Lord Tyger (21 page)

Her reply was a disgusted face and a disgusted sound in her throat.

He was both puzzled and hurt. The only woman to refuse him had been Mariyam. That was painful to remember, because he had gotten the worst whipping of his life when he had asked Mariyam if she would lie with him. During the whipping, both Yusufu and Mariyam had screamed at him that he was wicked, vile, degenerate, and perverted. "You do not lie with your own mother! Surely, this is unheard of since the days of the evil men of Noah! If Igziyabher finds this unholy desire in you, He will strike you dead!"

Ras still did not think that it was wrong to offer affection in its most intense form to his beloved mother, but if she was so convinced that his desire was wicked, she was not going to change her mind. And later on, when he saw that the Wantso also thought of this as monstrous, he began to wonder if perhaps there might not be something wrong with him.

But this woman was not his mother. Was it possible that angels--or demons--were also forbidden this highest of pleasures? Or was she Igziyabher's woman and so did not want to bring his jealous wrath down upon her? Certainly, she was
not as smooth between the legs as his forehead, as Yusufu had described angels.

Whatever her reason, she made it plain that she did not want him. Moreover, she insisted he cover his genitals, which she seemed to think repugnant, although he could not understand why such beauties would offend anyone except the Wantso men, who were so jealous of them and with good reason.

At her urging, he went to another tree, where he had cached the leopardskin loin-covering a long time ago, and he put it on. She seemed pleased at this although the skin was badly chewed by insects and rodents.

By then, Ras knew that one of the languages she was trying on him was English. This knowledge did not help him much. Except for a mangled word here and there, it was still gibberish. Nor did she comprehend his English, although she must have recognized some words. Immediately after his first attempt with it, she pulled two half-burnt papers from a pocket. These were also Letters from God.

He read them as best he could. The first went thus:

suspect that they are--that they have been for a long time--disobeying my injunctions. From the very beginning, and many times since, I have instructed them in exactly what they should tell him, given them minutest details of how they should behave when in his presence, and, indeed, when he is not around, in case he should be spying on them. But they are they hate me, even though I saved them from

out working or having to worry about

The second read:

become acquainted with the Wantso an early age. He must have been visiting them for years before I found out. Otherwise, he would not have known their language so well. This is an example of what I meant when I said things seem to go their own way, no matter how I tried to keep the situation as the Master described it. Of course, I am a hard-headed realist--ask anybody in South Africa who's dealt with me!--and I knew that

Ras read the two half-papers several times before he took his collection from his antelope bag and handed them to her. She exclaimed several times while reading and then returned them with a shrug. Very lovely shoulders, he thought.

That night he reached for her again, and she pulled the weapon--which she called a thirty-two--and pointed it at him. He grinned and lay back but pulled his leopardskin off so that she could see what she was denying herself. She spat at him and spoke rapidly in an un-English tongue. She did not, however, turn her back on him, which Ras thought showed intelligence and foresight.

Later that night, he left the tree to scout the Wantso village. The noise from there had lessened considerably. For several days and nights the leopards had roared, jackals barked, hyenas laughed. The second night, Janhoy's roars had reached Ras. There were sounds that could be nothing other than Janhoy fighting leopards! Ras had been too weary to investigate. Besides, Janhoy
had never lost a battle with a leopard yet, although there was no telling what might happen if he were ganged up on.

The moon was up when he swam across the river. A rat slithered away into the shadows as he passed an arm-bone. Bones glinted grayly; a skull with some shreds of meat still on it stared at the moon. Ras made sure there were no leopards in the branches before he climbed a tree. He called Janhoy, and almost immediately a rumble answered him. The lion padded out into the clearing and glared about him. Ras came down out of the tree to greet him.

