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  Electric light brings day to the plateau even on a moonless night, and the silence is replaced with a constant din of engines and people, construction, and occasional unexplained bursts of gunfire and distant explosions that send clouds of smoke into the sky. I am disturbed by it, but when I ask the Inyanga he smiles serenely and talks of the past being the future and the future the past.

  We began our descent today, and the plateau, not entirely to my regret, is disappearing from view. We seem still to be following in Gibbons' steps, though he is long gone from here. In the course of our journey we have several times stopped and spent the night in abandoned Moguan. There, the power of the vision is strongest, and when I drink from the tea and close my eyes, I can see the stone walls grow and reach up to the skies, and close above my head. There are vast buildings made entirely of white stone, a whole new Jerusalem, and the Moguan are only their worn-down remains, like the bleached bone skeleton of a dinosaur.

  I can hear the Kerit in the distance, howling at the night sky. I saw one last night, moving away. It is almost as if they are following us.

  February 19th

  We are in a narrow valley, with mountains rising on either side of it, as imposing and constrictive as the walls of a synagogue. What are we doing here? I have seen a herd of Kerit moving down below. The Inyanga led me further down. We followed a small river to a rocky enclave, where it disappeared underground. The Inyanga entered the water and motioned for me to do the same. I felt like a fish with nothing but my skin, no possessions and no burdens; a dark fish swimming in a clear calm world.

  We went through the fissure in the rock and tumbled down a waterfall into a cave. The water continued to flow onward and disappeared into the earth. The cave was small and dark, but the Inyanga motioned for me to follow him and we went through a crack in the rock and...

  #

  A: Did the Kerit try to harm you?

  R: No. But I noticed several of them sit still on their haunches and stare at us. I had a feeling then that they could communicate if they wanted to. A feeling of intelligence. However, I never found out for sure. I also felt...(pause). I suspect they were there for a reason. Almost as if they were guarding that hidden valley, or rather, guarding what was inside it. But I don't know.

  A: What was in the cave?

  #

  From the Rabbi's Journal, February 20th

  I had to stop writing rather abruptly yesterday. We were in a giant cavern deep under the earth. Yesterday, leaving the cave, we traversed a long way through tunnels of hard rock. There was a whole maze of caves down here, and had it not been for the Inyanga I would have been lost within minutes. The darkness was pure, but as we descended further and the air grew warm, the walls began to glow with a faint light that came from a kind of moss or fungus growing on them. No doubt Kaiser would have been most interested to examine them, had he been here.

  I began to find debris littering the floors. Curious things: a burnt toy automobile of a shape and material I had never seen before; a broken disc made of a material slightly resembling Parkesine that even in the faint light reflected, when turned, the whole rainbow of colours; an elongated gun with a button instead of a trigger. Here and there, too, I saw rusting plaques on those cold stone walls, the script adorning them all but faded away. It was as if the place had suffered some instantaneous, unexpected holocaust that had removed all persons but left some of their effects behind. Yet there was also the sense of a kind of timelessness, or of some distant age buried under aeons.

  At last our route came to an end. We stood in a small cave, deep within the earth. The walls, covered in moss, seemed to breathe. They cast an eerie glow over a small pool of water that rested in the middle of the cave, and which we approached.

  The Inyanga knelt down by the pool, and I followed him. "Do not drink from it," he warned. "Look only."

  I looked into the water. I...

  #

  February 22nd

  I did something foolish. Let me tell it from the beginning.

  The Inyanga and I were in the cave. I looked into the water.

  UasinGishu was spread before me.

  The whole of the plateau appeared to me in the water, as if I were a bird looking down from up high. Ringed by mountains, the terrain was otherwise changed beyond recognition.

  Roads criss-crossed the plateau. They were two- and thee-lane roads, and yet they were chock full with traffic. It consisted entirely of motorcars, of types and makes I have never seen. One resembled the toy car I had seen in the tunnels. The rivers were polluted and dead, each harnessed to fantastic factories that sat squarely on the banks. Beyond them, from Chipchangwane to the peaks of Nandi and Kavirondo, the land was a maze of architecture. Tall buildings, taller than anything save perhaps the towers in America, reached silver pinnacles towards the sun. It was a land of chrome and silver and glass, and amongst those constructions lay white-stone houses, whole towns of stones, like the numerous neighbourhoods of Jerusalem.

  The view in the pool changed, became a hot, dusty street of pale stone. There were few people afoot, yet my attention was not on the travellers but on the shop signs: they were all in Hebrew.

  I moved without thinking. "No!" the Inyanga said.

  I shook him off; though he was old, he was still strong. "It is an illusion," he said, trying to dissuade me.

  "It's real," I said, and I reached down to the water and cupped some in my hand, and drank it.

  The Inyanga looked at me for a long moment, sadness etched into his lined face. "What will be, has been," he said, and those were the last words I heard. The drink of water had taken its effect on me, and I felt my body freeze, my muscles contracting, causing me to lose my purchase on the ground. I fell towards the pool.

