The Headhunter's Daughter (17 page)

“Pierre!” Amanda screamed. “Pierre, you have to help him.”

“No one can reach him, Amanda. He can’t be helped.”

“You must!” she shrieked.

He grabbed her and yanked her away from the railing. Then he scooped her up and carried her along a fern-and-orchid-embroidered trail until they reached an alcove without a river view. He set her gently down there but continued to hold her in his arms while she sobbed hysterically. In an effort to calm her he kissed her hair and muttered soothing words in French that were every bit as meaningless as “there there.”

This was not the way their first embrace was supposed to have unfolded. These were not the kisses he’d been dreaming about. Oh well, that was only a plan, a wish; this was real life.

After many minutes the sobs became raspy as Amanda fought to breathe. Soon it became apparent that she desperately needed to blow her nose.
Mon Dieu
, what was a gallant Gaul to do under these circumstances? Pierre carefully unbuttoned his shirt, which had been imported from Paris, and offered it to Amanda as a handkerchief.

True, it wasn’t a malt shop with roller-skating waitresses, but he reckoned it wasn’t a bad gesture for a first date either.

Both eyes were swollen shut so the man had to feel for any indentations there might be in the rock above him. Unfortunately every nook and cranny was the potential home of a scorpion or a poisonous centipede the length of his forearm, or one of a dozen varieties of snakes. He had no way of knowing, but he’d already managed to pull himself up about thirty feet from where he’d finally landed—this despite a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder.

Mai Manene
they called this falls: the Big Waters. A better name for this place was
Mai a Mutoyo
: the Noisy Waters. The man had shouted to make himself heard until he had no voice left; he could not produce as much as a croak or a whimper. Fairness was not something that the man expected from life, yet it occurred to him that even a dying infant could make
some
sound that another could hear.

Then at last the man’s right hand found a spur of rock that had smooth edges, and behind which there might have been a ledge. It was something to hope for. If he could stand to move his broken leg, and if he could find a crack or pit for a toehold, he could perhaps make more progress in the next few minutes than he had in the last two hours.

And there it was! A crack just wide enough to accommodate his foot, and what’s more, it seemed to rise at an angle in the right direction. However, fate is no respecter of persons. As the man breathed a sigh of relief, in that same millisecond his concentration was broken and he relaxed his hold on the cliff face just enough so that he slipped and plunged to his death on the rock at the bottom of the abyss.

Such a small thing, that exhalation of a single breath. Yet such an important thing for the monstrous Nile crocodile waiting patiently below. Or, perhaps, it had been waiting impatiently. Who is to know? Surely not the dead man, who was not omniscient, and for whom reptilian fantasies were beyond his ken. Who, then, is to live and tell this tale?

Perhaps it was the man peering over the edge of the abyss.

Iron Sliver’s brother had been in the hunting party that was absent from the village the day that Headhunter and his daughter left for Belle Vue. Although he had been born a Muluba slave, Little Bully was the chief of the Headhunter’s village.

Although most decisions that involved the welfare of the village as a whole were made by the council of elders, old men all of them, there were occasions when Little Bully acted unilaterally. These happened to be occasions when Little Bully thought that he knew better than everyone else, or when time was too precious to waste on a consensus opinion. At any rate, by the time Iron Sliver and the Headhunter’s wife were through telling their stories, the chief of Musoko village had already made a crucial decision.

He clapped his hands, signaling his messenger to his side. “Alert the drummers. They must communicate the following message to the people: tonight we move the village deeper into the bush in order to escape the wrath of the
Bula Matadi
. We will dismantle every hut, including the palaver hut and the women’s bleeding hut. Every chicken and duck must be rounded up. Every goat and sheep must be securely tied. We will leave nothing behind.”

Unfortunately, it so happened that the Headhunter’s wife was standing within hearing distance of this conversation. No sooner did the breath of the last word cool his lips than she pounced on him like a leopard hiding in tall grass.

“
Mukelenge
, please, may I speak with you?”

“No, for surely you have heard there is no time. I must get this village moved before tomorrow’s light.”

“
Eyo, Great Mukelenge Little Bully Chief of Musoko,
I have heard, and I understand your reasoning, but it is false.”

Now without being summoned, it was the chief’s bodyguard who stepped to his side. Little Bully pushed the overzealous warrior away in annoyance. But when he turned again to the woman, he could almost feel his face harden into a beaten copper mask, so great was his disdain.

“Woman, it was you and your husband who brought this trouble upon us, was it not?”

The woman did not answer. She could not answer, could she? What can an honorable guilty person say in their own defense, except the truth? And were not the Headhunter and his wife amongst the most honorable citizens of the village? Little Bully enjoyed watching his neighbor squirm.

