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"Are there other animals that the Masai consider to be close to God?" The visitor had decided, in vague tracery, that the gazelle's grace was associated in the Masai mind with God's grace, a profound though punning link, and that by eating of the flesh of the gazelle, the Masai thought to partake of the grace of God. A pagan chinging of the altar bells, a transubstantiation.
The visitor walked on through the hills, his hands behind him, like an abbot. Then he glanced up at Joseph and saw that the elder was looking at him in consternation.
"Close to God?" asked Joseph.
"You said the gazelle is close to God," the other prompted. Something in Joseph detonated minutely, and then he waved it off with a snort.
"Oh, no! I said that we eat gazelle because it is close to goat! The gazelle tastes like goat! We like goat!"
Gott and goat. It was a lesson learned. East Africans see no spiritual significance in the animals, even though each of the Masai clans claims an unsentimental relationship with one animal or another.
Llewelyn Powys, a young English poet, came out to settle in Kenya early in the century. He wrote that Africa was a "country frequented by clawed creatures with striped and gilded pelts, where nettles sting like wasps and even moles are as large as water-rats . . . The sun, naked as when it was born, sucks out one's life blood, and nourishes savagery long since made dormant by the pious lives of one's ancestors. Kill! Kill! Kill! is the mandate of Africa."
A drowsing lioness at midday stirs in the grasses under a flat-topped acacia tree. She yawns, and her mouth is an abrupt vision of medieval horrors, of ripping white spikes. And then the mouth closes and she is a smug, serene Victorian dowager. She complacently surveys her young, who sleep near by, and subsides again into her torpor.
Sometimes it seems that there are no straight lines in Africa or that Africa at any rate resists them. Things curve and undulate: the landscape, the rivers, the gaits of the animals, the design of the enk'ang, the trajectory of the spear (although the spear itself is straight). Logic is also curved. At the same time, everything in Africa seems sharp and pointed, given to punctures and ripping. It is a land of teeth and thorns. The whistling- thorn acacia has spikes that can penetrate a six-ply tire.
It is easy to fall in love not only with the shapes and colors of the animals but with their motions, their curving and infinitely varied gaits. The zebra moves with a strong, short-muscled stride. It is a sleek, erotic beast with vigorous bearing. The zebra's self-possession is a likable trait. It is human habit to sort the animals almost immediately into orders of preference. The animals are arranged in people's minds as a popularity contest. Some animals are endearing, and some repulsive. One wants to see the lion first, and then the elephant and after that the leopard, then rhino . . . and so on. One wants to see some animals because they are fierce, and some because they are lovable and soft. It is hard to explain the attractions and preferences. It is possible that human feelings about wild animals reflect the complexities of sexual attractions. Certain animals are admired for their majestic aggressions, and others for softer qualities. The lion is a sleek piece of violence, the waterbuck a sweet piece of grace.