They were the same camel flies we found here on the lions. In Spain if one got inside your shirt you had to get the shirt off to kill him. He’d go inside the neckband, down the back, around and under one arm, make for the navel and the belly band, and if you did not get him he would move with such intelligence and speed that, scuttling flat and uncrushable he would make you undress completely to kill him.
That day of watching the camel flies working under the horse’s tail, having had them myself, gave me more horror than anything I could remember except one time in a hospital with my right arm broken off short between the elbow and the shoulder, the back of the hand having hung down against my back, the points of the bone having cut up the flesh of the biceps until it finally rotted, swelled, burst, and sloughed off in pus.
Alone with the pain in the night in the fifth week of not sleeping I thought suddenly how a bull elk must feel if you break a shoulder and he gets away and in that night I lay and felt it all, the whole thing as it would happen from the shock of the bullet to the end of the business and, being a little out of my head, thought perhaps what I was going through was a punishment for all hunters.
Then, getting well, decided if it was a punishment I had paid it and at least I knew what I was doing. I did nothing that had not been done to me. I had been shot and I had been crippled and gotten away. I expected, always, to be killed by one thing or another and I, truly, did not mind that any more. Since I still loved to hunt I resolved that I would only shoot as long as I could kill cleanly and as soon as I lost that ability I would stop.
If you serve time for society, democracy, and the other things quite young, and declining any further enlistment make yourself responsible only to yourself, you exchange the pleasant, comforting stench of comrades for something you can never feel in any other way than by yourself.
That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely, or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-coloured, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student’s exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat, all this well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians, they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm. fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing — the stream.
So, in the front seat, thinking of the sea and of the country, in a little while we ran out of Aragon and down to the bank of a sand river, half a mile wide, of golden-coloured sand, shored by green trees and broken by islands of timber and in this river the water is underneath the sand and the game comes down at night and digs in the sand with sharp-pointed hoofs and water flows in and they drink.
We cross this river and by now it was getting to be afternoon and we passed many people on the road who were leaving the country ahead where there was a famine and there were small trees and close brush now beside the road, and then it commenced to climb and we came into some blue hills, old, worn, wooded hills with trees like beeches and clusters of huts with fire smoking and cattle home driven, flocks of sheep and goats and patches of corn and I said to P.O.M., ‘It’s like Galicia’.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘We’ve been through three provinces of Spain to-day.’
‘Is it really?’ Pop asked.
‘There’s no difference,’ I said. ‘Only the buildings. It was like Navarre in Droopy’s country too. The limestone outcropping in the same way, the way the land lies, the trees along the watercourses and the springs.’
‘It’s damned strange how you can love a country’ Pop said.
‘You two are very profound fellows,’ P.O.M. said. ‘But where are we going to camp?’
‘Here,’ said Pop. ‘As well as any place. We’ll just find some water.’
We camped under some trees near three big wells where native women came for water and, after drawing lots for location, Karl and I hunted in the dusk around two of the hills across the road above the native village.
‘It’s all kudu country,’ Pop said. ‘You’re liable to jump one anywhere.’
But we saw nothing but some Masai cattle in the timber and came home, in the dark, glad of the walk after a day in the car, to find camp up, Pop and P.O.M. in pyjamas by the fire, and Karl not yet in.
He came in, furious for some reason, no kudu possibly, pale, and gaunt looking and speaking to nobody.
Later, at the fire, he asked me where we had gone and I said we had hunted around our hill until our guide had heard them; then cut up to the top of the hill, down, and across country to camp.
‘What do you mean, heard us?’
‘He said he heard you. So did M’Cola.’
‘I thought we drew lots for where we would hunt.’
‘We did,’ I said. ‘But we didn’t know we had gotten around to your side until we heard you.’
‘Did ‘you’ hear us?’
‘I heard something,’ I said. ‘And when I put my hand up to my ear to listen the guide said something to M’Cola and M’Cola said, “B’wana”. I said,
“What B’wana?” and he said, “B’wana Kabor”. That’s you. So we figured we’d come to our limit and went up to the top and came back.’
He said nothing and looked very angry.
‘Don’t get sore about it,’ I said.
‘I’m not sore. I’m tired,’ he said. I could believe it because of all people no one can be gentler, more understanding, more self-sacrificing, than Karl, but the kudu had become an obsession to him and he was not himself, nor anything like himself.
‘He better get one pretty quick,’ P.O.M. said when he had gone into his tent to bathe.
‘Did you cut in on his country?’ Pop asked me.
‘Hell, no,’ I said.
‘He’ll get one where we’re going,’ Pop said. ‘He’ll probably get a fifty-incher. ‘
‘All the better,’ I said. ‘But by God, I want to get one too.’
‘You will, Old Timer,’ Pop said. ‘I haven’t a thought but what you will.’
‘What the hell! We’ve got ten days.’
‘We’ll get sable too, you’ll see. Once our luck starts to run.’
‘How long have you ever had them hunt them in a good country?’
‘Three weeks and leave without seeing one. And I’ve had them get them the first half day. It’s still hunting, the way you hunt a big buck at home.’
‘I love it,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want that guy to beat me. Pop, he’s got the best buff, the best rhino, the best water-buck . . .’
‘You beat him on oryx,’ Pop said.
‘What’s an oryx?’
‘He’ll look damned handsome when you get him home.’
‘I’m just kidding.’
‘You beat him on impalla, on eland. You’ve got a first-rate bushbuck. Your leopard’s as good as his. But he’ll beat you on anything where there’s luck. He’s got damned wonderful luck and he’s a good lad. I think he’s off his feed a little.’
‘You know how fond I am of him. I like him as
