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    The Snows Of Kilimanjaro
    The Snows Of Kilimanjaro
    The Snows Of Kilimanjaro
    Ebook180 pages13 hours

    The Snows Of Kilimanjaro

    By Ernest Hemingway

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Hemingway's stories are famous for being so powerful, tough and convincing that it is difficult to not get stunned by their dramatic intensity. From the Nobel Laureate's splendid oeuvre, here are eighteen selected stories that loudly vindicate all the acclaim heaped upon him by short story fanatics and literary critics. From a wounded dying man getting nostalgic in Africa to a passionate woman learning the reality of romance in Michigan, these riveting, haunting tales will take you to places that you will never go to and introduce you to people you will never meet.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrakash Books
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9789362149244
    Author

    Ernest Hemingway

    Ernest Hemingway was an American journalist, novelist, short story writer, and sportsman. His economical and understated style, which he termed “the iceberg theory,” had a strong influence on twentieth-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image brought him admiration from later generations.

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    Reviews for The Snows Of Kilimanjaro

    3.5/5

    722 ratings24 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Despite how some of this didn't seem to age well (Sexism, privilege, etc), the meaning that comes across still stands at the end. After hearing a character in one of my favorite anime series reference this story and compare himself to the leopard I decided to give this a read, so by comparing the two I was able to enjoy the perspective even more.
    • 3/5
      the writing was of mixed quality. the bigotry and misogyny were painful, and i expect a part of their time. some of the details provided information regarding locations about which i had little knowledge. i would have preferred more clarity and more emotions.
    • 4/5
      Thought I'd read some classic short stories but the drabness of most of the stories overcame the fine writing. Maybe Snows, Fifty, and Macomber worked but mostly it seemed disconnected. His Nick Adams stories are so much better than these.
    • 5/5
      It has been too long since I read anything by Hemingway. I've read a lot of the big ones, but hadn't touched his short stories. These stories are truly remarkable written by a master storyteller. I found that any one of these stories could be the basis for at least one book, and some several books. The title story - The Snows of Kilimanjaro - is jarringly real. and was written by Hemingway in 1934. The story has all his characteristic writing styles - wonderful prose, beautiful descriptions, very real characters and a plot that grabs from the beginning. But this one is a beautifully written allegory about life and death, and all completely fleshed out in about 18 pages. A true masterpiece and a signature piece for this author. Hemingway admitted that this story was one that he put his whole heart into, and it was based on his own close calls with the "Grim Reaper". He also said that he condensed four novels into the 18 pages of this story, and he held nothing back. I don't think Hemingway holds much back at all with any of his work, but Kilimanjaro brought that out very clearly. The Short Happy Life of Francis MacComber is as different from Kilimanjaro as a story can be. It tells the story of a society wife who has tired of her rich husband, and is looking for any excuse to leave him and go on. When MacComber displays his cowardice and pettiness while on an African safari, she has the perfect reason to get rid of him. I see at least two novels that could come from this story. One before the safari and one after as we see what his wife gets up to afterwards. There are a eleven other stories in this book, and they are all great, but none reach the pinnacle that Kilimanjaro does in my opinion. Hemingway is superlative when he builds stories around his own personal experiences. He was a man who lived whole-heartedly and completely. Yes, he had many faults, and he is never afraid to admit to them, and to also point them out in his work, but I am thankful that he put all this "living" to such good use and created such wonderful literature for us to enjoy.
    • 5/5
      This book is drawn from other works and I have read all of the stories several times before either online or in other collected works. Rather than read in awe of the master, this reading had me feeling sorry for the depressing note to all things. While this makes the short stories art, it also hints at a fragility, but not of manhood, as Hemingway's critics often suggest, but of the absurd. And yet Hemingway had no time for the absurd, or at least, Malcolm Cowley with:...a stupid look on his potato face talking about the Dada movement...Yet here, in this collection, I couldn't help but think of the meaninglessness of life and Hemingway's enunciation of the absurd, building over and over in a collection put together, not by Hemingway, but by others. I suspect this is worth looking into further and a few re-reads of Hemingway's major works might benefit from a view through this lens.
    • 4/5
      A couple, Harry and Helen, in Africa--he is dying of gangrene; she is by his side, taking care of him. My first Hemingway (since high school) and I really enjoyed it. His writing conveys the inner conflicted soul. Great short story, one of Papa's greatest? How would I know, my first since High school.
    • 3/5
      Hemingway at his most Hemingwayesque. Does that tell you what you need to know?
    • 5/5
      I love the ending of this short story.
    • 4/5
      Audio of Kilimanjaro performed by Charlton Heston
      4**** for the title story (3*** for the collection as a whole)

