Listening for Lions

by Gloria Whelan

  “We’ll take precautions.”

  “Why can’t I take precautions?” I was excited at the thought of this exotic and dangerous disease appearing at our own hospital there on the plains of Africa. I didn’t want to be left out.

  “Don’t argue with me, Rachel.” It was Father’s God-to-Moses voice, and I said no more.

  Mother put her arm around me. “Rachel, if the influenza spreads, your father and I are going to have all we can manage. We don’t want to be distracted by worrying about you. And stay away from the Kikuyu shambas. We don’t know how quickly the influenza will spread.” Reluctantly I left the hospital.

  I had heard that in Nairobi there were cases of influenza in both the native hospital and the hospital for whites. Letters from the mission house in England and the local newspaper were full of frightening reports of the illness sweeping the world. But like the war that had ended in November, it was something that was happening far away. It had not been real. Now it was real.

  As I left the hospital, I looked out across the plains that spread mile upon mile to the ridges of the distant hills. There was a verse in Revelations that always frightened me: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” I saw the pale horse and its rider galloping across those plains and finding us.

  Kanoro kept a ladder against the house so that he could reach the roof for easy patching when heavy rains found their way through our ceiling. The roof was nothing more than sheets of corrugated iron with heavy stones to keep the sheets in place. When I was younger, I was often on the roof for a better view of the plains. Now I climbed up the ladder and looked out into the distance. There was no pale horse, only a herd of zebras far away, their black stripes against their white hides like writing, like an urgent message that was impossible to make out. In the distance I saw a small group of Kikuyu bringing another stretcher.

  Kanoro came to tell me that Mother and Father wouldn’t be home for their noon meal. “The man they brought in this morning, he died,” Kanoro said. “Now there are three more in the hospital; one of them is a Masai. The Masai was so sick, he made no protest at going into the hospital. Your mother said you are to take her class of little ones,” he said. Kanoro hurried away, trying to hide his worry from me, but I knew him too well.

  There were no books in Swahili except for the Bible and a hymnal, so I read to the small children from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, translating from English to Swahili as I went. I had them all practice smiling like the Cheshire Cat and taught them the “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Popo” poem.

  After class I curled up in a hammock strung between two cedar trees with a dog-eared copy of Dickens’s David Copperfield. I had few books, and those I had were worn, with bits of their pages nibbled by beetles who loved the books as much as I did. David’s miserable childhood in London, his cruel schoolmaster, and his horrible job in the blacking factory reminded me of my own parents’ youth in an orphanage. It didn’t occur to me at that moment that I, too, might become an orphan. I think I believed that because Father was a doctor, he would let no illness come to our family. Instead, I worried about Kanoro and his family and all the Kikuyu whose shambas I had visited. I had played with their children and sat beside them in our church. I feared for them and could not keep my mind on my book.

  Several times I walked to the hospital and thought of disobeying Father by going inside, but seeing the crowd of families gathered in little worried clusters, I turned back. I wasn’t hungry, and at dinnertime I only nibbled on a chicken leg and a bit of goat cheese.

  I couldn’t sleep and kept a lantern on against the darkness. When it got too hot, I went out onto the porch and listened to the crickets and the cicadas, the crickets’ chirp measured and regular, the cicadas with their frantic shrieks, sounding more like I felt. Later I heard the growls of a lion, faint and coming from a distance. It was a familiar sound and almost comforting, for I thought of the lions as soldiers of the night, patrolling all the dark places.

  It was midnight before Mother came home. Her shoulders sagged and her dress was wrinkled and soiled. Her hair straggled out of its neat bun. I hurried to heat some water so she could wash.

  Mother explained, “Your father is staying at the hospital to ready it for a large number of cases. Rachel, your father will sleep in the hospital for a few days until the worst of this is over. You are not to worry, and you are not to come to the hospital. The classes will not be meeting—the children in a group might spread the flu. Kanoro will let you know what is happening. And Rachel, you must pray that our people will be spared.”

