Sacred Hunger (69 page)

He felt confident he could win the case. He had made his own enquiries and had a surprise witness, whom he had sworn to secrecy. All the same, there were aspects of the business that worried him, the main one being the identity of Iboti’s accuser. Shantee Hambo was a fellow tribesman of Danka, one of the men with whom Tongman traded, and more importantly of Kireku, whom it was better to have for a friend than an enemy. These three were all the Shantee that had survived, but they formed a powerful group. And they had begun to claim their male children, which was contrary both to rule and custom…

The net was in now. Apart from the big parrot-fish, it had not been a good catch. But there were two bait fish, which he knew from the strong, brassy lustre of their colouring. They were not good to eat, but they were full of oil and could be chopped and scattered to attract the the big, black and silver food-fish that lay in the deep water of the creek mouths. This he remembered doing in another life, on a wider, swifter river.

Tongman had been a boy of fourteen when he was caught by a slaving party and sold aboard ship. His memories of childhood lay beyond the misery and terror of the voyage. They were thus in a charmed place, not altogether believed in but vivid and piercing when they came, and curiously arbitrary too. He had remembered scattering bait on the bright, flecked surface of the Roketa River, rocking in a dugout canoe not much different from this one, his father in the stern with a long spear. The memory was changeless: there was always the bright, eddying water, the crash of waves over the bar at the river mouth, the conical roofs of huts along the banks. And there were big white birds with forked tails that flew endlessly over the water. He could remember their quick shadows over the surface but he could not remember hearing any sounds from these birds, nor ever seeing them settle. In his memory they dipped and wheeled for ever in total silence…

Past and present were also interfused in an argument taking place on the outskirts of the settlement at more or less the same time, between Billy Blair and the negro named Inchebe.

“Oh, Billee, Billee, I so sorry for you, I ready for cry,” Inchebe said, shaking his head from side to side and blinking sorrowfully. “You don” know de shit of de fire from de burnin’ of de fire, dat you great trouble, man.” He was small and coal black, with a mobile, slightly twisted face, very quick and delicate in all his movements.

Blair’s frayed and battered palm-leaf hat dipped over his brows and the lower part of his face was hidden by a fair, curly beard. But his blue eyes were wrathful as ever, wide now with the furious protest with which he greeted all the manifold contradictions and failures of logic in the world. ‘allyou talkin” bigbig rabbish, Cheeby my son,” he said.

‘allyou altagedder tellin” me you got stone make rain? You want me b’lieve you knock bleddy stone tagedder make rain? Dat all my arse an’

Betty Martin.”

One of Inchebe’s great strengths in argument—and it was one peculiarly infuriating to Billy—was that he never sought to persuade. He radiated always a placid, unassertive confidence of being in the right.

‘What you b’lieve you business,” he said. “I tellin” trut.”

Both men were somewhat out of temper. They had spent most of the day trying to shoot turkey in the swamps without any success, stumbling and slipping in pursuit of that most wily and sagacious of birds, making gobbling noises in the vain hope of drawing one to them. All they had got were two small squirrels, hardly enough for a stew. In such situations they each tended to lay the blame on the other. They were in any case on terms of exasperated familiarity owing to the fact that they shared the same woman.

Sallian Kivee had grown very fat and had never been a beauty, but she was a good-tempered woman, very faithful by nature and an excellent cook. She had been content for ten years now with these two.

‘I hear you talkin” bigmowf Dinka Meri,”

Billy said, ‘say her you got rainstone, make yourself out big rainman.”

Inchebe returned no answer to this, merely gazing around him with his small, bright eyes. Billy too was silent for a while, as if baffled. Of late years a habit of suspended consciousness had grown in him.

At any time, when he was alone or with others or even, as now, in the midst of argument, there would come a certain kind of hush over things, everything before him would seem fixed somehow, arrested. Accompanying this was a kind of perplexity at the strangeness, the ultimate illogicality, of his being where he was. He felt this now as he looked away towards the first huts of the settlement. Only the sloping thatches of the roofs were visible from here; the rest was concealed behind the stockade of palm logs that encircled the whole area. He and Inchebe were standing outside this, lower down, on a track that led through thin forest. Some children were playing together up against the stockade and two women stood talking nearby. Beyond them, in the distance, he saw the hulking form of Libby go past, carrying what looked like fencing for a fish trap. Probably on some errand for Kireku, he thought with faint contempt. “Dinka never go b’lieve you,” he said. “She not born yestaday, she sabee you jus” tryin’ git you leg over.”

