The New World (19 page)

As we left Santa Caterina the Rider found us a trail winding toward the east. A very faint mark, which starlight made nothing at all, yet it came alive when the breeze blew the dust from footprints and wheel-marks, and for the next hour or two we made good progress. I thought once the town had vanished he might explain why he had thrown in his lot with us, but he said nothing and I let him be. It was enough to know that he wanted to find a way back to his own people, and enough to have his kindness as well. Whatever his feelings for Natty, or hers for him, when we made our camp later that night he was equally attentive to us both, and built our fire and cooked as though he had never forgotten his old customs.

When the sun rose next morning he continued in the same quiet way. Handing out food from the parcel given to us by Mr. Vale, then leading us forward along a track that now only he could see clearly. As far as Natty and I were concerned, everywhere was the same wilderness. Red rocks, and dusty grass, and cacti holding out their waxy arms, and little stunted trees. The same landscape as ever, in fact, but more blistered and shriveled than before, with the tracks of our fellow creatures very faint in the earth beside us.

In such a desert I needed all my curiosity to care for anything, and might not have done so without a good deal of help. But the Rider did more than encourage me. Under his instruction I found that a speck at the highest point of heaven turned out to be an eagle—a flake of gold that only revealed its valuable colors when the sunlight flashed along its wings. When he uprooted a dreary shrub and shook it so all the dirt blew away, I discovered a miniature universe of green shoots and insects, most of which were tasty to eat. When he pointed to a scribble on our track, that looked like a sand-ridge blown together by the wind, it suddenly curled into a snake and hissed at me and squirmed away to hide under a stone.

I suppose my childhood had given me an appetite for all this staring and studying; although our marshes were much more fertile and watery than the wilderness that now enclosed me, they were also a place where enormous skies made the ground seem dull, until the eye narrowed and sharpened and moved carefully to see what there was to see.

For this reason, I sometimes still imagine I am living alone and unremembered in America, with only the Indians for my company. But when I look around at my present life I check myself, because now I understand we cannot easily deny our origins. And although it has taken me a lifetime to accept this, some part of me knew it even when we made our second camp on this part of our journey, with the Rider once again building our fire and choosing where we should sleep. A crumbling boulder protected us from the breeze and its shadow was all the blanket I needed for warmth.

Then a part of this shadow moved, and I saw the Rider pull the knife from his belt, his black hair hanging around his face and the firelight rolling over his bare arms; a moment later he slackened again, when the shadow stepped forward and turned into a man.

Into three men in fact, Indians whose faces were smeared with ash, and whose bare arms and legs were thin as sticks. This alone made me think they were no threat to us, but as they shuffled closer and came into the light of our fire, I could see they were too weak even to look at us for more than a moment.

When we had given them something to eat from our pot, the Rider spoke to them in his own language and they rallied a little, answering questions that he then translated for us. Very soon he told us we had been invited to their camp.

“How's that?” I wondered.

“They are lonely,” the Rider said, which I thought was a strange notion.

“But surely they're not alone out here?” I said. “Surely they have the rest of their tribe?”

Natty interrupted. “They don't belong here, that's what he's saying; they've traveled from somewhere else.”

The Rider nodded, then picked up a stick and laid its tip in the flames until it began to blaze. He seemed fascinated by this, and kept his eyes fixed on it.

“They have traveled,” he said at length. “That is all I know.” Then he looked up. “They have come here to be safe.”

“They don't seem very safe to me,” I said.

This sounded facetious and the Rider frowned at me; I rebuked myself, and began to understand what he meant. These people were not as I had imagined we might become ourselves in this new phase of our existence, content to wander from place to place and accept the world as we found it. They had left their home against their wishes; they had been evicted. This was why their bodies were smeared with cinders. They were grieving.

Despite this, they were determined we should follow them to their camp. To make us welcome, the Rider said, but also because they thought we should not stay in the open.

“Because he's here?” I said at once, meaning Black Cloud.

The Rider shook his head. “Not now. He has been here, though. He came this way, perhaps on his way to Santa Caterina. But his ghost is here.”

“Is this what you think? That his ghost is real?”

“I think we must do what they say.” The Rider's face was a mask, and I could not decide whether he believed the danger was genuine, or merely wanted to show courtesy. I decided the latter, and did not persevere with my questions. When we had finished our meal, I therefore helped him put out our fire and gather up our things, and all six of us set off together.

We left the path our Rider had found through the scrub, heading across stony ground toward the north, and because the moon was now high and cloudless we saw the landscape quite clearly. It was a wretched country, with a stiff breeze blowing grit against my bare legs, prickling my arms and face.

