People work much in order to secure the future; I gave my mind much work and trouble, trying to secure the past.
And then, in the end, the Liberation came.
As now the dark, slimy waters began to decrease, Noah from his Ararat gazed round towards the four corners of the earth for a sprig of green.
The first live leaf was brought me all across the Atlantic. I had finished my Winter’s Tales in 1942, when it had been out of the question to get the manuscript off to England or America from Denmark. By rare good luck, and with the aid of mighty friends, I managed to get it with me to Stockholm and to make the British Embassy there forward it by their daily plane. I wrote to my publishers in London and New York: “I can sign no contract and I can read no proofs. I leave the fate of my book in your hands.” For three years I lived in the ignorance of that irresponsible person who shot an arrow into the air and left it to fall to earth he knew not where. Now, in the fair month of May, 1945, by one of the very first overseas mails, I received my book in the Armed Services Edition and shortly after, through the Red Cross, a number of moving and cheering letters from American officers and soldiers who had happened to read Winter’s Tales just before or after some attack in Italy or the Philippines. I gave one of my two copies to the King, who was pleased to know that from his dumb country one voice at least had been heard in far places.
I sent a dove off south: I wrote to Messrs. Hunter and Company for information about my servants. They wrote back to inform me that Farah had died, and that without him they were unable to get on to any of the others.
The news of Farah’s death to me was hard to take into my mind and very hard to keep there. How could it be that he had gone away? He had always been the first to answer a call. Then after a while I recognized the situation: more than once before now I had sent him ahead to some unknown place, to pitch camp for me there.
As to the others of my staff, now that I should no longer have Farah to look them up, it would, I reflected, be for them to find me. At the same time I could not be sure whether they would indeed set to do so or not. For they might not have grasped the fact that my long silence had been involuntary, but might quite well have taken it as a sign of my displeasure with them. “I shall have to sit still and wait for them,” I thought, “as I waited at sunset for the bushbuck to step out into the glades of my grounds.”
A few months later I had a letter from the Government House in Nairobi, with the very coat of arms of Great Britain on it. Sir Philip Mitchell, the then Governor, told me that he was writing upon the repeated request of his boy Ali Hassan. Ali, he said, was the best servant he had ever had, but from the beginning he had made it clear to his master that he looked upon himself as still being in my service, and that if ever I came back to Africa he would feel free to leave Government House without notice.
Here Ali at least had come forth, then, in great state, accompanied by the Lion and the Unicorn. He would order the others back as well, and we would all be gathered together once more. I started on a correspondence with Ali. From the style of his letters I gathered that for these years he had—in contrast to earlier days—been living in a household with no financial worries. But he was faithful to the past; naming the horses and the dogs and bringing back things I myself had forgotten. “Do you remember,” he wrote, “how the people give you name and call you: She who first of all see the New Moon?” In his repeated “things have changed” there was a gentle melancholy, which I recognized from the recollections of other Africans, who will dwell with preference on sad things. There was in his letter the sound of a lonely horn in the woods, a long way off.
He generously forgave me my own faux pas. “Do you remember, Memsahib,” he wrote, “the time when you dismissed us all because of this bitch?” I remembered it very well. I had brought out a Scotch deerhound bitch for my dog Pania, travelling, for her sake, in the midst of winter from Antwerp on a cargo boat. The first time she was in heat I had had to go into Nairobi, so had instructed all my servants, whatever they did, not to let her out of her hut. I came back tired and went to bed, and I there received a note from my manager regretting the fact that Heather had been let out, and that now most likely his Airedale terrier King would be the sire of her puppies. I at once flew into such anger that I walked straight from my bed on to the pergola, in which my entire household, sitting peacefully together, were having a sunset chat. But when I opened my mouth to tell them what I thought of them, I had no voice, I had to go back into the house to find it and even to repeat the manœuvre. As soon as I could speak, I dismissed all my people at one time, for I felt that I could not bear to see any of their faces again. None of them went, or—I believe—for a moment thought of going, and no catastrophe followed. Whatever had happened in my absence, Heather’s puppies turned out pure-bred, and very lovely.
Juma, Ali wrote, was now a very old man, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He lived upon the plot in the Masai Reserve that I had obtained for him. His son Tumbo was a lorry-driver in Nairobi.
Saufe, Farah’s son, was doing well as a horse-trader. He was soon going to marry, and as he was only seventeen years old by then, the fact was a sign of his prosperity.
The news of Kamante, Ali wrote, was good, then bad, then a little better, then again somewhat sad. He had been clever all these years, “same as he been in the house,” and on his land near Dagoretti he had a fine herd of cattle, sheep and goats. But he had gone blind. This, according to a clever doctor of Nairobi, might be bettered by an operation. But an operation would cost much money.
