Bones of the River Page 4

  “I have impressed upon Lulaga the impropriety of hastening the deaths of his relatives,” he said to Captain Hamilton of the Houssas, “and he has sworn by M’shimba and his own particular devil that there shall be no more blinding or old-age pensioning,” he added grimly.

  Hamilton smiled wearily. “‘The customs of the country must not be lightly overridden or checked,’” he quoted from a famous Instruction received from the Colonial Office in bygone days – there isn’t a Commissioner from K’sala to Tuli Drift who cannot recite it by heart, especially after dinner.

  “‘Nor,’” he went on, “‘should his religious observances or immemorial practices be too rudely suppressed, remembering that the native, under God’s providence, is a man and a brother.’”

  “Shut up!” snarled Sanders, but the inexorable Houssa was not to be suppressed.

  “‘He should be approached gently,’” he went on, “‘with arguments and illustrations obvious to his simple mind. Corporal punishment must under no circumstances be inflicted save in exceptionally serious crimes, and then only by order of the supreme judiciary of the country – ’”

  “That looks to me like a new hut,” said Sanders, and stepped over the hastily rigged gangway, twirling a mahogany stick in his thin, brown hand.

  Threading his way through a green and anaemic plantation, he came to the hut, and there he found B’saba, sometime headman of the village of M’fusu, and B’saba was mad and silly and was chuckling and whimpering alternately, being far gone in sleeping sickness, which turns men into beasts. He was blind, and he had not been blind very long.

  The nose of Sandi elaka wrinkled.

  “O man, I see you, but you cannot see me. I am Sandi, who gives justice. Now tell me, who brought you here?”

  “Lulaga the king,” said the old man woefully. “Also he has taken my pretty eyes.”

  He died that night, Sanders squatting on the ground by his side and feeding the fire that warmed him. And they buried him deep, and Sanders spoke well of him, for he had been a faithful servant of Government for many years.

  In the dawn-grey he turned the nose of the Zaire against the push of the black waters and came to the village of the chief, to that man’s uneasiness.

  The lokalis beat a summons to a great palaver, and in the reed-roofed hut Sanders sat in judgment.

  “Lord!” said the trembling Lulaga. “I did this because of a woman of mine who was mocked by the old man in his madness.”

  “Let her come here,” said Sanders, and they brought her, a mature woman of sixteen, very slim, supple and defiant.

  “Give me your medal, Lulaga,” said Sanders, and the chief lifted the cord that held his silver medal of chieftainship. And when Sanders had placed it upon the neck of a trustworthy man, and this man had eaten salt from the palm of the Commissioner’s hand, soldiers tied Lulaga to a tree, and one whipped him twenty times across the shoulders, and the whip had nine tails, and each was a yard in length.

  “Old men and madmen shall die in good time,” said Sanders. “This is the law of my King, and if this law be broken I will come with a rope. Hear me! The palaver is finished.”

  There came to him, as he made his way back to the ship, an elderly man who, by the peculiar shape of his spear, he knew was from the inner lands.

  “Lord, I am M’kema of the village by the Frenchi,” he said, “being a chief of those parts. Now, it seems to me that you have taken away the magic which our fathers gave to us, for all men know that the sick and old are nests where devils breed, and unless we kill them gently there will be sickness in the land. On the other side of the little river the Frenchi people are very sick, and some say that the sickness will come to us. What magic do you give us?”

  Sanders was instantly alert.

  “Any men of the Frenchi tribes who cross the river you shall drive back with your spears,” he said, “and if they will not go, you shall kill them and burn their bodies. And I will send Tibbetti, who carries many wonders in a little box, so that you shall not be harmed.”

  On the way down river, Sanders was unusually thoughtful. Not less so was Captain Hamilton, for, as the elder man had said, from the beginning of time every tribe, save the Ochori, had carried its ancient men and women into the forest and left them there to die. Sanders had threatened; he had on occasions caught men in the act of carrying off their uncomfortable relatives; but never before had he punished so definitely for a custom which the ages had sanctioned.

