I Dreamed of Africa Read online

  We flew almost touching the treetops, low down to the Mukutan stream, up to Mugongo ya Ngurue, Ol Donyo Orio, Nagirir, Kuti, Enghelesha with the grass leys dotted with trees, down to bomas and dams. We circled down all over the ranch, over and over again. The painful finality of last times. After a while I nodded.

  We landed, and before the dust had settled, someone opened the door of the plane; I found myself engulfed in the embrace of Garisha the cattleman, who wore the same old torn green pullover of every day, and, as usual, smelt faintly of cattle yard. Most people were crying, some uncontrollably, some silently, and no one talked. Everyone was dressed formally: the men wore suits and ties, but all the women wore white.

  Without a word the coffin was put in a Toyota pick-up. The silence and the large crowd were unreal.

  Paolo’s younger and only surviving brother, who wore a dark suit strangely out of place in the afternoon sun of the African bush, and who had not slept during the flight from Europe, took the wheel. I could sense what he thought. Paolo was the only brother he had left, and the second to die in Africa. They helped me in; they were all treating me as if I had suddenly become fragile and weak, and yet somehow, in a strange way, I had never felt stronger, untouchable, carrying my living Paolo inside me, and going to bury my dead one.

  The engine broke the silence, and I turned my head: Emanuele had jumped in the back, with the coffin, and was holding on to it with one hand, a gesture of love and despair and longing, his eyes clouded with pain, but dry. It was this which broke the knot which closed my throat, and for the first time that day, I, too, finally cried.

  The dogs came to greet the car as usual, wagging their tails and jumping, but before the car came to a halt they started whining, laid back their ears, and sat dejectedly, looking up at me, trembling. I put my face in Gordon’s fur, to dry my tears unseen.

  The house was full of flowers, the servants wore fezzes and their best white uniforms, the table was laid for a banquet. They all came to shake my hands and Emanuele’s, murmuring ‘Pole’, the antique acceptance of death painting their faces, like wooden masks. Simon held my hand for a long time.

  The garden was ablaze with bougainvillea and hibiscus, as always in the dry last weeks of March before the long rains. In the hot still air, a thousand birds sang their song of life. They concentrated here from the surrounding bush or stopped to rest during their short migrations, attracted by the small oasis of green and water and shade and food. Blue starlings crowded the bird-baths with metallic gleams, doves, weavers, parrots with green feathers, picking at the seeds that, even today, a faithful hand had laid. Extraordinary how, in my dazed state, I noticed all the familiar things, all the smallest details. Bumblebees circled the petria, and the querulous croak of the go-away bird called from the treetops.

  They put the coffin out, in the shade of the acocantera, and I sat there with the dogs, to wait.

  I do not know how long I waited, and I do not know why. I sat with Paolo for the last time in the garden we had carved out of the bush during the long years, when our dream of Africa had materialized and every day we learned more about this wild, beautiful land on the edge of the Rift Valley, which had become our home.

  I thought of the sense of adventure that had never left our life together. The magic of Paolo was the alertness with which he could create excitement and interest in all around him. There never had been a dull moment; boredom was unknown to both of us. Gone was the poet which was in Paolo, and the romantic squire, the ardent lover and Emanuele’s hero. Absurd though it seemed, our road together had come to its end. Yet, uncannily, I felt his presence more than if he were visible. Hovering and protecting, his love cloaked me with light.

  I walked again with Paolo for the last time, the coffin carried by his friends, Emanuele at my side in his white trousers. I turned to look at him, and felt an unbearable pity: his beloved father-companion had left him, and his world was shattered. Yet he walked straight, in control of his emotions. His red-rimmed eyes had shadows I could not read, but the slim arm he offered me was no longer a child’s. We were going to bury his dreams also.

  In front of the grave a kind hand had erected a green tent to shelter me from the sun. The earth which had been dug stood in a mound ready to be thrown back, and was covered with flowers. Exactly as in my premonition, the hole was surrounded with banana leaves.