      This slim volume contains 10 short stories, including the most famous SoK.
      This short story reflects many of Hemingway’s own concerns in the mid-late 1930s. He worried about the effects of “politics, women, drink, money and ambition” on American writers (from Green Hills of Africa). Here he voices those concerns through his main character, Harry, a writer who is dying in the bush from an infected leg wound. Their truck broken down, Harry and his wife have little to do but wait for the plane that should come “soon” to rescue them. Immobilized by his gangrenous leg, Harry reflects – sometimes in a delirious state – on his life and writing career. Today’s reader, knowing how Hemingway ended his own life, can see considerable foreshadowing here. Harry’s obsession with what he had not written, while succumbing to the temptations of an easy life, is slowly but surely poisoning him as much as the infection in his leg is. Heston’s narration of this particular short story is very good; the uber-macho man performing the uber-macho author’s work. I would rate THIS story 4****.

      Most of the rest of the stories in the book are not as much to my liking. There are continued threads of death, killing, guns, violence and alcohol abuse through this collection, and, frankly, I just didn’t care about his characters. To be fair, I think this is more a function of what’s happening in my own life rather than a reflection of Hemingway’s talent and skill. The story Fifty Grand about a prizefighter struggling at the end of his career, was very good (I’d give it 4****). The final story, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, takes us back to an African safari and a marriage falling apart. I thought this was the best in the collection, though perhaps more obvious than some of the others. Still, I would give it 4.5****

      So while I enjoyed and appreciated three of the ten stories, the rest of the volume left me cold. I give it 3 stars over all.

    • 4/5
      Some beautiful stories, but I always connect more with novels and this one wasn't an exception. I loved A Clean and Well Lighted Place. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber was dark, but packed a punch. They're a good way to dip into Hemingway if you're new to his work.
    • 3/5
      A collection of short stories. Well written, but these are fragments, not short stories as I know them.
      Read May 2004
    • 5/5
      It is no surprise that Hemingway took his life. It was a miserable mind to be in. Men are not men until they prove their invulnerability and lack of real interest in living. In Hemingwayland any sign of connection to others is read as weakness. Women filled with scorn are just waiting to (figuratively) castrate the men in their lives. But that man was the shit when it comes to crafting perfect elegant prose, telling the reader everything she needs to know with heart-stopping beauty and relentless economy. In the short stories the reader can engage in the situation with excitement and fascination and be done before the characters' vapidity and compulsiveness gets boring and vulgar. Reading Hemingway's novels is kind of like watching the Kardashians. For 10 minutes its amazing and you can't look away. Then, like a switch has been flipped, all the watcher feels is boredom and contempt and occasionally a sprinkling of sadness. "Kim Kardashian IS Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises!" But I digress. My point is that the short stories are filled with interest, and substance and beauty, and stunning craft where the books often feel to me like writing exercises. I had read most of these stories before in other collections, but this is well curated and a great way to return and remind myself why I used to really like Ernie.
    • 5/5
      A collection of short stories that, despite the title, are not all about Africa. But the story that lent it's title to the book is - despite the sentimentality - something akin to the most perfectly composed piece that Hemingway, or any author, has ever written.
    • 2/5
      This book contains some of Hemmingway's short stories of varying lengths with most of them about 10 pages long but I fear that I may be about to upset his many fans because it just didn't really cut the mustard with me and I cannot in all honesty say that I enjoyed it, which having read a few of his full novels, is a real shame.

      That said I did enjoy the title story which wonderfully charts the main events in lead character's life. He is an author who is lying badly injured after an accident in Africa and riddled with gangrene, he looks back with regrets over his life, in particular how he failed to write more about his own early life experiences. Hemingway depicts a man who has abandoned his own dreams and ambitions instead settling for marriage to a woman he doesn't really love and conformity. In this story we see the skill of Hemingway with both his characterisation and descriptions of the countryside.