  I went to my room without my usual good-night kiss, for Mother was keeping her distance from me. I was awake most of the night, persecuted by a yellow house bat that had found its way into my room and was ricocheting from wall to wall. Ordinarily I would have called Mother, but I didn’t want to awaken her. At last I got up my courage, and seizing a broom, I swiped at the bat until it fell to the floor quite dead. It was that night that I first heard the hyenas.

  Each day brought more influenza victims to the hospital. The Masai and Kikuyu families crowded about the hospital grounds. Because of the contagion they were not allowed to care for their families in the hospital. Jata took sick, but in a few days she was back at work. Rumors about the influenza spread as quickly as the disease. We heard that the hospitals in Nairobi were so crowded, they were not accepting patients. A steady stream of patients was carried to our hospital, and many were carried away with grieving and wailing.

  Kanoro was helping in the hospital. Left to myself all day with nothing to do but worry, I was glad to take over the feeding and milking of our goats and the tending of our garden. When she had first come to Africa, Mother had tried to plant English flowers—daffodils, primroses, and wallflowers. In the unforgiving dry earth and hot sun they wilted and crisped and gave up. Now our garden held practical things: sweet potatoes and corn, the same things the Kikuyu grew in their gardens.

  I would hoe a row or two and then forget about my work, standing and looking at the hospital, listening to a hoopoe bird in the distance, wondering what was happening. It seemed unfair to me that everyone else was fighting the epidemic and I could do nothing. I argued with Mother each evening when she returned home, but she wouldn’t change her mind. After a while I saw how tired she was, and I took pity on her and ceased my pleading.

  Kanoro’s son, Ngigi, brought me the news from the Kikuyu shambas, which were nearly deserted. The Kikuyu men were moving far away from the illness, accompanied by the women carrying their babies on their backs, their little ones skipping along beside them. Their goats and sheep went with them, but their crops, left behind, went untended, so hunger would go with them as well.

  On Sunday neither Father nor Mother left the hospital to come to church. This was more alarming to me than the illness itself. It was Sunday, and there must be church. I put on my one good dress and squeezed into my patent leather shoes. Trembling at my audacity, I stood at the pulpit where Father always stood. Only Kanoro and Ngigi and another Kikuyu whom I did not recognize came to the church. I read the fortieth Psalm, which always frightened me at first and then made me feel better, “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.” I then went to our old piano, chased away a mouse that was nesting there, and played “Angels! Ever bright and fair,” which the four of us sang in wavering voices. After that Kanoro and Ngigi and the other Kikuyu left the church and I trailed after them, not sure that God had bothered with my poor attempt.

  Kanoro was waiting for me. “It is bad at the hospital,” he said. He looked at me strangely and then in a half whisper added, “The memsahib is not well.”

  In church the heat had made my dress cling wetly to my back; now I felt cold all over. “What’s wrong with Mother?” Kanoro only shook his head and walked off in the direction of the hospital. I ran after him and grabbed at his arm.
“Kanoro, does Mother have influenza?”

  “It is better you talk to your father.” He would say nothing more, only swatting at his face as if to get rid of an insect, but it was tears that he was chasing away.

  In the distance I saw a family bearing away a stretcher, the sounds of their wails like the mournful cries of the wood pigeons. Though the hospital had been forbidden to me, I pushed through the entrance, making my way through the crowds of Kikuyu and Masai waiting for news of their relatives. The wards were crowded. There were twice as many beds as usual. I had only just walked into the hospital when I came upon my father.

  His eyes were red, and his face bristled with a beard of several days’ growth. He stared at me and there was no welcome in his eyes. He asked in a gruff voice, “Rachel, what are you doing here?”

  I had expected an angry scolding for going against his orders, but the question was asked in a hopeless way, as if he carried a great basket of questions and was weary of the asking of them.

  “I wanted to see Momma,” I said, using the name I had called her when I was little.

