African Nights Read online

  Forever he goes away up my wall, leaning forward, in the red dust of his motorbike, driving fast toward the hills, without turning his head to look back.

  I search, sometimes, when I walk alone in the sunsets, for his lost voice, for phrases already spoken and forever gone. I recall how he walked, how he shook his head to clear away the hair from his forehead or a thought from his mind. But the image comes and goes away too quickly, dissolving before I can quite manage to grasp it and savour it, before I can fix it in the hourglass of my present. I cannot smell any longer the warm smell of his young boy’s skin toasted by the sun, and it is only the scent of buffalo and elephant, of jasmine and sage, which mixes with the breeze from the east, blending with the sound of birds and the rustle of alarmed gazelles and jumping hares.

  What remain forever of him, are only his eyes.

  From the drifting fog of my vision only his head seemed to emerge; his mouth curved slowly in a spreading luminous smile, and the firm unwavering eyes kept looking inside me unblinkingly, yet without staring. The background seemed to take on an intense, unearthly nuance of vivid blue, vibrant with a cosmic quality which I perceived, but could not explain. A smooth shape, with glistening marbled skin and beady, lustrous eyes, coiled easily just below his chin.

  I stirred.

  ‘I can see him. He seems serene. He looks peaceful. And he is serious. Strange. He … has a snake around his neck.’

  The lady in the red sari smiled. Her short white hair was cut like a man’s, but a lock touched the red dot of paint forming a fine upward pointing arrow in the middle of her forehead. The eyes glowed bright like burning coals and they transmitted care and warmth, mixed with the unusual gift of a totally accepted and mastered insight. She put her hand on mine, and instant heat radiated from the dry palm. Her brown fingers, adorned with silver and gold rings, rested a moment on mine, and I felt a surge of great peace, an encompassing calm overtaking me. I closed my eyes and, even before she spoke, I knew that what she was going to say would be the answer to so many of my questions, and that it would be right. The weird, uncanny tie between Emanuele and whatever was Indian.

  ‘Breathe deeply. Yes, Kuki. But to finish his karma just do what I tell you, when you return to Kenya. It does not matter if you believe it or not; one does so many things without knowing why. It will not hurt to do it. With Sveva, the first night you are back.’

  Outside the tall window, the great mountain peaked with snow, whose shape seemed to me inexplicably familiar, hovered benign and extremely powerful. I had heard that some people found it threatening, and oppressive, and fled from it in fear. To me it was a protecting strength, fully deserving its old Red Indian name ‘The Mother’.

  The shadows of a setting, late-summer, American sun advanced slowly, and the granite boulders of the summit were suddenly tinged a deep blood red. For the first time I understood the reason for their name, Sangre de Cristo Mountains. And their blood was my own, and everyone’s, the sadness of the universe, and Emanuele’s blood.

  The milk filled the cup. Sveva withdrew the jug she was holding and looked up at me.

  ‘I think it is enough. Let us go.’

  We went out into the darkening garden, followed by our patient dogs. It was another sunset, short and of drifting blues and reds and greys.

  Our guests had retired for an evening shower and to change for dinner.

  Sveva and I were alone, and this was the right time.

  At the end of the garden the fire the askari had just lit was gaining strength, and its light, blending with the fading glow of the setting sun, was not yet in contrast with the darkening night.

  The dogs ran ahead, chasing each other, and looking back curiously at the wooden bowl Sveva was holding. Together we managed to fix it, without spilling a drop, in the fork of Emanuele’s tree, so that the dogs could not reach the milk.

  We stood side by side as we had been told, murmuring together the words that the Indian priestess had taught us, the haunting Hindu sing-song of the Vedic mantra. Strange, soothing words we could not understand.

  Their sound, their purpose, suddenly struck me as being of the same essence as any Christian, Muslim or Jewish prayer, or any pagan invocation, the instinct of humans to try and reach out to touch the inexplicable infinite that we call God. Their unknown meaning, by rendering them arcane, magic, and in a way more plausible, matched the incomprehensible mystery of death. For different reasons, in different languages, but with similar rituals, millions of people were praying, at that very time, with the same hope to the same Unknown to whom they gave different names. Standing on the Highlands of Kenya in the gathering darkness, the Latin murmurs in the churches of my childhood were closer to me than they had been in a lifetime.

