The Rift Read online

  Little Willie could not sleep. He, too, watched the grazing animals. Tied to a tree close to the grazing animals, he could see the bobbing heads of the warriors. At first, he thought the black heads were those of some strange animal. They seldom came up at the same time. Never did he see more than the tops of their heads. But Willie knew they were men when he saw the tip of a spear raise then drop quickly below the grass tops. They were less than ten meters from the wildebeests when suddenly one of the animals lifted his head, and like a single animal, the herd bolted toward the camp and away from the running warriors.

  In terror, the animals ran directly at the camp; the startled Ibrahim and the Shirazi fired their rifles into the air to frighten them off their deadly path. Fifty animals, most over four hundred kilos, rumbled through the camp, trampling the sleeping men. The Masai morani raced among the dazed and wounded men. The Shirazi pulled the bolt back to eject the first shell when the spear pierced his body. Before he could fall to the ground, a warrior cleanly removed his head from his shoulders. Twitching, the headless body dropped to the ground. Mercifully, the stunned men on the ground did not understand what was happening to them as the warriors fell upon them. In seconds it was over.

  Only Ibrahim stood. He knew his only hope was to get to the staked horses before the frenzied warriors reached him. The horses were less than twenty meters away. Emptying his revolver, he turned to run, taking only two steps when the first two spears pierced his body, their force driving him forward and pinning him to the ground. With terror filling his heart, he tried to turn his head, lifting it upright as he did. Above him, he looked into the red eyes of the morani leader, his arm upraised to strike. He opened his mouth wide to scream.

  The screams in the camp reawakened in Willie the horror of seven days past. He began to scream; reliving the horror of the first carnage. The leader of the morani stepped over to Willie, his eyes still shining from the killing. In his hand, he held the sword that decapitated Willie’s tormentor.

  Adiru turned and moved to stand before the white boy. He reached down and touched Willie’s shoulder, looking steadily into Willie’s eyes until the boy looked back at him. Glancing at the dead Somali, he wondered what the boy had been through. As he held his hand on Willie’s shoulder, the boy’s screams slowly subsided, until only the tiny whimpers of the injured boy could be heard. Adiru dropped to his haunches, bringing the sword down so that it waved in the face of the boy, who began to whimper again. The Masai assured Willie with his eyes as he cut the ropes from his hands and feet.

  “We will take him to the village.” He turned. Not looking back, he spoke to the boy. “Come.” It was a language Willie had not heard before but he understood and followed.

  The Masai carried the two dead and three wounded warriors to the west toward the village. Behind them, a lazy male lion had awakened and walked regally among the dead bodies. Vultures began to circle. Jackals, wild dogs, and hyenas began to move closer, smelling the fresh blood. The lion began the fruitless effort of protecting the scattered corpses, running off the scavengers which moved in as soon as he ran to protect another prize. As he chased a pack of jackals, a hyena raced past him and grabbed Ibrahim’s head and headed toward his den. The pack turned and raced after him.

  ---

  The elders knew the value of the little white boy. When Adiru argued that they should adopt him into the tribe, the elders thought him a fool. “The ferenji will find out we have the boy and punish us,” the village head man said, putting an end to Adiru’s protests.

  The caravan had stopped at Bunda where the Masai gathered to bargain with the Arab traders for Willie. Twenty blankets, six copper pots, and ten long knives of shining steel. The elders were astonished that the traders would pay so much for a frail white boy who did not speak. It was Adiru who chose to take the boy to the traders when the bargaining was over. He watched as two powerful Sukuma grabbed the boy, bound him and placed the rope around his neck. As Adiru turned his back, he heard no sound from the boy. He did not scream. Adiru looked into the eyes of the elder who was most adamant about selling the boy.

  “You see, he did not scream,” he told him proudly.

