“You’re sort of nice together,” she said. “I think I’d better call for lunch. Do you eat better here or there?”
“Here. Much better.”
“But you eat better than here up at Mr. Singh’s in Laitokitok.”
“Much better. But you’re never there. You’re always busy.”
“I have my friends there too. But I like to come into the back room and see you sitting there happily with Mr. Singh eating in the back room and reading the paper and listening to the sawmill.”
I loved it at Mr. Singh’s too and I was fond of all the Singh children and of Mrs. Singh, who was said to be a Turkana woman. She was beautiful and very kind and understanding and extremely clean and neat. Arap Meina, who was my closest friend and associate after Ngui and Mthuka, was a great admirer of Mrs. Singh. He had reached the age when his principal enjoyment of women was in looking at them and he told me many times that Mrs. Singh was probably the most beautiful woman in the world after Miss Mary. Arap Meina, who for many months I had called Arab Minor by mistake thinking it was an English public school type name, was a Lumbwa, which is a tribe related to the Masai, or perhaps a branch tribe of the Masai, and they are great hunters and poachers. Arap Meina was said to have been a very successful ivory poacher, or at least a widely traveled and little arrested ivory poacher, before he had become a Game Scout. Neither he, nor I, had any idea of his age but it was probably between sixty-five and seventy. He was a very brave and skillful elephant hunter and when G.C. his commanding officer was away he did the elephant control in this district. Everyone loved him very much and when he was sober, or unusually drunk, he had an extremely sharp military bearing. I have rarely been saluted with such violence as Arap Meina could put into a salute when he would announce that he loved both Miss Mary and myself and no one else and too much for him to stand it. But before he had reached this state of alcoholic consumption with its attendant declarations of undying heterosexual devotion he used to like to sit with me in the back room of Mr. Singh’s bar and look at Mrs. Singh waiting on the customers and going about her household duties. He preferred to observe Mrs. Singh in profile and I was quite happy observing Arap Meina observing Mrs. Singh and with studying the oleographs and paintings on the wall of the original Singh, who was usually depicted in the act of strangling a lion and a lioness; one in either hand.
If there was anything we needed to make absolutely clear with Mr. or Mrs. Singh or if I had any formal talks with local Masai elders we would use a Mission-educated boy who would stand in the doorway to interpret, holding a bottle of Coca-Cola prominently in his hand. Usually I tried to use the services of the Mission boy as little as possible since he was officially saved and contact with our group could only corrupt him. Arap Meina was allegedly a Mohammedan, but I had long ago noticed that our devout Mohammedans would eat nothing that he, Arap Meina, halaled; that is, made the ceremonial throat cut that made the meat legal to eat if the cut was made by a practicing Moslem.
Arap Meina, one time when he had drunk quite a lot, told several people that he and I had been to Mecca together in the old days. The devout Mohammedans knew this was not true. Charo had wished to convert me to Islam some twenty years before and I had gone all through Ramadan with him observing the fast. He had given me up as a possible convert many years ago. But nobody knew whether I had actually ever been to Mecca except myself. The Informer, who believed the best and worst of everyone, was convinced that I had been to Mecca many times. Willie, a half-caste driver who I had hired on his story that he was the son of a very famous old gun bearer who, I found, had not sired him, told everyone in strictest confidence that we were going to Mecca together.
Finally I had been cornered by Ngui in a theological argument and while he did not ask the question direct I told him for his own information that I had never been to Mecca and had no intention of going. This relieved him greatly.