4

I WENT OUTSIDE and checked the weather. There was just the steady building up of cloud over the Chulus and the flank of the Mountain was clear. As I watched I thought I heard the plane. Then I was sure and called out for the hunting car. Mary came out and we scrambled for the car and started out from camp and on the motor car tracks through the new green grass for the landing strip. The game trotted and then galloped out of our way. The aircraft buzzed the camp and then it came down, clean silver and blue, lovely wings shining, with the big flaps down and for a moment we were keeping almost abreast of it before Willie, smiling out through the Plexiglas as the blue of the prop passed us, touched the aircraft down so that she landed strutting gently like a crane and then wheeled around to come fanning up to us.

Willie opened the door and smiled, “Hello, you chaps.” He looked for Mary and said, “Get the lion yet, Miss Mary?”

He spoke in a sort of swinging lilting voice that moved with the rhythm that a great boxer has when he is floating in and out with perfect, unwasting movements. His voice had a sweetness that was true but I knew it could say the most deadly things without a change of tone.

“I couldn’t kill him, Willie,” Miss Mary called. “He hasn’t come down yet.”

“Pity,” said Willie. “I have to get a few odds and ends out here. Ngui can give me a hand. Pots of mail for you, Miss Mary. Papa has a few bills. Here’s the mail.”

He tossed the big manila envelope to me and I caught it.

“Good to see you retain some sign of basic reflexes,” Willie said. “G.C. sent his love. He’s on his way.”

I handed the mail to Mary and we commenced to unload the plane and put the packages and boxes into the hunting car.

“Better not do any actual physical labor, Papa,” Willie said. “Don’t tire yourself. Remember we’re saving you for the Main Event.”

“I heard it was canceled.”

“Still on I believe,” Willie said. “Not that I’d pay to see it.”

“Even you and Willie,” Mary said.

“Come on let’s go to campi,” she said to Willie.

“Coming, Miss Mary,” Willie said. He came down now in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his blue serge shorts and his low brogues and smiled lovingly at Miss Mary as he took her hand. He was handsome with fine merry eyes and an alive tanned face and dark hair and shy without any awkwardness. He was the most natural and best-mannered person I have ever known. He had all the sureness of a great pilot. He was modest and he was doing what he loved in the country he loved.

We had never asked each other any questions except about aircraft and flying. Everything else was supposed to be understood. I assumed he had been born in Kenya because he spoke such fine Swahili and was gentle and understanding with Africans but it never occurred to me to ask him where he was born and he might have come out to Africa as a boy for all I knew.

We drove slowly into camp in order not to raise dust and got out under the big tree between our tents and the lines. Miss Mary went over to see Mbebia the cook to have him make lunch at once and Willie and I walked over to the mess tent. I opened a bottle of beer that was still cold in the canvas bag that hung against the tree and poured one in each of our glasses.

“What’s the true gen, Papa,” Willie asked. I told him.

“I saw him,” Willie said. “Old Arap Meina seemed to have him under fairly close arrest. He does look a little bit the type, Papa.”

“Well, we’ll check his Shamba. Maybe he has a Shamba and maybe they had elephant trouble.”

“We’ll check the elephants too. That will save time and then we’ll drop him off here and then have a general look around on the other thing. I’m taking Ngui. If there are elephant and we have to work it out Meina knows all the country and he and Ngui and I will do it and Ngui and I will have made the recon.”

“It all seems sound,” Willie said. “You fellows do keep quite busy here for a quiet area. Here comes Miss Mary.”

Mary came in delighted with the prospect of the meal.

“We’re having Tommy chops, mashed potatoes and a salad. And it will be here right away. And a surprise. Thank you so much for finding the Campari, Willie. I’m going to have one now. Will you?”

“No thank you, Miss Mary. Papa and I are drinking a beer.”

“Willie, I wish I could go. But anyway I’ll have all the lists made and write the checks and the letters ready and after I kill the lion I’ll fly in with you to Nairobi to get the things for Christmas.”

“You must be shooting very well, Miss Mary, from that beautiful meat I saw hanging in the cheesecloth.”

“There’s a haunch for you and I told them to change it around carefully to be in the shade all day and then wrap it well for you just before you go back.”

“How is everything at the Shamba, Papa?” Willie asked.

“My father-in-law has some sort of combination chest and stomach ailment,” I said. “I’ve been treating it with Sloan’s liniment. Sloan’s came to him as rather a shock the first time I rubbed it in.”

“Ngui told him it was part of Papa’s religion,” Mary said. “They all have the same religion now and it’s reached a point where it is basically awful. They all eat kipper snacks and drink beer at eleven o’clock and explain it is part of their religion. I wish you’d stay here Willie and tell me what really goes on. They have horrible slogans and dreadful secrets.”

“It’s Gitchi Manitou the Mighty versus All Others,” I explained to Willie. “We retain the best of various other sects and tribal law and customs. But we weld them into a whole that all can believe. Miss Mary coming from the Northern Frontier Province, Minnesota, and never having been to the Rocky Mountains until we were married is handicapped.”

“Papa has everybody but the Mohammedans believing in the Great Spirit,” Mary said. “The Great Spirit is one of the worst characters I’ve ever known. I know Papa makes up the religion and makes it more complicated every day. He and Ngui and the others. But the Great Spirit frightens even me sometimes.”

