THE LAST SAVANNA

by Mike Bond

  Dottie came down, tugging back her hair, not looking at him. “I suppose you expect I’ll run the ranch?” She poured out the teapot and set new water to boil. “If you leave with Nehemiah you can get Isau to run the bloody ranch. I’m going away to London.”

  He put down the cleaning rod, the rifle across his knees, feeling angry at her turning on him again, as she always did, when it was already done, decided. He was angry at her dishevelledness, her having grown old, but sensed the root of his annoyance lay in the dream: he’d wanted to ask her what to do about the lion. “Maybe you should. After this I think we should sell the cattle and lease the land. Go back and try to live in England.”

  She sat down fast opposite him. “You’d never survive.”

  “I’m not surviving here.”

  “You get along.”

  “Is that what living is, to you?”

  “You’ll never be happy no matter where you are. I’m just your latest reason.”

  He bit his lip, wanting to strike the table, her, everything. “I was happy, for a while. I need something…”

  “I’m tired of your needs. If you had any sense you would be too.”

  He wanted to stroke the softness beneath her chin, the tawdry fall of hair past her jaw. “I’ve never felt so defeated,” he said.

  “You’re a warrior, darling. You always strike back.” With both hands she pushed the hair back from her cheekbones, tightening her face. “I can’t handle it any more, Ian. For good. You and Africa.”

  “And every breath I take I blame myself for bringing you here.”

  “You don’t have to leave this morning, darling. When Nehemiah comes why don’t you just tell him you’ve changed your mind?” Her fingers were like tendrils against his cheek. “Let’s try going back? Right away?”

  “I can’t drop out now, at the last minute. There’s Somalis drifting into the Ewaso N’giro, west of Buffalo Springs—that’s the last elephants in northern Kenya.” He held her hand; it was like a tiny white flag of surrender. “Once this’s over I’ll go up there, join you, try it for six months. Leave some young heifers and build up the herd again when we get back.”

  She sat up and pulled away her hand. “I don’t want to come back! Ever!”

  Daybreak through the four square mullioned panes of the kitchen window was like a plains fire out of control.

  “And I’m not sure I’ll want to stay. So we try it, then decide…”

  Her face flushed. “You’re really doing this, aren’t you—pushing me to go back so you and Nehemiah can have your fun!”

  “It’s not fun, Dottie. It’s survival. For the elephants. For Kenya. But most of all for me.”

  She looked at him dry-eyed. “You’ll never leave Africa.”

  “I said I’d go up there with you, try that.”

  “And all the time mooning over Africa—I’ve seen you, Ian, when the newness of London wears off and you get bored with your bloody dull Cotswolds, start wanting to come back. You draw all down inside yourself and you’re unpleasant to my friends and snarl at perfect strangers! If we go back we sell the farm and make a complete break.”

  “I won’t do that. Not yet. But I’ll try my best to stay there.”

  “Your best, my dear, isn’t good enough. Not anymore. Not for me.”

  Her face was set. He felt a weight slowly slipping from the back of his neck, replaced by pain. “So what do you suggest?”

  “Just leave, chase around the desert with your friends. Playing soldier. You’re too old, dearie—your hair’s going gray. Already the men call you “Mzee”!”

  He smiled to hide the hurt. “Maybe you should stay a while with the kids. Let me do my soldier thing, then I’ll come up. After that we’ll decide if we want to stay up there or come back here.”

  “Even the way you say it! “Up there”! It’s not part of your life.”

  “It never has been.”

  “It was mine, once! You’re the one who dragged me down here. “You’ll love it, darling”! Your tales of safaris—“wait till you see the sunsets”!”

  “Nehemiah’s my oldest friend. He needs help. He would never speak or even think of it, but twice he’s saved my life, when he was detailed to the SAS in Aden. In Africa, the way we think, I don’t even have the right to refuse him.”

  “You! You men! “The way we think”,” her teeth flashed as she mimicked him. “With your wars and noble vows and blood debts and all that other Kipling rot! Can’t you grow up, see beyond it?”

