THE LAST SAVANNA

by Mike Bond

  MacAdam swung snarling at the bird. It jumped back, hopped into the air, wide awkward wings ticking the earth.

  M’kele was back, pushed aside his backpack and sat up, waving flies from his mouth. “’S bad when the marabou he come to call.”

  “Where were you?”

  M’kele stared round the molten landscape. “Where else?”

  “You weren’t here!”

  The marabou circled overhead. It was not M’kele; there were too many, wide-winged in a column. He forced himself to stand, yanked M’kele’s arm. “They’ve come for us.”

  M’kele licked his lips with a large black tongue. MacAdam felt a surge of hatred. M’kele’s mouth was caked with white, like a camel’s vulva.

  M’kele lifted his G-3 from the ground, held it like a newborn across his lap, as if reading the maker’s stamp. With awkward fingers he shoved the mode selector to semi, squinted up into the circling column of buzzard storks, his fatigue cap slipping back off his head as he raised the rifle and fired, the noise like steel walls crushing MacAdam’s head. M’kele fired again, bang again. One of the huge birds exploded in a burst of fluff and meat, then another. As though caught by a wind that did not touch the earth, the others slanted off, while bits of feather, meat and bone drizzled down.

  MacAdam found his glasses, glanced up at the Selach hills. “Someone’ll hear that.” M’kele’s action seemed stupid, childish, could endanger Rebecca. MacAdam wanted to leave him.

  “Showing the hawk the bow.” M’kele chuckled giddily.

  “They’ll come back.”

  “And stay to feed on what’s left of their brothers.”

  “Just like us.” MacAdam knelt and shouldered his pack and rifle, made himself stand. Late afternoon sun reflected copper off the Selach hills; he staggered in circles till he found the track of the two camels and the sandal prints of the boy and the limping Somali, and without waiting for M’kele began to climb the shimmering slopes of lava up which they led, into the Selach hills.

  THE PAIN in Warwar’s dangling arm was so great he tried to run on tiptoe in the vain hope of not jerking it. His stomach kept bolting as if he’d drunk tainted water, but there was nothing to vomit. His body, unprotected from the sun, had caught fire. The gashes on his feet had coagulated and broken open so many times they now flowed blood steadily, as a punctured gourd leaks out the last of its liquid.

  Stumbling and running, running and stumbling, looking back and falling, raising himself from the sharp rocks and running onwards, he barely saw the mountains rise and slip down round him, changing from lava black and umber to ochre and crimson as the sun fell. He followed the north flank of the Selach hills east, the blunt shoulder of Gamud peak towering like an obelisk. In the immense north-descending rockslides ahead he was sure he could smell water. If he could reach it and there were no lions he’d find a way to live a little longer.

  Far ahead a pair of doum palms caught the last jaundiced light sliding up the valley. With great precision Warwar memorized the entire landscape, seeing no trace of lions or anything that moved but a few gazelles out on the dusty plain, one watching while the others grazed the sparse combretum, a single eagle gliding far above, as if jealous of their company.

  He approached to a hundred yards above the palms. Two augur buzzards sprang squawking from the top fork of one palm and sailed downslope; he moved closer, saw a dark stain of water on the sand. Moaning with joy he ran to the muddy, narrow pool, fell and drank.

  He coated his sunburned body with mud, checked his back trail, and drank again. Locusts clung to the branches of commiphora and acacias round the hole; without bothering to break them open he ate them all, over a hundred, cracking their metallic thoraxes in his jaws, till his belly felt marvelously full and his body stronger, but his arm ached now almost more than he could stand.

  The last light of the sun had climbed to the distant peaks as Ibrahim rounded the shoulder of the mountain and saw the two doum palms far ahead and below. Hiding among the rocks he studied the slope, trying to determine how far the young fool would move from the water hole that must be there, and where he could circle round to attack. From his ragged trail since noon it was clear Warwar was dying of his wound, of thirst and sun—he would probably not make wise decisions, nor had he the warrior’s experience to set an invisible trap, but still Ibrahim must be careful. The young fool might be dying by the water’s edge or else waiting, knife in hand, among the rocks ahead.

