7

I SAT DOWN to the eggs and bacon, the toast, coffee and jam. Mary was on her second cup of coffee and seemed quite happy. “Are we really getting anywhere?”

“Yes.”

“But he outsmarts us every morning and he can keep it up forever.”

“No he can’t. We’re going to start to move him a little too far out and he’ll make a mistake and you’ll kill him.”

That afternoon after lunch we did baboon control. We were supposed to keep the population of baboons down to protect the Shambas but we had been doing it in a rather stupid way trying to catch the bands in the open and fire on them as they made for the shelter of the forest. In order neither to sadden nor enrage baboon lovers I will give no details. We were not charged by the ferocious beasts and their formidable canine teeth by the time I reached them were stilled in death. When we got back to camp with the four disgusting corpses G.C. had already arrived.

He was muddy and he looked tired but happy.

“Good afternoon, General,” he said. He looked into the back of the hunting car and smiled. “Babooning I see. Two brace. A splendid bag. Going to have them set up by Roland Ward?”

“I’d thought of a group mounting, G.C., with you and me in the center.”

“How are you, Papa, and how is Miss Mary?”

“Isn’t she here?”

“No. They said she’d gone for a walk with Charo.”

“She’s fine. The lion’s been a little on her mind. But her morale is good.”

“Mine’s low,” G.C. said. “Should we have a drink?”

“I love a drink after babooning.”

“We’re going in for big-time babooning on a large scale,” G.C. said. He took off his beret and then reached into his tunic pocket and brought out a buff envelope. “Read this and memorize our role.”

He called to Nguili to bring drinks and I read the operation orders.

“This makes good sense,” I said. I read it on skipping, temporarily, the parts that had nothing to do with us and that I would have to check on the map, looking for where we came in.

“It does make sense,” G.C. said. “My morale’s not low because of it. It’s what’s holding my morale up.”

“What’s the matter with your morale? Moral problems?”

“No. Problems of conduct.”

“You must have been a wonderful problem child. You have more damned problems than a character in Henry James.”

“Make it Hamlet,” G.C. said. “And I wasn’t a problem child. I was a very happy and attractive child, only slightly too fat.”

“Mary was wishing you were back only this noon.”

“Sensible girl,” G.C. said.

We saw them then coming across the new bright green grass of the meadow; the same size, Charo as black as a man could be, wearing his old soiled turban and a blue coat, Mary bright blond in the sun, her green shooting clothes dark against the bright green of the grass. They were talking happily and Charo was carrying Mary’s rifle and her big bird book. Together they always looked like a numero from the old Cirque Médrano.

G.C. came out from washing up without a shirt on. His whiteness contrasted with the rose brown of his face and neck.

“Look at them,” he said. “What a lovely pair.”

“Imagine running into them if you’d never seen them before.”

“The grass will be over their heads in a week’s time. It’s nearly to their knees now.”

“Don’t criticize the grass. It’s only three days old.”

“Hi, Miss Mary,” G.C. called. “What have you two been up to?”

Mary drew herself up very proudly.

“I killed a wildebeest.”

“And who gave you permission to do that?”

“Charo. Charo said to kill him. He had a broken leg. Really badly broken.”

Charo shifted the big book to his other hand and flopped his arm to show how the leg had been.

“We thought you would want a bait,” Mary said. “You did, didn’t you? He’s close to the road. We heard you come by afterwards, G.C. But we couldn’t see you.”

“You did quite right to kill him and we did need a bait. But what were you doing hunting alone?”

“I wasn’t. I was identifying birds and I have my list. Charo wouldn’t take me where there were any bad beasts. Then I saw the wildebeest and he was standing looking so sad and his leg looked awful with the bone sticking out. Charo said to kill him and I did.”

“Memsahib piga. Kufa!”

“Shot him right behind the ear.”

“Piga! Kufa!” Charo said and he and Miss Mary looked at each other proudly.

“It’s the first time I ever had the responsibility of killing without you or Papa or Pop along.”

“May I kiss you, Miss Mary?” G.C. asked.

“You certainly may. But I’m awfully sweaty.”

They kissed and then we kissed and Mary said, “I’d like to kiss Charo too but I know I shouldn’t. Do you know the impala barked at me just as though they were dogs. Nothing is afraid of Charo and me.”

She shook hands with Charo and he took her book and her rifle over to our tent. “I’d better go and wash too. Thank you for being so nice about my shooting the beast.”

“We’ll send the truck for him and then put him out where he should be.”