  Om’s echo drifted away, floating between the wings of the wandering nocturnal plovers, whose voices sent a rain of arrows to the sky. The fire burned fiercely, fed by the wind. I touched both trunks in a lingering caress; the soft yellow fluff of the fever trees planted on Emanuele and Paolo’s graves trapped the warmth of the sun like a human body.

  Sveva and I walked back, holding hands. In the fishpond a half-moon was reflected. But amongst the papyrus, where the little silvery tree-frogs hide, inflating their small throats like pearly bubbles in a trilling song of bells, there was no movement. We searched the still oily water with our torch, but we could see no goldfish gliding away lazily below the waterlilies, under the carpet of salvinia. The fishpond seemed strangely silent that night.

  We went back to the house, where another fire had been lit on the fireplace.

  Early next morning, devoured by curiosity, still with our nightgowns under our caftans, Sveva and I went to look. Nothing seemed to have changed in the night. Even from a distance, we could see the wooden bowl lodged in the same place, between the arms of the smaller fever tree. I took Sveva on my hip, so that she too could look at the same time. Small sugar ants busily climbed through the fluffy bark. Up in the intertwined branches filtering the morning sun, a starling perched, and flew off. We looked, holding our breath.

  The bowl was empty.

  We walked back in total silence, not daring to give words to our thoughts which had no answers. Sveva threw a piece of her morning toast into the fish pond. A normal action. The bread disturbed the floating weeds, ripple after ripple unbalanced the blue water hyacinths, but no fish or frogs dashed up from the bottom to grab the food. The bread remained uneaten. All life seemed to have abandoned the fish pond. It was puzzling. I went to look for one of the gardeners to ask if any ibis or stork had come to eat the fish.

  The one shamba boy I found had not seen any.

  It was dark when we came back that night, after a long game drive with the car full of guests and friends. We were commenting on the troupe of baboons always perched on the tallest trees at Marati Ine, just above a rotten trunk where Emanuele had found his first cobra. The gardeners were waiting at the outside gate. I stopped the car to ask what was the matter.

  ‘Bunduki.’ ‘A gun,’ said Francis. ‘We wanted to ask permission to call a watchman with a gun to shoot the snake.’

  A feeling of hair rising at the nape of my neck. A feeling of having looked down into the unknown, to discover a familiar, yet indecipherable link.

  I switched the engine off while everyone was listening.

  ‘Which snake?’

  ‘The one who came last night. We saw him at the graves, but he disappeared into the fish pond.’

  That explained the eerie silence.

  ‘Which type of snake?’

  I found it difficult to find my voice. Sheelah had told us which. The snake sacred to Shiva, the most deadly, the most holy of all.

  ‘Kiko,’ said Francis. A cobra. Then his voice lowered to an awestruck murmur:

  ‘But we have never seen the like of him around here. He is the large variety. The one which stands straight upright.’

  The giant forest cobra. The king of cobras. The most holy of all.

  ‘Mamma
!’ Sveva was shouting in the waiting silence. ‘Sheela had told you. We must let her know. It worked. The mantra worked. Emanuele is all right now.’

  ‘No gun,’ was all I said to the gardeners. ‘Leave that snake alone. As he has come, so he will go, and he will follow his ways and the ones of his spirit god.’

  Next morning we went to the fish pond, Sveva and I. Weaver birds were flying in and out, busily ripping the papyrus into shreds for their nests. Midges flew in a small cloud and dragonflies darted jerkily from a creamy waterlily to a blue one. When Sveva threw in her bread, dozens of fishes of all sizes sprang to life from the muddy bottom, fighting for the bobbing morsels.

  The cobra had gone. The soul could rest.

  15

  Elephant Ballad

  For HRH Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands

  Recognizing that a creature of another species is in danger from one’s own kind; going to the aid of that creature … imply the exercise of true compassion and also other most sensitive emotions.

