True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  We came into camp and sat in chairs by the fire and stretched our legs out and drank tall drinks. Who we needed was Pop and Pop was not there. I had told Keiti to break out some beer for the lines and then I waited for it to come. It came as suddenly as a dry streambed filling with the high, foam-crested roar of water from a cloudburst. It had only taken time enough for them to decide who was to carry Miss Mary and then the wild, stooped dancing rush of Wakamba poured in from behind the tents all singing the lion song. The big mess boy and the truck driver had the chair and they put it down and Keiti dancing and clapping his hands led Miss Mary to it and they hoisted her up and started dancing around the fire with her and then out toward the lines and around the lion where he had been laid on the ground and then through the lines and around the cook fire and the men’s fire and around the cars and the wood truck and in and out. The Game Scouts were all stripped to their shorts and so was everyone else except the old men. I watched Mary’s bright head and the black strong fine bodies that were carrying her and crouching and stamping in the dance and then moving forward to reach up and touch her. It was a fine wild lion dance and at the end they put Mary down in the chair by her camp chair at the fire and everyone shook hands with her and it was over. She was happy and we had a fine happy meal and went to bed.

  In the night I woke and could not get back to sleep. I woke very suddenly and it was absolutely quiet. Then I heard Mary’s regular, smooth breathing and I had a feeling of relief that we would not have to pit her against the lion every morning. Then I began to feel sorrow that the lion’s death had not been as she hoped it would be and as she planned it. With the celebration and the really wild dance and the love of all her friends and their allegiance to her the disappointment that she felt had been anesthetized. But I was sure that after the more than a hundred mornings that she had gone out after a great lion the disappointment would return. She did not know the danger she had been in. Maybe she did and I did not know. Neither G.C. nor I wanted to tell her because we had both cut it too fine and we had not soaked in sweat that way in the cool of the evening for nothing. I remembered how the lion’s eyes had looked when he had looked toward me and turned them down and then looked toward Mary and G.C. and how his eyes had never left them. I lay in the bed and thought how a lion can come one hundred yards from a standing start in just over three seconds. He comes low down to the ground and faster than a greyhound and he does not spring until he is on his prey. Mary’s lion would weigh well over four hundred pounds and he was strong enough to have leaped out over a high thorn Boma carrying a cow. He had been hunted for many years and he was very intelligent. But we had lulled him into making a mistake. I was happy that before he died he had lain on the high yellow rounded mound with his tail down and his great paws comfortable before him and looked off across his country to the blue forest and the high white snows of the big Mountain. Both G.C. and I wanted him to be killed by Mary’s first shot or, wounded, charge. But he had played it his own way. The first shot could not have felt more than a sharp, slapping sting to him. The second that passed high through a leg muscle while he was bounding toward the heavy cover where he would make us fight would, at most, have felt like a hard slap. I did not like to think what my long-thrown running shot that was thrown at all of him, hoping to rake him and bring him down, must have felt like when it by chance took him in the spine. It was a two-hundred-and-twenty-grain solid bullet and I did not have to think how it would have felt. I had never yet broken my back and I did not know. I was glad G.C.’s wonderful distance shot had killed him instantly. He was dead now and we would miss hunting him too.

  I tried to go to sleep but I started to think about the lion and what the moves would have been if he had reached the heavy cover, remembering other people’s experiences under the same circumstances and then I thought the hell with all that. That’s stuff for G.C. and I to talk over together and to talk with Pop. I wished Mary would wake and say, “I’m so glad I got my lion.” But that was too much to expect and it was three o’clock in the morning. I remembered how Scott Fitzgerald had written that in the something something of the soul something something it is always three o’clock in the morning. For many months three o’clock in the morning had been two hours, or an hour and a half, before you would get up and get dressed and put your boots on to hunt Miss Mary’s lion. I untucked the mosquito net and reached for and found the cider bottle. It was cool with the night and I built up the two pillows by doubling them over and then leaned back against them with the rough square balsam pillow under my neck and thought about the soul. First I must verify the Fitzgerald quotation in my mind. It had occurred in a series of articles in which he had abandoned this world and his former extremely shoddy ideals and had first referred to himself as a cracked plate. Turning my memory back I remembered the quotation. It went like this. “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.”