      The themes of this initial story then go on to form the basis of those stories to follow from memories of childhood to regrets of old men and men at war. There is a recurrant character Nick Adams whom many feel was based on Hemingway himself but on the whole it felt disjointed and without the title story would have been rated even lower. IMHO it didn't work. However, it is also right that I admit that on the whole I am no real fan of short stories either so perhaps it is just me.

      This will not put me off reading some of Hemingway's other works but next time it will be a full novel.
    • 4/5
      I had not read Hemingway for over two decades when I picked up this book at the library. I don't remember liking his work that much when I first read it, but I obviously liked his writing enough at the time to read a large portion of what he's written. His work obviously engaged or at least intrigued me, but I'd forgotten that. Revisiting this book later in life was like rediscovering the author as an old friend and appreciating his merits.

      The Snows of Kilimanjaro is an outstanding piece that's incredibly well written. If you read nothing else from this collection or from Hemingway, I highly recommend it. Hemingway has a distinctive style that you may not always agree with, but I'm walking away from the second reading of this book with deeper respect for his writing.
    • 3/5
      I was rather disappointed to find out that The snows of Kilimanjaro, and other stories is an anthology, consisting of 18 short stories taken from various short story collections.

      Most stories in this collection are very short, consisting of dialogues about very down to earth topics. I enjoyed the little discussion about the merits of Hugh Walpole and G.K. Chesterton in "The Three-Day Blow".

      Most stories are a pleasure to read, but are hardly memorable.
    • 5/5
      Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories" is an anthology collection of 10 short stories that was first issued by his publisher Scribners in 1961 which was also the year of Hemingway's death by suicide. There isn't any reference to these being selected by Hemingway himself so we're left to speculate on how the selection was made, although the stories are described on the blurb as "Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction." There are 3 stories from 1927's "Men Without Women" ("In Another Country", "The Killers", "Fifty Grand"), 5 stories from 1933's "Winner Take Nothing" ("A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", "A Day's Wait", "The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio", "Fathers and Sons", "A Way You'll Never Be") and the 2 African safari stories ("The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber") from 1936 that were first collected in 1938's "The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories".
      Most Hemingway fans will likely have at least one or two other stories that they would expect to have seen included in a "most acclaimed" collection and I was surprised that the exquisite camping and fishing story "Big Two-Hearted River" from 1925 was missing here. However, there is an overall air of melancholy and impending tragedy and death in the stories in this collection which probably didn't suit the inclusion of the sunlight and air and cold fresh waters of the famous outdoor tale.
      Of the selected stories, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and "A Day's Wait", at 4 or 5 pages each, appear pretty slight at first glance, and yet, James Joyce is reported to have described the former as "one of the best short stories ever written," so some further close attention to each of these stories may be repaid with renewed appreciation and insight. I especially enjoyed reading this collection after having also just read Donald Bouchard's "Hemingway: So Far From Simple" which causes you to view all of Hemingway's characters and stories as metaphors for the writer and the act of writing itself. Reading "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and thinking of the ineffectual Francis Macomber, the sometimes sensitive/sometimes cold Margaret Macomber and the mythologized great white hunter Robert Wilson as all facets of Hemingway himself and the hunt as the path of the career of writing added a whole different view to what can superficially just be read as a tale of cowardice and jealousy in the bush.
    • 4/5
      This book reminded me of how much I love Ernest Hemingway, who happens to be one of my favorite authors because his writings inspire me. Granted, I missed most of the deep symbolism, but I'm okay with that. Some of the short stories included in this book will be very hard to forget about, and I was quite impressed by Hemingway's writing.
    • 3/5
      The Short Life of Francis MacComber was the best of the short stories here, and was very good. A rich but gutless (?) man travels on safari to Africa with his shrewd, content and unloving wife. He is transformed by one of the experiences while hunting, and his wife is as well. A great little tale.
    • 3/5
      Gelezen toen ik 16 was, veel te jong uiteraard om dit goed te kunnen appreciëren. Ik vond het toen dan ook maar matig. Twee jaar geleden herlezen: grote klasse!
    • 2/5
      An uneven collection of stories. The title story and The Short Life of Francis MacComber were very good, but most of the others were a chore to finish. Doesn't make me want to rush and read more Hemmingway just yet. A real sense of Machismo runs through the book. Men are Men when they fight in War...Against Men. Men like to hunt, in the company of men. Hmm, Does being a man also mean fostering a family value of suicide? I don't mean to be cruel but finding a man in this book who has a sensitive thought or an emotion that is not done in a shade of Red or Black is impossible. I feel like Hemmingway's prose hides behind a facade of pompous bravado. And even though we cannot expect to get the depth of character we would expect to fing in a novel, his characters, to me at least, often come off as insecure, knuckle dragging, Neanderthals who are afraid to express what they really might be feeling
    • 5/5
      This is my first exposure to Hemingway since "The Old Man and the Sea" (c. 9th grade). My main reaction now is a deep appreciation for his writing style and a belief that one must have a little more life experience to truly respect what and how he conveys the essence of a situation (particularly in adult relationships). "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" gives a quick and hard message about making what you can of your talents and not letting them slip away. The moral is especially geared toward any aspiring writer. The last story in this collection was "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." It parallels elegantly with the hunting theme of the first story, and drives home equally a message about being a man. The relationship nuances were especially dominant in this story too. From "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (p.24): "'The very rich are different from you and me.' And how someone had said to Julian, Yes, they have more money." "A Clean, Well-lighted Place" is a very short story about two waiters watching a customer they might become. "A Day's Wait" is another very short story about a boy who believes he is going to die and his unique young viewpoint that changes when the news of his mistake. "Fathers and Sons" is another Nicholas Adams story about how men in a family line are alike (also very deep into the senses of several male-oriented activities). There are also a couple stories reflective of Hemingway's experience in war and Italy. "Fifty Grand" is a joy -- simple plot, essentials conveyed elegantly, and neat ending.
    • 2/5
      A bunch of very short stories. Some good, some not.
    • 3/5
      Never been a big Hemingway fan (but that was high school), but thought I should give it a try again. Some of the stories were very good, others I felt as if I just walked into the middle of a conversation and never got the hang of.