“I try to hold him down, Willie,” I said. “But he gets away from me.”

“How does he feel about aircraft?” Willie asked.

“I can’t reveal that before Mary,” I said. “When we are airborne I’ll give you the word.”

“Anything I can do to help you, Miss Mary, count on me,” Willie said.

“I just wish you could stay around or that G.C. or Mr. P. was here,” Mary said. “I’ve never been present at the birth of a new religion before and it makes me nervous.”

“You must be something along the lines of the White Goddess, Miss Mary. There’s always a beautiful White Goddess isn’t there?”

“I don’t think I am. One of the basic points of the faith as I gather it is that neither Papa nor I are white.”

“That is timely.”

“We tolerate the whites and wish to live in harmony with them as I understand it. But on our own terms. That is on Papa’s and Ngui’s and Mthuka’s terms. It’s Papa’s religion and it is a frightfully old religion and now he and the others are adapting it to Kamba custom and usage.”

“I was never a missionary before, Willie,” I said. “It is very inspiring. I’ve been very fortunate that we have Kibo here that is almost the exact counterpart of one of the foothills of the Wind River range where the religion was first revealed to me and where I had my early visions.”

“They teach us so little at school,” Willie said. “Could you give me any gen on the Wind Rivers, Papa?”

“We call them the Fathers of the Himalayas,” I explained modestly. “The main low range is approximately the height of that mountain Tensing the Sherpa carried that talented New Zealand beekeeper to the top of last year.”

“Could that be Everest?” Willie asked. “There was some mention of the incident in the East African Standard.”

“Everest it was. I was trying to remember the name all day yesterday when we were having evening indoctrination at the Shamba.”

“Jolly good show the old beekeeper put up being carried so high so far from home,” Willie said. “How did it all come about, Papa?”

“No one knows,” I said. “They’re all reluctant to talk.”

“Always had the greatest respect for mountaineers,” Willie said. “No one ever gets a word out of them. They’re as tight mouthed a lot as old G.C. or you yourself Papa.”

“Nerveless too,” I said.

“Like us all,” Willie said. “Should we try for that food, Miss Mary? Papa and I have to go out and have a little look around the estate.”

“Lete chakula.”

“Ndio Memsahib.”

When we were airborne and flying along the side of the Mountain watching the forest, the openings, the rolling country and the broken ground of the watersheds, seeing the zebra always fat looking from the air running foreshortened below us, the plane turning to pick up the road so that our guest who sat beside Willie might orient himself as we spread the road and the village before him, there was the road that came up from the swamp behind us and now leading into the village where he could see the crossroads, the stores, the fuel pump, the trees along the main street and the other trees leading to the white building and high wire fence of the police Boma where we could see the flagpole with the flag in the wind.

“Where is your Shamba?” I said in his ear and as he pointed, Willie turned and we were over the Boma and up and along the flank of the Mountain where there were many clearings and cone-shaped houses and fields of mealies growing green out of the red brown earth.

“Can you see your Shamba?”

“Yes.” He pointed.

Then his Shamba roared up at us and spread green and tall and well watered ahead and behind the wing.

“Hapana tembo,” Ngui said very low in my ear.

“Tracks?”

“Hapana.”

“Sure that’s your Shamba?” Willie said to the man.

“Yes,” he said.

“Looks in pretty good shape to me, Papa,” Willie called back. “We’ll have another dekko.”

“Drag her good and slow.”

The fields roared by again but slower and closer as though they might hover next. There was no damage and no tracks.

“Don’t have to stall her.”

“I’m flying her, Papa. Want to see the other side of it?”

“Yes.”

This time the fields came up gently and softly as though they were maybe a green formally arranged disk being raised gently for our inspection by a skilled and gentle servant. There was no damage and no elephant tracks. We rose fast and turned so I could see the Shamba in relation to all of the others.

“Are you very sure that is your Shamba?” I asked the man.

“Yes,” he said and it was impossible not to admire him.

None of us said anything. Ngui’s face had no expression on it at all. He looked out of the Plexiglas window and drew the first finger of his right hand carefully across his throat.

“We might as well wash this and go home,” I said.

Ngui put his hand on the side of the plane as though grasping the handle of the door and made a motion as though turning it. I shook my head and he laughed.

When we landed at the meadow and taxied up to where the hunting car was waiting by the wind sock on the leaning pole the man got out first. No one spoke to him.

“You watch him, Ngui,” I said.

Then I went over to Arap Meina and took him aside.

“Yes,” he said.

“He’s probably thirsty,” I said. “Give him some tea.”

Willie and I rode over to the tents of the camp in the hunting car. We were sitting on the front seat. Arap Meina was in the back with our guest. Ngui had stayed behind with my 30-06 to guard the plane.

“Seems a little on the sticky side,” Willie said. “When did you make up your mind, Papa?”

“The law of gravity business? Before we went out.”

“Very thoughtful of you. Bad for the company. Put me out of business. Do you think Miss Mary would care to fly this afternoon? That would put us all up and we could have an interesting, instructional and educational flight in pursuit of your duties and all of us be airborne until I leave.”

“Mary would like to fly.”

