by Frank Achebe
As to bathing in the river, it did not make any difference to Zach. And as to the legends, he was not sure whether he believed them. But that part of the mysterious river where he had first taken his bath held a different mystery for him, a pernicious one, one that he never forgot till the very end.
# # #
Daniel was received into the Lioness’ Den. He was led by one of the house helps to a room that was specially made for Madam Békhtèn’s boys. He inspected the room. It did not reach his tastes but it certainly was not far from it. He unpacked and in a minute kicked in.
The journey to Nānti had been a very long one and the roads, being bad, had not allowed him much sleep. However, he was not at all sleepy. That would come much later. His mind went back to the prior arrangements that had led him to the woman who was as old as his own mother. He was a fine young man with the looks that matched Madam Békhtèn’s vain desires. He was handsome and strongly built. The myth that young men of his build were better off as sportsmen did not hold in his case. And mind you, he was not a male prostitute. No. He was a young man of very modern and wanton ideas tucked away in an actor’s body. The first meeting he’d had with the woman in a hotel room as arranged by a friend of his, assured him that he had gotten a great chance! Like most young men of his type, who had an excessive trust in their ‘intelligence’ and the place it would give them in the world, especially in the coming one, he was lazy. The woman’s coming would alleviate some of his financial needs and deep down; he even believed that he could dupe her by some sharp wits.
He was also a sensualist. Addicted to pornography, it was his chance of implementing all the sexual fantasises that had accumulated in his mind. He was certain he would live off her and make a way for himself in the world.
There were agreements. He was not to have anything with any other girl—especially her daughters—in the period of the contract. There had been tests and for that, no condoms. He was not to mingle with the townspeople. He would be allowed to travel out of the town at least once in two months. There was a good pay attached to all of that. Bleh bleh bleh. Both parties were satisfied and could not wait to get to work.
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts and he sat up and called out a ‘Come in.’ The door opened and a young lady whose best features were evident that day unlike many others, walked in carrying a tray of tea and bread and butter.
She was Ūö. According to her mother’s instructions around the house, she was to be serving ‘Danny’ until he could serve himself. The house helps were barred from his room.
Ūö was certain that the boy would turn out to be idiotic and mindless like the many others she had known. They were all scums and she remembered very vividly how one of them had almost been drowned in the River after she reported to her mother of his attempts at raping her. They dared not touch her. And her mother had taken out time to ‘explain’ to her ‘angel’. ‘I know you don’t judge your mother so there is nothing really to explain. Forgive me and promise me you won’t end up like your mother.’ She had smiled and shaken her head as if to say: ‘You so do not have any idea how I want to end up.’
They did not last and Madam Békhtèn was far from easily satisfied. She was also getting rid of them when she felt she had had enough of them. They were not durable in her hands.
They were all scums after all. One had tried turning her into a slave in her mother’s house. He had ordered her about and she had followed his orders until one Thursday morning, she had poured hot water on him. Being one that her mother was not going to play with a bit, she had tossed the idiot out of her house. From when she was sixteenth birthday, they had been asking her for quickies. Two confessed their love to her and urged her to elope with them until they had been caught stealing from her mother’s purse and given the beating of their lives.
If they succeeded with anyone, it was with Borûn.
What business did she have with those loathsome bags of filth? It was more from respect for her mother.
However, as she stepped into that room with the tray in her hand, she was not expecting anything different. But something different waited for her.
She stood there staring at the young man. He was not the most handsome of them nor was the chance that he was going to last any longer than theirs any higher. However, as she looked into his eyes and he into hers, something passed between them.
She knew it was going to be different with him.
Chapter Fourteen: The Bridge
The anxieties and hopefulness of seeing the mayor had disappeared by the time he returned from the stream. The hunter’s warning that the man they called Hééb was not going to let him anywhere close to his master had tempered those anxieties and hopefulness. He would have to take his time.
The boy would not take his drugs and by midday, he seemed perfectly normal. By midday, the sun was up and the wet day was drying rapidly. Then the hunter returned. He was carrying his gun, which was almost as tall as its owner. Zach had not had anything for the day as he was saving what he had left which could afford a little less than a day’s meal. It was weekend and even if he could make withdrawals in any bank around town, (there was no commercial bank in Nānti) he would have to keep it for any eventuality that could not outlive the weekend, especially with the boy. Besides, the hunter brought with him fresh corn boiled in salty water as well as purple-coloured pears that had been softened by being soaked in hot water. Zach was familiar with the taste, it was not his first time.
The hunter lifted his gun in a comical aim at Zach’s head and announced: ‘Want to see some live action?’
Zach had been in the shack from morning until that time though he had spent a while after his bath at the riverside and on his way back, relishing whatever sights of the country he could manage. As to his clothes, they remained unchanged. He had brushed them at the hems and all the other places dirt had accumulated by dipping a hand into the river and brushing it against the spots. It was not effective but he could not help it. The sun was not up at the time, he put them back on before returning to the batcher house.
