Bones of the River (6 page)

He spent an exhilarating three days in the village, indulging in an orgy of condemnation which would have reduced the little township to about three huts, had his instructions been taken literally. Then, one morning, came the chief, M’kema.

“Lord,” he said, “there is a devil in my arm, and your magic is burning terribly. Now, I have thought that I will not have your magic, for I was more comfortable as a plain man. Also my wives are crying with pain, and the little children are making sad noises.”

Walking down the village street, Bones was greeted with scowling faces, and from every hut, it seemed, issued moans of distress. In his wisdom Bones called a palaver, and his four soldiers stood behind him, their magazines charged, their rifles lying handily in the crooks of their unvaccinated arms.

As a palaver, it was not a success. He had hardly begun to speak before there arose a wail from his miserable audience, and the malcontents found a spokesman in one Busubu, a petty chief.

“Lord, before you came we were happy, and now you have put fiery snakes in our arms, so that they are swollen. Now by your magic make us well again.”

And the clamour that followed the words drowned anything that Bones had to say. That night he decided to make his way back to the river.

He came from his hut and found Ahmet waiting for him.

“Lord, there is trouble here,” said the Kano boy in a low voice, “and the young men have taken their spears to the forest path.”

This was serious news, and a glance showed Bones that the village was very much awake. To force his way through the forest path was suicidal; to remain was asking for a six-line obituary notice in the
Guildford Herald
. Bones brought his party to the little river, and half the ground had not been covered before he was fighting a rear-guard action. With some difficulty they found a canoe, and paddled into midstream, followed by a shower of spears, which wounded one of his escort. In a quarter of an hour Bones stepped ashore at the Frenchi village, which turned out even at that late hour to witness such an unusual spectacle as the arrival of a British officer on alien soil.

He slept in the open that night, and in the morning the chief of the Frenchi village came to him with a complaint.

“Lord, when three of my men went over the M’taki, you whipped them so that they stand or sleep on their bellies. And this you did because of our famous sickness. Now, tell me why you sit down here with us, for my young men are very hot for chopping you.”

“Man,” said Bones loftily, “I came with magic for the people of the Lower Isisi.”

“So it seems,” said the French chief significantly, “and their magic is so great that they will give me ten goats for your head; yet because I fear Saudi I will not do this thing,” he added hastily, seeing the Browning in Lieutenant Tibbetts’ hand.

Briefly but lucidly, Bones explained the object of his visit, and the chief listened, unconvinced.

“Lord,” he said at last, “there are two ways by which sickness may be cured. The one is death, for all dead men are well, and the other is by chopping a young virgin when the moon is in a certain quarter and the river is high. Now, my people fear that you have come to cure them by making their arms swell, and I cannot hold them.”

Bones took the hint, and, re-embarking, moved along the little river till he came to another Isisi village. But the
lokali
had rapped out the story of his mission, and locked shields opposed his landing.

The chief of this village condescended to come to the water’s edge.

“Here you cannot land, Tibbetti,” he said, “for this is the order of Saudi to M’kema, that no man must come to us from the Frenchi land because of the sickness that is there.”

For seven days and seven nights Bones was marooned between bank and bank, sleeping secretly at nights on such middle islands as he met with, and at the end of that time returned to the point of departure. M’kema came down to the beach.

“Lord, you cannot come here,” he said, “for since you have gone the arms of my young men have healed owing to the magic of their fathers.”

That night, when Bones had decided upon forcing a passage to the big river, the relief from the
Zaire
fought its way into the village and left him a clear path. Bones went back in triumph to headquarters and narrated his story.

“And there was I, dear old thing, a martyr, so to speak, to jolly old science, standing, as it were, with my back to the wall. I thought of jolly old Jenner–”

“Where were you, Bones? I can’t quite place your defence,” said Hamilton, peering over a map of the territory. “Were you in M’kema’s village?”

“No, sir, I skipped,” said Bones in triumph. “I went across the river to–”

Hamilton gasped. “Into the French territory?”

