Эрнест Хемингуэй. Зеленые холмы Африки (engl)

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     Ernest Hemingway. Green hills of Africa
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        CONTENTS

    PART I PURSUIT AND CONVERSATION
    PART II PURSUIT REMEMBERED
    PART III PURSUIT AND FAILURE
    PART IV PURSUIT AS HAPPINESS


     Dear Mr. J. P.
     Just tell them you are a fictional character and it is your bad luck to
have a writer put such  language in  your speeches. We all know how prettily
the best brought up people speak but there are always those not quite out of
the top drawer who have an 'orrid fear of vulgarity. You will know, too, how
to  deal with anyone who calls you Pop. Remember  you  weren't written of as
Pop. It was  all this fictional character. Anyway the book is for you and we
miss you very much.
                 E. H.


        PART I

        PURSUIT AND CONVERSATION

        CHAPTER ONE

     We were sitting in  the blind that Wanderobo hunters had built of twigs
and branches  at the edge of  the salt-lick  when we heard  the  motor-lorry
coming. At first it was far  away and no one  could tell what the noise was.
Then it  was  stopped  and we hoped it had  been nothing or perhaps only the
wind. Then  it  moved slowly  nearer,  unmistakable  now,  louder and louder
until, agonizing  in  a clank of loud irregular explosions, it passed  close
behind us to go on up the road. The theatrical one of the two trackers stood
up.
     'It is finished,' he said.
     I put my hand to my mouth and motioned him down.
     'It is finished,' he said again  and spread his arms wide.  I had never
liked him and I liked him. less now.
     'After,' I whispered. M'Cola shook his head. I looked at his bald black
skull and he  turned his face a little so that I saw the thin Chinese  hairs
at the corners of his mouth.
     'No good,' he said. {'Hapana m'uzuri.'}
     'Wait  a  little,' I  told him. He bent  his head down again so that it
would not show above the dead branches and we  sat there  in the dust of the
hole until it was too  dark to see the front sight on my rifle;  but nothing
more came. The theatrical tracker was impatient and restless.
     A little before the last of the  light was gone he  whispered to M'Cola
that it was now too dark to shoot.
     'Shut up, you,' M'Cola told him. 'The  Bwana can shoot after you cannot
see.'
     The other tracker, the educated one, gave another demonstration of  his
education  by scratching his  name, Abdullah, on the black skin  of his  leg
with  a  sharp twig. I watched without admiration  and M'Cola  looked at the
word without a shadow  of  expression on his face. After a while the tracker
scratched it out.
     Finally  I made a last sight against what was left of the light and saw
it was no use, even with the large aperture.
     M'Cola was watching.
     'No good,' I said.
     'Yes,' he agreed, in Swahili. 'Go to camp?'
     'Yes.'
     We stood up  and  made  our  way out of the blind  and  out through the
trees, walking on the sandy loam, feeling our  way between  trees  and under
branches, back  to the road. A mile along the  road was the car.  As we came
alongside, Kamau, the driver, put the lights on.
     The  lorry had spoiled it. That afternoon we had left  the  car up  the
road and approached  the salt-lick very carefully.  There  had been a little
rain, the day before, though  not enough to flood the lick, which was simply
an opening in  the trees  with a patch of earth  worn into deep  circles and
grooved  at the edges with hollows where the animals had licked the dirt for
salt, and  we had seen long, heart-shaped, fresh tracks of four greater kudu
bulls that had  been on  the salt  the night before, as well as  many  newly
pressed tracks of lesser kudu.  There was also a rhino who, from the  tracks
and the kicked-up mound of strawy dung, came there each night. The blind had
been built at close arrow-shot of the lick, and sitting, leaning back, knees
high, heads  low,  in a hollow half full of ashes and dust, watching through
the dried leaves and thin branches I had seen a lesser kudu bull come out of
the brush to  the edge of  the  opening where the salt was and stand  there,
heavy-necked, grey, and handsome, the horns spiralled  against the sun while
I sighted on his  chest  and  then refused the shot, wanting not to frighten
the greater kudu that should  surely come at dusk. But before  we ever heard
the lorry the bull had heard  it and  run off into the trees, and everything
else that had been moving, in the bush on the flats, or coming down from the
small hills through the  trees, coming toward  the salt, had  halted at that
exploding, clanking sound. They would come,  later, in the dark, but then it
would be too late.
     So now, going along the sandy track of the road in the car, the  lights
picking out the eyes of night birds that squatted  close on the  sand  until
the bulk of  the car was  on them  and they rose in  soft panic; passing the
fires  of  the travellers that all moved  to the westward by day along  this
road,  abandoning the  famine country that was  ahead of us, me sitting, the
butt of my rifle on my foot, the barrel in the crook of my left arm, a flask
of whisky between my knees, pouring the whisky into a tin cup and passing it
over my  shoulder  in  the  dark for M'Cola to pour  water into it from  the
canteen, drinking this, the first one of the day, the  finest  one there is,
and looting at the thick  bush we  passed in the dark, feeling the cool wind
of the night and smelling the good smell of Africa, I was altogether happy.
     Then ahead we saw a big fire and as we came up and passed, I made out a
lorry  beside  the road. I told Kamau to  stop and go back and as  we backed
into the firelight there was a short, bandy-legged man with a Tyrolese  hat,
leather shorts, and an open  shirt standing before an  unhooded  engine in a
crowd of natives.
     'Can we help?' I asked him.
     Wo,' he said. 'Unless you are a mechanic. It has taken a dislike to me.
All engines dislike me.'
     'Do you think it could be the timer? It sounded as though it might be a
timing knock when you went past us.'
     'I  think it is much worse than  that. It sounds to  be  something very
bad.'
     'If you can get to our camp we have a mechanic.'
     'How far is it?'
     'About twenty miles.'
     'In the morning I  will try it. Now  I  am afraid to make it go farther
with that noise of death inside. It is trying to die because it dislikes me.
Well, I dislike it too. But if I die it would not annoy it.'
     'Will you have a drink?' I held out the flask. 'Hemingway is my name.'
     'Kandisky,'  he  said and  bowed.  'Hemingway is  a name I have  heard.
Where? Where have I heard it? Oh, yes. The {dichter}. You know Hemingway the
poet?'
     'Where did you read him?'
     'In the {Querschnitt.'}
     'That is  me,'  I said, very  pleased. The {Querschnitt} was  a  German
magazine I had  written some rather obscene poems for, and  published a long
story in, years before I could sell anything in America.
     'This is very  strange,'  the  man in the Tyrolese hat  said. 'Tell me,
what do you think of Ringelnatz?'
     'He is splendid.'
     'So. You like Ringelnatz. Good. What do you think of Heinrich Mann?'
     'He is no good.'
     'You believe it?'
     'All I know is that I cannot read him.'
     'He is no good at  all. I see  we have  things  in common. What are you
doing here?'
     'Shooting.'
     {'Not} ivory, I hope.'
     'No. For kudu.'
     'Why should any man shoot a kudu? You, an intelligent  man, a poet,  to
shoot kudu.'
     'I haven't shot any yet,' I said. 'But we've been hunting them hard now
for  ten days.  We  would have got  one to-night  if it hadn't been for your
lorry.'
     'That poor lorry. But you should hunt  for a  year. At the end of  that
time you have shot  everything and you are  sorry for  it.  To hunt for  one
special animal is nonsense. Why do you do it?'
     'I like to do it.'
     'Of course, if you  {like}  to do it. Tell me, what do you really think
of Rilke?'
     'I have read only the one thing.'
     'Which?'
     'The Cornet.'
     'You liked it?'
     'Yes.'
     'I  have  no patience with it. It  is snobbery. Valery,  yes. I see the
point of Valery,  although there is much snobbery too. Well at  least you do
not kill elephants.'
     'I'd kill a big enough one.'
     'How big?'
     'A seventy-pounder. Maybe smaller.'
     'I see there  are things we do  not  agree on. But it is a pleasure  to
meet one of the great old {Querschnitt} group. Tell me what is Joyce like? I
have not  the money to  buy it. Sinclair Lewis  is nothing. I bought it. No.
No. Tell  me to-morrow.  You  do not mind if I am camped near? You  are with
friends? You have a white hunter?'
     'With my wife. We would be delighted. Yes, a white hunter.'
     'Why is he not out with you?'
     'He believes you should hunt kudu alone.'
     'It is better not to hunt them at all. What is he? English?'
     'Yes.'
     'Bloody English?'
     'No. Very nice. You will like him.'
     'You must go. I must not keep you. Perhaps I will see you to-morrow. It
was very strange that we should meet.'
     'Yes,' I said. 'Have them look at the  lorry to-morrow. Anything we can
do?'
     'Good night,' he said. 'Good trip.'
     'Good night,' I said. We started  off and I saw him walking  toward the
fire  waving an  arm at the  natives. I had not asked him why he had  twenty
up-country  natives with him, nor where he  was  going. Looking back, I  had
asked him nothing. I do not like  to ask questions, and where I was  brought
up it  was  not polite. But here we had  not seen a white man for two weeks,
not since we had  left  Babati to go south, and then to run into one on this
road where you met only an occasional Indian trader and the steady migration
of the natives out of the famine country, to have him look like a caricature
of Benchley in Tyrolean costume, to have him know your name, to call  you  a
poet, to have read the {Querschnitt}, to be an admirer of Joachim Ringelnatz
and to  want to talk about Rilke, was too fantastic to deal  with.  So, just
then, to crown  this  fantasy,  the lights  of  the  car showed three  tall,
conical, mounds of something smoking in the road ahead. I motioned  to Kamau
to stop, and putting on the brakes we skidded just short of them.  They were
from two to three feet high and when I touched one it was quite warm.
     {'Tembo,'} M'Cola said.
     It was dung from elephants that had just crossed the  road, and  in the
cold of the evening you could see it steaming. In a  little while we were in
camp.
     Next morning I was  up and away  to another salt-lick before  daylight.
There was a kudu bull on the lick when  we approached through the trees  and
he gave a loud  "bark, like a dog's but higher in pitch and sharply throaty,
and was gone, making no noise at first, then crashing in  the brush  when he
was well  away; and we never  saw him. This lick had an impossible approach.
Trees grew  around its open  area so that it was as though the game  were in
the blind and you had  to come to them across the open. The only way to make
it would have been for one  man to go  alone and crawl and then it would  be
impossible to get any  sort of a close  shot  through the  interlacing trees
until you were  within twenty  yards.  Of course once you  were  inside  the
protecting  trees,  and  in  the  blind,  you  were wonderfully  placed, for
anything that came to the salt had to come out in the open twenty-five yards
from any cover. But  though we stayed until eleven o'clock nothing came.  We
smoothed the dust of the lick carefully with our feet so that any new tracks
would  show when  we came  back again and walked the two  miles to the road.
