THE LAST SAVANNA Page 23

  The rifle was between his feet; he’d almost missed it. He lifted it quickly to his shoulder and checked the breech to make sure the hyenas had not unloaded it. Glancing reproachfully over their shoulders they withdrew, regrouped, and followed from the rear.

  INTO MACADAM’S MIND sprang a medieval image of a servant leading his lady’s horse by the halter, the lady in fine clothes, the servant in buckskin, and he laughed out loud, startling the camel. In the dream of going round the foot of the bed and stepping on the lion, would I have asked Rebecca what to do about the lion? He wondered. Never—instantly I would’ve known, acted without thinking. But once I’d lived a while with her I’d make her just like Dottie—someone to bounce things off of, someone to think for me. That’s how I left Dottie, so long ago. That’s why she drinks. Is she drinking now, does she need to, far north in London under the grim cold sky? Africa made her drink. Africa and I.

  He’d left Dottie long before he knew Rebecca, ceased to care all the way down. Rebecca was a symptom of the disease Dottie had perceived long before he had; like him she’d taken what medicine she could.

  There’d been an oaken dowel in the medieval beam above his bed that as a boy he’d always tried to pull out but never could, a sailfish he’d killed fishing off Kilifi, its terrored eyes, the rainbows draining from its bloodied sides. We’re always reaching for the mystery, he thought, but it will not submit, or fades to nothing in our hands.

  36

  AT THE FOOT of the long slope leading up to the water hole MacAdam halted and let the camel browse. He wanted to sit but the rocks were hotter than the sun now low in the west and coppering the peaks. Across the entire earth he could see no trace of man; yet in the countless crags and crannies a thousand men could hide. Water was how the desert would bring everyone together. The antelope’s daily prayer, weighing the mortal need of water with the mortal danger of obtaining it.

  She did not speak, seemed stunned and dislocated by the sun. He gave her M’kele’s rifle. It felt like a bad omen and made him think of Nehemiah again. “There’s forty rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The mode selector’s on semi, which means it fires every time you pull the trigger. I’ll come back after dark. I’ll call before I come in, so don’t shoot me. If the Somalis come and you can’t hide, shoot at them. That might keep them down till I get back. Any time you want me, fire four single shots a second apart. Stay over there, where that whistling thorn grows out of that lava slab. Don’t put the gun down where it can fall over and go off, hit you.”

  “I won’t shoot myself. Or you.”

  He put the last half canteen down beside her, absurdly thinking how he used to hide the liquor bottles from Dottie. “If you hear shots and I don’t come back—or if I don’t come back before dawn, ride straight north, to the left of Gamud peak. Then, keeping the peak behind you, with the sun on your right in the morning and the left in the evening, and at night with the Great Bear straight before you. Watch out for lions—”

  “Not the Great Bear, the Pole Star.”

  “That’s how you find it.” He turned to the camel, rubbing the soft spot at the top of its nose and talking softly to it in Rendille and English, as if giving it instructions also. She felt deserted, that just as he turned his back now so he would someday betray her for the grave, by dying before her.

  “Before we know it,” she said. “We’ll be in Nairobi.”

  As he climbed the slope in the gathering dusk her words took on another meaning: if we die, the words could say, our bodies will be brought back to Nairobi before we know it. This made him try to be doubly cautious, but the fever of his wound mixed up his thoughts so that he had constantly to recall where he was and the danger everywhere, the thirst so great he had to hold himself back from running to the water hole, drinking just drinking no matter what, for he was sure the Somalis had departed—he’d killed the last one, the one who shot M’kele. This reminded him that M’kele had died because they’d been incautious and exhausted, and for a while he made himself lie watching, but saw no danger.

  There was an evil, flatulent smell; ahead a pile of rocks rose in the gloom, and he circled wide to the right, thinking of M’kele buried there. She and I will smell like that too, he reminded himself, when we die. Unless the hyenas and marabous pick us clean. Above the ravine he reached the main slope where he had shot Rashid. There was a different smell here, not the swollen putrescence of a body covered by stones and heated by sun, but sun-dried bones and scraps discarded by vultures, hyenas, and jackals. Better to live on in them, some day scattered across the desert in their bones, living again in those that eat them, and on and on. As he thought this he was advancing silently to the crest above the water hole, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, smelling only the desiccated camel dung from before, and the entrancing overpowering odor of water that threatened to pull his body to it like a magnet, no matter how much he feared.

