by Tamar Myers
Well, ultimately, that was their business, wasn’t it? As Daddy always said: “It takes all kinds to make the world go around.” Daddy—how he would love to be along on an exciting outing like this. Scary, yes, but exciting.
“A centime for your thoughts, mademoiselle.”
“What?” Amanda said.
“That is close to your saying, no?”
“Yes, but we say penny. As to what I’m thinking—look, Pierre, there’s not a fence in sight.”
The savannahs rolled out on either side of the dirt track they were driving on, uninterrupted by anything man-made. The grass, which had just begun to grow with the new rains, was lime green and ankle high. Here and there flat-topped acacia trees with twisted trunks, their leaves a dark hunter green, punctuated the landscape like buttons on old-fashioned pillow-top sofas. But the sky—how could the same sky that presided over Rock Hill, South Carolina, seem so many times higher and grander here?
Captain Pierre Jardin laughed. “A fence? There is no need for a fence anywhere, because none of this land is private: it all belongs to Belgium. Oui, this tribe or that tribe will claim ownership over a certain area, and maybe they will go to war over the land, but a fence proves nothing.”
“No cattle?”
“Non. We are too close to the equator, and too low in elevation, so we have tsetse flies. They spread sleeping sickness to both humans and cattle. You have heard of this?”
“Yes. But I didn’t know that cattle could be affected.”
“Ah—look over there; do you see that ant-red hill as tall as a man?”
“Yes. It’s very impressive.”
“What do you see just behind it?”
“A giant gray rock.”
“It is not a rock, Amanda. It is a bull elephant.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I do not joke about such things.” Having said that, the devil-may-care captain turned the steering wheel sharply and gunned the engine of his two-ton pickup. Although it seemed to Amanda that the vehicle came perilously close to tipping over, somehow Pierre managed to coax it up over an earthen embankment and onto the grassy plain.
Meanwhile, from the open bed of the truck came the anxious shouts of two African soldiers and the shrieks of one very terrified housekeeper-in-training. Gripping the back of her seat with one hand and the door handle with another, Amanda turned her head far enough to look through the back window. Poor Cripple: the woman’s eyes were shut tightly but her mouth opened wide with each scream. Amanda had seen the expression on the faces of kids who never should have been talked into riding the roller coaster.
“Pierre—”
He stopped and turned off the ignition. “Look, your rock moves.”
Not only that, but the giant gray rock had transformed into a massive bull elephant with ears the size of barn doors. The great beast appeared to be scrutinizing them intently, all the while rocking back and forth, placing its weight first on one tree-like forelimb, then the other.
“Do you have your Brownie box camera?” Pierre said.
“I can’t believe you’re asking that,” Amanda said. She could barely speak, her throat felt so tight and dry. “Let’s get out of here.”
He turned off the ignition and leaned out the window to deliver a message to the Africans in the back.
To her credit, Cripple was no longer screaming, but she was whimpering rather loudly. “Lekele diyoyo,” Pierre said to her in a tone he would not have dared use to a white person. Cripple gave him a steely look in return but she shut up.
“There is nothing to fear,” Pierre said, turning his attention back to Amanda, “until the elephant starts flapping its ears.”
And that’s exactly what happened next. The great ears began to move slowly at first, like sails on a sunfish boat on Lake Wylie that had been improperly tethered in a summer storm.
“Merde,” Pierre said under his breath.
Then all hell broke loose—like Amanda’s daddy was fond of saying. The ears flapped with such force that they all but pushed the behemoth forward. The long, flexible trunk rose high in the air as the elephant trumpeted. Its shrill, angry warning cries were so loud that Amanda covered her ears—or was that a silly way of seeking protection? Because if that bull should charge, and if the truck wasn’t fast enough—then you could add a new meaning to the phrase “flatter than a pancake.”
“Aiyee!” Cripple screamed in the back.
