Mrs. Pollifax on Safari (11 page)

On an inspired note she added, “As a matter of fact after dinner I’ll bring down pictures of my grandchildren to show you. They’re very
lovely
grandchildren.”

“Really?” said Amy Lovecraft coldly.

The young waiter had just arrived bearing a large tray, followed by two young men carrying steaming dishes, and he chose this moment to announce that dinner was served. Mrs. Pollifax jumped up immediately and became the first to approach the food spread out on the table. She was not surprised when she returned to her chair to find herself something of a pariah after her announcement about snapshots. Mr. Kleiber chose a seat as far removed from her as possible, and Mrs. Lovecraft, who had shown no real interest in Mr. Kleiber before, eagerly took the chair next him. Lisa, assuming a more neutral corner, was joined by Steeves as usual. Tom Henry found a seat not far from Lisa, and McIntosh, still smiling enigmatically, sat beside Julian.

Only Chanda and Cyrus Reed showed signs of not
being infected. Chanda sat down cross-legged on the ground beside Mrs. Pollifax and gave her a dazzling white smile. “I sit here. You
nunandi.
”

“Damn awkward eating from one’s lap,” growled Reed.

“Try a corner of this little table,” suggested Mrs. Pollifax. “After all, the word safari means camping.”

“Touché,”
he said, smiling. “Thanks. Incredibly good food. Can’t imagine how they do such a
cordon bleu
job out here without electricity.”

“There is big wood stove,” Chanda told him eagerly, “and very fine cook. Julian calls him a—a chef.”

Reed nodded. “That’s it, then. Saw you up there poking around. Anyone else speak Bemba here?”

“
Cimo
,” said Chanda, holding up one finger. “There is good life here in park, maybe I not be hunter.”

“Tom said you’re damn good at hunting and tracking and only twelve years old,” pointed out Reed, deftly spearing a piece of steak. “Said you went off to see what’s left of your old village on the Angolan border this spring, and hiked fifty miles through the bush alone.”

Chanda’s smile deepened. “Yes, that. He tell you about the lions?”

“Lions!” exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax.

“Three of ’em,” said Reed, nodding, “but how did you know they were following you, Chanda?”

“Because—” Chanda hesitated. “I do not know name for
cula.
”

Several chairs away, Julian said, “Frogs, Chanda.”

“Ah! Yes. I hear them, you know. They make a frog sound, and then I cross
kamana—
”

“Brook,” called Tom Henry.

“Yes, brook, and frogs are very noisy talking to each
other. I walk more, and then—” He lifted one hand and cut the air dramatically. “
Cula
sound stop. So I look for big tree to climb because it becomes dark, like now, and I know something follows me or the frogs would be making noise.”

“Good heavens,” said Lisa. They were all listening now.

“Three lions try to climb tree for me, but I am too high. I sit all night for them to go away.”

“I take it they did eventually,” said Steeves.

“But not until morning,” put in Tom Henry.

“Yes, I climb down from tree but cannot walk.
Mwendo
become like tree too.”

“He means he’d lost all circulation in his legs,” explained Tom. “His limbs had become like the tree.”

Chanda nodded. “So I hunt sticks and dry grass and after long time make fire rubbing sticks. This is very hard to do. For many hours I sit to warm myself at fire, and then I go.”

“Something I can’t imagine any American twelve-year-old doing,” said Reed.

“Still, Africa’s a shade more hospitable a country than Mongolia,” put in Steeves. “There you’ve panthers and tigers, but even if the sun shines three hundred days a year you get tremendous winds and a horrendous wind-chill factor.”

“Tigers we don’t have,” said Julian, “but tomorrow we look for lion for you.”

“Oh, I do hope we see one,” cried Lisa eagerly.

“What time do we start?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“Directly after breakfast, about half-past seven.”

“Early,” said Amy Lovecraft, making a face.

The white-jacketed waiter had brought down a new
tray which he set upon the table. Now he bowed, his face grave, and said, “Pudding is served, please, ladies and gentlemen.”