I went over to our tent and G.C. went to his tent to dress. Mary was washing with the safari soap and changing her shirt and smelling her fresh shirt that had been washed with a different soap and dried in the sun. We each liked to watch the other bathe but I never watched her when G.C. was around because it could be sort of hard on him. I was sitting on a chair in front of the tent reading and she came over and put her arms around my neck.

“Are you all right, honey?”

“No,” she said. “I was so proud and Charo was so proud and it was one shot whack like the pelota ball hitting the wall of the fronton. He couldn’t have heard the shot even and Charo and I were shaking hands. You know what it’s like to do something yourself for the first time with all the responsibility. You and G.C. know and that’s why he kissed me.”

“Anybody’d kiss you anytime.”

“Maybe if I wanted them to. Or made them. But this wasn’t like that.”

“Why do you feel bad, honey?”

“You know. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“No, I don’t,” I lied.

“I held straight on the center of his shoulder. It was big and black and shiny and I was about twenty yards from him. He was half toward me and looking toward us. I could see his eyes and they looked so sad. He looked as though he would cry. He looked sadder than anything I’ve ever seen and his leg looked awful. Honey, he had such a long sad face. I don’t have to tell G.C. do I?”

“No.”

“I didn’t have to tell you. But we’re going after the lion together and now my god-damn confidence is gone again.”

“You’ll shoot beautifully. I’m proud to be with you with the lion.”

“The awful thing is that I can shoot properly too. You know it.”

“I remember all the beauty shots you made. And all the wonderful times you shot better than anyone at Escondido.”

“You just help me get back my confidence. But there’s such a short time.”

“You’ll get it back and we won’t tell G.C.”

We sent the lorry for the wildebeest. When they came back with him G.C. and I climbed up to have a look at him. They are never a handsome animal when dead. He lay big paunched and dusty, all his bluff gone and his horns gray and undistinguished. “Mary took an awfully fancy shot at him,” G.C. said. The wildebeest’s eyes were glazed and his tongue out. His tongue was dusty too and he had been drilled behind the ear just at the base of the skull.

“Now where do you suppose she actually held?”

“She shot him from only twenty yards. She had a right to hold up there if she wanted to.”

“I’d have thought she’d have taken him through the shoulder,” G.C. said.

I didn’t say anything. There was no use trying to fool him and if I lied to G.C. he would not forgive me.

“What about that leg?” I asked.

“Someone chasing at night with a car. Could be something else.”

“How old would you say it was?”

“Two days. It’s maggoty.”

“Somebody up the hill then. We’ve heard no cars at night. He’d come downhill with the leg anyway. He certainly wouldn’t climb with it.”

“He’s not you and me,” G.C. said. “He’s a wildebeest.”

We had stopped under the hitching post tree and were all getting out. G.C. and I went over to the truck which still held the wildebeest and he explained to his Chief Game Scout and the other scouts who had come up where we wanted the bait tied up. It was only to be dragged up to the tree from the road and then hung up out of reach of hyenas. The lions would pull it down if they came to it. It was to be dragged past where last night’s kill had been. They were to go up and get it up as quickly as possible and return to camp. My people had all the baboon baits hung up and I told Mthuka to wash the car out well. He said he had stopped at the stream and washed it.

We all took our baths. Mary took hers first and I helped dry her with a big towel and held her mosquito boots for her. She put a bathrobe on over her pajamas and went out by the fire to have a drink with G.C. before they started their cooking. I stayed with them until Mwindi came out from the tent and said “Bathi Bwana,” and then I took my drink into the tent and undressed and lay back in the canvas tub and soaped myself and relaxed in the hot water.

“What do the old men say the lion will do tonight?” I asked Mwindi, who was folding my clothes and laying out pajamas, dressing gown and my mosquito boots.

“Keiti says Memsahib’s lion maybe eats on bait maybe not. What does Bwana say?”

“The same as Keiti.”

“Keiti says you mganga with the lion.”

“No. Only a little good medicine to find out when he dies.”

“When he die?”

“In three days. I could not find out which day.”

“Mzuri. Maybe he dies tomorrow.”

“I don’t think so. But he may.”

“Keiti don’t think so either.”

“When does he think?”

“In three days.”

“Mzuri. Please bring me the towel.”

“Towel right by your hand. Bring him if you like.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. There is no word for I’m sorry in Swahili.

“Hapana sorry. I just say where it was. You want me rub back?’ ”

“No thank you.”

“You feel good?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Hapana why. I ask to know.”