Being  hunted,  the game had learned to  come only at night and leave before
daylight. One bull had stayed and our  spooking him  that morning would make
it even more difficult now.
     This was the tenth day we  had been hunting greater kudu and  I had not
seen a  mature bull yet. We had only three days more because the rains  were
moving north  each  day  from Rhodesia and unless we  were  prepared to stay
where we were through the rains we must be out as far as Handeni before they
came. We had set February 17th as the last safe date to leave. Every morning
now  it took the  heavy,  woolly sky  an hour or so longer to  clear and you
could  feel the rains coming,  as they  moved steadily  north,  as surely as
though you watched them on a chart.
     Now it is pleasant to hunt something  that you  want very  much  over a
long period of time, being outwitted, outmanoeuvred, and failing  at the end
of  each day, but having the hunt and  knowing every time you  are out that,
sooner or later, your luck will change and that you will get the chance that
you are seeking. But it is not pleasant to  have a time limit  by which  you
must get your kudu or perhaps never get it, nor even see  one. It is not the
way hunting should be. It is too much like those boys who used to be sent to
Paris  with two  years in  which to make good as writers or  painters, after
which, if they had not made good, they could go home and into their fathers'
businesses. The way to hunt is for  as long as you live against as  long  as
there is such and such an animal; just as the  way to paint is  as  long  as
there is  you and colours and canvas, and to write as long as  you  can live
and there  is  pencil and paper  or ink  or any  machine  to do it  with, or
anything  you care to write about, and you feel a fool, and  you are a fool,
to do  it  any other  way.  But here we  were, now, caught by  time, by  the
season,  and by the running out of our money, so that  what should have been
as much fun to do each day  whether you killed or not was being  forced into
that  most  exciting  perversion of  life;  the necessity  of  accomplishing
something  in less  time  than should truly be allowed  for  its  doing. So,
coming in at noon, up  since two hours before daylight, with only three days
left, I  was starting to be nervous about  it, and there, at the table under
the dining tent fly, talking away, was Kandisky of the Tyrolese pants. I had
forgotten all about him.
     'Hello.  Hello,' he said.  'No  success?  Nothing  doing?  Where is the
kudu?'
     'He coughed once and went away,' I said. 'Hello, girl.'
     She smiled. She was  worried too. The two of  them  had  been listening
since  daylight for a shot. Listening all the time, even  when our guest had
arrived; listening while writing letters, listening while reading, listening
when Kandisky came back and talked.
     'You did not shoot him?'
     'No. Nor  see him.'  I saw  that  Pop  was worried  too,  and a  little
nervous. There had evidently been considerable talking going on.
     'Have a beer, Colonel,' he said to me.
     'We spooked  one,' I reported. 'No  chance of a shot. There were plenty
of tracks. Nothing  more came. The wind was blowing  around.  Ask  the  boys
about it.'
     'As  I  was telling Colonel  Phillips,'  Kandisky began,  shifting  his
leather-breeched behind and crossing one heavy-calved, well-haired, bare leg
over the other, 'you must not stay here too long. You must realize the rains
are  coming. There is one  stretch of twelve miles beyond here you can never
get through if it rains. It is impossible.'
     'So he's been telling me,' Pop  said. 'I'm a Mister, by the way. We use
these  military  titles  as  nicknames.  No  offence  if  you're  a  colonel
yourself.' Then  to me, 'Damn these salt-licks. If you'd  leave them.  alone
you'd get one.'
     'They ball it all  up,' I agreed. 'You're so sure  of  a shot sooner or
later on the lick.'
     'Hunt the hills too.'
     Til hunt them, Pop.'
     'What  is killing a kudu, anyway?' Kandisky asked. 'You should not take
it so seriously. It is nothing. In a year you kill twenty.'
     'Best not say anything about that  to the game department, though,' Pop
said.
     'You misunderstand,'  Kandisky said. 'I  mean in a year a man could. Of
course no man would wish to.'
     'Absolutely,' Pop said. 'If he lived in kudu country, he could. They're
the commonest big antelope  in this  bush  country. It's just that when  you
want to see them you don't.'
     'I kill  nothing, you understand,' Kandisky  told  us. 'Why are you not
more interested in the natives?'
     'We are,' my wife assured him.
     'They are really interesting. Listen...' Kandisky said, and he spoke on
to her.
     'The hell of it is,' I said to Pop, 'when I'm in the hills I'm sure the
bastards  are down there on the salt. The cows are in  the hills but I don't
believe the bulls are  with them now. Then you get there  in the evening and
there are the tracks.  They {have} been on the lousy salt. I think they come
any time.'
     'Probably they do.'
     'I'm sure  we get different bulls there. They probably only come to the
salt every couple of days. Some are certainly spooked because Karl shot that
one. If he'd only killed it clean instead of  following it through the whole
damn countryside. Christ, if he'd only  kill any damn thing clean. Other new
ones will come  in. All we have to do is to wait them out, though. Of course
they can't all know about it. But he's spooked this country to hell.'
     'He gets so  very excited,'  Pop said. 'But he's a good lad. He  made a
beautiful shot on that leopard,  you know.  You don't  want  them killed any
cleaner than that. Let it quiet down again.'
     'Sure. I don't mean anything when I curse him.'
     'What about staying in the blind all day?'
     'The  damned  wind started to go round in  a circle.  It blew our scent
every direction. No use to sit there broadcasting it. If the damn wind would
hold. Abdullah took an ash can to-day.'
     'I saw him starting off with it.'
     'There wasn't a bit of wind when we stalked the salt and there was just
light to shoot.  He tried  the wind with the ashes all the way. I went alone
with Abdullah and left the others behind and we went quietly. I had on these
crepe-soled  boots and  it's soft cotton dirt. The bastard spooked  at fifty
yards.
     'Did you ever see their ears?'
     'Did I ever see their ears? If I can see his ears, the skinner can work
on him.'
     'They're bastards,' Pop said. 'I hate this salt-lick  business. They're
not  as smart as we think. The trouble is you're working on  them where they
are smart. They've been shot at there ever since there's been salt.'
     'That's what makes it fun,' I said. 'I'd be  glad to do it for a month.
I like to hunt sitting on my tail. No sweat. No nothing. Sit there and catch
flies and feed them  to the ant lions in the dust. I like it. But what about
the time?'
     'That's it. The time.'
     'So,' Kandisky was saying to my wife. 'That is what you should see. The
big {ngomas}. The big native dance festivals. The real ones.'
     'Listen,' I said to Pop. 'The other lick, the one I was at  last night,
is fool-proof except for being near that {bloody} road.'
     'The trackers say it is really  the property of the lesser kudu. It's a
long way too. It's eighty miles there and back.'
     'I know.  But there were four {big}  bull tracks. It's  certain. If  it
wasn't  for that lorry  last night. What about  staying there to-night! Then
I'd get the night and the early morning and give this lick a rest. There's a
big rhino there too. Big track, anyway.'
     'Good,'  Pop  said. 'Shoot the  rhino too.'  He hated to  have anything
killed except  what we were  after, no  killing on  the side, no  ornamental
killing, no killing to kill,  only when you wanted it more than  you  wanted
not to kill it, only when getting it was necessary to his being first in his
trade, and I saw he was offering up the rhino to please me.
     'I won't kill him unless he's good,' I promised.
     'Shoot the bastard,' Pop said, making a gift of him.
     'Ah, Pop,' I said.
     'Shoot him,'  said  Pop. 'You'll  enjoy it, being by  yourself. You can
sell the horn if you don't want it. You've still one on your licence. '
     'So,'  said Kandisky. 'You  have arranged a plan of campaign? You  have
decided on how to outwit the poor animals?'
     'Yes,' I said. 'How is the lorry?'
     'That  lorry  is finished,' the Austrian said. 'In a way I am glad.  It
was  too much of a symbol. It was  all that  remained  of  my {shamba}.  Now
everything is gone and it is much simpler.'
     'What is  a  shamba?' asked P.O.M., my  wife. 'I've  been hearing about
them for months. I'm afraid to ask about those words every one uses.'
     'A plantation,' he  said.  'It  is all gone except that lorry. With the
lorry I carry labourers to the shamba of an Indian. It is a very rich Indian
who  raises  sisal. I  am a manager  for this Indian.  An Indian  can make a
profit from a sisal shamba.'
     'From anything,' Pop said.
     'Yes. Where we fail, where we would starve, he makes money. This Indian
is  very  intelligent,   however.   He  values  me.   I  represent  European
organization. I  come now  from organizing recruitment of the  natives. This
takes  time.  It is impressive. I have been  away from  my family  for three
months. The organization is organized. You do it in a week as easily, but it
is not so impressive.'
     'And your wife?' asked mine.
     'She waits at my house, the house of the manager, with my daughter.'
     'Does she love you very much?' my wife asked.
     'She must, or she would be gone long ago.'
     'How old is the daughter?'
     'She is thirteen now.'
     'It must be very nice to have a daughter.'
     'You cannot  know how nice it is.  It  is like a  second wife. My  wife
knows  now  all I think, all I say, all I believe, all I  can do, all that I
cannot  do and cannot be. I know also about my  wife --  completely. But now
there is  always someone you do  not  know, who does not know you, who loves
you in ignorance  and is strange to  you both. Some one very attractive that
is  yours and not yours and that makes  the conversation more -- how shall I
say? Yes, it is like -- what do you call -- having here with you -- with the
two of  you -- yes there  -- it  is  the  Heinz Tomato Ketchup on the  daily
food.'
     'That's very good,' I said.
     'We have books,' he said. 'I cannot buy new books now but we can always
talk. Ideas and  conversation  are very interesting. We discuss  all things.
Everything. We  have  a very interesting  mental  life. Formerly,  with  the
shamba, we had the {Querschnitt}. That  gave you a feeling  of belonging, of
being made a part of, to a  very  brilliant group  of people. The people one
would see if one  saw whom one wished to see. You know all of those  people?
You must know them.'
     'Some of them.' I said. 'Some in Paris. Some in Berlin.'
     I  did not wish to destroy anything this  man had, and so I  did not go
into those brilliant people in detail.
     'They're marvellous,' I said, lying.
     'I  envy you to know them,' he said. 'And tell me, who is the  greatest
writer in America?'
     'My husband,' said my wife.
