Sacred Hunger (79 page)

The fact that Hambo had known exactly when and where to look for the fetish could be explained by some message that had come to him in a dream or vision, which had now disappeared from his recollection—such things were known to occur. He, Tongman, was very far from wishing to make accusations against anyone. It was enough for him that Iboti should be cleared.

On this, Tongman rested his case and returned the stick. The matter was put to the vote by Billy, as custom required, though now it was the merest formality: the show of hands in favour of acquittal was so overwhelming that a count of those against was not deemed necessary.

The Shantee contingent stalked off in stony silence, not waiting for the formal verdict. Billy pronounced Iboti not guilty of witchcraft and within a very few minutes the clearing, scene of so much excitement, was once again quite empty of people.

Relief at Iboti’s acquittal overlaid at first all other feelings in Paris. Before long, however, uneasiness came seeping back, something of that cold and half-incredulous dismay with which he had greeted Hambo’s plea.

Certainly the verdict had been a victory for truth. Tongman’s advocacy, the fortunate fact of Koudi’s presence at the graveyard, the good sense of the people, these had combined to triumph. But tyranny could take many such blows and still prevail; and it was this terrible resilience and recuperative power that was most in Paris’s mind in the hours that followed.

For all Tongman’s attempts to gloss things over in his summing-up, it was evident that there had been a conspiracy, that Hambo, with the connivance of Arifa and the probable complicity of Danka and Kireku, had practised to incriminate an innocent man and make a slave of him.

The more Paris considered the matter, the more convinced he became that Kireku was the key to it. He was cleverer and more able than the other two Shantee, and more far-seeing—a natural leader. He had been careful not to seem directly involved in the case and had taken no direct part in the pleading, but Paris felt sure he must have known of the enterprise and given it his blessing in some measure. However, the extent to which he might have encouraged Hambo remained in doubt and it was suddenly clear to Paris that this element of doubt could provide a basis for talk between them. It would be better to go immediately, if he were to go at all, while he was likely to find Kireku still at home.

All the same, the sun was well down in the sky before he finally made up his mind. Kireku’s hut was on the southern edge of the settlement, the side furthest from the lagoon. Like Tongman, he had built a second hut, alongside the first, for storing his trade goods. Libby emerged from this as Paris approached and called out, though whether in greeting or to notify his master was not clear. Amansa, Kireku’s woman, whom he shared with no one, sat outside the hut, shelling acorns and milling them between two blocks of wood, smooth and polished from much use. She glanced up but made no other acknowledgement of Paris’s presence.

Kireku appeared at the entrance, looked gravely at Paris for some moments without speaking, then motioned him to enter. He was naked to the waist and his chest and shoulders gleamed with the acorn oil which it seemed he had just been putting on himself. The palm matting on the side of the hut facing west had been raised and sunlight reached into the interior, where the corner poles cast long shadows. Paris found Barton inside, sitting on a mat in one corner with his back against a post. He lifted his narrow face and nodded as Paris entered, but said nothing.

Kireku gestured towards the mats on the floor, waited for Paris to sit, then sat himself.

His long, narrow eyes were bright and fathomless in the sunlight and those parts of his body in the shade shone with blue-black glints at every smallest movement.

"All you welcome,” he said. “You drink someting?

You drink beer?”’

“Thank you.”

“Barton, go git de beer.”

“Aye-aye,” Barton said, and Paris, as if in some uneasy dream where one struggles against recognition, heard in these syllables the same irony—too faint for insolence—the same servile alacrity as in the days when Barton had been mate on the slaveship. The response, too, was the same: Kireku directed a look of intimate disdain and irritation at his minister.

“Look live, den,” he said. “Stir you stumps.”

The beer was good cool, unclouded and not too sour to the taste. They had to draw close to drink, following the sociable custom of the settlement, by which the beer, like the gruel sometimes made from the same grain, was taken with long-handled shell scoops from the same wooden bowl.

Paris smacked his lips politely at the excellence of the beer and commented on the beauty of the scoops—they had been made, he was told, by Sefadu. He answered Kireku’s queries as to his health and well-being and waited through the long, hospitable silences.

