Behind the weeping girl other natives were crying along softly. I said to Romilayu, “What the blast is going on?”
“Him shame,” said Romilayu, very grave, with that upstanding bush of hair.
Thus this sturdy, virginal-looking girl was crying—simply crying—without gestures; her arms were meekly hanging by her sides and all the facts about her (speaking physically) were shown to the world. The tears fell from her wide cheekbones onto her breasts.
I said, “What’s eating this kid? What do you mean, shame? This is very bad, if you ask me, Romilayu. I think we’ve walked into a bad situation and I don’t like the looks of it. Why don’t we cut around this town and go back into the desert? I felt a damned sight better out there.”
Apparently Romilayu sensed that I was rattled by this delegation shedding tears and he said, “No, no sah. You no be blame.”
“Maybe it was a mistake with that bush?”
“No, no, sah. You no mek him cry.”
At this I struck myself in the head with my open hand and said, “Why sure! I would.” (Meaning, “I would think first of myself.”) “The poor soul is in trouble? Is there something I can do for her? She’s coming to me for help. I feel it. Maybe a lion has eaten her family? Are there man-eaters around here? Ask her, Romilayu. Say that I’ve come to help, and if there are killers in the neighborhood I’ll shoot them.” I picked up my H and H Magnum with the scope sights and showed it to the crowd. With enormous relief it dawned on me that the crying was not due to any fault of mine, and that something could be done, that I did not have to stand and bear the sight of those tears boiling out. “Everybody! Leave it to me,” I said. “Look! Look!” And I started to go through the manual of arms for them, saying, “Hut, hut, hut,” as the drill instructors always did.
Everyone, however, went on crying. Only the very little kids with their jack-o’-lantern faces seemed happy at my entertainment. The rest were not done mourning, and covered their faces with their hands while their naked bodies shook.
“Well, Romilayu,” I said, “I’m not getting anywhere, and our presence is very hard on them, that’s for sure.”
“Dem cry for dead cow,” he said. And he explained the thing very clearly, that they were mourning for cattle which had died in the drought, and that they took responsibility for the drought upon themselves—the gods were offended, or something like that; a curse was mentioned. Anyway, as we were strangers they were obliged to come forward and confess everything to us, and ask whether we knew the reason for their trouble.
“How should I know—except the drought? A drought is drought,” I said, “but my heart goes out to them, because I know what it is to lose a beloved animal.” And I began to say, almost to shout, “Okay, okay, okay. All right, ladies—all right, you guys, break it up. That’s enough, please. I get it.” And this did have some effect on them, as I suppose they heard in the tone of my voice that I felt a certain amount of distress also, and I said to Romilayu, “So ask them what they want me to do. I intend to do something, and I really mean it.”
“What you do, sah?”
“Never mind. There must be something that only I can do. I want you to start asking.”
So he spoke to them, and the smooth-skinned, humped cattle kept grunting in their gentle bass voices (the African cows do not low like our own). But the weeping died down. And now I began to observe that the coloring of these people was very original and that the dark was more deeply burnt in about the eyes whereas the palms of their hands were the color of freshly washed granite. As if, you know, they had played catch with the light and some of it had come off. These peculiarities of color were altogether new to me. Romilayu had gone aside to speak with someone and left me among the natives, whose sobbing had almost stopped. Just then I deeply felt my physical discrepancies. My face is like some sort of terminal; it’s like Grand Central, I mean—the big horse nose and the wide mouth that opens into the nostrils, and eyes like tunnels. So I stood there waiting, surrounded by this black humanity in the aromatic dust, with that inanimate brilliance coming off the thatch of the huts nearby.
