For England, the war began in September, 1939. The people on the island knew about it at once and began to prepare themselves. In farther places the people heard about it a few minutes afterwards,
and they too began to prepare themselves.
And in East Africa, in Kenya Colony, there was a young man who was a white hunter, who loved the plains and the valleys and the cool nights on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. He too heard about the war and began to prepare himself. He made his way over the country to Nairobi, and he reported to the RAF and asked that they make him a pilot. They took him in and he began his training at Nairobi airport, flying in little Tiger Moths and doing well with his flying.
After five weeks he nearly got court-martialled because he took his plane up and instead of practising spins and stall-turns as he had been ordered to do, he flew off in the direction of Nakuru to look at the wild animals on the plain. On the way, he thought he saw a Sable antelope, and because these are rare animals, he became excited and flew down low to get a better view. He was looking down at the antelope out of the left side of the cockpit, and because of this he did not see the giraffe on the other side. The leading edge of the starboard wing struck the neck of the giraffe just below the head and cut clean through it. He was flying as low as that. There was damage to the wing, but he managed to get back to Nairobi, and as I said, he was nearly court-martialled, because you cannot explain away a thing like that by saying you hit a large bird, not when there are pieces of giraffe skin and giraffe hair sticking to the wing and the stays.
After six weeks he was allowed to make his first solo cross-country flight, and he flew off from Nairobi to a place called Eldoret, which is a little town eight thousand feet up in the Highlands. But again he was unlucky. This time he had engine failure on the way, due to water in the fuel tanks.
He kept his head and made a beautiful forced landing without damaging the aircraft, not far from a little shack which stood alone on the highland plain with no other habitation in sight. That is lonely country
up there.
He walked over to the shack, and there he found an old man, living alone, with nothing but a small patch of sweet potatoes, some brown chickens and a black cow.
The old man was kind to him. He gave him food and milk and a place to sleep, and the pilot stayed with him for two days and two nights, until a rescue plane from Nairobi spotted his aircraft on the ground, landed beside it, found out what was wrong, went away and came back with clean petrol
which enabled him to take off and return.
But during his stay, the old man, who was lonely and had seen no one for many months, was glad of
his company and of the opportunity to talk. He talked much and the pilot listened. He talked of the lonely life, of the lions that came in the night, of the rogue elephant that lived over the hill in the west,
of the hotness of the days and of the silence that came with the cold at midnight.
On the second night he talked about himself. He told a long, strange story, and as he told it, it seemed to the pilot that the old man was lifting a great weight off his shoulders in the telling. When he had finished, he said that he had never told that to anyone before, and that he would never tell it to anyone again, but the story was so strange that the pilot wrote it down on paper as soon as he got back to Nairobi. He wrote it not in the old man’s words, but in his own words, painting it as a picture with the old man as a character in the picture, because that was the best way to do it. He had never written a story before, and so naturally there were mistakes. He did not know any of the tricks with words which writers use, which they have to use just as painters have to use tricks with paint, but when he had finished writing, when he put down his pencil and went over to the airmen’s canteen for a pint of beer, he left behind him a rare and powerful tale.
We found it in his suitcase two weeks later when we were going through his belongings after he had been killed in training, and because he seemed to have no relatives, and because he was my friend, I took the manuscript and looked after it for him.
This is what he wrote.
The old man came out of the door into the bright sunshine, and for a moment he stood leaning on his stick, looking around him, blinking at the strong light. He stood with his head on one side, looking up, listening for the noise which he thought he had heard.
He was small and thick and well over seventy years old, although he looked nearer eighty-five, because rheumatism had tied his body into knots. His face was covered with grey hair, and when he moved his mouth, he moved it only on one side of his face. On his head, whether indoors or out, he wore a dirty white topee.
He stood quite still in the bright sunshine, screwing up his eyes, listening for the noise.
Yes, there it was again. The head of the old man flicked around and he looked towards the small wooden hut standing a hundred yards away on the pasture. This time there was no doubt about it: the yelp of a dog, the high-pitched, sharp-piercing yelp of pain which a dog gives when he is in great
danger. Twice more it came and this time the noise was more like a scream than a yelp. The note was higher and more sharp, as though it were wrenched quickly from some small place inside the body.
