“May I hear the slogan?”
“Slogans are a bore, Mission boy…. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Then to take the curse off having offered a slogan and because Mr. Singh was becoming solemn and ready to reenlist I said, “Harden your feet well as you are doing. Keep your bowels open and remember that there is some corner of a foreign field that shall be forever England.”
He could not quit which might have been his Chagga blood or might have been the Masai strain and he said, “But you are an officer of the Crown.”
“Technically and temporarily. What do you want? The Queen’s shilling?”
“I would like to take it, sir.”
It was a little bit rough to do but knowledge is rougher and more poorly compensated. I took the hard shillingi out of my pocket and put it in the boy’s hand. Our Queen looked very beautiful and shining in silver and I said, “Now you are an informer; no that is wrong,” because I saw Mr. Singh had been hurt by the dirty word. “Now you are commissioned as a temporary interpreter for the Game Department and will be remunerated at the stipend of seventy shillings per month in so long as I hold the tenure of acting temporary Game Ranger. On the cessation of my tenure your appointment shall cease and you will receive a gratuity of seventy shillings from the date of ceasing of tenure. This gratuity will be paid from my own private funds and you hereby avow that you have no claims of any sort nor any possible future claims against the Game Department nor any other, etc., and may God have mercy on your soul. The gratuity shall be made in a single payment. What is your name, young man?”
“Nathaniel.”
“You will be known in the Game Department as Peter.”
“It is an honorable name, sir.”
“No one asked for your comments and your duties are strictly confined to accurate and complete interpretation when as and if you are called on. Your contact will be with Arap Meina, who will give you any further instructions. Do you wish to draw any advance?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you might go now and toughen your feet in the hills behind town.”
“Are you angry with me, sir?”
“Not at all. But when you grow up you may discover that the Socratic method of acquiring knowledge is overrated and if you ask people no questions they will tell you no lies.”
“Good day, Mr. Singh,” the former convert said, donning his shoes in case there was a spy from the Mission about. “Good day, sir.”
Mr. Singh nodded and I said, “Good day.”
When the young man had gone out of the back door and Mr. Singh had drifted toward the door almost absentmindedly and then returned to pour another drink of White Heather and pass me the water in the cooling jug, he settled himself comfortably and said, “Another bloody babu.”
“But not a shit.”
“No,” Mr. Singh said. “But you waste your time on him.”
“Why did we never speak English together before?”
“From respect,” Mr. Singh said.
“Did the original Singh, your ancestor, speak English?”
“I would not know,” Mr. Singh said. “That was before my time.”
“What was your rank, Mr. Singh?”
“Do you wish my serial number as well?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “And it is your whisky. But you put up with Unknown Tongue for a long time.”
“It was a pleasure,” Mr. Singh said. “I learned much Unknown Tongue. If you like, I would be very happy to enter your service as an unpaid volunteer,” Mr. Singh said. “At present I am informing for three government services none of whom coordinate their information nor have any proper liaison.”
“Things are not always exactly as they seem and it is an Empire which has been functioning for a long time.”
“Do you admire the way it functions now?”
“I am a foreigner and a guest and I do not criticize.”
“Would you like me to inform for you?”
“With carbons furnished of all other information delivered.”
“There are no carbons or oral information unless you have a tape recorder. Do you have a tape recorder?”
“Not with me.”
“You could hang half Laitokitok with four tape recorders.”
“I have no desire to hang half Laitokitok.”
“Neither do I. And who would buy at the duka?”
“Mr. Singh, if we did things properly we would perpetrate an economic disaster but now I must go up to where we left the car.”
“I will walk with you if you don’t mind. Three paces to the rear and on your left.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself.”
“It is no trouble.”
I said good-bye to Mrs. Singh and told her we would be by with the car to pick up three cases of Tusker and a case of Coca-Cola and walked out into the lovely main and only street of Laitokitok.
Towns with only one street make the same feeling as a small boat, a narrow channel, the headwaters of a river or the trail up over a pass. Sometimes Laitokitok, after the swamp and the different broken countries and the desert and the forbidden Chulu hills, seemed an important Capital and on other days it seemed like the Rue Royale. Today it was straight Laitokitok with overtones of Cody, Wyoming, or Sheridan, Wyoming, in the old days. With Mr. Singh, it was a relaxed and pleasant walk which we both enjoyed and in front of Benji’s with the gas pump, the wide steps like a Western general store and the many Masai standing around the hunting break. I stopped by it and told Mwengi I would stay with the rifle while he went to shop or drink. He said no that he would rather stay with the rifle. So I went up the steps and into the crowded store. Debba and the Widow were there still looking at cloth, Mthuka helping them, and turning down pattern after pattern. I hated shopping and the rejection of materials and I went to the far end of the long L-shaped counter and began to buy medicines and soaps. When these were stacked into a box I began to buy tinned goods; mostly kipper snacks, sardines, silts, tinned shrimp and various types of false salmon along with a number of tins of local tinned meat which were intended as a gift for my father-in-law and then I bought two tins each of every type of fish exported from South Africa including one variety labeled simply FISH. Then I bought half a dozen tins of Cape Spiny Lobster and, remembering we were short of Sloan’s liniment, bought a bottle of that and one half dozen cakes of Lifebuoy soap. By this time there was a crowd of Masai watching this purchasing. Debba looked down and smiled proudly. She and the Widow could still not make up their minds and there were not more than a half a dozen rolls of cloth to be inspected.
Mthuka came down the counter and told me the car had been filled up and that he had found the good posho that Keiti wanted. I gave him a hundred-shilling note and told him to pay for the girls’ purchases.
“Tell them to buy two dresses,” I said. “One for the cambia and one for the Birthday of the Baby Jesus.” Mthuka knew that no woman needed two new dresses. She needed her old one and the new one. But he went down and told the girls in Kikamba and Debba and the Widow looked down, all impudence replaced by a shining reverence as though I had just invented electricity and the lights had gone on over all of Africa. I did not meet their look but continued purchasing, now moving into the field of hard candies, bottled, and the various types of chocolate bars both nutted and plain.
By this time I did not know how the money was standing up but we did have the gas in the car and the posho and I told the relative of the owner who was serving behind the counter to load everything and box it carefully and I would return to pick it up with the bill. This gave Debba and the Widow more time to select and I would drive the hunting car down to Mr. Singh’s and pick up the bottled products.