up, started playing, looking after the goats, and stopped taking his antibiotics. The family let him. Then, as soon as the symptoms reappeared, his parents concluded that Western medicine was no better than their own remedies. They resorted to their herbal cures, and didn’t bother to tell us—it was their affair. The poor boy died yesterday.”
Natalie couldn’t think what to say. It was as if there was a big, empty space in her brain. It had happened before, when her mother died. “When is the funeral?”
Jonas stared at her. “He wasn’t a chief or a warrior … He was a child.” He passed his hand over his face again. “I’m sorry, Natalie, but his body was left out in the bush last night, to be eaten by predators and scavengers. There’s nothing left of him to be buried … it’s the tradition here.”
Natalie felt out of breath. This was a bad business and it had just got worse. “Did you see Mgina?”
He nodded. “She’s upset but it’s a large family—I’m not saying the Maasai don’t feel grief the way we do because they do, keenly, and he was a lovely boy. But mortality is high in the bush. That’s not supposed to comfort you, but it is a fact. Mgina says she’ll be back in a day or so.”
He took his hand off her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I have some sedatives if you’d like one.”
Natalie still felt winded, but she shook her head. “No, no thanks. I’ll just lie on my bed for a bit. It’s so … so disappointing.”
He nodded. “That’s the right word. It’s one of the first things you learn when you qualify as a doctor, that there are some people you can’t save, even though, according to the book, according to the rules, they should survive. It’s harder here because local traditions are so strong, and so different from ours. You’re not a doctor, so it’s hit you harder. Pity there’s no hard liquor on this dig—otherwise, I could prescribe a shot of brandy for you.”
He smiled.
3
WITNESS
Natalie looked at the packet of cigarettes she held in her hand. The moonlight was so bright tonight that she could read the writing without the aid of the hurricane lamp. The campfire was alight—just—but its crimson glow was dim. She took a cigarette from the pack and slipped it into her mouth. When she flicked open her lighter, the flame jumped up and caught the tobacco. She didn’t know which she liked more, the first taste of her first cigarette of the day, or the first sip of whiskey.
She put the cigarette pack in the breast pocket of her shirt and leaned forward to light the hurricane lamp. After it had caught, she turned the flame down low and savored the tang of kerosene in her nostrils. In the distance she could just make out the skyline of the Amboseli Mountain, its smooth shoulders sinking into the maroon gloom of the plain.
She knew that as soon as Russell saw the glow of her lamp he would be over. Tonight, she definitely needed company. Odnate’s death had upset her. Having, as she thought, rescued him, she felt as if part of herself had died with him. She felt partly cheated and partly foolish for thinking that it was so easy to save a life, and she also felt naive that she had been so ignorant of the local customs that, in the end, had won out.
Naïveté. It was the curse of her life. It was her naïveté that had got her involved with Dominic and had, in the end, been responsible for his moving on, moving on without her. For the umpteenth time she relived that last afternoon, by the river in Cambridge, against the backdrop of Trinity and King’s College Chapel. By Cambridge standards it had been a sunny day, gloriously warm but with clouds too, blotting out the sun from time to time. They were walking but both wheeling bicycles, planning to ride into the countryside, as they sometimes did. She still wasn’t sure whether what had come next was sophisticated or cruel, or both.
Dominic would often hum or softly whistle tunes and it had become their private game for Natalie to guess what he was humming or whistling. If she couldn’t guess the tune, she would try for the composer.
“Oh, I know that,” she had said enthusiastically that day. “It’s from that new musical … what’s it called? … that’s it, West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein, that’s