“What’s that?” Bernardo said a few minutes later.
Earlier, Salvestro had only shrugged at the giant’s question. He had no more idea where all the people were than his companion did. Perhaps there were no people. The plantations might be some freakish caprice of the forest, the paths worn by animals. The old woman might be leading them around and around for no better reason than her own amusement. Now his gaze followed the giant’s outstretched arm. To the left of the stream the trees were beginning to thin, and between their trunks, perhaps a hundred paces away, he saw sunlight falling directly on some smooth surface, a high wall, perhaps, or an unnaturally smooth bank of earth. The vista was interrupted, broken up by the tree-trunks into segments that his eyes could not make sense of.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
The old woman had not waited, nor had Diego. They were standing a little way ahead. The two men quickened their step to catch up and, when they reached them, found themselves standing at the edge of a dusty apron of cleared ground that served as a kind of forecourt to the structure behind.
The object they had glimpsed was indeed a wall, made of smooth mud and fifteen or even twenty feet high. It formed one side of a rectangular enclosure whose extent they could only guess. It stretched from the apron back into the forest until it was lost to view. Its frontage, if it was a front, was broken only by a small door set so deep into the wall that the shadowed recess appeared at first to be a tunnel. After the jumbled lines of the forest, the scale and regularity of the walls seemed shocking, a disruption.
“I think we’re here,” said Bernardo behind him.
The old woman began chattering in her own language, its strange sounds and rhythms only reinforcing the alien character of the structure. Still chattering, she led them to the door. Carved faces pushed their features out of the wood. She pressed her palms against two foreheads as though trying to force them back into the timber. She was trying to explain something, but they could not understand her. Then she buffeted the massive door with her shoulder, stepped aside, and pointed to Bernardo.
It took the big man two heavy blows before the barrier so much as shuddered. All three set their shoulders to the task, forcing an entrance inch by inch, dislodging clods of dry mud that rained down on their heads, and gouging a semicircular weal in the ground. The door turned out to be fashioned from a single slab of hardwood, no higher than Salvestro but thicker than Bernardo’s chest. Time, damp, and heat had warped the frame in which it was set until its sagging hinges had deposited its weight on the ground. They set to again, heaving and pushing, sweating and cursing, until eventually the crack widened to a gap through which even Bernardo might squeeze. He gave it a last tremendous buffet and turned to the old woman in triumph.
She was gone.
The ground was cleared for fifty paces or more in any direction. The three men looked around them, but she was nowhere in sight. The trees stood in a halfcircle around the open area as though they had advanced that far and then been stopped abruptly by an unseen force or prohibition. An hour ago the men had been walking beneath their canopies. Now they appeared forbidding. Something was different, Salvestro thought vaguely. The old woman seemed to have disappeared into thin air. A door that seemed not to have been opened in years had been forced. … Something else. He looked about uneasily and saw that Bernardo was still looking about anxiously.
“She guided us here,” Salvestro said uncertainly. “Now we’re here, why would she stay?”
He addressed this last remark to Diego, but the soldier only stared at his boots, nodding to himself with a half-smile on his face, at once resigned and amused at some private realization.
“But what now?” Bernardo burst out. He looked about him at the encircling forest. “What do we do now?”
There was nowhere else to go. Diego was already sliding around the door.
A courtyard: a wide strip of open space stretching widthwise between the side walls. At its center stood a structure that reminded Salvestro of the one Diego had entered after they had climbed out of the boat. A roof fashioned from intertwined palm branches had been raised on stout poles, but the fronds had dried and shredded, and now they lay scattered on the ground. Its sides were open. The three of them stood beneath the bare lattice on which the roof had once been laid and stared at the wide front of a building that as far as they could make out filled the entire remainder of the enclosure. A number of low doorways punctuated the forewall at irregular intervals. They were quiet. Salvestro realized that the source of the strange apprehension he had felt only a few minutes earlier was, in effect, an absence. This courtyard, the great low building that squatted before them and stretched back out of sight, the clearing outside, and the surrounding forest were all perfectly silent.
He looked again at Diego, but the soldier was intent on the doorways, his gaze sweeping over them as if whatever he sought might suddenly flicker in the interior darkness, disturb it somehow and reveal itself. Salvestro recalled the man’s last words, spoken on the ridge overlooking the valley. The certainty he had invested them with. The soldier was lost, adrift, clinging to the fraying thread of his quest. It had happened on the river, or in the rear room where he, Salvestro, had discovered him “at prayer.” Or on the ship. Usse could bring him back, perhaps, or the Beast. He would find neither of them here.
Instead chambers. And more chambers. And more chambers again beyond those.
They entered the building and began moving through its divisions. Sunlight entering by the open doorways illuminated the foremost rooms, but as they moved deeper into the structure the three men were reduced to squinting into a darkness lit only by the faint glimmers that penetrated the thatch. The chambers varied only slightly in size and were linked by unframed archways that seemed to have been carved directly out of the same smooth mud that formed the walls. Their angles and corners were curving planes, and their floors bowed up so that it was impossible to say exactly where they stopped being floors and started being walls. Only the roof was constant, uniformly flat and suspended out of reach above their heads. Gradually their eyes adjusted to the gloom, and, advancing hesitantly through the irregular enfilades, they began to realize that the building was not simply uninhabited. It was empty. None of the chambers contained anything.
