Hemingways widow, p.28
Hemingway's Widow, page 28
Ernest shot a zebra for camp food, and close to the body, they found a newborn Grant’s gazelle abandoned by its mother. Concerned the baby would die, they took him back to camp, and Ty made a nipple of cotton-batten and gauze and coaxed him to drink tinned milk. They called him “Baa,” for that was the sound he made in the night. He soon became the center of attention, and Mary worried about him. One morning Kibo rushed up to Baa, baring his teeth and growling, but the little gazelle butted the puppy, who soon learned to keep a respectful distance. They bought a baby’s bottle and nipple from a small Indian store in the local village of Laitokitok, and Baa came three times a day for his tinned milk mixed with water. Baa began sleeping in their tent, and he slept in a box that Mary carried on the seat of the hunting car when they left the camp. She worried what would become of the infant gazelle because he smelled of humans, and his herd would not accept him. If they released him, a jackal, hyena, or leopard would soon eat him.
* * *
The Hemingways filled their days with a pleasant routine: hot tea in the morning while they dressed, driving in the hunting car looking for beasts, and returning to the mess tent for breakfast or lunch. After taking a siesta in camp, they explored again in the late afternoon and returned to the campfire at dusk for cocktails and dinner. Mary was learning to identify trees, birds, and insects and pick out the best animal in a herd. She was learning Swahili and something of the geography and history of Kenya. They seemed blissfully unaware of the colonial government’s determined efforts to eradicate the Mau Mau just over the mountains.
Ernest was more like the man she had fallen in love with, and Mary found him an endearing companion. He committed himself to the hunt, became respectful of the safari team, learned who was more and who less reliable, and dealt with the inevitable crises. Gone was the quick temper which spilled over into nasty remarks and even physical abuse. He continued to drink significant quantities of gin, but the careful habits of Percival and Zaphiro, who never let themselves drink so much they could not take charge in an emergency, helped to subdue his drinking. It was amazing what a difference the positive reception of Old Man had made to Ernest’s sense of well-being and how his relationship with Mary prospered. They retreated to their tent and played sexual games on the narrow cot under the mosquito netting. Mary recalled, “we made up games and secret names and joyous jokes, as only lucky people who are friends do.”34 She hoped the warmth and affection would continue, and the five months in Kenya were some of the happiest of their relationship. Thinking back to those days, Mary wrote, “we wanted to hear the Lions speaking in the evenings and the fun of trying to fit ourselves into a single narrow camp cot. Some parts of us stuck out, but we were pleased with this maneuver.”35
Despite almost constant practice, Mary continued to be an unreliable shooter—sometimes she could drop an animal with a single shot, but often her bullets kicked up dust around her target. One day, Mary, Ernest, and Zaphiro went out in the hunting car to find meat for the camp. They found a herd of eland, and Zaphiro pointed out the one to shoot only seventy yards away. Mary aimed, shot, and missed. She tried again and missed, “perhaps singeing the hair of his knees.” They drove on, found a second herd, got out of the car, and walked closer. Mary missed again. “So, it goes,” she confided to her journal. “It is lonely being the only incompetent here.” She felt the “grey misery of missing beasts” and wondered why she was having so much trouble.36 After lunch, they rested, and Mary fell into a deep sleep. She dreamed of Irwin Shaw and his wife, Marian, whom she had never met, and their baby boy.37
The next day, they were cruising in the Jeep, when they saw a class of half a dozen Thomson’s gazelles (Tommy bucks), and Ernest told Mary to shoot one with his Springfield. Mary got a buck in her sights and noticed there was no shaking in her forearm this time. She shot and dropped him, but it was a bad shot, not in the shoulder. They walked up to the wounded animal, and Mary finished him off, shooting him just below his ear. As Mary recalled, “I felt ashamed and sorry but pleased, too, that I finally shot something instead of forever missing. Felt more a working part of the safari than a useless baggage.”38 That afternoon, during her nap, she dreamed she met a warthog dressed in a black morning coat, and black porkpie hat, on the steps of a Gothic church. He was making elaborate German philosophical speeches in a guttural tone. People told Mary to shoot him just below his ear, and she kept shooting, though with no effect, as he lifted his paws to his ear and brushed away the shots like they were flies. Mary woke up before he finished his speech about “the ambiance of immortality.”39 Her anthropomorphic dreams continued, increasing the pressure on her to avoid hitting the animals, who came to her with human personalities and speeches at night.
