Garden of Eden (22 page)

"How
far are we behind him?" David asked.

"We're
quite close actually," his father said. "It all depends on whether he
travels when the moon comes up. It's an hour later tonight and two hours later
than when you found him."

"Why
does Juma think he knows where he's going?"

"He
wounded him and killed his askari not too far from here."

"When?"

"Five
years ago, he says. That may mean anytime. When you were still a tow he
says."

"Has
he been alone since then?"

"He
says so. He hasn't seen him. Only heard of him."

"How
big does he say he is?"

"Close
to two hundred. Bigger than anything I've ever seen. He says there's only been
one greater elephant and he came from near here too."

"I'd
better get to sleep," David said. "I hope I'll be better tomorrow.

"You
were splendid today," his father said. "I was very proud of you. So
was Juma."

In
the night when he woke after the moon was up he was sure they were not proud of
him except perhaps for his dexterity in killing the two birds. He had found the
elephant at night and followed him to see that he had both of his tusks and
then returned to find the two men and put them on the trail. David knew they
were proud of that. But once the deadly following started he was useless to
them and a danger to their success just as Kibo had been to him when he had
gone up close to the elephant in the night, and he knew they must each have
hated themselves for not having sent him back when there was time. The tusks of
the elephant weighed two hundred pounds apiece. Ever since these tusks had
grown beyond their normal size the elephant had been hunted for them and now
the three of them would kill him. David was sure that they would kill him now
because he, David, had lasted through the day and kept up after the pace had
destroyed him by noon. So they probably were proud of him doing that. But he
had brought nothing useful to the hunt and they would have been far better off
without him. Many times during the day he had wished that he had never betrayed
the elephant and in the afternoon he remembered wishing that he had never seen
him. Awake in the moonlight he knew that was not true.

All
morning, writing, he had been trying to remember truly how he felt and what had
happened on that day. The hardest to make truly was how he had felt and keep it
untinctured by how he had felt later. The details of the country were sharp and
clear as the morning until the foreshortening and prolongation of exhaustion
and he had written that well. But his feeling about the elephant had been the
hardest part and he knew he would have to get away from it and then come back
to it to be certain it was as it had been, not later, but on that day. He knew
the feeling had begun to form but he had been too exhausted to remember it
exactly.

Still
involved in this problem and living in the story he locked up his suitcase and
came out of the room onto the Hagstones that led down to the terrace where
Marita was sitting in a chair under one of the pines facing out toward the sea.
She was reading and as he was walking barefooted she did not hear him. David looked
at her and was pleased to see her. Then he remembered the preposterous
situation and turned into the hotel and walked to his and Catherine's own room.
She wasn't in the room and, still feeling Africa to be completely real and all
of this where he was to be unreal and false, he went out on the terrace to
speak to Marita.

"Good
morning," he said. "Have you seen Catherine?"

"She
went off somewhere," the girl said. "She said to tell you she'd be
back."

Suddenly
it was not unreal at all.

"You
don't know where she went?" "No," the girl said. "She went
off on her bike." "My God," David said. "She hasn't ridden
a bike since we bought the Bug." "That's what she said. She's taking
it up again. Did you have a good morning?" "I don't know. I'll know
tomorrow." "Are you eating breakfast?" "I don't know. It's
late." "I wish you would." "I'll go in and get cleaned
up," he told her. He had taken a shower and was shaving when Catherine
came in. She was wearing an old Grau du Roi shirt and short linen slacks
chopped off below the knees and she was hot and her shirt was wet through.
"It's wonderful," she said. "But I'd forgotten what it does to
your upper thighs when you climb." "Did you ride very far,
Devil?" "Six kilometers," she said. "It was nothing but I'd
forgotten about the côtes." "It's awfully hot to ride now unless you
go in the very early mornings," David said. "I'm glad you started
again though." She was under the shower now and when she came out she
said, "Now see how dark we are together. We're just the way we
planned." "You're darker." "Not much. You're terribly dark
too. Look at us together." They looked at each other standing touching in
the long mirror on the door. "Oh you like us," she said. "That's
nice. So do I. Touch here and see." She stood very straight and he put his
hand on her breasts. "I'll put on one of my tight shirts so you can tell
what I think about things," she said. "Isn't it funny our hair hasn't
any color at all when it's wet? It's pale as seaweed."

She
took a comb and combed her hair straight back so it looked as though she had
just come out of the sea.

"I'm
going to wear mine this way now again," she said. "Like Grau du Roi
and here in the spring."

"I
like it across your forehead."

"I'm
tired of that. But I can do it if you like. Do you think we could go into town
and have breakfast at the cafe?"

"Haven't
you had breakfast?"

"I
wanted to wait for you."

"All
right," he said. "Let's go in and get breakfast. I'm hungry too.

