“I’m not.”
“Brother, please try not to misunderstand me. You know the sense in which I say father. Arap Meina says you are his father. Also you brought him to life after he died in the airplane. You brought him back to life after he lay dead in Bwana Mouse’s tent. It is known. Many things are known.”
“Too many things are improperly known.”
“Brother, may I have a drink?”
“If I do not see you take it.”
“Chin chin,” the Informer said. He had taken the Canadian gin instead of the Gordon’s and my heart went out to him. “You must forgive me,” he said. “I have lived all my life with the Bwanas. May I tell you more or are you tired of the subject?”
“I am tired of part of it, but other parts interest me. Tell me more about the history of the Shamba.”
“I do not know it exactly because they are Kamba and I am Masai. That shows there is something wrong with the Shamba or I would not be living there. There is something wrong with the men. You have seen them. For some reason they came here originally. This is a long way from Kamba country. Neither true tribal law nor any other law runs here. You have also seen the condition of the Masai.”
“We have to talk about that another day.”
“Willingly, brother, things are not well. It is a long story. But let me tell you about the Shamba. Why you went there in the early morning and spoke through me about the all-night Ngoma of the great drunkenness with such severity, the people say afterwards that they could see the gallows in your eyes. The man who was still so drunk that he couldn’t understand was taken to the river and washed in the water from the Mountain until he understood and he entered the neighboring province the same day climbing the Mountain on foot. You do not know what serious law you are.”
“It is a small Shamba. But very beautiful. Who sold them the sugar for the beer of that Ngoma?”
“I do not know. But I could find out.”
“I know,” I said and told him. I knew that he knew. But he was an informer and he had lost out in life long ago and it was the Bwanas who had ruined him although he gave full credit for that process to a Somali wife. But it was a Bwana, a great Lord, who was the greatest friend the Masai ever had but who liked, he said, to do things backwards who, if what he said was true, had ruined him. No one knows how much is true that an informer says but his description of this great man had been done with such a mixture of admiration and remorse that it seemed to explain many things that I had never understood. I had never heard of any backward tendency on the part of this great man until I came to know the Informer. I always expressed disbelief at some of these surprising tales.
“You will hear, of course,” the Informer said to me now that his zeal for informing had been heightened by the Canadian gin, “that I am an agent of the Mau Mau and you may believe it because I have said such things about this backwardness. But, brother, it is not true. I truly love and believe in the Bwanas. True all but one or two of the great Bwanas are dead and I should have led a far different life,” the Informer said. “Thinking of these great dead Bwanas fills me with the resolution to lead a better and finer life. It is permitted?”
“The last one,” I said. “And only as a medicine.”
At the word medicine, the Informer brightened. He had a very nice and rather noble large face covered with the lines and wrinkles of good temper and uncomplaining dissipation and debauchery. It was not an ascetic face nor was there any depravity in it. It was the face of a dignified man who, being a Masai and ruined by the Bwanas and by a Somali wife, now lived in an outlaw Kamba village with the status of protector of a Widow and earned eighty-six shillings a month betraying anyone betrayable. Yet it was a handsome face, ravaged and cheerful, and I was very fond of the Informer although I disapproved of him completely and had several times told him that it might be my duty to see him hanged.
“Brother,” he said. “There must be those medicines. How would the great doctor with the Dutch name have written about them in such a serious review as the Reader’s Digest if they did not exist?”
“They exist,” I said. “But I do not have them. I can send them to you.”
“Brother, only one thing more. The girl is a very serious thing.”
“If you ever say that again I will know you are a fool. Like all people when they drink you repeat yourself.”
“I will excuse myself.”
“Go, brother. I will try, truly, to send you the medicine and other good medicines. When I see you next be prepared to bring me more of the history of the Shamba.”
“Do you have any messages?”
“No messages.”
It always shocked me to realize that the Informer and I were the same age. We were not exactly the same age but were of the same age group, which was near enough and bad enough. And here I was with a wife that I loved and who loved me and tolerated my errors and referred to this girl as my fiancée, tolerating because I was in some ways a good husband and for other reasons of generosity and kindness and detachment and wanting me to know more about this country than I had any right to know. We were happy at least a good part of each day and nearly always at night and this night, in bed together, under the mosquito netting with the flaps of the tent open so that we could see the long burned-through logs of the big fire and the wonderful darkness that receded jaggedly as the night wind struck the fire and then closed in quickly as the wind dropped, we were very happy.
“We’re too lucky,” Mary said. “I love Africa so. I don’t know how we can ever leave it.”
It was a cold night with the breeze off the snows of the Mountain and we were snug under the blankets. The night noises were starting and we had heard the first hyena and then the others. Mary loved to hear them at night. They make a pleasant noise if you love Africa and we laughed together as they moved around the camp and out past the cook’s tent where the meat was hung in a tree. They could not reach the meat but they kept talking about it.
“You know if you are ever dead and I’m not lucky so we die together, if anyone asks me what I remember best about you I’ll tell them about how much room you could give your wife in a canvas cot. Where do you put yourself, really?”
“Sort of sideways on the edge. I’ve lots of room.”
“We can sleep comfortably in a bed one person couldn’t be comfortable in if it’s cold enough.”
“That’s the thing. It has to be cold.”
“Can we stay longer in Africa and not go home until spring?”
“Sure. Let’s stay until we’re broke.”
Then we heard the thud of a lion’s cough as he came hunting across the long meadow up from the river.
“Listen,” Mary said. “Hold me close and tight and listen.
“He’s come back,” Mary whispered.
“You can’t tell it’s him.”
“I’m sure it is him,” Mary said. “I’ve heard him enough nights. He’s come down from the Manyatta where he killed the two cows. Arap Meina said he would come back.”
We could hear his coughing grunt as he moved across the meadow toward where we had made the airstrip for the small plane.
“We’ll know if it’s him in the morning,” I said. “Ngui and I know his tracks.”
“So do I.”
“OK, you track him.”
“No. I only meant that I do know his tracks.”
“They’re awfully big.” I was sleepy and I thought if we are going to hunt lion with Miss Mary in the morning I should get some sleep. For a long time we had known, in some things, what the other one of us was going to say or, often, to think and Mary said, “I’d better get in my own bed so you’ll be comfortable and sleep well.”