Two days later, Mary, Zaphiro, and Ernest came upon a herd of zebras, and Zaphiro told Mary to shoot one for dinner. She aimed with the Springfield and missed him. They followed the zebras to a flat, pleasant country until they were well within range. Mary missed, again and again, even when they were so close she could’ve hit them with a well-aimed stone. She confided to her journal, “I’ve tried to think and assess and analyze, and I do not understand at all why I shoot so badly. My eyes see, my hands do not shake. I see him clearly in the sites. And I miss. It is on the verge of being comic.”40
* * *
Mary knew Baa could not continue living with them, although he was becoming affectionate and nibbled her arms and legs and her chin after drinking his bottles of sweetened milk. He enjoyed being held and stroked but hated having his face washed. He feared the spear-carrying Masai, but not the domestic camp boys. One afternoon they returned from a hunt and found Baa’s leash broken and no sign of the little gazelle. Mary walked for hours along paths close to the camp calling his name but to no avail. “Night fell and no Baa and, my spirits entombed, I decided we’d seen the last of him.” Mary, Ernest, and Percival were subdued, sitting around the fire having a drink before dinner, when Baa appeared out of the grasses, walked daintily toward Mary, and nibbled on her chin. There was “a thundershower of affection around.”41 Mary knew they had to find a home for Baa, and Mrs. Laurie Aitkin from a nearby town said she would be pleased to take care of him. Mary worried he would not do well, but she had no better options, and she confided to her journal, “I feel terrible, awful, about having left him there—my only child.”42 Perhaps Mary’s emotional attachment to the helpless Baa was all the stronger because she could not give birth to her own child.
* * *
A delegation of Masai came to complain that a large lion was killing their cattle. Percival decided to help, and they jumped into the hunting car. Mary checked her ammunition, for she knew since Ernest had already shot his lion, they would give her the honor of the first shot. After they drove eastward for several miles, Percival stopped the car and said they would track the lion on foot. The sun was high in the cloudless sky, and Mary felt sweat running down her face and dripping down her back. The rim of her felt hat became soaked with sweat as she tried to keep up with the fast-moving trackers. After about an hour, they halted at a thicket of thorn trees. Percival touched her arm and pointed. It took a full thirty seconds for Mary to spot the lion, twenty yards away, camouflaged in the trees. She was “breathless and sweating, burning with excitement, and hope, and expectation.” She aimed at his shoulder because she wanted to spare his face. “Safety off, hold steady; squeeze,” she chanted inside her head.43 Holding her breath, she squeezed the trigger, and her round spit up dirt about a yard in front of the lion, which stood up, turned around, and retreated into the forest. This was a serious mistake, and no one laughed. The team had worked hard to give Mary a chance, and their disappointment showed. In the first few minutes, she was not ashamed to have missed but exhilarated to have seen the large lion.
Everyone treated her with kindness and spoke words of quiet encouragement, but despite their gentle manners, Mary felt shame. She knew she had let down the team, and there was only one way to regain their respect. She woke up that night dreaming of the lion, who spoke to her in an Oxford accent. Mary was damp with sweat and frightened she would miss again.
Mary, Ernest, and Mayito were climbing a hill when Mayito, who was just ahead of Mary, shot to the right. Ernest fired in the same direction, and Mary’s gun boy grinned, for twenty paces away was a dead leopard. This delighted Ty Theisen because he could finally photograph Ernest with a dead dangerous beast. Theisen arranged a scene, with a nonchalant Ernest holding his rifle and smiling into the distance, while the dead leopard crouched next to Ernest, looking like he was about to pounce. Ty took several photographs despite Mary’s protest that it may not have been Ernest’s bullet that brought down the leopard. She thought Mayito deserved credit for the kill and was appalled Ernest posed for the photographs as if he had shot the leopard himself. Mary told him his attitude was morally repugnant, and they bickered about the issue for a month, one of the few arguments they had in Kenya. Ernest maintained he would shoot a leopard himself, and that would solve the problem.
