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The visitor did not believe Moses' left-handed-animal theory. Perhaps Moses meant it to be mere entertainment. The American could not be sure, but gave way to it anyhow. He shook his head in appreciation, his mind for the moment numb and hospitable and superstitious. It had ripped across time zones for 23 hours, across the Atlantic Ocean and the breadth of Africa, and had dropped out of the sky into Nairobi. It was dislocated. The visitor's soul vibrated. He thought of a soap bubble's elongation when its iridescent membrane is drawn swiftly through the air by a child. His soul began now to float slow-motion in the strange, bright medium of Africa. He felt suspended, drifting through layers of time.
The Africans run Kenya now. Lord Delamere's dream of an African "white man's country" ended 24 years ago with black independence. From other tables in the Lord Delamere Restaurant came the low music of Swahili, like a dark stream of syllables rushing over rocks. One heard both the deep molten music and the undersong of baby talk that bubbles through Swahili, the lingua franca that came up from the coast with the Arab slavers.
Moses in his tutorial passed on now to the subject of lions. He told about how he had killed a lion in the Loita Hills not many days before. He and another Masai were herding cattle in the upland pastures. A lion sprang at his friend and clawed him on the shoulder. Moses came running and drew the lion away from the other man. The lion charged Moses, and when the animal was six feet distant, Moses hurled his spear. The spear went into the lion's left eye and crashed through its brain. The animal came to rest at Moses' feet. It was the sixth lion that Moses had killed in his 29 years.
There was trouble with the authorities after that. The rangers came and told Moses he could not kill a lion because it is against the law in Kenya to kill one. "I told them, 'The lion attacked my friend!' They said, 'You should have reported the attack first and asked for a permit to kill the lion.' " In the Lord Delamere Restaurant, Moses threw back his head and laughed, and cried, with an oddly Yiddish intonation, "Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi!"
Moses was asked about a Masai child's dreams. "I do not know what a Masai child has nightmares about," he said. "I will tell you what my bad dreams are about. I have bad dreams about Nairobi, and bright lights and speeding cars and lorries crashing. And all the noise of a thousand radios playing." He made a face and clutched his head: "All of that noise crashing out of the air!" Then, "Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi!" In the Loita Hills, said Moses, "we sing, but we sing without instruments. It makes some sense."