The Flame Trees of Thika (35 page)

He was a small man: not a dwarf exactly, or a pygmy, but one who stood about half-way between a pygmy and an ordinary human. His limbs were light in colour and he wore a cloak of bushbuck skin, a little leather cap, and ear-rings, and carried a long bow and a quiver of arrows. He stood stock-still and looked at me just as the dikdik had done, and I wondered whether he, too, would vanish if I moved.

‘
Jambo
,’ I ventured.

His face crinkled into a smile. It was a different face from that of a Kikuyu, more pointed, lighter-skinned, finer-boned; it wore something of the watchful and defensive look of an animal, with an added humour and repose.

He stepped forward, raised his hand, and returned my greeting.

‘The news?’ I asked, continuing the traditional form of greeting.

‘Good.’

‘Where have you come from?’

He threw back his head to indicate the hills at his back.

‘The forest.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To seek meat.’

He came and stood by me, fingering his bow. We could not speak much, for he knew only about a score of Swahili words. From him came a strong, pungent smell, with a hint of rankness, like a waterbuck’s; his skin was well greased with fat, his limbs wiry and without padding, like the dikdiks’. I knew him for a Dorobo, one of that race of hunters living in the forest on game they trapped or shot with poisoned arrows. They did not cultivate, they existed on meat and roots and wild honey, and were the relics of an old, old people who had once had sole possession of all these lands – the true aborigines. Then had come others like the Kikuyu and Masai, and the Dorobo had taken refuge in the forests. Now they lived in peace, or at least neutrality, with
the herdsmen and cultivators, and sometimes bartered skins and honey for beads, and for spears and knives made by native smiths. They knew all the ways of the forest animals, even of the bongo, the shyest and most beautiful, and their greatest delight was to feast for three days upon a raw elephant.

I knew his arrows would be poisoned. He pulled one out and showed me the sticky black coating on the iron head. ‘This kills the elephant, the great pig, the buffalo.’

‘There are many buffaloes?’ I asked, thinking of Humphrey’s water-furrow, and the warning uttered by the Kikuyu elders.

‘Come with me.’ He turned and walked towards the forest with loping, bent-kneed strides. Where the glade ended the undergrowth looked black and solid as a wall, but he slid into it, and I found that we were on a little path. That was too strong a word for it; it was rather a crack in the spiked solidity where other feet had trodden. The Dorobo stooped, I copied him, and we proceeded slowly like crouching animals, he silently, I treading on sticks and barging into roots and getting caught by creepers and scratched by thorns.

We came to a small glade sloping down towards a stream that could be heard whispering at the bottom, clouded with reeds and long grass. Near the glade’s margin was a patch of bare, greyish earth.

‘See!’ exclaimed the Dorobo, pointing with satisfaction: and I looked in vain for a herd of buffaloes.

‘I see nothing.’

He loped forward again. When we halted on the edge of the bare patch, I could observe hoof-marks and cattle-droppings; the hint of a rank odour, faintly bovine, hung about the place. It was a salt-lick, tramped by the feet of many buffaloes.

‘They come every night,’ the Dorobo said. ‘If the bwana brings a gun early in the morning, he will see many, many, just like cattle.’

‘Where are they now?’

He pointed with his chin to the slopes beyond. ‘There above. They sleep. They eat salt at night, and in the early morning they play.’

We returned along the game-track. ‘Where is your house?’ I asked.

‘In the forest.’

‘You have no shamba?’

‘The elephant is my shamba. These are my hoes.’ He touched the quiver at his side. ‘Have you tobacco?’

‘No.’ I felt ungrateful, and I had no money either. ‘I will try to get some.’

‘Good. Bring it here, and I will take the bwana to the buffaloes.’ He smiled, half-raised his hand, twitched his bushbuck cloak more securely on his shoulder, and loped off, leaving his ripe civet smell on the morning air.

I wanted to keep the Dorobo to myself, he belonged to the same world as the dikdik and jasmine and butterflies, but I did not know how to get hold of any tobacco; so I was forced to confide in Dirk. His eye gleamed when he heard about the saltlick.

‘That is how to get them, man,’ he said. ‘There will be many, big bulls and all. I will find that Kaffir, he will show me the spoor.’

‘You must take me with you.’

Dirk merely laughed. ‘A
toto
like you?’

‘But he’s my Dorobo!’