To begin with they drifted through together, one leading the way, then another, one poking his head through a side opening while the others went ahead, then reconvenings, then more individual detours, which grew longer and longer until Diego grunted and marched off to the left and, a little later, Bernardo seemed to forget his earlier unease, simply wandering through the opposite door to Salvestro. They went their separate ways, not so much by design as by the fact that there seemed no compelling reason to stay together. Soldier, Giant, Thief: a disbanded trio or dissected amphibrach: a humpless dromedary trudging in three different directions at once.
Salvestro found himself alone in a space rather longer than it was wide and tapered at one end. The next was narrower, and the next almost triangular. A dead end. He moved on. The hardened mud that formed the walls and the floor deadened the sound of his footfalls. He had a vague idea of continuing forward until he reached the building’s outer wall. He would then follow it around until he reemerged at the front or discovered some other entrance at the rear. He was not sure what benefit this information might confer on him, but nevertheless he advanced, passing slowly through the chambers and taking careful note of the angles at which they were set, for the building itself seemed to resist straightforward passage, its skewed honeycomb bending him away from his objective and forcing him to guess at every turn whether he was still maintaining his heading or had been subtly turned or diverted somehow. His steps grew hesitant, and realizing that this was adding to the problematic nature of the task, he strode forward more boldly, forcing himself to walk quickly. He passed briskly from chamber to chamber, almost running now, thinking that the very next dead end must indicate the building’s limit. Then he stepp
ed confidently into one of the largest chambers he had yet seen and pitched forward into space.
“Bernardo!”
The structure was not, after all, quite empty. Or even uninhabited.
It took some time for the giant to find him. Guided by Salvestro’s periodic shouts, Bernardo moved in haphazard fashion toward the source of the noise, growing increasingly confused and impatient as he did so. He had been quite content to drift aimlessly among the chambers, but now they seemed arranged for no other purpose than deflecting him. Salvestro’s shouts increased and decreased in volume, booming out one minute, stifled the next, as the chambers trapped or amplified the sound. Several times he stopped to try to clarify his predicament, allowing Salvestro to yell away for a minute or two before resuming his search. His predicament grew no clearer. So he blundered forward through the gloom, calling out what he hoped were encouraging phrases such as “Over here, Salvestro!” and “Almost there!” and “Not long now!” until the variously muffled or resonant answering voice, instead of shouting his name, said quite clearly and distinctly: “Stop.”
Bernardo stopped.
He was standing on the edge of a smooth-sided pit. The chamber’s floor, though concave like the others, was hollowed to a far greater depth and the consequent depression shaped like the inside of an enormous inverted bell. Its impatient clapper was Salvestro, standing there looking up at him. And there was something else down there. …
“Come on, Bernardo! Get down here. Just sit on the edge and slide.”
“Then we’ll both be stuck,” he objected.
“What do you mean, ‘stuck’? I’ve been up and down half a dozen times already. It’s easy.”
Bernardo peered at the slope mistrustfully, then squinted into the pit.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
“Come and look for yourself,” retorted Salvestro.
Bernardo scrambled down.
It was a man, or one who once had been a man. He was seated upright on a chair that seemed—the light was even weaker than before—to have been carved from a single tree-trunk. He wore a headdress of some sort and a long robe that was open at the chest, disclosing some necklaces and a pendant carved with an animal’s face. Part clasped by and part resting against one arm, its base resting on the hard mud of the floor and its tip extending a little higher than his shoulder, was a massive ivory tusk, while the other arm held a thick staff with a few disks stuck on the end. A tightly bound bundle of twigs lay on the ground between his feet.
Bernardo stared into the man’s face. “He’s not breathing, is he?”
“No,” said Salvestro behind him.
The face, indeed the whole body, appeared in so perfect a state of preservation that both men had hushed their voices for fear of waking the seated figure.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Salvestro. Then he added, “Touch him.”
Bernardo poked tentatively at the robe. It crumbled where his finger touched. He nodded his satisfaction.
“No,” Salvestro said. “Touch him. His skin.”
The giant approached the body again, hesitating as he decided which part to touch. The forehead, it seemed. Yes. He extended his arm to press the palm of his hand against the figure’s flesh.
“Urgh!”
He recoiled in horror, springing back and crying out, “You told me he was dead, damn you, Salvestro!”
“He is dead.”
“But he’s still warm. …
Salvestro said nothing. Performing the exact same act, he had jumped back himself. But then, conquering the strange mixture of fear and revulsion that had risen in his throat, he had pressed his hand to the figure’s chest. It was still. The heart had ceased beating, the lungs had stopped pumping, and long ago judging from the state of the robe draped over his shoulders. The man was dead. Yet his flesh was warm. Bernardo’s face was a mask of appalled incomprehension. He seemed unable to tear his eyes away.
