I was thinking of this when we saw the tracks of the lion and afterwards, when we started to maneuver the kongoni, I thought only of that. But the lion track was in my mind as though it had been branded there and I knew that Mary, from having seen other lions, had imagined him as he must have looked coming along that trail. We had killed the highly edible, horse-faced, awkward, tawny kongoni, which was as innocent or more innocent than anything could be and Mary had finished it with a shot where the neck joins the head. She had done this to perfect her shooting and because it was necessary and someone must do it.
Sitting there in the tent I thought how abhorrent this would be to real vegetarians but everyone who has ever eaten meat must know that someone has killed it and since Mary, having engaged in killing, wanted to kill without inflicting suffering, it was necessary for her to learn and to practice. Those who never catch fish, not even a tin of sardines, and who will stop their cars if there are locusts on the road, and have never eaten even meat broth should not condemn those who kill to eat and to whom the meat belonged to before the white men stole their country. Who knows what the carrot feels, or the small young radish, or the used electric light bulb, or the worn phonograph disc, or the apple tree in winter. Who knows the feelings of the overaged aircraft, the chewed gum, the cigarette butt or the discarded book riddled by woodworms? In my copy of the regulations of the Game Department not one of these cases was treated nor was there any regulation about the treatment of yaws and of venereal disease which was one of my daily duties. There were no regulations regarding the fallen limbs of trees nor dust nor biting flies, other than Tsetse; see Fly Areas. The hunters who took out licenses to hunt and were allowed by valid permits to hunt for a limited time in certain of the Masai countries which had formerly been reserves and were now controlled areas kept a schedule of what beasts they were permitted to kill and then paid a very nominal fee which was later paid to the Masai. But the Wakamba, who used to hunt at great risk to themselves in the Masai country for meat, were not permitted now to do so. They were hunted down as poachers by Game Scouts, who were also, mostly, Wakamba, and G.C. and Mary thought Game Scouts were better loved than they were.
Game Scouts were nearly all of them a very high type of soldier who had come from the hunting Wakamba. But things were getting very difficult Ukambani. They had farmed their land in their own and their old fashion but shortening the fallow that should last a generation as the Wakamba grew and their land did not, it had eroded along with all the rest of Africa. Their warriors had always fought in all of Britain’s wars and the Masai had never fought in any. The Masai had been coddled, preserved, treated with a fear that they should never have inspired and been adored by all the homosexuals like Thessinger who had worked for the Empire in Kenya or Tanganyika because the men were so beautiful. The men were very beautiful, extremely rich, were professional warriors who, now for a long time, would never fight. They had always been drug addicts and now they were becoming alcoholics.
The Masai never killed game but only cared about their cattle. Trouble between the Masai and the Wakamba was always over cattle stealing, never over the killing of game.
The Wakamba hated the Masai as rich show-offs protected by the government. They despised them as men whose women were completely faithless and nearly always syphilitic and as men who could not track because their eyes were destroyed by filth diseases carried by flies; because their spears bent after they had been used a single time and finally, and most of all, because they were only brave when under the influence of drugs.
The Wakamba, who liked to fight, really fight, not Masai fight, which is, usually, a mass hysteria which cannot come off except under the influence of drugs, lived at lower than subsistence level. They had always had their hunters and now there was no place for them to hunt. They loved to drink and drinking was strictly controlled by tribal law. They were not drunkards and drunkenness was severely punished. Meat was a staple of their diet and it was gone now and they were forbidden to hunt it. Their illegal hunters were as popular as smugglers in England in the old days or as those people were who brought good liquor into the United States in Prohibition.
It had not been this bad when I had been there many years before. But it had not been good. The Wakamba were completely loyal to the British. Even the young men and the bad boys were loyal. But the young men were upset and things were not simple at all. The Mau Mau were suspect because it was a Kikuyu organization and the oaths were repulsive to the Wakamba. But there had been some infiltration. There was nothing about this in the Wild Animal Protection Ordinance. I had been told by G.C. to use my common sense, if any, and that only shits got in trouble. Since I knew that I could qualify for that class at times I tried to use my common sense as carefully as possible and avoid shithood so far as I could. For a long time I had identified myself with the Wakamba and now had passed over the last important barrier so that the identification was complete. There is no other way of making this identification. Any alliance between tribes is only made valid in one way.
Now, with the rain, I knew that everyone would be less worried about their families and if we got some meat everyone would be happy. Meat made men strong; even the old men believed that. Of the old men in camp I thought Charo was the only one who might possibly be impotent and I was not sure about him. I could have asked Ngui and he would have told me. But it was not a proper thing to ask and Charo and I were very old friends. Kamba men, if they have meat to eat, retain their ability to make love well after they are seventy. But there are some sorts of meat that are better for a man than others. I do not know why I had started to think about this. It had started with the killing of the kongoni the day we had first seen the track of the huge Rift Valley escarpment lion and then it had wandered around like an old man’s tale.
“What about going out and getting a piece of meat, Miss Mary?”
“We do need some don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“What have you been thinking about?”
“Kamba problems and meat.”
“Bad Kamba problems?”
“No. In general.”
“That’s good. What did you decide?”
“That we needed meat.”
“Well, should we go for the meat?”
“It’s a good time to start. If you’d like to walk.”
“I’d love to walk. When we come home we’ll have a bath and change and there will be the fire.”
We had found the herd of impala that were usually close to the road where it crossed the river and Mary had killed an old buck that had one horn. He was very fat and in good shape and my conscience was clear about taking him for meat, as he would never have provided the Game Department with a trophy to dispose of and, since he had been driven out of the herd, he was no use anymore for breeding. Mary had made a beautiful shot on him hitting him in the shoulder exactly where she had aimed. Charo was very proud of her and he had been able to butcher absolutely legally by perhaps a hundredth of a second. Mary’s shooting, by now, was regarded as completely in the hands of God and since we had different Gods, Charo took complete credit for the shot. Pop, G.C. and I had all seen Miss Mary come into perfect form shooting and make astounding and lovely shots. Now it was Charo’s turn.
“Memsahib piga mzuri sana,” Charo said.
“Mzuri. Mzuri,” Ngui told her.
“Thank you,” Mary said. “That’s three now,” she said to me. “I’m happy and confident now. It’s strange about shooting, isn’t it?”
I was thinking how strange it was and forgot to answer.