Deeblog

The conclusion to a story ("An accidental shooting") by this Danish woman of letters.  You can read the original as part of this famous book. 

The local hospital in Nairobi sat on a high hill right before the road that descended the hollow in which the city was located.  The entire hospital was dark now and it looked rather peaceful.  We had some difficulty in getting it to wake up.  After what seemed like a long time, an old Goan doctor or assistant doctor came to the door in a highly peculiar nightdress.  He was a fat man with a remarkably smooth and tranquil countenance, as well as the habit of making the same grandiose gesture, first with his right hand then with his left.  As I was holding Wamai while pulling him out of the car, he stretched out somewhat in my arms; yet once we had gotten him into the well-lit hospital room I saw that he was dead.  The old Goan threw out his hand towards him and said, "he is dead," then threw out the other hand towards Wanyangerri and said, "he is alive."  I never got to see the old man again because I never returned to the hospital at night, when he had his shifts.  While I was there that night, he could not help but anger me; yet later when I thought about him, it seemed to be fate itself that a man in long, white dress meeting us upon the threshold of the house had been able to divvy out life and death.

When we brought him to the hospital, Wanyangerri awoke from his lethargy and worked himself up into a frightful panic.  He did not want to remain inside and, screaming and shaking violently, he clung to anyone of us from the farm on whom he could get his hands.  Finally the old Goan calmed him down with an injection of morphine.  He looked at me over his glasses and said again, "he is alive."  So I exited the hospital and left the two children, the living and the dead, each on his own stretcher, each to his own fate.

Belknap had come in with us on his motorcycle to help us once again push-start the car were it to stall on the way.  He came over to me now and said that we had to report the accident to the police.  We drove down to the River Road police station in Nairobi and immediately entered Nairobi's nightlife.  There was not one white policeman at the station when we arrived, and so while they sent for him, we waited outside in the car.  The street had a long alley of eucalyptus trees, the typical tree for all new settler towns in the highlands.  At night their small, long blades emitted a strong, prudish and rather agreeable smell, and in the sheen from the street lamps they looked wonderful.  A large, magnificent young Swahili woman was being cajoled into the police station by a group of local policemen and, biting and scratching her wardens in the face and squealing like a stuck pig, doing everything in her power to resist.  The police also escorted in a company of rowdies, who even on the staircase in the station had to held back with force from belting one another.  A thief who had just been arrested came down the street with a whole trail of night owls -- some of whom were on his side, others of whom openly favored the police -- all screaming about the exact details of the case.  At length a young police officer appeared, ostensibly fresh from a boisterous party, and he turned out to be a disappointment to Belknap.  Although he began to write up his report with the liveliest interest and great rapidity, he soon was overcome by deeper thoughts and started dragging his pencil across the paper.  In the end, he ceased writing entirely and had returned his pencil to his pocket.  I was freezing in the night air because I had so little clothing on, and at long last we decided to head home.

While I still lay in bed the next morning, I could tell by the concentrated stillness outside the house that there were a host of people gathered there.  I knew who they were: they were the farm's elders, squatting on stones outside, munching on something or other, spitting and whispering.  I also knew full well what they wanted.  They had come to inform me that they now had to hold a kyama on the farm so as to reach an agreement regarding the shot from last night and the child's death.

A kyama was a gathering of the farm's elders with the government's consent to pass judgment in local disputes between squatters.  The old men in the kyama would meet on the occasion of a crime or an accident like a flock of bald vultures, debate the matter for weeks on end, and gorge themselves on mutton, gossip and misfortune.  I knew that they would try to get me to review the matter with them, and that they, if they could, would drag me into their negotiations and let me pass the final verdict.  I was in no shape to start on a review of the night's wretched events.  I sent for my horse so that I could ride off away from them.  

As I came out of the house, I saw what I had expected: a whole ring of old men sitting on the ground on my left near the huts of my staff.  To preserve the dignity of their little gathering, they pretended not to have seen me  -- that is, until they realized that I was about to ride off.  They tottered my horse with their old legs and hit me with their arms.  But I did nothing except wave back to them and ride off.