  “I am afraid you are too late. Your dear mother has just passed away. I was coming to the house to tell you. It’s a sad day for us.” Father was not an affectionate man. I never held it against him, for I thought that when he was a child, there had been no one to teach him affection. Now he surprised me by putting an arm around me and holding me tightly. After a moment he drew away. “This won’t do, Rachel. I and everyone in this hospital will be a danger to you. You must go back to the house. I’ll be there soon. The burial will be today. I will leave it to you to select a place in the churchyard, and Kanoro must prepare it.” His voice wavered. “You must ask the Lord for strength to bear this.” He turned abruptly away from me and vanished into one of the wards.

  I left the hospital and made my way toward the churchyard, passing our goat pen. One of the kids was nuzzling its mother, wanting to nurse. Once I had had to bottle-feed a young kid that had lost its mother. If we had not fed it, it would have died. How old, I wondered, must a child be to survive after its mother has died? I knew that I would survive, but I was not sure of the way it was to be done.

  Not many girls must choose the place where their mother’s coffin is to lie. The churchyard was small, with only two wooden crosses to mark the graves of Kanoro’s father and a missionary preacher who had come long before us. The grasses had been scythed, and a few flat-topped acacia trees made loose circles of shade. Kanoro, who stood beside me with a shovel and with tears streaming down his face, must have wondered at my dry eyes, but I had turned myself to stone for my task.

  I chose a small plot that looked out at the hills, remembering Mother marveling at how the hills were blue and misty in the morning, purple and shimmering in the late afternoon, and then at nightfall nothing more than a deeper darkness in the distance.

  I could not bear to see Kanoro at his work, but went to gather flowers for Mother. I returned with a bouquet of the flowers that grow wild in the bush, spikey blue thistles and red and yellow aloes. I thought them too garish for their sad purpose and wished I had the soft English flowers Mother longed for. Father was already there, and beside him were men carrying Mother’s coffin. Father had shaved his beard and wore his black suit. He took my hand and drew me to him. His hand felt hot in mine, and he wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. Kanoro and Jata, the nurse who had been especially close to Mother, stood beside us. The others could not leave their work at the hospital.

  Father began to read the burial service. His voice, usually so strong, wavered as he read, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” He was thinking, as I had, of Mother’s love for the hills. Father was unsteady on his feet, and once Kanoro reached out to support him. I bit my lip to keep from crying, imagining that Mother was watching us and would be proud of me.

  As Father closed his Bible and the coffin was lowered into the ground, a large black car drove up to the hospital. It was so rare to see a car that the owner of each car was known. This was the Pritchards’ car. I had seen it once in Nairobi, with Mrs. Pritchard and her daughter riding in the back. I had stood and stared at them, thinking what a treat it would be to ride around in such a car instead of the dusty, slow-moving oxcart that carried us. All the car doors opened at once, and Mr. Pritchard was hurrying toward us, his wife beside him, his daughter lying in his arms.

  Mr. Pritchard was panting a little from the running and the weight of his daughter. “Valerie is very ill,” he said to Father. “There was no time to take her into Nairobi.” The girl’s eyelids fluttered and she made a small moaning sound. All her plumpness was gone. Her face was tinged with blue, and there were brownish spots on her cheeks.

  Father accompanied the Pritchards to the hospital and I followed along, reluctant to be alone after all the sadness. In spite of my misery, I was fascinated with the drama of the car and the sick girl cradled in her father’s arms, the father in his white linen suit and the mother in a blue linen dress and a large straw hat trimmed with silk flowers. It was like a story that you might find in some book, except that all the people were real and their worry the most real thing of all.

  As we reached the hospital, Mr. Pritchard said, “You must clear the natives out of a ward for her.”

  “That’s impossible,” Father said. “Even if I would agree to such a thing, we are overcrowded and there would be no place for our patients to go.”

  “I will not have her in a bed next to some filthy native.”

  They were at the hospital entrance. Father stood in front of the door, barring their entrance. “If your daughter becomes a patient in the hospital, I shall do all I can for her, just as I do for any patient who comes to my hospital, but it is my hospital and I will make the rules. If you don’t like that, you may take her elsewhere.”