  Ivan T. Sanderson: The Dynasty of Abu: A History and Natural History of Elephant and their Relatives, Past and

  Present

  Its breath is said to be a cure for headaches in man.

  Cassiodorus, Variae, X, 30

  The man limped towards my car holding on to rudimentary crutches made of cut branches. Below his loose turban, feverish eyes peered at me above gaunt cheeks.

  ‘Jambo!’ he addressed me shakily. ‘Mimi ni He ulikufa mwaka hi. Unakumbuka mimi? Ulitembelea musijana yako na ngamia.’ ‘I am the one who has died this year. Do you still know me? I used to bring your young girl riding with my camels.’

  Of course I remembered him. His name was Borau, a camel handler of the Boran tribe, whom we had employed in Laikipia for years. He herded camels day after day, and often came up to Kuti to hold the bridle of Sveva’s camel when, at four or five, she had developed a passion for camel riding. He spoke constantly to his camels in the ancient camel language developed over generations and generations of close relationship with these extraordinary creatures, the noblest of African livestock and essential to the survival of his tribe and the related Somalis.

  ‘Toh-toh galla.’ The camel sat, crashing down on its knees.

  ‘Oh. Ohohoh oh galla.’ And the camel went.

  ‘Ahiaeh ellahereh.’ And the camel drank.

  ‘Kir-kir-kir.’ The camel trotted faster and faster … and so on.

  Day after day, off went Borau at sunrise to guide his herd to the grazing grounds. Until one day he met the elephant.

  A morning like all September mornings; a sky of deep rose and the stillness of dawn; the profile of the horizon black, with sculpted acacia trees; birds chattering from the lelechwa shrubs; and a yellow sun, round and flaming, rising in a glow of promised heat.

  The camels had waited patiently, chewing their cud with a crusty noise of long worn teeth, sitting on knobbly knees, and surveying through sad eyelashes the morning preparations in the boma. A hot mug of spiced tea to wash away sleep; a bowl of sour camel milk; incitations, calls, and they were on their way. His camel stick firm across his shoulders, today Borau headed towards Marati Mbili.

  He liked his job. He knew nothing else but walking in front of the camels, timing his agile step to their rhythm, curiously similar to them in his long ambling steps and his thin legs with heavy joints, built to march without pause. Or walking behind the camels, following their large soft feet that raised no dust, and left only neat rounded prints, like the shadows of a leaf.

  He knew their favourite browse, and interpreted their needs like all herdsmen who match their lives to those of the animals they tend. His very existence was camels.

  Today was drinking day for the camels, and Borau decided to wash in the marati. The camels drank first, extending their necks to the troughs, stimulated by the Song of Water, a triumphant biblical lament as ancient as the need to drink.

  ‘Hayee helleree, oho helleheree.’

  Immediately after drinking, the camels started grazing, nibbling with prehensile lips on nearby bushes and filling their discerning mouths with carissa leaves. The sun was higher now, and Borau slid off his shuka and his head-scarf to wash.

  It was then that a big young male camel, who had been mauled by lion, started a courting skirmish with one of the females, but was intercepted instantly by the dominant rutting male. The old camel came behind the suitor with frightening gurgles, and chased him off furiously. The younger one crashed away through the bushes with alarming speed, and was instantly lost to sight.

  It is extraordinary how suddenly and completely the African bush can swallow animals. A shiver runs through the leaves, as the shrubs recompose themselves like ripples settling after a plunging stone. A cloud of dust suspended in the air; a whiff of rank smell; a sudden intake of our breath; perhaps the impression of a shadow, darting too quickly to let us focus on what we think we have seen. Only the prints of feet running on the track remain to prove that a herd of animals has just passed.

  Borau sped after his camel, dressing while he ran. He tracked its rounded foot marks, but soon lost them in a mess of fresh elephant prints round a muddy water-hole. He looked and looked in vain; not only did the abundant elephant spoor confuse any other marks, but it announced the presence of a large invisible herd. It was wiser to go back to the camels, and make sure they did not become frightened and scatter in all directions.

