West with the Night

by Beryl Markham

‘You are very selfish, Kibii,’ I said. ‘I can jump as high as you can, and play all our games just as well. I can throw a spear almost as far. We will find him together and put both our spears in his heart.’

‘God makes fat birds and small birds, trees that are wide and trees that are thin, like wattle. He makes big kernels and little kernels. I am a big kernel. One does not argue with God.’

If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work.

He had been lavish with a stranger. He had left me a word, tossed me a key to a door I never knew was there, and had still to find.

More people had driven out from the town, compelled by the new romance of a roaring propeller — a sound that was, for me, like a white light prying through closed eyes, disturbing slumber I did not want disturbed. It was the slumber of contentment — contentment with a rudimentary, a worn scheme of life — slumber long nurtured by a broad and silent country, effortless and fruitful in the sun, and whose own dreams were the fabric of its history. I had curiosity, but there was resentment with it. And neither of these could be translated into reason.

I could have warned you — but you shouldn’t be robbed of your right to make mistakes.’

Tom had kept me from a trip and Arab Ruta had asked a question. They had known, and I have wondered how they knew, and I have found an answer for myself.

Denys was a keystone in an arch whose other stones were other lives. If a keystone trembles, the arch will carry the warning along its entire curve, then, if the keystone is crushed, the arch will fall, leaving its lesser stones heaped close together, though for a while without design. Denys’ death left some lives without design, but they were rebuilt again, as lives and stones are, into other patterns.

A day later, Blix would be on his way again, resembling a half-brother to Death, but shooting just as straight as he always had and performing his job with his usual competence.

I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts. They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily.

Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.

It didn’t matter because Tom was unchanging — neither a fairweather pilot nor a fairweather friend. If for a month, or a year, or two years we sometimes had not seen each other, it still hadn’t mattered.