  In the shade of a large bush, a silent group of women clad in their colourful shukas and many bead necklaces, babies at their breasts or strapped to their backs, sat still, watching with liquid eyes, like sad gazelles. The crowd drew close. I saw Oria, Carol, Aino, all dressed in long white skirts like guardian angels.

  For the last time, before he was buried, I talked to Paolo.

  Over the years, we had made a special habit of writing to each other, even – especially – when we shared the same house, the same bed. We exchanged letters, poems, or little curious notes. Paolo’s often came with unusual presents which never ceased to amaze me with his thoughtfulness or perfect timing. He sent me once a huge flowered bush, the first day of spring; a wedding chest of brass for a wedding anniversary; a writing-box of ebony from Zanzibar when he had asked me for a poem for his birthday; a pair of antique ice skates the day I had begun to walk again.

  The night he died, I wrote to him until morning. I chose to say now the simplest words. I did not have much voice.

  I tuoi occhi eran colore d’acqua:

  Si, tu sei acqua.

  Avevano trasparenze d’aria:

  Si, tu sei questo cielo adesso.

  La tua pelle era cotta dal sole

  come la terra del Kenya:

  Si, tu sei questa rossa polvere.

  Per sempre

  Per sempre

  Per sempre, Paolo,

  Sei diventato tullo.

  (‘Your eyes were the colour of water:

  yes, you are water.

  They had transparencies of air:

  yes, you are this sky now.

  Your skin was baked by the sun

  like Kenya’s earth:

  yes, you are this red dry dust.

  Forever, forever, forever, Paolo,

  you have become everything.’)

  These were my words of requiem, and I crumpled the sheet of paper and threw it in the open grave, together with what was left of that gardenia. It fell gently and noiselessly, like a feather.

  Colin passed me the spade. With an overwhelming feeling of unreality, I dug it into the red earth, and threw the first soil on the coffin. It landed with a dumb thud, and I passed the spade to my son. He was the man left to me.

  A last-minute thought: I murmured to Colin, and he nodded: Luka and Mirimuk and all the Security men in their green uniforms stood in a line and fired a salute in the air, aiming towards the sky. The last gunshot in Paolo the Hunter’s life echoed on the hills, doubling the silence.

  Boccherini’s Quintettino filled the air in liquid waves, the music written in Venice by which Paolo had been haunted, which he loved and had chosen for his burial. The sun shone on the music. I had kept my promise.

  On the grave I now planted a little yellow fever tree which would one day grow out of his body, tall and lean as he had been, for us to touch and see.

  Elephant screamed at the water tank, so close that everyone was startled. A white eagle flew high above the grave in great slow circles. Soon all faces were upturned to watch it. It was a rare sight, an omen. Paolo’s words came back to me, and I said silently:

  ‘Fly for me, bird of the sun. Fly high.’

  I loved him.

  Hot was the night, and the ostrich egg hung from the four-poster with its secret message.

  The egg hung over my head the night after I buried Paolo, with its silent wisdom and the answer perhaps to my bewildered pain, yet I had the sense to resist the desire to listen to Paolo’s message. The time was not right for an act of violence.

  In the bed, close to me, I felt a presence, a familiar breathing, something gentle seeme
d to caress my face with infinite love. A flutter in my womb. A knot closed my throat with emotion. Paolo was dead, but Paolo was now moving alive for the first time inside me. The egg could wait. The baby had to be born. Then perhaps I could read the message.

  I closed my eyes and let the memories and the pain come and take me. Alone with the unborn baby he had so much wanted, surrounded by the music I had promised I would play for him at his death, I surrendered to the design of destiny and to the agony of his loss, knowing fully that Africa had just begun to claim her price, and I could only accept it, pay it and try to learn from it. A letter he had written me on the first day of January of that year, soon after he had learnt the baby had been conceived, was still in the Zanzibar writing-box he had given me. That night, after I had talked to him for hours as if he could still listen, I read again that letter:

  In this golden morning the pollen of abundance lifts from the dust of years of drought: It will be the year of our baby. I wish for one thing: That you may give her a soul like yours. That you may bring her always through forests, treasures, battles, loves to the centre of an horizon from which one can dominate the world. That you may let her fly lightly following the track of your butterfly wing, like a golden powder on the leaves which may guide her through the thickets. I love you both. P.

