The Ventriloquist's Tale

by Pauline Melville

  The next day, Father Napier, desperately eager to start on his mission, stood on the sloping, wooden top floor of the presbytery, which was the Bishop’s office. The rattle of passing dray-carts drifted in from the street through the open window.

  The Bishop was a heavy-set, Germanic-looking man with steel-rimmed glasses, whose enormous ego grazed quietly every day on tit-bits of flattery. He was half asleep.

  Father Napier wanted permission to go straight away into the interior. The Bishop, a man whose serenity was, in fact, a discreet camouflage for sloth, tried to dissuade him from going, fearing that he himself would be obliged to undertake an unpleasant journey into the interior to supervise the founding of such a mission.

  ‘Spend a little time here in Georgetown.’ He spoke slowly, his mouth struggling against a yawn. ‘Get to know the place gradually.’ Father Napier was obliged to concede to his wishes.

  By dint of burning fervour, Father Napier overcame some of the habitual apathy and lassitude he encountered in Georgetown society. Apart from his regular duties, taking mass, marrying and baptising, he set about organising a cathedral choir with Portuguese, black, East Indian and coloured choristers whom he trained personally. Music was one of his passions. He would tap on the chair back with his baton, delighted at the opportunity of demonstrating some cadence or other in his own melodic tenor voice.

  He mounted concerts too in the Assembly Rooms for which extra chairs had to be brought in, so eager were the upper classes of the colony to hear excerpts from Peer Gynt, the Grand March from Tannhäuser and, of course, the solos performed by the Governor’s daughter. This last creature was a tall, gangly girl with long fair hair, who leaned backwards when she walked and raised her knees like a giraffe. But she had a passable voice and Father Napier included her in his programmes, hoping to use his influence to convert her from the Protestant heresy.

  There was no giving up, however, on his overriding ambition to evangelise the interior and after five years in Georgetown, the Bishop’s will was eventually eroded by Father Napier’s persistent requests and he gave permission for the evangelisation of the savannahs. Father Napier had explained to the Bishop that, if they both undertook a tour of the south-west borders of the country, he could be sure that the Brazilians on the other side would give a mammoth, triumphal greeting to a man of his stature. Vanity overcame sloth and the Bishop agreed.

  In November, 1909, the apprehensive Bishop and an enthusiastic Father Napier arranged for a boat to be stacked with provisions. They hired a crew and set off up the Essequibo River, to journey through the forest until they reached their final destination in the savannahs.

  As he stepped out of the forest and into the savannahs, the heat struck Father Napier like a blast from an oven door.

  After the long journey through the forest, the Bishop and Father Napier reacted entirely differently when they finally emerged into the savannahs. The Bishop heaved a sigh of relief, mopped his face with a handkerchief and blessed God that he was in the open once more. He found the forest oppressive.

  Father Napier took one look out over the red plains and his heart sank. It was midday. No clouds in the sky. Dry season made the parched earth and rocks act as reflectors for the sun’s rays. There were no roads or bridges, just Indian trails in all directions. The trails were all narrow and appeared to meander. Father Napier bent down and picked up a handful of soil. It was light and sandy. Nowhere was there any shade.

  It had been arranged that the two churchmen would meet McKinnon at Zariwa, a spot high on bare ground near the bank of the Takatu River. McKinnon wanted to photograph the Bishop under the triumphal arch which the Brazilians had indeed erected for the occasion. A band with hoarse, seductive trumpets and a horde of Indian children accompanied the Bishop wherever he went. The Bishop looked around him in horror at the aridity of the place. There were a few thatched shacks. The band had come together from various scattered Brazilian ranches in the area. He raised his crook in acknowledgement of the curious populace, most of whom had come in from Bom Success. The sweat gathered in the creases of his fat neck and beads appeared in the indentation above his top lip.

  The sun had started to sink when McKinnon shook hands with Father Napier. The two men took an almost instant dislike to each other.

  A strong evening breeze stroked flat the dun-coloured grasses where they stood on a slight slope near the river, with the blue mountains silhouetted in the background.