  They smelt headquarters before they saw the grey quay and the flowering palm-tops that hid the residency. Suddenly Sanders sniffed.

  “What in the name of Heaven – !” he asked.

  A gentle wind, blowing in from the sea, carried to him a strange and penetrating odour. It was not exactly the smell of tar, nor was it the scent which one associates with a burning soap factory. It combined the pungent qualities of both. Later, Sanders learnt that, in his absence, a trading steamer had called and had landed half-a-dozen carboys of creosote for the use of the Health Officer, and that Bones, in his enthusiasm and in that capacity, had tried the experiment of a general fumigation. The fire whereon the creosote had been transformed into its natural gases, still smouldered in the centre of the square, and Bones, a fearsome object in a gas mask, and without any assistance – his men had practically mutinied and flown to their huts – was continuing the experiment when, in sheer self-defence, Sanders pulled the siren of the Zaire and emitted so blood-curdling a yell that it reached beyond the protective covering of Bones’ mask.

  “For the love of Mike, what are you trying to do?” gasped Hamilton, spluttering and coughing.

  Bones made signs. After his helmet had been removed, he propounded the results of his experiments.

  “There isn’t a jolly old rat left alive,” he said triumphantly; “the beetles have turned in their jolly old numbers, and the mosquitos have quietly passed away!”

  “Are any of the company left?” demanded Hamilton. “Phew!”

  “Creosote,” began Bones, in his professorial manner, “is one of those jolly old bug-haters–”

  “Bones, I’ve got a job for you,” said Sanders hastily. “Get steam in the Wiggle and go up to the Lesser Isisi and on to the French frontier. Near a village which I gather is M’taka there is smallpox. Vaccinate everybody within a ten mile radius and be happy.”

  “And keep away from the French territory,” warned Hamilton.

  Bones smiled contemptuously. “Am I a ravin’ old ass?”

  “Not ‘old,’” said Hamilton.

  Within two hours Bones was on his way, a huge pipe clenched between his teeth, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles (“And God knows where he got those from!” said Hamilton in despair) on his nose, and, balanced upon his knees, a ponderous medical tome. The fact that it was a surgical work dealing with nerve centres made no difference to Bones, it was the only medical work he had – it had been sent to him, in response to his written request to a London publisher for a novel that was enjoying some popularity at the time. And if, reading Bones’ vile handwriting, the publisher translated his request for “Walter Newman’s Sister” into “Watts’ Diseases of the Nervous System,” he was hardly to blame.

  In course of time he came to the Lesser Isisi, and was received with great honour by the new chief. It seemed that every man, woman and child in the village had turned out to meet him. But there were no marks of special enthusiasm, nor did any of the people smile. And the folk of the Lesser Isisi are only too ready to laugh.

  “Lord,” said the new chief, “all men know that you bring great magic in your two hands, for Sandi has spoken well of you, and it is known that you are a friend of ju-jus and ghosts. Therefore, my people have come that they may see this magic which is greater than the magic of our fathers.”

  This he said publicly, for all men to hear. In the privacy of his hut, he told another story.

  “The people have anger in their stomachs, because Sandi whipped Lulaga, and there have been secret pal
avers,” he said. “And, lord, I think they will make an end to me. Also, there is a saying that Sandi loves death and hates the people of the lsisi, so that he would be glad if the cooking-pots were broken and the roofs of the village were fallen.”

  Thus he symbolised death, for when a man of the Isisi passes, the pots wherein his food was cooked are broken on his grave, and no man tends his hut until the winds and the rain bring it sagging to the ground.

  “That is foolish talk,” said Bones, “since Sandi has sent me to make all people well by the wonder which is in my little box. Behold, I will put into their arms a great medicine, so that they shall laugh at ghosts and mock at devils. For I am very honoured in my land because of my great wisdom with medicine,” added Bones immodestly.