  PART III

  Emanuele

  23

  The Time of Waiting

  Je me souviens de jours anciens, et je pleure.*

  Paul Verlaine, Les Violons de l’automne

  The afternoon after the funeral, Emanuele rode out on his horse to the hut on the Mukutan. He returned sooner than I expected, and came straight to my room. He was holding the book in which, at Paolo’s request, he had recorded the animals sighted at the salt lick.

  ‘I saw Bianco there and a herd of twelve elands. Then came two male buffaloes. There were elephant breaking trees on the hill behind Marati Ine. I found a white-lip snake in the thatch. And this. It was in the book.’ He handed me a fragile leaf of paper folded in four.

  I felt as if the wind of memory had blown it from the past. The handwriting was Paolo’s. There was no date.

  Dear Emanuele, [the note said]

  I miss you. This place without you is different. When I am gone, look after it for me. Remember. Fly for me, bird of the sun. Fly high. I see you, Ema.

  Paolo

  We looked at each other. His lost eyes stared back, shadowed in misery. Still holding the note, I embraced him. His head barely reached my shoulder. He was just fourteen. ‘Yes, Ema. You will look after us all.’

  His voice was changing. ‘My life, you know, my life is no more worth living.’

  I felt too weary to comment. Emanuele never said anything he did not truly mean.

  From then on he slid into his new role as the man in the household. He now sat at the head of the table, and took responsibility for the day-to-day problems. The staff started referring to him about the matters of maintenance which had been Paolo’s task. He learnt to carve the meat. He served the drinks in the evening. He concentrated on practising driving with Arap Rono, Karanja, or Colin. As a child he had always been reliable. As a young man, he could be in charge. I found great comfort in his presence and wisdom.

  Friends took turns in keeping me company, but the house and the garden, the hills and the gorges, echoed with Paolo’s absence. ‘… and Love is immortal and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is the limit of our eyes,’ had quoted Jack Block in his letter of condolence. I tried to remember this.

  Paolo’s presence had been so vibrant that now the world seemed to be suddenly silent. Days passed in a haze of solitude and expectation. I found refuge in my poems, and in my journal I wrote daily as if I were still talking to him. I began walking with the dogs in the evening. My favourite hour in Laikipia is that time before sunset when everything seems covered in golden dust and yellow light lines the silhouette of the hills. The silvery-green of the leleshwa blends with the shiny dark of the euclea as in a subtle tapestry of brilliant sage green. The water in the dams reflects the sky, families of Egyptian geese float smoothly, drawing darker ripples in the mirror-like surface, and pelican fish in small coordinated groups, like dancers. I loved walking with the dogs. I called their names, and they came, pushing their warm muzzles against my legs, hoping for a pat, and each got a scratch on the nose or behind the ears. We met buffalo sometimes, and often elephant, feeding silently from the upper branches of an acacia, betrayed only by the sudden cracking of snapped wood. It was a matter of staying quiet, hoping the dogs would resist the urge to bark or rush in a playful attack. This always resulted in a mock charge by the elephant, and in my blood chilling for a few still moments. I came back when the last shadows before darkness created new shapes in the bush, and they all looked like buffalo.

  Emanuele was quieter than usual. He had made a large poster for his room with snapshots of happy days, and had concentrated on completing a ‘Study of Kenya’s Billfish’, with drawings, text and photographs, which he had been secretly working on at the time of Paolo’s death and which he had intended to present to him. When he finished it, he wrote on the first page:

  For my father, Paolo, who taught me to appreciate the skills and crafts of Deep-Sea Fishing, and the challenge that this magnificent, yet unpredictable sport presents. Emanuele.