  I thought Mr. Pritchard was going to strike Father. His wife put her hand on his arm. “Aldon, please do as the doctor says.”

  Father lifted the girl from Mr. Pritchard’s arms, and I saw Father look at her ginger hair, so much like mine. His face softened and I knew he was thinking that it might have been me, sick and helpless, in his arms. He handed her gently to Jata.

  The Pritchards tried to follow them into the hospital, but Father put a hand on either side of the entrance like Solomon holding up the pillars of the temple. “I can’t allow you to come in. The whole hospital is a contagion ward. It’s for your own good.”

  “I don’t think you understand what we feel,” Mr. Pritchard said. “Suppose it were a member of your family.”

  Father gave him a steely look. “I have just buried my wife.”

  Mrs. Pritchard said, “Surely you understand that we cannot leave our child.”

  Father said, “You may wait in my home. Rachel will see to your comfort. Now I must take care of your daughter.”

  The Pritchards looked at me with surprise. It was the first time they had noticed me. As we walked toward the house, Mrs. Pritchard said, “We are very sorry for your loss.” Her voice had an unpleasant shrillness to it, like the sharp cries of the cicadas. She walked ahead of me and into the house without waiting for me to invite her inside. Mr. Pritchard brushed me aside as well, so I was the last to enter my own home.

  Looking about him, Mr. Pritchard demanded, “Is this your only house?”

  “Yes.” I wondered if he thought I was hiding our real house to mislead him.

  Mrs. Pritchard wiped the seat of a chair with a lace handkerchief and sat down. Mother was a conscientious housekeeper, but Mother had not been in the house for several days and dust had blown through the open windows.

  “Where is your servant?” Mr. Pritchard asked. “Perhaps he could bring my wife some tea.”

  We had no servants, only Kanoro to help us. “I’ll get some tea,” I said. I was glad for a task that would take me away from them. I wanted only to be by myself and grieve for my mother. In the kitchen I emptied some water from a bottle into the kettle and set
it to boil. I put some milk in a pitcher. A tear fell into the pitcher, and I recalled a children’s book in which a child’s tears curdled the milk. I didn’t like the Pritchards and hoped my tear would sour their milk. Reluctantly I opened our last packet of sweet biscuits and arranged them neatly on a plate. When the tea was ready, I took the tray into the sitting room and placed it on our table.

  Mrs. Pritchard sipped the tea but refused the biscuits. She blinked away tears. “Valerie is our only child,” she said. “She was going to visit her grandfather in England.”

  My dislike disappeared. I only felt sorry for her. I tried to think of something comforting to say. “You mustn’t think there is no hope,” I said. “One of our Kikuyu nurses recovered from the influenza.”

  “They are not as delicate as Valerie,” Mrs. Pritchard said. She kept looking at me. “Where did you get your red hair?” she asked. “Valerie’s was from her grandfather.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Both my parents were orphans. They never knew their relatives.”

  “Never knew their relatives?” Mr. Pritchard repeated. “How very unusual.”

  I didn’t think I could sit there for one more minute making conversation. The Pritchards with their cold, critical eyes were too much for me. Fortunately at that moment Mr. Pritchard said to his wife, “I think you should lie down, my dear. You’ve had no sleep in days.”

  I led his wife into my own bedroom. I could not bear to think of her lying on my parents’ bed. She looked at the narrow camp bed with distaste. Finally, with a great sigh she settled down. “You might just wring out a cloth in cold water for my forehead,” she said, but when I returned with the cloth, she was asleep. Mr. Pritchard sat alone in the sitting room with his head in his hands.

  At last I was left to myself. I sat on the porch, looking out at the hospital. A starling chattered on a tree, its gaudy purple, red, and yellow feathers out of place in so much sadness. A lizard settled in the sun, and I was glad of the company. It was dusk when I saw Father walking slowly along the dirt path that led from the hospital. I ran to him, seizing hold of his hand.