The boy came alive. “You know you’ll need a gift thor the leader?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Really?”
“It is custom for all guests of honour.”
Shit. “But I don’t have anything. I didn’t pack… I mean, I didn’t think we’d be staying.”
He brushed imaginary dust off the boy’s velvet jacket, saying nothing.
“You haven’t got anything I could give him, do you?” Worth a try.
The Shaman stared at me and sniffed. “No,” snapped the dummy.
“I could pay you.”
This piqued his interest. “Hoo nuch?”
“I don’t have any money on me here – but I do have travellers’ cheques back at Gossips. I could pay you back there.”
“Hoo nuch?”
I hoped he didn’t have much of a grasp of the value of Sterling. “Ten pence?”
His eyes lit up. He opened one side of the cloak enough so he could peer in, without me seeing what he was up to. After some deliberation he picked out a cigar and held it out towards me.
“You can hath this,” he said, but snatched it away as I reached out. “For 20 of these klennies!” The Shaman cackled dryly, like a hyena choking on Ryvita.
He held out the stogey again, a thin, long thing and inexpertly wrapped, half whipped it away, then let me take it, leering.
“You drive a hard bargain,” I said.
I was surprised to see, beyond the cooking fire, tables, arranged in two rows of three, seating a dozen or so on individual stools. All the furniture was made from natural materials, bound with twine, but sturdy.
Many of the seats were already taken. Children played around the edges and were regularly shooed away.
I inhaled deeply as the scene sunk in. Here I was, privileged to be among this community so very many miles from home. Birds and monkeys, painted faces, flaming torches dotted about like fairylights, nature unburdened, freedom. Stresses slipped away. While my previous adventures had all been against the clock, here there was no time constraint. I was on the craziest, most intoxicating holiday of my life. And I would drink it in.
The leader, Gdgi, was seated centrally on one side of the far middle table, in the largest chair of all. His torso, arms and head were painted yellow, his hair whitened. On his head he wore a coiled snake, poised to strike, hood extended, which was dead enough but still threatening. He spotted the Shaman and I, and beckoned us towards him.
“Welcome!” he said, standing up. He had swapped to a golden codpiece, I noted. “Please, you must join our table,” he said, waving towards two spare stools next to each other and opposite him, though I had hoped to avoid sitting near the Shaman.
“This is my wife,” said Gdgi, helping the woman to his right to her feet.
It was all I could do to avoid looking perplexed. Grey haired, thin and toothless, hunch-backed, half his height and twice his age, her breasts hung like unoccupied hammocks beneath a thick golden neck-chain. Hanging from her waist, covering her privates, was some sort of mini armadillo.
I waved at her gormlessly. The Shaman bowed; his son said nothing.
As I took my seat, I said to Gdgi, “I see you have tables here.”
“Yes,” he replied, shrugging.
Then I remembered: “Ah yes. I brought you a gift.”
“How kind. You should not have.”
I held out the cigar.
His eyes lit up. “How wonderful. Cigars are one of my favourite things. How did you know?”
Should I come clean? “Always do your homework – that’s my motto!” I laughed falsely and avoided looking at the Shaman.
The other occupants of our table clapped in appreciation and I bowed. They were more elderly than most attendees, and boasted the shiniest jewellery. I nodded at the gentleman to my left. He looked at me as if I had just shat in his lap and I wondered whether nodding had negative connotations in these parts.
“My name is Pilsbury,” I said, extending a hand.
He stared at it, wrinkling his nose, and said something in his native tongue.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Thank goodness for that! Could have been an awkward dinner party otherwise!”
Gdgi called across. “That is Ekoto. He is one of the elders who refuses to learn English. He is a bit of a grumpy old sod, I am afraid.”
Then the leader clapped his hands and the sound of drums began to echo through the jungle as masked dancers, their masks representing jungle animals, their waists wrapped in red sashes, began to circle us, losing themselves in the tribal rhythms.
