“Honey,” I said. “Would you maybe order breakfast? There’s Tommy liver and bacon.”
She called Nguili and ordered her breakfast very graciously.
“What were you smiling about in your sleep after you had your tea?”
“Oh, that was my wonderful dream. I met the lion and he was so nice to me and so cultured and polite. He’d been at Oxford, he said, and he spoke with practically a BBC voice. I was sure I had met him before someplace and then suddenly he ate me up.”
“We live in very difficult times,” I said. “I guess when I saw you smiling was before he ate you up.”
“It must have been,” she said. “I’m sorry I was cross. He ate me up so suddenly. He never gave any sign that he disliked me. He didn’t roar or anything like the Magadi lion.”
I kissed her and then Nguili brought in the beautiful small slices of browned liver with upcountry bacon spread across them, fried potatoes and coffee and tinned milk and a dish of stewed apricots.
“Please have one piece of the liver and bacon,” Mary said. “Are you going to have a rough day, darling?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Will I be able to fly?”
“It doesn’t look like it. But maybe if there’s time.”
“Is there a lot of work?”
I told her what we had to do and she said, “I’m so sorry I came in cross. It was just the lion eating me up I think. Eat the liver and bacon and finish the beer, honey, and take it easy until the ndege comes. Nothing has reached the no hay remedio stage. Don’t ever even think it in your sleep.”
“Don’t you ever think about the lion eating you up either.”
“I never do in the daytime. I’m not that sort of girl.”
“I’m not a no hay remedio boy, really.”
“Yes. You are a little bit. But you’re happier now than when I first knew you, aren’t you?”
“I’m truly happy with you.”
“And you’re happy with everything else too. My, it will be wonderful to see Willie again.”
“He’s much better than either of us.”
“But we can try to be better,” Mary said.
We did not know what time the plane would be in nor even if it would surely come. There had been no confirmation of the signal the young police officer had sent but I expected the plane from one o’clock on; although if there was any weather building over the Chulus or on the eastern flank of the Mountain, Willie might come earlier. I got up and looked at the weather. There was some cloud over the Chulus but the Mountain looked good.
“I wish I could fly today,” Mary said.
“You’ll fly plenty, honey. Today’s just a job.”
“But will I fly over the Chulus?”
“I promise. We’ll fly anywhere you want.”
“After I kill the lion I’d like to fly into Nairobi to get the things for Christmas. Then I want to be back in time to get a tree to have it beautiful. We picked out a fine tree before that rhino came. It will be really beautiful but I have to get all the things for it and everybody’s presents.”
“After we kill the lion Willie can come down with the Cessna and you can see the Chulus and we’ll go way up the Mountain if you want and we’ll check the property and then you go back to Nairobi with him.”
“Do we have enough money for that?”
“Sure.”
“I want you to learn and to know about everything so we won’t have just wasted the money. Truly I don’t care what you do as long as it’s good for you. All I want is that you love me the most.”
“I love you the most.”
“I know it. But please don’t do other people harm.”
“Everybody does other people harm.”
“You shouldn’t. I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t hurt other people or spoil their lives. And don’t say no hay remedio. That’s too easy. When it is all fantastic and you all make up your lies and live in this strange world you all have, then it is just fantastic and charming sometimes and I laugh at you. I feel superior to such nonsense and to the unrealness. Please try to understand me, because I’m your brother too. That dirty Informer isn’t your brother.”
“He invented that.”
“Then suddenly the nonsense gets so real that it is like having somebody chop your arm off. Chop it off truly. Not like chop it off in a dream. I mean chop it off truly the way Ngui uses a panga. I know Ngui is your true brother.” I didn’t say anything.
“Then when you speak so harshly to that girl. When you speak like that it’s like watching Ngui butcher. It’s not the lovely life we have where everyone has fun.”
“Haven’t you been having fun?”
“I never was as happy in my life, ever, ever. And now that you have confidence in my shooting, I’m really happy today and confident except I only hope it will last.”
“It will last.”
“But you see what I mean about how it suddenly becomes so different from the lovely dream way it is? The way it is when it is like a dream or the loveliest part of when we were both children? We being here with the Mountain every day more beautiful than anything and you people with your jokes and everyone happy. Everyone is so loving to me and I love them too. And then there is this other thing.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s all a part of the same thing, kitten. Nothing is as simple as it looks. I’m not really rude to that girl. That’s just being sort of formal.”
“Please never be rude to her in front of me.”
“I won’t.”
“Nor to me in front of her.”
“I won’t.”
“You’re not going to take her up to fly in the aircraft are you?”
“No, honey. I promise you that truly.”
“I wish Pop were here or that Willie would come.”
“So do I,” I said, and went out and looked at the weather again. There was a little more cloud over the Chulus but the shoulder of the Mountain was still clear.
“You’re not going to drop that Shamba owner out of the aircraft are you? You and Ngui?”
“Good God, no. Will you believe me that I hadn’t thought of it?”
“I’d thought of it when I heard you talking to him this morning.”
“Who’s getting to have bad thoughts now?”
“It’s not that you think things so bad. All of you do things in that sudden awful way as though there were no consequences.”
“Honey, I think a lot about consequences.”
“But there’s that strange suddenness and the inhumanity and the cruel jokes. There’s death in every joke. When will it start being nice and lovely again?”
“Right away. This nonsense only goes on for a few days more. We don’t think those people are coming down here and they’ll be caught wherever they go.”
“I want it to be the way it was when every morning we woke and knew something wonderful would happen. I hate this hunting men.”
“This isn’t hunting men, honey. You’ve never seen that. That’s what goes on up in the North. Here, everybody is our friend.”
“Not in Laitokitok.”
“Yes, but those people will be picked up. Don’t worry about that.”
“I only worry about all of you when you are bad. Pop was never bad.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I mean bad the way you and G.C. are. Even you and Willie are bad when you’re together.”
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.