Mrs. Pollifax on Safari (5 page)

“Emotions have nothing to do with intellect,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax.

“You understand that,” he said, nodding. “Lisa didn’t.”

“What’s happened to her since then?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“You’ll see her,” he reminded her. “Cool, brisk, businesslike, that’s Lisa. Liked her better when she tumbled for every cause that came along. Warm-hearted, ardent child.”

“Then of course she still is,” put in Mrs. Pollifax.

“Somewhere, yes, but in the last two years she’s grown a shell three feet thick. Thought the trip might do her good. Not healthy for either of us, living together. Exhausting.”

Mrs. Pollifax put down her fork and smiled at him. “Is there anything that doesn’t exhaust you?”

He directed a sleepy glance at her and smiled. “As a matter of fact a few things … good food, good talk, collecting rare books … still play a decent game of tennis and I’ve been known to rouse myself at dawn for bird-watching.”

“That’s hard to imagine. Are you,” she asked sternly, “ecology-minded?”

“Passionately,” he said with a straight face.

Mrs. Pollifax laughed and decided at that moment that if she had been deprived of Farrell’s company during her few hours in Lusaka, then Cyrus Reed made a rather fair replacement. She also found herself hoping that Mr. Reed’s lethargy was genuine, his daughter bona fide, and that he had not acquired a nasty habit of assassinating people in his spare time.

“Dessert?” suggested Mr. Reed, offering her the menu.

She glanced at her watch and shook her head. “I can only thank you for a delicious lunch,” she told him, picking up her umbrella, “and see you next at Chunga.”

They said goodbye and she removed herself to the lobby, where she chose a chair in sight of the front door. There she sat, gazing with interest at a party of dark men in turbans. A porter walked past her ringing a bicycle bell and carrying a chalkboard on which were scrawled the words “Mr. Kaacha wanted at desk,” and then suddenly Homer Kulumbala appeared before her, smiling.

“Good afternoon, you are ready for Chunga?” he asked.

“Ready and waiting,” she told him.

“Your luggage?”

She pointed to her suitcase next the door and he picked
it up and led her out to the hotel drive. The same VW bus was parked among the bougainvillea, and again she chose the front seat next to the driver. Homer went off to round up other members of the safari and presently returned escorting a narrow man in a pair of slacks and a bush jacket. “Oh dear, we’re twins,” thought Mrs. Pollifax ruefully, glancing from his bush jacket and slacks to her own, and wondered if everyone on safari would wear identical khaki clothes. “Hello,” she said as he reached the bus.

He was a prim-looking little man, perhaps forty-five or fifty, his one notable feature a reddish-brown goatee. He seemed an odd candidate for a safari: he looked fastidious and a trifle pinched about the nostrils, as if the world had a slightly rancid odor to him. At sight of Mrs. Pollifax he looked even more disapproving, or perhaps he resented her occupying the front seat. He stepped carefully into the rear and in faintly accented English called to Homer to be careful with his two suitcases. Only then—and after wiping the seat with his handkerchief—did he turn to Mrs. Pollifax and say peevishly, “They throw them, have you noticed?”

“No,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and introduced herself.

“Oh. Yes. Well.” He extended a thin dry hand and shook hers. “Kleiber here. Willem Kleiber.” He did not exactly wipe his hand after touching hers but she had the impression that he wanted to, and that the gesture was aborted only because he thought better of it

“German?” she asked.

“No, no, Dutch,” he said firmly.

If Mrs. Pollifax had feared that all bush outfits might look alike, this idea was quickly dispelled now as Homer
escorted a third member of the safari to the bus. The woman walking beside him made Mrs. Pollifax feel suddenly dowdy and not at all swashbuckling. In her forties, she wore her long platinum hair tied in the back with a scarlet silk kerchief. Her bush jacket and slacks were cut out of pale-beige gabardine that very nearly matched the color of her hair, and they had been tailored to outline every curve of her figure. Diamonds glittered on several fingers, and a stunning turquoise was pinned to her black turtleneck shirt. Everything about her was striking, from her outfit to her cool sapphire eyes, the clear-cut features, pale-pink mouth and subtly tanned face.