A middle-aged woman, wearing earrings the diameter of dinner plates, brought around a tray laden with drinks and popped one in front of each diner. I hoped it might be cold beer, however it turned out to be an insipid creamy brew that tasted bittersweet and on the cusp of unpleasantness, at least with an alcoholic aftertaste that suggested perseverance might prove worthwhile.
I called the earring lady back. “Excuse me, what is this drink?”
She raised an eyebrow and clicked her tongue. “It is ch-ch. It is made from root swallowed by woman then collected later when shat into pot.”
I retched, barely managing to keep the terrible concoction down.
The earring lady spotted this, looked quizzical then tutted to herself. “I am sorry. I meant spat, not shat. Your language, it is very complicated.”
Somehow her revision felt like an improvement.
Food began to appear on the table. Piles of pork meat and crackling; the pig’s head stripped of its ears, which had been sliced up and placed beside it; its tail, blackened and in one piece; way too much stuff that looked like offal; a pile of what looked like roasted rodents; fruits and vegetables – tubas, squashes, nuts and greens, in shades of browns, reds and yellows – the like of which I had never seen; plates of flat bread and bowls of honey; and – ah – reed dishes filled with fat, writhing grubs trying desperately to escape over the dish rims. Aside from the horrors, the crackling alone made my stomach kiss my heart. However, I was aware that no one had yet dived in and I feared breaking with protocol by doing so first.
I dared to nudge the Shaman, hoping for advice. Both he and the boy glared at me. Before I could speak, Gdgi clapped again. The drumming stopped and the tribe fell silent.
The leader rose from his stool to address the crowd. I tried to make sense of his speech, but the sounds were impenetrably alien. At one point he must have cracked a joke because everyone laughed. When I joined in obsequiously, everyone’s eyes fell on me and the laughter grew louder.
“We welcome our guests of honour tonight,” said Gdgi, thankfully switching to English. “The Shaman you already know, and with him our new friend, Pilsbury.” More chuckling, which he silenced with a look of reproach. He turned to me. “When a white stranger accepts our hospitality, he must take a test, to show he is worthy.”
My buttocks tightened, my teeth clenched. Had I known, there is no way I would have stayed.
Gdgi continued: “We call this test Ymze Lysta and it has been taken by all before you who passed this way and asked for our help” – I didn’t recall doing so – “It is simple, you will come to no harm. Probably. It is for our amusement. Pilsbury, are you hungry?”
“I suppose I am quite hungry,” I replied warily.
“That is good, because we have some food for you.”
A great “Ooooooooh!” arose from the crowd and he grinned knowingly.
I inspected the potential monstrosities on the dinner table before me. What could they have in mind? The offal soaking in a brown liquid, like a discarded rug sample in a full chamber pot? The bowl containing two things that looked horribly like pig’s testicles? No, it had to be those grubs, those animated, stuffed, ribbed condoms.
Still, I was so ravenous that even they looked possibly enticing. No sense prolonging the agony, I decided. Lowering a hand into the dish, I pinched one around the midriff and felt its cream
y insides pulse past my fingertips.
“No, no, no!” interjected the leader. “Not the grub. How could we gain amusement from your eating such a delicious treat? No, we have something else in mind. Clnde and Yntha, bring Pilsbury his test!”
Two figures, one male, one female, got up from the table to my right and disappeared into darkness towards the huts. As I watched them go, I noticed the other shaman seated on the far corner of the table furthest from us, no doubt to keep the warring siblings apart.
His head turned slowly. He rose and pointed at me, staring. On his face he had painted a white beetle and he wore a suit made of, well, fish. Dead silvery flat fish strung together. And there was me finding my shaman disconcerting.
Clnde and Yntha returned in a state of breathless excitement, each holding a cardboard box. Yntha, the girl I assumed, had a tuft of hair perched centrally atop her scalp and a tapering jawline, which made her head look a bit like an onion. Clnde, like Yntha in his late-teens, wore a necklace comprising millipedes threaded end to end.
The pair held out their boxes towards me. A hush had descended upon the audience, broken by the odd stage whisper.