  But he made himself watch till he was sure the hilltop was vacant beneath the new, bright stars, then crept to the water hole and lowered himself to the bottom, knelt and drank. He circled the area once more, still seeing nothing, and began his descent towards Rebecca.

  As she sat by the whistling thorn, the strange, oil-smelling rifle beside her, the camel snoring softly, it occurred to her she’d always been alone like this. Maybe we’re all always alone, she wondered, only reminded of our solitude by the occasional appearance of others, their mirages, but each time we begin to believe they’re real we find ourselves even more utterly alone.

  The way I’ve hungered, she decided, for a lost father in a man, but instead got sex and children and the slavery of the kitchen, when all I wanted was his dispassionate warmth, the linkage of our souls. But needs all separate our souls; like a fish rising to a lure maybe I was doomed by the flashing thing I thought would feed my hunger.

  With a hiss of gravel a snake crossed the lava. Let him come, she thought. A shooting star darted over, lost itself in the blackness like the sound of the snake dying out among the lava pebbles. She felt the part of her soul taking over that would console her in the face of death.

  But she’d been happy with him, cared about him, reassured him he’d return. Maybe she should drink some water. The idea of water was repugnant. The idea of having one personality, linked, was foolish; different selves began to swirl in her, rising and speaking, sinking and twirling on.

  There—a sound. The camel heard it too. A lion, maybe hyenas. The beast-child Warwar returning like a devoted lover. She took the cold, evil-smelling, heavy gun in her hand, a thumbnail absently scraping at a gout of blood hardened to the barrel. She placed the butt against her shoulder, the weight of the stock and barrel almost toppling her.

  The sound was closer. If it’s a lion and I fire he’ll run away, or he’ll be angry and charge. If it’s Warwar he’ll be warned and will sneak up on me and this time he’ll put his knife into me and I’ll be his forever. She strained her eyes, seeing nothing but the great dark slope blanketed with stars. When he comes I’ll kill him.

  Wasn’t there a story, once, of someone who killed her own son by mistake? Don’t we do that giving birth? Do I want him back? How could Rebekah love Jacob more? Her hands, on the rifle, began to sweat.

  DESCENDING the slope MacAdam fought against the hope growing inside him. As he’d expected there’d been no Somalis at the water hole, and no sign they’d been there since the night he’d killed the one who’d shot M’kele. Night before last. This meant he and she could rest here tonight, drink their fill, water the camel, leave at first light. The cleft in the rocks above the water hole was easy to guard. The map showed a spring on the north side of Gamud peak; they’d fill the canteens again there, have enough water to reach Faille.

  “Faille’s French for ‘flaw’.” She’d said. “Or geologic fault.”

  “It’s the only place we can reach. It’s a Galla word.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I don’t know Galla.” I pray there’s no flaw, he
thought, I don’t believe but I’m happy to pray anyway. I don’t believe in anything because I’ve never found anything that’s true, and now I see that’s the only thing that’s true. I’m happy now to realize nothing’s true and that I’ve been faithful to that.

  The rocks were crumbly going downhill, bounding ahead like hares out of his way. No worry for sounds now—the Somalis gone—no lions. If we’re very smart and very careful perhaps we’ll make it.

  37

  WARWAR APPROACHED the water hole from uphill, the northeast, back the same way he now remembered fleeing Ibrahim. God sees what will happen with men though they do not, he reminded himself. Only God knew, when Ibrahim shot and then hunted his clansman Warwar, that two would leave the water hole but only one come back, that the naked martyr would return in the garments of his hunter. The victim conquers, for God is just: the proud and evil find an early grave in the bellies of hyenas.

