Tefuga

by Peter Dickinson

  But the really interesting thing is that I was wrong saying there are two me’s, ’cos there aren’t. They’re all the same. The spy and the secret are part of the happiness, and the happiness is part of the understanding. You’ve got to have that, or you won’t understand how it happens. You’ve got to have it as much as you can, which I jolly well intend to! But you mustn’t let it stop you understanding. That’s what really matters. This is my Paradise, I said, and I suppose that means I must be Eve. But I’m the snake, too!

  Well, apart from all that inside me, yesterday wasn’t very interesting till the evening. Two more villages. Me doctoring. The women too frightened to talk. Bush, just bush. We got here, to Tefuga, about an hour before dark and then straight off we had to go out and watch a dance they put on to welcome Zarafio ’cos he’s KB’s representative. A bit like when the Governor General comes to a station, Ted says, and there’s a parade for him and a guard of honour for him to inspect and everything, not just ’cos it’s pretty to watch, but to show everyone he really is the big man. It’s even more than that here, tho’, or it would be if it was KB they were dancing for. This is what I find so hard to understand. Here are these lovely, simple, honest, open people and there is that horrible fat black brute, and yet to them he’s a kind of god! He’s holy. They’re deadly afraid of him too, but not just ’cos of what he might do to them, but ’cos of what he is! Zarafio’s not that yet, but he will be one day if Ted has his way!

  Well, long as it was light the dancing was rather a disappointment. Three whole hours, on and on. Pattery little drums. All you could see of the dancers was their feet, ’cos the rest of them was hidden by the costumes, just tall tubes of grass about eight feet high with a painted round for a face at the top, swaying and stamping round and round. A bit boring, really, but soon as it got dark and the grass torches were lit, that was different. Tall thin shadows, shapes you couldn’t quite see properly, moving not like people or animals. Spooky. I did rather a good picture, a sloppy dribbly one, not my usual style at all, but then I could hardly see to paint. When I showed it to Elongo this morning he put his hand over it to cover it up, so’s he shouldn’t look at it! Then he laughed (that lovely noise) and said the dancers were messengers from the ancestors sent to welcome us and when the dance was over they had to be sent back to the hill. I suppose he was afraid I might have trapped them in my picture. Interesting he could see—when I’d shown it to Ted he couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be of!

  Well, this morning I decided I’d go and do a picture of Tefuga Hill before it got too hot. I’ve forgotten to say about the hill—we’d ridden fairly close to it on our way to the village. It’s about two miles out and not at all impressive, a pimple with a fuzz of trees on top. You’d hardly call it a hill except that the country round here is absolutely flat ’cos of the river which runs close by. Doesn’t run, I mean, except in the rains and two or three weeks after. But I thought I ought to try and do a sketch for old KB, seeing the hill’s the most important place in his kingdom. I didn’t get off quite as soon as I’d have liked—we’re staying two nights at Tefuga and there wasn’t any hurry and you’re always late when it’s like that—and I started to ride out quite alone, but I’d hardly got half way when two of Zarafio’s spearmen came cantering up after me and said they’d been sent to guard me. I wasn’t terribly pleased but I didn’t feel like arguing.

  Just to make a bit more of my picture I put my easel up close against the bank of the dry river, which gave me a wiggly line running away past the hill. I told the spearmen to go and tether the horses about thirty yards off, and to stay there themselves. They propped their spears against a termites’ nest and then, without me having to say anything, sat down in exactly the right pose—pure Africa!—and began to play that game of theirs with pebbles on a patch of earth, like noughts and crosses gone mad. They looked as tho’ they’d been at it for days. I did a quick sketch in case they moved.

  Suddenly I’d got a picture I really wanted to paint. The trick was to make people see that tho’ the hill wasn’t really anything, really it was everything. This was where KB and his forebears had come to be accepted as Kings of Kiti. This was where horrible things had been done, under that fuzz of trees at the top. This was where the Kitawa began. This was where the nine ancestors, the first real people, were buried—only they were still alive, inside the hill! Elongo’d told me that, back at The Warren. It was only one of his fairy-stories there, but you could see here it might be real! If I got my picture right, I mean. The spearmen might look more interesting, but tomorrow they’d be gone. The hill was always. I could paint that, I thought.

  It began to get hot. Sweltering. Windless. Bleached. Very, very lonely and empty. After a bit, down in the river to my left, half a dozen women came creeping along, bent low, hunting for something. Little bubbles of their talk floated across to me. Soon as I’d done my picture, I thought, I’d go and ask them what they were up to. Only they’d be too frightened to tell me. I started thinking about that, and it made me sad. Sadder when I thought about how Ted had let me down over being watched while I’m doctoring. I began to wonder if he’d been absolutely straight with me. Of course he has in his own mind, but I wonder if there isn’t part of him which actually rather resents me talking to the Kitawa in their own language, ’cos it means there’s something I do which doesn’t belong to him. He can’t even share. And the same with why he didn’t say no to Zarafio right at the start—I don’t think Kaduna or Mr de Lancey would pay a blind bit of notice to a little rat like Z. They’d lose face dreadfully if they did. But then Ted’s terribly jumpy about the idea I might be stopped coming on tour and being with him all the time. This business of s**. Oh, I like it too, much more than I’d ever expected. I sometimes even wonder if that isn’t why my painting’s picked up so terrifically. Africa is thrilling in its funny way, but my pictures aren’t just that. There’s something inside me, coming out, set free, making my eye and hand work the way they’re doing. I honestly can’t see any connection between that and me and Ted doing it in our little tent, but I know clever people are saying it’s there, only you don’t know. So perhaps it’s a bit unfair of me to worry about Ted, but I do. You see, with him it’s almost as tho’ nothing else in the world mattered any more. I’m sure that’s not right. Dangerous. All your eggs in one basket. Sorry now I’d played up so the night before …