  My head hit water, and then the rest of my body followed. I felt a momentary sensation of drowning.

  Then I was in the white-stone street, walking along towards one of the high-rising silver buildings. Overhead, aircraft flew--strange great things like silver bullets with wings--and here and there I could discern the colourful bubbles of floating dirigibles. A car approached me at speed, the driver honking his horn and making me jump.

  There were trees planted along the road, providing welcome shade, and the shops were all open and selling a variety of products that nearly spilled onto the pavement. I passed a greengrocer selling pineapples and bananas, fresh ripe corn and golden apples. It was followed by a bakery with magnificent cakes in the windows, and then by a shop selling brides' dresses, and another that sold spices. Café houses were dotted along the road and people sat at tables outside and drank small glasses of coffee, and ate cakes and smoked. The company was mixed, men and women together. All the shop signs were in Hebrew.

  I saw a shop selling newspapers. They, too, were mostly in Hebrew, though there were newspapers there in English and French and Russian, too. I looked at some of the headlines but could make little sense of them, though they filled me with unease.

  #

  Uprising Will Be Crushed, Vows Chief-of-Staff.

  Sources at the Weizmann Institute Report Successful Cloning of Saurian DNA.

  President Einstein To Resign: Says War "Immoral."

  #

  My feet led me to a large square. Beyond it lay a quarter of silver and glass high-rising buildings.

  I turned at the sound of many marching feet.

  Through that hot, dusty haze a platoon of soldiers came marching in true English style, legs rising and falling in rhythm, uniforms immaculate and on display. Their guns were long, sleek machines that seemed to purr as they were carried.

  Behind the soldiers came huge vehicles, armour-plated with moving tracts for wheels and the long barrel of a cannon emerging from their turrets.

  I heard a voice beside me and turned to see an elderly gentleman in a chequered shirt opened at the neck, a pair of ridiculous-looking trousers cut short at the knee, and a pair of biblical-looking sandals.

  "Beautiful, aren't they?" he sai
d, and there was a gleam in his eye. He spoke Hebrew to me, but with a strange, heavy accent that was a little that of the Dutch Afrikaaners and a little of Russian, too, perhaps. "I used to drive one of these when I was still in the army."

  I became conscious of my nakedness then, afraid to draw attention to myself, but upon a cursory examination realised I was dressed in a similar way to my new friend, with the addition of a hat.

  "The army?" I said. He chuckled as if I had said something funny. "Best army in the world," he said. "Everyone knows that. Ask the British, even."

  He must have misinterpreted my expression. "Don't worry," he said reassuringly, laying his hand on my arm. "The Mau Mau are not a serious threat. We can deal with them."

  I was about to speak when I felt someone was observing me, yet I could see no one but for my companion. I bid him goodbye and walked away. The feeling persisted.

  I came to a crowded place. Large, double-decker omnibuses stopped there, picking and letting off passengers. I saw an old chasid, dressed in black despite the heat, get onto one of the buses. Someone shouted. I turned, saw two men fight with the man in black. A scream.

  The man exploded.

  It must have been strapped to his body, under his clothes. The bomb ripped his body apart and blew out the windows of the bus. More screams filled the air. I saw a wounded woman crawl out of the bus with her left hand missing. I heard sirens. I smelled the mixed stench of smoke and blood.

  It was like being in a dream, I thought, that had turned bad. I felt myself pulled away from the scene of carnage into a feeling of insubstantiality as I wandered through the streets in a haze that grew the more I walked, until I saw nothing but white walls, a white space turning dark blue as I fell into it, all the while feeling the unseen eyes burning into me...

  I surfaced in the pool, inside the cave. The Inyanga was squatting above me, looking into the pool with the same expression of sadness on his face. I pulled myself out. When I looked into the water again the vision was gone, and with it the feeling I was being observed.

  We didn't speak on our way out. I couldn't get over the feeling I had done something profoundly wrong.

  #

  From Gibbons' Report

  On the 24th camp was pitched immediately to the west of the mountains, near a small spring of good water. The following day I sent boys out in different directions to try and find the base camp, which according to my instructions was to have been pitched as close to the mountain as water would allow. They returned without success, and a climb to the top of the mountain, though it offered an extensive view of the surrounding country, disclosed no sign of any tent. On the following day I myself set off in a NNE direction, and after travelling five miles struck a small river on which, by tracing it a short distance, I discovered the camp hidden away in a hollow.

  #

  A: Tell me about your journey back.

  R: There is not much to tell. We left the tunnels and made our way up the mountain. I did not see any more Kerit. The whole place had an abandoned feel, as if I had merely imagined it filled with life. (Pause.) I parted with the Inyanga. He looked troubled, almost hostile to me, as if I had awoken something that should have been left sleeping. I made my way south, towards the others' base camp. It took several days of hard hiking.

  A: (Unintelligible).