“Feel very good.” I stood up and got out of the tub and started to dry myself. I wanted to say that I felt good and very relaxed and a little sleepy and did not feel much like talking and would have preferred fresh meat to spaghetti but had not wished to kill anything and that I was worried about all three of my children for different causes and that I was worried about the Shamba and I was a little worried about G.C. and quite worried about Mary and that I was a fake as a good witch doctor, but no more a fake than the others were, and that I wished Mr. Singh would keep out of trouble and that I hoped the operation we were committed in as from Christmas Day would go well and that I had some more 220 grain solids and that Simenon would write fewer and better books. I did not know all the things Pop would discuss with Keiti when he had his bath but I knew Mwindi wanted to be friendly and so did I. But I was tired tonight for no reason and he knew it and was worried.

“You ask me for Wakamba words,” he said.

So I asked him for Wakamba words and tried to memorize them and then I thanked him and went out to the fire to sit by the fire in an old pair of pajamas from Idaho, tucked into a pair of warm mosquito boots made in Hong Kong and wearing a warm wool robe from Pendleton, Oregon, and drank a whisky and soda made from a bottle of whisky Mr. Singh had given me as a Christmas present and boiled water from the stream that ran down from the Mountain animated by a siphon cartridge made in Nairobi.

I’m a stranger here, I thought. But the whisky said no and it was the time of day for the whisky to be right. Whisky can be as right as it can be wrong and it said I was not a stranger and I knew it was correct at this time of night. Anyway my boots had come home because they were made of ostrich hide and I remembered the place where I had found the leather in the boot-maker’s in Hong Kong. No, it was not me who found the leather. It was someone else and then I thought about who had found the leather and about those days and then I thought about different women and how they would be in Africa and how lucky I had been to have known fine women that loved Africa. I had known some really terrible ones who had only gone there to have been there and I had known some true bitches and several alcoholics to whom Africa had just been another place for more ample bitchery or fuller drunkenness.

Africa took them and changed them all in some ways. If they could not change they hated it.

So I was very happy to have G.C. back in camp and so was Mary. He was happy to be back too because we had become a family and we always missed each other when we were apart. He loved his job and believed in it and its importance almost fanatically. He loved the game and wanted to care for it and protect it and that was about all he believed in, I think, except a very stern and complicated system of ethics.

He was a little younger than my oldest son and if I had gone to Addis Ababa to spend a year and write back in the middle thirties as I had planned I would have known him when he was twelve since his best friend then had been the son of the people I was going out to stay with. But I had not gone because Mussolini’s armies had gone instead and my friend that I had been going out to stay with had been moved to another diplomatic post and so I had missed the chance to know G.C. when he was twelve. By the time I met him he had a long, very difficult and unrewarding war behind him plus the abandonment of a British Protectorate where he had made the start of a fine career. He had commanded irregular troops, which is, if you are honest, the least rewarding way there is to make a war. If an action is fought perfectly so that you have almost no casualties and inflict large losses on the enemy it is regarded at Headquarters as an unjustified and reprehensible massacre. If you are forced to fight under unfavorable conditions and at too great odds and win but have a large butcher bill the comment is, “He gets too many men killed.”

There is no way for an honest man commanding irregulars to get into anything but trouble. There is some doubt as to whether any truly honest and talented soldier can ever hope for anything except to be destroyed.

By the time I met G.C., he was well started in another career in another British Colony. He was never bitter and he did not look back at all. Over the spaghetti and the wine he told us of how he had been reproved by some newly arrived expatriate civil servant for using a bad word which might be overheard by this young man’s wife. I hated for G.C. to have to be bored by these people. The old Pukka Sahibs have been often described and caricatured. But no one has dealt much with these new types except Waugh a little bit at the end of Black Mischief and Orwell completely in Burmese Days. I wished Orwell were still alive and I told G.C. about the last time I had seen him in Paris in 1945 after the Bulge fight and how he had come in what looked something like civilian clothes to Room 117 of the Ritz where there was still a small arsenal to borrow a pistol because “They” were after him. He wanted a small pistol easily concealed and I found one but warned him that if he shot someone with it they probably would die eventually but that there might be a long interval. But a pistol was a pistol and he needed this one more as a talisman than a weapon, I thought.

He was very gaunt and looked in bad shape and I asked him if he would not stay and eat. But he had to go. I told him I could give him a couple of people who would look after him if “They” were after him. That my characters were familiar with the local “They” who would never bother him nor intrude on him. He said no, that the pistol was all he needed. We asked about a few mutual friends and he left. I sent two characters to pick him up at the door and tail him and check if anybody was after him. The next day their report was “Papa nobody is after him. He is a very chic type and he knows Paris very well. We checked with so and so’s brother and he says no one pursues him. He is in touch with the British Embassy but he is not an operative. This is only hearsay. Do you want the timetable of his movements?”

