Just then the Informer joined us. He was wearing the paisley and he walked with great dignity, balanced on his heels.
“Good afternoon, brother,” he said and I saw Ngui turn away and spit at the word brother.
“Good afternoon, Informer,” I said. “How is your health?”
“Better,” said the Informer. “Can I go with you up the Mountain?”
“You cannot.”
“I can serve as interpreter.”
“I have an interpreter on the Mountain.”
The child of the Widow came up and bumped his head hard against my belly. I kissed the top of his head and he put his hand in mine and stood up very straight.
“Informer,” I said. “I cannot ask beer from my father-in-law. Please bring us beer.”
“I will see what beer there is.”
If you liked Shamba beer it was all right, tasting like home brew in Arkansas in the time of Prohibition. There was a man who was a shoemaker and who had fought very well in the First World War who brewed a very similar beer that we used to drink in the front parlor of his house. My fiancée and the Widow came out and my fiancée got into the car and sat beside Mthuka. She kept her eyes down except for short triumphant looks at the other women of the village and wore a dress that had been washed too many times and a very beautiful trade goods scarf over her head. The Widow seated herself between Ngui and Pop’s gun bearer. We sent the Informer for six more bottles of beer but there were only four in the village. I gave these four bottles to my father-in-law. Debba looked at no one but sat very straight with her breasts pointing at the same angle as her chin.
Mthuka started the car and we were off leaving the village, all people who were jealous or disapproved, many children, the goats, the nursing mothers, the chickens, the dogs and my father-in-law.
“Que tal, tu?” I asked Debba.
“En la puta gloria.”
This was the second phrase that she liked best in Spanish. It is a strange phrase and no two people would translate it alike.
“Did the chui hurt you?”
“No. There was nothing.”
“Was he big?”
“Not very.”
“Did he roar?”
“Many times.”
“Did he not hurt anyone?”
“No one. Not even you.”
She was pressing the carved leather pistol holster hard against her thigh and then she placed her left hand where she wanted it to be.
“Mimi bili chui,” she said. Neither of us were Swahili scholars but I remembered the two leopards of England and someone must have known about leopards a long time ago.
“Bwana,” Ngui said and his voice had the same harshness that came from love or anger or tenderness.
“Wakamba, tu,” I said. He laughed and broke the rough bad thing.
“We have three bottles of Tuskah that Msembi stole for us.”
“Thank you. When we make the big rise we’ll turn off and eat the kippah snack.”
“Good cold meat,” Ngui said.
“Mzuri,” I said.
There is no homosexuality among Wakamba people. In the old days homosexuals after the trial of King-ole, which Mwindi had explained to me meant when you gathered together formally to kill a man, were condemned, tied in the river or any water hole for a few days to make them more tender and then killed and eaten. This would be a sad fate for many playwrights, I thought. But, on the other hand and if you have another hand you are lucky in Africa, it was considered very bad luck to eat any part of a homosexual even though he had been tenderized in the Athi in a clean and nearly clear pool and according to some of my older friends a homosexual tasted worse than a water buck and could bring out sores on any part of the body but especially in the groin or in the armpits. Intercourse with animals was also punishable by death although it was not regarded as so fouling a practice as homosexuality and Mkola, who was Ngui’s father, since I had proved mathematically that I could not be, had told me that a man who had rogered his sheep or his goats was as tasty as a wildebeest. Keiti and Mwindi would not eat wildebeest but that was a part of anthropology that I had not yet penetrated. And as I was thinking of these facts and confidences and caring greatly for Debba who was a straight Kamba girl replete with modesty and true basic insolence, Mthuka stopped the car under a tree where we could see the great gap and break in the country and the small tin-roofed shine of Laitokitok against the blue of the forest on the Mountain which rose white sloped and square topped to give us our religion and our long and lasting hope while behind was all our country spread out as though we were in the aircraft but without the movement, the stress and the expense.
“Jambo, tu,” I said to Debba and she said, “La puta gloria.”