The Setting Sun

by Bart Moore-Gilbert

  ‘Are you alright, sir? You look pale.’

  Doesn’t everyone look grey in this merciless neon? ‘Just a bit hot,’ I mutter, flicking blankly through another brochure.

  ‘Why don’t you come back when you’re clearer about what you’re looking for?’ he eventually asks, understandably impatient to get back to his meal.

  This is better. At the end of a lane leading from Colaba Causeway, I come to the promenade overlooking the Arabian Sea where I sit heavily on a stone bulwark. To my left, I see the darkened Taj Hotel, spectrally impressive beyond the surrounding security barriers, where soldiers are stationed at intervals. ‘Crime Scene. Do Not Cross’, the plastic tape insists. Once finished at the Leopold, the terrorists must have come this way to join their colleagues attacking the Taj. In the eerie street-light it has the look of a ruined monument, windows smoke-scorched, one cupola badly burned. In front of it, the Gateway of India seems to float out of the water. The triumphal triple arch marks the spot where the King-Emperor George V became the first British monarch to visit his Indian possessions, in 1911. It represents everything Bill was defending. Incredible that within less than forty years, all the power it symbolised had melted away. What part did the Parallel Government play in that process?

  The Gateway of India, Bombay 1938

  Despite the uncanny atmosphere, the lapping waves and starlight are calming and I start to order my reactions to Shinde. Does anything in what I remember as a child hint that my father was such a man as he describes? Bill certainly had a temper. Yet, despite racking my brains, I can’t remember him being involved in any physical violence during my African childhood – apart from the incident with the cook.

  The boy and his father are in canvas chairs, sipping tea from white enamel mugs and scoffing the first sausages of the day. Embers glow in the creamy ash of the previous night’s fire. Above the tents, the dawn clouds are coral still and the bird-song deafening. The boy’s tired. He was up late the previous evening while his father mapped the night sky for him, with binoculars so powerful the boy has to rest them against a tree to stop the shake. And it’s hard to get to sleep in the tent they share. The bush comes alive at night, the air thick with insect noise, the calls of animals looking for a mate or prey, the greedy gulps of frogs. Even the canvas seems to come alive, stretching and contracting like a skin in the night breeze. Every so often he’ll ask his father what’s making a particular sniffle, whimper, hiss or cry. The answer comes immediately, whether it’s a bug, bird or mammal. There’s nothing about the natural world he doesn’t seem to know, what a bull hippo weighs or how long the eggs of weaver birds take to hatch. The bush fits him like a glove. He’s invariably right when instinct tells him they’re close to an animal they can’t yet see. The boy wonders if he’ll ever be master of all this, too.

  A scout approaches, saluting smartly, red beret with brass buffalo-head insignia pulled down to his ears against the early chill. He looks tired after being out all night, having left the previous afternoon to make inquiries amongst the fishermen. One of them’s with him, a very tall, slender man with a small head and dull eyes. He looks unsteady on his legs, perhaps because of his height or because he’s more at home on water.

  ‘He says there’s an elephant in a trap, bwana,’ the scout announces. He gives rough co-ordinates and the fisherman answers some questions.

  ‘Asante, Daoudi, thank you, bwana. Bring the gun case,’ his father commands, standing up, scratching his stubble and gulping the remainder of his tea.

  The boy goes to fetch the awkward oblong box from the back of the tent where it’s buried under the pile of dirty clothes. The boy loves the freedom of safari, without his mother always telling him to tidy his things. By the time he returns, his father’s organised the team. A driver, Hamisi Sekana, two game scouts – Daoudi and light-skinned Salim – the fisherman and an Ndorobo tracker, a tiny man with a wispy goatee and a right arm so muscular it looks deformed. It’s because he’s been drawing his bow on that side since he was a child, the boy’s father explained on the first day of the trip.

