Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  Danka was a loyal friend, but his wits were nowhere near equal to Tongman’s and he had been taken by surprise. He hesitated a moment, then uttered a short grunt of contempt for the question. “I no see him look adder time. Why he look adder time?”’

  “Why he look adder time? Dat a very good question.” Tongman resumed his perambulation between the lines. “Danka no see Hambo look adder time. Nobody see Hambo look adder time. I go tell you why.” However, for a moment he hesitated, his confident expression wavered a little and he passed his tongue quickly over his lips. Then, with a dramatic increase of volume, he said, “Hambo no look adder time cause he sabee well fetish no on de roof adder time.”

  Hambo shouted a denial and rose to his feet, taking some steps between the files towards Tongman. The latter, his brief attack of nerves now quite overcome, demonstrated his sense of theatre by turning his back on his furious opponent, drawing himself up to his full height and raising Delblanc’s cane high in the air. “Who got the stick?”’ he demanded loudly. Neema’s baby, disturbed by all the noise, set up a lusty bawling.

  “I tell you one time, Hambo,” Billy shouted over the hubbub. ‘now I tell you agin.

  Tongman got the stick. Shove you oar in one more time, Palaver finish, Iboti go free.”

  Hambo’s face expressed violent displeasure, but he was obliged to return to his place. After courteous thanks to the beck-man for his timely intervention, Tongman resumed his case. He had the audience now in the palm of his hand. They might think, he said, that if a man knows exactly when and where to look for a thing, he either has some special information about it or he has put it there himself. But Hambo had made no claim to special information, except only the knowledge of the death threats and the business of the dust—both derived from Arifa. Perhaps Arifa could now throw some light on these extremely puzzling questions…

  Arifa had been pondering all this while and had hit upon what she thought a good way of neutralizing the damning point that Tongman had just made. In her eagerness she did not wait for questions, a serious error as it turned out. “Hambo no look de roof adder time, ha-ha, dat easy say why. He no sabee Iboti badmowf, I no tell him Iboti badmowf, I no tell him Iboti pick up dust. I tell him after. When I tell him, den he look.”

  “You no tell him?”’ Tongman raised his eyebrows. “We go see now. Day you see Iboti, dat de day you take koonti root wash in creek, seven-eight adder woman same-same ting altagedder? Dat de day, yes? An” you no tell Hambo dat day?”’

  ‘no, I no tell him.”

  “Man try kill you bootiful Hambo, you no tell? Why dat?”’

  Arifa settled the wrap over her ample shoulders and lowered her lashes. “I “fraid Iboti too much,” she said.

  There was laughter at this, especially from the women.

  Arifa was bigger than Iboti and noted for her termagant temper. “Poor little kuku, poor mwona Tabakali called, ‘I so sorry for you.”

  Under this provocation, Arifa forgot her role of fearful woman. Her eyes flashed and she clenched her fists. “Foulani baggage, crow pick you eye,” she said.

  “Never mind dem,” Tongman said, giving her a look of sympathetic understanding. “I sabee why you no tell Hambo. You not sartin, dat why.

  Early mornin” light no very good. You see Iboti pick up someting, but mebbe piece string, mebbe piece flint. Mebbe not Iboti. Dat right?”’

  Flustered by the laughter and misled by Tongman’s sympathetic tone, Arifa was brought to agree that in fact Iboti had been some considerable distance away and that a man picking up dust would not easily be distinguished from a man picking up any small object. But she still swore it was Iboti and said she knew it was dust because of the careful way he had carried it.

  Tongman turned away from her to address the assembly at large. The evidence against Iboti was completely discredited already, as he felt sure they would agree; however, he proposed to call one witness who would demolish any shreds of credibility still remaining. There was something of a sensation at this, for Tongman had told noboby about this witness, for fear she might be intimidated. It was Koudi, who had been sitting silent among them all this while. She was a quiet, long-limbed, rather shy and self-effacing woman with a kind expression of the eyes.