  Well, I was painting away and thinking about that sort of thing and the thinking was getting into the painting, the way it does, heavy and sad, spite of the light, but coming rather good, specially the feeling of sheer heat, when all of a sudden, close by my foot just below the lip of the bank a brown head popped into sight. It stared at me with big eyes, all the whites showing, put a finger to its lips and popped out of sight again. I almost dropped my brush but I don’t suppose I really jumped much. When I glanced their way the spearmen weren’t even looking.

  Nothing happened. Soon I couldn’t bear it so I twisted round and pretended to be looking for something in my satchel. She was just there, only a couple of feet below me, peering at me through spiky tussock on the edge of the bank. Two other women huddled against the bank behind her with their faces in the gravel but she was looking straight up. Naked of course, except for their grass collars and belts. I supposed they must have been inquisitive about the white woman and come sneaking along for a closer look, but ’cos of the spearmen I couldn’t tell them to come up and be friendly. All I could do was smile. The woman put her fingers to her lips again.

  “Do the horsemen listen?” she said.

  Luckily those were easy words. “Horsemen” is what the Kitawa call the Hausa, not just ’cos some of them ride horses but ’cos they all are horses really. I say luckily ’cos actually Kiti’s a terrible language for whispering—the tones almost disappear—if you’ve been talking it since you were tiny perhaps it’s not so bad, but for me it’s v. near impossible. That’s why I’m not honestly sure I really understood
anything else the women tried to tell me. Besides, when I was doctoring the women in the villages they soon realized I was a bit stupid at their language and spoke slowly and went back when I asked and so on. Now I couldn’t even look at them. I had to pretend to go on painting almost at once.

  “The horsemen are far off,” I said.

  I looked at them as I twisted back to my easel. They still hadn’t noticed. The women were muttering to each other below me. Suddenly I felt v. nervy, as tho’ something important was going to happen and I wasn’t sure I wanted it to.

  “Femora Feng speaks,” one of them whispered. “I am the aunt of Elongo Sisefonge. He sends words that you are a friend.”

  “A strong spirit in Femora Feng,” I whispered. “Betty Jackland speaks.”

  This was all quite easy, of course. It’s the usual form. I’d even got the right women’s language for it, doing my doctoring. And the old woman the day before yesterday had told me about the business of “aunts”. I absolutely longed to turn round and look at the woman who’d done that for dear Elongo. She’d be older than him, of course, but she could still be young and pretty. What Africans think is pretty, anyway. (I’ve sometimes wondered—if I had a black skin would Africans think I was pretty? White men don’t, as I am.)

  Another long pause. More mutterings. Then …

  “The White Man is the friend of Kama Boi.”

  “That is and is not,” I said—useful phrase—the Kitawa say it a lot. “I am the friend of the Kitawa. I am strongly the friend of Elongo Sisefonge.”

  (And I hadn’t even known his whole name till then!)

  She drew a deep breath and started. I’d sort of guessed what was coming, only I expected it to be all about KB stealing Elongo’s sister, but it was a different story. I didn’t understand it all, anything like. There were places and people she seemed to think I knew all about already, which of course I didn’t, and lots of words I didn’t know. I tried to make her slow down, but I couldn’t keep interrupting or the spearmen would have been bound to notice, so all I could hope for was to try and pickup bits and bobs and piece something together. Anyway, I think it was a story about one of KB’s other sons, not Zarafio, coming to the village and spearing the elders and burning the huts and taking everyone else away to sell for slaves. It all sounded perfectly ghastly, but it was the sort of horror that used to happen all the time before the British came. The only surprising thing I thought was KB letting it happen to the Kitawa, after the agreement Ted had told me about. He was supposed to be protecting them from things like that. I didn’t know quite what to say when she’d finished, but obviously I had to be sympathetic and try and explain it couldn’t happen now.

  “This is a bad story,” I said. “But it is many rains ago.”

  “It is two rains ago,” she said.

  I thought I’d heard wrong.

  “Two rains?”

  “Two rains.”

  She was absolutely certain about it.

