True at First Light

by Ernest Hemingway

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  The Narrator The author, who never in his whole life ever kept a journal, is writing, a year after the events that inspired it, a story in the first person. As he once remarked to his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, “We’re just sitting cross-legged in a bazaar and if people aren’t interested in what we’re saying they’ll go away.”

  Mary Ernest Hemingway’s fourth and last wife.

  Philip (Mr. P., Pop) Philip Percival, the longest lived and most knowledgeable of all white hunters, who guided, among many others, Teddy Roosevelt and George Eastman, and whose physical appearance Hemingway used to disguise Baron Bror von Blixen as the model for the white hunter in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”

  Gin Crazed (G.C.) The game warden of the Kajiado District of the British administration of what was then Kenya Colony. This was a very large area comprising most of the game country south of Nairobi and north of the Tanganyika (now Tanzania) border with Kenya. At no time during their safari except for their taking the whole outfit down to visit their son and daughter-in-law in southern Tanganyika did the Hemingways hunt outside the Kajiado District.

  Harry Dunn A senior police officer in the same administration.

  Willie A commercial bush pilot. Like all pilots who do not bomb civilians, a very noble character.

  Keiti The chief and the authority figure of the white hunter’s safari crew. His Edwardian opinions as to what was appropriate behavior on the part of Europeans differed little from those of the butler in the movie many readers may have seen: The Remains of the Day, with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins.

  Mwindi Under Keiti, the person in charge of the safari household servants.

  Nguili A steward and apprentice cook.

  Msembi A steward.

  Mbebia The safari cook, a highly skilled and important job. The daughter of the last governor general of the Belgian Congo, whom together with her husband I was guiding on a month’s shooting safari, told me that the roast wild duck that she had just eaten was better than the one she had enjoyed last at the Tour d’Argent in Paris. The first of these cooks learned their craft from European ladies who knew their cooking. There is a fine account of the training of such a cook in Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa.

  Mthuka A black African driver. The generation of white hunters to which I belonged, who learned their trade after World War II, drove shooting breaks that they designed and owned themselves and which were not part of the equipment provided by the safari outfitter, but that was not the case with the Hemingways’ safari. Percival used a shooting break supplied by the outfitter and it was driven by Mthuka. Hemingway, when he took over the safari crew from Percival, had Mthuka drive for him as well.

  Ngui Hemingway’s gun bearer and tracker. No one who liked big-game hunting and was fit enough to do it would have ever let his rifle be carried by a gun bearer. The term really meant a native guide as that term was used in Maine or Canada. A gun bearer was expected to have all the skills that General Baden-Powell and Ernest Thompson Seton thought a Boy Scout should. He had to know the animals and their habits, the useful properties of wild plants, how to track, especially how to follow a blood spoor, and how to look after himself and others in the African bush, in short, a Leather-Stocking or Crocodile Dundee.

  Charo Mary Hemingway’s gun bearer. Hemingway is at pains to point out, in this story, the space and time aspect of ethical behavior in different cultures. Western ethics allows polygamy and polyandry sequentially by death or divorce but a person can have only one spouse at a time. Mary is married to a spouse at the time of this story who has, within the ethical framework of the West, already had two spouses by divorce and a third, Pauline, by both divorce and death. Mary, who has been married before twice herself, is protected from her husband taking a second wife by the ethics of the West, but not from sequential polygamy, which troubles her a great deal. It is what lies behind her desire to kill a lion, not in the way Pauline did twenty years before, but in a new and superior way. Charo was Pauline’s gun bearer on that other safari.

  Mwengi Philip Percival’s gun bearer.

  Arap Meina A game scout. A game scout was the lowest ranked game law enforcement officer in Kenya. There were no white game scouts. At the time of this safari there were no black game rangers. It is perhaps just a coincidence that Arap Meina has the same name as the young Kipsigis warrior who took Beryl Markham on the spear hunt for warthog in West with the Night and who was later killed in the First World War.

