Chapter one. Part I pursuit and conversation

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.'