True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  If there was anything we needed to make absolutely clear with Mr. or Mrs. Singh or if I had any formal talks with local Masai elders we would use a Mission-educated boy who would stand in the doorway to interpret, holding a bottle of Coca-Cola prominently in his hand. Usually I tried to use the services of the Mission boy as little as possible since he was officially saved and contact with our group could only corrupt him. Arap Meina was allegedly a Mohammedan, but I had long ago noticed that our devout Mohammedans would eat nothing that he, Arap Meina, halaled; that is, made the ceremonial throat cut that made the meat legal to eat if the cut was made by a practicing Moslem.

  Arap Meina, one time when he had drunk quite a lot, told several people that he and I had been to Mecca together in the old days. The devout Mohammedans knew this was not true. Charo had wished to convert me to Islam some twenty years before and I had gone all through Ramadan with him observing the fast. He had given me up as a possible convert many years ago. But nobody knew whether I had actually ever been to Mecca except myself. The Informer, who believed the best and worst of everyone, was convinced that I had been to Mecca many times. Willie, a half-caste driver who I had hired on his story that he was the son of a very famous old gun bearer who, I found, had not sired him, told everyone in strictest confidence that we were going to Mecca together.

  Finally I had been cornered by Ngui in a theological argument and while he did not ask the question direct I told him for his own information that I had never been to Mecca and had no intention of going. This relieved him greatly.

  Mary had gone to take a nap in the tent and I sat in the shade of the dining tent and read and thought about the Shamba and Laitokitok. I knew I mustn’t think about the Shamba too much or I would find some excuse to go there. Debba and I never spoke to each other in front of the others except for me to say “Jambo, tu,” and she would bow her head very gravely if there were others than Ngui and Mthuka present. If there were just the three of us she would laugh and they would laugh too and then the others would stay in the car or walk in another direction and she and I would walk a little way together. The thing she liked best about public society was to ride in the front seat of the hunting car between Mthuka, who was driving, and me. She would always sit very straight and look at everyone else as though she had never seen them before. Sometimes she would bow politely to her father and her mother but sometimes she would not see them. Her dress, which we had bought in Laitokitok, was pretty well worn out now in the front by sitting so straight and the color was not resisting the daily washing she gave it.

  We had agreed about a new dress. This was to be for Christmas or when we got the leopard. There were various leopards but this was one which had a special importance. He, for reasons, was as important to me as the dress was to her.

  “With another dress I would not have to wash this one so much,” she had explained.

  “You wash it so much because you like to play with soap,” I told her.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But when can we go to Laitokitok together?”

  “Soon.”

  “Soon is no good,” she said.

  “It’s all I have.”

  “When will you come to drink beer in the evening?”

  “Soon.”

  “I hate soon. You and soon are lying brothers.”

  “Then neither of us will come.”

  “You come and bring soon too.”

  “I will.”

  When we rode together in the front seat she liked to feel the embossing on the old leather holster of my pistol. It was a flowered design and very old and worn and she would trace the design very carefully with her fingers and then take her hand away and press the pistol and its holster close against her thigh. Then she would sit up straighter than ever. I would stroke one finger very lightly across her lips and she would laugh and Mthuka would say something in Kamba and she would sit very straight and press her thigh hard against the holster. A long time after this had first started I found that what she wanted, then, was to impress the carving of the holster into her thigh.

  At first I only spoke to her in Spanish. She learned it very quickly and it is simple if you start with the parts of the body and the things one can do and then food and the different relationships and the names of animals and of birds. I never spoke a word of English to her and we retained some Swahili words but the rest was a new language made up of Spanish and Kamba. Messages were brought by the Informer. Neither she nor I liked this because the Informer felt it his duty to tell me exactly her feelings in regard to me, which he learned at second hand from her mother the Widow. This third-party communication was difficult, sometimes embarrassing but often interesting and, at times, rewarding.

  The Informer would say, “Brother, it is my duty to inform you that your girl loves you very much, truly very much, too much. When can you see her?”

  “Tell her not to love an ugly old man and not to confide in you.”

  “I am serious, brother. You do not know. She wishes you to marry her by your tribe or by hers. There are no costs. There is no wife price. She wishes only one thing, to be a wife if Memsahib, my lady, will accept her. She understands that Memsahib is the principal wife. She is also afraid of Memsahib as you know. You do not know how serious this is. All of it.”

  “I have a faint idea,” I said.

  “Since yesterday you cannot conceive how things have been. She asks me only that you will show a certain politeness and formality to her father and her mother. The case has been reduced to that. There is no question of payment. Only of a certain formality. There are certain ceremonial beers.”

  “She should not care for a man of my age and habits.”

  “Brother, the case is that she cares. I could tell you many things. This is a serious thing.”

  “What can she care for?” I said, making a mistake.

