Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  At this point he found himself being regarded closely by Inchebe, who was more devious than Billy and so more prone to suspicion. ‘We glad too much get you idea on dis subjec”,” he said. It was known to everyone that Sullivan, by one of those shifts of fortune sometimes occurring in the settlement, where relations between the sexes were a complex blend of the casual and the binding, now found himself having to share his woman with two others. ‘allyou say Dinka no good,” Inchebe said. “Mebbe you tink Dinka not bootiful girl, not have bootiful butties an” so on an’ so fort, what you say?”’

  This was a very cunning question and Sullivan, aware that he had possibly overdone Sallian’s praises, was thrown out by it. ‘Thim things you mention is steadily deterioratin”,” he said. ‘Any man with a knowledge of commerce, like meself, will tell you it is no arthly use investin” your money in a deterioratin’ asset.”

  Some of Inchebe’s calm fell away from him.

  ‘What shit lingo dat?”’ he said. “You want say me someting, you talk people lingo.”

  “Bootiful butties, what dat madder?”’

  Sullivan said earnestly. “You feller lucky have soso ugly woman. Bootiful go way soon soon, niver come back. Ugly go on gettin” more “n more.” He cast about for a way of changing the subject. “What you talk about?”’ he said.

  “Sallian look after you so good you like twin, you like bun same oven, one bake bit longer.”

  This was a true observation. Both men were short and quick of movement; and both were dressed identically in clothes that had been made for them by Sallian. A tactful and loving woman, she made no distinction of any kind between them. They had exactly the same palm-leaf hats, deerskin drawers decorated with plaited fibre tassels dyed red, and sleeveless smocks of faded blue, made from a remnant of cotton from the trade goods that had been brought off the ship.

  “Subjec” not Dinka, subjec’ not Sallian,” Billy said austerely.

  ‘Subjec” not bleddy twins. We talkin’

  “bout rainstone. Easy too much no tell where.

  Ho, yes. Last rain come late. Why you no knock stone tagedder fall rain before?”’

  “De time no right.”

  “What you mean, time no right? Dat de time people need.”

  “Rain no come for people need, no care bugger people need.”

  “Aha! I got you in de corner now, Cheeby.” Billy’s expression was again triumphant. “I got you pin down. You wait you see rain come den you knock stone.”

  Inchebe nodded placidly. ‘Sartinly,” he said. “Dat de right time knock stone.” He raised a thin forefinger. “But only rainman ken see dat.”

  “He right.” Sullivan had begun to take an interest in the argument. “Why the pox man knock stone if rain no come?”’

  “Jesus, you bad as he is.” Billy felt himself sweating. There was a contradiction of appalling proportions at the heart of Inchebe’s argument, but he could not see it clearly enough to be able to expose and refute it. He raised his heated face to an uncomprehending sky. “Give me strength,” he said.

  Sullivan was shaking his head slowly. “Aye, bejabbers, wasted effort,” he said. “Where de point in dat?”’

  Suddenly Billy saw a way. “Tell me dis, den. How you know dey de right stones?”’

  “How you fin” dem? You no born with stone, eh? Only stone you born with is you ball. Or mebbe you rainman bebby, you knock you ball tagedder make rain?”’

  Inchebe greeted this with dignified silence.

  ‘Well, den,” Billy went on, “you got to look here, look dere, fin” de good stone. Right or wrong?”’

  ‘Right.”

  “Got you now.” Billy paused, savouring his triumph. “One bleddy stone like anadder. How you know you stone de right one?”’

  Inchebe looked at him with genuine astonishment.

  “What kind question dat? Dey de wrong stone, rain no come down.”

  47.

  On his return, happening to pass Matthew Paris, Hughes mentioned the ship and the fact that she had anchored overnight. Most things came to Paris’s ears sooner or later. The people of the crew reported to him out of habit and a kind of deference that had survived the familiarity of the years; and both black and white confided in him sometimes when he was treating them for sickness or injury or discontent in the long, palm-thatch lean-to on the edge of the compound that he used for a sickroom.