  ‘You’d better understand straightaway that I do not belong to any religion. I am a free-thinker,’ McKinnon announced mischievously as he introduced himself. It was a pleasure to be speaking English again after so many months, even to a priest.

  Father Napier ran his fingers through his sandy hair, barely able to suppress his disgust. His future success in founding missions could depend on McKinnon who had lived amongst the south savannah Indians for years and so he did not say what was on his mind. But when he discovered that McKinnon lived with two sisters as his wives, he could not restrain himself.

  ‘I myself think that is an intolerable arrangement,’ he said sharply.

  ‘Nevertheless, that is the case. It is an Indian tradition.’ McKinnon enjoyed the priest’s discomfort and continued: ‘Two of my daughters are over there.’ And he pointed to Beatrice and Wifreda who were amongst a group of mainly naked children, listening to the musicians. ‘They’re staying with the Marinheiro family to learn Portuguese.’

  The cacophonous band started up again in the background. The Bishop was making a speech in halting Portuguese that was not understood by most of the Macusi Indians who had gathered round.

  ‘I think I should found a mission right here,’ said Father Napier.

  ‘It is not a good place,’ said McKinnon, spurred by a resentment of the priest. ‘Nothing grows here and there is no good fishing and no game. The Indians would not like it here.’

  Immediately, Father Napier suspected that McKinnon was trying to subvert his evangelical purpose.

  ‘Well. I shall give it a try anyway,’ he said defiantly.

  Within weeks, Father Napier had set up a mission and changed the name of Zariwa to St Ignatius.

  It was some months later, after he had firmly established himself in the north savannahs, that Father Napier made his first, tentative journey beyond the Kanaku Mountains to the Wapisiana territory of the south. He travelled to Waronawa by bullock cart. Progress was slow. Gradually, the Kanakus grew closer and with his guide, he made his way round the most westerly point of the range and across the Sawariwau creek.

  In the dry season, the palm-thatch roofs of the small Indian settlements look ash-grey from a distance and glint silver in the sun. This was the sight that greeted Father Napier as he approached Waronawa.

  Despite his reservations about the new priest, McKinnon would never have dreamed of refusing him hospitality. With no roads, hotels, lodging houses or shops, the savannahs could prove a harsh environment for strangers. Droughts and floods alternately scoured the arid landscape. For months at a time, the sky was a stretched blue canvas bleached almost white by the heat. Then, during the rainy season, grey blubbery clouds filled the sky and tempestuous rains and winds whipped lake, rivers and ponds into a frenzy.

  As he approached the settlement, a Wapisiana man of about forty came running up from the direction of the Rupununi River. It was Uncle Shibi-din. His brown back gleamed. His arrows were grasped in one hand and his bow was slung over one shoulder. Several large houri fish swung to and fro, skewered on one of his arrows. Father Napier was struck by the man’s face, full of life and vigour. He nodded and smiled a greeting. Shibi-din ran straight on and ignored him.

  Maba watched cautiously from the door as the sandy-haired priest in his black robe climbed over the side of the cart and jumped to the ground. She noted immediately that his springy gait was notsuited to the savannahs. It wasted energy. You have to walk at the right pace in the savannahs. Walk too fast and the savannah will slow you down. Walk too slow and i
t will leave you behind and you will die. This man was nervous and jerky like a fowl-cock.

  Maba dissolved back into the shadows as he came up the slope, leaving the greetings to McKinnon who came to the door in jovial and expansive mood and showed Father Napier to a hammock where he could rest after his bone-shaking ride.

  Later the priest got up and explored his surroundings.

  Beatrice and Danny were now the oldest of ten children and the family had spread through two other adobe and thatch buildings. Inside the first of these, Father Napier found that it was darker but with more space than he had imagined. Rooms had been made with wooden partition walls that did not reach all the way up to the eaves so that air could circulate easily. The place was full of pets. Close to the wall, a baby ant-eater slunk past him. Green parrots perched on top of the partitions. Puppies survived as best they could. Baby tortoises dithered underfoot. A brown monkey gibbered in a cage that hung by the back door and a tapir made free use of all the facilities.