Finally, enough time had passed so that he was obliged to put an end to the game. “You may leave your house standing,” he said. “Or you may wish to send it ahead with my slaves. But then where will you wait for your man? On top of an anthill? The very first night a leopard will come along and take you back to her weaning cubs. There they will bat you about like a child’s ball. Is that what you wish, widow woman?”

The last two words had not been intentional, and they made him shudder with cold, despite the heat of the day. It was the shared opinion of many in the village that Little Bully’s predictions were far more likely to come true than were predictions from the witch doctor—this despite the fact that Little Bully did not engage in fortune-telling.

The chief was a freed slave, captured as an infant, and it was widely surmised he descended from a line of hereditary witch doctors in the tribe of his birth. These hereditary gifts—or powers—were not something that Little Bully particularly enjoyed, as they enabled him to see his own stony path to destruction along with everyone else’s.

“I am not a widow!” the Headhunter’s wife cried angrily. “But if it is your intention that the village flee, and does not leave so much as a trace for the
Bula Matadi
to follow, how then can my husband follow me when he returns?”

Little Bully knew then, without a doubt, that she need not worry about staying behind for the sake of her husband. “You will not be seeing your husband again,” he said matter-of-factly.

Her eyes widened and just as the drums began to talk she let loose a scream that was so anguished that even he, who had been ripped from his mother’s teat while suckling, was moved. For the duration of her cry, the sun paused on its journey across the sky out of respect, and the birds folded their wings, and those still in flight fell to earth. Because of the pain in her cry a lioness jumped off a buffalo’s back and trotted away hungry.

But a mere woman cannot scream forever. The next thing the Headhunter’s wife did was drop to the ground and roll in the dirt. When she was sufficiently covered with it, so that it was clear to all that she was mourning, she began to keen, rocking backward and forward, as if keeping time to her own invisible drummer. Occasionally, without varying her rhythm, she scooped up handfuls of sand which she dribbled down on her head.

Iron Sliver, who had been harvesting wild mushrooms in the short grass, was hurrying back to the village when she heard the drums announcing their sudden departure, but when she was yet a full sprinting distance away, she heard her best friend’s piercing shriek. Iron Sliver was a good friend, but not a foolish woman; she knotted the mushrooms she’d collected securely in a corner of her waistcloth before racing home to her friend’s side. There she carefully deposited half of the delicious mushrooms in a clay pot inside the Headhunter’s house, and half of the mushrooms in a pot in her own house. Then she joined her friend on the ground, wailing and throwing handfuls of sand in the air.

The Headhunter’s wife had expected no less from her friend. However, should the Headhunter’s wife decide to remain behind, then she would expect Iron Sliver to move on with the village. They would say good-bye, but not in a long, exaggerated, drawn-out manner. Such displays of emotion were not the way of the Bashilele people. Nonetheless she very much appreciated her best friend’s solidarity and her cries of anguish grew even louder now that she had support.

A crowd of spectators grew, but so did the number of women who actively participated in mourning the great headhunter’s passing.

At last it was time for Mastermind to make an appearance—if that’s what you want to call it—at the OP’s party. Mastermind did not require finery in order to impress. What’s more, Mastermind spoke softly, so softly as to be unheard by anyone but the OP. Besides, the OP was standing on the lowest terrace, looking out over the falls and the cliffs beyond, when Mastermind startled him by speaking. At first he hoped it was a joke; one that his conscience was playing on him. The alternative was that he was going mad.

“Perhaps you have already guessed, Monsieur OP, but I am the Mastermind.”

He grinned; embarrassed that he might be experiencing a public breakdown—just like his deceased wife. May she rest in peace. When he turned and saw Mastermind just behind him, he yelped like an injured dog.

“
Sacre coeur!
It’s only you; I thought for a minute that my mind was playing tricks on me.”

“What kind of tricks?”

“I thought you said—” He stopped abruptly. What a fool he could be.

“That I was the Mastermind? But I am. Monsieur OP, don’t look so astonished; it is not a becoming look on you. What were you expecting anyway, a cape and a mustache?”

“No, but you—this is impossible! Surely you are not working alone?”

The Mastermind gave him a look as cold as any Belgian winter. “Believe me, Monsieur OP, I have spent a lifetime outwitting men far more intelligent than you; I am not falling for your silly trap. Not that it matters, for I am not so stupid as to come here alone. I am one, and I am twenty. Thirty, if I snap my fingers. Now tell me; did you get the letter?”

The OP fancied himself to be a good judge of human behavior. After all, one cannot climb this high in an organization such as the Consortium without a thorough understanding of the way people worked. Just where had he learned all that? By carefully observing a troop of baboons. And what exactly had he learned? The importance of bluffing in getting one’s way; it was as simple as that.

It was all about one’s attitude, and it was precisely because the OP was himself such an expert on attitude that he was able to determine that the Mastermind was not bluffing. Clearly the OP was outnumbered—outmaneuvered even, for the time being.

