We ourselves were between the elephant hunters and the point of the river where the rest of the bandits had crossed – so that the farther they penetrated into the territory away from the frontier, the smaller their chances of escaping alive became.
Within all of us there slumbers the executioner; we would all stone the woman taken in adultery; but although it is prudent to refrain from condemning others unless we ourselves are without sin, on this occasion we felt that we were dealing not with ordinary men but with monsters. We could not forget the horrible wounds between the thighs of the Cunama children, their imploring and terrified faces; we still heard the cries of their mothers and remembered the mute desperation of their fathers. ‘They are mad dogs,’ Gabremariam had cried as I treated the unfortunate children and, sickened, he had turned aside and vomited.
As far as the men were concerned, the desire to reach the bandits was now coupled with the delight of being on the track of an elephant, and their impatience to punish the criminals was joined to their desire to outdo them in bringing down el wāhido. Their enthusiasm therefore knew no bounds.
Towards evening we reached the stream where the raiders had bivouacked and began to go carefully, knowing that we were on the track of armed bandits who at any moment might abandon the chase and retrace their steps in order to reach the frontier. This obliged us to restrain the impatience of the men who would have liked to push on in the uncertain light of the stars. We spent the night near the stream, with sentinels posted on the crests of the hills.
From there, for a couple of days, we pursued our prey blindly. The sand and clay had given place to solid rock which preserved no sign of the passage of the elephant, still less of the bandits. The men became silent and bad-tempered. Scattered in all directions, with their eyes fixed on the ground, they went to and fro like shuttles, scrutinising every inch. They worked round the wells and investigated the bushes, seeking the slightest sign we might take for a guide.
On the morning of the third day, we saw through a wet mist a goatherd on a hillock. He was standing on one leg like a crane, with the foot of the other leg resting against his thigh. He stood on the highest point, keeping an eye on a small herd which was scattered over the hillside searching for tufts of grass among the stones. He had not seen the Abyssinians and when he heard of the raid, of the encounter, of the shifta who were following the elephant, he was filled with that vicarious fear which people feel for the misfortunes and dangers which a happy fate has spared them. He was from the Condigherà district and was on his way to the lowland pastures. In the early morning of the previous day he had, in fact, heard the furious trumpeting of an elephant and he pointed out the direction from which the voice of the solitary one had come.
If it was the same animal, it was obvious that el wāhido had turned back on his tracks and that we had been travelling in the opposite direction, to the east of his route. Perhaps even the bandits had lost sight of him, although in view of the well-known obstinacy of Abyssinians it was very improbable that they had given up the chase; if we could find the route the elephant had taken we were almost certain, sooner or later, to come across the raiders.
The ground sloped slightly in the direction indicated by the goatherd; it became less stony and as we reached the lower slopes the bush became thicker and the heat increased.
After marching a day and a half, a flank patrol came running towards us waving their rifles: they had found the elephant’s tracks again and were wild with delight.
There was no doubt about it: they were the marks of our animal. Taddé Bocú pointed out that the foreward edge of the footprint was deeper and that at each step the animal had thrown back the earth he had disturbed so that between the tracks the ground was scattered with loose soil. This, according to Taddé Bocú, was a sign that el wāhido was moving at a great pace in an attempt to escape some imminent danger. The men looked around as though seeking that possible threat, but the landscape stretched as far as the eye could see, empty and bare except for a few scattered shrubs, bushes and low, twisted trees with ‘umbrella’ tops. Within a radius of a mile and more the ground had been combed with the utmost care, and there had been no sign of the recent presence of leopards, lions or men – the only things from which a solitary, tired old elephant, desiring only peace and quiet, would flee.
We followed the tracks of the beast for many hours. There was no sign of any slackening of his pace: in fact, it seemed to have increased, for the marks in the ground became deeper and deeper and the animal had knocked down an acacia tree which had stood in his path. At a certain point, without any apparent reason, el wāhido had taken a right turn and, still at a great pace, made off towards a pool which the rain had formed in a basin. Into this he had thrown himself. The mud was still churned up, and the edges of the pool which had been broken down under the elephant’s weight, were covered with the marks of his tusk.
The biggest surprise still awaited us, however.
We had entered an area of doum palms. None of them was very tall because the subterranean water level was deep and the roots had a long way to go to reach it, but a good many of them were about thirty to forty feet high, and the whole area was covered with sucker shoots which reached to our chests. Some of these trees had been knocked down or uprooted and much of the robinia had been torn up by the animal in his anxiety to clear a path. At one point there was an open space about forty yards wide. We halted on the edge of it and gazed in astonishment.
It seemed as though a cyclone had passed over the spot or as though it had been devastated by an earthquake. The ground had been stamped down under the sledgehammer feet and then ploughed up to a depth of six inches by the animal’s single tusk. The whole space was strewn with uprooted tree trunks and broken branches, some of which, on the edge of the wood, still hung a yard from the ground attached to the mother tree by a few fibres or by splintered bark. Large acacias had been torn up as though they were asparagus, and where the elephant had planted his feet to get a leverage, the marks of his thick, square nails were clearly visible.
