Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur - Страница 86

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The sand spits were red also, coated with a deep layer of thick mud.

The carcasses of the catfish were strewn on the red banks, thick as autumn leaves, piled upon each other in their multitudes.  Their skulls were eyeless and the stench of their putrefying flesh was oppressive in the humid air below the forest canopy.  What has done this, Sepoo?

Kelly whispered, but he shrugged and busied himself rolling a pinch of coarse black native tobacco in a leaf.  While Kelly went down the bank, he lit his primitive cheroot from the live coal he carried wrapped in a pouch of green leaves around his neck.  He puffed great clouds of blue smoke, squeezing his eyes tightly shut with pleasure.

As Kelly stepped out on to the sand spit, she sank almost knee-deep into the mud.  She scooped up a handful of it and rubbed it between her fingers.  It was slick as grease, fine as potter's clay, and it stained her skin a dark sang de boeuf.  She tried to wash it off, but the colour was fast and her fingers were red as those of an assassin.  She lifted a handful of mud to her nose and sniffed it.  It had no alien smell.

She waded back to the bank and confronted Sepoo.  What has done this, old father?  What has happened?

He sucked on his cheroot, then coughed and giggled nervously, avoiding her gaze.  Come on, Sepoo, tell me.  I do not know, Kara-Ki.

Why not?  Did you not go upstream to find out?  Sepoo, examined the burning end of his green-leaf cheroot with great interest.

Why not?  Kelly insisted.  I was afraid, Kara-Ki, he mumbled, and Kelly suddenly realised that for the Bambuti this was some supernatural occurrence.

They would not follow the choked rivers upstream for fear of what they might find.

How many rivers are like this?  Kelly demanded.

Many, many, Sepoo muttered, meaning moretban four.  Name them for me, she insisted, and he reeled off the names of all the rivers she had ever visited in the region and some that she had only heard of.  It seemed then that almost the entire drainage area of the Ubomo was affected.

This was notsome isolated local disturbance, but a large-scale disaster that threatened not only the Bambuti hunting areas but the sacred heartland of the forest as well.  We must travel upstream, Kelly said with finality, and Sepoo, looked as though he might burst into tears.

They are waiting for you at Gondola, he squeaked, but Kelly did not make the mistake of beginning an argument.  She had learned from the women of the tribe, from old Pamba in particular.  She lifted her pack on to her back, adjusted the headband and started up the bank.  For two hundred yards she was alone, and her spirits started to sink.  The forest area ahead was completely unknown to her, and it would be folly to continue on her own if Sepoo could not be induced to accompany her.

Then she heard Sepoo's voice close behind her, protesting loudly that he would not take another step further.  Kelly grinned with relief and quickened her pace.

For another twenty minutes Sepoo trailed along behind her, swearing that he was on the point of turning back and abandoning her, his tone becoming more and more plaintive as he realised that Kelly was not going to give in.  Then quite suddenly he chuckled and began to sing.

The effort of remaining miserable was too much for him to sustain.

Kelly shouted a jibe over her shoulder and joined in the next refrain of the song.  Sepoo slipped past her and took the lead.

For the next two days they followed the Tetwa River and with every mile its plight was more pitiful.  The red clay clogged it more deeply.

The waters were almost pure mud, thick as Oatmeal porridge and there were dead roots and loose vegetation mixed into it already beginning to bubble with the gas of decay; the stink of it mingled with that of dead birds and small animals and rotting fish that had been trapped and suffocated by the mud.  The carcasses were strewn upon the red banks or floated with balloon bellies upon the sullied waters.

Late in the afternoon of the second day they reached the far boundary of Sepoo's tribal hunting-grounds.  There was no signpost or other indication to mark the line but Sepoo paused on the bank of the Tetwa, unstrung his bow and reversed his arrows in the rolled bark quiver on his shoulder, as a sign to the Mother and the Father of the forest that he would respect the sacred place and kill no creature, cut no branch nor light a fire within these deep forest preserves.

Then he sang a pygmy song to placate the forest, and to ask permission to enter its deep and secret place.

Oh, beloved mother of all the tribe, You gave us first suck at your breast And cradled us in the darkness.

Oh respected father, of our fathers You made us strong You taught us the ways of the forest And gave us your creatures as food.

We honour you, we praise you.  . .

Kelly stood a little aside and watched him.  It seemed presumptuous for her to join in the words, so she was silent.

In her book, The People of the Tall Trees, she had examined in detail the tradition of the forest heartland and discussed the wisdom of the Bambuti law.  The heartland was the reservoir of forest life which spilled over into the hunting preserves, renewing and sustaining them.

It was also the buffer zone which separated each of the tribes from its neighbours, and obviated friction and territorial dispute between them.

This was only another example of the wisdom of the system that the Bambuti had evolved to regulate and manage their existence.

So, Kelly and Sepoo camped that night on the threshold of the sacred heartland.  During the night it rained, which Sepoo proclaimed was a definite sign from the forest deities that they were aimenable to the two of them continuing their journey upstream.

Kelly smiled in the darkness.  It rained, on average" three hundred nights a year in the Ubomo basin, and if it had not done so tonight Sepoo would probably have taken that as even more eloquent assent from the Mother and Father.

They resumed the journey at dawn.  When one of the striped forest duiker trotted out of the undergrowth ahead of them and stood to regard them trustingly from a distance of five paces, Sepoo reached instinctively for his bow and then controlled himself with such an effort that he shook as though he were in malarial ague.  The flesh of this little antelope was tender and succulent and sweet.  Go!  Sepoo yelled at it angrily.  Away with you!  Do not mock me!  Do not tempt me!  I am firm against your wiles.

The duiker slipped off the path and Sepoo turned to Kelly.  Bear witness for me, Kara-Ki.  I did not trespass.  That creature was sent by the Mother and Father to test me.  No natural duiker would be so stupid as to stand so close.  I was strong, was I not, Kara-Ki?  he demanded piteously, and Kelly squeezed his muscular shoulder.  I am proud of you, old father.  The gods love you.

They went on.

In the middle of that third afternoon Kelly paused suddenly in mid-stride and cocked her head to a sound she had never heard in the forest, before.  It was still faint and intermittent, blanketed by the trees, but as she went on it became clearer and stronger with each mile until it resembled in Kelly's imagination the growling of lions on the kill, a terrible savage and feral sound that filled her with despair.

Now the River Tetwa no longer flowed, it was dammed with branches and debris, so that in places it had broken its banks and flooded the forest floor and they were forced to wade waist-deep through the stinking swamp.

Then abruptly, with a shock of disclosure, the forest ended and they were standing in sunlight where sunlight had not penetrated for a million years.

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