Lord Tyger

by Philip José Farmer

  Wilida shook her head and then rose to go.

  She leaned over and kissed him briefly on the lips

  "My grandmother told me stories of girls who were seduced by ghosts and went away to their land and were never seen again."

  Ras permitted her to leave, although he thought for a moment of forcing her to go with him. After that, he skulked around the village at night and at day. He often saw Wilida and the others, and he also saw why it would be difficult for the girls to get away, even if they wanted to. Two old women were always with them.

  As for the two boys, Bigagi and Sutino, they had become suddenly hostile. One day, as Ras stepped out from behind a tree to greet Bigagi, he had to throw himself to the ground to dodge a spear. He was so shocked that he ran off crying. Later, he became angry and wanted to kill Bigagi and probably would have if he could have gotten close enough to attack. Now, he could not approach the village as easily or as frequently. The Wantso seemed to be on the watch for him. While eavesdropping on two women working in the fields near the bush, he learned that Bigagi and Sutino had told the elders about him. Everybody was close to panic. Wuwufa, the old spirit-talker, put the children through a cleansing ceremony. They had to wear amulets thereafter to ward off the Ghost-Boy. And the girls were watched closely for several months to make sure that they had not conceived by the ghost.

  Ras longed for Wilida. He ached for her in his dreams. He sat for long hours on the branch of a tree across the river from the village and waited for her to come into view. He pretended to talk to her and made up her replies to him while, unaware of him, she bent over the cooking fire in front of her house. She was now wearing a bark-fiber belt and a white, triangular bark-fiber apron. A band of mousehide, turned out to expose the white inner side, encircled her head. From it hung many tassels and tiny wooden fetishes. Her buttocks were painted white every morning.

  Ras knew now what Yusufu had meant when he had said a man could eat his heart out for something he could not get. There was a pain in his chest and an ache that started from the root of his penis and spread through his belly. It was like a poisoned arrow sticking in him. The poison was sweet-paining, not fire-deadly, and there were times when he knew that he was enjoying his suffering. No, he did not really enjoy it. It was just that it was better to be feeling this denial than to know that she was dead, forever lost to him. Ras had no intention of skulking around the village for long. He meant to do something about getting her back. And that he could not have done if she were dead.

  One moonless night he climbed the big sacred tree and swiftly let himself down on the roof of Wuwufa's house. It was impossible to keep from making noise, because the branches and leaves rustled under his feet and the ribs of the roof bent and creaked under his weight. A rat on the beam under the roof squeaked and ran across the beam. Ras stood still for a while until he was sure that Wuwufa was not disturbed. The spirit-talker had been drinking much beer with the other men all evening. His wife, however, might be a light sleeper.

  A nearby hog grunted. A bat fluttered above him, as black and swift and chilling as the thought of death. He waited, and presently eased himself down on the roof and thence onto the ground. His feet hit the earth with a noise he regretted making but could not help. The hog grunted again, and the bat winged above his head by three feet, then returned, like a piece of night fallen off, to flutter past his shoulder and close to the ground before it rose again. Another bat joined it in its zigs and zags. Ras was happy to see them. According to the Wantso, demons and ghosts sometimes took the form of bats. They would fly out of the shadows and reach down with tiny hands and seize a Wantso by the two cones of his hair. This made the Wantso more than reluctant to leave their houses at night unless there were many torches blazing and many people around.

  Despite which, some did come out at night and quietly so that very few others would know they were out. There were forces stronger than the fear of demons and ghosts. Ras knew this because he had observed the breakers of the night from his perch on the branch of the big sacred tree.

  He drew his knife, and crouching, ran to the Great House. He squatted in the shadows underneath the floor, his back against one of the tree-trunk supports, and waited. Somebody inside the Great House was snoring. Somebody else groaned and muttered. He grinned and was just about to crawl out from under the house when he saw a woman letting herself down from a hut directly across from him. The collapsible stairs had been taken in. The hut was Tobato and Seliza's, and, while he could not see the woman's features, he could recognize the silhouette of body and her manner of walking.

