Dark Memory

by Jonathan Latimer

  “You are not a bit big, darling.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Nobody would ever know you were going to have a child.”

  “You are good to me.”

  “Really? Nobody would ever know it.”

  After dinner he worked on Hello, Satan!, happy in the two things that had ever mattered to him: to be near Linda and to be writing.

  Not much of a memory, he thought, listening to the music of the lukimbes. It was important only to him. It would not be important to anyone else. Anyone could have a memory like that. It was only a small house by the sea and the maid’s night off. It was a memory that many servants and much money would have spoiled. It was a simple memory, but it was sweet.

  He felt sad and disturbed. He wished he could go to bed. He supposed he had to thank the English for the coffee and brandy. He went into the bar and found two Belgian officials had joined the party. They gave it considerable distinction. One, a small, gray, middle-aged man with a sallow complexion, was named Monsieur Delage. The other was Captain Absard. He had a fine black mustacbe. They were happy to know Mr. Nichols. Mr. Nichols was equally happy to know them. Did Mr. Nichols like the Congo? Indeed, yes. Could they congratulate Mr. Nichols on having shot a gorilla? They could, though it was hardly a matter for congratulations.

  Jay sat down at the table. The Belgians sat down, too.

  Rollins said, “You really got a gorilla, Nichols?”

  “Yes. A female.”

  “By God! I do envy you.”

  “They fall to the lot of few hunters,” Monsieur Delage said.

  “Just bad luck I didn’t get it,” Cable said.

  “What happened?” Rollins asked. “He take the first shot?”

  “No. I was laid up in camp.”

  Everyone sympathized with Cable. “Rotten luck,” Rollins said. Jay had to admit the sympathy was deserved. It was hard luck to finance an expedition to Africa and then miss killing either of its two gorillas. Still, there was the okapi left. It was even better than the gorilla. Maybe Cable would shoot one.

  The Belgians were interested in Eve, but Lady Faulkener and Edna Rollins talked to them. They talked in French. The Belgians were bored, but polite. Jay noticed Bill watching Hobbs, who seemed to be watching the tip of his nose.

  “I’m waiting for him to fall over,” Bill said.

  “It ought to happen any minute.”

  “I’ve been waiting two hours,” Bill said.

  “I’ve been waiting ten years,” said Rollins. “Been blotto every night, but he’s never fallen over.”

  They watched Hobbs. He sat straight in his chair, his chin well away from his chest, looking at his nose. Suddenly his hand raised a full glass of brandy to his mouth, which opened and received it. He put the empty glass on the table and Lady Faulkener, without interrupting her conversation with the Belgians, filled it. There was no change in Hobbs’s expression.

  “My God!” Bill said.

  Rollins spoke to Jay. “How big was your gorilla?”

  “About three fifty.”

  “We’d have liked one.”

  “They’re pretty well protected.”

  “I got two lions and a buff,” Rollins said. “Not bad for the first time out, eh?”

  “Very good.”

  “How were the lions compared with the buffalo?” Bill asked.

  “Both bad,” Rollins said. “Though the lions are damned hard to hit when they rush you.”

  “Were you scared?” Bill asked.

  “One can’t afford to be scared, you know.”

  “You’re right.” Bill was a little drunk. “I’ve got to shoot one myself.” He looked at Rollins. “You’re a brave man.”

  Rollins was embarrassed. “Forget it, Bill,” Jay said.

  “No. I was yellow once. Now I have to redeem myself.”

  “That’s the talk,” Rollins said.

  Captain Absard had finally got away from the Englishwomen and was talking to Eve. Lew Cable looked angry. He’s really gone on Eve, Jay thought. She was talking to the captain in French.

  Jay asked Rollins, “Did you get a leopard?”

  “Yes.”

  “A hippo?”

  “Yes. Two.”

  “Aren’t they rather harmless?” Bill asked.

  “Oh, no. That’s a misinterpretation. Especially when you shoot them from a boat.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Bill said.

  “What else did you get?” Jay asked.