      The Good: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, A Clean Well-Lighted Place, A Day’s Wait, The Short and Happy Life, Fifty Grand

      The Confusing:The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio;In Another Country; The Killers; A Way You’ll Never Be

      The first list all had well developed story-lines and could be considered an A –>B–>C type of story (sorry, I am a bit concrete-sequential when it comes to reading); the next list was a bit too scattered for me. If I was to read this again, I would bypass the stories that didn’t do it for me in the first page or two, then move on to the next.

    Book preview

    The Snows Of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway

    The Snows of Kilimanjaro

    Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai ‘Ngaje Ngai’, the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

    T he marvelous thing is that it’s painless, he said. That’s how you know when it starts.

    Is it really?

    Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odor though. That must bother you.

    Don’t! Please don’t.

    Look at them, he said. Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?

    The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade on to the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed.

    They’ve been there since the day the truck broke down, he said. Today’s the first time any have lit on the ground. I watched the way they sailed very carefully at first in case I ever wanted to use them in a story. That’s funny now.

    I wish you wouldn’t, she said.

    I’m only talking, he said. It’s much easier if I talk. But I don’t want to bother you.

    You know it doesn’t bother me, she said. It’s that I’ve gotten so very nervous not being able to do anything. I think we might make it as easy as we can until the plane comes.

    Or until the plane doesn’t come.

    Please tell me what I can do. There must be something I can do.

    You can take the leg off and that might stop it, though I doubt it. Or you can shoot me. You’re a good shot now. I taught you to shoot, didn’t I?

    Please don’t talk that way. Couldn’t I read to you?

    Read what?

    Anything in the book that we haven’t read.

    I can’t listen to it, he said. Talking is the easiest. We quarrel and that makes the time pass.

    I don’t quarrel. I never want to quarrel. Let’s not quarrel any more. No matter how nervous we get. Maybe they will be back with another truck today. Maybe the plane will come.

    I don’t want to move, the man said. There is no sense in moving now except to make it easier for you.

    That’s cowardly.

    Can’t you let a man die as comfortably as he can without calling him names? What’s the use of slanging me?

    You’re not going to die.

    Don’t be silly. I’m dying now. Ask those bastards. He looked over to where the huge, filthy birds sat, their naked heads sunk in the hunched feathers. A fourth planed down, to run quick-legged and then waddle slowly toward the others.