“…  very nearly didn’t stop, you know, and I was afraid I’d not be here in time, and then—oh, two already here, isn’t this super,” she said, stopping by the bus and smiling at Mr. Kleiber. “I think we’d better introduce ourselves, don’t you?” Her voice was caressing, with a somewhat affected British accent, so that the word
better
emerged as
baytor
, spoken through the nose with a not unattractive nasal quality. “I’m Mrs. Lovecraft,” she said. “
Amy
Lovecraft.”

At this moment a tall, good-looking young man walked out of the hotel, shouted to Homer and then strode toward the bus calling, “I say, is this the transportation to Chunga camp for the KT/3 safari?”

“What a lovely man,” murmured Mrs. Lovecraft appreciatively.

“Yes, yes,” said Homer. “You are—?”

“John Steeves.” He was dressed very casually in a heavy turtleneck sweater and shabby twill slacks; he looked, thought Mrs. Pollifax, like a man who would know that African mornings were cold. He looked seasoned.
His voice marked him as an Englishman, the patina on his boots marked him as a hiker. His face was long and intense, with a thick brown mustache and interesting dark eyes.

Homer’s face lighted up at the name. “Of course—yes, I was inquiring for you. Have you luggage?”

“A duffelbag, but Tom’s bringing it. He’s one of the party, too, we met in the Coffee Hut. Tom Henry.” He turned and gestured vaguely toward the hotel entrance. “There he is,” he said.

Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw a solid-looking young man walk out of the hotel carrying a suitcase and a duffelbag, followed by a barefooted black boy carrying a second suitcase. Tom Henry looked cheerful and uncomplicated, with sandy hair and a pair of level, candid gray eyes. No nonsense about him, thought Mrs. Pollifax, liking him at once; relaxed, stable and efficient. The boy walking beside him suddenly looked up at him and smiled. It was, thought Mrs. Pollifax, the most adoring glance that she’d ever seen a child give an adult, and she realized that the two belonged together.

“Henry?” said Homer, puzzled, and then, “Ah, this is
Doctor
Henry? Dr. Henry from the mission hospital?”

“And Chanda,” the young man said firmly. “Chanda Henry.”

The three men and the boy moved to the back of the bus to stow away their luggage, and Mrs. Lovecraft climbed in beside Mr. Kleiber, saying, “Isn’t this fun?”

Glancing toward the hotel Mrs. Pollifax saw Cyrus Reed walk out, looking vaguely concerned. He had exchanged his seersucker suit for a pair of new bluejeans that made his legs look very long indeed, and over this
he wore a shirt and a shabby jacket. After noticing the bus he came toward it, and looking extraordinarily pleased at seeing her in it, he leaned over and spoke to her through the window.

“She’s five hours late now,” he said. “Difficulties mount.”

At that moment a small red Fiat raced into the drive of the hotel and came to a sudden stop, its tires protesting shrilly. A voice called, “Dad!” and a young woman as petite as Reed was enormous jumped out of the car and waved. “I’m here, Judge!”

“That,” said Cyrus Reed resignedly, “is Lisa.”

“Judge?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“Retired.”

She turned to look again at the young woman who was now opening the door of the car. She was slim and long-legged and difficult to overlook because her hair was bright auburn, the color of a new penny, and her face was round and pixie-like, with a dimple in the chin. Mrs. Pollifax said, “She doesn’t look at all cold and businesslike.”

“She doesn’t, does she,” said Reed. He looked surprised. “Something’s different. Like you to meet her. I’ll bring her back.”

Mrs. Pollifax watched as Lisa spoke to someone inside the car, and then from its confining interior crept a woman with a baby in a sling over her shoulders, followed by a small black man in a business suit and spectacles, three grinning barefooted boys, a bent old man carrying a crutch, and at last a young man in purple slacks and pink shirt. It was rather like that old circus act, thought Mrs. Pollifax, where dozens of people kept emerging from a
tiny car, and she wondered how on earth they had all fitted inside. Lisa shook hands with each of them and then allowed herself to be led off to the minibus by her father.

“…  a flat tire,” she was saying, “but Kanyama helped me change it and Mbulo was carrying firewood when I picked him up, so we had a jolly fire by the side of the road and cooked a breakfast. Really neat—and you should have seen the Falls!”

“I suppose you had to give rides to everyone?”

“Well, but wasn’t it providential that I did? Otherwise I’d still be down near Penga somewhere with a flat tire. It’s not at all like the States, Dad. Nobody asked for a ride, but how could I drive by them when I had a car and they didn’t? Hello,” she said, smiling warmly at Mrs. Pollifax. “Hello,” she added, nodding to Mrs. Lovecraft and Mr. Kleiber.

