Seròn tried to laugh off the suggestion, but this Rufo was adamant and persuasive, almost insistent, and in the end he complied, removing his squeaking shoes, first the left, taking Rufo’s profferred hand to balance himself, then the right, wobbling a little, an awkward, incredulous stork as the man explained, “Believe it or not, Don Antonio, the instrument for this particular secret of the cobbler’s art is the object here in my hand. If you have ever seen the men being shaved by the barbers of Navona, or a suckling pig dressed for Easter, you will understand my meaning now.” His tone was affable, as before.
Seròn looked up in puzzlement.
“An apple, my friend,” said Rufo, presenting it to the secretary’s mouth. “Take a bite.”
His puzzlement turned to bewilderment, and in instant later he would have cried out; but Rufo’s hand forced the fruit between his jaws and, swiftly following that, the pommel of Rufo’s sword descended and knocked him senseless.
“Oh, he is good,” Don Diego murmured in grim admiration.
Don Antonio’s eyes stared past the two men, his neck twisted strangely and his face distorted. Diego’s sword had pierced his victim’s back a little below the shoulder blade, the steel continuing diagonally and down through the rib cage to emerge again at the waist. Blood flowed freely from both wounds. A wide pool of it spread quickly across the floor. The apple lodged in his mouth held Don Antonio’s jaws apart and pulled the skin tight over his cheekbones. He had been tied hand and foot. Salvestro noticed that he wore no shoes.
His fear became shock then, a strange light-headedness. Diego turned to him, the blood already drying on his sword. The soldier wiped it clean on a strip of canvas. The blade shone dully once again.
“Stand up.”
Salvestro looked about halfheartedly, already knowing there was nowhere else to run. There seemed little point in obeying, so he remained sitting, waiting for what would follow. Diego’s hand gripped him by the collar of his doublet and hauled him upright. His legs felt slack and unsteady. He twisted away, oddly irritable and nauseated, still waiting. Diego addressed him sharply, sheathing his sword, already moving toward the door.
“If I had the intention to kill you, you would already be dead. Now gather your wits, if you have any. There is very little time.”
The catchers had begun by stationing themselves a round ten paces away, but that had quickly proved inadequate as Stoberin went sailing over their heads to land heavily in the dust a little way short of the door. They had retreated, then retreated again, and finally found themselves outside the warehouse altogether, arms linked, eyes trained on the giant inside as he readied himself for the next launch. The dwarfs rotated busily between being thrown, being caught, and catching their fellows. The giant was tireless, his delivery smooth, and clearly he was enjoying himself hugely. Above all, however, he was accurate.
“Wheee-eee. … Oof!”
That was the General, who had spotted Bernardo first as the big man walked up, hesitant and confused at the sight of adult faces on child-size heads.
“Another good one, Bernardo!” he shouted back into the building. “We’ll try a somersault next time.”
“Right!” came the reply as the giant bent to pick up Coppernin. He steadied himself, rocked back, then launched the dwarf into space. A full rotation in midair, and, whump! Another perfect landing. The Pope was going to love this.
At first this Bernardo had insisted on playing a rather dull game that involved him standing there with his legs apart and arms outstretched while they clambered up and down him, two to each leg, one on each hip, and the remaining half dozen hanging from his arms and shoulders.
“I can keep this up for hours,” he proclaimed proudly. Then Alberich had got back from making inquiries at the inn and had tried to complete the formation by standing on the giant’s head.
“But he’s not a dw—” the giant began to protest.
“Sssh!” the General hissed in his ear. “He’s very touchy about that.”
Alberich stood almost four feet tall. “Easy does it,” he puffed cheerfully, one foot on Conopas’s head. He got an arm around Bernardo’s neck, then started to swing sideways. …
“I think,” gasped Bernardo. “I think …”
Anyhow, a few bruises apart, no one was hurt; and dusting themselves off, they explained to the concerned and apologetic giant that dwarfs are generally a lot tougher than they look and anyone who’s survived his or her mother’s rubbing grease rendered from moles, bats, and dormice into his or her spine every day, well, that person will already know pretty much all there is to know about discomfort, so not to worry, and how about another game, such as dwarf-throwing?
