True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  They did not look funny now though perched obscenely above the remains of the zebra and when the big lioness rose and yawned and went out to feed again two big vultures dropped as soon as she was on the meat. The young lioness flicked her tail once and charged them and they rose running and heavy winged as she slapped at them as a kitten slaps. She then lay down by the big lioness and started to feed and the birds stayed in the trees but the closest ones were almost overbalanced with hunger.

  It would not take the lionesses long to finish off what was left of the zebra and I told Mary it was probably better to leave them feeding and drive on up the road as though we had not seen them. Ahead of us there was a small bunch of zebra and beyond were wildebeest and many more zebra.

  “I love to watch them,” Mary said. “But if you think it’s better we can go on up and see how the salt flats are and maybe see the buff.”

  So we went up as far as the edge of the salt flat and saw no tracks of buffalo and no buffalo. The flats were still too wet and slippery for a car and so was the ground to the east. We found the tracks of the two lionesses at the edge of the salt flats headed in the direction of the kill. They were fresh tracks and it was impossible to tell when they had hit the kill. But I thought it must have been the lion who killed and Ngui and Charo agreed. “Perhaps if we just drive back the way we’ve come he’ll get used to seeing the car,” Mary said. “I don’t have a headache but it would be fun to have breakfast.”

  It was what I had been hoping she would suggest.

  “If we don’t shoot at all.” I stopped because I would have said that it would give him confidence.

  “Maybe he will think it is a car that just goes up and down,” Mary finished for me. “We’ll have a lovely breakfast and I will do all the letters I should write and we’ll be patient and good kittens.”

  “You’re a good kitten.”

  “We’ll drive back to camp like tourists and see the new wonderful green fields and breakfast feels so good in advance.”

  But when we got to camp for breakfast there was the young policeman in his mud-spatted Land Rover waiting for us. The car was under a tree and his two askaris were back at the lines. He got out of the car as we came up and his young face was lined with his great cares and responsibilities.

  “Good morning, Bwana,” he said. “Good morning, Memsahib. Been making an early patrol I see.”

  “Will you have some breakfast?” I asked.

  “If I’m not in the way. Turn up anything interesting, governor?”

  “Just checking on the stock. What’s the word from the Boma?”

  “They nailed them, governor. They got them over on the other side. North of Namanga. You can call in your people.”

  “Much of a show?”

  “No details yet.”

  “Pity we couldn’t have fought here.”

  Miss Mary looked at me warningly. She was not happy at having the young policeman for breakfast but she knew he was a lonesome boy and while she was intolerant with fools she was feeling kindly until we had seen the policeman exhausted in his mud-covered vehicle.

  “It would have meant a lot to me. Governor, we had almost the perfect plan. Perhaps it was the perfect plan. The only aspect I worried about was the little Memsahib here. If you’ll pardon my saying it, ma’am, this is no work for a woman.”

  “I wasn’t in it at all,” Mary said. “Would you have some kidneys and bacon?”

  “You were in it,” he said. “You were a part of The Screen. I’m mentioning you in my report. It’s perhaps not the same as a Mention in Dispatches. But it’s all part of one’s record. Someday those who fought in Kenya will be very proud.”

  “After wars I’ve found that the people are usually just crashing bores,” Miss Mary said.

  “Only to those who did not fight,” the policeman said. “Fighting men, and with your permission fighting women, have a code.”

  “Try some beer,” I said. “Have any gen on when we’ll fight again?”

  “You’ll have the word, governor, before anyone else has it.”

  “You’re too kind to us,” I said. “But I suppose there is glory enough for all.”

  “Too true,” the young policeman said. “In a way, governor, we’re the last of the Empire builders. In a way we’re like Rhodes and Dr. Livingstone.”

  “In a way,” I said.

  That afternoon I went to the Shamba. It was cold since the sun was under the cloud of the Mountain and a heavy wind was blowing from the heights where all the rain that had fallen on us must now be snow. The Shamba was at about six thousand feet and the Mountain was over nineteen thousand feet high. Its sudden cold winds, when heavy snow had fallen, were punishing to those who lived on the upland plain. Higher in the foothills, the houses, we did not call them huts, were built in the folds of hills to have a lee against the wind. But this Shamba had the full force of the wind and on this afternoon it was very cold and bitter with the smell of not quite frozen dung and all birds and beasts were out of the wind.

  The man who Miss Mary referred to as my father-in-law had a chest cold too and bad rheumatic pains in his back. I gave him medicine and then rubbed him and applied Sloan’s liniment. None of us Kamba regarded him as the father of his daughter but since he was technically such by tribal law and custom, I was bound to respect him. We treated him in the lee of the house with his daughter watching. She was carrying her sister’s child on her hip and was wearing my last good woolly sweater and a fishing cap which had been given me by a friend. My friend had ordered my initials embroidered on the front of the cap and this had some significance with all of us. Until she had decided that she wanted it, the initials had always been an embarrassment. Under the woolly sweater she wore the last and too many times washed dress from Laitokitok. It was not correct etiquette for me to speak to her while she was carrying the child of her sister and, technically, she should have not watched the treatment of her father. She handled this by keeping her eyes downcast at all times.