  Ibrahim glanced west; at night the advantage of his rifle was much less. Should he go quickly towards the palms, hoping for a shot before darkness? Or should he wait, come in silently at night, unseen?

  If he waited, Warwar might move on, and he’d have to track him tomorrow. If he moved in now, the young fool would see him and might evade him till dark, note where he was, and hunt him in the night.

  The immense desert, empty as a bird’s wing, inspired him with promise. As when going into battle he felt a rich completion, his entire soul’s intuition of the beauty and brevity of life. I’ll walk quickly towards the water hole and if he’s there I’ll shoot him. If he’s not, he’ll see me, that I’ve stopped at the palms, and he’ll hunt me there tonight. But I won’t be where he imagines; while he thinks he’s hunting me I’ll be hunting him.

  CRAZED by thirst and sun, Rebecca wandered south down the Selach hills. Somewhere ahead, in the tilting endless black peneplain shifting into darkness, must be the geb tree. The woman of the jawbone will lead me there again. If she cares she’ll lead me. To save her children, because my children are hers. Thinking of her sons made Rebecca’s eyes sting but she could not stop, her sobs a choking rattle.

  With night returned her childhood vision of the black despair that rules eternity. Sitting on the green grass in her white frock, long pigtails warm with sun between her shoulder blades, her parents’ voices near as the patio, she watched her tortoise-shell cat bring her a lump of molten green in his mouth, a dead hummingbird. The ruling principle of eternity was not good but evil, she’d understood, a purveyor of pain, pain made more tragic by the joy of life. Yes, the Master was truly evil and God just one of his disguises, a spy to ferret out the good and then betray it.

  If there’s only Hell it didn’t matter; everyone belonged there. But if everyone’s imaginary then she was the only one in Hell. But there had been a way out before. The geb tree. But what if it was too far and the woman of the jawbone couldn’t find her?

  In the day’s last chiaroscuro she moved slowly, weakly, avoiding the still-fiery stones, the scorpions and desert cobras creeping and sliding from their crannies into the evening’s cool. Walk quietly so you don’t disturb them. No, better to make noise and warn them. But then the lions hear you. But they hear you anyway, or smell you on the wind.

  Ahead a noise among the rocks made her crouch in fear. Footsteps, two people—how’d Warwar get so far ahead of me? Two shadows, rifles glinting, come to kill me. What if it’s not them? If it’s someone with water? “Help!” she started to call, suppressed it, wind tickling her hair against her lips. She bowed her head to hide its glimmer. The steps paused, then moved on, paused again, as if seeking something. She waited, hardly breathing, till the footsteps moved further up the Selach hills and faded into silence.

  M’KELE’S legs were tightening. No water for two nights and no sleep for three, just snatches caught walking when the ground’s flat and the Somalis’ tracks easy in the moonlight. Now the ground’s steep and only rocks, no moon. No water. MacAdam faster and faster. Can’t live without water. MacAdam a brave man but blue eyes no good for tracking. Like a lion, walks and walks and never complains of the broken ribs. Easier to be that way when your woman’s taken. But it’s complicated about the woman because Nehemiah said she doesn’t live in his manyatta although he protects her and is angry with those who took her. To understand these Europeans you must be one—see the world through their poor eyes, walk about in their weak, awkward, heavy bodies, love money and things as they do, with crav
ing unsatisfied sad hearts.

  The Europeans came to Maasailand boasting they’d killed God and hung him on a tree, as the leopard keeps his prey. We felt sorry for their frailty and the shame of killing the God who’d led them out of the desert as N’gai once did for us and the Samburu. We gave them food, some land to wander with their cattle, but the Europeans did not wander; their houses did not return to earth, and in trade for our gifts of food and land they gave us smallpox, liquor and guns, killed a million Maasai, all of us except six thousand. Now the Europeans have changed many Maasai into black Europeans, wanting things and money, and staying in one place.

  I, too, am too much European, with their schooling and the tribe’s, but when this last year of Army ends as I have promised myself I’ll go back to the Mau Escarpment, the Amala’s shaded banks, its pools cool and brighter than silver, to wander with my herds the old way, see my children raise their families, enjoy my wives and take a new one, someone young and lithe with budding breasts and slender thighs—Joseph’s daughter Celia, or some young beauty I’ve never even seen.

