Hugh came to a stop, feeling the buildings held him under surveillance, and Simon said: ‘What do you make of this?’
Hugh did not know what to make of it. He said: ‘I suppose they’re huts? Standing like this, they look like a monstrous halma set.’
‘Yes, they are huts. Fortified huts. People once lived in them – or, rather, they existed. Look at those walls. This one’s about fifteen feet high. Some of them go up to twenty feet, with no doors or entrances. The place is difficult to explore because of the undergrowth. I cleared a path here last week and the weeds are already springing up again.’
The cleared path, running between maidenhair, thorns and young trees, led to a ladder propped against the wall of the first hut. Simon went to it and gripped the sides, saying: ‘No ants in this wood. It’s been treated with lime or potash, a trick learnt from the Arabs. Do you know why this ladder was left here?’ As Simon turned, Hugh noticed that his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were unusually brilliant: ‘I think the very last of the colony shinned up and left it here because he was too weak to pull it in after him. He’d come home to die.’
‘Why do you think that?’
Simon took out a handkerchief and pushed it over his face, making an impatient movement of the body as though to shoulder back a physical annoyance: ‘He collapsed on the other side. He’s still lying there, what’s left of him. His first need would be to make the place impregnable. Only weakness – a dire weakness – could cause him to leave the ladder here. They were terrified. They really lived in a state of siege. It’s possible they feared one another. I’ve heard that some African tribes make arrow poison so strong that their own people are frightened by it. Or they may have feared the gods.’
‘You think they had gods?’
‘Naturally. Having escaped one set of tyrants, they would at once fit themselves out with another.’ Simon took off the rucksack and found the tube of antibiotic cream: ‘Put some of that on your scratches, then we’ll take a look inside. Be careful not to touch the wall. The plaster’s riddled with insect life. Ants everywhere. Look down there.’
Ants, yellow in colour, were marching out of the weeds, crossing the cleared ground and entering the weeds on the other side. They were in close formation, twenty abreast, a steadily moving band of bodies, broad and glistening as a python.
Simon propped himself against the ladder for a while then, pulling himself together, leapt up it and gained the top of the wall. There he paused and put a hand to his head.
‘Are you all right?’ Hugh asked.
‘Fine. Perhaps a touch of fever. I hope it’s not malaria.’
Hugh watched him anxiously as he again mopped his face: ‘Let’s go back now. I’ve seen all I want to see.’
Simon laughed and without answering, swung his legs over the wall and went down on the other side. He had, it seemed, regained his energy but his movements had lost their cat-like grace. Hugh followed him up the ladder and found wooden footholds and a handrail on the other side. As Simon had told him, the householder lay where he had fallen on the other side: a stretched-out pattern of crumbling bones. Jumping to avoid them, Simon did what he had told Hugh not to do: he touched the wall of the hut. The plaster cracked like paper and ants poured out. He stood and watched them as they assembled about his feet, saying: ‘We can be thankful they’re not scorpions. Still, they’re unpleasant enough. People think that ants don’t eat the living but they’re wrong. I heard of a fellow who went back drunk to his bungalow and passed out. The bungalow was in the path of an ant army and next morning our drunken friend was no more than this skeleton here.’
Though there were no windows in the round, tapering hut, there was an opening about five feet high and Simon, stooping, went in. Hugh refused to follow but, looking in, saw a small, circular room where the ashes of a long dead fire were heaped under a vent in the pointed roof. Beside the door were more bones, a huddle of bones large and small that fell apart as Simon touched them with the toe of his boot.
He said: ‘The family. Probably waited here for the one who dared to venture out.’ He paced the diameter of the room: ‘About five feet. A self-made prison.’
Cooking pots and animal bones were heaped between the walls and Hugh, going to look at them, stepped quickly away from them. The heap had become a habitat for large white spiders that sat quivering amid a complex of webs. He turned his back in disgust and when Simon emerged, said: ‘Why did you bring me in here?’
