The Ventriloquist's Tale

by Pauline Melville

  Beatrice slipped off her shoes and walked away from the ranch.

  Kanaima

  Leaving the settlement behind and putting as much distance as possible between herself and the sounds of the wedding party afforded Beatrice some relief. Beads of sweat broke out on her face and a dark patch of sweat, in the centre of her back, marked her blouse.

  She walked northwards along a trail with a few stunted, scrubby bushes on either side. The scorching wind began to bluster, hissing and singing across the savannahs. After a while, it blew more steadily. A long-legged jabiru bird stalked along the dry bed of a stream beside her.

  A prolonged, harsh rattle like a shak-shak brought her to an instinctive standstill. She waited, motionless, for about ten minutes until she saw the zigzag pattern of the rattlesnake’s tubular body slide into the cool shade of a termite’s nest.

  She pulled at a strand of black hair as she walked, twisting it round her fingers. She had thought the ceremony would leave her unmoved. Not true. She had imagined she could survive it with no ill effects.

  Walking numbed the grief. Some distance from the house, she stepped for a moment on to a large flat rock-stone that lay across the path. Standing in the sun, in the full light of day, Beatrice McKinnon underwent some kind of seizure. Her head snapped back. As she stared at the sun, her eyes rolled back in her head. Her arms were flung up in mid-air and remained there quite rigid for several seconds in some sort of fit or spasm.

  During those few seconds, all the grief turned into violent fury. The hairs on her head bristled with rage. Her face turned dark, her mouth began to work, her features contorted. The wind blew strands of black hair across her mouth. At the same time, a noise erupted from her throat, a long, choking rattle that seemed to have its origins in the base of her spine and shook her whole body.

  When she came back to her senses, she was throwing up at the side of the track and her eyes stung with the tears that come with vomiting. In a sort of stupor, she chose one of the many criss-crossing trails and made her way to Koko Lupi’s house on the outermost reaches of the settlement.

  Koko Lupi’s house was a dismal, poky hut, reeking of smoke from the clay-brick stove. Chickens and ducks wandered about outside and by the door stood a hollowed log and a pounder. Some fresh fish lay on a bamboo table covered in palm fronds. Beatrice could not see as she first entered but she heard a shuffling flutter like a bird rising from its nest.

  ‘Kaimen?’ Koko Lupi greeted her in Wapisiana. As Beatrice’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see Koko Lupi’s toothless face, sharp as a hawk. Two of her grandchildren, with dirty faces, stared listlessly from where they sat on their sleeping mats. A debris of half-eaten corn-cobs, turtle-shells and bones lay on the earth floor. A colony of red ants attacked the shreds of fruit on a sucked mango seed.

  ‘I want something to make the priest dead.’ Beatrice spat her request right out. The voice came straight from her belly, much deeper than usual.

  Koko Lupi shuffled around and poked through various piles of seeds, beans, dried plants, birds’ eggs, dried cassava leaves, various powders in calabashes and two mounds of little wisdom stones. All these were arranged on blocks of tree trunks next to a pot of fish and cassava stew.

  Eventually, she picked up some dark brown beans and wrapped them in a leaf.

  ‘Grate them and put them in the food. It would take a very strong piaiman to recover from these. They don’t work all at once. They work over a long, long time. I don’t like him either. He tries to strike the sun out of the sky. Him with his dead god on a stick. He thinks he can stand between the sun and the moon. Give him this and leave the rest to the sun. The sun will finish him off.’

  Beatrice took them.

  ‘Don’t use them near here. No. No.’ She waved her arms in front of her face as if trying to shoo away a hornet.

  Then she asked with an unpleasant leer: ‘How is your brother?’

  ‘He is all right,’ said Beatrice calmly.

  Koko Lupi picked up some leaves and swizzled them between her hands.

  ‘Take some of these leaves. They won’t make you fly but they’ll make you walk fast. They will make it like your legs have been whittled down to the bone and you can run along on the points like the wind. You rub the leaves all over your body like this.’ She rubbed Beatrice’s arm vigorously with a few of the leaves. The arm tingled and went numb.

