Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  He saw her swallow at hope or fear. Then she moved forward again lightly and rapidly, without a glance behind, and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.

  There was a short silence. Then Owen appeared to notice his hat. He retrieved it and restored it to his head with an attempt at a flourish. “I think you will agree I handled that with proper firmness,” he said. His hands were trembling and after some moments he thrust them into the pockets of his jacket. “You think it is funny when a man is cheated, Mr Simmonds?”’ he said. “Well, I must spoil your joke—those Susu people would not have known her condition when they sold her to me.”

  Whatever his private opinion, Simmonds had the grace to assent to this, and the examination was resumed, though Paris found his mind still on the diseased girl and the lightsome way she had stepped into the dark refuge of the forest. He found nothing amiss with the remaining slaves and left the bargaining to Simmonds. This passed reasonably quickly as it was a question merely of agreeing on the purchase price in bars—Owen would come out to the ship within a day or two to haggle with the redoubtable Thurso and make his choice of the goods.

  When this was concluded and the slaves back in the barracoon, the three men returned to the house.

  They took their rum on the verandah. Owen pressed them eagerly to stay the night but Simmonds was for returning downriver. He made it a matter of duty that the slaves should be conveyed that night but in fact he was not properly easy in his present company and the place was lonely. His shipmates were at Tucker’s, there would be drink in plenty there, and women.

  Owen turned to Paris. Would he not stay? He could get off early in the morning, there would be time enough.

  “The life is monotonous here,” the factor said. “I do not see much company of my own sort.”

  Paris was not sure that he cared to be included in this category, but the pathos of the understatement half won him and the mild and desperate eyes did the rest. And so it was decided: Simmonds would convey the slaves that evening under guard provided by Owen, Paris would remain until next morning.

  The mate began preparing to leave at once, desire for more drink routed by the fear of being caught on the river in the dark with a boatload of slaves.

  Fettered by the legs in pairs, their arms bound tightly behind them, the negroes were thrust into the waist of Owen’s longboat. With a heavily armed Simmonds at the stern and the two Susu spearmen forming a guard, they cast off. Owen and Paris watched the boat out of sight then mounted again to the house. The woman who had been hanging out washing was now in the lean-to beside the house, sitting on a low stool, thighs spread, winding cotton thread round a wooden spool. She looked intensely black in the shade there, so black that her skin glinted blue like coal, reminding Paris of the Kru people who had ferried his first slaves. She watched the approach of the two men without expression. Her face was broad and flat-boned, with a low forehead and a wide, sullen mouth.

  ‘This one friend me, he sleep here one night,”

  Owen said. “Two person chicken rice, you sabee?”’ He indicated Paris and himself with rapid gestures then made motions of eating. “I don’t trust the bitch,” he said moodily to Paris.

  ‘Here, come in here.”

  The house was built on a single storey with rooms leading off a narrow verandah. Owen led the way into what was evidently his living-room. Rush mats covered an earth floor. There was a European-style couch in worn red plush and some upright chairs round a bamboo table. “Have a seat,” Owen said. “She’ll bring in the rum, she knows my habits by this time.”

  He had barely finished speaking when the woman came in with glasses and bottle and set them down on the low table. She was tall and full-bodied. The cotton shift was strained across her hips and fell above the knees, showing thick, shapely legs with a faint down of black hair. Having set down bottle and glasses, she looked at Owen briefly and insolently, uttered some soft and high-pitched words and swayed out.

  “She is getting above herself,” Owen said, with a wry smile that seemed to be intended as an apology. “I shall get rid of her one of these days.

  She has brought her family in and I am expected to maintain “em all, father, mother, maternal grandmother, two sisters and a man she claims is her cousin. I have reason to think she plays the whore with the men who come here in the way of trade. And moreover I suspect it is her relatives that broke into the storehouse and made away with goods. But I intend calling in the Mandingo priest to get to the bottom of that business. These are difficult times, Mr Paris. On every hand there is news coming in of things miscarrying one way or another. There is Captain Potter’s being cut off by slaves at Mano and the ship driven ashore and the captain, the second mate and the doctor all killed in the most barbarous manner—the slaves were all taken by the natives again and sold to other vessels, so they in no way mended their condition by their enterprise. And along the river here things are rendered difficult lately: it is dangerous to pass and repass because Captain En-gelduc, upon his coming up the river, has refused the king his custom, or dashee as we call it, which has bred a great palaver between the king and all the whites trading along the river. Come, Mr Paris, you are not drinking, sir.”

  “I am well enough,” Paris said. ‘allyou need not wait on me—I will see to my own glass.”

  He watched the factor pour himself out a liberal measure. The light was fading now, shadows lengthened over the rough walls. In the silence Paris thought he heard a faint, continuous pattering sound like distant drums comor perhaps it was the sea, audible even here.

  This was Owen’s evening then, the rum, the fading light, the smell of hot palm oil, the view across the baked clay of the compound to where the land dipped towards the river… “This is my first voyage,” he said. “I am new to the trade and I do not perfectly know how it is conducted. I saw that you agreed on a price in bars with Simmonds, and that is the same as they do with slaves that are brought to the ship.”

