Lord Tyger (48 page)

Yusufu was dressed in the clothes of an English child. The clothes had been flown in from Nairobi with those Ras now wore.

The pilot's voice came over the loud-speaker. They could unfasten their seat belts and smoke if they wished. The passengers began crowding around his seat to discuss what they wanted him to do. Eeva sent them away by saying that he was beginning to feel sick from the "shots." He felt nothing as yet of the deep sickness which might result from the many "shots" and the "smallpox vaccine" the doctor had given him shortly before they had left. But he allowed Eeva to speak for him. He needed time to be alone to think.

The airplane droned on, and soon the jagged mountains were behind them and they were over dry, brown land, and then they were over jungle. Eeva said that it would be some hours before they were out of Ethiopia. They didn't expect to have trouble in the next country. The movie people had "greased" the right palms.

The flight that morning had been planned the previous night. The Ethiopian military and police had been talking about taking Yusufu to Addis Ababa. He was still wanted for the twenty-two-year-old theft and murder. Yusufu said that he was innocent, but he did not want to stand trial, because he could not prove his innocence. Ras was also in trouble, because he was in the country illegally and also would have to stand trial because he had killed so many Wantso and Sharrikt, citizens of Ethiopia, even if they had not known it. Also, he had killed Boygur and his Ethiopian employees, and he might be tried for these deaths.

Eeva and Yusufu agreed that Ras might go free after a trial, but that he would probably die from disease while in an Ethiopian jail. Early that morning, Ras and Yusufu had led the Ethiopian pilot and officials into the hills to search for Jib's body. Ras and Yusufu had then sneaked away from the party and returned to the lake, where a plane-load of fellow conspirators waited for them. Ras had taken the shots and the vaccination, and the plane had carried them all off.

Mr. Brentwood, a movie producer, said that "accounts would be squared" with the Ethiopians later--apparently with more "palm-greasing"--and then the movie would be filmed in the valley, which would probably be leased by the company. All this would be very expensive, Mr. Brentwood said, but this picture was a natural to make millions.

So now they were high above the Ethiopia-Kenya border, and Marilyn Provo, the publishing-house executive, was standing by the seat and talking to Eeva and flicking long-lashed glances at him. By then he was beginning to feel sick. Before they landed to refuel, he became feverish and also nauseated,
and finally fell asleep. The last thing he remembered was Eeva telling Marilyn that she was not worried about how he would get along. He was ignorant and innocent of the world, true. But he had an enduring courage, an adaptability, a true friendliness, great strength, charm, sensitivity, imagination, and quite a lot of artistic talent; He would do all right as long as someone who was both experienced and loved him was with him.

Later, after talking feverishly with Wilida and Mariyam and the other dead, he half awoke. The wailing sound came from the mouth of some device in the "ambulance." A "siren," Eeva, who was sitting by him, called it. And then he was being carried on a stretcher into an enormous white building. Lights burned steadily and flashed off and on and something roared and thrummed at a distance, and many brown and white faces were around him--Eeva and Marilyn among them--and then the light and faces wheeled and winged away like pelicans into the blackness.

A day later, he had recovered enough to sit up and to sniff in, with eyes, nose, ears, and touch, all the new that even this small and simply furnished room offered. He was downwind of the world and eager to start the chase, although he was not sure that this world was not a crafty, backtracking leopard.

To Eeva, that night, he said, "To be well in this world, in this 'civilization,' you have to get very sick first. Just as, to be fully alive, you must first die."

Eeva did not know what he was talking about. Contrary to her usual interest in his thinking out of things, she wanted to discuss nothing except "business." He humored her for a while
and then said that he would like to go to bed with her. She was shocked. She couldn't. Not here. Somebody, a nurse, a doctor, or a visitor, would be sure to come in.

He did not plead. He kissed her and said that he would see her tomorrow.

A half hour later, after the nurses had made their rounds, Marilyn slipped into his room. She wasn't supposed to be here, she said, since visiting hours were over, but she knew that he would be glad of her company. He was, and, as he had guessed, she was less inhibited than Eeva. She had her own crocodile heart.

He went pleasantly to sleep but awoke in the middle of the night to find a nurse, Mariymu, fussing over him. She was a young and well-shaped girl, even under her loose, white uniform, and she had a beautifully shaped head and face that he knew he would have to sculpture. He told her so, and although she seemed shy and even a little afraid of him, she did not leave. She talked longer than she should have, so, presently, the floor supervisor had to run her out. But she promised Ras that he could do her head, and she gave him her address. The supervisor, a big woman, of about forty, but handsome, did not leave the room. She seemed to be fascinated by what she had heard about him and listened to his story while her eyes grew bigger and she came closer and closer. After a while, he had pulled her down to him, and she did just the opposite of struggle.

Ras went to sleep again thinking that this world outside must have its many dangers, of course, but it also had its compensating pleasures, if you knew how to get them.