  When Beatrice arrived back at Waronawa after nightfall, there were hammocks slung everywhere with an orchestra of drunken snores coming from them. About twenty bodies lay in the upstairs room. Silently, she collected tasso, farine and a hammock for her journey. One of the musicians lay sprawled across the kitchen table.

  Her plan was to reach the village of Baidanau which Father Napier would have to pass through on his way to the Wai-Wai. She must get there before him. That was where Aro, Shibi-din’s wife, now lived as the second wife of the touchau. Beatrice knew that if she told Aro that the priest was going to insist on a man having only one wife, Aro would worry about her position. She would almost certainly agree to doctor his food with the grated beans.

  Before she left, Beatrice went and peeped in at Sonny. He was rocking in his small hammock and by the light of the moon she could see that his eyes were open and staring into a dark corner of the room. It was not possible to tell whether he was awake or asleep. She crept out again. There were plenty of people to look after him while she was away.

  It was the same journey that she had once made with Danny. She took a boat and paddled for the first few miles, then made her way across the savannahs until she reached the edge of the forest. It was easier to travel across the savannahs before the sun rose.

  As she was about to enter the forest, she remembered being taught by Uncle Shibi-din that she should explain to the maigok, the forest spirit, the nature and purpose of her journey. This she did and then set off, nervous but determined.

  The trees towered in ghostly grey columns, lacking all foliage until the top. If she looked up, filigree tracery patches of colourless sky were just visible between the leaves.

  She did not look up often. The danger was underfoot. Fallen trees had crashed across the trails and the forest was littered with great rocks. In some places, crevices covered with leaves and twigs gave a treacherous impression of a firm footing. Roots of trees where the earth had been washed away formed an eerie network, stretching over chasms some forty or fifty feet deep, at the bottom of which she could see water running. Sometimes, she had to balance along a tacouba, straddling a creek twenty feet below. Despite rubbing herself with the leaves, she seemed to go at a snail’s pace. The boulders became bigger. She moved along in a humid grey gloom. She marked the trail as she went. Once or twice she lost it but soon found it again.

  After two days, the nature of the landscape changed. The deep forest thinned out. The rarely used trail became ill-defined. There was no water to be had. Worst of all, there were pale thickets of giant thorns, some three to six feet high. Previously, Wapisiana had attempted to take cattle through on this route and to transport goods, but every journey became such an ordeal that it had fallen into disuse.

  Beatrice felt almost weightless. Fuelled with cool rage, she continued through the arid wasteland.

  It was outside the village of Baidanau that she caught sight of Aro on her way to bathe. Aro was astonished that Beatrice had made such a journey on her own. After Beatrice had spoken to her for a while, she nodded seriously and took the package of beans without hesitation.

  Later that day, after Beatrice had gone, Aro heard a noise outside her house as if people were mumbling or talking in low voices. Anxiously, she peered through the window, but it was only the hens circling a rattlesnake, walking round it and saying: ‘Coo. Coo. Coo.’

  On his return journey to the Wai-Wai, Father Napier sat back in the corial and weighed up his achievements. He was happy. Plagued by the heat and insects, but happy. The men paddled the boat steadily. Titus, the Macusi with broad flat ch
eekbones, and his young son Linus were accompanying him as they had the first time. Father Napier cast his mind back over his achievements like a general reliving a successful military campaign.

  Single-handed, he had converted most of the Macusi in the north. After an irritating delay, for which he mainly blamed McKinnon’s resistance, he had made inroads into the Wapisiana in the south. His brow puckered as he thought of McKinnon for a moment and wondered how such a hospitable man could hold such despicable views. Father Napier had thought that McKinnon would return to the fold after the business with Beatrice and Danny, but McKinnon had just become more evasive, distracted and withdrawn. The priest was satisfied with the way he had handled the affair between Beatrice and Danny. He was especially gratified by Danny’s marriage to Sylvana.

