Redemption in Indigo

by Karen Lord

  Rahid, the mule-driving hunter who was not a chef, grinned. Do not be fooled by his happy face. Rahid is a pure cynic who has long ago concluded that since the world seems set up for men like Ansige to get ahead, the only thing to do is to work for the most amusing one of the breed so that one can at least be entertained by his japes and capers. Of course he is not correct, but it will take a broader experience than his home village and its environs for him to learn otherwise.

  'What do you recommend, Mister Ansige?’ he enquired.

  'I? Recommend?’ Ansige spat fragments of food in his wrath. ‘It is for you to tell me how you plan to get me out of this mess that you have got me into!'

  Pei, the mule-driving hunter who was a chef, looked disgusted, an unwise beginning since it only made Ansige think that he must be against him.

  Pei said, ‘It is a half day's trip to Erria in the north. Let us go there and see if anyone knows of a better road, or if they will help us to clear this one.'

  Dissatisfied by this suggestion, Ansige turned to Rahid instead and allowed himself to be soothed by that crocodile smile. Rahid was shaking his head. He knew already what Ansige was thinking.

  'Erria is a small town, and we may be waiting there for some time before we can continue our journey. It does not have the kind of lodgings that you would appreciate, and we will soon run through—I mean run out of the food we have brought. Let us go instead to Ahani in the east. The journey will take a day and a half, but it is a large city and there will be good roads directly to Makendha. We can even get provisions while we are there.'

  Ansige brightened up. Any disappointment could be overcome by the prospect of a good feed, and after two days on the road, he had been eyeing the stores uneasily. He was almost out of chocolate-covered fire ants, and he would miss their snap and crunch for his evening's appetiser.

  Naturally they headed for Ahani.

  For a moment I need to mention our as-yet-anonymous pair who wanted to see Ansige delayed. You do not know who they are, but I would not have you think badly of them out of ignorance, so just bear in mind that the only thing they arranged was the delay. The choice to go to Erria or to Ahani lay in the hands of the travellers, and only the travellers are responsible for what happened next.

  When they reached Ahani, Ansige was weary, but not as weary as Rahid and Pei. Ansige's freshly awakened anxiety meant that they had endured a lifetime of childish, whining complaints until Pei had had the bright idea of leaving in a tiny trace of the poison sac of the bleerfrog when he prepared its legs for Ansige's breakfast. The result had been a slow, unusually silent Ansige, too tired to be fretful, who struggled to stay awake in the saddle. They quickly found lodgings and rolled him into bed, placing a few covered dishes in the room in case he should revive and remember his stomach before dinner. Then they left him and went to the nearest bar to drink to their shared misery.

  First Rahid bought a drink for them both, and they grew more cheerful. Then Pei bought a drink for them both, and on that they grew indignant, telling tale after tale of the madness that was a man's life in the service of Ansige. Then a third round arrived, and they did not know who was paying for it, but when they looked around, there was a friendly-looking spider of more than average size who raised his glass cheerfully in their direction and indicated with a wave that they should go ahead and drink up on his behalf. Heartened by such a gesture of diplomacy from a representative of the animal kingdom, they toasted him gladly and resumed their tales of woe to each other.

  'I tell you, I do not think I can stand this for one day more,’ confided Rahid.

  'You?’ Pei exclaimed. ‘You are always smiling! You are his favourite, you and your peaceful, happy smile!'

  'I smile so that I do not weep or try to grind his head between my jaws. But now my face is tired and I am thinking to myself, is this really all there is to life, to wait on the Ansiges of the world until they drop dead from the excesses of their addictions? We are in Ahani, friend, a city of many entertainments, and all we can do is snatch a moment in a downtown bar because our boss is lying half-drugged in his bed. Why are we doomed to follow this man like nursemaids of an overgrown baby?'