“No. Did he amuse himself?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“I’m happy. We will not worry about him. He has the pistol.”

“That worthless pistol,” one of the characters said. “But you warned him against it, Papa?”

“Yes. He could have had any pistol he wished.”

“Perhaps he would have been happier with a stinger.”

“No,” the other character said. “A stinger is too compromising. He was happy with that pistol.”

We let it go at that.

G.C. did not sleep well and often would lie awake most of the night reading. He had a very good library at his house in Kajiado and I had a big duffel bag full of books that we had arranged in empty boxes in the mess tent as a library. There was an excellent bookstore in the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi and another good one down the road and whenever I had been in town I bought most of the new books that looked worth reading. Reading was the best palliative for G.C.’s insomnia. But it was no cure and I would often see his light on all night in his tent. Because he had a career as well as because he had been brought up properly he could have nothing to do with African women. He did not think they were beautiful either nor attractive and the ones I knew and liked the best did not care for him either. But there was an Ismaili Indian girl who was one of the nicest people I have ever known and she was completely and hopelessly in love with G.C. She had convinced him that it was her sister, who was in strictest purdah, who loved him and she sent him gifts and messages from this sister. It was a sad but also clean and happy story and we all liked it. G.C. had nothing to do with the girl at all except to speak pleasantly to her when he was in her family’s shop. He had his own white Nairobi girls that he was fond of and I never talked with him about them. Mary probably did. But we had no personal gossip among the three of us on serious personal things.

In the Shamba it was different. There and in the lines there were no books to read, no radio, and we talked. I asked the Widow and the girl who had decided she wished to be my wife about why they did not like G.C. and at first they would not tell me. Finally the Widow explained that it was not polite to say. It turned out that it was a question of smell. All people with the color of skin I had smelled very badly usually.

We were sitting under a tree by the bank of a river and I was waiting for some baboons that, by their talking, were working down toward us.

“Bwana Game smells good,” I said. “I smell him all the time. He has a good smell.”

“Hapana,” the Widow said. “You smell like Shamba. You smell like smoked hide. You smell like pombe.” I did not like the smell of pombe and I was not sure I liked smelling like it.

The girl put her head against the back of my bush shirt, which I knew was salty with dried sweat. She rubbed her head against the back of my shoulders and then the back of my neck and then came around for me to kiss her head.

“You see?” the Widow asked. “You smell the same as Ngui.”

“Ngui, do we smell the same?”

“I don’t know how I smell. No man knows. But you smell the same as Mthuka.”

Ngui was sitting against the opposite side of the tree looking downstream. He had his legs drawn up and was resting his head against the tree. He had my new spear beside him.

“Widow, you talk to Ngui.”

“No,” she said. “I look after girl.”

The girl had laid her head in my lap and was fingering the pistol holster. I knew she wanted me to trace the outline of her nose and her lips with my fingers and then touch the line of her chin very lightly and feel the line where she had her hair cut back to make a square line on the forehead and the sides and feel around her ears and over the top of her head. This was a great delicacy of courtship and all I could do if the Widow was there. But she could explore too, gently if she wished.

“You hard-handed beauty.”

“Be good wife.”

“You tell Widow go away.”

“No.”

“Why?”

She told me and I kissed her on top of the head again. She explored very delicately with her hands and then picked my right hand up and put it where she wished it. I held her very close and put the other hand where it should be.

“No,” the Widow said.

“Hapana tu,” the girl said. She turned over and put her head facedown where it had been and said something in Kamba that I could not understand. Ngui looked down the stream and I looked up it and the Widow had moved behind the tree and lay there with our fused, implacable sorrow and I reached up to the tree and got the rifle and laid it by my right leg.

“Go to sleep, tu,” I said.

“No. I sleep tonight.”

“Sleep now.”

“No. Can I touch?”

“Yes.”

“As a last wife.”

“As my hard-handed wife.”

She said something else in Kamba that I did not understand and Ngui said, “Kwenda na campi.”

“I have to stay,” the Widow said. But as Ngui went off walking with his careless walk and casting a long shadow through the trees she walked a little way with him and spoke in Kamba. Then she took up her post about four trees back and looking downstream.

“Are they gone?” the girl asked.

I said yes and she moved up so we lay tight and close together and she put her mouth against mine and we kissed very carefully. She liked to play and explore and be delighted at the reactions and at the scars and she held my earlobes between her thumb and fore-finger where she wanted them pierced. Hers had never been pierced and she wished me to feel where they would be pierced for me and I felt them carefully and kissed them and then bit them a little very gently.

“Really bite them with the dog teeth.”

“No.”

