The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  He rose and returned to where Banga was still on his knees in the dust of the road. He saw the chief coming towards him and with the coldness still in his body was able to ask him, ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘He must be put to death,’ said the chief calmly. ‘Isn’t that what Christianity teaches us?’ The missionary looked at him with horror as if he thought that the chief was mocking him but the latter’s expression was as tranquil and settled as the morning itself.

  Donald began to pull his collar off with frantic hands and finally threw it on the road where it lay round and white like a ring that has been cast aside or lost. He didn’t know what to do or where to go.

  All the time he was staring at the chief with a wild mad gaze and trying to speak but not succeeding.

  ‘My fault, my fault,’ he shouted at last and at that very moment he saw Banga, who was still kneeling on the road, thrusting the knife deep into his chest and falling on the ground.

  He began to scream, ‘I should never have come here. Never. Never.’ He ran away from the dying Banga and from the chief with no destination in mind, and at last found himself in the middle of the damp green forest where there was a deep silence and he could hear no bird singing. His body was shaking and he had no control over it. He looked dully at the uniform green around him and no thought dawned in his mind, which was as empty as the blue cloudless sky that he had left. He thought of the prayer that he had put up in that very forest when he was returning with Banga’s wife and children and began to cry with sorrow and rage.

  After a while he saw the chief coming towards him and stopping beside him and looking down at him where he was lying on the ground. He raised his head to him as Banga had raised his to him.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ said the chief. ‘You can’t stay here.’

  Fat man with your throne and sceptre, the missionary thought, are you going to tell me what my destination and purpose should be now? The chief’s question rose in front of him like that phantom waterfall of which he had dreamed, that had poured endlessly among the heat.

  ‘You can come back with me,’ said the chief quietly. ‘If that is what you want. Banga’s hut is now empty and you can stay there if you wish.’

  How wise you are, how subtle, the missionary thought. Who else would have thought of that? You are more than the owner of a ruined European chair and a stick. Was that what he wanted, to stay in Banga’s house. There was a sort of fatal appropriateness in what the chief had just said, that he should go and live among the blood and sin and guilt that he himself had created and which would never wash away.

  He rose and stood upright in the middle of the forest.

  ‘That is what I shall do,’ he said firmly.

  The two of them returned to the hut through the forest. While they were walking the missionary threw off his shoes, leaving them behind him on the path which had been worn by so many feet. He felt the soles of his feet warm on the clay and he was like a child again barefoot in a Scottish summer.

  They stopped outside the hut. ‘The bodies are no longer there,’ said the chief. ‘You can stay in it. The floor has been cleaned.’

  He turned away and the missionary entered the hut. There were a few clay plates, and a bundle of twigs and branches for a bed. The bareness appealed to him, in a strange way healed his spirit. This is my study, my dining-room, my bedroom, he thought, as if he were repeating a litany. He lay down on the bed like a prisoner in a cell, ready to pay for his crimes. He lay down on what had once been a marriage bed. He fell asleep almost immediately and did not waken till the darkness had fallen. He could not see his watch, and feeling for it, loosed the strap and smashed the dial again and again against the clay floor of the hut. Then he fell asleep for the second time.

  When he woke in the morning he didn’t at first know where he was. The sun was shining beyond the open door but inside the hut it was dark. He rose from his bed and saw that beside it there was a pot full of water and a bunch of yellow fruits that weren’t at all like the ones he had seen on the trees. He washed himself and ate one of the fruits that tasted like a coconut and had some substance like milk inside it. He did not wish to do anything and sat in front of the hut as he had seen the natives do, now and again looking at the church which appeared remote and superfluous, its bells dumb. He told himself that he might as well let his beard grow and he considered this an important decision.

