by Shlomo Kalo
At a later stage, when the poisoned arrows were used up, they started shooting burning arrows and these made an entirely different sound on impact – something else deserving the attention of scientists – not to mention the smell of burning that filled my nostrils and tried, in vain, to cloud my consciousness. In some place and to a far from negligible extent, I derived some reasonable and cultural pleasure from this smell of fresh wood burning, which compared with the smell I had left behind in the wigwam-prison, seemed like the living fragrance of the lost Garden of Eden.
All that I had heard before that time about the Indians and their miraculous marksmanship was as nothing compared with the reality that I experienced on the ground – from theory into practice. They could definitely shoot "within a hair’s breadth" – and they hit the hairs of my head and hit them repeatedly, distributing them in the shape of a fan, in the most picturesque manner imaginable. And all this in spite of the manic rotation of the drum and my naturally rebellious hair. They were accurate to a margin of error of a thousandth of a millimeter, in a time of a thousandth of a second – and they never missed. If there had been an instance of one of them losing concentration for a thousandth of a second, citing the familiar western excuse that there is no living person who doesn’t make mistakes – then one of the arrows, poisoned or burning, or a bullet from one of the Winchesters, would have pierced the skull of your narrator, and this story of his would never, under any circumstances, have come to your attention, my dear and esteemed readers and hearers.
It is possible today to declare with confidence and without fear of contradiction that on the "drum", vivid and unforgettable moments were experienced, their lesson running deep and their memory – the most beautiful… the head that was all in a whirl infused a mild sensation of tipsiness, intoxication almost, and the view of the landscape was utterly blurred and mixed, and instead of the midday sun, the sight taking shape before my wide-open eyes was that of the blackest night, densely strewn with sparkling stars, big and close at hand – an ideal opportunity for precise astronomical and astrological observations…
The scores of faces fixing curious eyes on me reminded me of thousands of distorting mirrors in which my face was reflected in new lines – proud, aristocratic and decidedly handsome. The burning arrows had something of a warming effect on the air that had chilled, reminding me for a few moments of the heat of the blazing fire in one of my mansions in my faraway homeland – and suddenly I saw before my eyes the high walls of that mansion, laden with the choice books of famous writers and decorated with pictures painted by the greatest artists of all peoples, of all times…
Towards evening the show came to an end. Ammunition was exhausted and the arrows, after repeated use, began to break and their tips were blunted. The strings of the bows were becoming slack too, and even the new-fangled Winchester rifles were so overheated they could not be touched for fear of scalding. Both the parties playing an active role in the game – the Indians on one side and I on the other – were in a state of extreme fatigue, and in some place or other needed a time of respite. We were all tired, they as much as me, but satisfied and filled with elation, as if after a stroll through the stunning expanses of nature, wild majesty still intact.
When they untied the ropes and released me from the drum (for the first moment I needed the support of those "basketball-players" who popped up behind me, they too bathed in healthy sweat, with muscles rippling) I held out my hand to the other participants in the game, as demanded by the norms of the etiquette in which I was schooled and which has been extended, not with outstanding success, to various sporting contests and all kinds of venues. My competitors ignored my outstretched hand, their faces taking on, in addition to the healthy red hue with which nature had endowed them, a flush of embarrassment which was no less becoming.
However, in the end my hand was shaken by someone who overcame his embarrassment, and spared his blushes, and did not ignore the outstretched hand – frankly touched as he was by this display of sporting courtesy – the Chief, Bat-Feather.
The Chief had been watching events from a respectful distance, and now he stood up from his seat on a mound of earth erected in his honor, approached me with his measured, majestic tread and shook my hand, and while standing close to me he twisted his sharp features into a grimace, and on the basis of this subtle hint I could guess that the decisive moment had arrived and it was up to me to try out the miraculous ointment, supposed, according to tradition, to protect the one smeared with it from the gleaming bullets and heavy shells of all kinds of weapons of destruction, from the tiniest of handguns to the mighty howitzer – if his heart is as pure and innocent as the heart of an infant.