  He thought for a while about what Hughes had told him as he sat there at the corner of his hut on a low stool he had made out of driftwood, with his hat tilted forward against the low sun and his naked, long-shanked legs stretched out before him. He did not see anything very remarkable in a ship lingering a day or two longer than usual—there could be a score of reasons. That it was Hughes who had delivered the information was the only remarkable thing. In remote communities legends form as imperceptibly as clouds change shape and colouring; and Hughes, while still alive amongst them, had become a legendary climber and watcher. This lonely man had saved them once, or so it was generally held, in the violent early days of the settlement when the threads that held them all together had been stretched taut, close to snapping.

  In the first rainy season it had happened, when the vast prairies of saw-grass lay under water.

  Hughes never spoke of it, taciturn in this as in all else; but the words with which he had come to tell the others had always been remembered—and repeated.

  Delblanc in particular had seen from the first the importance of telling things over; he had been clear-sighted in those times of danger, always seeking to encourage a sense of unity among the fugitives, ready to seize on anything that could be celebrated by the whole people together. Delblanc lay under the ground now, but this had been his legacy.

  Jimmy, the linguister, had aided this work, especially with the children. He had found his vocation as a teacher, though his school was very irregularly attended and subject to changes in the weather. He taught the children to form letters and he taught them simple arithmetic; but his lessons were mainly story-telling and playacting. He was helped sometimes by Paris, who had no idea of teaching, but would read extracts from his small stock of books. The children dozed or fidgeted to the sound of Pope and Hume.

  The years had stiffened Jimmy’s back and thinned his wiry poll so that the scalp showed through. His habit of smiling was unchanged, but in class, for the sake of drama, he would compel his face to seriousness, and this was effective, even sometimes fearsome, because of the contrast.

  He always began the Hughes story in the same way, speaking in his high, musical, rather plaintive voice, raising his hands and assuming a fixed stare, so as to engage the children’s attention: “One time Oose climb dis big tree. Oose ken climb anyting. Dis tree go high in de sky too much.

  S-o-o-o big dis tree…” Jimmy raised his arms and spread his fingers, looking up in a daze of wonderment at branches and foliage lost in the sky. “Now why he do dat?”’

  A number of hands were raised immediately.

  “Ya, Sammy?”’

  “Oose want git up top.”

  The simplicity of this answer occasioned some mirth.

  Sammy glanced round him smiling, then slowly allowed his head to sink forward on to his hands.

  “Very good, my pikin, very good,” Jimmy said.

  “Never mind dem sniggin” ones. Easy to laff.

  Dey laff diffrent baimbai. You answer hunnerd per cent right. You only four but you a thinker. But dere anadder reason come behind dat one.

  Ya, Tekka?”’

  Tekka was a strong, sardonic boy of nine, deep black in colour, with prominent cheekbones and bright, intrepid eyes.

  There was always a high shine on his face, as if it were kept polished. ‘Mebbe black bear chase Oose up de tree,” he said. “Mebbe black bear come after him an” Oose fraid lose him arse.”

  There was some laughter at this, spiced with the sense of sacrilege. It was the ambition of all the children to add in some way to the body of the sto
ry, and Jimmy sometimes admitted new material. But this attempt of Tekka’s failed altogether.

  ‘no black bear.” Jimmy shook his head more in sorrow than in anger. “No arse or any portion Oose ‘natomy.” To assert authority, or deal with subversion, he found it effective sometimes to use words outside the range of the children’s pidgin. Besides, he enjoyed the sound of them in his mouth. “Dat not in de story,” he said. “Ya, Lamina?”’

  Lamina, who was a little older than Sammy, had a mouth whose upper and lower lips were full and exactly symmetrical, forming the perfect shape of a flower. She always hesitated long over her answer, however eagerly she had thrust up her hand.

  “Oose want git up dere for lookout,” she said at last.

  “Dat right, my pikin. An” when he git up dere, what he see?”’

