| |
––––––––
THE FOLDABLE CANVAS bathtub had been filled at daybreak and left to warm in the sun. Two days had passed since the killing of the last lion, and it was finally safe for Alexandra to submerge into this overdue oasis. Outside of monkeys making a racket amidst the Acacia trees, not a creature stirred. She stepped out of her pants and peeled off her crusted undergarments to settle into her haven. For the first time since being startled by the hippo on that initial day, she permitted herself to relax. If a gramophone were handy, she would play Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”—thereby uniting God’s greatest natural backdrop to humanity’s closest offering of perfection.
It did not take long for a troop of colobus monkeys to infringe on her solitude. The braver among them came right up to the bush bath to steal a quick drink.
Alexandra found them charming and did not shoo them away. More to herself, she sang, “Yes! We Have No Bananas.”
One monkey picked up her silk French knickers in its tiny hands. It dipped them into the tub, scrubbed them upon her feet, smelled them, and then made a strange noise before repeating the process.
Alexandra took it for granted that it had a penis. “You dirty little man,” she quipped, splashing water with her hand.
The monkey squawked and splashed back.
Alexandra countered, and once hit with another well-aimed rebuttal, she turned to a growing ruckus. Other monkeys were running off with her clothes. She lunged forward and swiped her knickers from the primate’s grip. It hissed, bared its teeth, and fled. Tranquility lost, she franticly hopped out of the tub and into her knickers. The scrubber monkey was closest, now dragging off her towel. She ran after him with desperate fury and stomped a foot on a corner of the towel. Once winning the vicious tug of war, she wrapped herself up and secured it across her chest.
The other monkeys had carried their ill-gotten booty into the heights of the Acacia trees. Alexandra was grateful that at least they did not abscond with her rifle and shoot her.
I don’t have my rifle!
It was this thought that thunderstruck upon spotting the leopard. It was the only Big-five game that she’d yet to see and the one that was going to finish her. The lean cat was slinking through the grass in a taut belly-hug of the ground. Finch Hatton had told her to never run in such circumstances: keep eye contact; back off slowly; and foremost, not to panic. Her admiration for the man notwithstanding, Alexandra did not hesitate to turn, freak out, and run for the trees for all she was worth.
The leopard made its break, and the race was on.
Alexandra made it first into the shade and began scurrying up one of the taller trees. The monkeys squawked over the big cat’s presence. They dropped her clothing to climb unencumbered, instinctively knowing that they just needed to stay one branch higher than the foolish white woman to avoid being appetizers or entrée.
Alexandra paused, twenty feet up.
With a determined leap, the big cat started its climb. She went one limb higher, but it seemed the end of her line. She ripped off her towel and tossed it across the leopard’s head. It stuck, despite the beast’s efforts to shake it free. The blinded feline jumped back to the ground, looked about, and then scurried off.
Alexandra felt untold relief until spotting the fourth lion. She thought to scream but paused, needing to calculate which was worse: being devoured by a lion or alerting Big Jim to see her topless.
The lion looked akin to those killed: young, big, and hungry. It drew closer, eyeing her intently. The monkeys scaled higher once the bigger cat started climbing.
Alexandra shrieked as it ascended—ten feet away... eight feet... Six! She was readying to jump when a dark figure emerged from the savannah, running in fluid strides; a long spear uplifted. The lion’s front paws were upon her branch when the sharp tip of the spear impaled it against the tree.
The beast shook and roared, trying to break free.
Alexandra stood mesmerized, looking down at the hunter. He was the most indigenous man she’d ever seen outside of Papua: lean, muscular, and barefoot. He wore only a red loincloth. An elaborate headdress of ostrich feathers circled his head, and his hair was stained orange with crushed ochre.
With one hand clasped upon a branch, she covered her breasts with her other arm and looked away from the lion’s desperate plight. Big Jim arrived. He raised his rifle and shot the lion at close range. It was the most merciful thing he could do.
The lion went limp and remained suspended.
Alexandra opened her eyes, still balancing her bare feet along the tree limb. If it was not humiliating enough having Big Jim and the magnificent African bushman gawking up at her, De Pauw and two askaris arrived to join in on the spectacle.
