Green Hills of Africa Read online

impossibly, up, hearing the rustle of night things and the cough of a

  leopard hunting baboons, me scared of snakes, and touching each root and

  branch with snake fear in the dark.

  To go down and up two hands-and-knee climbing ravines and then out into

  the moonlight and the long, too-steep shoulder of mountain that you climbed

  one foot up to the other, one foot after the other, one stride at a time,

  leaning forward against the grade and the altitude, dead tired and gun

  weary, single file in the moonlight across the slope, on up and to the top

  where it was easy, the country spread in the moonlight, then up and down and

  on, through the small hills, tired but now in sight of the fires and on into

  camp.

  So then you sit, bundled against the evening chill, at the fire, with a

  whisky and soda, waiting for the announcement that the canvas bath had been

  a quarter filled with hot water.

  {'Bathi}, B'wana.'

  'Goddamn it, I could never hunt sheep again,' you say.

  'I never could,' says P.O.M. 'You all made me.'

  'You climbed better than any of us.'

  'Do you suppose we could hunt sheep again, Pop?'

  'I wonder,' Pop said. 'I suppose it's merely condition.'

  'It's riding in the damned cars that ruins us.'

  'If we did that walk every night we could come back in three nights

  from now and never feel it.'

  'Yes. But I'd be as scared of snakes if we did it every night for a

  year.'

  'You'd get over it.'

  'No,' I said. 'They scare me stiff. Do you remember that time we

  touched hands behind the tree?'

  'Rather,' said Pop. 'You jumped two yards. Are you really afraid of

  them, or only talking?'

  'They scare me sick,' I said. 'They always have.'

  'What's the matter with you men?' P.O.M. said. 'Why haven't I heard

  anything about the war to-night?'

  'We're too tired. Were you in the war, Pop?'

  'Not me,' said Pop. 'Where is that boy with the whisky?' Then calling

  in that feeble, clowning falsetto, 'Kayti... Katy-ay!'

  {'Bathi,'} said Molo again softly, but insistently.

  'Too tired.'

  'Memsahib {bathi,'} Molo said hopefully.

  'I'll go,' said P.O.M. 'But you two hurry up with your drinking. I'm

  hungry.'

  '{Bathi,'} said Kayti severely to Pop.

  {'Bathi} yourself,' said Pop. 'Don't bully me.'

  Kayti turned away in fire-lit slanting smile.

  'All right. All right,' said Pop. 'Going to have one?' he asked.

  'We'll have just one,' I said, 'and then we'll {bathi.'}

  {'Bathi}, B'wana M'Kumba,' Molo said. P.O.M. came toward the fire

  wearing her blue dressing-gown and mosquito boots.

  'Go on,' she said. 'You can have another when you come out. There's

  nice, warm, muddy water.'

  'They bully us,' Pop said.

  'Do you remember the time we were sheep hunting and your hat blew off

  and nearly fell on to the ram?' I asked her, the whisky racing my mind back

  to Wyoming.

  'Go take your {bathi,'} P.O.M. said. 'I'm going to have a gimlet.'

  In the morning we were dressed before daylight, ate breakfast, and were

  hunting the forest edge and the sunken valleys where Droop had seen the

  buffalo before the sun was up. But they were not there. It was a long hunt

  and we came back to camp and decided to send the lorries for porters and

  move with a foot safari to where there was supposed to be water in a stream

  that came down out of the mountain beyond where we had seen the rhinos the

  night before. Being camped there we could hunt a new country along the

  forest edge and we would be much closer to the mountain.

  The trucks were to bring in Karl from his kudu camp where he seemed to

  be getting disgusted, or discouraged, or both, and he could go down to the

  Rift Valley the next day and kill some meat and try for an oryx. If we found

  good rhino we would send for him. We did not want to fire any shots where we

  were going except at rhino in order not to scare them, and we needed meat.