“We could have a look at the Chulus and check the buff and your other beasts. G.C. might be pleased to know where the elephant really are.”

“We’ll take Ngui. He’s getting to like it.”

“Is Ngui very high in the religion?”

“His father once saw me changed into a snake. It was an unknown type of snake never seen before. That has a certain amount of influence in our religious circles.”

“It should, Papa. And what were Ngui’s father and you drinking when the miracle occurred?”

“Nothing but Tusker beer and a certain amount of Gordon’s gin.”

“You don’t remember what type of snake it was?”

“How could I. It was Ngui’s father who had the vision.”

“Well, all we can do at the moment is hope Ngui watches the kite,” Willie said. “I don’t want it changing into a troop of baboons.”

Miss Mary wanted to fly very much. She had seen the guest in the back of the hunting car and she was quite relieved.

“Was his Shamba damaged, Papa?” she asked. “Will you have to go up there?”

“No. There was no damage and we don’t have to go up.”

“How will he get back up there?”

“He’s hitchhiking, I think.”

We had some tea and I took a Campari and Gordon’s with a splash of soda.

“This exotic life is charming,” Willie said. “I wish I could join in it. What does that stuff taste like, Miss Mary?”

“It’s very good, Willie.”

“I’ll save it for my old age. Tell me, Miss Mary, have you ever seen Papa turn into a snake?”

“No, Willie. I promise.”

“We miss everything,” Willie said. “Where would you like to fly, Miss Mary?”

“The Chulus.”

So we flew to the Chulus going by Lion Hill and crossing Miss Mary’s private desert and then down over the great swampy plain with the marsh birds and the ducks flying and all the treacherous places that made that plain impassable clearly revealed so that Ngui and I could see all of our mistakes and plan a new and different route. Then we were over the herds of eland on the far plain, dove colored, white striped and spiral horned, the bulls heavy with their awkward grace, breaking away from the cows that are the antelope cast in the form of cattle.

“I hope it wasn’t too dull, Miss Mary,” Willie said. “I was trying not to disturb any of G.C.’s and Papa’s stock. Only to see where it was. I didn’t want to frighten any creatures away from here or disturb your lion.”

“It was lovely, Willie.”

Then Willie was gone, first coming down the truck path at us bouncing into a roar as the widespread crane-like legs came joggling closer to clear the grass where we stood and then rising into an angle that creased your heart to take his course as he diminished in the afternoon light.

“Thank you for taking me,” Mary said, as we watched Willie until the plane could no longer be seen. “Let’s just go now and be good lovers and friends and love Africa because it is. I love it more than anything.”

“So do I.”

In the night we lay together in the big cot with the fire outside and the lantern I had hung on the tree making it light enough to shoot. Mary was not worried but I was. There were so many trip wires and booby snares around the tent that it was like being in a spiderweb. We lay close together and she said, “Wasn’t it lovely in the plane?”

“Yes. Willie flies so gently. He’s so thoughtful about the game too.”

“But he frightened me when he took off.”

“He was just proud of what she can do and remember he didn’t have any load.”

“We forgot to give him the meat.”

“No. Mthuka brought it.”

“I hope it will be good this time. He must have a lovely wife because he’s so happy and kind. When people have a bad wife it shows in them quicker than anything.”

“What about a bad husband?”

“It shows too. But sometimes much slower because women are braver and more loyal. Blessed Big Kitten, will we have a sort of normal day tomorrow and not all these mysterious and bad things?”

“What’s a normal day?” I asked watching the firelight and the unflickering light from the lantern.

“Oh, the lion.”

“The good kind normal lion. I wonder where he is tonight.”

“Let’s go to sleep and hope he’s happy the way we are.”

“You know he never struck me as the really happy type.”

Then she was really asleep and breathing softly and I bent my pillow over to make it hard and double so I could have a better view out of the open door of the tent. The night noises all were normal and I knew there were no people about. After a while Mary would need more room to sleep truly comfortably and would get up without waking and go over to her own cot where the bed was turned down and ready under the mosquito netting and when I knew that she was sleeping well I would go out with a sweater and mosquito boots in a heavy dressing gown and build up the fire and sit by the fire and stay awake.

There were all the technical problems. But the fire and the night and the stars made them seem small. I was worried though about some things and to not think about them I went to the dining tent and poured a quarter of a glass of whisky and put water in it and brought it back to the fire. Then having a drink by the fire I was lonesome for Pop because we had sat by so many fires together and I wished we were together and he could tell me about things. There was enough stuff in camp to make it well worth a full-scale raid and G.C. and I were both sure that there were many Mau Mau in Laitokitok and the area. He had signaled them more than two months before only to be informed that it was nonsense. I believed Ngui that the Wakamba Mau Mau were not coming our way. But I thought they were the least of our problems. It was clear that the Mau Mau had missionaries among the Masai and were organizing the Kikuyu that worked in the timber-cutting operations on Kilimanjaro. But whether there was any fighting organization we would not know. I had no police authority and was only the acting Game Ranger and I was quite sure, perhaps wrongly, that I would have very little backing if I got into trouble. It was like being deputized to form a posse in the West in the old days.