‘Don’t you find it fascinating?’ Simon glowed with his own interest in his discovery but his colour looked unnaturally high: ‘Think what an existence these people led! The women and children cooped up here in terror of the outside world, never going out, never seeing anything, never admitting a stranger to the little compound. And the one who went out to hunt or take part in some ceremony – the gods always demand ceremonies – getting back in as fast as his legs would carry him. I’ve climbed into three of these huts and there were skeletons in all of them. And drums. I found several drums. They must have communicated by drum beat. They were savages who had escaped slavery and here tried to reconstitute the life they had known in Africa. And this is how they ended up. Why? Because of fear. Doesn’t that fascinate you?’
‘I hate the place.’
‘Yes, but think what it proves! Fear can confine you to a space so small, you might as well be in a grave.’
Simon smiled quizzically at Hugh and Hugh, feeling baited, said angrily: ‘I didn’t want to come here and I don’t want to be here. I’m getting out of this compound.’
The climb back to the lane gave him an illusion of deliverance: but, of course, he was not delivered. He was still inside the abominable village and the village was surrounded by forest. The place imposed on him such an anguish of repulsion, he felt sick.
Waiting, with no company but the steady, glistening flow of the ant army near his feet, he listened to every movement that Simon made inside the wall. There was no other noise. It was midday and the forest was silent under the heat. Damp, drawn up from the ground, was forming a haze over the sky. The sun was fading back and humidity hung in the air.
When Simon at last appeared at the top of the wall, Hugh said fervently: ‘Let’s go back.’
Coming down the ladder, Simon missed a step and slipped to the ground. He remained seated, his head hanging and Hugh said: ‘Drink the coffee.’
Hugh took the flask from the rucksack and filled the cup. When he had swallowed down most of the coffee, Simon said: ‘Look in the pack. See what you can find.’
Hugh brought out a phial of yellow tablets: ‘Paludrine?’
‘Might work. Not the usual symptoms, though. No initial drop in temperature, no rigors.’ Simon swallowed two tablets with the last of the coffee and said: ‘Bitter. The wrong sort of bitterness. Wish there was more coffee.’
Sweat beaded on every pore of his face and neck. Hugh, seeing he was in danger of falling into the path of the marching ants, went to the wall on the other side of the lane and began clearing the ground. He tugged up the heavy fern-roots with a fury that helped to keep his anxiety at bay. He did not consider the insects that, at any other time, would have unnerved him. Unlike the ants, that moved in such numbers they could devour a living man, the spiders and centipedes fled as he uncovered them. When there was space enough, he took Simon under the arm-pits and dragged him across the lane and put him down in the new clearing with the rucksack for a pillow. He opened his eyes and smiled: ‘You’re still there?’
‘Did you think I would run away?’
‘I expect you’re hungry. You’ll have to forage.’
‘Forage? Is there anything to forage for?’
Simon tried to rise on his elbow and failing, waved a hand towards the far end of the village: ‘Down there. Old plantain grove. Better go before the rain starts.’
Looking down the lane between the fluting of the walls, Hugh saw how the day had changed. The moisture in the sky was now so heavy that it hid the sun. The end
of the lane was fogged by a thunderous shadow. Hugh took a step then paused, nervous of the clogging weeds: ‘Are there land-crabs here?’
‘No.’ Simon closed his eyes and smiled with his old irony: ‘Nothing to fear.’
‘All right. I’ll see what I can find.’
Like a non-swimmer forced into water, Hugh struck into the weeds with a blundering deliberation, swallowing back his aversion from the place. Half-way down the lane, he glanced back and was amazed to see how far he had come without mishap. Simon was right. There was nothing to fear.
At the end of the lane, he felt the suck of water under his boots. Here he was among reeds that rose above his head and became so thick, he had to force a way through them. The reeds gave suddenly and he fell out on to a platform of stone.
When he got to his feet, he understood Simon’s talk of gods and ceremonies. Here were the gods, staring at him with monstrous eyes. There were two of them, set up side by side on the natural stone. They had probably been carved from tree trunks but like the huts, they were plastered over and whitened. Their whiteness flashed against the purple bruising of the sky. The black of their eyes and red of their lips and cheeks caricatured human features, but they did not look human. They had the teeth of wolves.
He thought he could see in the pair a reference to the peaks. These, too, were guardians, built to frighten off whatever was feared. But there had been more to it than that. The feet of the figures were soaked with blood and the stone was stained with it. Piled around the figures were the skulls of the slain. Hugh felt an aroma of terror here but it was not his own terror. It was the terror of those who had waited to die.