  “We’ve really done quite well for our seventy-five pounds. Zebra, eland, antelope, kuku, oryx, wildebeest, hartebeest, topi, waterbuck, impalxa, dik-dik, oribi, bushbuck, reedbuck; I can’t remember them all. Yes, and a number of different gazelles. We’ve killed more than two hundred animals.”

  “You certainly got your money’s worth,” Bill said.

  “Why not?” Rollins asked. “Weren’t they made for men to shoot?”

  Bill did not answer that. Jay winked at him, but Bill didn’t see him. He was probably still thinking of lions.

  Captain Absard and Eve had been listening to Rollins. “How do you feel about your gorilla?” the captain asked Jay in English.

  “Not very well.”

  Captain Absard nodded. “I’ve shot them, too.”

  Bill said, “It required courage, though.”

  “I do not think so, if Mr. Nichols will pardon me.”

  “I quite agree,” Jay said.

  “The odds are very much in favor of the hunter,” said Captain Absard. “With all animals.”

  “How about lions?” Bill asked.

  “I think lions also.”

  “Bill seems to have lions on the brain,” Lew Cable said.

  “To face one is an experience,” Captain Absard declared. “I do not know if it is a necessary experience.”

  “It’ll tell you if you’ve guts or not,” Lew Cable said.

  “Guts aren’t important,” Jay said. He was beginning to worry about the effect of the conversation on Bill.

  “No?” Cable said.

  Captain Absard did not understand what they were talking about. He watched Lew Cable, who said to Jay, “I suppose you’d value smoothness more.”

  “Why?” Jay was puzzled.

  “Aren’t you being smooth yourself? Trying to fool us about not being married?”

  “He’s not married,” Bill said.

  “What’s the difference?” Jay asked Cable. “If you want me married, I’ll be married. Is that satisfactory?”

  “You’re married, aren’t you, Cable?” Bill asked.

  “Yes. I don’t try to conceal it, either.”

  “Your wife has a great deal of money, hasn’t she?” Bill said.

  “Now listen,” Cable began.

  “Please,” Eve said. “Let’s don’t quarrel.”

  “I just want to find out about Jay,” Cable said.

  “Let Jay alone,” Eve said. “Please.”

  Rollins was standing up across the table. “Let’s have a drink at the bar, Nichols,” he said.

  Jay went to the bar with him. Rollins bought two brandies. Rollins drank his at once. Jay could not. He had already drunk more than he wanted. He wondered why he hadn’t gone to bed. It was always better in bed. Sometimes a crowd, especially a merry one, intensified his loneliness.

  “Nichols, I’d like to have that gorilla of yours,” Rollins said.

  “She’s not mine.”

  “You shot her.”

  “I was employed to shoot her.”

  “She could be lost, couldn’t she?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Really now,” Rollins said. His purple face was serious. “Think of the sensation if I went back to England with a gorilla. I don’t know of a sportsman who’s bagged one.”

  “There haven’t been many.”

  “I’ll give you fifty pounds for her,” Rollins said.

  “You could have her for nothing if she was mine.”

  “I’ll give y
ou a hundred pounds.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’d better think it over. A hundred pounds is a great deal of money.”

  “I know,” Jay said. “But really I can’t sell her.”

  He finished his brandy alone. He didn’t know whether to be amused or to be angry. Why did Rollins even come to Africa? Killing his lions from a boma; having Holmstrom kill the buffaloes; trying to buy a gorilla. Why didn’t he just buy the skins and say he’d been to Africa and shot them? It would be cheaper. Maybe he hadn’t thought of that. He’d have to ask him.

  He couldn’t hear the lukimbes; the people were making too much noise. Lady Faulkener had captured Captain Absard. She was talking to him, holding his arm firmly. Eve and Bill and Lew Cable were talking to the other Belgian. Eve looked tired, but she was still beautiful. She made him think of Linda. Not because they looked alike, but because they were both so beautiful. He could see Linda clearly, as though she had just gone out of the room. Her face, he thought, was one of the things they could not take away.

  He started for bed, but Bill called to him. He went to the table.

  Eve said, “Monsieur Delage is telling us about the Ituri.”

  “You’ve been there?” Jay asked.