She bit mine a little bit to show me the place and it was a very nice feeling.

“Why did you never do it before?”

“I don’t know. In our tribe we do not do it.”

“It is better to do it. It is better and more honest.”

“We will do many good things.”

“We have already. But I want to be a useful wife. Not a play wife or a wife to leave.”

“Who would leave you?”

“You,” she said.

There is, as I said, no word for love and no word for I am sorry in Kikamba. But I told her in Spanish that I loved her very much and that I loved everything about her from her feet to her head and we counted all the things that were loved and she was truly very happy and I was happy too and I did not think I lied about any one of them nor about all of them.

We lay under the tree and I listened to the baboons coming down toward the river and we slept for a while and then the Widow had come back to our tree and she whispered in my ear, “Nyanyi.”

The wind was blowing down the stream toward us and a troop of baboons were crossing the stream on the rocks of the ford coming out of the bush toward the fence of the mealie Shamba where the maize (our field corn) was twelve and fourteen feet high. The baboons could not smell us and they did not see us lying in the broken shade under the tree. The baboons came out of the bush quietly and started to cross the stream like a raiding party. There were three very big old man baboons at the head, one bigger than the others, walking carefully, their flattened heads and long muzzles and huge heavy jaws swinging and turning. I could see their big muscles, heavy shoulders and thick rumps and the arched and drooping tails and the big heavy bodies and behind them was the tribe, the females and the young ones still coming out of the bush.

The girl rolled away very slowly so I was free to shoot and I raised the rifle carefully and slowly and still lying down stretched it out across my leg and pulled the bolt back, holding it by the knurl with my finger on the trigger and then letting it forward to the cocked position so there was no click.

Still lying down I held on the shoulder of the biggest old dog baboon and squeezed very gently. I heard the thump but did not look to see what had happened to him as I rolled over and got to my feet and started to shoot at the other two big baboons. They were both going back over the rocks toward the bush and I hit the third and then the second as he jumped over him. I looked back at the first baboon and he was lying facedown in the water. The last one I had shot was screaming and I shot and finished him. The others were out of sight. I reloaded in the brush and Debba asked if she could hold the rifle. She stood at attention with it, imitating Arap Meina. “It was so cold,” she said. “Now it is so hot.”

At the shots people had come down from the Shamba. The Informer was with them and Ngui came up with the spear. He had not gone to camp but to the Shamba and I knew how he smelt. He smelt of pombe.

“Three dead,” he said. “All important generals. General Burma. General Korea. General Malaya. Buona notte.”

He had learned “Buona notte” in Abyssinia with the K.A.R. He took the rifle from Debba, who was now holding it very demurely and looking out at the baboons on the rocks and in the water. They were not a handsome sight and I told the Informer to tell the men and boys to haul them out from the stream and sit them up against the fence of the mealie plantation with their hands crossed in their laps. Afterwards I would send some rope and we would hang them from the fence to frighten away the others or place them as baits.

The Informer gave the order and Debba, very demure, formal and detached, watched the big baboons with their long arms, obscene bellies and really bad faces and dangerous jaws being pulled out of the water and up the bank and then being composed in death against the wall. One of the heads was tipped back in contemplation. The other two were sunk forward in the appearance of deep thought. We walked away from this scene toward the Shamba where the car was parked. Ngui and I walked together; I was carrying the rifle again; the Informer walked to one side and Debba and the Widow walked behind.

“Great generals. Important generals,” Ngui said. “Kwenda na campi?”

“How are you feeling Informer old-timer?” I asked.

“Brother, I have no feelings. My heart is broken.”

“What is it?”

“The Widow.”

“She is a very good woman.”

“Yes. But now she wants you to be her protector and she does not treat me with dignity. She wishes to go with you and the small boy that I have cared for as a father to the Land of Mayito. She wishes to care for the Debba who wishes to be the assistant wife to the Lady Miss Mary. Everyone’s thought is bent in this direction and she talks of it to me all night.”

“That’s bad.”

“The Debba should never have carried your gun.” I saw Ngui look at him.

“She did not carry it. She held it.”

“She should not hold it.”

“You say this?”

“No. Of course not, brother. The village says it.”

“Let the village shut up or I will withdraw my protection.”

This was the sort of statement which was valueless. But the Informer was moderately valueless too.

“Also you had no time to hear anything from the village because it happened a half an hour ago. Don’t start to be an intriguer.” Or finish as one I thought.

