I made the gimlet and then said that there was no hurry to take the medicine and for her to go in and lie down on the bed and rest and read if she felt like it or I would read to her if she would like.
“What did you shoot?”
“A couple of very small francolin. They’re like small partridges. I’ll bring them in after a while and you can look at them. They’ll make you supper.”
“What about lunch?”
“We’ll have some good Tommy broth and mashed potato. You’re going to knock this thing right away and it’s not so bad that you shouldn’t eat. They say that Terramycin kills it better than Yatren in the old days. But I’d feel better if we had Yatren. I was sure we had it in the medical chest.”
“I’m thirsty all the time.”
“I remember. I’ll show Mbebia how to make rice water and we’ll keep it cool in a bottle in the water bag and you drink all of that you want. It’s good for the thirst and it keeps your strength up.”
“I don’t know why I had to get ill with something. We lead such a wonderful healthy life.”
“Kitten, you could just as well have got fever.”
“But I take my antimalarial medicine every night and I always make you take yours when you forget it and we always wear our mosquito boots in the evening by the fire.”
“Sure. But in the swamp after the buffalo we were bitten hundreds of times.”
“No, dozens.”
“Hundreds for me.”
“You’re bigger. Put your arms around my shoulders and hold me tight.”
“We’re lucky kittens,” I said. “Everybody gets fever if they go in country where there is a lot of it and we were in two bad fever countries.”
“But I took my medicine and I made you remember yours.”
“So we didn’t get fever. But we were in bad sleeping sickness country too and you know how many tsetse flies there were.”
“Weren’t they bad though by the Ewaso Ngiro. I remember coming home in the evenings and they would bite like red-hot eyebrow tweezers.”
“I’ve never even seen red-hot eyebrow tweezers.”
“Neither have I but that’s what they bite like in that deep woods where the rhino lived. The one that chased G.C. and his dog Kibo into the river. That was a lovely camp though and we had so much fun when we first started hunting by ourselves. It was twenty times more fun than having somebody with us and I was so good and obedient, remember?”
“And we got so close to everything in the big green woods and it was like we were the first people that were ever there.”
“Do you remember where the moss was and the trees so high there was almost no sunlight ever and we walked softer than Indians and you took me so close to the impala that he never saw us and when we found the herd of buffalo just across the little river from the camp? That was a wonderful camp. Do you remember how the leopard came through the camp every night just like having Boise or Mr. Willie moving around the Finca at night at home?”
“Yes, my good kitten, and you’re not going to be sick really now because the Terramycin will have taken hold of that by tonight or in the morning.”
“I think it’s taking hold now.”
“Cucu couldn’t have said it was better than Yatren and Carbsone if it wasn’t really good. Miracle drugs make you feel spooky while you are waiting for them to take hold. But I remember when Yatren was a miracle drug and it really was then too.”
“I have a wonderful idea.”
“What would it be, honey my good kitten?”
“I just thought we could have Harry come with the Cessna and you and he could check on all your beasts and your problems and then I’d go back with him to Nairobi and see a good doctor about this dysentery or whatever it is and I could buy Christmas presents for everyone and all the things we should have for Christmas.”
“We call it the Birthday of the Baby Jesus.”
“I still call it Christmas,” she said. “And there are an awful lot of things we need. It wouldn’t be too extravagant do you think?”
“I think it would be wonderful. We’ll send a signal through Ngong. When would you want the plane?”
“How would day after tomorrow be?”
“Day after tomorrow is the most wonderful day there is after tomorrow.”
“I’m going to just lie quiet and feel the breeze from the snow on our Mountain. You go and make yourself a drink and read and be comfortable.”
“I’ll go out to show Mbebia how to make the rice water.”
Mary felt much better at noon and in the afternoon she slept again and in the evening felt quite well and was hungry. I was delighted with how the Terramycin had acted and that she had no bad reactions from it and told Mwindi, touching the wood of my gun butt, that I had cured Miss Mary with a powerful and secret dawa but that I was sending her into Nairobi tomorrow in the ndege in order that a European doctor might confirm my cure.
“Mzuri,” Mwindi said.