Msembi kept feeling worse all the time and had no Simenon to read and his next suggestion was that he and I should go with the car and get the girl. He said it was a Kamba custom and there was nothing to be paid but a fine. Besides he said the Shamba was illegal; no one was qualified to bring us to trial and I had made my father-in-law many presents as well as having killed a leopard for him on this same day.
I thought this over and decided against it. Some time before I had paid the tribal price to sleep in the bed of my mother-in-law which is a rough thing to do. How was Keiti to know this? He was supposed to know everything but the outfit we had built up was very taut and just possibly rougher than he knew. I was not sure about this since I respected and admired him so especially since Magadi. He had tracked there, when he had no need to and with both his snakes out above his cheekbones and under his turban until I was beat and Ngui was having difficulty. He had done this tracking in a heat of one hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit in the shade on the good thermometer in camp and the only shade we had was when I, beat, would take a break under a small tree, taking the shade as a great gift breathing deeply and trying to compute how many miles we were from campi; that fabulous place with the wonderful shade of the fig trees and the rippling stream and the water bags sweating cool.
Keiti had whipped us on that day with no ostentation and I did not respect him without cause. But tonight I still was not sure why he had intervened. They always do it for your own good. But I knew one thing: Msembi and I should not go back as rummies do and resume the exercise.
Africans are not supposed to ever feel bad about anything. This is an invention of the whites who are temporarily occupying the country. Africans are said not to feel pain because they do not cry out, that is some of them do not. Yet not showing pain when it is received is a tribal thing and a great luxury. While we in America had television, motion pictures and expensive wives always with soft hands, grease on their faces at night and the natural, not the ranch, mink coat somewhere under refrigeration with a ticket like a pawnbroker’s to get it out; the African, of the better tribes, had the luxury of not showing pain. We, Moi, as Ngui called us, had never known true hardship except in war which is a boring, nomadic life with the occasional compensations of combat and the pleasure of looting given as a bone is thrown to a dog by a master who cares nothing for him. We, Moi, who at this moment were Msembi and myself had known what it was to sack a town and we both knew, although the subject was never to be talked about but only shared secretly, what the mechanics and the procedure was to implement what the Bible phrase meant when they put the men to the sword and carried the women into captivity. This was no longer done but anyone who had done it was a brother. Good brothers are difficult to find but you can encounter a bad brother in any town.
The Informer was my brother as he continually stated. But I had not chosen him. In the thing which we had now, which was not a safari and where Bwana was very close to a direct insult, Msembi and I were good brothers and on this night, without mentioning it, we both remembered that the slave raiders who had come up the different routes from the sea were all Moslems and I knew that was why Mthuka with the slashed arrow on each cheek would never, nor could ever, have been converted to the fashionable religion his father, Keiti, and dear honest Charo and Mwindi, the honest and skillful snob, had been received into.
So I sat there and we had a sharing of our sorrow. Nguili came in once, humble as a nanake should come, but wishing to weigh in with his sorrow if it was permissible. It was not permissible and I slapped him on his green-frocked ass, lovingly, and said, “Morgen ist auch nach ein tag.” This is an old German phrase which is the opposite of no hay remedio, which is a true and beautiful phrase but which I felt guilt for having implanted as though I had the guilt of a defeatist or a collaborationist. I translated it carefully into Kamba with the help of Msembi and then feeling the guilt of a phrase mutterer I asked Ngui if he would find my spears because I was going out to hunt when the moon rose.
It was more than a little bit theatrical but so is Hamlet. We were all deeply moved. Possibly I was the most moved of the three of us, having made the old mistake of not watching my mouth.
Now the moon was up over the shoulder of the Mountain and I wished that I had a good big dog and that I had not declared to do something that would make me a better man than Keiti. But I had and so I checked the spears and put on my soft moccasins and thanked Nguili and left the mess tent. There were two men on guard with the rifles and the ammo and a lantern on the tree outside the tent and I left these lights behind and left the moon over my right shoulder and started off on the long walk.
The spear shaft felt good and heavy and it was taped with surgical tape so that your hand would not slip if it was sweaty. Often, using the spear, you sweat heavily under your armpits and on your forearms and the sweat runs down the shaft. The grass stubble felt good under my feet and then I felt the smoothness of the motor tire track that led to the airstrip we had made and the other track we called the Great North Road. This was the first night I had gone out alone with the spear and I wished I had one of the old Honest Ernies or the big dog. With the German shepherd dog you could always tell if there was something in the next clump of bush because he fell back at once and walked with his muzzle against the back of your knee. But being properly scared as I was when out with the spear at night is a luxury that you have to pay for and like the best luxuries it is worth it most of the time. Mary, G.C. and I had shared many luxuries and some had been potentially expensive but, so far, all had been worth the price. It was the stupidities of daily life with its unflagging erosion that was not worth what it cost, I thought and I checked the various bushes and dead trees that had cobra holes in my mind and hoped that I would not step on any of them if they were out hunting.
In camp I had heard two hyenas but they were quiet now. I heard a lion up by the Old Manyatta and resolved to keep away from the Old Manyatta. I did not have enough courage to go up there anyway and that was also rhino country. Ahead, on the plain, I could see something asleep in the moonlight. It was a wildebeest and I worked away from him or her; it turned out to be him; and then got back onto the trail again.
There were many night birds and plover and I saw bat-eared foxes and leaping hares but their eyes did not shine as they did when we cruised with the Land Rover since I had no light and the moon made no reflection. The moon was well up now and gave a good light and I went along the trail happy to be out in the night not caring if any beast presented himself. All the nonsense about Keiti and the girl and the Widow and our lost banquet and night in bed seemed of no importance and I looked back and could just not see the lights of camp but could see the Mountain high and square topped and shone white in the moonlight and I hoped I would not run onto anything to kill. I could always have killed the wildebeest, maybe, but if I did I would have to dress him out and then stay with the carcass so the hyenas did not get him or else rouse the camp and get the truck and be a show-off and I remembered that only six of us would eat wildebeest and that I wanted some good meat for when Miss Mary came back.
So I walked along in the moonlight hearing the small animals move and the birds cry when they rose from the dust of the trail and thought about Miss Mary and what she would be doing in Nairobi and how she would look with her new haircut and whether she would get it or not and the way she was built and how there was almost no difference between the way she was built and the way Debba was built and that I would have Miss Mary back by two o’clock the next in a day and that it was a damned good thing all the way around.