“Do you really want to go so much?”
“Yes, truly, honey. And I always have somebody keep guard over you.”
“Why don’t you take somebody with you?”
“It isn’t any good with anybody with you.”
“It’s just another craziness. But you don’t drink before you do it, do you?”
“No, and I wash clean and put on lion fat.”
“Thanks for putting it on after you get out of bed. Isn’t the water cold in the night?”
“Everything is so cold you don’t notice it.”
“Let me make you a drink now. What will you have? A gimlet?”
“A gimlet would be fine. That or a Campari.”
“I’ll make us each a gimlet. Do you know what I want for Christmas?”
“I wish I did.”
“I don’t know whether I should tell you. Maybe it’s too expensive.”
“Not if we have the money.”
“I want to go and really see something of Africa. We’ll be going home and we haven’t seen anything. I want to see the Belgian Congo.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t have any ambition. You’d just as soon stay in one place.”
“Have you ever been in a better place?”
“No. But there’s everything we haven’t seen.”
“I’d rather live in a place and have an actual part in the life of it than just see new strange things.”
“But I want to see the Belgian Congo. Why can’t I see something I’ve heard about all my life when we are so close to it?”
“We’re not that close.”
“We can fly. We can make the whole trip flying.”
“Look, honey. We’ve been from one end of Tanganyika to the other. You’ve been to the Bohoro flats and down the Great Ruaha.”
“I suppose that was fun.”
“It was educational. You’ve been to Mbeya and to the Southern Highlands. You’ve lived in the hills and hunted on the plain and you’ve lived here at the foot of the Mountain and in the bottom of the Rift Valley beyond Magadi and hunted nearly down to Natron.”
“But I haven’t been to the Belgian Congo.”
“No. Is that what you really want for Christmas?”
“Yes. If it’s not too expensive. We don’t have to go right after Christmas. You take your time.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You haven’t touched your drink.”
“Sorry.”
“It isn’t any fun if you give someone a present and you’re not happy about it.”
I took a sip of the pleasant unsweetened lime drink and thought how much I loved it where we were.
“You don’t mind if I bring the Mountain along do you?”
“They have wonderful mountains there. That’s where the Mountains of the Moon are.”
“I’ve read about them and I saw a picture of them in Life magazine.”
“In the African Number.”
“That’s right. In the African Number.”
“When did you first think about this trip?”
“Before I went to Nairobi. You’ll have fun flying with Willie. You always do.”
“We’ll gen the trip out with Willie. He’s coming here day after Christmas.”
“We don’t have to go until you want to. You stay until you’re finished here.”
I knocked on wood and drank the rest of the drink.
“What did you plan to do this afternoon and evening?”
“I thought I’d take a siesta and catch up on my diary. Then we would go out together in the evening.”
“Good,” I said.
Arap Meina came in and I asked him about the setup at the first Manyatta. He said there was a lioness and a lion, which seemed strange this time of year, and that they had killed five head of stock in the last half-moon and the lioness had clawed a man the last time they had come over the thorn Boma, but the man was all right.
There is no one hunting in the area, I thought, and I cannot get a report in to G.C. before I see him, so I will have the Informer spread the word about the lions. They should work downhill, or across it, but we will hear of them unless they go toward Amboseli. I’d make the report to G.C. and it was up to him to deal with that end of it.
“Do you think they will come back to that Manyatta?”
“No,” Meina shook his head.
“Do you think they are the same ones that attacked the other Manyatta?”
“No.”
“I will go to Laitokitok for petrol this afternoon.”
“Perhaps I could hear something there.”
“Yes.”
I went over to the tent and found Miss Mary awake reading with the back of the tent propped up. “Honey, we need to go into Laitokitok. Would you like to go?”
“I don’t know. I was just getting sleepy. Why do we have to go?”
“Arap Meina came in with some news of some lions that have been making trouble and I have to get petrol for the lorry. You know, what we used to call gas for the truck.”
“I’ll wake up and clean up and come along. Do you have plenty of shillingi?”
“Mwindi will get them.”
We started off on the road through the open park country that led to the road that went up the Mountain and saw the two beautiful Tommy rams that always grazed close to camp.
Mary sat in the back seat with Charo and Arap Meina. Mwengi was in the back on a box and I began to worry; Mary had said I didn’t have to go until I wanted to. I would hold out for three weeks after the first of the year. There was plenty of work to do after Christmas and there would be work all the time. I knew I was in the best place I had ever been, having a fine, if complicated, life and learning something every day and to go flying all over Africa when I could fly over our own country was the last thing I wished to do. But maybe we could work out something.
I had been told to keep away from Laitokitok but this visit for petrol and supplies and Arap Meina’s news of the lions made our visit completely normal and necessary and I was sure G.C. would have approved of it. I wouldn’t see the police boy but I would stop in for a drink with Mr. Singh and to buy some beer and Coca-Cola for camp since I always did that. I told Arap Meina to go over to the Masai stores and tell what lion news he had and pick up any news there was and to do the same at the other Masai hangouts.
At Mr. Singh’s there were several Masai elders that I knew and I greeted them all and made my compliments to Mrs. Singh. Mr. Singh and I conversed in my phrase book Swahili. The elders needed a bottle of beer badly and I bought it and drank a symbolic gulp from my own bottle.
Peter came in to say the car would be down immediately and I sent him to look for Arap Meina. The car came down the road with the drum roped and three Masai women in the back. Miss Mary was talking happily to Charo. Ngui came in to get the cases with Mwengi. I handed my bottle of beer to them and between them they drained it. Mwengi’s eyes shone with absolute delight as he drank beer. Ngui drank it like a racing driver quenching his thirst at a pit stop. He saved half for Mwengi. Ngui took a bottle out for Mthuka and me to share and opened up a Coca-Cola for Charo.
Arap Meina came up with Peter and climbed into the back with the Masai women. They all had boxes to sit on. Ngui sat in front with me and Mary sat with Charo and Mwengi behind the gun rack. I said good-bye to Peter and we started up the road to turn to the west into the sunlight.
“Did you get everything you wanted, honey?”
“There’s really nothing to buy. But I found a few things we needed.”
I thought of the last time I had been there shopping but there was no use thinking about that and Miss Mary had been in Nairobi then and that is a better shopping town than Laitokitok. But then I had just begun to learn to shop in Laitokitok and I liked it because it was like the general store and post office in Cooke City, Montana.