The old man turned and limped fast across the grass towards the wooden shed where Judson lived, pushed open the door and went in.
The small white dog was lying on the floor and Judson was standing over it, his legs apart, his black hair falling all over his long, red face; standing there tall and skinny, muttering to himself and sweating through his greasy white shirt. His mouth hung open in an odd, lifeless way, as though his
jaw was too heavy for him, and he was dribbling gently down the middle of his chin. He stood there looking at the small white dog which was lying on the floor, and with one hand he was slowly
twisting his left ear; in the other he held a heavy bamboo.
The old man ignored Judson and went down on his knees beside his dog, gently running his thin hands over its body. The dog lay still, looking up at him with watery eyes. Judson did not move. He was watching the dog and the man.
Slowly the old man got up, rising with difficulty, holding the top of his stick with both hands and
pulling himself to his feet. He looked around the room. There was a dirty rumpled mattress lying on
the floor in the far corner; there was a wooden table made of packing cases and on it a Primus stove
and a chipped blue-enamelled saucepan. There were chicken feathers and mud on the floor.
The old man saw what he wanted. It was a heavy iron bar standing against the wall near the
mattress, and he hobbled over towards it, thumping the hollow wooden floorboards with his stick as
he went. The eyes of the dog followed his movements as he limped across the room. The old man
changed his stick to his left hand, took the iron bar in his right, hobbled back to the dog and without
pausing, he lifted the bar and brought it down hard upon the animal’s head. He threw the bar to the
ground and looked up at Judson, who was standing there with his legs apart, dribbling down his chin
and twitching around the corners of his eyes. He went right up to him and began to speak. He spoke
very quietly and slowly, with a terrible anger, and as he spoke he moved only one side of his mouth.
‘You killed him,’ he said. ‘You broke his back.’
Then, as the tide of anger rose and gave him strength, he found more words. He looked up and spat
them into the face of the tall Judson, who twitched around the corners of his eyes and backed away
towards the wall.
‘You lousy, mean, dog-beating bastard. That was my dog. What the hell right have you got beating
my dog, tell me that. Answer me, you slobbering madman. Answer me.’
Judson was slowly rubbing the palm of his left hand up and down on the front of his shirt, and now the whole of his face began to twitch. Without looking up, he said, ‘He wouldn’t stop licking that old place on his paw. I couldn’t stand the noise it made. You know I can’t stand noises like that, licking, licking, licking. I told him to stop. He looked up and wagged his tail; but then he went on licking. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I beat him.’
The old man did not say anything. For a moment it looked as though he were going to hit this creature. He half raised his arm, dropped it again, spat on the floor, turned around and hobbled out of the door into the sunshine. He went across the grass to where a black cow was standing in the shade of a small acacia tree, chewing its cud, and the cow watched him as he came limping across the grass from the shed. But it went on chewing, munching its cud, moving its jaws regularly, mechanically, like a metronome in slow time. The old man came limping up and stood beside it, stroking its neck. Then he leant against its shoulder and scratched its back with the butt end of his stick. He stood there for a long time, leaning against the cow, scratching it with his stick; and now and again he would speak to it, speaking quiet little words, whispering them almost, like a person telling a secret to another.
It was shady under the acacia tree, and the country around him looked lush and pleasant after the long rains, for the grass grows green up in the Highlands of Kenya; and at this time of the year, after
the rains, it is as green and rich as any grass in the world. Away in the north stood Mount Kenya
itself, with snow upon its head, with a thin white plume trailing from its summit where the city winds
made a storm and blew the white powder from the top of the mountain. Down below, upon the slopes
of that same mountain there were lion and elephant, and sometimes during the night one could hear the
roar of the lions as they looked at the moon.