  Gently, amidst complete silence, Tongman drew out her story. She had seen Iboti on that particular morning she knew it was the same day that Arifa had been referring to, because it was the day for the washing of the pulped koonti roots. She herself had gone down to the creek, though a little later. There had been several women already there, Arifa among them.

  This evidence as to the day carried complete conviction.

  Everyone knew that the washing of the pulp was planned in advance and that it was collective work, involving repeated saturation and straining, the women helping one another with the heavy baskets.

  ‘So now de day fix, you tell us where you see Iboti,” Tongman said.

  “See him nearby de graveyar”.”

  ‘What time day?”’

  “Mornin”. Sun jus’ come up.”

  ‘What he carry?”’

  “Carry chop knife an” baskit.”

  ‘An” you comin’ from graveyar’, dat right? Come from Wilson an’ Tibo grave?”’

  ‘Dat right.”

  This too, no one would have dreamed of doubting. It was common knowledge that Koudi visited the graveyard frequently in the early hours of the day so as to sprinkle water on the graves of Wilson and Tibo and conciliate their spirits. These two men had died because of her in the early days of the settlement, one murdered for her sake and the other put to death for the crime. An aura of evil fortune had hung over Koudi ever since. Nobody held her directly responsible, but a woman who brings death to two men can never be quite as others are. Koudi was regarded as an unlucky woman and so, to some extent, guilty.

  However, on this occasion, for Iboti, she was lucky enough.

  Tongman had allowed an appreciable pause for the significance of her statements to come fully home to the people. Now he put his last, crucial, question to her: “What course Iboti lay? He lay for hut, he lay adder way, for bush?”’

  “Adder way,” Koudi said, without hesitation.

  “Iboti lay for bush.”

  “Iboti lay for bush,” Tongman repeated loudly. “I tank you. Dat all. Now, Iboti, stan’ up, hoist up you head. You no “fraid. Only one ting you say dese good people.

  Where you go with you baskit an” knife?”’

  It was Iboti’s moment. He raised his head and straightened his shoulders. “I go cut cabbage in de ammack,” he said, in his drawling, thick-tongued voice.

  “Iboti, you good man,” Tongman said. “I sorry you have dis trouble.” He was standing still now between the rows. It was time for the plea for acquittal and he was conscious of the need to tread carefully. The case was won, he knew it from the faces round him. His fee was sure, his reputation enhanced. But a wise man thinks of the future. The Shantee were strong and likely to get stronger; they were warriors as well as traders, whereas he was a trader only. It was highly inadvisable to make enemies of them. He had caused offence already, but this had been unavoidable. Now he would do what he could to mend matters.

  He cleared his throat and began, addressing himself to Billy. There were still elements of mystery in the business, they must all feel that, but one thing was abundantly clear: whoever had put the fetish on Hambo’s roof, it had not been Iboti. There was no case against Iboti at all. Arifa had seen a man pick something up, but that man had not been Iboti because he was on his way to cut cabbage at the time and he was only a mortal man and could not be in two places at once. However, Arifa’s mistake was natural. It was early morning and the distance considerable. The identity of the man she had seen would perhaps never be known. Possibly, if he resembled Iboti, it was the ghost of one of Iboti’s relatives come to pick up something he needed.

  The fact that Hambo had known exactly when and where to look for the fetish could be explaine
d by some message that had come to him in a dream or vision, which had now disappeared from his recollection—such things were known to occur. He, Tongman, was very far from wishing to make accusations against anyone. It was enough for him that Iboti should be cleared.

  On this, Tongman rested his case and returned the stick. The matter was put to the vote by Billy, as custom required, though now it was the merest formality: the show of hands in favour of acquittal was so overwhelming that a count of those against was not deemed necessary.

  The Shantee contingent stalked off in stony silence, not waiting for the formal verdict. Billy pronounced Iboti not guilty of witchcraft and within a very few minutes the clearing, scene of so much excitement, was once again quite empty of people.

  51.

  Relief at Iboti’s acquittal overlaid at first all other feelings in Paris. Before long, however, uneasiness came seeping back, something of that cold and half-incredulous dismay with which he had greeted Hambo’s plea.