  And I thought sitting up awake in the African night that I knew nothing about the soul at all. People were always talking of it and writing of it but who knew about it? I did not know anyone who knew anything of it nor whether there was such a thing. It seemed a very strange belief and I knew I would have a very difficult time trying to explain it to Ngui and Mthuka and the others even if I knew anything about it. Before I woke I had been dreaming and in the dream I had a horse’s body but a man’s head and shoulders and I had wondered why no one had known this before. It was a very logical dream and it dealt with the precise moment at which the change came about in the body so that they were human bodies. It seemed a very sound and good dream and I wondered what the others would think of it when I told it to them. I was awake now and the cider was cool and fresh but I could still feel the muscles I had in the dream when my body had been a horse’s body. This was not helping me with the soul and I tried to think what it must be in the terms that I believed. Probably a spring of clear fresh water that never diminished in the drought and never froze in the winter was closest to what we had instead of the soul they all talked about. I remembered how when I was a boy the Chicago White Sox had a third baseman named Harry Lord who could foul off pitches down the third-base line until the opposing pitcher was worn out or it would get dark and the game be called. I was very young then and everything was exaggerated but I can remember it beginning to get dark, this was before there were lights in ballparks, and Harry still fouling them off and the crowd shouting, “Lord, Lord Save Your Soul.” This was the closest I had ever come to the soul. Once I had thought my own soul had been blown out of me when I was a boy and then that it had come back in again. But in those days I was very egotistical and I had heard so much talk about the soul and read so much about it that I had assumed that I had one. Then I began to think if Miss Mary or G.C. or Ngui or Charo or I had been killed by the lion would our souls have flown off somewhere? I could not believe it and I thought that we would all just have been dead, deader than the lion perhaps, and no one was worrying about his soul. The worst part would have been the trip to Nairobi and the inquiry. But all I really knew was that it would have been very bad for G.C.’s career if Mary or I had been killed. It would have been bad luck for G.C. if he had been killed. It would have certainly been very bad for my writing if I had been killed. Neither Charo nor Ngui would have liked to be killed and if she had been killed it would have come as a great surprise to Miss Mary. It was something to be avoided and it was a relief to not have to put yourself in a position where it could happen day after day.

  But what did this have to do with “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning”? Did Miss Mary and G.C. have souls? They had no religious beliefs as far as I knew. But if people had souls they must have them. Charo was a very devout Mohammedan so we must credit him with a soul. That left only Ngui and me and the lion.

  Now here it was three o’clock in the morning and I stretched my recent horse’s legs and thought I would get up and go outside and sit by the coals of the fire and enjoy
the rest of the night and the first light. I pulled on my mosquito boots and put on my bathrobe and buckled the pistol belt over it and went out to the remains of the fire. G.C. was sitting by it in his chair.

  “What are we awake about?” he said very softly.

  “I had a dream I was a horse. It was very vivid.”

  I told G.C. about Scott Fitzgerald and the quotation and asked him what he thought of it.

  “Any hour can be a bad hour when you wake,” he said. “I don’t see why he picked three especially. It sounds quite good though.”

  “I think it is just fear and worry and remorse.”

  “We’ve both had enough of those haven’t we?”

  “Sure; to peddle. But I think what he meant was his conscience and despair.”

  “You don’t ever have despair do you, Ernie?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’d probably have had it by now if you were going to have it.”

  “I’ve seen it close enough to touch it but I always turned it down.”

  “Speaking of turning things down should we share a beer?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  The big bottle of Tusker was cold too in the canvas water bag and I poured beer into two glasses and set the bottle on the table.

  “I’m sorry I have to go, Ernie,” G.C. said. “Do you think she’ll take it really badly?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ride it out. She may take it perfectly all right.”

  9

  I WENT IN TO the tent to see if Mary was awake, but she was still sleeping heavily. She had awakened and drunk some of her tea and then gone back to sleep again.

  “We’ll let her sleep,” I said to G.C. “It doesn’t make any difference if we don’t skin out until half past nine even. She should get all the sleep she can.”

  G.C. was reading the Lindbergh book but I had no stomach for The Year of the Lion this morning and so I read the bird book. It was a good new book by Praed and Grant and I knew that by hunting one beast too hard and concentrating on him I had missed much in not observing the birds properly. If there had been no animals we could have been quite happy observing the birds but I knew that I had neglected them terribly. Mary had been much better. She was always seeing birds that I did not notice or watching them in detail while I sat in my camp chair and just looked out across the country. Reading the bird book I felt how stupid I had been and how much time I had wasted.

  At home sitting in the shade at the head of the pool I was happy to see the kingbirds dip down to take insects off the water and to watch the gray white of their breasts show green from the reflection of the pool. I loved to watch the doves nesting in the alamo trees and to watch the mockingbirds as they sang. Seeing the migratory birds come through in the fall and the spring was an excitement and it made an afternoon happy to see the small bittern come to drink at the pool and watch him search the gutters for tree frogs. Now here in Africa there were beautiful birds around the camp all of the time. They were in the trees and in the thorn bushes and walking about on the ground and I only half saw them as moving bits of color while Mary loved and knew them all. I could not think how I had become so stupid and calloused about the birds and I was very ashamed.

  For a long time I realized I had only paid attention to the predators, the scavengers and the birds that were good to eat and the birds that had to do with hunting. Then as I thought of which birds I did notice there came such a great long list of them that I did not feel quite as bad but I resolved to watch the birds around our camp more and to ask Mary about all the ones I did not know, and most of all, to really see them and not look past them.