  Seliza was a good-looking woman who had begun to get fat. She was still attractive enough so that Ras had speculated on what she would be like in the bush, as he had speculated about every woman, attractive or not, in the village. If she were out in the demon-ridden air, she was herself driven by a demon. Certainly, she was not climbing out of the house just to relieve herself of excrement. Wilida had told him that every hut had several pots for evacuation. These were emptied into a large hole outside the village, and the contents of the hole were later taken out for fertilizer when needed. Nobody except Ras seemed to mind the odor that enveloped the village when the wind blew north, and his opinions did not count.

  Seliza circled behind her hut, where she stopped. Presently, a form identifiable as a man's walked out from behind a hut on the outer circle. The man went on out of Ras's sight to meet Seliza behind her house. A minute passed. The two, hand in hand, walked swiftly toward the Great House. Ras retreated to hide behind the thick central post. Evidently, they were going to crawl under the Great House, though why they should choose this place he could not guess. They would not be able to sneak out the north or the south gate without making too much noise, and there were guards at the east and west gates. They were, as usual, asleep, but the creak of wood might awaken them.

  Perhaps they were coming here because the old chief and his wife had a reputation as heavy sleepers. Chufija, their son, had been a simpleton after becoming very sick when he was a young boy. He was good for nothing except to keep the birds and monkeys off the crops, drink beer, and grin at the insults and jibes of all.

  Seliza whispered something and giggled. The man growled at her to be quiet. By then Ras had recognized his walk; the voice confirmed the identification. He was Jabubi, Wilida's father. Wilida had spoken of how he could not keep his hands off women when he thought no one was looking. Although he had never been caught in adultery, he had several times been accused. So far, Wuwufa's guilt-search had not made Jabubi confess, and Jabubi apparently had not been scared enough.

  Ras was delighted. If Jabubi was here, he would make one less to guard his daughter. The only trouble was, the two were crawling toward the post behind which he was hiding. He would have to get away, and quickly, before they arrived. His white skin made him easier to see, so he would have to retreat without noise to attract their gaze to him. He got on his hands and knees and, keeping the central post between him and them, crawled backward. When his feet touched another post, he turned to go around it. At that moment, Seliza and Jabubi came around the central post. Ras did not try to keep moving; he froze for a second. He then let himself down slowly until he was flat on the ground.

  Seliza and Jabubi, in each other's arms, were breathing so loudly and making such smackings and gigglings and groanings that Ras wondered if they had lost all sense, and then knew that they had, of course.

  Suddenly, Seliza grunted and said something. Jabubi whispered to her; she whispered back. They got up on all fours and began to crawl directly toward him. Ras knew that they had not noticed him as yet. If they had thought there was somebody else under the house, they would have fled at once and with much noise, thinking that he was a ghost. They must have left the first place because Seliza had complained of unevenness of the ground or a stone pushing into her back. Whatever the reason, they had gone only a few feet before they stopped. And then Ras pulled in his first breath since they had rolled apa
rt and lurched on hands and knees toward him.

  Ras had nobody in his way then; he did not think that they would be observant enough to see him if he circled through the huts the long way to Wilida's. The two-in-one lump that Seliza and Jabubi formed in the shadows, the raspings of breath torn through arched nostrils, the smacks and gulps and sucking noises, the giggles, the groans that came up from the tip of the spine and half escaped from the lips, these had excited Ras so that his penis stood up and throbbed. However, instead of flying him toward Wilida, it seemed to turn him, as the nose of a hungry leopard turns it toward a deer, to Seliza. Once oriented, he was pulled along, or, so intense and forceful was his sudden feeling, he was not so much pulled as borne.

  Barely able to cram back a sob of ecstasy, he crawled up behind Jabubi, who was just getting onto his knees before letting himself down on Seliza. She had raised her legs to hook them over Jabubi's shoulders.

