Mr. Palmer gave the chief five cigarettes and each of the others one. The conversation, as far as Jay could make out, went along remarkably well. Mr. Palmer wanted to know if they liked to hunt. Did they not? Mr. Palmer liked to hunt, too. They were all hunters. They were all brothers. The pygmies took this piece of news calmly. Did they know the Ituri well? They did. Would they help the white men capture an okapi? This caused some discussion. Mr. Palmer presented them with more cigarettes. There was more discussion. The chief held up six fingers. The leader of the porters said something to Mulu, who translated it into Swahili.
“Good,” Mr. Palmer said.
“What’s happening?” Jay asked.
“They’re to dig six okapi pits tomorrow.”
Mr. Palmer gave the pygmies what was left of his cigarettes. Some of the women were coming out of the jungle. The stink of the pygmies was overpowering. Jay saw a small yellow dog with a curled tail. He didn’t know the pygmies had dogs. He followed Mr. Palmer back to the dining tent.
“You’re quite a linguist,” he said.
“Am I not,” Mr. Palmer said.
“Why didn’t you tell us you spoke pygmy?”
“Didn’t know it myself until now.”
They drank some whisky. They both felt good. They felt the okapis were as good as caught. From the front of the dining tent they could see the pygmies. The women were still coming out of the forest. They wore nothing over their breasts and their g-strings were narrow. Some of them had bracelets on their wrists and ankles.
“Women at home ought to dress that way,” Jay said.
“There’d be no surprises.”
“Not many now,” Jay said.
“No. Pity, too.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know exactly.” Mr. Palmer took a long drink of whisky. “Tried to figure it out once. When I was a young blood, woman was a mystery. A bit of a goddess, so to speak. You were lucky to get one. Mean the right kind, of course. Hung to her through thick and thin. Something sacred about sleeping with her. Must not offend her. Protect her, instead. Shelter her. It gave you something to do.”
“I should imagine.”
“Now a girl curses like a sergeant and bares her body. Sleeps with whoever she fancies. Earns her own living. Utterly independent. Marry you, yes. But it’s a business contract. Something for something. When either’s fed up, you chuck it.”
Mr. Palmer stared at the pygmy encampment. His forehead was white where the Stetson had protected the skin from the sun. The rest of his face was red. Jay saw he was quite serious.
“Go on,” he said.
“Am I running off at the mouth?”
“Not at all.” Jay put whisky and water in Mr. Palmer’s cup. “But do you think we’ve a right to force her to be something she doesn’t want to be?” Mr. Palmer took the cup of whisky. “Why shouldn’t she have her freedom?”
“Don’t believe she really wants it,” Mr. Palmer said. “Think she got it because we’re cracking up.”
“That sounds pretty philosophical.”
“Doesn’t it? One has a fine opportunity, though, to be philosophical in Africa.”
Bill came around the corner of the dining tent. “What’s all this?” he asked. “Did I hear someone say philosophical?” He had gotten over being angry.
Jay gave him a drink. Bill sat down with it. “Great little word, philosophical,” he said. “And I’m a great little philosopher.”
“Mr. Palmer thinks we’re cracking up,” Jay told him, “because women have got equal rights.”
“Not quite,” Mr. Palmer objected. “Rather the reverse.”
“Tell us about it,” Bill said.
“I haven’t it quite clear.”
“Tell us anyway,” Bill said. “I’ve always been opposed to equal rights for women, but I never could think of a reason.”
“It’s damned uninteresting.”
“Go ahead,” Jay said.
“Well,” Mr. Palmer said, “I decided one night equal rights for women were a symptom of racial decay.” He smiled at them. “Like the dole and the unemployed. Apartment houses, too.”
“I always thought they were a victory for people like Dorothy Thompson and Carrie Nation,” Bill said.
“No. Be no equal rights if we didn’t want the girls to have ’em. Never see equal rights in a pioneering country, do you?”
“No,” Jay agreed. “But where does the decay come in?”
