West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Author:Beryl Markham [Markham, Beryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4532-3791-5
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

Na Kupa Hati M’zuri

THE RED-JAWED RUSSIAN SQUINTS over his glass of vodka, swallows, and snorts from the bottom of his belly.

‘Leopard?’ he says. ‘Pah! I have fought Siberian wolves with a clasp-knife. Listen, my friend — once at Tobolsk …’

‘Oxford myself,’ the man at his elbow says, ‘shall we sing?’

‘Wait until the orchestra stops.’

‘White hunter? You’ll want the best, old man. Get Blixen if you can, or Finch-Hatton. The Rift Valley isn’t Hyde Park, you know …’

‘In America we make the biggest there are. Take Chicago now …’

‘Champagne, Memsahib?’

‘Only a little … thanks. Now what were you saying, dear? Is that Lord Delamere with the glasses on?’

‘No. The one with the long hair. He never misses a Race Meeting. He never misses anything.’

‘Good old Muthaiga Club!’

‘Good old Haig and Haig!’

‘Good old Harrow — a toast to Harrow!’

‘Eton, you mean — swing, swing together — steady from stroke to bow …’

‘Forty years on …’

‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’ A tipsy fellow, swaying like a wind-rocked palm, frowns over the sea of fun and commands it to subside, but he has no magic. The sea rises, engulfs him in a single swell of laughter, and rolls on and on.

Let there be music. And there is music.

‘Beryl! — I’ve been looking for you …’

The lean, easy figure of Eric Gooch looms at my shoulder.

There is economy in the straight lines of his face, his eyes are blue and candid, and lacking worry. He is a farmer who has farmed for years without crying about it. He likes it. He likes all animals and especially horses. His filly, Wise Child, is in my stable. Now that I have moved to Nakuru, leaving Molo with its smells of Scotland, its cold nights and its contours so unorthodox — except to a Calvinistic eye — I am in closer touch with the owners of the horses I train. This is the big race, the important race — the Saint Leger, and most of my hopes (and Eric’s) hang on the satin-sleek shoulders of Wise Child.

Eric finds a chair and somehow crowds it up to my table. We put our heads together and talk of what to us are serious things; we mumble under the raucous chorus of voices that blend somehow and rise to the rafters of Muthaiga Club in a crescendo that lacks only a conductor to time its swell.

We can talk elsewhere. Nairobi has outgrown its swamp and tin-roof days. There are other places for discussing a horse-race, but none more appropriate, none more congenial. Poet or ploughman, statesman or derelict — every man has his Mermaid’s Tavern, every hamlet its shrine to conviviality, and in the image of the common spirit of those who haunt it, the character of the shrine is fashioned.

A Claridge’s in London or a pub, a Cirro’s in Paris or a bistro — alehouse, coffee-house, bodega, caravansary — by any name each is a sanctuary, a temple for talk, and for the observance of the warming rites of comradeship. Around this samovar,

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