  “I trade at the same prices as they do who take slaves to the ship. That is only fair, as I keep them penned here at my expense, convenient for the ships” boats. There are two rates of bars, one up country and one aboard ship. The ship’s bar is worth twenty per cent more. At present prices a male slave in good condition can be purchased up country, by those that will bring them down— travelling traders like the Vai people and these Susu that are here now—for twenty country bars, which when brought down here we buy for thirty-five or forty. The same slave, sold on board ship or here from the barracoon, will fetch sixty-five ship’s bars, which is equal to above eighty country bars. So I get eighty for laying out forty and the difference is made up in trade goods.”

  The dark was gaining now and Owen rose to light the oil lamp on the table. His hands trembled no longer, Paris noted comthe rum had steadied him. The lamp had been badly trimmed and it cast a wavering light over the walls of the room and the coarse matting on the floor. Owen’s brows and eyes were left in shadow as he sat back in his chair.

  ‘It is in determining the value of a bar that you find yourself exercised,” the factor said. “A man has to keep himself abreast of things. The value of a bar can go up or down, Mr Paris, depending on the supply of slaves. A man can incur losses.

  I have seen men ruined on this coast, decent men, traders like myself, ruined, sir, for failing to remember that the price of a slave can fluctuate.”

  Owen leaned forward and the lamplight fell on his face. His eyes were unsteady and Paris saw him frown slightly in what seemed an effort to focus them. “For instance, a country bar,” he said in slow recital, “may be worth fifty flints today and sixty-five two days from now. A piece of blue baft is worth ten bars as I speak to you now.

  Tomorrow, who knows? A man’s intellects are exhausted keeping up with it.”

  “All the same,” Paris said, “if I understand you aright, you are making substantial profits.”

  “Aye, sir, I would be, but for the exorbitant behaviour of the people here, that carr
y it all away. Your profits are brought down by the expenses of the kings and your own people, which are very unreasonable and great. For example in Sherbro there are three kings who divide the country among them, as well as others of less note. Every one of these expects custom from a white trader, which comes to twenty bars at your first visit, and after perhaps ten or twelve, if you bring a shallop or a longboat. I tell you, I am standing still. I have no more stock now than I did twelve month since.”

  Owen paused to refill his glass. His movements were slower now and more deliberate. When he spoke again it was in a different tone, more consciously sociable.

  “You are lately from England, I take it,” he said. “I envy you. How you must look forward to returning there.”

  “No, I do not. To be frank with you, I think I would be content not to set foot in England again as long as I live.”

  His voice, deep and rather vibrant at any time, had betrayed an intensity of feeling surprising even to himself. The question, Owen’s assumption, natural as it was, had caught him off guard.

  But the factor was too rhetorical with rum by now, and too much occupied with his own deprivations, to notice much of this. “You surprise me, sir,” he merely said. “When I consider what it is to live in England, the happiness of conversation, the pleasures of a life free from all inconveniences which must certainly happen in this wilderness, where the inhabitants are scarcely above beasts, ignorant of all arts and sciences, without the comfort of religion, destitute of all wholesome laws…”

  “Comfort of religion?”’ Despite himself, Paris’s tone had quickened. He had drunk considerably less than the factor, but what he had drunk had inclined him to acerbity rather than indulgence, and the phrase Owen had used was hateful to him. “Do you think we have wholesome laws in England?”’ he said.

  “I have heard my fellow-Englishmen described in precisely the words you are using, and by those that were busy penning them up. Our good captain uses terms not much different to describe his crew.”

  Owen seemed about to reply, but then his expression changed suddenly. ‘Here she is,” he said. “She has come at last with our supper. You have taken your time, haven’t you?”’

  The woman had entered silently. Her moving form in the lamplight sent shadows flexing about the room.

  She set down the dishes on the table, straightened herself and stood still for some moments, though without looking directly at Owen.

  “Do you think I don’t know where you have been?”’

  Owen said. “She pretends not to understand anything,” he added to Paris. “Me go call Mandingo priest-man,” he said loudly. “He catchee thief. Tomorrow—do you hear that?”’

  The woman glanced indifferently at him then turned and walked slowly out of the room.

  “She has been plotting with her relatives,”

  Owen said. “But I have given her something to think about now. Serve yourself, sir. Let us not stand on ceremony.”

  Paris took boiled fowl and rice and a sauce of palm oil and chopped peppers. Small black flies had entered the room; he felt the occasional sting through his shirt. Glancing up, he found Owen’s eyes on him in a wide, unsteady stare.

  “The Mandingos have a fashion of finding things out,” the factor said. “I did not believe it when I came here at first, but I have seen things with my own eyes… They follow the law of Mahomit according to the Alchorn, as they learn it from the Moors of Barbary and elsewhere, and so fetches it down here by these wandering pilgrims. You may say it is not reasonable for a Christian man to believe they are able to perform anything above the common run. But I have seen them with nothing but a few feathers and a handful of sand find out the secrets of futurity and things that people have spoke of to no one. It is my belief they have the power of some evil spirit or familiar sent to them by the great enemy, to draw these ignorant Bulums to himself.”

