True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  “Really bite them with the dog teeth.”

  “No.”

  She bit mine a little bit to show me the place and it was a very nice feeling.

  “Why did you never do it before?”

  “I don’t know. In our tribe we do not do it.”

  “It is better to do it. It is better and more honest.”

  “We will do many good things.”

  “We have already. But I want to be a useful wife. Not a play wife or a wife to leave.”

  “Who would leave you?”

  “You,” she said.

  There is, as I said, no word for love and no word for I am sorry in Kikamba. But I told her in Spanish that I loved her very much and that I loved everything about her from her feet to her head and we counted all the things that were loved and she was truly very happy and I was happy too and I did not think I lied about any one of them nor about all of them.

  We lay under the tree and I listened to the baboons coming down toward the river and we slept for a while and then the Widow had come back to our tree and she whispered in my ear, “Nyanyi.”

  The wind was blowing down the stream toward us and a troop of baboons were crossing the stream on the rocks of the ford coming out of the bush toward the fence of the mealie Shamba where the maize (our field corn) was twelve and fourteen feet high. The baboons could not smell us and they did not see us lying in the broken shade under the tree. The baboons came out of the bush quietly and started to cross the stream like a raiding party. There were three very big old man baboons at the head, one bigger than the others, walking carefully, their flattened heads and long muzzles and huge heavy jaws swinging and turning. I could see their big muscles, heavy shoulders and thick rumps and the arched and drooping tails and the big heavy bodies and behind them was the tribe, the females and the young ones still coming out of the bush.

  The girl rolled away very slowly so I was free to shoot and I raised the rifle carefully and slowly and still lying down stretched it out across my leg and pulled the bolt back, holding it by the knurl with my finger on the trigger and then letting it forward to the cocked position so there was no click.

  Still lying down I held on the shoulder of the biggest old dog baboon and squeezed very gently. I heard the thump but did not look to see what had happened to him as I rolled over and got to my feet and started to shoot at the other two big baboons. They were both going back over the rocks toward the bush and I hit the third and then the second as he jumped over him. I looked back at the first baboon and he was lying facedown in the water. The last one I had shot was screaming and I shot and finished him. The others were out of sight. I reloaded in the brush and Debba asked if she could hold the rifle. She stood at attention with it, imitating Arap Meina. “It was so cold,” she said. “Now it is so hot.”

  At the shots people had come down from the Shamba. The Informer was with them and Ngui came up with the spear. He had not gone to camp but to the Shamba and I knew how he smelt. He smelt of pombe.

  “Three dead,” he said. “All important generals. General Burma. General Korea. General Malaya. Buona notte.”

  He had learned “Buona notte” in Abyssinia with the K.A.R. He took the rifle from Debba, who was now holding it very demurely and looking out at the baboons on the rocks and in the water. They were not a handsome sight and I told the Informer to tell the men and boys to haul them out from the stream and sit them up against the fence of the mealie plantation with their hands crossed in their laps. Afterwards I would send some rope and we would hang them from the fence to frighten away the others or place them as baits.

  The Informer gave the order and Debba, very demure, formal and detached, watched the big baboons with their long arms, obscene bellies and really bad faces and dangerous jaws being pulled out of the water and up the bank and then being composed in death against the wall. One of the heads was tipped back in contemplation. The other two were sunk forward in the appearance of deep thought. We walked away from this scene toward the Shamba where the car was parked. Ngui and I walked together; I was carrying the rifle again; the Informer walked to one side and Debba and the Widow walked behind.

  “Great generals. Important generals,” Ngui said. “Kwenda na campi?”

  “How are you feeling Informer old-timer?” I asked.

  “Brother, I have no feelings. My heart is broken.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Widow.”

  “She is a very good woman.”

  “Yes. But now she wants you to be her protector and she does not treat me with dignity. She wishes to go with you and the small boy that I have cared for as a father to the Land of Mayito. She wishes to care for the Debba who wishes to be the assistant wife to the Lady Miss Mary. Everyone’s thought is bent in this direction and she talks of it to me all night.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “The Debba should never have carried your gun.” I saw Ngui look at him.

  “She did not carry it. She held it.”

  “She should not hold it.”

  “You say this?”

  “No. Of course not, brother. The village says it.”

  “Let the village shut up or I will withdraw my protection.”

  This was the sort of statement which was valueless. But the Informer was moderately valueless too.

  “Also you had no time to hear anything from the village because it happened a half an hour ago. Don’t start to be an intriguer.” Or finish as one I thought.

  We had come to the Shamba with the red earth and the great sacred tree and the well-built huts. The Widow’s son butted me in the stomach and stood there for me to kiss the top of his head. I patted the top of his head instead and gave him a shilling. Then I remembered the Informer only made sixty-eight shillings a month and that a shilling was close to half a day’s wages to give to a little boy so I called the Informer to come away from the car and I felt in the pocket of my bush-shirt and found some ten-shilling notes that were sweated together.

