The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński Page A

It’s too late for that; I am afraid to turn around, for they might rush us. They are fantastically swift, stubborn, and persistent animals. I make a sign of the cross and slowly, slowly, in first gear, the clutch only half engaged, drive into the herd. It is enormous, stretching almost to the horizon. I observe the bulls, who are at the head. Those who are standing in the path of the car begin drowsily, sluggishly to step aside so that the car can pass. They do not move even a centimeter farther than is absolutely necessary, and still the Land Rover is constantly scraping against their sides. I am drenched in sweat as we drive through this minefield. Out of the corner of my eye I look at Leo. His eyes are shut. One meter after another, meter by meter. The herd is silent. Immobile. Hundreds of pairs of dark, bulging eyes in massive heads, filmy, dull, expressionless. The passage lasts a long time, a crossing seemingly without end, but at last we emerge on the other shore—the herd is now behind us, its deep, dark stain against the green surface of the Serengeti growing smaller and smaller.
    The more time passed, the farther we drove, circling and straying, the more anxious I became. We had not encountered any people since morning. We had also not come upon either a larger road or any kind of signpost. The heat was terrifying, and it intensified with every minute, as if the road we were on, and all others as well, led directly toward the sun, and as we drove we were inexorably approaching the moment we would be consumed by fire, like offerings laid at its altar. The burning air started to quiver and undulate. Everything was becoming fluid, each view blurred and washed out as in a film left running out-of-focus. The horizon receded and smudged, as if subject to the oceanic law of ebb and flow. The dusty gray parasols of the acacias swayed rhythmically and moved about—as if some confused madmen were tossing them here and there, at a loss for anything better to do.
    But the worst by far was that the tangled net of roads that had held us in its treacherous and suffocating grip for several hours now itself twitched and began to move. I could see that the web, the entire intricate geometry, which admittedly I had not been able to decipher but which nonetheless was a kind of constant, a fixed element upon the surface of the savannah, was now thrashing about and drifting. Where was it drifting to? Where was it pulling us, entwined in its coils? We were all being swept somewhere, Leo, the car and I, the roads, the savannah, the buffalo, and the sun, toward some unknown, shining, white-hot space.
    Suddenly, the engine stopped and the car came to an abrupt halt. Leo, seeing that something was wrong with me, had turned off the ignition. “Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll drive.” We continued this way until the heat diminished, and it was then that we spotted two African huts in the far distance. We drove up. They were empty, with no doors or windows. There were some wooden bunks inside. The houses clearly did not belong to anyone, and were simply intended for travelers who happened by.
    I don’t know how I found myself on one of the bunks. I was half dead. My head was pounding from the sun. To overcome drowsiness, I lit a cigarette. It didn’t taste good. I wanted to put it out, and when I looked at my hand, which was reaching instinctively for the ground, I saw that I was about to extinguish the cigarette on the head of a snake lying under the bed.
    I froze. Froze to such a degree that instead of quickly pulling back my hand, I left it suspended, cigarette burning, over the snake’s head. Slowly, the reality of my position dawned on me: I was the prisoner of a deadly reptile. I knew one thing for certain: I could not move a muscle, because then the snake would attack. It was an Egyptian cobra, yellowish gray, neatly coiled on the floor. Its venom brings death quickly, and in our situtation—with no medicines, and the