Tefuga (12 page)

She drew a deep breath and started. I'd sort of guessed what was coming, only I expected it to be all about KB stealing Elongo's sister, but it was a different story. I didn't understand it all, anything like. There were places and people she seemed to think I knew all about already, which of course I didn't, and lots of words I didn't know. I tried to make her slow down, but I couldn't keep interrupting or the spearmen would have been bound to notice, so all I could hope for was to try and pickup bits and bobs and piece something together. Anyway, I think it was a story about one of KB's other sons, not Zarafio, coming to the village and spearing the elders and burning the huts and taking everyone else away to sell for slaves. It all sounded perfectly ghastly, but it was the sort of horror that used to happen all the time before the British came. The only surprising thing I thought was KB letting it happen to the Kitawa, after the agreement Ted had told me about. He was supposed to be protecting them from things like that. I didn't know quite what to say when she'd finished, but obviously I had to be sympathetic and try and explain it couldn't happen now.

“This is a bad story,” I said. “But it is many rains ago.”

“It is two rains ago,” she said.

I thought I'd heard wrong.

“Two rains?”

“Two rains.”

She was absolutely certain about it.

You can paint a bit while you're listening, even when it's a difficult language you aren't v. good at. Sometimes your hand knows what it wants and does better if you aren't really thinking about it. Mine had been blobbing away at the fuzz of branches on top of the mound, dirty grey-brown, getting them spot on—you could almost feel something pretty unspeakable might have happened up there—but now I saw it had given a jump and made a great splodge just where I didn't want it, up in the sky. I started trying to soak it away tho' I knew I'd never get back to the plain smooth wash I'd put there—my system I have to get things right first time or it's no use. If I hadn't needed to pretend to the spearmen I'd probably have chucked the picture away then and there.

Of course I wanted to check I'd understood right, so soon as I'd mopped up the worst of the damage I twisted round to my satchel again to try and make sure, face to face, but the women were changing places and there was a new one waiting to tell me something. She was absolutely terrified, sort of purply-grey, and trembling. Probably it was 'cos of that, but she was almost impossible to follow. Even if I'd understood every word I'd have been muddled. Somebody had taken something from someone else, and someone had gone to someone to complain (I think) but no one would listen and instead he'd been beaten very hard and then on his way home he'd been attacked again and beaten till he was dead. And the horsemen wouldn't let his wives take his body away but made them leave it by the path so that everyone could see. Oh dear, I've made that sound much more sensible than it was. The only thing I'm at all sure of is that somebody was beaten till he was dead and the horsemen sent the wives away. I'm not honestly sure it was the dead person's wives. I've sort of guessed it together, the way you do with dreams. At least I didn't have to ask how long ago.

“This is new,” she said. “This is done these rains.”

“No one has spoken to the white man about this,” I said. I knew that, 'cos it would have been still going on with memos to and fro when I'd been helping Ted with his papers. She didn't answer. More shufflings as the women changed places. I couldn't get a proper look at them but I think it was Femora Feng again.

“Who can speak to the white man?” she said. “He is the friend of Kama Boi. The sons of Kama Boi stand at his side. We must speak through the mouth of the horsemen. Will he say what we say? Where will the white man be when the horsemen come to punish those who have spoken? We speak to you, Betty Jackland.”

Oh, how I wanted to help, but I felt absolutely helpless. The trouble was she was sort of right. There's an absolute rule against political officers hearing complaints against the Native Authority without an N.A. representative there, and of course this doesn't just mean the N.A. knows who's making the complaint, the complainer knows they know. Suppose a chief's had your brother beaten for not giving him a present, what's he going to do to you for complaining about it? You've got to have an awful lot of trust in the White Man, and how can you if he doesn't understand your language and you have to speak to him using someone who's one of
them
? Besides, even if the White Man believes you he doesn't do anything, far as you can see. He doesn't get rid of the chief—Kaduna hate deposing chiefs. So the chief'll still be there when that White Man's gone and a new one's come. I'm not making this up. It's what Ted says too. But it's part of the system and the rest of the system won't work if you try and put it right so you have to lump it. Like these poor women. Terrified.

