A Feast Unknown

shell had lifted it up and cast it through the opening in the box before the opening was covered up again.

It seemed like a gift to me and cheered me up, despite my headache and earache.

I was also thirsty. I chewed some of the mud to get moisture, and I collected a thimbleful of food from the cans. Then I pushed the mud into the corner opposite the opening, smoothed out my tracks, and pushed the mud over me. Hours passed. My hearing sharpened. Drums beat. Voices shouted and laughed.

I smelled liquor, faintly. I heard cattle mooing and bellowing and then smelled blood. After a while, smoke drifted to me and the odor of cooking flesh.

Once, I heard footsteps and the rattle of wood being pushed aside. Several men spoke in the tongue of the Agikuyu. I could imagine them looking down into the box. One said something about going down to see what it was and what was in it. Another said something about tossing a grenade into it just for fun. I did not move.

They talked among themselves in a much lower voice and agreed to come back tonight when no one would notice them and climb down. Perhaps the Englishman had hidden money down there, or the gold he was rumored to have in great quantities.

It became darker. The drums and shouts and stamping feet of dancing men became louder. The moon paled the night and made a skeleton of the wood laid over the opening. I arose, stretched and bent until my muscles were loose again, and then stepped on a ledge and opened a little door.

This was hidden by more debris, but I could see well enough through it. Capering figures in front of great bonfires were lifting bottles from my liquor stores or shooting at the empties when they tossed them into the air. Those who still wore their clothes were in the uniform of the army of Kenya. There was also a number of my own tribesmen, all young fellows.

At the nearest fire, 60 feet away, three men were holding down my pet bitch, a German shepherd named Esta. A young Bandili, Zabu, naked except for an ostrich feather headdress—which he had no right to wear according to tribal law—was holding the bitch by the flanks. His hips moved back and forth rapidly while the soldiers and Bandili laughed and clapped their hands in rhythm with Zabu’s strokes. The dog was howling in agony and struggling frantically.

Zabu was a leader of the youth of the villages in this area. He hated all whites, and most of all he hated me. I don’t bother to explain my position or views very often, but I had done so with the young racists of my tribe. I tried to explain that the color of my skin was not relevant. I was not as other men, black or white. My rearing by The Folk had resulted in a lack of conditioned reflexes concerning skin color among men.

Nor had I exploited the blacks, as other whites had. Actually, the Bandili had no cause to complain about any whites. I had kept whites from possessing, or even living in, this relatively broad territory. I had also kept the Agikuyu from attempting to run the Bandili out. And I had spent much money to establish local schools, bring in qualified teachers, and send young Bandili, male or female, to colleges as distant as

England and America.

All of this made no difference to Zabu and his fellows. I was a white. I must go.

I don’t like to be forced into doing anything. On the other hand, it would have been a great relief to get away from my duties and obligations as the owner of the Grandrith plantation and as chief of the

Bandili. Especially, it would be a relief to get away from the overcrowdedness, noisiness, bickering, and hatefulness of the humans here.

Once, there were only a few small tribes here and much room to roam and great herds. Now ...

I was stubborn, and I stayed.

I had recently sent my wife off to England to shop, visit friends in London, and inspect the ancestral estate in the Lake District. Thus, I did not have to worry about her. I had only myself to take care of, and that is the way I like it.

Zabu was not content with my death. He had to revenge himself on the poor dog because she was mine. There was nothing I could do for the moment to help her. I did, however, crawl out to hide behind a pile of bricks and stones. I did not want to be caught in the box if the three who pla

After a while, an officer pushed the onlookers aside and violently yanked Zabu off the dog. Zabu arose and staggered back, turning, and I saw, by the light of the fire, that his belly and genitals were covered with blood. The slit of the animal had not been large enough for him, so he had used a knife.

The officer shouted at Zabu in his tribal speech and then in Swahili and drew his pistol. I thought he was going to shoot Zabu, but he turned and held the muzzle a foot from the bitch’s head and fired. She jerked once.

Zabu had held up his hands in a pleading gesture, evidently thinking that the officer was going to kill him. The officer was a Mugikuyu and so hated the Bandili.

Seeing that he was spared, Zabu laughed and took a bottle from a man and swaggered off. The officer spat at Zabu’s back. I didn’t know whether he interfered with Zabu because of humane feelings or because he wanted to bug a Bandili.

I waited. I was hungry and thirsty, but I would be stupid to try to stroll out through that crowd in the light of the bonfires. If I could get past the fires, I might pass for one of them. I was taller than most, but a few were the equal of my six foot three, and at a distance, in the dark, I was muddied enough to look black-ski

I fixed my eyes on Zabu and hated him. After a while, as if he were hypnotized by me, he lurched very near. He was mumbling to himself, his head swinging low. I rose up behind him and chopped him on the side of the neck with the edge of my palm and dragged him back behind the pile. Nobody had noticed us. Everybody was looking at a group of young Bandili dancing a spear dance around the dead dog.

3

Zabu awoke on his back with my hand over his mouth and my knife at his throat. His eyes widened like water boiling over. He shook. With a rip of gas, he shot out a long turd. His breath stank of my whiskey and of terror. The blood on his belly and genitals stank of the terror and agony of the bitch, and of the sperm he had loosed.

“Tell me how this happened, Zabu,” I said. “Otherwise, I kill you right now.”

He was willing to buy a few minutes of life, although his grandfather and father would have died rather than tell an enemy anything. His lips spewed Bandili. His eyes rotated as if he were looking for some device to appear from the air and give him a handhold whereby he could be whisked away from my knife.

Perhaps he thought I had been killed and my ghost had come back.

He had gone through school and college with my assistance. He had denied believing in ghosts. He was an educated man, he had said. But he believed. The hindbrain is almost always stronger than the forebrain, though in a subtle fashion.

Zabu said that the Kenyan army had moved in with the assistance of some of the young Bandili. At the last moment, the older Bandili in the nearby village had found out about the attack. They were told to keep quiet or die. Three of the old men had tried to warn me.

One was Paboli, the Spear-Launcher, Zabu’s grandfather. All three did die.

A strange thing happened then. Zabu, speaking of his grandfather’s death, wept.

The army units had moved in on three fronts, leaving the western open because I was returning from a hunting trip in that direction. After I got home, the units quietly closed the gap.

During the night, with utmost care, a ca