  The rhino seemed very shy and I knew from Wyoming how the shy game will all

  shift out of a small country, a country being an area, a valley or range of

  hills, a man can hunt in, after a shot or two. We planned this all out, Pop

  consulting with Droopy, and then sent the lorries off with Dan to recruit

  porters.

  Late in the afternoon they were back with Karl, his outfit, and forty

  M'Bulus, good-looking savages with a pompous headman who wore the only pair

  of shorts among them. Karl was thin now, his skin sallow, his eyes very

  tired looking and he seemed a little desperate. He had been eight days in

  the kudu camp in the hills, hunting hard, with no one with him who spoke any

  English, and they had only seen two cows and jumped a bull out of range. The

  guides claimed they had seen another bull but Karl had thought it was

  kongoni, or that they said it was a kongoni, and had not shot. He was bitter

  about this and it was not a happy outfit.

  'I never saw his horns. I don't believe it was a bull,' he said. Kudu

  hunting was a touchy subject with him now and we let it alone.

  'He'll get an oryx down there and he'll feel better,' Pop said. 'It's

  gotten on his nerves a little.'

  Karl agreed to the plan for us to move ahead into the new country, and

  for him to go down for meat.

  'Whatever you say,' he said. 'Absolutely whatever you say.'

  'It will give him some shooting,' Pop said. 'Then he'll feel better.'

  'We'll get one. Then you get one. Whoever gets his first can go on down

  after oryx. You'll probably get an oryx to-morrow anyway when you're hunting

  meat.'

  'Whatever you say,' Karl said. His mind was bitterly revolving eight

  blank days of hill climbing in the heat, out before daybreak, back at dark,

  hunting an animal whose Swahili name he could not then remember, with

  trackers in whom he had no confidence, coming back to eat alone, no one to

  whom he could talk, his wife nine thousand miles and three months away, and

  how was his dog and how was his job, and god-damn it where were they and

  what if he missed one when he got a shot, he wouldn't, you never missed when

  it was really important, he was sure of that, that was one of the tenets of

  his faith, but what if he got excited and missed, and why didn't he get any

  letters, what did the guide say kongoni for that time, they did, he knew

  they did, but he said nothing of all that, only, 'Whatever you say', a

  little desperately.

  'Come on, cheer up, you bastard,' I said.

  'I'm cheerful. What's the matter with you?'

  'Have a drink.'

  'I don't want a drink. I want a kudu.'

  Later Pop said, 'I thought he'd do well off by himself with no one to

  hurry him or rattle him. He'll be all right. He's a good lad.'

  'He wants someone to tell him exactly what to do and still leave him />
  alone and not rattle him,' I said. 'It's hell for him to shoot in front of

  everybody. He's not a damned show-off like me.'

  'He made a damned fine shot at that leopard,' Pop said.

  'Two of them,' I said. 'The second was as good as the first. Hell, he

  can shoot. On the range he'll shoot the pants off of any of us. But he

  worries about it and I rattle him trying to get him to speed up.'

  'You're a little hard on him sometimes,' Pop said.

  'Hell, he knows me. He knows what I think of him. He doesn't mind.'

  'I still think he'll find himself off by himself,' Pop said. 'It's just

  a question of confidence. He's really a good shot.'

  'He's got the best buff, the best waterbuck, and the best lion, now,' I

  said. 'He's got nothing to worry about.'

  'The Memsahib has the best lion, brother. Don't make any mistake about

  that.'

  'I'm glad of that. But he's got a damned fine lion and a big leopard.

  Everything he has is good. We've got plenty of time. He's got nothing to

  worry about. What the hell is he so gloomy about?'

  'We'll get an early start in the morning so we can finish it off before

  it gets too hot for the little Memsahib.'

  'She's in the best shape of any one.'

  'She's marvellous. She's like a little terrier.'