  “Many times.” Monsieur Delage smiled at Jay. “But never into the tabu forest.”

  “Is that where we’re going?” Jay asked Bill.

  “To the edge of it.”

  “Then I do not envy you,” Monsieur Delage said.

  “Why?” Lew Cable asked.

  Monsieur Delage took off his glasses and wiped them with a silk handkerchief. The pause was impressive. “It is very dangerous.”

  “That’s swell,” Bill said.

  “What is the danger?” Jay asked

  “Partly the natives,” Monsieur Delage said. “In the tabu districts they will often desert one. Without guides one becomes lost. That, I believe, is what happened to Monsieur Salles.”

  “And what else?” Jay asked.

  “The deadly animals known to inhabit the Ituri.”

  Captain Absard leaned over the table. “Ah, pardon, mon vieux,” he said, “but the animals I doubt.”

  “They are not a matter for doubt,” Monsieur Delage said stiffly.

  “Mon cher,” Captain Absard said, “the animals to which you refer do not exist.”

  “I hold to my statement,” Monsieur Delage said.

  Jay felt greatly interested. “What animals do you refer to?” he asked Monsieur Delage.

  Monsieur Delage was glaring at the captain. “Do you doubt that in the forest exist large elephants with four tusks?”

  “Mais oui,” said the captain.

  “Mais non!” exclaimed Monsieur Delage. “I myself have seen skulls with four tusks. Can you doubt that, mon capitaine?”

  “What you have seen are freaks, mon cher; not a new race of pachyderms.”

  “I stand by my opinion,” Monsieur Delage said.

  The captain smiled at the others. “My colleague relates native gossip.” He twirled his mustache with a flourish.

  “Please permit me to continue,” Monsieur Delage said. “Madame asked me to tell her of the Ituri.”

  “I beg your pardon,” the captain said. “I was of the opinion Madame wished the truth.” He turned back to the English.

  Monsieur Delage was angry. “That one!” he said scornfully. Then he turned to Eve. Madame had no doubt heard of the giant elephants of the Ituri? he asked. She had not? He could assure her they existed. It was well known they stood half again as high as normal elephants. There were also pygmy elephants, no larger than Shetland ponies. These had been known to attack men. Of their existence there could be no possible doubt. Monsieur Delage looked defiantly across the table at Captain Absard and spoke loudly. Had not the Colonel Vercel been treed by them? Had he not the honor to have been a member of the rescue party? Had he not personally helped the Colonel Vercel to descend from the tree? And in the trunk, to evidence the pygmy elephants’ ferocity, were there not embedded three tiny tusks?

  “Ah, they are epatants!” he said to Eve.

  “They must be,” Bill said. “What else lives in the forest?”

  “There is the white unicorn.”

  “I must protest,” Captain Absard cried across the table. “I must protest the white unicorn.”

  Monsieur Delage stared at him angrily. “Can you deny the natives believe a white unicorn with a spiral horn inhabits the Ituri?”

  “I deny the white unicorn, mon vieux,” the captain said jauntily.

  “Well, then!” Monsieur Delage exclaimed. “He denies the white unicorn. The white unicorn no longer exists.”

  Edna Rollins seized the captain’s arm. She began to talk to him. “He has no imagination, that one,” Monsieur Delage said.

  The captain heard, but Edna Rollins had him. He could not break away. However, he twirled his mustache scornfully. He was a man who did not believe in white unicorns.

  “Go on,” Eve told Monsieur Delage.

  “Do I bore you?”

  “Oh, no. Absolutely not.”

  “You have heard of the birds with hairy bodies which live in the tabu forest, preying on men?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  Lew Cable said, “What bunk!”

  “Come on, Lew,” Bill said. “Let him talk.”

  Monsieur Delage had not understood what Lew Cable said. He went on talking to Eve. “And very interesting stories are told by the pygmies of a race of golden-bearded men deep in the forest. They wear the skins of animals and use stone knives and stone-headed spears to kill their enemies.”

  “Not really!” Eve exclaimed.

  “Mais out, madame.”

  “Do you believe in such men?” Bill asked.