  Pei sipped at his glass and thought. Rahid had never called him ‘friend’ before, but it was a word that went well with the flavour of the spiced alcohol. ‘You surprise me. And yet, even before you spoke, I thought to myself, “We are indeed in Ahani, and there are many roads that lead from here.” Many, many roads.'

  He smiled at his glass. It seemed to be in on the joke. It fed daring and plausibility to the tiny flame of rebellion growing in his heart.

  Rahid was also staring at his drink as if there were inspiration in its dregs. ‘I am not a thief. We can put the mules in pawn, draw out our last wages, and leave the rest of the money with Ansige.'

  'We are fair men,’ Pei agreed. ‘We can make all the arrangements before we go—for his lodging, his provisioning, and his onward transport. Thus we discharge our duties for this trip.'

  'Gentlemen, pardon me for eavesdropping.'

  It was the spider. He was a handsome specimen, standing well over a metre at the shoulder, and he had a slight tendency to gesticulate upward with his front legs that made him appear taller. His eyes were keen and deep, and they radiated sympathy.

  'I could not help overhearing you, and I thought to myself that I might be of some assistance, for I am a pawnbroker.'

  Rahid and Pei looked at each other and nodded. This made perfect sense.

  'I will pawn just the second mule pair of the train. It is practically mine anyway,’ said Pei.

  'And I will pawn the hunting gear, which I have made mine through years of use,’ said Rahid.

  Thus, with feelings of honesty and honour intact, they made their transactions and agreed to meet the spider in a few minutes for the exchange of goods and cash. They returned to the hotel, where Ansige dreamed on in ignorance, and they settled his bill for three days in advance. After thoughtfully leaving a note of explanation for Ansige, they proceeded to the pawnbroker's office to get their wages cashed.

  I know your complaint already. You are saying, how do two grown men begin to see talking spiders after only three glasses of spice spirit? My answer to that is twofold. First, you have no idea how strong spice spirit is made in that region. Second, you have no idea how talking animals operate. Do you think they would have survived long if they regularly made themselves known? For that matter, do you think an arachnid with mouthparts is capable of articulating the phrase ‘I am a pawnbroker’ in any known human language? Think! These creatures do not truly talk, nor are they truly animals, but they do encounter human folk, and when they do, they carefully take with them all memory of the meeting.

  To resume, by evening Pei and Rahid had departed the city, still riding the buzz of the alcohol's inspiration. Pei went north to the desert, and Rahid south to the sea, and I have no further report of them for the time being. I do know that they never spoke of the spider again, though they did have vague memories of a hairy pawnbroker, very well endowed in the arm department, with keen, deep, sympathetic eyes.

  In the meantime, Ansige awoke and found his servants gone. He went to the hotel proprietor and was told there was a note, but then the note could not be found and seemed to have blown away. Ansige, who was not a hard-hearted man, took it into his head that his two servants had stepped out briefly and been waylaid and probably murdered by vicious city thugs. He became so upset at this picture that instead of doing the sensible thing, which would have been to inform the authorities, he shut himself up for two days of constant room service and ran up such a bill that even the generous prepayment arranged by Pei and Rahid could not cover it.

  Now you understand how we come at last to this quite different picture of a delayed, distressed Ansige departing for Makendha. He was forced to sell the mules and the majority of the baggage, partly to pay his bill and partly because he could not afford to hire anyone to take care of them on the onward journey. He
did not wish to part with the horse, but the hotel proprietor convinced him that he should leave it behind to be rented out so it could pay for its own keep until Ansige returned. Pei and Rahid's plans for transport had to be scrapped. Now that he lacked a chef, he needed to get to Makendha as quickly as possible so as not to miss any proper meals.

  Driven by the mania of his obsession and blinded by the melancholy of loneliness, Ansige made his choices and boarded a five-hour omnibus to Makendha with nothing more than a small suitcase and a packet of antinausea, antacid chews. Then, because he still had quite a large amount of money, he hopped off briefly at the first stop to buy food, just in case his stomach recovered during the trip.

