Forest of the Pygmies (22 page)

Her grandson interrupted. “This isn't the time to go all mushy, Kate; we have a lot to accomplish.”

By then everyone in the hut was awake and standing around Alex and Nadia, besieging them with questions. Kate got tired of mouthing recriminations no one was listening to, so instead she decided to offer
the newly arrived youngsters something to eat. She pointed out the mounds of pineapples, mangos, and bananas, vessels filled with chicken fried in palm oil, cassava pudding, and vegetables, all of which had been brought as gifts. Alex and Nadia wolfed them down gratefully; they had eaten very little for the last two days. For dessert, Kate gave them her last can of peaches.

“Didn't I tell you the youngsters would be back? Praise be to God!” Brother Fernando kept repeating.

In one corner of the hut, they had made a place for the guards whose lives Angie had saved. One of them, named Adrien, was dying from the knife in his stomach. The other, called Nzé, was wounded in the chest, but according to the missionary, who had seen many wounds in the war in Rwanda, no vital organ was compromised and he could recover—unless the wound became infected. He had lost a lot of blood, but he was young and strong. Brother Fernando bandaged him up the best he could and was giving him antibiotics from the store Angie carried in her first-aid kit.

“It's good that you kids got back. We have to get out of here before Kosongo claims me as a wife,” Angie told Alex and Nadia.

“We will do that with the Pygmies' help, but first we have to help them,” Alexander replied. “This afternoon the hunters will come. The plan is to unmask Kosongo and then challenge Mbembelé.”

“Sounds like taking candy from a baby,” Kate said sarcastically. “But how are you going to do it?”

Alexander and Nadia explained the strategy, which included, among other points, engaging the Bantus, telling them that Queen Nana-Asante was alive, and setting the slave women free so they could fight along with their men.

“Does anyone here know how we can disable the soldiers' rifles?” Alexander asked.

“You have to jam the firing mechanism,” Kate said.

It occurred to the writer that they could do that with the resin used to light the torches, a thick, sticky substance kept stored in tin drums in each of the huts. The only persons with free access to the soldiers' barracks were the Pygmy slave women charged with cleaning, carrying water, and preparing food. Nadia offered to direct that operation, since she had already established contact with them when she visited their corral. Kate picked up Angie's rifle to explain where to put the resin.

Brother Fernando told them that Nzé, one of the two wounded Bantus, could also help. His mother, along with Adrien's mother and other family members, had come the night before bringing gifts of fruit, food, palm wine, and even tobacco for Angie. She had become the local heroine for being the only person in their history who had stood up to the commandant. She not only had talked back to him, she had touched him. The villagers didn't know how they could repay her for having saved Adrien and Nzé from certain death at the hands of Mbembelé.

Adrien was expected to die at any moment, but Nzé was lucid, though very weak. The terrible tourney had shaken him from the paralysis of terror he had lived in for years. He felt reborn; fate was offering him a few more days of life as a gift. He had nothing to lose, since he was as good as dead. As soon as the strangers left, Mbembelé would throw him to the crocodiles. By accepting the possibility of imminent death, he gained a courage he had not had before. That bravery was redoubled when he learned that Queen Nana-Asante was going to return to reclaim the throne Kosongo had usurped. He accepted the strangers' plan to incite the Bantus of Ngoubé, but he asked that if the plan did not turn out as expected, they promise to give Adrien and him a merciful death. They did not want to fall into Mbembelé's hands alive.

Later that morning Kate called on the commandant to inform him that Nadia and Alexander had miraculously escaped death in the forest and were back in the village. That meant that she and the rest of her group would be leaving as soon as the canoes came the next day to pick them up. She added that she was very disappointed that she had not been able to interview His Most Serene Majesty, King Kosongo, for her magazine.

The commandant seemed relieved to learn that the bothersome foreigners would be leaving his territory, and he was willing to help them as long as Angie kept her promise to take her place in King Kosongo's harem. Kate had feared that would happen, and she had a story ready. She asked where the king was. Why hadn't they seen him? Was he ill? She hoped that the sorcerer who meant to marry Angie Ninderera hadn't put a curse on him from across all that distance. Everyone knew that the betrothed or the wife of a witch man is untouchable. And this was a particularly vengeful man, she said. Once before when an important politician had insisted on paying court to Angie, he had lost his position in government, his health, and his fortune. Desperate, he had paid some hirelings to murder the sorcerer, but they hadn't succeeded because their machetes melted like butter in their hands, she added.

Perhaps Mbembelé was impressed with her story, but Kate couldn't tell because she couldn't read his expression behind the mirrored glasses.

“This afternoon His Majesty King Kosongo will preside over a celebration in honor of the woman and the ivory the Pygmies will be bringing,” he announced.

“Forgive me, Commandant, but isn't dealing in ivory outlawed?” Kate asked.

“Ivory, and every product here, belongs to the king. Is that understood, old woman?”

“Understood, Commandant.”

In the meantime, Nadia, Alexander, and the others in the
International Geographic
group were making their preparations. Angie couldn't help, as she wanted, because four of the king's young wives came to get her and take her to the river, where they kept her company during a long bath overseen by the old man with the bamboo stick. When he raised his arm to administer a few preventative canings to his master's future wife, Angie laid him out flat in the mud with a right to the chin. Then she broke the bamboo over one ample knee and threw the pieces in his face, with the warning that the next time he lifted a hand to her she would dispatch him to the land of his ancestors. The four girls were overcome with such a fit of laughing that they had to sit down; their legs wouldn't hold them. Awed, they felt Angie's muscles and realized that if this husky woman entered the harem their lives might possibly take a turn for the better. Perhaps Kosongo had at last met an opponent who was his equal.

