The Pop’s Rhinoceros (103 page)

“He is dead.”

“But he’s still
warm. …

Salvestro said nothing. Performing the exact same act, he had jumped back himself. But then, conquering the strange mixture of fear and revulsion that had risen in his throat, he had pressed his hand to the figure’s chest. It was still. The heart had ceased beating, the lungs had stopped pumping, and long ago judging from the state of the robe draped over his shoulders. The man was dead. Yet his flesh was warm. Bernardo’s face was a mask of appalled incomprehension. He seemed unable to tear his eyes away.

“What is he?” he whispered.

Before Salvestro could say he did not know, a third voice broke the chamber’s hush.

“King of Nri! I bring greetings from Fernando the Catholic, King of all Spain. I am Don Diego of Tortosa, the servant of my King. …”

The two men stared up in amazement at Diego, who stood poised on the edge of the pit, one arm folded across his chest, the other extended to lend emphasis to this peroration.

“Sire, my King bids me salute you in his place. I have traveled here to beg of you a Beast, called Ezodu in these parts, for it is the wish of my King to have him and so it is my wish too that this be done. Thus and therefore I come before you, King of Nri.

“These”—he pointed at the two men staring up at him but did not look at them—” are my companions, called Salvestro and Bernardo. They are from … I do not know where they are from, but they are my servants. And I am Diego of Tortosa, servant of Fernando the Catholic, King of all Spain. …”

He paused to draw breath, then his voice sounded again.

“King of Nri! I bring greetings from Fernando the Catholic. I am Don Diego of Tortosa, the servant of my King, the King of all Spain. …”

Different cacophonies. First the animals: chattering, roaring, lowing, and screeching, their cries all jumbled together in a meaningless panic. Bleating goats
were being herded along the bank of the River. A man forced his way through the crowd with a brace of squawking chickens.

Were the men any different? Their accents battered her ears, a fabulous mess of cluckings and cries, random shouts, pointless yelling: excitement and its noises. She was in the thick of it, in the press of their bodies as they formed up. She had only to stand firm now and their orbits would wrap them about her. She thought she glimpsed Gbujo. His defeated face. Men were streaming out of their huts and compounds. She heard hammering, axes striking wood. Yes, she thought, send them the forest if that is what the Eze-Nri decrees. In the middle of the River, the Ndi Mili Nnu were ripping up their bivouacs. The dwindling island would be flooded soon, the
yangbe
already driving down the River, swelling it again. The Nri-men around her pressed closer. Namoke was near the front, she thought. The hunting-party was long gone. Noise, and more noise, hammering at her skull until it hummed, her very bones quivering under the assault. They were almost ready. There was no more time. She let the racket pound her.

Then the swarm took flight, a distant buzz at first, a million sounds all blurred together. She could not pluck a single voice from the increasing roar, a massive wave of urgency and appeal,
hurry, hurry, hurry …

Wait, she told herself.

Ezodu
is stepping on our graves. …

She ignored their complaints, sifting through the mass of voices that now descended on her, each one striving to rise above all the others.

“Nri!” shouted a voice that might have been Namoke’s.

They were moving off. Nri, she echoed to herself, and the spirits parroted it back to her:
Nrrurrreee-eee. …
Mocking laughter rose above their wail:
Heh, heh, heh …
She knew who that was. Eri was the one who would not reveal himself, the only one who did not care. They were your sons, she thought. The laughter subsided. Her feet were moving her forward. Torches somewhere. There were too many voices, too many generations, and going further and further back, thickening and weighing on her: a wall of mud she could not break. She could not find the one she sought.

Daughter?…

The voice was distant but distinct, set apart from the others. She could follow it, a single insect, a feather glued to its back with a dab of resin. She could run after, chase it until it chose to stop.

She followed, and the men around her seemed to carry her along, keeping close to her and watching her while she drifted and darted after her playful quarry. She knew they saw nothing of this. The swarm was no more than a murmur now. She moved farther away, or sank deeper, or reached back and felt herself stretch after the one she pursued, who eluded her with such ease that it seemed she was not following but being led or even dragged away. The men around her were so close, she could feel the warmth of their skin. They would surround her as they moved from Onitsha to Nri: a village by the River, then the paths through
the forest. The slope of the valley that led to the village. Nri’s plantations and the course of its stream. They would find themselves before an apron of dusty ground, before a door so heavy that no one man might open it, before a compound that stretched back, and back, and back… The chambers of the Eze-Nri. She would leave them there. She was the Eze-Ada, and these names were familiar, these places known. Yet within herself she was so far away now that she feared she might never be able to return. What if she could not find her way back? The voice sounded again then, the voice she chased after colder now than before.

Too late. …

The boy dug a calabash of charcoal from the pile in the courtyard, then carried it inside and handed it to the old man, who grunted and began distributing handfuls about the fire, more where it burned hot and less where the glow had yet to penetrate the fuel.

“Fire must be even,” the old man said, sprinkling the last few pieces over a tiny flame that had sparked into life a moment before. “Even this way”—he swept his hand out horizontally—” and even that way.” The same hand cut slices of air, moving downward as it did so. “You have to build it up slowly. In layers, like clay. When you need more heat, you peel off a layer, and there it is underneath. More heat. Simple.”