    They are around every camp. You never notice them. You can’t die if you don’t give up.

    Where did you read that? You’re such a bloody fool.

    You might think about someone else.

    For Christ’s sake, he said, that’s been my trade.

    He lay then and was quiet for a while and looked across the heat shimmer of the plain to the edge of the bush. There were a few Tommies that showed minute and white against the yellow and, far off, he saw a herd of zebra, white against the green of the bush. This was a pleasant camp under big trees against a hill, with good water, and close by, a nearly dry water hole where sand grouse flighted in the mornings.

    Wouldn’t you like me to read? she asked. She was sitting on a canvas chair beside his cot. "There’s a breeze coming up.

    No thanks.

    Maybe the truck will come.

    I don’t give a damn about the truck.

    I do.

    You give a damn about so many things that I don’t.

    Not so many, Harry.

    What about a drink?

    It’s supposed to be bad for you. It said in Black’s to avoid all alcohol. You shouldn’t drink.

    Molo! he shouted.

    Yes Bwana.

    Bring whiskey-soda.

    Yes Bwana.

    You shouldn’t, she said. That’s what I mean by giving up. It says it’s bad for you. I know it’s bad for you.

    No, he said. It’s good for me.

    So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would never have a chance to finish it. So this was the way it ended, in a bickering over a drink. Since the gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain and with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and anger that this was the end of it. For years, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity. For years it had obsessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.

    Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

    I wish we’d never come, the woman said. She was looking at him holding the glass and biting her lip. You never would have gotten anything like this in Paris. You always said you loved Paris. We could have stayed in Paris or gone anywhere. I’d have gone anywhere. I said I’d go anywhere you wanted. If you wanted to shoot we could have gone shooting in Hungary and been comfortable.

    Your bloody money, he said.

    That’s not fair, she said. It was always yours as much as mine. I left everything and I went wherever you wanted to go and I’ve done what you wanted to do But I wish we’d never come here.

    You said you loved it.

    I did when you were all right. But now I hate it. I don’t see why that had to happen to your leg. What have we done to have that happen to us?

    I suppose what I did was to forget to put iodine on it when I first scratched it. Then I didn’t pay any attention to it because I never infect. Then, later, when it got bad, it was probably using that weak carbolic solution when the other antiseptics ran out that paralyzed the minute blood vessels and started the gangrene. He looked at her, What else?

    I don’t mean that.

    If we would have hired a good mechanic instead of a half-baked Kikuyu driver, he would have checked the oil and never burned out that bearing in the truck.

    I don’t mean that.

    If you hadn’t left your own people, your goddamned Old Westbury, Saratoga, Palm Beach people to take me on––

    Why, I loved you. That’s not fair. I love you now. I’ll always love you. Don’t you love me?

    No, said the man. I don’t think so. I never have.

    Harry, what are you saying? You’re out of your head.

    No. I haven’t any head to go out of.

    Don’t drink that, she said. Darling, please don’t drink that. We have to do everything we can.

    You do it, he said. I’m tired.

    Now in his mind he saw a railway station at Karagatch and he was standing with his pack and that was the headlight of the Simplon-Orient cutting the dark now and he was leaving Thrace then after the retreat. That was one of the things he had saved to write, with, in the morning at breakfast, looking out of the window and seeing snow on the mountains in Bulgaria and Nansen’s Secretary asking the old man if it were snow and the old man looking at it and saying, No, that’s not snow. It’s too early for snow. And the Secretary repeating to the other girls, No, you see. It’s not snow and them all saying, It’s not snow we were mistaken. But it was the snow all right and he sent them on into it when he evolved exchange of populations. And it was snow they trampled along in until they died that winter.

    It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that year up in the Gauertal, that year they lived in the woodcutter’s house with the big square porcelain stove that filled half the room, and they slept on mattresses filled with beech leaves, the time the deserter came with his feet bloody in the snow. He said the police were right behind him and they gave him woolen socks and held the gendarmes talking until the tracks had drifted over.

