“Look, honey. We’ve been from one end of Tanganyika to the other. You’ve been to the Bohoro flats and down the Great Ruaha.”
“I suppose that was fun.”
“It was educational. You’ve been to Mbeya and to the Southern Highlands. You’ve lived in the hills and hunted on the plain and you’ve lived here at the foot of the Mountain and in the bottom of the Rift Valley beyond Magadi and hunted nearly down to Natron.”
“But I haven’t been to the Belgian Congo.”
“No. Is that what you really want for Christmas?”
“Yes. If it’s not too expensive. We don’t have to go right after Christmas. You take your time.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You haven’t touched your drink.”
“Sorry.”
“It isn’t any fun if you give someone a present and you’re not happy about it.”
I took a sip of the pleasant unsweetened lime drink and thought how much I loved it where we were.
“You don’t mind if I bring the Mountain along do you?”
“They have wonderful mountains there. That’s where the Mountains of the Moon are.”
“I’ve read about them and I saw a picture of them in Life magazine.”
“In the African Number.”
“That’s right. In the African Number.”
“When did you first think about this trip?”
“Before I went to Nairobi. You’ll have fun flying with Willie. You always do.”
“We’ll gen the trip out with Willie. He’s coming here day after Christmas.”
“We don’t have to go until you want to. You stay until you’re finished here.”
I knocked on wood and drank the rest of the drink.
“What did you plan to do this afternoon and evening?”
“I thought I’d take a siesta and catch up on my diary. Then we would go out together in the evening.”
“Good,” I said.
Arap Meina came in and I asked him about the setup at the first Manyatta. He said there was a lioness and a lion, which seemed strange this time of year, and that they had killed five head of stock in the last half-moon and the lioness had clawed a man the last time they had come over the thorn Boma, but the man was all right.
There is no one hunting in the area, I thought, and I cannot get a report in to G.C. before I see him, so I will have the Informer spread the word about the lions. They should work downhill, or across it, but we will hear of them unless they go toward Amboseli. I’d make the report to G.C. and it was up to him to deal with that end of it.
“Do you think they will come back to that Manyatta?”
“No,” Meina shook his head.
“Do you think they are the same ones that attacked the other Manyatta?”
“No.”
“I will go to Laitokitok for petrol this afternoon.”
“Perhaps I could hear something there.”
“Yes.”
I went over to the tent and found Miss Mary awake reading with the back of the tent propped up. “Honey, we need to go into Laitokitok. Would you like to go?”
“I don’t know. I was just getting sleepy. Why do we have to go?”
“Arap Meina came in with some news of some lions that have been making trouble and I have to get petrol for the lorry. You know, what we used to call gas for the truck.”
“I’ll wake up and clean up and come along. Do you have plenty of shillingi?”
“Mwindi will get them.”
We started off on the road through the open park country that led to the road that went up the Mountain and saw the two beautiful Tommy rams that always grazed close to camp.
Mary sat in the back seat with Charo and Arap Meina. Mwengi was in the back on a box and I began to worry; Mary had said I didn’t have to go until I wanted to. I would hold out for three weeks after the first of the year. There was plenty of work to do after Christmas and there would be work all the time. I knew I was in the best place I had ever been, having a fine, if complicated, life and learning something every day and to go flying all over Africa when I could fly over our own country was the last thing I wished to do. But maybe we could work out something.
I had been told to keep away from Laitokitok but this visit for petrol and supplies and Arap Meina’s news of the lions made our visit completely normal and necessary and I was sure G.C. would have approved of it. I wouldn’t see the police boy but I would stop in for a drink with Mr. Singh and to buy some beer and Coca-Cola for camp since I always did that. I told Arap Meina to go over to the Masai stores and tell what lion news he had and pick up any news there was and to do the same at the other Masai hangouts.
At Mr. Singh’s there were several Masai elders that I knew and I greeted them all and made my compliments to Mrs. Singh. Mr. Singh and I conversed in my phrase book Swahili. The elders needed a bottle of beer badly and I bought it and drank a symbolic gulp from my own bottle.
Peter came in to say the car would be down immediately and I sent him to look for Arap Meina. The car came down the road with the drum roped and three Masai women in the back. Miss Mary was talking happily to Charo. Ngui came in to get the cases with Mwengi. I handed my bottle of beer to them and between them they drained it. Mwengi’s eyes shone with absolute delight as he drank beer. Ngui drank it like a racing driver quenching his thirst at a pit stop. He saved half for Mwengi. Ngui took a bottle out for Mthuka and me to share and opened up a Coca-Cola for Charo.
Arap Meina came up with Peter and climbed into the back with the Masai women. They all had boxes to sit on. Ngui sat in front with me and Mary sat with Charo and Mwengi behind the gun rack. I said good-bye to Peter and we started up the road to turn to the west into the sunlight.
“Did you get everything you wanted, honey?”
“There’s really nothing to buy. But I found a few things we needed.”
