The Book of Secrets (9 page)

Why the snake should understand Swahili, and why a white man should go after an insect armed with his rifle I did not bother to inquire. Finally we stopped. We were at a boundary of sorts. The growth became dense ahead of us, and small trees littered the area. “What?” I said. A villager pointed at the ground beneath a tree, and I saw the snake slithering away into the bush rather unhurriedly. It was a pretty large one — about nine inches in diameter. The villagers, by creating a racket, forced it to turn back, whereupon Fumfratti said, “Shoot,” and I shot it twice.

Any resistance it had left was bludgeoned out of it with clubs and sticks, and it was finally dragged out in front of us, belly swollen with its latest prey. Very skilfully it was cut open, lengthwise, so it could be skinned later, and out of the slimy inside that still twitched, they brought out something so revolting I shudder even now. It was a human baby.

We stopped at two other villages, at the second of which there was a long case involving a father and his sons …

Fumfratti has proved invaluable on this journey. He has travelled widely as a scout, and is a mine of information. My askaris and porters defer to his age and experience, and his wit. Several of them can carry a tune, lead the company in song through forest and grass, but Fumfratti is the storyteller. In the evenings, by the fire, his long stories continue from the previous night and (I believe) change plots and characters. During marches he keeps the men’s minds off their loads, their pangs of hunger, and the intense heat with a marvellous supply of riddles. Not surprisingly he was greeted like an old friend when we arrived in Taveta. We had been on the road three nights and a little over two days.

In Taveta Corbin was shown the graveyard, which lay in arcadian peace and shade behind a mango grove. There he saw two European graves built up as shrines. He was taken to the site where the explorer Thomson had struck camp thirty years before. Kilimanjaro loomed even closer here, and he learned that an underground stream from the mountain practically surrounded the town. From the top of the hill where the Mission offices were, he could see the green belt of dense vegetation that followed the water line. The water surfaced first at a crater lake, called Chala, in the hills to the west. It then came up in a spring, and later at Lake Jipe, before flowing towards the Pare mountain range back in German territory. He was told the area had been explored by Maynard two years before.

In Taveta the government station was now vacant, though a new
ADC
was on his way Corbin stayed four days, to hear petitions and dispense salaries, and he ordered a clean-up of the town on the last day.

On their way back they made a detour to see the hallowed site of local legend, the peaceful Lake Chala, which lay secluded among the hills and mountains. They were taken to it by two Masai youths they met in the vicinity, who without a word but understanding their purpose led them through coarse bush up a steep path on a hill. They arrived at the summit abruptly, and found themselves looking down upon a breathtaking sight: a blue lake, crystal-clear below them, wavelets stirring across it, and presiding in the distance the mighty snow-topped mountain that fed it. The Masai each carried a long staff. They grinned proudly at Corbin, then proceeded to climb down, leaping from clump to clump of shrub and sliding towards the water. Their young voices cut sharply through the pristine air. Corbin, a little nervous, felt compelled, followed, then hesitated halfway. The youths stopped to wait for him, then one of them threw the mzungu his staff, and doggedly Corbin descended after them.

For a long moment he crouched on his haunches at the lake’s side, under a clear sky, watching the clean, irregular edge of the water with the land rising steeply all around it, breathing the cool air, feeling it play on his skin, oblivious to anything else. It was a place so unique in its beauty, so much at peace with itself, so unviolated, he felt he had come to the site of Creation itself.

There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between that nature’s secret, the Edenic Chala, and the pioneering hustle and bustle of man-made Nairobi, where Corbin found himself unexpectedly but not unwillingly a few weeks later. In his isolation he had often longed for even a brief foray into the European life of Nairobi. His application to sit for the language examination in the capital, and to show his face at the Secretariat, was considered an indulgence, but was approved, by his
DC
, Hobson of Voi.

It was the morning of the day before Nairobi’s Race Week when he arrived.

“You realize, of course,” Mrs. Unsworth said to Corbin with a glint in her eye, “that the Norfolk, Torr’s, the Embassy, all the clubs — everything in Nairobi — is absolutely booked. You can put up in our guest house, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, but he must!” said her niece Anne.

“That’s very kind of you,” he said.

The girl was radiant with life.

Edwina Unsworth and her niece had come to collect him at the railway station. There was something charmingly childlike about the way Anne was dressed, and yet decidedly odd — the safari skirt with pockets and leather belt with gun holster, the collar and tie, the wide-brimmed hat.

“I told you he’d recognize it,” said Mrs. Unsworth pointedly to her niece.

As he did, of course, from the outfit of Princess Amelia in the recent newspaper photographs of a royal hunting expedition. Like the princess, Anne was small in build, and she had golden curls under her hat.

“It suits you better,” he said graciously, and everybody was pleased.

Mrs. Unsworth was a bigger, middle-aged, woman. She wore a simple dress and on her head a double terai lined with the customary red as protection from the sun. “Jack couldn’t come away,” she explained as they got into the buggy. “He’ll meet us later.” A larger party near them was having their luggage loaded into a wagon drawn by two mules in the charge of a huge man in riding boots swinging a long whip. “That’s Omar Khan,” said Anne. “He’s from South Africa and absolutely indispensable in this town.”