Then the man with whom Romilayu had been speaking came up and talked to me in English, which astonished me, for I would never have thought that people who spoke English would have been capable of carrying on so emotionally. However, he was not one of those who had carried on. From his size alone I felt he must be an important person, for he was built very heavily and had an inch or two on me in stature. But he was not ponderous, as I am, he was muscular; nor was he naked like the others, but wore a piece of white cloth tied on his thighs rather than on his hips proper, and around his belly was a green silk scarf, and he had a short loose middy type of blouse, which he wore very free to give his arms lots of play, which, owing to the big muscles, they needed. At first he was rather heavy of expression and I thought he might be looking for trouble, sizing me up as if I were some kind of human mushroom, imposing in size but not hard to knock over. I was very upset, but what upset me was not his expression, which soon changed for the better; it was, among other things, the fact that he spoke to me in English. I don’t know why I should have been so surprised—disappointed is the word. It’s the great imperial language of today, taking its turn after Greek and Latin and so on. The Romans weren’t surprised, I don’t think, when some Parthian or Numidian started to speak to them in Latin; they probably took it for granted. But when this fellow, built like a champion, in his white drooping cloth and his scarf and middy, addressed me in English, I was both shaken up and grieved. Preparing to speak he put his pale, slightly freckled lips into position, moving them forward, and said, “I am Itelo. I am here to introduce. Welcome. And how do you do?”
“What? What?” I said, holding my ear.
“Itelo.” He bowed.
Quickly, I too bent and bowed in the short pants and corky white helmet with my overheated face and great nose. My face can be like the clang of a bell, and because I am hard of hearing on the right side I have a way of swinging the left into position, listening in profile and fixing my eyes on some object to help my concentration. So I did. I waited for him to say more, sweating boisterously, for I was confounded down to the ground. I couldn’t believe it; I was so sure that I had left the world. And who could blame me, after that trip across the mountain floor on which there was no footprint, the stars flaming like oranges, those multimillion tons of exploding gas looking so mild and fresh in the dark of the sky; and altogether, that freshness, you know, that is like autumn freshness when you go out of the house in the morning and find the flowers have waked in the frost with piercing life? When I experienced this in the desert, night and morning, feeling everything to be so simplified, I was quite sure that I had gone clean out of the world, for, as is common knowledge, the world is complex. And besides, the antiquity of the place had struck me so, I was sure I had got into someplace new. And the weeping delegation; but here was someone who obviously had been around, as he spoke English, and I had been boasting, “Show me your enemies and I’ll kill them. Where is the man-eater, lead me to him.” And setting bushes on fire, and performing the manual of arms, and making like a regular clown. I felt extremely ridiculous, and I gave Romilayu a dark, angry look, as though it were his fault for not having briefed me properly.
But this native, Itelo, did not mean to work me over because of my behavior on arrival. It never seemed to enter his mind, even. He took my hand and placed it flat against his breast saying, “Itelo.”
I did likewise, saying, “Henderson.” I didn’t want to be a shit about it, you see, but I am not good at suppressing my feelings. Whole crowds of them, especially the bad ones, wave to the world from the galleries of my face. I can’t prevent them. “How do you do?” I said. “And say, what’s going on around here—everybody crying to beat the band? My man says it’s because of the cows. This isn’t a good time for a visit, eh? Maybe I should go and come back some other time?”
“No, you be guest, said Itelo, and made me welcome.
But he had observed that I was disappointed and that my offer to depart was not one hundred per cent gallantry and generosity and he said, “You thought first footstep? Something new? I am very sorry. We are discovered”
“If I did expect it,” I said, “then it’s my own damn fault. I know the world has been covered. Hell, I’d have to be out of my mind. I’m no explorer, and anyway that’s not what I came for.” So, recalling to mind what I had come for, I started to look at this fellow more closely to see what he might know about the greater or deeper facts of life. And first of all I recognized that his heaviness of expression was misleading and that he was basically a good-humored fellow. Only he was very dignified. Two large curves starting above his nostrils came down beside his mouth and gave him the look I had misinterpreted. He had a backed-up posture which emphasized the great strength of his legs and knees, and in the corners of his eyes, which had the same frame of darkness as the others in the tribe, there was a glitter which made me think of gold leaf.