  R: Yes. I occasionally felt I was being followed. But as immediate events had shown, it had a simple explanation.

  #

  From Wilbusch's Diary

  1905

  February

  28 Last Camp in the Territory

  5 a.m. 53° F. 9 p.m. 57° F. Cloudy, rain in the afternoon.

  Long march of about 16 miles along the Elgeyo boundary. The rear of the caravan was attacked by a Nandi tribe, and as the porters had no good guns, the loads were stolen and the head man was wounded. Gibbons, I, and some porters pursued the Nandi about 5 miles but could not find them in the wood and returned to the caravan.

  #

  From Gibbons' Report

  In the affray, Feraji received a blow on the top of his head with what must have been a spiked instrument, for it left a round hole which by its depth seemed to have penetrated the skull. This blow, which in my opinion would have killed a white man, gave him something in the nature of pain for the first two days, after which he seemed to derive pleasure from it, for it served to illustrate his story from the Ravine as far as Mombassa. Had it not been for his plucky conduct and that of Tanganiko, the boy who came to his rescue, my impression is we would have lost nine loads instead of two. Unfortunately, we were all out of hearing when the episode occurred.

  Accompanied by Mr. Wilbusch, I returned as rapidly as possible as soon as information of the attack was brought me, but to track the thieves in the forest proved as hopeless as I expected it would be, for Swahili porters, through generations of civilization, have lost all the instincts for tracking so marvellously developed in the natural savage. The porters, like the proverbial donkey on his return journey, travelled back so quickly that we were able to catch the train leaving for Nairobi on March 6th, two days earlier than anticipated.

  #

  A: What did you think of Gibbons?

  R: (Laughs). You could call him a man of his time. Do you know that Kipling poem? The White Man's Burden?

  A: I don't recall.

  R: Look it up.

  #

  The following – the first stanza of the Kipling poem – was attached to this document.

  Take up the White Man's burden–

  Send forth the best ye breed–

  Go bind your sons to exile

  To serve your captives' need;

  To wait in heavy harness,

  On fluttered folk and wild–

  Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

  Half-devil and half-child.

  #

  A: Were you a witness to the attack?

  R: From afar only. I could not discern the faces of the raiders. Yet I was sure of their intent.

  A: Which was?

  R: What will be, was, the Inyanga had said to me. I think they knew the nature of the expedition, and tried to curtail it. That way, the future would remain only in the realm of possibility, and the past...the past would remain safely dead.

  A: So they were successful.

  R: I do not know. (Pause). The expedition came to nought. Their report was negative. There was no Jewish settlement in East Africa. And yet...

  A: (Unintelligible).

  R: Did I awaken something in that lost valley in the Chipchangwane mountains? Did I, by foolishness, allow an opening to form between the two worlds I could see? And did something follow me through it, even now seeking a way back, or a way to...no, I'd rather not indulge in hopeless speculation.

  A: It could have been magnificent. A new Jerusalem rising in the mountains of East Africa, a shiny new civilization, dominating all around it, a home of peace and prosperity for all Jews...

  R: I saw no peace.

  A: (Unintelligible).

  R: (Shouting). How did you find me? Who do you work for?

  A: Please calm down.

  R: Why do you were those dark glasses?

  A: (Unintelligible).

  R: I apologise. (Pause). Old memories sometimes ache like old bones.

  A: I quite understand.

  #

  From Wilbusch's Diary

  1905

  March

  6 UgandaRailway

  Travelled all day, felt rather ill.

  7 Mombassa

  Arrived in the morning.Waiting for steamer in Hotel Cecil.

  8 Mombassa

  Steamer arrived today. Went on board later in the afternoon.

  9-16 Indian Ocean

  Continued my journey to Palestine.

  16 Aden

  Arrived early in the day.Started at mid-day.

  16-21 Red Sea

  Continued voyage.

  22-26 Port Said

  Waiting for steamer to Palestin
e.

  27 Jaffa

  Arrived in Palestine.

  The Dope Fiend

  Mother’s advice, and Father’s fears,

  Alike are voted – just a bore.

  There’s Negro music in our ears,

  The world’s one huge dancing floor.

  We mean to tread the Primrose Path,

  In spite of Mr. Joynson-Hicks.

  We’re People of the Aftermath

  We’re girls of 1926.

  In greedy haste, on pleasure bent,

  We have no time to think, or feel

  What need is there for sentiment

  Now we’ve invented Sex Appeal?

  We’ve silken legs and scarlet lips,

  We’re young and hungry, wild and free,

  Our waists are round about the hips

  Our shirts are well above the knee

  We’ve boyish busts and Eton crops,

  We quiver to the saxophone.

  Come, dance before the music stops,

  And who can bear to be alone?

  Come drink your gin, or sniff your ‘snow’,

  Since Youth is brief, and Love has wings,

  And time will tarnish, ere we know,

  The brightness of the Bright Young Things.

  - “Women of 1926” by James Laver