15
IT TURNED OUT to be rather a quiet evening. In the tent Debba did not wish to bathe and neither did the Widow. They were afraid of Mwindi, who had to bring the hot water, and they were afraid of the large green canvas tub on its six legs. This was understandable and understood.
We had dropped some people off at the Masai Manyattas and we were past the bravado stage and things, in the dark and in a definite place, were a little bit rough and there was no repeal nor any thought of any. I had told the Widow to leave but since I was protecting her I did not know whether, under Kamba law, she had the right to be there. Any rights she had under Kamba law I was prepared to grant her and she was a very nice and delicate woman with good manners.
The Informer had turned up during the period of unquietness and both Debba and I had seen him steal the bottle of lion fat. It was in an empty bottle of the Grand MacNish and both Debba and I knew that it had been adulterated with eland fat by Ngui before he and I had decided to be brothers. It was like eighty-six proof whisky instead of one hundred proof and we came awake to see him steal it and she laughed very happily, she always laughed happily, and said, “Chui tu,” and I said, “No hay remedio.”
“La puta gloria,” she said. We did not have a great vocabulary and were not great conversationalists and had no need for an interpreter except on Kamba law and we went to sleep for one or two minutes with the Widow, fiercely, on guard. She had seen the Informer steal the off-shape bottle with the too white lion fat that we all knew well and it had been her cough which had called our attention.
At this time I called Msembi, the good rough boy who served as mess steward and was a hunting, not a crop-raising Kamba but was not a skilled hunter and was reduced, since the war, to servant status. We were all servants since I served the government, through the Game Department, and I also served Miss Mary and a magazine named Look. My service to Miss Mary had been terminated, temporarily, with the death of her lion. My service to Look had been terminated, temporarily; I had hoped permanently. I was wrong of course. But neither Msembi nor I minded serving in the least and neither of us had served our God nor our King too well to be stuffy about it.
The only laws are tribal laws and I was a Mzee which means an elder as well as still having the status of a warrior. It is difficult to be both and the older Mzees resent the irregularity of the position. You should give up something, or anything if necessary, and not try to hold everything. I had learned this lesson in a place called the Schnee Eifel where it had been necessary to move from an offensive to a defensive position. You give up what you have won at great cost as though it had not cost a dime and you become eminently defensible. It is hard to do and many times you should be shot for doing it; but you should be shot quicker if you did not make the adjustment.
So I had told Msembi that he would serve dinner in one half of an hour in the mess tent and that plates would be laid for Debba, the Widow and myself. He was completely delighted and full of Kamba energy and malice and went off to give the order. Unfortunately that was not how it turned out. Debba was brave and la puta gloria is a better place than most people ever reach or attain. The Widow knew it was a rough order and she knew that no one ever took Africa in a day nor on any given night. But that was the way it was going to be.
Keiti killed it in the name of his loyalty to the Bwanas, to the tribe and to the Moslem religion. He had the courage and the good taste not to delegate to anyone his order and he knocked on the tent pole and asked if we might speak. I might have said no, but I am a disciplined boy. Not with twelve of the best as Pop disciplined but with the implacable discipline of all of our lives. He said, “You have no right to take the young girl violently. [In this he was wrong. There had never been any violence, ever.] This could make great trouble.”
“All right,” I said. “You speak for all the Mzees?”
“I am the eldest.”
“Then tell your son who is older than I am to bring the hunting car.”
“He is not here,” Keiti said and we knew about that and his lack of authority over his children and why Mthuka was not a Moslem but it was too complicated for me.
“I will drive the car,” I said. “It is not a very difficult thing.”
“Please take the young girl home to her family. I will go with you if you like.”
“I will take the young girl, the Widow and the Informer.”
Mwindi was standing, in his green robe and cap, beside Keiti now since it was torture for Keiti to speak English.
Msembi had no business there but he loved Debba as we all did. She was feigning sleep and she was the wife that we would all wish to purchase, all of us knowing we would never own anything that we had bought.
Msembi had been a soldier and the two heavy elders knew this and were not unconscious of their treason when they became Moslems and, since everyone becomes an elder eventually, he threw quick against their complacence and with the true African litigational sense, using titles, which had been abolished, and his own knowledge of Kamba law, “Our Bwana can keep the Widow since she has a son and he protects her officially.”
Keiti nodded and Mwindi nodded.
Putting an end to it and feeling too bad about Debba who in her sense of glory had eaten the meal and slept the night as we were not permitted to sleep but as we slept so many times without the judgment of the splendid elders who had attained their rank uniquely, no, that was not just, by seniority, I said, to the interior of the tent, “No hay remedio. Kwenda na Shamba.”
This was the beginning of the end of the day in my life which offered the most chances of happiness.
