But darkness was there and he could not forget it. His feet touched the spongy ground at the base of the ladder. The spot of light from his torch bobbed just ahead like a white moth. He kept his eyes fixed there, and his mind on the snakes or scorpions that might endanger unshod feet. But it seemed that this Philip Washington, this cool concentrating man following the bobbing light of his torch and treading cautiously so not to break a leaf or twig under foot, sheltered another creature, hardly a man, who crouched in a huddled animal state of apprehension, ears pricked and hair raised on its spine, its nerves like the hundred hands of a sea anemone reaching out and fingering the night ahead.
The darkness behind did not worry him. That was the way they had come, it was the path to Kairipi and to Marapai. The village was wrapped in a warm, inhabited dark, cleansed of evil by the sweat of human bodies, the breath exhaled from sleeping men and women and the trust of children. The darkness ahead was different. Anything might reside here, and they were only two days’ march from Eola.
The path led around the side of the hut to where the boys had built their fire. Down the front, back and one side had been built a ragged brush fence, possibly to form some sort of enclosure for pigs. The dying fire gleamed on the outstretched legs of one of the carriers, who lay with his head under the hut, his legs and thighs stretched out into the footpath. Hitolo and the other boys were well under the hut. Washington could hear them breathing.
He paused and looked down at them. The little coconut charm was warm and damp in his hand. The village was behind him now and out of sight, hidden by the corner of the hut. He was alone with the four sleeping men and the darkness that closed around them. There was no comfort in them as there had been in Stella. They were not restless, but he knew they had not surrendered consciousness with the confidence that she had. Their sleep was as uneasy as his own, haunted by vague shapes and flickering tongues of fear. He knew so well the sleep of terror, the anguish of almost breaking surface, of lying, limbs paralysed, mind half submerged, with the anaesthetic of sleep still fuming in the brain, while the voice of the outside world whispered, ‘Danger!’ There was no more terror than to hear this voice, to carry in the mind an awareness of the location and cause of dread, and yet to lie, physically still in sleep, tied and helpless, while fear plucked at the roots of the hair.
These thoughts unsteadied him, and he bent down quickly beside the fire and ran his fingers over the ground. The soil was damp and slimy, but there was no vegetation. He raised the torch and the beam of light lengthened. The pool of its termination settled a little further ahead. The long, shining trunk of a tree beamed out from the edge of the jungle. He quickly dipped the light. Something had flashed in the shadows beyond the tree.
He stepped a little further away from the fire and felt again on the ground. He only wanted grass or a few leaves. He hesitated – only a few steps were needed to carry him to the fringe of vegetation, but it needed enormous daring to make them. His gaze was fixed on the ground, but the grey form of the tree was still there, visible to those other watching eyes within that took no heed of these devices against fear but were always on the lookout, always infusing life into a shadow and movement into a log or a stone. These eyes were fixed now on the light that had shone out in the jungle ahead. It no longer flashed like a luminous insect but had settled on the ground at the foot of the trees and just behind, and beamed palely like a round, bright eye.
Would it be enough without the grass and leaves? he wondered, fingering the damp polished sides of the coconut in his hand. Would the intention be sufficiently clear? They could be regarded, Anthony Nyall had said, as fairly harmless without the appropriate trappings. There were plenty of them in the villages hanging about more or less disregarded and forgotten. So he reasoned, stroking the coconut with wet, shaking fingers. And all the time the animal within stared at the soft, bright jungle eye that beamed ahead.
The point of the torch moved on across the ground, showing only the slime of river mud. Not until that tree was reached would the ground yield vegetation. One more step forward and he could resist the drag of his lids no longer. He raised his eyes and suffered one fierce, almost annihilating instant of terror. The jungle eye glowed out from the ground at his feet. It was not gold, but a green, white light, ice-light, moonlight. It breathed. It was palpitatingly alive. It pierced the very core of his heart.
A nerve flicked in his wrist, the torch jerked up and the eyes died away in the circle of torch light. He was looking at a cluster of fungi that sprang up from the roots of the tree.
Luminous jungle fungi! He was almost sick with relief. His sweating body jerked with spasms of silent laughter. For an instant the world was safe and sweet. But the animal within was not confident of safety. Instinctively he knew that what was to be done must be done quickly. He clawed at the ground with his fingers. His hand closed over a piece of dead wood. He lowered the torch and the fungi burned out again just ahead. The next thing his fingers touched was a piece of dead pandanus leaf. He picked it and went quickly back to the hut and the sleeping men.
He squatted down by the fire, broke off the tip of the pandanus leaf and shredded it with his fingernails. His eyes did not move from the shredded leaf but a voice from the jungle ahead spoke incessantly, Look up, look up. All his will was bent on not looking up, and the shredding of the leaf was an act that he was hardly conscious of.
He tried to stuff the little sheaf of leaf fibre into the mouth of the coconut. But the opening was too small and the sheaf would not stay in position. He felt about desperately on the ground for a small piece of stick to prod the plug into place. But he knew there was nothing, and that he must return to the edge of the jungle. He squatted, quivering with rage. He knew he could not go back and that he was defeated by a coconut and a plug of leaves. He forgot that this was only a small, incidental obstacle in the journey ahead. It was the goal itself, the end of all doubt and fear.