     'No.  I  do not  mean for you to speak from  family  pride. I mean  who
really? Certainly not Upton Sinclair. Certainly not  Sinclair  Lewis. Who is
your Thomas Mann? Who is your Valery?'
     'We do  not have great writers,' I said. 'Something happens to our good
writers at  a certain age. I can explain but it  is  quite long and may bore
you.'
     'Please explain,' he said. 'This is what I enjoy. This is the best part
of life. The life of the mind. This is not killing kudu.'
     'You haven't heard it yet,' I said.
     'Ah, but I  can see it coming. You must take  more beer to  loosen your
tongue.'
     'It's loose,' I told him. 'It's always too loose. But {you} don't drink
anything.'
     'No, I never drink. It is not good for the mind. It is unnecessary. But
tell me. Please tell me.'
     'Well,'  I said, 'we have  had, in America,  skilful  writers. Poe is a
skilful  writer. It is skilful, marvellously constructed, and it is dead. We
have had writers of rhetoric who had the good fortune to find a little, in a
chronicle  of another man and from  voyaging, of how things, actual  things,
can be, whales for instance, and this  knowledge is wrapped  in the rhetoric
like plums in  a  pudding.  Occasionally  it  is there, alone,  unwrapped in
pudding, and it is  good. This is Melville.  But the people who  praise  it,
praise it  for  the rhetoric which is not important. They  put  a mystery in
which is not there.'
     'Yes,' he said.  'I see. But  it  is  the mind working,  its ability to
work,  which  makes the  rhetoric.  Rhetoric is  the  blue  sparks from  the
dynamo.'
     'Sometimes.  And  sometimes  it is only  blue  sparks,  and what is the
dynamo driving?'
     'So. Go on.'
     'I've forgotten.'
     'No. Go on. Do not pretend to be stupid.'
     'Did you ever get up before daylight...'
     'Every morning,' he said. 'Go on.'
     'All right. There were others who  wrote like exiled  English colonials
from an England of which they were never a part to a newer England that they
were  making.  Very good men with the small, dried,  and excellent wisdom of
Unitarians; men of letters, Quakers with a sense of humour.'
     'Who were these?'
     'Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier, and Company. All  our early classics who
did not  know  that a new  classic  does  not  bear  any  resemblance to the
classics that have preceded it. It can steal from anything that it is better
than, anything that is not a classic, all classics do that. Some writers are
only born to help another writer to write one sentence. But it cannot derive
from or resemble a previous classic.  Also  all these men were gentlemen, or
wished  to be.  They were all very respectable. They did  not  use the words
that people always have used in speech, the words that survive in language.
     Nor would you gather that they had bodies. They  had minds, yes.  Nice,
dry, clean  minds. This is all  very dull, I would not  state it except that
you ask for it.'
     'Go on.'
     'There is one at that time that is supposed to be really good. Thoreau.
I cannot tell you about it because I have not  yet been able to read it. But
that  means nothing because I cannot read other  naturalists unless they are
being extremely accurate and not literary. Naturalists should all work alone
and  some  one else should correlate their findings for them. Writers should
work alone. They should see each other  only after their work  is  done, and
not too often then.  Otherwise  they  become like writers in  New  York. All
angleworms in  a bottle,  trying to  derive knowledge and  nourishment  from
their  own contact and from the bottle. Sometimes the bottle  is shaped art,
sometimes  economics, sometimes  economic-religion. But once they are in the
bottle they stay there. They are lonesome outside of the bottle. They do not
want to be lonesome. They  are afraid to be  alone  in  their beliefs and no
woman  would  love  any  of  them  enough so  that  they  could  kill  their
lonesomeness in that woman, or pool it with hers, or make something with her
that makes the rest unimportant.'
     'But what about Thoreau?'
     'You'll have to read him.  Maybe I'll be able to later. I can do nearly
everything later.'
     'Better have some more beer, Papa.'
     'All right.'
     'What about the good writers?'
     'The good  writers are  Henry James,  Stephen  Crane, and  Mark  Twain.
That's not the order they're good in. There is no order for good writers.'
     'Mark Twain is a humorist. The others I do not know.'
     'All  modern  American literature comes  from  one book  by  Mark Twain
called {Huckleberry Finn}. If you read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim
is  stolen from the boys. That  is the real end. The rest is  just cheating.
But it's the best book  we've had. All  American  writing comes  from  that.
There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.'
     'What about the others?'
     'Crane wrote two  fine stories. {The Open Boat} and {The --Blue Hotel}.
The last one is the better.'
     'And what happened to him?'
     'He died. That's simple. He was dying from the start.'
     'But the other two?'
     'They both lived  to be old  men but they did not get any wiser as they
got older. I don't know what they really wanted. You see we make our writers
into something very strange.'
     'I do not understand.'
     'We destroy them in many ways. First, economically. They make money. It
is only by hazard that a writer makes money  although good books always make
money eventually. Then our writers when  they have made some money  increase
their standard  of living and they are caught. They have to write to keep up
their  establishments, their wives, and so on, and they  write  slop. It  is
slop not on purpose but because it is hurried. Because they write when there
is nothing to say or no water in the well. Because they are ambitious. Then,
once they have betrayed  themselves, they justify it  and you get more slop.
Or else they  read  the critics. If they  believe the critics when they  say
they are great then they must believe them when they say they are rotten and
they lose  confidence. At present  we have two good writers who cannot write
because they have lost confidence  through reading  critics. If  they wrote,
sometimes it would be good and sometimes not so good and  sometimes it would
be quite bad, but the good would get out. But they have read the critics and
they must write  masterpieces. The masterpieces the critics said they wrote.
They  weren't masterpieces, of  course. They were just quite good books.  So
now they cannot write at all. The critics have made them impotent.'
     'Who are these writers?'
     'Their names  would mean  nothing  to you  and  by  now  they  may have
written, become frightened, and be impotent again.'
     'But what is it that happens to American writers? Be definite.'
     'I was not here in the old  days so  I cannot tell you about  them, but
now there are various  things. At a certain  age the men writers change into
Old  Mother Hubbard.  The  women writers  become  Joan  of  Arc  without the
fighting.  They become leaders. It doesn't matter who they lead.  If they do
not  have followers they  invent them. It is useless for  those selected  as
followers to protest.  They  are accused of disloyalty. Oh, hell. There  are
too many things happen to them. That is one thing.  The  others try to  save
their souls with what they write. That is an easy way out. Others are ruined
by the first money, the first praise, the first attack, the first  time they
find they  cannot write,  or the first time they cannot do anything else, or
else they get  frightened and join organizations that do  their thinking for
them. Or they do  not know what they want. Henry James wanted to make money.
He never did, of course.'
     'And you?'
     'I am interested in other things. I  have a good life but I must  write
because  if I do not write a certain  amount I do  not enjoy the rest of  my
life.'
     'And what do you want?'
     'To write as well as I can and learn as I go along. At  the same time I
have my life which I enjoy and which is a damned good life.'
     'Hunting kudu?'
     'Yes. Hunting kudu and many other things.'
     'What other things?'
     'Plenty of other things.'
     'And you know what you want?'
     'Yes.'
     'You really like to do this, what you do now, this silliness of kudu?'
     'Just as much as I like to be in the Prado.'
     'One is not better than the other?'
     'One is as necessary as the other. There are other things, too.'
     'Naturally.  There must be. But this sort of  thing  means something to
you, really?'
     'Truly.'
     'And you know what you want?'
     'Absolutely, and I get it all the time.'
     'But it takes money.'
     'I could always make money, and besides I have been very lucky.'
     'Then you are happy?'
     'Except when I think of other people.'
     'Then you think of other people?'
     'Oh, yes.'
     'But you do nothing for them?'
     'No.'
     'Nothing?'
     'Maybe a little.'
     'Do you think your writing is worth doing -- as an end in itself?'
     'Oh, yes.'
     'You are sure?'
     'Very sure.'
     'That must be very pleasant.'
     'It is,' I said. 'It is the one altogether pleasant thing about it.'
     'This is getting awfully serious,' my wife said.
     'It's a damned serious subject.'
     'You see, he is really serious about something,'
     Kandisky said. 'I knew he must be serious on something besides kudu.'
     'The  reason  everyone  now  tries  to avoid  it, to  deny  that  it is
important,  to  make  it  seem. vain to try to do it,  is  because  it is so
difficult. Too many factors must combine to make it possible.'
     'What is this now?'
     'The kind of writing that can be done. How far prose can be carried  if
anyone is serious enough and has luck. There is a fourth and fifth dimension
that can be gotten.'
     'You believe it?'
     'I know it.'
     'And if a writer can get this?'
     'Then nothing else matters. It is more  important than anything he  can
do. The chances  are,  of course, that he  will  fail. But there is a chance
that he succeeds.'
     'But that is poetry you are talking about.'
     'No.  It  is much more difficult than poetry.  It  is a  prose that has
never  been written.  But  it can  be  written,  without tricks and  without
cheating. With nothing that will go bad afterwards.'
     'And why has it not been written?'
     'Because there are too many factors. First, there must be  talent, much
talent. Talent  such  as Kipling had.  Then there  must  be  discipline. The
discipline of Flaubert. Then there must  be the conception of what it can be
and an absolute conscience as unchanging  as the standard meter in Paris, to
prevent  faking. Then the writer must  be intelligent and  disinterested and
above  all he must survive. Try  to get all these in one person and have him
come through all the influences that press on  a writer.  The hardest thing,
because time is so short, is for him to survive and get his work done. But I
would like us to have such a writer and to read what he would write. What do
you say? Should we talk about something else?'
     'It  is  interesting  what  you  say.  Naturally I  do  not agree  with
everything.'
     'Naturally.'
     'What about  a gimlet?'  Pop  asked.  'Don't  you  think a gimlet might
help?'
     'Tell  me  first what are the  things, the actual, concrete things that
harm a writer?'
     I  was tired of  the conversation which was becoming an interview. So I
would make it an interview and finish it.  The  necessity to put a  thousand
intangibles into a sentence, now, before lunch, was too bloody.
     'Politics, women,  drink, money,  ambition. And the  lack of  politics,
women, drink, money and ambition,' I said profoundly.
     'He's getting much too easy now,' Pop said.
     'But drink.  I do  not  understand  about that. That has  always seemed
silly to me. I understand it as a weakness.'
     'It  is  a way  of ending a day. It has great benefits. Don't  you ever
want to change your ideas?'
     'Let's have one,' Pop said. 'M'Wendi!'
     Pop  never  drank before lunch except as  a mistake  and  I knew he was
trying to help me out.
