“I am too. I wonder if I can go back there.”
“You will.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think maybe not.”
“There are an awful lot of things I’m not sure I can go back to.”
“I wish we didn’t have to go back at all. I wish we didn’t have any property nor any possessions nor any responsibilities. I wish we only owned a safari outfit and a good hunting car and two good trucks.”
“I’d be the most popular hostess under canvas in the world. I know just how it would be. People would turn up in their private planes and the pilot would get out and open the door for the man and then the man would say, ‘Bet you can’t tell me who I am. I’ll bet you don’t remember me. Who am I?’ Sometime somebody is going to say that and I’m going to ask Charo for my bunduki and shoot the man right straight between the eyes.”
“And Charo can halal him.”
“They don’t eat men.”
“The Wakamba used to. In what you and Pop always refer to as the good old days.”
“You’re part Kamba. Would you eat a man?”
“No.”
“Do you know I’ve never killed a man in my life? Remember when I wanted to share everything with you and I felt so terribly because I had never killed a Kraut and how worried everyone became?”
“I remember very well.”
“Should I make the speech about when I kill the woman who steals your affection?”
“If you’ll make me a Campari and soda too.”
“I will and I’ll make you the speech.”
She poured the red Campari bitters and put in some Gordon’s and then squirted the siphon.
“The gin is a reward for listening to the speech. I know you’ve heard the speech many times. But I like to make it. It’s good for me to make it and it’s good for you to hear it.”
“OK. Start it.”
“Ah hah,” Miss Mary said. “So you think you can make my husband a better wife than I can. Ah hah. So you think you are ideally and perfectly suited to one another and that you will be better for him than I am. Ah hah. So you think that you and he would lead a perfect existence together and at least he would have the love of a woman who understands communism, psychoanalysis and the true meaning of the word love? What do you know about love you bedraggled hag? What do you know about my husband and the things we have shared and have in common?”
“Hear. Hear.”
“Let me go on. Listen, you bedraggled specimen, thin where you should be robust, bursting with fat where you should show some signs of race and breeding. Listen, you woman. I have killed an innocent buck deer at a distance of three hundred and forty estimated yards and have eaten him with no remorse. I have shot the kongoni and the wildebeest which you resemble. I have shot and killed a great and beautiful oryx and that is more beautiful than any woman and has horns more decorative than any man. I have killed more things than you have made passes at and I tell you cease and desist in your mealymouthed mouthings to my husband and leave this country or I will kill you dead.”
“It’s a wonderful speech. You wouldn’t ever make it in Swahili would you?”
“There’s no need to make it in Swahili,” Miss Mary said. She always felt a little like Napoleon at Austerlitz after the speech. “The speech is for white women only. It certainly does not apply to your fiancée. Since when does a good loving husband not have a right to a fiancée if she only wishes to be a supplementary wife? That is an honorable position. The speech is directed against any filthy white woman who thinks that she can make you happier than I can. The upstarts.”
“It’s a lovely speech and you make it more clear and forcible each time.”
“It’s a true speech,” Miss Mary said. “I mean every word of it. But I’ve tried to keep all bitterness and any sort of vulgarity out of it. I hope you didn’t think mealymouthed had anything to do with mealies.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“That’s good. Those were really nice mealies she brought you too. Do you think one time we could have them roasted in the ashes of the fire? I love them that way.”
“Of course we can.”
“Is there anything special about her bringing you four?”
“No. Two for you and two for me.”
“I wish someone were in love with me and brought me presents.”
“Everybody brings you presents every day and you know it. Half the camp cuts toothbrushes for you.”
“That’s true. I have lots of toothbrushes. I still have plenty from Magadi even. I’m glad you have such a nice fiancée though. I wish everything was as simple always as things are here at the foot of the Mountain.”
“They’re not really simple at all. We’re just lucky.”
“I know. And we must be good and kind to each other to deserve all our luck. Oh I hope my lion will come and I’ll be tall enough to see him clearly when the time comes. Do you know how much he means to me?”
“I think so. Everybody does.”
“Some people think I’m crazy I know. But in the old days people went to search for the Holy Grail and for the Golden Fleece and they weren’t supposed to be silly. A great lion is better and more serious than any cups or sheepskins. I don’t care how Holy or Golden they were. Everybody has something that they want truly and my lion means everything to me. I know how patient you’ve been about him and how patient everyone has been. But now I’m sure after this rain I’ll meet him. I can’t wait until the first night that I hear him roar.”
“He has a wonderful roar and you’ll see him soon.”
“Outside people will never understand. But he will make up for everything.”
“I know. You don’t hate him do you?”
“No. I love him. He’s wonderful and he is intelligent and I don’t have to tell you why I have to kill him.”
“No. Certainly not.”
“Pop knows. And he explained to me. He told me about that terrible woman too that everyone shot her lion forty-two times. I better not talk about it because no one can ever understand.”
We did understand because together one time we had seen the tracks of the first great lion. They were twice the size a lion’s tracks should be and they were in light dust that had just been rained on only enough to dampen it so that they were a true print. I had been working up on some kongoni to kill meat for camp and when Ngui and I saw the tracks we pointed with grass stems and I could see the sweat come on his forehead. We waited for Mary without moving and when she saw the tracks she drew a deep breath. She had seen many lion tracks by then and several lions killed but these tracks were unbelievable. Ngui kept shaking his head and I could feel the sweat under my armpits and in my crotch. We followed the tracks like hounds and saw where he had drunk at a muddy spring and then gone up the draw to the escarpment. I had never seen such tracks, ever, and by the mud of the spring they were even clearer.
I had not known whether to go back and find the kongoni and run the risk of shooting and perhaps having him leave that country with the sound of the rifle shot. But we needed meat and this was a country where there was not much meat and all the game was wild because there were so many predators. You never killed a zebra that did not have black, riven lion claw scars on his hide and the zebra were as shy and unapproachable as desert oryx. It was a buffalo, rhino, lion and leopard country and nobody liked to hunt it except G.C. and Pop and it made Pop nervous. G.C. had so many nerves that he had ended by having no nerves and he never admitted the presence of danger until he had shot his way out of it. But Pop had said that he never had hunted this country without having trouble and he had hunted it, making the trek across the deadly flats at night to avoid the heat, which could be one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, many years before G.C. had been here or motor cars had been brought to East Africa.