“It’s a diplomatic incident, I admit,” said Bones, “but I can explain to the President exactly the motives which led me to violate the territory of a friendly power – or, at least, they were not so friendly either, if you’d seen the ‘Petit Parisienne’ that came out by the marl–”

“But you were in the French village? That is all I want to know,” said Hamilton with deadly quiet.

“I certainly was, old thing.”

“Come with me,” said Hamilton.

He led the way to Bones’ hut and opened the door.

“Get in, and don’t come near us for a month,” he said. “You’re isolated!”

“But, dear old thing, I’m Health Officer!”

“Tell the microbes,” said Hamilton.

And isolated Bones remained. Every morning Hamilton came with a large garden syringe, and sprayed the ground and the roof thereof with an evil-smelling mixture. And, crowning infamy of all, he insisted upon handing the unfortunate Bones his meals through the window at the end of a long bamboo pole.

The Health Officer had come out of isolation, and had ceased to take the slightest interest in medical science, devoting his spare time to a new architectural correspondence course, when M’kema, summoned to headquarters, appeared under escort and in irons, to answer for his sins.

“Lord, Tibbetti did a great evil, for he took our people, who were well, and made them sick. Because their arms hurt them terribly they tried to chop him.”

Sanders listened, sitting in his low chair, his chin on his fist.

“You are an old man and a fool,” he said. “For did not the sickness come to the Isisi? And did not the villagers have their mourning – all except yours, M’kema, because of the magic which Tibbetti had put into their arms? Now, you are well, and the other villagers have their dead. How do you account for that, M’kema?”

M’kema shook his head. “Lord,” he said, “it was not by the magic of Tibbetti, for he made us ill. We are well people, and the sickness passed us because we followed the practice of our fathers, and took into the forest a woman who was very old and silly, and, putting out her eyes, left her to the beasts. There is no other magic like this.”

“What’s the use?” asked the despairing Sanders, and M’kema, hearing these words in English, shivered, suspecting a new incantation.

There is a new legend on the river, and it is the legend of a devil who came from a black egg and hated its new master so powerfully that it slew him.

Once upon a time in the Isisi land, the birds ceased suddenly from gossiping at the very height of day, and goats and dogs stood up on their feet and looked uneasily from left to right, and there was in the world a sudden and an inexplicable hush, so that men came out of their huts to discover what was the matter.

And whilst they were so standing, gaping at a silence which was almost visible, the world trembled, and down the long street of the Isisi city came a wave and a billowing of earth, so that houses shook and men fell on to their knees in their fear. Then came another tremble and yet another billowing of solid ground, and the waters of the big river flowed up in sudden volume and flooded the lower beaches and washed even into the forest, which had never seen the river before.

Between the first and the second shocks of the earthquake, N’shimba was born, and was named at a respectful distance after that ghost of ghosts – more nearly after one who had been as terrible. M’shimba M’shamba notoriously dwelt in the bowels of the earth, and was prone to turn in his sleep.

Down the river went three canoes laden with wise men and chiefs, and they came solemnly into the presence of Mr Commissioner Sanders, who, in addition to being responsible for the morals and welfare of a few millions of murderous children predisposed to cannibalism, was regarded as a controller of ghosts, ju-jus, the incidence of rainfall and the fertility of crops.

“O Sandi, I see you,” said M’kema, chief of the deputation. “We are poor men who have come a long journey to tell you of terrible happenings. For you are our father and our mother and you are very wise.”

It was a conventional opening, and Sanders, who had felt the earthquake, an infrequent occurrence in these parts, waited, knowing what would come.

“…and then, lord, the river rose fearfully, washing through the huts of Bosubo, the fisherman, and eating up his salt. And the roof of Kusu, the hunter, fell down whilst he was in bed, and also two canoes were washed away and found by the thieving Akasava, who will not give them to us. Now tell us, Sandi, what made the world rock? Some of my councillors think one thing, some another. One says that it was M’shimba putting up his knees as he slept. Men do this in their sleep, as I know. Another, that it was a fight between two mighty ghosts. Speak for us, Sandi.”