  God’s not a man you nail upon a tree. As it’s said, God is he who separates the paths. And as it’s said, the man who tries to walk two paths soon cleaves himself.

  Unlike most Europeans MacAdam doesn’t scorn us somewhere inside himself nor make himself silly with false friendliness. But like other Europeans he’s crucified his God, kills what he loves.

  Soon we reach the place beyond Dibandiba where water’s marked on the map. Where these tracks go. But these tracks more than a day old: because of the Borani, the Somalis will have moved on. If there’s water there, we’ll live, and I’ll take first watch so he can sleep.

  Watching the tracks, M’kele did not see the muzzle flash but felt keenly its rod of fire rip through his intestines and throw him back down the hill, never heard the muzzle’s blast in the complete agony crushing his stomach and pelvis, his mind telling him at first that he had been kicked by a camel, had strayed into one of the Somalis’ camels, but pain exploded so horribly inside him he thought then he’d been struck by a rocket or by lightning, rolling, moaning, on his side, holding his shattered belly from which his life sprayed through his fingers. He heard the answering chatter of MacAdam’s rifle, the ping of ejected cartridges on the rocks, and understood there’d be no sunny days herding cattle on the Mau Escarpment, no grandchildren warm and giggly in his arms, no lithe young wife whose eyes, round and fearful, looked in on him as he died.

  32

  MACADAM WAS YELLING for M’kele but he didn’t answer and when he reached him he was dead. From uphill came the hurried snap of a bolt and the pop of a firing pin in an empty chamber; MacAdam dashed to the crest of the slope where a white-robed figure charged him swinging a rifle, and he shot him dead in the chest and dived between the boulders expecting the other Somalis to fire. Over his pounding blood and breath he could hear only camels stomping nervously in a gully where they seemed tethered. He could smell water, a faded fire, camel dung, the hot stink of blood and grease from the dead man’s cloak, the burnt oil and cordite of his own rifle. Where were the other two? He mustn’t let them kill him or then he couldn’t kill them for M’kele.

  The camels quieted, ripping and munching branches with the sideways grind of their jaws. Blood from the dead Somali trickled down the rocks. The dead man was skinny with a pointed beard, probably the one who limped, his mouth agape at the surprise of death, of how rapidly it claims you. His burnoose was dark across the chest as if he were empty there and the black ground showed through. His rifle lay beside him, the magazine full with an empty cartridge in the chamber, a dent across the breech, where the ejection mechanism had jammed after the first shot.

  MacAdam dismounted the Somali’s magazine and threw it far down the hill; it clattered against the rocks and a jackal barked a warning across the ravine. He circled the top of the hill and found only the two camels tethered in the gully, who huffed at his smell.

  He went back to M’kele but he was truly dead. He sat with M’kele’s grizzled head in his arms, but M’kele had no interest in condolence. MacAdam returned to the dead Somali and in widening circles scouted the camp; there was no one there at all, and after a while he found a water bottle and drained it and stumbled to a distant niche in the rocks to sleep till dawn.

  WARWAR’S pain grew ever more horrible. One-handed, he had wrapped his feet in palm fronds so they made no blood trail when he left the spring between the two doum palms; he tried to fortify himself with the vision of Soraya as she leaned out over the well at El God God, her slender strong arm revealed to the shoulder, her back straight as if the bucket were weightless, as if all tragedy were nothing beside the joy of living, but even she could not diminish this agony. It made him want to lie down, collapse, give up, walk empty-handed to Ibrahim and beg forgiveness, explain he’d heard a noise in camp, had gone with his knife to check it, naked and barefoot because he’d wanted to wash with a little water from the spring, and although Ibrahim would upbraid him for the water he would not kill him just for that. But a man shows his lies in his eyes, in the cut of his lips, and now that Ibrahim had drawn his blood he couldn’t give mercy.

  And had not Soraya stood by while the others stoned him? Had she not, tentatively, then harder, thrown sharp stones? If it had not happened why did he remember it? He couldn’t be sure, as in his body he could not tell which was the pain from the bullet and which from the sun.