The days passed and Judson went about his work on the farm in a silent, mechanical kind of way, taking in the corn, digging the sweet potatoes and milking the black cow, while the old man stayed
indoors away from the fierce African sun. Only in the late afternoon when the air began to get cool and sharp, did he hobble outside, and always he went over to his black cow and spent an hour with it under the acacia tree. One day when he came out he found Judson standing beside the cow, regarding it strangely, standing in a peculiar attitude with one foot in front of the other and gently twisting his ear with his right hand.
‘What is it now?’ said the old man as he came limping up.
‘Cow won’t stop chewing,’ said Judson.
‘Chewing her cud,’ said the old man. ‘Leave her alone.’
Judson said, ‘It’s the noise, can’t you hear it? Crunchy noise like she was chewing pebbles, only she isn’t; she’s chewing grass and spit. Look at her, she goes on and on crunching, crunching,
crunching, and it’s just grass and spit. Noise goes right into my head.’
‘Get out,’ said the old man. ‘Get out of my sight.’
At dawn the old man sat, as he always did, looking out of his window, watching Judson coming across from his hut to milk the cow. He saw him coming sleepily across the field, talking to himself
as he walked, dragging his feet, making a dark green trail in the wet grass, carrying in his hand the old four-gallon kerosene tin which he used as a milk pail. The sun was coming up over the escarpment
and making long shadows behind the man, the cow and the little acacia tree. The old man saw Judson
put down the tin and he saw him fetch the box from beside the acacia tree and settle himself upon it,
ready for the milking. He saw him suddenly kneeling down, feeling the udder of the cow with his
hands and at the same time the old man noticed from where he sat that the animal had no milk. He saw
Judson get up and come walking fast towards the shack. He came and stood under the window where
the old man was sitting and looked up.
‘Cow’s got no milk,’ he said.
The old man leaned through the open window, placing both his hands on the sill.
‘You lousy bastard, you’ve stole it.’
‘I didn’t take it,’ said Judson. ‘I bin asleep.’
‘You stole it.’ The old man was leaning farther out of the window, speaking quietly with one side
of his mouth. ‘I’ll beat the hell out of you for this,’ he said.
Judson said, ‘Someone stole it in the night, a native, one of the Kikuyu. Or maybe she’s sick.’
It seemed to the old man that he was telling the truth. ‘We’ll see,’ he said, ‘if she milks this
evening; and now for Christ’s sake, get out of my sight.’
By evening the cow had a full udder and the old man watched Judson draw two quarts of good
thick milk from under her.
The next morning she was empty. In the evening she was full. On the third morning she was empty
once more.
On the third night the old man went on watch. As soon as it began to get dark, he stationed himself
at the open window with an old twelve-bore shotgun lying on his lap, waiting for the thief who came
and milked his cow in the night. At first it was pitch dark and he could not see the cow even, but soon
a three-quarter moon came over the hills and it became light, almost as though it was day time. But it
was bitter cold because the Highlands are seven thousand feet up, and the old man shivered at his
post and pulled his brown blanket closer around his shoulders. He could see the cow well now, just
as well as in daylight, and the little acacia tree threw a deep shadow across the grass, for the moon was behind it.
All through the night the old man sat there watching the cow, and save when he got up once and
hobbled back into the room to fetch another blanket, his eyes never left her. The cow stood placidly
under the small tree, chewing her cud and gazing at the moon.
An hour before dawn her udder was full. The old man could see it; he had been watching it the
whole time, and although he had not seen the movement of its swelling any more than one can see the
movement of the hour hand of a watch, yet all the time he had been conscious of the filling as the milk
came down. It was an hour before dawn. The moon was low, but the light had not gone. He could see
the cow and the little tree and the greenness of the grass around the cow. Suddenly he jerked his head.
He heard something. Surely that was a noise he heard. Yes, there it was again, a rustling in the grass
right underneath the window where he was sitting. Quickly he pulled himself up and looked over the
sill on to the ground.
