True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  The Masai love to talk and to argue but neither of these men was a talker and I told them and those who had come with them and stood saying nothing that we would attend to the problems. To do this I had to speak to Mwindi who then spoke to Arap Meina who then spoke to our clients. I leaned on my Mzee stick which has a silver shilling pounded out and flattened into the head of it and grunted in the purest Masai which sounds a little like Marlene Dietrich when she is expressing sexual pleasure, understanding or affection. The sounds vary. But they are deep and have a rising inflection.

  We all shook hands and then Mwindi who loved to announce the worst possible news said in English, “Bwana, there are two ladies with bubu.”

  Bubu is any form of venereal disease but also includes yaws about which the authorities do not agree. Yaws certainly have a spirochete much like that of syphilis but opinion is divided as to how one acquires them. People are supposed to be able to acquire the old rale from a drinking glass or from sitting injudiciously on the seat of a public toilet or from kissing a stranger. In my limited experience I have never known anyone so unfortunate.

  Yaws, by now, I knew almost as well as I knew my brother. That is to say that I had much contact with them without ever being able to appreciate them at their true worth.

  The two Masai ladies were both quite beautiful and this reinforced me in my theory that, in Africa, the more beautiful you are the more yaws you got. Msembi loved the practice of medicine and produced all the yaws remedies without being prompted. I made a general cleaning and threw the result into the still live ashes of the fire. After that I painted the edge of the lesion with gentian violet for psychologic effect. Gentian violet has a wonderful effect on the morale of the patient and it inspires the physician and the spectators with its lovely purple color tingeing into gold. I made a practice, usually, of making a small dot with it on the forehead of the husband.

  After this, to take no chances, I would sprinkle the lesion, sometimes having to hold my breath to work with it, with sulfathiazole and then smear it with Aureomycin, and apply a dressing. Always I would give oral penicillin and, if the yaws did not clear up, after the daily cure I would administer as massive doses of penicillin as we could afford. Afterwards I took the snuff out from under my armpit and put half of it behind the ear of each patient. Msembi loved this part of the treatment but I asked him to bring a bowl of water and the good truly blue Nekko two percent soap so that I might wash my hands after shaking hands with each patient. Their hands were always lovely and cold and once you take a Masai woman’s hand, even in the presence of her husband, she does not wish to give your hand up ever. This could be tribal or it could be personal to a yaws doctor. It was one of the few things I could not ask Ngui as we had no vocabulary to handle it. In return for the services performed a Masai might bring you a few mealies. But this would be exceptional.

  The next patient was no inspiration even to an amateur physician. He was a prematurely old man if you could judge from the teeth and the genitals. He breathed with difficulty and his temperature was one hundred and four. His tongue was white and furry and there were white pockets and caves in his throat when I depressed his tongue. When I touched his liver lightly, the pain was almost unbearable. He said he had great pain in his head, in his belly, in his chest and he had not been able to evacuate for a long time. He did not know how long. If he had been an animal it would have been better to shoot him. Since he was a brother in Africa I gave him chloroquine for the fever in case it was malaria, a mild cathartic, aspirin to take for the pain if it continued and we boiled the syringe and laid him flat on the ground and gave him one million and a half units of penicillin in the tired, sunken, black cheek of his left buttock. It was a waste of penicillin. We all knew it. But if you go for broke that is the way you go and we all felt ourselves to be so fortunate in the religion that we were trying to be kind to all those outside of it and who should hoard penicillin when he is headed, self-propelled, for the Happy Hunting Grounds.

  Mwindi, who had entered into the spirit of it all and was wearing his green robe and green skullcap and thought that we were all non-Islamic bums but also Kamba bums, said, “Bwana, there is another Masai with bubu.”

  “Bring him here.”

  He was a nice boy, still a warrior, and proud but shy from his defect. It was the classical. The chancre was hard and it was not new and after feeling it I added up the penicillin we had left in my mind and remembered that no man should ever panic and that we had an aircraft that could bring more and I told the boy to sit down and we boiled the syringe and the needle again, although what he could get from them that was worse than he had I did not know, and Msembi wiped off the buttocks area, with cotton and alcohol, this time hard and flat as a man’s ass should be, and I made the puncture and watched the tiny oily ooze that was the mark of my inefficiency and the wastage of that which now was like the Host, and through Mwindi and Arap Meina I told the boy, upright now and with his spear, when he should come back and that he should come six times and then take a note to the hospital that I would give him. We did not shake hands because he was younger than me. But we smiled and he was proud of having had the needle.

  Mthuka, who had no business there, but had wandered by to watch the practice of medicine and in the hope that I would undertake some form of surgery since I did surgery out of a book which Ngui held and which had fascinating colored pictures some of which folded over and could be opened so that you saw the organs of both the front and the rear of the body at the same time. Surgery everyone loved but there had been no surgery today and Mthuka came up, long and loose and deaf and scarred beautifully to please a girl a long time ago and said, wearing his checked shirt and his hat that had once belonged to Tommy Shevlin, “Kwenda na Shamba.”

  “Kwenda,” I said and to Ngui, “Two guns. You and me and Mthuka.”

  “Hapana halal?”