  He felt time lying on him like a cloak that rests heavily on the shoulders. He had no desire for anything, the future did not trouble him in any way. As he watched the street which was at first still and bare, he heard the sound of instruments being played, and then he saw people coming towards him dancing, dressed in colourful clothes and feathers. They were carrying something, and it took him some time to realise that it was the bodies of the dead, wherever they had lain during the night. The bodies were covered with flowers, and lying on trestles. The dancers were making a noise that was melancholy and gay at the same time, and he saw with a bitter pang of pain that among them were the Christians whom he had seen in the church. Without thinking he rose and followed them as they made their way into the forest, dancing all the time as if they were taking part in a festival.

  They danced and sang for a long while till at last they reached a glade deep among the trees. When he looked up he saw that the branches of the trees were thick with bones, shining among the leaves, white still bones like musical instruments.

  The crowd stopped and he saw the witch doctor emerging from it and making signs above the bodies, while at the same time the people kept up a low harmonious murmur like the twittering of birds.

  With thick ropes made of the branches of trees they began to haul the bodies up into the sky till they were lying among the other bones, while still maintaining their singing and dancing, and now and then taking little steps as birds do, or spreading their arms as if they were wings.

  The music and the blueness of the sky and the dancing seemed to make death itself joyful and it occurred to him that this tribe had, in their natural motions, been little affected by Christianity. They were presenting the bodies to the birds, transforming them to music in the middle of the forest. When the bodies were safely in the trees, they began to make obeisance to them, again spreading their arms as if they were wings.

  He was so absorbed in the sight in front of him, which seemed so natural and cheerful, that he did not at first notice that the chief was standing beside him, till the latter spoke in a soft voice, saying,

  ‘This will bring your home to your mind,’ and he looked at the missionary with a wise ancient gaze.

  ‘That is so,’ said the missionary, thinking of the burials in Scotland on cold days with a sharp wind, and the men clad in their black stiff clothes.

  ‘That is natural,’ said the chief.

  ‘Do you believe in the soul then?’ asked Donald.

  ‘The soul?’ said the chief. ‘The soul is like the music of birds.’

  ‘I thought you were a Christian,’ said Donald probingly.

  The chief did not directly answer the question but said, indicating the crowd, ‘They think that what Banga did was natural. It was natural for him to kill his wife and children, and natural for him to kill himself. They understand that.’

  Natural, thought Donald to himself, looking up at the bodies which he could hardly see because of the thickness of the foliage.

  ‘Why did Banga’s wife leave him?’ he asked.

  ‘He was beating her,’ said the chief and then, without irony, ‘After he became a Christian his temper became worse. Did you not see the stripes on her back? He talked about the soul and became idle.’

  And that was natural as well, thought Donald. Everything was natural, the forest, the music, the dancing and even the chief in his purple feathers.

  All the time the chief was gazing at him with sharp searching eyes and all the time Donald was thinking, Is everything then natural? What then of the Law?

  He saw Tobbuta c
oming towards him and the chief whispered to him, ‘He will try and kill you. You have put off your collar and you are now like anybody else. You are a natural enemy.’ And again there was no hint of irony in his voice.

  Tobbuta’s face was a black uncomplicated mask. The crowd looked at him carelessly as if his rage too was natural.

  He is going to try and kill me, thought Donald, and I don’t care.

  Tobbuta stopped in front of him, taking out two knives one of which he handed to him. Donald gazed at the knife as if he did not know what it was. Then he threw the knife on the ground and stood where he was, without weapons, Tobbuta raised his knife which was a dazzle of light among the greenness, and at that moment the missionary felt something strange happening to him. He did not want to die.

  After all that had happened he did not want to die. The urge for life poured through him like water, like joy, like music.

  He seized Tobbuta’s wrist and began to twist it, using every ounce of strength which he possessed, thinking of the days when he had been a hammer thrower at the university which was now so far away. Tobbuta twisted and twisted like a fish at the end of a rod and the missionary fought for his life. The veins stood out on his forehead, a great wrath was blinding his spirit.

  I do not want to die, he said to himself, squeezing Tobbuta’s wrist, and he thought it absurd that he should lose his life so far from his own home while at the same time the bodies covered with flowers were waiting for the birds to come. It would be a ridiculous finale.