Whatever displeasure Kireku might have felt at the way the Palaver had gone, he showed nothing of it now. The face that regarded Paris was equable and handsome, with its broad nostrils and wide, full mouth. Thin diagonal scars of tribal incisions showed faintly on his cheeks. The marks of thought were on Kireku’s face, there were fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and slight vertical folds between the brows. But its general expression was confident and resolute. It was the face of a man in command of his passions and of the circumstances of his life. Now, either from indifference or contempt, he gave Paris the opening he needed. “Well, so it look like Iboti not de man,” he said.

“Not less he got wing,” Paris said.

Kireku chuckled at this and tapped his temple with a long forefinger. “Iboti got brain of de bird, no got de wing,” he said.

“He not clever, dat is sartin,” Paris agreed. “But dat not a reason make him Hambo porter.”

Grasping the opportunity thus afforded, he began to speak of his fears for the future of the settlement if it became accepted among them that a man’s weakness or stupidity or simply his poverty was reason enough for that man to be made the possession of another and forced to do that other’s bidding.

Some men had short memories, but Kireku’s was longer and he would remember his own sufferings as a slave. If Kireku, as a leading member of the community, would speak to his fellow-tribesman Hambo and explain these things to him, it might be possible to stop this tendency now, before it took hold among them and became customary practice.

Kireku was a man of sense and experience and he would know that once a thing became customary it soon came to be regarded as lawful and was then extremely difficult to root out…

Concerned above all to find words that would express his meaning clearly and show at the same time his confidence in Kireku as an ally, Paris had not looked very closely at the other in the course of speaking. When he did so now, he saw at once that his words had failed of their effect. Kireku’s position had not changed; he sat cross-legged, his strong, well-shaped hands resting lightly on his knees; but his face had assumed the same expression of frowning severity it had worn during the Palaver when he had intervened to protest at Paris’s lapse from pidgin.

“What man you tink me, Paree, what man you tink yourself?”’ he said, after an angry silence.

“You come here my house for ask favour. Man born me I favour dat man, no madder what, but you no born me, you buckra white man come off slaveship.”

Paris took care to keep his eyes steadily on the other: any shift of gaze would be taken as weakness. “White man, black man, all free man, all bradder, live tagedder dis place, all same boat,” he said.

“Same boat?”’ For a moment Kireku seemed to waver between anger and amusement. Then his face settled into a fierce smile of derision. “Dat de slaveboat you talkin” bout?”’ He glanced round at his minion, who was seated to one side and slightly behind him. Barton, responsive as always to the need for background effects, sniggered loudly.

‘Hear him laff, heh, heh?”’ Kireku said.

“Barton, he sabee when to laff” With a sudden gesture he brought his right hand across his body and pointed to the livid scar on his chest. “Barton do dis,” he said. “Barton put hot iron, burn me. How ken he do dat? I tell you. It cause Barton strong pas” me dat time. Now Barton my man, fetch dis, carry dat. He no do it I kick him arse. Dat de same boat? You bigman doctor, look me eye, mouth, ball, make me dance, people laff, heh, heh. Now you come sweetmowf, ask favour me, say we fren’, sai by sai, no more slave. Dat de same boat?”’

‘He got you by the bollocks.” Barton was grinning. He seemed no whit abashed or put out by the slighting references to himself. “He got a headpiece on him like I never -“

“Barton, stow you gab,” Kireku said.

“All dat finish now,” Paris said, after a brief pause to gather himself. “Dat in de past.

Twelve year live tagedder dis place.

We no tink come here. Come here by wind an” sea. Come here by God hand, you like say so. We jus’ happen here, Kireku, but give us de chance put ting altagedder right agin.” He paused again, casting about for words that might somehow clinch the matter, failing to find them. Kireku’s face had returned to seriousness, the look of derision quite gone. The sun was close to setting, shadows inside the hut had lost form, seemed merely now a vanguard of darkness.

Paris saw Amansa pass outside with an armful of kindling. There was a smell of wood smoke and he could hear the voices of children, happy-angry, in the distance. It was a world, and precious to him. ‘Give us secon” time here,” he said heavily, ‘give us secon” chance.”

‘Mebbe give you secon” chance, not me,”

Kireku said, and his deep-throated voice now held a quality of conscious forbearance, sarcastic or sympathetic, Paris could not tell which. “I no panyar people from house put slavemark on dem, take for sell. You de one do dat. You tink one mind belong all us here, dat mind same-same you mind.