  The man who was known by a name which means potential father-in-law was not particularly brave under the ordeal of Sloan’s liniment. Ngui, who knew Sloan’s well, and had no regard for the men of this Shamba, wanted me to rub it in and signaled once that I let a few drops fall where they should not go. Mthuka with his beautiful tribal scars on both cheeks was completely happy in his deafness watching what he considered to be a worthless Kamba suffer in a good cause. I was completely ethical with the Sloan’s to the disappointment of everyone including the daughter and all lost interest.

  “Jambo, tu,” I said to the daughter when we left and she said with her eyes down and her chest up, “No hay remedio.”

  We got into the car, no one waving to anyone, the cold closing in with the formality. There was too much of both and we all felt badly to see a Shamba so miserable.

  “Ngui,” I asked. “How can they have such miserable men and such wonderful women in this Shamba?”

  “Great men have passed through this Shamba,” Ngui said. “Formerly this was the route to the south until the new route.” He was angry with the men of the Shamba because they were worthless Kamba.

  “Do you think we ought to take this Shamba?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You and I and Mthuka and the young men.”

  We were going into the African world of unreality that is defended and fortified by reality past any reality there is. It was not an escape world or a daydreaming world. It was a ruthless real world made of the unreality of the real. If there were still rhino, and we saw them every day while it was obviously impossible for there to be such an animal, then anything was possible. If Ngui and I could talk to a rhinoceros, who was incredible to start with, in his own tongue well enough for him to answer back and I could curse and insult him in Spanish so that he would be humiliated and go off, then unreality was sensible and logical beside reality. Spanish was regarded as Mary’s and my tribal language and it was considered to be the all-purpose language of Cuba where we came from. Th
ey knew we also had an inner or secret tribal language. We were not supposed to have anything in common with the British except the color of our skin and a mutual tolerance. While Mayito Menocal was with us he was greatly admired because of his very deep voice, the way he smelled, his courtesy and because he had arrived in Africa speaking both Spanish and Swahili. They also revered his scars and as he spoke Swahili with a strong Camagüey accent and looked like a bull he was, truly, almost revered.

  I had explained that he was the son of the King of his own country, in the time when it had great kings, and had described the thousands of acres of land that he owned and its quality, the number of cattle I had known that he owned and the quantities of sugar that he produced. Since sugar was the universally sought food by the Wakamba after meat and since Pop had backed me up to Keiti that these things were true and since Mayito was obviously a sound cattleman who knew exactly what he spoke of and, when he spoke of it, spoke in a voice very similar to that of a lion and had never been unjust, rude, contemptuous or boastful, he was really loved. In all the time he was in Africa I only told one lie about Mayito. This was in respect to his wives.

  Mwindi, who was a true admirer of Mayito, asked me, flat out, how many wives Mayito had. Everyone had wondered and it was not the sort of statistic they could get from Pop. Mwindi was in one of his gloomy days and there had evidently been a discussion. I did not know which side he had taken but it was evidently a question that he had been asked to settle.

  I thought the question and the aspects of the strangeness over and said, “In his own country no one would wish to count them.”

  “Ndio,” Mwindi said. This was the proper language of Mzees.

  Mayito had one actually. She was very beautiful. Mwindi went out as gloomy as ever.

  Now today, coming back from the Shamba, Ngui and I were engaged in that characteristic occupation of men, planning the operation which will never take place.

  “All right,” I said. “We take it.”

  “Good.”

  “Who takes Debba?”

  “She is yours. She is your fiancée.”

  “Good. After we take it how do we hold it when they send a company of K.A.R.?”

  “You get troops from Mayito.”

  “Mayito is in Hong Kong now. In China.”

  “We have aircraft.”

  “Not that kind. What do we do without Mayito?”

  “We go up into the Mountain.”

  “Very cold. Too damn cold right now. Also we lose the Shamba.”

  “War is shit,” Ngui said.

  “I’ll sign that,” I said. We were both happy now. “No. We take the Shamba day by day. The day is our unit. Now we have what the old men believe they will have when they die. Now we hunt good; eat good meat; drink well once Memsahib kills her lion; and make the happy hunting grounds while we are alive.”

  Mthuka was too deaf to hear anything we said. He was like a motor which is functioning perfectly but the gauges have cut out. This usually only happens in dreams but Mthuka had the finest sight of any of us and was the best wild driver, and he had, if such a thing exists, complete extrasensory perception. As we drove up to the camp and stopped the car Ngui and I knew he had not heard a word we had said but he said, “It is better, much, much better.”

  He had pity and kindness in his eyes and I knew he was a better and kinder man than I could ever be. He offered me his snuffbox. It was semi-normal snuff with none of the strange additions of Arap Meina but it tasted very good and I put a big three-fingered pinch of it under my upper lip.

  None of us had been drinking at all. Mthuka always carried himself rather like a crane in cold weather with his shoulders hunched. The sky was overcast and the cloud was down to the plain and as I handed him back the snuffbox he said, “Wakamba tu.”