I found, as I laid down Ali’s letter, that I was not surprised to learn that Kamante had gone blind. His watchful eyes, so keenly observant that he had at times made me think of that “loyal servant” of Grimm’s fairy-tale who had to wear a cloth round his eyes in order not to destroy what he gazed at, at the same time in an eerie way had in them the introspectiveness which you will find in the eyes of a blind man. I remembered, from our very first meeting, when I had knocked against the dying child on the plain, those glassy, patient eyes turned towards me, and I felt that I must have them light up once more, even although I myself was never again to meet their unbiased, stock-taking glance.
I have had news from my old servants later on, through other people, and at last from themselves.
Sir Philip Mitchell in the beginning of the fifties looked me up in Denmark. “I dare not come home from Europe to Ali,” he said, “without having seen you.” While we dined together we had a sad little talk about the changes in the world. I realized to what extent my own book about Africa had become history, a document of the past. It was, I thought, as I listened to Sir Philip describing present-day conditions in Kenya, as much out of date as a papyrus from a pyramid.
My old friend Negley Farson in his book of 1950, Last Chance in Africa, speaks of Ali as Sir Philip’s major-domo and reports how, at his and Sir Philip’s fishing camp on the Thika, Ali repeats his statement that he is Memsahib Blixen’s boy. “I rose,” Mr. Farson tells, “high in Ali’s esteem when I told him that I had lunched in Denmark with his Memsahib. After that I could do no wrong.”
The Danish author John Buchholzer in 1955 travelled in Somaliland to collect Somali folkore and poetry, and published a book, Africa’s Horn, on his journey. One chapter of the book turns upon the new national and religious movement against the Europeans and relates how, in the market-place of the small town of Hargeisa, the author is being stoned by an angry crowd and is saved from their hands through the intervention of a passing young Somali official. The young man next day looks him up in his quarters and asks him if really, as has been said, he is a Dane. He presents himself as Abdullahi Ahamed, for many years in the past the servant of a Danish lady known to all tribes of Somali. Abdullahi here, in the book, goes through the long list of my benefactions towards him, including the typewriter.
It was pleasant to come across this passage of the book. It was more pleasant still to receive a letter from Abdullahi himself, inspired
by his meeting with Mr. Buchholzer. For ten years, Abdullahi states, he has been deeply grieving not to hear from me; it now gives him much satisfaction that I have sent out such a nice gentleman to re-establish contact between us. He has actually married Farah’s young widow and has a small son by her. The whole family, however, he informs me, is at the moment sunk in deep sadness over the death of Fathima’s mother, the child’s grandmother—so that old women appear to play as great a part in the life of the tribes as in my day. In his letter to me, too, Abdullahi remembers the typewriter. It gave him, he says, a decisive advantage over competitors in the career, and he owes to it that he has now for three years been holding the office of judge in Hargeisa.
“I am,” he concludes in his letter, “carrying my official duties successfully, with dignity and popularity.”
There lives in Copenhagen a talented young journalist, Mr. Helge Christensen, who from boyhood has been keen on ornithology and many years ago got my mother’s permission to study bird life in the woods of Rungstedlund. Mr. Christensen in an international competition won a flying trip to Nairobi and came to Rungstedlund to ask me whether I wanted him to take out greetings to friends of mine in Kenya. I asked him, if possible, to look up Juma and Kamante. But Ali Hassan being away at the time, I felt that it might be a difficult task to pick out by their names only two Kikuyu among two millions. Mr. Christensen, though, held on to his promise and was successful.
Juma he tracked down by going out to the residential district of Karen, named after me, and making enquiries at its central club-house, formerly my own house. He was here told that an old man by the name of Juma from time to time would come up and ask permission to walk in the grounds, “to think there, of the time that had once been,” for an afternoon would walk on the paths beneath the tall trees and then again would disappear. A kitchen toto from the club believed that he knew from where the old man came, and was taken into the car to point out the rough grass-track winding into the Masai Reserve—a long way, the traveller thought, for an old man to walk in order to meditate on the past. Juma’s manyatta here, below the blue hills of Ngong, surely is one of the loveliest spots in the world. It had, Mr. Christensen told me, grown into a big place and was swarming with young people and children, who thronged round the car. Juma himself was called forth from his hut, a patriarch, full of days, somewhat long in the teeth, a little vague about the present but brightening up as he got on to days gone by, and in the end explaining to his wives and his offspring that his Memsahib had sent out this good Bwana with gifts, thanksgivings for his excellent service in her house. Two eagles, Mr. Christensen told me, circling high above the heads of host and visitor, were pointed out as old friends of the Memsahib’s, eager to have news of her. Juma once had heard them cry “God bless her.” The scream of an eagle, as I myself heard it on a day when I was flying with Denys Finch-Hatton, is like anything but a blessing.