  At last he heard a crack as of bones breaking and he saw Tobbuta looking down at his wrist which hung helplessly at his side.

  ‘Ah,’ said the crowd, and their sigh was like a breeze moving gently about the forest.

  Tobbuta turned away and tried to stab himself with the knife which he held in his uninjured hand, but the missionary took it from him and threw it deep among the leaves. Tobbuta turned his mad tormented face towards him and then ran away through the crowd without looking back.

  ‘Everything is natural,’ said the chief in the same low voice as he had used already.

  As if nothing had happened, the crowd began to sing and dance as before, and the missionary went in search of Tobbuta.

  He found him at last sitting by himself against the trunk of a tree and when the missionary approached him he tried to rise to his feet, staring at him with a defiant angry look.

  He thinks I’ve come to finish him off, thought the missionary, and he’s not frightened.

  He stood in front of Tobbuta and asked, ‘Did you love her?’

  Tobbuta nodded without speaking.

  ‘Why then did you let me take her away?’ Donald asked.

  ‘We couldn’t disobey the chief,’ said Tobbuta. And he began to cry, the tears streaming down his face, his body shaking.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Donald. ‘I didn’t know it.’

  The two of them sat beside each other for a long time, and when Donald left Tobbuta appeared calm and peaceful. As he walked back he thought he was being watched by secretive eyes but he saw no one. He returned to his house wondering what Tobbuta would do now. Would he kill himself as well?

  When he reached the hut there was a girl standing in front of it and he recognised her as the one who had asked him the question about her old bad-tempered complaining father.

  Her face shone in the sun, her breasts were bare, her legs looked strong and muscular, and she wore nothing but a belt of leaves about her waist.

  He was filled with lust: she was like a black Venus rising from a green sea of leaves.

  ‘The chief told me to come,’ she said simply, staring at him with a direct challenging gaze.

  He took her by the hand and together they entered the hut. They lay on the bed of twigs and branches and she was like a fish turning and twisting in foam, in a waterfall, in tormented glimpses of water and sun.

  Miraga Miraga Miraga.

  Everything is natural, the voice told him. The birds are singing, the bodies are rising from the dead, there is music in the forest. And the black fish is turning in the water. The world is black and natural and beautiful, it is mysterious and abundant, its shadows are cool in the sunlight.

  He threw the water away from his shoulders as he turned in the river. His white soul put on flesh among the fruitful shadows.

  When she rose from the bed she set out fruit for the two of them and he ate his ravenously. The juice flowed down his growing beard.

  ‘Are we always going to eat fruit?’ he asked her.

  ‘You will have to get meat,’ she told him contentedly as if she were already a housewife at ease in her own house and with her own lawful husband.

  ‘Get meat?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about that burial,’ he said.

  ‘What about the burial?’

  ‘Why do you put the bodies up in the trees?’

  ‘It’s a custom of the tribe. That kind of burial has always been our way.’

  She said nothing more and he knew that her knowledge did not extend further than what she had told him.

  ‘What are we going to do every day?’ he asked, thinking about time which would grow around him continually.

  ‘There is nothing to do, but to bring the water from the well and to get the meat.’

  ‘What sort of meat is that?’

  ‘The meat of the deer, of course.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In the Long Grass.’

  ‘Tell me about your tribe.’

  ‘About our tribe? We believe in the birds, in the deer. We believe that our dead speak to us in the songs of the birds. I don’t know anything else. And our tribe has been there forever.’

  ‘What happened to the missionary who was here before me?’ he asked.

  She looked at him with astonishment. ‘He died,’ she said. ‘He went to live in the forest and he died.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And tomorrow you will go to the Long Grass. It is not far from here.’

  The same even intense heat was beating down on the earth, merciless, dry.

  ‘We didn’t have much rain this year,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the grass will not be so long as it used to be.’

  ‘Is that a bad thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But what can I do,’ he asked. ‘I can’t hunt. I’ve never hunted in my life.’