     'Let's all have a gimlet,' I said.
     'I never drink,' Kandisky said. 'I will go to the lorry  and fetch some
fresh butter  for  lunch.  It is  fresh  from Kandoa,  unsalted. Very  good.
To-night we  will  have a  special  dish  of Viennese  dessert.  My cook has
learned to make it very well.'
     He went off  and my wife said: 'You were getting awfully profound. What
was that about all these women?'
     'What women?'
     'When you were talking about women.'
     'The hell with them,' I said. 'Those are the ones you get involved with
when you're drunk.'
     'So that's what you do.'
     'No.'
     'I don't get involved with people when I'm drunk.'
     'Come, come,' said Pop. 'We're  none of us ever drunk. My God, that man
can talk.'
     'He didn't have a chance to talk after B'wana M'Kumba started.'
     'I did have verbal dysentery,' I said.
     'What about his lorry? Can we tow it in without ruining ours?'
     'I think so,' Pop said. 'When ours comes back from Handeni.'
     At  lunch under the green fly of the dining-tent, in the shade of a big
tree, the wind  blowing,  the  fresh  butter much admired,  Grant's  gazelle
chops,  mashed  potatoes,  green corn, and  then  mixed  fruit for  dessert,
Kandisky told us why the East Indians were taking the country over.
     'You see, during the war they sent  the Indian troops to fight here. To
keep them out of India because they feared another mutiny. They promised the
Aga Khan that because they fought  in Africa, Indians could  come freely  to
settle and  for business afterwards. They cannot break that promise and  now
the  Indians have taken  the  country  over from the Europeans. They live on
nothing and they send  all  the money  back to  India. When  they have  made
enough to go home they leave, bringing out their poor relations to take over
from them and continue to exploit the country.'
     Pop said nothing. He would not argue with a guest at table.
     'It  is the  Aga  Khan,' Kandisky said. 'You are  an American. You know
nothing of these combinations.'
     'Were you with Von  Lettow?' Pop asked him.  'From the start,' Kandisky
said. 'Until the end.'
     'He was a great fighter,' Pop said. 'I have great admiration for him.'
     '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
it and watch the  sun and I would see M'Cola watching him and pretending not
to  see.  This  was not outrightly funny  to him. This was something that he
could not laugh about openly but that he felt  superior  to and  wondered at
the  silliness of  it. The Mohammedan religion  was very fashionable and all
the higher social grades  among the  boys were Mohammedans. It was something
that  gave  caste,  something  to  believe  in,  something  fashionable  and
god-giving  to  suffer  a  little for  each  year, something  that made  you
superior to other people, something that gave you more complicated habits of
eating, something that I understood and M'Cola did not understand,  nor care
about, and he watched Charo watch for the sun to set with that blank look on
his  face that it put  on about all things  that he was not a part of. Charo
was deadly thirsty and truly devout and the sun set very slowly. I looked at
it,  red  over the trees, nudged him and he grinned. M'Cola  offered me  the
water  bottle solemnly. I  shook my  head  and Charo  grinned again.  M'Cola
looked blank. Then the  sun was down and Charo had the bottle tilted up, his
Adam's  apple rising and falling greedily and M'Cola looking at him and then
looking away.
     In the  early days, before we became good  friends, he did not trust me
at all. When anything came  up  he went  into this  blankness. I liked Charo
much better then. We  understood each other  on the question of religion and
Charo admired my shooting  and always  shook  hands  and smiled when  we had
killed  anything particularly good. This was flattering and pleasing. M'Cola
looked on all this early shooting  as a series of  lucky accidents. We  were
supposed  to shoot.  We  had not yet shot anything that amounted to anything
and he was not really my gun bearer. He was Mr. Jackson Phillip's gun bearer
and he had been loaned to me. I meant nothing to him. He did not like me nor
dislike me. He was politely contemptuous of Karl. Who he liked was Mama.
     The evening we killed the first  lion it was dark when we came in sight
of  camp.  The killing  of the lion had been confused and unsatisfactory. It
was agreed beforehand that P.O.M. should have the first  shot  but since  it
was the  first lion any of  us had ever shot at, and it was very late in the
day, really  too late to take the lion on, once he was hit we were to make a
dogfight  of it  and anyone was free to get him. This was a good plan  as it
was  nearly sundown and if the lion got into cover, wounded, it would be too
dark to  do  anything about it without  a mess.  I remember  seeing the lion
looking yellow and heavy-headed and enormous against  a scrubby looking tree
in a patch of orchard bush and P.O.M. kneeling  to shoot and wanting to tell
her  to sit down and  make sure of him. Then there was  the  short-barrelled
explosion  of the Mannlicher and the lion was going to the left on a  run, a
strange,  heavy-shouldered,  foot-swinging,  cat  run.  I hit him  with  the
Springfield and he went down and  spun over and  I shot again,  too quickly,
and threw a cloud of dirt  over him. But there he was, stretched out, on his
belly, and, with the sun  just over the top of the trees, and the grass very
green, we walked up  on him like  a posse, or a gang of Black and Tans, guns
ready and cocked, not knowing whether he was stunned  or dead. When  we were
close M'Cola threw a stone at him. It hit him in  the flank and from the way
it  hit  you could tell he was  a dead animal. I was sure P.O.M. had hit him
but there  was  only one bullet hole, well  back, just  below  the spine and
ranging forward  to come to  the  surface under  the skin of the chest.  You
could feel the bullet under the skin  and M'Cola made a slit and cut it out.
It  was a 220-grain solid bullet from the Springfield and  it had raked him,
going through lungs and heart.
     I was  so surprised  by the way he  had rolled  over dead from the shot
after we had been prepared for  a charge, for heroics, and for drama, that I
felt more  let down  than  pleased.  It was  our first lion and we were very
ignorant and this was not what  we  had paid to see.  Charo  and M'Cola both
shook P.O.M.'s hand and then Charo came over and shook hands with me.
     'Good shot, B'wana,' he said in Swahili. {'Piga m'uzuri.'}
     'Did you shoot, Karl?' I asked.
     'No. I was just going to when you shot.'
     'You didn't shoot him, Pop?'
     'No. You'd have  heard it.' He opened the breech  and took  out the two
big 450 No. 2's.
     'I'm sure I missed him,' P.O.M. said.
     'I was sure you hit him.. I still think you hit him,' I said.
     'Mama hit,' M'Cola said.
     'Where?' Charo asked.
     'Hit,' said M'Cola. 'Hit.'
     'You  rolled  him  over,' Pop said to  me.  'God,  he went over  like a
rabbit.'
     'I couldn't believe it.'
     'Mama {piga,'} M'Cola said. {''Piga Simba.'}
     As we saw the camp fire in the dark ahead of us, coming in  that night,
M'Cola suddenly commenced to shout a stream of  high-pitched, rapid, singing
words in Wakamba ending in the word {'Simb}a{'}. Someone at the camp shouted
back one word. D 47
     'Mama!' M'Cola shouted. Then another long stream. Then 'Mama! Mama!'
     Through the dark came all the porters, the cook, the skinner, the boys,
and the headman.
     'Mama!' M'Cola shouted. 'Mama {piga Simba.'}
     The boys came dancing, crowing, and beating time and chanting something
from  down in their chests that started like a cough  and sounded like {'Hey
la Mama! Hay la Mama! Hey la Mama!'}
     The  rolling-eyed skinner picked P.O.M. up, the big  cook  and the boys
held her,  and the others pressing forward to lift  and  if not to  lift  to
touch and hold, they danced and sang through the dark around the fire and to
our tent.
     {'Hey la Mama! huh!  huh! huh!  Hay la Mama! huh! huh! huh!'} they sang
the lion dance  with that deep, lion asthmatic cough in it. Then at the tent
they put  her  down and everyone, very shyly, shook  hands,  the boys saying
{'m'uzuri, Memsahib,''} and M'Cola and the  porters all saying  {''m'uzuri},
Mama' with much feeling in the accenting of the word 'Mama'.
     Afterwards in the chairs in front of the fire, sitting with the drinks,
Pop said, 'You shot it. M'Cola would kill anyone who said you didn't.'
     'You know,  I  feel as though  I  did shoot it,' P.O.M. said.  'I don't
believe I'd be able to stand it if I really had  shot  it. I'd be too proud.
Isn't triumph marvellous?'
     'Good old Mama,' Karl said.
     'I believe you did shoot him,' I said.
     'Oh, let's not go into that,' P.O.M.  said. 'I feel so  wonderful about
just being supposed to have killed him. You know people  never used to carry
me on their shoulders much at home.'
     'No one knows how to behave in America,' Pop said. 'Most uncivilized.'
     'We'll carry you in Key West,' Karl said. 'Poor old Mama.'
     'Let's not talk about it,'  P.O.M. said. 'I like it too much. Shouldn't
I maybe distribute largess?'
     'They didn't do it for  that,' Pop  said. 'But it  is all right to give
something to celebrate.'
     'Oh, I want  to  give them  all  a  great  deal of money,' P.O.M. said.
'Isn't triumph simply marvellous?'
     'Good old Mama,' I said. 'You killed him.'
     'No, I didn't. Don't lie to me. Just let me enjoy my triumph.'
     Anyway M'Cola did not trust me for a long  time. Until P.O.M.'s licence
ran out,  she was  his favourite and we  were  simply a lot  of  people  who
interfered and kept Mama from shooting things. Once her  licence was out and
she was no longer  shooting, she dropped back into non-combatant status with
him  and as  we began to hunt kudu and Pop  stayed  in  camp and sent us out
alone with  the trackers, Karl with Charo and M'Cola and I  together, M'Cola
dropped Pop  visibly in his estimation. It was only temporary  of course. He
was Pop's man and I  believe  his  working estimations were only from day to
day  and  required  an unbroken  series of events  to have any  meaning. But
something had happened between us.


        PART II

        PURSUIT REMEMBERED

        CHAPTER ONE

     It dated back to the time  of Droopy, after I had come  back from being
ill in Nairobi and we had gone on a foot safari to hunt rhino in the forest.
Droopy  was a real savage  with lids  to  his eyes that nearly covered them,
handsome, with a great deal of style, a fine hunter and a beautiful tracker.
He was about thirty-five, I should  think,  and  wore only  a piece of cloth
knotted over  one shoulder, and  a  fez that some hunter  had given  him. He
always  carried a spear. M'Cola wore an old U. S. Army khaki tunic, complete
with buttons, that had originally been  brought out for Droopy, who had been
away somewhere and had missed getting it.  Twice  Pop had brought it out for
Droopy and finally M'Cola had said, 'Give it to me'.