  “Without Nehemiah I wouldn’t even be here! You want me to see beyond that?”

  “Would you be here without me?”

  He watched the coffee cup he turned in circles on the table. It was one of those moments begging for the truth. That changes things. “Yes, I’d be here,” he replied.

  “I wouldn’t. I’d be in London and spending weekends in Kent, with friends and family, not in an alien world, a primitive world, with a man who doesn’t love me!”

  He stood up and gently tucked in his chair. “As usual, this is going nowhere. If you don’t think by now I love you, you never will.”

  “I never will.”

  He put the cleaning rod, oil, solvent and cloths into their kit and laid them on the table beside the rifle. “Nehemiah’ll be here any minute. But when I come back from this patrol, we’ll do what you want, Dot. As long as you lay off the bottle. You quit drinking and we’ll sell out and go to England.”

  “Bastard!” She pushed herself up with her hands. He shrugged and turned towards the den, the teacup she had hurled shattering against the jamb, but he continued to the den, gathered up his backpack, bush hat and canteen, and returned to the kitchen for the gun and cleaning kit. He wanted to kiss her goodbye, sensing as with every campaign that this might be the last one, that he’d never see her again, that it was not wrong to die but wrong to leave her. But he didn’t, stepping past her into the morning scent of jacarandas, fuchsia and bougainvillea, into the rising sun glinting off the thatched roofs of the Rendille rondavels beyond the camel pens. There was no peace, no joy—only duty to be done, day after day, life after life, long after its reason was obscured by time.

  Suddenly the entire fabric of their lives grew clear to him, how it had been woven day by day on an adulterated pattern, one that had not contained all of him, nor all of her, and now the garment didn’t fit, had worn in the wrong places, constrained them by day but no longer kept them warm at night.

  Oh poor Dottie, he whispered, not out of condolence but of sorrow, that her human trace had gone astray, that he had failed her, that they’d ended up too close and far too far apart. If one could unravel the false strands, back to the beginning…but the pattern had been lost—they’d killed it by dying, separately, inside it. And it was too late to disassemble both their lives; even a poorly fitting fabric clung to the soul and could not be renounced.

  Was he really leaving this farmhouse, this savanna, for the final time, never again to cross the yard in twilit dawn after feeding the bum calves, never again to see the stone house rising tall and square before him, having once again defeated the night, its familiar windows bright with family, food and love, making him feel, “I’ve made this, it’s mine”? Already it grew alien, awaiting other lives, he and his loved ones so soon forgotten—where was the echo of what they’d been, in this house?

  Dorothy’s still there, inside. But even when he was there, he wasn’t. She was right, he’d left long ago. When? Was it his leaving that had made her drink? Where had he gone?

  A camel brayed with anger out on the savanna; smoke rose in indolent columns from the rondavels; new sunlight struck the savage earth. He felt suddenly that women had emptied men through submission and fidelity, stolen their power by demanding that they not wander, not war, not hunt, not fertilize other women. What weaklings, how feeble we’ve become. I too. To call this life.

  7

  THE SOFTEST sweetest leaves of the baobab tree are high in the top branches, and the young
elephant was determined to get them. She stretched her trunk as high as it would reach, coiled the tip round a branch and bent it down. But even standing on her rear legs she could not pull the branch low enough to reach her mouth.

  Annoyed, she dropped to four feet and ripped away mouthfuls of lower, bitter stems, grunting at their dusty, rough taste. Without listening she heard ripping soil behind her as her sister pulled up chunks of murram grass, the crackling of boughs from a neighboring tree as old aunt yanked them down, the squeal of baby bull calf as he waited for the tasty leaves.

  The young elephant tried a desert date bush, but it was sour with ants and she spat half out. She moved back to the baobab, rose up again on her back feet and snatched the high branch. Swaying back and forth, she used her weight against the branch; it was limber, would bend down but would not snap. She stripped bark and leaves with her trunk, angry at the sting of flesh.

  Mother would just reach up and yank the bough down, or put her shoulder against the baobab’s massive trunk and shove it over. Then the young elephant would rush to the topmost, sweetest branches and chew them down, sheltered in her mother’s rumbling shadow. The young elephant whinnied with sorrow and glanced behind her.

