“It was Prince Rajapur who had summoned me. Twelve elephants, a veritable army of beaters. The tiger was a great male, a child-eater ravaging the villages of the region. They’d been trying to corner him for a year now, but he was a sly beast, extraordinarily cunning, orange asflame, with stripes of camouflage that made him almost invisible to the naked eye. But his breath was atrocious, and …”
David wasn’t really listening. Soler’s imaginarium didn’t really overlap with his own fantasies, but he knew that every dreamer haunted his own territory. In his youth, Soler Mahus had been weaned on tales of adventure and big game hunting. He too had once owned a library full of twopenny pulps. From these storybook memories, he’d built a world made of jungles and vast rivers cleaving sunburnt lands in two, savannahs, all-devouring deserts, through which he tracked fantastical beasts, legendary animals whose atrocities local tribes recounted in fearful whispers. Mahus hunted down the white rhino, the white gorilla, the white tiger … ghostly creatures, each the only living one of its kind. Wild monsters whose white coats contrasted strangely with green forests thick with sap.
Down below
, he’d been a great hunter bristling with bullets, sporting an anaconda-skin hat. A formidable stalker of the savannah who made his own cartridges, whose catchphrase—no matter the adversary—was always “Boys, don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!” He’d faced down the fiercest predators, felled at point-blank range elephants driven mad by a poisoned assegai. He’d had every tropical disease there was, every fever, every pox. He’d eaten quinine by the fistful, sewn his wounds shut with his own two hands. His body (his body down there) was but a quilt of scars, an appallingly stitched figure no white woman could gaze upon without immediately hiding her eyes. The negresses were the only ones to lick his wounds, and they did so with the tips of their tongues, naming him a great warrior, knowing what they gazed on was indomitable courage.But Soler cared little for women. He came and went, content with a virgin offered up by some unworthy kinglet during a quick halt; then once more he was the ascetic hunter of endless expeditions. The mad monk whose rifle was loaded with bullets he’d carved Xs into. He sought the white beast, the one he had to kill at any price and throw over his shoulder if he wanted to go back up with a trophy …
“Did I ever tell you the one about the lion of Magombo? Or the panther of Fijaya?” His monologues always started out the same way. He never bothered waiting for an answer, and dove right into an endless, convoluted tale, full of backtracking and contradictions. He’d once successfully hunted down a tiger in Africa—it hadn’t posed him the slightest problem of believability.
“Or the Raja of Shaka-Kandarek’s safari? And the great massacre of the mad gorillas? And the tale of the leopard with the golden claws?” Stories, so many stories. Down below, he was Majo-Monko, He-Who-Slew-Like-Lightning. He had his friends, his chief spear-carrier: Nemayo, a prince of the savannah, sole survivor of a tribe wiped out by a terrible civil war. Nemayo, an athlete slender as an assegai, his face covered in ritual scars and his body in inscrutable tattoos. Nemayo knew the lair of every legendary beast, was never scared of any taboo; he alone remained, faithful, when the whole troop of porters had scattered in the jungle at the first roar.
“Kid,” Soler whispered. “I was happy down there. I hunted the great white beasts. It was hard—terrible, sometimes—but that’s life, real life! Know what I’m saying?”
David understood. For a long time, Soler had worked as a packer in the basement of a department store, hiding his power for fear of being persecuted. Changing fashions had delivered him from this hell, making him a star overnight. The great white beasts … how many
David wasn’t really listening. Soler’s imaginarium didn’t really overlap with his own fantasies, but he knew that every dreamer haunted his own territory. In his youth, Soler Mahus had been weaned on tales of adventure and big game hunting. He too had once owned a library full of twopenny pulps. From these storybook memories, he’d built a world made of jungles and vast rivers cleaving sunburnt lands in two, savannahs, all-devouring deserts, through which he tracked fantastical beasts, legendary animals whose atrocities local tribes recounted in fearful whispers. Mahus hunted down the white rhino, the white gorilla, the white tiger … ghostly creatures, each the only living one of its kind. Wild monsters whose white coats contrasted strangely with green forests thick with sap.
Down below
, he’d been a great hunter bristling with bullets, sporting an anaconda-skin hat. A formidable stalker of the savannah who made his own cartridges, whose catchphrase—no matter the adversary—was always “Boys, don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!” He’d faced down the fiercest predators, felled at point-blank range elephants driven mad by a poisoned assegai. He’d had every tropical disease there was, every fever, every pox. He’d eaten quinine by the fistful, sewn his wounds shut with his own two hands. His body (his body down there) was but a quilt of scars, an appallingly stitched figure no white woman could gaze upon without immediately hiding her eyes. The negresses were the only ones to lick his wounds, and they did so with the tips of their tongues, naming him a great warrior, knowing what they gazed on was indomitable courage.But Soler cared little for women. He came and went, content with a virgin offered up by some unworthy kinglet during a quick halt; then once more he was the ascetic hunter of endless expeditions. The mad monk whose rifle was loaded with bullets he’d carved Xs into. He sought the white beast, the one he had to kill at any price and throw over his shoulder if he wanted to go back up with a trophy …
“Did I ever tell you the one about the lion of Magombo? Or the panther of Fijaya?” His monologues always started out the same way. He never bothered waiting for an answer, and dove right into an endless, convoluted tale, full of backtracking and contradictions. He’d once successfully hunted down a tiger in Africa—it hadn’t posed him the slightest problem of believability.
“Or the Raja of Shaka-Kandarek’s safari? And the great massacre of the mad gorillas? And the tale of the leopard with the golden claws?” Stories, so many stories. Down below, he was Majo-Monko, He-Who-Slew-Like-Lightning. He had his friends, his chief spear-carrier: Nemayo, a prince of the savannah, sole survivor of a tribe wiped out by a terrible civil war. Nemayo, an athlete slender as an assegai, his face covered in ritual scars and his body in inscrutable tattoos. Nemayo knew the lair of every legendary beast, was never scared of any taboo; he alone remained, faithful, when the whole troop of porters had scattered in the jungle at the first roar.
“Kid,” Soler whispered. “I was happy down there. I hunted the great white beasts. It was hard—terrible, sometimes—but that’s life, real life! Know what I’m saying?”
David understood. For a long time, Soler had worked as a packer in the basement of a department store, hiding his power for fear of being persecuted. Changing fashions had delivered him from this hell, making him a star overnight. The great white beasts … how many
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