Dirk said that Dorobo belonged to anyone who brought them tobacco, and rode up with some next morning to the furrowhead. Although we had made no appointment, the Dorobo appeared, this time with another, even thinner and smaller than himself. They departed carrying the tobacco, having promised to meet Dirk at the forest’s edge next morning, before dawn, and guide him to the lick. As for me, I was to be left out, and resentment stung me like
siafu
. I had discovered the Dorobo, and now Dirk was going to have all the fun.

That night I thumped my head four times on the pillow, so as to wake at four o’clock. Probably it was the stir of Dirk’s departure that really woke me, the lanterns moving in the darkness, the tapping on the door of his rondavel, and the pawing and snorting of the pony he was taking as far as the furrowhead, because of his leg. I dressed in the darkness, shivering, for these early mornings were chilly and the water in the jug stung the skin. I waited until the pony had gone and the lights vanished, then I crept out like a vole to follow on foot.

This was not nearly so simple as I had expected. Although a half-moon threw black shadows, the path developed all sorts of bumps, holes, and obstacles unknown in daylight. The grass was soaking wet and bitterly cold, and the twinkling guide-light soon disappeared, leaving me hemmed in by shapes that leant towards me with a crouching menace: leopards, buffaloes, hyenas, even elephants might be within a few feet, gloating at the prospect of a meal. I wished very much that I had stayed in bed, and with every step decided to retreat, but obstinacy drove my reluctant feet forward. Only the furrow hummed a friendly note with its gentle swishing; at least I could not lose the way, so long as I followed it.

As I approached my glade I could hear Dirk’s pony cropping grass, and the movement of humans; he and the syce were waiting for the Dorobo. I waited also, frightened to reveal myself, shivering, and getting hungry; a rumbling stomach threatened to betray me, and I wanted to sneeze.

Many hours seemed to pass before the Dorobos’ arrival. At last I heard low voices, the jingle of a bridle, an order given, and then silence, save for the noises of the pony, who was to be left behind with the syce while Dirk proceeded, limp and all, on foot.

The syce, a Kikuyu named Karoli, was to some extent an ally, and I decided to ask him to help me follow Dirk into the forest. When I appeared he was at first alarmed, then incredulous, and finally discouraging.

‘The bwana told me to stay here,’ he said. ‘I do not wish to be eaten by leopards and trampled by buffaloes. Are you not a
toto
? And should not all
totos
be in bed?’

‘I shall wait here until he shoots a buffalo.’

‘It is too cold, and the bwana will be angry.’

‘I want to stay.’

‘Haven’t you heard about the savage monster that lives in the forest and eats horses? When it smells one, out it comes. It is bigger than a forest pig, it has teeth like swords and five arms like a monkey’s, and seven eyes. It will eat you up in one mouthful, like a stork eating a locust.’

‘You are telling lies.’

All the same, I could not help thinking of the monster, with
big pointed teeth and burning eyes, and wondering if there might not be a grain of truth in Karoli’s tale. I hugged the pony’s neck for warmth, convinced by now that bed would, after all, be a much nicer place.

‘Why do you not go back to Thika, to your mother and father?’ Karoli asked. ‘Thika is a better place than this. The maize grows tall, and there are sweet potatoes, and the land is fat.’

‘Is Thika your home, also?’

‘Very close to Thika; and Kupanya is the chief of my people. But my family will think I have died in this cold place, for my bwana will not let me go home.’

We talked of Thika while the darkness thinned slowly and the stars faded, and the sky glowed with a deep, rich, royal blue. The air was steel-keen, a film of dew lay over everything and a breath of frost passed over the glade, leaving no traces. A rain-bird called; its haunting downward cadence was like a little waterfall, melodious and melancholy.

The gun shot could not now be long delayed. Night was fading so fast that we could see tree-shapes thirty or forty paces distant. Something moved just down the furrow; I watched it fiercely: a leopard on the prowl, a homing forest pig? No, only a bushbuck, his pelt dark with dew, picking his way fastidiously along our glade, his nostrils a-quiver to receive the book of scents from which he could read with certainty the news of the morning.

The crash came and shook the trees: another after it, then a third. These three explosions united to form a hollow echo from the hills, and made the pony plunge and whinny. The sound rolled away into a watchful silence. The bushbuck had vanished, the rain-bird was stilled, only the furrow whispered to itself unchanged. Then from the forest came movement, a muffled crashing, the snap of branches, a thumping of hooves.