Whaaa-hey. … Splot!
Alberich had, once again, proved problematic, protesting loudly when six of them had lined up to catch him instead of the usual four, then complaining that the amended quartet was creeping forward a few paces every time he was launched and thus denying him his full measure of airtime. He waved them back furiously whenever he spotted this happening and as a result would most often land short, just inside the door, then berate himself furiously, which seemed to fluster the giant. His next launch would often be unsteady, producing awkward uncontrolled turns in midflight and more difficulties for the catching-party, which nevertheless applauded furiously each time, for the giant’s need for reassurance seemed insatiable.
“Bernardo, you’re the best thing that’s happened to us since we quit Magdeburg,” Stoberin confided to him as he was swung shoulder-high. “We were going to stay with a cousin of mine in Rome. Rooms in the Vatican Palace itself, we were promised, introduction to His Holiness. What happens when we get there? Turns out he lives in a cupboard and the Pope hasn’t set eyes on him in over a year. … Sometimes I think we’re the unluckiest dwarf troupe in the world.”
“Me too,” said Bernardo. He steadied himself.
“Right,” said Stoberin, eyeing the catchers thirty paces away through the door. “I’m going for a full somersault with double rotation. Give me plenty of torque.”
Bernardo nodded slowly. Stoberin saw the catchers bend their knees in readiness, felt the giant tense, an odd pause before the throw, and then he was shot forward, the torque strong as promised, kicking his legs up over his head to make the somersault; but something felt wrong, yes, something was definitely wrong. … What?
Direction. Stoberin saw his flight-plan peel off and leave him, an invisible line aimed straight at the catching-party from which he was now parting company; there they were, crouched and waiting at the end of a smooth and beautiful curve, a fast flat arc flying through the open barn door, a lovely, lovely line. But not his. He was headed for the closed door.
Clunk!
He came to a moment later. Two sets of twins stood over him, one pair dressed plainly, the other as gaudily as the giant. Or giants, for two Bernardos seemed to be retreating back into the warehouse, a look of panic on their faces, while the gaudy twins remonstrated with them, “No Bernardo, no. Everything’s changed. Don Antonio wouldn’t help us if he could. Now hurry up. We’ve got to get to the ship. Come on. …
The Bernardos were shaking their heads and walking forward at the same time, while twenty-two dwarfs and two identical Alberichs pleaded with them to stay, but to no avail. The plainly dressed twins said nothing at all. Stoberin felt a lump the size of an egg rise from the top of his skull. More torque, he thought vaguely before passing out.
Oboni had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. He was an Igala warrior from the north. He conquered the high country of Nsukka and the low country of Idoma. He achieved this alone. He had his people build a tower high in the air so that he might make war on the spririts above. It collapsed when he climbed it, killing many of his people. Then he declared war on the spirits below. He had his followers dig a great shaft in the earth and climbed down to fight, but the shaft collapsed, too. Only Oboni climbed out alive. His name sounded like the word for a woman’s parts. A lot of people laughe
d at him for that.
Oboni sought a wife. Usse was eldest daughter of Onitsha’s King. Oboni took her while she walked alone on the banks of the River, and he made her his wife. The people around Onitsha and the Igala-people at Idah both told this story. She was named after that Usse, and she too was Eze-Ada. She was the King’s eldest daughter. She had been the King’s eldest daughter—this tongue was like a machete, cutting up lives into little bits of time: now, and then, and then then, and the time before that … But the King was dead. Her father was dead. And this white-faced Oboni had caught his Usse crouching by a keyhole.
Aguu was a good month for the spirits, so she waited for her father to come and tell her what she should do. The two men talking in the kitchen had described the animal badly, but she had understood. It was the enemy of the “elephant.” An “elephant” was Enyi, she knew what that was. Its enemy was Ezodu.
