Authors: Pat Barker
They went on
staring at each other, reluctant to start exploring their shared resource of
pidgin, aware, perhaps, even in these first moments, of how defective an
instrument it would be for what they needed to say to each other.
Suddenly Njiru
pointed to the lamp.
'Baggerup.'
Rivers was so
surprised he laughed out loud.
'No,
No baggerup. I
mend.'
* * *
Njiru was the
eldest son of Rembo, the chief who controlled the most important cults on the
island. Because of his deformity, he'd never been able to compete with other
young men, in canoeing, fishing, building or war. By way of compensation, he'd
devoted himself to thought and learning, and, in particular, to the art of
healing. His abilities would have made him remarkable in any society. On
Eddystone, his power rested primarily on the number of spirits he controlled.
The people made no distinction between knowledge and power, either in their own
language or in pidgin. 'Njiru knows Mateana' meant Njiru had the power to cure
the diseases caused by Mateana. Similarly, Rivers was told within a few days of
arriving on the island that Njiru 'knew' Ave. Without in the least
understanding the significance of what he'd been told, he repeated it to Njiru.
'Kundaite he
say
you know Ave.' A snort of derision.
'Kundaite he speak
gammon:
He was by far the best interpreter and—when he
chose—the most reliable informant, capable of making rigorous distinctions
between what he knew and what he merely supposed, between evidence and
hypothesis. But he did not generally choose to share
information.
If knowledge was power, then Njiru kept a firm grasp on his. Indeed, at first
he would do no more than translate passively what others said. In particular,
he acted as interpreter between Rivers and Rinambesi.
Rinambesi was
the oldest man on the island, the liveliest, and, after Njiru, the most
vigorous. He seemed immune to the apathy and depression that many of the
younger islanders seemed to feel, perhaps because he lived so much in the
glories of the past. Like very old people the world over, he was hazy about
yesterday's events, but vividly remembered the triumphs of his youth. He'd been
a great head-hunter once, ferocious enough to have secured the rare privilege
of a second wife. His memory for the genealogies of the islanders was
phenomenal, and this was chiefly what brought Rivers to him. And yet, time and
time again, the flow of information faltered, though it was not immediately
obvious why.
Sexual
intercourse between unmarried young people was very free, though 'free' was
perhaps the wrong word, since every act had to be preceded by a payment of
shells by the young man to the girl's parents. After marriage complete fidelity
was required, and one expression of this was that one must never utter the name
of an ex-lover.
All
the women's
names in Rinambesi's generation had to be left blank. Looking at the row of
cards in front of him, Rivers turned to Njiru. '
This fellow
make
fuck-fuck
all
women?'
A gleam of
amusement.
'Yes.'
Rivers threw the
pencil down. Rinambesi, grinning toothlessly, was making a deeply unsuccessful
attempt to look modest. Rivers started to laugh and
after
a moment Njiru joined in, a curious moment of kinship across the gulf of
culture.
* * *
A thread-like
wail from the baby Njiru held in his hands, one palm cradling the head, the
other the buttocks, a morsel of black-eyed misery squirming in between.
Her name was
Kwini and her mother was dead. Worse than that, she'd died in childbirth, which
made her an evil spirit, likely to attempt to reclaim her child. The body had
been dumped at sea, a bundle of rags strapped between the breasts to fool the
mother into thinking she had her baby with her, but still... Kwini's failure to
thrive was attributed to her mother's attempts to get her back.
She certainly
wasn't
thriving: skin
hung in loose folds from her thighs. Rivers looked round the circle at her
grandmother's wrinkled dugs, the flat chest of her nine-year-old sister,
the
highly developed pectoral muscles of her father. He
asked what she was being fed on.
Mashed-up yams softened by
spit was
the answer. The tiny hands clawed the air as if she would wring
life out of it.
Njiru passed the
leaves he was holding several times between his legs and then, stretching to
his full height, attached them to the rafters at the gable end, where the scare
ghost shivered in the draught. 'Come down and depart, you ghost, her mother; do
not haunt this child and let her live.'
'Will
she live?'
Rivers asked.
He had his own
opinion, but wanted to know what Njiru would say. Njiru spread his hands.
On their way
back to Narovo, Rivers questioned
him about the ghosts
of women who died in childbirth. This was not a rare form of death, since the
custom was for women to give birth alone, and there was no tradition of
midwifery. Such ghosts could not be named, he already knew that. In the
genealogies they were referred to as evil spirits. It had startled him at first
to be told quite casually that such and such a man had married 'an evil
spirit'.
They were called
tomate pa na
savo
—the
ghosts of the confining house—Njiru explained, and they were dreaded, since
their chief aim was to ensure that as many other women as possible should die
in the same way.
One ghost in
particular inspired dread: Ange Mate. She was more powerful, more vengeful than
any other ghost of the confining house. Rivers had been taken to see Ange
Mate's well, a hole in the ground which had once been living spring, now choked
with coconut husks. Still, he sensed there was something more that Njiru was
reluctant to tell him. 'What does she
do?'
he wanted to know. It puzzled him that the men were
obviously frightened of her, if it were true that the
tomate pa
na
savo
selected women as their victims.
