The Book of Secrets (8 page)

“According to the coolies,” the mukhi said, “the spirits of the desert were offended by the railway of the mzungu, and came to attack them as lions.”

“Then this Rashid must be called Simba in jest,” I offered.

The mukhi smiled assent. “Now he handles mules. That’s what he knows. But he’s a good provider … and a very protective father. He’s fond of the girl — perhaps too fond.”

“Would he take to following the girl about?” I asked.

To which he responded, “Bwana Corbin is a keen observer.”

“The girl is wild,” the mukhi said. “She’s inclined to go away by herself and the family is worried.”

I wondered if it was she whom I had seen running in the distance the day I came here to take up my post. She had been coming from the direction of the river.

“And she is this young man Pipa’s betrothed?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. He came to set the wedding date. He, too, has problems, but inshallah, God willing, they can give happiness to each other.”

“And when is the wedding to take place?”

“In a few months, Bwana Corbin.”

Pipa, meanwhile, will return to Moshi, where he has his shop and his mother.

The Indians were grateful for the lenient treatment of the young man, and they showed their gratitude in abundance. Crates of tinned milk, a bottle of whisky, socks, underwear, soap, landed in Corbin’s home. One result of the whole incident was his discovery of Thomas’s practice of extorting favours from the businessmen using threats of influencing the
ADC
against them. After receiving a severe dressing down, Thomas fled.

It was some days later that Corbin found out that his servant had gone and joined the Mission station. Word got around that Bwana Corbin was looking for a new cook, and one day a plate of fresh chapatti arrived at his doorstep, which he ate with much relish. The askari told him it had been left by the girl Mariamu. The offering was repeated every Thursday, the eve of Juma, an auspicious day when orphans and beggars were fed.

The nights were cold and dry, the blackness so absolute, so palpably dense he felt that if he reached out a hand from where he slept he could pull it aside and let in the lighted world of London, Paris, and Hamburg. The mbuyu tree rustled outside, in the distance was the cackle of hyenas, the grunt of a leopard or hog, the constant
crick-crick
of insects. Sometimes there would be the maddening, eerie pelting of rain on the roof, a sound which should have been welcome in this semi-desert. He had heard of spirits resident in mbuyu trees and naturally had ridiculed the idea, but in this menace-filled darkness, in this loneliness, all one’s scientific objectivism seemed vulnerable. He knew it to be four o’clock when the rich and rising cry of the brave muezzin rallied against the thick darkness. Such a desolate cry of the human soul in the vast universe. Was there an answer, a response? And then the Shamsis preparing for their mosque. They were a hardy lot, who could match the early Christians in their zealousness. First the mosque caretaker got up and went around the village knocking on doors. Gradually those who felt inclined would make their
way to the mosque. Then for a space of half an hour there would be silence — while they meditated, so he was told.

He had read accounts of the explorers, the great travellers, read reports of their lectures, including one at the Geographical Society of Hamburg given by Krapf. As a boy in England he might have heard Stanley. Didn’t they ever spend sleepless nights, these men, or waver from their purpose? Maynard, the seemingly indomitable Maynard, who had stalked the length and breadth of the country subduing intransigent natives, had confessed to him to bouts of sleeplessness, depression, doubt, taking to his diary to kill time and tire the brain, taking a local woman to kill loneliness. And also he had admitted to that snapping of nerves, an outbreak of savagery.

That irregular journal for the junior official,
The View from Down Here
, had recently carried an article on the dreaded “disease” that often struck the lonely administrator in Africa, and dubbed the
Furore africanus.
“The thing to watch out for,” said the writer, “is a welling up of uncontrollable anger. Before the storm breaks out in a bayonet charge against a tax-evader or witchdoctor, it is a good idea to go out on safari.” An official in German East Africa, he read further, had hanged eight mothers in a row for infanticide. This was in the Pare region, not even a hundred miles away.

Outside there would momentarily be the murmur of human voices as the Shamsis came out of the mosque and went home. Looking towards the shuttered window he could see the first rays of the morning light streaking in through the cracks. There would follow a few minutes of absolute stillness, and then the familiar flapping sound of birds on the move signalled that the day was at hand, and he would get up.

After such nights of desolation he longed for European society; a round of bridge, which normally he did not play or like very much, a game of chess. Several attempts at chess with his
now-absent Thomas had proved disastrous. They could not agree on rules, had quarrelled like schoolboys. They had played draughts sometimes, and even card games for two hands. Once, the Indian community had invited him to play carom, and six-handed whist, amidst tea and snacking and much giggling and staring on the part of the children and women. He realized they had made much accommodation for him, and the experiment was stopped — both to his relief and disappointment.

He pored avidly over the Nairobi papers when they came, the
Herald
and the gossipy
Globetrotter.
The arrivals, the departures, the controversies were many. The outbreak of bubonic plague in the Indian quarter and the resulting outpouring of vituperation against the “unhygienic brown man,” the shooting or lashing of an African, the arrival of royalty or a flamboyant Chicago hunting expedition with balloons, a new chef at the Norfolk, the new Governor, the newspapers were a wonderfully exuberant source of news.