Chapter Four
The African woman had finally opened her eyes and it was her keen vision that detected the forward movement first; the elephant was charging. Pierre reacted swiftly, but perhaps too swiftly. When he stomped on the accelerator he gave the truck too much gas and flooded the engine. He turned the key uselessly, again and again, and in his panic foolishly continued to supply more fuel to the swamped carburetor.
They say that one’s life passes before one’s eyes at the moment preceding a violent death, but alas, for Amanda, that was not to be. The words of the “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep” prayer were all she could think of as she listened to Pierre grind the starter repeatedly, and felt the earth beneath the truck shake with each step of the lumbering beast.
Then a shot rang out, quickly followed by another. Then a third. Altogether three very distinct cracks of lightning and the earth shook violently one last time as the magnificent bull fell to its knees not more than twenty feet from the stalled vehicle.
The stench was all but intolerable. It smelled of elephant, dung, death, and Amanda’s own sweat. Despite the protective cork helmet she wore, the tropical sun drew the perspiration out of her head in salty streams that stung her eyes and trickled into the corners of her mouth. What on earth was she doing on top of an elephant? It was an insane idea, and it certainly wasn’t hers.
“Now put your left hand on your hip,” Pierre called from the ground. “Like so!” He formed a fist.
Feeling utterly foolish, for her right hand enclosed the barrel of a heavy-gauge gun; Amanda struggled to maintain her balance. Heaven forfend she should lose it and fall flat on the smelly beast. The thick skin was cracked like worn asphalt and surprisingly hairy. Already flies—and not just sweat flies either—had managed to find it.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Amanda said, and ordered Pierre to help her to the ground. Without missing a beat Pierre nodded to his soldiers. At once they stripped off their uniforms. The rags they wore underneath their khakis did not qualify as underwear in Amanda’s book; they certainly did not keep the soldiers’ genitals completely covered. For the next couple of hours they labored under the broiling sun as they butchered the elephant with machetes kept on the truck. More than once a testicle popped out in the open between a soldier’s legs, and Amanda averted her head politely until its owner noticed.
Although at first it was exciting to watch from a safe distance, soon the smell of blood and gastric gases became overpowering to the point that Amanda retreated to the shade of the lone acacia that had once served as the elephant’s refuge from the sun. Cripple hobbled along with her.
“Does the mamu enjoy eating elephant meat?” Cripple asked, smacking her lips loudly. She seemed remarkably cheerful, especially in light of the extreme terror she’d been put through earlier.
“I have never eaten it,” Amanda said.
“Are there no elephants in mputu?” The word mputu was a corruption of the word Portugal and nebulous in its meaning: that place out there somewhere, from whence you came. The white man claimed to have come from beyond a lake so vast that one could not see across it; but the fact that Cripple had never formally been to school did not make her ignorant. No such lake could possibly exist, because all that water would pour off the edge of the earth. Here was yet another lie the white man told, and fully expected the Africans to believe because they were ignorant savages.
“We have a few elephants,” Amanda said, “but they are all in cages.”
Cripple laughed. “But Mamu, elephants do not need to be fattened.”
“We do not eat them, Cripple.”
“Surely you do, Mamu. Did you not say that they are kept in cages?”
“Yes, but they are only to look at.”
Cripple shook her head. “Forgive me, Mamu, but the ways of your people are very strange, are they not?”
“They are not.”
Cripple yelped with laughter.
“What is it?” Amanda said crossly. Perhaps they’d have been better off not bringing the woman along as an interpreter, not if she was going to strike this attitude the entire way.
“Mamu,” Cripple said, “you are very hot with that horrible thing on your head, are you not?”
“It is a hat, Cripple, and yes, I am hot. But we whites were not created like—like you black people. If I were to remove this hat, I would die.” That message had been pounded into the student missionaries back in Brussels more than any other excepting one: boil all water a minimum of twenty minutes.