  “OK. Bring Charo.”

  “Mzuri,” Ngui said since it would have been insulting to kill a good piece of meat and not have it legally butchered for the Moslem elders. Keiti knew only too well that we were all bad boys but now that we had the backing of a serious religion, and I had explained that this religion in its origin was as old if not older than the Mountain, Keiti would take it seriously. I think we could have conned Charo, which would have been a terrible thing to do since he had the comfort of his own faith which was much better organized than ours, but we were not proselytizing and we had made a great stride when Charo took the religion seriously.

  Miss Mary hated what she knew of the religion, which was very little, and I am not sure that in our group everyone desired that she be a member. If she was a member by tribal right it was all right and she would be obeyed and respected as such. But on an elective entrance I am not positive she would have made it. With her own group, of course, headed by all the Game Scouts and led by the magnificent, well-starched, erect and handsome Chungo, she would have been elected to be the Queen of Heaven. But in our religion there was not going to be any Game Department and while we planned to abolish both flogging and capital punishment against anyone except our enemies and there was to be no slavery except by those we had taken prisoner personally and cannibalism was completely and absolutely abolished except for those who chose to practice it, Miss Mary might not have received the same number of votes that she would certainly have had from her own people.

  So we drove to the Shamba and I sent Ngui to get Debba and with her sitting beside, one hand holding the carved holster of the pistol, we drove off, Debba receiving any salutes from children or old people as though she were taking the salute from any regiment of which she might have been Honorary Colonel. At this time she was patterning her public behavior after the photographs in illustrated weeklies I had given her and she had selected the dignity and grace of the better royalty as though she were going over the bolts of cloth in the duka. I never asked her who she was patterning her public behavior on but it had been a year of well-photographed pageantry and she had muc
h to choose from. I had tried to teach her the lift of the wrist and undulation of the fingers with which the Princess Aspasia of Greece would greet me across the smoke-filled clamor of Harry’s Bar in Venice but we had as yet no Harry’s Bar in Laitokitok.

  So now she was receiving salutes and I was maintaining a rigid amiability while we went off on the road that curved up the slope of the Mountain to where I hoped to kill a beast sufficiently large, fat and succulent to make everyone happy. We hunted diligently and lay until almost dark on an old blanket on the high side of a hill waiting for a beast to feed out onto the open hillside. But no beast fed out and when it was time to go home I killed a Tommy ram which was all we really needed. I lined up on him and with us both sitting down had her put her finger on the trigger ahead of mine and while I tracked him with the sight I felt the pressure of her finger and her head against mine and could feel her trying not to breathe. Then I said, “Piga,” and her finger tightened as mine tightened on the trigger only a tiny cheating shade faster and the ram, whose tail had been switching as he fed, was dead with his four legs oddly rigid toward the sky and Charo was running out to him in his ragged shorts and old blue blazer and his dingy turban to cut his throat and make him legal.

  “Piga mzuri,” Ngui said to Debba and she turned to him and tried for her royal manner and couldn’t make it and started to cry and said, “Asanta sana.”

  We sat there and she cried and then stopped it clean and well. We watched Charo do his business and the hunting car come down from behind the brow of the hill and drive to the beast and Mthuka get out and lower the tailgate and he and Charo, very small at the distance and the big car small too, stoop and lift and swing the carcass up into the back of the car. Then the car came up the hill toward us, larger every moment as it came. There had been a moment when I had wished to pace the distance of the shot. But it would have been a chicken thing to do and a man should be able to shoot at all distances giving the proper allowance for shooting downhill.

  Debba looked at him as though it was the first antelope she had ever seen and put her finger in the hole where the solid had passed through the very top of both shoulders and I told her not to get dirty with the blood on the floor. The floor had strips of iron on it to lift the meat above the heat of the car and let the air circulate and although well washed always it was a sort of charnel house.

  Debba left her beast and we drove downhill with her sitting between Mthuka and me and we both knew she was in a strange state but she did not talk at all and only held tight on to my arm and held tight to the carved holster. At the Shamba she became regal but her heart was not in it and Ngui butchered out the ram and threw the tripe and the lungs to the dogs and opened the stomach and cleaned it and put the heart, kidneys and liver in the stomach sack and handed it to a child to take in to Debba’s house. My father-in-law was there and I nodded to him. He took the white, wet sack with its red and purple content and went inside the house which was really quite a beautiful building with its conical roof and red walls.

  I got out of the car and helped Debba down.

  “Jambo, tu,” I said and she said nothing and went into the house.

  It was dark by now and when we got to camp the fire was burning and my chair and the table with the drinks had been set out. Mwindi had bathwater ready and I took a bath, soaping carefully, and then dressed in pajamas, mosquito boots and a heavy bathrobe and came out to the fire. Keiti was waiting.

  “Jambo, Bwana,” he said.

  “Jambo, Mr. Keiti,” I said. “We killed a small Tommy. Charo will have told you he is OK.”

  He smiled and I knew we were friends again. He had the nicest, cleanest smile of anyone I ever knew.

  “Sit down, Keiti,” I said.

  “No.”