  ---

  For six weeks, Adiru had watched the boy. He spoke often to him, pleased that each time, the boy seemed to understand more of his language. When the tall morani would move the cattle, he would bring the boy. At first the boy would whimper as they would walk in the sun for hours, without water and food. But after two weeks, Adiru noticed the boy had stopped complaining, and stayed with Adiru and the other morani.

  Still the boy did not speak, and the other children teased him. The morani watched the sport with Adiru. They noticed that Adiru was not laughing. One of the morani noticed how Adiru looked at the boy.

  “Adiru has a son. What will you call your son, Adiru?”

  “He is only a boy. He has been frightened by evil men. Do you remember when we first brought him to the village? He was weak and he whimpered. Now, he is almost as strong as the other children and he says nothing.” Adiru looked at the others, who grew silent. All were careful with Adiru, who was the strongest and swiftest of the young warriors.

  One morning, as the children were making sport with the little boy, one of the boys began to slap him on the legs with a young sapling. As the boy began to come toward him a second time, the little boy grabbed a spear one of the men had left leaning against a manyatta, and charged after his tormentor. The young Masai began to scream. Adiru, nearby, rushed to take the long spear from the little boy. As the men and women gathered round, gleefully pointing to the little boy, Adiru bent down and looked into his eyes.

  “A spear is for killing, Little Spirit. You must only use it against your enemies.” Adiru looked at the boys who huddled around the terrified one. “They will not tease you. They want to be your friend.” From that moment, they called him Little Spirit.

  As Adiru spoke, the band of boys began to come closer to the ferenji boy. One offered him a stick he had sharpened. The ferenji boy took the stick, and followed the boys as they began to run toward the edge of the village.

  The morning after the council had decided to sell the boy, the Masai men had gathered for their trip to Bunda. They were carrying hides, ivory tusks, and rhino horns. They pushed goats before them, and several young bulls from their herd. Walking with them was Little Spirit, the name Adiru had given him after the morning where he had defended himself. The boy did not know that he was to be sold, and walked willingly with Adiru. Adiru recalled the arguments he had used to keep the boy, to make him one of them. He pointed out that the boy had grown strong like the other boys, and, although he did not speak, he understood their language. Soon, he told them, the boy would speak and grow to be strong and wise. As they walked, he thought sadly that Little Spirit would think he betrayed him.

  ---

  The Arab traders had tied Little Spirit’s hands, shackled his feet with ropes, and led him with a rope about his neck. At first, he fought to pull away until the rope began to tear the skin from his neck and each pull brought him great pain. Then he thought of Adiru. He was angry at his friend, at first. When he looked at Adiru as he was led away, he understood. He thought of the leopard.

  ---

  Three young Masai warriors had been searching for a leopard they had seen the day before. The leopard skin would bring a great price, perhaps four cattle. The leopard was hunted also because the day before it had killed one of the young calves from the village herd. Slowly, the three men and Little Spirit approached the thick underbrush where the leopard was last seen. The brush was very thick and the men would move several meters, then stop, while one would slowly raise his head. Then they would move again.

  Suddenly, the brush in front of the three began to move. A huge boar warthog, surprised near his lair, charged. Little Spirit was behind Adiru as the boar headed directly for them. Adiru could have danced to the side of the charging boar, but Little Spirit was directly behind him. The boar would hav
e ripped out the stomach of the small boy in an instant. The morani took the charge of the squealing animal, thrusting his spear into its huge shoulders. The spear went through the shoulder into the heart of the animal, who continued his charge, ripping the leg of Adiru before he collapsed at Little Spirit’s feet. The little boy remembered watching Adiru, as the others gathered round to look at the wound spurting blood. He never made a sound as one of the others bound the wound. Little Spirit watched while the sweat poured from Adiru’s face and his jaws pulsed from the clenching of his teeth. Seeing the little boy staring wide-eyed at his savior, the morani smiled.

  “You did not run, Little Spirit. You will grow up to be a morani someday.”