  I unfolded two and gave them to the Informer.

  “Don’t talk balls about who holds my gun. There isn’t a man in this Shamba that could hold a shit-pot.”

  “Did I ever say there was, brother?”

  “Buy the Widow a present and let me know what goes on in town.”

  “It is late to go tonight.”

  “Go down to the road and wait for the lorry of the Anglo-Masai.”

  “If it does not come, brother?”

  Ordinarily he would have said, “Yes, brother.” And the next day, “It did not come, brother.” So I appreciated his attitude and his effort.

  “Go at daylight.”

  “Yes, brother.”

  I felt badly about the Shamba and about the Informer, and the Widow and everyone’s hopes and plans and we drove off and did not look back.

  That had been several days ago before the rain and before the lion came back and there was no reason to think of it now except that tonight I was sorry for G.C., who because of custom, law and choice too perhaps had to live alone on safari and had to read all night.

  One of the books we had brought with us was Alan Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope. I had found it almost unreadable due to the super-biblical style and the amount of piety in it. The piety seems to be mixed in a cement mixer and then carried in hods to the building of the book and it was not that there was an odor of piety; piety was like the oil on the sea after a tanker had been sunk. But G.C. said it was a good book and so I would read on in it until my brain would feel that it was not worth it to spend time with such stupid, bigoted, awful people as Paton made with their horrible sense of sin because of an act passed in 1927. But when I finally finished it I knew G.C. was right because Paton had been trying to make just such people; but being more than a little pious himself he had bent backwards trying to understand them or, at least, could not condemn them except by more scripture. Until finally in his greatness of soul he approved of them; I saw what G.C. meant about the book though, but
it was a sad thing to think of.

  G.C. and Mary were talking happily about a city called London that I knew of largely by hearsay and knew concretely only under the most abnormal conditions, so I could listen to them talk and think about Paris. That was a city that I knew under almost all circumstances. I knew it and loved it so well that I never liked to talk about it except with people from the old days. In the old days we all had our own cafés where we went alone and knew no one except the waiters. These cafés were secret places and in the old days everyone who loved Paris had his own café. They were better than clubs and you received the mail there that you did not wish have come to your flat. Usually you had two or three secret cafés. There would be one where you went to work and read the papers. You never gave the address of this café to anyone and you went there in the morning and had a café crême and brioche on the terrace and then, when they had cleaned the corner where your table was, inside and next to the window, you worked while the rest of the café was being cleaned and scrubbed and polished. It was nice to have other people working and it helped you to work. By the time the clients started to come to the café you would pay for your half bottle of Vichy and go out and walk down the quay to where you would have an aperitif and then have lunch. There were secret places to have lunch and also restaurants where people went that you knew.

  The best secret places were always discovered by Mike Ward. He knew Paris and loved her better than anyone I knew. As soon as a Frenchman discovered a secret place he would give a huge party there to celebrate the secret. Mike and I hunted secret places that had one or two good small wines and had a good cook, usually a rummy, and were making a last effort to make things go before having to sell out or go into bankruptcy. We did not want any secret places that were becoming successful or going up in the world. That was what always happened with Charley Sweeny’s secret places. By the time he took you there the secret had been so revealed that you had to stand in line to get a table.

  But Charley was very good about secret cafés and he had a wonderful security consciousness about his own and yours. These were of course our secondary or afternoon and early evening cafés. This was a time of day when you might want to talk to someone and sometimes I would go to his secondary café and sometimes he would come to mine. He might say he wished to bring a girl he wanted me to meet or I might tell him I would bring a girl. The girls always worked. Otherwise they were not serious. No one, except fools, kept a girl. You did not want her around in the daytime and you did not want the problems she brought. If she wanted to be your girl and worked then she was serious and then she owned the nights when you wanted her and you fed her evenings and gave her things when she needed them. I never brought many girls to show them off to Charley, who always had beautiful and docile girls, all of whom worked and all of whom were under perfect discipline, because at that time my concierge was my girl. I had never known a young concierge before and it was an inspiring experience. Her greatest asset was that she could never go out, not only in society, but at all. When I first knew her, as a locataire, she was in love with a trooper in the Garde Républicaine. He was the horse-tail plumed, medaled, mustached type and his barracks were not very far away in the quarter. He had regular hours for his duty and he was a fine figure of a man and we always addressed each other formally as “Monsieur.”

  I was not in love with my concierge but I was very lonely at night at that time and the first time she came up the stairs and through the door, which had the key in it, and then up the ladder that led to the sort of loft where the bed was beside the window that gave such a lovely view over the Cemetery Montparnasse and took off her felt-soled shoes and lay on the bed and asked me if I loved her I answered, loyally, “Naturally.”

  “I knew it,” she said. “I’ve known it too long.”