Kamante was found further away from Nairobi, in the midst of a maze of shambas with hemp, corn and sweet potatoes, and of grass-land. I was told that he received his visitor as if he had been expecting him this very afternoon, which may well have been the case, for Kamante was resourceful. Kamante had never shown any faith whatever in my intelligence, yet he now enlarged upon my wisdom and competence, pointing out to my countryman the wide area of land which, against all resistance and intrigue, I had forced the Government of Kenya to yield up to him. Like Abdullahi and Juma he took it that his guest had been sent out as a personal ambassador of mine to get his news and enquire into his wants. He was anxious to send back by him such news and information as I should be interested in, weighing his words and from time to time making a pause to collect his thoughts. The operation on his eyes had been successful, inasmuch as he could now see his cows. He could not count them, he said, which was a sad thing, but when in the evening they had been brought back into their boma he could make them out dimly, like a multitude of sweet potatoes within a pot of furiously boiling water, thronging and rolling about and jumping upon one another, which was pleasant.
Mr. Christensen has published a small book, Juma and Kamante, on his visit to my two old servants. It contains two woodcut portraits of the title-characters; the one of Juma is very good.
Quite recently, and quite by chance, I have in another Danish paper come upon a later interview with Kamante, whom the journalist has succeeded in tracing and running to earth. Kamante is well, and would like to come to Denmark to take service with me once more, at the same time he fears that he is too old, and that it might be better to send me one of his sons. Somewhat uneasy at giving the information—as I am uneasy at passing it on here—Kamante tells the Danish journalist that he has been a year in prison for taking the Mau-Mau oath. I did not know of the circumstance; it has given me matter for thought. Has the deep, unconquerable sceptic here at last met with something in which it was possible to him to have faith? Has the eternal hermit, the “rogue” head of game, by his own choice totally isolated from the herd, here at last through a dark inhuman formula experienced some kind of human fellowship? In order to make up for the awkwardness of the situation, Kamante brings out from his pocket a letter from me to him and shows it to my countryman. “Look,” he says, “Msabu writes to me: ‘My good and faithful servant Kamante.’ ” As again he folds up the letter and sticks it into his pocket, he adds, “And so I am.”
I have had news of another former resident of the farm, the blind Dane, Old Knudsen, who for some time lived in a small house on it, all salted and embittered through the experiences of a tragic life, but with great flaming inner visions to make up for his loss of sight, a grey and bent indomitable optimist.
Last March I had a letter from an American lady of the University of Maryland. A fortnight before, she had been dining with a Danish economist just back from a recent mission to East Africa; they had been talking about me and my book Out of Africa, and he had told her that at the Danish Consulate to Tanganyika he had been given information which he wanted to bring to my attention. When a few days later he had died in his hotel in Washington, Mrs. Stevenson passed on this information to me. “What he had learned from the Danish Consul,” she wrote, “and what I feel that he would want you to know, was that Old Knudsen’s scheme for extracting phosphate from the bottom of Lake Naivasha was not wild. Some discovery has been made which verifies his theory. I did not get the details, but I feel that you should know.”
Thus, with deep satisfaction, I now see before me Old Knudsen righted, for a while laying down his harp in order to grip old fishermen’s and mariners’ tools, laughing out in triumph over Old Knudsen’s enemies.
I hear, these days, with intervals of one month, or half a year, from my old servants in Africa.
So there they are, out from their coverts in the woods, in the rays of sunset, treading cautiously still, but looking round them more confidently than when they first came into sight, lifting and turning their heads. It is content to watch you so, friends and comrades, I wish you may wander and gaze there, so high up in the air, in the strange freedom of your hearts, for a long time still. You have kept me company through many years; I shall not again frivolously doubt your actuality, I shall, from now, leave to you the rich world of reality. And you may hand me over to those dreams of mine which will take charge of me.
Juma has died. But I have recent news of Ali and Kamante.
Ali writes good English now. He has seen my photograph in the paper. “Really and truthfully it makes my heart very much pleased to see your photo. Really and truthfully it fills my heart with joy when I hear your name spoken. Or when I speak your name.”
As I admire his handwriting and grammar, I sometimes seem to see Berkeley’s little wry smile as in his mind he followed a line of wild duck on the glass-clear sky. And I wonder whether one more of them, fascinated by the decoys below, will here be slowing its flight to drop, in the end, like an arrow-head let off backwards by some heavenly archer, into the water of the pond, in order to become respectable.
r /> But Kamante, all through a triple layer of idiom, in a many-times-folded note, manages to preserve his originality. His last letter, of a month ago, ends up:
“I certainly convinced when I pray for you to almighty God that this prayer he will be stow without fault. So I pray that God will be kind to you now and then.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ISAK DINESEN is the pseudonym of Karen Blixen, born in Denmark in 1885. After her marriage in 1914 to Baron Bror Blixen, she and her husband lived in British East Africa, where they owned a coffee plantation. She was divorced from her husband in 1921 but continued to manage the plantation for another ten years, until the collapse of the coffee market forced her to sell the property and return to Denmark in 1931. There she began to write in English under the nom de plume Isak Dinesen. Her first book, and literary success, was Seven Gothic Tales. It was followed by Out of Africa, The Angelic Avengers (written under the pseudonym Pierre Andrézel), Winter’s Tales, Last Tales, Anecdotes of Destiny, Shadows on the Grass and Ehrengard. She died in 1962.
Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa: And Shadows on the Grass
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