Nicholas worked swiftly. His knives were of a special design to
facilitate the fine work, and he stropped them at regular intervals on a
ceramic sharpening rod until he could shave the hairs from his forearm
with just the lightest touch.
The legs had to be skinned out with the tiny hooves still attached.
Before he had completed this part of the work, another figure stooped
into the hut. He was dressed in a priest's shamma and headcloth, and
until he spoke Nicholas did not recognize Mek Nimmur.
"I hear that you have been looking for trouble again, Nicholas. I came
to make sure that you were still alive.
There was a rumour at the monastery that you had drowned yourself,
though I knew it was not possible. You will not die so easily."
"I hope you are right, Mek," Nicholas laughed at him.
Mek squatted opposite him. "Give me one of your knives and I will finish
the hooves. It will go quicker if I help you."
Without comment Nicholas passed him one of the knives. He knew that Mek
could skin out the hooves, for years before he had taught him the art.
With two of them working on the pelt, it would go that much faster. The
sooner the skin was off, the less chance there would be of
deterioration.
He turned his attention to the head. This was the most delicate part of
the process. The skin had to be peeled off like a glove, and the eyelids
and lips and nostrils must be worked from the inside. The ears were
perhaps the most difficult to lift away from the gristle in one piece.
They worked in companionable silence for a while, which Mek broke at
last.
"How well do you know your Russian, Boris Brusilov?" he asked.
"I met him for the first time when I stepped off the plane. He was
recommended by a friend."
"Not a very good friend." Mek looked up at him and his expression was
grim. "I came to warn you about him, Nicholas."
"I a listening," said Nicholas quietly.
"In "85 I was captured by Mengistu's thugs. They kept me in the Karl
Marx prison camp near Addis. Brusilov was one of the interrogators
there. He was KGB in those days.
His favourite trick was to stick the pressure hose from a compressor up
the anus of the man or woman he was questioning and turn on the tap.
They blew up like a balloon, until the gut burst." He stopped speaking
while he moved around to work on the other hoof of the antelope.
"I escaped before he got around to questioning me. He retired when
Mengistu fled, and went hunting. I don't know how he persuaded Tessay to
marry him, ut knowing what I do of the man, I expect she did not have
much choice in the matter."
"Of course, I had my suspicions about him," Nicholas admitted.
They were quiet after that until Mek whispered, "I came to tell you that
I may have to kill him."
Neither of them spoke again until Mek had finished working on all four
hooves. Then he stood up. "These days, life is uncertain, Nicholas. If I
have to leave here in a hurry, and I do not have a chance to say goodbye
to you, then there is somebody in Addis who will pass a message to me if
you ever need me. His name is Colonel Maryam Kidane in the Ministry of
Defence. He is a friend. My code name is the Swallow. He will know who
you are talking about."
They embraced briefly. "Go with GodV said Mek, and left the hut quietly.
The night swallowed his robed figure and Nicholas stood for a long time
at the door, until at last he turned back to finish the work.
It was late by the time he had rubbed every inch of the skin with a
mixture of rock salt and Kabra dip to cure it and protect it from the
ravages of the bacon beetle and other insects and bacteria. At last he
laid it out on the floor of the hut with the wet side uppermost and
packed more rock salt on the raw areas.
The walls of the hut were reinforced with mesh netting to keep out
hyenas. One of these foul creatures could gobble down the pelt in a few
seconds. He made certain the door was wired shut before he carried the
lantern up to the dining hut. The others had all eaten and gone to bed
hours earlier, but Tessay had left his dinner in the charge of the
Ethiopian chef. He had not realized how hungry he was until he smelt it.
The next morning Nicholas was so stiff that he hobbled down to the
skinning hut like an old man. First he checked the pelt and poured
fresh salt over it, then he ordered Kif and Satin to bury the skull of
the dik-dik in an ant heap to allow the insects to remove the surplus
flesh and scour the brain pan. He preferred this method to boiling the
skull.
Satisfied that the trophy was in good condition, he went on down to the
dining hut, where Boris greeted him jovially.
"And so, English. We leave for Addis now, da? "thing more to do here."
"We will stay to photograph the ceremony of Timkat at the
monastery,'Nicholas told him. "And after that I may want to hunt a
Menelik's bushbuck. Who knows? I've told you before. We go when I say
so."
Boris looked disgruntled. "You are crazy, English. Why do you want to
stay in this heat to watch these people and their mumbo'jumbo?"
"Today I will go fishing, and tomorrow we will watch Timkat."
"You do not have a fishing rod," Boris protested, but pened the small
canvas roll no larger than a Nicholas woman's handbag and showed him
the four-piece Hardy Smuggler rod nestling in it.
He looked across the table at Royan, "Are you coming along to ghillie
for me?" he asked.
They went upstream to the suspension bridge where Nicholas set up the
rodand tied a fly on to his leader.
"Royal Coachm " He held it up for her appraisal.
an.
"Fish love them anywhere in the world, from Patagonia to Alaska. We
shall soon find out if they are as popular here in Ethiopia, as well."
She watched from the top of the bank as he shot out line, rolling it
upon itself in flight, sailing the weightless fly out to midstream, and
then laying it gently on the surface of the water so that it floated
lightly on the ripples. On his second cast there was a swirl under the
fly. The rod tip arced over sharply, the reel whined and Nicholas let
out a whoop.
"Gotcha, my beauty!'
watched him indulgently from the top of the bank.
Sh In his excitement and enthusiasm he was like a small boy.
She smiled when she noticed how his injuries had miraculously healed
themselves, and how he no longer limped as he ran back and forth along
the water's edge, playing the fish. Ten minutes later he slid it,
gleaming like a bar of freshly minted gold as long as his arm, sopping
and flapping up on to the beach.
"Yellow fish," he told her triumphantly. "Scrumptious.
Breakfast for tomorrow morning."
He came up the bank and dropped down in the grass beside her. "The
fishing was really just an excuse to get away from Boris. I brought you
here to tell you about what I found up there yesterday." He pointed up
through the archway of pink stone above the bridge. She came up on her
elbow and watched him with her full attention.
"Of course, I have no way of telling if it has anything to do with our
search, but somebody has been working in there." He described the niches
that he had found carved into the canyon wall. "They reach from the lip
right down to the water's edge. Those below the high-water mark have
been severely eroded by the floods. I could not reach those higher up,
but from what I could see they have been protected from wind and rain by
the dished shape of the Cliff., it has formed a veranda roof over them.
They appear to be in pristine condition, very much in contrast to those