  As soon as they arrived at Baidanau, Father Napier’s party was provided with a pot of stewed peppers. There was no meat in the pot. Father Napier burned his tongue as he dipped his bread into the stew and ate it. A stout, friendly woman, one of the wives of the touchau, brought him some pieces of yam which were dry and a dingy brown colour. Linus, Titus’s young son, polished off half the yams which Father Napier found too dry to eat.

  The next morning, Linus complained of a sore mouth. Father Napier waited two more days but Linus became worse and the priest decided that he could no longer keep the people in the next village waiting. He had heard that some people, including several Wai-Wai, had already assembled there and he did not want to disappoint them. He set off, leaving Titus to nurse his son, telling them to catch up as soon as Linus recovered.

  Shortly after leaving Baidanau, Father Napier felt unwell. He had a sharp pain under his tongue. They pitched camp for the night. After a day’s walk, both his tongue and his gums started to swell. His throat felt in shreds. He had earache, headache and high fever. As they proceeded, it became increasingly difficult for him to open his mouth. To utter a whole sentence was impossible. Father Napier wrapped himself in his hammock against the cold night air and waited for the comfort of daylight. By nightfall of the next day they reached a village where there was water, but his tongue and gums were coated with white, foul-smelling pus. He could neither spit nor swallow. It was pointless trying to continue his journey. They turned round and headed back for Baidanau.

  Back at Baidanau, Father Napier discovered a tin of condensed milk that someone had slipped into his bag after the wedding at Waronawa. Linus lay in his hammock, his mouth distended and full of white matter. The priest managed to give him the last rites. Barely able to speak himself, Father Napier indicated that they should bring milk for himself and the boy. They brought milk for him but refused to give it to the boy.

  ‘He dead already,’ they said.

  For four days, Father Napier eked out the cow’s milk with the condensed milk. High fever had him in a constant sweat. His soutane was streaked with yellowy-white mucus and pus. He craved milk, milk and only milk. Water was not able to relieve or satisfy him. Since the onset of the illness he had been unable to sleep. He was hardly aware when Linus had died. Titus buried him and came to tell the priest that he was leaving.

  After a week, Father Napier became convinced that his only hope of survival was to beg for a horse and make his way back to Danny McKinnon’s house at Wichabai.

  The villagers agreed to let him have a horse. His guide had to sit on the horse behind him because he was not strong enough to stay upright on his own.

  It was the worst ride imaginable. Once they left the forest, heat blasted the savannahs. The horse had to pick its way over huge clods of dried earth, some two feet across and one and a half feet high, before they struck a trail.

  Father Napier longed to see Danny. He felt that Danny would be kind to him. Danny was under an obligation to him. He had saved Danny’s soul.

  But when they finally arrived, Danny and Sylvana were not there. They had gone to Ruruwau where he was helping to build a house for an Indian family. A message was sent. Some hours later, Danny arrived on horseback. Unable to speak, the priest wrote down what had happened. Danny immediately sent for his sisters to come from Waronawa and help.

  Not more than two hours after Danny had helped Father Napier into his hammock, the sound of horses announced the arrival of Beatrice, Alice and Wifreda, who had not yet returned to Pirara after the wedding. All three of them were garlanded with smiles and proceeded straightaway to administer comfort.

  They washed his face and hands, scrubbed the room with lemons to freshen the air and slipped spoonfuls of tapioca porridge into his mouth. He noticed Wifreda sprinkling brown nutmeg on to it, to make it more delicious, but each time a spoon touched his lips, he winced and wrenched his head away.

  Every day, the McKinnon sisters rode over. After two weeks Father Napier began to feel better. He sat up in a chair. The McKinnons sat around him, smiling but not talking. He found the presence of Beatrice something of an embarrassment, but she seemed perfectly at ease and unruffled by the situation.

  Danny swung in his hammock.

  ‘Fancy,’ he said to the priest, ‘even after all your teaching, these Indians are still superstitious.’

  When it pleased him, Danny spoke as if he were not one himself.

  He went on casually: ‘They’ve been telling me you’ve been poisoned.’

