I said yes and she moved up so we lay tight and close together and she put her mouth against mine and we kissed very carefully. She liked to play and explore and be delighted at the reactions and at the scars and she held my earlobes between her thumb and fore-finger where she wanted them pierced. Hers had never been pierced and she wished me to feel where they would be pierced for me and I felt them carefully and kissed them and then bit them a little very gently.
“Really bite them with the dog teeth.”
“No.”
She bit mine a little bit to show me the place and it was a very nice feeling.
“Why did you never do it before?”
“I don’t know. In our tribe we do not do it.”
“It is better to do it. It is better and more honest.”
“We will do many good things.”
“We have already. But I want to be a useful wife. Not a play wife or a wife to leave.”
“Who would leave you?”
“You,” she said.
There is, as I said, no word for love and no word for I am sorry in Kikamba. But I told her in Spanish that I loved her very much and that I loved everything about her from her feet to her head and we counted all the things that were loved and she was truly very happy and I was happy too and I did not think I lied about any one of them nor about all of them.
We lay under the tree and I listened to the baboons coming down toward the river and we slept for a while and then the Widow had come back to our tree and she whispered in my ear, “Nyanyi.”
The wind was blowing down the stream toward us and a troop of baboons were crossing the stream on the rocks of the ford coming out of the bush toward the fence of the mealie Shamba where the maize (our field corn) was twelve and fourteen feet high. The baboons could not smell us and they did not see us lying in the broken shade under the tree. The baboons came out of the bush quietly and started to cross the stream like a raiding party. There were three very big old man baboons at the head, one bigger than the others, walking carefully, their flattened heads and long muzzles and huge heavy jaws swinging and turning. I could see their big muscles, heavy shoulders and thick rumps and the arched and drooping tails and the big heavy bodies and behind them was the tribe, the females and the young ones still coming out of the bush.
The girl rolled away very slowly so I was free to shoot and I raised the rifle carefully and slowly and still lying down stretched it out across my leg and pulled the bolt back, holding it by the knurl with my finger on the trigger and then letting it forward to the cocked position so there was no click.
Still lying down I held on the shoulder of the biggest old dog baboon and squeezed very gently. I heard the thump but did not look to see what had happened to him as I rolled over and got to my feet and started to shoot at the other two big baboons. They were both going back over the rocks toward the bush and I hit the third and then the second as he jumped over him. I looked back at the first baboon and he was lying facedown in the water. The last one I had shot was screaming and I shot and finished him. The others were out of sight. I reloaded in the brush and Debba asked if she could hold the rifle. She stood at attention with it, imitating Arap Meina. “It was so cold,” she said. “Now it is so hot.”
At the shots people had come down from the Shamba. The Informer was with them and Ngui came up with the spear. He had not gone to camp but to the Shamba and I knew how he smelt. He smelt of pombe.
“Three dead,” he said. “All important generals. General Burma. General Korea. General Malaya. Buona notte.”
He had learned “Buona notte” in Abyssinia with the K.A.R. He took the rifle from Debba, who was now holding it very demurely and looking out at the baboons on the rocks and in the water. They were not a handsome sight and I told the Informer to tell the men and boys to haul them out from the stream and sit them up against the fence of the mealie plantation with their hands crossed in their laps. Afterwards I would send some rope and we would hang them from the fence to frighten away the others or place them as baits.
The Informer gave the order and Debba, very demure, formal and detached, watched the big baboons with their long arms, obscene bellies and really bad faces and dangerous jaws being pulled out of the water and up the bank and then being composed in death against the wall. One of the heads was tipped back in contemplation. The other two were sunk forward in the appearance of deep thought. We walked away from this scene toward the Shamba where the car was parked. Ngui and I walked together; I was carrying the rifle again; the Informer walked to one side and Debba and the Widow walked behind.
“Great generals. Important generals,” Ngui said. “Kwenda na campi?”
“How are you feeling Informer old-timer?” I asked.
“Brother, I have no feelings. My heart is broken.”
“What is it?”
“The Widow.”
“She is a very good woman.”