Mary’s attitude toward the killing was ambivalent. She wanted to enjoy the respect of the men in the hunting party, and to prove herself, she needed to shoot well. Pauline had killed a lion on her safari with Ernest twenty years earlier, and Mary felt she must measure up to Pauline’s achievement. She did her best to shoot well and kill game to provide meat for the camp, and she celebrated with the others when they killed magnificent beasts. However, she also felt bad about killing the animals.
In early October, she and Ernest were sightseeing when Ernest’s gun-bearer pointed out a handsome male greater kudu with two pretty does on a hill half a mile away. Ernest told Mary to take the shot, and she slammed a cartridge into the chamber of her Mannlicher. They started fast through the yellow grass and scrambled over red lava rock, keeping cover between them and the animals on the hill ahead, finally coming upon an anthill which was just the right size for Mary to use as a support for her shot. She aimed, held her breath, and fired. The kudus disappeared. Mary and Ernest scrambled up the hill to the place where the magnificent creatures had stood, and twenty yards into the bush, they found the handsome young male lying dead from a shot that had punctured his jugular vein. Mary wrote, “He was very pretty and very neat when I first saw him, his eyes still bright, a tiny trickle of blood coming from the small hole and from his mouth. Too young and too handsome and too full of life with his pretty does to die by a lucky shot from a stranger.”44 Ernest paced the shot and figured Mary had made the kill from 240 yards. All the gun boys, Mayito, and Ty complimented her, and the entire safari crew produced a jamboree, singing, beating on tin pans, and shaking her hand when she returned to camp. Mary confessed, “I felt bad, privately. I had shot badly and missed animals time after time, I decided, because privately I couldn’t bear to kill them.”45
* * *
Mary knew it was difficult to raise Grant’s gazelles in captivity because they develop digestive problems. About a month after she left Baa with Mrs. Atkin, she learned he had died. Mary berated herself, “I should never have left him there, seeing how little there was for him to nibble, seeing the cement enclosure where she proposed to keep him. I was weak to leave him there.” She should have made “the bold, quick, rude decision to keep him with me, for we did understand each other, and I think his trust in me would’ve prevented the digestive upset.” She realized, “no amount of sorrow and shame can suffice to excuse my stupidity and weakness about him. Lord, how I wish I could get him back to us.”46 Mary felt almost inconsolable grief and guilt at the fate of the only fur baby in Africa she had adopted. The other animals did not enjoy her protection, though she sought to justify killing them because they were guilty of crimes against the villagers, or they were necessary for food, or because they were injured. The fact they appeared to her in dreams wearing porkpie hats and speaking about philosophy in Oxford accents showed the depth of her inner conflict.
* * *
Ernest’s appointment as an honorary game warden came through on November 3, 1953, and he was given “full authority to act” under the Kenyan Wild Animals Protection Ordinance of 1951.47 He was to protect people from marauding animals (which involved killing dangerous beasts), prevent poaching, and monitor the movement of Mau Mau in the neighborhood. Ernest had become an agent of the colonial administration, and he took his duties seriously. He told Harvey Breit, “Got made an Honorary Game Warden and due to the emergency [Mau Mau rebellion] been acting game ranger here. It is a first-class life. Problems all day and night.”48 According to a “Top Secret directive,” issued on December 23, 1953, under the code name “Operation Long Stop,” Kenyan police “swept and screened the Laitokitok area and detained thirty-seven Mau Mau suspects.” In order to “nip in the bud any further spread of subversive activity,” a series of arrests were planned following simultaneous raids. “Game Wardens were part of the plan, and Laitokitok was considered a likely point of entry.”49 Two days later, Mary reported in her journal, “the police have been raiding Kikuyu on the other side of the mountain. We met them on the road to town this morning, the officer stopping us to interrogate us briskly but cheerfully.”50