  She undressed very quickly and I looked out at the moonlight on the cemetery. Unlike the Shamba she did not smell the same but she was clean and fragile out of sturdy but insufficient nourishment and we paid honor to the view which neither saw. I had it in my mind however and then she said that the last tenant had entered and we lay and she told me that she could never love a member of the Garde Républicaine truly. I said that I thought Monsieur was a nice man, I said un brave homme et très gentil, and that he must look very well on a horse. But she said that she was not a horse and also there were inconveniences.

  So I was thinking this about Paris while they were talking of London and I thought that we were all brought up differently and it was good luck we got on so well and I wished G.C. was not lonely nights and that I was too damned lucky to be married to somebody as lovely as Mary and I would straighten things out at the Shamba and try to be a really good husband.

  “You’re being awfully silent, General,” G.C. said. “Are we boring you?”

  “Young people never bore me. I love their careless chatter. It keeps me from feeling old and unwanted.”

  “Balls to you,” G.C. said. “What were you thinking about with the semi-profound look? Not brooding are you or worrying about what the morrow will bring?”

  “When I start worrying about what the morrow will bring you’ll see a light burning in my tent late at night.”

  “Balls to you again, General,” G.C. said.

  “Don’t use rough words, G.C.,” Mary said. “My husband is a delicate and sensitive man and they repugn him.”

  “I’m glad something repugns him,” G.C. said. “I love to see the good side of his character.”

  “He hides it carefully. What were you thinking about darling?”

  “A trooper in the Garde Républicaine.”

  “You see?” G.C. said. “I always said he had a delicate side. It comes out completely unexpectedly. It’s his Proustian side. Tell me, was he very attractive? I try to be broad-minded.”

  “Papa and Proust used to live in the same hotel,” Miss Mary said. “But Papa always claims it was at different times.”

  “God knows what really went on,” G.C. said. He was very happy and not at all taut tonight and Mary with her wonderful memory for forgetting was happy too and without any problems. She could forget in the loveliest and most complete way of anyone I ever knew. She could carry a fight overnight but at the end of a week she could forget it completely and truly. She had a built-in selective memory and it was not built entirely in her favor. She forgave herself in her memory and she forgave you too. She was a very strange girl and I loved her very much. She had, at the moment, only two defects. She was very short for honest lion hunting and she had too good a heart to be a killer and that, I had finally decided, made her either flinch or squeeze off a little when shooting at an animal. I found this attractive and was never exasperated by it. But she was exasperated by it because, in her head, she understood why we killed and the necessity for it and she had come to take pleasure in it, after thinking that she never would kill an animal as beautiful as an impala and would only kill ugly and dangerous beasts. In six months of daily hunting she had learned to love it, shameful though it is basically and unshameful as it is if done cleanly, but there was something too good in her that worked subconsciously and made her pull off the target. I loved her for it in the same way that I could not love a woman who could work in the stockyards or put dogs or cats out of their suffering or destroy horses who had broken their legs at a race course.

  “What was the trooper’s name,” G.C. asked. “Albertine?”

  “No. Monsieur.”

  “He’s baffling us, Miss Mary,” G.C. said.

  They went on talking about London. So I started to think about London too and it was not unpleasant although much too noisy and not normal. I realized I knew nothing about London and so I started to think about Paris and in greater detail than before. Actually I was worried about Mary’s lion and so was G.C. and we were just handling it in different ways. It was always easy enough when it really happened. But Mary’s lion had been going on for a long time and I wanted to get him the hell over with.

  Finally
, when the different dudus, which was the generic name for all bugs, beetles and insects, were thick enough on the dining tent floor so that they made a light crunching when you walked we went to bed.

  “Don’t worry about the morrow,” I said to G.C. as he went off to his tent.

  “Come here a moment,” he said. We were standing halfway to his tent and Mary had gone into ours. “Where did she aim at that unfortunate wildebeest?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Go to sleep,” I said. “We don’t come in until the second act anyway.”

  “You couldn’t do the old husband and wife thing?”

  “No. Charo’s been begging me to do that for a month.”

  “She’s awfully admirable,” G.C. said. “You’re even faintly admirable.”

  “Just a lot of admirals.”

  “Good night, Admiral.”

  “Put a telescope to my blind eye and kiss my ass, Hardy.”

  “You’re confusing the line of battle.”

  Just then the lion roared. G.C. and I shook hands.

  “He probably heard you misquoting Nelson,” G.C. said.

  “He got tired of hearing you and Mary talk about London.”

  “He is in good voice,” G.C. said. “Go to bed, Admiral, and get some sleep.”

  In the night I heard the lion roar several more times. Then I went to sleep and Mwindi was pulling on the blanket at the foot of the cot.

  “Chai, Bwana.”

  It was very dark outside but someone was building up the fire. I woke Mary with her tea but she did not feel well. She felt ill and had bad cramps.

  “Do you want to cancel it, honey?”

  “No. I just feel awful. After the tea maybe I’ll be better.”

  “We can wash it. It might be better to give him another day’s rest.”