Sanders was not prepared to give a lecture on seismology, but supplied a plausible, fairly accurate, not wholly fanciful explanation.

“M’kema,” said he, “in this world what do you see? The earth and the trees upon it, and the rivers that run on the earth. And if you dig, there is more earth. And if you dig deeper, there is rock and more rock, and beneath that – who knows? Sands and rivers and soft earth again. And if the rivers wash away the under earth, then the rocks settle and the ground settles, and there are strange disturbances. As to ghosts, I know M’shimba M’shamba, for he is my friend and well liked by the Government. But when he comes it is with a mighty wind and rains and spittings of fire. He lifts big trees and little trees and carries away huts, and he roars with a loud voice.”

“
Cala cala
,” said a grey wise man (Foliti, suspected of witchcraft), “in the days of our fathers this thing happened, and there was born in the midst of the wonder, a man whose name was Death.”

Sanders knew the legend of the ancient N’shimba, and had fixed the date of his appearance at somewhere in the seventeenth century. This N’shimba, so miraculously born, had been a common man who had no respect for kings or authorities, and by his genius had made himself master of the land between the mountains and the sea. It was said that when he was a youth, a ghost brought him a black egg, and from this egg was hatched a devil, who gave him power so that he was greater than kings.

“This I know,” he said. “Why do you say this to me, wise man?”

“Lord, such a child has now been born in our village, and the mother, being mad, has named him N’shimba. And doing this, she made strange faces and died, as the mother of N’shimba of our fathers died. Because of this we have held a palaver for three days and three nights. And some said that the baby must be buried alive before the ghost comes which will give him power, and some that he must be put in the Pool of the Silent Ones, and others that he must be chopped and all of us must put our fingers in his blood and smear the soles of our feet, this being magic.”

Sanders wrinkled his nose like an angry terrier.

“Do this,” he said unpleasantly, “and be sure that I will come with a magic rope and hang the men who chopped him. Go back, men, to your villages and let this be known. That I will send a Jesus-man to this child, and he shall take away all that is evil in him, and then will I come and fix to his forehead a certain devil mark which shall be strange to see. Thereafter let no man raise his hand against N’shimba, for my spirit will be powerfully with him.
Elaka
!”

Two days after a missionary had formally baptised N’shimba, Sanders came, and in view of all the silent village, pressed a small rubber stamp on the squirming baby’s forehead. It was the stamp that Sanders used when he sent microscope slides to the School of Tropic Medicines for examination, and it said: “Fragile: open carefully.”

In a sense it was an appropriate inscription.

“People, I have put my ju-ju upon this child,” said Sanders, addressing the multitude. “Presently it will fade and go away, because by my magic it will eat into his bones and into his young heart. But because my magic is so fearful, I shall know who laid his hand upon this small one, and I shall come swiftly with my soldiers and my gun that says ‘ha-ha-ha.’”

Such was the potency of the charm that, after many years, a slightly mad woman who struck the child, died in great agony the same night.

All this happened
cala cala
, in the days when Sanders was mapping out the destinies of five contentious nations. From time to time he saw the boy, and discovered in him nothing remarkable, except that he was a little sulky, and, according to his father, given to long silences and to solitary walks. He knew none of his own kind; neither played with boys nor spoke frankly to girls. They said that he was looking for the black egg, and certainly N’shimba climbed many trees without profit.

Then one day, N’shimba, squatting about the family fire before the hut, propounded a riddle.

“I caught a young leopard and put him in the fine little house, where once I had kept many birds. Did my leopard sing or fly or make ‘chip-chip’ noises?”

“Boy, you are foolish,” said his unimaginative father, “for you have caught no leopard and you have no fine house where birds are kept.”

“That is my mystery,” said N’shimba, and, rising, walked away to the forest and was not seen for three days. When he returned, he brought with him a young girl of the Inner lsisi.

“This is my wife,” he said.