“Well,” I said, “I see you have been out in the world anyway Or is English everybody’s second language here?”
“Sir,” he said, “oh, no, just only me.” Perhaps because of the breadth of his nose he had a tone which was ever so slightly nasal “Malindi school. I went, and also my late brother. Lot of young fellows sent from all over to Malindi school. After that, Beirut school. I have traveled all over. So I alone speak. And for miles and miles around nobody else, but only Wariri king, Dahfu.”
I had completely forgotten to find out, and now I said, “Oh, excuse me, do you happen to be royalty yourself?”
“Queen is my auntie,” he said, “Willatale. And you will stay with other auntie, Mtalba. Sir, she lend you her house.”
“Oh, that’s great,” I said. “That’s hospitable. And so you’re a prince?”
“Oh, yes.”
That was better. Owing to his size and appearance I thought from the beginning that he must be distinguished. And then to console me he said that I was the first white visitor here in more than thirty years, so far as he knew. “Well, Your Highness,” I said, “you’re just as well off not to attract many outsiders. I think you’ve got a good thing here. I don’t know what it is about the place, but I’ve visited some of the oldest ruins in Europe and they don’t feel half as ancient as your village. If it worries you that I’m going to run and broadcast your whereabouts or that I want to take pictures, you can just forget about it. That’s not my line at all.” For this he thanked me but said there wasn’t much of value to attract travelers here. And I’m still not convinced that I didn’t penetrate beyond geography. Not that I care too much about geography; it’s one of those bossy ideas according to which, if you locate a place, there’s nothing more to be said about it.
“Mr. Henderson, sir. Please come in and enter the town,” he said.
And I said, “I suppose you want me to meet everyone.”
It was gorgeous weather, though far too dry, radiance everywhere, and the very dust of the place aromatic and stimulating. Waiting for us was a company of women, Itelo’s wives, naked, and with the dark color worked in deeply around the eyes as if by special action of the sun. The lighter skin of their hands reminded me continually of pink stone. It made both hands and fingers seem larger than ordinary. Later I saw some of these younger women stand by the hour with a piece of string and play cat’s cradle, and each pair of players usually had several spectators and they cried, “Awho!” when one of them took over a complicated figure. The women bystanders now laid their wrists together and flapped their hands, which was their form of applause. The men put their fingers in their mouths and whistled, sometimes in chorus. Now that the weeping had ended entirely, I stood laughing under the big soiled helmet, my mouth expanded greatly.
“Well,” said Itelo, “we will go to see the queen, my aunt, Willatale, and afterward or maybe the same time the other one, Mtalba.” By now a pair of umbrellas had come up, carried by two women. The sun was very rich, and I was sweating, and these two state umbrellas, about eight feet tall and shaped like squash flowers, gave very little shade from such a height. Everybody was extremely good-looking here; some of them would have satisfied the standards of Michelangelo himself. So we went along by twos with considerable ceremony, Itelo leading. I was grinning but pretended that it was a grimace because of the sun. Thus we proceeded toward the queen’s compound.
And now I began to understand what the trouble here was all about, the cause of all the tears. Coming to a corral, we saw a fellow with a big clumsy comb of wood standing over a cow—a humped cow like all the rest, but that’s not the point; the point is that he was grooming and petting her in a manner I never saw before. With the comb he was doing her forelock, which was thick over the bulge of the horns. He stroked and hugged her, and she was not well; you didn’t have to be country bred, as I happen to be, to see at once that something was wrong with this animal. She didn’t even give him a knock with her head as a cow in her condition will when she feels affectionate, and the fellow himself was lost in sadness, gloomily combing her. There was an atmosphere of hopelessness around them both. It took a while for me to put all the elements together. You have to understand that these people love their cattle like brothers and sisters, like children; they have more than fifty terms just to describe the various shapes of the horns, and Itelo explained to me that there were hundreds of words for the facial expressions of cattle and a whole language of cow behavior. To a limited extent I could appreciate this. I have had great affection for certain pigs myself. But a pig is basically a career animal; he responds very sensitively to human ambitions or drives and therefore doesn’t require a separate vocabulary.