Zach was obliged. He liked the idea and they started off munching on the corn cobs on their way.
They entered the street that led up to the shack and made their way until they were in the boulevard and off it. A few more turns, they were crossing a path that ran through a dumpsite. The road that slid around the dumpsite was dirty for the rains had carried lumps of dirt onto the road and had blocked it in places. They had walked through it raising their legs very high and minding where they landed them.
They continued down the path through what was a wide stretch of farmland. There was another stream, a smaller stretch of farmland, a forest of bamboo and another road, a deserted one. They continued up the road with the hunter commenting on a few of the sights. Since he was excited and possessed a keen appreciation of the town, it was enjoyable for his partner.
The walk continued until they were down a wide gully overgrown by bananas and plantains where more dirt were dumped. They came up the gully and Zach was already becoming weary when they made a turn through a low brush and onto a wide road. They followed the road and just as the hunter was telling his mate he was hopeful that the walk had not gotten too long, Zach saw what made his heart skip not one beat but too many—a bridge.
The bridge was not actually in full sight but Zach knew it was a bridge, – the bridge. He had seen it before—from that very distance. He had. He had seen…
His walk speed reduced at the sight and his two hands went into the pockets of his coat, which had not yet fully dried. He shook his head and continued the walk hopeful of anything that was going to save him from his certain embarrassment by the bridge.
The hunter was saying something about their destination being on the other side of the bridge. But Zach was not hearing anything. His feet felt as if they were going to melt from under him.
A few more steps, they stood facing the bridge. It was an iron bridge of about two hundred metres an
d four metres wide. It looked like an abandoned one for it was rarely used—not by cars. Its light blue metallic colour had resisted years of rain and sunlight. There were floorboards fitted under the bridge. They were almost four inches thick. They gave the bridge a look of solidity.
The hunter was already on the bridge that he had been on a thousand times before. The other man was on the other side of the road that led up to it with a grave look on his face.
Zach did not want to disappoint the other man who was having a pleasurable time by turning back just when they had almost reached their destination. But he knew, from the depth of the valley under the bridge and from the length of the bridge, that he was not getting on that bridge.
Zach was scared of heights to the death especially heights that opened to great depths like the one that was under the bridge. Heights held great terrors for him. His first memories of nightmares as a child were about someone pushing him off great heights. He would wake into a fever, migraines and on occasion, on the floor instead of the bed. He run into his mother’s bedroom from fright. He would snuggle into her arms. When he grew older and could no longer slip into a sickly mother’s arms; he would turn on the lights and instead of sleeping on the bed, (from where he could possibly fall off) he would take the floor.
More than just that fear, he knew there was some mystery about that bridge. His sensibilities were growing stronger and more than feel that, he knew it in a concrete way. Even though his recent nightmares were still vague, he knew it had a bridge inside it—this one bridge.
‘What is wrong with you?’ He heard the other man ask.
He shook his head and answered: ‘I’m sorry but I’m scared of heights. My feet are already wobbling from this distance. I’m not getting onto that bridge.’
He sounded firm with his objections.
The hunter exhaled, his feeling of disappointment heightening. ‘It’s just a bridge, sir. Even little kids cross it; they even play on it. Besides, it’s strong…if that’s….’
Zach was really sorry but it was not happening. He was not getting on that bridge. ‘I suppose we can find another way around it.’
The hunter agreed and led the way down the road grumbling to himself as he did. Zach stood from the side of the road where he had taken a seat and followed him. They walked in moody silence till they found a place through the valley that had steps leading down into the valley. On the other side were steps leading up to the other side.
‘It’s useless,’ the hunter said breaking Zach’s hopes of a mediation, ‘the water level is very high. It’s August for God’s sake.’
Zach looked in and saw that the stream flowing through the valley was galloping angrily as if chasing him off. Not only was it high, it was moving in a rage.
Zach returned to the road, sat on the other side of it, and tried to take it all in. He was disappointed by himself as he was embarrassed that another man was watching him at it. When it came to human beings, Zach was a fearless one. But not bridges and certainly not this one bridge.
The other man joined him still grumbling, shaking his head in disappointment and frustration and cringing from embarrassment—all at the same time in a way that made him look like he was in one of his drunken frenzies.
‘I’m sorry,’ Zach told him. The sun was still on its way down. By their reckoning, it was about three in the afternoon.
Still hopeful of something that could assuage the man’s grumpy temper, he said: ‘Tell me about it.’ Zach was grateful that he did for the hunter was a great storyteller in his own rights for he knew the town like the palm of his own hands—and was always willing to tell and show. The same eagerness had made him want to take his new friend out on the short excursion through the woods. His good spirits returned when he had the same chance to do it otherwise.
# # #
It was during the talk, in place of the walk now gone sour, that the hunter told the story of the town to Zach. Through it, he would stand, draw in the sand, point, giggle like a kid, mimic the priest, the mayor or whoever, whistle like a bird when one came into the story, neigh like a horse, bleat like a goat that by the time the sun was down, Zach did not want it to ever end.