Then he remembered the hut. He stood up and went across to the sleeping men, stepping over the legs of the boy who lay stretched out with his feet turned to the fire. He broke off a splinter of hard leaf from the side of the hut and rammed it into the mouth of the coconut. It held the plug firmly in place. Gusts of hysterical laughter broke out inside him. He need not have left the fire.
Biting back his laughter, he twisted the string that was attached to the coconut around a loose splinter jutting out from one of the beams of the hut. The little charm dangled now just over the heads of the sleeping boys. They would open their eyes to see it hanging there – the threat of a slow mysterious sickness, perhaps the visit of the vada men who cut out life from the body and left the shell to rot away, the fear of the unknown striking with weapons of magic.
The little black charm with its sprouting mouth of dead leaf and stick swayed in the faintly stirring air. The thought flashed through Washington’s mind that one of the boys might die as a result of what he had done. It might need only the knowledge of guilt in one of these susceptible hearts, fear sufficiently intense, despair completely surrendered, and life might be handed over willingly to the sorcerer.
This possibility gave him little distress. He genuinely loved the Papuan people, but it did not seem to him that the death of a few of them, or even of a whole community, mattered. As he saw it, death for them was more natural, more likely, followed more closely and inevitably on the heels of life. Death for a white man was something to shudder at, to resist and fight against. To kill a white man or a white woman was the very last of all human acts to be contemplated, and then only when any other action was impossible. But a Papuan was different. He did not regard them as inferior, but as nearer to natural law, one with rock, river and tree, bird and fish, and destined for the same struggle and violent extermination. They were hunters, and like all hunters must accept the likelihood of being hunted.
He steadied the coconut charm gently over the three men’s heads, and stepped back. It turned slowly on the frayed string and was at last still. T
he white, incised eyes stared into his own. It looked now, with the equipment of sorcery bristling from its mouth and its victims marked down, subtly animated and malevolent.
He turned away quickly, walked back to the front of the hut and flashed the torch on the steps. The doorway loomed above him; he went up the first three steps. He could not hear Stella’s breathing. No light penetrated the black interior of the hut. He paused, and an unaccountable feeling of dread held him motionless, waiting. He listened for some sound, but there was silence. He was afraid to move, to look back at the deserted village, to stay where he was, to flash his torch inside the hut. The last feeble tongues of reason whispered, Do something, do something, you can’t stand this. Something will crack and it will be too late. He stepped up on to the rickety verandah at the top of the steps and flashed his torch over the frame of the door. Hanging from the centre of the doorway, directly in front of his eyes, was a small, black coconut with two vivid white eyes that stared into his own and a plug of leaves bristling from its mouth.
He did not scream, he had passed beyond screaming. He stood in a sweat of terror and the magic poured out and pierced his veins. He was doomed, his blood was poisoned. He did not wonder how the coconut came to be hanging there. He believed it was his own coconut that, with gifts of thought and flight, had found its way to its true destination.
He knew that he had been discovered. The forces of evil had discovered him and would track him down till they destroyed him. With a sobbing cry, he flung out a hand and plucked at the coconut on the door. His fingers closed on emptiness. The vision faded. There was nothing there.
He clawed the wood with his nails. The palms of his hands burned with pain.
‘What’s that? Who is it?’ It was Stella speaking from inside the hut. ‘Is that you, Philip?’
‘Yes.’
He saw her vague white form drift near and turned towards her, clenching his teeth to strangle the sobs that bubbled in his throat. He forgot for a moment who she was. Was she his sister, Doris, who had come to help him and comfort him? He wanted to run into the hut and clutch her in his arms. But he held out his throbbing palm and said querulously, ‘My hand.’
She came nearer. ‘Your hand? What’s the matter with it?’ She took it in her own. ‘You’re burning!’ she said. ‘Is it fever? You’ve cut your hand. It’s bleeding. Give me the torch.’
She flashed the light on his hand. It was bleeding freely from a long scratch on the palm. He stared down at it and a deep shudder that he was too weak to control passed through his body.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Stella. ‘Why are you up?’
It struck him that she had changed; that she was no longer silly, deluded and helpless, that the jungle that had robbed him of reason and strength had given these very qualities to her. He had been rejected and she had been chosen.
‘I heard something,’ he said. ‘Was there anything?’
‘No. You must put something on that cut or it may fester.’
He followed her meekly into the hut. It will not be me who kills her, he thought. She will kill me.
CHAPTER 17
They made a later start the next day. Stella slept soundly and was awakened only by the sounds of the village stirring. Washington was already up and folding his net. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she said.
He looked around. ‘There’s plenty of time.’ His face shocked her. It was white and strained, and he looked like an old man. The skin folded loosely round his throat and chin. His heavy, bloodshot eyes told that he had had no sleep.