  We both knew it and there was nothing to do about it and he covered the car and I walked over to the tent.

  “Was the Shamba in good shape?” Miss Mary asked.

  “It’s fine. It’s a little cold and rough.”

  “Is there anything I can do for anyone there?”

  You good lovely kind kitten, I thought and I said, “No. I think everything is fine. I’m going to get a medicine chest for the Widow and teach her to use it. It’s awful for the kids’ eyes not to be cared for when they’re Wakamba.”

  “If they are anybody,” Miss Mary said.

  “I’m going out to talk to Arap Meina. Would you please ask Mwindi to call me when the bath is ready?”

  Arap Meina did not think that the lion would kill that night. I told him he had looked very heavy when he had gone off into the forest that morning. He doubted if the lionesses would kill that night either although they might and the lion might join them. I asked him if I should have made a kill and tied it up or covered it with brush to try to hold the lion. He said the lion was much too intelligent.

  A large part of time in Africa is spent in talk. Where people are illiterate this is always true. Once you start the hunt hardly a word is spoken. You all understand each other and in hot weather your tongue is stuck dry in your mouth. But in planning a hunt in the evening there is usually much talking and it is quite rare that things come off as they are planned; especially if the planning is too complicated.

  Later, when we were both in bed that night the lion proved us all to be wrong. We heard him roar to the north of the field where we had made the airstrip. Then he moved off roaring from time to time. Then another and less impressive lion roared several times. Then it was quiet for a long time. After that we heard the hyenas and from the way they called and from the high quavering laughing noise they made I was sure some lion had killed. After that there was the noise of lions fighting. This quieted down and the hyenas started to howl and laugh.

  “You and Arap Meina said it was going to be a quiet night,” Mary said very sleepily.

  “Somebody killed something,” I said.

  “You and Arap Meina tell each other about it in the morning. I have to go to sleep now to get up early. I want to sleep well so I won’t be cross.”

  7

  I SAT DOWN to the eggs and bacon, the toast, coffee and jam. Mary was on her second cup of coffee and seemed quite happy. “Are we really getting anywhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he outsmarts us every morning and he can keep it up forever.”

  “No he can’t. We’re going to start to move him a little too far out and he’ll make a mistake and you’ll kill him.”

  That afternoon after lunch we did baboon control. We were supposed to keep the population of baboons down to protect the Shambas but we had been doing it in a rather stupid way trying to catch the bands in the open and fire on them as they made for the shelter of the forest. In order neither to sadden nor enrage baboon lovers I will give no details. We were not charged by the ferocious beasts and their formidable canine teeth by the time I reached them were stilled in death. When we got back to camp with the four disgusting corpses G.C. had already arrived.

  He was muddy and he looked tired but happy.

  “Good afternoon, General,” he said. He looked into the back of the hunting car and smiled. “Babooning I see. Two brace. A splendid bag. Going to have them set up by Roland Ward?”

  “I’d thought of a group mounting, G.C., with you and me in the center.”

  “How are you, Papa, and how is Miss Mary?”

  “Isn’t she here?”

  “No. They said she’d gone for a walk with Charo.”

  “She’s fine. The lion’s been a little on her mind. But her morale is good.”

  “Mine’s low,” G.C. said. “Should we have a drink?”

  “I love a drink after babooning.”

  “We’re going in for big-time babooning on a large scale,” G.C. said. He took off his beret and then reached into his tunic pocket and brought out a buff envelope. “Read this and memorize our role.”

  He called to Nguili to bring drinks and I read the operation orders.

 
“This makes good sense,” I said. I read it on skipping, temporarily, the parts that had nothing to do with us and that I would have to check on the map, looking for where we came in.

  “It does make sense,” G.C. said. “My morale’s not low because of it. It’s what’s holding my morale up.”

  “What’s the matter with your morale? Moral problems?”

  “No. Problems of conduct.”

  “You must have been a wonderful problem child. You have more damned problems than a character in Henry James.”

  “Make it Hamlet,” G.C. said. “And I wasn’t a problem child. I was a very happy and attractive child, only slightly too fat.”

  “Mary was wishing you were back only this noon.”

  “Sensible girl,” G.C. said.

  We saw them then coming across the new bright green grass of the meadow; the same size, Charo as black as a man could be, wearing his old soiled turban and a blue coat, Mary bright blond in the sun, her green shooting clothes dark against the bright green of the grass. They were talking happily and Charo was carrying Mary’s rifle and her big bird book. Together they always looked like a numero from the old Cirque Médrano.

  G.C. came out from washing up without a shirt on. His whiteness contrasted with the rose brown of his face and neck.

  “Look at them,” he said. “What a lovely pair.”

  “Imagine running into them if you’d never seen them before.”

  “The grass will be over their heads in a week’s time. It’s nearly to their knees now.”

  “Don’t criticize the grass. It’s only three days old.”

  “Hi, Miss Mary,” G.C. called. “What have you two been up to?”

  Mary drew herself up very proudly.

  “I killed a wildebeest.”

  “And who gave you permission to do that?”

  “Charo. Charo said to kill him. He had a broken leg. Really badly broken.”