     Pop  had let him have it and M'Cola had  worn it ever since. It, a pair
of shorts, his fuzzy wool curler's cap, and  a knitted army sweater he  wore
when washing  the tunic, were  the only garments I ever saw  on  the old man
until he took my bird-shooting coat. For shoes  he used sandals cut from old
motor-car tyres.  He had  slim, handsome legs with well-turned ankles on the
style of Babe Ruth's and I remember how surprised I was the first time I saw
him with the  tunic  off and noticed how old his upper body was. It had that
aged look you see in photographs of Jeffries and Sharkey posing thirty years
after, the ugly, old-man biceps and the fallen pectoral muscles.
     'How old is M'Cola?' I asked Pop.
     'He must be over fifty,' Pop  said.  'He's got a grown-up family in the
native reserve.'
     'How are his kids?'
     'No good, worthless. He can't  handle them. We  tried  one as a porter.
But he was no good.'
     M'Cola was not jealous  of  Droopy. He simply  knew  that  Droopy was a
better man than  he was.  More of a hunter, a  faster and a cleaner tracker,
and a great  stylist in everything he did. He admired Droopy in the same way
we did  and being out with  him, it made  him  realize that  he  was wearing
Droopy's tunic and  that he had been a  porter before he became a gun bearer
and suddenly he ceased being an old timer  and we  were hunting together; he
and I hunting together and Droopy in command of the show.
     That had been a  fine hunt. The afternoon of the day  we came  into the
country we walked about four miles from camp along a  deep rhino trail  that
graded through  the grassy hills with their abandoned orchard-looking trees,
as smoothly and evenly as though an engineer had planned it. The trail was a
foot  deep in the ground and smoothly worn and  we left it  where it slanted
down through a divide in the  hills like a dry irrigation ditch and climbed,
sweating, the small, steep hill on the  right to  sit there  with our  backs
against the hilltop and glass the country. It was a green, pleasant country,
with hills  below the forest that grew  thick on the side of a mountain, and
it  was cut by the valleys of several watercourses that came down out of the
thick timber on the mountain. Fingers of the forest came down on to the head
of some of the slopes and it was there, at the  forest edge, that we watched
for rhino to  come out. If you looked  away from the forest and the mountain
side you  could follow the watercourses and the hilly slope of the land down
until  the land flattened  and the  grass was brown and  burned  and,  away,
across  a long sweep of country, was the brown Rift Valley and  the shine of
Lake Manyara.
     We all lay there on the hillside  and watched the country carefully for
rhino. Droopy was on the other side of  the hilltop, squatted on his  heels,
looking, and M'Cola sat below us. There was a cool breeze from the  east and
it blew the grass in  waves  on the hillsides. There  were  many large white
clouds and the tall trees of the forest on the mountain side grew so closely
and were so  foliaged that it looked as though you could walk on their tops.
Behind this  mountain there was a gap and then another mountain and the  far
mountain was dark blue with forest in the distance.
     Until five o'clock we did not  see anything. Then, without the glasses,
I  saw something  moving  over the shoulder of one of  the valleys  toward a
strip of the timber. In  the glasses  it was a rhino, showing very clear and
minute at  the  distance,  red-coloured  in  the sun,  moving with  a  quick
waterbug-like  motion across  the hill. Then there were  three  more of them
that  came out  of the forest,  dark in the  shadow,  and  two  that fought,
tinily,  in the glasses,  pushing head-on, fighting in front  of a  clump of
bushes  while  we watched them and the light failed.  It was too dark to get
down the hill, across the valley and up the narrow slope of mountain side to
them in time for a  shot. So we went back  to the camp, down the hill in the
dark, edging down on our shoes and then feeling the trail smooth under foot,
walking along that  deep trail, that  wound through the dark hills, until we
saw the firelight in the trees.
     We  were excited  that  night because  we  had seen the three rhino and
early  the next  morning while we were eating breakfast before starting out,
Droopy came in to report a herd of buffalo  he had found feeding at the edge
of the forest not  two miles from camp. We went there, still  tasting coffee
and kippers  in  the  early  morning heart-pounding of  excitement,  and the
native Droopy had left watching them  pointed where  they had crossed a deep
gulch and gone into  an open  patch  of forest.  He said there were two  big
bulls in a herd of a dozen or more. We followed them in, moving very quietly
on the game trails,  pushing the vines aside and seeing  the tracks and  the
quantities of fresh dung, but though  we went on into the  forest, where  it
was too thick to shoot and made a wide circle, we did not see  or hear them.
Once we heard the tick birds and saw them flying, but  that  was all.  There
were numbers of rhino  trails there in the  woods and  may strawy  piles  of
dung, but  we  saw nothing but the green wood-pigeons and some  monkeys, and
when  we  came  out we were wet to our waists from  the dew, and the sun was
quite high. The day was very hot, now before the wind had gotten up,  and we
knew whatever rhino and buffalo had been out  would have gone back deep into
the forest to rest out of the heat.
     The others started back to camp with Pop and M'Cola.  There was no meat
in camp, and I wanted to  hunt back in a circle  with Droopy  to  see  if we
could kill a piece. I was beginning to feel strong again after the dysentery
and  it was a pleasure to walk in the easy rolling  country, simply to walk,
and to be  able to hunt, not knowing what we might see and free to shoot for
the meat we needed. Then, too, I liked  Droopy and liked to watch  him walk.
He  strode very loosely and with a slight lift, and I liked to watch him and
to feel  the grass under my  soft-soled boots and the pleasant weight of the
rifle,  held just back of the muzzle, the barrel resting on my shoulder, and
the sun hot enough  to sweat you  well as  it burned the dew from the grass;
with the breeze  starting and the country  like  an  abandoned  New  England
orchard to walk through.  I knew that I was shooting well again and I wanted
to make a shot to impress Droopy.
     From the  top  of  one rise we  saw two  kongoni showing  yellow  on  a
hillside about a  mile away and I  motioned to Droop that we would  go after
them. We started down and in a ravine jumped a waterbuck bull and  two cows.
Waterbuck was the  one animal we might get that I knew was worthless as meat
and I  had shot a better head than this one carried. I had the sights on the
buck as he tore away, remembered about the  worthless  meat,  and having the
head, and did not shoot.
     'No shoot kuro?' Droopy asked in Swahili. {'Doumi sana}. A good bull.'
     I tried to tell him that I had  a better one and that it was no good to
eat.
     He grinned.
     {'Piga kongoni m'uzuri.'}
     Piga' was a fine word. It sounded exactly as the command to fire should
sound or the announcement of a hit. 'M'uzuri', meaning  good,  well, better,
had sounded too much like the name of a state for a long time, and walking I
used to make up  sentences in Swahili with Arkansas and M'usuri in them, but
now it  seemed  natural, no longer to  be italicized, just  as all the words
came  to  seem  the  proper and natural  words and there  was nothing odd or
unseemly in  the  stretching of  the ears, in the tribal scars, or in a  man
carrying a spear.  The  tribal marks and  the tattooed places seemed natural
and handsome  adornments and I regretted not having  any  of my own. My  own
scars were  all informal, some  irregular and sprawling, others simply puffy
welts.  I had one on my forehead that people still commented on, asking if I
had bumped my head, but  Droop had handsome ones  beside  his cheekbones and
others, symmetrical and  decorative, on his chest and belly.  I was thinking
that I had one good one, a sort of embossed Christmas tree, on the bottom of
my  right foot  that  only served  to  wear out socks,  when  we jumped  two
reedbuck. They went off through the trees and then stood at sixty yards, the
thin, graceful buck looking back, and I shot him high and a touch behind the
shoulder. He gave a jump and went off very fast.
     'Piga.' Droopy smiled. We had both heard the whunk of the bullet.
     'Kufa,' I told him. 'Dead.'
     But when we  came up  to  him,  lying on his  side, his heart was still
beating  strongly, although to all appearances he  was  dead.  Droopy had no
skinning knife and I  had only a penknife to stick him with. I felt  for the
heart behind  the  foreleg  with my fingers and feeling it beating under the
hide slipped  the knife  in but  it was short and pushed the heart  away.  I
could feel  it, hot and rubbery against my  fingers, and feel the knife push
it, but I felt around  and cut the big artery and the blood came hot against
my fingers. Once bled,  I started to open  him, with the little knife, still
showing off to Droopy, and emptying him neatly took out the liver,  cut away
the gall, and laying the liver on a hummock of grass, put the kidneys beside
it.
     Droopy  asked for the  knife.  Now he  was going to show  me something.
Skilfully  he  slit open the stomach  and turned it inside, tripe side, out,
emptying the  grass  in it on the  ground, shook it, then put the liver  and
kidneys inside it and with the knife cut a switch from the tree the buck lay
under and sewed the stomach together with the withe so that the tripe made a
bag to carry the other delicacies in. Then he  cut a pole and put the bag on
the end of it, running it through the flaps, and put it over his shoulder in
the  way  tramps carried their property  in a handkerchief on the end  of  a
stick in  Blue Jay corn plaster advertisements when we were children. It was
a good trick and I thought how I would show it to John Staib in Wyoming some
time  and he would smile  his deaf man's smile (you had to throw  pebbles at
him to make  him  stop when you heard a bull bugle),  and  I knew what  John
would say. He would say, 'By Godd, Urnust, dot's smardt'.
     Droop handed  me the  stick, then took off his single garment,  made  a
sung and  got the buck up on his back. I tried to help him  and suggested by
signs  that  we cut a  pole and sling him, carrying him between  us, but  he
wanted to carry him  alone. So we started for camp, me with the tripe bag on
the end  of a stick over  my shoulder, my rifle slung, and Droopy staggering
steadily ahead, sweating heavily, under the buck. I tried to get him to hang
him in a tree and leave him until we could send out a couple of porters, and
to that end we  put him in the crotch of a tree. But when Droopy saw that  I
meant to go off and leave him there rather than simply allow him to drain he
got  him down on to  his shoulders again and we went on into camp, the boys,
around the cooking fire,  all laughing at the tripe bag over my shoulder  as
we came in.
     This  was the kind  of  hunting  that I liked. No riding  in  cars, the
country broken  up instead of the plains, and I was completely  happy. I had
been quite ill and had that pleasant feeling of getting stronger each day. I
was underweight, had a great  appetite for meat,  and could eat all I wanted
without feeling stuffy. Each  day I sweated out whatever we drank sitting at
the fire at night, and in  the heat of the day, now, I lay in the shade with
a breeze  in the  trees  and read with no  obligation  and  no compulsion to
write, happy  in knowing that at four o'clock  we  would be starting out  to
hunt again. I would not even write a letter. The only person  I really cared
about, except the children, was  with nie,  and I had no wish to  share this
life with anyone who was not there, only to live it, being completely  happy
and quite  tired. I  knew that I was shooting well and I had that feeling of
well-being and confidence that is so much more pleasant to have than to hear
about.
