Chimp stood still, wearing his new name. A flush swept up under his brown skin, paled, then came flooding back again. He bent his knees, little by little, and felt with his hands for the place where he would sit, without looking for it. He squatted. His mouth was dropped open, his eyes and his nostrils wide. His face stayed dusky red.
The sun moved over the tree and down, the shadow of the leaves crept back towards the bole. Chimp squatted where he was and did not sleep. The red had faded from his face but he did not lay his cheek down on his knees. Instead, he looked bleakly across the plain.
Mountains surrounded the plain on all sides. Here and there were white patches against their light blue. Lower down the blue changed to dark blue, then blue and brown. Below that again was the green of the forested foothills, but Chimp looked through it all. Only when a black storm crept into view, crawling along the mountains on his left, did he watch it and fumble for his flute. But after a moment he let the flute alone and watched the storm cloud without expression. It was so far away it passed like a snail along the mountains. Where it passed, there were flashes and dazzles lower down so that the stormcloud left a glittering snail trail behind it. He watched the cloud drag its smears of falling rain right out of sight; and his own eyes were full of tears so that the plain and the foothills swam.
The sunlight moved inward. A casual breeze elected to drift their way so that the big tree stirred its leaves, woke, roared and was silent again. The Leopard Men began to wake too. They yawned and stretched, and licked furred lips. They stood up and collected a miscellany of things. The Elder of Elders refastened the strings of blown eggshells round his neck. Chimp thrust his flute through his belt. Stooping Eagle smoothed the strings of a bolas with his fingers and inspected the stones, as if lying there, they might have changed while he slept. No one smiled or laughed.
The Elder of Elders had finished with his gear. He waited, frowning and staring round, as the others fixed pouches and shoulder bags and tightened the strings of their loinguards. When all were done and waiting, he stood for a while, his ear cocked at the plain. He laid a finger to his lips and pointed with his spear. Soundlessly, youths, young men, elders, the Leopard Men crept forward through the long grass of the plain.
Droves of animals were grazing over it, knee or shoulder deep in grass. Here and there, between the herds, thorn bushes, termite cities or huge trees like the one they had slept under broke the expanse; but otherwise, it was flat grassland, that washed right up to the forests of the foothills. The Leopard Men entered this plain in single file along a narrow trail that animals had made. They went at the exact speed that threatened no creature. Firefly led the way, crouched and keen. When he reached a point where there were herds on three sides of them, the file stopped as one man. Even Chimp stopped, though by now he was a little way behind the others. The Elder of Elders stared round, saw not only what grazed where, but examined each animal in turn, fat, thin, old, young, healthy, diseased, male, female. Zebras, wild cattle, antelopes, gazelles, rhinos—he saw them all, and knew how they lay, between the invisible ravines with their puddles and their cliffs of clay. He saw, he knew what animal might be trapped against the edge of a cliff or driven over it. So when he turned to his left, the whole file turned and faced the nearer foothill, remembering the dry ravine that lay between it and them. It was a delicate balance, this inserting of a group of men into those societies to a point where a single animal might be cut out. Softly they moved when the Elder moved, aiming without conscious thought, yet nevertheless aiming for the exact point which threatened no herd in particular. Between them and the ravine were three separate droves—but also intermingled at the edges—droves of cattle, zebras, gazelles. As the Leopard Men moved, the margin for error became smaller. Animals on watch lifted their heads and stood at gaze. The expertise was to find a way at which the lookouts would wonder and watch, without knowing which herd was threatened—be wary but not frightened. This wariness was as yet no more than a slight intensification of the normal state of dread. So the herds began to move, grazing slowly into comfortable areas where the threat would be small enough to be ignored. The zebras moved to the left, the cattle to the right. The gazelles, willing to go with neither, moved a little farther off towards the edge of the ravine. The hunters stopped moving. There were many animals in front of them—animals that would escape past, as water escapes from cupped fingers, leaving no more than a drop in the palm. For the hunters were at least ten paces apart; and if the last animal did not leap into space over the edge of the ravine, it could burst between them. That was why each hunter was now hefting his spear gently in the palm of his right hand—why each left hand felt at the strings of the bolas hanging at each belt. It would be a desperate moment when the last animal obeyed nothing but terror. If it should choose to fly through or over the line, there would be a moment of screams and shouts, of whirling bolases and spears with points of fire-hardened wood but stone-weighted, bolas stones whirling in planetary movement at the ends of their strings. An eye might go, or teeth. There might be a broken arm or leg, or even a smashed skull. Then, with skill and some luck‚ there would be a kicking hysterical thing threshing about in the grass and a line of light brown men closing in on it.