“Why here?” Natty asked the Rider in a hollow voice, which was also my question.

“They have nowhere else,” he said.

“But they've chosen the worst of all places,” she went on. “The very worst.”

The Rider did not answer this, and for the rest of our trek, which could only have taken half an hour but seemed much longer, we kept silent as we led our ponies up the gently rising slope, seeing the earth grow poorer with every step and the plants more desiccated, until we came to an obstacle that seemed to represent the entire spirit of the place. A makeshift barrier of thorns about six feet high and spiny as a hedgehog.

I could not see how to go any farther, and for a moment even wondered whether we had been led into a trap, where Black Cloud was about to fall on us. Then without any warning the thorns began to shake, and to shudder, and eventually to open—showing a little scratchy gap through which we could pass in single file.

We found ourselves in a compound about fifty yards long and the same across, with thorn-walls bristling on every side and the central area trampled flat, which made for convenience of a sort, except the dust was very fine and hovered in the air like mist. Why so much dust? Because there were so many people. People churning and tramping even though it was the middle of the night, while others lay on blankets in the open, or peered at us from the dozen or more tepees that stood scattered about, or stood close to the boundaries that hemmed us in, with their hands pressed to their faces as though they could not believe what they saw.

There were about a hundred of them, every one smeared in ashes like our companions, and every one equally dejected. A few children tottered to their feet and stared; one or two dogs ran about; occasionally a thin face turned to inspect us, then cringed away again. But no one spoke, and no one rose to greet us.

“Why did they bring us here?” I asked Natty.

“You know the reason,” she said. “To make us welcome.”

“But this isn't making us welcome.”

“It is custom,” the Rider broke in. “They have to ask us—it is their way.”

“Even though they're so miserable?”

“Even though.”

As if they had understood my questions, and to prove the Rider right, our guides then pointed to a rail where we tethered our ponies, and led us toward the center of the compound. Here the largest of all the tepees had been erected, a dingy affair smeared with filth and charred by flames.

The Rider told us we should wait while the guides disappeared inside to fetch their chief. When we had listened to a few whispers hissing to and fro, the flaps opened to reveal an ancient half-skeleton, half-man, wearing a tunic of moth-eaten bearskin and a necklace of bear's claws. A crown of drab brown feathers was perched on his head, and his face was coated with the same pale ash that covered the rest of his people.

As our three guides took their places—one on either side and one behind him—he pulled himself up as straight as possible and confronted each of us in turn; his face was very weather-beaten and leathery.

The sight of the Rider made him frown; Natty almost made him smile; and I made him curious, so his eyes passed quickly from my face to the satchel around my neck, which he then reached out and opened before I had the wit to prevent him. When he saw the necklace inside he half-lifted it, allowing a few of the silver pieces to slip between his fingers, then withdrew his hand and stared at me. What was he thinking? I could not tell; his face was expressionless. But I do not believe he recognized the necklace, except in the sense that he knew it was valuable.

At last he roused himself to speak—a greeting I assumed, but I only heard grunts and growls, with the Rider acting as my interpreter; he said the chief's name was Talks to the Wind, but he had no gifts to welcome us.

“We know that,” I replied. “We have none of our own, and don't expect any in return.” Then, with the Rider speaking one beat behind me, we continued as follows.

“Tell him we come in friendship,” I said.

“Talks to the Wind is grateful. He offers you his protection.”

I doubted this would be possible, because the whole tribe seemed so wretched and feeble, but I did not say so. Instead, I asked where they had come from.

“The east,” I heard. “Many days' march.”

“Why?” I said.

“The White Man,” said Talks to the Wind.

“I am sorry,” I told him, and bowed my head. “We would not all do the same.”

Talks to the Wind nodded impassively.

“Where will you go?” I continued.

“Where we can.”

“And where is that?”

“Where we are allowed.”

“But the country is so big! Endless.”

“Each of us has his place. We belong in the east near the ocean. We do not belong here in the desert or anywhere to the west.”

Talks to the Wind rocked on his heels when he had finished speaking and stared into the darkness. I turned to the Rider. “You are from the east,” I said quietly. “Did you know these people already?”

“I know they exist,” he told me. “I left when they left—we took different ways.”

“But you are going back.”

“If I can.”

“And they cannot go back.”

“It seems so.”

The Rider fell silent then, and at the same moment Talks to the Wind raised a hand to show he had finished speaking as well, whereupon two of our guides helped him back into his tent, while the third led us away to another part of the compound.