  Now, from the signs he saw, he knew the elephants were ahead of him. Not that it mattered. Borau was used to this. He just ought to be on guard, make sure he remained downwind, so that his scent would not alarm them, and move on light feet, hardly touching the soil, like the impala.

  Soon he sighted the backsides of two elephants emerging from the sage just a few steps in front of him. He moved behind them carefully, all his senses alert so as not to disturb them.

  He never heard the cow elephant which followed silently. He never saw her, until it was too late.

  An instinctive glance over his shoulder. A large hovering shadow obscuring the sun for an instant, the pungent smell of ripe dung and hay, a hot breath fanning his neck and shoulders. The look of a yellow eye fixed on him, from a few feet above. Large grey ears flattened against grey temples. Extended trunk curled up to expose long tusks. The horrible recognition that the elephant was after him, and that he could not escape.

  Blind terror squeezed his heart and Borau ran.

  In total silence, the elephant ran after him. She was a heavily pregnant female, young enough to be quick, agile, and gain deadly speed; old enough to remember that man is the only danger to elephant. Old enough also to have been part of a group caught in a poaching ambush, when the screams of pain and the smell of the blood of her fallen companions left an indelible mark in her memory. And female elephants are known to become overprotective, often touchy and aggressive in the time immediately before and after they give birth.

  Borau ran and ran, mindless of thorns and sticks tearing his clothes apart, blinded by the sweat filling his eyes, and while he ran, he knew that he was going to die.

  The thought of a slender girl, her velvet eyes laughing below her head-shawl; a bowl of camel milk steaming in the chill of dawn; the call of a child running towards him; the familiar hollow sound of the wooden camel bell. The simple things of his lost life now beyond his reach.

  The earth vibrated, shaken by the elephant’s feet, and by the thumping noise of his heart.

  He wildly looked around for somewhere to hide, for a tree to climb. But there are no trees, in thick lelechwa country. Then the impenetrable, impassable lelechwa gave way to an open mbogani, littered with roots and boughs. One caught his foot, and he tripped, face down, on to the hardened soil, his nose squashed into the dust. With a jerk he turned and looked up.

  The elephant was on him.

  In perfect silence she went down on her knees at his side, and in one movement lifted her tusks high and plunged them down into his leg. The tusks were butter-coloured but hard as
spears, and like spears they penetrated his thigh like butter. The snap of fractured bone sounded like the snap of a broken branch. No pain. A spreading numbness.

  The elephant stood, towering over him, looking down at his squirming body, as if to make sure he could hurt her no more. Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her foot above him. He screamed.

  Startled by the strange noise, she stiffened, her foot hesitated and, in this pause, Borau instantly saw his chance and started pleading. If his camels understood, why not the elephant.

  ‘Hapana. Hapana, ndovu. Wacha. Kwenda. Akuue mimi, tafadhali akuue rafiki yako.’ ‘No. No, elephant. Leave me. Go. Do not kill me, please do not kill your friend.’

  Had the elephant cow ever heard a human voice before? The new sound pierced her opened ears, puzzling them with a new note. She seemed to listen. Her large ears flapped once, twice. Her foot came down on to the exposed face, but not to hurt. It stopped almost in mid-air, then descended to touch him.

  Borau was too shocked to protect his face with his hands, and the elephant’s nail caught his turban, and undid it. The material came loose, covering his eyes. The foot hovered over him slowly, delicately, brushing down the length of his whimpering body, but pausing to feel his head and chest. He could see now the furrows dug into the sole of the elephant foot by walking thousand and thousand miles over thorns and rocks. She probed him with surprising gentleness, as if the sound of pain and fear in his moaning voice was one she could understand.

  After a while she stood back, and, more confident now, Borau agitated his hands and began calling out loud with all his remaining strength, the camel’s command to run: ‘Kir-kir, kir-kir.’ Go fast. Go fast. He screamed louder and louder.

  The elephant shook her head from side to side a few times, as if to chase that sound away stamping round him in the dust. Then she turned, and crashed away trumpeting. Only the cicadas remained, to fill the sudden silence with their eager songs.