Then he saw it. A large black snake, a Mamba, eight feet long and as thick as a man’s arm, was gliding through the wet grass, heading straight for the cow and going fast. Its small pear-shaped head was raised slightly off the ground and the movement of its body against the wetness made a clear
hissing sound like gas escaping from a jet. He raised his gun to shoot. Almost at once he lowered it again, why he did not know, and he sat there not moving, watching the Mamba as it approached the cow, listening to the noise it made as it went, watching it come up close to the cow and waiting for it to strike.
But it did not strike. It lifted its head and for a moment let it sway gently back and forth; then it raised the front part of its black body into the air under the udder of the cow, gently took one of the
thick teats into its mouth and began to drink.
The cow did not move. There was no noise anywhere, and the body of the Mamba curved
gracefully up from the ground and hung under the udder of the cow. Black snake and black cow were
clearly visible out there in the moonlight.
For half an hour the old man watched the Mamba taking the milk of the cow. He saw the gentle
pulsing of its black body as it drew the liquid out of the udder and he saw it, after a time, change from
one teat to another, until at last there was no longer any milk left. Then the Mamba gently lowered
itself to the ground and slid back through the grass in the direction whence it came. Once more it
made a clear hissing noise as it went, and once more it passed underneath the window where the old man sat, leaving a thin dark trail in the wet grass where it had gone. Then it disappeared behind the
shack.
Slowly the moon went down behind the ridge of Mount Kenya. Almost at the same time the sun rose up out of the escarpment in the east and Judson came out of his hut with the four-gallon kerosene
tin in his hand, walking sleepily towards the cow, dragging his feet in the heavy dew as he went. The old man watched him coming and waited. Judson bent down and felt the udder with his hand and as he
did so, the old man shouted at him. Judson jumped at the sound of the old man’s voice.
‘It’s gone again,’ said the old man.
Judson said, ‘Yes, cow’s empty.’
‘I think,’ said the old man slowly, ‘I think that it was a Kikuyu boy. I was dozing a bit and only woke up as he was making off. I couldn’t shoot because the cow was in the way. He made off behind the cow. I’ll wait for him tonight. I’ll get him tonight,’ he added.
Judson did not answer. He picked up his four-gallon tin and walked back to his hut.
That night the old man sat up again by the window watching the cow. For him there was this time a
certain pleasure in the anticipation of what he was going to see. He knew that he would see the
Mamba again, but he wanted to make quite certain. And so, when the great black snake slid across the
grass towards the cow an hour before sunrise, the old man leaned over the window sill and followed
the movements of the Mamba as it approached the cow. He saw it wait for a moment under the belly
of the animal, letting its head sway slowly backwards and forwards half a dozen times before finally
raising its body from the ground to take the teat of the cow into its mouth. He saw it drink the milk for
half an hour, until there was none left, and he saw it lower its body and slide smoothly back behind the shack whence it came. And while he watched these things, the old man began laughing quietly with one side of his mouth.
Then the sun rose up from behind the hills, and Judson came out of his hut with the four-gallon tin
in his hand, but this time he went straight to the window of the shack where the old man was sitting wrapped up in his blankets.
‘What happened?’ said Judson.
The old man looked down at him from his window. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing happened. I dozed
off again and the bastard came and took it while I was asleep. Listen, Judson,’ he added, ‘we got to
catch this boy, otherwise you’ll be going short of milk, not that that would do you any harm. But we
got to catch him. I can’t shoot because he’s too clever; the cow’s always in the way. You’ll have to
get him.’
‘Me get him? How?’
The old man spoke very slowly. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I think you must hide beside the cow, right
beside the cow. That is the only way you can catch him.’
Judson was rumpling his hair with his left hand.
‘Today,’ continued the old man, ‘you will dig a shallow trench right beside the cow. If you lie in it
and if I cover you over with hay and grass, the thief won’t notice you until he’s right alongside.’
‘He may have a knife,’ Judson said.
‘No, he won’t have a knife. You take your stick. That’s all you’ll need.’
Judson said, ‘Yes, I’ll take my stick. When he comes, I’ll jump up and beat him with my stick.’
Then suddenly he seemed to remember something. ‘What about her chewing?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t
stand her chewing all night, crunching and crunching, crunching spit and grass like it was pebbles.