     As  it  turned out,  we started soon after three  to be on the  hill by
four.  But it  was nearly  five before we saw  the first rhino come bustling
short-leggedly across the ridge of hill in almost the same place we had seen
the rhino the night before. We sat where he went into the edge of the forest
near where  we had seen the  two fighting and then  took a course that would
lead us down the hill, across the grown-over gully at the bottom, and up the
steep slope to where there was a thorn tree with yellow blossoms that marked
the place where we had seen the rhino go in.
     Coming  straight up  the slope in  sight of the  thorn  tree,  the wind
blowing  across  the hill, I  tried to  walk as  slowly as I could and put a
handkerchief inside the sweatband  of my hat to keep the perspiration out of
my glasses. I expected to shoot at any minute and I wanted to slow up enough
so my  heart  would not be pounding. In shooting large  animals there  is no
reason ever to miss if you have a clear shot and can shoot and know where to
shoot,  unless you are unsteady from  a run or a climb or  fog your glasses,
break them or run out of cloth or paper to wipe them clean. The glasses were
the biggest hazard  and I used to carry  four handkerchiefs and  change them
from the left to the right pocket when they were wet.
     We  came  up  to  the yellow blossomed tree very carefully, like people
walking up  to a bevy of quail the dogs have pointed, and the rhino was  not
in sight.  We  went  all through  the edge of the forest  and it was full of
tracks and fresh rhino sign, but there was no rhino. The sun was setting and
it was getting too dark to shoot, but we followed the forest around the side
of  the mountain,  hoping  to see  a rhino  in  the open glades. When it was
almost too dark to shoot, I saw  Droopy stop and crouch. With  his head down
he motioned us forward. Crawling up,  we saw  a  large rhino and a small one
standing chest deep in brush, facing us across a little valley.
     'Cow and calf,' Pop said softly. 'Can't  shoot her. Let me  look at her
horn.' He took the glasses from M'Cola.
     'Can she see us?' P.O.M. asked.
     'No.'
     'How far are they?'
     'Must be nearly five hundred yards.'
     'My God, she looks big,' I whispered.
     'She's a big cow,'  Pop said. 'Wonder what became of the bull?'  He was
pleased and  excited by the sight of game. 'Too dark  to shoot  unless we're
right on him.'
     The  rhinos  had  turned  and were  feeding. They never seemed  to move
slowly. They either bustled or stood still.
     'What  makes  them so red?'  P.O.M. asked.  'Rolling  in the  mud,' Pop
answered. 'We better get along while there's light.'
     The sun --was down when  we  came out of the forest and looked down the
slope and across to the hill where we had  watched from with our glasses. We
should  have back-tracked and gone down, crossed the gulch, and climbed back
up the trail  the  way  we  had come, but  we decided, like fools,  to grade
straight across  the mountainside below  the edge of  the forest. So  in the
dark, following this ideal line, we descended into steep ravines that showed
only as wooded  patches  until you were in them, slid down, clung  to vines,
stumbled  and  climbed  and  slid  again,  down  and  down,  then   steeply,
impossibly,  up,  hearing  the rustle of night  things  and  the cough of  a
leopard hunting baboons,  me scared  of snakes, and  touching  each root and
branch with snake fear in the dark.
     To go down and up two hands-and-knee climbing ravines and then out into
the moonlight and the long,  too-steep shoulder of mountain that you climbed
one  foot up  to the other, one foot after the other, one stride at  a time,
leaning  forward against  the grade  and the  altitude,  dead  tired and gun
weary,  single file in the moonlight across the slope, on up and to the  top
where it was easy, the country spread in the moonlight, then up and down and
on, through the small hills, tired but now in sight of the fires and on into
camp.
     So then you sit, bundled against the evening chill, at the fire, with a
whisky and soda, waiting for the announcement that the  canvas bath had been
a quarter filled with hot water.
     {'Bathi}, B'wana.'
     'Goddamn it, I could never hunt sheep again,' you say.
     'I never could,' says P.O.M. 'You all made me.'
     'You climbed better than any of us.'
     'Do you suppose we could hunt sheep again, Pop?'
     'I wonder,' Pop said. 'I suppose it's merely condition.'
     'It's riding in the damned cars that ruins us.'
     'If we  did  that walk every  night we could come back in  three nights
from now and never feel it.'
     'Yes. But I'd be as scared  of snakes if  we  did it every night for  a
year.'
     'You'd get over it.'
     'No,'  I said.  'They  scare me  stiff. Do  you remember  that  time we
touched hands behind the tree?'
     'Rather,' said  Pop.  'You jumped two  yards. Are you really afraid  of
them, or only talking?'
     'They scare me sick,' I said. 'They always have.'
     'What's the matter  with you men?'  P.O.M. said.  'Why haven't I  heard
anything about the war to-night?'
     'We're too tired. Were you in the war, Pop?'
     'Not me,' said Pop. 'Where  is that boy  with the whisky?' Then calling
in that feeble, clowning falsetto, 'Kayti... Katy-ay!'
     {'Bathi,'} said Molo again softly, but insistently.
     'Too tired.'
     'Memsahib {bathi,'} Molo said hopefully.
     'I'll  go,' said P.O.M.  'But you two hurry up  with your drinking. I'm
hungry.'
     '{Bathi,'} said Kayti severely to Pop.
     {'Bathi} yourself,' said Pop. 'Don't bully me.'
     Kayti turned away in fire-lit slanting smile.
     'All right. All right,' said Pop. 'Going to have one?' he asked.
     'We'll have just one,' I said, 'and then we'll {bathi.'}
     {'Bathi},  B'wana M'Kumba,' Molo  said.  P.O.M.  came  toward the  fire
wearing her blue dressing-gown and mosquito boots.
     'Go on,'  she said. 'You  can have another  when you  come out. There's
nice, warm, muddy water.'
     'They bully us,' Pop said.
     'Do you remember the time we were  sheep hunting and your hat blew  off
and nearly fell  on to the ram?' I asked her, the whisky racing my mind back
to Wyoming.
     'Go take your {bathi,'} P.O.M. said. 'I'm going to have a gimlet.'
     In the morning we were dressed before daylight, ate breakfast, and were
hunting  the  forest edge  and the sunken valleys  where Droop had  seen the
buffalo before  the sun was up. But they were not there.  It was a long hunt
and we came back to camp  and  decided  to  send the lorries for porters and
move with a foot safari to where there was supposed  to be water in a stream
that came down out of the mountain beyond where we  had seen  the rhinos the
night  before. Being  camped  there  we could hunt a  new  country along the
forest edge and we would be much closer to the mountain.
     The trucks were to bring in Karl  from his kudu camp where he seemed to
be getting disgusted, or discouraged, or both, and  he could go down  to the
Rift Valley the next day and kill some meat and try for an oryx. If we found
good rhino we would send for him. We did not want to fire any shots where we
were going  except at rhino in order  not to scare them, and we needed meat.
The rhino seemed very shy and I knew from  Wyoming how the shy game will all
shift out of a small country, a country being an area,  a valley or range of
hills, a man can hunt in, after a  shot or two. We planned this all out, Pop
consulting with Droopy, and then sent the  lorries off  with Dan to  recruit
porters.
     Late in the afternoon they  were back with Karl, his outfit, and  forty
M'Bulus, good-looking savages with a pompous headman who wore  the only pair
of  shorts among them. Karl was  thin now, his  skin  sallow, his  eyes very
tired  looking and he seemed a little  desperate. He had been eight days  in
the kudu camp in the hills, hunting hard, with no one with him who spoke any
English, and they had only seen two cows and jumped a bull out of range. The
guides claimed  they  had  seen  another  bull but  Karl had  thought it was
kongoni, or that they said it was a kongoni, and had not shot. He was bitter
about this and it was not a happy outfit.
     'I never saw his horns. I don't believe it was  a bull,' he  said. Kudu
hunting was a touchy subject with him now and we let it alone.
     'He'll  get an oryx down  there and he'll feel better,' Pop said. 'It's
gotten on his nerves a little.'
     Karl agreed to the plan for us to move ahead  into the new country, and
for him to go down for meat.
     'Whatever you say,' he said. 'Absolutely whatever you say.'
     'It will give him some shooting,' Pop said. 'Then he'll feel better.'
     'We'll get one. Then you get one. Whoever gets his first can go on down
after oryx. You'll probably get an oryx to-morrow anyway when you're hunting
meat.'
     'Whatever you  say,'  Karl said. His mind was bitterly  revolving eight
blank days of hill climbing  in the heat, out before daybreak, back at dark,
hunting an animal  whose  Swahili name  he  could not  then  remember,  with
trackers in whom he had no confidence, coming back  to eat alone, no one  to
whom he could talk, his  wife nine thousand miles and three months away, and
how was  his dog and how  was  his job, and  god-damn it where were they and
what if he missed one when he got a shot, he wouldn't, you never missed when
it was really important, he was  sure of that, that was one of the tenets of
his faith, but what if he got excited and  missed, and why didn't he get any
letters, what did the guide  say kongoni for that  time, they  did, he  knew
they did,  but  he  said nothing  of  all  that, only, 'Whatever you say', a
little desperately.
     'Come on, cheer up, you bastard,' I said.
     'I'm cheerful. What's the matter with you?'
     'Have a drink.'
     'I don't want a drink. I want a kudu.'
     Later Pop said, 'I thought he'd do well off by himself  with no one  to
hurry him or rattle him. He'll be all right. He's a good lad.'
     'He wants  someone to  tell him  exactly what to do and still leave him
alone and not rattle  him,' I said. 'It's hell  for him to shoot in front of
everybody. He's not a damned show-off like me.'
     'He made a damned fine shot at that leopard,' Pop said.
     'Two  of  them,' I said. 'The second was as good as the first. Hell, he
can shoot. On the range he'll shoot  the pants  off of  any  of us.  But  he
worries about it and I rattle him trying to get him to speed up.'
     'You're a little hard on him sometimes,' Pop said.
     'Hell, he knows me. He knows what I think of him. He doesn't mind.'
     'I still think he'll find himself off by himself,' Pop said. 'It's just
a question of confidence. He's really a good shot.'
