The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Page 31

  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. T 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. Mwcndo 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 cwno 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 camp-fire. 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. Love-craft 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."

  "1 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, / 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 sec 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 yo
u'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—"

  Their voices blurred as they passed from the arcade into the compound; she heard one more brittle laugh pierce the stillness and then there was silence. Mrs. Pollifax had closed her eyes again when she heard fresh pebbles crunching underfoot outside the building. "Really beautiful," Lisa Reed was saying. "I love it, don't you?"

  It was Tom Henry who replied. "Absolutely." A comfortable silence followed and then Tom said, "John Steeves is certainly very distinguished."

  Lisa said carelessly, "Oh—distinguished, yes."

  "As a matter of fact we've one of his paperbacks at the hospital. One Hundred Nights in a Yurt, I think. The chap who read it—"

  "Tom."

  "Mmmm?"

  "Don't be a goose."

  Tom Henry laughed. "Have a good sleep, my dear."

  Mrs. Pollifax heard him walk away and Lisa open the door of the room opposite hers. A very interesting exchange of words, she thought, smiling, very interesting indeed, and wondered on whom she might eavesdrop next.

  She was not kept waiting long: Mclntosh came next through the arcade, talking to Cyrus, and for a man of smiling silence Mclntosh had suddenly become very articulate. ". . . Monetary Fund, of course. You simply can't cure inflation unless nations stop going to the printing press. The world is being drowned in worthless paper . . . Irresponsible. Expedient, of course, but disastrous. No discipline without paper being backed by something."

  "Gold?" inquired Cyrus.

  "Probably, yes. We've not been on a gold standard since 1901. Governments sneer at it, of course, because it would force discipline on them. But mark my words, Reed, whole civilizations have become graveyards by corrupting their currency."

  "You do considerable business between countries?"

  "Oh yes, quite international, but of course multinational's the word these days. But I don't want to hold you up, we can continue this another time. Good night, Reed."

  "Yes . . . Lions tomorrow. Good night."

  The last to pass by her door were Julian and John Steeves, and they were walking much faster. ". . . oh, much better here," Julian was saying. "Too many young men of my country head for the cities, and this is bad. Lusaka is full of thieves and spies."

  "Excellent sense," said Steeves. "I'm not very big on cities myself. I like your bush, it has a mystique . . ."

  Mrs. Pollifax did not hear the rest because they had left the arcade and their voices faded. In any case she was growing warmer now, and with this came a voluptuous drowsiness: she closed her eyes and slept and dreamed of masks. In her dream she sat in a theater and one by one each member of the safari walked out on stage to form a single line facing her. It was only when they moved up to the footlights in unison that Mrs. Pollifax saw they were holding masks to their faces. At a given signal each mask was swept away, but underneath lay another mask, and then another and still another . . .

  CHAPTER

  8

  When Mrs. Pollifax woke at half-past six the next morning it was bone-chillingly cold. The young waiter who brought coffee to her room on a tray said, "Good morning, madam," and it was so cold that wisps of vapor curled from his lips to match the steam rising from the coffeepot. Mrs. Pollifax put one foot out of bed, poured coffee into a cup and carried it under the blankets with her, wondering if she would ever be warm again.

  "I thought Africa was t-t-tropical," she protested at breakfast, which was served down by the river in the morning mist.

  "We're four thousand feet above sea level," Julian reminded her with a flash of white teeth. "You are ready for lion? Perhaps it will warm you to hear that Crispin took the Land Rover out at dawn and found lion tracks six miles north of camp."

  "Oh how wonderful!" gasped Mrs. Pollifax.

  Almost as exciting was the news that overnight two of the Land Rover roofs had been removed so that they could ride standing up and scan the savannah for game, like professionals. Mrs. Pollifax could scarcely wait.

  But in spite of her excitement she had not forgotten her resolve of the night before, and between breakfast and departure time she retired to her room to make a list for the day and contemplate it. Find out, she wrote, who's traveled widely during the past eight months (France—Costa Rica). To this she added: Try Mclntosh again, could be opening up. Mr. Kleiber: if good at machinery ask about guns. John Steeves: what disguises preferred? She studied this memo and then lit a match and burned it.

  They set out shortly afterward
in the two Land Rovers, the sun higher now and promising warmth soon. For this excursion Mrs. Pollifax had arranged her clothing in layers so that as the day advanced she could remove first her bush jacket, and then her heavy sweater, and then the pale-blue cardigan until eventually—it was rather like peeling an artichoke, she thought—she would be resplendent in striped shirt and kerchief before the process reversed itself. She also carried her bright parasol and two rolls of film for her camera and wore her lapel pin.

  As they left Kafwala camp behind and headed for the open savannah Mrs. Pollifax realized that, like Lisa, Africa was having its charismatic effect upon her: the road wound ahead of the Land Rover like textured brown ribbon, the high grass tawny on either side and the earth flat under the incredible arc of blue African sky. There were also the surreal notes: a candelabra tree, its limbs perfectly splayed, its blossoms a dull orange; a baobab tree smooth and silvery in the warm morning light, and when Mrs. Pollifax inquired of Julian what the cement posts along the road meant, Julian laughed. "Not cement —termite nests." Bringing the Land Rover to a halt he jumped out and kicked at the top one, exposing holes like a honeycomb.

  It was Mrs. Pollifax who spotted the elephants first. "Oh look," she cried, and in both Land Rovers heads swiveled to the left. At some distance away from them a line of elephants was moving across the savannah, an entire family with three young ones among them. "Baby nsofu," said Chanda, pointing and grinning. "I count nine," volunteered Cyrus, standing beside her. Mrs. Pollifax stood up on the seat and took three pictures in rapid succession, and then somewhat reluctantly slid down in the seat and snapped a close-up shot of John Steeves as he watched the procession.

  "Can we get out?" called Amy Lovecraft, who was all beige and white today, with a green kerchief around her hair.

  "Better if we drive ahead down the road," said Julian. "They're heading for water, we'll see them closer farther along."