True at First Light полностью

“Yes. But now she wants you to be her protector and she does not treat me with dignity. She wishes to go with you and the small boy that I have cared for as a father to the Land of Mayito. She wishes to care for the Debba who wishes to be the assistant wife to the Lady Miss Mary. Everyone’s thought is bent in this direction and she talks of it to me all night.”

“That’s bad.”

“The Debba should never have carried your gun.” I saw Ngui look at him.

“She did not carry it. She held it.”

“She should not hold it.”

“You say this?”

“No. Of course not, brother. The village says it.”

“Let the village shut up or I will withdraw my protection.”

This was the sort of statement which was valueless. But the Informer was moderately valueless too.

“Also you had no time to hear anything from the village because it happened a half an hour ago. Don’t start to be an intriguer.” Or finish as one I thought.

We had come to the Shamba with the red earth and the great sacred tree and the well-built huts. The Widow’s son butted me in the stomach and stood there for me to kiss the top of his head. I patted the top of his head instead and gave him a shilling. Then I remembered the Informer only made sixty-eight shillings a month and that a shilling was close to half a day’s wages to give to a little boy so I called the Informer to come away from the car and I felt in the pocket of my bush-shirt and found some ten-shilling notes that were sweated together.

I unfolded two and gave them to the Informer.

“Don’t talk balls about who holds my gun. There isn’t a man in this Shamba that could hold a shit-pot.”

“Did I ever say there was, brother?”

“Buy the Widow a present and let me know what goes on in town.”

“It is late to go tonight.”

“Go down to the road and wait for the lorry of the Anglo-Masai.”

“If it does not come, brother?”

Ordinarily he would have said, “Yes, brother.” And the next day, “It did not come, brother.” So I appreciated his attitude and his effort.

“Go at daylight.”

“Yes, brother.”

I felt badly about the Shamba and about the Informer, and the Widow and everyone’s hopes and plans and we drove off and did not look back.

That had been several days ago before the rain and before the lion came back and there was no reason to think of it now except that tonight I was sorry for G.C., who because of custom, law and choice too perhaps had to live alone on safari and had to read all night.

One of the books we had brought with us was Alan Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope. I had found it almost unreadable due to the super-biblical style and the amount of piety in it. The piety seems to be mixed in a cement mixer and then carried in hods to the building of the book and it was not that there was an odor of piety; piety was like the oil on the sea after a tanker had been sunk. But G.C. said it was a good book and so I would read on in it until my brain would feel that it was not worth it to spend time with such stupid, bigoted, awful people as Paton made with their horrible sense of sin because of an act passed in 1927. But when I finally finished it I knew G.C. was right because Paton had been trying to make just such people; but being more than a little pious himself he had bent backwards trying to understand them or, at least, could not condemn them except by more scripture. Until finally in his greatness of soul he approved of them; I saw what G.C. meant about the book though, but it was a sad thing to think of.

G.C. and Mary were talking happily about a city called London that I knew of largely by hearsay and knew concretely only under the most abnormal conditions, so I could listen to them talk and think about Paris. That was a city that I knew under almost all circumstances. I knew it and loved it so well that I never liked to talk about it except with people from the old days. In the old days we all had our own cafés where we went alone and knew no one except the waiters. These cafés were secret places and in the old days everyone who loved Paris had his own café. They were better than clubs and you received the mail there that you did not wish have come to your flat. Usually you had two or three secret cafés. There would be one where you went to work and read the papers. You never gave the address of this café to anyone and you went there in the morning and had a café crême and brioche on the terrace and then, when they had cleaned the corner where your table was, inside and next to the window, you worked while the rest of the café was being cleaned and scrubbed and polished. It was nice to have other people working and it helped you to work. By the time the clients started to come to the café you would pay for your half bottle of Vichy and go out and walk down the quay to where you would have an aperitif and then have lunch. There were secret places to have lunch and also restaurants where people went that you knew.