Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [16]
“I’m thinking.”
“Do you want a piece of advice from your old father?”
“Not really.”
“Don’t look back so much or you’ll get wiped out on the tree in front of you.”
Curiosity and Cats
Dad
BY THAT AFTERNOON, the rain had returned. And by late evening, when we sloshed down to the end of the farm to see what remained of its west bank, the river had abandoned all pretense of making its way toward Mozambique in a stately manner and had gathered up its skirts and was racing with unseemly haste, tumbling great chunks of Fuller real estate with it in the process. The island in front of the watchman’s hut was washed away from its foundations and could be seen sailing hurriedly down the Pepani.
Two enterprising young crocodiles, flushed out of the roiling river, worked their way through the bananas to the breeding pond at the top of the farm and inhaled hundreds of fish before they were discovered by Mum.
“Now that,” she said as the pond was drained, “I really cannot allow.”
The crocodiles sank guiltily into the shrinking muddy puddle.
But Mum hardened her jaw. “Nope,” she said, “no clemency.”
Erasmus, the man whose job it was to take care of the breeders, and who had been a poacher before he found employment with Mum and Dad, told Mum, “I have a good trick for killing crocodiles. It is only that I need a torch and a gun.”
“For heaven’s sake,” said Mum, sniffing. “Just bonk the little blighters on the head and bring me their hides.”
Then we hurried back through the rain to the camp, sat huddled under the shelter of the tamarind tree, and tried to ignore the yelps and shouts that wafted down through the persistent rain from the top of the farm.
Eventually Erasmus, looking like the sole survivor of a catastrophic mud slide, appeared with two crocodile skins and laid them on the veranda wall for Mum’s approval. Mum inspected them and said, “Pity about all the holes. They might have made quite a sweet pair of shoes.”
Dad lit his pipe and said, “Still got all your fingers, Erasmus?”
“Bwana?”
Lightning blanketed the sky and turned everything an eerie shade of pale blue for a moment. Thunder swelled around us, as if the belly of the earth were growling.
Mum said, “Thank you, Erasmus. You’d better knock off now.”
Dad said, “You’d better salt those skins like mad, or they’ll start stinking the place up.”
Mum said, “I might pin them up around the ponds as a warning to other crocodiles.”
Dad said, “I’m going to Lusaka tomorrow. Anyone need anything?”
“Should we treat ourselves to a nice fat turkey for Christmas this year?”
“What’s wrong with those things that keep crashing around the garden? Why don’t we eat one of them?”
“Those are Atatürk and Isabelle, and they’re not for eating,” said Mum. “Too tough by now anyway.”
It was quite true that Mum’s pet turkeys had been more than usually exercised by the frequent appearance of snakes and monitor lizards and by the constant unwanted attention of the dogs.
“Crocodile tail?” Dad tried.
“Not very Christmassy,” said Mum. “Go and see the Greek fellow at Cairo Butchery. You might be able to swap some fish for a bird.”
Dad sighed. “All right. What about you, Bobo?”
“I don’t think I can stomach Lusaka,” I said, thinking of the crush of traffic and the blistering Christmas decorations flapping from the shop windows, everything turgid and overblown. I find the forced cheer of the holiday season depressing in northern climes, but the tropical equivalent is almost unbearable. And I thought of myself half suffocated and sweating, permanently assigned to guard the car while Dad negotiated with the Greek butcher. “I’ll stay in the valley,” I said.
Mum said, “You could always help me sex the fish.”
I flinched, “No thanks, Mum,” and said to Dad, “Maybe you could drop me off at K’s farm. I’ll go and look at his bananas.”
Dad threw me a sharp look from above his pipe.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“I’m curious,” I said.
“You know what they say?”
“What?”
Dad tapped his pipe and cleared his throat. “Curiosity scribbled the cat.”
“Well,