G.C. turned up after breakfast, his beret over one eye, his boy’s face gray and red with dust and his people in the back of the Land Rover as trim and dangerous looking and cheerful as ever.

“Good morning, General,” he said. “Where is your cavalry?”

“Sir,” I said. “They are screening the main body. This is the main body.”

“I suppose the main body is Miss Mary. You haven’t strained yourself thinking this all out have you?”

“You look a little battle fatigued yourself.”

“I’m damned tired actually. But there’s some good news. Our pals in Laitokitok are all going in the bag finally.”

“Any orders, Gin Crazed?”

“Just continue the exercise, General. We’ll drink a cold one and I must see Miss Mary and be off.”

“Did you drive all night?”

“I don’t remember. Will Mary be over soon?”

“I’ll get her.”

“How is she shooting?”

“God knows,” I said piously.

“We’d better have a short code,” G.C. said. “I’ll signal shipment received if they come out the way they should.”

“I’ll send the same if they show up here.”

“If they come this way I imagine I’ll hear of it through channels,” then as the mosquito bar opened, “Miss Mary. You’re looking very lovely.”

“My,” she said. “I love Chungo. It’s absolutely platonic.”

“Memsahib Miss Mary, I mean.” He bowed over her hand. “Thank you for inspecting the troops. You’re their Honorary Colonel you know. I’m sure they were all most honored. I say, can you ride sidesaddle?”

“Are you drinking too?”

“Yes, Miss Mary,” G.C. said gravely. “And may I add no charges of miscegenation will be preferred for your avowed love for Game Ranger Chungo. The D.C. will never hear of it.”

“You’re both drinking and making fun of me.”

“No,” I said. “We both love you.”

“But you’re drinking though,” Miss Mary said. “What can I make you to drink?”

“A little Tusker with the lovely breakfast,” G.C. said. “Do you agree, General?”

“I’ll go out,” Miss Mary said. “If you want to talk secrets. Or drink beer without being uncomfortable.”

“Honey,” I said, “I know that in the war the people in charge of the war used to tell you everything about it before it happened. But there are many things G.C. doesn’t tell me about. And I am sure there are people who don’t tell G.C. things too long ahead of time. Also when people told you all about everything in the war you weren’t camped in the heart of possibly enemy country. Would you want to be wandering around by yourself knowing projects?”

“Nobody ever lets me wander around by myself and I’m always looked after as though I were helpless and might get lost or hurt. Anyway I’m sick of your speeches and you all playing at mysteries and dangers. You’re just an early morning beer drinker and you get G.C. into bad habits and the discipline of your people is disgraceful. I saw four of your men who had obviously been on a drinking bout all night. They were laughing and joking and still half drunk. Sometimes you’re preposterous.”

There was a heavy cough outside the door of the tent. I went outside and there was the Informer, taller, and more dignified than ever and impressive in his shawl-wrapped, porkpie-hatted drunkenness.

“Brother, your Number One Informer is present,” he said. “May I enter and make my compliments to the Lady Miss Mary and place myself at her feet?”

“Bwana Game is talking with Miss Mary. He’ll be out directly.”

Bwana Game came out of the mess tent and the Informer bowed. G.C.’s usually merry and kind eyes closed like a cat’s and peeled the layer of protective drunkenness from the Informer as you might slice the outer layers from an onion or strip the skin from a plantain.

“What’s the word from town, Informer?” I asked.

“Everyone was surprised that you did not fly down the main street nor show Britain’s might in the air.”

“Spell it ‘mite,’ ” G.C. said.

“To respectfully inform I did not spell it. I enunciated it,” the Informer went on. “All of the village knew that the Bwana Mzee was in search of marauding elephants and had no time for aerial display. A Mission-educated owner of a Shamba returned to the village late in the afternoon having flown with the ndege of Bwana and he is being tailed by one of the children of the bar and duka run by the bearded Sikh. The child is intelligent and all contacts are being noted. There are between one hundred and fifty and two hundred and twenty certifiable Mau Mau in the village or within short outlying districts. Arap Meina appeared in the village shortly after the arrival of the airborne owner of the Shamba and devoted himself to his usual drunkenness and neglect of duty. He is voluble in talking about the Bwana Mzee in whose presence I stand. His story, which has wide credence, is that the Bwana occupies a position in America similar to that of the Aga Khan in the Moslem world. He is here in Africa to fulfill a series of vows he and Memsahib Lady Miss Mary have made. One of these vows deals with the need for the Memsahib Lady Miss Mary to kill a certain cattle-killing lion indicated by the Masai before the Birthday of the Baby Jesus. It is known and believed that a great part of the success of all things known depend on this. I have informed certain circles that after this vow has been performed the Bwana and I will make the visit to Mecca in one of his aircraft. It is rumored that a young Hindu girl is dying for the love of Bwana Game. It is rumored—”

“Shut up,” said G.C. “Where did you learn the word tailed?”

“I also attend the cinema when my small wages permit. There is much to learn in the cinema for an informer.”

“You are almost forgiven,” G.C. said. “Tell me. Is the Bwana Mzee regarded as sane in the village?”