Gdgi spoke: “Pilsbury, you must choose one of the boxes, and you must eat its entire contents while we watch. Choose now!”
I dreaded to think what lurked beneath those lids if grubs were deemed too easy on the taste buds. Spiders? Flies? Maggots? A grilled snake? What to do? How to choose, minimise the hideousness?
I studied Clnde and Yntha’s expressions, hoping for a clue, but they wore the same studied look of eager expectation. I could only resort to eeny-meeny-miny-mo.
Yntha’s box.
Should I change my mind?
No. Trust to eeny.
Inhaling deeply, I took the box. Yntha squealed and clenched her thighs, perhaps trapping an escaping modicum of wee. Clnde looked dejected.
The tribe began chanting, building towards hysteria. Some were now standing on stools and tables for a better view. Was this really a spectator sport? How low on genuine entertainment their daily lives must have been.
I closed my eyes and opened the lid.
Everyone whooped. I opened my eyes and looked into the box…
A burger?
I lifted it out and peered underneath, checking for something crawling or crisped, with legs. Nothing. I lifted the bun to check the burger itself. Nope. Seemed perfectly normal.
“Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!” chanted the crowd.
With pleasure, I thought, and began chomping almightily.
Some in the crowd chewed on fingernails. Others watched open-mouthed, ecstatic in their revulsion. I caught several cries of “No!”, a smattering in the native tongue and a single “Uncivilised!”
One woman fell to the ground vomiting, which set off a chain reaction of heaving and ejected bile among her neighbours.
Beside me, the Shaman’s dummy cackled.
I was finished in moments, bulging cheeks contracting to force meaty, breaded goo between eagerly masticating gnashers. Sweet, sweet burger.
Swallowing the last morsel, smacking my lips, I asked, “Got any more?”
Oh, the delirium. I could not have been more popular in that moment had I died dramatically of food poisoning.
“Clnde, open your box!” cried Gdgi.
And guess what? Another burger! Practically identical, the cheats!
I chewed that one with gusto, rather than wolfing it down, playing to the crowd, limp lettuce, pickle and all, as the villagers failed to control themselves. Never before had a meal tasted so sweetly of victory. This was the life, lost in the tropics among celebrating strangers. I thought briefly of home, of returning to Glibley one day to drink tea on a carpet; the prospect simply didn’t measure up.
The leader held up his hands for order and his people gradually calmed down.
He spoke to me again. “Pilsbury, thank you. You have entertained us greatly, though I do not know how you can eat such a thing with such relish. You are indeed brave – and very strange!”
Cue catcalls and cheers.
Two can play the humour card, I thought. “Great leader. Our cultures are very different. Your burger is my grub.” I waited; no one laughed. “Grub as in fat wriggly thing. Your burger is my fat wriggly thing… It’s a pun.” Silence/bewilderment. “Where I come from, people like burgers. Our tastes are different. Here you eat animals’ testicles!”
“What do you think your burgers are made from?” replied Gdgi.
I was sordidly full. So full I could feel that final roasted rodent breast sitting at the base of my throat. Eating constantly had also made me look too busy for conversation, though a succession of well-wishers had patted my back and congratulated me on my performance in the Ymze Lysta.
Once I could not face another morsel I was trapped in a social hell, between the Shaman and sour-faced Ekoto, obliged towards small talk as the guest of honour.
I tried Ekoto first, with a little sign language. “Lovely food,” I said, rubbing my stomach with one hand and miming eating with the other.
He looked right through me.
I could think of nothing more to say, so I sat there, rictus grin, while he stared at me, nodding furiously.
“Hoi, Klilsgury!” came a voice behind me.
The wooden boy’s company suddenly felt like a welcome respite.
I swivelled to face the Shaman, who had opened one side of his cloak, exposing to me the rows of secret pockets. What was his game?
As I scanned through them my eyes were drawn to rolled paper protruding from one pouch. A network of lines was printed over it in black, among which was typed writing. Could it be?
