abrupt dismissal of him. She was lying down in her tent when a landrover drove up and came to a halt in the clearing they had named “the car park”.

  Millie heard the sound of arrival. She thought it might be Alistair and she walked around the back of the camp to meet him, but saw Rupert Hatchard coming towards her. She hurried to him, smiling.

  He didn’t smile. As he came nearer, she realized that something serious had come up and that it must be pretty bad. She stopped in front of him.

  “I’m glad I found you alone,” he said. “I have bad news.”

  “I know. I can see.”

  “He’s dead. He told me if anything ever went wrong, I was to come to you and tell you the truth. He has enemies. People are always telling lies about him. It was Hart and McBride who did it.”

  She moved her mouth, to ask what had happened. Her throat had almost closed. She put her hands out, as if to protect herself.

  “He tried to keep the poachers away from his territory. They knew they couldn’t do anything in his country, so they set out to nobble him. They wouldn’t even do it themselves. They paid other men to do it for them. That means they’ll be caught in the end, of course, but that’s small comfort.”

  “No,” Millie said.

  “He trusted me with—because I said how much I liked you.”

  “Yes, I see. I’m glad. I’m glad I heard it from you, but I can’t think. I don’t want it to be true.”

  “I brought your letters. I thought you’d want me to.”

  “Of course. That was thoughtful. That was kind.” Her voice faded away. She closed her eyes.

  “He was so good to Isabel,” he said. “And me, naturally. He gave me no end of gen for the books. In fact, he was the one who made me believe I could do it. He could make you believe in yourself.”

  “Oh, yes. More than anybody I ever met, made you love the world. So much fun. I can’t stand it. To be happy, finally. Did they hurt him? Say they didn’t. Say it was quick.”

  She was in tears, snorting, spluttering, holding her head in her hands. He led her over to the landrover. A second man—an additional driver, or perhaps just a friend—who had been leaning against the fender, moved away. Rupert made her sit down inside.

  While she cried, he told her that the four hired men had tried to make it look like any other drunken fight in a bar, but there were witnesses. And they would talk. Harry was greatly loved by many people, and also greatly feared. There were those who would testify to the truth because they were superstitiously convinced of the power he might have to avenge himself on them, even after death, if they didn’t. At least a dozen bystanders knew the men’s names. Six who were willing to speak had actually seen three of the four pinion him while the fourth cut his throat.

  “I don’t believe they’ll live to be brought to book,” Rupert said. “And I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of Marcus Hart or Pat McBride. Every man, woman and child in Harry’s territory will be out for blood, you’ll see.”

  Millie wailed, “I loved him so much. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’ve died. I hate everything.”

  He patted her on the back, smoothed her hair, put the small bundle of letters into her lap.

  “It must have been instantaneous,” he said. “And he was fighting hard—that would have lessened any pain. He loved you too. He kept saying: when Millie and I do this, when Millie and I do that. I can’t really believe it either, even now. I’m not a man who has many friends. I never had the knack of making friends. And now he’s gone.”

  “We prepared,” Nicholas translated, “for the feast, for the bride who would come. All the village … um … Hang on. Right. This isn’t the central village, but it’s near.” He asked a question, was drawn into a conversation, and spoke at some length. The answer was even longer.

  Stan shifted his gaze from the man sitting opposite them to the brown roofs of the huts beyond. Everything outside the canopied shade where they sat appeared vibrant with light, effervescent, almost ready to burst into flame. He could hear children’s voices coming from a place far beyond any point to which his line of vision reached.

  Nicholas said, “They all prepared for the big feast and the god was supposed to put in an appearance with the bride, but now they’re going to celebrate it in a different way because he’s returned to his people—this is where it’s confusing, because they talk about themselves as his people, too. But I think the idea is that he’s gone back to the lion.”

  “That’s great. That’s the kind of thing I need.”

  “And he’s going to take the bride with him. She’s human.”

  “Are these ceremonies going to involve human sacrifice?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It sounds right. Ask him.”

  “Certainly not. I wouldn’t want to offend him by mentioning it. And if it were true, there’d be no hope of getting a straight answer.”

  “You think they might tether a girl out in the open at night and let the lions come for her?”

  “I suppose that’s why they made you a professor, for dreaming up ideas like that.”

  Nicholas spoke to the tribesman again. And all at once, Stan wondered if everything he and Nicholas had just said to each other had been understood. When the man answered and his words were again translated, Stan felt angry at himself for not having waited until afterwards to talk freely.

  “There’s going to be food, drink, a lot of dances, and singing. They’re going to tell the story of the god. They’ll make a doll, dress it up, have a parade, enormous, to the sacred place, and leave the statue of the bride for the god to come for it. All the vil
lages in the district are going to take part. No outsiders. That means us.”

  “Oh, but surely if we—”

  “No. Not even outsiders who are near neighbours. No one who doesn’t come from this part of the country. They believe it, you see. It’s their religion. I’ve never heard of it. And there’s a lot that he says it wouldn’t be right to talk about.”

  “Ask what the god was like when he was in his human form.”

  Through Nicholas, the man said, “The old men loved him, the women loved him, the children loved him, the young people; everyone loved him. He made us happy. He made us laugh. He made us rich.”

  “Rich?” Stan said. “How?”

  The tribesman looked shaken for a moment. Then, when Nicholas asked, he pointed to his heart.

  Contrary to Stan’s expectations, they hadn’t had to eat or drink anything, or watch any show. They had been escorted to a deserted corner of the village and now, as they left, could hear the small, high voices singing a lively song, but still could not see anyone. The children were in another part of the place. He was about to ask if they could look around, or see the singers but Nicholas sent him a swift, cautioning wink and made a lengthy thank-you speech. Judging by something in the tone of his voice, Stan assumed it to be extremely ornate. He added his own short thanks in English and had his words translated, although he was sure by now that it wasn’t necessary.

  As they drove away, Nicholas said, “Something isn’t right.”

  Stan started to talk about Jack’s theory that the whole business was just a cover for an ordinary protection racket.

  “I was thinking of something else,” Nicholas said. “There’s been a bloody great epidemic of poaching in the past few years. Ivory. That means riches, even shared out among a few villages. But the place they kept telling me was the centre of the ceremony—I know it. That’s Harry Lewis’s district. Not great elephant country. Still—if the business went on somewhere else, but the songs about the leader started up in another place … no, that’s no good. I don’t suppose it could be that they’re all just songs like any others and people sing them for pleasure? And then they begin to compete against each other, to see who can make the best song? I must say, they don’t look wonderfully prosperous here. Not unusually so.”