As for Nadia, she was instructing Beyé-Dokou's wife, Jena, how to disable the rifles with the resin. Once Jena understood what was expected of her, she trotted off with her tiny little girl steps toward the soldiers' barracks without further questions or comments. She was so small and insignificant, so quiet and discreet, that no one noticed the fierce gleam of vengeance in her chestnut-colored eyes.

Brother Fernando learned the fate of the missing missionaries through Nzé. Though he had suspected it, the shock of finding his fears confirmed was traumatic. The missionaries had come to Ngoubé for the purpose of spreading their faith, and nothing could dissuade them, not threats, not the hellish climate, not the solitude in which they lived. Kosongo had kept them well isolated, but gradually they had begun to win the confidence of a few villagers, which brought down the wrath of the king and Mbembelé. When they overtly began to oppose the abuse suffered by the Bantus and to intercede for the Pygmy slaves, the commandant put them and their belongings into a canoe and shipped them off downriver. A week later, however, the brothers returned, more determined than ever. Within a few days they disappeared. The official version was that they had never been in Ngoubé. The soldiers burned the few things they owned, and it was forbidden to speak their names. It was no mystery to anyone, however, that the missionaries had been murdered, and that their bodies had been thrown into the pond of the crocodiles. No trace of them remained.

“They're martyrs, true saints; they will never be forgotten,” Brother Fernando promised, drying the tears running down his gaunt cheeks.

At about three
P.M
. Angie returned. She was nearly unrecognizable. Her hair was combed into a tower of curls and gold and glass beads that brushed the ceiling. Her skin was gleaming with oil and she was dressed in snakeskin sandals and a voluminous tunic of bold colors. She wore gold bracelets from wrist to elbow. Her arrival filled the hut.

“She looks like the Statue of Liberty!” Nadia commented, enchanted.

“God almighty, woman! What have they done to you?” the horrified missionary exclaimed.

“Nothing that can't be undone, Brother,” she replied and, jingling her gold bracelets, she added, “With all this I can buy a whole fleet of planes.”

“That is, if you escape from Kosongo.”

“We're all going to escape, Brother.” She smiled, very sure of herself.

“Not all of us. I'm staying to take the place of the brothers who were murdered,” the missionary replied.

T
HE FESTIVITIES BEGAN ABOUT FIVE
in the afternoon, when it was a little less hot. A climate of great tension hovered over Ngoubé. Nzé's mother had spread the word among the Bantus that Nana-Asante, the legitimate queen, greatly mourned by her people, was alive. She added that the foreigners were planning to help the queen recover her throne, and that this would be the last chance they had to free themselves of Kosongo and Mbembelé. How long were they going to put up with his recruiting their sons to turn them into murderers? They were spied on every minute, with no freedom to move about or think, and they were poorer every day. Everything they produced, Kosongo took away. While he was piling up gold, diamonds, and ivory, the people could not get basic medical care. The woman spoke in secret with her daughters, the daughters told their women friends, and in less than an hour most of the adults shared the general restlessness. They didn't dare enlist the guards, even though they were members of their own families; they didn't know how they would react. Mbembelé had brainwashed them; he held them in his fist.

The anxiety was greater still among the Pygmy women because that afternoon the allotted time would run out for saving their children. Their husbands had always managed to come up with the elephant tusks in time, but now something was different. Nadia had given Jena the fabulous news that their magic amulet, Ipemba-Afua, had been recovered, and that the men were coming not with ivory but with a determination to confront Kosongo. The women would have to fight with the men. They had borne their slavery for years, believing that their families would survive if they obeyed. Their submission had yielded little fruit, however; their living conditions grew steadily worse. The more they put up with, the worse the abuse they suffered. As Jena explained to the other women, when there were no more elephants in the forest, Mbembelé and Kosongo would sell their children anyway. Better to die rebelling than live in slavery.

Kosongo's harem was also in an uproar because they had found out that the king's future wife was not afraid of anything and was almost as strong as Mbembelé; she had mocked the king and had knocked the old man down with one punch. The women who hadn't been lucky enough to witness that scene couldn't believe it. They were afraid of Kosongo, who had forced them to marry him, and they had a healthy respect for the crotchety old man who had the task of guarding them. Some believed that the arrogant Angie Ninderera would be tamed in less than three days and would become one of the most submissive of the king's wives—that's what had happened to them—but the four young women who had gone with her to the river, and who had seen her muscles and her attitude, were convinced that wouldn't happen.

The only ones unaware that something was brewing were precisely those who should have been best informed: Mbembelé and his “army.” Authority had gone to their heads; they felt invincible. They had created their own reality, in which they felt comfortable, and since no one had ever defied them, they had grown careless.

By Mbembelé's orders, the women of the village were put in charge of preparations for the king's wedding. They decorated the square with a hundred torches and arches fashioned from palm branches. They piled up pyramids of fruit and assembled a banquet with what they had at hand: hens, rats, lizards, antelope, cassava, and corn. Containers of palm wine began to circulate among the guards early on, but the civilian population abstained, just as Nzé's mother had instructed them.

Everything was ready for the dual ceremony of the royal wedding and the delivery of the ivory. It was still twilight, but the torches were already lit and the odor of roast meat was heavy on the air. Mbembelé's soldiers and his pathetic court were lined up beneath the Tree of Words. All of Ngoubé was crowded along both sides of the square, and the Bantu guards were standing at their posts, armed with machetes and clubs. Wood stools had been provided for the foreign visitors. Joel had his cameras loaded, and the rest of the
International Geographic
group was on the alert, ready to act when the moment came. Nadia was the only one of the group missing.