‘You fought?’ Kandisky asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I do not care for Lettow,’ Kandisky said. ‘He fought, yes. No one ever better. When we wanted quinine he would order it captured. All supplies the same. But afterwards he cared nothing for his men. After the war I am in Germany. I go to see about indemnification for my property. «You are an Austrian,» they say. «You must go through Austrian channels.» So I go to Austria. «But why did you fight?» they ask me. «You cannot hold us responsible. Suppose you go to fight in China. That is your own affair. We cannot do anything for you.»
‘ «But I went as a patriot,» I say, very foolishly. «I fight where I can because I am an Austrian and I know my duty.» «Yes,» they say. «That is very beautiful. But you cannot hold us responsible for your noble sentiments.» So they passed me from one to the other and nothing. Still I love the country very much. I have lost everything here but I have more than anyone has in Europe. To me it is always interesting. The natives and the language. I have many books of notes on them. Then too, in reality, I am a king here. It is very pleasant. Waking in the morning I extend one foot and the boy places the sock on it. When I am ready I extend the other foot and he adjusts the other sock. I step from under the mosquito bar into my drawers which are held for me. Don’t you think that is very marvellous?’
‘It’s marvellous.’
‘When you come back another time we must take a safari to study the natives. And shoot nothing, or only to eat. Look, I will show you a dance and sing a song.’
Crouched, elbows lifting and falling, knees humping, he shuffled around the table, singing. Undoubtedly it was very fine.
‘That is only one of a thousand,’ he said. ‘Now I must go for a time. You will be sleeping.’
‘There’s no hurry. Stay around.’
‘No. Surely you will be sleeping. I also. I will take the butter to keep it cool.’
‘We’ll see you at supper,’ Pop said.
‘Now you must sleep. Good-bye.’
After he was gone, Pop said: ‘I wouldn’t believe all that about the Aga Khan, you know.’
‘It sounded pretty good.’
‘Of course he feels badly,’ Pop said. ‘Who wouldn’t. Von Lettow was a hell of a man.’
‘He’s very intelligent,’ my wife said. ‘He talks wonderfully about the natives. But he’s bitter about American women.’
‘So am I,’ said Pop. ‘He’s a good man. You better get some shut-eye. You’ll need to start about three-thirty.’
‘Have them call me.’
Molo raised the back of the tent, propping it with sticks, so the wind blew through and I went to sleep reading, the wind coming in cool and fresh under the heated canvas.
When I woke it was time to go. There were rain clouds in the sky and it was very hot. They had packed some tinned fruit, a five-pound piece of roast meat, bread, tea, a tea pot, and some tinned milk in a whisky box with four bottles of beer. There was a canvas water bag and a ground cloth to use as a tent. M’Cola was taking the big gun out to the car.
‘There’s no hurry about getting back,’ Pop said. ‘We’ll look for you when we see you.’
‘All right.’
‘We’ll send the lorry to haul that sportsman into Handeni. He’s sending his men ahead walking.’
‘You’re sure the lorry can stand it? Don’t do it because he’s a friend of mine.’
‘Have to get him out. The lorry will be in to-night.’
‘The Memsahib’s still asleep,’ I said. ‘Maybe she can get out for a walk and shoot some guineas?’
‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about us. ‘Oh’, I hope you get them.’
‘Don’t send out to look for us along the road until day after to-morrow,’ I said. ‘If there’s a good chance we’ll stay.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Good luck, sweet. Good-bye, Mr. J. P.’
CHAPTER TWO
We were out from under the shade of camp and along the sandy river of a road, driving into the western sun, the bush thick to the edge of the sand, solid as a thicket, the little hills rising above it, and all along the road we passed groups of people making their way to the westward. Some were naked except for a greasy cloth knotted over one shoulder, and carried bows and sealed quivers of arrows. Others carried spears. The wealthy carried umbrellas and wore draped white cloth and their women walked behind them, with their pots and pans. Bundles and loads of skins were scattered along ahead on the heads of other natives. All were travelling away from the famine. And in the heat, my feet out over the side of the car to keep them away from the heat of the engine, hat low over the eyes against the sun, watching the road, the people, and all clearings in the bush for game, we drove to the westward.
