The Book of Secrets Page 6

  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.”

  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, force
d 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.

  5

  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. Holl
is, 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 …