The White Lion

Don’t think that Robi was an especially refined white or that Antalu was an especially primitive Negro. Their degree of civilization was pretty much the same; maybe Antalu’s was even better, because he had done two or three years at the University of Cape Town, while Robi after high school had taken only a training course for hunters.

Nor were they much different in character, these two — otherwise, what happened could be explained easily; in fact, they got along perfectly. And it’s not easy to live like that, two men alone together in the jungle for months and months, without coming to irritate, even hate each other.

To top it off, physically they were alike, seeing that Robi’s features were as thick for a white as Antalu’s were sharply cut for a Negro. They seemed brothers, with their skin dyed different colors on account of a mother’s caprice; but the black skin of Antalu was more alive and natural. Next to his, Robi’s seemed faded and dull and false. I didn’t look at my hands all day long, for fear that mine, too, would come out that way.

I had gone to them because I wanted to kill a lion. There always comes to a man in Africa the time when he wants to kill a lion, and not just for something to do: it’s an overwhelming and desperate desire, like that of slapping the face of the woman you love, to feel yourself somehow the master.

Antalu and Robi had a hunter’s concession together, and when a man wanted to kill his lion, he turned to them, as I did. They stayed in a log house built on a bald rise, just emerging from the jungle. Sometimes you could shoot at a lion while comfortably looking out of a window, they told me, and there were some who did so, but to come face to face with one in the open field was another thing again, added Antalu, much more wonderful.

He had a way of looking, Antalu, which softened you; there was something tender, vital, astonished in his eyes. This was the greatest difference between him and Robi, whose eyes were always veiled with irony or anxiety or boredom or something else, but never clear.

You see, this about their eyes is an important point, even if at the time I didn’t give it much weight, all intent as I was on desiring the death of my lion. It’s a difference that’s always there, between the eyes of a Negro and those of a white, but in Antalu and Robi you noticed it more, because they were alike in all the rest.

The white lion came into the game a few nights later. For days we had searched in vain for a grayish-tan one — that is, a lion-colored lion — rummaging through the forest inch by inch and waiting for sunset on the river bank, the probable watering place. As if they had understood I was determined to kill one, they stayed away, drawing close only in the dark, when you couldn’t tell them apart from the vegetation, and you could feel the dense air vibrate with their roaring.

Antalu was close to the window, while Robi and I were playing chess — Robi winning, because I was thinking of my lion. All of a sudden Antalu gave a start and then shivered as it the long hand of a woman had caressed him. Instead, it was a lion. “A white lion,” said Antalu, choking, and Robi asked him, “You feeling all right?”

But we had run to the window beside him. and our eyes, too, found the shape of the lion, white in the black night, moving, slow and flexuous, disappearing at times behind a screen of tangled branches to reappear whiter than ever.

“Impossible,” said Robi. “It must be the moon.”

“There’s no moon tonight,” said Antalu.

The white lion made a sort of semicircle around the clearing. At least he could have roared. Instead he was silent as a spirit lion, only you could sense the slight vibration of his steps on the compact earth.

“There’s no such thing as a white lion,” said Robi.

Antalu was silent, now, with the pupils of his eyes clear and virginal and shiny, mirroring two tiny white lions. And on his face was almost a smile, but mystic.

“Maybe it’s my lion,” I said. “White or not, I’ll take a shot.” Really, though, I wouldn’t have dared, whereas Robi had already grabbed his rifle and was pointing it, slowly following the movements of the lion.

He was about to fire when Antalu realized what was going on and knocked the gun barrel aside. The shot was lost up high, clattering. For a second the white lion remained immobile, his great head turned toward the house; then, at a trot, he disappeared into the jungle.

“What’s got hold of you?” asked Robi. “We could have seen what kind of lion it is. A lion has to be a lion,” he said.

“He’s white,” said Antalu. “Honest-to-goodness white.” A loving wonder warmed his voice, while in his eyes the two tiny lions seemed to remain mirrored. “How can you kill a white lion?”

And Robi laughed, saying: “You black people are funny — everywhere you go you see miracles.” And added, “Seriously, if it was really white, killing him could make our fortune — money, I mean.”

“A white lion,” said Antalu, dreamy and warm as if speaking of a woman. “Maybe he’s the only one in the whole world, but I’ve seen him.”

“It’s that he’s old,” said Robi, laughing again. “It’ll be a lion grown hoary, or maybe he’s got a vitamin deficiency. Real lions are lion-colored and exist on purpose to be killed by lion hunters.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’d like to kill one — white or tan, it’s the same to me.” I was on Robi’s side. I hated to admit it, but I was on Robi’s side, condemned along with him to not believing in the existence of white lions.

“He didn’t roar,” said Antalu. “He must be different from all other lions, so white he can’t be fierce.”

“And men?” asked Robi. “I suppose you don’t know any who are white and fierce?” He laughed and added, “Then there are men who are black and silly, and fall in love with lions.”

Antalu waited every night for the white lion. Robi and I tried to think of him as silly, savage, and primitive, but it was hard, because his smile was knowing and his eyes shone with a clear reason. We felt ourselves empty to meet them, those eyes of his, limpid, luminous, warm; so we tried to fill ours with irony, but what came out — at least in Robi’s — was a sterile and dulled expression.

The lion did not return for many nights. Antalu kept waiting for him with constant faithful freshness, standing next to the window. He slept days while we went out trying to kill my lion — white or tan, it didn’t matter — but in vain: the lions had all vanished.

When the white lion returned, we were sleeping. It was the quiver of joy shaking Antalu which woke us up. And we saw him jump out the window, fast and light; walk toward the lion, who was still on the edge of the jungle, still and white as a statue.

Antalu had his gun, but he was holding it straight up before him, like a bishop’s staff.

Robi called out, but Antalu didn’t hear, and, honestly, I didn’t seem to hear him either. I was intent on watching the young Negro draw close to the white lion, the lion white and still as a statue lion. Antalu’s step was sure and light; it had a happy rhythm, of a person who walks toward a precise and wonderful destiny.

It was a scene which seemed preordained, too beautiful and illogical to give either Robi or me the power to intervene in some way, to stop Antalu as he moved toward his white lion.

Then the lion took a leap, a flash of forked lightning in the dense air of that night. The silence remained, not even a sob to break it. I was astonished by the sudden shot next to me. I saw the white lion shudder high, then gently drape himself over the fallen body of Antalu.

Robi jumped over the window sill and I followed him. Anyway, the scene was over and what we did mattered little. It was hard work freeing Antalu from the lion’s body. He was dead, but his eyes were open; yet they were like live people’s eyes, not dead ones’. And the pupils of his eyes were full of joy and of wonder; mirrored in the middle were two tiny white lions.

It was truly a happy death, one to envy.

And maybe that’s why Robi gave a sign of satisfaction when he saw his hands covered with white. He had touched the lion, and he touched him again. It was, in fact, chalk dust. A dusty lion, that’s what he was.

“He must have had his cave in the white rock,” said Robi, laughing sourly. “Antalu’s gone and got himself killed by a powdered lion.” And I cried; Robi cried, too; but we were hypocrites more than anything else, and we were envious.

Because Antalu’s eyes were clear and virginal and happy, but ours grew more and more dull and dry, violated by reality.