16
HAVING ACCEPTED the decision of the elders and driven Debba, the Widow and the Informer home to the Shamba where I left her with the things that I had bought for her I returned to camp. The things that I had bought made a difference and they did both have the cloth for their dresses. I would not speak to my father-in-law and gave him no explanations and we all acted as though we were returning, a little late perhaps, from a purchasing expedition. I had seen the bulge of the Grand MacNish bottle containing the adulterated lion fat wrapped in the Informer’s paisley shawl but that meant nothing. We had better lion fat than that and would have better if we wished and there is no minor satisfaction comparable to have anyone, from a writer on up, and up is a long way, steal from you and think that they have not been detected. With writers you must never let them know since it might break their hearts if they had them and some have them and who should judge another man’s cardiac performance unless you are in competition? With the Informer it was another matter, involving, as it did, his degree of loyalty which was already in dispute. Keiti hated the Informer, with considerable cause, since he had served under Keiti in the old days and they had many old unresolved things dating from when the Informer had served as a lorry driver and off-ended Keiti with, then, youthful insolence and with treasonable frankness about the great nobleman who was, by other accounts than the Informer’s, a backward man. Keiti had loved Pop ever since he had taken service under him and with the Kamba hatred of homosexuality he could not tolerate a Masai lorry driver impugning a White Man and especially one of such renown and when the bad boys painted the lips of the statue that had been erected to this man with lipstick, as they did each night in Nairobi, Keiti would not look at it when he rode past. Charo, who was a more devout Moslem than Keiti, would look at it and laugh the way we all did. But when Keiti had taken the Queen’s shilling he had taken it for always. He was a true Victorian and the rest of us, who had been Edwardians and then Georgians and Edwardians for a brief period again only to become Georgians and now were frankly and completely Elizabethans within our capacity to serve and our tribal loyalties, had little in common with Keiti’s Victorianism. On this night I felt so badly that I did not wish to be personal nor think about any personal things and especially not to be unjust with someone that I admired and respected. But I knew Keiti was more shocked that Debba and the Widow and I should eat together
at the table in the mess tent than he was worried about Kamba law because he was a grown man with five wives of his own and a beautiful young wife and who was he to administer our morals or lack of them?
Driving along in the night, trying not to be bitter, and thinking of Debba and our arbitrary deprivation of formal happiness which could have been overlooked by anyone regardless of their seniority, I thought of turning off to the left and going down that red road to the other Shamba where I would find two of our group and not Lot’s nor Potiphar’s, but a Masai wife and see if we could parlay yaws into true love. But that was not the thing to do either so I drove home and parked the car and sat in the mess tent and read Simenon. Msembi felt terribly about it but he and I were not conversationalists either.
He made one very gallant suggestion: that he would go with our lorry driver and bring the Widow. I said hapana to that and read some more Simenon.
Msembi kept feeling worse all the time and had no Simenon to read and his next suggestion was that he and I should go with the car and get the girl. He said it was a Kamba custom and there was nothing to be paid but a fine. Besides he said the Shamba was illegal; no one was qualified to bring us to trial and I had made my father-in-law many presents as well as having killed a leopard for him on this same day.
I thought this over and decided against it. Some time before I had paid the tribal price to sleep in the bed of my mother-in-law which is a rough thing to do. How was Keiti to know this? He was supposed to know everything but the outfit we had built up was very taut and just possibly rougher than he knew. I was not sure about this since I respected and admired him so especially since Magadi. He had tracked there, when he had no need to and with both his snakes out above his cheekbones and under his turban until I was beat and Ngui was having difficulty. He had done this tracking in a heat of one hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit in the shade on the good thermometer in camp and the only shade we had was when I, beat, would take a break under a small tree, taking the shade as a great gift breathing deeply and trying to compute how many miles we were from campi; that fabulous place with the wonderful shade of the fig trees and the rippling stream and the water bags sweating cool.
Keiti had whipped us on that day with no ostentation and I did not respect him without cause. But tonight I still was not sure why he had intervened. They always do it for your own good. But I knew one thing: Msembi and I should not go back as rummies do and resume the exercise.
Africans are not supposed to ever feel bad about anything. This is an invention of the whites who are temporarily occupying the country. Africans are said not to feel pain because they do not cry out, that is some of them do not. Yet not showing pain when it is received is a tribal thing and a great luxury. While we in America had television, motion pictures and expensive wives always with soft hands, grease on their faces at night and the natural, not the ranch, mink coat somewhere under refrigeration with a ticket like a pawnbroker’s to get it out; the African, of the better tribes, had the luxury of not showing pain. We, Moi, as Ngui called us, had never known true hardship except in war which is a boring, nomadic life with the occasional compensations of combat and the pleasure of looting given as a bone is thrown to a dog by a master who cares nothing for him. We, Moi, who at this moment were Msembi and myself had known what it was to sack a town and we both knew, although the subject was never to be talked about but only shared secretly, what the mechanics and the procedure was to implement what the Bible phrase meant when they put the men to the sword and carried the women into captivity. This was no longer done but anyone who had done it was a brother. Good brothers are difficult to find but you can encounter a bad brother in any town.
The Informer was my brother as he continually stated. But I had not chosen him. In the thing which we had now, which was not a safari and where Bwana was very close to a direct insult, Msembi and I were good brothers and on this night, without mentioning it, we both remembered that the slave raiders who had come up the different routes from the sea were all Moslems and I knew that was why Mthuka with the slashed arrow on each cheek would never, nor could ever, have been converted to the fashionable religion his father, Keiti, and dear honest Charo and Mwindi, the honest and skillful snob, had been received into.