Inchebe was unmoved. ‘I not born yestaday, neever. I sabee you tryin” git you leg over.”

Dinka was young, twenty-two or three, it was computed, tall and graceful, scornful of smile but melting of eye. She was visited by a man of the Bulum, middle-aged and taciturn, known to everyone by the single name of Amos. But her regular man had failed to return from a fishing trip and was now presumed drowned.

‘allyou jaloos, Billee,” Inchebe said.

“Dat what it is.”

Billy feigned laughter. The floppy brim of his hat nodded up and down. “Me jaloos? Dat a good ‘un. Ho, ho, look de big ‘portant rainman of Africa.”

“Prentiss man.”

“What you say?”’

“I prentiss rainman.”

‘Aha!” Billy’s eyes shone with triumph.

“Dat a different song,” he said. “Dat not what you tell Dinka.”

At this moment Sullivan came up the track and joined them. He was carrying a palm-fibre basket three-quarters full of freshwater mussels.

“Well, me brave lads,” he said. “Will you look at this now?”’ He took up a handful of mussels and let them slide off his palm into the basket, watching the clattering blue shells with eyes that were hallucinated-looking in the deep tan of his face. Sullivan was a great man for mussels and clams and knew all the best places. Gathering them he was sometimes taken back to his childhood in Galway, foraging for shellfish in the salt recesses of this same ocean.

He was naked except for his deerskin moccasins and a breechclout of braided palm leaves and he smelled of the fish oil he had rubbed on himself against mosquitoes. His black hair fell almost to his shoulders and was held off his face by a band of fibre tied across the forehead. “You make swap?”’ he said, reverting to pidgin at the prospect of trade.

“You make me good swap five pint measure mussel? What you got?”’

Neither Billy nor Inchebe said anything.

Sullivan regarded the two small, limp squirrels hanging head downwards from Billy’s rope belt. “Dat all?”’

Billy looked away from the mussels with assumed indifference.

“De time come for trut,” he said doggedly to Inchebe. “You tell Dinka you got rainstone, you show me dem rainstone. Where dey?”’

Inchebe turned to Sullivan, twisting his mouth and widening his small expressive eyes. “You hear dis man? He tink rainman carry cargo rainstone aboard all de time.” He turned a pitying glance back to Billy. “Dey kept secret place, close water,” he said. “No tell where.

Anyone know anyting bout rainstone know dat. Why you care soso much what ‘pinion Dinka have? Dat no secret, I tell you why, you want get in Dinka bed, get you leg over.”

“For the love of God,” Sullivan said. His face had assumed an expression of astonishment.

His green eyes glanced after a lost vision of human reason and decency. “You feller sniffin” after dat no-good Dinka when you got a soso jool at home? Yeh, yeh, dat right, I talkin’ bout you Sallian. She cook good too much, she fuck much you want, she never naggy. What man do when he got woman like dat? I tell you what, he treasure dat woman, he put de grapple on dat woman, he climb aboard an’ stay aboard.”

At this point he found himself being regarded closely by Inchebe, who was more devious than Billy and so more prone to suspicion. ‘We glad too much get you idea on dis subjec”,” he said. It was known to everyone that Sullivan, by one of those shifts of fortune sometimes occurring in the settlement, where relations between the sexes were a complex blend of the casual and the binding, now found himself having to share his woman with two others. ‘allyou say Dinka no good,” Inchebe said. “Mebbe you tink Dinka not bootiful girl, not have bootiful butties an” so on an’ so fort, what you say?”’

This was a very cunning question and Sullivan, aware that he had possibly overdone Sallian’s praises, was thrown out by it. ‘Thim things you mention is steadily deterioratin”,” he said. ‘Any man with a knowledge of commerce, like meself, will tell you it is no arthly use investin” your money in a deterioratin’ asset.”

Some of Inchebe’s calm fell away from him.

‘What shit lingo dat?”’ he said. “You want say me someting, you talk people lingo.”

“Bootiful butties, what dat madder?”’