The surrounding forest, as though affected by the squalor it enclosed, was hung with grey moss. Hugh looked among the trees and saw, on the other side of the stone, a few old plantain palms. To get to them, he had to walk under the idols, among the skulls.
Now he knew why Simon had smiled. Another joke!
Hugh crossed the platform, kicking the skulls as he went, and reached the palms. Inside the light green, silken leaves, he found a single bunch of fruit, greener than the leaves. The fruits were the size of small runner beans. He picked one, peeled it, tasted it and spat it out. He felt disgust at Simon’s arrogance and a profound sense of betrayal. Picking up a skull, he flung it and hit the nearer figure. Then, determined to overthrow the pair of them, he picked up skull after skull, throwing them wildly so the whole platform became covered with shattered bone. Grinning like Aunt Sallies, the figures shuddered and rocked, but they did not fall.
In the midst of this exercise, Hugh was startled by a tearing, hissing sound. Rain was rushing across the open ground. It struck him harshly and, remembering Simon lying helpless beneath the storm, he took to his heels, leaving the figures still upright behind him.
Holding up his arms to shield his face from the cataract of water, he blundered through the reeds into the lane. Lightning was darting about in the upper air. A rivet of red struck down into the forest and the following thunder peal renewed the rain.
Hugh found Simon prone, eyes half closed, rain beating on to his face. His skin had taken on an earthy colour and he looked, in the grey light, as gaunt and contracted as an old man. Uncertain whether he was alive or dead, Hugh knelt beside him and felt his hand. Raising his eyelids a little, Simon whispered: ‘Very cold.’
‘It’s the rain.’
‘Five days since the spider bit me. Remember that; five days. Could be significant. Not sure. Interesting. Wish I knew.’ Taking his hand from Hugh’s hold, he opened it and displayed the key to the Land-Rover: ‘You’ll have to find your own way back.’
‘I won’t leave you.’
Hugh sat down against the wall, putting the rucksack behind his own head and pulling Simon’s head onto his lap. He settled himself to wait.
The forest was no distance from them and through the howl and clatter of wind, he could hear the trees groaning together, their branches cracking and breaking, and, when the rain slackened, he could see the leaf crowns turning like mops in the whirl of wind. Sometimes a tree fell, bringing down with a rush of sound everything about it. The earth shook. To Hugh it seemed that roots were moving in the ground beneath him.
A glow touched the air and he knew that above the storm, the sun was setting. The glow was soon gone. Darkness came down and there was nothing to be seen but the lighting that for an instant would reveal the forest by its lurid light.
Putting the rucksack on to his shoulder, he dropped his head on to it and tried to sleep. As the hours passed, the noise of the storm blurred and took itself into the distance. He woke to a tranquil world, pink with daybreak, silent except for the tentative whistles of the storm-shocked birds.
Warmth had returned to the air but Simon’s hand was cold. He had died while Hugh slept.
Hugh thrust out his legs to ease the cramp in them, then rolling from under the weight of Simon’s head and shoulders, he rose unsteadily. Looking at the dead man, he wondered what he could do for him. He could not bear to leave the body exposed there but had not the means to bury it. He went to the forest edge where branches in full leaf had been torn down during the night. He gathered an armful then, turning to go back, he saw the huts reflecting the dawn glow. In the delicate pink of the light, they looked mild and placating, an enemy overcome.
When he reached the clearing, he saw that the ant army had broken in half and the rear echelon had changed direction. It was marching across the lane, straight towards the dead body. Hugh realized that for the dead, whether in the ground or on it, the result would be the same. Taking the key out of the stiff hand, he began to put the branches in place. Simon’s face had regained its normal pallor and look of youth. The remarkable blue of the eyes glinted between the half-closed eyelids. Already the ants were moving through the black beard and into the delicate nostrils and over the fine pale lips. Hugh dropped the last branch to hide the spectacle of this spoliation. Then, putting the key into his pocket, he set out to find his own way back.
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Copyright © The Estate of Olivia Manning 1974
The right of Olivia Manning to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1974 by William Heinemann
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The Rain Forest Page 29