The boy nodded. His fetching and carrying had begun before midday. Burning charcoal, the boy decided, was much like making charcoal. There was no sign as yet that they were doing anything but building a fire. No indication that they were there, at last, to cast bronze.

“Stop nodding. You’re standing there like your mother’s about to boil yam and you don’t have the first idea what I’m talking about. Everything even. Have to keep everything the same. Hot clay and cold clay, or the bronze when it’s running and the bronze when it’s still. Things that are different don’t like each other. They crack. Can’t have a cracked Eze-Nri, eh?” He glanced over at the mold that sat on the bench next to several short rods of metal. The boy suppressed a smirk: the bowls affixed to its top still resembled ears. “If the bronze comes apart, those iron bands won’t help. They’re just for the mold. …”

The boy almost nodded, stopped himself.

“Yes,” he said. He picked up the calabash and went outside to fetch more charcoal.

“I haven’t finished telling you about the fire!” the old man called after him. “We don’t need any more charcoal yet!”

The boy ignored him.

He was getting tired of the old man and exasperated with his whining, with his boring “jokes.” Even his insults had become dull. He simply ignored them
when they came, though they came less and less frequently and grew weaker and weaker. When was the last? Had it been something to do with the “sprues”? He dug the calabash into the charcoal and carried it back to the hut.

Late in the afternoon, Iguedo returned. As the sun sank, the ridge high above threw a shadow over the forest below, advancing down the valley like a soundless flood. She seemed to simply appear, leaning against the doorpost with her arms folded as though she had been there all along, watching them for hours. The old man looked up hurriedly, then turned again to the fire, a flat dish of heat spreading over the floor of the hut, pulsing black and red. He had an iron rod for a poker whose tip glowed dull orange. When he dipped it in the water-bucket there was a little hiss and a puff of steam. The hut was stifling, and the weak gusts of air entering through the doorway felt icy by contrast. The two of them sweated. Breathing burned their throats. Iguedo seemed indifferent, simply standing there, watching them, making no comment.

“Ready,” said the old man at last. Then, “Now we’ve got you.” He seemed to be talking to the mold.

The fire throbbed, pumping slabs of flameless heat into the two faces that squinted above. The glow seemed to reach behind their eyes, throbbing and aching, but they could not look away now. They had the mold between them, maneuvering it with heavy tongs into the very middle of the fire. They settled it there, and the old man piled coals up the sides. He began placing the bronze rods one by one into the bowls on top of the mold. Not ears, the boy told himself. Crucibles. The old man was moving the dull rods with the tongs, fussing over their arrangement and muttering as he did so. The boy frowned in puzzlement and moved closer to catch the words.

“Got you nice and tight in there now. And you can’t get out, can you? Clay too hard? Of course it is. …” There was a pause then, but a few seconds later the old man took up the theme again, seemingly oblivious of his audience.

“Struggle all you like, you won’t get out like that. Tried scraping it off, didn’t you? Didn’t work. Only one way you’re getting out of there. Thought you could run around the forest like an animal, keep the sun off your back, keep your nice white flesh soft as cheese, leave the work to your brother. … Let half the people starve before you’d pick up a hoe. Well, now we’ve got you, and there’s only one way you’re coming out. Going to cook you out, we are. Going to melt you. Going to burn you out. …”

There was no doubt: he was addressing these remarks to the mold. The boy glanced over his shoulder at Iguedo, who shook her head at this foolishness.

“Stupid old man,” she said. There was no affection in her voice. “You’ll be in the clay yourself soon enough.”

The old man did not look up. He was fiddling with the bronze rods, which in the heat of the fire were now beginning to bend and loll within the crucibles. His arm shook a little as he reached over the heat to give one of them a poke. The boy saw that he was grimacing from the effort. He thought about the insults
heaped upon him by the old man, his own patient silence, his humility, if that was what it had been. Stupid. Why had he ever accepted that? And from a doddering grayhead who could talk about nothing unless it had to do with Eri or Eri’s sons. He thought about the stupid story the old man had made up. It was stupid even if it was true.

“Ifikuanim
stole
his brother’s land,” he declared abruptly.

The old man’s head came up.

“You said it yourself. He was the thief, not his brother.”

The old man looked surprised, almost dazed. Good, thought the boy.

“Ifikuanim was the one who was wrong. And after he was wrong he was stupid. Rolling his brother in the clay and driving him out of the forest. …”

“Didn’t drive him,” the old man muttered. “He did not do that. Ezodu ran away.”

The boy ignored this. It changed nothing. “He was stupid. Stupid to do that. He should have driven the horn through his neck, not stuck it on the end of his nose. He should have
killed
him. …”

“What do you know, boy? Eh? What do you …” It was the same tone as before, but now the old man’s contempt only sounded querulous. An old bleating goat.

“What happens when the clay cracks, eh?” he pressed on. “Old man? What happens when Ezodu comes back? When the brother comes back for what was once his own, what happens then?”

The old man straightened. He turned and faced the boy. Apart from the dull hiss of the fire, there was silence. They stared at each other, and the boy began to think that he had gone too far. He wanted to goad the old man, that was all. Now there would be some crushing answer, something he had not considered. He would be the stupid one. But the seconds stretched and lengthened, and still the old man remained silent. Because there was nothing to say, the boy realized. The old man mumbled something, but too low for him to hear. He moved nearer. The old man picked up his tongs again, still muttering away.