True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  “I think they are over toward the Chulus. We’ll find out when Willie brings the Cessna.”

  “Isn’t it strange how the Mountain throwing all those stones hundreds and hundreds of years ago can make a place impossible to get to so that it is absolutely shut off from everyone and no one can reach it since men started to go on wheels.”

  “They’re helpless now without their wheels. Natives won’t go as porters anymore and the fly kills pack animals. The only parts of Africa that are left are those that are protected by deserts and by the fly. The tsetse fly is the animal’s best friend. He only kills the alien animals and the intruders.”

  “Isn’t it strange how we truly love the animals and still have to kill almost every day for meat?”

  “It’s no worse than caring about your chickens and still having eggs for breakfast and eating spring chicken when you want it.”

  “It is different.”

  “Of course it is. But the principle is the same. So much game has come now with the new grass that we may not have any trouble lions for a long time. There is no reason for them to bother the Masai when we have so much game now.”

  “The Masai have too many cattle anyway.”

  “Sure.”

  “Sometimes I feel as though we were fools protecting their stock for them.”

  “If you don’t feel like a fool in Africa a big part of the time you are a bloody fool,” I said rather pompously, I thought. But it was getting late enough at night for generalizations to appear the way some stars showed reluctant in their distance and disinterest and others always seemed brazen in their clarity.

  “Do you think we should go to bed?” I asked.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “And be good kittens and forget anything that’s been wrong. And when we’re in bed we can listen to the night.”

  So we went to bed and were happy and loved each other with no sorrow and listened to the night noises. A hyena came close to the tent after we had left the fire and I had crawled in under the mosquito net and between the sheets and the blankets and lay with my back against the canvas wall of the tent with Mary comfortable in the main part of the cot. He cried out a few times in the strange rising pitch and another answered him and they moved through the camp and out beyond the lines. We could see the glow of the fire brightening when the wind came and Mary said, “Us kittens in Africa with our faithful good fire and the beasts having their night life. You really love me don’t you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you do.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  After a while we heard two lions coughing as they hunted and the hyenas were quiet. Then a long way away to the north toward the edge of the stony forest beyond the gerenuk country we heard a lion roar. It was the heavy vibrating roar of a big lion and I held Mary close while the lion coughed and grunted afterwards.

  “That’s a new lion,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said. “And we don’t know anything against him. I’ll be very damned careful about any Masai that talk against him.”

  “We’ll take good care of him, won’t we? Then he’ll be our lion the way our fire is our fire.”

  “We’ll let him be his own lion. That’s what he really cares about.”

  She was asleep now and after a while I was asleep and when I woke and heard the lion again she was gone and I could hear her breathing softly in her bed.

  12

  “MEMSAHIB SICK?” Mwindi asked as he fixed the pillows so that Mary could lie with her head toward the wide-open end of the tent and tested the air mattress on the cot with the palm of his hand before drawing the sheets smooth over the mattress and folding them tightly under.

  “Yes. A little.”

  “Maybe from eat the lion.”

  “No. She was sick before kill the lion.”

  “Lion run very far very fast. Was very angry and sad when he die. Maybe make poison.”

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  “Hapana bullshit,” Mwindi said gravely. “Bwana Captain Game Ranger eat lion too. He sick too.”

  “Bwana Captain Game Ranger sick with same sickness long back Salengai.”

  “Eat lion Salengai too.”

  “Mingi bullshit,” I said. “He sick before I kill lion. Hapana eat lion in Salengai. Eat lion here after safari from Salengai. When lion skinned Salengai all chop boxes packed. Nobody eat that morning. You think back bad.”

  Mwindi shrugged his shoulders under the long green gown. “Eat lion Bwana Captain Game Ranger sick. Memsahib sick.”

  “Who eat lion feel fine? Me.”

  “Shaitani,” Mwindi said. “I see you sick to die before. Many years ago when you young man you sick to die after you kill lion. Everybody know you die. Ndege know. Bwana know. Memsahib know. Everybody remember when you die.”

  “Did I eat the lion?”

  “No.”

  “Was I sick before I kill that lion?”

  “Ndio,” Mwindi said reluctantly. “Very sick.”

  “You and me talk too much.”

  “We are Mzees. All right talk if you wish talk.”

  “Kwisha talk,” I said. I was tired of the pidgin English and I did not think much of the idea that was building up.

  “Memsahib goes to Nairobi in the ndege tomorrow. Doctor in Nairobi cures her sickness. Come back from Nairobi well and strong. Kwisha,” I said, meaning it is finished.

  “Mzuri sana,” Mwindi said. “I pack everything.”

  I went out of the tent and Ngui was waiting under the big tree. He had my shotgun.

  “I know where there are two kwali. Shoot them for Miss Mary.”

  Mary was not back yet and we found the two francolin dusting in a patch of dried dirt at the edge of the big fever trees. They were small and compact and quite beautiful. I waved at them and they started to run crouching for the brush so I shot one on the ground and the other as it rose.

  “Any more?” I asked Ngui.

  “Only the pair.”

