'The Keeper of Knowledge'

She is one of those beings that has no real god, but in the last few months of this job, she has taken to praying. To what, or whom, she doesn’t know. To the hyraxes, the deities of rock, bounding over granite while they secretly rule over their elephant offspring? The goshawk overhead, feathers dripping in divinity? Or a hippo goddess, wallowing in the mud of immortality? It doesn’t matter. ‘Please,’ she prays silently, ‘let them be interested.’

They bundle into the car, equally divided into shapeless tracksuits and whatever shade of brown cargo pants is perceived abroad as the appropriate look for a safari. The latter group is almost inevitably adorned with elaborate false eyelashes, making them look like ground hornbills perched in the rear-view mirror. ‘Welcome to the reserve,’ she chimes, with more enthusiasm than she thought she’d be able to muster. Somehow she always surprises herself with how friendly she can make her voice sound under so much hidden dread. ‘If anyone wants to stop and look at anything— a tree, a bird, a stone— anything at all, just give me a shout. There’s nothing too mundane to admire!’ No response from the back. She shudders. As if any of them would be interested in any of those things.

They want lions. They want big cats that fit into small screens and even smaller minds. Their purses aren’t small, though. It seems the perpetual curse of the Universe that the people with the least interest in the world have the most money at their disposal to explore it.

There’s been a silence in the car for a while now. She should start chattering again, she thinks, even if they don’t pay attention. But she’s been reading a book about Michelangelo, and isn’t it so much nicer to muse about marble masterpieces and the Battle of the Centaurs than to speak to the deaf void?

A sight in the branches ahead draws her interest. ‘Look at that leopard orchid in the msasa tree!’ she cries.

‘A leopard?’ one asks dubiously. ‘Where?’

‘Orchid,’ she corrects. ‘Ansella africana to be exact. It’s the only species that can really survive in this environment. In indigenous medicine, it is believed that this orchid can cure madness,’ she tells them, though they have already returned to their phones. She may need some of this orchid soon.

As they proceed, she points out more things to them, things that fill her with wonder—things that even after a million sightings can still make her gasp in awe. They pass impala lilies bursting with pink, lilac-breasted rollers shimmering in a hundred shades of turquoise and purple, and herons strutting on long, elegant legs. Sometimes they illicit a slight mumble, mostly uttered in anticipation of moving on. More often they achieve deathly silence, and seldom a glance that lasts longer than a breath.

She recognises that by now she should have accepted these responses, or lack of them, as the standard experience of driving foreign tourists through paradise. She has realized, in a chilling way, that they are here, predominantly, to check off a box. To be able to say that they have gone on ‘a real African safari’ and move on to the next post. She knows this in an abstract way, the way one knows that some people are capable of strangling their own children, but cannot truly fathom how this is done.

A resentment has grown within her. The resentment that one feels for all the evil in the world, which is how she categorizes indifference. Indifference to the Earth, the sky, the water—and almost everything in it, on it, or under it—unless they’ve been told by a tourist brochure that this is something worth seeing. She has shown them painted reed frogs, and green lizards with orange tails. Waterbuck calves hiding in reeds, and starlings bathing in dust clouds. They have been carried past miracles, and have acted like infidels strolling through sacred temples.

She realizes also that she is most likely just ill-equipped to be a tour guide, but this seems unfair. It is much more comforting to think that they are simply ill-equipped to be tourists—or really, she thinks—ill-equipped to be sentient beings, with the amount of attention they pay to the world.

In between these private musings, more akin to ragings than musings though they be, she has been telling them about the intricate social life of baboons, while a troop of them lounge on the road ahead.

‘Is that the same kind of monkey as Rafiki is?’ asks an accent at the back.

‘No, actually. This is Papio ursinus. Rafiki is a mandrill, which is why he is one of the most colourful mammals in the world. But our Chacmas over here are quite the—’

‘Bummer. We were hoping to see Rafiki.’

And so, like mist evaporating in the heat of the sun, the brief honour of a fleeting attention span has vanished again. On and on the drive continues, deeper into the wilderness, past lilies with praying mantises tucked inside their petals. Eagles feeding chicks in stick nests on the branches of baobab trees. Bumblebees buzzing around acacia flowers, and mushrooms sprouting from elephant dung.