So the line of Leopard Men halted in the grass and readied their weapons as the animals sifted away. The movement was still slow, as if the herds possessed some statistical sense of the danger and knew there was little threat to each animal, but death for one. The hunters began to move forward again and the animals moved a little more quickly but in caution, not fear. The hunters were like the bows of a ship moving among pack ice, where the white sheets drift away, not struck precisely, but nudged, or even moved apart by a transmitted urging of the water.
The hunters quickened their pace. Now each moved nothing but his legs that were hidden by grass, as if the watching eyes could be deceived into thinking they came no closer. And now the hunters started to run, at the exact point where most was to be gained on the confused and unwary, least lost by a show of open purpose. The herds bellowed and snorted and poured away so that the plain shook under them and dust rose up among the dry grass. Faster the hunters, faster the herds, louder the hooves, panic and squeals——
“Olly-olly-olly-olly!”
It would be trapped and timid gazelles—gazelles harmless and witless and helpless with no aid but their slender legs; gazelles voiceless and delicate, darting this way and that, cannoning into each other, leaping in the air more than the height of a man. Most of them looped away in great arcs, touching the earth only to rebound from it. The bolases were swinging free, the spears were at shoulder height. The last of the gazelles blundered and crashed, the last one of all, left alone between the depth of the ravine and the screaming men and whirling stones. It fled to the brink and back. A spear whipped over it and vanished down the ravine. It leapt vertically as another spear followed the first. It came down, darted to the side, where a figure ran late and clumsily into line. The figure lifted its spear then fell sideways in the grass. The gazelle rose in a great loop over the figure in the grass and went looping away into the plain. Between the semicircle of hunters and the ravine nothing moved at all.
Stooping Eagle ran forward to the fallen figure. He beat one fist into the other as he glared down.
“You, you—Chimp!”
Beautiful Bird looked down into the ravine.
“Now Beautiful Bird must fly down for his spear!”
“And Furious Lion!”
“And Firefly!”
The hunters drew together by the edge of the ravine. They sang, and scowled. The Elder of Elders pointed to a scree of tumbled earth that reached up to not much more than a spear’s length below them. One by one, they jumped down into it, they laboured on through loose earth to the bottom, where the spears stuck among puddles in the wet mud. Chimp got himself up slowly on his spear. He was biting his lower lip and grimacing with pain. He did not follow the other hunters. Instead, he went anxiously along th
e edge of the ravine, looking for an easier way down. The thunder of the herds had diminished to a grumble and died right away. He found nothing but a path so dizzy and narrow that he paused and looked down at the hunters before he took it. The boy called Dragonfly was kneeling by a pool and sipping delicately from his cupped hand. Beautiful Bird was washing the blood off himself while the others stood round and admired his long tears and scratches. Chimp looked up the ravine, but it was so crooked that the corner very little farther up was all he could see. He resigned himself to the dizzy path and began to let himself down it, one hand on the dry, clay cliff, the other feeling for support with his spear. But when he was the height of two men from the bottom the path ended. The last thing that had passed that way had leapt down and in leaping thrust with its hind legs so that the clay cliff had broken away. Without consciously putting these things together, Chimp knew what was the last animal that had used the path and his hair prickled. He stared down into the ravine, his nostrils wide. He saw a paw mark in mud and a tiny smear of blood where the thing had put down its kill to drink. He knew it all at once. Somewhere up the ravine or farther, there would be a cave or perhaps a convenient tree. A creature, a gazelle, perhaps, would hang dead and half-eaten among the branches. The killer would laze there in the sun, fullfed, and licking its paws. Chimp’s face went sallow, then dusky red. His breathing came short. He opened his mouth to sing and made nothing but a clucking noise. He took a deep breath and sang out.