The procession had stopped with Itelo and me, and everyone was looking at the fellow and his cow. But seeing how much emotional hardship there was in this sight I started to move on; but the next thing I saw was even sadder. A man of about fifty, white-haired, was kneeling, weeping and shuddering, throwing dust on his head, because his cow was passing away. All watched with grief, while the fellow took her by the horns, which were lyre-shaped, begging her not to leave him. But she was already in the state of indifference and the skin over her eyes wrinkled as if he were only just keeping her awake. At this I myself was swayed; I felt compassion, and I said, “Prince, for Christ’s sake, can’t anything be done?”
Itelo’s large chest lifted under the short, loose middy and he pulled a great sigh as if he did not want to spoil my visit with all this grief and mourning. “I do not think,” said Itelo.
Just then the least expected of things happened, which was that I caught a glimpse of water in considerable amounts, and at first I was inclined to interpret this as the glitter of sheet metal coming and going before my eyes keenly. But there is something unmistakable about the closeness of water. I smelled it too and I stopped the prince and said to him, “Check me out on this, will you, Prince? But here is this guy killing himself with lamentation and if I’m not mistaken I actually see some water shining over there to the left. Is that a fact?”
He admitted that it was water.
“And the cows are dying of thirst?” I said. “So there must be something wrong with it? It’s polluted? But look,” I said, “there must be something you can do with it, strain it or something. You could make big pots—vats. You could boil out the impurities. Hey, maybe it doesn’t sound practical, but you’d be surprised, if you mobilized the whole place and everybody pitched in—gung-ho! I know how paralyzing a situation like this can become.”
But all the while the prince, though shaking his head up and down as though he agreed, in reality disagreed with me. His heavy arms were folded across his middy blouse, while a tattered shade came down from the squash-flower parasol held aloft by the naked women with their four hands as if they might be carried away by the wind. Only there was no wind. The air was as still as if it were knotted to the zenith and stuck there, parched and blue, a masterpiece of midday beauty.
“Oh … thank you,?
?? he said, “for good intention.”
“But I should mind my own business? You may be right. I don’t want to bust into your customs. But it’s hard to see all this going on and not even make a suggestion. Can I have a look at your water supply at least?”
With a certain reluctance he said, “Okay. I suppose.” And Itelo and I, the two of us almost of a size, left his wives and the other villagers behind and went to see the water. I inspected it, and except for some slime or algae it looked all right, and was certainly copious. A thick wall of dark green stone retained it, half cistern and half dam. I figured that there must be a spring beneath; a dry watercourse coming from the mountain showed what the main source of supply was normally. To prevent evaporation a big roof of thatch was pitched over this cistern, measuring at least fifty by seventy feet. After my long hike I would have been grateful to pull off my clothes and leap into this shady, warm, albeit slightly scummy water to swim and float. I would have liked nothing better than to lie floating under this roof of delicate-looking straw.
“Now, Prince, what’s the complaint? Why can’t you use this stuff?” I said.
Only the prince had come up with me to this sunken tank; the rest of them stood about twenty yards off, obviously unsettled and in a state of agitation, and I said, “What’s eating your people? Is there something in this water?” And I stared in and realized for myself that there was considerable activity just below the surface. Through the webbing of the light I saw first polliwogs with huge heads, at all stages of development, with full tails like giant sperm, and with budding feet. And then great powerful frogs, spotted, swimming by with their neckless thick heads and long white legs, the short forepaws expressive of astonishment. And of all the creatures in the vicinity, bar none, it seemed to me they had it best, and I envied them myself. “So don’t tell me! It’s the frogs?” I said to Itelo. “They keep you from watering the cattle?”