     'He's got the best buff, the best waterbuck, and the best lion, now,' I
said. 'He's got nothing to worry about.'
     'The Memsahib has the best  lion, brother. Don't make any mistake about
that.'
     'I'm glad of that. But he's got a damned fine lion  and  a big leopard.
Everything he has is good. We've got  plenty of  time.  He's got nothing  to
worry about. What the hell is he so gloomy about?'
     'We'll get an early start in the morning so we can finish it off before
it gets too hot for the little Memsahib.'
     'She's in the best shape of any one.'
     'She's marvellous. She's like a little terrier.'
     We  went out  that afternoon and glassed the country from the hills and
never  saw a  thing.  That night after  supper  we were in the  tent. P.O.M.
disliked intensely being  compared to a little  terrier. If she must be like
any dog, and she did not wish to be, she would prefer a wolfhound, something
lean, racy, long-legged and ornamental.  Her courage was so automatic and so
much  a simple state  of being  that she never thought of danger; then, too,
danger was in the hands of Pop and for Pop she had a complete, clear-seeing,
absolutely trusting adoration. Pop was her ideal  of how a  man  should  be,
brave,  gentle,  comic,  never losing  his  temper,  never  bragging,  never
complaining except in a joke, tolerant, understanding, intelligent, drinking
a little too much as a good man should, and, to her eyes, very handsome.
     'Don't you think Pop's handsome?'
     'No,' I said. 'Droopy's handsome.'
     'Droopy's {beautiful}. But don't you {really} think Pop's handsome?'
     'Hell,  no.  I  like  him  as well as any man I've ever known, but  I'm
damned if he's handsome.'
     'I think he's lovely looking. But you understand about how I feel about
him, don't you?'
     'Sure. I'm as fond of the bastard myself.'
     'But {don't} you think he's handsome, really?'
     'Nope.'
     Then, a little later:
     'Well, who's handsome to you?'
     'Belmonte and Pop. And you.'
     'Don't be patriotic,' I said. 'Who's a beautiful woman?'
     'Garbo.'
     'Not any more. Josie is. Margot is.'
     'Yes, they are. I know I'm not.'
     'You're lovely.'
     'Let's talk about Mr. J. P. I don't like you to call him  Pop. It's not
dignified.'
     'He and I aren't dignified together.'
     'Yes, but I'm dignified with him. Don't you think he's wonderful?'
     'Yes,  and  he doesn't  have to read  books written by some female he's
tried to help get published saying how he's yellow.'
     'She's just  jealous and malicious. You never should  have helped  her.
Some people never forgive that.'
     'It's a shame, though, with all that talent gone to malice and nonsense
and self-praise. It's a goddamned shame, really. It's a shame you never knew
her before she went to pot.  You know a  funny thing; she  never could write
dialogue. It was terrible. She learned how to do  it  from my stuff and used
it  in  that book.  She had never written like that before. She never  could
forgive learning that and she was afraid people would notice it, where she'd
learned it,  so  she had to attack me.  It's a funny  racket,  really. But I
swear she was  nice before she got ambitious. You would have liked her then,
really.'
     'Maybe, but I don't think  so,' said P.O.M.  'We have fun though, don't
we? Without all those people.'
     'God damn it if we don't. I've had a better time every year since I can
remember.'
     'But isn't Mr. J. P. wonderful? Really?'
     'Yes. He's wonderful.'
     'Oh, you're nice to say it. Poor Karl.'
     'Why?'
     'Without his wife.'
     'Yes,' I said. 'Poor Karl.'


        CHAPTER TWO

     So in the morning, again, we started ahead of the porters and went down
and across the  hills and through  a deeply forested valley and then up  and
across  a  long  rise  of  country  with  high grass that made  the  walking
difficult, and  on and  up and  across, resting  sometimes in the shade of a
tree, and then on and  up and down  and across, all in high grass  now, that
you  had to break  a  trail in, and the  sun was very hot. The five of us in
single file,  Droop and M'Cola with a big gun apiece, hung with musettes and
water bottles and the cameras, we all  sweating in the sun, Pop and  I  with
guns and the Memsahib trying to walk like Droopy,  her Stetson tilted on one
side, happy to be on  a trip,  pleased about how comfortable her boots were,
we came finally to a thicket of thorn trees over a ravine that ran down from
the side of  a ridge to the water and we leaned the guns  against the  trees
and went in under the close shade and lay on the ground P O M. got the books
out of one of the musettes and she  and Pop read while I followed the ravine
down to the little stream  that came out  of  the mountainside, and  found a
fresh lion track and many rhino tunnels  in the tall grass that  came higher
than your head. It was very hot climbing back up the sandy ravine  and I was
glad  to lean  my  back  against  the  tree  trunk  and  read  in  Tolstoy's
{Sevastopol}.  It  was a  very  young book and  had one fine description  of
fighting  in  it,  where  the French take the redoubt,  and I  thought about
Tolstoy and  about  what a  great  advantage  an experience of war was to  a
writer. It was one of the major subjects and certainly one of the hardest to
write  truly of, and  those writers  who  had  not seen it were always  very
jealous and tried to make it seem unimportant, or abnormal,  or a disease as
a subject, while, really,  it was just  something quite  irreplaceable  that
they had missed. Then Sevastopol made me think  of the  Boulevard Sevastopol
in  Paris, about riding  a bicycle down it in the rain on  the way home from
Strassburg  and  the  slipperiness  of  the rails  of the tram cars and  the
feeling  of riding on greasy,  slippery asphalt and cobble stones in traffic
in the  rain, and how we had  nearly lived on  the Boulevard du  Temple that
time, and I remembered  the look of that apartment, how it was arranged, and
the wall paper,  and instead  we  had taken the upstairs of  the pavilion in
Notre Dame des  Champs in  the  courtyard with the  sawmill {(and the sudden
whine of the saw, the smell of  sawdust and the chestnut tree over  the roof
with a mad woman  downstairs)},  and the year worrying about  money {(all of
the stories back in the  post  that came  in through a  slit in the saw-mill
door, with notes of rejection that would never call them stories, but always
anecdotes,  sketches,  conies, etc. They did not want  them, and we lived on
poireaux  and  drank cahors and water)}, and how fine  the fountains were at
the Place  de L'Observatoire ({water sheen rippling on the bronze of horses'
manes, bronze breasts and shoulders, green under thin-flowing} {water)}, and
when they  put  up the bust of  Flaubert in the Luxembourg on the  short cut
through  the gardens on the way to the  rue Soufflot  {(one that we believed
in, loved without  criticism, heavy now in stone  as an idol should be)}. He
had  not seen  war but he  had  seen a  revolution  and the  Commune,  and a
revolution is much the best if you  do  not become bigoted because every one
speaks  the same language.  Just as civil war is the best war for  a writer,
the most complete. Stendhal had seen a war and Napoleon taught him to write.
He was teaching everybody then; but no one else learned. Dostoevski was made
by being sent to  Siberia.  Writers  are  forged in injustice as  a sword is
forged. I wondered if it would make a writer of him, give him  the necessary
shock to cut the  over-flow  of words and give him a sense of proportion, if
they  sent Tom Wolfe to Siberia or to  the  Dry Tortugas. Maybe it would and
maybe it wouldn't. He seemed  sad, really, like Camera. Tolstoy  was a small
man. Joyce was of  medium height and  he wore  his eyes out. And  that  last
night,  drunk, with Joyce and the  thing  he kept quoting from Edgar Quinet,
'Fraiche  et rose comme au jour  de  la bataille'. I didn't have  it right I
knew. And when you saw him he would take up a conversation interrupted three
years before. It was nice to see a great writer in our time.
     What  I  had  to do was work. I did not care, particularly,  how it all
came out. I  did not take  my  own  life seriously any more, any  one else's
life, yes, but not mine. They all wanted something that I did not want and I
would get it without wanting it, if I worked. To work was the only thing, it
was the one thing that always made you feel good, and in the meantime it was
my own damned life and I would lead  it where and how I pleased. And where I
had led it now pleased  me very  much. This was a better sky than Italy. The
hell it was.  The best sky was  in Italy and Spain and  Northern Michigan in
the fall and in the fall in the Gulf off Cuba. You could beat  this sky; but
not the country.
     All I wanted to do now was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet,
but when I would wake in the  night  I would lie, listening, homesick for it
already.
     Now, looking out the tunnel of trees over  the  ravine at the  sky with
white  clouds moving across in the wind, I loved  the  country so that I was
happy as you are after  you have  been with a  woman that  you really  love,
when, empty, you feel  it welling up again and there it is and you can never
have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you  want more and
more, to have,  and be, and  live in,  to possess now again for always,  for
that long, sudden-ended always, making  time stand  still, sometime  so very
still  that  afterwards  you  wait to  hear it  move,  and,< it  is  slow in
starting. But you are not alone, because if you  have  ever really loved her
happy and untragic, she loves you always, no matter whom she loves nor where
she goes  she loves  you  more. So if  you  have loved some  woman and  some
country  you are very  fortunate  and,  if you  die afterwards, it  makes no
difference.  Now,  being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes
of the seasons, the rains  with no need to travel, the  discomforts that you
paid to make it real, the names of the trees,  of the small animals, and all
the birds,  to know the  language and  have  time to be  in  it  and to move
slowly. I have loved country all my life, the country was always better than
the people. I could only care about people a very few at a time.
     P.O.M. was sleeping. She was always lovely to  look at asleep, sleeping
quietly, close  curled like an animal, with  nothing of the being  dead look
that  Karl  had  asleep. Pop slept quietly too,  you could see his soul  was
close in his body. His body no longer  housed him fittingly. It  had gone on
and changed, thickening here, losing its lines, bloating a little there, but
inside he was young and lean and tall  and hard  as when he galloped lion on
the  plain below  Wami, and the pouches under  his eyes were all outside, so
that now I  saw him asleep the way P.O.M.  saw him always. M'Cola was an old
man  asleep, without history and without mystery. Droopy  did  not sleep. He
sat on his heels and watched for the safari.