“Not an enemy,” said Iguedo when she had finished drawing the two animals in the dust of her compound. “An opposite. Like sky and land. Wise old Enyi and mad old Ezodu.” Then she told her how they came to be so different, how they quarreled, and how Ezodu ran off to the desert in a rage and Enyi ambled south to live in the forest. “Just like us,” said Iguedo.
“Is that where Nri-people come from?” she asked.
“Where do we come from? Where do we come from?” Iguedo mimicked her tone. “Stupid question. Where are we going? Think about that.”
“Nowhere,” she replied in an instant. “We’re staying here.” She was clever. Namoke told her that twenty times a day.
“Stupid answer,” said Iguedo. “Everyone is going somewhere. How are they going, though? Like Enyi? Or like Ezodu?” More than a dozen children had sucked Iguedo’s breasts until now they were as flat as her own. No one and nothing had sucked her breasts. She had tried to interest Onugu once, the youngest and stupidest of her three stupid younger brothers. He had cried.
The next year the drought began, and the year after that the famine. She began to travel with Namoke as he moved among the villages. Sometimes they were gone for weeks at a time, for Nri-men were needed now in villages that had never wanted them before. She thought about Enyi and Ezodu from time to time, but it still did not make much sense to her, and she was beginning to think that it was one of Iguedo’s jokes, a little more “coco-oil to help swallow all those dry words,” as the woman had once explained when Usse had confronted her with a particularly outrageous fabrication. No one else told those stories. Then she and Namoke were called to an Ijaw village that was farther down the River than they had ever been before.
These Ijaw lived by fishing and making salt, which they sold in a market on a great sandbank half a day’s paddling from their village, which was a collection of stilted huts on a mangrove island. They were good fishermen, but every year one or two would be taken by the sharks who swam in the waters about their village. In return they killed as many sharks as they could, and then the sharks would take their revenge. And so on. One or two men a year.
The headman was a very stupid fellow who had a small ju-ju set up in his hut with some teeth and old fishing-poles in it. Usse listened as he told Namoke that the shark’s power was so great that the only solution was to make it their god. If, the man explained, he could swallow the shark’s power himself (he patted his stomach when he said this; Usse had to stop herself laughing), then he could use that power to get rid of the sharks. So he had made his ju-ju, and he had forbidden his men to kill sharks. But the sharks had taken eight men that year. What should he do?
Namoke had begun to talk about one of the alusi. She was called Onishe. “Big woman,” he said. “Breasts down to here.” He slapped his hands on his knees. “She has her place in the forest behind the point at Asaba, and at night you can see her throwing torches from the top of the cliff down into the River. …” They were already waving their arms and protesting that it was too far. “No, no, no!” Namoke shouted them down. “You don’t have to go there. She’s a River-spirit. You can sacrifice here as well as there. …” The headman began nodding again, then asked what they should sacrifice.
“Sharks,” said Namoke. “As many as you can kill.”
The Ijaws baked a fish called odinki for them that night. The young Ijaw men stared at her curiously, but none had the nerve to approach. Namoke and the headman exchanged an unending series of compliments and drank palm-wine, which Namoke always brought as his share of the meal. (” With enough palm-wine it is possible to eat anything,” he had confided to her one night. “Even dogs’ feet.”) Now the headman was drunk and had forgotten she was there.
“Have you heard about the sickness on the coast?” he asked Namoke casually.
“A little,” said Namoke in a tone which told Usse that he knew nothing.
“First the eyes go red,” the headman said, “then the skin turns the color of this odinki, and then they start to sweat. At the same time, they shiver and have to wear as many clothes as they can. That is only the outside, though. The worst is here—” He thumped his chest. “Their chis turn into devils. They forget how to speak. A Calabari was up here telling us about it. …” He prattled on, absorbed in his own tall tales: outrageous breaches of hospitality and manners, blatant robberies, pointless acts of violence. “It comes from farther along the coast, plenty of days away from here,” he said. “The Calabari man said you couldn’t do anything with them. You had to tie them down or kill them. Nothing else to do.” He shook his head.