Couldn’t stand that all night,’ and he began twisting again at his left ear with his hand.
‘You’ll do as you’re bloody well told,’ said the old man.
That day Judson dug his trench beside the cow which was to be tethered to the small acacia tree so
that she could not wander about the field. Then, as evening came and as he was preparing to lie down
in the trench for the night, the old man came to the door of his shack and said, ‘No point in doing
anything until early morning. They won’t come till the cow’s full. Come in here and wait; it’s warmer
than your filthy little hut.’
Judson had never been invited into the old man’s shack before. He followed him in, happy that he
would not have to lie all night in the trench. There was a candle burning in the room. It was stuck into
the neck of a beer bottle and the bottle was on the table.
‘Make some tea,’ said the old man, pointing to the Primus stove standing on the floor. Judson lit the
stove and made tea. The two of them sat down on a couple of wooden boxes and began to drink. The
old man drank his hot and made loud sucking noises as he drank. Judson kept blowing on his, sipping
it cautiously and watching the old man over the top of his cup. The old man went on sucking away at
his tea until suddenly Judson said, ‘Stop.’ He said it quietly, plaintively almost, and as he said it he
began to twitch around the corners of his eyes and around his mouth.
‘What?’ said the old man.
Judson said, ‘That noise, that sucking noise you’re making.’
The old man put down his cup and regarded the other quietly for a few moments, then he said,
‘How many dogs you killed in your time, Judson?’
There was no answer.
‘I said how many? How many dogs?’
Judson began picking the tea leaves out of his cup and sticking them on to the back of his left hand.
The old man was leaning forward on his box.
‘How many dogs, Judson?’
Judson began to hurry with his tea leaves. He jabbed his fingers into his empty cup, picked out a
tea leaf, pressed it quickly on to the back of his hand and quickly went back for another. When there
were not many left and he did not find one immediately, he bent over and peered closely into the cup,
trying to find the ones that remained. The back of the hand which held the cup was covered with wet
black tea leaves.
‘Judson!’ the old man shouted, and one side of his mouth opened and shut like a pair of tongs. The
candle flame flickered and became still again.
Then quietly and very slowly, coaxingly, as someone to a child, ‘In all your life, how many dogs has it been?’
Judson said, ‘Why should I tell you?’ He did not look up. He was picking the tea leaves off the back of his hand one by one and returning them to the cup.
‘I want to know, Judson.’ The old man was speaking very gently. ‘I’m getting keen about this too.
Let’s talk about it and make some plans for more fun.’
Judson looked up. A ball of saliva rolled down his chin, hung for a moment in the air, snapped and
fell to the floor.
‘I only kill ’em because of a noise.’
‘How often’ve you done it? I’d love to know how often.’
‘Lots of times long ago.’
‘How? Tell me how you used to do it. What did you like best?’
No answer.
‘Tell me, Judson. I’d love to know.’
‘I don’t see why I should. It’s a secret.’
‘I won’t tell. I swear I won’t tell.’
‘Well, if you’ll promise.’ Judson shifted his seat closer and spoke in a whisper. ‘Once I waited till
one was sleeping, then I got a big stone and dropped it on his head.’
The old man got up and poured himself a cup of tea. ‘You didn’t kill mine like that.’
‘I didn’t have time. The noise was so bad, the licking, and I just had to do it quick.’
‘You didn’t even kill him.’
‘I stopped the noise.’
The old man went over to the door and looked out. It was dark. The moon had not yet risen, but the
night was clear and cold with many stars. In the east there was a little paleness in the sky, and as he
watched, the paleness grew and it changed from a paleness into a brightness, spreading over the sky
so that the light was reflected and held by the small drops of dew upon the grass along the highlands;
and slowly, the moon rose up over the hills. The old man turned and said, ‘Better get ready. Never
know; they might come early tonight.’
Judson got up and the two of them went outside. Judson lay down in the shallow trench beside the
cow and the old man covered him over with grass, so that only his head peeped out above the ground.