  Chungo A handsome, spit-and-polish head game scout who works for G.C. He might remind readers of Denzel Washington as the Duke in the splendid movie version of Much Ado About Nothing.

  The Informer He is what he is called, a police informer. Hemingway did a lot of intelligence work, first in the Spanish Civil War, where he brought the term fifth columnist into the English and many other languages, and then in Cuba during World War II, where he helped to catch several German spies, one of whom was executed, who were sent over to Havana via Spain. Hemingway shows a sympathy and a pity for the Informer which is shared by nobody else in the story.

  Bwana Mouse Patrick, Ernest Hemingway’s middle son, a.k.a. “mouse.”

  The Widow The mother of Debba and under the dubious protection of the Informer.

  Debba A young black African woman. Hemingway has been faulted as unable to realistically depict women in his fiction. This would be, if true, a serious fault in a major writer, similar to pointing out that an Old Master could not draw the human figure. Hemingway grew up in a household shared with four sisters so he certainly had an opportunity to learn. A different sort of criticism is now styled political correctness. Art is regarded by these critics as a tool in social engineering. In Hitler’s Germany, it was politically correct to depict Jews as dirty polluters of a pure Aryan stream. Whatever the reader’s opinions about artistic competence or purpose he or she should pay attention to Debba.

  Mr. Singh In the old colonial Kenya, when the white people pronounced it to rhyme with “key” instead of the post-colonial rhyme with the first name “Kay,” the population, for administrative purposes, was divided into European, Asian and African according to their continents of origin. Mr. Singh is an Asian and a Sikh. His people originate from the Punjab and their rage at the way the Indian government handled the Golden Temple crisis led to the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi. The Sikhs are a warlike and mechanically gifted people, many of whom are machine tool operators, airline pilots, police inspectors and electrical engineers. A Sikh policeman friend of mine had the unpleasant task of having to arrest a very cantankerous, fat and foul-mouthed old European lady on a charge of having poisoned her husband for the insurance. Although she called him a curry-farting bastard to his face, my friend arrested her with the utmost care and professional courtesy.

  Mrs. Singh The very handsome wife of Mr. Singh.

  SWAHILI GLOSSARY

  askari (noun) Soldier, a loan word from Turkish.

  bili (adjective) Ungrammatical form of two. Should be mbili.

  Boma 1. (noun) Fence, an area protected or sealed off by any sort of enclosure. 2. (noun) Buildings and grounds of a district government headquarters.

  bunduki (noun) Gun, a loan word from Arabic.

  bwana 1. (noun) Title prefixed to name of a European man having no other title. 2. (noun) Sir (used by an African addressing a European).

  chai(noun) Tea.

  chakula (noun) Food.

  chui (noun) Leopard.

  dudus (noun) English plural of word for bug: dudu.

  duka (noun) Store.

  dumi (noun) Male animal.

  hapana (interjection) No.

  Hiko huko (phrase) It or he is over there.

  hodi (interjection) Hello (calling attention, or answering call).

  jambo 1. (noun) Concern. 2. (interjection) Greeting: “Cool?” to which the correct response is “sijambo”: “Cool, man.” (Literally: “no concern.”)

  kanga (noun) Guinea fowl.


  kidogo (adjective) Small.

  Kikamba (noun) The language spoken by the Kamba tribe.

  kongoni (noun) Coke’s hartebeest.

  kubwa (adjective) Big.

  kufa (intransitive verb) To die.

  kuhalal (transitive verb) To cut the throat of.

  kuleta (transitive verb) To bring.

  kupiga (transitive verb) To shoot, also to hit or strike.

  kuua (transitive verb) To kill.

  kwali (noun) Francolin, a pheasantlike upland game bird.

  kwenda (intransitive verb) To go.

  kwisha (intransitive verb) It is finished. A contraction of imekwisha.

  mafuta (noun) Fat, lard.