“Leopard!”
The hunters snatched up their weapons and turned, then froze, staring up at him. Chimp, one hand against the crumbling cliff, pointed down with his spear.
“Leopard! He has eaten!”
Dragonfly giggled and Stooping Eagle gave a shaky laugh. The hunters moved together, shoulder to shoulder. Their legs quivered. The Elder of Elders went forward, following the indication of Chimp’s spear. He squatted, smelt first the paw mark, then the blood. He took his weight off one hand, touched the blood with his finger then tasted it. He glanced up the ravine towards the corner, moved forward a little and examined a mark so small that only he could see it. His face was expressionless, but he breathed as quickly as Chimp. He turned round and ran back to the other hunters. He seized one of the Elders by the wrists and stared into his face. For a moment they were both still and silent. Then the next they were clutching each other, chest to chest and laughing. Dragonfly stood by them. He held his spear with two fists. His mouth was open and his teeth chattering. He got his lips together but only forced the chatter into his body, which shook.
The Elder of Elders let his friend go. He was expressionless again. He summoned the hunters with his eyes, looking at each in turn. It was as if he bound them together. He turned and began to move silently up the ravine, through the muddy pools, and the group came with him. The young hunters flanked him, the youths and the other elders were at his back. All crouched low, with spears at the ready. So alike were they, that they might have shared one face between them, a face proud, fearful and glad.
Chimp sang out on the cliff, misery creating an exactness of words for him.
“Wait for me!”
He looked at the distance to the bottom of the ravine, bared his teeth and let go the cliff, to jump. But even as he bent his knees, he became aware of a difference in the air, a faint noise, new, unidentifiable. No herd of animals ever rushed so—and now louder, from higher up the ravine, louder, nearer—he stared at the corner and the hunters stopped, uncertain in their fear and pride, and stared too. They recoiled, lost pride and gladness and kept only fear and uncertainty, they moved aimlessly and clutched each other. The noise became a mighty roar. A mad creature of clods and branches, of trapped animals and rolling stones, of muddy water and foam burst round the corner of the ravine like a monstrous paw. It reared and roared higher than a man. It took the hunters, elders, men, and youths, included them, turned them upside-down, whirled them round, washed away weapons and strength. It beat ringing heads against stones, bounced faces in mud, twisted limbs like straws. It was mindless, resistless and overwhelming. And then the front wave of the flashflood was past, the roar diminishing to a vast, pouring sound. The water smoothed, washed sideways up the crumbling walls of the ravine, accepted the falling clods, beat together down the centre and poured on, the colour of wet earth streaked with yellow foam. Furious Lion was swept along arseupward and only the wriggling of his hams told how he struggled to get upright. The Elder of Elders was clutching into the mud of the cliff and coughing up dark water. A fall of earth knocked him down again. The water sank to no more than knee height. Beautiful Bird stood up and staggered back as a green snake wriggled past him. Dragonfly sat up, hiccuping and howling. The Elder of Elders appeared again farther down the ravine. Again he was expressionless, but this time because his face could not be seen for mud. Then the flood lay still, circling here and there but only ankle deep. There was the sound of Leopard Men splashing and wading and the plop! plop! of falling clods.