  Certainly the verdict had been a victory for truth. Tongman’s advocacy, the fortunate fact of Koudi’s presence at the graveyard, the good sense of the people, these had combined to triumph. But tyranny could take many such blows and still prevail; and it was this terrible resilience and recuperative power that was most in Paris’s mind in the hours that followed.

  For all Tongman’s attempts to gloss things over in his summing-up, it was evident that there had been a conspiracy, that Hambo, with the connivance of Arifa and the probable complicity of Danka and Kireku, had practised to incriminate an innocent man and make a slave of him.

  The more Paris considered the matter, the more convinced he became that Kireku was the key to it. He was cleverer and more able than the other two Shantee, and more far-seeing—a natural leader. He had been careful not to seem directly involved in the case and had taken no direct part in the pleading, but Paris felt sure he must have known of the enterprise and given it his blessing in some measure. However, the extent to which he might have encouraged Hambo remained in doubt and it was suddenly clear to Paris that this element of doubt could provide a basis for talk between them. It would be better to go immediately, if he were to go at all, while he was likely to find Kireku still at home.

  All the same, the sun was well down in the sky before he finally made up his mind. Kireku’s hut was on the southern edge of the settlement, the side furthest from the lagoon. Like Tongman, he had built a second hut, alongside the first, for storing his trade goods. Libby emerged from this as Paris approached and called out, though whether in greeting or to notify his master was not clear. Amansa, Kireku’s woman, whom he shared with no one, sat outside the hut, shelling acorns and milling them between two blocks of wood, smooth and polished from much use. She glanced up but made no other acknowledgement of Paris’s presence.

  Kireku appeared at the entrance, looked gravely at Paris for some moments without speaking, then motioned him to enter. He was naked to the waist and his chest and shoulders gleamed with the acorn oil which it seemed he had just been putting on himself. The palm matting on the side of the hut facing west had been raised and sunlight reached into the interior, where the corner poles cast long shadows. Paris found Barton inside, sitting on a mat in one corner with his back against a post. He lifted his narrow face and nodded as Paris entered, but said nothing.

  Kireku gestured towards the mats on the floor, waited for Paris to sit, then sat himself.

  His long, narrow eyes were bright and fathomless in the sunlight and those parts of his body in the shade shone with blue-black glints at every smallest movement.

  "All you welcome,” he said. “You drink someting?

  You drink beer?”’

  “Thank you.”

  “Barton, go git de beer.”

  “Aye-aye,” Barton said, and Paris, as if in some uneasy dream where one struggles against recognition, heard in these syllables the same irony—too faint for insolence—the same servile alacrity as in the days when Barton had been mate on the slaveship. The response, too, was the same: Kireku directed a look of intimate disdain and irritation at his minister.

  “Look live, den,” he said. “Stir you stumps.”

  The beer was good cool, unclouded and not too sour to the taste. They had to draw close to drink, following the sociable custom of the settlement, by which the beer, like the gruel sometimes made from the same grain, was taken with long-handled shell scoops from the same wooden bowl.

  Paris smacked his lips politely at the excellence of the beer and commented on the beauty of the scoops—they had been made, he was told, by Sefadu. He answered Kireku’s queries as to his health and well-being and waited through the long, hospitable silences.

  Whatever displeasure Kireku might have felt at the way the Palaver had gone, he showed nothing of it now. The face that regarded Paris was equable and handsome, with its broad nostrils and wide, full mouth. Thin diagonal scars of tribal incisions showed faintly on his cheeks. The marks of thought were on Kireku’s face, there were fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and slight vertical folds between the brows. But its general expression was confident and resolute. It was the face of a man in command of his passions and of the circumstances of his life. Now, either from indifference or contempt, he gave Paris the opening he needed. “Well, so it look like Iboti not de man,” he said.

  “Not less he got wing,” Paris said.

  Kireku chuckled at this and tapped his temple with a long forefinger. “Iboti got brain of de bird, no got de wing,” he said.

  “He not clever, dat is sartin,” Paris agreed. “But dat not a reason make him Hambo porter.”