  Monsieur Delage shrugged. “Four years ago a pygmy hunter brought me a stone-headed spear,” he said. “He had found it in an okapi which had fallen into his pit. The shaft had broken off, but otherwise the spear was in good condition.”

  “Oh, hell,” Lew Cable said. “Some other pygmy had thrown it.”

  “Pygmies use iron-tipped spears. Moreover, it was far too heavy for a pygmy to have thrown.”

  “I deny the statement.” Captain Absard broke away from Edna Rollins. “A large pygmy could have thrown it.”

  “The statement is true in every respect,” Monsieur Delage said.

  “I deny the statement,” Captain Absard repeated.

  They began to argue in rapid French. Jay could not follow them. “What a bloody liar!” Cable said.

  “I don’t know,” Bill said.

  “You were very rude,” Eve told Lew Cable.

  “Why not? Does he expect us to believe all that?”

  “I’ve seen photographs of skulls with four tusks,” Bill said.

  “I don’t want to argue,” Cable told Bill. “Let’s drop it.”

  “I’ve certainly heard of pygmy elephants,” Jay said.

  “I said drop it,” Cable said.

  The argument between the two Belgians ended. They began to talk to Lady Faulkener and Edna Rollins. Hobbs finished a drink and Lady Faulkener filled the glass without pausing in her conversation. She was talking to the Belgians in French. Rollins had left the barroom. Captain Absard, while he was talking, kept glancing at Eve and twirling his mustache. He obviously thought the gesture was irresistible. Eve paid no attention to him.

  “I’m going to bed,” Jay said.

  “Not before we settle something,” Lew Cable said. His voice was ugly. He had drunk a great deal.

  “Settle what?”

  “This marriage business. I’m going to get it straight if I have to knock it out of you.”

  “Why do you care, Lew?” Bill asked. His voice was placating. He saw Cable was in a nasty mood.

  Cable ignored him. “I heard you were married, Boy Scout,” he said to Jay. “How about it?”

  “I was,” Jay said.

  Cable looked triumphantly at Eve. “I told you,”
he said.

  They were laughing at the other end of the table. It was something Hobbs had said. Jay did not know what it was, but it must have been funny. Even the Belgians were laughing.

  “What difference does it make?” Bill asked Cable. “Why can’t you leave Jay alone?”

  “I want to know where his wife is.”

  “I don’t know,” Jay said.

  “You’re divorced?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the matter?” Cable asked. “Why don’t you know where she is?”

  “Because she’s dead,” Jay said.

  They were making a great deal of noise at the end of the table. Rollins was back and they had told him what Hobbs had said. He was laughing. He stood up and offered a toast to Hobbs. All of the others except Hobbs stood up. “Bung-o,” Rollins said. The others said, “Bung-o,” and they drank.

  “I’m sorry as hell,” Lew Cable said.

  “All right.”

  “I really didn’t know she was dead.”

  “All right.”

  “I never even thought of it.”

  “All right,” Jay said. “It isn’t anything. People die all the time. People are dying right now. For Christ’s sake, can’t we please discuss something else?”

  Lew Cable began to talk to Eve. Jay finished his brandy. “I’m going to bed,” he told Bill.

  “I’ll walk up with you,” Bill said.

  “I’m all right.”

  As he went out he was conscious of Eve’s eyes following him. He looked back just outside the bar and she was still watching him. He went up the stairs and then slowly along the hall, the green plush carpet giving a little under his feet. It was cold in his room. He could hear the chuf-chuf of the electric power plant. He sat on the bed and undressed, putting his shoes carefully on the mat. His nerves were tight, and there was a feeling of unreality about everything, as though it was a part of a very detailed, very impossible dream. It was as though the evening had never happened. The talk about the tabu forest and Rollins’ attempt to buy the gorilla and the English and Belgians laughing and his having to say that Linda was dead were all something he might have dreamed.

  “It’s all right,” he said aloud.

  The words startled him. He put on his pajamas and fixed the mosquito netting over the bed and got in bed and lay on his back, looking up at the netting that hung like a white fog above him. “It’s all right,” he said again. But it was not all right, and he was afraid to turn off the light. He did not know what would come with the dark.