“With all respect, Bwanas, he is regarded as mad in the greatest tradition of Holy Men. It is rumored too that if the Honorable Lady Miss Mary does not kill the marauding lion before the Birthday of the Baby Jesus the Memsahib will commit suttee. Permission, it is said, has been obtained for this from the British Raj and special trees have been marked and cut for her funeral pyre. These trees are those from which the Masai make the medicine which both of you Bwanas know. It is said that in the event of this suttee, to which all tribes have been invited, there will be a giant Ngoma lasting a week, after which Bwana Mzee will take a Kamba wife. The girl has been chosen.”

“Is there no other news from town?”

“Almost none,” the Informer said modestly. “Some talk about the ritual killing of a leopard.”

“You are dismissed,” G.C. said to the Informer. The Informer bowed and retired to the shade of a tree.

“Well, Ernie,” G.C. said. “Miss Mary had better bloody well kill this lion.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve thought so for some time.”

“No wonder she is a little irascible.”

“No wonder.”

“It’s not the Empire nor white prestige since you seem to have rather withdrawn from us palefaces for the moment. It’s become rather personal. We have those five hundred rounds on nonexistent arms licenses that your outfitter sent out rather than hang if they were found on him. I think they might be impressive in a suttee in the very center of the pyre. I don’t know the drill unfortunately.”

“I’ll get it from Mr. Singh.”

“It puts a little heat on Miss Mary,” G.C. said.

“I understand suttee always does.”

“She’ll kill the lion but make good peace with her and handle it sweetly and well and try to make him confident.”

“That was the plan.”

I spoke to G.C.’s people and I made a few jokes and they were off driving wide around the camp to keep from raising dust. Keiti and I talked about the camp and the way things were going and he was very cheerful so I knew everything was all right. He had walked down to the river and across to the road while the dew was still fresh and had seen no tracks of people. He had sent Ngui on a wide circle up past the meadow where the airstrip was and he had seen nothing. No one had come to any of the Shambas.

“They will think I am a careless fool that the men go twice in a row to drink at night,” he said. “But I told them to say that I had fever. Bwana, you must sleep today.”

“I will. But I must go now and see what Memsahib wishes to do.”

At the camp I found Mary sitting in her chair under the biggest tree writing in her diary. She looked up at me and then smiled and I was very glad.

“I’m sorry I was cross,” she said. “G.C. told me a little about your problems. I’m just sorry they come at Christmastime.”

“I am too. You’ve put up with so much and I want you to have fun.”

“I’m having fun. It’s such a wonderful morning and I’m enjoying it and watching the birds and identifying them. Have you seen that wonderful roller? I’d be happy just watching the birds.”

It was quiet around camp and everyone had settled into normal life. I felt badly about Mary having the feeling she was never allowed to hunt alone and I had realized long before why white hunters were paid as well as they were and I understood why they shifted camp to hunt their clients where they could protect them accurately. Pop would never have hunted Miss Mary here, I knew, and would have taken no nonsense. But I remembered how women almost always fell in love with their white hunters and I hoped something spectacular would come up where I could be my client’s hero and thus become beloved as a hunter by my lawful wedded wife instead of her unpaid and annoying bodyguard. Such situations do not come by too often in real life and when they do they are over so quickly, since you do not permit them to develop, that the client thinks they were extremely facile. It seemed natural I should be reprimanded and it was certainly not the way a white hunter, that iron-nerved panderer to what a woman expects, should behave.

I went to sleep in the big chair under the big shade tree and when I woke the clouds had come down from the Chulus and were black across the flank of the Mountain. The sun was still out but you could feel the wind coming and the rain behind it. I shouted to Mwindi and to Keiti and by the time the rain hit, coming across the plain and through the trees in a solid white, then torn curtain everyone was pounding stakes, loosening and tightening guy ropes and then ditching. It was a heavy rain and the wind was wild. For a moment it looked as though the main sleeping tent might go but it held when we pegged the windward end heavily. Then the roar of the wind was gone and the rain held steadily. It rained all that night and nearly all of the next day.

During the rain of the first evening a native policeman came in with a message from G.C., “Shipment passed through.” The askari was wet and had walked from where a truck was stranded up the road. The river was too deep to cross.

I wondered how G.C. had the word so quickly and had been able to send it back. He must have run into a scout who was bringing it to him and sent it back by one of the Hindu lorries. There was no more problem so I went out in my raincoat through the driving rain walking in the heavy mud and around the running streams and lakes of water to the lines and told Keiti. He was surprised that there had been a signal so soon but happy that the alert was over. It would have been a difficult problem as conditions were to continue the exercise in the rain. I left work with Keiti to tell Arap Meina he could sleep in the mess tent if he showed up and Keiti said Arap Meina was too intelligent to show up to keep watch by a fire in this rain.

As it turned out Arap Meina turned up, really wet, having walked all the way from the Shamba in the worst of the storm. I gave him a drink and asked him if he did not want to stay and put on dry clothes and sleep in the mess tent. But he said that he would rather go back to the Shamba where he had dry clothes and that it was better for him to be there because this rain would last another day and maybe two days. I asked him if he had seen it coming and he said that he had not and neither had anyone else and that if they said they had they were liars. For a week it had looked as though it would rain and then it had come with no warning. I gave him an old cardigan of mine to wear next to his skin and a short waterproof skiing jacket and put two bottles of beer in the back pocket and he took a small drink and set off. He was a fine man and I wished that I had known him all my life and that we had spent our lives together. I thought for a moment about how odd our lives would have been in certain places and that made me happy.