Here was our place for the night: a patch of bare sandy ground where I lay down without a word, and immediately closed my eyes. More than sleep, I wanted to blind myself to everything around me—but could not. The voices of the camp continued in my head for a long time, as if I was still upright and awake. A child sobbing and a mother in tears. A dog whining. Wind hissing through the thorn-fence. Before these things disappeared and I shelved away into my dreams at last, I thought I had never heard such desolate sounds in the whole of my life, and would be grateful never to hear them again.

Next morning I woke thinking we should leave Talks to the Wind as soon as possible, and return to the trail that would take us east to the river that Hoopoe had told us we must find. But when the sun rose above the barricade surrounding the camp, and the shadows of its thorns scratched my eyes open, we seemed bound to delay again—because most of the tribe were crowding around us. Why had this not happened the night before? As they continued staring and I saw how gaunt they were, with their eyes half-closed and their bellies swollen by hunger, I thought they must simply have felt too stupefied to bother. But when we had finished our breakfast and wandered through the camp for a while to shake off our audience, I knew there was another reason as well.

The place was strewn with relics—offerings of some kind, I guessed, and all very grotesque. Rabbit skeletons dangling on poles. Desert foxes hollowed out by the wind. Collections of feathers, stuffed into leather bags and left on little platforms. Skins, stripped from small creatures such as mice and rats, then twisted together to make ropes and stretched between poles, or draped around the doors of tepees. Matted balls of hair, which were collected on a large red blanket, and laid on the ground beside the tepee belonging to Talks to the Wind.

“What are they?” I asked the Rider, but he only told us we must present ourselves to the chieftain in order to make our farewell. Then, when he had led us to the tepee, he surprised me by putting one arm around my waist and the other around Natty so that he could whisper to us both in confidence.

“Sickness,” he said. “That is the explanation for all these things.”

“Sickness?” Natty repeated anxiously. “You mean fever?”

The Rider nodded.

“Shouldn't we leave at once, then?” she said.

“We cannot,” said the Rider. “We have something we must do first.”

“What sort of thing?” I asked; suddenly I felt as alarmed as Natty, with the dusty air thickening in my throat.

“I did not see last night. It is not just custom, bringing us here. It is something more. They need our help.”

“What help?” I asked.

The Rider let his hands drop away and stared straight ahead, as though he could see through the walls of the tepee and envisage the scene inside. In the pause that followed, everything that had previously seemed mysterious about the camp began to make sense to me. These famished men with their sunken eyes and ashy hair. These women with their sallow faces and slumped shoulders. These children with their pot bellies and flies in their eyes. They were not just hungry. They were suffering another sort of hurt as well, and had invited us here because they thought we might heal it. We were not only guests but physicians.

I turned to the Rider and found him looking at me very gravely. “Mister Jim?” he asked. “Have you finished what you are thinking?

“How do you know what I'm thinking?”

“We are all thinking the same thing,” the Rider said; then he bent down and opened the flaps of the tent, holding them apart so the three of us could enter together.

I stepped into twilight—thick, swimming twilight scented heavily with sage—and paused for a moment to let my eyes adjust. There was Talks to the Wind, wearing the same moth-eaten furs as yesterday and the same sad little crown, sitting on a mat of woven grass. What else? Dangling from the crown of the tepee: charms made of feathers and wood and even scraps of metal. Scalps too, dried up and crinkled like seaweed, one with its ears still attached. To the right of Talks to the Wind: a bench with a bowl of corn, uneaten, and half a dozen clay pots, some with steam drifting from their mouths. On the ground: dark brown rugs patterned with creamy lines, which made the air swirl around me although it was perfectly still.

And at the center of the tepee, an elderly woman cushioned on a deep bed of blankets. Dead, I thought—then at a second glance not dead, but sick. Very sick. A narrow face with graying hair in a plait. The plait coiled on her head and stuck through with a wooden pin. Her eyes wide open but seeing nothing, gazing into the crown of the tepee where sunlight soaked through like rust.

“Come,” said the Rider, leading me forward; I knew at once what he wanted.

“I'm sorry,” I said, turning to Natty, who gave me a baffled look and shrugged her shoulders.

“He does not want your sorry,” the Rider said, nodding toward Talks to the Wind as he sat down beside us, keeping his eyes fixed on my face.

“I can't help him,” I said. “I wish I could but I can't. I have no medicine.”

“You have your medicine,” the Rider insisted, as though he had not heard me.

“I don't,” I told him. “I wish I did.”

“That is not true,” said the Rider. “You can heal.” He spoke very stubbornly, as if he was making a plain statement of fact, and reached out to touch the satchel around my neck. “Here it is,” he said.