Taddé Bocú and the other Cunama trackers ran over the ground lightly on their bare feet, bent double, seeking some sign which would explain the animal’s fury: he was old and solitary and therefore there was no question of the madness which takes young males in the mating season. One of the men called us to the trunk of a palm tree which the beast had uprooted and dragged a distance of some yards. The trunk was covered with some substance which was not sap, nor the urine of the animal, but a dense, fetid and sticky liquid – the purulent matter from a suppurating wound.
The trackers consulted together like clinicians round the bed of a patient. As far as they were concerned the symptoms were so clear that there could be no argument. They exchanged very few words but gathered round a fallen tree, a piece of churned-up ground, and made significant gestures. Finally, Taddé Bocú, the most expert and authoritative among them, pronounced the verdict and they all signified their assent by repeatedly nodding their heads. Gabremariam translated their conclusions for me. El wāhido was ill, very ill, perhaps on the point of dying. His fury had been caused by the pain he was suffering. He had a gangrenous wound of considerable dimensions on the right side of his head, between the ear and the root of the missing tusk. The unfortunate beast had been fleeing from the lacerating pain in his head, and had relieved himself, when the pain became unbearable, by destroying everything within reach of his trunk, feet and single tusk. The effort to uproot the palm trunk had opened the wound which had begun to discharge its pus; at that moment the pain had been so intense that the poor beast had rolled on the ground – Taddé Bocú pointed with a stick – and had beaten his head against some bushes which were now flattened.
The Cunama had marshalled the symptoms and seemed to expect a diagnosis from me. I was obliged to disappoint them, however, for, apart from the fact that I had never treated an elephant, it is absolutely essential before making a diagnosis to see the patient – and in this case the patient wa
s a long way off. And so were the bandits.
The delirium of the solitary beast had made such an impression on us that for the moment we had completely forgotten our human quarry. They seemed to have vanished into thin air. There was no trace of them in the wood, the forest or the plain. We began to wonder whether they had thought better of it, given up the chase and returned towards the east, making for the Badumà heights and Ethiopia. However, we were too convinced of their stupidity to believe entirely in such an access of wisdom.
We spent that airless night among the broken branches in the open space made by the pain-wracked elephant.
The shadows were filled with a thousand forms of life. We heard the flutter of night birds’ wings, the cries of birds of prey, the clap of closing wings as other birds settled on the trees; the guttural croak of the ngong, the giant frog; the stealthy footfall, the trotting, the running of animals on the damp ground; the crackle of shrubs as they brushed past them; the constant drip, drip of the sap from climbing plants; the fall of an over-ripe fruit; the rustle of beasts in the rotting undergrowth, and the low hum of a million insects. The hyena, satiated with its carrion meal, laughed its strident laugh; the grunting of the wild boar in the pasture alternated with the belling of the male antelope and the answering call of the female; monkeys broke into a frenzied chattering as from the distance came the raucous cough of a leopard in search of food. The bush seemed to breathe heavily; the trees rustled, and the mist which rose from the wet ground and descended from the overhanging clouds turned to silver in the light of the moon.
The next morning we set out again, following the traces left by our ‘solitary one’. After the crisis, he had gone down to the river to drink but had not crossed it: he had retraced his steps for several miles before deciding to resume his journey to the west – almost as though, feeling that death was upon him, he had wished to return to his native region.
On the rain-soaked ground it was easy to follow the footmarks; the animal had continued to run, but at a less desperate pace and with more frequent halts.
One evening, beside the elephant tracks we found again the marks of the Abyssinian sandals and of the bare foot with the missing third toe. They had come from the north; by pure chance they had found the traces of the elephant and had immediately set off in pursuit again. The bandits’ footprints were fresh from the previous day, and we redoubled our watchfulness and precautions.
Three days later, just before dawn, one of the men of the forward patrol left the path and ran up a slope, following a large lizard. Suddenly, in the silence which precedes the rising of the sun, a shot rang out. The report reverberated through the air as the dawn whitened, and echoed back from the hill on the other side.
Thinking that one of the men – in spite of repeated instructions to the contrary – had fired at some wild game, Gabremariam and I made a dash in the direction of the shot. But firing was already becoming general: seeing their comrade fall, the whole patrol had opened fire and the shouts of our men announced that we had finally caught up with the bandits.
The Sergeant disappeared, then reappeared suddenly, followed by three men with rifles at the ready. He ran, bent double, almost on all fours, jumping like a whiskered gnome from one shrub to another, using the cover of every rise and fall in the ground to get to where he could take the bandits in the rear. The bandits, having been under the impression that they had shot an isolated soldier on his way home, had not yet recovered from their surprise at finding themselves in the presence of an armed patrol.
As we passed the dead Askari – who lay spreadeagled on his back, his face in a pool of blood round which the flies were already beginning to buzz – I saw one of the Abyssinians roll down the hillside, hit the trunk of a tree, bounce, and then lie still in the attitude of a marionette when its strings have been slackened.