It was after the pudding that Tom Henry reminded Chanda he was tired today and it was time for him to invest in some sleep. The boy arose from his cross-legged stance on the ground, and at the same moment Mrs. Pollifax had a sudden, dazzling idea. She, too, arose. “I’ll go up with Chanda,” she said. “It’s so dark I couldn’t bring myself to go alone, but if we’re breakfasting at seven—”

“What, no snapshots of your grandchildren?” asked Reed mischievously.

“I’m still catching up on my sleep,” she said, ignoring him and picking up her purse. “Good night!”

A chorus of farewells followed her as she turned away from the fire. It was very dark outside the circle of light and Chanda took her hand and guided her. Pebbles slid underfoot; the sound of the rushing water behind them made a low musical backdrop, rather soporific, she thought, like the murmur of voices heard from a distant room. There was a lantern waiting at the top of the hill, placed on a table in the center of the arcade. She turned and looked back at the campfire, counting heads. They were all there, no one had left. She said, “Chanda …”

“Yes, madam.”

“Chanda, I wonder if you’d hide something for me—keep something for me—in your
cumo
bag.”

He stared at her, eyes clouded now, opaque, mysterious, so that she wondered if he understood.

“It’s something important and quite small. Only until
the safari ends,” she added quickly. “It needs—needs hiding.” She walked around the corner of the passageway out of the lantern’s light and opened her camera and removed the film that she’d completed down by the campfire. When she held it out to Chanda he remained impassive, the expression in his eyes chilling, as if he looked into, through and beyond her into something she couldn’t see. Then abruptly the mask splintered into smiles, the strange effect was gone and an enormous smile lighted up his eyes.

“Yes, secret,” he said, nodding, and taking the cartridge from her hand he loosened the string of his chamois bag and dropped the film inside.

She realized that she had been holding her breath; she exhaled now in relief. “You’re a real friend, Chanda.”

“But of course—
nunandi
,” he said, laughing, and raced off into the darkness, calling over his shoulder, “Good night, madam!”

She stared after him thoughtfully. She did hope he understood but at least in giving him one of her films she felt that she had diversified, and this lifted her spirits. Her glance moved to the fire at the rear of the camp where the silhouettes of half a dozen men crouched talking around the blaze. She turned to go to her room and jumped when she saw Cyrus Reed standing in the arcade watching her.

“Oh—you startled me,” she gasped, and wondered how long he’d been standing there and how much he’d seen.

He held out her sun-goggles and her umbrella. “Left these behind you,” he said, handing them to her, and then, “Care for a stroll around the compound before turning in?”

She hesitated. “I do feel rather unexercised,” she admitted.

“Good. Damn good display of Orion and the Pleiades if we can get away from the light of the fire. Tiresome down below after you left. Can’t help noticing that Mrs. Lovecraft talks through her nose and Mr. Kleiber sniffs a great deal through his, and Steeves was running on about Mongolia, which is all very well but this is Africa.”

She laughed. “You poor man.”

“Not at all,” he said amiably, taking her arm. “Decided to look for better company.”

“I think your daughter Lisa’s a darling, by the way.”

“She is, isn’t she? Seems to be thawing out now. Damn glad to see it.”

“And you,” she said, “are really a judge?”

He brought out his flashlight, checked it and nodded.

“A
phungu
, Julian tells me. The Nyanga word for judge or counselor.”

“Phungu
,
”
she repeated, trying it out on the tongue. “Sounds a little like fungus. What sort of
phungu
were you before you retired? Did you have hundreds of exciting cases?”

“Strictly routine,” he said, “except for the Rambeau-Jenkins case.”

Mrs. Pollifax stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “Oh,” she gasped, “do you think she murdered him?”

He had been staring up at the sky; now he turned and looked down at her and smiled his sleepy smile. “That, my dear, only God knows.”

“But you were there, you presided, and I’ve so often wondered—”

“Ha—common fallacy, that,” he told her. “We
phungus
never judge guilt or innocence, we judge evidence. The law isn’t emotional, you know, it’s cold and impersonal. Has to be.”

“But you’re not,” she told him indignantly.

She could see his smile in the light of the campfire. “Don’t ever tell anyone, my dear.” He stopped and said, “With you the ‘my dear’ just slips out.”

“Well,
I
think Nina Rambeau was innocent,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t notice that she was blushing. She wondered how long it had been since anyone had called her “my dear.” “Have you found Orion yet?”

