more, and of cooking bananas; she certainly yearned for the wild ululation of the Masai over this suffocating library quiet.
Padding dark and silent down the well-waxed linoleum halls of that building, a tall Masai warrior came to deliver her.
“I will see Richasan.”
Gray started, and looked up to find a man in her doorway. He was wearing a gray suit which, though it fit him well, looked ridiculous. The man didn’t look ridiculous; the suit did. His hair was plaited in many strands and bound together down his back.
“Dr. Richardson won’t be in for six or seven hours.” For God’s sake, it was three in the morning. Then, an African’s sense of time was peculiar. If you made an appointment with a Kikuyu for noon, he might show up at five with no apology for being late. With a Masai you did not make appointments. He came when he felt like it.
“I wait, then.” The man came in and stood opposite Gray, balancing perfectly on one leg, with his other foot raised like a stork’s. His long face high and impassive, he stood immobile, as he had no doubt poised many times for hours in a clump of trees, waiting for a cheetah to pass in range of his spear. Six or seven hours was nothing.
“Can I help you?”
“No.”
“I am Dr. Richardson’s assistant.”
“You are his woman?”
“I am no man’s woman.”
The Masai looked down at her. “Pity.”
“Not really. I don’t need a man.”
“You are silly fool, then, to shrivel and dry soon.”
Gray couldn’t bear his towering over her any longer. “Won’t you sit down?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll stand.” When she did so the Masai glanced at her with surprise. Gray was six feet tall, and looked him in the eye now. “Anything you want to say to Dr. Richardson will have to go through me first. You want him to do something for you, right?”
The Masai’s eyes narrowed. “Yez … but I wait for Richasan.”
“What is it?” Gray stood right next to him, close enough to make him uncomfortable. “An apartment? Or you want into Harvard?”
“I do not come for myself,” he said with disgust. “For others. These, not even my people—”
“Who?”
The man turned away. “Richasan.”
Gray was beginning to get curious. She tried polite conversation. “How long have you been in the U.S.?”
“One day.”
“What are you here for, to study?”
“Yez …” he said carefully. “I learn this white people.”
“What will you study?”
His eyes glimmered. “Your weakness.”
“You’re a spy, then.”
“We want you out of my country.”
Gray nodded. “I’ve done some work for Kenyan independence myself.”
“The lady has not worked so hard, then,” said the Masai dryly. “You are still there.”
“Well, who in Kenya would listen to a woman?”
“Yez.”
“We’re not the same tribe, you know. As the English.”
“No, you are the same. This becomes clear with Corgie.”
“Who is Corgie?”
The Masai did not respond.
“How do you plan to get the whites out?”
“Masai—” He raised his chin high. “We like to put the man to sleep with steel, the woman with wood. But the gun … Kikuyu think we best fight with talk. Kikuyu talk so much, this is all Kikuyu know,” said the Masai with disdain. “But this time Kikuyu right. I begin my study already. This white man smart with his gun, not so smart in his head.”
“Don’t underestimate your opponent,” said Gray pointedly.
“We get most whites out with talk. Talk take time. One will not wait. I come to Richasan.”
“Whom do you want to get rid of?”
The Masai folded his arms.
Gray released a tolerant sigh. She went back to her chair, settling in for the duration. “Where did you learn English?”
“Richasan. He come to my country. I save his life,” said the warrior grandly.
“How?” Gray hadn’t heard this story.
“Richasan make this picture. My people want to kill him with steel. They think this camera, it take the soul away. Ridiculous. I have worked this camera. Ridiculous to think a man could take your soul.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Gray quietly, with a slight smile. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The Masai looked down at her with new interest, though he didn’t press her to explain. “So I stop the killing of Richasan. I help with his work. He teach me English. My English excellent.”
Gray shrugged. “It’s all right.”
“My English vedy, vedy excellent,” he reasserted with feeling.
“Your English is very excellent.”
“Yez.”
“No, I mean you left out the verb. You said it wrong.”
The Masai answered angrily in his own language.
“You’re quite right,” said Gray. “To outstrip a foreigner in one’s home tongue is weak and easy. But you were being arrogant, and I don’t think I deserved that kind of language.”
The Masai stared at her and said nothing, as if doubting his ears. Gray had responded in Masai—correct, intelligible, and beautifully spoken. As he was silent, she went on, “If you were more comfortable in your own language, you should have said so.”
The Masai stared, and she was concerned she’d angered him—Masai were easily offended. Still, she went on, enjoying the language she so rarely got to use, its lilting, playful, vowelridden sound: “And I don’t think I bear the least resemblance to a hyena, in heat or not.” Hyena, “ol-ngyine,” she took care to pronounce just as he had.
The Masai began to laugh. He extended his hand over the table and clasped hers. “Good, Msabu.” His grip was strong and dry. “Vedy, vedy good, Msabu. Hassatti. Pleasure, big pleasure.” Hassatti took a seat opposite Gray. “How you learn Masai?”
“Richasan.”
“Msabu must like my people,” he said with satisfaction.
“You’re a powerful and magnificent tribe. Straight. Angry. You bow to no one. I’ve studied and admired you a great deal.”
“So why you treat Hassatti from so high? Change his English?”
“What I admire I also embrace. I also bow to no one, even Masai.”
“Ah.” Hassatti nodded. “Now tell Hassatti. In America United States, this woman is different thing? Yez?”
“I’m different. Yes.”
Hassatti’s brow rumpled. “Richasan, he do not warn me of this … Why Msabu has no husband? Your father ask too many cows?”
“I strike my own bargains.”
Hassatti reached out and touched Gray’s fine honey