The Book of Secrets Read Online Free Page A

in civilized England tend to overeat.”
    They sat up late into the evening. Maynard did most of the talking, mostly about Africa. He loved it and he hated it, above all he feared it for what it could do to him. “This is a savage country, and it could turn you into a savage. It is so easy to be overcome by its savagery, to lose one’s veneer of Western civilization. This is what I have learned, what I dread most. So in a way I look forward to leaving it. But I have nowhere to go. India, perhaps. Egypt …”
    He respected the African, yet would call him nigger. He loved animals. He had killed scores of both. He believed in Empire, but had no patience with settling the country with whites. “I,” said the soldier, “respect the African — as a redoubtable enemy or as a friend. I would kill him with as little compunction as he would me. But the settler, and the low class of official we have in East Africa — excuse me, Corbin, but there are not enough of you here — despises the black and would use me to kill him.”
    They sat in silence for a long time. The courtyard below was quiet now. The moon had risen and passed the window and wassomewhere above the house. From outside came the sound of frogs and night insects, with the richness of a symphony, it seemed, when he paid attention to it, and from the kitchen came the occasional clatter of utensils. One more time Corbin glanced around the room, preparing mentally to leave. There was one question he had about this man, based on what he had heard at the parties and picnics. But it was not his place to ask.
    As if sensing this unease, Maynard began explanations.
    “Imagine,” he said, “the centre of the village where they hold the baraza. Cleared hard ground. A white man — an Englishman — pegged to the ground. Lying on his back, mouth wedged open. Savage men and women come and urinate in his mouth. Men standing and laughing, women crouching, all drunk on pombé. The man drowns in nigger urine. He is disembowelled, used as a latrine.… Imagine the insects feeding on him … the stench … the scavengers … hyenas who would not leave a scrap of meat on a bone, vultures, crows. It had to be avenged, Corbin. For the white man, for authority, for order — they are the same thing here.
    “We went in at dawn. Spies had given us the layout. No man or woman to be spared, I ordered. We set fire to the huts, waited outside for the niggers to emerge. I myself bayoneted them, men and women they came running out.… No mercy, I said …
    “You’d be surprised at the ease with which a bayonet enters a human chest.… How cheap human life is really …
    “You disapprove — obviously. Tell me, what would you do? I myself am not sure I did the right thing — I am haunted at times — but I believed then I was doing the right thing. To show strength, fury. This is a savage country, it makes a savage out of you. What would you do?”
    “I’m not sure I can say … not being a military man. I do think the Colonial Office holds vastly different views of the natives.”
    “Yes. I wonder which will prevail. Yours, obviously, when I’ve cleaned up and subdued the land for you to administer.”
    But they departed on cordial terms. “I disapprove of his actions, not of the man,” Corbin went back and wrote. In fact he was strangely drawn to the soldier, and joined him several times for drinks, until his posting came.
    17 March, 1913
    “Send the poor devil in,” I heard the Provincial Commissioner say, and the secretary looked rather apologetically at me. “Poor devil” because I had been posted to a place called Kikono near the border with German East. It is a substation that has been sporadically manned depending on the availability of junior staff. There are a few mission stations in the area that lies to the east and next to the foothills of Kilimanjaro. The town is populated by a community of Indians and some Swahilis from the Coast. Henley, the PC , is