  Manyatta (noun) A masai word equivalent to Boma.

  mbili (adjective) Two. (Note H’s purposefully illiterate usage in conversation with Debba in.)

  mchawi (noun) Witch.

  memsahib (noun) Title prefixed to name of a European woman having no other title. A contraction of Madam Sahib.

  mganga (noun) Wizard. A good witch.

  mimi (personal pronoun) I.

  mingi (adjective) Many.

  moja (noun) One.

  moran (noun) A Masai word equivalent to askari.

  mtoto (noun) Child.

  mwanamuki (noun) Woman.

  Mzee (noun) Old man.

  mzuri (adjective) Good.

  ndege (noun) Bird, aircraft.

  ndio (interjection) Yes.

  Ngoma (noun) Dance.

  nyanyi (noun) Baboon.

  panga (noun) Machete, sword, cutlass.

  poli poli (adverb) Slowly.

  pombe (noun) Homemade beer.

  posho (noun) Cornmeal.

  risasi (noun) Bullet.

  samaki (noun) Fish.

  sana (adverb) Very.

  shamba (noun) Small cultivated field.

  shauri (noun) Affair, business, concern.

  simba (noun) Lion.

  tembo (noun) Elephant. Can also mean hard liquor.

  tu (adjective) Only, just.

  uchawi (noun) Witchcraft, in the bad sense.

  Ukambani (phrase) In the country of the Kamba tribe.

  wanawaki (noun) Plural form of mwanamuke, woman.

  watu (noun) People.

  EDITOR’S

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Michael Katakis, as Hemingway literary rights manager, for myself and my brothers, for sustaining our belief that this job was worth doing.

  Thanks as well to the staff of the Kennedy Library and especially Megan Desnoyers and Stephen Plotkin, whose archival professionalism has been such a help to all who have had the privilege to work with the manuscripts of Ernest Hemingway.

  Thanks also to the editorial staff of Scribner and especially Charles Scribner III and Gillian Blake for their help to a grateful amateur.

  Special thanks to my wife, Carol, who shares my belief that writing is important and that one word is worth a thousand pictures.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, and began his writing career with The Kansas City Star in 1917. During the First World War he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front but was invalided home, having been seriously wounded while serving with the Red Cross. In 1921 Hemingway settled in Paris, where he became part of the expatriate circle of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Ford Madox Ford. His first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, was published in Paris in 1923 and was followed by the short story collection In Our Time, which marked his American debut in 1925. With the appearance of The Sun Also Rises in 1926, Hemingway became not only the voice of the “lost generation” but the preeminent writer of his time. This was followed by Men Without Women in 1927, when Hemingway returned to the United States, and his novel of the Italian front, A Farewell to Arms (1929). In the 1930s, Hemingway settled in Key West, and later in Cuba, but he traveled widely—to Spain, Italy, and Africa—and wrote about his experiences in Death in the Afternoon (1932), his classic treatise on bullfighting, and Green Hills of Africa (1935), an account of big-game hunting in Africa. Later he reported on the Spanish Civil War, which became the background for his brilliant war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), hunted U-boats in the Caribbean, and covered the European front during the Second World War. Hemingway’s most popular work, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and in 1954 Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his powerful, style-forming mastery of the art of narration.” One of the most important influences on the development of the short story and novel in American fiction, Hemingway has seized the imagination of the American public like no other twentieth-century author. He died in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961. His other works include The Torrents of Spring (1926), Winner Take Nothing (1933), To Have and Have Not (1937), The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (1938), Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), and posthumously, A Moveable Feast (1964), Islands in the Stream (1970), The Dangerous Summer (1985), and The Garden of Eden (1986).

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  True at First Light

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1) Hemingway completed just one draft of True at First Light, and after his death it remained under lock and key for decades. Did these circumstances affect the way you read the book? How should True at First Light be judged within Hemingway’s complete canon of work? If he had finished writing and editing the book himself, in what ways might it have been different?

