True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  “Sounds wonderful. Just like Kimana.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing. I went out to a few places with Ngui and Charo and Keiti. I think we went to a church supper of some kind. What did you do the third night?”

  “Honey, I don’t remember really. Oh, yes. Alec and his girl and G.C. and I went somewhere. Alec was difficult. We went a couple of other places and they took me home.”

  “Same type of life we’ve been having here. Only Keiti was difficult instead of Alec.”

  “What was he difficult about?”

  “It escapes me,” I said. “Which of these Times would you rather read?”

  “I’ve looked at one. Does it make any difference to you?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t said you loved me or were glad to have me back.”

  “I love you and I’m glad to have you back.”

  “That’s good and I’m so glad to be home.”

  “Anything else happen in Nairobi?”

  “I got that nice man who took me out to take me to the Coryndon Museum. But I think he was bored.”

  “What did you eat at the Grill?”

  “There was fine fish from the big lakes. In filets, but like bass or walleye pike. They didn’t tell what fish. Just called it samaki. There was really good fresh smoked salmon that they flew in and there were oysters, I think, but I can’t remember.”

  “Did you have the Greek dry wine?”

  “Lots of it. Alec didn’t like it. He was in Greece and Crete I think with that friend of yours in the RAF. He doesn’t like him either.”

  “Was Alec very difficult?”

  “Only about small things.”

  “Let’s not be difficult about anything.”

  “Let’s not. Can I make you another drink?”

  “Thank you very much. Keiti’s here. What do you want?”

  “I’ll take Campari with just a little gin.”

  “I like it when you’re home in bed. Let’s go to bed right after supper.”

  “Good.”

  “You promise you won’t go out tonight?”

  “I promise.”

  So, after the supper I sat and read the Time air edition while Mary wrote in her diary and then she walked on the new cut path with her searchlight to the latrine tent and I turned off the gaslight and put the lantern on the tree and undressed folding my things carefully and laying them on the trunk at the foot of the bed and got into my bed, folding the mosquito bar back under the mattress.

  It was early in the night but I was tired and sleepy. After a while Miss Mary came in to the bed and I put the other Africa away somewhere and we made our own Africa again. It was another Africa from where I had been and at first, I felt the red spilling up my chest and then I accepted it and did not think at all and felt only what I felt and Mary felt lovely in bed. We made love and then made love again and then after we had made love once more, quiet and dark and unspeaking and unthinking and then like a shower of meteors on a cold night, we went to sleep. Maybe there was a shower of meteors. It was cold enough and clear enough. Sometime in the night Mary left the bed for her bed and I said, “Good night, blessed.”

  I woke when it was getting light and put on a sweater and mosquito boots over my pajamas and buckled my bathrobe around with the pistol belt and went out to where Msembi was building up the fire to read the papers and drink the pot of tea Mwindi had brought. First I put all the papers in order and then started to read the oldest ones first. The horses would just be finishing at Auteuil and Enghien now, but there were no French racing results in these British airmail editions. I went to see if Miss Mary was awake and she was up and dressed, fresh and shining and putting drops in her eyes.

  “How are you, darling? How did you sleep?”

  “Wonderfully,” I said. “And you?”

  “Until just this minute. I went right back to sleep when Mwindi brought the tea.”

  I held her in my arms feeling her fresh early morning shirt and her lovely build. Picasso had called her my pocket Rubens once and she was a pocket Rubens, but trained down to one hundred and twelve pounds and she had never had a Rubens face and now I felt her clean, freshly washed-ness and whispered something to her.

  “Oh yes, and you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful to be here alone with our own Mountain and our lovely country and nothing to spoil it?”

  “Yes. Come on and get your breakfast.”

  She had a proper breakfast with impala liver broiled with bacon and a half of papaya from town with lemon to squeeze on it and two cups of coffee. I drank a cup of coffee with tinned milk but no sugar and would have taken another cup but I did not know what we were going to do and I did not want coffee sloshing in my stomach whatever we did.

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I missed you terribly but there were so many things to do. There wasn’t any time at all, really.”

  “Did you see Pop?”

  “No. He didn’t come into town and I didn’t have any time nor any transport to get out there.”

  “Did you see G.C.?”

  “He was in one evening. He said for you to use your own judgment but adhere strictly to the scheme as outlined. He made me memorize it.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all. I memorized it. He’s invited Wilson Blake down for Christmas. They get in the night before. He says for you to be prepared to like his boss, Wilson Blake.”

  “Did he make you memorize that?”

  “No. It was just a remark. I asked him if it was an order and he said no, that it was a hopeful suggestion.”

  “I’m open to suggestion. How was G.C.?”

  “He wasn’t difficult in the same way Alec was. But he’s tired. He says he misses us and he’s very outspoken with people.”

  “How?”

  “I think fools are beginning to annoy him and he’s rude to them.”

  “Poor G.C.,” I said.

  “You’re both quite a bad influence on each other.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

  “Well, I think you’re a bad influence on him.”