  Soon the Land Rover is bucking off-track towards the low hills overlooking the Ugalla River. They go slowly, because the wet-season grass is growing rapidly, concealing rocks and potholes. The fisherman stands next to Daoudi and the tracker, even more unsteady in the unfamiliar environment of a vehicle, gripping the metal tubing behind the cab, squinting like a ship’s lookout as he scans the fever-trees. Daoudi bangs on the roof occasionally to indicate to the driver to change direction. Hamisi and Salim cradle their weapons, faces impassive. Are they anxious? the boy wonders. He is, but not so much as he’s proud. It’s not like with the spitting cobra, when he was told to stay behind. Now he’s beginning to be treated like a man. Often these days his father asks his opinion on things. Sometimes, he even seems impressed by the answers.

  A gang of warthogs suddenly appears. The mother stares reproachfully over stubby tusks, before high-stepping away; the piglets follow like pinnaces behind a top-heavy mother ship. Once in longer grass, only a rustling current betrays their passage. Along the crest of a hill, a caravan of giraffes proceeds on its stately way, coal-black twigs against the rising sun. The breeze is deliciously cool as it plays through the boy’s blue Aertex shirt. This is heaven, being in the bush, for the first time just him and his father, seeing such sights. He wishes it could be the pattern for all his days. If only there weren’t an elephant in a trap.

  It’s an hour and much hotter before Daoudi bangs and points to two o’clock. The Land Rover pulls over and they all get out. The men check their weapons. The boy holds the gun case, trying to keep his back straight, while his father takes out the double-barrelled .458, a gift from Prince Bernhard. ‘Holland and Holland, Piccadilly’, the gold letters read on the red velvet lining. The boy loves the peppery smell of warm gun-oil which percolates as his father fixes both barrels to the carved stock. They sit over-and-under, not side-by-side like the twelve-bore. The driver’s told to wait with the fisherman. Then they set off in single file, Daoudi and the tracker first, the boy and his father, Salim and Hamisi Sekana bringing up the rear. They walk in silence, dewy grass muffling their footsteps. No one knows where the poachers are and, like buffalo, they’re sometimes bold enough to ambush their pursuers.

  Before long they come to the edge of a gently rising clearing, where the tracker stops. Urgent whispers pass between him and the boy’s father. The boy can see the crushed grass ahead. There’s elephant dung as well. Moist with dew, it looks fresh. But he can tell by the crust it’s a day old, possibly more. They skirt the clearing cautiously, half crouching amongst the low acacia thorn. Halfway across they hear the first scream. The boy goose-pimples. There’s nothing so blood-curdling as the sound of an elephant in pain, not even hyena howls at night, which make him almost want to be young enough still to crawl into his father’s camp bed. The tracker proceeds unhurriedly. Despite his impatience, the boy knows that if they go too quickly, important evidence may be overlooked.

  ‘Nne,’ the tracker whispers, holding up four fingers.

  At least they’re not outnumbered, the boy reflects with relief. There’s another anguished trumpet, weaker than the first.

  When they reach the second clearing, the boy wishes for a moment he hadn’t come. Although upwind, the elephant knows they’re there and makes frantic efforts to break free. It’s a young female, tusks ten or fifteen pounds apiece at most. From this distance, the wire’s invisible, but each time she raises her foreleg, the boy glimpses the hideous red grin below the knee. The same haunted look appears on his father’s face as when Shotty the spaniel died.

  ‘Stay here with Salim,’ he whispers.

  Once he’s binoculared the surrounding bush, the boy’s father takes out a waxy carton of bullets from his safari jacket, breaks the .458 at the breech and loads a slug in each barrel. He slips a third in his mouth like a dummy before checking his sights. Hamisi Sekana and Daoudi lock their bolts as they slowly advance, one to e
ach side and five yards behind the game ranger. The elephant turns head-on, trunk curling and unfurling as she sips the breeze. Above his pounding heart the boy hears the slap of her ears. Salim faces behind them, cradling his rifle, while his father approaches to about forty yards from the animal. He examines the young elephant again through his field glasses, before signalling Hamisi up beside him.

  The boy sees the black spot between the target’s eyes before he hears the deafening report. There’s a cacophony of protest as every bird within half a mile takes wing. The elephant settles itself a moment before slipping gracefully to its knees, then keels over in slow motion. The trunk’s the last thing to hit the ground, as if it wants one last draw of savannah air. The boy’s awestruck.

  ‘Keep your eyes peeled,’ his father calls back, breaking the dead silence which eventually ensues, ‘the mother may still be around.’