By the time we reached the crest of the hill it was all over and Gabremariam was wiping his bayonet with a handful of grass. Not a quarter of an hour had passed since the first shot was heard. The four corpses of the shifta laid out before us confirmed Taddé Bocú’s deductions: three were of medium stature and the third – a colossus – had a great wound in the calf of his left leg. The only missing element was the hunter of fleas, although very recent footmarks proved that he too had been present on the hill.
The earth was already back in the Askari’s grave, and the Cunama death chant still hung suspended on the relatively fresh air, when we heard a smothered groan, a cavernous and indistinct shout. We looked round and listened: the voice was near at hand but we could see no place from which it could possibly come.
The Cunama and Baria, awed by the presence of the bodies, and by the smell of blood which still enveloped us, began at once to imagine the presence of the troubled spirits of the unburied dead. Gripping their rifles with trembling hands, they stared about them with wide-open eyes, expecting the appearance of ghosts and phantoms.
The groans and shouts were repeated, louder and longer. This time there was no doubt about it: the voice came from the baobab tree behind us. The men struck the trunk with their rifle butts and the tree spoke again. But this time its voice was feeble and subdued and was greeted with hilarious laughter. For the men had recognised the tremulous accents of Anto Alimatú, the hunter of fleas.
It seemed that at the first shot, terrified and without knowing what he was doing, the unfortunate creature had shinned up a tree; in his hurry he had missed his footing and fallen head first into the hollow trunk. When we mounted the hill and he heard the speech of his own people he realised that the bandits had been annihilated and he had then tried to get out of his prison. But the more he struggled the deeper he wedged himself, until he was held by the tree as in a vice.
Two of his fellow countrymen climbed up the baobab and pulled him out by the feet, much to everyone’s amusement. They let him down like a doll into the arms of the other men, who received him with all kinds of capers.
He was exhausted and covered with scratches and bruises. The Abyssinians had given him nothing to eat because their few provisions were hardly sufficient for themselves; for about twenty days he had lived on nothing but berries, fungi, and doum palm nuts. When he lost track of the elephant the Abyssinians beat him until they drew blood, accusing him of doing it on purpose; when he was tired and slowed down, or when he left the path to look for something edible, they pricked his buttocks with their knives, and at night they tied him by the hands and feet so that he could not run away.
‘Ha! Aren’t you better off hunting fleas?’ asked Tallù Ellana, the philosopher of the group. ‘You don’t fall into bad company; you sit down to it and all you need is a finger with some spit on it and you can catch as many as you like.’
Anto Alimatú, his mouth full, nodded assent.
The men were delighted to have the hunter of fleas with them: he served as a target for all their pleasantries. ‘Now that we have Anto Alimatú among us el wāhido’s number is up: he is already in our hands, by God’s grace.’
In fact, it was the truth. From the moment when Anto Alimatú joined the band the traces of the elephant became fresher and fresher; we found branches he had broken which were still running with sap; scattered leaves and twigs which had not had time to wither; the matter from his wound was still dripping from the trunks on which he had rubbed himself. One evening, as dusk and a veil of rain descended upon the plain, we heard in the distance – or thought we heard – a low and mournful trumpeting. Only those who, in the religious silence of the short, tropical twilight, have heard that voice calling across the primitive wilderness, will understand what I felt at that moment.
We passed the night in the shelter of a crag behind a clump of doum palms. The rain had ceased, but over our heads the sky was leaden, and away in the distance, to the east, the horizon was lit from time to time by flashes of lightning.
I do not know how long I had been sleeping. I was dreaming that I was at the Tiberius baths near the Marina Grande at Capri; I was cushioned on
the warm water of the bathing-pool, under a night sky. Suddenly I was awakened by a hand violently shaking my shoulder. It was Gabremariam. ‘A flood, a flood!’ he cried. ‘Quick! We shall drown! Hurry!’ He dragged me by the wrist, still half asleep, up the slope to the top of the crag. The continuous roar of thunder filled the air so that we had to shout to make ourselves heard. We called to the men and became anxious when their reply was slow – but they all arrived, stunned and stupid, with their cartridge pouches tied round their heads, and their sandals hanging round their necks. Anto Alimatú was also present, only half awake and shivering, wrapped in a blanket.
Not a drop of rain fell however, and the sky was clear, yet below us, half hidden in the night, lay a landscape we no longer recognised. Where the bush had been there was now a sheet of water as far as the eye could see – only the heads of the doum palms and the ‘umbrella’ tops of the robinias emerged, like water plants. Above the flood floated a milky mist which shone like mother-of-pearl where the moonlight touched it. In this dead, submerged world only sound survived. The violent thunder which had wakened us now sank to a dull rumble which seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth.
The crest on which we had taken refuge was narrow and not very long and we crowded together in the limited space, seated on the ground with our knees drawn up under our chins, our arms round our legs, gazing at the spectacle before us and waiting for the dawn.
‘O Anto Alimatú, wouldn’t you like to swim out and find el wāhido?’ asked one of the men. But no one was in a laughing mood. In fact, bad humour was ready to explode on the slightest pretext and when Gabremariam found that in the confusion of the sudden awakening no one had thought to save the flour, butter, salt or the packet of berberé; that there was nothing left from the flood but two days’ bread ration, he let loose an astounding stream of invective.
A Cure for Serpents Page 19