‘The hunting profession has its own ethics’ the hunter had begun with his earlier eagerness. The chance to go again cheered him up. From the abundance of what followed in a spirited lecture about the hunting profession, Zach was amazed at one particular thing among a few others—the man’s sense of nature.
‘How do you know all that?’
The hunter shook his head and clapped at a fly in his face, ‘No one taught me. It was there, written somewhere in the wind, the waters. You could feel it. I don’t know how best to express myself but we are one with nature and the hunter’s task is not to violate this oneness but to preserve it. That is why we do not shoot at pregnant or nursing animals. We don’t do that. We’d rather shoot the ageing ones and the sick ones.’
‘How’d you know which one is sick or aged?’
‘The first gunshot is not to kill but to find out among the pack, which is the mother, the sick or the dying.’
‘Oh, from the way they scuttle away?’ Zach observed.
‘Exactly! You got it!’
‘Phew!’
‘But that aside, we have our own sensibilities.’
Zach had learnt that there were wild goats, deer, grass cutters, rabbits, bush rats, hares, monkeys and buffalo in the stretch of the wild before them.
‘There is guilt that goes into our work, at least for me. There are sights you do not want to violate and when you do so, you have to live with the guilt that you have violated nature.’
One of such sights was a kid suckling its mother. ‘It’s so beautiful that you wouldn’t want to separate one from the other. In the case where you happen to, you will have to deal with the guilt—if you are an overly sensitive man like me.’
There was a solemn pause after which the hunter continued: ‘There is something in the watery eyes of the animals that makes me giddy staring into their eyes. It’s like a high tide. You feel as if something is going to swallow and drown you in a flash. I don’t know but it is always like they are at your mercy and you wouldn’t want to hurt someone who is at your mercy. And even though nature has given you the license to kill, you seek justification in something else before you use it.’
‘Like?’
‘When you set a trap for an animal, you will suppose it was its greed that killed it and you will find your justification in that.’
He stopped and looked into Zach’s eyes as if he were searching for something. The deep stare lasted for a brief instant. He saw something.
‘It is almost as if you can tell a man’s fate from looking into his eyes. Same with the animals and perhaps even much more with them, because in the wild, they hide absolutely nothing.’
That was received in silence.
‘I hardly eat my catch when I make them. Not when I also kill and prepare them. Especially when…’ he stopped abruptly and resumed almost immediately. ‘I cannot understand why a man would take the life of his fellow man. I have always believed that to do so you would have to kill a man from behind him. You would not want to do so looking into his eyes. The tide there is even higher.’
‘Not everyone sees that tide…’ Zach answered. ‘I have known men who killed their own brothers in cold blood looking deep into their eyes.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, there are men who don’t need any justification to kill. It’s like Death does its work through them. They are their own license to kill. They need no other, not even in the causes they kill for, if there were any. I would doubt if those men ever had any guilt while or after killing a fellow man, especially in cold blood.’
‘What makes such men?’
‘I have no idea.’
Zach sincerely could not tell but I have something to say.
I guess it is just history and nature that endow such men with such powers, when they wish to upse
t their own balance. They could kill a man and get away with it, even win medals for the deed. They may even become statesmen, generals, Alexanders, Napoleons and…. To be this, one must risk one’s humanity; one must close one’s eyes to his own humanity and to the humanity of others. No man can take that upon himself. I doubt risking one’s humanity is an easy thing. Often times, it is history and nature that wrest it from these men without their notice. The reward for this of course is immense power.
There are other men whose eyes are blinded to this tide. This blindness may last and sometimes it may not last. However, when it passes, they see this tide and are drowned by it. Their only justification is their blindness. They mostly stumble over their victims by it.
While some look to the laws and the lawmakers for their license to kill, the rest need no justification to kill. War itself is a license to kill, as is hatred, revenge and malice. Every man carries in them his own license to kill. He may use it or he may not.
In all this, Zach wondered why such a sensitive man had remained a hunter.
‘Well, the wild is my home. In a way. That is the only place I have my peace and I do make catches from time to time.’
During good times, he would spend weeks in the wild where he would eviscerate, salt and smoke his catch. He made his money by selling the meat. And on good days, he made good deals. His drinking though was reducing the number of the good days.
# # #
The conversation switched to the town and the legends of the goddess was told again. Zach learnt more. The people of Nānti before the coming of the missionaries were into the disposal of twins, except not totally.
The twin were understood as one good and one evil, as the case may be. One was to be accepted and the other rejected. No particular rationale was given for that. It was more or less a people’s way of explaining away things in the same way as modern day conspiracy theorists and astrophysicists—we fear what we do not understand. They were then placed in the river in a midnight ritual. Any of the twin that did not drown through the night would be taken the next morning as the ‘good’ of the two children. The other one will be disposed.