The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian
For my pod, literal and metaphoric, from 2020, the Year That Satan Spawned, and the first half of 2021.
When I was hanging on by my fingernails, you gave me your hand. You are my safari.
Grace Experience Blewer Victoria Blewer Julia Cox
Robert Cox
Todd Doughty Andrew Furtsch Joan Heaton Jenny Jackson Stephen Kiernan Gerd Krahn
Laura Krahn Brian Lipson Khatchig Mouradian Hawk Ostby
Monica Ostby Lisa Goodyear-Prescott Reed Prescott Deborah Schneider John Searles Stephen Shore Adam Turteltaub and (yes)
Horton and Jesse
Everything I learned, I learned from the movies.
—Audrey Hepburn
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
—Orson Welles
THE SAFARI
Registered Guest List
MARRIED COUPLES
David Hill: gallerist
Katie Barstow: actress
Billy Stepanov: psychologist and Katie Barstow’s older brother Margie Stepanov: homemaker
Felix Demeter: screenwriter
Carmen Tedesco: actress
SINGLE GUESTS
Terrance Dutton: actor
Reggie Stout: Katie Barstow’s publicist Peter Merrick: Katie Barstow’s agent
Team Leaders
Charlie Patton: owner of Charles Patton Safari Adventures Juma Sykes: head guide
Muema Kambona: second guide Benjamin Kikwete: porter and guest liaison
Prologue
Oh, I can’t speak for the dead. And I won’t speak for the missing. I can only tell you what I think happened. Others—the dead and the missing—would probably have their own versions. Blame, I can tell you firsthand, is every bit as subjective as truth.
Of course, I am also confident that the missing will never be found: the Serengeti is vast and it’s been years. Years. But Africa is changing. One never knows. Someday it’s possible that some of their bones—a femur that is recognizably human or a skull that was clearly a woman’s or a man’s—will be spotted beside a dirt road where a jackal or hyena or magnificent lappet-faced vulture decades ago finished off what a leopard or lion didn’t. Just think for a moment of the age of the fossils and remnants of ancient man that have been found a little south of where we were in the Olduvai Gorge. Mary Leakey began piecing together the Nutcracker Man only five years before we were there when she saw what looked like two teeth in a jaw. Nutcracker Man lived two million years ago. We went there and (most of us, anyway) died there in 1964.
So, perhaps a ranger will discover the bones while tracking a poacher. It could be just that ordinary.
But let’s be clear. This story was never about Western, privileged tourists or local Maasai or Tanzanians. It was never about rich or poor, Americans or Africans. We were all just people, and most of us had no idea what was happening. We had no idea what to do. We made the best decisions we could, but think of who we were and where we were. The mantra for most of us? Just stay alive. See if, somehow, we might see the sun rise one more time.
Safari
CHAPTER ONE
Katie Barstow
Hollywood royalty gathered Saturday night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where Katie Barstow wed Rodeo Drive gallerist David Hill. The two of them left afterward for Paris and then the wilds of Africa on a “safari.” Rumor has it that the actress is bringing along an entourage into the jungle that will include her brother and sister-in-law, Billy and Margie Stepanov; her agent, Peter Merrick; her publicist, Reggie Stout; actress Carmen Tedesco and her husband, Felix Demeter; and Katie’s friend and co-star in the still controversial Tender Madness, Terrance Dutton. The little group has nicknamed themselves the Lions of Hollywood—though anyone who knows Katie Barstow or has seen her on the screen understands that she is the lioness in charge of this pride.
—The Hollywood Reporter, November 9, 1964
She was watching the giraffes at the watering hole after breakfast, no longer as awed by their presence as she’d been even four days ago, when she’d first seen a great herd of them eating leaves from a copse of tall umbrella acacia, their heads occasionally bobbing up to stare back, unfazed and not especially alarmed by the humans. Their eyes were sweet. Their horns were the antennae on a child’s extraterrestrial Halloween mask. The inscrutable creatures were wary of these humans, but they felt no need to flee.
They’d just finished breakfast and were still at their camp. Her husband, David, was on her left, and her brother, Billy, was on her right. Both had their cameras out. Terrance was sitting nearby with his notebook on his knees, sketching the creatures. Katie had known that Terrance was as talented a visual artist as he was an actor—her husband loved his paintings—but she was still stunned by how quickly and how remarkably he was drawing the animals they saw. The eyes of his elephant had broken her heart. Earlier that autumn, when they were still in L.A., David had said it was only a matter of time before he could risk giving the man a show. (“He’s a movie star,” she told David when she heard the hesitation in his voice. “He’s a Black movie star,” David had reminded her, and while he was only acknowledging the backlash he might face from some quarters, she had still felt the need to remind him it was 1964, not 1864. His gallery’s fiscal foundation couldn’t possibly be so weak that it couldn’t withstand blowback from racist critics and so-called connoisseurs.)