  “Yesterday there was the matter of you catching the roosters of the village and then putting them to sleep by some form of magic and laying them asleep in front of her family’s lodge. [Neither of us could say hut.] This has never been seen and I do not ask you what magic was employed. But she says you sprung at them with a movement that could not be seen almost like a leopard. Since then she has not been the same. Then she has on the walls of the lodge the pictures from Life magazine of the great beasts of America and of the washing machine, the cooking machines and miraculous ranges and the stirring machines.”

  “I am sorry about that. It was a mistake.”

  “It is because of that she washes her dress so much. She is trying to be like the washing machine to please you. She is afraid that you will become lonely for the washing machine and go away. Brother, sir, there is tragedy. Can you do nothing positive for her?”

  “I will do what I can,” I said. “But remember that putting the roosters to sleep was not magic. It is a trick. Catching them is only a trick too.”

  “Brother, she loves you very much.”

  “Tell her there is no such word as love. Just as there is no word for sorry.”

  “That is true. But there is the thing although there is no word for it.”

  “You and I are the same age. It is not necessary to explain so much.”

  “I tell you this only because it is serious.”

  “I cannot break the law if we are here to enforce the law.”

  “Brother, you do not understand. There is no law. This Shamba is here illegally. It is not in Kamba country. For thirty-five years it has been ordered removed and it has never happened. There is not even customary law. There are only variations.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Thank you, brother. Let me tell you that for the people of this Shamba you and Bwana Game are the law. You are a bigger law than Bwana Game because you are older. Also he is away and his askaris are with him. Here you have your young men and warriors such as Ngui. You have Arap Meina. Everyone knows you are Arap Meina’s father.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Brother, please try n
ot to misunderstand me. You know the sense in which I say father. Arap Meina says you are his father. Also you brought him to life after he died in the airplane. You brought him back to life after he lay dead in Bwana Mouse’s tent. It is known. Many things are known.”

  “Too many things are improperly known.”

  “Brother, may I have a drink?”

  “If I do not see you take it.”

  “Chin chin,” the Informer said. He had taken the Canadian gin instead of the Gordon’s and my heart went out to him. “You must forgive me,” he said. “I have lived all my life with the Bwanas. May I tell you more or are you tired of the subject?”

  “I am tired of part of it, but other parts interest me. Tell me more about the history of the Shamba.”

  “I do not know it exactly because they are Kamba and I am Masai. That shows there is something wrong with the Shamba or I would not be living there. There is something wrong with the men. You have seen them. For some reason they came here originally. This is a long way from Kamba country. Neither true tribal law nor any other law runs here. You have also seen the condition of the Masai.”

  “We have to talk about that another day.”

  “Willingly, brother, things are not well. It is a long story. But let me tell you about the Shamba. Why you went there in the early morning and spoke through me about the all-night Ngoma of the great drunkenness with such severity, the people say afterwards that they could see the gallows in your eyes. The man who was still so drunk that he couldn’t understand was taken to the river and washed in the water from the Mountain until he understood and he entered the neighboring province the same day climbing the Mountain on foot. You do not know what serious law you are.”

  “It is a small Shamba. But very beautiful. Who sold them the sugar for the beer of that Ngoma?”

  “I do not know. But I could find out.”

  “I know,” I said and told him. I knew that he knew. But he was an informer and he had lost out in life long ago and it was the Bwanas who had ruined him although he gave full credit for that process to a Somali wife. But it was a Bwana, a great Lord, who was the greatest friend the Masai ever had but who liked, he said, to do things backwards who, if what he said was true, had ruined him. No one knows how much is true that an informer says but his description of this great man had been done with such a mixture of admiration and remorse that it seemed to explain many things that I had never understood. I had never heard of any backward tendency on the part of this great man until I came to know the Informer. I always expressed disbelief at some of these surprising tales.

  “You will hear, of course,” the Informer said to me now that his zeal for informing had been heightened by the Canadian gin, “that I am an agent of the Mau Mau and you may believe it because I have said such things about this backwardness. But, brother, it is not true. I truly love and believe in the Bwanas. True all but one or two of the great Bwanas are dead and I should have led a far different life,” the Informer said. “Thinking of these great dead Bwanas fills me with the resolution to lead a better and finer life. It is permitted?”

  “The last one,” I said. “And only as a medicine.”

  At the word medicine, the Informer brightened. He had a very nice and rather noble large face covered with the lines and wrinkles of good temper and uncomplaining dissipation and debauchery. It was not an ascetic face nor was there any depravity in it. It was the face of a dignified man who, being a Masai and ruined by the Bwanas and by a Somali wife, now lived in an outlaw Kamba village with the status of protector of a Widow and earned eighty-six shillings a month betraying anyone betrayable. Yet it was a handsome face, ravaged and cheerful, and I was very fond of the Informer although I disapproved of him completely and had several times told him that it might be my duty to see him hanged.

  “Brother,” he said. “There must be those medicines. How would the great doctor with the Dutch name have written about them in such a serious review as the Reader’s Digest if they did not exist?”

  “They exist,” I said. “But I do not have them. I can send them to you.”

  “Brother, only one thing more. The girl is a very serious thing.”