Best I could think of was somehow to persuade Ted to listen with me to interpret. Go out for our evening ride and meet someone, where Z. and his men couldn't see. It'd have to be an eye-witness, tho'.

“Did you see this spearing and burning?” I said. “Or the beating? Who saw them?”

“It is far away. Three days and two days.”

That wasn't any use, not even on this tour area. Ted wouldn't be able to make enquiries on the spot.

“At this place, at Tefuga, the horsemen have done nothing like this?”

She sucked in her breath. She was going to speak but one of the other women must have stopped her. I could hear mutterings, angry and frightened. I couldn't look 'cos the spearmen were getting fidgety. I hummed and pretended to be busy with my painting. Quite spoilt now, so just to have something to do with the brush I scrubbled in a quick trick thunder-cloud to cover up the mess. One of the spearmen started to get up.

“Don't move,” I shouted in Hausa, but he pretended not to understand and came striding over. I was furious. I snatched up the study I'd done and went to meet him and bullied him back to where he'd been sitting and made a great fuss about posing him just how he'd been. (Me! Bullying two big men! Isn't that extraordinary? They didn't like it but they took it.)

When I got back to my easel the women had gone. Crept away under the bank, I suppose. I waited for them to come back but they didn't. I had to pretend to go on with my painting so I finished the cloud—all wrong with that heat and light below, so I messed around with the shadows a bit and then gave up. It wasn't quite as bad as it might have been—effective in a creepy kind of way. It'll do for KB, at least. He won't know.

I tickled up my study of the spearmen so I could give it to them and by then it was too hot for anything so we all came back to Tefuga. Ted's still at his census palaver. I'm supposed to be doctoring but I don't feel up to it. I'll have to tell him—get it over. Oh, if only I'd understood a bit better!

Awful. My fault. Perhaps I shouldn't really have tried. But I had to. I told him while we were having lunch under our little shade roof. Too hot to eat much, specially tinned tomato soup. Everything so still, drained, veiled with heat, nobody moving, nobody even talking or singing or pounding food among those funny sideways-tilted roofs. Lots of people somewhere, in for the dancing and the palaver, but where? Just our bearers under one lot of trees and Z. and his people under another lot, waiting. Waiting for the heat to go, so life could start again.

What was awful was that he didn't believe me!

I don't mean he really thought I was lying. Of course not. At least … Oh, how can two people trust each other absolutely and then suddenly not? I started it, wondering if he was being straight with me, and now it's the other way round.

Pull yourself together, Bets.

Of course he was terribly nice about it. He is a nice man, but that doesn't help. I explained how difficult it had been for me, 'cos of her whispering and me having to pretend to paint. I didn't want him to think I was making out I knew anything I didn't. I kept saying I couldn't be sure. He'd started filling his pipe but then he just sat teasing the baccy to and fro in his fingers. When I'd finished about them burning the village I waited for him to say something. He took a long time. He looked hard at me, then away.

“Oyalirri? Or something like that?” he said.

“I think so. She only said it once, at the start, before I knew it might be important. I never got a chance to ask.”

“Anyway, not Fadum.”

“No, I'm pretty certain. Longer than that.”

“You've never heard of Fadum?”

“No. Why?”

“That was in 'seventeen. It's up in the north. It was a Tuareg raid, but apart from that it was exactly as you describe. We had a diplomatic dust-up with the French, who were supposed to be keeping the Tuareg in order, but I doubt if much was done.”

“But this was only two rains ago, darling. I asked her specially.”

“Alright. Go on.”

I tried. I was doing my best about the beating and the murder, and what a muddle it was but I was sure it was something wicked and only just this rains, but in the middle of that I suddenly saw why he'd asked if
I'd
ever heard of Fadum. I might have been making it all up. Why, there mightn't have been any women at all!