  The others were moving towards the water, and she ran to catch up. In the shade of the tall bankside trees the hot skin of her back shivered with anticipation. The branches and leaves in her stomach still tasted sour and she thought of the cool water soothing them.

  There was no human smell on the wind. Old aunt moved first out of the brush to the water’s edge. When no thunder and death came, the others moved out behind old aunt and the young elephant felt the delicious water rise up her legs to the dry skin of her belly and up her sides to her shoulders, and she poured it down her throat, washing the dust away, the twigs and leaves and dirt and root scraps; all was pure in the coolness of this moment. She sucked in more water and cascaded it down her back, shivering with delight as it chilled the hot skin.

  She was sleepy now as they tramped single file back under the tall trees, stopping to snatch at vines, their earthy taste good in her wet throat. Old aunt led them through the thinner scrub beyond the trees and out on to the warm savanna; the grass crackled pleasantly underfoot, the sun a comfortable weight on her shoulders.

  A sharp smell made her jump with fear; she raised her trunk to taste it on the wind, spun round to face it, ears wide. It came from the north, upriver; she could hear nothing but the birds and the song of bees and butterflies, the rasping wind on the murram grass, the distant murmur of the river that reminded her suddenly of her mother. The odor was rough, strong, yet exciting. She peered towards it, seeing only the flow of heat and sunshine over the earth.

  Old aunt trumpeted angrily; the young elephant raised her own trunk and ran towards her, calling, spun on her heels and faced the smell again. The baby bull calf ran past her, towards old aunt. The young elephant’s sister came and nudged her with her trunk, sniffed the breeze, blew it out her trunk.

  Again old aunt trumpeted and sister ran to her. Old aunt turned away from the smell, along the edge of the river brush. The young elephant dropped her head and snatched at the grass, not tasting it, waiting for the smell. Slowly she began to follow the herd.

  A distant but louder trumpet startled her, out of the river brush to the north, from the smell. Old aunt waved her trunk angrily, pushing bull calf and little sister ahead. The young elephant halted, looked back.

  A huge bull elephant broke through the riverside brush and walked steadily towards them, his head above the baobabs. Letting the others go, the young elephant stood till the bull came near and circled to get her smell, nickered, drew close and reached down his long trunk to touch her shoulder. His odor was acrid, intoxicating, frightening, strange yet suddenly familiar, like a place where she had been a long time ago and just now remembered. Nervously she trotted towards the others; the bull huffed and followed, swinging his massive head to keep his tusks above the scrub.

  But as they neared the others he turned her aside, back towards the river. She squealed and old aunt rumbled back; the bull was beside her now and she wanted to go to the herd and get away from him. Suddenly the bull screamed with rage and pain as guns roared all around them and a vicious agony struck her stomach, making her legs fold, and she crashed to the earth, the agony ripping through her chest. The guns crackled from the riverside trees, louder, more awful, and over the wails of old aunt and the terror of her sister she heard the bull’s furious trumpet and the thunder of the earth as he charged the guns and they seemed to concentrate, grow louder, fuse into one permanent roar, as if the world had split apart.

  She heard little sister squealing and dragged herself to her feet, the agony spreading like fire inside her; she could not see her sister, could see nothing, hearing only this storm of guns and the bubbling squeal of her sister and the moans of old aunt and a weird humming like angry bees. Another pain struck her head, knocking her down. The grass and earth before her face were near and far away, full of odors and empty; she rolled on to her knees and pulled herself up, her belly tearing as if rooted to earth. The poor land itself was struck, twisting and spinning, blood-red. She stumbled towards the cries of her sister, another horrible pain striking her hip, the guns banging closer now, and she could smell humans coming through the grass, their metallic, sweaty, hyena stink, and here was bull calf lying covered with gore, that which had been his life moments ago now spread over him and the grass.