  “Didn’t we go into this once or twice before?”

  “Not this morning,” Miss Mary said. “Certainly not recently. Did you write anything while I was away?”

  “Very little.”

  “Didn’t you write any letters?”

  “No. Oh, yes. I wrote G.C. once.”

  “What did you do with all your time?”

  “Small tasks and routine duties. I made a trip to Laitokitok after we killed the unfortunate leopard.”

  “Well, we are going to get the real Christmas tree and that will be something accomplished.”

  “Good,” I said. “We’ll have to get one we can bring back in the hunting car. I’ve sent away the truck.”

  “We’re going to get that one that is picked out.”

  “Good. Did you find out what sort of tree it is?”

  “No, but I’ll find it in the tree book.”

  “Good. Let’s go and get it.”

  We started out, finally, to get the tree. Keiti was with us and we had shovels, pangas, sacking for the roots of the tree, large guns and small guns in the rack across the back of the front seat and I had told Ngui to bring four bottles of beer for us and two of Coca-Cola for the Moslems. We were clearly out to accomplish and except for the nature of the tree, which would make an elephant drunk for two days if he ever ate it, we were out to accomplish something so fine and so blameless that I might write about it for some religious publication.

  We were all on our good behavior and we noted tracks without commenting on them. We read the record of what had crossed the road that night. And I watched sand grouse flighting in long wavering wisps to the water beyond the salt flats and Ngui watched them too. But we did not comment. We were hunters but this morning we were working for the Forestry Department of our Lord,
the Baby Jesus.

  Actually we were working for Miss Mary so we felt a great shifting in our allegiance. We were all mercenaries and it was clearly understood that Miss Mary was not a missionary. She was not even under Christian orders; she did not have to go to church as other Memsahibs did and this business of the tree was her shauri as the lion had been.

  We went into the deep green and yellow-trunked forest by our old road that had become overgrown with grass and weeds since we had been over it last, coming out in the glade where the silver-leafed trees grew. Ngui and I made a circle, he one way and I the other, to check if this rhino and her calf were in the bush. We found nothing but some impala and I found the track of a very big leopard. He had been hunting along the edge of the swamp. I measured the pug marks with my hand and we went back to join the tree diggers.

  We decided that only so many could dig at a time and since Keiti and Miss Mary were both issuing orders, we went over to the edge of the big trees and sat down and Ngui offered me his snuff box. We both took snuff and watched the forestry experts at their work. They were all working very hard except Keiti and Miss Mary. It looked to us as though the tree would never fit into the back of the hunting car but when they finally had it dug out it was obvious it would and that it was time for us to go over and help with the loading. The tree was very spiky and not easy to load but we all got it in finally. Sacks wet down with water were placed over the roots and it was lashed in, about half its length projecting from the rear of the car.

  “We can’t go back the same way we came,” Miss Mary said. “It will break the tree in those turns.”

  “We’ll go by a new way.”

  “Can the car get through?”

  “Sure.”

  Along this way through the forest we hit the tracks of four elephants and there was fresh dung. But the tracks were to the south of us. They were good-sized bulls.

  I had been carrying the big gun between my knees because Ngui and Mthuka and I had all seen these tracks where they crossed the north road on our way in. They might have crossed over from the stream that ran into the Chulu swamp.

  “All clear now to campi,” I said to Miss Mary.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Now we’ll get the tree up in good shape.”

  At camp Ngui and Mthuka and I hung back and let volunteers and enthusiasts dig the hole for the tree. Mthuka drove the car over out of the shade when the hole was dug and the tree was unloaded and planted and looked very pretty and gay in front of the tent.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Miss Mary said. And I agreed that it was.

  “Thank you for bringing us home such a nice way and for not worrying anybody about the elephants.”

  “They wouldn’t stop there. They have to go south to have good cover and feed. They wouldn’t have bothered us.”

  “You and Ngui were smart about them.”

  “They are those bulls we saw from the aircraft. They were smart. We weren’t smart.”

  “Where will they go now?”

  “They might feed a while in the forest by the upper marsh. Then they’ll cross the road at night and get up into that country toward Amboseli which the elephant use.”

  “I must go and see they finish properly.”

  “I’m going up the road.”

  “Your fiancée is over under the tree with her chaperone.”

  “I know. She brought us some mealies. I’m going to give her a ride home.”

  “Wouldn’t she like to come and see the tree?”

  “I don’t think she would understand.”

  “Stay at the Shamba for lunch, if you like.”

  “I haven’t been asked,” I said.

  “Then you’ll be back for lunch?”

  “Before.”

  Mthuka drove the car over to the waiting tree and told Debba and the Widow to get in. The Widow’s little boy bumped his head against my stomach and I patted it. He got into the back seat with Debba and his mother but I stepped down and had Debba come and sit in the front seat. She had been a brave girl to come to the camp, bringing the mealies and to stay at the waiting tree until we had come in and I did not want her to ride back to the Shamba in any but her usual place. But Miss Mary being so nice about the Shamba had put us all on our honor as though we had been given our parole.