  Accompanied by four soldiers, he marched two days into the forest and came at last to the village by the water, and arrived only in time; for, in defiance of Sandi’s orders, three men from the Frenchi village had crossed in the night and were being entertained by the headman himself. They left hurriedly and noisily, Bones chasing them to their canoe, and whacking at them with his walking stick until they were out of reach of his arm. Then he came back to the village and called a palaver. In the palaver house, placed upon an upturned drum, and covered with one of his famous sanitary handkerchiefs, were innumerable little tubes and a bright lancet.

  “O people,” said Bones in his glib Bomongo – and he spoke the language like a native – “Sandi has sent me because I am greater than ju-jus and more wonderful than devils. And I will put into your bodies a great magic, that shall make the old men young and the young men like leopards, and shall make your women beautiful and your little children stronger than elephants!”

  He held up a tube of lymph, and it glittered in the strong sunlight.

  “This magic I found through my wonderful mind. It was brought to me by three birds from M’shimba M’shamba because he loves me. Come you M’kema.”

  He beckoned the chief, and the old man came forward fearfully.

  “All ghosts hear me!” said Bones oracularly, and his singsong voice had the quality of a parrot’s screech. “M’shimba M’shamba, hear me! Bugulu, eater of moons and swallower of rivers, hear me!”

  The old man winced as the lancet scraped his arm.

  “Abracadabra!” said Bones, and dropped the virus to the wound.

  “Lord, that hurts,” said M’kema. “It is like the fire of Hell!”

  “So shall your heart be like fire, and your bones young, and you shall skip over high trees, and have many new wives,” promised Bones extravagantly.

  One by one they filed past him, men, women and children, fear and hope puckered in their brows, and Bones recited his mystic formula.

  They were finished at last, and Bones, weary but satisfied, went to the hut which had been prepared for him, and, furiously rejecting the conventional offer of the chief’s youngest daughter for his wife – Sanders had a polite and suave formula for this rejection, but Bones invariably blushed and spluttered – went to sleep with a sense of having conferred a great blessing upon civilisation; for by this time Bones had forgotten that such a person as Dr Jenner had ever existed, and took to himself the credit for all his discoveries.

  He spent an exhilarating three days in the village, indulging in an orgy of condemnation which would have reduced the little township to about three huts, had his instructions been taken literally. Then, one morning, came the chief, M’kema.

  “Lord,” he said, “there is a devil in my arm, and your magic is burning terribly. Now, I have thought that I will not have your magic, for I was more comfortable as a plain man. Also my wives are crying with pain, and the little children are making sad noises.”

  Walking down the village street, Bones was greeted with scowling faces, and from every hut, it seemed, issued moans of distress. In his wisdom Bones called a palaver, and his four soldiers stood behind him, their magazines charged, their rifles lying handily in the crooks of their unvaccinated arms.

  As a palaver, it was not a success. He had hardly begun to speak before there arose a wail from his miserable audience, and the malcontents found a spokesman in one Busubu, a petty chief.

  “Lord, before you came we were happy, and now you have put fiery snakes in our arms, so that they are swollen. Now by your magic make us well again.”

  And the clamour that followed the words drowned anything that Bones had to say. That night he decided to make his way back to the river.

  He came from his hut and found Ahmet waiting for him.

  “Lord, there is trouble here,” said the Kano boy in a low voice, “and the young men have taken their spears to the forest path.”

  This was serious news, and a glance showed Bones that the village was very much awake. To force his way through the forest path was suicidal; to remain was asking for a six-line obituary notice in the Guildford Herald. Bones brought his party to the little river, and half the ground had not been covered before he was fighting a rear-guard action. With some difficulty they found a canoe, and paddled into midstream, followed by a shower of spears, which wounded one of his escort. In a quarter of an hour Bones stepped ashore at the Frenchi village, which turned out even at that late hour to witness such an unusual spectacle as the arrival of a British officer on alien soil.

  He slept in the open that night, and in the morning the chief of the Frenchi village came to him with a complaint.

