True at First Light полностью

“Good, and now you’re back. Give me a hold hard and a good anti-Nairobi kiss.”

She was slim and shiny in her khakis and hard inside them and she smelled very good and her hair was silver gold, cropped close, and I rejoined the white or European race as easily as a mercenary of Henry IV saying Paris was worth a mass.

Willie was happy to see the rejoining and he said, “Papa, any news beside the chui?”

“Nothing.”

“No troubles?”

“The road at night is a scandal.”

“It seems to me they rely a little too much on the desert as being impassable.”

I sent for the saddle of meat for Willie and Mary went to our tent for her letters. We rode out and Willie took off. Everyone’s face shone at the angle he pulled her into and then, when he was a distant silver speck, we went on our way home.

Mary was loving and lovely and Ngui was feeling badly because I had not taken him. It would soon be evening and there would be Time and the British airmail papers and for the bright receding light and the fire and a tall drink.

The hell with it, I thought. I have complicated my life too much and the complications are extending. Now I’ll read whichever Time Miss Mary doesn’t want and I have her back and I will enjoy the fire and we’ll enjoy our drink and the dinner afterwards. Mwindi was fixing her bath in the canvas tub and mine was the second bath. I thought that I would wash everything away and soak it out with the bathi and when the canvas tub had been emptied and washed out and filled again with former petrol tins of hot water from the fire, I lay back in the water and soaked and soaped with the Lifebuoy soap.

I rubbed dry with my towel and put on pajamas and my old mosquito boots from China and a bathrobe. It was the first time since Mary had been gone that I had taken a hot bath. The British took one every night when it was possible. But I preferred to scrub every morning in the washbowl when I dressed, again when we came in from hunting and in the evening.

Pop hated this as the bathi ritual was one of the few surviving rites of the old safari. So when he was with us I made a point of taking the hot bathi. But in the other kind of washing yourself clean you found the ticks you’d picked up in the day and had either Mwindi or Ngui remove those that you could not reach. In the old days, when I had hunted alone with Mkola, we had burrowing chiggers that dug into the toes under the toenails and every night we would sit down in the lantern flare and he would remove mine and I would remove his. No bathi would have taken these out, but we had no bathi.

I was thinking about the old days and how hard we used to hunt, or rather, how simply. On those days when you sent for an aircraft, it meant you were insufferably rich and could not be bored by any part of Africa where it was at all difficult to travel or it meant that you were dying.

“How are you really, honey, after your bath and did you have a good time?”

“I’m well and fine. The doctor gave me the same stuff I was taking and some bismuth. People were very nice to me. But I missed you all the time.”

“You look wonderful,” I said. “How did you get such a fine Kamba haircut?”

“I cut it square at the sides some more this afternoon,” she said. “Do you like it?”

“Tell me about Nairobi.”

“The first night I ran into a very nice man and he took me to the Traveler’s Club and it wasn’t so bad and he brought me home to the hotel.”

“What was he like?”

“I don’t remember him terribly well, but he was quite nice.”

“What about the second night?”

“I went out with Alec and his girl and we went someplace that was terribly crowded. You had to be dressed and Alec wasn’t dressed. I don’t remember if we stayed there or went somewhere else.”

“Sounds wonderful. Just like Kimana.”

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing. I went out to a few places with Ngui and Charo and Keiti. I think we went to a church supper of some kind. What did you do the third night?”

“Honey, I don’t remember really. Oh, yes. Alec and his girl and G.C. and I went somewhere. Alec was difficult. We went a couple of other places and they took me home.”

“Same type of life we’ve been having here. Only Keiti was difficult instead of Alec.”

“What was he difficult about?”

“It escapes me,” I said. “Which of these Times would you rather read?”

“I’ve looked at one. Does it make any difference to you?”

“No.”

“You haven’t said you loved me or were glad to have me back.”

“I love you and I’m glad to have you back.”

“That’s good and I’m so glad to be home.”

“Anything else happen in Nairobi?”

“I got that nice man who took me out to take me to the Coryndon Museum. But I think he was bored.”

“What did you eat at the Grill?”

“There was fine fish from the big lakes. In filets, but like bass or walleye pike. They didn’t tell what fish. Just called it samaki. There was really good fresh smoked salmon that they flew in and there were oysters, I think, but I can’t remember.”

“Did you have the Greek dry wine?”