We were all spoiled by too much perfect weather and the older men were more uncomfortable and intolerant of the rain than the young outfit. Also they did not drink, being Mohammedans, and so you could not give them a shot to warm them when they were soaked through.

There had been much discussion as to whether this rain could also have fallen in their own tribal lands in the Machakos area and the general opinion was that it had not. But as it kept up and rained steadily all night everyone was cheered that it was probably falling in the north as well. It was pleasant in the mess tent with the heavy beating of the rain and I read and drank a little and did not worry at all about anything. Everything had been taken out of my control and I welcomed, as always, the lack of responsibility and the splendid inactivity with no obligation to kill, pursue, protect, intrigue, defend or participate and I welcomed the chance to read. We were getting a little far down into the book bag but there were still some hidden values mixed in with the required reading and there were twenty volumes of Simenon in French that I had not read. If you are to be rained in while camped in Africa there is nothing better than Simenon and with him I did not care how long it rained. You draw perhaps three good Simenons out of each five but an addict can read the bad ones when it rains and I would start them, mark them bad, or good; there is no intermediate grade with Simenon and then having classified a half dozen and cut the pages, I would read happily, transferring all my problems to Maigret, bearing with him in his encounters with idiocy and the Quai des Orfieves, and very happy in his sagacious and true understanding of the French, a thing only a man of his nationality could achieve, since Frenchmen are barred by some obscure law from understanding themselves sous peine des travaux forcés à la perpétuité.

Miss Mary seemed resigned to the rain, which was steadier now and no less heavy, and she had given up writing letters and was reading something that interested her. It was The Prince by Machiavelli. I wondered what it would be like if it should rain three days or four. With Simenon in the quantities that I possessed of him I was good for a month if I stopped reading and thought between books, pages or chapters. Driven by continuing rain I could think between paragraphs, not thinking of Simenon but of other things, and I thought I could last a month quite easily and profitably even if there should be nothing to drink and I should be driven to using Arap Meina’s snuff or trying out the different brews from the medicinal trees and plants we had come to know. Watching Miss Mary, her attitude exemplary, her face beautiful in repose as she read, I wondered what would happen to a person who since little past her adolescence had been nurtured on the disasters of daily journalism, the problems of Chicago social life, the destruction of European civilization, the bombing of large cities, the confidences of those who bombed other large cities in retaliation, and the large- and small-scaled disasters, problems and incalculable casualties of marriage which are only relieved by some painkilling unguent, a primitive remedy against the pox, the paste compounded of newer and finer violences, changes of scene, extensions of knowledge, exploration of the different arts, the places, the people, the beasts, the sensations; I wondered what a six-week rain would be to her. But then I remembered how good and fine and brave she was and how much she had put up with through many years and I thought she would be better at it than I would. Thinking this I saw her put down her book, go and unhook her raincoat, put it on, put on her floppy hat and start out in the straight up and down rain to see how her troops were.

I’d seen them in the morning and they were uncomfortable but fairly cheerful. The men all had tents and there were picks and shovels for ditching and they had seen and felt rain before. It seemed to me that if I were trying to keep dry under a pup tent and live through a rain I would want as few people in waterproof clothing, high boots and hats inspecting my living conditions as possible, especially since they could do nothing to better them except see that some local grog was served. But then I realized this was no way to think and that the way to get along on a trip was not to be critical of your partner and, after all, visiting the troops was the only positive action there was to offer her.

When she came back and flapped the rain from her hat, hung her Burberry on the tent pole and changed her boots for dry slippers I asked how the troops were.

“They’re fine,” she said. “It is wonderful how they keep the cooking fire sheltered.”

“Did they come to attention in the rain?”

“Don’t be bad,” she said. “I just wanted to see how they cooked in this rain.”

“Did you see?”

“Please don’t be bad and let’s be happy and have a good time since we have the rain.”

“I was having a good time. Let’s think about how wonderful it will be after the rain.”

“I don’t have to,” she said. “I’m happy with being forced to do nothing. We have such a wonderful exciting life every day that it is good to be forced to stop and appreciate it. When it is over we are going to wish we’d had time to appreciate it more.”

“We’ll have your diary. Do you remember how we used to read it in bed and remember that wonderful trip through the snow country out around Montpelier and the east end of Wyoming after the blizzard and the tracks in the snow and how we would see the eagles and racing with the streamliner that was the Yellow Peril and all the way along the border in Texas and when you used to drive? You kept a lovely diary then. Do you remember when the eagle caught the possum and he was so heavy he had to drop him?”

“This time I’m always tired and sleepy. Then we’d stop early and be in a motel with a light to write by. It’s harder now when you’ve been up since daylight and you can’t write in bed and have to write it outside and so many unknown bugs and insects come to the light. If I knew the names of the insects that interfere with me it would be simpler.”

“We have to think about poor people like Thurber and how Joyce was finally when they get so they can’t even see what they write.”

“I can hardly read mine sometimes and thank God no one else can read it with the things I put down.”

“We put in rough jokes because this has been a rough-joking outfit.”