I thought of the last time I had been there shopping but there was no use thinking about that and Miss Mary had been in Nairobi then and that is a better shopping town than Laitokitok. But then I had just begun to learn to shop in Laitokitok and I liked it because it was like the general store and post office in Cooke City, Montana.
In Laitokitok they did not have the cardboard boxes of obsolete calibers that the old-timers bought two to four cartridges from each season in the late fall when they wanted to get their winter meat. They sold spears instead. But it was a home-feeling place to buy things and almost everything on the shelves and in the bins you could have found a use for if you lived around there.
But today was the end of another day and tomorrow would be a new one and there were no people walking on my grave yet. No one that I could see looking into the sun or ahead over the country and watching the country as we came down the Mountain, I had forgotten that Mthuka would be thirsty and as I opened the bottle of beer and wiped its neck and lips, Miss Mary asked, very justly, “Aren’t wives ever thirsty?”
“I’m sorry, honey. Ngui can get you a full bottle, if you like.”
“No. I want just one drink of that.”
I passed it to her and she drank what she wished and passed it to me.
I thought how nice it was that there was no African word for I’m sorry, then I thought I’d better not think that or it would come between us and I took a drink of the beer to purify it from Miss Mary and wiped the neck and the lip of the bottle with my good clean handkerchief and handed it to Mthuka.
Charo didn’t approve of any of this and would have liked to see us drink properly with glasses. But we were drinking as we drank and I did not want to think anything that would make a thing between Charo and me either.
“I think I will have another swallow of beer,” Miss Mary said. I told Ngui to open a bottle for her. I would share it with her and Mthuka could pass his to Ngui and Mwengi when he had quenched his thirst. I had not said any of this aloud.
“I don’t know why you have to be so complicated about the beer,” Mary said.
“I’ll bring cups fo
r us the next time.”
“Don’t try to make it more complicated. I don’t want a cup if I drink with you.”
“It’s just tribal,” I said. “I’m truly not trying to make things any more complicated than they are.”
“Why did you have to wipe the bottle so carefully after I drank and then wipe it after you drank before you passed it on?”
“Tribal.”
“But why different today?”
“Phases of the moon.”
“You get too tribal for your own good.”
“Very possibly.”
“You believe all this.”
“No. I just practice it.”
“You don’t know enough about it to practice it.”
“I learn a little every day.”
“I’m tired of it.”
As we came down a long slope Mary saw a big kongoni about six hundred yards away, standing tall and yellow at the lower crest of the slope. No one had seen it until she pointed it out and then everyone saw it at once. We stopped the car and she and Charo got out to make their stalk. The kongoni was feeding away from them and the wind would not carry their scent to the animal as it was blowing high across the slope. There were no bad animals around here and we stayed back with the vehicle so we would not hamper their approach.
We watched Charo leading from one piece of cover to another and Mary following him, crouched down as he was. The kongoni was out of sight now but we watched Charo freeze and Mary come up beside him and raise her rifle. Then there was the sound of the shot and the heavy plunk of the bullet and Charo ran forward out of sight with Mary following him.
Mthuka drove the car cross country through the bracken and the flowers until we came to Mary and Charo and the dead kongoni. The kongoni or hartebeest is not a handsome animal in life nor in death but this was an old male, very fat and in perfect condition, and his long, sad face, his glazed eyes, and his cut throat did not make him unattractive to the meat eaters. The Masai women were very excited and very impressed by Miss Mary and kept touching her in wonderment and unbelief.
“I saw him first,” Mary said. “The first time I ever saw anything first. I saw him before you did. Mthuka and you were in front. I saw him before Ngui and Mwengi and Charo.”
“You saw him before Arap Meina,” I said.
“He doesn’t count because he was looking at the Masai women. Charo and I stalked him by ourselves and when he looked back toward us I shot him exactly where I wanted to.”
“Low down in the left shoulder and hit the heart.”
“That’s where I shot for.”
“Piga mzuri,” Charo said. “Mzuri mzuri sana.”
“We’ll put him in the back. The women can ride up front.”
“He isn’t handsome,” Mary said, “but I’d rather shoot something that isn’t beautiful for meat.”
“He’s wonderful and you’re wonderful.”
“Well, we needed meat and I saw the best kind of meat we could get and fat and the biggest next to eland and I saw him myself and just Charo and I stalked him and I shot him myself. Now, will you love me and not go off alone by yourself in your head?”
“You ride up in front now. We won’t be shooting anymore.”
“Can I have some of my beer? I’m thirsty from stalking.”
“You can have all of your beer.”
“No. You take some too to celebrate me seeing him first and we being friends again.”
We had a pleasant supper and went to bed early. I had bad dreams in the night and I was awake and dressed before Mwindi brought the tea.
That afternoon we went out on a ride around the country and found by their tracks that the buffalo were back in the forest by the swamp. They had come in during the morning and the trail was wide and deep cut like a cattle trail but cold now and the dung beetles were working rolling up the balls of buffalo sign. The buffs had headed into the forest where the glades and the openings were full of fresh new heavy grass.