So I sat there and we had a sharing of our sorrow. Nguili came in once, humble as a nanake should come, but wishing to weigh in with his sorrow if it was permissible. It was not permissible and I slapped him on his green-frocked ass, lovingly, and said, “Morgen ist auch nach ein tag.” This is an old German phrase which is the opposite of no hay remedio, which is a true and beautiful phrase but which I felt guilt for having implanted as though I had the guilt of a defeatist or a collaborationist. I translated it carefully into Kamba with the help of Msembi and then feeling the guilt of a phrase mutterer I asked Ngui if he would find my spears because I was going out to hunt when the moon rose.
It was more than a little bit theatrical but so is Hamlet. We were all deeply moved. Possibly I was the most moved of the three of us, having made the old mistake of not watching my mouth.
Now the moon was up over the shoulder of the Mountain and I wished that I had a good big dog and that I had not declared to do something that would make me a better man than Keiti. But I had and so I checked the spears and put on my soft moccasins and thanked Nguili and left the mess tent. There were two men on guard with the rifles and the ammo and a lantern on the tree outside the tent and I left these lights behind and left the moon over my right shoulder and started off on the long walk.
The spear shaft felt good and heavy and it was taped with surgical tape so that your hand would not slip if it was sweaty. Often, using the spear, you sweat heavily under your armpits and on your forearms and the sweat runs down the shaft. The grass stubble felt good under my feet and then I felt the smoothness of the motor tire track that led to the airstrip we had made and the other track we called the Great North Road. This was the first night I had gone out alone with the spear and I wished I had one of the old Honest Ernies or the big dog. With the German shepherd dog you could always tell if there was something in the next clump of bush because he fell back at once and walked with his muzzle against the back of your knee. But being properly scared as I was when out with the spear at night is a luxury that you have to pay for and like the best luxuries it is worth it most of the time. Mary, G.C. and I had shared many luxuries and some had been potentially expensive but, so far, all had been worth the price. It was the stupidities of daily life with its unflagging erosion that was not worth what it cost, I thought and I checked the various bushes and dead trees that had cobra holes in my mind and hoped that I would not step on any of them if they were out hunting.
In camp I had heard two hyenas but they were quiet now. I heard a lion up by the Old Manyatta and resolved to keep away from the Old Manyatta. I did not have enough courage to go up there anyway and that was also rhino country. Ahead, on the plain, I could see something asleep in the moonlight. It was a wildebeest and I worked away from him or her; it turned out to be him; and then got back onto the trail again.
There were many night birds and plover and I saw bat-eared foxes and leaping hares but their eyes did not shine as they did when we cruised with the Land Rover since I had no light and the moon made no reflection. The moon was well up now and gave a good light and I went along the trail happy to be out in the night not caring if any beast presented himself. All the nonsense about Keiti and the girl and the Widow and our lost banquet and night in bed seemed of no importance and I looked back and could just not see the lights of camp but could see the Mountain high and square topped and shone white in the moonlight and I hoped I would not run onto anything to kill. I could always have killed the wildebeest, maybe, but if I did I would have to dress him out and then stay with the carcass so the hyenas did not get him or else rouse the camp and get the truck and be a show-off and I remembered that only six of us would eat wildebeest and that I wanted some good meat for when Miss Mary came back.
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br /> So I walked along in the moonlight hearing the small animals move and the birds cry when they rose from the dust of the trail and thought about Miss Mary and what she would be doing in Nairobi and how she would look with her new haircut and whether she would get it or not and the way she was built and how there was almost no difference between the way she was built and the way Debba was built and that I would have Miss Mary back by two o’clock the next in a day and that it was a damned good thing all the way around.
By this time I was nearly up to where she had killed her lion and I could hear a leopard hunting in the edge of the big swamp to the left. I thought of going on up to the salt flats but I knew if I did I would be tempted by some animal so I turned around and started on the worn trail back to camp looking at the Mountain and not hunting at all.
17
IN THE MORNING Mwindi brought tea and I thanked him, drank it outside the tent by the remnants of the fire thinking and remembering while I drank it, and then dressed and went out to see Keiti.
It was not to be a completely quiet day nor one devoted to reading and contemplation as I had hoped. Arap Meina came to the open flap of the mess tent and saluted smartly and said, “Bwana, there are small problems.”
“Of what type?”
“Nothing grave.”
In what amounted to the reception room in the area beyond the cooking fires where there were several large trees there were the leading men from two Masai Manyattas. They were not chiefs since a chief is a man who has taken money or a cheap medal from the British and is a bought man. These were simply the heads of their villages, which were separated by more than fifteen miles, and they both had lion trouble. I sat in the chair outside the tent with my Mzee stick and tried to make intelligent and dignified grunts when I understood or did not understand and Mwindi and Meina interpreted. None of us were Masai scholars but these were good serious men and the troubles were obviously legitimate. One man had four long grooves across a shoulder that looked as though they had been made by a hay rake and the other at some time had lost an eye and had an atrocious old wound that started a little above the line of his scalp and came down, over the lost eye, almost to the point of his jaw.
True at First Light Page 29