‘I shall be watching, too,’ he said, ‘from the window. If I give a shout, jump up and catch him.’
He hobbled back to the shack, went upstairs, wrapped himself in blankets and took up his position
by the window. It was early still. The moon was nearly full and it was climbing. It shone upon the
snow on the summit of Mount Kenya.
After an hour the old man shouted out of the window:
‘Are you still awake, Judson?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I’m awake.’
‘Don’t go to sleep,’ said the old man. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go to sleep.’
‘Cow’s crunching all the time,’ said Judson.
‘Good, and I’ll shoot you if you get up now,’ said the old man.
‘You’ll shoot me?’
‘I said I’ll shoot you if you get up now.’
A gentle sobbing noise came up from where Judson lay, a strange gasping sound as though a child
was trying not to cry, and in the middle of it, Judson’s voice, ‘I’ve got to move; please let me move.
This crunching.’
‘If you get up,’ said the old man, ‘I’ll shoot you in the belly.’
For another hour or so the sobbing continued, then quite suddenly it stopped.
Just before four o’clock it began to get very cold and the old man huddled deeper into his blankets
and shouted, ‘Are you cold out there, Judson? Are you cold?’
‘Yes,’ came the answer. ‘So cold. But I don’t mind because cow’s not crunching any more. She’s
asleep.’
The old man said, ‘What are you going to do with the thief when you catch him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will you kill him?’
A pause.
‘I don’t know. I’ll just go for him.’
‘I’ll watch,’ said the old man. ‘It ought to be fun.’ He was leaning out of the window with his arms
resting on the sill.
Then he heard the hiss under the window sill, and looked over and saw the black Mamba, sliding
through the grass towards the cow, going fast and holding its head just a little above the ground as it
went.
When the Mamba was five yards away, the old man shouted. He cupped his hands to his mouth and
shouted, ‘Here he comes, Judson; here he comes. Go and get him.’
Judson lifted his head quickly and looked up. As he did so he saw the Mamba and the Mamba saw
him. There was a second, or perhaps two, when the snake stopped, drew back and raised the front
part ofits body in the air. Then the stroke. Just a flash of black and a slight thump as it took him in the
chest. Judson screamed, a long, high-pitched scream which did not rise nor fall, but held its note until
gradually it faded into nothingness and there was silence. Now he was standing up, ripping open his
shirt, feeling for the place in his chest, whimpering quietly, moaning and breathing hard with his
mouth wide open. And all the while the old man sat quietly at the open window, leaning forward and
never taking his eyes away from the one below.
Everything comes very quick when one is bitten by a black Mamba, and almost at once the poison
began to work. It threw him to the ground, where he lay humping his back and rolling around on the
grass. He no longer made any noise. It was all very quiet, as though a man of great strength was
wrestling with a giant whom one could not see, and it was as though the giant was twisting him and
not letting him get up, stretching his arms through the fork of his legs and pushing his knees up under
his chin.
Then he began pulling up the grass with his hands and soon after that he lay on his back kicking
gently with his legs. But he didn’t last very long. He gave a quick wriggle, humped his back again,
turning over as he did it, then he lay on the ground quite still, lying on his stomach with his right knee
drawn up underneath his chest and his hands stretched out above his head.
Still the old man sat by the window, and even after it was all over, he stayed where he was and did
not stir. There was a movement in the shadow under the acacia tree and the Mamba came forward
slowly towards the cow. It came forward a little, stopped, raised its head, waited, lowered its head,
and slid forward again right under the belly of the animal. It raised itself into the air and took one of
the brown teats in its mouth and began to drink. The old man sat watching the Mamba taking the milk
of the cow, and once again he saw the gentle pulsing of its body as it drew the liquid out of the udder.
While the snake was still drinking, the old man got up and moved away from the window.
‘You can have his share,’ he said quietly. ‘We don’t mind you having his share,’ and as he spoke
he glanced back and saw again the black body of the Mamba curving upward from the ground, joining
with the belly of the cow.
‘Yes,’ he said again, ‘we don’t mind your having his share.’