When morning came, he returned with Janhoy to the nest in which the woman still slept. Ras made the introductions carefully. Janhoy behaved as if he were thinking of her as a potential meal. The woman objected when Ras pulled her to him and started to hug and caress her, but she quickly caught on to what he was doing, and submitted. She did not even try to push his hand away when he fondled her right breast, although she stiffened. Janhoy sniffed her to make sure that she was acceptable and that Ras wasn't making a mistake--at least, it seemed to Ras that this was what the lion was doing. When the woman was sure that Janhoy had decided she was classifiable and not dangerous, she pushed Ras's hand away and walked off, though slowly. Ras grinned. He had felt her nipple swell and harden and so knew that her repulsion was not genuine.

But why was she pretending?

A few minutes later, he heard the chop-chop of the Bird. He glimpsed it through the branches of a tree as it went east. After a while, it returned and circled around. It seemed to him that it
was searching, and that its object was he. Then it disappeared southward.

Why was the Bird--or the angels in it--looking for him? Had Igziyabher instructed them to make sure he was safe? Whatever the reason, the angels--if they were angels--had limitations, just as Igziyabher had limitations. They could not see through the trees, and Igziyabher did not have the all-seeing eyes that Mariyam had claimed for him. Nevertheless, the angels did possess the shooters of invisible death, and Ras respected these.

Shortly after the Bird was out of hearing, the woman spoke to him in a very slow English.

"My nim iss Eeva Rantanen."

Ras was delighted. He spoke as slowly and carefully.

"I am Ras Tyger. Ras means
Lord
in Amharic."

Eeva smiled and said, "You tell me, vhy you sepeak--speak--English so peculiar?"

"You talk funny, not me," Ras said. "Anyway, we can talk now, if we go slow. Why didn't you do this before?"

She shrugged and said, "I tought you could not sepeak English vell or maype not at all. Vhen I saw you looking at the paperss, I tought you vere yust curious and did not know vhat te vordss mint. Put--but I tought I vould tery--try--again. You unterstant me?"

"Yes. You were right in one thing. There are some words in the letters I don't understand. Could you explain them to me?"

She asked him to repeat his question. He did so. They squatted side by side then while Ras pointed out the words in doubt. When they had gone through all the pages, she said, "You
cawt-cawed dem letterss. Vhat you mean py--by--dat?"

Ras told her what he thought they were. She looked flabbergasted and said, "You muss tell me all about yourself."

Ras stood up. "Later. I can tell you while we're on our way, in the dugout."

They walked to the river and swam across it. Janhoy followed them. Ras led them to the bank just outside the west gate, where the Wantso kept the dugouts. He had not examined them the night before and was disappointed to find all four unwaterworthy. The weapons of the Bird had blown even through the thick wood. All were riddled with holes and unrepairable.

Not wishing to labor for four or five days to make a new dugout, Ras decided to build a raft. Even this, however, took two days. He had to poke through the ashes until he had recovered enough iron and copper axheads, adzes, shovels, and hoes. These he fitted with new handles he had fashioned with his knife from branches. The blade became dulled many times, and he had to take time out to rewhet its edges with the stone from his antelope-hide bag. Then he set to work digging up some wall-poles. Eeva helped him. Janhoy disappeared, presumably to hunt.

At dusk of the next day, Ras had a raft. It was twelve feet long, four feet wide, and held together by vines. The forepart was shaped into a broad, water-cutting head. There were two poles for pushing against the river-bottom or banks, and three paddles that had escaped destruction.

By now, he knew what the deadly things were that the twin cylinders had spat. While going through the bones of the Wantso, he had discovered several rough discs of soft, gray metal. He had connected these with the conical gray metal in the dull yellow
cylinders Eeva put into the revolving barrel of her thirty-two. He asked her to explain; she did as best she could. The angels' weapons shot a bigger "caliber" and the ends of their "calibers" were notched to become
dum-dums.

Ras was startled. This word made him remember his childhood, when all seven of the "apes" had been alive. At full moons, they would go naked into the woods where a drum of hard-packed earth stood in the middle of a clearing. And there they would dance the
dum-dum
while Mariyam and Sara beat a rhythm on the drum with sticks and the five men would caper wildly around it and give long, ululating screams. Ras would dance with them and thought it was great fun. But after the first three of the "apes" died, the
dum-dums
ceased. Yusufu said that there was not much point in it any more. Ras tried to organize a
dum-dum
among the gorillas, but had gotten nowhere. A few of the young ones had danced with him for a while, but they could not keep an interest in it long enough for Ras to feel that they were really enacting the dance properly.