I had always liked to see the dung beetles work and since I had learned that they were the sacred scarabs of Egypt, in a slightly modified form, I thought we might find some place for them in the religion. Now they were working very hard and it was getting late for the dung of that day. Watching them I thought of the words for a dung beetle hymn.
Ngui and Mthuka were watching me because they knew I was in a moment of profound thought. Ngui went for Miss Mary’s camera in case she should want to take any pictures of the dung beetles, but she did not care to and said, “Papa, when you get tired of watching the dung beetles, do you think we might get on and see something else?”
“Sure, if you are interested, we can find a rhino and there are two lionesses and a lion around.”
“How do you know?”
“Several people heard the lions last night and the rhino crossed the buffalo trail back there.”
“It’s too late for good color.”
“Never mind. Maybe we can just watch them.”
“They’re more inspiring than dung beetles.”
“I’m not seeking inspiration. I’m seeking knowledge.”
“It’s lucky you have such a wide open field.”
“Yes.”
I told Mthuka to try and find the rhino. He had regular habits and now that he was on the move, we knew about where we might find him.
The rhino was not far from where he should have been but, as Miss Mary had said, it was too late to photograph well in color with the speed of film that was then available. He had been to a water hole in gray white clay and in the green of the brush and against the dark black lava rocks, he looked a ghostly white.
We left him undisturbed but magnificently and stupidly alert after his tick birds had left him and swung wide downwind of him to come out, finally, onto the salt flats that stretched toward the edge of the marsh. There would be very little moon that night and the lions would be hunting and I wondered how it would be for the game knowing the night was coming on. The game had no security ever but on these nights the least of all and I thought how it was on a dark night like tonight the great python would come out from the swamp to the edge of the flats to lie coiled and waiting. Ngui and I had followed his track once into the swamp and it was like following the single track of an oversize lorry tire. Sometimes he sunk so that it was like a deep rut.
We found the tracks of the two lionesses on the flat and then along the trail. One was very large and we expected to see them lying up but did not. The lion, I thought, was probably over by the old abandoned Masai Manyatta and he might be the lion that had been raiding the Masai we had visited that morning. But that was conjecture and no evidence to kill him on. Tonight I would listen to them hunt and tomorrow if we saw them I would be able to identify them again. G.C. had said, originally, we might have to take four or perhaps six lion out of the area. We had taken three and the Masai had killed a fourth and wounded another.
“I don’t want to go over too close to the swamp, so we won’t give our wind to the buff and maybe they will feed out in the open tomorrow,” I told Mary and she agreed. So we started back toward home on foot and Ngui and I read the sign on the flats as we walked.
“We’ll get out early, honey,” I said to Mary, “and there is a better than fair chance we’ll find the buff in the open.”
“We’ll go to bed early and make love and listen to the night.”
“Wonderful.”
20
WE WERE IN bed and it was quite cold and I lay curled against the tent side of the cot and it was lovely under the sheet and the blankets. No one has any size in bed, you are all the same size and dimensions are perfect when you love each other and we lay and felt the blankets against the cold and our own warmth that came slowly and we whispered quietly and then listened when the first hyena broke into the sudden flamenco singing noise as though he were blasting into a loudspeaker in the night. He was close to the tent and then there was another one behind the lines and I knew the drying meat and the buffalo out beyo
nd the lines had brought them. Mary could imitate them and she did it very softly under the blankets.
“You’ll have them in the tent,” I said. Then we heard the lion roar off to the north toward the old Manyatta and after we had heard him we heard the coughing grunts of the lioness and we knew they were hunting. We thought we could hear the two lionesses and then we heard another lion roar a long way away.
“I wish we did not have to ever leave Africa,” Mary said.
“I’d like never to leave here.”
“Bed?”
“We’d have to leave bed in the daytime. No, this camp.”
“I love it too.”
“Then why do we have to go?”
“Maybe there will be more wonderful places. Don’t you want to see the most wonderful places before you die?”
“No.”
“Well, we’re here now. Let’s not think of going away.”
“Good.”
The hyena slipped into night song again and took it far up past where it was possible. Then broke it sharply off three times.
Mary imitated him and we laughed and the cot seemed a fine big bed and we were comfortable and at home in it. Afterwards she said, “When I’m asleep, just straighten out good and take your rightful share of the bed and I’ll get into mine.”
“I’ll tuck you in.”
“No, you stay asleep. I can tuck myself in asleep.”
“Let’s go to sleep now.”
“Good. But don’t let me stay and you be cramped.”
“I won’t be.”
“Good night, my dearest sweet.”
“Good night, dear lovely.”
As we went to sleep we could hear the closer lion making deep heavy grunts and far away the other lion roaring and we held each other hard and gently and went to sleep.
I was asleep when Mary went to her bed and I did not wake until the lion roared quite close to camp. He seemed to shake the guy ropes of the tent and his heavy coughing was very close. He must have been out beyond the lines but he sounded, when he woke me, as though he were going through the camp. Then he roared again and I knew how far away he was. He must be just at the edge of the track that ran down to the landing strip. I listened as he moved away and then I went back to sleep.
True at First Light Page 33