“It is because of that she washes her dress so much. She is trying to be like the washing machine to please you. She is afraid that you will become lonely for the washing machine and go away. Brother, sir, there is tragedy. Can you do nothing positive for her?”
“I will do what I can,” I said. “But remember that putting the roosters to sleep was not magic. It is a trick. Catching them is only a trick too.”
“Brother, she loves you very much.”
“Tell her there is no such word as love. Just as there is no word for sorry.”
“That is true. But there is the thing although there is no word for it.”
“You and I are the same age. It is not necessary to explain so much.”
“I tell you this only because it is serious.”
“I cannot break the law if we are here to enforce the law.”
“Brother, you do not understand. There is no law. This Shamba is here illegally. It is not in Kamba country. For thirty-five years it has been ordered removed and it has never happened. There is not even customary law. There are only variations.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Thank you, brother. Let me tell you that for the people of this Shamba you and Bwana Game are the law. You are a bigger law than Bwana Game because you are older. Also he is away and his askaris are with him. Here you have your young men and warriors such as Ngui. You have Arap Meina. Everyone knows you are Arap Meina’s father.”
“I’m not.”
“Brother, please try not to misunderstand me. You know the sense in which I say father. Arap Meina says you are his father. Also you brought him to life after he died in the airplane. You brought him back to life after he lay dead in Bwana Mouse’s tent. It is known. Many things are known.”
“Too many things are improperly known.”
“Brother, may I have a drink?”
“If I do not see you take it.”
“Chin chin,” the Informer said. He had taken the Canadian gin instead of the Gordon’s and my heart went out to him. “You must forgive me,” he said. “I have lived all my life with the Bwanas. May I tell you more or are you tired of the subject?”
“I am tired of part of it, but other parts interest me. Tell me more about the history of the Shamba.”
“I do not know it exactly because they are Kamba and I am Masai. That shows there is something wrong with the Shamba or I would not be living there. There is something wrong with the men. You have seen them. For some reason they came here originally. This is a long way from Kamba country. Neither true tribal law nor any other law runs here. You have also seen the condition of the Masai.”
“We have to talk about that another day.”
“Willingly, brother, things are not well. It is a long story. But let me tell you about the Shamba. Why you went there in the early morning and spoke through me about the all-night Ngoma of the great drunkenness with such severity, the people say afterwards that they could see the gallows in your eyes. The man who was still so drunk that he couldn’t understand was taken to the river and washed in the water from the Mountain until he understood and he entered the neighboring province the same day climbing the Mountain on foot. You do not know what serious law you are.”
“It is a small Shamba. But very beautiful. Who sold them the sugar for the beer of that Ngoma?”
“I do not know. But I could find out.”
“I know,” I said and told him. I knew that he knew. But he was an informer and he had lost out in life long ago and it was the Bwanas who had ruined him although he gave full credit for that process to a Somali wife. But it was a Bwana, a great Lord, who was the greatest friend the Masai ever had but who liked, he said, to do things backwards who, if what he said was true, had ruined him. No one knows how much is true that an informer says but his description of this great man had been done with such a mixture of admiration and remorse that it seemed to explain many things that I had never understood. I had never heard of any backward tendency on the part of this great man until I came to know the Informer. I always expressed disbelief at some of these surprising tales.
“You will hear, of course,” the Informer said to me now that his zeal for informing had been heightened by the Canadian gin, “that I am an agent of the Mau Mau and you may believe it because I have said such things about this backwardness. But, brother, it is not true. I truly love and believe in the Bwanas. True all but one or two of the great Bwanas are dead and I should have led a far different life,” the Informer said. “Thinking of these great dead Bwanas fills me with the resolution to lead a better and finer life. It is permitted?”
“The last one,” I said. “And only as a medicine.”