  The rum he had drunk, the wavering light, his host’s oddly disconnected speech, had combined to confuse Paris. It seemed to him for a moment that the factor was referring to some powerful and malignant slave trader further in the interior. ‘Who is that?”’ he said. “Further upriver, is he?”’

  “I am talking about Satan.” Owen looked gloomily before him. His mood was turning morose.

  He had eaten very little and now thrust his plate aside and reached again for the bottle. ‘It is by Satan’s help these ignorant wretches are so deceived,” he said.

  “The Bulum compose the local population, don’t they? Is the woman… your housekeeper, is she a Bulum?”’

  “No, she belongs to the Kru people.”

  “They are darker, aren’t they? Yellow Henry and his band are Bulum, I suppose. Well, he is a mulatto of course, but -“

  “You were acquainted with Henry Cook then?”’

  “It was he who came with our first slaves.”

  “He’ll never come with another.” Owen clapped white, slender hands at a fly, looking afterwards with a sort of hallucinated intensity for traces on his palms.

  “Why? What do you mean?”’

  But the factor had reverted to his former gloomy staring and made no reply. He remained silent for some considerable time with his head sunk on his chest.

  Paris was beginning to think he had gone to sleep when he spoke again, in the blurred and dogged fashion of a man contending with his own obscured senses to reach to the heart of truth. “No,” he said, “for all religion these Bulums have only the Porra Man.”

  “Who is he?”’

  “There is a secret mystery that these people have kept for many ages, or for all we know since their first foundation. It goes by the name of Porra or Porra Men. These men are marked in their infancy by the priests with three or four rows of small dents upon their backs and shoulders. Anyone that has not these marks they look on as of no account. There is one among the rest who personates the devil or Porra. He hides himself in some convenient place within call and upon his priests shouting he in the bush answers it with a terrible screech. Wherever the women or white men or any that is not Porra hear it, they fly immediately to their houses and shut all the windows and doors. Any caught outside will be torn to pieces.”

  Owen raised his head and fixed the surgeon with a sombre regard. “I have heard them,” he said.

  “I have heard the screams. Sounds carry in this place. The Porra hasn’t come this far yet, though.” He attempted a derisive expression, but there was no change in his eyes. “It is all nonsense anyway, no one but a savage could believe in it. They come into town afterwards, this mock devil with his gang about him, and he speaks through a reed, and he tells on what account he comes and demands liquor and victuals. Then he goes away with singing and dancing and all is quiet again.

  ‘Tis all faking—anyone with the curiosity to peer out of their houses would see it was only a man dressed up.”

  “They surely cannot lack for curiosity to that extent,” Paris said. “Either they are too terrified to look out or —and this I think more probable—they accept the mummery for the sake of order, just as we do. You say these people are charlatans. Well, just look at England, she is a paradise for Porra Men: the Church and the learned professions and parliament are full of them.”

  He hesitated here, with some feeling of compunction.

  Owen’s eyes were mournful and moist—he had wanted only to confide his solitude, his fears of the dark. But the surgeon was a little drunk and the memory of his shame was hot in his mind and his old vice of prideful assertiveness had him now in its grip.

  “The system works better here,” he said. “It has great consequence for the peace of the country. In Liverpool, not long before I left, a gang of seamen started to break up a brothel where one of them had been robbed. Others joined in. The watch was powerless to do anything. In the end they had to call in a regiment of militia and read the riot act. Two seamen and a passer-by were killed outright and one of the girls crippled for life before they could restore order.”

  Paris
paused, smiling his bitter, lop-sided smile. He was arrogant with superior wisdom and intensely dislikeable at this moment. “If it had happened here,” he said, “just one screech from the bushes would have solved all.”

  “Are you comparing things at home to this benighted place? I see you are one of those who always think they know better.” Owen raised his head to look steadily at Paris. Anger had stiffened him, given clarity to his speech. “You do not know better, sir. You do not know worse, even. You know nothing at all of the nature of life here, along this pestilential river.”

  There was silence between them for a short while. Paris sat with shoulders bowed, his big-knuckled hands thrust between his knees as if for safekeeping. Then he looked squarely into the other man’s face. “You are right,” he said, “and I am sorry that I spoke as I did.” Rage to have the better of it, unwillingness to compromise, these were old failings in him, if failings they be. New, however—no older than Ruth’s death—was the swift remorse that would come to him, a feeling like sorrow, at having delivered a wound for the mere sake of argument. The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge—much older than the desire for truth—to command attention, dominate one’s fellows. The fuddled man before him was truth enough. He had belittled the nature of the factor’s servitude. Owen needed to despise his surroundings in order to endure them. That a man engaged in this cruel trade still deserved not to be treated with cruelty seemed a mystery to Paris rather than a truth; but it was one which contained a strong imperative for him. “Why don’t you get out?”’ he said gently. “Why don’t you leave this place?”’