Looking for Mrs Dextrose (7 page)

I lofted a thumb at the Shaman. “Powerful magic!”

I swear he smirked back.

“Go!” hollered the wooden boy.

I’d been riding for quite a while, my inner thighs noticeably chafing and my bottom indelibly numb, when the Shaman signalled for me to stop the bike. My stomach rumbled.
Though the route had become increasingly bumpy, over creeping vegetation and barely formed trackway, we were yet to encounter anything previously untouched by human progress.

“Get oth gike!” snapped the boy.

I did so without question, no doubt a result of my Englishness.

“Are we nearly there yet?” I enquired.

The Shaman pushed the boy’s head towards me and the top hat fell off. He retrieved it with a harrumph. “Yes!” barked the boy. “No nore koo-estions!”

I’d only asked one!

The Shaman then took my place on the motorbike, arranging his son in his lap, and motioned for me to get into the sidecar. For several minutes he sat there looking rather proud of himself,
occasionally urging it forwards with a thrust of his thighs, but of course we did not move.

Eventually the boy asked: “How nachine oo-erk?”

We stalled more than a dozen times in as many yards before the Shaman got the hang of puttering gradually forwards in bottom gear. Such was his trepidation, his arms and neck
were rod-stiff; even the dummy somehow looked more horrified than usual.

Quite why he’d demanded to take over the driving bemused me. Were he trying to show off he was greatly mistaken, show-offs not generally wearing expressions of exquisite unease. Who,
anyway, would he be showing off to?

That question was shortly answered when two figures in animal skins, clutching spears, appeared from among foliage. They stopped before us, dropped to their knees and kissed the ground before
the oncoming Shaman. We, inexorably, carried on going and ran over one of them.

Reaching across hastily, I managed to apply the brake.

As the tribesmen rose to their feet, the one who had been run over checked his body-parts for damage and looked distinctly put out. He was the taller of the two and had a scar running diagonally
down his torso, from right nipple to navel. Probably accident-prone. He did not smile. The other, more compact, wore a broad grin the width of his face and was sporting a pair of dead scorpions as
ear-rings.

The three locals spoke among themselves in a new language I failed to understand, sounding similar to the Aghanaspan I had heard, with added clicks of the tongue and the occasional guttural
snort. From their body language, it was plain that the Shaman was much respected.

Greetings dispensed with, the tribesmen led us through a gap between clumped trees, like some makeshift guard of honour, though they stole regular backward glances to ensure we were at a safe
distance behind. The scarred chap was limping badly and kept inspecting his elbow.

The ground opened out into an expansive clearing. It was like stepping into a Tardis. Circular wooden huts with palm-frond roofs – similar in construction but smaller than those back in
Mlwlw – were dotted about, and adults and children stood rooted to the spot, staring, focused upon our arrival. Some looked concerned, most aghast – at myself or the motorbike, it was
hard to tell. The only movement came from pigs, snuffling among them for unseen morsels. Flies buzzed my head and nipped at any exposed flesh. Though I swatted at them, their numbers were so great
it was a war I could not win.

So this was the lost tribe. I might feasibly have been the first white man on the planet ever to witness them. How thrilling!
This
was genuine exploration, such as Doctor Livingstone
practised, or Magellan and Columbus, the doyens of the history books. Might I even have one-upped Harrison Dextrose, I wondered?

Happily, the Shaman managed to brake before we maimed anyone.

One by one the villagers edged forward until they were crowded around the motorbike, muttering to one another, tentatively reaching out to touch the metal machine. One small
boy foolishly pressed a palm onto the hot engine, squealed and withdrew his hand, shaking it violently while everyone around him, besides one woman I assumed to be his mother, chuckled
enthusiastically. To my surprise, they didn’t seem remotely impressed by me, their first ever Westerner.

The women were all bare-chested, which might have been titillating had I not assumed the responsibilities of a pioneering anthropologist, and wore skirts made of skins or woven natural
materials. The men, also bare-chested, wore either loin-cloths, or something like a skirt made of animal skin, and the children were all naked.

Both sexes sported jewellery and bodily adornments: beads, sparkling stones, small bones and carved ivory, dead insects and creepy beasts. One gentleman appeared to be wearing a bright green,
red-spotted frog as a jaunty beret.

The Shaman had donned his tall wizard’s hat with the celestial designs, and had his nose in the air. Whenever anyone went to touch the dummy, he pulled the boy away and growled.

Suddenly everyone fell silent and the crowd parted.

A thick-set man, his chest draped in layers of beading, sporting leather chaps and a codpiece made from something’s shell, had appeared in the doorway of the largest of the huts. Their
leader, I assumed. He raised a hand to acknowledge the Shaman, spotted me and cocked his head to one side. He then began walking towards us.

It felt like an historic occasion and I wondered whether I should say something, break the ice. But how should I address this man? What was the name of his tribe? Come to think of it, where was
I?

Whatever the facts, this was surely all about me, the benign conqueror.

I stood up in the sidecar, causing a couple near me to giggle behind their hands, which was off-putting. “Great leader,” I began. “My name is… My name is Pilsbury
Dextrose.” The giggling couple snorted with laughter and tears began streaming down their cheeks. Sniggers rippled out within the crowd.

I continued, only partially undaunted: “I have come from England, a land in the West, to discover your tribe for all mankind.” It sounded portentous enough.