  ---

  He would not cry out. He would not show the traders that they hurt him. For three days they walked until they came to the shores of the great Lake Victoria. When he saw the water which went without end to the western horizon, images of great waves of water flashed before his eyes, then were gone. The sharp pain as the rope scraped his neck brought him back to the trail. They had turned south, keeping the lake to their right.

  ---

  Otto Bucher stood with Gustav, looking to the east. The rains were late this year.

  “The dryness has been a strain on the seedlings, Gustav. We need rain soon.

  Although we water them, it is not the same as a good, soaking rain.”

  “It is hard to urge patience, my friend. I don’t know if we Germans will ever get used to the seasons in Africa. Nature is not a machine, whatever Professor Stuhlmann might say.” Gustav thought of the time last year before the rains. They had returned from the safari at Ngordato. It had been a wonderful time.

  Little Willie …

  “Is something the matter, Gustav?”

  Otto wished he had said nothing. It was best to let his friend’s moods pass in silence or by trying to talk of something else. He thought about the terrible time almost a year ago, when his family received the news that little Willie had been taken. The settlers understood the sudden moods of melancholy that overtook Gustav and Maria. For almost a year, the settlers had searched. Men from the German Navy were brought ashore to assist. There was no sign. No clues, as if the Somali had disappeared from the face of the earth. There were even rumors that he was seen traveling west toward Lake Victoria, but the search there had turned up nothing.

  “Gustav, did I tell you that we plan to return to Schleswig? We have received a very attractive offer from an import company in Bremen.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, Otto. You had mentioned your wife’s distress, but that was some time ago.”

  “She misses her family and little Erika has not been well. Being near the medical centers in Germany will help.” What Otto could not tell his friend was that his wife had been frightened for her children since Gustav’s boy had been kidnapped. He knew that the fear was not rational, yet the presence of so many people different from you often induced in him a dread that they would suddenly rise up against the settlers. He did not understand the Africans. He did not understand what they really thought about the settlers.

  “Is it the Goldschmidts?”

  “Yes. I did not know you knew they were interested in buying coffee plantations?” Otto asked. “They have been investing heavily in German East Africa.”

  Otto looked at Gustav. Did he disapprove? Was it because the Goldschmidts were Jews? He wondered, but said nothing. If the Goldschmidts put their offer on the table, he would take it. The Junkers seemed more obsessed with Jewish bankers than others in Germany.

  “What about you, Gustav? Do you plan to stay in Africa?”

  “There is the chance that Willie is still somewhere in Africa. We will not leave until we are sure. This is our home, Otto.”

  Chapter Two

  The captain had agreed to take on the cargo after a heated discussion with the sweating Belgian agent James Alfred Fleming II had hired. The discussion had taken place in a room in the La Femme brothel, one of the many in Stanleyville. Jim stood and listened as the captain at first refused, then relented after another fifty francs passed into his hands. The steamer would be leaving tomorrow. Jim Fleming was returning home a very rich man.

  That night, Fleming sat in the bar of the brothel with Francie. They had met three years before, when he first showed up in Stanleyville. Tall, still thin despite the years of abusing his body, he was different from the mining engineers, speculators, and government officials that frequented the brothel. He was one of the few Americans, and the only man who treated her like a lady.

  Francie was one of the many girls in the brothel with French or Belgian fathers and African mothers. She had her dreams of returning to Belgium with her father, until one day he was gone with only a goodbye note. Francie took the one choice offered to her by the Belgians, to entertain the European community; something she did well with her command of French, Flemish, German and English.

  Big Jim, as he liked to be called, seldom talked about his past. He was a man who never seemed to take life seriously. He made Francie laugh. Tonight, he seemed in a different mood. He was excited, his eyes glistening as he talked. Francie knew that the cargo he was sending to Leopoldville was worth a great deal of money. She knew that he had someone very important in the Congo Free State who could help get the cargo past customs and out of the country. If he could manage that, he would be a rich man. If he did not, he would rot in the prison in Leopoldville, along with many others who had tried the same thing. King Leopold was a very greedy man. If he did not have some share of the enterprise, he was ruthless.

