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Chapter six

It was a new country to us but it had the marks of the oldest countries

The road was a track over shelves of solid rock, worn by the feet of the

caravans and the cattle, and it rose in the boulder-strewn un-roadhness

through a double line of trees and into the hills. The country was so much

like Aragon that I could not believe that we were not in Spain until,

instead of mules with saddle bags, we met a dozen natives bare-legged and

bareheaded dressed in white cotton cloth they wore gathered over the

shoulder like a toga, but when they had passed, the high trees beside the

track over those rocks was Spam and I had followed this same route forged on

ahead and following close behind a horse one time watching the horror of the

flies scuttling around his crupper They were the same camel flies we found

here on the lions. In Spain if one got inside your shirt you had to get the

shirt off to kill him. He'd go inside the neckband, down the back, around

and under one arm, make for the navel and the belly band, and if you did not

get him he would move with such intelligence and speed that, scuttling flat

and uncrushable he would make you undress completely to kill him That day of

watching the camel flies working under the horse's tail, having had them

myself, gave me more horror than anything I could remember except one time

in a hospital with my right arm broken off short between the elbow and the

shoulder, the back of the hand having hung down against my back, the points

of the bone having cut up the flesh of the biceps until it finally rotted,

swelled, burst, and sloughed off in pus. Alone with the pain in the night in

the fifth week of not sleeping I thought suddenly how a bull elk must feel

if you break a shoulder and he gets away and in that night I lay and felt it

all, the whole thing as it would happen from the shock of the bullet to the

end of the business and, being a little out of my head, thought perhaps what

I was going through was a punishment for all hunters. Then, getting well,

decided if it was a punishment I had paid it and at least I knew what I was

doing. I did nothing that had not been done to me. I had been shot and I had

been crippled and gotten away. I expected, always, to be killed by one thing

or another and I, truly, did not mind that any more. Since I still loved to

hunt I resolved that I would only shoot as long as I could kill cleanly and

as soon as I lost that ability I would stop.

If you serve time for society, democracy, and the other things quite

young, and declining any further enlistment make yourself responsible only

to yourself, you exchange the pleasant, comforting stench of comrades for

something you can never feel in any other way than by yourself. That

something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you

write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in

that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the

subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely, or

when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and

yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as

important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you

are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with,

knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before

man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy

island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out

about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value

because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after

the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the

Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the

martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as

the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-coloured, white-flecked,

ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue

water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the

load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the

flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes,

seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn

leaves of a student's exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional

rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat, all this well shepherded by the boats

of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as

interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians, they have the

viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day

when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it

is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled

out the scow; and the palm. fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of

our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no

significance against one single, lasting thing -- the stream.

So, in the front seat, thinking of the sea and of the country, in a

little while we ran out of Aragon and down to the bank of a sand river, half

a mile wide, of golden-coloured sand, shored by green trees and broken by

islands of timber and in this river the water is underneath the sand and the

game comes down at night and digs in the sand with sharp-pointed hoofs and

water flows in and they drink. We cross this river and by now it was getting

to be afternoon and we passed many people on the road who were leaving the

country ahead where there was a famine and there were small trees and close

brush now beside the road, and then it commenced to climb and we came into

some blue hills, old, worn, wooded hills with trees like beeches and

clusters of huts with fire smoking and cattle home driven, flocks of sheep

and goats and patches of corn and I said to P.O.M., 'It's like Galicia'.

'Exactly, ' she said. 'We've been through three provinces of Spain

to-day.'

'Is it really? ' Pop asked.

'There's no difference, ' I said. 'Only the buildings. It was like

Navarre in Droopy's country too. The limestone outcropping in the same way,

the way the land lies, the trees along the watercourses and the springs.'

'It's damned strange how you can love a country' Pop said.

'You two are very profound fellows, ' P.O.M. said. 'But where are we

going to camp? '

'Here, ' said Pop. 'As well as any place. We'll just find some water.'

We camped under some trees near three big wells where native women came

for water and, after drawing lots for location, Karl and I hunted in the

dusk around two of the hills across the road above the native village.

'It's all kudu country, ' Pop said. 'You're liable to jump one

anywhere.'

But we saw nothing but some Masai cattle in the timber and came home,

in the dark, glad of the walk after a day in the car, to find camp up, Pop

and P.O.M. in pyjamas by the fire, and Karl not yet in.

He came in, furious for some reason, no kudu possibly, pale, and gaunt

looking and speaking to nobody.

Later, at the fire, he asked me where we had gone and I said we had

hunted around our hill until our guide had heard them; then cut up to the

top of the hill, down, and across country to camp.