     We saw them coming a long way off. At first the boxes just showed above
the high grass, then a line of heads,  then they were in a hollow, and there
was only the point of a spear in the sun, then they came up a rise of ground
and I could see  the strung out line  coming  towards us. They  had  gone  a
little too far to the  left and Droopy waved to signal them  toward us. They
made camp, Pop warning  them to be quiet, and we  sat under the dining  tent
and were comfortable in  the chairs and talked. That night we hunted and saw
nothing. The next morning we hunted and saw nothing and the next evening the
same. It was very interesting but there were no results. The  wind blew hard
from the east and the ground was broken in short ridges of hills coming down
close {from} the forest so you could not get above  it without sending  your
scent on ahead of you on the wind to warn everything. You could not see into
the sun  in  the evening, nor on  the heavy shadowed hillsides to the  west,
beyond which the sun was setting at  the time  the rhino would be coming out
of the forest, so all the country to the westward was  a loss in the evening
and in the country we could  hunt we found nothing. Meat came in from Karl's
camp by some porters we sent  back. They came in carrying quarters of tommy,
grant,  and  wildebeeste,  dusty, the  meat seared  dry by the sun, and  the
porters were happy, crouched around their fires roasting the meat on sticks.
Pop was puzzled why the rhino were all gone.  Each day we had seen  less and
we discussed whether  it  could be the full moon, that they fed out at night
and were back in the forest in the morning before it was light, or that they
winded us, or heard the men, and were simply shy  and kept in the forest, or
what was it?  ' Me putting out the theories, Pop pricking them with his wit,
sometimes considering them  from politeness, sometimes  with  interest, like
the one about the moon.
     We went  to bed early and  in the night it rained a little, not a  real
rain  but a shower from the mountains, and in the morning we  were up before
daylight and had climbed up to the top of the steep grassy ridge that looked
down on to the camp, on  to the  ravine of the river bed,  and across to the
steep opposite bank of the stream, and from where we could see all the hilly
slopes and the edge of the forest. It was not yet light when some geese flew
overhead and the light was still too grey to be able to see the  edge of the
forest clearly in  the  glasses. We  had scouts out on three  different hill
tops and we were waiting  for it  to be light enough  for us to see  them if
they signalled.
     Then Pop  said, 'Look at that son of a bitch', and shouted at M'Cola to
bring the rifles. M'Cola  went jumping down the hill, and across the stream,
directly opposite us, a rhino was running with a quick trot along the top of
the bank.  As we watched he speeded up and came, fast trotting, angling down
across the face of the bank. He was a  muddy red, his  horn showed  clearly,
and there  was  nothing ponderous in his quick,  purposeful movement. I  was
very excited at seeing him.
     'He'll cross the stream,' Pop said. 'He's shootable.'
     M'Cola put  the Springfield in my hand and I opened it  to  make sure I
had solids. The Rhino was out of  sight now but I could  see the  shaking of
the high grass.
     'How far would you call it?'
     'All of three hundred.'
     'I'll bust the son of a bitch.'
     I was  watching,  freezing  myself deliberately  inside,  stopping  the
excitement as you close a  valve, going into that impersonal state you shoot
from.
     He showed, trotting into the  shallow, boulder-filled  stream. Thinking
of one thing, that the shot was perfectly possible, but that I must lead him
enough, must get ahead, I got on  him, then well ahead of  him, and squeezed
off. I heard  the {whonk}  of the  bullet and, from his trot,  he seemed  to
explode forward. With  a whooshing snort he  smashed ahead, splashing  water
and snorting. I shot again and  raised a  little column of water behind him,
and shot again as he went into the grass; behind him again.
     'Piga,' M'Cola said. 'Piga!'
     Droopy agreed.
     'Did you. hit him?' Pop said.
     'Absolutely,' I said. 'I think I've got him.'
     Droopy was running and I re-loaded and ran off after him. Half the camp
was  strung  out across the  hills waving and yelling. The rhino had come in
right  below  where  they  were and gone on up the valley towards  where the
forest came close down into the head of the valley.
     Pop and P.O.M. came up. Pop with his big gun and M'Cola carrying mine.
     'Droopy will get the tracks,' Pop said. 'M'Cola swears you hit him.'
     'Piga!' M'Cola said.
     'He  snorted  like  a  steam engine,'  P.O.M.  said.  'Didn't  he  look
wonderful going along there?'
     'He was late getting home with the milk,' Pop said. 'Are you {sure} you
hit him? It was a godawful long shot.'
     'I {know} I hit him. I'm {pretty} sure I've killed him.'
     'Don't tell any one if you did,' Pop said. 'They'll never  believe you.
Look! Droopy's got blood.'
     Below,  in the high grass,  Droop was holding up a grass  blade towards
us. Then, stooped, he went on trailing fast by the blood spoor.
     'Piga,' M'Cola said. 'M'uzuri!'
     'We'll keep up above where we can see  if he makes a break,'  Pop said.
'Look at Droopy.'
     Droop had removed his fez and held it in his hand.
     'That's all the  precautions he needs,' Pop said. 'We bring up a couple
of  heavy  guns  and  Droopy goes in  after  him  with  one article less  of
clothing.'
     Below us  Droopy and his partner who was trailing with him had stopped.
Droopy held up his hand.
     'They hear him,' Pop said. 'Come on.'
     We started toward them. Droopy came toward us and spoke to Pop.
     'He's in there,'  Pop whispered. 'They can hear the tick birds.  One of
the boys says  he heard the faro, too. We'll go  in against the wind. You go
ahead with Droopy. Let the  Memsahib stay behind me.  Take the  big gun. All
right.'
     The  rhino was in high grass, somewhere in there behind some bushes. As
we went forward we heard a deep, moaning sort of groan. Droopy looked around
at  me  and  grinned.  The  noise  came  again,  ending  this  time  like  a
blood-choked  sigh. Droopy was laughing. 'Faro,' he  whispered  and  put his
hand palm  open on  the side of his head in the gesture that means to  go to
sleep. Then in a jerky-flighted, sharp-beaked  little flock we  saw the tick
birds  rise  and  fly away.  We knew where  he  was and, as  we  went slowly
forward, parting the high grass, we saw him. He was on his side, dead.
     'Better shoot him once to make  sure,' Pop  said. M'Cola handed me  the
Springfield he had been carrying. I noticed it was cocked, looked at M'Cola,
furious with him, kneeled down and shot the rhino in  the sticking place. He
never moved. Droopy shook my hand and so did M'Cola.
     'He had that damned Springfield cocked,' I said to Pop. The cocked gun,
behind my back, made me black angry.
     That  meant nothing to  M'Cola. He was very happy, stroking the rhino's
horn, measuring it with his fingers spread, looking for the bullet hole.
     'It's on the side he's lying on,' I said.
     'You  should  have  seen him when  he  was protecting Mama,'  Pop said.
'That's why he had the gun cocked.'
     'Can he shoot?'
     'No,' Pop said. 'But he would.'
     'Shoot me in the  pants,' I said.  'Romantic  bastard.' When the  whole
outfit came up, we rolled the rhino into a sort of kneeling position and cut
away the grass to take some pictures. The bullet hole was fairly high in the
back, a little behind the lungs.
     'That was a  hell of  a shot,' Pop said. 'A hell of a shot.  Don't ever
tell any one you made that one.'
     'You'll have to give me a certificate.'
     'That  would  just  make us both liars. They're a strange beast, aren't
they?'
     There he was, long-hulked,  heavy-sided, prehistoric looking, the  hide
like vulcanized rubber and faintly transparent looking, scarred with a badly
healed  horn wound that the birds  had pecked at, his tail thick, round, and
pointed, flat many-legged ticks crawling on him, his ears fringed with hair,
tiny pig  eyes, moss growing on  the  base of his horn that grew out forward
from his  nose. M'Cola looked at him and shook his head. I agreed with  him.
This was the hell of an animal.
     'How is his horn?'
     'It  isn't bad,' Pop  said. 'It's nothing  extra. That was a hell of  a
shot you made on him though, brother.'
     'M'Cola's pleased with it,' I said.
     'You're pretty pleased with it yourself,' P.O.M. said.
     'I'm  crazy  about  it,' I  said. 'But don't let me start on  it. Don't
worry  about  how I feel about it. I  can wake up and think about  that  any
night.'
     'And you're a good tracker, and a hell of  a fine bird shot, too,'  Pop
said. 'Tell us the rest of that.'
     'Lay off me. I only said that once when I was drunk.'
     'Once,' said P.O.M. 'Doesn't he tell us that every night?'
     'By God, I {am} a good bird shot.'
     'Amazing,' said Pop. 'I never would have  thought  it. What else is  it
you do?'
     'Oh, go to hell.'
     'Mustn't  ever let  him  realize what  a shot  that  was or  he'll  get
unbearable,' Pop said to P.O.M.
     'M'Cola and I know,' I said.
     M'Cola came up. 'M'uzuri, B'wana,' he said. 'M'uzuri sana.'
     'He thinks you did it on purpose,' Pop said.
     'Don't you ever tell him different.'
     'Piga m'uzuri,' M'Cola said. 'M'uzuri.'
     'I believe he feels just the way you do about it,' Pop said.
     'He's my pal.'
     'I believe he is, you know,' Pop said.
     On our way back across country to our main camp  I made a fancy shot on
a reedbuck at about  two hundred  yards, offhand, breaking  his neck  at the
base of the skull. M'Cola was very pleased and Droopy was delighted.
     'We've got  to put  a stop to him,' Pop  said to P.O.M. 'Where did  you
shoot for, really?'
     'In the neck,' I lied. I had held full on the centre of the shoulder.
     'It was awfully pretty,' P.O.M. said. The bullet had  made a crack when
it hit like  a bat swung against a  fast  ball  and  the  buck had collapsed
without a move.
     'I think he's a damned liar,' Pop said.
     'None of us great shots is appreciated. Wait till we're gone.'
     'His idea  of  being  appreciated  is  for  us  to  carry  him  on  our
shoulders,' Pop said. 'That rhino shot has ruined him.'
     'All right. You  watch from  now  on. Hell, I've  shot  well the  whole
time.'
     'I seem to remember  a grant of some sort,' Pop  was teasing.  So did I
remember him. I'd followed a fine one out  of the country missing shot after
shot all morning after a series of stalks in the heat, then crawled up to an
ant hill to shoot one that was not nearly as  good, taken a rest on the  ant
hill,  missed the buck at fifty yards, seen him  stand facing me, absolutely
still, his nose up, and shot him in the chest. He went over backwards and as
I went up to him he jumped up and went off, staggering.
     I sat  down and waited  for  him to  stop  and  when he did,  obviously
anchored,  I sat there, using the sling,  and shot  for his neck, slowly and
carefully, missing  him eight  times  straight in a mounting, stubborn rage,
not making  a correction but shooting exactly for the same place in the same
way each time, the gun bearers all laughing, the truck that had come up with
the outfit holding more amused  niggers,  P.O.M.  and Pop saying nothing, me
sitting  there  cold, crazy-stubborn-furious, determined to  break  his neck
rather  than walk up and  perhaps start him off over that heat-hazy,