  And so it would go on, from question to answer, both questions and answers known by heart, until Jimmy settled into the story in real earnest and then it was just his voice rising and falling, a sound that belonged there, like the hiss and crackle of evening fires or the dry rustle of wind in the cabbage palms, while the children sat silently listening, all shades from ebony to dark sand, in the shade of the long fronds.

  ‘Oose he see like snippy bit colour, mebbe dey was colour, mebbe dey was shine a white man face…”

  The climber hero, from his eminence there in the close-growing hummock, had found himself able to look down over a narrow valley, or canyon rather, a long strip where the rock rose near the surface, giving lodgement only to low growths, palmetto and bush willow. Beyond this, mangroves marked the course of a creek which wound through swampland, taking its rise from the flooded saw-grass plain. In the distance Hughes could see the winking rim of this vast lake.

  Through the lower leaves of the mangroves, in the long shaft 5f2 of sunlight that lay along the defile before him, he glimpsed a flash of red, saw light reflected from broken water. He trained the ship’s telescope, which had belonged once to Thurso and was now common property, over the belt of barer ground to where the creek water glinted behind the screen of mangroves. He waited. Then, for a space of perhaps fifteen seconds, before it was again hidden by denser foliage, he saw a long canoe pass downstream, a white man paddling at the prow in a ragged straw hat, with a musket slung across his back. Behind him, huddled together on the centre thwarts, were three Indians with faces painted or tattooed—he could not determine which, in this brief space of time. They sat with heads hanging, roped together, their arms bound behind them. Three more men, two of them negroes, all armed with muskets, sat in the stern. One of the negroes had a red kerchief tied round his head—it was this that Hughes had glimpsed through the screen of trees.

  This was the tale he had come back with. The long canoe, the armed men, the bound Indians. They were going towards the sea. But this creek would not take them far, Hughes knew that—and reported it. It was a summer stream only, swollen by the rains, running out into the marshy edges of the lagoons.

  Perhaps they did not know this, someone suggested. Or perhaps they were not making for the sea at all, but looking for some great river they knew of, which would take them north, where they could sell their captives. That it was their intention to sell the Indians everyone was agreed —there could be no other reason for taking men and binding them.

  Nothing much else was clear. At this time the people of the settlement knew only their immediate surroundings. They knew the shore and the sheltering pineland and the swamps behind. They had not ventured far into the interior for fear of the Indians, who had already killed and mutilated Haines. Thus they could form no idea of where the men had come from. But some of the crew remembered stories of whites and runaway negroes banded together down among the Florida Keys, who lived by wrecking craft on the reefs and selling any Indians they caught to the Spanish.

  “Dis de story Oose come back with,” Jimmy said. “Den de people talk tagedder bout dis. Some dem say, let canoe alone, dem feller no danger to us, come for take Indian, not us. But Parry an”

  Delba, dey say no. Mebbe some you member Delba, he get sick, die after. An’ Foulah woman Tabakali say no an’ Nadri say no, s’pose dem feller come back agin. What den? But dere anadder reason back behind dis why dey say no. Why dem Indian in de canoe fust place? Ya, Kenka?”’

  Kenka was a slender, tawny-skinned mulatto boy, who often did not put up his hand even when he knew the answer, but Jimmy had learned to recognize the look on his face when he wanted to be asked and the tense position of his body. Jimmy knew too that Tabakali, the heroine of this debate, was Kenka’s mother.

  ‘Dey take Indian for slave,” the boy said proudly.

  “Dat right. Take dem for slave. Dat very ‘portant reason for help dem. All people got a right to be free. Nadri say dat an” Delba say dat. You let dem take slave? You stand one side, let dem take slave? You was slave youself. You forget so quick?”’

  Jimmy paused and smiled round at the children. “I was dere,” he said. “Dem time people no talk pidgin like now, people talk lingo belong dem. I big linguister dem time.”

