True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  The safari crew did not like to eat them. I did not like them as well as lesser bustard, teal or snipe or the spur-winged plover. But they were very good eating and would be good for supper. The small rain had stopped again but the mist and the clouds came down to the foot of the Mountain.

  Mary was sitting in the dining tent with a Campari and soda.

  “Did you get many?”

  “Eight. They were a little like shooting pigeons at the Club de Cazadores del Cerro.”

  “They break away much faster than pigeons.”

  “I think it just seems that way because of the clatter and because they are smaller. Nothing breaks faster than a really strong racing pigeon.”

  “My, I’m glad we’re here instead of shooting at the Club.”

  “I am too. I wonder if I can go back there.”

  “You will.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think maybe not.”

  “There are an awful lot of things I’m not sure I can go back to.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to go back at all. I wish we didn’t have any property nor any possessions nor any responsibilities. I wish we only owned a safari outfit and a good hunting car and two good trucks.”

  “I’d be the most popular hostess under canvas in the world. I know just how it would be. People would turn up in their private planes and the pilot would get out and open the door for the man and then the man would say, ‘Bet you can’t tell me who I am. I’ll bet you don’t remember me. Who am I?’ Sometime somebody is going to say that and I’m going to ask Charo for my bunduki and shoot the man right straight between the eyes.”

  “And Charo can halal him.”

  “They don’t eat men.”

  “The Wakamba used to. In what you and Pop always refer to as the good old days.”

  “You’re part Kamba. Would you eat a man?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know I’ve never killed a man in my life? Remember when I wanted to share everything with you and I felt so terribly because I had never killed a Kraut and how worried everyone became?”

  “I remember very well.”

  “Should I make the speech about when I kill the woman who steals your affection?”

  “If you’ll make me a Campari and soda too.”

  “I will and I’ll make you the speech.”

  She poured the red Campari bitters and put in some Gordon’s and then squirted the siphon.

  “The gin is a reward for listening to the speech. I know you’ve heard the speech many times. But I like to make it. It’s good for me to make it and it’s good for you to hear it.”

  “OK. Start it.”

  “Ah hah,” Miss Mary said. “So you think you can make my husband a better wife than I can. Ah hah. So you think you are ideally and perfectly suited to one another and that you will be better for him than I am. Ah hah. So you think that you and he would lead a perfect existence together and at least he would have the love of a woman who understands communism, psychoanalysis and the true meaning of the word love? What do you know about love you bedraggled hag? What do you know about my husband and the things we have shared and have in common?”

  “Hear. Hear.”

  “Let me go on. Listen, you bedraggled specimen, thin where you should be robust, bursting with fat where you should show some signs of race and breeding. Listen, you woman. I have killed an innocent buck deer at a distance of three hundred and forty estimated yards and have eaten him with no remorse. I have shot the kongoni and the wildebeest which you resemble. I have shot and killed a great and beautiful oryx and that is more beautiful than any woman and has horns more decorative than any man. I have killed more things than you have made passes at and I tell you cease and desist in your mealymouthed mouthings to my husband and leave this country or I will kill you dead.”

  “It’s a wonderful speech. You wouldn’t ever make it in Swahili would you?”

  “There’s no need to make it in Swahili,” Miss Mary said. She always felt a little like Napoleon at Austerlitz after the speech. “The speech is for white women only. It certainly does not apply to your fiancée. Since when does a good loving husband not have a right to a fiancée if she only wishes to be a supplementary wife? That is an honorable position. The speech is directed against any filthy white woman who thinks that she can make you happier than I can. The upstarts.”

  “It’s a lovely speech and you make it more clear and forcible each time.”

  “It’s a true speech,” Miss Mary said. “I mean every word of it. But I’ve tried to keep all bitterness and any sort of vulgarity out of it. I hope you didn’t think mealymouthed had anything to do with mealies.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “That’s good. Those were really nice mealies she brought you too. Do you think one time we could have them roasted in the ashes of the fire? I love them that way.”

  “Of course we can.”

  “Is there anything special about her bringing you four?”

  “No. Two for you and two for me.”

  “I wish someone were in love with me and brought me presents.”

  “Everybody brings you presents every day and you know it. Half the camp cuts toothbrushes for you.”

  “That’s true. I have lots of toothbrushes. I still have plenty from Magadi even. I’m glad you have such a nice fiancée though. I wish everything was as simple always as things are here at the foot of the Mountain.”

  “They’re not really simple at all. We’re just lucky.”

  “I know. And we must be good and kind to each other to deserve all our luck. Oh I hope my lion will come and I’ll be tall enough to see him clearly when the time comes. Do you know how much he means to me?”

  “I think so. Everybody does.”

