“Already I am better, brother.”
“Go now and look after the Widow.”
“I go.”
All this time we had been hearing the beating of the drums and the thin shaking of the ankle bells and the blowing of the traffic whistles. I still did not feel festive nor like dancing so, when the Informer was gone, I mixed a Gordon’s gin and Campari and put some soda in it from the siphon. If this mixed well with the double dose of oral, something would have been established even though not perhaps in the realm of pure science. They seemed to blend harmoniously and, if anything, to sharpen the beat of the drums. I listened carefully to see if the police whistles were any shriller but they seemed unaltered. Taking this to be an excellent sign I found a cool quart of beer in the dripping canvas water bag and made my way back to the Ngoma. Someone was playing the head of my metal drum and so I found a good tree to sit against where I was joined by my friend Tony.
Tony was a fine man and one of my best friends. He was a Masai and had been a sergeant in the Tank Corps and had been a very brave and able soldier. If not the only Masai in the British Army he was at least the only Masai sergeant. He worked for G.C. in the Game Department and I always envied G.C. having him because he was a good mechanic, loyal, devoted and always cheerful and he spoke good English, perfect Masai, naturally, Swahili, some Chagga, and some Kamba. He had a very un-Masai build, having short, rather bandied legs and a heavy, powerful chest, arms and neck. I had taught him to box and we sparred together quite often and were very good friends and companions.
“It is a very fine Ngoma, sar,” Tony said.
“Yes,” I said. “Won’t you dance, Tony?”
“No, sar. It is a Kamba Ngoma.”
They were dancing a very complicated dance now and the young girls were dancing too in a very intense copulative figure.
“There are some very pretty girls. Who do you like the best, Tony.”
“Who do you like, sar?”
“I cannot decide. There are four really beautiful girls.”
“There is one who is the best. You see who I mean, sar?”
“She’s lovely, Tony. Where is she from?”
“From the Kamba Shamba, sar.”
She was the best all right and better than the best. We both watched her.
“Have you seen Miss Mary and the Captain Game Ranger?”
“Yes, sar. They were here a short time ago. I am truly happy that Miss Mary has killed her lion. Do you remember from the early days and the lion spearing with the bubblegum Masai, sar? Do you remember from Fig Tree camp? That was a long time, sar, for her to hunt lion. This morning I told her a Masai proverb. Did she tell you?”
“No, Tony. I don’t think she did.”
“I told her this saying, ‘It is always very quiet when a great bull dies.’ ”
“That is very true. It is quiet now even with the noise of the Ngoma.”
“Did you notice it too, sar?”
“Yes. I have been quiet inside all day. Do you want any beer?”
“No thank you, sar. Will there be boxing tonight?”
“Do you feel like it?”
“If you do, sar. But there are many new boys to try. We can do it better tomorrow without Ngoma.”
“Tonight if you like.”
“Perhaps it would be better tomorrow. One boy is not a very nice boy. Not bad. But not nice. You know the kind.”
“Town boy?”
“A little bit, sar.”
“Can he box?”
“Not really, sar. But fast.”
“Hit?”
“Yes, sar.”
“What is that dance now?”
“The new boxing dance. You see? They make infighting now and left hooks the way you teach.”
“Better than I teach.”
“Tomorrow is best, sar.”
“But you’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“I forgot, sar. Please excuse me. I am forgetful since the great bull died. We’ll make it when we come back. I go now to check the lorry.”
I went off to look for Keiti and found him on the outskirts of the dancing. He looked very cheerful and possessive.
“Please send them home in the truck when it gets dark,” I said. “Mthuka can take several loads in the hunting car too. Memsahib is tired and we should have dinner early and go to bed.”
“Ndio,” he agreed.
I found Ngui and he said, “Jambo, Bwana,” sarcastically in the dusk.
“Jambo, tu,” I answered. “Why didn’t you dance?”
“Too much law,” he said. “It is not my day to dance.”
“Nor mine.”
That night we had a cheerful dinner. Mbebia, the cook, had made breaded cutlets of the lion tenderloin and they were excellent. In September, when we had eaten the first lion cutlets, it had been a matter for discussion and was regarded as an eccentricity or something barbaric. Now everyone ate them and they were regarded as a great delicacy. The meat was white as veal and tender and delicious. It had no gamy flavor at all.
“I don’t think anyone could tell it from a costoletta Milanesa at a really good Italian restaurant except that the meat is better,” Mary said.
I had been sure it would be good meat the first time I had ever seen a lion skinned. Mkola, who was my gun bearer in those days, told me that the tenderloin was the best meat there was to eat. But we had been very disciplined then by Pop, who was trying to make at least a semi-pukka Sahib of me and I had never had the nerve to cut a tenderloin and ask the cook to prepare it. This year, though, when we killed the first lion and I asked Ngui to take the two tenderloins it had been different. Pop said it was barbarous and that no one ever ate lion. But this was almost surely the last safari we would ever make together and we had come to the point where we both regretted things we had not done rather than those we had and so he made only perfunctory opposition and when Mary showed Mbebia how to prepare the cutlets and when we smelled their fine savor and when he saw how the meat cut exactly like veal and how much we enjoyed it, he tried some too and liked it.
“You ate bear in America hunting in the Rockies. It’s like pork but too rich. You eat pork and a hog will feed fouler than a bear or a lion.”
“Don’t badger me,” Pop had said. “I’m eating the damned stuff.”
“Isn’t it good?”
“Yes. Damn it. It’s good. But don’t badger me.”
“Have some more, Mr. P. Please have some more,” Mary said.
“All right. I’ll have some more,” making his voice into a high complaining falsetto. “But don’t keep staring at me while I eat it.”
It was pleasant talking about Pop whom Mary and I both loved and whom I was fonder of than any man that I had ever known. Mary told some of the things Pop had told her on the long drive they had made together through Tanganyika when we had gone down to hunt the Great Ruaha river country and the Bohoro flats. Hearing these stories and imagining the things he had not told it was like having Pop there and I thought that even in his absence he could make things all right when they were difficult.
Then too it was wonderful to be eating the lion and have him in such close and final company and tasting so good.
That night Mary said she was very tired and she went to sleep in her own bed. I lay awake for a while and then went out to sit by the fire. In the chair watching the fire and thinking of Pop and how sad it was he was not immortal and how happy I was that he had been able to be with us so much and that we had been lucky to have three or four things together that were like the old days along with just the happiness of being together and talking and joking, I went to sleep.
11
WALKING IN THE early morning watching Ngui striding lightly through the grass thinking how we were brothers it seemed to me stupid to be white in Africa and I remembered how twenty years before I had been taken to hear the Moslem missionary who had explained to us, his audience, the advantages of a dark skin and the disadvantages of the white man’s pigmentation. I was burned dark enough to pass as a half-caste.