Listening for Lions Read Free

two more teas at the vicar’s.”
    â€œI had to sit there in a stiff collar,” Father said, “talking nonsense. I have heard how in the times of chivalry men had to joust with sharp lances for their women, but I don’t believe they ever had to eat so many of the vicar’s wife’s biscuits. Like rocks they were.”
    Because the church had seen to Father’s training, he was expected to serve the church in the mission field, but that was no hardship for Mother and Father. “We had no family in England,” Mother said, “and it’s a cold country. Here the sun shines and all the Kikuyu are our family. Someday, I suppose, we must all return to England, but I hope the day will not come soon.”
    For Mother and Father the day never came.

TWO
    I t was a hot afternoon in January. I was sitting on the hospital steps ripping a width of cloth into bandages and longing for the cool of the evening. A Kikuyu man was brought to the hospital by his family. I could see the small party coming across the dry plain from a long way away. There had been a drought, and a train of little puffs of red dust followed along behind them and settled like a powdery rain on the leaves of the acacia trees. After depositing the homemade stretcher and its burden in the hospital, the family stood about peering into the hospital windows, waiting for some word about the patient.
    After Father examined the man, there was an unusual bustle of activity in the hospital. Father sent me to get Mother. Quickly a contagious ward was created by stringing a curtain across a doorway. I recognized the curtain, for it had hung between rooms in our house and I hadhelped Mother in the hemming of it.
    Father and Mother whispered together and then told me that I must go home and stay away from the hospital.
    When I asked why, Father said, “It’s influenza, Rachel, and it’s extremely contagious.”
    â€œBut what about you and Mother?”
    â€œWe’ll take precautions.”
    â€œWhy can’t I take precautions?” I was excited at the thought of this exotic and dangerous disease appearing at our own hospital there on the plains of Africa. I didn’t want to be left out.
    â€œDon’t argue with me, Rachel.” It was Father’s God-to-Moses voice, and I said no more.
    Mother put her arm around me. “Rachel, if the influenza spreads, your father and I are going to have all we can manage. We don’t want to be distracted by worrying about you. And stay away from the Kikuyu shamba s. We don’t know how quickly the influenza will spread.” Reluctantly I left the hospital.
    I had heard that in Nairobi there were cases of influenza in both the native hospital and the hospital for whites. Letters from the mission house in England and the local newspaper were full of frightening reports of the illness sweeping the world. But like the war that had ended in November, it was something that was happening far away. It had not been real. Now it was real.
    As I left the hospital, I looked out across the plains thatspread mile upon mile to the ridges of the distant hills. There was a verse in Revelations that always frightened me: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” I saw the pale horse and its rider galloping across those plains and finding us.
    Kanoro kept a ladder against the house so that he could reach the roof for easy patching when heavy rains found their way through our ceiling. The roof was nothing more than sheets of corrugated iron with heavy stones to keep the sheets in place. When I was younger, I was often on the roof for a better view of the plains. Now I climbed up the ladder and looked out into the distance. There was no pale horse, only a herd of zebras far away, their black stripes against their white hides like writing, like an urgent message that was impossible to make out. In the