  Ras hit him hard in the back of the neck with the hilt of the reversed knife. Jabubi grunted and began to fall forward; Ras shoved him to one side and was on Seliza, a hand over her mouth, before she could scream. She trembled like a flow of mud just before it went over a cliff, and her eyes were so wide that he could see the whites even in this dark place. But she did not try to fight or to escape. Suddenly, the whites disappeared. Her eyelids had closed. Her body seemed to draw in on itself and became a lump. She had fainted.

  Ras was able to control himself long enough to make sure that Jabubi was still unconscious. Jabubi lay on his right side, his mouth open, breathing deeply. Then Ras was on Seliza, and, after a few strokes, he had an orgasm.

  It was the first in his life, the final culmination of so many almost-jettings, and he became, for a few seconds, unable to care about enemies or anything. At that moment, anyone could have attacked him without fear of retaliation.

  Just as control returned, Seliza began to come out of her faint. Ras spoke to her softly, telling her that if she kept quiet, she would not be carried off to the Land of the Ghosts.

  Some of the shock and fright may have been pared off because he was not entirely unknown or unexpected. For at least a year the Wantso had talked about the ghost-child that their children had played with, and he had been glimpsed a few times in daylight and once at night. The adults knew that the ghost-child had not harmed the children and had never made any threats against anybody. He had become somewhat familiar.

  So, although her heart now thudded like the feet of a rabbit being chased across hard earth by a serval cat, it was not so shocked that it stopped. She groaned and began shaking again. Ras, who had not withdrawn, began to move back and forth, and presently Seliza, her terror pushed out a little farther with every thrust, also began to move. Perhaps she thought that, if she made the Ghost-Boy happy, she would not be harmed. Whatever her reasoning, her actions seemed to be sincere, and after his second orgasm had shaken him as a dog shakes a rat to death, he became aware that she had scratched his back deeply during her own ecstasy.

  Jabubi added his groans and moved a little. Ras hit him again, this time on the side of the head, and turned back to Seliza. He had expected her to try to escape when he was busy with Jabubi. Instead, she had lain quietly and then had reached out for him when he turned back to her from Jabubi.

  Later, she told him why. She was so eager to get a man who could have a complete erection that she had momentarily forgotten--or had been able to push aside--her terror of ghosts. She did not know what he meant to do with her afterward, but, for the moment, especially since she could do nothing else anyway, she was happy to take him in. His repeated assurances that he would not harm her helped to quiet her fears.

  Ras did not get to Wilida that night. He was afraid to leave Seliza and stay inside the walls, because she might arouse the village. Or, if she kept silence, Jabubi might make an uproar when he became conscious. So he stayed with Seliza several hours more. He had to pause for a while to tie Jabubi's hands and feet with his rope and to threaten to cut his tongue out if he cried out. Jabubi, teeth chattering with fear of the Ghost-Boy, promised that he would say nothing. Ras reminded him that he would have a difficult time explaining what he was doing under the Great House.

  Seliza did not like to have Jabubi watch, so they crawled over behind a post, where he could not see them. And when Ras decided that he must leave before it got too light to escape the guards' watch, he knocked out Jabubi again and untied him. He felt sorry for him; he hoped he would not be hurt too much. But tonight he would have killed him to get Seliza.

  Jabubi did raise an uproar that day, but he was forced to do so. His wife and others noticed the lumps on his neck and head when he complained of being sick. Old Wuwufa came to shake administering rattles at him and sprinkle powders and incantations over him. After hearing Jabubi's story of being beaten in a dream by demons, he put him through an exorcism. This hurt Jabubi more than Ras's blows; he had to drink a cathartic to expel any residue of evil left by the denizens of night.

  This was the beginning of Ras's affair with almost the entire adult female population. He met Seliza in the bush many times thereafter. If she still thought that he was a ghost, she had told herself that he meant her no evil. On the contrary, he was doing her more good than anyone she had ever known. He had not been crippled by the savage flint knife during the circumcision rites of the Wantso.

  It was inevitable that Seliza, who had a big and busy mouth, should confide to a friend. Seliza did not fear that Pamathi would betray her and so send her to the gauntlet.