“Quite simple. Wives and children an asset in a country like Africa. Larger the tribe, the more powerful. Sons and daughters handy around the home, too. But in London children are a liability. Rich can afford ’em. Nobody else. Wife a liability, too. Have to support her. You see?”
“In a way.”
“Exactly. So we give the girls equal rights. Let them earn their living. Don’t have to support ’em then. Lower their moral standards so one needn’t marry them to sleep with them. Teach them birth control, too. No children then.”
“And let them think they’re doing it for themselves,” Jay said.
“Quite,” Mr. Palmer said. “Less we need ’em, more rights they get.”
“And the quicker we skid down the hill of racial destruction,” Bill said.
“Italians have got onto it,” Mr. Palmer said. “Germans, too. Worship the Mother. Bonus for extra children. Woman’s place in the home and all that.”
“And in the whorehouse,” Bill said.
“Yes,” Mr. Palmer said. “Lack of whorehouses another sympton of decay.”
“My God!” said Jay. “How you two talk!”
“A new book,” Bill said, “The Decline of the Whorehouse, by Oswald Palmer.”
They all laughed. Lew Cable came into the tent. He looked very large standing in the entrance. “You’re making too much noise,” he said.
“Sorry,” Mr. Palmer said.
“Eve’s trying to rest. She doesn’t feel well.”
“Sorry.”
“Haven’t you anything to do? Jay, why aren’t you taking pictures of the pygmies?”
“He’ll take some right away, boss,” Bill said.
“Don’t be funny,” Cable said.
“Why not?”
Cable went back to Eve’s tent. “Lot of rest she’s getting,” Bill said, looking after him.
Mr. Palmer’s blue eyes were on Bill. “I’d be careful, lad,” he said.
“The hell with him,” Bill said.
CHAPTER 21
JAY GOT THE LEICA and tried to photograph the pygmies, but he was not at all successful. The only pygmy he could photograph was the younger of the two who had guided them into the Ituri. The women and the children and the dogs went into the forest when he approached the encampment, and when he pointed the camera at the warriors they turned their backs. The guide was the only one who would pose. His name was Little Orchid. He had been photographed before. Jay took some pictures of him. Then he gave the pygmies cigarettes. They took them shyly, but turned their backs when he pointed the Leica at them. He made another picture of Little Orchid to show them it was all right. They watched interestedly, but they would not allow themselves to be photographed. He took a close-up of Little Orchid’s red-and-gray-painted head. The pygmies hid their faces when he turned towards them. He took a picture of Little Orchid posed with a spear. He took Little Orchid shooting an arrow. He took Little Orchid begging for salt. He took Little Orchid by the buffalo’s head. He took Little Orchid smoking a calabash pipe. He took Little Orchid lying in ambush for game. Little Orchid was having a fine time. He had already earned two dozen cigarettes. The others would not pose. The hell with them, Jay decided. Maybe Little Orchid had the photographic concession for the district.
He went to his tent and took off his boots and lay on the bed. The tent was hot and smelled of canvas and he got up and tied back the flap. There began a slow movement of warm air through the tent. He lay on his back and presently he became sleepy. He had not slept well during the night. He would sleep until
dinner. The low buzz of insects by the netting soothed him.
He thought about Africa. A really fine country. It seemed as though he had been there all his life. Actually he had been there three weeks. Yet America seemed unreal. It was hard to believe in elevators and soda fountains and night clubs and taxis. It was a curious thing, but as America faded he came to life. The numb despair that followed Linda’s death was gone. The murder of the gorilla, the trouble with Cable, the pulse-quick, hollow-stomach, tingling feeling Eve gave him helped, but most of all Africa had done it. He thought for a minute of Linda, and it was a different memory; still painful and sad and poignant and irrevocable, but no longer immediate. It was like the memory of his mother and father. Linda had been dead a year, but it seemed much longer. That was Africa. Time was different in Africa. In the thirty seconds before you brought down the yellow, fast-moving, charging bulk of a lion you lived a year. You lived ten years, he thought. You could not live so quickly at home. Except when there was a war. He had not been to war, but he imagined this was something like it. Death was close here; hiding in the grass, moving heavily through the jungle, lying on the plains, skulking about the tents at night, dozing in thickets; in the air, the water, the soil.