The leader opened his arms. “Calm down, mate,” he said. “We have been ‘discovered’” – he actually made the ‘quotes’ gesture with his fingers
– “a dozen times. And if you are so white, where is your camera crew?”

Hang on. “My what?”

“Your camera crew. You know: ‘people with cameras’.” Again the ‘quotes’ thing.

The villagers hooted with laughter and I noticed the shaman’s bloody dummy had only joined in, bobbing its stupid head as its gob opened and closed. I could see its broomstick neck and
wanted to wring the fucker.

Someone had exaggerated the ‘lost’ bit in ‘lost tribe’.

“Look,” said the leader, wafting his wrist at me. “The last one gave me a Rolex.”

It was true: a huge, garish, sparkly thing that took ‘gauche’to new dimensions.

He went on: “Tk-tk, tell Pilsbury” – I could swear he stifled a snigger – “who has been here before.”

Tk-tk, a gangly teen with outrageously brilliant teeth, however at all sorts of angles, took up the story. “OK, from the Discovery channel we have had Chipmunk Simmers – Dad beat him
at table tennis – and Tent Guy. From Australia we had The Jungle Foodie and Davina Galumph. Her catchphrase was: ‘Sheilas can survive too, you know’, but she said it so often that
we asked her to leave. Britain sends well-meaning anthropologists. There was a large man, even though he only ate ants and leaves… What was his name?”

One of the kids piped up: “Sonny Lakeman! He was my favourite!”

A few of the other children lofted their hands and chorused: “Mine too!”

Tk-tk went on: “Then there was that little man who arrived with his own penis gourd and we had to convince him that he would not have to wear it.”

The leader butted in: “He was great. Really gullible…”

Having had quite enough of their reminiscences, I butted in. “Your English is very good. Do all your tribe speak it?”

“Most of the people, yes,” replied the leader. “One TV explorer left a Linguaphone English Language course, many years ago, and we play the cassettes to the children. But some
of the elders choose not to learn. They feel it offends our ancestors.”

There came an almighty shriek, the sound of a mother discovering her pram empty. A figure flew in among the crowd, scattering onlookers. Seeing the interloper, the villagers dropped to their
knees, revealing a sinister-looking man painted in mud. It had dried and cracked and so he resembled old china. On his head he wore a headdress of coloured feathers and twigs, and he carried in one
hand a big stick with a dead raven tied to it by its neck. His modesty was only covered at the front, by a red-painted crocodile’s head suspended through its nostrils from string tied around
his waist.

The Shaman hissed and revved the motorbike. This new fellow, visibly unhinged, tried to pull him off the machine. The Shaman produced a blowpipe and blew powder at the man, who staggered
backwards and began sneezing.

“Klowerthul nagic!” declared the boy.

The crowd gasped.

The new fellow produced a pack of chewing gum and offered the Shaman a piece, which he dubiously accepted. As he pulled out the stick, a tiny mouse-trap spring thwacked him on the thumb. He
howled, more at the outrage than the pain.

Applause broke out.

Eyes narrowed, the Shaman held out his hand, looking for the shake; the new fellow pulled out a knife and stabbed him in it.

The Shaman yelled in pain, shaking his hand vigorously so the buzzer he had palmed within it fell to the ground. As he was about to launch himself at his attacker, several men of the village
fell upon him and the two were pulled apart.

It really was most unbecoming.

The Shaman and I had been shown into the same hut, occupied by two makeshift beds (rug-covered wooden frames on the floor) and a hearth containing cold ashes. The assumption
seemed to have been made that we would be staying the night and, though I didn’t fancy it, I wasn’t about to exacerbate the tense atmosphere by saying so out loud.

The Shaman sat there cradling the dummy, stroking its hair with a bandaged hand, sulking.

I wondered, should I stay there with him – basically hide, until we could leave – or venture out and try to make friends? Why were we still in the village, anyway? I thought he had
come purely to pick up some magic supplies, an in-and-out mission? And what had that scene with Crocodile Thong been all about?

“Who was that man you fought with?” I ventured.

No reply.

“Was he another shaman?”

Still nothing.

“Is he a more powerful shaman than you?”

That roused him. He was across the hut and beside me, on all fours, like a well-motivated crab, dragging the dummy along with him. I felt his body heat and smelled his breath: an aroma of
compost heaps.

“Mnnmk hnnmn, nngl,” he said (or words to that effect).

“Oo-otch it, nister,” translated the boy. I noticed his monocle had become cracked.

“I just wish someone would tell me what’s going on,” I protested.

The Shaman and his son conferred. Eventually the boy said, “Oo-ee oo-ent to shanan school together. He is ny grother.”

“He’s your brother!”

“That is oo-ot I said.”

“So what happened?”

The Shaman shifted the boy in his lap. “Once I oo-oz shanan in this thillage. Ny grother gecane jealous and he cane here one night, nany years ago. He clained he oo-oz a nediun, that he
could channel our ancestors. The kleokle listened as he klut on these silly thoices, saying that he should gee shanan here, not nee. And the kleokle geliethed hin!”

“The people believed him?”

“That is oo-ot I said.”

“So you don’t believe in mediums?”

“As if! Oo-ot a load of gollocks!”

“In Britain we had this lady called Doris Stokes…”

But he wasn’t interested in my stories. “Helk ne to gecun shanan here once again,” he said.

“Help you to become shaman here once again?”

“Jesus! Do I hath to keek rekleating nyself?”