  He watched above the water hole, eyes and muscles weak with thirst, but there was no sign of Rashid and the whitewoman, only a disassociated sense of death difficult to monitor on the downslope wind, that and the dried camel dung and old fire and here, near Warwar’s feet, the place where Ibrahim must have spattered his drops of urine before lying down in his crevice in the rocks.

  Yet the place was made evil by the sense of something he could not understand, a lacking, perhaps, the lacking of absence. Yes, the place was not as empty as it should be, the night avoids it—why? The scent of death—whose? Nothing that threatens now, he decided, holding up Ibrahim’s clock as he descended the last steep pitch and climbed down the hole to the water, fell to his knees, and gratefully sucked in its bitter, brackish warmth.

  SHE AIMED the rifle at the noise coming downhill. Waiting made her very thirsty and as soon as she killed this thing approaching she’d drink some water. She would not drink it all because if he came back and there was no water at the water hole or if they were there, he’d need it.

  A rock crackled down and smacked against a boulder. He’s trying to make noise, she told herself, so I won’t shoot. “Ian!” she started to call but held her breath. The camel nickered, its tether twanging as it strained its neck towards the sound. It can smell him. If it whinnies in fear than he’s a lion or hyena and I’ll shoot. If it calls to him then he’s a Somali and I also have to kill him. I’ll miss and he’ll kill me but I have to do it anyway.

  “I’m coming in,” he called.

  Her finger descended towards the trigger. Don’t the Samburu teach that the lion will dress as a man and take his voice, talk himself inside the manyatta’s coil of thorns? The Devil says he’s God and we believe him. Her finger found the trigger.

  “Rebecca!” he called. “It’s me!”

  “Yes, come!” If it’s not you, you’ll die.

  Visible now, a shape against the darkness; her heart pounding made the rifle jerk up and down. I’m crazy, she told herself, there’s too many of me. Some which love and some which hate and some which fear nothing at all. Kill him and I’ll never be alone. “Is that you, Ian?”

  “Of course it’s me! Who’d you think—Haile Selassie?”

  She leaped to her feet, rushed forward, the rifle clattering, “It’s you!”

  “Who else?” he laughed, his whiskers tickling as he kissed her, his arms binding her together. “There’s no one at the water hole—we’re going. Where’s the canteen? Quick! Drink up!”

  Seeming to see perfectly in the dark he gathered up the other rifle and untied the camel and she took his hand and limped after him up the slope down which she had fled from Rashid so many years ago, before the rain turned Death into MacAdam, before she had climbed the cliff and hid on the tiny ledge and Rashid had climbed past her, after the time Warwar had shot Milton and W’kwaeme and the others at the Land Rover, and the Somalis had taken her across the Chalbi, and she’d escaped and the little woman of the fossil jaw had led her to the geb tree where Warwar rescued her from the leopard, and the Borani took her to their village, to the hut of the hooded man whose neck she’d branded, whom Warwar killed as he slept, Warwar who then brought her water, walking faithfully beside her camel up to this water hole where he climbed down to get her more water and Ibrahim struck him with a rock and now Ian says Ibrahim has shot and hunted Warwar, and her body felt warm and sad but, she thought, don’t care.

  There was no feeling but a numb joy, as after love—when, she wondered, did I have love? Sex fills me up and afterwards I’m twice as empty—the emptiness I had before and now the new emptiness of his absence inside me. “Merisio ereposhi o eseriani”—don’t the Maasai say that? “Being full and safety are two very different things.” Why should I go home with him and grow old with him when everything will be the same?

  But how can I measure with no measure but myself? When every other measure I would use is measured by me? Above her a mass of rhyolite loomed like a sleeping camel against the rocky, naked slope. Here I tried to find shade but could not. It was noon and there was no shade anywhere.

  WARWAR WOKE in his sleeping place on the side of Gamud, throat afire with thirst. For a time he convinced himself to lie still, not climb back down to the water hole in darkness, prey to lion, leopard, hyenas, or Rashid, but then it came to him simply that death was better than such thirst, so he took the rifle and started towards the water hole. Trusting to the dissuasive threat of his noise and the final deterrent of the gun he walked quickly, scrutinizing the scrub for movement, the wind pushing at his back.