‘They come towards us,’ said Karoli.

The sounds were indeed growing louder as the buffaloes, obsessed by panic, stampeded downhill, abandoning all caution in a frantic flight. At such times their big-bossed horns were used like battering-rams to thrust a way through thickets; in their panic they would plunge ahead with no regard for any object in their way.

‘To that tree, quickly!’ cried Karoli, tugging at the reins and trying to pull the pony after him; it smelt the buffaloes, threw up its head, and bolted. I ran to the big cedar where Karoli cowered; he was sweating and rolling his eyes. The buffaloes went by as if a mass of great black boulders had detached themselves from the hillside and come hurtling down upon us at such a speed that they were gone before I had time even to realize what they were; their hoof-beats made the ground quiver under my feet as if it were a hollow gourd. The boulders vanished, the drumming faded, in a moment only the rank smell remained. Karoli rubbed his head and made chattering sounds. We both sat down on a log to rest our weak knees.

‘These buffaloes are bad, bad, bad,’ said Karoli. ‘They will crush you with their feet as a man steps upon a beetle. Eee – eee, there were a hundred buffaloes, a thousand, more than the cattle of the Masai; they were angry, they were bad.’ He went on talking to himself in this vein.

By now the sky in the direction taken by the buffaloes was banded with rose and lemon and the colour of flamingo wings: the path was ready, the sun was on his way. From the forest came three figures led by my Dorobo, whose face was eager as a dog’s. Dirk was the last, hampered by his leg. When he saw me he was furious, but had no time for more than swearing; he had wounded a buffalo, and had to find the spoor. Two bulls lay dead near the salt-lick, where he had lain in wait until dawn.

The Dorobo ranged through the glade like hounds casting for a scent, and soon one of them stood rigid and gave a low call. On a leaf-blade was a little crimson bead, which Dirk and the Dorobo bent to examine. By its colour they could tell whether the buffalo had been hit in the body, or in the heart or lungs.

My Dorobo took the lead with his head down and his eyes on the ground, bow in hand. Dirk followed with the rifle. The sun came up proud as a lancer, hurling long golden spears over the dew-white grass and silver cobwebs; a red flame sprang up the trunks of the cedars, the birds fluted, the whole world came alive. Karoli went over to the pool and sluiced his head in the cold upland water.

‘Now we must go back with an angry buffalo on the path,’ he
grumbled. ‘If it sees us it will trample on us, perhaps it is waiting for us now.’

Nevertheless we encountered nothing more ferocious than a pair of dikdiks, a distant glimpse of waterbuck, and some francolins. I had entertained a hope of sneaking off to my rondavel unobserved, but this was quickly dispelled. The pony had arrived, and a relief expedition under Mr Crawfurd was about to set forth. He glared at me with an anger all the more alarming for its cold suppression, and told me in icy tones that I deserved to be kept in bed for a week on bread and water. But Kate Crawfurd, although she scolded, was too relieved to be severe, which in any case was not in her nature, and I enjoyed an excellent breakfast, and later in the day went with a party sent to skin and cut up the two dead buffaloes.

Dirk’s shots had brought forth from the forest’s recesses a little posse of Dorobo who could hardly restrain their excitement as hides were stripped from carcasses to reveal beneath the dark red flesh with its wonderful network of veins and arteries, the viscous blue coiled intestines, the purple liver, and the bright spongy lungs. As the knives sliced away, a murmur of joy and eagerness arose. At a word from the chief skinner they fell upon the raw meat and hacked hunks off with swords and knives, smearing faces and chests with blood and mucus as they dug in their teeth like worrying hounds. The Kikuyu stepped back and looked on with contempt. They ate meat only, as a rule, on ceremonial occasions and, while they relished a fat ram or bullock, they tackled these decorously, old men eating before the young, men before women, each age-grade in its turn.

‘They are like hyenas,’ Karoli said. ‘If they had no buffaloes or elephants, they would eat men.’

But the Dorobo were sublimely happy, immersed in pleasure as a bather in the sea, and holding nothing back. They had no fear, as hyenas must have, of being driven off by stronger creatures; they simply gave way to their appetites, belching to make room for more. After a while their stomachs began to swell up like puffballs, the pace grew slower, and some of them wrapped slabs of meat in leaves to carry home.