  We went out that afternoon and glassed the country from the hills and

  never saw a thing. That night after supper we were in the tent. P.O.M.

  disliked intensely being compared to a little terrier. If she must be like

  any dog, and she did not wish to be, she would prefer a wolfhound, something

  lean, racy, long-legged and ornamental. Her courage was so automatic and so

  much a simple state of being that she never thought of danger; then, too,

  danger was in the hands of Pop and for Pop she had a complete, clear-seeing,

  absolutely trusting adoration. Pop was her ideal of how a man should be,

  brave, gentle, comic, never losing his temper, never bragging, never

  complaining except in a joke, tolerant, understanding, intelligent, drinking

  a little too much as a good man should, and, to her eyes, very handsome.

  'Don't you think Pop's handsome?'

  'No,' I said. 'Droopy's handsome.'

  'Droopy's {beautiful}. But don't you {really} think Pop's handsome?'

  'Hell, no. I like him as well as any man I've ever known, but I'm

  damned if he's handsome.'

  'I think he's lovely looking. But you understand about how I feel about

  him, don't you?'

  'Sure. I'm as fond of the bastard myself.'

  'But {don't} you think he's handsome, really?'

  'Nope.'

  Then, a little later:

  'Well, who's handsome to you?'

  'Belmonte and Pop. And you.'

  'Don't be patriotic,' I said. 'Who's a beautiful woman?'

  'Garbo.'

  'Not any more. Josie is. Margot is.'

  'Yes, they are. I know I'm not.'

  'You're lovely.'

  'Let's talk about Mr. J. P. I don't like you to call him Pop. It's not

  dignified.'

  'He and I aren't dignified together.'

  'Yes, but I'm dignified with him. Don't you think he's wonderful?'

  'Yes, and he doesn't have to read books written by some female he's

  tried to help get published saying how he's yellow.'

  'She's just jealous and malicious. You never should have helped her.

  Some people never forgive that.'

  'It's a shame, though, with all that talent gone to malice and nonsense

  and self-praise. It's a goddamned shame, really. It's a shame you never knew

  her before she went to pot. You know a funny thing; she never could write

  dialogue. It was terrible. She learned how to do it from my stuff and used

  it in that book. She had never written like that before. She never could

  forgive learning that and she was afraid people would notice it, where she'd

  learned it, so she had to attack me. It's a funny racket, really. But I

  swear she was nice before she got ambitious. You would have liked her then,

  really.'

  'Maybe, but I don't think so,' said P.O.M. 'We have fun though, don't

  we? Without all those people.'

  'God damn it if we don't. I've had a better time every year since I can

  remember.'

  'But isn't Mr. J. P. wonderful? Really?'

  'Yes. He's wonderful.'

  'Oh, you're nice to say it. Poor Karl.'

  'Why?'

  'Without his wife.'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Poor Karl.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  So in the morning, again, we started ahead of the porters and went down