'What do you mean, heard us? '

'He said he heard you. So did M'Cola.'

'I thought we drew lots for where we would hunt.'

'We did, ' I said. 'But we didn't know we had gotten around to your side

until we heard you.'

'Did {you} hear us? '

'I heard something, ' I said. 'And when I put my hand up to my ear to

listen the guide said something to M'Cola and M'Cola said, " B'wana". I said,

" What B'wana? " and he said, " B'wana Kabor". That's you. So we figured we'd

come to our limit and went up to the top and came back.'

He said nothing and looked very angry.

'Don't get sore about it, ' I said.

'I'm not sore. I'm tired, ' he said. I could believe it because of all

people no one can be gentler, more understanding, more self-sacrificing,

than Karl, but the kudu had become an obsession to him and he was not

himself, nor anything like himself.

'He better get one pretty quick, ' P.O.M. said when he had gone into his

tent to bathe.

'Did you cut in on his country? ' Pop asked me.

'Hell, no, ' I said.

'He'll get one where we're going, ' Pop said. 'He'll probably get a

fifty-incher. '

'All the better, ' I said. 'But by God, I want to get one too.'

'You will, Old Timer, ' Pop said. 'I haven't a thought but what you

will.'

'What the hell! We've got ten days.'

'We'll get sable too, you'll see. Once our luck starts to run.'

'How long have you ever had them hunt them in a good country? '

'Three weeks and leave without seeing one. And I've had them get them

the first half day. It's still hunting, the way you hunt a big buck at

home.'

'I love it, ' I said. 'But I don't want that guy to beat me. Pop, he's

got the best buff, the best rhino, the best water-buck...'

'You beat him on oryx, ' Pop said.

'What's an oryx? '

'He'll look damned handsome when you get him home.'

'I'm just kidding.'

'You beat him on impalla, on eland. You've got a first-rate bushbuck.

Your leopard's as good as his. But he'll beat you on anything where there's

luck. He's got damned wonderful luck and he's a good lad. I think he's off

his feed a little.'

'You know how fond I am of him. I like him as well as I like anyone.

But I want to see him have a good time. It's no fun to hunt if we get that

way about it.'

'You'll see. He'll get a kudu at this next camp and he'll be on top of

the wave.'

'I'm just a crabby bastard, ' I said.

'Of course you are, ' said Pop. 'But why not have a drink? '

'Right, ' I said.

Karl came out, quiet, friendly, gentle, and understandingly delicate.

'It will be fine when we get to that new country, ' he said.

'It will be swell, ' I said.

'Tell me what it's like, Mr. Phillips, ' he said to Pop.

'I don't know, ' said Pop. 'But they say it's very pleasant hunting.

They're supposed to feed right out in the open. That old Dutchman claims

there are some remarkable heads.'

'I hope you get a sixty-incher, kid, ' Karl said to me.

'You'll get a sixty-incher.'

'No, ' said Karl. 'Don't kid me. I'll be happy with any kudu.'

'You'll probably get a hell of a one, ' Pop said.

'Don't kid me, ' Karl said. 'I know how lucky I've been. I would be

happy with any kudu. Any bull at all.'

He was very gentle and he could tell what was in your mind, forgive you

for it, and understand it.

'Good old Karl, ' I said, warmed with whisky, understanding, and

sentiment.

'We're having a swell time, aren't we? ' Karl said. 'Where's poor old

Mama? '

'I'm here, ' said P.O.M. from the shadow. 'I'm one of those quiet

people.'

'By God if you're not, ' Pop said. 'But you can puncture the old man

quick enough when he gets started.'

'That's what makes a woman a universal favourite, ' P.O.M. told him.

'Give me another compliment, Mr. J.'

'By God, you're brave as a little terrier.' Pop and I had both been

drinking, it seemed.

'That's lovely.' P.O.M. sat far back in her chair, holding her hands

clasped around her mosquito boots. I looked at her, seeing her quilted blue

robe in the firelight now, and the light on her black hair. 'I love it when

you all reach the little terrier stage. Then I know the war can't be far

away. Were either of you gentlemen in the war by any chance? '

'Not me, ' said Pop. 'Your husband, one of the bravest bastards that

ever lived, an extraordinary wing shot and an excellent tracker.'

'Now he's drunk, we get the truth, ' I said.

'Let's eat, ' said P.O.M. 'I'm really frightfully hungry.'

We were out in the car at daylight, out on to the road and beyond the

village and, passing through a stretch of heavy bush, we came to the edge of

a plain, still misty before the sunrise, where we could see, a long way off,

eland feeding, looking huge and grey in the early morning light. We stopped

the car at the edge of the bush and getting out and sitting down with the

glasses saw there was a herd of kongoni scattered between us and the eland

and with the kongoni a single bull oryx, like a fat, plum-coloured, Masai

donkey with marvellous long, black, straight, back-slanting horns that

showed each time he lifted his head from feeding.