I smiled some half dozen smiles at him, and I have to admit that in part at least, these were forced smiles. It occurred to me then to ask Bat-Feather to extend the "intermission" to a whole night, but when I remembered conditions in the wigwam where I would have to spend the night – I abandoned the idea.
And sure enough, my supposition proved to be accurate, and even before I was entirely steady on my feet, I was hustled by those two potential basketball-players to another wigwam – spacious and well-ventilated, which looked to me like the royal pavilion of Cyrus, King of the Persians, and was in fact the Chief’s tent.
From the moment I was deposited on the compressed earth of the floor of the wigwam I was assailed by the Chief’s many children, his young sons and daughters, who tried to ride me like a mule, plaiting my disheveled hair into reins. I was rescued by the seven wives of the master of the tent, who swooped on the unruly fruit of their wombs, detached them forcibly from their living plaything and disappeared with them behind the heavy curtain.
The Chief and I were left. My host rose and pulled out from some dark corner a box of medium size, the kind formerly used by tobacco-traders. With a ceremonious movement he removed the lid, using an ancient bayonet, formerly the property of the Confederate Army, which still retained its original shape.
Inside the box (I leaned over and peered, as I understood this was permitted) was the sparkle of some ointment, the color of fermented honey, somewhat reminiscent of diesel oil, a recent invention.
The Chief handed me the box and commanded me to strip off my rags and smear my aching body, from my toes to the last recalcitrant hair on my head, with this "diesel oil". I obeyed.
During the process of smearing, the Chief was walking up and down the tent, softly humming a monotonous kind of chant, its tune revealing unmistakable relics of a distant Negroid influence. When I had almost finished the task, the Chief’s gait turned into a kind of dance, and the tune shook off all traces of Negroid influence, changing to a series of truncated calls of the raven and the owl, with the wailing of cats to the full moon.
Finally, I went to put on the rags which were all that remained of my clothing, and then it became clear that they categorically refused to endure any more of the hardships inflicted on my body; instead – they fell to pieces when brought into renewed contact with it.
The Chief understood the situation, he turned to the dark recesses of the spacious wigwam and drew out from a cabinet engraved with Slavic script in a faux-rococo style, an authentically Indian loincloth made of cougar hide, moccasins fashioned from the hide of the wild boar, and laced with the plaited hair of some white person, blond apparently, and he topped off my smart new outfit with an almost new crest of feathers.
So I strode back to the central square of the village, accompanied by armed bodyguards, those putative basketball-players, walking steadily in the footsteps of Bat-Feather.
In the square there was commotion again, and there were even fresh voices discernible there – Indians from neighboring encampments invited to the event. Men considered young were more flamboyant than the other members of their tribe and were dancing in narrow circles, each man by himself, alternately lowering and raising the head with its crest of feathers, and performing rhythmic leaps punctuated by the waving of the sharpened tomahawks
brandished by all, under the baton of the master of ceremonies, and the uttering of shrieks and whistles in all possible registers, imitating the call of birds and animals that were once and have disappeared, that are still with us, and those which are yet to come.
An impressive dance from any angle and perspective, from a dry academic angle and also from the perspective of the social melting-pot which we, considered people of culture, would be well advised to study in depth, learning from it and understanding its unifying principle.
In the place where the "drum" was formerly situated, a lofty pole now stood, a sort of obelisk, made of wood and with all kinds of faces carved into it – the faces that visit men in nightmares, colored with exquisite taste and raising the artistry of pictorial horror to the highest level imaginable.
As always, fortune smiled on me and I was made to stand against this impressive pole, a unique work of art without equal in any of the lands of western culture.
With a quick glance I noticed the women of the village distributing to their husbands the Winchester rifles which they had serviced in exemplary fashion: cooling the barrels, cleaning, brushing and polishing to a bright sheen.
My bodyguards came to tie me to the totem pole, but Chief Bat-Feather stopped them with an authoritative wave of the hand. He approached me and asked me if I wanted to be tied, or could I control myself during this important experiment and not run away like a typical white man.