He shook his head. “Glow from the men’s campfire bleaches out the stars. Daresay if we wandered a little way up the road we could see better.”

“Oh, do let’s,” she said.

He nodded pleasantly to the men around the campfire as they passed. “Just looking at the stars,” he told them, pointing at the sky.

The men burst into smiles and nods.

“Damn lot livelier up here than down by the river,” he said mildly as they left the fire behind and entered the road beyond.

They had ventured a few paces into the darkness when Mrs. Pollifax looked back and sighed. “It’s the guard,” she told Reed. “He’s
following
us, isn’t that ridiculous?”

“Not at all,” said Reed thoughtfully. “Can’t have it both ways, my dear.”

“Can’t—what do you mean by that?”

“Well,” he said in his mild voice, “if you want to observe wild animals in perfect safety you capture them, bring ’em back to our world and look at them behind bars in a zoo. Here we’re their guests,” he pointed out.
“Trespassers, actually. They run free, wild and protected, but we do
not.
”

“Of course you’re right,” she said reluctantly. “It’s just that it’s so
confining
not to be able to leave camp without being followed.”

“Doubt if anyone could confine you, my dear. Ought to mind his presence far more than you since I’ve every intention of kissing you.”

She turned and looked at him in astonishment, which placed her in the perfect position for him to make good his intention. “Orion be damned,” he said, and swept her into his arms.

Mrs. Pollifax gave a small squeak of protest, resisted briefly and then discovered that she fitted very nicely into the curve of his arm and that she enjoyed being kissed very much. When he let her go she promptly dropped her sun-goggles, her kerchief and her umbrella. “Oh,” she stammered. “Oh dear.”

He patiently retrieved them and handed them back to her. “And there,” he said, grasping her hand and firmly holding it in his, “is Orion.”

“Yes,” she said, feeling very disoriented and breathless as she realized that she was not immune, after all, to huge and charming
phungus.
It was all very disconcerting, she thought—at her age, too—and then she lifted her gaze to the sky and was struck breathless all over again. “Oh,” she whispered.

It was like standing in the center of a planetarium, the sky a huge bowl turned upside down and fitted snugly to the horizon and then filled with thousands upon thousands of stars. This, surely, was infinity, she thought, gazing up in awe, and slowly became aware of the silence
surrounding them, a silence like the beginning or the end of the world.

It was interrupted by a cough from the guard some distance behind them. Cyrus said dryly, “I think we’re keeping him, he’s been patient with us long enough.”

Without speaking they turned and walked back to camp.

When Mrs. Pollifax entered her room again it was already very cold and she paused only long enough to slip a new cartridge of film into her camera and to hide the camera under her pillow for the night. Blowing out the candle beside her bed she inserted herself between the blankets, tucked the mosquito netting around her and was surprised to find her room still filled with light. She noticed now what had escaped her by daylight: the wall of the room over her door rose only to a height of eight feet. Between this and the inverted V of the rafters there was only mosquito netting, so that she could see the glow of the lantern in the passageway outside.

She lay gazing up at this light and thinking about her strange day, about her film being stolen and then about Cyrus Reed, who was proving very distracting indeed. She realized that she was going to have to discipline herself very severely; after all, for her this was no ordinary safari. She was here for a purpose, and if she was not attentive and very clever, then Aristotle would continue wandering around the world negotiating contracts to shoot more people and this would never do.

Never, she thought, and resolved to put Cyrus Reed completely out of her mind. She closed her eyes and then opened them when she heard voices and footsteps
outside on the path. A moment later she recognized Amy Lovecraft’s high-pitched laugh.

“I would have fallen, Mr. Kleiber, if you’d not rescued me like a knight in shining armor, you dear man. This path—”

Amy Lovecraft, thought Mrs. Pollifax, was definitely hunting something more than game.

“I do not understand,” Mr. Kleiber said in his pedantic, humorless voice, “why one bulldozer could not be assigned to this hill. They have the bulldozers, I know. They use them on the roads, and with only one hour of work—”

“Are you in the construction business, Mr. Kleiber? You seem to know so much about machinery.”

“Heavy machinery, yes. I sell worldwide. It’s—”