“What is he?” he whispered.
Before Salvestro could say he did not know, a third voice broke the chamber’s hush.
“King of Nri! I bring greetings from Fernando the Catholic, King of all Spain. I am Don Diego of Tortosa, the servant of my King. …”
The two men stared up in amazement at Diego, who stood poised on the edge of the pit, one arm folded across his chest, the other extended to lend emphasis to this peroration.
“Sire, my King bids me salute you in his place. I have traveled here to beg of you a Beast, called Ezodu in these parts, for it is the wish of my King to have him and so it is my wish too that this be done. Thus and therefore I come before you, King of Nri.
“These”—he pointed at the two men staring up at him but did not look at them—” are my companions, called Salvestro and Bernardo. They are from … I do not know where they are from, but they are my servants. And I am Diego of Tortosa, servant of Fernando the Catholic, King of all Spain. …”
He paused to draw breath, then his voice sounded again.
“King of Nri! I bring greetings from Fernando the Catholic. I am Don Diego of Tortosa, the servant of my King, the King of all Spain. …”
Different cacophonies. First the animals: chattering, roaring, lowing, and screeching, their cries all jumbled together in a meaningless panic. Bleating goats were being herded along the bank of the River. A man forced his way through the crowd with a brace of squawking chickens.
Were the men any different? Their accents battered her ears, a fabulous mess of cluckings and cries, random shouts, pointless yelling: excitement and its noises. She was in the thick of it, in the press of their bodies as they formed up. She had only to stand firm now and their orbits would wrap them about her. She thought she glimpsed Gbujo. His defeated face. Men were streaming out of their huts and compounds. She heard hammering, axes striking wood. Yes, she thought, send them the forest if that is what the Eze-Nri decrees. In the middle of the River, the Ndi Mili Nnu were ripping up their bivouacs. The dwindling island would be flooded soon, the yangbe already driving down the River, swelling it again. The Nri-men around her pressed closer. Namoke was near the front, she thought. The hunting-party was long gone. Noise, and more noise, hammering at her skull until it hummed, her very bones quivering under the assault. They were almost ready. There was no more time. She let the racket pound her.
Then the swarm took flight, a distant buzz at first, a million sounds all blurred together. She could not pluck a single voice from the increasing roar, a massive wave of urgency and appeal, hurry, hurry, hurry …
Wait, she told herself.
Ezodu is stepping on our graves. …
She ignored their complaints, sifting through the mass of voices that now descended on her, each one striving to rise above all the others.
“Nri!” shouted a voice that might have been Namoke’s.
They were moving off. Nri, she echoed to herself, and the spirits parroted it back to her: Nrrurrreee-eee. … Mocking laughter rose above their wail: Heh, heh, heh … She knew who that was. Eri was the one who would not reveal himself, the only one who did not care. They were your sons, she thought. The laughter subsided. Her feet were moving her forward. Torches somewhere. There were too many voices, too many generations, and going further and further back, thickening and weighing on her: a wall of mud she could not break. She could not find the one she sought.
Daughter?…
The voice was distant but distinct, set apart from the others. She could follow it, a single insect, a feather glued to its back with a dab of resin. She could run after, chase it until it chose to stop.
She followed, and the men around her seemed to carry her along, keeping close to her and watching her while she drifted and darted after her playful quarry. She knew they saw nothing of this. The swarm was no more than a murmur now. She moved farther away, or sank deeper, or reached back and felt herself stretch after the one she pursued, who eluded her with such ease that it seemed she was not following but being led or eve
n dragged away. The men around her were so close, she could feel the warmth of their skin. They would surround her as they moved from Onitsha to Nri: a village by the River, then the paths through the forest. The slope of the valley that led to the village. Nri’s plantations and the course of its stream. They would find themselves before an apron of dusty ground, before a door so heavy that no one man might open it, before a compound that stretched back, and back, and back… The chambers of the Eze-Nri. She would leave them there. She was the Eze-Ada, and these names were familiar, these places known. Yet within herself she was so far away now that she feared she might never be able to return. What if she could not find her way back? The voice sounded again then, the voice she chased after colder now than before.
Too late. …
The boy dug a calabash of charcoal from the pile in the courtyard, then carried it inside and handed it to the old man, who grunted and began distributing handfuls about the fire, more where it burned hot and less where the glow had yet to penetrate the fuel.
“Fire must be even,” the old man said, sprinkling the last few pieces over a tiny flame that had sparked into life a moment before. “Even this way”—he swept his hand out horizontally—” and even that way.” The same hand cut slices of air, moving downward as it did so. “You have to build it up slowly. In layers, like clay. When you need more heat, you peel off a layer, and there it is underneath. More heat. Simple.”
The boy nodded. His fetching and carrying had begun before midday. Burning charcoal, the boy decided, was much like making charcoal. There was no sign as yet that they were doing anything but building a fire. No indication that they were there, at last, to cast bronze.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 77