  “Lord, when three of my men went over the M’taki, you whipped them so that they stand or sleep on their bellies. And this you did because of our famous sickness. Now, tell me why you sit down here with us, for my young men are very hot for chopping you.”

  “Man,” said Bones loftily, “I came with magic for the people of the Lower Isisi.”

  “So it seems,” said the French chief significantly, “and their magic is so great that they will give me ten goats for your head; yet because I fear Saudi I will not do this thing,” he added hastily, seeing the Browning in Lieutenant Tibbetts’ hand.

  Briefly but lucidly, Bones explained the object of his visit, and the chief listened, unconvinced.

  “Lord,” he said at last, “there are two ways by which sickness may be cured. The one is death, for all dead men are well, and the other is by chopping a young virgin when the moon is in a certain quarter and the river is high. Now, my people fear that you have come to cure them by making their arms swell, and I cannot hold them.”

  Bones took the hint, and, re-embarking, moved along the little river till he came to another Isisi village. But the lokali had rapped out the story of his mission, and locked shields opposed his landing.

  The chief of this village condescended to come to the water’s edge.

  “Here you cannot land, Tibbetti,” he said, “for this is the order of Saudi to M’kema, that no man must come to us from the Frenchi land because of the sickness that is there.”

  For seven days and seven nights Bones was marooned between bank and bank, sleeping secretly at nights on such middle islands as he met with, and at the end of that time returned to the point of departure. M’kema came down to the beach.

  “Lord, you cannot come here,” he said, “for since you have gone the arms of my young men have healed owing to the magic of their fathers.”

  That night, when Bones had decided upon forcing a passage to the big river, the relief from the Zaire fought its way into the village and left him a clear path. Bones went back in triumph to headquarters and narrated his story.

  “And there was I, dear old thing, a martyr, so to speak, to jolly old science, standing, as it were, with my back to the wall. I thought of jolly old Jenner–”

  “Where were you, Bones? I can’t quite place your defence,” said Hamilton, peering over a map of the territory. “Were you in M’kema’s village?”

  “No, sir, I skipped,” said Bones in triumph. “I went across the river to–”

  Hamilton gasped. “Into the French territory?”

  “It’s a diploma
tic incident, I admit,” said Bones, “but I can explain to the President exactly the motives which led me to violate the territory of a friendly power – or, at least, they were not so friendly either, if you’d seen the ‘Petit Parisienne’ that came out by the marl–”

  “But you were in the French village? That is all I want to know,” said Hamilton with deadly quiet.

  “I certainly was, old thing.”

  “Come with me,” said Hamilton.

  He led the way to Bones’ hut and opened the door.

  “Get in, and don’t come near us for a month,” he said. “You’re isolated!”

  “But, dear old thing, I’m Health Officer!”

  “Tell the microbes,” said Hamilton.

  And isolated Bones remained. Every morning Hamilton came with a large garden syringe, and sprayed the ground and the roof thereof with an evil-smelling mixture. And, crowning infamy of all, he insisted upon handing the unfortunate Bones his meals through the window at the end of a long bamboo pole.

  The Health Officer had come out of isolation, and had ceased to take the slightest interest in medical science, devoting his spare time to a new architectural correspondence course, when M’kema, summoned to headquarters, appeared under escort and in irons, to answer for his sins.

  “Lord, Tibbetti did a great evil, for he took our people, who were well, and made them sick. Because their arms hurt them terribly they tried to chop him.”

  Sanders listened, sitting in his low chair, his chin on his fist.

  “You are an old man and a fool,” he said. “For did not the sickness come to the Isisi? And did not the villagers have their mourning – all except yours, M’kema, because of the magic which Tibbetti had put into their arms? Now, you are well, and the other villagers have their dead. How do you account for that, M’kema?”

  M’kema shook his head. “Lord,” he said, “it was not by the magic of Tibbetti, for he made us ill. We are well people, and the sickness passed us because we followed the practice of our fathers, and took into the forest a woman who was very old and silly, and, putting out her eyes, left her to the beasts. There is no other magic like this.”