I don't think that now. I mean if he did think something like that it was only for a mo. But when it happened it was perfectly awful for me. I stuck, with my mouth wide open. He stared at me and I stared at him. Then I managed to go stammering on.

When I'd finished he gave a great sigh.

“Do you want me to send for this woman, Rabbit? She could presumably be found.”

“I don't think it would do any good.”

“Oh?”

“She wouldn't tell you anything. She thinks you are on Kama Boi's side. I told her she ought to go to you, but …”

“Alright. But I have to make this clear, Rabbit. Officially I am not allowed to listen to complaints against the N.A. except in the presence of a representative of the N.A.”

“But then they'll never tell you anything! They're terrified as it is!”

“You are never going to educate the native to a concept of justice until he is persuaded that a complaint openly made against someone in authority will be fairly investigated and if found justified the culprit properly punished.”

“But what actually happens is that somebody starts trying to complain but before he gets anywhere near you he's beaten to death and his body's left lying by the path for everyone to see. That's the concept of justice they're being educated in!”

“Let's take that case, Rabbit. Suppose it came to my ears …”

“Which it has.”

“… that something like that had happened I would, of course, look into it. In order even to begin I would need something to go on, a location, the name of the victim. You understand that?”

“Would you tell Kama Boi what you were doing?”

“Unless I had reason to believe he was in some way personally involved I would not be prepared to go behind his back.”

“Then no one is going to tell you anything.”

“I can't accept that, Rabbit. They will come to me, or to my successors, in the end.”

He stuffed his baccy into his pipe at last as tho' he was shutting the argument off. But I didn't feel like giving up.

“I haven't quite finished telling you,” I said. “Course I saw it would be harder for you if they only told me about things which had happened miles away, so I asked what about Tefuga, and the one called Femora Feng was going to tell me, I think, but the other two stopped her. Then they all ran away. They were absolutely terrified.”

“I can well believe it. For a peasant to bring an accusation against a powerful noble must be an alarming experience, all the more so if the accusation is false.”

“Darling! But why on earth …”

“I've warned you before about attempting to read the mind of the native, but I can suggest a number of possible reasons. For instance, in the peasant mind the N.A. is not merely an instrument of taxation, it is taxation. These women might well believe that if they can discredit the N.A. their husbands might no longer have to pay tax.”

“I don't believe it. In fact, I think that's why Zarafio's so set on stopping me talking to anyone, 'cos he thinks they might tell me things like this. I suppose you told him I was going painting.”

“As a matter of fact, yes. But I think you are doing him an injustice. The Hausa have a very strong sense of propriety, and it is simply not in his eyes proper that a person of importance, which you are, should roam about the bush unescorted.”

I felt utterly miserable, not just about Ted perhaps not believing me and then saying the women were lying, but about me letting them down when they'd been so brave (I'm sure it was a frightful risk for them) and been so sure I could do something. Usually I'm quite good at hiding my feelings (practice with Daddy) but it must have shown. I mean, even Ted noticed.

“Cheer up, Rabbit,” he said. “It's not the end of the world. It's something you have to get used to. Africa's full of things we haven't a hope of understanding and which our system simply isn't geared to dealing with. I really think you'd best try and put all this out of your mind for the moment, and I promise you that I'll keep my eyes and ears open and if I come across the slightest hint of anything of the sort I'll be on to it like a terrier after a rat. I've got to be off, now. Don't brood on things, Rabbit. We'll go for a ride this evening, shall we?”

“Lovely,” I managed to say.

Well, I've not been brooding. I've been writing instead, to get it clear in my mind, and in a funny way I think Ted's right. Not his way, tho'! But I'm going to let him think I've done what he said and stopped worrying about it, 'cos I can't do anything about it till I can talk to some Kitawa all alone, and that's not going to happen
this
tour.