As recently as twenty years earlier one in four missionaries to the Congo died in the Congo. One sure way to topple over dead from sunstroke—or at the very least go as mad as a dog (or an Englishman)—was to go bareheaded. That explained the thick cork helmet. At least the current generation had given up on wearing long woolen underwear as insulation against heat; apparently it had quite the opposite effect, and was rather like deep-frying a turkey.
“Tch,” Cripple said, by pushing her tongue up against her lower teeth. Although it wasn’t exactly a word, still it meant a lot more than any one word in English that Amanda knew, like: “That’s dumb, you’re crazy, you guys are nuts, what a bunch of ding-dongs you foreigners are.” Amanda hated that sound, particularly because it made her feel even more out of place and increased her feelings of loneliness.
“Cripple,” she said, taking the high road, “what will become of all this elephant meat?”
The clever little woman rubbed her stomach as she licked the corners of her mouth. “It is my desire that I will feast on some of it tonight, as it was my husband’s magic that sent the elephant to us and begged the soldiers that they should shoot it.”
“Is that so?” Cripple’s husband was a witch doctor and she regularly made preposterous claims pertaining to his powers.
“Bulelela.” Truly.
“But even you—with the appetite of a lactating hyena—could not make a dent in so much meat.”
“Eh, what you say is true, Mamu. But we will no doubt take much of it to those heathen Bashilele as a peace offering, so that they will not eat us—”
“They are not cannibals, Cripple.”
Cripple grunted. “And some of the meat will surely be given to those poor wretches so that they will allow us to continue on our way unharmed.”
“What poor wretches? Where?”
Cripple clapped her hands in astonishment. “Aiyee! Mamu, always I forget how poor the white man’s eyes are! Yet this is the name we have given you: Mamu Mesu Mabi—Mamu Ugly Eyes.”
“Cripple, it was you who gave me that name, and then others learned it from you. I do not like it, by the way.”
“Mamu, there are many things we do not like, but cannot change. If we do not learn to accept such things, then we will be like a dog on a rope in the marketplace. We will pull first this way, then that way, never finding a moment of peace.”
Amanda averted her gaze while she rolled her eyes. She was not long out of college, and during that time she’d lived with her parents. Then it had been her father’s tedious lectures that had gotten under her skin; now it was her assistant housekeeper who gave her unsolicited bits of advice. When was it going to end? Never?
“Cripple,” she said, summoning up every scrap of patience she had, “where are these wretches that you mentioned?”
“There, Mamu?” Cripple pointed to the horizon at approximately eleven o’clock.
“But Cripple, those are bilundu—low anthills. They are the sort that are crushed and used to smooth the roads.”
“Nasha—those are not anthills; those are people. Look closer, for they move.”
Amanda shaded her eyes against the midday glare. Sure enough, either she was hallucinating, or a large number of anthills had managed to line themselves up and were definitely moving their way.
“Where do they come from?” she asked in utter amazement.
“Mamu, they are basenji—bush people. Perhaps even, they are Bashilele. It is best that you and I remain here by this tree. If need be we can climb to safety.”
“Nonsense, Cripple.”
“Aiyee. I mean no offense, Mamu, but if these people are Bashilele, and if the men are indeed in search of new skulls from which to drink their maluvu—well, there is no other way to say it; you have an exceptionally large head.”
“I do?” Amanda said. She began by patting her cheeks, then her chin, then her pate.
“Mamu, I think your skull might hold two liters of this beer—the maluvu.”
“Cripple!” Amanda only feigned indignation because she thought Cripple was joking. Or was she? Cripple never joked—at least not with her.
“Mamu, if it is some consolation, because of its great size your skull will become the property of the headman—the chief.”
What do you know? She was serious! Well, take that, Charlene Ferguson, who lived down the street, Amanda thought. All those years when we were growing up in Rock Hill, you thought that you were so much better than me—and all because your family owned a boat. You’ll probably die a nobody; but I stand a good chance of ending up as a chief’s mug.