We had come to the Shamba with the red earth and the great sacred tree and the well-built huts. The Widow’s son butted me in the stomach and stood there for me to kiss the top of his head. I patted the top of his head instead and gave him a shilling. Then I remembered the Informer only made sixty-eight shillings a month and that a shilling was close to half a day’s wages to give to a little boy so I called the Informer to come away from the car and I felt in the pocket of my bush-shirt and found some ten-shilling notes that were sweated together.

I unfolded two and gave them to the Informer.

“Don’t talk balls about who holds my gun. There isn’t a man in this Shamba that could hold a shit-pot.”

“Did I ever say there was, brother?”

“Buy the Widow a present and let me know what goes on in town.”

“It is late to go tonight.”

“Go down to the road and wait for the lorry of the Anglo-Masai.”

“If it does not come, brother?”

Ordinarily he would have said, “Yes, brother.” And the next day, “It did not come, brother.” So I appreciated his attitude and his effort.

“Go at daylight.”

“Yes, brother.”

I felt badly about the Shamba and about the Informer, and the Widow and everyone’s hopes and plans and we drove off and did not look back.

That had been several days ago before the rain and before the lion came back and there was no reason to think of it now except that tonight I was sorry for G.C., who because of custom, law and choice too perhaps had to live alone on safari and had to read all night.

One of the books we had brought with us was Alan Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope. I had found it almost unreadable due to the super-biblical style and the amount of piety in it. The piety seems to be mixed in a cement mixer and then carried in hods to the building of the book and it was not that there was an odor of piety; piety was like the oil on the sea after a tanker had been sunk. But G.C. said it was a good book and so I would read on in it until my brain would feel that it was not worth it to spend time with such stupid, bigoted, awful people as Paton made with their horrible sense of sin because of an act passed in 1927. But when I finally finished it I knew G.C. was right because Paton had been trying to make just such people; but being more than a little pious himself he had bent backwards trying to understand them or, at least, could not condemn them except by more scripture. Until finally in his greatness of soul he approved of them; I saw what G.C. meant about the book though, but it was a sad thing to think of.

G.C. and Mary were talking happily about a city called London that I knew of largely by hearsay and knew concretely only under the most abnormal conditions, so I could listen to them talk and think about Paris. That was a city that I knew under almost all circumstances. I knew it and loved it so well that I never liked to talk about it except with people from the old days. In the old days we all had our own cafés where we went alone and knew no one except the waiters. These cafés were secret places and in the old days everyone who loved Paris had his own café. They were better than clubs and you received the mail there that you did not wish have come to your flat. Usually you had two or three secret cafés. There would be one where you went to work and read the papers. You never gave the address of this café to anyone and you went there in the morning and had a café crême and brioche on the terrace and then, when they had cleaned the corner where your table was, inside and next to the window, you worked while the rest of the café was being cleaned and scrubbed and polished. It was nice to have other people working and it helped you to work. By the time the clients started to come to the café you would pay for your half bottle of Vichy and go out and walk down the quay to where you would have an aperitif and then have lunch. There were secret places to have lunch and also restaurants where people went that you knew.

The best secret places were always discovered by Mike Ward. He knew Paris and loved her better than anyone I knew. As soon as a Frenchman discovered a secret place he would give a huge party there to celebrate the secret. Mike and I hunted secret places that had one or two good small wines and had a good cook, usually a rummy, and were making a last effort to make things go before having to sell out or go into bankruptcy. We did not want any secret places that were becoming successful or going up in the world. That was what always happened with Charley Sweeny’s secret places. By the time he took you there the secret had been so revealed that you had to stand in line to get a table.

But Charley was very good about secret cafés and he had a wonderful security consciousness about his own and yours. These were of course our secondary or afternoon and early evening cafés. This was a time of day when you might want to talk to someone and sometimes I would go to his secondary café and sometimes he would come to mine. He might say he wished to bring a girl he wanted me to meet or I might tell him I would bring a girl. The girls always worked. Otherwise they were not serious. No one, except fools, kept a girl. You did not want her around in the daytime and you did not want the problems she brought. If she wanted to be your girl and worked then she was serious and then she owned the nights when you wanted her and you fed her evenings and gave her things when she needed them. I never brought many girls to show them off to Charley, who always had beautiful and docile girls, all of whom worked and all of whom were under perfect discipline, because at that time my concierge was my girl. I had never known a young concierge before and it was an inspiring experience. Her greatest asset was that she could never go out, not only in society, but at all. When I first knew her, as a locataire, she was in love with a trooper in the Garde Républicaine. He was the horse-tail plumed, medaled, mustached type and his barracks were not very far away in the quarter. He had regular hours for his duty and he was a fine figure of a man and we always addressed each other formally as “Monsieur.”