  and across the hills and through a deeply forested valley and then up and

  across a long rise of country with high grass that made the walking

  difficult, and on and up and across, resting sometimes in the shade of a

  tree, and then on and up and down and across, all in high grass now, that

  you had to break a trail in, and the sun was very hot. The five of us in

  single file, Droop and M'Cola with a big gun apiece, hung with musettes and

  water bottles and the cameras, we all sweating in the sun, Pop and I with

  guns and the Memsahib trying to walk like Droopy, her Stetson tilted on one

  side, happy to be on a trip, pleased about how comfortable her boots were,

  we came finally to a thicket of thorn trees over a ravine that ran down from

  the side of a ridge to the water and we leaned the guns against the trees

  and went in under the close shade and lay on the ground P O M. got the books

  out of one of the musettes and she and Pop read while I followed the ravine

  down to the little stream that came out of the mountainside, and found a

  fresh lion track and many rhino tunnels in the tall grass that came higher

  than your head. It was very hot climbing back up the sandy ravine and I was

  glad to lean my back against the tree trunk and read in Tolstoy's

  {Sevastopol}. It was a very young book and had one fine description of

  fighting in it, where the French take the redoubt, and I thought about

  Tolstoy and about what a great advantage an experience of war was to a

  writer. It was one of the major subjects and certainly one of the hardest to

  write truly of, and those writers who had not seen it were always very

  jealous and tried to make it seem unimportant, or abnormal, or a disease as

  a subject, while, really, it was just something quite irreplaceable that

  they had missed. Then Sevastopol made me think of the Boulevard Sevastopol

  in Paris, about riding a bicycle down it in the rain on the way home from

  Strassburg and the slipperiness of the rails of the tram cars and the

  feeling of riding on greasy, slippery asphalt and cobble stones in traffic

  in the rain, and how we had nearly lived on the Boulevard du Temple that

  time, and I remembered the look of that apartment, how it was arranged, and

  the wall paper, and instead we had taken the upstairs of the pavilion in

  Notre Dame des Champs in the courtyard with the sawmill {(and the sudden

 
whine of the saw, the smell of sawdust and the chestnut tree over the roof

  with a mad woman downstairs)}, and the year worrying about money {(all of

  the stories back in the post that came in through a slit in the saw-mill

  door, with notes of rejection that would never call them stories, but always

  anecdotes, sketches, conies, etc. They did not want them, and we lived on

  poireaux and drank cahors and water)}, and how fine the fountains were at

  the Place de L'Observatoire ({water sheen rippling on the bronze of horses'

  manes, bronze breasts and shoulders, green under thin-flowing} {water)}, and

  when they put up the bust of Flaubert in the Luxembourg on the short cut

  through the gardens on the way to the rue Soufflot {(one that we believed

  in, loved without criticism, heavy now in stone as an idol should be)}. He

  had not seen war but he had seen a revolution and the Commune, and a

  revolution is much the best if you do not become bigoted because every one

  speaks the same language. Just as civil war is the best war for a writer,

  the most complete. Stendhal had seen a war and Napoleon taught him to write.

  He was teaching everybody then; but no one else learned. Dostoevski was made

  by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is

  forged. I wondered if it would make a writer of him, give him the necessary

  shock to cut the over-flow of words and give him a sense of proportion, if

  they sent Tom Wolfe to Siberia or to the Dry Tortugas. Maybe it would and

  maybe it wouldn't. He seemed sad, really, like Camera. Tolstoy was a small

  man. Joyce was of medium height and he wore his eyes out. And that last

  night, drunk, with Joyce and the thing he kept quoting from Edgar Quinet,

  'Fraiche et rose comme au jour de la bataille'. I didn't have it right I

  knew. And when you saw him he would take up a conversation interrupted three

  years before. It was nice to see a great writer in our time.

  What I had to do was work. I did not care, particularly, how it all

  came out. I did not take my own life seriously any more, any one else's

  life, yes, but not mine. They all wanted something that I did not want and I

  would get it without wanting it, if I worked. To work was the only thing, it

  was the one thing that always made you feel good, and in the meantime it was

  my own damned life and I would lead it where and how I pleased. And where I

  had led it now pleased me very much. This was a better sky than Italy. The

  hell it was. The best sky was in Italy and Spain and Northern Michigan in

  the fall and in the fall in the Gulf off Cuba. You could beat this sky; but

  not the country.

  All I wanted to do now was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet,

  but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it

  already.

  Now, looking out the tunnel of trees over the ravine at the sky with

  white clouds moving across in the wind, I loved the country so that I was

  happy as you are after you have been with a woman that you really love,

  when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never

  have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and

  more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for

  that long, sudden-ended always, making time stand still, sometime so very

  still that afterwards you wait to hear it move, and,< it is slow in

  starting. But you are not alone, because if you have ever really loved her

  happy and untragic, she loves you always, no matter whom she loves nor where

  she goes she loves you more. So if you have loved some woman and some

  country you are very fortunate and, if you die afterwards, it makes no

  difference. Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes

  of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you

  paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all

  the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move

  slowly. I have loved country all my life, the country was always better than

  the people. I could only care about people a very few at a time.