“You and G.C. joke so very rough and Pop jokes quite rough too. I joke rough too I know. But not as bad as all of you.”

“Some jokes are all right in Africa but they don’t travel because people don’t realize what the country and the animals are like where it is all the world of the animals and they have predators. People who have never known predators don’t know what you are talking about. Nor people that never had to kill their meat nor if they don’t know the tribes and what is natural and normal. I put it very badly I know, kittner, but I’ll try and write it so it can be understood. But you have to say so many things that most people will not understand nor conceive of doing.”

“I know,” Mary said. “And the liars write the books and how can you compete with a liar? How can you compete with a man who writes how he shot and killed a lion and then they carried him to camp in a lorry and suddenly the lion came alive? How can you compete with the truth against a man who says the Great Ruaha was maggoty with crocodiles? But you don’t have to.”

“No,” I said. “And I won’t. But you can’t blame the liars because all a writer of fiction is really is a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men. I am a writer of fiction and so I am a liar too and invent from what I know and that I’ve heard. I’m a liar.”

“But you would not lie to G.C., or Pop, or me on what a lion did, or a leopard did, or what a buff did.”

“No. But that is private. My excuse is that I make the truth as I invent it truer than it would be. That is what makes good writers or bad. If I write in the first person, stating it is fiction, critics now will still try to prove these things never happened to me. It is as silly as trying to prove Defoe was not Robinson Crusoe so therefore it is a bad book. I’m sorry if I sound like speeches. But we can make speeches together on a rainy day.”

“I love to talk about writing and what you believe and know and care about. But it’s only on a rainy day that we can talk.”

“I know it, kittner. That’s because we’re here in a strange time.”

“I wish I’d known it in the old days with you and Pop.”

“I was never here in the old days. They just seem old now. Actually now is much more interesting. We couldn’t have been friends and brothers the way we are now in the old days. Pop never would have let me. When Mkola and I got to be brothers it wasn’t respectable. It was just condoned. Now Pop tells you all sorts of things he never would have told me in the old days.”

“I know. I’m very honored that he tells me.”

“Honey, are you bored? I’m perfectly happy reading and not being wet in the rain. You have to write letters too.”

“No. I love for us to talk together. It’s the thing I miss when there is so much excitement and work and we’re never alone except in bed. We have a wonderful time in bed and you say lovely things to me. I remember them and the fun. But this is a different kind of talking.”

The rain was still a steady, heavy beating on the canvas. It had replaced all other things and it fell without varying its beat or its rhythm.

“Lawrence tried to tell about it,” I said. “But I could not follow him because there was so much cerebral mysticism. I never believed he had slept with an Indian girl. Nor even touched one. He was a sensitive journalist sightseeing in Indian country and he had hatreds and theories and prejudices. Also he could write beautifully. But it was necessary for him, after a time, to become angry to write. He had done some things perfectly and he was at the point of discovering something most people do not know when he began to have so many theories.”

“I follow it pretty well,” Miss Mary said, “but what does it have to do with the Shamba? I like your fiancée very much because she is a lot like me and I think she’d be a valuable extra wife if you need one. But you don’t have to justify her by some writer. Which Lawrence were you talking about, D.H. or T.E.?”

“OK,” I said. “I think you make very good sense and I’ll read Simenon.”

“Why don’t you go to the Shamba and try living there in the rain?”

“I like it here,” I said.

“She’s a nice girl,” Miss Mary said. “And she may think it’s not very genteel of you to not turn up when it rains.”

“Want to make peace?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good. I won’t talk balls about Lawrence and dark mysteries and we’ll stay here in the rain and the hell with the Shamba. I don’t think Lawrence would like the Shamba too much anyway.”

“Did he like to hunt?”

“No. But that’s nothing against him, thank God.”

“Your girl wouldn’t like him then.”

“I don’t think she would. But thank God that’s nothing against him either.”

“Did you ever know him?”

“No. I saw him and his wife once in the rain outside of Sylvia Beach’s book shop in the Rue de l’Odéon. They were looking in the window and talking but they didn’t go in. His wife was a big woman in tweeds and he was small in a big overcoat with a beard and very bright eyes. He didn’t look well and I did not like to see him getting wet. It was warm and pleasant inside Sylvia’s.”

“I wonder why they didn’t go in?”

“I don’t know. That was before people spoke to people they did not know and long before people asked people for autographs.”

“How did you recognize him?”

“There was a picture of him in the shop behind the stove. I admired a book of stories he wrote called The Prussian Officer very much and a novel called Sons and Lovers. He used to write beautifully about Italy too.”

“Anybody who can write ought to be able to write about Italy.”

“They should. But it’s difficult even for Italians. More difficult for them than for anyone. If an Italian writes at all well about Italy he is a phenomenon. Stendhal wrote the best about Milan.”

“The other day you said all writers were crazies and today you say they’re all liars.”

“Did I say they were all crazies?”

“Yes, you and G.C. both said it.”

“Was Pop here?”

“Yes. He said all Game Wardens were crazy and so were all White Hunters and the White Hunters had been driven crazy by the Game Wardens and the writers and by motor vehicles.”

“Pop is always right.”

“He told me never to mind about you and G.C. because you were both crazy.”