I was not in love with my concierge but I was very lonely at night at that time and the first time she came up the stairs and through the door, which had the key in it, and then up the ladder that led to the sort of loft where the bed was beside the window that gave such a lovely view over the Cemetery Montparnasse and took off her felt-soled shoes and lay on the bed and asked me if I loved her I answered, loyally, “Naturally.”

“I knew it,” she said. “I’ve known it too long.”

She undressed very quickly and I looked out at the moonlight on the cemetery. Unlike the Shamba she did not smell the same but she was clean and fragile out of sturdy but insufficient nourishment and we paid honor to the view which neither saw. I had it in my mind however and then she said that the last tenant had entered and we lay and she told me that she could never love a member of the Garde Républicaine truly. I said that I thought Monsieur was a nice man, I said un brave homme et très gentil, and that he must look very well on a horse. But she said that she was not a horse and also there were inconveniences.

So I was thinking this about Paris while they were talking of London and I thought that we were all brought up differently and it was good luck we got on so well and I wished G.C. was not lonely nights and that I was too damned lucky to be married to somebody as lovely as Mary and I would straighten things out at the Shamba and try to be a really good husband.

“You’re being awfully silent, General,” G.C. said. “Are we boring you?”

“Young people never bore me. I love their careless chatter. It keeps me from feeling old and unwanted.”

“Balls to you,” G.C. said. “What were you thinking about with the semi-profound look? Not brooding are you or worrying about what the morrow will bring?”

“When I start worrying about what the morrow will bring you’ll see a light burning in my tent late at night.”

“Balls to you again, General,” G.C. said.

“Don’t use rough words, G.C.,” Mary said. “My husband is a delicate and sensitive man and they repugn him.”

“I’m glad something repugns him,” G.C. said. “I love to see the good side of his character.”

“He hides it carefully. What were you thinking about darling?”

“A trooper in the Garde Républicaine.”

“You see?” G.C. said. “I always said he had a delicate side. It comes out completely unexpectedly. It’s his Proustian side. Tell me, was he very attractive? I try to be broad-minded.”

“Papa and Proust used to live in the same hotel,” Miss Mary said. “But Papa always claims it was at different times.”

“God knows what really went on,” G.C. said. He was very happy and not at all taut tonight and Mary with her wonderful memory for forgetting was happy too and without any problems. She could forget in the loveliest and most complete way of anyone I ever knew. She could carry a fight overnight but at the end of a week she could forget it completely and truly. She had a built-in selective memory and it was not built entirely in her favor. She forgave herself in her memory and she forgave you too. She was a very strange girl and I loved her very much. She had, at the moment, only two defects. She was very short for honest lion hunting and she had too good a heart to be a killer and that, I had finally decided, made her either flinch or squeeze off a little when shooting at an animal. I found this attractive and was never exasperated by it. But she was exasperated by it because, in her head, she understood why we killed and the necessity for it and she had come to take pleasure in it, after thinking that she never would kill an animal as beautiful as an impala and would only kill ugly and dangerous beasts. In six months of daily hunting she had learned to love it, shameful though it is basically and unshameful as it is if done cleanly, but there was something too good in her that worked subconsciously and made her pull off the target. I loved her for it in the same way that I could not love a woman who could work in the stockyards or put dogs or cats out of their suffering or destroy horses who had broken their legs at a race course.

“What was the trooper’s name,” G.C. asked. “Albertine?”

“No. Monsieur.”

“He’s baffling us, Miss Mary,” G.C. said.

They went on talking about London. So I started to think about London too and it was not unpleasant although much too noisy and not normal. I realized I knew nothing about London and so I started to think about Paris and in greater detail than before. Actually I was worried about Mary’s lion and so was G.C. and we were just handling it in different ways. It was always easy enough when it really happened. But Mary’s lion had been going on for a long time and I wanted to get him the hell over with.

Finally, when the different dudus, which was the generic name for all bugs, beetles and insects, were thick enough on the dining tent floor so that they made a light crunching when you walked we went to bed.

“Don’t worry about the morrow,” I said to G.C. as he went off to his tent.

“Come here a moment,” he said. We were standing halfway to his tent and Mary had gone into ours. “Where did she aim at that unfortunate wildebeest?”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“No.”

“Go to sleep,” I said. “We don’t come in until the second act anyway.”

“You couldn’t do the old husband and wife thing?”

“No. Charo’s been begging me to do that for a month.”

“She’s awfully admirable,” G.C. said. “You’re even faintly admirable.”

“Just a lot of admirals.”

“Good night, Admiral.”

“Put a telescope to my blind eye and kiss my ass, Hardy.”

“You’re confusing the line of battle.”

