On Hunting Lions


 John took the cane in his hand, thinking of his grandfather, the middle aged colonialist who hunted lions. His grandfather would go out in a jeep, mosquito netting hanging down from his hat, enveloping the black stubble that decorated his chin. "Bloody razor” he would say, “cuts me half to death when I try to shave. How the hell am I supposed to look presentable without a mirror?” But perhaps the British colonial budget was short by that time, because they didn’t send him a mirror for three years, during which he refused to shave “as a matter of principle”, until the royal naval shipping company told him that if he didn’t start looking more presentable, he’d be fired. He asked them if he would be escorted home by one of their "white mockeries of an African warrior" who "spent his evening alternating between jerking off and crying for his mother" - but the next day, he bought a new razor and began hacking at the his beard like a logger in a jungle.

 “Did you even know then, why you died?” John murmured, caressing the cane, thinking of the eighteen year old’s mother. They must have come to the house decked out in military finery. The woman - what had her name been? The soldier had been named Tom Hitchens - well, his mother must have been Mary: Mary Hitchens - a nice, respectable, middle-class name, with no pretensions. It is a name that speaks of slightly faded oriental carpet and beautiful china dishes that are only brought out for Christmas dinners. The father of course, would have already been deceased, from some respectable middle-class disease, like...a heart attack. Yes, something melodramatic and sudden, in contrast to the slow bourgeois decay of the soul. So Mary would have been dreading this visit. A part of her must have known it was coming, because the military officer entrusted with this sad duty could not recall having seen her cry: “Esteemed madame, we regret to inform you that your son Tom was killed in action last week protecting the glory of his homeland and preserving the honor of the Crown. May God rest his soul.” No specifics -no, it would not do for Mary to know that her son was mauled by a lion, as an upper-level beaurocrat attempted to assert his manliness by spearing the lion with one hand, while holding a cane in the other. It simply was unbecoming of England that she should allow a person of such low birth to know classified information about hunting lions.

 Hunting lions after all, was a sport reserved for the elect few: An ancient art that had been passed down through the ages, a re-enactment of man’s dominion over animals - something that, far away from the smoggy streets of London and the Anglican churches with their sharp steeples, was not always so clear-cut, despite the words of Genesis. His grandfather however, had never understood that in order to hunt lions, one had to discover and conquer the lion within himself, and that lion was not to be found in the offices of the royal naval shipping company. After the death of Tom Hitchens, John’s grandfather was promoted - to a post in London, far away from lions, but much too close to the lion’s uglier counterpart, the human.