  I handed the gun to him and we started back for camp, me holding the two plump birds, warm and clear-eyed with their soft feathers blowing in the breeze. I would have Mary look them up in the bird book. I was quite sure I had never seen them before and that they might be a local Kilimanjaro variety. One would make a good broth and the other would be good for her if she wanted solid food. I would give her some Terramycin and some Chlorodyne to tie things up. I was uncertain about the Terramycin but she seemed to get no bad reactions from it.

  I was sitting in a comfortable chair in the cool mess tent when I saw Mary come up to our tent. She washed and then came over and into the door of the tent and sat down.

  “Oh my,” she said. “Should we not mention it?”

  “I could drive you back and forth in the hunting car.”

  “No. It’s as big as a hearse.”

  “Take this stuff now if you can hold it down.”

  “Would it be terrible to have a gimlet for my morale?”

  “You’re not supposed to drink but I always did and I’m still here.”

  “I’m not quite sure whether I’m here or not. It would be nice to find out.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  I made the gimlet and then said that there was no hurry to take the medicine and for her to go in and lie down on the bed and rest and read if she felt like it or I would read to her if she would like.

  “What did you shoot?”

  “A couple of very small francolin. They’re like small partridges. I’ll bring them in after a while and you can look at them. They’ll make you supper.”

  “What about lunch?”

  “We’ll have some good Tommy broth and mashed potato. You’re going to knock this thing right away and it’s not so bad that you shouldn’t eat. They say that Terramycin kills it better than Yatren in the old days. But I’d feel better if we had Yatren. I was sure we had it in the medical chest.”

  “I’m thirsty all the time.”


  “I remember. I’ll show Mbebia how to make rice water and we’ll keep it cool in a bottle in the water bag and you drink all of that you want. It’s good for the thirst and it keeps your strength up.”

  “I don’t know why I had to get ill with something. We lead such a wonderful healthy life.”

  “Kitten, you could just as well have got fever.”

  “But I take my antimalarial medicine every night and I always make you take yours when you forget it and we always wear our mosquito boots in the evening by the fire.”

  “Sure. But in the swamp after the buffalo we were bitten hundreds of times.”

  “No, dozens.”

  “Hundreds for me.”

  “You’re bigger. Put your arms around my shoulders and hold me tight.”

  “We’re lucky kittens,” I said. “Everybody gets fever if they go in country where there is a lot of it and we were in two bad fever countries.”

  “But I took my medicine and I made you remember yours.”

  “So we didn’t get fever. But we were in bad sleeping sickness country too and you know how many tsetse flies there were.”

  “Weren’t they bad though by the Ewaso Ngiro. I remember coming home in the evenings and they would bite like red-hot eyebrow tweezers.”

  “I’ve never even seen red-hot eyebrow tweezers.”

  “Neither have I but that’s what they bite like in that deep woods where the rhino lived. The one that chased G.C. and his dog Kibo into the river. That was a lovely camp though and we had so much fun when we first started hunting by ourselves. It was twenty times more fun than having somebody with us and I was so good and obedient, remember?”

  “And we got so close to everything in the big green woods and it was like we were the first people that were ever there.”

  “Do you remember where the moss was and the trees so high there was almost no sunlight ever and we walked softer than Indians and you took me so close to the impala that he never saw us and when we found the herd of buffalo just across the little river from the camp? That was a wonderful camp. Do you remember how the leopard came through the camp every night just like having Boise or Mr. Willie moving around the Finca at night at home?”

  “Yes, my good kitten, and you’re not going to be sick really now because the Terramycin will have taken hold of that by tonight or in the morning.”

  “I think it’s taking hold now.”

  “Cucu couldn’t have said it was better than Yatren and Carbsone if it wasn’t really good. Miracle drugs make you feel spooky while you are waiting for them to take hold. But I remember when Yatren was a miracle drug and it really was then too.”

  “I have a wonderful idea.”

  “What would it be, honey my good kitten?”

  “I just thought we could have Harry come with the Cessna and you and he could check on all your beasts and your problems and then I’d go back with him to Nairobi and see a good doctor about this dysentery or whatever it is and I could buy Christmas presents for everyone and all the things we should have for Christmas.”

  “We call it the Birthday of the Baby Jesus.”

  “I still call it Christmas,” she said. “And there are an awful lot of things we need. It wouldn’t be too extravagant do you think?”

  “I think it would be wonderful. We’ll send a signal through Ngong. When would you want the plane?”

  “How would day after tomorrow be?”

  “Day after tomorrow is the most wonderful day there is after tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to just lie quiet and feel the breeze from the snow on our Mountain. You go and make yourself a drink and read and be comfortable.”

  “I’ll go out to show Mbebia how to make the rice water.”

  Mary felt much better at noon and in the afternoon she slept again and in the evening felt quite well and was hungry. I was delighted with how the Terramycin had acted and that she had no bad reactions from it and told Mwindi, touching the wood of my gun butt, that I had cured Miss Mary with a powerful and secret dawa but that I was sending her into Nairobi tomorrow in the ndege in order that a European doctor might confirm my cure.

  “Mzuri,” Mwindi said.