He had forgotten the anguished emotions of the night and turned on her a glance of cold hostility.
‘Two of the boys are staying here,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He would not meet her eye. ‘They are afraid,’ he said, and went on folding the net.
‘Which two?’
‘Hitolo and the police boy are going on with us. We’ll leave some of the food here for when we return.’
Stella went to the entrance of the hut and called, ‘Hitolo! Hitolo!’
The boys were nowhere to be seen. A few silent figures moved about in the village, their legs shrouded in the morning mist that still hung over the ground. She climbed down the steps. ‘Hitolo!’
Washington followed her out on to the verandah and stood looking down at her. ‘What’s the matter? What do you want?’ he said. There was a nervous edge to his voice. ‘You won’t be able to persuade them. It’s no use. They’re terrified. They saw something last night.’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter what it was,’ he said. ‘They were prepared to be afraid and something frightened them. You can’t bring reason to bear. It might have been a bird or a bat.’
Hitolo had appeared round the side of the hut. He stood looking up at them. Stella thought that his eyes looked wild. They were set in his head in a peculiarly unfixed way, as if at any moment they might roll round in their sockets like the broken eyes of a doll.
‘What’s all this about the boys not coming?’
‘They come now, Mrs Warwick,’ he said.
‘You mean they’ve changed their minds?’
‘Yes, Mrs Warwick. They come now. I tell them and they come.’ A momentary smile of self-congratulation passed over his face, but his eyes still looked wild.
She glanced at Washington. He was leaning against the door frame, and she could not tell whether the expression on his face was anger or relief.
‘All right, Hitolo, make breakfast.’
He shook his head. ‘Boys no stop, sinabada. Kai-kai breakfast in bush. No stop here.’ She looked at Washington again for explanation.
‘They’re afraid,’ he said. ‘They say that a sorcerer was here last night. He might come back and pick up their leavings. We’ll have to walk for an hour and then have breakfast.’
A quarter of an hour later they started. The boys still looked frightened. They huddled together, walking almost on each other’s heels, for the path was only wide enough to allow them to walk in single file. They whispered and grunted among themselves and kept throwing apprehensive glances about them. Washington kept near to the rest of the party and did not stride off in front as he had done the day before. He walked so close to Stella that he fell in alongside her whenever the path widened. Yesterday he had been silent, today he talked.
At seven they stopped for breakfast. The boys sat apart and ate like dogs, bolting their food, eyes on the surrounding trees. When they had finished they scraped a hole on the side of the path and buried the scraps, stamping the earth hard and flat with their feet. They hid the empty tin in the undergrowth and pulled the foliage of the bushes up around it so that it could not be seen from the path. Washington had finished his breakfast and sat watching them.
‘Why do they do that?’ said Stella.
‘It’s dangerous to leave scraps around. If a sorcerer finds a piece of food you have been eating, it can be used just as potently against you as leavings from the body.’
He spoke quietly, but there was an undercurrent of eagerness in his voice. She had noticed it once before, the first time she met him, when he spoke of the Eola vada men. He believes it all, she thought, watching him curiously, and he welcomes it. There is something here that he dreads but wants.
The jungle was lighter now, and she could see more clearly his worn, haggard face. A nerve fluttered in his cheek. His eyes did not dart about searching the trees like the eyes of the native men. His eyes were wide, and haunted. Terror lived within him now, not in the jungle outside.
She felt she should not pity him, but pity was there, struggling against judgment. Even the wicked, in the moment of executing their most monstrous plans, are pitiful. She was not astonished or shocked by this discovery – discovery now was an hourly event – but waited to find the new paradox in it.
Free from the illusion of having loved David, she was free from those opinions and attitudes of his she had worn as her own. She thought of Marapai, and
of Anthony and Trevor Nyall. What were they really like? About Anthony she felt she knew, about Trevor she had no idea. People had always come to her second hand, stamped with the insignia of someone else’s approval. Why had David liked one and disliked the other? His choice now seemed to her incongruous, and she could not understand it. She could not understand David for she had never known him, only his opinions. Perhaps he had never liked Trevor, but preferred it to be thought that he did.
She felt that everyone she had known had hidden from her, had protected her from the dangers of discovery because they had enjoyed in her a condition of innocence. All except one person, who alone had respected her enough to disclose what he believed to be the worst in himself.
The boys had huddled together on the path and were watching her expectantly. She glanced over her shoulder at Washington to see if he was ready to move. He was squatting down on the path with his back towards her. For a moment she could not see what he was doing. One knee was bent, his head was lowered, and his elbows jerked backwards and forwards. He was scraping the pieces of charred yam from his plate into a hole he had dug in the ground.
She felt her stomach lurch. She was frightened and revolted as if she had looked on something obscene. ‘Don’t !’ she cried. ‘Don’t!’
He looked around. He crouched still, his head lowered. His muddied hands dabbled like paws on the ground. His eyes were turned in their sockets showing a rim of smoky, bloodshot white. He looked like a cornered dog. She could hear the sharp hiss of his breath.
Beat Not the Bones Page 18