  Life’s to kill and be killed, he remembered Ibrahim would say; he of little caution lives few years. But there comes a time you no longer care, you’ve so long been careful this time surely you’ll be lucky—it did not matter this time if he finally gave in, ran towards it, let his body overrule his soul.

  AFTER MacAdam and Rebecca had drunk their fill he’d lit a fire and hitched up the camel in the little gully leading to the water hole. She sat on drawn-up legs, half-sideways, one hand on the ground, the other curved in her lap; he liked her way of looking down as she spoke, of hiding things and not speaking of them unless he probed. But each claim of common experience he made only caused her to draw back, as if her self was far too nascent still to share, or even she did not yet dare to know herself. It’s not that, he decided. The illusion of love must be accepted by both people, or it soon comes to grief.

  Thinking this made him hunger for her again, the ache so long instilled, but crazy now, with all this danger. And you’re a fool to try to penetrate the mystery, he told himself, pin it down, convince yourself a moment is forever. You’ve always hated the unseeing people crouched over games of chance and profit in some dim corner of life’s bazaar, counting up their markers while life goes on all round them in multicolored splendor. But how different have you been, savaging all illusions but your own?

  When you were with Rebecca before, you knew you’d never have her, that she’d never leave the satisfying solitude of a failed marriage to give herself to anyone. She as much as Klaus was architect of what they had. And you had Dottie: someone you loved and who loved you but you wore each other down, deadened each other. You forsake Dottie by putting Africa ahead of her, and she withdrew the only way she could.

  Then why live with either? He thought, looking at her, at Dottie in her. They wear us down, domesticate us like our sheep. It’s our prick and loneliness that draw our claws, they and the errant inexplicable need to love. The poacher in the Matthews Range spared me and I didn’t shoot him later, on the ridge, but M’kele did and now M’kele’s dead and I killed his killer, and if killing’s so inseparable from love I have no need of either.

  This he thought between the seconds, while seeing her and hearing her voice and thinking about her words and thoughts, and listening for hyenas or a change in the wind or in the pattern of the camel’s breathing, a nervous clack of hoof, while he was tasting the wind for the smell of danger, reaching out a hand from time to check the G-3 beside him, its black barrel shroud shimmering with starlight and
the fire’s votive glimmer.

  If there’s nothing to believe in where do joy and beauty come from? This sense of harmony, everything fitting, of not being apart?

  If everything that lives feels, why kill? He started in surprise, looked round to see who’d lifted the cloak from his shoulders. But there was no cloak and no one there to lift it, and he shivered, drawing in his shoulders. With a ripping of brush and grating of teeth the camel resumed eating; far to the north a jackal had wailed. MacAdam’s heart reached out towards the jackal squatting on the hard earth, his muzzle raised to call across the dangerous night for a voice like his. Wish he could be like me, safe and warm with another of his kind.

  38

  IT CAME before Warwar saw or heard— the smell of camel: Rashid and the whitewoman! He halted, mouth agape with thirst.

  When there was no sign of Rashid he crept closer, till he could see a camel’s hump against the starlit rocks. The female: now he could smell her but could not smell or see the male. He decided perhaps he was grazing lower, or further west, beyond the wind.

  Staying east he circled the camel till he could now smell the smoldering dung and twigs of Rashid’s fire. But Rashid would not light a fire unless he’s killed something to eat, yet there’s no smell of meat or any food. Maybe he’s going to cook it or maybe he has the fire because he fears a lion. Or has he lit the fire to watch the whitewoman? To strip her clothes and use her, even this instant? Or is she dead, when I vowed to protect her?

  He tried to swallow down his thirst but could not, remembering the well at El God God shrouded in its grove of tamarinds, geb, guider, quadi, and desert dates. Water transparent and smooth as a dawn breeze, soft as woman’s skin, jeweled like mica cold out of the cold center of the earth. Cold slaking this thirst. The villagers all stoned me, Soraya too, her eyes taunting me through her slitted veil.