“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.”