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  2

  ansige eats lamb and murders a peacock

  * * * *

  Semwe headed Ansige off before he could come to their door and ushered him into the village's guest lodge. For the sake of his daughter, he tried to talk as if he were really glad to see Ansige. ‘How nice to see you again. Did you have a pleasant journey?'

  It was the perfect trigger. Ansige unreeled the tale of his tribulations, thoroughly ransacking the truth and then dipping into the bag of embellishment and sprinkling with a free hand. He noted how Semwe's face grew agonised in sympathy at hearing that such a horrible experience could happen to anyone in a supposedly safe country. He was only partially correct. Semwe was counting under his breath with a kind of furious amazement at the fact that Ansige had been talking nonstop for twenty-five minutes with no more encouragement than a glazed look.

  'You must be hungry,’ he interjected desperately.

  It was the perfect distraction. Ansige choked off in midflow and murmured weakly that yes, he was indeed rather famished.

  'I have the perfect solution. Come with me.'

  Semwe led him from the lodge to the edge of his own field, where a young lamb was tethered.

  'Yours,’ he told Ansige, untying the cord and hooking the loops over Ansige's eagerly outstretched hand. ‘It will make a good dinner. Take it, tie it in the court in front of the lodge for now. I must go tell Paama you are here.'

  Off he went to find Paama and tell her about Ansige's arrival. It took him a while because Paama had already seen Ansige from a distance and didn't want to be found. Eventually she relented, to spare her family the shame of a grown daughter hiding like a child.

  'Besides,’ she said to herself, ‘if I know my husband, it will not take him long to get into very deep trouble.'

  She went to the lodge, but to her surprise he was not there. She began to wander through the village, looking for him with more duty than enthusiasm. Finally she made herself widen the search to the fields. By then twilight was deepening to dusk, so rather than go far, Paama decided she would only visit her family's lands. The moment she saw what was happening there, she clapped her hands over her mouth for one frozen moment of horror and then started to run.

  So that you may understand what has happened, we must go back to the moment when Semwe left Ansige holding the lamb by its tether. You will recall that Ansige was supposed to take it back to the court outside the lodge. Well, he did take one step, but then his stomach snarled at him, and his thoughts ran thus:

  He was really hungry.

  If he took the lamb back to the lodge, he would be compelled by courtesy to share it with any other guests staying there.

  He was practically starving, and he did not want to do this.

  Semwe gave the lamb to him. Why shouldn't he enjoy it by himself?

  He looked around, and there was a corner of ruined old wall, and in its shadow a space of blackened earth and stone. Someone had lit a fire there once, and so could he. Tugging the protesting beast after him, he went back and forth across the field, gathering sticks and grass and other fuel, and heaping them up by the sheltering bricks of the old, broken wall. Then he drew out his knife and rolled up his sleeves.

  Anyone who has ever butchered an animal will not need to have the messy business described. They will, however, wonder whatever possessed Ansige to opt for hastily butchered, half-barbecued, unseasoned carcass of lamb when he could have had a proper meal shared with his fellow human beings. I will not try to explain his behaviour. I have already made it quite clear that the man has problems, and so we cannot expect him to act logically.

  It was not even this scene that caused Paama's reaction. It so happened that after Ansige somehow managed to pick the lamb down to well-gnawed bones, he still felt cravings. He looked around for something to??ell??ot pack the empty spaces, for they were already packed, but to give his stomach that pleasantly stretched sensation without which he always felt slightly uneasy. His eyes anxiously scanned the flat lands from horizon to horizon until he saw a sheep, half-hidden amid a clump of tall khus-khus grass.

  No, he won't, I hear you saying. Make him a glutton, make him a fool, but do not make him a thief, for we cannot believe that such a man would stoop to larceny. Very well, let me once again explain his thoughts, but I do not want to have to do this too often. He employs a twisted kind of logic, but one that still works when the will is looking for any excuse. Thus runs the train of his reasoning:

  Thought 1: I am Semwe's guest.