  The boy looks warily along the inscrutable scrub. But white egrets are already returning to sit amongst the thorn branches, at a respectful distance. If they all suddenly flap up again, it’s time to worry. Yet he’s trembling violently when they advance to examine the animal. Its foreleg’s in terrible condition. In trying to free itself, the elephant has tightened the noose and the wire has cut to the bone. The iron picket to which the noose is attached is hammered down below ground level, protected by barbed wire to prevent the elephant pulling it out. Even had she succeeded, which sometimes happens, the injury would soon have finished her off. Maggots are already swarming in the raw flesh, flies settling on the clouding long-lashed eyes. In its death-throe, the elephant has expelled a last massive pat of dung, which smells sweet as cut meadow.

  The boy’s father gives orders to the scouts and tracker, who disappear towards the east. Hamisi follows behind. With his easy loping stride, which can swallow forty miles in a day, he can afford them a head start.

  ‘They’ll probably have heard the shot and be miles away by the time we find their camp.’

  ‘Why did the mother leave her?’ the boy asks, focused entirely on the elephant.

  ‘Maybe they killed her first. This one’s tusks are so small they perhaps couldn’t be bothered, and she wandered over here. Or they’re coming back later to check the trap.’

  His father’s subdued for the rest of the day. The episode has cast a shadow over what, for the boy, has been the happiest three weeks he can remember. On returning to camp, the game ranger dispatches more scouts with the driver, to dig up the noose as evidence, hack out the tusks and cut up the carcase to be distributed to the fishermen. It’s a way of keeping them onside, they’re a vital source of information. Late afternoon, they drive the Bedford truck down to the marshes. The fishermen are pleased to see them and even happier with the elephant meat, strips of raw, red, rubbery flesh which turn the boy’s stomach as they slither across the tarpaulin. More and more poachers are coming across from the Congo side, the fishermen complain. They, too, suffer from the trespassers, who often demand food and sometimes take their catches by force.

  While the adults discuss, the boy wanders off. He’s fascinated by these temporary wet-season settlements. The fishermen make platforms of reeds to sleep on, within a scaffolding of branches, lashed together with strips of bark, on which they dry their harvest. Mainly it’s catfish, with flat, wide heads and long whiskers. In the broiling sun they shrink, turning and leather-brown, like stinking sandals. Around their camps, the reeds stretch for miles in ankle-deep water from the flooding Ugalla. The boy loves to slosh through them in his new gumboots, replacements for the ones stolen from outside his tent on the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater. His father hadn’t believed him when the boy claimed to have heard snuffling during the night. Only when they continued the hyena cull the following day and one gumboot was found in an elderly female’s stomach did his father apologise. The next time he went to Arusha, he bought the best replacements he could find.

  Later, the fishermen take them to see the latest wave of migratory birds. Crouching behind a tussocked ridge from where the flat opal surface of the seasonal lake stretches away, the boy’s father gets out his decoy, a black tube like a relay baton. A few toots bring some Egyptian geese scooting over the water, brown and white with iridescent green heads and a blue wing chevron. But the boy isn’t all there. He keeps having flashbacks to the elephant’s dreadful gash, and smoulders with anger against those who did it.

  When they get back to camp, it’s growing dark. There’s laughter and excitement amongst the scouts building the fires. Strips of elephant meat have been set out to cure on frames like the ones the fishermen use. Light-skinned Salim’s back, and the Land Rover’s gone one last time to fetch Daoudi, the tracker and Hamisi Sekana. They’ve found the poachers’ camp and are bringing someone in. The boy and his father barely have time to measure the tusks of the young elephant, still partly encased in a crimson honeycomb of shattered jawbone, when they see headlights bumping towards them. Soon three figures emerge from the shadows. Hamisi leads forward a small, undernourished man wearing only filthy shorts and sandals made from old tyre treads, wrists handcuffed behind his back. Despite his bare, pumping pigeon-chest and pronounced limp, the boy takes a violent dislike to him. It’s the sly eyes and obsequious smile. On each shoulder, Daoudi bears a tusk. These must be forty pounds each.

  ‘We found the camp and this man hiding in the bush nearby. There was this ivory. And traps.’

