“Even with a fever?”
“Yes, even so.” She smiled. “But then I went away home, and after that he did, and it’s only lately that we’re back to our friendship, you see. I feel very fortunate.” She stood up and wiped her hands on her apron. Beyond the open door the sky was thick and low and the rain went on and on. “I’ll have one of the boys fetch your horse if you’d like. Unless you’ll reconsider.”
I thought of the slick miles to Soysambu, and then of Denys’s hazel eyes and his laughter. I wanted to see him again, and also to know how he and Karen were together. “I may have to,” I told her. “It’s not going to stop.”
—
All that day Karen stayed focused on Denys’s imminent arrival, dreaming up dinner menus and getting her servants to polish the house from top to bottom. Finally, Denys’s Somali boy came running into sight again, and Denys himself followed not long after, wet to the skin but somehow cheerful. He rode up, unflappably, while his equally undaunted Somali man, Billea, walked.
“It’s a little embarrassing to be held up by rain when you’ve managed quite well,” I confessed after we’d said our hellos.
“I haven’t told you about the bits where my horse was up to his neck.” He squinted at me, and then took off his hat, water pouring from the brim. “Besides, it’s nice to see you.”
Karen whisked him away deep into the house to get comfortable before dinner while I took myself into the library, suddenly nervous. I wasn’t sure why, but as I tried to page through a pile of Thackeray novels and travel books Karen had set aside for me, I found myself reading the same snatches over and over again, holding on to nothing, while from her perch nearby, the little owl Minerva swivelled her head and looked at me with great, round unblinking eyes. She was the size of a feathered apple, with a glossy beak like the tip of a buttonhook. I went over to her and tried to show her I was a friend, petting her with one finger as Karen had done, and finally she seemed convinced.
Maybe my feelings were only bald insecurity, I thought, looking again at the thick stack of books. Denys and Karen were each so intelligent…and together they might make me feel a fool. Would it have killed me to stay at school for a few years and glean some knowledge that had nothing to do with horses or farming or hunting with Kibii? I had been so anxious to be back at home, thrusting myself at what I knew, that I couldn’t imagine any part of book learning that might be useful. Now it was probably too late. I could try to soak up a few titbits from the Thackeray and possibly sound clever at dinner, but that would be acting a part, trying to be some version of Karen. “Stupid,” I said, irritated with myself, while Minerva stretched out one striped yellow claw. For better or worse, I was who I was. It would have to do.
—
Denys was starved for talk after so many weeks in the bush. During the meal of scented tomato water, blanched tiny lettuces, and turbot in a hollandaise that melted on the spoon, he told us how he’d come back through the North Country. Near Eldoret, he’d stopped at some property he owned and had seen and heard evidence of tourists hunting wild game from their motorcars and leaving the carcasses to rot.
“My God.” I had never heard of such a thing. “It’s slaughter.”
“I blame Teddy Roosevelt,” he said. “Those photographs of him straddling slain elephants like some sort of buccaneer. It came off too glamorous. Too easy.”
“I thought his hunting was a scheme to collect specimens for museums,” Karen said.
“Don’t let the museum piece fool you. He was a sportsman through and through.” Denys pushed his chair back from the table and lit a cigar. “It’s not Roosevelt that gets to me so much as what he started. These animals shouldn’t die for nothing. Because someone gets drunk and loads a rifle.”
“Perhaps there could be a law one day,” Karen said.
“Perhaps. But in the meantime, I hope I don’t run into one of these joyriders, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
“You’re trying to hold on to paradise.” Karen’s eyes simmered in the candlelight, intense and deeply black. “Denys remembers too well how unspoiled things were in the early days,” she told me.
“So do I. It’s hard to forget.”
“Beryl’s mother was here for a short time,” Karen explained to Denys and then said, “I thought she was going to be a tenant at Mbagathi.”
“Oh,” he said. “I assumed your mother had died.”
“It’s all right. You wouldn’t be very far off. She went away when I was very young.”