A third of the way up the cliff, Chimp squatted high and dry. His mouth was wide open as he looked down from one hunter to the other. They were moving towards each other, wordlessly. Chimp burst into a cackle of laughter. He beat his hands on his knees so that he nearly fell. He leaned his head back and the tears ran down his face. He screamed his laughter and when the breath was out of him he hooted like a woman in labour. The hunters looked up at him evilly through mud and smeared hair. He got some breath and sang.
“We are the Fish Men! Rah! Rah! Rah!”
Beautiful Bird tore one bedraggled feather from his head and held it out.
“How can Beautiful Bird fly now?”
He burst into tears and they made light brown streaks down his face. Stooping Eagle snatched up a handful of mud and hurled it. At once, they were throwing and shouting. A clod with a stone in it hit Chimp on the shoulder. He stopped laughing and grabbed at the cliff again. He sang out at the top of his voice.
“Charging Elephant Who Fell On His Face Before An Antelope would leopard leap but the root is twisted, the bough bent——”
“You—Chimp!”
Stooping Eagle was fumbling at his waist. He got the bolas free and began to swing it round his head, whirr, whirr. Furious Lion scrabbled at the cliff, got himself up a little way then slid down again in a shower of clods. The stones of the bolas came whirling up the cliff face and the wave of their passing was like a shock on Chimp’s skin. He scrambled, fast and indignant to the top of the cliff and could see the hunt climbing up under his arm. He ran, angrily and clumsily away through the grass and did not stop until he was out of spear cast. He turned and looked back but the hunters were climbing over the lip of the cliff, so he ran on, then stopped and turned again. They were all there, grouped together. They sang out at him and each other, they gesticulated. He saw Firefly shake his fist. Beautiful Bird had his face in his hands, while Stooping Eagle put an arm round his shoulder. Chimp spread his arms wide, his head on one side, trying to communicate at that distance a complex of feeling for which words were useless.
Furious Lion made throwing gestures with his spear.
“Go away!”
Rutting Rhino put his hands to his face and sang through them.
“We don’t like you any more!”
Beautiful Bird lifted his face from his hands and sang as if his heart was breaking.
“Beautiful Bird wanted to fly!”
Stooping Eagle kissed him. A hunter—Chimp could not see who it was—cupped his hands round his face.
“Join the other Chimps!”
There was a howl of laughter. It did not sound kind. Chimp snarled at the distant group and made gestures with his spear, then brought it down again. They were turning away, they were moving along the edge of the ravine, deeper into hunting country. Their backs were to him. He moved after them, but as if they knew what he was doing, they turned a blur of faces towards him and a high-pitched voice stopped him in his tracks.
‘‘Fight the Boss Chimp!”
He heard laughter again; and even at the distance, he could see a youth doing the Boss Chimp walk, erect and clumsy. Slowly the group diminished to a few shocks of dark hair, then passed out of sight.
All this time, Chimp stood at gaze, his mouth open, his eyes blinking occasionally. The hunters were well out of sight when he moved. He dashed his spear into the ground, then snatched it out. He ran forward a few steps, then reeled. He knelt slowly, feeling his ankle without looking at it. He looked only at the place where the hunters had been. He bowed forward, his head between his hands. He put his forehead to the ground. He burst into tears. He howled. He rocked to and fro, up and down, in the flattened grass and when he had cried as much as there was crying in him, he thrust out his legs and lay there, his face against the crushed stems.
The shadows and cries of birds roused him at last. They were returning to roost and talking over the affairs of the day as they went. To Chimp, their message was plain and urgent. He knelt up with a jerk and stared at the red mess of the sunset. He leapt to his feet and whirled round as if there might be a leopard behind him—then whirled round again and reeled. In the warm air, goosepimples rose all over his skin. He clenched and bared his teeth—and when he let them apart for a moment they chattered. He began to run after the hunting group, but stopped, then ran in a circle. He stopped again and gripped himself with his arms. Tears chased each other down his face but he made no sound. A problem was all round him and through him but he had no word for it, nothing was like it, he had never had a problem to solve before. He was neither sick nor old; but he was alone.
The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels Page 8