They
had a very good breakfast of café au lait, brioche and strawberry jam and oeufs
au plat avec jambon and when they were finished Catherine asked, "Would
you come over with me to Jean's? It's the day I go to get my hair washed and
I'm going to have it cut."

"I'll
wait here for you."

"Wouldn't
you please come? You did it before and it wasn't bad for anybody."

"No,
Devil. I did once but that was just once. Like getting tattooed or something.
Don't ask me to."

"It
doesn't mean anything except to me. I want us to be just the same.

"We
can't be the same."

"Yes
we could if you'd let us.

"I
really don't want to do it."

"Not
if I say it's all I want?"

"Why
can't you want something that makes sense?"

"I
do. But I want us to be the same and you almost are and it wouldn't be any
trouble to do. The sea's done all the work."

"Then
let the sea do it."

"I
want it for today." "Then you'll be happy I suppose. "I'm happy
now because you're going to do it and I'll stay happy. You love how I look. You
know you do. Think of it that way. "It's silly." "No it isn't.
Not when it's you and you do it to please me." "How badly will you
feel if I don't?" "I don't know. But very." "All
right," he said. "It really means all that to you?"
"Yes," she said. "Oh, thank you. It won't take very long this
time. I told Jean we'd be there and he's staying open for us." "Are
you always that confident I'll do things?" "I knew you would if you
knew how much I wanted it." "I wanted very much not to. You shouldn't
ask it." "You won't care. It's nothing and afterwards it will be fun.
Don't worry about Marita." "What about her?" "She said that
if you wouldn't do it for me to ask you if you'd do it for her."
"Don't make things up." "No. She said it this morning."

"I
wish you could see yourself," Catherine said. "I'm glad I can't."
"I wish you'd looked in the glass." "I couldn't."
"Just look at me. That's how you are and I did it and there's nothing you
can do now. That's how you look." "We couldn't really have done
that," David said. "I couldn't look the way you do." 'Well, we
did," Catherine said. "And you do. So you better start to like
it."

"We
can't have done that, Devil."

"Yes
we did. You knew it too. You just wouldn't look. And we're damned now. I was
and now you are. Look at me and see how much you like it." David looked at
her eyes that he loved and at her dark face and the incredibly flat ivory color
of her hair and at how happy she looked and he began to realize what a
completely stupid thing he had permitted.

HE
DID NOT THINK that he could go on with the story that morning and for a long
time he could not. But he knew that he must and finally he had started and they
were following the spoor of the elephant on an old elephant trail that was a
hard packed worn road through the forest. It looked as though elephants had
travelled it ever since the lava had cooled from the mountain and the trees had
first grown tall and close. Juma was very confident and they moved fast. Both
his father and Juma seemed very sure of themselves and the going on the
elephant road was so easy that Juma gave him the .303 to carry as they went on
through the broken light of the forest. Then they lost the trail in smoking
piles of fresh dung and the flat round prints of a herd of elephants that had
come onto the elephant road from the heavy forest on the left of the trail.
Juma had taken the .303 from David angrily. It was afternoon before they had
worked up to the herd and around it seeing the gray bulks through the trees and
the movement of the big ears and the searching trunks coiling and uncoiling,
the crash of branches broken, the crash of trees pushed over and the rumbling
in the bellies of the elephants and the slap and thud of the dung falling.

They
had found the trail of the old bull finally and when it turned off onto a
smaller elephant road Juma had looked at David's father and grinned showing his
filed teeth and his father had nodded his head. They looked as though they had
a dirty secret, just as they had looked when he had found them that night at
the shamba.

It
was not very long before they came on the secret. It was off to the right in
the forest and the tracks of the old bull led to it. It was a skull as high as
David's chest and white from the sun and the rains. There was a deep depression
in the forehead and ridges ran from between the bare white eye sockets and
flared out in empty broken holes where the tusks had been chopped away. Juma
pointed out where the great elephant they were trailing had stood while he
looked down at the skull and where his trunk had moved it a little way from the
place it had rested on the ground and where the points of his tusks had touched
the ground beside it. He showed David the single hole in the big depression in
the white bone of forehead and then the four holes close together in the bone
around the ear hole. He grinned at David and at his father and took a .303
solid from his pocket and fitted the nose into the hole in the bone of the
forehead.

"Here
is where Juma wounded the big bull," his father said. "This was his
askari. His friend, really, because he was a big bull too. He charged and Juma
knocked him down and finished him in the ear."

Juma
was pointing out the scattered bones and how the big bull had walked around
among them. Juma and David's father were both very pleased with what they had
found.

"How
long do you suppose he and his friend had been together?" David asked his
father.

"I
haven't the faintest idea," his father said. "Ask Juma."

"You
ask him please."

His
father and Juma spoke together and Juma had looked at David and laughed.

"Probably
four or five times your life he says," David's father told him. "He
doesn't know or care really."