“We are,” I said. “But you mustn’t tell outsiders.”

“But you don’t really mean all writers are crazy?”

“Only the good ones.”

“But you got angry when that man wrote a book about how you were crazy.”

“Yes, because he did not know about it nor how it worked. Just as he knew nothing about writing.”

“It’s awfully complicated,” Miss Mary said.

“I won’t try to explain it. I’ll try to write something to show you how it works.”

So I sat for a while and reread La Maison du Canal and thought about the animals getting wet. The hippos would be having a good time today. But it was no day for the other animals and especially for the cats. The game had so many things that bothered them that the rain would only be bad for those that never had known it and those would only be the beasts born since the last rain. I wondered if the big cats killed in the rain when it was as heavy as this. They must have to, to live. The game would be much easier to approach but the lion and leopard and cheetah must hate to get so wet when they hunted. Maybe the cheetah not so much because they seemed part dog and their coats were made for wet weather. The snake holes would be full of water and the snakes would be out and this rain would bring the flying ants too.

I thought how lucky we were this time in Africa to be living long enough in one place so that we knew the individual animals and knew the snake holes and the snakes that lived in them. When I had first been in Africa we were always in a hurry to move from one place to another to hunt beasts for trophies. If you saw a cobra it was an accident as it would be to find a rattler on the road in Wyoming. Now we knew many places where cobras lived. We still discovered them by accident but they were in the area where we lived and we could return to them afterwards and when, by accident, we killed a snake he was the snake who lived in a particular place and hunted his area as we lived in ours and moved out from it. It was G.C. who had given us this great privilege of getting to know and live in a wonderful part of the country and have some work to do that justified our presence there and I always felt deeply grateful to him.

The time of shooting beasts for trophies was long past with me. I still loved to shoot and to kill cleanly. But I was shooting for the meat we needed to eat and to back up Miss Mary and against beasts that had been outlawed for cause and for what is known as control of marauding animals, predators and vermin. I had shot one impala for a trophy and an oryx for meat at Magadi which turned out to have fine enough horns to make it a trophy and I had shot a single buffalo in an emergency which served for meat at Magadi when we were very short and which had a pair of horns worth keeping to recall the manner of the small emergency Mary and I had shared. I remembered it now with happiness and I knew I would always remember it with happiness. It was one of those small things that you can go to sleep with, that you can wake with in the night and that you could recall if necessary if you were ever tortured.

“Do you remember the morning with the buff, kittner?” I asked.

She looked across the mess table and said, “Don’t ask me things like that. I’m thinking about the lion.”

That night after cold supper we went to bed early, since Mary had written her diary in the late afternoon, and lay in bed listening to the heaviness of the rain on that taut canvas.

But in spite of the steady noise of the rain I did not sleep well and I woke twice sweating with nightmares. The last one was a very bad one and I reached out under the mosquito net and felt for the water bottle and the square flask of gin. I brought it into the bed with me and then tucked the netting back under the blanket and the air mattress of the cot. In the dark I rolled my pillow up so I could lay back with my head against it and found the small balsam-needle pillow and put it under my neck. Then I felt for my pistol alongside my leg and for the electric torch and then unscrewed the top of the flask of gin.

In the dark with the heavy noise of the rain I took a swallow of the gin. It tasted clean and friendly and made me brave against the nightmare. The nightmare had been about as bad as they come and I have had some bad ones in my time. I knew I could not drink while we were hunting Miss Mary’s lion; but we would not be hunting him tomorrow in the wet. Tonight was a bad night for some reason. I had been spoiled by too many good nights and I had come to think that I did not have nightmares anymore. Well I knew now. Perhaps it was because the tent was so battened down against the rain that there was no proper ventilation. Perhaps it was because I had had no exercise all day.

I took another swallow of the gin and it tasted even better and more like the old Giant Killer. It had not been such an exceptional nightmare, I thought. I’ve had much worse than that. But what I knew was that I had been through with nightmares, the real ones that could drench you in sweat, for a long time and I had only had good or bad dreams and most of the night they were good dreams. Then I heard Mary say, “Papa are you drinking?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Could I have some too?”

I reached the flask over from under the net and she put her hand out and took it.

“Do you have the water?”

“Yes,” I said and reached it over too. “You have yours too by your bed.”

“But you told me to be careful about things and I did not want to wake you with the light.”

“Poor kitten. Haven’t you slept?”

“Yes. But I had the most awful dreams. Too bad to tell before breakfast.”

“I had some bad ones too.”

“Here’s the Jinny flask back,” she said. “In case you need it. Hold my hand tight, please. You aren’t dead and G.C. isn’t dead and Pop isn’t dead.”

“No. We’re all fine.”

“Thank you so much. And you sleep too. You don’t love anybody else do you? White I mean?”

“No. Not white nor black nor red all over.”

“Sleep well, my blessed,” she said. “Thank you for the lovely midnight drink.”

“Thank you for killing the nightmares.”

“That’s one of the things I’m for,” she said.

I lay and thought about that for a long time remembering many places and really bad times and I thought how wonderful it would be now after the rain and what were nightmares anyway and then I went to sleep and woke sweating again with the horrors but I listened carefully and heard Mary breathing softly and regularly and then I went back to sleep to try it once more.