Surely Linda would not want him to mourn forever. To remember her, with the bittersweet memory of their love, but not to mourn. He had mourned enough. Oh, Linda, darling, I have mourned enough. It sounded like the start of a sonnet. The hell with sonnets.
Juma brought the linen tub and two buckets of warm water. Jay’s head was stuffy from sleeping in the heat and he rubbed the back of his neck. Bill was shaving in the tent. He had not heard him come in. Jay undressed and stood in the tub and gave himself a sponge bath. He wet himself with the water and covered his body with soap. The soap was faintly perfumed. He wished he could lie in the tub, but it was too small. Bathtubs were the one thing he really missed from America. He washed off the soap and dried himself. He felt better. The stuffy feeling in his head was gone.
“That damned Cable,” Bill said.
“What’s he done now?”
“Nothing new. It just gripes me to have him hang about Eve so.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Jay said. “You don’t see me paying any, do you?”
“That’s because you don’t care for Eve.”
“I like her very much.”
“Sure. But it’s not the same thing.”
“Maybe not.”
“It isn’t.”
“It’s her problem anyway. She can sleep with him, or she can go back to Lubero.”
“But what a louse trick!” Bill was getting worked up again.
“Do you interfere every time somebody tries a louse trick?”
“I do when somebody uses his authority to force a woman into bed with him.”
“You should go to Hollywood,” Jay said, “You’d have a hell of a time there.”
Bill started to say something. Then he laughed. “Old Jay, the cynic.”
“You bet.”
Bill went on to the dining tent. Jay decided to shave. Some water was left in one of the buckets. He dipped his brush in it and lathered his face. Poor Bill. He was having a very bad time. As bad as possible. He did not know how seriously Bill was in love with Eve, but it had undoubtedly been a shock when she called him a coward. And now he was forced to watch another man try to get her into bed. He hoped he would do nothing violent. He hoped he would not try to fight Cable. That would be fatal.
It was still hot. He put on a clean shirt and the brown linen hunting jacket with loops for cartridges he had bought in Nairobi. The sun was out of sight when he came out of the tent, but it was not yet dark. The pygmies had lit fires on their side of the clearing. There were three fires going. Half a dozen pygmy men were dancing by one of the fires. The leader set the time by beating together two sticks. One of the sticks sounded hollow. The other pygmies chanted softly. One of the Totos was bringing food to the dining tent. Jay saw Herbert watching the pygmies from a side of Eve’s tent and went over to him.
“What do you think of them?” he asked.
Herbert jumped. “Christ!” He had pulled out a small automatic pistol. “You shouldn’t do that.” He put the automatic back in a shoulder holster.
“That pistol won’t do you much good after dark,” Jay said.
“Why not?”
“Mr. Palmer says there are leopards around.”
There was a handkerchief tied around Herbert’s face to keep off insects. “How else am I to watch her?” he asked.
“I’d forget it.”
“I can’t do that. It’s my job.” He coughed. “I keep my word.” He turned away from Jay. His neck was a rash of insect bites.
Jay walked slowly to the dining tent. He could see the safari lanterns burning inside, the rays pale against the light in the sky. The pygmy with the hollow stick was beating thock-thock, thock, thock; thock-thock, thock, thock, and more pygmies were dancing. Their skins looked copper brown in the firelight. Eve was in the dining tent with Bill and Mr. Palmer. He had a queer feeling in his stomach when she smiled at him. She looked lovely in the soft light. Her shirt was open at the neck and he could see the firm white skin above her breasts.
Bill made him a drink. He could taste grain and malt and smoke in the whisky. Lew Cable came in the tent and sat beside Eve. “I’ve arranged for the dance to begin as soon as we finish dinner.”
