Green Hills of Africa. Ernest Hemingway

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СКАЧАТЬ else that had been moving, in the bush on the flats, or coming down from the small hills through the trees, coming toward the salt, had halted at that exploding, clanking sound. They would come, later, in the dark; but then it would be too late.

      So now, going along the sandy track of the road in the car, the lights picking out the eyes of night birds that squatted close on the sand until the bulk of the car was on them and they rose in soft panic; passing the fires of the travellers that all moved to the westward by day along this road, abandoning the famine country that was ahead of us; me sitting, the butt of my rifle on my foot, the barrel in the crook of my left arm, a flask of whisky between my knees, pouring the whisky into a tin cup and passing it over my shoulder in the dark for M’Cola to pour water into it from the canteen, drinking this, the first one of the day, the finest one there is, and looking at the thick bush we passed in the dark, feeling the cool wind of the night and smelling the good smell of Africa, I was altogether happy.

      Then ahead we saw a big fire and as we came up and passed, I made out a lorry beside the road. I told Kamau to stop and go back and as we backed into the firelight there was a short, bandy-legged man with a Tyrolese hat, leather shorts, and an open shirt standing before an unhooded engine in a crowd of natives.

      ‘Can we help?’ I asked him.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘Unless you are a mechanic. It has taken a dislike to me. All engines dislike me.’

      ‘Do you think it could be the timer? It sounded as though it might be a timing knock when you went past us.’

      ‘I think it is much worse than that. It sounds to be something very bad.’

      ‘If you can get to our camp we have a mechanic.’

      ‘How far is it?’

      ‘About twenty miles.’

      ‘In the morning I will try it. Now I am afraid to make it go farther with that noise of death inside. It is trying to die because it dislikes me. Well, I dislike it too. But if I die it would not annoy it.’

      ‘Will you have a drink?’ I held out the flask. ‘Hemingway is my name.’

      ‘Kandisky,’ he said and bowed. ‘Hemingway is a name I have heard. Where? Where have I heard it? Oh, yes. The dichter. You know Hemingway the poet?’

      ‘Where did you read him?’

      ‘In the Querschnitt.’

      ‘That is me,’ I said, very pleased. The Querschnitt was a German magazine I had written some rather obscene poems for, and published a long story in, years before I could sell anything in America.

      ‘This is very strange,’ the man in the Tyrolese hat said. ‘Tell me, what do you think of Ringelnatz?’

      ‘He is splendid.’

      ‘So. You like Ringelnatz. Good. What do you think of Heinrich Mann?’

      ‘He is no good.’

      ‘You believe it?’

      ‘All I know is that I cannot read him.’

      ‘He is no good at all. I see we have things in common. What are you doing here?’

      ‘Shooting.’

      ‘Not ivory, I hope.’

      ‘No. For kudu.’

      ‘Why should any man shoot a kudu? You, an intelligent man, a poet, to shoot kudu.’

      ‘I haven’t shot any yet,’ I said. ‘But we’ve been hunting them hard now for ten days. We would have got one to-night if it hadn’t been for your lorry.’

      ‘That poor lorry. But you should hunt for a year. At the end of that time you have shot everything and you are sorry for it. To hunt for one special animal is nonsense. Why do you do it?’

      ‘I like to do it.’

      ‘Of course, if you like to do it. Tell me, what do you really think of Rilke?’

      ‘I have read only the one thing.’

      ‘Which?’

      ‘The Cornet.’

      ‘You liked it?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I have no patience with it. It is snobbery. Valéry, yes. I see the point of Valéry; although there is much snobbery too. Well at least you do not kill elephants.’

      ‘I’d kill a big enough one.’

      ‘How big?’

      ‘A seventy-pounder. Maybe smaller.’

      ‘I see there are things we do not agree on. But it is a pleasure to meet one of the great old Querschnitt group. Tell me what is Joyce like? I have not the money to buy it. Sinclair Lewis is nothing. I bought it. No. No. Tell me to-morrow. You do not mind if I am camped near? You are with friends? You have a white hunter?’

      ‘With my wife. We would be delighted. Yes, a white hunter.’

      ‘Why is he not out with you?’

      ‘He believes you should hunt kudu alone.’

      ‘It is better not to hunt them at all. What is he? English?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Bloody English?’

      ‘No. Very nice. You will like him.’

      ‘You must go. I must not keep you. Perhaps I will see you to-morrow. It was very strange that we should meet.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Have them look at the lorry to-morrow. Anything we can do?’

      ‘Good night,’ he said. ‘Good trip.’

      ‘Good night,’ I said. We started off and I saw him walking toward the fire waving an arm at the natives. I had not asked him why he had twenty up-country natives with him, nor where he was going. Looking back, I had asked him nothing. I do not like to ask questions, and where I was brought up it was not polite. But here we had not seen a white man for two weeks, not since we had left Babati to go south, and then to run into one on this road where you met only an occasional Indian trader and the steady migration of the natives out of the famine country, to have him look like a caricature of Benchley in Tyrolean costume, to have him know your name, to call you a poet, to have read the Querschnitt, to be an admirer of Joachim Ringelnatz and to want to talk about Rilke, was too fantastic to deal with. So, just then, to crown this fantasy, the lights of the car showed three tall, conical, mounds of something smoking in the road ahead. I motioned to Kamau to stop, and putting on the brakes we skidded just short of them. They were from two to three feet high and when I touched one it was quite warm.

      ‘Tembo,’ M’Cola said.

      It was dung from elephants that had just crossed the road, and in the cold of the evening СКАЧАТЬ