  Father Napier laughed. Wifreda looked uncomfortable. Alice chipped in with what she had heard.

  ‘Somebody told me there was a Macusi man who had two wives and you taught him to behave like a Christian and give one up. The Macusi wife was so vex with you that she follow you to where you were going and put poison in a yam you ate. They showed me the poison she used – a dark brown bean. It has effects that last for months. You must be careful.’

  Beatrice listened, composed and thoughtful, her head to one side. Wifreda butted in.

  ‘Macusis are like that. Untrustworthy. We Wapisiana wouldn’t do that. Did you find the tin of milk I put in your bag?’ she asked, quickly.

  ‘Oh, that was you, was it? I swear that milk saved my life.’

  A silence fell on the room. The guava tree next to the house was bearing fruit. Now and then, one tumbled on to the roof. Danny levered himself out of his hammock and wedged his vaqueiro hat on to his head.

  ‘I have to be at Ruruwau before dark.’

  Making sure the priest was comfortable, the McKinnons said their goodbyes and left. Wifreda was returning to Pirara. The others felt no need to come back now that Father Napier was so much better. His helpers would see to his needs.

  Danny turned his horse to the left and headed for Ruruwau. The women headed straight on for Waronawa.

  It was another full week before Father Napier felt well enough to travel to his base mission at St Ignatius. Still a little unsteady on his feet, he collected together his belongings, including the tin trunk, and set off.

  Fire-Burn

  Father Napier only undertook light duties at St Ignatius until his strength returned. Then he decided it was time to retrace his missionary route through the whole savannah region and inspect the progress of each mission he had set up.

  He travelled on horseback, but for some reason he could not keep his focus on the tracks. His mind kept wandering. The silver-blue sheen of the sandpaper leaves on the ground reminded him of the Scottish lakes of his boyhood and he thought with longing of the cool Highlands.

  The sun tormented him more than it had done previously. After riding through Wapisiana territory in the south savannahs for a week, he began to dread the heat of the midday sun.

  Not far from Aishalton was a tiny hut which served as the District Commissioner’s office on his rare tours of duty. On one trip, Father Napier decided to shelter there.

  All he wanted was a cool place to rest before continuing his journey. He forced open the wooden door. It had not been open for months. The imprisoned air from inside burst out to greet him in a blast of heat. His nostrils tingled with the sweet, dry dust from the palm roof which made him want to sneeze. If anything,
it was hotter inside than out. He found it almost impossible to breathe. Father Napier choked back a sob. There was no furniture in the room apart from a small table and a chair. He sat on the chair and it collapsed. He became childishly tearful as he realised there was no escape from the scorching heat.

  In a moment of petulance, he knew exactly what to do. Fight fire with fire. He wasted no time. He pulled out some grey palm stalks and dried brown leaves from the wall and laid them underneath the table. He set them alight and strode out of the hut, never looking back at the aery flames which flickered to and fro on the roof, barely visible, making the air above it ripple with heat.

  Four weeks later, Father Napier turned up on foot at Pirara in the north savannahs. Wifreda and Sam Deershanks now had a sizeable ranch of their own with the usual settlement of Macusi houses around it. Wifreda had felt odd at first, living in Macusi territory, but after the first two of her sons were born there, she began to feel more relaxed.

  Father Napier appeared to be very depressed when he arrived and asked if he could stay there for a while. Sam and Wifreda responded warmly and agreed that he could stay as long as he wanted.

  The first night, Wifreda felt too shy to try and say grace at the table with the priest present. She asked him if he would say it. He started to say the familiar words and then found himself singing ‘The Erl King’ by Schubert.

  Feeling confused and out of place, he went to his room.

  Over the next few days, he seemed happier and spent the time playing a collection of records which Sam Deershanks had acquired for his wind-up gramophone. At mealtimes, Father Napier told them how he had spent the last few weeks visiting his missions in the south and how pleased he was with their progress. He related with some pride how, single-handed, he had secured most of the north savannahs, a good proportion of the south and had made a start with the Wai-Wai in the name of the Master.