Reluctantly,
Njiru said she lay in wait for men, particularly for men who fell asleep on the
beach at Pa Njale. 'But what does she do?' A ripple of amusement among Njiru's
retinue, a strange response in view of the obvious terror she inspired. Then he
guessed. When Ange Mate came upon a man sleeping she forced him to have sex
with her. 'Is he good-fellow after?' Rivers asked.
No, seemed to be
the answer, he suffered from a long list of complaints, not the least of which
was a disappearing penis. Rivers would have liked to ask about the
psychological effects, but that was almost impossible. The language of
introspection was simply not available.
By the time they
reached Narovo, the sun was low in the sky. Rivers went down to the beach,
following the narrow bush path that petered out into fine white sand. Hocart's
head was a dark sleek ball, far out, but then he saw Rivers, waved and shouted.
Slowly Rivers
waded out, looking down, rather liking the dislocation the refraction of the
light produced, the misalignment of knees and feet. As usual he was joined by a
shoal of little darting black fish who piloted him out into deeper
waters—always a moment of absolute magic. Behind him, the bluish shadows of
rocks crept over the white sand.
After their swim
they lay in the shallows, talking over the events of the day. In the rough
division of labour they'd mapped out between them, death, funerary rites and
skull houses belonged to Hocart, ghosts, sex, marriage and kinship to Rivers,
but it had already become clear that no division really made sense. Each of
them was constantly acquiring information relating to one of the other's
specialities.
Hocart, though,
was in a mood to tease. 'Why've I got death when you've got sex?' he wanted to
know. 'Ghosts and sex don't go together. Now ghosts and
death...'
'All right, you
can have ghosts.'
'
No...
' Hocart began,
and then laughed.
Not true anyway,
Rivers thought. On Eddystone ghosts and sex
did
go together, or
so at least it must seem to men who fell asleep on the beach at Pa Njale and
woke between the ravening thighs of Ange Mate.
They lay in
silence, almost too lazy to speak, as the shadows lengthened and the sun began
its precipitate
descent. Nightfall on Eddystone was
abrupt, as if some positive force of darkness in the waters of the bay had
risen up and swallowed the sun. At last, driven back to shore by the cooling
water, they snatched up their clothes and ran, laughing, back to the tent.
* * *
Mbuko was dying
of a disease caused by the spirits of Kita, and had no more than a few hours to
live.
Kita, Njiru
explained, causes a man to waste away 'till he too small all bone he got no
meat'. Certainly Mbuko could not have been more emaciated. He looked more like
an anatomical drawing than a man, except for the persistent flutter of his
heart under the stretched skin. He lay on the raised wooden platform that was
used for sleeping, though nobody else now slept in the hut. Njiru said they
were afraid.
Outside, bright sunshine, people coming and
going.
Now and then a neighbour would look in to see if he were still
alive,
'Soon,' the people sitting round would say,
indifferently, shaking their heads. Some were obviously amused or repelled by
his plight. '
Rakiana'
was the word one heard over and over again.
Rakiana
.
Thin.
Even Njiru who,
within the framework of his culture, was a compassionate man (and we can none
of us claim more, Rivers thought), seemed to feel, not indifference or contempt
exactly, but that Mbuko had become merely a problem to be solved. Njiru looked
across the barely breathing heap of bones at Rivers and said, '
Mate.'
'Mate
' in all the
dictionaries was
translated as 'dead'.
'No
mate,'
Rivers said,
breathing deeply and pointing to Mbuko's chest.
There and then,
across the dying man, he received a tutorial, not unlike those he remembered
from his student days in Bart's.
Mate
did not mean dead, it designated a state of which
death was the appropriate outcome. Mbuko was
mate
because he was
critically ill. Rinambesi, though quite disgustingly healthy, still with a keen
eye for the girls, was also
mate
because he'd lived to an age when if he wasn't dead he
damn well ought to be. The term for actual death, the moment when the
sagena
—here Njiru
breathed in, slapping his belly in the region of the diaphragm— the 'something
he stop long belly' departed, was
mate ndapu.
In pidgin, '
die finish
'.
'Was the
sagena
the same as the soul?' Rivers wanted to know. 'Of
course it wasn't,' Njiru snapped, nostrils flaring with impatience. Oh God, it
was Bart's all over again.
Heaven help the unsuspecting public when we let you
loose on them.
The problem with Mbuko, Njiru pressed on, as with all
those who fell into the power of Kita, was that he couldn't die. He seemed to
be making a very creditable stab at it, Rivers thought rebelliously. Kita could
'make him small', but not kill him. '
Kitapausia
,' Njiru said, stroking Mbuko. 'Kita loves him?'
Rivers suggested. No, Njiru would know the word. Kita was nursing him.
Njiru hung
malanjari leaves from the gable end of the hut where the scare ghost shivered
in the draught, and began chanting the prayer of exorcism. His shadow came and
went across the dying man's face. At one point Rivers got cramp in his legs and
tried to stand up, but the people on either side of him pulled him down. He
must not walk under the malanjari leaves, they said, or he would waste away and
become
like Mbuko.