And I thought sitting up awake in the African night that I knew nothing about the soul at all. People were always talking of it and writing of it but who knew about it? I did not know anyone who knew anything of it nor whether there was such a thing. It seemed a very strange belief and I knew I would have a very difficult time trying to explain it to Ngui and Mthuka and the others even if I knew anything about it. Before I woke I had been dreaming and in the dream I had a horse’s body but a man’s head and shoulders and I had wondered why no one had known this before. It was a very logical dream and it dealt with the precise moment at which the change came about in the body so that they were human bodies. It seemed a very sound and good dream and I wondered what the others would think of it when I told it to them. I was awake now and the cider was cool and fresh but I could still feel the muscles I had in the dream when my body had been a horse’s body. This was not helping me with the soul and I tried to think what it must be in the terms that I believed. Probably a spring of clear fresh water that never diminished in the drought and never froze in the winter was closest to what we had instead of the soul they all talked about. I remembered how when I was a boy the Chicago White Sox had a third baseman named Harry Lord who could foul off pitches down the third-base line until the opposing pitcher was worn out or it would get dark and the game be called. I was very young then and everything was exaggerated but I can remember it beginning to get dark, this was before there were lights in ballparks, and Harry still fouling them off and the crowd shouting, “Lord, Lord Save Your Soul.” This was the closest I had ever come to the soul. Once I had thought my own soul had been blown out of me when I was a boy and then that it had come back in again. But in those days I was very egotistical and I had heard so much talk about the soul and read so much about it that I had assumed that I had one. Then I began to think if Miss Mary or G.C. or Ngui or Charo or I had been killed by the lion would our souls have flown off somewhere? I could not believe it and I thought that we would all just have been dead, deader than the lion perhaps, and no one was worrying about his soul. The worst part would have been the trip to Nairobi and the inquiry. But all I really knew was that it would have been very bad for G.C.’s career if Mary or I had been killed. It would have been bad luck for G.C. if he had been killed. It would have certainly been very bad for my writing if I had been killed. Neither Charo nor Ngui would have liked to be killed and if she had been killed it would have come as a great surprise to Miss Mary. It was something to be avoided and it was a relief to not have to put yourself in a position where it could happen day after day.
But what did this have to do with “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning”? Did Miss Mary and G.C. have souls? They had no religious beliefs as far as I knew. But if people had souls they must have them. Charo was a very devout Mohammedan so we must credit him with a soul. That left only Ngui and me and the lion.
Now here it was three o’clock in the morning and I stretched my recent horse’s legs and thought I would get up and go outside and sit by the coals of the fire and enjoy the rest of the night and the first light. I pulled on my mosquito boots and put on my bathrobe and buckled the pistol belt over it and went out to the remains of the fire. G.C. was sitting by it in his chair.
“What are we awake about?” he said very softly.
“I had a dream I was a horse. It was very vivid.”
I told G.C. about Scott Fitzgerald and the quotation and asked him what he thought of it.
“Any hour can be a bad hour when you wake,” he said. “I don’t see why he picked three especially. It sounds quite good though.”
“I think it is just fear and worry and remorse.”
“We’ve both had enough of those haven’t we?”
“Sure; to peddle. But I think what he meant was his conscience and despair.”
“You don’t ever have despair do you, Ernie?”
“Not yet.”
“You’d probably have had it by now if you were going to have it.”
“I’ve seen it close enough to touch it but I always turned it down.”
“Speaking of turning things down should we share a beer?”
“I’ll get it.”
The big bottle of Tusker was cold too in the canvas water bag and I poured beer into two glasses and set the bottle on the table.
“I’m sorry I have to go, Ernie,” G.C. said. “Do you think she’ll take it really badly?”
“Yes.”
“You ride it out. She may take it perfectly all right.”
I WENT IN TO the tent to see if Mary was awake, but she was still sleeping heavily. She had awakened and drunk some of her tea and then gone back to sleep again.
“We’ll let her sleep,” I said to G.C. “It doesn’t make any difference if we don’t skin out until half past nine even. She should get all the sleep she can.”