Sullivan said earnestly. “You feller lucky have soso ugly woman. Bootiful go way soon soon, niver come back. Ugly go on gettin” more “n more.” He cast about for a way of changing the subject. “What you talk about?”’ he said.

“Sallian look after you so good you like twin, you like bun same oven, one bake bit longer.”

This was a true observation. Both men were short and quick of movement; and both were dressed identically in clothes that had been made for them by Sallian. A tactful and loving woman, she made no distinction of any kind between them. They had exactly the same palm-leaf hats, deerskin drawers decorated with plaited fibre tassels dyed red, and sleeveless smocks of faded blue, made from a remnant of cotton from the trade goods that had been brought off the ship.

“Subjec” not Dinka, subjec’ not Sallian,” Billy said austerely.

‘Subjec” not bleddy twins. We talkin’

“bout rainstone. Easy too much no tell where.

Ho, yes. Last rain come late. Why you no knock stone tagedder fall rain before?”’

“De time no right.”

“What you mean, time no right? Dat de time people need.”

“Rain no come for people need, no care bugger people need.”

“Aha! I got you in de corner now, Cheeby.” Billy’s expression was again triumphant. “I got you pin down. You wait you see rain come den you knock stone.”

Inchebe nodded placidly. ‘Sartinly,” he said. “Dat de right time knock stone.” He raised a thin forefinger. “But only rainman ken see dat.”

“He right.” Sullivan had begun to take an interest in the argument. “Why the pox man knock stone if rain no come?”’

“Jesus, you bad as he is.” Billy felt himself sweating. There was a contradiction of appalling proportions at the heart of Inchebe’s argument, but he could not see it clearly enough to be able to expose and refute it. He raised his heated face to an uncomprehending sky. “Give me strength,” he said.

Sullivan was shaking his head slowly. “Aye, bejabbers, wasted effort,” he said. “Where de point in dat?”’

Suddenly Billy saw a way. “Tell me dis, den. How you know dey de right stones?”’

“How you fin” dem? You no born with stone, eh? Only stone you born with is you ball. Or mebbe you rainman bebby, you knock you ball tagedder make rain?”’

Inchebe greeted this with dignified silence.

‘Well, den,” Billy went on, “you got to look here, look dere, fin” de good stone. Right or wrong?”’

‘Right.”

“Got you now.” Billy paused, savouring his triumph. “One bleddy stone like anadder. How you know you stone de right one?”’

Inchebe looked at him with genuine astonishment.

“What kind question dat? Dey de wrong stone, rain no come down.”

On his return, happening to pass Matthew Paris, Hughes mentioned the ship and the fact that she had anchored overnight. Most things came to Paris’s ears sooner or later. The people of the crew reported to him out of habit and a kind of deference that had survived the familiarity of the years; and both black and white confided in him sometimes when he was treating them for sickness or injury or discontent in the long, palm-thatch lean-to on the edge of the compound that he used for a sickroom.

He thought for a while about what Hughes had told him as he sat there at the corner of his hut on a low stool he had made out of driftwood, with his hat tilted forward against the low sun and his naked, long-shanked legs stretched out before him. He did not see anything very remarkable in a ship lingering a day or two longer than usual—there could be a score of reasons. That it was Hughes who had delivered the information was the only remarkable thing. In remote communities legends form as imperceptibly as clouds change shape and colouring; and Hughes, while still alive amongst them, had become a legendary climber and watcher. This lonely man had saved them once, or so it was generally held, in the violent early days of the settlement when the threads that held them all together had been stretched taut, close to snapping.

In the first rainy season it had happened, when the vast prairies of saw-grass lay under water.

Hughes never spoke of it, taciturn in this as in all else; but the words with which he had come to tell the others had always been remembered—and repeated.

Delblanc in particular had seen from the first the importance of telling things over; he had been clear-sighted in those times of danger, always seeking to encourage a sense of unity among the fugitives, ready to seize on anything that could be celebrated by the whole people together. Delblanc lay under the ground now, but this had been his legacy.

Jimmy, the linguister, had aided this work, especially with the children. He had found his vocation as a teacher, though his school was very irregularly attended and subject to changes in the weather. He taught the children to form letters and he taught them simple arithmetic; but his lessons were mainly story-telling and playacting. He was helped sometimes by Paris, who had no idea of teaching, but would read extracts from his small stock of books. The children dozed or fidgeted to the sound of Pope and Hume.