  It was not the first debate he had assisted in: that had been held on board the ship, blood still on the deck, Thurso’s body still warm. The children knew this story too. Jimmy always went through all the stages of these famous debates, but he was a moralist as teachers often are, he wanted to instil a sense of community in the children so there were certain aspects that he omitted to mention or even falsified, his version of events was not necessarily that which lived in the memory of others who had taken part. People read into things their own truths and meanings. But everyone who had been present —and that was all of the fugitives, men and women, black and white, who had survived the voyage and the landing and the hardships of the first weeks—knew that the actions stemming from this debate had saved the settlement.

  One thing Jimmy always omitted was the naming of those unheroic ones who would have let the slaver-takers go unmolested. Only Wilson was named—he took the burden of all.

  The others still walked the earth, their offspring were among Jimmy’s pupils; but Wilson had died in public view, disgraced and without issue, and so everything discreditable could be laid at his door. In the course of time a legendary wickedness had gathered round Wilson’s name. It had been his fate to become first scapegoat then ogre. Now mothers sometimes hushed their children with the threat that Wilson would hear them and come.

  But in fact there had been others to take his side in this debate. Libby had done so, and a big, morose man from the Ivory Coast named Tiamoko. None of these had been able to see any point in intervening to save the Indians.

  “Them Indians aren’t nothin” but savviges,” Libby said, his solitary eye staring furious and bloodshot. ‘allyer seen what they done to Haines. They took the scalp off him while he was still alive. Them white fellers done me no harm. Why should I raise my hand agin my own kind?”’

  It was then, when these remarks had been explained to her, that Tabakali, the Foulani woman, joined in the discussion. She spoke no pidgin at that time, but she was a bold, independent woman from a nomad people and had ranged far west along the Guinea Coast, and she could speak some Malinke, which Jimmy was able to translate. He had not been able to do full justice to the contempt that rang in the words of this tall and magnificent woman, but enough of it came through, even in the bare pidgin of his rendering: “She say, what you mean raise you hand agin you kind? You kind slave-taker, dat what you mean? She say, in dat case you no belong here, you ken git out. Den she say, Haines killed stealin” gold dust from de ship. Who weepin’ for Haines? Barton sabee dat good. Sabee different, he ken speak now, we waitin’.”

  Barton had remained silent. Everyone knew he had joined with Haines in the ill-fated attempt to escape with the gold.

  ‘She say, Libby make sick she belly.

  She say, Libby missin” one eye an’ both him ball. If Libby her man, but she tank great god he not, she put him out de door. She say Wilson an’ Tiamoko same same L
ibby.”

  ‘Hooray!” Billy Blair said, delighted at this discomfiting of his old enemy.

  But Wilson was not amenable to the rules of debate, had moreover an ugly temper; not many weeks later it was to be his death. He took two steps towards the woman. “You black bitch,” he said, “is tha callin” me names?”’

  ‘Stand back.” Without conscious thought Paris had interposed himself. Wilson’s darkly bearded face was on a level with his own, the eyes in their cavernous sockets curiously vacant and unseeing. “Stand back,” he said again, though not loudly or threateningly. “This is a time for words, not blows.

  Or do you not know the difference?”’ he added with a sort of involuntary contempt.

  Wilson continued to look sullenly at him. He showed no sign of being cowed, but after a moment, perhaps sensing opinion was against him, he fell back.

  Paris turned and looked at the woman standing there.

  She had not given ground. She was wearing still the coarse cotton shift they had given her on the slaveship.

  The passion of her words had deepened her breathing.

  Her eyes flashed and her head was thrown back on the splendid column of her neck. Paris, who still had no woman at that time, was swept by a tide of admiration and desire more urgent than anything he had known, flooding his whole being, like a sudden brimming of the vessel in which lay all the thoughts he had had of her from the very first, when he had seen her behind the bars in the sunlit slave dungeon of the fort. He could not keep the feeling out of his eyes and Tabakali saw it.

  But it was above all for Delblanc that this debate —the first one of the whole people together—was a turning point and a revelation. And the nature of this revelation did not feature in Jimmy’s account either, because it was mainly concerned with Delblanc’s knowledge of himself. He had seen at once that the Indians should be rescued.