  28.3.1980

  In the meantime my belly swelled, and the birth of the baby was imminent. Every day I tended Paolo’s grave at the edge of my garden. A large oblong rock had been brought from a favourite spot of Paolo’s, below a gigantic euphorbia which he had liked to use as a meeting-place, and which, because of this, had been named Bobonghi ya Paulo. It was his tombstone, and weighed more than two tons. With Emanuele’s help, Colin had engraved just simply: PAOLO and, underneath, the date of his death: 19.3.1980.

  One day I was sitting cross-legged, my back to the stone on Paolo’s grave, plucking off the weeds which grew between the small portulaca I had planted, lost in thoughts and in a monologue with him which did not need words. I was trying to communicate with Paolo, and I was thinking that there are things, like music, like perfumes or light, which are so evocative of moods or places or people, and which, being shapeless, are timeless. I remembered the phrase Catholics apply to saints: ‘He died in the odour of sanctity’, and recalled many stories I had heard about people dying and fragrances strangely filling the air. There was the account of my grandmother’s death; she was a particularly pious woman, who was also a medium. When my mother walked to her bedroom where she had been laid to rest before the funeral, the perfume of gardenia – her favourite flower – was overpowering. Yet there were no flowers at all.

  Concentrating on this thought, I wished for a sign, any sign. There was not a particular scent which I could associate with Paolo: he had used no lotion nor after-shave. Yet suddenly the air was filled with a very strong smell. It was not a perfume, but a disinfectant or deodorant, sweetish and vaguely medicinal, not particularly nice and definitely artificial, and it was coming from the fingers which I was using to weed the grave. It was so strong and sudden, and so recognizable, that my mouth felt dry with emotion.

  For this was the smell which had pervaded the mortuary the day I had gone to see Paolo for the last time, before we flew him up to Laikipia to bury him. Cradling my hand like a fragile nestling, I went to look for my mother, who had come from Italy for the birth of the baby. I wanted a witness to this strange happening.

  ‘Do you smell anything?’ I asked hopefully, as if it had all been the fruit of my imagination. She wrinkled her nose: ‘Yes, very strong… a disinfectant or something… what is it?’

  When I told her what happened and my only association with that smell, she did not look surprised. ‘I have always known you are a bit fey, Kuki,’ she said calmly, like your grandmother. Nothing about you would surprise me.’

  And that was it. That strange odour persisted a long time before fading. Only once again, three years later, did it come back to me,
and in such a way that I knew this first time could not possibly have been a coincidence.

  24

  Sveva

  … a little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me …

  Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

  ‘Have you ever seen eyes so blue?’ The doctor was holding out the baby for me to see. ‘A beautiful baby girl. Well done.’

  I had been waiting for this moment during the long months, listening to the baby kicking in my enlarged belly, resting in the afternoons, embroidering a cushion in needlepoint with the words: FOR PAOLO’S BABY. Eating the right food, going through exercises, check-ups, scans: nothing should go wrong for the birth of Paolo’s child. Always I listened to the music of Boccherini, which had a soothing effect on me.

  In view of the problems I had gone through, and my age, the doctor had suggested that, if the baby was late, they would induce it. I had chosen a prospective date, which sounded like a good omen: 18.8.80.

  On the chosen date, the baby was born naturally. It was 4.35 a.m. She weighed eight pounds and was fifty-one centimetres long.

  I had arrived at Nairobi Hospital feeling well, with a great sense of expectation, an unbearable curiosity. The nurse kept coming back to check, a puzzled look on her face. I was in labour. From the headphones around my head, from the ones around my belly, the music flew, taking away the pain, submerging us both in waves of pure harmony. The music Paolo had loved and chosen for his funeral was going to be the music of this re-birth. The baby was born with the music as the only medicine. And she was not crying.