think she concluded that I was jealous of Charlie, and anyway I was spoiling her African honeymoon. "So, no hard feelings, eh, Charlie? But it does me no good to travel this way." "That's okay. I'm not trying to stop you. Just blow." And that was what I did. I organized a separate expedition that suited my soldierly temperament better. I hired two of Charlie's natives and when we drove away in the jeep I felt better at once. And after a few days, anxious to simplify more and more, I laid off one of the men and had a long conversation with the remaining African, Romilayu. We arrived at an understanding. He said that if I wanted to see some places off the beaten track, he could guide me to them. "That's it." I said. "Now you've got the idea. I didn't come here to carry on a quarrel with a broad over a kiss." "Me tek you far, far," he said. "Oh, man! The farther the better. Why, let's go, let's go," I said. I had found the fellow I wanted, just the right man. We got rid of more baggage and, knowing how attached he was to the jeep, I told him I would give it to him if he would take me far enough. He said the place he was going to guide me to was so remote we could reach it only on foot. "So?" I said. "Let's walk. We'll put the jeep up on blocks, and she's yours when we get back." This pleased him deeply, and when we got to a town called Talusi we left the machine in dead storage in a grass hut. From here we took a plane to Baventai, an old Bellanca, the wings looked ready to drop off, and the pilot was an Arab and flew with bare feet. It was an exceptional flight and ended on a field of hard clay beyond the mountain. Tall Negro cowherds came up to us with their greased curls and their deep lips. I had never seen men who looked so wild and I said to Romilayu, my guide, "This isn't the place you promised to bring me to, is it?" "Wo, no sah," he said. We were to travel for another week, afoot, afoot. Geographically speaking I didn't have the remotest idea where we were, and I didn't care too much. It was not for me to ask, since my object in coming here was to leave certain things behind. Anyway, I had great trust in Romilayu, the old fellow. So for days and days he led me through villages, over mountain trails, and into deserts, far, far out. He himself couldn't have told me much about our destination in his limited English. He said only that we were going to see a tribe he called the Arnewi. "You know these people?" I asked him. A long time ago, before he was full grown, Romilayu had visited the Arnewi together with his father or his uncle--he told me many times but I couldn't make out which. "Anyway, you want to go back to the scenes of your youth," I said. "I get the picture." I was having a great time out here in the desert among the stones, and continually congratulated myself on having quit Charlie and his wife and on having kept the right native. To have found a man like Romilayu, who sensed what I was looking for, was a great piece of luck. He was in his late thirties, he told me, but looked much older because of premature wrinkles. His skin did not fit tightly. This happens to many black men of certain breeds and they say it has something to do with the distribution of the fat on the body. He had a bush of dusty hair which he tried sometimes, but vainly, to smooth flat. It was unbrushable and spread out at the sides of his head like a dwarf pine. Old tribal scars were cut into his cheeks and his ears had been mutilated to look like hackles so that the points stuck into his hair. His nose was fine-looking and Abyssinian, not flat. The scars and mutilations showed that he had been born a pagan, but somewhere along the way he had been converted, and now he said his prayers every evening. On his knees, he pressed his purple hands together under his chin, which receded, and with his lips pushed forward and the powerful though short muscles jumping under the skin of his arms, he'd pray. He fetched up deep sounds from his chest,
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