  You can paint a bit while you’re listening, even when it’s a difficult language you aren’t v. good at. Sometimes your hand knows what it wants and does better if you aren’t really thinking about it. Mine had been blobbing away at the fuzz of branches on top of the mound, dirty grey-brown, getting them spot on—you could almost feel something pretty unspeakable might have happened up there—but now I saw it had given a jump and made a great splodge just where I didn’t want it, up in the sky. I started trying to soak it away tho’ I knew I’d never get back to the plain smooth wash I’d put there—my system I have to get things right first time or it’s no use. If I hadn’t needed to pretend to the spearmen I’d probably have chucked the picture away then and there.

  Of course I wanted to check I’d understood right, so soon as I’d mopped up the worst of the damage I twisted round to my satchel again to try and make sure, face to face, but the women were changing places and there was a new one waiting to tell me something. She was absolutely terrified, sort of purply-grey, and trembling. Probably it was ’cos of that, but she was almost impossible to follow. Even if I’d understood every word I’d have been muddled. Somebody had taken something from someone else, and someone had gone to someone to complain (I think) but no one would listen and instead he’d been beaten very hard and then on his way home he’d been attacked again and beaten till he was dead. And the horsemen wouldn’t let his wives take his body away but made them leave it by the path so that everyone could see. Oh dear, I’ve made that sound much more sensible than it was. The only thing I’m at all sure of is that somebody was beaten till he was dead and the horsemen sent the wives away. I’m not honestly sure it was the dead person’s wives. I’ve sort of guessed it together, the way you do with dreams. At least I didn’t have to ask how long ago.

  “This is new,” she said. “This is done these rains.”

  “No one has spoken to the white man about this,” I said. I knew that, ’cos it would have been still going on with memos to and fro when I’d been helping Ted with his papers. She didn’t answer. More shufflings as the women changed places. I couldn’t get a proper look at them but I think it was Femora Feng again.

  “Who can speak to the white man?” she said. “He is the friend of Kama Boi. The sons of Kama Boi stand at his side. We must speak through the mouth of the horsemen. Will he say what we say? Where will the white man be when the horsemen come to punish those who have spoken? We speak to you, Betty Jackland.”

  Oh, how I wanted to help, but I felt absolutely helpless. The trouble was she was sort of right. There’s an absolute rule against political officers hearing complaints against the Native Authority without an N.A. representative there, and of course this doesn’t just mean the N.A. knows who’s making the complaint, the complainer knows they know. Suppose a chief’s had your brother beaten for not giving him a present, what’s he going to do to you for complaining about it? You’ve got to have an awful lot of trust in the White Man, and how can you if he doesn’t understand your language and you have to speak to him using someone who’s one of them? Besides, even if the White Man believes you he doesn’t do anything, far as you can see. He doesn’t get rid of the chief—Kaduna hate deposing chiefs. So the chief’ll still be there when that White Man’s gone and a new one’s come. I’m not making this up. It’s what Ted says too. But it’s part of the system and the rest of the system won’t work if you try and put it right so you have to lump it. Like these poor women. Terrified.

  Best I could think of was somehow to persuade Ted to listen with me to interpret. Go out for our evening ride and meet someone, where Z. and his men couldn’t see. It’d have to be an eye-witness, tho’.

  “Did you see this spearing and burning?” I said. “Or the beating? Who saw them?”

  “It is far away. Three days and two days.”

  That wasn’t any use, not even on this tour area. Ted wouldn’t be able to make enquiries on the spot.

  “At this place, at Tefuga, the horsemen have done nothing like this?”

  She sucked in her breath. She was going to speak but one of the other women must have stopped her. I could hear mutterings, angry and frightened. I couldn’t look ’cos the spearmen were getting fidgety. I hummed and pretended to be busy with my painting. Quite spoilt now, so just to have something to do with the brush I scrubbled in a quick trick thunder-cloud to cover up the mess. One of the spearmen started to get up.

  “Don’t move,” I shouted in Hausa, but he pretended not to understand and came striding over. I was furious. I snatched up the study I’d done and went to meet him and bullied him back to where he’d been sitting and made a great fuss about posing him just how he’d been. (Me! Bullying two big men! Isn’t that extraordinary? They didn’t like it but they took it.)

  When I got back to my easel the women had gone. Crept away under the bank, I suppose. I waited for them to come back but they didn’t. I had to pretend to go on with my painting so I
finished the cloud—all wrong with that heat and light below, so I messed around with the shadows a bit and then gave up. It wasn’t quite as bad as it might have been—effective in a creepy kind of way. It’ll do for KB, at least. He won’t know.

  I tickled up my study of the spearmen so I could give it to them and by then it was too hot for anything so we all came back to Tefuga. Ted’s still at his census palaver. I’m supposed to be doctoring but I don’t feel up to it. I’ll have to tell him—get it over. Oh, if only I’d understood a bit better!

  Awful. My fault. Perhaps I shouldn’t really have tried. But I had to. I told him while we were having lunch under our little shade roof. Too hot to eat much, specially tinned tomato soup. Everything so still, drained, veiled with heat, nobody moving, nobody even talking or singing or pounding food among those funny sideways-tilted roofs. Lots of people somewhere, in for the dancing and the palaver, but where? Just our bearers under one lot of trees and Z. and his people under another lot, waiting. Waiting for the heat to go, so life could start again.