  ‘You can pray,’ she said innocently without malice. ‘That is what you can do.’

  I am a spear in their hands, he thought, a spear in the war that is always going on, the war against starvation and disease.

  ‘Is that why you came?’ he asked. ‘To buy my help?’

  ‘The chief sent me here,’ she answered simply.

  The chief. What sort of man was he really. Old and wise, strong and intelligent, keeping the tribe together day after day, he was alive in time, in darkness.

  ‘Come,’ she told him and he found himself swimming in the dark waterfall again, among the shadows, among the lightning that poured about him, an eternal spear piercing a cloud without end.

  ‘I can’t leave you now,’ he said stroking her hair. She looked at him with calm fathomless eyes.

  ‘In the tribe,’ she said, ‘it’s a law that I must leave you if you cannot win meat for us both.’

  ‘Leave me?’ he echoed.

  ‘That is the law,’ she answered. ‘It is natural.’

  But what of love, he almost shouted, what of loyalty, pity, are they too dependent on the world of plenty and abundance, are they unnatural?

  ‘That is why,’ she said, ‘Banga’s wife left him. He wasn’t winning meat for her. His wife and children were hungry. That is why he began to beat her: that is why he became a Christian. He thought that he might learn magic from the Christian church that would help him to kill deer.’ Donald nearly laughed aloud. Banga had gone in search of the soul in order to provide for the flesh!

  ‘He thought th
at there was big magic in the church,’ she repeated. ‘When the other missionary died we had a good wet season.’

  She sat in front of him like an idol of ebony, cut out of time, heavy, strong, potentially fertile.

  My shadow, my black flower, my darkness from which all that is abundant and powerful flows.

  He felt himself like a white worm inside that darkness.

  He knew that this wasn’t love, this was lust alone, and behind her, behind time, he saw a white church rising with white slender turrets, a large church, a cathedral.

  But how would he win meat for her?

  He who had never used a spear in his whole life.

  He put his arms around her and said, ‘What would I do without you,’ as he buried his face in her hair. ‘I would be completely alone in this strange place.’

  Your breasts, your legs, the perfume that pervades you.

  Your flesh, your flesh.

  The deer running about the glade like rays of sunlight, and he himself pursuing them with the spear of truth.

  He sensed a shadow falling across the doorway and when he looked up there was the chief with a rifle in his hand. ‘I brought you this gun,’ he said. ‘No one in the tribe can use it. It will help you in the Long Grass.’ The missionary seized the gun joyfully. How kind the chief was, how thoughtful. But why were his eyes so mocking, so distant? What was he thinking about? And again he had the uneasy feeling that he was merely a white puppet in this man’s hands, that he was being pushed out of the darkness into the sunlight. They looked at each other, each holding an end of the gun, and it seemed as if the chief were handing to the white man a treacherous secret weapon.

  But at that very moment a ray of sunlight flashed across the old wood of the gun and everything was clear and simple again. When the chief left he himself kissed Miraga, and while he did so his hand rested on the gun that lay between them. Slowly her hand crept forward and also touched the gun as if by doing so she was showing the purest trust in his ability to provide for her. And he was filled with a sudden and almost holy joy.

  Early in the morning they left the village, he and ten other tribesmen including the chief himself, they carrying spears, he his gun. They walked silently through the forest, the missionary following the others. There was dew still on the ground and now and again he would see a bird peering through the mist, grey and wet, a ghost of a bird sitting on a branch with folded dripping wings. The whole world was like the ghost of a world, like a misty thought, the leaves silent and motionless under the wet heavy grey mist. There was no sight or sound of any animal, only the intent tribesmen moving silently forward, now lost and now found by his eyes. Donald thought, This is the meaning and marrow of existence and not preaching a dry sermon from a pulpit: this is natural, that other is unnatural. Though man may not live on bread alone he needs bread as well. The soul grows from the body as a flower from the earth, as a bird sings out of the mist. The hunters ahead of him were half running half walking at a steady pace, bending forward into the whitish mist ahead of them. No one spoke.