  Some of the rooms had beds but in most of them, hammocks had been slung. One room seemed to have been put aside for leather work and was full of deer- and cow-hides. Another was used by McKinnon as a dark room for his photography. Outside were two open outhouses for storing tackle and harnesses and mending gear for the ranch cowboys.

  While Father Napier poked around downstairs, McKinnon sat upstairs reading. Unusually, the main house had a second storey, another of McKinnon’s innovations. To his delight, Father Napier had brought with him several old and yellowing copies of The Times. The sun poured in as he read.

  Apart from the treat of having newspapers to read, McKinnon was relishing the perverse pleasure of having told both the Anglican priest from Yupokari and Father Napier, the Catholic, that whichever one of them reached Waronawa first could baptise his children. He reckoned himself to be a liberal and not fanatical enough to ban religion from his house altogether just because he himself had rejected it.

  The two priests had been involved in an undignified race across eighty miles of savannah in order to be the first to rescue the lost souls of the McKinnon family. Father Napier had won.

  ‘You can use my dark room for mass,’ said McKinnon casually.

  All the children were gathered together except Danny, who had been baptised an Anglican on a previous visit to Yupokari, and Beatrice and Wifreda who had already been baptised by the Bishop when they were in Brazil.

  When Father Napier enquired about Maba and Zuna, McKinnon replied provocatively: ‘Oh it’s too late for them to change. They believe in a wonderful tree, you know, that has all the fruits of the earth on it. It was chopped down by two brothers, Tuminkar and Duid – the Macusi call them Macunaima and Chico. Anyway, a huge flood sprang out of the stump. I think I rather prefer that story to the story of Noah.’

  Father Napier bristled but refused to become involved in an argument although he sensed the mockery in McKinnon’s tone. He understood that Waronawa was a key settlement in the south savannahs. Wapisiana came from miles around to squat on the ground, exchange news, discuss problems and barter goods at the small wooden store. McKinnon seemed to be accepted as an unofficial touchau or chief of the Wapisiana. The priest could not afford to antagonise him. However, time was on his side. I will convert the Macusi first, he thought. I have already made a beginning there.

  The women took their morning bathe together naked in the lake under a blank sky. One fat, smooth-browed woman trod water, keeping afloat by paddling her arms.

  ‘I don’t like that priest. He walk funny,’ she said.

  ‘Just wait. He’ll go away. They all go away if you wait long enough.’ Her neighbour was washing her hair and ducking underwater to rinse it. ‘My husband met some Macusi who said he’s causing problems there. Apparently he built himself a church-house and a couple went and spent the night making love in it. He came shouting round the village in a big, loud voice and said he’d have to build it all over again.’

  ‘I don’t trust Macusis,’ said the first woman. ‘You can’t believe a word they say. They might be getting something nice from him that they don’t want us to have.’

  ‘He likes a man to have one wife and so do I,’ said Auntie Bobo, floating face up like an overturned turtle. ‘If I thought my husband had someone else, I would chop him.’

  ‘Maba and Zuna seem to get on all right now,’ said another woman, out of the blue.

  ‘Yes. Better than they used to. They were jealous bad. They never knew whose hammock he was going to rock. It drove Maba mad. She cut Zuna’s head open with a stone once.’

  The Giant Grasshopper

  That evening, most of the Wapisiana from the settlement crowded silently round McKinnon’s table and helped themselves to the food. People had come out of curiosity to see the new priest. Some of the villagers settled down to eat sitting on the floor with their backs to the plank walls.

  On the table stood a huge cauldron filled to the brim with pepper-pot. The children climbed on the benches to dip their cassava bread into the pot. A side of roast deer had been carried in from the outside kitchen and sat next to a clay dish of farine stuffing. Piles of cassava bread stood alongside dishes of rice, bowls of shibi and gourds of coconut water.