  The murderous wires tinkle and glint in the firelight where Hamisi sets them down. He’s smiling. It’s a job well done, and the boy’s father tells him so. Then he compares the first noose recovered with these ones.

  ‘You see,’ he shows the boy, ‘they’ve got five twists around the neck. Made by the same person.’

  ‘He’s not from round here,’ Hamisi interjects. ‘He says he comes from the north, near Mwanza. But his Swahili is shenzi.’

  The boy spotted some of the man’s, too, has mistakes. His father nods and begins to ask questions. At first his tone is conversational, as if they’ve all just met in friendlier circumstances. What’s the man’s village, his tribe, his father’s name, those of his relations? The man shifts from foot to foot, as if his bad leg’s giving him trouble. At times he’s defiant, more often ingratiating. He claims to have been travelling south and stumbled on the deserted camp. Hearing the scouts approach, he hid nearby, fearing the owners were returning. He knows nothing about the tusks or nooses.

  ‘Where were you travelling to? Who were you visiting and where? Why didn’t you go by the road?’ Then the questions become more general.

  The boy’s becoming increasingly angry. Who cares what the president’s wife is called? With every faltering answer, as the suspect mangles the Swahili words, he knows the man’s lying. Why isn’t the questioning more direct?

  ‘Have you ever seen an animal caught in a noose?’ his father eventually asks the man, almost as an afterthought. ‘Can you imagine what it feels?’

  The suspect denies it emphatically. Hamisi’s face twists into a sneer. The boy’s finding it hard to control himself. He wants to beat the man, make him confess and apologise. Put his bad leg in a wire noose and see how he makes out. Then his father begins to ask the identical questions he began with, in the same matter-of-fact tone. The boy’s furious. Why’s his father wasting time? Adults can be so unfair sometimes. His father thrashed him once for twisting their pet monkey’s tail, yet now he’s smiling at this man, politely inquiring after his personal affairs when the suspect’s caused the elephant intolerable suffering. Suddenly his father sits up straighter, his tone steely at last.

  ‘The first time you said your village was to the east of Mwanza, now it’s the other side. If you came from anywhere near Mwanza you’d know Binti Nyerere’s name. Do you take me for an mpumbafu?’

  Daoudi laughs derisively. It’s the prisoner who’s made a fool of himself. Traps don’t have to be made of wire, the boy realises, with a burst of admiration. In the firelight, his father’s face flickers lividly. Surely he’s
going to give the man a thrashing now? Perhaps the suspect fears the same thing, for his expression suddenly crumples. Looking down, he confesses to coming across Lake Tanganyika three weeks earlier, from Rwanda, where unspeakable things are happening.

  ‘We are poor men, bwana, we have been chased from our homes. What can we do?’

  He explains that the gang was paid by an Indian they met in Kigoma, who smuggles ivory to the Far East. The boy’s father is calm again. He listens attentively.

  ‘So many of these buggers are coming over now,’ he mutters.

  ‘What’ll happen to him?’ the boy asks later, tucked up under his mosquito net, still aggrieved.

  His father stirs. ‘We’ll take him up to the police post in Mpanda. They’ll do the paperwork and send him on to court in Tabora.’

  ‘And if he denies it in front of the judge?’

  ‘You have to collect the evidence. Then it’s for other people to decide,’ his father explains, as if to an apprentice. ‘We need to catch the rest of the gang and persuade him to give evidence against them. If that happens, he’ll be fined and they’ll probably get a couple of years.’

  ‘That’s more than the poor flump will have.’ The boy’s face burns vengefully again.

  ‘Well, at least she’s out of her misery. Think about something else or you’ll have nightmares.’

  Author sitting on rogue elephant shot by Bill, holding a rifle, c. 1961.

  ‘I want to smash that man.’

  ‘Yes, I understand. But we’ll be needing his help.’ The boy’s father sits up. ‘Did you leave your Wellingtons outside?’

  ‘Should I bring them in?’

  ‘No thanks, old chap. I doubt the Ugalla hyenas could face the smell of your toe jam. They’re not as brave as up at the Crater.’

  Before the rumbling laugh dies down, the boy’s asleep, exhausted by the emotion of another long day.