'You want to go after him? ' I asked Karl.

'No. You go on.'

I knew he hated to make a stalk and to shoot in front of people and so

I said, 'All right'. Also I wanted to shoot, selfishly, and Karl was

unselfish. We wanted meat badly.

I walked along the road, not looking toward the game, trying to look

casual, holding the rifle slung straight up and down from the left shoulder

away from the game. They seemed to pay no attention but fed away steadily. I

knew that if I moved toward them they would at once move off out of range

so, when from the tail of my eye I saw the oryx drop his head to feed again,

and, the shot looking possible, I sat down, slipped my arm through the sling

and as he looked up and started to move off, quartering away, I held for the

top of his back and squeezed off. You do not hear the noise of the shot on

game but the slap of the bullet sounded as he started running across and to

the right, the whole plain backgrounding into moving animals against the

rise of the sun, the rocking-horse canter of the long-legged, grotesque

kongoni, the heavy swinging trot into gallop of the eland, and another oryx

I had not seen before running with the kongoni. This sudden life and panic

all made background for the one I wanted, now trotting, three-quartering

away, his horns held high now and I stood to shoot running, got on him, the

whole animal miniatured in the aperture and I held above his shoulders,

swung ahead and squeezed and he was down, kicking, before the crack of the

bullet striking bone came back. It was a very long and even more lucky shot

that broke a hind leg.

I ran toward him, then slowed to walk up carefully, in order not to be

blown if he jumped and ran; but he was down for good. He had gone down so

suddenly and the bullet had made such a crack as it landed that I was afraid

I had hit him on the horns but when I reached him he was dead from the first

shot behind the shoulders high up in the back and I saw it was cutting the

lee from under him that brought him down. They all came up and Charo stuck

him to make him legal meat.

'Where did you hold on him the second time? ' Karl asked.

'Nowhere. A touch above and quite a way ahead and swung with him.'

'It was very pretty, ' Dan said.

'By evening, ' Pop said, 'he'll tell us that he broke that off leg on

purpose. That's one of his favourite shots, you know. Did you ever hear him

explain it? '

While M'Cola was skinning the head out and Charo was butchering out the

meat, a long, thin Masai with a spear came up, said good morning, and stood,

on one leg, watching the skinning. He spoke to me at some length, and I

called to Pop. The Masai repeated it to Pop.

'He wants to know if you are going to shoot something else, ' Pop said.

'He would like some hides but he doesn't care about oryx hide. It is almost

worthless, he says. He wonders if you would like to shoot a couple of

kongoni or an eland. He likes those hides.'

'Tell him on our way back.'

Pop told him solemnly. The Masai shook my hand.

'Tell him he can always find me around Harry's New York Bar, ' I said.

The Masai said something else and scratched one leg with the other.

'He says why did you shoot him twice? ' Pop asked.

'Tell him in the morning in our tribe we always shoot them twice. Later

in the day we shoot them once. In. the evening we are often half shot

ourselves. Tell him he can always find me at the New Stanley or at Torr's.'

'He says what do you do with the horns? '

'Tell him in our tribe we give the horns to our wealthiest friends.

Tell him it is very exciting and sometimes members of the tribe are chased

across vast spaces with empty pistols. Tell him he can find me in the book.'

Pop told the Masai something and we shook hands again, parting on a

most excellent basis. Looking across the plain through the mist we could see

some other Masai coming along the road, earth-brown skins, and kneeing

forward stride and spears thin in the morning light.

Back in the car, the oryx head wrapped in a burlap sack, the meat tied

inside the mudguards, the blood drying, the meat dusting over, the road of

red sand now, the plain gone, the bush again close to the edge of the road,

we came up into some hills and through the little village of Kibaya where

there was a white rest house and a general store and much farming land. It

was here Dan had sat on a haystack one time waiting for a kudu to feed out

into the edge of a patch of mealy-corn and a lion had stalked Dan while he

sat and nearly gotten him. This gave us a strong historical feeling for the

village of Kibaya and as it was still cool and the sun had not yet burned

off the dew from the grass I suggested we drink a bottle of that

silver-paper-necked, yellow-and-black-labelled German beer with the horseman

in armour on it in order that we might remember the place better and even

appreciate it more. This done, full of historical admiration for Kibaya, we

learned the road was possible ahead, left word for the lorries to follow on

to the eastward and headed on toward the coast and the kudu country.