  2) Perhaps the most controversial aspect of True at First Light is Hemingway’s purported “marriage” to Debba. Do you believe that this relationship is truthfully rendered, or one of the “fictionalized” elements of this memoir? Could Debba be an amalgamation of a few different women? A metaphor for Hemingway’s love of Africa itself?

  3) On the surface, Hemingway perpetuates the notion that he and Mary are very happy. They frequently take great pains to reassure one another that they are content. Are they trying to convince themselves they are still in love? If so, why? Is their bickering a sign that they are unhappy, or is this just the way they communicate? Discuss his assertion that “love is a terrible thing…[and] fidelity does not exist nor ever is implied except at the first marriage”.

  4) Hemingway often mocks the white man’s presence in Africa, noting how many are willing to pay inflated prices for an authentic African hunt, and even joking that a Hilton should be built for the comfort of such people. Does Hemingway despise these casual hunters and the changes they bring to Africa? Does he realize that, in the eyes of many, he himself is one of those people? How does he feel about his own role as an outsider in Africa, and the impact of his own presence there? Does he become more aware of it as the novel progresses?

  5) The Informer is one of the book’s most interesting characters, universally despised by nearly everyone but Hemingway. Why is the author so charitable to the Informer? What does this character represent to Hemingway and to the others at camp? Is the information he gives Hemingway useful in any real way? Discuss Hemingway’s observation that the Informer will “betray anyone betrayable” for money.

  6) Hemingway says, “A writer of fiction is really a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men. I am a writer of fiction and so I am a liar too…I make the truth as I invent it truer than it would be”. In what way is Hemingway’s fiction truer than real life? And if “the truth as [he] invents it is truer than it would be” then why does he call himself a liar? Is a writer of fiction ever obligated to tell the absolute truth? What does Hemingway mean when he says that “in Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon”?

  7) Hemingway refers to “having a conscience” about hunting. Is such a thing possible when you are hunting at least partly for sport? Is hunting more noble if you stick to the rules?

  8) Reread Hemingway’s description of the killing of Mary’s lion, and the subsequent examination of his body. Does his rendering of the details glorify
the violence, sadness, and ultimate indignity of the event — or the opposite? Compare it to the scene where Hemingway must put down his favorite horse, Old Kite. How does this description differ from his descriptions of hunting?

  9) Does Mary appreciate how much danger she puts everyone in every day so that she can kill the lion? Why is she so melancholy after she accomplishes her goal? Is she truly disappointed in the way the hunt plays out, or is she experiencing a predictable emotional letdown? Does she feel guilty for killing something so beautiful, or feel a true sadness at its destruction?

  10) Hemingway laments throughout the narrative that Debba is “losing her impudence.” What does he mean by this? Are the changes in Debba a result of her relationship with Hemingway? If Debba is a symbol of Hemingway’s desire to truly be a part of Africa, then do the changes in Debba symbolize the changes outsiders like Hemingway are bringing to the land?

  11) Debba and Mary are two starkly different women from different worlds. Compare Mary’s Nairobi shopping excursion with Debba’s shopping trip with Hemingway. What does each trip mean to each woman? How does their individual behavior and attitude express their inherent differences as people? How does Hemingway’s love for Debba differ from his love for Mary? Is it possible to be in love with two people at once?

  12) While reading True at First Light, it is difficult to know when Hemingway is telling the truth, and when he has fictionalized his story. By altering details and creating new stories, is he proving that writers have the power the blur the line between what is real and what is imaginary — and sometimes even rewrite history?

  13) How does Hemingway use humor to get his point across in True at First Light? Was this book funnier than you expected it to be? How much of it is a parody of Hemingway himself?

  14) Discuss Hemingway’s choice to be in Kenya at this particular time, given the dangerous political situation. Did the looming danger in the region make the trip more exciting for them? Can you recall any scene where Hemingway himself displays violent tendencies? Does he ever exhibit the mercenary behavior plaguing the region at this time?