Don’t start, she says to herself, about the ring on the waterbuck’s bum. Don’t start about the crocodile’s heart rate. And absolutely nothing about the long-toed tree frog! You know how far you can go down that tadpole hole.

 Overhead, there is a bateleur circling. She almost tells them about how it swoops down to carcasses, and always eats the eyes first, plucking them from their sockets the way that they pluck the energy out of her life. But no, she thinks, looking longingly at the bird. That will be our secret.

It escalates from there. A dazzle of zebras appears on their right. ‘With zebras, it’s very easy to tell the stallions from the mares. The males are black and white, whereas the females are white and black.’

‘Neat,’ drawls another accent at the back.

‘Cool,’ a second one affirms.

She keeps her gaze straight down the road, but a small, almost imperceptible smirk has possessed her lips.

‘You see these blue, shimmery birds in that tree? These birds fly every morning to the nearest petrol station, and coat their feathers in the oil that drips onto the pavement from the car engines… That’s how they achieve that iridescent sheen they have. Then they fly back into the reserve, and they maintain their dominance of the bird kingdom for another day.’

‘Damn!’ the Americans exclaim.

‘Very interesting!’ say the Germans.

‘So, this bird is like the bourgeoisie of Africa?’ the French chime in. ‘Incredible!’

Somewhere in the ether, Hades laughs, while Athena shakes her head in disapproval. You can’t please everyone.

‘And over here we have the beautiful Burchell’s coucal,’ she continues.

‘So does this one do anything cool, or is it just a bird?’

But in that moment, there is a stirring in the yellow grass. A flash of amber, a brush of mirage-like movement. A tawny tail flicking to the sky. Lions.

After the prayer for interest, or at least curiosity, this is the second prayer. If they are as closed to everything else as the rest of them, then at least give them what they want, so they can be off again, to the Sistine Chapel, or Peruvian pyramids, or whatever other place their money will take them to ignore everything.

There is a sudden scurrying in the car. A mad rush to the window, clambering over each other, with small bursts of annoyance when one gets another one’s finger in the corner of the prized picture. A group of four lionesses crouch in the undergrowth. They are attentive, bodies poised. Not the lazy, sprawled-out slumberers of a well-fed pride. These are hunters still. Despite her love for the overlooked things, she does not dissent that they are a glorious sight. They are the emblem of emperors, the envy of battle-wagers. The head of the Chimera. They are the body of the Sphinx, and the dream of dignity.

‘Here, kitty kitty,’ one coos. She thinks she can see the fury in the burning amber eyes.

‘You know what guys? I don’t normally let anyone do this, but since you were such a wonderful and attentive group, I’m going to give you a special experience today. How do you feel about getting nice up-close with our lovely cats over here?’

A few dubious looks, but still, it is the least brain-dead that she has seen them today.

‘Perfect! So you can just hop out here. Take some selfies, hug some cats. Go wild, in short.’

‘It’s not dangerous?’ one asks.

‘Oh, as long as you’re nice to them, they’re quite cuddly.’

With more enthusiasm but only slightly more caution than they entered, they climb out of the car. Like maggots crawling out of a wound, she thinks. And like maggots, they try to scramble back in when the first blood-curdling growls erupt from the depths of the cat’s ribcage, but alas, she no longer drives a wound. She drives quite an ordinary vehicle, and one whose doors are securely locked.

As the engine revs up, she is struck by a loving admiration for the minds who built this symphony of gears and intricate parts. The human soul is capable of so much, if it only strives to be. And as the tyres roll forward, she realizes that the first prayer she uttered has also been answered. Perhaps for the first time in their lives, these people she has driven today are fully in the world. They are finally invested in that thing which before was merely a means to shareable pictures and the checking off of dead-hearted lists. We all have to reach our limit at some point, and decide to answer our own prayers. For her, the day has come.

Somewhere, now, bones crunch as an ancient feast resumes once more. In the azure sky, the bateleur is circling in already. She gazes up at him through the windscreen.

‘It didn’t have to be this way, did it, darling?’ she asks him. ‘But you and I know that it’s for the best.’

On she drives, free finally, to adore the mantises tucked into the lily leaves, and the iridescent starlings hopping around in their natural finery.

Talons gripping fistfuls of air and raptor wisdom, the bateleur circles ever downward to pluck the eyes of those who saw so much yet took in so little.