  “Some people think I’m crazy I know. But in the old days people went to search for the Holy Grail and for the Golden Fleece and they weren’t supposed to be silly. A great lion is better and more serious than any cups or sheepskins. I don’t care how Holy or Golden they were. Everybody has something that they want truly and my lion means everything to me. I know how patient you’ve been about him and how patient everyone has been. But now I’m sure after this rain I’ll meet him. I can’t wait until the first night that I hear him roar.”

  “He has a wonderful roar and you’ll see him soon.”

  “Outside people will never understand. But he will make up for everything.”

  “I know. You don’t hate him do you?”

  “No. I love him. He’s wonderful and he is intelligent and I don’t have to tell you why I have to kill him.”

  “No. Certainly not.”

  “Pop knows. And he explained to me. He told me about that terrible woman too that everyone shot her lion forty-two times. I better not talk about it because no one can ever understand.”

  We did understand because together one time we had seen the tracks of the first great lion. They were twice the size a lion’s tracks should be and they were in light dust that had just been rained on only enough to dampen it so that they were a true print. I had been working up on some kongoni to kill meat for camp and when Ngui and I saw the tracks we pointed with grass stems and I could see the sweat come on his forehead. We waited for Mary without moving and when she saw the tracks she drew a deep breath. She had seen many lion tracks by then and several lions killed but these tracks were unbelievable. Ngui kept shaking his head and I could feel the sweat under my armpits and in my crotch. We followed the tracks like hounds and saw where he had drunk at a muddy spring and then gone up the draw to the escarpment. I had never seen such tracks, ever, and by the mud of the spring they were even clearer.

  I had not known whether to go back and find the kongoni and run the risk of shooting and perhaps having him leave that country with the sound of the rifle shot. But we needed meat and this was a country where there was not much meat and all the game was wild because there were so many predators. You never killed a zebra that did not have black, riven l
ion claw scars on his hide and the zebra were as shy and unapproachable as desert oryx. It was a buffalo, rhino, lion and leopard country and nobody liked to hunt it except G.C. and Pop and it made Pop nervous. G.C. had so many nerves that he had ended by having no nerves and he never admitted the presence of danger until he had shot his way out of it. But Pop had said that he never had hunted this country without having trouble and he had hunted it, making the trek across the deadly flats at night to avoid the heat, which could be one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, many years before G.C. had been here or motor cars had been brought to East Africa.

  I was thinking of this when we saw the tracks of the lion and afterwards, when we started to maneuver the kongoni, I thought only of that. But the lion track was in my mind as though it had been branded there and I knew that Mary, from having seen other lions, had imagined him as he must have looked coming along that trail. We had killed the highly edible, horse-faced, awkward, tawny kongoni, which was as innocent or more innocent than anything could be and Mary had finished it with a shot where the neck joins the head. She had done this to perfect her shooting and because it was necessary and someone must do it.

  Sitting there in the tent I thought how abhorrent this would be to real vegetarians but everyone who has ever eaten meat must know that someone has killed it and since Mary, having engaged in killing, wanted to kill without inflicting suffering, it was necessary for her to learn and to practice. Those who never catch fish, not even a tin of sardines, and who will stop their cars if there are locusts on the road, and have never eaten even meat broth should not condemn those who kill to eat and to whom the meat belonged to before the white men stole their country. Who knows what the carrot feels, or the small young radish, or the used electric light bulb, or the worn phonograph disc, or the apple tree in winter. Who knows the feelings of the overaged aircraft, the chewed gum, the cigarette butt or the discarded book riddled by woodworms? In my copy of the regulations of the Game Department not one of these cases was treated nor was there any regulation about the treatment of yaws and of venereal disease which was one of my daily duties. There were no regulations regarding the fallen limbs of trees nor dust nor biting flies, other than Tsetse; see Fly Areas. The hunters who took out licenses to hunt and were allowed by valid permits to hunt for a limited time in certain of the Masai countries which had formerly been reserves and were now controlled areas kept a schedule of what beasts they were permitted to kill and then paid a very nominal fee which was later paid to the Masai. But the Wakamba, who used to hunt at great risk to themselves in the Masai country for meat, were not permitted now to do so. They were hunted down as poachers by Game Scouts, who were also, mostly, Wakamba, and G.C. and Mary thought Game Scouts were better loved than they were.

  Game Scouts were nearly all of them a very high type of soldier who had come from the hunting Wakamba. But things were getting very difficult Ukambani. They had farmed their land in their own and their old fashion but shortening the fallow that should last a generation as the Wakamba grew and their land did not, it had eroded along with all the rest of Africa. Their warriors had always fought in all of Britain’s wars and the Masai had never fought in any. The Masai had been coddled, preserved, treated with a fear that they should never have inspired and been adored by all the homosexuals like Thessinger who had worked for the Empire in Kenya or Tanganyika because the men were so beautiful. The men were very beautiful, extremely rich, were professional warriors who, now for a long time, would never fight. They had always been drug addicts and now they were becoming alcoholics.