  Fleming looked at the pretty girl across from him. “Maybe this time,” he said.

  “Maybe this time I’ll make it back home. Sometimes, I wonder if there is such a place as home. The last time I felt I was home was with old General Nathan Bedford Forrest, killin’ Yankees. That was over thirty years ago. We weren’t like the infantry, livin’ off cornmeal and drinkin’ ground up peanuts with chicory for coffee. We had meat we took from the Yankee stores and real coffee, just like you got here.”

  Francie was looking at big Jim, wondering why he was telling her all this.

  They had known each other for three years. It was because he was leaving.

  “When I got mustered out, we kept what was on our backs. I remember I had a Sharps rifle and a Colt revolver, the gifts of a dead Yankee. When I got home our house was gone. The Yankees were using it for the officers’ quarters and the slave quarters for barracks. When the rebel soldiers got home, you could see the contempt on the faces of those long-faced New England bastards. Same sonsabitches whose ancestors got rich bringing slaves to this country, looking like they were agents of God. They gave us rebs a choice. You could admit that you were a worthless sonofabitch working for an illegal government and denounce all the folks you grew up with, or you could leave. Well, I left.”

  “You left America?” Francie asked. The sisters had told her such wonderful things about America. Millions of people from Europe want to go to America, they told her. She had never heard anyone speak badly of the United States.

  “No, I just left Mississippi. I was looking for some way to get back at the Yankees for what they did to the South. I joined the James gang. You probably never heard of Frank and Jesse James, but they were robbers who, everyone thought, were heroes. Well, some things happened and I left the gang. I wandered from one mining town to another, looking for an easy way to get rich.

  “Somewhere in my travels, it might have been Virginia City, Nevada, I remember running into this Irishman. We were drinking and he began to talk about Africa. He swore the real riches were in Africa. “

  Fleming seemed to Francie to have a faraway look. He was watching the cigarette smoke he blew from his lungs, trying to create an image of the Irishman, and trying to recreate his words. “If it’s gettin’ rich you’re after, Jim, m’boy, Africa. That’s the place. Diamonds, gold, ivory, it’s there for those with the sand to take it.” He smiled when he thought about
that Irishman. “Why am I smiling at that lying bastard,” he said. “But it was true enough, what he said, for the lucky few.”

  Then he shook his head, watching the smoke from his cigarette as it drifted away from him. “No, Paddy had nothin’ to do with me coming here. For me, Africa wasn’t a place to go to, it was one to run to.”

  Francie watched Big Jim drift away from her. He seemed to be looking through her. His eyes had grown sad. He had been drinking since early afternoon. When men drew inward like that, Francie knew it was time to move away. She saw another customer drinking alone. Touching Jim’s arm gently, she moved to join the man.

  His thoughts always came back to Fort Collins. He had been moving from place to place, looking for an easy way to get rich when he met Jenny. She was the daughter of a rancher.

  “She was young and full of life and I was a thirty-five year old philanderer who knew how to talk to ladies. The father had a huge spread on the Platte, right under the Rocky Mountains. If it wasn’t for Jenny, he would have sent me on my way, but Jenny was his only daughter and he convinced himself that with my genteel southern roots, there was hope of redemption.”

  Fleming thought about Jenny and those blue Colorado skies and the self-contempt rose like a gorge. “I hadn’t been around Fort Collins six months when Jenny and me got married. We had a real big wedding, people comin’ up from Boulder and Denver, small towns and spreads farther out on the plains.”

  For five years, he recalled, he led a normal, satisfying life, sharing in the running of the ranch with his father-in-law and Jenny’s brothers. “I always had a drinkin’ problem, but on the ranch, I figured out ways to hide it. Jenny knew, but she loved me and protected me from her father. I remember one of the brothers, Frank, wanted Jenny to throw me out, but she wouldn’t do it.”