She started chuckling. “Jean-Luc, you’re back!”
“Have I missed anything?” he asked smartly. “I see you’ve finally met Kavidi.”
“And he has surely seen me. Might you toss up the towel?”
“I retrieved your camera,” he teased. “Care for a shot? It looks adventurous up there.”
“Don’t make me scalp you on the ride home.”
Big Jim picked it up. “This count as saving your life?”
Alexandra rolled her eyes. “I will credit you if you get that to me straight away.” He tossed it up, but his aim was off. She reached out, almost lost her balance, and snapped her arm back once more to cover herself. The towel fell to the ground.
“A rather poor effort, Mister Gustin. I beg of you.”
Big Jim tossed it again. Though it struck her, Alexandra let it fall. Between holding the branch and concealing herself, it would be impossible to wrap up, anyway. Her only desire was to return to her well-earned bath, and there was only one way to quickly go about it. She dropped the arm covering her breasts to her side and endured their wide-eyed appreciation.
“Yes! This is what an American girl looks like standing near-naked in an Acacia tree.”
Click.
—‡—
ALEXANDRA LOADED HER suitcase into a safari wagon and headed for the lake to collect her driver. Four lions had been killed, photographed, and her work here was complete. De Pauw would take her to Kampala, and then she would backtrack her trip to Mombasa, hoping to hit London by the new year. A tour of Rippon Falls was a must. To leave without seeing the source of the Nile seemed foolish. In Nairobi, she would gather her stored luggage at the Norfolk Hotel. She knew she’d find Simra waiting for her, now knowing the measure of the man.
All that was left unrealized was a photograph of a shoebill stork. She found Jean-Luc by the lakeside telling a tale to Big Jim, who stood knee-deep, washing up a cut on his arm. The two askaris idled nearby. Her farewell could wait until they finished. Camera at the ready, she searched but could not detect any storks high-stepping the reeds.
Big Jim called her over. “If I give you an address in New Zealand, would you take a photograph and send it to my mother? Can’t seem to find a mailbox about these parts.”
“Sure.” Alexandra stepped closer and lined him up in her lens. For some reason, she’d miss the big lug.
He stood up and flexed his biceps. “No man or beast is my equal!”
Alexandra jumped back the moment her camera clicked. The enormous crocodile had broken the surface, clamped down, and taken him under at the thighs.
Blood filled the water where he had stood. The askaris fired their rifles, but he was gone; the quicker the mercy.
One of Big Jim’s legs washed ashore.
Equally shocked, De Pauw walked over to let Alexandra cry on his shoulder.
—‡—
“MISS BATHENBROOK, I presume?” The receptionist passed over a room key. “And might I say, well done!”
“Thank you.”
Alexandra drifted through the lobby of the Speke Hotel, ready to celebrate the completion of her duties in Kampala with a splash of lemonade. The local officials were pleased with her work. She had visited Kizza in the hospital, and if infection did not set in, he would keep his leg. Two thousand dollars was donated for his care, and she left unsure if such a gesture was patronizingly colonial or the correct thing to do. She had received no formal training on how a millionairess should act. A seat was taken to wait out the arrival of the owners of the canvas-topped Ford Model-T motorcars parked outside, which featured a decal: Wanderwell-Around the World endurance record.
She lifted off her slouch hat and shook out her hair. It was over.
The colonial hotel was named for John Speke—the first westerner to sight Lake Victoria in 1858. His claim that it served as the source of the Nile had spawned controversy. In those days, the mysteries of Africa filled the newspaper headlines: foremost, the great manhunt of the nineteenth century to find explorer David Livingstone. Yet Africa today was deemed a familiar commodity, with the most daring voyagers now looking toward Amazonia, the polar regions, or the depths of the ocean. Some even imagined mankind amidst the stars.
Boundless horizons were becoming less storybook fantasy.
The Great War had changed social norms, indeed everything. The age of colonial rule had reached its zenith upon its onset and was now on the wane. Through civil unrest, peaceful retreat, or bloody rebellion, aspiring nations were on a path toward self-determination, however intermittent and slow each might prove to be. Good men like Kizza and Simra were needed to father them along.