“Is that the map you spoke of? The key to the sketch?”
I snatched at it, but he closed the cloak too quickly.
The boy said, “Yes, that is the nak. Do you oo-ont to see it?”
“You know I want to see it.”
“Thirst you do sunthing for us.”
Hang on! “But I’ve already done something for you. I drove you here! And I’ve stayed far longer than I intended.”
“Thirst you do sunthing for us.”
“We had a deal and I kept my side of it.”
“Thirst you do sunthing for us.”
I sighed. “What?”
He opened the cloak once again, reached in and pulled out a wooden cup. “This sklecial drink I nake thor ny grother. You take it to hin for nee.”
So he’d made a ‘special drink’ for his brother, whom he had not hours earlier asked me to murder. He must have considered me stupid. Yet… if I refused, let him know I was onto him, would I ever get to see the map?
Could I not just pretend to hand over the dubious brew? It might work.
“OK,” I said. “But you have to show me the map first.”
The shaman wagged his finger and the boy cackled. “Thirst you do sunthing for us.”
Fuck it. I had a plan. “Alright. Give me the drink.”
It was hard to tell what colour the liquid was, in the depths of the dark receptacle, but it smelled rank, like rotten vegetables. Now, how to pretend to give it to the other shaman without arousing this one’s suspicions?
I started walking, cradling the cup, which felt like death. There were other wooden cups, similar in design to this one, on other tables. If I could somehow swap them without the Shaman noticing…
With my back shielding my hands from him, I dropped the cup onto the ground and kicked it under a table, in one fluid motion picking up an unused wooden cup. I didn’t dare turn around to see whether the Shaman had noticed.
The other shaman had seen me coming. As I confronted him, he stood. His fish-suit had begun to rot and a few of the fish had fallen off, exposing portions of his body. It had also begun to smell bad.
I handed him the cup. “This is from your brother,” I said, uncertain whether he would even understand me.
He did something unexpected. He smiled. Not a friendly smile, granted, more pitying, but a sm
ile nonetheless. As he did so, the legs on the beetle painted on his face moved, as if the creature were walking.
He took the cup, drank the contents down in one, threw it to the ground, pushed me away and sat down. Was he supposed to clutch his throat, gasping, stagger around a bit and die in agony? Or was the poison more subtle than that? I hoped so. And if so, how long did I have before the Shaman realised I had switched cups?
I turned to walk back. The Shaman was laughing, the gloating Machiavellian. At least he couldn’t have noticed the swap.
Sleight of hand. Too easy. Anyone could play the magic game.
Gdgi beckoned me towards him as I returned to our table. His wife had gone walkabout, mingling with the hoi-polloi, and I took her seat next to him, warily eyeing the dead snake coiled on his head.
“First I must apologise to you, Pilsbury,” he said, chewing some berries open-mouthed.
“Oh really? What for?”
“The test. I made it up. We do not really ask guests to perform such things.”
I felt embarrassed.
“Please do not feel embarrassed. We have fooled guests far cleverer than you.” Suddenly he looked concerned. “I hope I have not offended you.”
How to reassure him? “We had a television show in England, called Beadle’s About. The host played pranks on people.”
“Yes?”
“He was called Jeremy Beadle… The host, I mean.”
Gdgi shrugged. “Why is this interesting?”
It was a fair point. “He had a withered hand?”
It was the death of the art of conversation.
Gamely, Gdgi ploughed on. “Tell me, Pilsbury, which lands have you travelled to?”
That was an easier one, and I told him of my previous adventures, England to Mlwlw, embellishing only slightly. Gdgi raised an eyebrow here and there, interjected with the odd “My goodness!” and looked suitably impressed.
“What do you know?” he asked, when I had finished.
Odd question, I thought. “How do you mean?”
“You have been to all these places. What have you learned?”
Blimey. I’d never really thought in those terms. “I’ve learnt never to get drunk at the Frihedhags’ celebration party!”
Looking for Mrs Dextrose Page 6