Corbin had corresponded with the Unsworths unevenly since meeting them in Mombasa when he first arrived, and while planning this visit he had asked if they could arrange to have him met, this being his only imposition on them. For the two ladies to come to meet him, instead of sending a junior official or a store clerk, was a kindness greater than he expected.

This was the capital of the land, where the rulers lived, he told himself. From here the Governor and the Secretariat sent directives to the Provincial Commissioner in Mombasa, who directed Corbin’s own master, the
DC
in Voi. This was the “up there,” or “God’s-eye view,” in contrast to the “down here” or “worm’s-eye view” of the lowly
ADCS
. There were hand-drawn hamali carts
on the road, bullock carts with turbaned drivers coaxing their charges in Indian vernacular, rickshaws with tinkling bells, their African drivers calling out for passengers or right of way. There were a few motorcars.

Edwina’s husband, Jack Unsworth, was a civil engineer who had stayed on, after completion of the railway, and was now part-owner of Unsworth and Mason, importers of machinery parts. Anne was the youngest daughter of one Edwina’s sisters. She had come on holiday and decided to stay.

The Unsworths lived in a bungalow on a two-acre plot. Like so many of the newer buildings, it had the cold grey look of the stone now being quarried in the area. Solid and squat, respectable yet dreary-looking, especially on the cold misty mornings of Nairobi. There were stone steps descending to the driveway under the shade of a large tree, where the Ford was parked; an askari in khaki uniform and a red fez but no shoes kept watch from the top of the steps.

After a game of tennis, a sundowner, a rubber or two of bridge, the servants pampering you with morning tea, the smell of frying eggs and bacon, the clink of china and crystal, a late round of brandy or port, the soft bed immaculately prepared by the trained servants … after all this the African night seemed as tame as it could be made. And you could eliminate it with the flick of a switch. Yet, he thought, there seemed a fraudulence in this little England in Africa — fraudulence in the sense of a conjuring trick — and fragility. He was told, however, that with persistence it could all be made real, like America. If only there could be self-government. Ten years ago this was all bush, dry grass. The Masai and Kikuyu walked around half-naked then. Now they would take loose hand-me-down tweeds if they could.

Nairobi, even white Nairobi, was not a homogeneous society. Some wit, commenting on the scandals for which it became known, called it a “square” society. At one corner stood Mrs. Hollis, brothel-keeper and fortune-teller, who could also be
hired to preside over seances. Her Syrian girls had been put on the train, and Nairobi was bracing itself for the Japanese girls due to arrive before Race Week. At another corner were her customers, the low-level railway officials, salesmen, drifters, out-of-work hunters and scouts. On the third point of the social square were the few aristocrats and their fawning toadies, playing public-school pranks at the Norfolk. Then there were the high officials like Ainsworth and Whitehouse, responsible for much of the development of Nairobi, and respectable businessmen like Unsworth.

With Anne, who wrote the occasional witty column on colonial life called “Our Way” for the
Herald
, Corbin visited some court hearings.

4 April, 1914

… A lord of the realm who shot a servant for serving bad cream with dumplings. A Jesuit priest who confiscated the possessions of his converts in the name of the church and was contesting them in earnest. A farmer who had a servant flogged fifty times, until senseless, for eating the kitchen rice and denying it afterwards; another who shackled his workers by their pierced earlobes, causing infection and death in one.… Two brothers, Londoners, who desperately sought for the graves of their parents while the land went unused. And so on. The case of Captain Maynard is still remembered with some bitterness here …

… Went with Anne to the new bioscope — a place called Garvie’s. The film caught fire, and amidst catcalls and bottle-throwing we departed in haste …

A number of young men in town had their eyes on Anne. He met them at dinner or dances at the new Nairobi Club, all apparently willing to wait on her hand and foot. It was a wonder, as Edwina
remarked pointedly to Corbin, that she was not yet engaged. No girl coming in from England survived Mombasa, they all arrived at the capital well after their honeymoons. Only Anne was holding out, but, she gave her guest a smile, not for much longer.

“Would she mind,” he asked Mrs. Unsworth, “a life far away from the city, almost in the middle of nowhere?”

“Anne,” she told him, taking the cue with a grateful look, “is an unusual girl. She is an adventuress. That’s why she is here. If you ask me, she’s bored with society.”

He found Anne intelligent and attractive — perhaps even a little glamorous. Her spontaneous nature complemented nicely his reserve, and it was obvious she preferred his company. But a matrimonial step would have to be thought out carefully. For one thing, his own
DC
’s approval would be necessary.

During Race Week, Nairobi was covered in a perpetual cloud of dust kicked up by horses, buggies, and motorcars. Many visitors simply set up tents on open ground. At the Turf Club, which was decorated with flags and bunting, people of all tribes gathered to watch the horse races and polo matches. Elsewhere in town there was tennis and cricket, fishing and cockfighting, gambling and boxing. And throughout the week, everywhere it seemed, bands of the police and the King’s African Rifles added a touch of smartness, not to say music, to the whole affair.

He had earlier on called at Government House and signed his name in the official book. He sat for the Swahili and Hindustani language exams, and his interview with the Acting Governor, in the middle of Race Week, went well. Before his departure he and Anne agreed to write to each other.

He took a crowded, festive train back, getting off at Voi, where he spent the rest of the night at the Dak bungalow, sharing rooms with a Swiss farmer and a young South African. The next day, with some askaris given to him by the
DC
, he marched to Kikono.