25 December, 1913 (Christmas Day)

… pantry bare, but there were spare tins of biscuits and corned beef under the bed. I had rather expected an invitation from the Mission, though I suppose with Thomas there it would have made for an awkward situation …

The town was quite noisy for a holiday, and when I stepped outside to look I saw that preparations were afoot for what turned out to be a garden party. This “happiness” was for my benefit and quite pleasant, but the speeches were long.

Perhaps Mrs. Bailey and Miss Elliott had thought he would be spending Christmas Day in Taveta.

He had familiarized himself with the towns in the area,
including Mbuyuni, where he finally met the German resident Lenz, who had been sent the letter (intercepted and read by Corbin) from the German commandant of Moshi Fort. A few times Corbin had been required in Taveta, the pleasant oasis town at the German East African border, with a resident
ADC
and the large Church Missionary Society station whose incumbents — Miss Campbell and Miss Knight — were more amiable than those of the local Mission.

He hunted on occasion, having first begun when a leopard attacked a woman behind her hut in a nearby village. The animal was not found, having perhaps met its fate elsewhere. But on his tours upcountry he shot for meat. Only once, when he sighted a beautiful stray zebra, did he shoot, wantonly, for trophy. The animal seemed to have sensed its fate, standing perfectly still and hopeless, only its ears twitching slightly. His companions on such trips were the village dog Bwana Tim, some askaris, and a gold-bearded albino with the rather strange nickname of Fumfratti, who appeared always in the same black trousers and waistcoat, red shirt, yellow bandanna, and a wide-brimmed hat, as if to mimic an American hunter.

Taveta: 13 February, 1914

A trying journey, from which I recover at this
CMS
Mission in Taveta in the hands of two solicitous missionaries …

On our way down from Kikono, with much relief we arrived at a stream. It was overhung with great trees where we stopped, and the ground was cool. The water level was low, and the flow down to a trickle, coming from the general direction of Kilimanjaro. That eminence had by now both peaks behind cloud covers. Behind us was the local village, whose children had come out to watch us and receive their presents (sweets from the mukhi’s store). But we were not to have peace in this arbour, it was already
occupied by baboons. At first they remained content with shrieking and shaking of branches farther upstream. Soon, however, they became bolder. One peeped out from the foliage fairly close to us, then another crossed the stream in three or four rapid bounds. At this point Fumfratti, caressing a smooth grey stone in the palm of his hand, told me very casually that we should put a collar on Bwana Tim. Surely the dog wouldn’t stray so far, I said. Whereupon he stood and began walking up the stream, stepping lightly on stones to do so, and then for a moment disappeared from sight. There came then, from where he presumably was, a mighty commotion from the monkeys, after which the albino reappeared, holding something white in his hand. He came and placed it in my hands. Imagine my shock when I saw what it was — a skull! I almost dropped it from my hands.

“The nyanyi play with it. It is a nyanyi, a baboon, skull.”

The flat, declarative remark is often the prelude to a story. I waited for it.

14 February

A few years ago, Fumfratti said, a mzungu and his party — which included himself, he paused to add — had walked by this spot with a dog. A small dog, kadogo (he gestured, making a dog shape with his arm and the flat of his palm), brown, with a lot of fur on his back, ears like fans (another gesture). This mzungu was also on his way to Taveta. While he was preoccupied with arrangements, his little dog strayed. (Here Fumfratti paused to look at me as if to prepare me.)

A pack of yelling baboons jumped upon the dog from the trees and quickly tore him limb from limb. When the mzungu’s party, having heard the commotion, reached the site of the slaughter they saw what must surely have been a most grisly sight — baboons at play with pieces of the body. One monkey bounded away with a limb, another had his mouth covered with entrails. I told him to stop. The mzungu went mad with fury, continued Fumfratti. He
was foaming. The man responsible for the dog’s care was lashed to within an inch of his life. The party decided to abandon the site, but they left some meat lying around where they had rested. After they had gone some distance, the mzungu turned and crept back up the path they had walked. He entered the bush, walked on farther, approaching the baboons from behind. Cunningly, and with caution, like a lion. The baboons were at the leftover meat, fighting over the pieces, rowdy as only monkeys can be. The mzungu went and waited behind a large bush, observing. “Kwa taratibu yule mzungu akalenga,” said my man, conscious of his audience. Carefully the white man took aim, and with his rifle shot as many of the stupid baboons as he could. About ten in all.

“Truly, that was a mzungu,” said Fumfratti.

I wondered what to make of this veiled judgement of me. “Describe him to me,” I said.

“Menandi,” he said. “That was his name. Big, head like a rock, two teeth like this …” he gestured with two fingers.

And yes, the
CMS
ladies tell me Maynard was here, on his way to Moshi (ever the soldier) to see what the Germans in their colony were up to.

But this was not all. The stream had more for us than a reminder of that grisly episode. As we prepared to leave, some villagers approached: a young man in the company of older men. They had so far kept their distance, fearing, I suppose, that I was after taxes. After humming and hawing, in broken Swahili and a mixture of local languages, they made their plea. They wanted the bwana — me — to kill a python who had moved into the vicinity. But surely they could kill snakes, I put it to them. But the mzungu had a bunduki (a gun). And all the wild animals fear the mzungu.

So off we went in search of the snake. It was a strange, bewildering procession through the bush. My companions chanted all the while: “Dudu … dudu … dudu-dudu …” Why, I asked
Fumfratti, why dudu — insect? “They want to fool the snake, make him think the mzungu is after a dudu.”