  Ibrahim was very thirsty, smelling the spring at the doum palms, but in the darkness unable to come in because of Warwar. If the young fool’s still there I must kill him quickly and drink. I must not take pity on him as I have been thinking. If he came with a knife it was to kill me. Unless he had been with the whitewoman. I must kill him just for that, for mixing flesh.

  But he’s young, and wild because he had no father, and now his only brother’s dead. How much better, years ago, for the clan to be his father. Then none of this would have happened. In my pride and love for my own sons and those who are my dead brother’s, could I not have given some to him? And now I think he flees because he’s guilty, when perhaps he’s only injured and afraid. If he calls openly to me I won’t kill him but will first speak: he who has strayed furthest from the clan must be most welcomed back.

  Deepest night, when the leopard hunts, the time of greatest danger. Don’t be weakened by thinking. Ibrahim turned south, up the black shoulder of the mountain, intending to approach the doum palms from above.

  Warwar walked until he could walk no more and nestled himself in the rocks. In the night, with no blood trail, Ibrahim could not follow. Gratefully he sank back among the cool, soft rocks, the dagger in his hand, and tumbled into sleep.

  When Ibrahim neared the doum palms he listened for a long time, hearing only the hum of insects round the spring, the whisper of wings overhead as two tambourine doves landed in the palms, cooing softly together, the minute rustle of sand disturbed by the wind between two rocks, the shifting of his homespun djellabah as he breathed. How sad to be here, in an alien land, hunting your own kind.

  BEFORE SUNRISE MacAdam checked the Somali camp but could find no sign of Rebecca or the other two Somalis. The dead man, like M’kele, had hardened in the form of his death, as if our last moments somehow define our posture for eternity. The two camels were very irritable from hunger and drank avidly when he brought them a little water. Near them he found a large lion skin busy with scorpions, and in the camels’ panniers two Nikons, magnifying glasses and a worn leather case containing an assortment of archaeological brushes and probes. Rebecca’s wide flat sneaker tracks marked the sand by the extinct fire. He wanted to force the Somali to say where she was and had to keep reminding himself the man was dead. Either the other two had taken her or—he would not think of an alternative. He stood where the dead man lay and looked out over the desert beginning to yellow now with first day, the body of M’kele a tiny clump far down the slope, the wind from the south damp and fragrant.

 
; A movement out on the plain caught his eye and his heart leaped, but it was just a string of hyenas come to share the feast; he went down and covered M’kele’s body with heavy stones while the hyenas sat expectantly, ears perked, out of range.

  Now it was light enough and he returned to the camp, descended the water hole, filled all four canteens, and put them in his backpack. Keeping M’kele’s rifle, he again circled camp until he found Warwar’s trail of blood and Ibrahim’s tracks following it north. He pursued them a short way then went back and kept circling, almost missing the wind-muddled traces of Rebecca’s sneakers leading downslope and west, the prints of the limping Somali atop them.

  He saddled the female camel, tied M’kele’s rifle and his own backpack to her saddle, set the male free, and tugged the unwilling female by the halter rope along Rebecca’s tracks. The male ran snorting in circles round him and the female, obscuring Rebecca’s trail, charging and baring his teeth at this strange person suddenly in command of his heifer. Without guilt MacAdam shot him in the head, the camel sitting shocked then flopping over as the rifle’s echoes brayed up and down the hills.

  The she-camel sniffed the dead male, pulling back her upper lip, and, keeping her head down, followed MacAdam. Beneath a precipice MacAdam saw the limping Somali’s tracks coming back, knelt and sifted the sand, trying to invent an explanation other than that he’d killed her and now was returning.

  When he reached the precipice she had climbed he tied up the camel and followed her, knowing at the top he’d find her body scavenged by hyenas among the rocks where the Somali had shot her—scraps of flesh, bloody clothing scattered by the wind.

  Under the overhang a thread of golden hair twisted in the wind; he took it in his lips and held it there as he climbed, till the slope eased and he put the hair in his breast pocket. Without hope he went higher but there was no sign or track of Rebecca; he climbed back down, tried a side-sloping ledge, and found at its steepening edge the two solid imprints of her sneakers side by side in the dust.