But what did this have to do with “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning”? Did Miss Mary and G.C. have souls? They had no religious beliefs as far as I knew. But if people had souls they must have them. Charo was a very devout Mohammedan so we must credit him with a soul. That left only Ngui and me and the lion.
Now here it was three o’clock in the morning and I stretched my recent horse’s legs and thought I would get up and go outside and sit by the coals of the fire and enjoy the rest of the night and the first light. I pulled on my mosquito boots and put on my bathrobe and buckled the pistol belt over it and went out to the remains of the fire. G.C. was sitting by it in his chair.
“What are we awake about?” he said very softly.
“I had a dream I was a horse. It was very vivid.”
I told G.C. about Scott Fitzgerald and the quotation and asked him what he thought of it.
“Any hour can be a bad hour when you wake,” he said. “I don’t see why he picked three especially. It sounds quite good though.”
“I think it is just fear and worry and remorse.”
“We’ve both had enough of those haven’t we?”
“Sure; to peddle. But I think what he meant was his conscience and despair.”
“You don’t ever have despair do you, Ernie?”
“Not yet.”
“You’d probably have had it by now if you were going to have it.”
“I’ve seen it close enough to touch it but I always turned it down.”
“Speaking of turning things down should we share a beer?”
“I’ll get it.”
The big bottle of Tusker was cold too in the canvas water bag and I poured beer into two glasses and set the bottle on the table.
“I’m sorry I have to go, Ernie,” G.C. said. “Do you think she’ll take it really badly?”
“Yes.”
“You ride it out. She may take it perfectly all right.”
9
I WENT IN TO the tent to see if Mary was awake, but she was still sleeping heavily. She had awakened and drunk some of her tea and then gone back to sleep again.
“We’ll let her sleep,” I said to G.C. “It doesn’t make any difference if we don’t skin out until half past nine even. She should get all the sleep she can.”
G.C. was reading the Lindbergh book but I had no stomach for The Year of the Lion this morning and so I read the bird book. It was a good new book by Praed and Grant and I knew that by hunting one beast too hard and concentrating on him I had missed much in not observing the birds properly. If there had been no animals we could have been quite happy observing the birds but I knew that I had neglected them terribly. Mary had been much better. She was always seeing birds that I did not notice or watching them in detail while I sat in my camp chair and just looked out across the country. Reading the bird book I felt how stupid I had been and how much time I had wasted.
At home sitting in the shade at the head of the pool I was happy to see the kingbirds dip down to take insects off the water and to watch the gray white of their breasts show green from the reflection of the pool. I loved to watch the doves nesting in the alamo trees and to watch the mockingbirds as they sang. Seeing the migratory birds come through in the fall and the spring was an excitement and it made an afternoon happy to see the small bittern come to drink at the pool and watch him search the gutters for tree frogs. Now here in Africa there were beautiful birds around the camp all of the time. They were in the trees and in the thorn bushes and walking about on the ground and I only half saw them as moving bits of color while Mary loved and knew them all. I could not think how I had become so stupid and calloused about the birds and I was very ashamed.
For a long time I realized I had only paid attention to the predators, the scavengers and the birds that were good to eat and the birds that had to do with hunting. Then as I thought of which birds I did notice there came such a great long list of them that I did not feel quite as bad but I resolved to watch the birds around our camp more and to ask Mary about all the ones I did not know, and most of all, to really see them and not look past them.
This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it. I tried to think how I had gotten into not seeing the small birds around camp and I thought some of it was reading too much to take my mind off the concentration of the serious hunting and some was certainly drinking in camp to relax when we came in from hunting. I admired Mayito, who drank almost nothing because he wanted to remember everything in Africa. But G.C. and I were drinkers and I knew it was not just a habit nor a way of escaping. It was a purposeful dulling of a receptivity that was so highly sensitized, as film can be, that if your receptiveness were always kept at the same level it would become unbearable. You make out quite a noble case for yourself, I thought, and you know too that you and G.C. drink because you love it too and Mary loves it the same way and we have such good fun drinking. You better go in and see if she is awake now, I thought.
So I went in and she was still asleep. She always looked beautiful asleep. Her face, when she slept, was neither happy nor unhappy. It simply existed. But today the line of it was too finely drawn. I wished that I could make her happy but the only thing I knew to do for this was to let her keep on sleeping.
I went out again with the bird book and identified a shrike, a starling and a bee eater, and then I heard movement in the tent and went in and found Mary sitting on the edge of her cot putting her moccasins on.
“How do you feel, honey?”
“Awful. And you shot at my lion first and I’d rather not see you.”
“I’ll just keep out of the way for a while.”
Out at the lines Keiti told me that the Game Scouts were planning a really big Ngoma; everyone in the camp would be dancing and the whole Shamba was coming. Keiti said that we were short of beer and of Coca-Cola and I said I would go up to Laitokitok in the hunting car with Mthuka and Arap Meina and anybody who wanted to buy anything in the village. Keiti wanted some more posho too and I would try to get a sack or a couple of sacks as well as some sugar. The Wakamba liked the corn meal that was brought in by way of Kajiado and sold by the Indian duka whose owner was a follower of the Aga Khan. They did not like the other type that was sold in the other Indian general stores. I had learned to tell the kind they liked by color, texture and taste but I could always make a mistake and Mthuka would check. The Coca-Cola was for the Mohammedans who could not drink beer and for the girls and the women who would come to the Ngoma. I would drop Arap Meina off at the first Masai Manyatta and he would tell the Masai to come and see the lion so they would know, surely, that he had been killed. They were not invited to the Ngoma, which was to be strictly for Wakamba.