In early January, Mary reported, “Fifteen Mau Mau have escaped from Machakos jail and may be around here tonight. It would be too bad, especially this year, to be carved up in bed by a race fanatic, but Keiti doesn’t think they’ll come this way.”51 Mary was concerned about the stories of Mau Mau actions against Europeans, and Ernest took the warning seriously. Ernest posted one of his trusted safari crew members, “Arap Menah in one of the Kamba shambas and [Ernest] went to see if the Mau Mau had showed.” Ernest thought, “the escaped boys had first got caught from being drunk, and they’d head for drink.” They would probably go to Laitokitok, “since all Wakamba know that there are these shambas here—and have been here since thirty years ago.” Ernest went to Laitokitok, “to check the bars but bought something in each place so as not to look like a policeman.” Ernest was armed, and luckily for him and the Mau Mau escapees, he did not find them.52 By this time, Ernest had adopted his role as an officer of the colonial administration. He sided with the Kamba “who were completely loyal to the British.” Patrick Hemingway told me his father failed to express any empathy for the Kikuyu.53
* * *
The Masai complained about a large black-maned lion killing their cattle, and Percival decided Mary should shoot him. They set bait close to the lion’s lair, chaining dead zebras to a tree so the lionesses could not drag the game back home. They hoped this would draw the male himself for a free meal. Late on the afternoon of December 5, the lion came for dinner. As they pulled up in the hunting car near the bait, the lion stood thirty yards in front of them. Ernest jumped out and ran to the left. Mary found his hip in her sights, held her breath, and squeezed the trigger. Almost at the same time, Ernest and Zaphiro both shot. They told Mary she had fired first.54
They found the lion dead 350 yards away. The safari truck drove up, full of people singing, yelling, and beating on tin pans. There were handshakes and back-slaps all around, and the boys sang a song of triumph about the small Memsa’ab killing the huge, frightening creature. Mary loved the attention, but she was embarrassed because she wasn’t sure her shot had hit the lion. Percival said he had not seen such a celebration in twenty years. After dinner, the safari boys danced around the fire and celebrated the Memsa’ab slaying the Simba.55
The next day when they skinned the lion, they found Mary’s bullet had broken his leg and Zaphiro’s heavier round had severed his spine. He was nine feet long and weighed 384 pounds. Mary and Ernest ate the lion’s tenderloin, marinated in sherry and grilled. The meat was tender and delicious. In the days following the long campaign and thrill of the hunt, Mary felt subdued, empty, and purposeless. A few nights later, she woke up weeping in the night, finally understanding she could not lay any claim to the lion. She felt foolish, for she realized Zaphiro had shot him and then tricked her into thinking her round hit him first. Mary felt heartbroken and frustrated she couldn’t shoot well enough, and after such “a long, sincere, serious, purposeful pursuit, it should have finished in such a farce.”56 She said so at lunch, and Zaphiro somewhat harshly replied they had handed her a lion on a platter. Mary confessed to her journal Zaphiro deserved credit for the lion, but she left this out of her published memoir. In How It Was, Mary claimed the lion as her kill, just as Ernest took credit for Mayito’s leopard in the Look article about the safari.
* * *
Mary and Ernest met a young pilot, Roy Marsh, who flew charter flights out of Nairobi in small aircraft. He introduced them to a new adventure, brief flights from the base camp to observe herds of wild animals only minutes away. On December 12, he took them on a flight over the Kimana swamp and to the Chyulu hills. They saw sixteen different rhinos, six herds of eland, three vast herds of oryx and zebra, and a big herd of buffalo. They buzzed Masai villages and Laitokitok and came home. Mary found it the most exciting hour they had spent in Africa apart from her lion hunt.57
Mary accompanied Marsh to Nairobi so she could do some Christmas shopping. Five days later, she returned to the camp and found Ernest had shaved his head “to the scalp, like a Masai girl’s, shiny and showing all the scars.”58 He had dyed some of his clothes, including his blue and white shirt, two suede jackets, and a khaki shirt into various shades of Masai rusty pink ocher.59 While Mary had busied herself making Christmas preparations in Nairobi, Ernest had occupied himself hunting and partying with the safari staff and the nearby Kamba. He had shot a leopard after a dangerous hunt and organized a celebration back at the camp. He gave a beer to each of the safari boys, a practice frowned upon by most professional hunters because they believed the Africans could not hold their liquor. After a campfire, he went to bed for a nap, but a wild party woke him. Someone had invited the local Kamba girls to join the bash. Ernest took the girls to Laitokitok and bought them dresses for Christmas, and he asked them back to the camp for dinner, but no dinner was served. Instead, he invited his favorite, Debba, and two of her friends into the Hemingway’s tent. As Mary reported in her journal, “the celebration there was so energetic that they broke my bed.”60
