At this time I called Msembi, the good rough boy who served as mess steward and was a hunting, not a crop-raising Kamba but was not a skilled hunter and was reduced, since the war, to servant status. We were all servants since I served the government, through the Game Department, and I also served Miss Mary and a magazine named Look. My service to Miss Mary had been terminated, temporarily, with the death of her lion. My service to Look had been terminated, temporarily; I had hoped permanently. I was wrong of course. But neither Msembi nor I minded serving in the least and neither of us had served our God nor our King too well to be stuffy about it.
The only laws are tribal laws and I was a Mzee which means an elder as well as still having the status of a warrior. It is difficult to be both and the older Mzees resent the irregularity of the position. You should give up something, or anything if necessary, and not try to hold everything. I had learned this lesson in a place called the Schnee Eifel where it had been necessary to move from an offensive to a defensive position. You give up what you have won at great cost as though it had not cost a dime and you become eminently defensible. It is hard to do and many times you should be shot for doing it; but you should be shot quicker if you did not make the adjustment.
So I had told Msembi that he would serve dinner in one half of an hour in the mess tent and that plates would be laid for Debba, the Widow and myself. He was completely delighted and full of Kamba energy and malice and went off to give the order. Unfortunately that was not how it turned out. Debba was brave and la puta gloria is a better place than most people ever reach or attain. The Widow knew it was a rough order and she knew that no one ever took Africa in a day nor on any given night. But that was the way it was going to be.
Keiti killed it in the name of his loyalty to the Bwanas, to the tribe and to the Moslem religion. He had the courage and the good taste not to delegate to anyone his order and he knocked on the tent pole and asked if we might speak. I might have said no, but I am a disciplined boy. Not with twelve of the best as Pop disciplined but with the implacable discipline of all of our lives. He said, “You have no right to take the young girl violently. [In this he was wrong. There had never been any violence, ever.] This could make great trouble.”
“All right,” I said. “You speak for all the Mzees?”
“I am the eldest.”
“Then tell your son who is older than I am to bring the hunting car.”
“He is not here,” Keiti said and we knew about that and his lack of authority over his children and why Mthuka was not a Moslem but it was too complicated for me.
“I will drive the car,” I said. “It is not a very difficult thing.”
“Please take the young girl home to her family. I will go with you if you like.”
“I will take the young girl, the Widow and the Informer.”
Mwindi was standing, in his green robe and cap, beside Keiti now since it was torture for Keiti to speak English.
Msembi had no business there but he loved Debba as we all did. She was feigning sleep and she was the wife that we would all wish to purchase, all of us knowing we would never own anything that we had bought.
Msembi had been a soldier and the two heavy elders knew this and were not unconscious of their treason when they became Moslems and, since everyone becomes an elder eventually, he threw quick against their complacence and with the true African litigational sense, using titles, which had been abolished, and his own knowledge of Kamba law, “Our Bwana can keep the Widow since she has a son and he protects her officially.”
Keiti nodded and Mwindi nodded.
Putting an end to it and feeling too bad about Debba who in her sense of glory had eaten the meal and slept the night as we were not permitted to sleep but as we slept so many times without the judgment of the splendid elders who had attained their rank uniquely, no, that was not just, by seniority, I said, to the interior of the tent, “No hay remedio. Kwenda na Shamba.”
This was the beginning of the end of the day in my life which offered the most chances of happiness.
16
HAVING ACCEPTED the decision of the elders and driven Debba, the Widow and the Informer home to the Shamba where I left her with the things that I had bought for her I returned to camp. The things that I had bought made a difference and they did both have the cloth for their dresses. I would not speak to my father-in-law and gave him no explanations and we all acted as though we were returning, a little late perhaps, from a purchasing expedition. I had seen the bulge of the Grand MacNish bottle containing the adulterated lion fat wrapped in the Informer’s paisley shawl but that meant nothing. We had better lion fat than that and would have better if we wished and there is no minor satisfaction comparable to have anyone, from a writer on up, and up is a long way, steal from you and think that they have not been detected. With writers you must never let them know since it might break their hearts if they had them and some have them and who should judge another man’s cardiac performance unless you are in competition? With the Informer it was another matter, involving, as it did, his degree of loyalty which was already in dispute. Keiti hated the Informer, with considerable cause, since he had served under Keiti in the old days and they had many old unresolved things dating from when the Informer had served as a lorry driver and off-ended Keiti with, then, youthful insolence and with treasonable frankness about the great nobleman who was, by other accounts than the Informer’s, a backward man. Keiti had loved Pop ever since he had taken service under him and with the Kamba hatred of homosexuality he could not tolerate a Masai lorry driver impugning a White Man and especially one of such renown and when the bad boys painted the lips of the statue that had been erected to this man with lipstick, as they did each night in Nairobi, Keiti would not look at it when he rode past. Charo, who was a more devout Moslem than Keiti, would look at it and laugh the way we all did. But when Keiti had taken the Queen’s shilling he had taken it for always. He was a true Victorian and the rest of us, who had been Edwardians and then Georgians and Edwardians for a brief period again only to become Georgians and now were frankly and completely Elizabethans within our capacity to serve and our tribal loyalties, had little in common with Keiti’s Victorianism. On this night I felt so badly that I did not wish to be personal nor think about any personal things and especially not to be unjust with someone that I admired and respected. But I knew Keiti was more shocked that Debba and the Widow and I should eat together at the table in the mess tent than he was worried about Kamba law because he was a grown man with five wives of his own and a beautiful young wife and who was he to administer our morals or lack of them?
Driving along in the night, trying not to be bitter, and thinking of Debba and our arbitrary deprivation of formal happiness which could have been overlooked by anyone regardless of their seniority, I thought of turning off to the left and going down that red road to the other Shamba where I would find two of our group and not Lot’s nor Potiphar’s, but a Masai wife and see if we could parlay yaws into true love. But that was not the thing to do either so I drove home and parked the car and sat in the mess tent and read Simenon. Msembi felt terribly about it but he and I were not conversationalists either.
He made one very gallant suggestion: that he would go with our lorry driver and bring the Widow. I said hapana to that and read some more Simenon.