Once we saw three lesser kudu cows in an open place of broken bush.
Grey, big bellied, long necked, small headed, and with big ears, they moved quickly into the woods and were gone. We left the car and tracked them but there was no bull track.
A little beyond there a flock of guineas quick-legged across the road running steady-headed with the motion of trotters. As I jumped from the car and sprinted after them they rocketed up, their legs tucked close beneath them, heavy-bodied, short wings drumming, cackling, to go over the trees ahead. I dropped two that thumped hard when they fell and as they lay, wings beating, Abdullah cut their heads off so they would be legal eating. He put them in the car where M’Cola sat laughing; his old man’s healthy laugh, his making-fun-of-me laugh, his bird-shooting laugh that dated from a streak of raging misses one time that had delighted him. Now when I killed, it was a joke, as when we shot a hyena, the funniest joke of all. He laughed always to see the birds tumble and when I missed he roared and shook his head again and again.
‘Ask him what the hell he’s laughing about?’ I asked Pop once.
‘At B’wana,’ M’Cola said, and shook his head, ‘at the little birds.’
‘He thinks you’re funny,’ Pop said.
‘Goddam it. I am funny. But the hell with him.’
‘He thinks you’re very funny,’ Pop said. ‘Now the Memsahib and I would never laugh.’
‘Shoot them. yourself.’
‘No, you’re the bird shot. The self-confessed bird shot,’ she said.
So bird shooting became this marvellous joke. If I killed, the joke was on. the birds and M’Cola would shake his head and laugh and make his hands go round and round to show how the bird turned over in the air. And if I missed, I was the clown of the piece and he would look at me and shake with laughing. Only the hyenas were funnier.
Highly humorous was the hyena obscenely loping, full belly dragging, at daylight on the plain, who, shot from the stern, skittered on into speed to tumble end over end. Mirth provoking was the hyena that stopped out of range by an alkali lake to look back and, hit in the chest, went over on his back, his four feet and his full belly in the air. Nothing could be more jolly than the hyena coming suddenly wedge-headed and stinking out of high grass by a ‘donga’, hit at ten yards, who raced his tail in three narrowing, scampering circles until he died.
It was funny to M’Cola to see a hyena shot at close range. There was that comic slap of the bullet and the hyena’s agitated surprise to find death inside of him. It was funnier to see a hyena shot at a great distance, in the heat shimmer of the plain, to see him go over backwards, to see him start that frantic circle, to see that electric speed that meant that he was racing the little nickeled death inside him. But the great joke of all, the thing M’Cola waved his hands across his face about, and turned away and shook his head and laughed, ashamed even of the hyena, the pinnacle of hyenic humour, was the hyena, the classic hyena, that hit too far back while running, would circle madly, snapping and tearing at himself until he pulled his own intestines out, and then stood there, jerking them out and eating them with relish.
»Fisi,» M’Cola would say and shake his head in delighted sorrow at there being such an awful beast. Fisi, the hyena, hermaphroditic, self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain, looking back, mongrel dog-smart in the face; whack from the little Mannlicher and then the horrid circle starting. ‘Fisi,’ M’Cola laughed, ashamed of him, shaking his bald black head. ‘Fisi. Eats himself. Fisi.’
The hyena was a dirty joke but bird shooting was a clean joke. My whisky was a clean joke. There were many variations of that joke. Some we come to later. The Mohammedans and all religions were a joke. A joke on all the people who had them. Charo, the other gun bearer, was short, very serious and highly religious. All Ramadan he never swallowed his saliva until sunset and when the sun was almost down I’d see him watching nervously. He had a bottle with him of some sort of tea and he would finger