Ras did not tell Eeva of this. The memory made him sad. He still grieved when he thought of his parents.

Ras and Eeva launched the raft on the third morning. They ate monkey meat and fruit for breakfast as soon as the raft was moving well in the middle of the stream. Eeva asked him about Janhoy. He said, "I hate to leave him behind, because he may go hungry. But I can't take him along. He'd get in the way, and I'd have to spend too much time hunting for him. He'll get along."

At that moment, Janhoy roared nearby. He was on the south bank opposite them. Ras shouted at him to go away, but the lion swam out to them and almost tipped the raft over getting
up onto it. Ras cursed him in Arabic and Amharic, although he was glad that Janhoy had insisted on coming along. He had felt guilty about deserting him. However, Janhoy's weight made the raft sink so that there was a continual wash over its deck. It was some time before Ras could get him to lie down in the middle of the raft and not move. And the extra weight made propulsion more difficult.

Eeva asked him why they were going down-river. He opened his mouth to explain, but she said, "Iss it pecausse you vant to ket out off de valley? If so, it von't pe--be--eassy. Maype it's not possiple."

Ras said, "What valley? We won't be in any valley."

She stared at him for a while, and then she opened her mouth to say something. At that moment, just as the raft cleared a bend, the first crocodile appeared. It rowed its length down the bank with its short legs, oozed into the water, and slanted against the grain of the current to intercept them.

Farther down the bank, at least twenty others launched themselves down the mud bank. A few, some distance away from the river, lifted their bodies up and ran to the bank, where they slid down. Their voices were like far-off thunder.

Janhoy stood up and answered their thunder with one stored deep in his chest.

Ras said, "I don't think they'll come up on the raft, but you never know about them. And if they get under the raft, and Janhoy gets excited and moves around, the raft'll tip over."

He wished that his guilt and his affection for the lion had not induced him to take him along.

"We'd better push in to the bank," he said, "so we can jump
for it if we have to. I've never seen them so unafraid."

Eeva started to lean her weight on her pole, but she suddenly laid it down. A ridged back had cracked open the water near her. Ras yelled at her to push. She pulled the thirty-two from the holster and pointed it at the beast. The unexpected loudness of the explosion made Ras and Janhoy jump. The crocodile whirled around and around like a carcass on a spit. The waters around it reddened, and the other crocodiles closed in on it. Eeva resumed poling, and presently they were going around another bend. There was only one crocodile in sight, and it was heading toward the bellowing around the bend.

"They must have been holding a meeting," Ras said. "Or a mating."

He laughed. It was not often he got a chance to pun in English. Eeva looked as if she wondered what his laughter was about. He did not bother to explain. And for a moment the thought that Yusufu would have understood and would have laughed saddened him.

He told Eeva why he was going down the river.

She said, "Who iss Iksiyapher--Igziyabher?"

"He is God."

"Your fater?"

"So my mother, Mariyam, said," Ras replied. "She was an ape. Or so she said, but I do not think so. And if she lied about that, then perhaps she lied about Igziyabher."

Eeva was confused by more than his pronunciation of English. She asked him to start at the beginning of his story. He said he did not know where to begin. She should keep silent while he finished answering the first question.

"You can't keep quiet any more than Mariyam could."

He was silent for a moment as he thought of that dear little brown face.

"Vhat iss te... de... the... matter?"

"There are ghosts, but not the kind the Wantso believe--believed--in."

"What?"

"Also, Bigagi, who killed my mother and father..."

"Your fater? You sait... said... dat he vass God."

"My foster father, Mariyam's husband."

"Husspant?"

"Bigagi killed them. He led the Wantso men; otherwise they'd never have been brave enough. They think... thought... I was a ghost."