“I am deeply honored,” Amanda said and then she started to laugh. And laugh. She laughed so hard that her sides hurt. After a while her knees felt weak, and so, still laughing, she squatted. Then exactly how it happened she couldn’t remember, but she was actually on the ground—rolling on the ground—in the shade of the acacia tree.
“Mamu Ugly Eyes, you must stop this unseemly behavior and get up!”
Amanda laughed even harder.
“Lekele kuseke, Mamu,” Cripple said. “Mpindu!” Now!
There was something compellingly urgent in Cripple’s tone that Amanda thought she should probably heed. But I refuse to be embarrassed, she thought to herself. She got up slowly, and brushed herself off without making eye contact with the all-too-serious spoilsport.
“Yes, Cripple, what is it?”
“Ants are coming, Mamu.”
Ants? Amanda thought she recognized the word, but there were many Tshiluba words for ants. This word did not apply to the ants that created the low anthills. Usually there were just two species of ants to be seen roaming about above ground—a miniscule brown ant and the giant stink ant—but curiously, for once the trampled grass around her, and the ground beneath it, appeared devoid of insect life.
“What ants?” Amanda said. “Where?”
Cripple pointed with her chin, but all Amanda could see was a grass-covered hillside and beyond that a shallow vale where a handful of acacia trees kept company in the baking sun. Beyond that the savannah rolled away for miles; it was only just before the sky blended into the horizon that a thin strip of grayish turquoise hinted at a forest.
“Can you not hear them, Mamu?”
“Hear the ants? Cripple, do you joke yet again?”
“Tch,” Cripple said.
Without saying another word, Cripple began hobbling toward the truck. Amanda thought of chasing after her, but instead ran up to Pierre, who stood just out of range of splattering blood, watching his two soldiers butcher the elephant.
“Having fun?” Pierre said, while only half paying attention to Amanda’s sudden arrival.
“Cripple said that the luhumbe are on their way.”
Amanda had Pierre’s full attention now. “Are you sure?” he said.
“Cripple insisted that she could hear them.”
“Did she say where they were coming from?”
Amanda nodded and pointed.
Pierre grabbed a chunk of elephant hide that was roug
hly two inches thick and about two feet square. He’d been planning to make a door mat out of it. Normally it would have been a tedious process, but thanks to the driver ants—if indeed that’s what they were—the process was about to be greatly shortened.
“Follow me,” he said, “but pay attention to where you step, yes? These ants bite so—how do you say—perhaps firm, yes? So firm, that when you try to pull them off, the bodies will remove, but the heads will stay tightly in place. Sometimes even the Africans will use them for surgeries.”
“Surgeries?”
“Oui, mademoiselle. If, for instance, a person has been cut with a machete, then the ants can close up the wound very tight.”
“Ah, like stitches!”
“Oui, oui, like stitches. But if, on the other hand, someone is sick, and cannot get out of the way, the ants will gapple them up.”
“You mean gobble?”
“Oui.”
Amanda laughed and Pierre couldn’t help but feel annoyed. It was a sensitive story; one that still haunted him. A Belgian hausfrau of Flemish heritage was suddenly widowed when her husband, a Consortium employee, died of a heart attack. The young widow worked through her grief by adopting three African orphans who, sadly, she treated more like servants than family members. But, such were the times, were they not?
At any rate, the eldest, a boy, misbehaved. Because the boy was too old to whip, she locked him in the woodshed while she and the two girls made an overnight visit to the provincial capital of Luluaburg. While they were gone, the luhumbe—the driver ants—marched through Belle Vue, cutting directly through the widow’s property. No one else knew about the orphan in the woodshed. By the next morning when the widow returned, the ants were long gone, but so was every tiny morsel of soft connective tissue of that helpless lad. For when the widow opened the door to release her intransigent son, all she saw was a gleaming white skeleton.