Just then the lion roared. G.C. and I shook hands.

“He probably heard you misquoting Nelson,” G.C. said.

“He got tired of hearing you and Mary talk about London.”

“He is in good voice,” G.C. said. “Go to bed, Admiral, and get some sleep.”

In the night I heard the lion roar several more times. Then I went to sleep and Mwindi was pulling on the blanket at the foot of the cot.

“Chai, Bwana.”

It was very dark outside but someone was building up the fire. I woke Mary with her tea but she did not feel well. She felt ill and had bad cramps.

“Do you want to cancel it, honey?”

“No. I just feel awful. After the tea maybe I’ll be better.”

“We can wash it. It might be better to give him another day’s rest.”

“No. I want to go. But just let me try and feel better if I can.”

I went out and washed in the cold water in the basin and washed my eyes with boric, dressed and went out to the fire. I could see G.C. shaving in front of his tent. He finished, dressed and came over.

“Mary feels rocky,” I told him.

“Poor child.”

“She wants to go anyway.”

“Naturally.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Well. You?”

“Very well. What do you think he was doing last night?”

“I think he was just going walkabout. And sounding off.”

“He talks a lot. Want to split a bottle of beer?”

“It won’t hurt us.”

I went and got the beer and two glasses and waited for Mary. She came out of the tent and walked down the path to the latrine tent. She came back and walked down again.

“How do you feel, honey?” I asked when she came over to the table by the fire with her tea. Charo and Ngui were getting the guns and the binoculars and shell bags out from under the tents and taking them to the hunting car.

“I don’t feel good at all. Do we have anything for it?”

“Yes. But it makes you feel dopey. We’ve got Terramycin too. It’s supposed to be good for both kinds but it can make you feel funny too.”

“Why did I have to get something when my lion’s here?”

“Don’t you worry, Miss Mary,” G.C. said. “We’ll get you fit and the lion will get confident.”

“But I want to go out after him.”

She was in obvious pain and I could see it coming back on her again.

“Honey, we’ll lay off him this morning and rest him. It’s the best thing to do anyway. You take it easy and take care of yourself. G.C. can stay a couple of more days anyway.”

G.C. shook his hand, palm down, in negation. But Mary did not see him.

“He’s your lion and you take your time and be in shape to shoot him and all the time we let him alone he will be getting more confident. If we don’t go out at all this morning it’s much better.”

I went over to the car and said we were not going out. Then I went and found Keiti by the fire. He seemed to know all about it but he was very delicate and polite.

“Memsahib is sick.”

“I know.”

“Maybe spaghetti. Maybe dysentery.”

“Yes,” Keiti said. “I think spaghetti.”

“Meat too old.”

“Yes. Maybe little piece. Made in the dark.”

“We leave lion alone take care of Memsahib. The lion gets confident.”

“Mzuri,” Keiti said. “Poli poli. You shoot kwali or kanga. Mbebia make Memsahib broth.”

After we were sure that the lion would have left the bait if he had been on it G.C. and I went out to have a look at the country in his Land Rover.

I asked Ngui for a bottle. It was wrapped in a wet sack and was still cold from the night and we sat in the Land Rover in the shade of the tree and drank it out of the bottle and looked off across the dried mud flat and watched the small Tommies and the black movement of the wildebeest and the zebra that looked a gray white in this light as they moved out across the flat to the grass on the far side and at the end toward the Chulu hills. The hills were a dark blue this morning and looked very far away. When we turned to look back at the great Mountain it looked very close. It seemed to be just behind camp and the snow was heavy and bright in the sun.

“We could hunt Miss Mary on stilts,” I said. “Then she could see him in the tall grass.”

“There’s nothing in the Game Laws against it.”

“Or Charo could carry a stepladder such as they have in libraries for the higher stacks.”

“That’s brilliant,” G.C. said. “We’d pad the rungs and she could take a rest with the rifle on the rung above where she stood.”

“You don’t think it would be too immobile?”

“It’d be up to Charo to make it mobile.”

“It would be a beautiful sight,” I said. “We could mount an electric fan on it.”

“We could build it in the form of an electric fan,” G.C. said happily. “But that would probably be considered a vehicle and illegal.”

“If we rolled it forward and had Miss Mary keep climbing in it like a squirrel would it be illegal?”

“Anything that rolls is a vehicle,” G.C. said judicially.

“I roll slightly when I walk.”

“Then you’re a vehicle. I’ll run you and you’ll get six months and be shipped out of the Colony.”

“We have to be careful, G.C.”

“Care and moderation have been our watchwords haven’t they?”

“Any more in that bottle?”

“We can share the dregs.”