  So we ate lightly but well and happily that night and it was a happy camp again and the disease and misfortune through the eating-of-lion-meat party, which had made a strong bid for power in the morning, dissolved as though the subject never had been raised. There were always these theories that came to explain any misfortune and the first and most important thing was someone or something that was guilty. Miss Mary was supposed to have extraordinary and unexplainable bad luck herself, which she was in the process of expiating, but she was also supposed to bring great good luck to other people. She was also well loved. Arap Meina actually worshipped her and Chungo, G.C.’s chief Game Scout, was in love with her. Arap Meina worshipped very few things as his religion had become hopelessly confused but he had moved into a worshipping of Miss Mary that, occasionally, reached peaks of ecstasy that were little short of violence. He loved G.C. but this was a sort of schoolboy fascination combined with devotion. He came to care greatly for me, carrying this affection to the point where I had to explain to him that it was women that I cared for rather than men though I was capable of deep and lasting friendship. But all his love and devotion which he had scattered over one whole slope of Kilimanjaro with complete sincerity and almost always with returned devotion, giving it alike to men, women, children, boys and girls and to all types of alcohol and the available heroic herbs, and they were many, he now concentrated this great talent for affection on Miss Mary.

  Arap Meina was not supremely beautiful although he had great elegance and soldierliness in uniform with his ear-laps always coiled neatly over the tops of his ears so that they formed a knot of the sort Greek Goddesses wore their hair in a sort of modified Psyche knot. But he had to offer the sincerity of an old elephant poacher gone straight and into a straightness so unimpeachable that he could offer it to Miss Mary almost as though it were a virginity. The Wakamba are not homosexual. I do not know about the Lumbwa because Arap Meina was the only Lumbwa I have ever known intimately but I would say that Arap Meina was strongly attracted by both sexes and that the fact that Miss Mary, with the shortest of African haircuts, provided the pure Hamitic face of a boy with a body that was as womanly as a good Masai young wife was one of the factors that channeled Arap Meina’s devotion until it became worship. He called her not Mama, which is the ordinary way an African speaks of any married white woman when he does not feel up to saying Memsahib, but always Mummy. Miss Mary had never been called Mummy by anyone and told Arap Meina not to address her in that way. But it was the highest title he had salvaged from his contact with the English language and so he called her Mummy Miss Mary or Miss Mary Mummy, depending on whether he had been using the heroic herbs and barks or had simply made contact with his old friend, alcohol.

  We were sitting by the fire after dinner talking of Arap Meina’s devotion to Miss Mary and I was worrying about why I had not seen him that day when Mary said, “It isn’t bad for everybody to be in love with everybody else the way it is in Africa, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure something awful won’t come out of it suddenly?”

  “Awful things come out of it all the time with the Europeans. They drink too much and get all mixed up with each other and then blame it on the altitude.”

  “There is something about the altitude or it being altitude on the equator. It’s the first place I’ve ever known where a drink of pure gin tastes like water. That’s really true and so there must be something about the altitude or something.”

  “Sure there is something. But we who work hard and hunt on foot and sweat our liquor out and climb the damned escarpment and climb around this Mountain don’t have to worry about liquor. It goes out through the pores. Honey, you walk more going back and forth to the latrine than most of the women who come out here on safari walk in the whole of Africa.�
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  “Let’s not mention the latrine. It has a wonderful path to it now and it’s always stocked with the best reading matter. Have you ever finished that lion book yet?”

  “No. I’m saving it for when you’re gone.”

  “Don’t save too many things for when I’m gone.”

  “That’s all I saved.”

  “I hope it teaches you to be cautious and good.”

  “I am anyway.”

  “No you’re not. You and G.C. are fiends sometimes and you know it. When I think of you a good writer and a valuable man and my husband doing what you and G.C. do on those terrible night things.”

  “We have to study the animals at night.”

  “You don’t either. You just do devilish things to show off to each other.”

  “I don’t think so really, kitten. We do things for fun. When you stop doing things for fun you might as well be dead.”

  “But you don’t have to do things that will kill you and pretend that the Land Rover is a horse and that you’re riding in the Grand National. Neither of you can ride well enough to ride at Aintree on that course.”

  “That’s quite true and that’s why we’re reduced to the Land Rover. G.C. and I have the simple sports of the honest countryman.”

  “You’re two of the most dishonest and dangerous countrymen I’ve ever known. I don’t even try to discipline you anymore because I know it’s hopeless.”

  “Don’t talk bad about us just because you’re leaving us.”

  “I wasn’t doing that. I was just horrified for a minute thinking about you two and what your ideas of fun are. Anyway, thank God G.C. isn’t here so you’d be alone together.”

  “You just have a good time in Nairobi and get checked by the doctor and buy whatever you want and don’t worry about this Manyatta. It will be well run and orderly and nobody will take any unnecessary risks. I’ll run a nice clean joint while you’re gone and you’ll be proud.”

  “Why don’t you write something so I’ll be really proud?”

  “Maybe I’ll write something too. Who knows?”

  “I don’t mind about your fiancée as long as you love me more. You do love me more don’t you?”