    In Schrunz, on Christmas day, the snow was so bright that it hurt your eyes when you looked out from the Weinstube and saw every one coming home from church. That was where they walked up the sleigh-smoothed urine-yellowed road along the river with the steep pine hills, skis heavy on the shoulder, and where they ran down the glacier above the Madlenerhaus, the snow as smooth to see as cake frosting and as light as powder and he remembered the noiseless rush the speed made as you dropped down like a bird.

    They were snow-bound a week in the Madlenerhaus that time in the blizzard playing cards in the smoke by the lantern light and the stakes were higher all the time as Herr Lent lost more. Finally he lost it all. Everything, the skischule money and all the season’s profit and then his capital. He could see him with his long nose, picking up the cards and then opening, "Sans Voir." There was always gambling then. When there was no snow you gambled and when there was too much you gambled. He thought of all the time in his life he had spent gambling.

    But he had never written a line of that, nor of that cold, bright Christmas day with the mountains showing across the plain that Barker had flown across the lines to bomb the Austrian officers’ leave train, machine-gunning them as they scattered and ran. He remembered Barker afterwards coming into the mess and starting to tell about it. And how quiet it got and then somebody saying, ‘’You bloody murderous bastard.’’

    Those were the same Austrians they killed then that he skied with later. No not the same. Hans, that he skied with all that year, had been in the Kaiser- Jagers and when they went hunting hares together up the little valley above the saw-mill they had talked of the fighting on Pasubio and of the attack on Perticara and Asalone and he had never written a word of that. Nor of Monte Corno, nor the Siete Commun, nor of Arsiero.

    How many winters had he lived in the Vorarlberg and the Arlberg? It was four and then he remembered the man who had the fox to sell when they had walked into Bludenz, that time to buy presents, and the cherry-pit taste of good kirsch, the fast-slipping rush of running powder-snow on crust, singing ‘’Hi! Ho! said Rolly!’ ‘ as you ran down the last stretch to the steep drop, taking it straight, then running the orchard in three turns and out across the ditch and on to the icy road behind the inn. Knocking your bindings loose, kicking the skis free and leaning them up against the wooden wall of the inn, the lamp-light coming from the window, where inside, in the smoky, new-wine smelling warmth, they were playing the accordion.

    Where did we stay in Paris? he asked the woman who was sitting by him in a canvas chair, now, in Africa.

    At the Crillon. You know that.

    Why do I know that?

    That’s where we always stayed.

    No. Not always.

    There and at the Pavillion Henri-Quatre in St. Germain. You said you loved it there.

    Love is a dunghill, said Harry. And I’m the cock that gets on it to crow.

    If you have to go away, she said, is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? Do you have to kill your horse, and your wife and burn your saddle and your armour?

    Yes, he said. Your damned money was my armour. My Sword and my Armour.

    Don’t.

    "All right. I’ll stop that. I don’t want to hurt you.’

    It’s a little bit late now.

    All right then. I’ll go on hurting you. It’s more amusing. The only thing I ever really liked to do with you I can’t do now.

    No, that’s not true. You liked to do many things and everything you wanted to do I did.

    Oh, for Christ sake stop bragging, will you?

    He looked at her and saw her crying.

    Listen, he said. Do you think that it is fun to do this? I don’t know why I’m doing it. It’s trying to kill to keep yourself alive, I imagine. I was all right when we started talking. I didn’t mean to start this, and now I’m crazy as a coot and being as cruel to you as I can be. Don’t pay attention, darling, to what I say. I love you, really. You know I love you. I’ve never loved anyone else the way I love you.

    He slipped into the familiar lie he made his bread and butter by.

    You’re sweet to me.

    You bitch, he said. You rich bitch. That’s poetry. I’m full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry.

    Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil now?

    I don’t like to leave anything, the man said. I don’t like to leave things behind.

    It was evening now and he had been asleep. The sun was gone behind the hill and there was a shadow all across the plain and the small animals were feeding close to camp; quick dropping heads and switching tails, he watched them keeping well out away from the bush now. The birds no longer waited on the ground. They were all perched heavily in a tree. There were many more of them. His personal boy was sitting by the bed.

    Memsahib’s gone to shoot, the boy said. Does Bwana want?

    Nothing.

    She had gone to kill a piece of meat and, knowing how he liked to watch the game, she had gone well away so she would not disturb this little pocket of the plain that he could see. She was always thoughtful, he thought. On anything she knew about, or had read, or that she had ever heard.

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