  This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it. I tried to think how I had gotten into not seeing the small birds around camp and I thought some of it was reading too much to take my mind off the concentration of the serious hunting and some was certainly drinking in camp to relax when we came in from hunting. I admired Mayito, who drank almost nothing because he wanted to remember everything in Africa. But G.C. and I were drinkers and I knew it was not just a habit nor a way of escaping. It was a purposeful dulling of a receptivity that was so highly sensitized, as film can be, that if your receptiveness were always kept at the same level it would become unbearable. You make out quite a noble case for yourself, I thought, and you know too that you and G.C. drink because you love it too and Mary loves it the same way and we have such good fun drinking. You better go in and see if she is awake now, I thought.

  So I went in and she was still asleep. She always looked beautiful asleep. Her face, when she slept, was neither happy nor unhappy. It simply existed. But today the line of it was too finely drawn. I wished that I could make her happy but the only thing I knew to do for this was to let her keep on sleeping.

  I went out again with the bird book and identified a shrike, a starling and a bee eater, and then I heard movement in the tent and went in and found Mary sitting on the edge of her cot putting her moccasins on.

  “How do you feel, honey?”

  “Awful. And you shot at my lion first and I’d rather not see you.”

  “I’ll just keep out of the way for a while.”

  Out at the lines Keiti told me that the Game Scouts were planning a really big Ngoma; everyone in the camp would be dancing and the whole Shamba was coming. Keiti said that we were short of beer and of Coca-Cola and I said I would go up to Laitokitok in the hunting car with Mthuka and Arap Meina and anybody who wanted to buy anything in the village. Keiti wanted some more posho too and I would try to get a sack or a couple of sacks as well as some sugar. The Wakamba liked the corn meal that was brought in by way of Kajiado and sold by the Indian duka whose owner was a follower of the Aga Khan. They did not like the other type that was sold in the other Indian general stores. I had learned to tell the kind they liked by color, texture and taste but I could always make a mistake and Mthuka would check. The Coca-Cola was for the Mohammedans who could not drink beer and for the girls and the women who would come to the Ngoma. I would drop Arap Meina off at the first Masai Manyatta and he would tell the Masai to come and see the lion so they would know, surely, that he had been killed. They were not invited to the Ngoma, which was to be strictly for Wakamba.

  We stopped in front of the gasoline pumps and the duka where we traded and Keiti got down. I passed my rifle back to Mwengi, Pop’s gun bearer, who locked it in the rack that was built against the back of the front seat. I told Keiti I would go down to Mr. Singh’s to order the beer and soft drinks and told Mthuka to get the car filled with petrol and then drive it down to Mr. Singh’s and put it in the shade. I did not go into the big general store with Keiti but walked down under the shade of the trees to Mr. Singh’s.

  It was cool inside and smelled of cooking from the kitchen in the living quarters and of sawdust from the sawmill. Mr. Singh had only three cases of beer but thought he could get two more at a place across the street. Three Masai elders came in from the disreputable drinking place next door. We were friends and greeted each other with dignity and I could smell they had already been drinking Golden Jeep sherry, which accounted for the affection that was mixed with their dignity. Mr. Singh had only six bottles of beer cold so I bought two for the three of them and one for myself and told them Miss Mary had killed the big lion. We drank to each other and to Miss Mary and the lion and then I excused myself because I had business with Mr. Singh in the back room.

  There was no real business. Mr. Singh wanted me to eat something with him and drink a whisky and water with him. He had something to tell me that I couldn’t understand and went out and got the Mission-educated boy to translate for him. The young man wore trousers and a white shirt tucked in and big, heavy black square-toed boots which were the badge of his education and civilization.

  “Sir,” he said. “Mr. Singh here requests me to tell you
that these Masai chiefs take a constant advantage of you in respect to beer. They congregate at the beer hall next door which calls itself a tea room and when they see you arrive they come over solely to take an advantage of you.”

  “I know those three elders and they are not chiefs.”

  “I used the designation chiefs as one speaks to a European,” the Mission-educated boy said. “But the observation of Mr. Singh here is exact. They abuse your friendship in respect to beer.”

  Mr. Singh nodded his head solemnly and handed me the bottle of White Heather. He had understood two words of the Mission English: friendship and beer.

  “One thing must always be clear. I am not a European. We are Americans.”

  “But there is no such distinction. You are classified as Europeans.”

  “It is a classification that will be remedied. I am not a European. Mr. Singh and I are brothers.”

  I poured water in my glass as did Mr. Singh. We toasted each other and then embraced. We then stood and looked at the oleograph of the original Singh strangling two lions one in each hand. We were both deeply moved.

  “You are a follower of the Baby Jesus, I presume?” I asked the Mission-educated Chagga.

  “I am a Christian,” he said with dignity.

  Mr. Singh and I looked at each other sadly and shook our heads. Then Mr. Singh spoke to the Interpreter.

  “Mr. Singh here says he is saving the three cold bottles for you and your people. When the Masai Mzees return he will serve them wine.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Will you see if my people have arrived in my shooting brake?”

  He went out and Mr. Singh tapped his head with his forefinger and offered me the White Heather in the square squat bottle. He said he was sorry we had no time to eat together. I told him to keep off the god-damn roads at night. He asked me how I liked the Interpreter. I said he was marvelous and had strong black shoes to prove his Christianity.