  “I am very grateful for what you did last night. You acted correctly and exactly as you should. I have seen the father of the girl for some time and have made the necessary visits and presents. There was no way you should know this. The father is worthless.”

  “I know. Women rule that Shamba.”

  “If I have a son by the girl he will be educated properly and may choose to be a soldier, a doctor or a lawyer. This is exact. If he wishes to be a hunter he can remain with me as my son. Is this clear?”

  “It is very clear,” Keiti said.

  “If I have a daughter I will give her a dowry or she may come to live with me as my daughter. Is that clear?”

  “It is clear. Better, maybe, stay with the mother.”

  “I will do everything according to Kamba law and custom. But I cannot marry the girl and take her home because of stupid laws.”

  “One of your brothers can marry her,” Keiti said.

  “I know.”

  The case was now closed and we were the same good friends as always.

  “I would like to come some night and hunt with the spear,” Keiti said.

  “I am only learning,” I said. “I am very stupid and it is difficult without a dog.”

  “Nobody knows the night. Not me. Not you. Nobody.”

  “I want to learn it.”

  “You will. But be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “No one knows the night except in a tree or in some safe place. The night belongs to the animals.”

  Keiti was too delicate to speak about the religion but I saw the look in his eye of one who has been led up to the top of a high hill and seen the temptations of the world spread out before him and it reminded me that we must not corrupt Charo. I could see that we were winning now and that I could have had Debba and the Widow for dinner now with a written menu and place cards. So, winning, I crowded just a little for the extra point.

  “Of course, in our religion, everything is possible.”

  “Yes. Charo told me about your religion.”

  “It is very small but very old.”

  “Yes,” Keiti said.

  “Well, good night then,” I said. “If everything is in order.”

  “Everything is in order,” Keiti said and I said good night again and he bowed again and I envied Pop that Keiti was his man. But, I thought, you are starting to get your own men and while Ngui can never compare with Keiti in many ways yet he is rougher and more fun and times have changed.

  In the night I lay and listened to the noises of the night and tried to understand them all. What Keiti had said was very true; no one knew the night. But I was going to learn it if I could alone and on foot. But I was going to learn it and I did not want to share it with anyone. Sharing is for money and you do not share a woman nor would I share the night. I could not go to sleep and I would not take a sleeping pill because I wanted to hear the night and I had not decided yet whether I would go out at moonrise. I knew that I did not have enough experience with the spear to hunt alone and not get into trouble and that it was both my duty and my great and lovely pleasure to be in camp when Miss Mary should return. It was also my duty and my wonderful pleasure to be with Debba but I was sure that she would sleep well at least until the moon rose and that after the moon rose we all paid for whatever happiness or sorrow we had bought. I lay in the cot with the old shotgun rigidly comfortable by my side and the pistol that was my best friend and severest critic of any defect of reflexes or of decision lying comfortably between my legs in the carved holster that Debba had polished so many times with her hard hands and thought how lucky I was to know Miss Mary and have her do me the great honor of being married to me and to Miss Debba the Queen of the Ngomas. Now that we had the religion it was easy. Ngui, Mthuka and I could decide what was a sin and what was not.

  Ngui had five wives, which we knew was true, and twenty head of cattle, which we all doubted. I had only one legal wife due to American law but everyone remembered and respected Miss Pauline who had been in Africa long ago and was much admired and beloved especially by Keiti and Mwindi and I knew that they believed she was my dark Indian wife and that Miss Mary was my fair Indian wife. They were all sure that Miss Pauline must be looking after
the Shamba at home while I had brought Miss Mary to this country and I never told them that Miss Pauline was dead because it would have saddened everyone. Nor did we tell them of another wife they would not have liked who had been reclassified so that she did not hold that rank nor category. It was generally presumed even by the most conservative and skeptical of the elders that if Ngui had five wives I must have at least twelve due to the difference between our fortunes.

  It was generally understood that I was married to Miss Marlene who on this safari, through photographs I had received and letters, was supposed to be working for me in a small amusement Shamba I owned called Las Vegas. They all knew Miss Marlene as the author of “Lili Marlene” and many people thought that she was Lili Marlene and we had all heard her on our first safari many times singing a song called “Jonny” on the old crank-up phonograph when Rhapsody in Blue was a new tune and Miss Marlene sung about mutts around the phlegm. This tune had always moved everyone deeply then and when I was gloomy or dispirited in those days on rare occasions, Keiti would ask, “Muts around flem?,” and I would say to put her on, he would crank the portable phonograph and we would all be happy hearing the beautiful, deep, off-key voice of my beautiful non-existent wife.

  This is the material from which legends are built and the fact that one of my wives was supposed to be Lili Marlene was no deterrent to the religion. I had taught Debba to say, “Vámonos a Las Vegas,” and she loved the sound of it almost as much as, “No hay remedio.” But she was always afraid of Miss Marlene although she had a large picture of her wearing what looked to me like nothing on the wall above her bed along with advertisements for the washing machine and garbage disposal units and the two-inch steaks and cuts of ham and the paintings of the mammoth, the little four-toed horse and the saber-toothed tiger that she had cut from Life magazine. These were the great wonders of her new world and the only one she feared was Miss Marlene.