  The Masai never killed game but only cared about their cattle. Trouble between the Masai and the Wakamba was always over cattle stealing, never over the killing of game.

  The Wakamba hated the Masai as rich show-offs protected by the government. They despised them as men whose women were completely faithless and nearly always syphilitic and as men who could not track because their eyes were destroyed by filth diseases carried by flies; because their spears bent after they had been used a single time and finally, and most of all, because they were only brave when under the influence of drugs.

  The Wakamba, who liked to fight, really fight, not Masai fight, which is, usually, a mass hysteria which cannot come off except under the influence of drugs, lived at lower than subsistence level. They had always had their hunters and now there was no place for them to hunt. They loved to drink and drinking was strictly controlled by tribal law. They were not drunkards and drunkenness was severely punished. Meat was a staple of their diet and it was gone now and they were forbidden to hunt it. Their illegal hunters were as popular as smugglers in England in the old days or as those people were who brought good liquor into the United States in Prohibition.

  It had not been this bad when I had been there many years before. But it had not been good. The Wakamba were completely loyal to the British. Even the young men and the bad boys were loyal. But the young men were upset and things were not simple at all. The Mau Mau were suspect because it was a Kikuyu organization and the oaths were repulsive to the Wakamba. But there had been some infiltration. There was nothing about this in the Wild Animal Protection Ordinance. I had been told by G.C. to use my common sense, if any, and that only shits got in trouble. Since I knew that I could qualify for that class at times I tried to use my common sense as carefully as possible and avoid shithood so far as I could. For a long time I had identified myself with the Wakamba and now had passed over the last important barrier so that the identification was complete. There is no other way of making this identification. Any alliance between tribes is only made valid in one way.

  Now, with the rain, I knew that everyone would be less worried about their families and if we got some meat everyone would be happy. Meat made men strong; even the old men believed that. Of the old men in camp I thought Charo was the only one who might possibly be impotent and I was not sure about him. I could have asked Ngui and he would have told me. But it was not a proper thing to ask and Charo and I were very old friends. Kamba men, if they have meat to eat, retain their ability to make love well after they are seventy. But there are some sorts of meat that are better for a man than others. I do not know why I had started to think about this. It had started with the killing of the kongoni the day we had first seen the track of the huge Rift Valley escarpment lion and then it had wandered around like an old man’s tale.

  “What about going out and getting a piece of meat, Miss Mary?”

  “We do need some don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you been thinking about?”

  “Kamba problems and meat.”

  “Bad Kamba problems?”

  “No. In general.”

  “That’s good. What did you decide?”

  “That we needed meat.”

  “Well, should we go for the meat?”

  “It’s a good time to start. If you’d like to walk.”

  “I’d love to walk. When we come home we’ll have a bath and change and there will be the fire.”

  We had found the herd of impala that were usually close to the road where it crossed the river and Mary had killed an old buck that had one horn. He was very fat and in good shape and my conscience was clear about taking him for meat, as he would never have provided the Game Department with a trophy to dispose of and, since he had been driven out of the herd, he was no use anymore for breeding. Mary had made a beautiful shot on him hitting him in the shoulder exactly where she had aimed. Charo was very proud of her and he had been able to butcher absolutely legally by perhaps a hundredth of a second. Mary’s shooting, by now, was regarded as completely in the hands of God and since we had different Gods, Charo took complete credit for the shot. Pop, G.C. and I had all seen Miss Mary come into perfect form shooting and make astounding and lovely shots. Now it was Charo’s turn.

  “Memsahib piga mzuri sana,” Charo said.

  “Mzuri. Mzuri,” Ngui told her.

  “Thank you,” Mary said
. “That’s three now,” she said to me. “I’m happy and confident now. It’s strange about shooting, isn’t it?”

  I was thinking how strange it was and forgot to answer.

  “It’s wicked to kill things. But it’s wonderful to have good meat in camp. When did meat get so important to everybody?”

  “It always has been. It’s one of the oldest and most important things. Africa’s starved for it. But if they killed the game the way the Dutch did in South Africa there wouldn’t be any.”

  “But do we keep the game for the natives? Who are we taking care of the game for, really?”

  “For itself and to make money for the Game Department and keep the white hunting racket going and to make extra money for the Masai.”

  “I love our protecting the game for the game itself,” Mary said. “But the rest of it is sort of shoddy.”

  “It’s very mixed up,” I said. “But did you ever see a more mixed-up country?”