Why you tink I belong you idea right-wrong? I tell you why, Paree. It cause you tink you clever pas” me, you think you idea right-wrong strong pas’ my idea.”

His voice had quickened and stumbled as he spoke and his hands had clenched. He made a brief pause, staring before him. When he spoke again it was more deliberately.

‘Dat you big trouble, you never change. You alius try make adder people belong you idea. Like you play game wit dem, move here, move dere, like amati game, you sabee? You try make people here dis place do like you want, so you feel good, make man free. Den Paree feel good, oh-hoh! No feel bad no more, make man free, win de game. But Kireku not piece amati game pick up, put down. I no stay in place you want.

I strong pas” you. You a fool. You tink dis speshul place but it altageddar same adder place. Iboti, Callee, Libbee, dese men slave, you no change dat never. Go look for Iboti now, where you find him? Find him Tongman field, workin’ for Tongman. I build hut need man guard dat hut, build boat need boatman, do trade need porter for cargo. Need dem all de time, not jus’ when dey wan’. Dat de way ting go dis worl’, Paree, where you been?

Dis de real worl’, you no sabee dat?”’

‘Thurso was another who talked about the real world,” Paris said after a moment and as if to himself.

He looked at Kireku and attempted a smile.

“Funny ting,” he said. “Dey talk bout real worl”, dey never mean real worPeople where man help adder man or spend him life do good for people, dey alius mean real worl’ like rat in de cellar or dung-heap cock try git on top.”

Kireku said nothing to this and it was clear from his face that he thought it not worth answering.

Paris too sat silent for some time. It was not so much the force and penetration of the other’s argument that daunted him, considerable as these were, but the certainty and finality of the tone. He sought for a memory of Kireku aboard the slaveship, as if some clue to their present impasse could be found there. But no such memory was available to his mind. That shuffling, clanking dance to the sound of Sullivan’s fiddle, the mass of listless limbs and faces in the shadow of the awning amidships, the terrible cries from the fetid darkness of the hold, the stench of defecation, the corpses one so like another… Somewhere among those herded, brutalized people, featureless, indistinguishable in misery from the rest, this drive to power still dormant, undcld. Perhaps it could only have declared itself here, he thought, with a painful sense of paradox. His mind staggered suddenly at the thought of what manifold talents, what capacities for good and ill, had been thrown from the deck of the Liverpool Merchant to feed the sharks. The moral argument, he now saw, had been a mistake, they were both trapped in the same bog. Perhaps all that was left was the argument of expediency. He thought of Delblanc and his doctrine of necessity. Even freedom and equality might be seen as necessities of survival…

‘My life in dis place, jus” like you life,” he said, in low tones. ‘Some man weak, some man not clever, I same mind wit you ‘bout dat. But suppose I use weak man make me strong pas” adder people an’ you do same-same ting, den we go fight, dis place altagedder finish.”

But he knew as he spoke that he had failed, that the discussion was over.

‘allyou wrong.” Kireku smiled, a genial smile of complete equanimity. He now wore the same air as when Paris had first arrived: unruffled, sure of himself and his world.

“Barton,” he said, “I cold, go git my jackit.”

‘Aye-aye.”

Kireku nodded humorously at Paris.

“Barton no slave,” he said. “Barton too close me, he too bad man for slave. Poor Paree, you no sabee nottin”, no sabee de shit of de fire from de burnin’ of de fire. I no ask come here. Now I here I fight for place.

Strong man get rich, him slave get rich.

Strong man make everybody rich. Everybody dis place happy an’ rich come from trade. Some man not free, nevermind, buggerit, trade free. Dis palaver finish now. Barton, take Paree show him way along.”

It was a dismissal. Kireku looked austerely away while Paris rose and barely acknowledged his departure. As instructed, Barton walked some way with him.

The former mate seemed disposed to say something on his own account and they stood together for a few minutes some way beyond Amansa’s cooking fire. The last of the sunshine lay over the settlement and there was no breath of wind. Smoke from the fires rose in slow plumes and the cabbage palms outside the stockade stood motionless and stiff, the dead, withered lower fronds bright rust-colour where the sun caught them.