I looked down at his fingers, long and thin with skin so supple they almost seemed to shine. “How will this help?” I asked.

“You will find a way,” he said, and laid a hand on my shoulder, drawing me forward until I was standing beside the woman's head, close enough to touch her.

“This is Fire Wife,” he said gently. “Wife to Talks to the Wind.”

I was not expected to answer, only to look at the thin face and the cracked lips; at the veins pulsing beneath the gray temples; at the specks of sand in the corners of her eyes, and paler sand-trails creeping into her ears, which showed where her tears had run down.

When I had seen all these things, and felt them weigh on me, a chant began outside the tepee, regular as a heartbeat.

“Mister Jim,” said the Rider, speaking even more quietly now.

But I did not need his encouragement any more. I reached into my satchel, removed the necklace, and slipped the cord around my neck. The slim oblongs of silver clicked as they settled, and the torchlight scattered their brightness into the half-light around me. Then I lifted my hands and laid them on the woman's forehead, one upon the other.

Natty thought I was about to press down and gasped, “Gently, Jim, gently!” I did not answer. I kept my hands on the woman's forehead, feeling its heat enter my fingers, and asked the Lord to bless her. Then I said His prayer—“Our father, which art in heaven”—and heard Natty join in behind me, her voice growing steadily louder until we reached the end—“the power and the glory, forever and ever, Amen”—when I lifted my hands and made the sign of the cross. Three times. Once on the woman's forehead. Once on her mouth. And once above her heart.

It took two minutes or less—and by the time I had finished, the chanting outside the tepee had risen to a crescendo, so the walls actually seemed to vibrate. Talks to the Wind remained as he was, his eyes sliding away from my face and fastening on his Fire Wife again. The Rider was also still as a stone, with his head down and his hands clasped.

Then the chanting stopped as though the people knew my healing was over, and my hands returned to touch Fire Wife on her forehead again. Her skin was much cooler now, and softer. Instantly—like that. I felt it and I believed it. So did Natty, when she came to stand at my shoulder. So did the Rider, when he lifted his head and saw the change in her. So did Talks to the Wind, when he climbed painfully to his feet and clapped his hands together.

As for Fire Wife, I would like to say her journey back to us was very easy. But it was not. She did not look into my face and smile. She did not turn her head to find her husband, or stretch out to clutch his hand. She did not speak. She merely blinked, and blinked again, then writhed and trembled so desperately that all four of us had to hold her still, in order to prevent her from heaving off her bed and crashing onto the ground.

What had she felt, I wondered, as she burst out from her dark underworld? Surprise. Terror. Disbelief. Amazement. Regret. Regret most of all. A moment before, she had been ghosting through a country without suffering. Now she felt sadness again and remembered the reasons for it.

Yet her distress did not last. As Talks to the Wind continued to hold her still, and spoke to her in his own language, and I suppose told her the story of the miracle we had seen, and pointed to the necklace I was still wearing, she began to quieten and breathe more easily, and at length even smiled to herself or perhaps at me. This smile was so radiant it brightened her whole face, and remained in her eyes when it had faded from her mouth.

Now it was my turn to feel a sort of paralysis. I could not respond at all. I stepped away. I told her (which she did not understand) that what I had done was nothing.

This, despite the cheering and shouting that now started outside the tepee. Despite the Rider, who clapped me on the back very proudly. Despite Talks to the Wind, who told me that I was his son, and embraced me, and held me so close I almost choked on the mustiness in his bearskin. Despite Natty, who I would also like to say was pleased by what she had seen—but cannot.

For when all these congratulations were finished, and I had slipped the necklace back into my satchel again, she took me aside to speak in private.

“You see?” she whispered.

“Natty—” I began, but she interrupted me.

“You've made her fall in love with you.”

This was so surprising I could only stammer at her. “That's ridiculous! She's grateful, that's all, she's not in love with me.”

Natty brushed this aside. “Either that or they think you're a god. Like it was with White Feather.”

“He certainly did not think that; he couldn't think of anything.”

Natty ignored this as well. “Whatever sickness this woman has,” she said, “we must get away from it as fast as possible.”

“We must—” I said, but got no further because Talks to the Wind stepped between us, and took hold of me, and made me understand that I must come outside with him now, so he could show me to the people and tell them what I had done.

I followed him as he wanted. I stooped through the doorway of his tepee and I faced the people, and I heard their shouts and the clattering din as they banged their spears together. When I held out my hands to show I wanted to thank them, and not to receive their thanks, they did not understand, and only cheered me more loudly.