“Too true,” the young policeman said. “In a way, governor, we’re the last of the Empire builders. In a way we’re like Rhodes and Dr. Livingstone.”
“In a way,” I said.
That afternoon I went to the Shamba. It was cold since the sun was under the cloud of the Mountain and a heavy wind was blowing from the heights where all the rain that had fallen on us must now be snow. The Shamba was at about six thousand feet and the Mountain was over nineteen thousand feet high. Its sudden cold winds, when heavy snow had fallen, were punishing to those who lived on the upland plain. Higher in the foothills, the houses, we did not call them huts, were built in the folds of hills to have a lee against the wind. But this Shamba had the full force of the wind and on this afternoon it was very cold and bitter with the smell of not quite frozen dung and all birds and beasts were out of the wind.
The man who Miss Mary referred to as my father-in-law had a chest cold too and bad rheumatic pains in his back. I gave him medicine and then rubbed him and applied Sloan’s liniment. None of us Kamba regarded him as the father of his daughter but since he was technically such by tribal law and custom, I was bound to respect him. We treated him in the lee of the house with his daughter watching. She was carrying her sister’s child on her hip and was wearing my last good woolly sweater and a fishing cap which had been given me by a friend. My friend had ordered my initials embroidered on the front of the cap and this had some significance with all of us. Until she had decided that she wanted it, the initials had always been an embarrassment. Under the woolly sweater she wore the last and too many times washed dress from Laitokitok. It was not correct etiquette for me to speak to her while she was carrying the child of her sister and, technically, she should have not watched the treatment of her father. She handled this by keeping her eyes downcast at all times.
The man who was known by a name which means potential father-in-law was not particularly brave under the ordeal of Sloan’s liniment. Ngui, who knew Sloan’s well, and had no regard for the men of this Shamba, wanted me to rub it in and signaled once that I let a few drops fall where they should not go. Mthuka with his beautiful tribal scars on both cheeks was completely happy in his deafness watching what he considered to be a worthless Kamba suffer in a good cause. I was completely ethical with the Sloan’s to the disappointment of everyone including the daughter and all lost interest.
“Jambo, tu,” I said to the daughter when we left and she said with her eyes down and her chest up, “No hay remedio.”
We got into the car, no one waving to anyone, the cold closing in with the formality. There was too much of both and we all felt badly to see a Shamba so miserable.
“Ngui,” I asked. “How can they have such miserable men and such wonderful women in this Shamba?”
“Great men have passed through this Shamba,” Ngui said. “Formerly this was the route to the south until the new route.” He was angry with the men of the Shamba because they were worthless Kamba.
“Do you think we ought to take this Shamba?”
“Yes,” he said. “You and I and Mthuka and the young men.”
We were going into the African world of unreality that is defended and fortified by reality past any reality there is. It was not an escape world or a daydreaming world. It was a ruthless real world made of the unreality of the real. If there were still rhino, and we saw them every day while it was obviously impossible for there to be such an animal, then anything was possible. If Ngui and I could talk to a rhinoceros, who was incredible to start with, in his own tongue well enough for him to answer back and I could curse and insult him in Spanish so that he would be humiliated and go off, then unreality was sensible and logical beside reality. Spanish was regarded as Mary’s and my tribal language and it was considered to be the all-purpose language of Cuba where we came from. They knew we also had an inner or secret tribal language. We were not supposed to have anything in common with the British except the color of our skin and a mutual tolerance. While Mayito Menocal was with us he was greatly admired because of his very deep voice, the way he smelled, his courtesy and because he had arrived in Africa speaking both Spanish and Swahili. They also revered his scars and as he spoke Swahili with a strong Camagüey accent and looked like a bull he was, truly, almost revered.
I had explained that he was the son of the King of his own country, in the time when it had great kings, and had described the thousands of acres of land that he owned and its quality, the number of cattle I had known that he owned and the quantities of sugar that he produced. Since sugar was the universally sought food by the Wakamba after meat and since Pop had backed me up to Keiti that these things were true and since Mayito was obviously a sound cattleman who knew exactly what he spoke of and, when he spoke of it, spoke in a voice very similar to that of a lion and had never been unjust, rude, contemptuous or boastful, he was really loved. In all the time he was in Africa I only told one lie about Mayito. This was in respect to his wives.
Mwindi, who was a true admirer of Mayito, asked me, flat out, how many wives Mayito had. Everyone had wondered and it was not the sort of statistic they could get from Pop. Mwindi was in one of his gloomy days and there had evidently been a discussion. I did not know which side he had taken but it was evidently a question that he had been asked to settle.
I thought the question and the aspects of the strangeness over and said, “In his own country no one would wish to count them.”
“Ndio,” Mwindi said. This was the proper language of Mzees.
Mayito had one actually. She was very beautiful. Mwindi went out as gloomy as ever.
Now today, coming back from the Shamba, Ngui and I were engaged in that characteristic occupation of men, planning the operation which will never take place.
“All right,” I said. “We take it.”
“Good.”
“Who takes Debba?”
“She is yours. She is your fiancée.”
“Good. After we take it how do we hold it when they send a company of K.A.R.?”
“You get troops from Mayito.”
“Mayito is in Hong Kong now. In China.”
“We have aircraft.”
“Not that kind. What do we do without Mayito?”
“We go up into the Mountain.”
“Very cold. Too damn cold right now. Also we lose the Shamba.”
“War is shit,” Ngui said.
“I’ll sign that,” I said. We were both happy now. “No. We take the Shamba day by day. The day is our unit. Now we have what the old men believe they will have when they die. Now we hunt good; eat good meat; drink well once Memsahib kills her lion; and make the happy hunting grounds while we are alive.”
Mthuka was too deaf to hear anything we said. He was like a motor which is functioning perfectly but the gauges have cut out. This usually only happens in dreams but Mthuka had the finest sight of any of us and was the best wild driver, and he had, if such a thing exists, complete extrasensory perception. As we drove up to the camp and stopped the car Ngui and I knew he had not heard a word we had said but he said, “It is better, much, much better.”
He had pity and kindness in his eyes and I knew he was a better and kinder man than I could ever be. He offered me his snuffbox. It was semi-normal snuff with none of the strange additions of Arap Meina but it tasted very good and I put a big three-fingered pinch of it under my upper lip.
None of us had been drinking at all. Mthuka always carried himself rather like a crane in cold weather with his shoulders hunched. The sky was overcast and the cloud was down to the plain and as I handed him back the snuffbox he said, “Wakamba tu.”