  Two of the vaqueiros started to discusss in Wapisiana whether or not to go after the jaguar which had caught a calf and bitten it on the head. Father Napier could not understand a word of what was being said. He made a mental note that he must learn the language if he was to make any headway at all with converting these people. McKinnon was listening seriously to the discussion. It was not even the rainy season yet, the time when jaguars and pumas usually come after the pigs and cattle. Occasionally, McKinnon remembered to translate for his guest.

  Auntie Bobo, who had stout legs and a man’s laugh, sat with her back to the wall and wriggled her toes.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to get him down by the river,’ she said, looking over at Father Napier. ‘He’s so thin he looks like he’d snap in two in my arms like a twig.’ She roared with laughter.

  Beatrice and Wifreda came running over to join the fun.

  ‘There was this girl,’ continued Auntie Bobo, warming to her audience, ‘who was told not to go down by the river when her husband was away. Well, she did of course. And a huge hairy monster came and had sex with her. His penis was so big and he fucked so hard that the penis came right out through the top of her head. And the girl turned into – oh what’s the bird’s name – the one with a bald patch on its head that waddles like it’s sore?’

  ‘A coot,’ giggled Beatrice.

  All the women were smiling and Auntie Bobo laughed so hard she had to wipe her eyes with the corner of her skirt. Maba was frowning as she looked at Wifreda.

  ‘We must do something about Wifreda’s eyes. She can hardly see the small grass seeds when she’s threading necklaces.’

  ‘Get Koko Lupi to ask the ducks for help. That’s what she did for my daughter’s eyes. Ducks make a good, clear path through the muck on top of a pond. She’ll get them to make Wifreda’s eyes shiny and clear the same way,’ said a neighbour.

  Father Napier was explaining earnestly to McKinnon that he would confirm the children when they were old enough to received proper instruction.

  ‘They must be able to understand the idea of eternal life after death through Christ and the resurrection,’ he said earnestly. McKinnon grinned cynically.

  Maba was taking in what her neighbour had said about the ducks.

  ‘Yes, ducks,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘and maybe parrots too. They cut a clean path through woodsmoke. She needs help from any of those creatures that would make her eyes clear.’

  Something had set Auntie Bobo off again. She rocked with laughter and pointed at Shibi-din who was drunk on parakari and staggering towards a bench.

  Just then, Danny came flying through the door, his black hair sticking up on top like two crossed fingers, his face glowing.

  ‘Mamai. I kill a rat. I mash it on the head, then
I cut it, then I lick it in the belly and all the guts spill out. It was a young one.’

  ‘Where was the rat?’ asked Maba.

  ‘Under my hammock.’

  ‘Take one of the dogs in there with you tonight.’

  McKinnon called Danny over and introduced Father Napier to his eldest son who grimaced with shyness as he mumbled hello in English.

  ‘Well, young man. Soon it will be Easter and you will be on holiday. What do you do then?’

  Danny was confused.

  ‘I walk about and I sleep,’ he answered.

  And for the first time it occurred to McKinnon that his son could barely speak English and that he had had no schooling.

  ‘The children are going to school in Georgetown soon,’ he mumbled gruffly.

  Which was the first anyone had heard of it.

  Shadows jigged on the high thatched eaves. The women and children cleared everything away, throwing bones and scraps outside for the dogs and chickens.

  And then Father Napier did an astonishing thing that was remembered and talked about for months afterwards. In the gloomy, flickering light, he got up from the table, went over to his bags, took a violin out from its case and began to tune it.

  He then proceeded to play the last movement of Mozart Sonata K.304 in E minor.

  Auntie Bobo’s body stiffened and jerked as she clamped her hand over her mouth to prevent the laughter bursting out. Everybody watched as the priest paced the floor, his body bending backwards and forwards, his right arm holding the bow, sawing at the instrument with gusto.

  Someone remarked that he looked and sounded like a great grasshopper rubbing its legs together and the room fell silent as everybody absorbed this information with some concern.

  Moved by the idea that he was introducing these people to the classics for the first time and convinced, even as he played, that the awed silence proved how entranced they were by the music, Father Napier felt his eyes fill with tears.