“Oh, good,” Eve said. “What sort of a dance will they do?”
“Hunting dance, I think,” said Mr. Palmer.
“Hope they don’t decide to hunt us,” Jay said.
“No danger.”
“Will there be any rites?” Eve asked.
“What do you mean?” Lew Cable asked.
“Animals brought in. People tortured. Human sacrifices. Goats and bats and things. You know what I mean.”
“Afraid not,” Mr. Palmer said.
“How disappointing!”
For dinner there was buffalo. The meat had been boiled until there was very little flavor left, but it was still tough. They drank whisky through the meal. For dessert they had some kind of English pudding with a rum-and-butter sauce. All English pudding tasted to Jay as though it had been made of stale bread crumbs and figs and chopped-up leaves with a few branches thrown in, but Mr. Palmer ate three servings. He also drank a large quantity of whisky. Bill drank a lot, too. They talked a great deal at dinner and were very gay. Even Lew Cable was pleasant, but there was a feeling of tension. Every now and then there would be a silence in which they could hear the singing of the pygmies.
The pygmies had begun the dance. They could see them from the dining tent. One very old pygmy was chanting in a reedy voice, and some of the men were acting as a chorus. They repeated the last line of each verse. Three bonfires made a rough triangle around which the other pygmies danced, the flames and the sweat making them look copper colored. The women squatted at the edge of the light thrown by the fires. They clapped time with the dancers. The singing was soft and the clapping of the women’s hands was soft. The man with the hollow stick led the dancers. Over the sound of the singing was the crackle of burning wood.
Cable led them from the dining tent to a log behind the chief singer. They were to watch the dance from there. The pygmies did not notice them. They had already lost themselves in the music, their faces sad and remote.
“Let’s join ’em,” Bill said.
“You’re drunk.”
“Sure.”
“It’s a ceremonial dance,” Jay said.
“I’m very ceremonious.”
“Shut up,” said Lew Cable.
After a time the tempo of the Chief Musician’s chant increased and the dancers began to move in short steps around the fires. A man with a tom-tom came from the jungle and beat time on it with his palms. There did not seem to be any conventions about the dance. The pygmies danced or sat as they pleased, and there were no particular steps or movements. When a pygmy tired, he would s
it on the ground beside the very old men and drink banana beer. Every now and then one, refreshed, would leap to his feet and do an intricate solo dance. Then the other dancers would stamp time with their bare feet on the ground. The women became bolder and moved close to the dancers. They clapped their hands softly. There were about forty men dancing. The sound of the tom-toms and the hands and the feet and the chorus and the voice of the Chief Musician was subdued.
Jay noticed Cable had his arm around Eve. He turned so he could not see them. He watched the dance for a long time. It was not very interesting and the log was hard and he got to his feet and left the others, bending over so he would not disturb the pygmies. He went to the dining tent and poured himself a drink from the canteen hanging from the fly pole. While he was drinking he heard someone in the tent and lifted the netting. Eve was sitting at the table. The light of the safari lantern made tears on her face glisten.
“Sorry,” he said.
He dropped the netting and screwed the lid on the canteen. Eve came out and stood by him. The noise of the dance was faint. Jay could hear the muffled sound of the tom-toms and the reedy voice of the Chief Musician. The fires had burned down and the figures of the pygmies were indistinct. Night birds flew over the clearing.
“Why were you crying?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Lew Cable?”
“No,” she said. “Oh, no.”
“Why, then?”
“I feel sad.”
“Is it because you’d rather give yourself than make a trade?”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“You know.”
“Yes.” She was silent for a moment. “I didn’t know you knew.”
“It’s pretty obvious.”
“To everyone?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that glorious!”
The chorus of pygmies was underlining every line of the Chief Musician’s song with a deep woo-woo. The song was sad and the dancers moved very slowly around the fires. It was a funeral chant. The pygmies danced in a long line, advancing upon and retreating from the old men who sat behind the Chief Musician. Now yellow flames were rising from the fires.
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