“Well, you’ve not made it with much time to spare,” said her father, sounding like fathers everywhere.

“Yes, but I made it, didn’t I?” said Lisa, grinning. “And who’s holding us up now? See you all later,” she called over her shoulder, and began propelling her father toward the hotel.

On the way to the entrance they passed Homer carrying luggage for another guest. The Reeds stopped to speak to him, leaving the newest member of the party waiting patiently, a faint smile on his lips. He was a man of average height, perhaps fifty, carrying an attaché case and a battered trench coat over his arm. He was still dressed for traveling, Mrs. Pollifax noted, in a light suit that must once have been well-cut but was wrinkled now.
He wore his hair rather long; it was jet black, with streaks of pure white.

The group abruptly dissolved and Homer came toward them smiling. “We now have Mr. McIntosh,” he said, gesturing at the man beside him. “We go. Gentlemen, if you will be so kind as to get in the bus now?”

The two men and the boy Chanda climbed into the seat in the far rear, next the luggage. Mr. McIntosh crawled past Mrs. Lovecraft to sit in the space between her and Mr. Kleiber. Homer closed and locked the doors and a moment later they were off, driving on the left side of the road like the British.

They passed the National Assembly building with its roof sheathed in copper and gleaming in the sun. They passed neat rows of government housing and then a shantytown with thatched-roof huts, and finally, leaving the city behind, a satellite station that had been built by the Japanese, Homer told them. As the traffic thinned they sped past fields of cotton, sunflowers and maize, and the pedestrians along the side of the road increased: women walking with loads of firewood balanced carefully on their heads, a few men wheeling bicycles. Then these, too, vanished and they settled down to the long road ahead, moving steadily toward the Mungwa mountain range. The sun began to look surprisingly low on the horizon to Mrs. Pollifax, and when she commented on this she was startled to learn that in Zambia the sun set at six o’clock. She began to understand some of the urgency behind Homer’s driving; certainly he drove like a man pursued by
something
, and now it was heartening to realize the something was darkness, because she had no desire to be caught among wild animals in the dark
either. The excessive speed rendered conversation almost impossible, however; everything rattled and it was necessary to cling to one’s seat

An hour later Mrs. Pollifax was still clinging to her seat when Homer placed his foot on the brake and nearly sent her through the windshield. Up ahead she saw a roadblock, a gaily striped red-and-white pole extending from one side of the road to the other.

From the rear Mr. Kleiber called, “And what is this?”

“The bridge,” said Homer. “All our bridges are guarded by the police.”

“Good heavens why?” asked Mrs. Pollifax, turning to look at him in surprise.

“Rhodesian spies,” he said with a shrug. “They try to bomb our bridges. We have three in Zambia, all of them over the Kafue River.” He pronounced it
Ka-fooey.

“Rhodesian
spies
?” repeated Mrs. Pollifax.

“Yes, spies. They are everywhere.” With a jerk of his head to the left he added, “The police live over there.”

Mrs. Pollifax glancd to the left and saw a cluster of corrugated tin houses down near the river, shaded by a circle of acacia trees. She started to speak but Homer’s attention had turned to the guard who walked toward them, looking very official with a rifle strapped across his back. He wore a felt cavalry hat, blue khaki shorts and tunic, and around his legs a wrapping of heavy cloth from ankle to knee that could only be puttees, decided Mrs. Pollifax, remembering Kipling. He peered into the car and then shook hands with Homer and began talking in an incomprehensible language that Homer seemed to understand. At last the guard saluted, the bus was put into gear and they moved across the modest bridge over
the river. “What language was it that you spoke back there?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“Nyanga,” said Homer. “I speak Tonga, he speaks Luvale but we both know Nyanga. All the government people know Nyanga.”

“Those spies you mentioned,” began Mrs. Pollifax, and then found it even more difficult to be heard as they turned off the paved highway onto a dirt road marked by a sign that read
CHUNGA CAMP
. “Those spies,” she shouted above the rattles and bumps, hanging onto her seat with both hands to keep from hitting the roof of the bus.

“What?” shouted Homer.

“Spies,” she shrieked. Just as she decided that the road had been cut out of a pitted lava bed it changed to brown dust beaten hard into corrugated stripes that placed her more firmly in her seat but vibrated her spine like a massage.