  “If you ever say that again I will know you are a fool. Like all people when they drink you repeat yourself.”

  “I will excuse myself.”

  “Go, brother. I will try, truly, to send you the medicine and other good medicines. When I see you next be prepared to bring me more of the history of the Shamba.”

  “Do you have any messages?”

  “No messages.”

  It always shocked me to realize that the Informer and I were the same age. We were not exactly the same age but were of the same age group, which was near enough and bad enough. And here I was with a wife that I loved and who loved me and tolerated my errors and referred to this girl as my fiancée, tolerating because I was in some ways a good husband and for other reasons of generosity and kindness and detachment and wanting me to know more about this country than I had any right to know. We were happy at least a good part of each day and nearly always at night and this night, in bed together, under the mosquito netting with the flaps of the tent open so that we could see the long burned-through logs of the big fire and the wonderful darkness that receded jaggedly as the night wind struck the fire and then closed in quickly as the wind dropped, we were very happy.

  “We’re too lucky,” Mary said. “I love Africa so. I don’t know how we can ever leave it.”

  It was a cold night with the breeze off the snows of the Mountain and we were snug under the blankets. The night noises were starting and we had heard the first hyena and then the others. Mary loved to hear them at night. They make a pleasant noise if you love Africa and we laughed together as they moved around the camp and out past the cook’s tent where the meat was hung in a tree. They could not reach the meat but they kept talking about it.

  “You know if you are ever dead and I’m not lucky so we die together, if anyone asks me what I remember best about you I’ll tell them about how much room you could give your wife in a canvas cot. Where do you put yourself, really?”

  “Sort of sideways on the edge. I’ve lots of room.”

  “We can sleep comfortably in a bed one person couldn’t be comfortable in if it’s cold enough.”

  “That’s the thing. It has to be cold.”

  “Can we stay longer in Africa and not go home until spring?”

  “Sure. Let’s stay until we’re broke.”

  Then we heard the thud of a lion’s cough as he came hunting across the long meadow up from the river.

  “Listen,” Mary said. “Hold me close and tight and listen.

  “He’s come back,” Mary whispered.

  “You can’t tell it’s him.”

  “I’m sure it is him,” Mary said. “I’ve heard him enough nights. He’s come down from the Manyatta where he killed the two cows. Arap Meina said he would come back.”

  We could hear his coughing grunt as he moved across the meadow toward where we had made the airstrip for the small plane.

  “We’ll know if it’s him in the morning,” I said. “Ngui and I know his tracks.”

  “So do I.”

  “OK, you track him.”

  “No. I only meant that I do know his tracks.”

  “They’re awfully big.” I was sleepy and I thought if we are going to hunt lion with Miss Mary in the morning I should get some sleep. For a long time we had known, in some things, what the other one of us was going to say or, often, to think and Mary said, “I’d better get in my own bed so you’ll be comfortable and sleep well.”

  “Go to sleep here. I’m fine.”

  “No. It wouldn’t be good.”

  “Sleep here.”

  “No. Before a lion I ought to sleep in my own bed.”

  “Don’t be such a bloody warrior.”

  “I am a warrior. I’m your wife and your love and your small warrior brother.”

  “All right,”
I said. “Good night, warrior brother.”

  “Kiss your warrior brother.”

  “You get in your own bed or stay here.”

  “Maybe I’ll do both,” she said.

  In the night I heard a lion speak several times as he was hunting. Miss Mary was sleeping soundly and breathing softly. I lay awake and thought about too many things but mostly about the lion and my obligation to Pop and to Bwana Game and to others. I did not think about Miss Mary except about her height, which was five feet two inches, in relation to tall grass and bush and that, no matter how cold the morning was, she must not wear too much clothing as the stock on the 6.5 Mannlicher was too long for her if her shoulder was padded and she might let the rifle off as she raised it to shoot. I lay awake thinking about this and about the lion and the way Pop would handle it and how wrong he had been the last time and how right he had been more times than I had ever seen a lion.

  2

  BEFORE IT WAS daylight when the coals of the fire were covered by the gray ashes that sifted in the early morning breeze I put on my high soft boots and an old dressing gown and went to wake Ngui in his pup tent.

  He woke sullen and not at all my blood brother and I remembered that he never smiled before the sun was up and sometimes it took him longer to get rid of wherever he had been when he was asleep.

  We talked at the dead ashes of the cook fire.

  “You heard the lion?”

  “Ndio, Bwana.”

  This, a politeness, was also a rudeness as we both knew for we had discussed the phrase, “Ndio, Bwana,” which is what the African says always to the White Man to get rid of him through agreement.

  “How many lions did you hear?”

  “One.”

  “Mzuri,” I said, meaning that was better and he was correct and had heard the lion. He spat and took snuff and then offered it to me and I took some and put it under my upper lip.

  “Was it the big lion of Memsahib?” I asked, feeling the lovely quick bite of the snuff against the gums and the pocket of the upper lip.