  Pamathi was as guilty as she of adultery, although not with the same men. Pamathi was horrified--but intrigued--and she talked Seliza into letting her watch the two from behind a tree.

  Seliza had said nothing to Ras about this arrangement. However, he was aware that Pamathi was a hidden witness. Before meeting Seliza, he always scouted the area carefully from several trees, and so he had known that Seliza was with Pamathi. The second time they met, he suddenly disappeared and, before Pamathi realized what was happening, she was seized from behind.

  Thereafter, the two met him together and took turns.

  In the meantime, Ras was frustrated in his attempt to get to Wilida. During the day, she was too closely watched. At night, his efforts to sneak into her house were blocked by the adult women. They were lying in wait for him--seemingly under every house--and would not let him by. Nor was he able--at first--to say no to them. One night, when he did manage to bypass the wives, he was almost killed. Jabubi, Wilida's father, may have been awake by accident or he may have been waiting every night since Ras had interrupted him with Seliza. This moonless night, as Ras, heart lurching with anticipation of his beloved Wilida, his skin cold, began to crawl past the door-curtain, he heard a gasp inside the hut. At the same time he saw--or seemed to see--a darker mass within the blackness, and he threw himself back out by placing both hands on the floor and lifting himself up and back and out. Something thudded into the bamboo wall near the entrance--probably a spear--and then Jabubi yelled. Ras fled while the village woke on every side. He went up the wall of Wuwufa's house and onto the roof and onto the branch of the tree and down it to the ground outside the wall.

  Ras was balked this time and many times. Yet it was when Wilida was most watched and most encaged that he was able to be with her.

  Between his twelfth and fourteenth year, he spied on many circumcision ceremonies of the boys at thirteen and the clitoris-cutting rites for the girls of twelve. Both rituals were supposed to be secret; they were enacted in the jungle near the foot of the eastern hills. No women were allowed near the place for the boys and no men near that for the girls. Any unauthorized person caught spying would have been torn to pieces by the nails and teeth of the outraged men or women.

  But Ras had no trouble observing either ceremony from positions high in trees or in bushes very close to the participants and behind the guards' backs. He became familiar with the words of incantation and song, with the ritualized gestures, the sawing off of the fores
kin and the cutting of the skin on the shaft to cause great scars and with the severing of the clitoris tip.

  He saw no sense in either rite; he hurt with the victims; he became enraged when Sutino, his playmate, was infected as a result of the circumcision and died in agonies two weeks later.

  And he could not imagine why any boy would submit willingly to a practice that would make him only a half man for the rest of his life, a half man before he became a man. The children explained to him that it was the custom. Bigagi, who survived the cutting, ripping, and sawing, never told Ras how he felt about the custom. Unless the spear thrown at Ras was comment enough.

  A year after Wilida and two of her friends had been initiated into womanhood, they were placed in bamboo cages hung from the branches of trees about a mile from the village. Here each in her own cage, within sound but not sight of the other, they lived for six months. Old women stood guard and fed and bathed them once a day when they lowered the cages and allowed the girls to step out for a few minutes. The old women gave them counsel day and night--enough to last them for the rest of their lives.

  Ras, listening, learned more about the Wantsos than he dreamed could exist.

  Once every four days, the girls' mothers visited them and, squatting under the cages, shouted news and gossip. At other times, other women also visited them. The girls were, however, mostly lonely, miserable, and scared. The leopards prowled beneath the cages or sometimes came up onto the branches and dropped down on the cages and tried to reach through the bars. The girls screamed then, and the old women guards--safe in their huts on the ground--screamed at the leopards.

  Ras felt sorry--and also furious at times--because Wilida was being treated so cruelly. But he lost much of his fury when he found that the situation, though bad for the girls, was good for him. And in some ways it was also good for the girls. When he was sure that the old women were barricaded in for the night, he would climb the tree and go on all fours out along the branch. And after calling softly to Wilida so that she would not think he was a leopard, he would slide down one of the thick grass ropes from which the cage hung. He would untie the door and swing into the cage.