For a long time, while the sun rose and the day became hot we drove

through what Pop had described, when I asked him what the country was like

to the south, as a million miles of bloody Africa, bush close to the road

that was impenetrable, solid, scrubby-looking undergrowth.

'There are very big elephant in there, ' Pop said. 'But it's impossible

to hunt them. That's why they're very big. Simple, isn't it? '

After a long stretch of the million-mile country, the country began to

open out into dry, sandy, bush-bordered prairies that dried into a typical

desert country with occasional patches of bush where there was water, that

Pop said was like the northern frontier province of Kenya. We watched for

gerenuk, that long-necked antelope that resembles a praying mantis in its

way of carrying itself, and for the lesser kudu that we knew lived in this

desert bush, but the sun was high now and we saw nothing. Finally the road

began to lift gradually into the hills again, low, blue, wooded hills now,

with miles of sparse bush, a little thicker than orchard bush, between, and

ahead a pair of high, heavy, timbered hills that were big enough to be

mountains. These were on each side of the road and as we climbed in the car

where the red road narrowed there was a herd of hundreds of cattle ahead

being driven down to the coast by Somali cattle buyers; the principal buyer

walked ahead, tall, good-looking in white turban and coast clothing,

carrying an umbrella as a symbol of authority. We worked the car through the

herd, finally, and coming out wound our way through pleasant looking bush,

up and out into the open between the two mountains and on, half a mile, to a

mud and thatched village in the open clearing on a little low plateau beyond

the two mountains. Looking back, the mountains looked very fine and with

timber up their slopes, outcroppings of limestone and open glades and

meadows above the timber.

'Is this the place? '

'Yes, ' said Dan. 'We will find where the camping place is.'

A very old, worn, and faded black man, with a stubble of white beard, a

farmer, dressed in a dirty once-white cloth gathered at the shoulder in the

manner of a Roman toga, came out from behind one of the mud and wattle huts,

and guided us back down the road and off it to the left to a very good camp

site. He was a very discouraged-looking old man and after Pop and Dan had

talked with him he went off, seeming more discouraged than before, to bring

some guides whose names Dan had written on a piece of paper as being

recommended by a Dutch hunter who had been here a year ago and who was Dan's

great friend.

We took the seats out of the car to use as a table and benches, and

spreading our coats to sit on had a lunch in the deep shade of a big tree,

drank some beer, and slept or read while we waited for the lorries to come

up. Before the lorries arrived the old man came back with the skinniest,

hungriest, most unsuccessful looking of Wanderobos who stood on one leg,

scratched the back of his neck and carried a bow and quiver of arrows and a

spear. Queried as to whether this was the guide whose name we had, the old

man admitted he was not and went off more discouraged than ever, to get the

official guides.

When we woke next the old man was standing with the two official and

highly-clothed-in-khaki guides and two others, quite naked, from the

village. There was a long palaver and the head one of the two khaki-panted

guides showed his credentials, a To Whom It May Concern, stating the bearer

knew the country well and was a reliable boy and capable tracker. This was

signed by so and so, professional hunter. The khaki-clothed guide referred

to this professional hunter as B'wana Simba and the name infuriated us all.

'Some bloke that killed a lion once, ' Pop said.

'Tell him I am B'wana Fisi, the hyena slaughterer, ' I told Dan. 'B'wana

Fisi chokes them with his naked hands.'

Dan was telling them something else.

'Ask them if they would like to meet B'wana Hop-Toad, the inventor of

the hoptoads and Mama Tziggi, who owns all these locusts.'

Dan ignored this. It seemed they were discussing money. After

ascertaining their customary daily wage, Pop told them if either of us

killed a kudu the guide would receive fifteen shillings.

'You mean a pound, ' said the leading guide.

'They seem to know what they're up to, ' Pop said. 'I must say I don't

care for this sportsman in spite of what B'wana Simba says.'

B'wana Simba, by the way, we later found out to be an excellent hunter

with a wonderful reputation on the coast.

'We'll put them into two lots and you draw from them, ' Pop suggested,

'one naked one and one with breeches in each lot. I'm all for the naked

savage, myself, as a guide.'

On suggesting to the two testimonial-equipped, breeched guides that

they select an unclothed partner, we found this would not work out. Loud

Mouth, the financial and, now, theatrical, genius who was giving a

gesture-by-gesture reproduction of How B'wana Simba Killed His Last Kudu

interrupted it long enough to state he would only hunt with Abdullah.

Abdullah, the short, thick-nosed, educated one, was His Tracker. They always

hunted together. He himself did not track. He resumed the pantomime of

B'wana Simba and another character known as B'wana Doktor and the horned

beasts.

'We'll take the two savages as one lot and these two Oxonians as the

other, ' Pop said.