  “Did you see the tree?” I asked Debba. She giggled. She knew what sort of a tree it was.

  “We will go and shoot again.”

  “Ndio,” she sat up very straight as we drove past the outer huts and stopped under the big tree. I got down to see if the Informer had any botanical specimens ready to transport, but could locate nothing. He probably has them in the herbarium, I thought. When I came back Debba was gone and Ngui and I got in the car and Mthuka asked where we were going.

  “Na campi,” I said. Then thought and added, “By the big road.”

  Today we were in suspense, suspended between our new African Africa and the old Africa that we had dreamed and invented and the return of Miss Mary. Soon there would be the return of whatever Game Scouts G.C. brought and the presence of the great Wilson Blake who could enunciate policy and move us or throw us out or close an area or see that someone got six months as easily as we could take a piece of meat to the Shamba.

  None of us was very cheerful but we were relaxed and not unhappy. We would kill an eland to have for Christmas Day and I was going to try to see that Wilson Blake had a good time. G.C. had asked that I try to like him and I would try. When I had met him I had not liked him but that had probably been my fault. I had tried to like him but probably I had not tried hard enough. Perhaps I was getting too old to like people when I tried. Pop never tried to like them at all. He was civil or moderately civil and then observed them through his blue, slightly bloodshot and hooded eyes without seeming to see them. He was watching for them to make a mistake.

  Sitting in the car under the tall tree on the hillside I decided to do something special to show my liking and appreciation for Wilson Blake. There was not much in Laitokitok he would care for and I could not picture him as truly happy at a party given for him in one of the illegal Masai drinking Shambas nor in the back of Mr. Singh’s. I had grave doubts if he and Mr. Singh would get on too well. I knew what I would do. It was absolutely an ideal present. We would charter Willie to fly Mr. Blake over the Chulus and all of his domain that he had never seen. I could not think of a finer nor more useful present and I began to like Mr. Blake and to give him almost most favored nation status. I would not go along but would stay modestly and industriously at home photographing my botanical specimens, perhaps, or identifying finches while G.C. and Willie and Miss Mary and Mr. Blake worked out the country.

  “Kwenda na campi,” I told Mthuka and Ngui opened another bottle of beer so that we would be drinking while we crossed the stream at the ford. This was a very lucky thing to do and we all had a drink from the bottle while we watched the small fish in the pool above the long ripple of the ford. There were good catfish in the stream but we were too lazy to fish.

  19

  MISS MARY WAS waiting under the shade of the double fly of the mess tent. The back of the tent was up and the wind blew new and cool from the Mountain.

  “Mwindi’s worried about you hunting barefoot and going out nights.”

  “Mwindi’s an old woman. I took my boots off once because they squeaked and the reason they squeaked was his fault for not dubbing them properly. He’s too bloody righteous.”

  “It’s easy to call someone righteous when they’re looking after your own good.”

  “Leave it at that.”

  “Well, why is it that you take so many precautions and sometimes you don’t take any at all?”

  “Because sometimes they signal possibility of bad peoples and then you hear they’re somewhere else. I always take what precautions we need.”

  “But when you go out by yourself nights.”

  “Someone sits up with you and the guns and there are always the lights. You’re always guarded
.”

  “But why do you go out?”

  “I have to go out.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the time is getting short. How do I know when we can get back? How do I know we’ll ever get back?”

  “I worry about you.”

  “You’re usually sound asleep when I go out and sound asleep when I come back.”

  “I’m not always. Sometimes I touch the cot and you’re not there.”

  “Well, I can’t go now until there’s a moon and the moon gets up very late now.”

  “Do you really want to go so much?”

  “Yes, truly, honey. And I always have somebody keep guard over you.”

  “Why don’t you take somebody with you?”

  “It isn’t any good with anybody with you.”

  “It’s just another craziness. But you don’t drink before you do it, do you?”

  “No, and I wash clean and put on lion fat.”

  “Thanks for putting it on after you get out of bed. Isn’t the water cold in the night?”

  “Everything is so cold you don’t notice it.”

  “Let me make you a drink now. What will you have? A gimlet?”

  “A gimlet would be fine. That or a Campari.”

  “I’ll make us each a gimlet. Do you know what I want for Christmas?”

  “I wish I did.”

  “I don’t know whether I should tell you. Maybe it’s too expensive.”

  “Not if we have the money.”

  “I want to go and really see something of Africa. We’ll be going home and we haven’t seen anything. I want to see the Belgian Congo.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t have any ambition. You’d just as soon stay in one place.”

  “Have you ever been in a better place?”

  “No. But there’s everything we haven’t seen.”

  “I’d rather live in a place and have an actual part in the life of it than just see new strange things.”

  “But I want to see the Belgian Congo. Why can’t I see something I’ve heard about all my life when we are so close to it?”

  “We’re not that close.”

  “We can fly. We can make the whole trip flying.”