Progress was evident in Kampala, to which the British applied a lighter boot. If the diverse people of Uganda could set aside their tribal differences and derive a unified sense of being of one nation, their homeland and future would become a creation of their own. The English had done so centuries ago, and it was among the reasons, for so long a period, they had ruled the world.
Alexandra immersed herself in an edition of the London Times. An article about George Dyott’s preparations to conduct the most anticipated manhunt of the twentieth century caught her eye. It stated the expedition was delayed until spring 1928, for reasons unspecified.
She pondered what future, if any, remained for her in adventure photography. In her brief time, she had too often tempted a sunrise not meant to be her last, to be her last. She had kept that one awful photo of Big Jim posing, just as the croc surfaced to take him under. It had shaken her in seeing his life snuffed out so violently.
They are here. Alexandra slyly peered around a corner of her newspaper to watch the trailblazers settle at a table. All four looked exhausted, dust-covered, and defeated. She knew from the newsreels that one of the three men was Walter “Cap” Wanderwell. In 1922, he had started out leading his team on a race across the globe in his custom-made automobiles. Alexandra’s eyes, however, locked onto the sole female in the party, who was unmissable standing at six feet and dressed in khaki breeches.
The young woman took off her leather aviator cap.
Over recent years following her escapades, Aloha Wanderwell had been elevated into Alexandra’s absentee idol. She hid behind her paper and quashed an impulse to introduce herself. What of interest could she possibly say to a woman who’d entered the Muslim holy city of Mecca disguised as a man and escaped capture from Chinese bandits by fleeing to Soviet Vladivostok?
Alexandra again peeked, and this time they took notice as the men filed out of the lobby. She felt silly in being caught gawking and retreated behind her newspaper.
“Alexandra Bathenbrook, I presume?”
“Yes.” She folded down her paper. “I am thrilled to meet you!”
“And I am so very thrilled to meet you!” Aloha took the chair across. She displayed a tomboyish appeal that did not match her high-pitched voice. “I read about your travels in Papua. I said to myself, ‘This is a gal I hope to meet one day.’ And here you are!”
Alexandra was stunned, having never examined her reflection in the mirror for any semblance of celebrity. She summoned a waiter. “You must share a drink if you have the time.”
Aloha ordered lemonade. “Cap and the boys are fixing the axle on my vehicle. We’re all down with malaria, but plan to push on for Mombasa tomorrow. Kampala is abuzz over your success.”
“I did little more than evade being eaten,” Alexandra said. “What you’ve done is remarkable. Do tell.”
Aloha told her tale. On a whim, she had answered a newspaper ad and joined up with Wanderwell’s troupe to become the first female to drive around the world. The group spent the entirety of 1927 touring Africa. Such barnstorming was financed by giving lectures and showing films of their travels, but they’d came across shockingly few opera houses between Cape Town and Khartoum. They were so spent of resources that their cars had chugged into Kampala using crushed bananas for grease and elephant fat for engine oil. It was clear they were nearly bankrupt.
Aloha ended her story. “So, what exotic lands are next for you?”
“Montana. Home.” Alexandra shared a little about her travels and fading ambitions. “Adventure photography has been fun, but I shan’t do it any longer.”
“You mustn’t!” Aloha perked up. “What I’m doing is but a novelty act. Once done, it’s done. What you’re doing will allow young women the world over to dream beyond working in a factory or resigned to secretarial work. You mustn’t, you truly mustn’t give up!”
It was a lot to think about.
Alexandra said, “My travel guide is delayed. I’m left with an extra room. You and your friends may have it.”
Aloha again appeared ill: her complexion ashen and eyes heavy. She tepidly resisted, half-asleep in her chair.
While John Speke had a hotel bearing his name and Doctor Livingstone had been presumed, it had proven the ambitious reporter, Henry Stanley, who ushered both men to fame.
A young American upstart with a speck of courageous vision.
Aloha’s heartfelt encouragement relit Alexandra’s pilot light. She stood and marched over to the reception desk. “I need a second room for the night.”
“Only the Royal suite is vacant. It comes with room service,” informed the receptionist.
Alexandra smiled. “That sounds perfect.”