Traveling back up the River the next day, Namoke said very little, apart from remarking that if the Ijaws could stir their bones to sacrifice at Asaba, they could barter their fish and salt there at the same time and for almost twice the price.
Ezodu’s back, thought Usse, perhaps not then, but later, when everyone knew it was not a sickness, but a people. No one she or any of the Nri had yet encountered had claimed actually to have seen one of them. At present, they were on the coast. Where did they come from? Where were they going?
Stupid questions, thought Usse, grinning to herself. They come from here. Here is where they are going. Ezodu’s people. …
She thought the same again kneeling outside a door a world away from Nri. The two men were talking inside. She understood that these people did not know where they were going or where they came from. They had no remembrance of the animal. The streets were like rivers in spate, blind and furious. The men and women were boiling surges and undertows. No wonder their Pope groped for his beast. They had traveled farther than their memories. Very dangerous, and a warning to herself, perhaps. When the soldier’s hand had slid over her cheek to cover her mouth, when the thick cable of his arm had circled her waist to hoist her off the floor and carry her noiselessly upstairs, when he had released her and hissed, “What do you know?” his face full of a rage that had nothing to do with her, when he had expected her to stand there dumb with shock and saying nothing, a silly little serving girl, she had said, “I know everything. …”
She had given herself to him that night and seven times since. But not last night, she thought now, watching from the window as instructed by her fish-skinned Oboni, her six-fingered conqueror. The river was dotted with little boats, many of them anchored and waiting for the same vessel she sought in the glare of the water. Someone must have ridden down from La Rocca with intelligence of its approach, for a crowd was streaming out of the inn and making its way over to the landing stage. The people who had gathered outside the warehouse drifted across to join them. Her lover and the other two were still inside. Presently they reappeared, walking quickly, almost running against the flow of people emptying out of the inn. She glanced out of the southward-facing window. The ship that would carry them away looked indistinguishable from the one that had brought her to this place three years before. Men were moving about on her decks. Turning back, she glimpsed the three men just before the sill barred them from her sight.
She heard their footsteps on the stairs and thought of her own tramping up and down the
staircase of Fiametta’s house. Three years of that, but finished now. She had waited for her father’s instruction in the sanctuary of her bedchamber, but his mmuo had never come. That was good. It meant they had not buried him. It meant her three foolish brothers yet believed she was alive: Onugu, Apia, Gboju. She told herself only the Eze-Ada might wash the body of the Eze-Nri. Only the Eze-Ada might crown his successor. She looked down again.
Men in elaborate hats were marshaling the crowd at the landing stage now, trying to push them farther back. A small boat approached from the river and was angrily waved away. Farther upstream, around the bend of the river, the Pope’s barge hove into view.
The balmy airs of the broadening river, the pleasant splish-splosh of the paddles as they dip and strike the water, the padded comfort of his seat, all these contribute to the Pope’s sense of well-being on this sunny morning. The number of people gathered to greet him has been described by Ghiberti as gratifying, although even at this distance—a few hundreds of paces—they appear to him as leaves shaking in a tree under strong sunlight, blurred and confused, uncountable except by God. So he places his faith in “gratifying” as the number corresponding to his perfect satisfaction, leans back in his throne, and listens to the anxious twitterings of his courtiers, functionaries, and guests, who have been herded together on the deck of the barge and are now having to be forcibly restrained from all moving over to the left-hand side, where the view of the nearing jetty is better. Capsizement would be unfortunate.
Minutes later, the barge secured, he is being carried head-high on a makeshift palanquin along the waterfront to the stand. The crowds are, as ever, importunate, shoving and grabbing, shouting for his blessing, which he distributes generally while the Switzers keep them off him with their pikes. There is a wooden contraption with a tarpaulin draped over it. A little way down the quay is a ship. He will sit and watch and be watched. The ambassadors? He cannot place them at present.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 55