  Thought 2: It is Semwe's responsibility to feed his guest.

  Thought 3: These are Semwe's lands.

  Thought 4: The sheep is on Semwe's lands and is therefore Semwe's sheep, and so I can eat it.

  Don't be startled at the galloping logic in the last thought. The will is usually in a hurry to get to the point of justification.

  His blunted conscience nudged him slightly. Was that sheep really Semwe's? His whole argument swung on that point, and if the reasoning-out of his actions was not firmly grounded, the uncertainty might interfere with his digestion. He looked around for some way out of this difficulty and caught sight of a stick insect, commonly known as a godhorse.

  The godhorse had perched itself on the top of the cracked remnants of the wall, downwind of the smoke from the dying fire. It wagged its head slowly from side to side and looked at Ansige very sternly. It was not this that made Ansige stare at it, however. It was the manner in which it sat: back curled like a young twig, lower legs lapped, midlegs bracing it as it leaned back, and front legs folded.

  Ansige goggled a moment longer and then found his voice. ‘Pardon me, but—'

  'Yes, these are Semwe's lands,’ said the godhorse in a solemn, almost bored voice.

  'Oh. Then perhaps you know if—'

  'And the sheep, as any fool can see, is standing on Semwe's lands,’ said the creature coldly.

  'Oh. So then it is certainly Semwe's sheep.'

  There was a tense silence while the godhorse glared at him. Finally it said, ‘That wasn't a question.'

  'I??hat? But—'

  'I don't wish to talk to you any more, you??ou??’ snapped the godhorse, but it was a tired attempt at scolding that trailed off as if it considered Ansige unworthy of the breath and effort of a proper insult.

  It uncricked its joints and stalked away into the grass, where it soon disappeared among the sticks and straw of brown and gold. Ansige immediately forgot it had spoken. All he remembered was that someone had told him this was Semwe's sheep, so anything that he planned for it was bound to be in order. Conscience appeased, he jumped up from the scant leavings of his meal and went to grab the next course, but to his surprise it moved off, trailing a frayed line of cord behind it. He headed it off and made another grab, but it stepped out of the way. A slow-motion chase ensued, a parody of a hunt—full, lumbering Ansige after the sedate sheep, whose mission in life seemed to be to discover the most economical movements that would put it mere millimetres beyond Ansige's reach.

  Panting, pouring sweat, he halted for a moment to catch his breath. He slowly turned around, surveying the fields, and stopped short at a horrific sight. There was a bird, a huge, sleek, colourful, bold-faced bird, picking away at the scraps of meat h
e had left behind! He was still staring at it, too appalled to move, when a thin, dry chuckle caught his ear. It was the arthritic godhorse, now seated on a low boundary stone nearby.

  'I wouldn't take that if I were you,’ it mocked him, jerking a limb at the scavenging bird. ‘A fat bird like that should make a good meal, don't you think?'

  With that comment, Ansige reached the pinnacle of frustration. He picked up a rock, hurled it, and whacked the thieving bird on its tiny brainpan. It fell dead instantly.

  Now enter Paama. Poor thing. She came running towards Ansige, trying to scream out her dismay in a kind of anguished whisper.

  'Are you mad? Where is the lamb my father gave you? Why have you killed the village peacock?'

  Ansige looked at her, looked at the peacock, and looked at her again. The day's injustices seemed to pile up in his throat as he tried to explain to her that it was a perfectly natural mistake that anyone could have made, and why did she have to scold him for it? His emotions spilled out in an indignant bluster.

  'Don't act as if you don't know me! I ate the lamb your father gave me, but it wasn't enough, so I saw the sheep and I thought he wouldn't mind if I had a little extra sustenance. He knows what a hard time I had coming here. And then this bird started eating the best bits of my leftovers that I hadn't really finished with, and anyway, if it was the village peacock, why wasn't it kept in a cage instead of being allowed to wander about stealing people's food?'