  Grasping the opportunity thus afforded, he began to speak of his fears for the future of the settlement if it became accepted among them that a man’s weakness or stupidity or simply his poverty was reason enough for that man to be made the possession of another and forced to do that other’s bidding.

  Some men had short memories, but Kireku’s was longer and he would remember his own sufferings as a slave. If Kireku, as a leading member of the community, would speak to his fellow-tribesman Hambo and explain these things to him, it might be possible to stop this tendency now, before it took hold among them and became customary practice.

  Kireku was a man of sense and experience and he would know that once a thing became customary it soon came to be regarded as lawful and was then extremely difficult to root out…

  Concerned above all to find words that would express his meaning clearly and show at the same time his confidence in Kireku as an ally, Paris had not looked very closely at the other in the course of speaking. When he did so now, he saw at once that his words had failed of their effect. Kireku’s position had not changed; he sat cross-legged, his strong, well-shaped hands resting lightly on his knees; but his face had assumed the same expression of frowning severity it had worn during the Palaver when he had intervened to protest at Paris’s lapse from pidgin.

  “What man you tink me, Paree, what man you tink yourself?”’ he said, after an angry silence.

  “You come here my house for ask favour. Man born me I favour dat man, no madder what, but you no born me, you buckra white man come off slaveship.”

  Paris took care to keep his eyes steadily on the other: any shift of gaze would be taken as weakness. “White man, black man, all free man, all bradder, live tagedder dis place, all same boat,” he said.

  “Same boat?”’ For a moment Kireku seemed to waver between anger and amusement. Then his face settled into a fierce smile of derision. “Dat de slaveboat you talkin” bout?”’ He glanced round at his minion, who was seated to one side and slightly behind him. Barton, responsive as always to the need for background effects, sniggered loudly.

  ‘Hear him laff, heh, heh?”’ Kireku said.

  “Barton, he sabee when to laff” With a sudden gesture he brought his right hand across his body and pointed to the livid scar on his chest. “Barton do dis,” he said. “Barton put hot iron, burn me. How ken he do dat? I tell
you. It cause Barton strong pas” me dat time. Now Barton my man, fetch dis, carry dat. He no do it I kick him arse. Dat de same boat? You bigman doctor, look me eye, mouth, ball, make me dance, people laff, heh, heh. Now you come sweetmowf, ask favour me, say we fren’, sai by sai, no more slave. Dat de same boat?”’

  ‘He got you by the bollocks.” Barton was grinning. He seemed no whit abashed or put out by the slighting references to himself. “He got a headpiece on him like I never -“

  “Barton, stow you gab,” Kireku said.

  “All dat finish now,” Paris said, after a brief pause to gather himself. “Dat in de past.

  Twelve year live tagedder dis place.

  We no tink come here. Come here by wind an” sea. Come here by God hand, you like say so. We jus’ happen here, Kireku, but give us de chance put ting altagedder right agin.” He paused again, casting about for words that might somehow clinch the matter, failing to find them. Kireku’s face had returned to seriousness, the look of derision quite gone. The sun was close to setting, shadows inside the hut had lost form, seemed merely now a vanguard of darkness.

  Paris saw Amansa pass outside with an armful of kindling. There was a smell of wood smoke and he could hear the voices of children, happy-angry, in the distance. It was a world, and precious to him. ‘Give us secon” time here,” he said heavily, ‘give us secon” chance.”

  ‘Mebbe give you secon” chance, not me,”

  Kireku said, and his deep-throated voice now held a quality of conscious forbearance, sarcastic or sympathetic, Paris could not tell which. “I no panyar people from house put slavemark on dem, take for sell. You de one do dat. You tink one mind belong all us here, dat mind same-same you mind.

  Why you tink I belong you idea right-wrong? I tell you why, Paree. It cause you tink you clever pas” me, you think you idea right-wrong strong pas’ my idea.”

  His voice had quickened and stumbled as he spoke and his hands had clenched. He made a brief pause, staring before him. When he spoke again it was more deliberately.