  Little sister would not move nor was there breath coming from her mouth; the young elephant dug her tusks under little sister and pushed her up but she fell down and an awful explosion thudded into the young elephant’s brain, knocking her back on her haunches, but she stood and ran wildly screaming at the guns as the blows struck everywhere and all at once the earth was with her and anything was better than this pain.

  In the smell of cordite and powder and blood, and in the sudden silence after the shooting, Warwar felt nauseous but empty, as if he had already thrown up everything. He stood and stared out over the long grass at the young elephant’s flank rising like a gray lava outcrop; his rifle barrel touched his cheek, searing the skin.

  “Dead!” someone screamed. “He’s dead!”

  It was Suli, screaming. He must have killed the big bull, Warwar thought, wanting to walk out across the savanna and never live with humans again.

  Parting the long grass with his rifle, he neared the young elephant. Her skull was cratered and splintered by bullets, her head and ears a roseate pulp. He tried to remember how afraid he’d been when she charged. She was nearly dead even then, he told himself.

  Suli was still carrying on, his voice tilting like a woman’s in mourning. So he killed the bull. Now let him carry his tusks. Warwar leaned his rifle against the young elephant’s flank, pulled out his simi, and began to chop at the thick flesh from the base of one upraised tusk. Her tongue lay half out of her mouth, coated with wet grass. He shoved the tip of the simi between the gray flesh and the tusk and drove it upwards, twisting the blade to slit the tough skin.

  He finished slicing away the skin on the outside and, down on his knees, leaned in to pry the root of the tusk with the simi. As he did her eye moved.

  He dropped the simi and jumped away. Her eye followed him. Weirdly the words of the Prophet came to him: “Even when you do not know it, Allah watches you.”

  Ibrahim was calling. “Ho!” Warwar answered. “I’m here—the young cow.”

  Ibrahim’s voice neared, panting. “He’s killed your brother!”

  The sky leaned over and crashed into the earth. Warwar righted himself, holding the elephant’s ear, the skin grainy as stone.

  “The big bull,” Ibrahim gasped, running. “Threw him in the air and stamped him.” Ibrahim took Warwar’s shoulders. “We could do nothing. We kept shooting. Nothing would stop him.” Warwar shoved Ibrahim away, ran towards the sound of Suli wailing like a loose cloth in the wind.

  Ahmed lay in bloody grass by a thorn
tree, head crushed, one arm torn off. His leg was jerking as if he would run away. Warwar lay down with his face on his brother’s chest.

  “Hurry!” It was Rashid, whispering to Suli. “We have to hurry!”

  Warwar stared up at him. “We’re never going to leave here!”

  Rashid’s hand over his heart was an open lie. “We must rush. Rangers will come.” He looked across the grass tops. “The bull can charge again.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He ran into the trees, there, along the river. We’ll take the other tusks quickly, and your brother, bury him later.”

  This was not Ahmed, but a body covered in its own blood and the blood of elephants. Already the flies were at it. A single hawk flew high over the savanna. Now it is just me. You have died and now you live inside me and nowhere else.

  In the crushing silence of sorrow he walked through the tawny tall grass and took his rifle that leaned against the young cow elephant. Ibrahim was chopping away her second tusk. “She’s not dead,” Warwar said.

  “Dead enough. We have to move quickly.”

  “We’ll go nowhere till I kill the bull.”

  Ibrahim’s head jerked up. “You are the youngest here, and give no commands. I regret your brother’s dead, but keep your tongue, as Allah wills.”

  “Go as you like, all of you.” From the sheath inside his cloak Warwar took a leather sack filled with bullets. He dismounted the clip of his AK47, and reloaded it. “I will bury my brother, and kill the bull. That is what Allah wills.”

  8

  THE BULL’S BLOOD-SPATTERED path was wide through the crushed brush. You will never grieve, Warwar told himself. When you were young you thought love was important. Now you see it, too, is illusion. You will learn to live without sorrow. To be free, of everything. As you covered Ahmed with stones so the jackals cannot eat him, so you will cover his death inside your heart. The whooshing burst of a francolin from a bush made him jump back, jerk up the rifle. No, he told himself, follow the path straight, Allah says, no need to fear.