“Yes, I got your letter,” he growled. “I will start working on getting the parcel together tonight. How shall I contact you?”

“Wait! Did you see that?” Mastermind asked.

“See what?”

“Across the gorge—there, on the American side. It looked like a man falling.”

“It was most likely a rock,” the OP said. “Or a dead tree limb. The river is constantly eating away at the landscape. For the Consortium, that’s a good thing, because often it’s the hungry river that exposes the diamonds that are deposited along its banks.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are right,” Mastermind said, suddenly all business again. “I understand that you rise very early.”

“I’m too old to benefit from any beauty sleep, and too young to practice for the grave.”

“I see. In that case, Monsieur OP, meet me at the gravel pit at four in the morning. We’ll talk more then. Oh—and bring what product you’ve managed to lay your hands on by then.”

“
What?
Product?
”

Poof! Mastermind disappeared into the throng of party guests, just like the rabbit the OP had seen disappear at a carnival sideshow in Brussels when he was a boy.

Chapter Eighteen

H
usband was a man of renown for his patience. Until recently he had worked for the white man by day, cutting grass around the post office, and never once had Husband shown the
Bula
Matadi
that he felt himself to be his equal. In the evening he’d been served by two wives; one of whom possessed a tongue sharp enough to cut through a stalk of sugar cane, and the other—well, the other was Cripple.

Aiyee!
Cripple was more trouble than any three wives! Still, any man who could put up with a woman such as Cripple and not beat her, now there was a man of infinite patience. Husband had waited faithfully outside the compound of the OP, hiding in the shadows as all good non-essential persons should do on a night like that, and when Cripple’s services were no longer needed, he’d given her a ride home.

He had listened to her exciting stories and asked the right questions, but she had a request that stumped him.

“
Why
will you need the machete tonight?” Husband asked in disbelief.

“Husband, it is better that you do not know.”

“Cripple,” Husband said, his patience finally worn away, “must I sit on your neck and beat you?”

“If you do so, Husband,” Cripple said, “then I will turn my head and bite your behind. Like so.” Because Cripple’s body was already twisted, she had a head start on turning her head.

Husband’s laugh began as the sputter of a diesel generator that was first springing to life, and it finished with a roar that was sure to attract the neighbor’s attention. Only a man of great self-control—such as Husband—was capable of reigning in his emotions thusly.

“Wherever it is that you are going, Wife, there I am going as well.”

Husband could see Cripple’s jaw tense in the reflected light of fire. She responded almost immediately, but he was not surprised by the speed of her response. Husband knew that she had probably made up her mind long before she’d broached the subject with him. Such was the way of Cripple.

“I walk to the gravel pits tonight,” she said. “The machete is in case we are attacked by hyenas—or a leopard.”

Husband stared at his beloved first wife in horror. “
The
gravel pits. The very same gravel pits which are haunted by the ghost of a white woman?”

“Are there any other? Husband, the white girl—the white Mushilele, but yet not of their blood—it is important that this very same girl must return to her village so that she may live a few days more with her tribe.”

“
E!
And that is all you will be giving her—a few
days
more! Wife, do you not see the futility in this plan? Do you not see the danger that you are putting these people in? True, they are only savages, these Bashilele, but they are not our enemies, like the Bena Lulua. They do not lock us in our thatch huts and burn us alive simply because we agree to work for the Belgians—because we are smart enough to work for the Belgians, and they are not.”

Cripple nodded. “A few days perhaps. Maybe a few years. Husband, I would do anything to spend that much time with you.”

Husband spit into the dirt at the side of the cooking fire to indicate his unconditional surrender. Who could not admire Cripple above all other women?

“
I
will carry the machete, and I will carry you,” he said.

“Husband,” Cripple said softly, “you will not have to carry me but a short way. At my place of employment there is a box on wheels that is used to transport wood from the chopping block to kitchen, or perhaps to the storage hut. I can easily fit inside that box, Husband. Believe me, for I have tried.”

Husband laughed deeply. “I believe that you have, Cripple, and I shall be happy to give you and our little skunk a ride in this box on wheels.”

In the Tshiluba language, the planet Venus is called the moon’s wife. She rises faithfully as soon as the day is done to greet her husband. After spending some alone time together, they are joined by their children, the stars. Soon after that they part, for the moon is a restless husband and cannot stand to be kept in one place.

Cripple’s twisted body had refused to give her a full night’s sleep since the day it was wrenched from her mother’s amniotic fluid. Thus it was that she knew the hour of the moon’s rising and bedding on the night in question. Amanda Brown, however, claimed to be able to sleep like a baby, although Cripple would have been happy to tell her that babies don’t necessarily sleep well, and that sometimes they can squall for no reason and keep one up all night.

Although Amanda didn’t believe in fate, she did believe in God, and that He worked in mysterious ways, but she would never have thought that He’d use her bladder as a means. She normally woke between three forty-five and four in the morning, thanks to a large glass of milk before going to bed, but tonight she’d had three club sodas over at the OP’s and was up at three thirty.

Amanda was a heavy sleeper, which meant that most mornings she would hardly even remember having gotten up, unless a toad or a snake got in her way to the toilet. This morning, however, the second her eyelids parted, they popped open wide as the memory of Pierre and the kiss that night before banished all thoughts of sleep.

Or wait; was that just a dream? Because if it wasn’t, then that stuff about the man and the crocodile had to be real as well. But it was too horrible to have been real! Oh God, Amanda felt the need to be sick. She rushed into the bathroom, and threw herself on the floor in the classic drunk’s position, arms around the toilet bowl. Try as she might to retch, nothing came up.

When she was satisfied that she could keep her stomach under control, she used the toilet for its original conception, but even then she felt reluctant to leave the room. Something unusual was happening outside the window; she could feel it in her bones.

She turned off the light and slowly peeked between a pair of heavy lined curtains. That old saying about it being darkest just before dawn was certainly right on the money; at least this side of the house was deep in shadows. In the mango grove the spaces between trees showed up as black. Although the turbulent falls appeared white at all times of the night, she could see only a sliver of them from this window.

You could hate the falls for all their treachery, for the constant noise they made, and for their seasonal threat to precariously perched structures such as the Missionary Rest House, but without them Belle Vue would have no electricity. They were its life force, its heartbeat. But as she peered between the curtains Amanda felt drawn to the blackness of the mango grove instead; it was as if a powerful force of energy was pulling at her from somewhere down amongst those trees.

Amanda dressed hastily, but still appropriately for the outdoors. The night watchman, Kind Person, was more often than not asleep on the job, but she surely did not want to be seen by anyone in her nightdress and bathrobe. So skirt, blouse, bobby socks, and oxfords, it was, complete with the brassier which had been unsuccessfully worn by the real Ugly Eyes the preceding day.

Although Amanda carried a large box-shaped flashlight with a powerful beam, she did not turn it on until she reached the edge of the cultivated lawn and was actually about to step beneath the first tree. She’d walked quickly and quietly, keeping to the shadows, like Tonto on
The Lone Ranger
television show. Her heart pounded as the circle of bright light revealed first one tree trunk and then another, and then finally it shone upon three abject, terrified human beings crouched around her wheelbarrow.

Seeing them gave Amanda quite a fright, but apparently they got a good scare as well. Cripple beat her arms against her husband and then fell to the ground moaning.

“Oh Mamu Ugly Eyes, do you not know that you look exactly like that white woman’s ghost?”

“Cripple,” Amanda said, whilst trying to appear cool, “which white woman’s ghost do you refer to? And how is it that you know this?”

“The OP’s wife,
Mamu
; the woman went over the falls in the truck when it was the second month of August. It is said that she roams the cliffs on this side of the river late at night calling out for her body, and that she is particularly loathsome.”

Amanda was at first dumbfounded, but Cripple’s husband stepped forward as if to shield his wife. “
Mamu
, please forgive my wife for her foolish words. She is an intelligent woman, as you know,
Mamu
, but quite often she steps on her tongue.”

“There has been no offense taken, Cripple’s husband. Since the OP’s wife has been under the falls for two months now, I am quite certain that she is indeed loathsome to look upon. If it is true that I bear a resemblance to her, then my appearance has greatly improved since I arrived in Belle Vue.”

Both husband and wife stared at her openmouthed for a second or two and then convulsed with laughter.

“Shhh!” Amanda held a warning finger to her lips.

“
Mamu
,” sniggered Cripple, “those words were but said in jest. You are not as loathsome as that.”

“And you are less hideous than the rear end of a jackal. Now come, we have not a minute to lose.”

Cripple’s husband, whose reputation was that of failed witch doctor, stepped in front of his small, misshapen wife. “
Mamu
, what is it that you wish us to do?”

“Why, to do whatever it is that you had planned before I showed up. By the looks of things, I would say that the three of you are planning a trip. If so, then we must hurry and get out of Belle Vue before the sun rises.”

“
Mamu
,” Ugly Eyes said, speaking for the first time, “why is it that you help me, a Mushilele? I am but a savage, the daughter of a headhunter. Surely I am beneath your consideration.”

“Ugly Eyes, do not insult my intelligence like that. If I will stoop to befriend these two worthless Baluba, then why would I not do the same for you? Now, let us move and not talk. When we reach your village, then we can sit and talk like old women—like Cripple. Do you understand?”

“Yes,
Mamu
. And I promise that when we reach my village I will not let anyone take your head.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said, both surprised and touched by the kind words. “I am moved by those words.”