I answered him (in sign language and with the few Indian expressions I had managed to pick up) and told him that any form of binding was hateful to me, and insofar as the choice depended on me I had never bound or shackled any person – least of all myself – and I had always been resolutely opposed to the forcible restraint of anyone, at the hands of friend or foe.
"So I thought!" I correctly interpreted the vivid gestures of the Chief, who smiled a broad and thoroughly Indian smile at me.
So, I wasn’t tied.
The firing party was composed of all the men of the tribe who considered themselves warriors, ranging in age from nine to one hundred, a total of some three hundred rifle-carriers. Their weapons included not only the new-fangled Winchesters but also the long-barreled and highly decorated flintlocks which had once belonged to the first pioneers, those men who rode at sunset across the wide open prairies, conquered wasteland and slaughtered bison, until the skilled and nimble hand of the Indian removed their scalps and took their weapons for souvenirs.
Before the ceremony began, they explained to me that shooting at the man anointed with ointment was an obligation of the highest importance among the three hundred and seventy-seven obligations that every adult Indian is required to uphold meticulously. Furthermore, it was considered one of the three special commandments which guarantee to those who keep them a place in the great plains thronged with bison that comprise the Indian afterlife. The other two commandments are: remembering the birthday of the firstborn son; hence anyone who has not been blessed with offspring or has not fathered a male child – will be denied his place in the Indian afterlife, and after his death his longing eyes will never get to see those famous bison hunting-grounds. And the third commandment, the last of the three is – not eating a cabbage that a rabbit has bitten. This commandment accounts for the strange Indian practice of removing the front teeth of every rabbit that falls into their hands – alive or dead.
The Chief, Bat-Feather, moved away from the field of activity and took no active part in testing the ointment and the one daubed with it, after supervising the ceremony of the latter’s anointing, a task surpassing in importance, as it turned out, the three special commandments combined, and outclassing any number of the other sacred obligations imposed on the Indians.
The Chief produced a strange-looking object resembling a checkered flag of the kind waved at motor-races, placed a giant hand over his mouth in a ceremonious and emphatic manner, understood by everyone as the signal for two full minutes of silence, and then, with the authoritative air so typical of him he raised the little flag – and all at once they opened fire.
Before I had time to intone for the second time the enchanted Indian anthem which had infused me with blessed and emphatic indifference when I was tied to the drum – there was the thunder of countless bullets exploding around me, deafening – and literally so.
The faces of those shooting at me, from short range, were tense, consumed with reverential fear, surprising in their nobility. And before I had time to study their sharp features in greater depth – the visible world dissolved and disappeared (apparently I closed my eyes for a nano-second) and rapidly changed to a totally different vision: beside me stood a stately horse, white as snow and beside the saddle, decorated with trappings of silver and gold and studded with precious stones – a ceremonial white gown, woven from pure silk and shot through with sparkling rubies.
Someone mounted the horse, and the gown was thrown over him and he put it on and it fitted him perfectly and the whole redskin nation cried out in one voice:
"Long live Af-Balloon, God of the sun and creator of all, our king and savior!"
It seemed like a dream, or like departure from a dream and entry into one of the many Indian paradises, appropriate to each and every individual case…
Some time passed before it was finally made clear to me that this was not the Indian paradise and not a dream, or waking from a dream, but simple and tangible Indian reality, that the one wearing the ceremonial gown shot through with sparkling rubies, and riding the no less ceremonial white horse, was none other than your faithful servant – Baron Leutenlieb of the House of Munchausen. This and more – the body of the rider which still looked somewhat petrified, in the eyes of those seeing him and in his own eyes too, was whole and healthy, with not even the slightest scratch perceptible there, despite the three hundred bullets of various calibers fired at him from new and old weapons, at short range.
So, the ointment had proved its worth.
Indians were still prostrating themselves before the feet of the horse, and some had already flung themselves into giddying ritual dances, while others hurried to follow their example… when Bat-Feather approached me, and in a festive spirit and an air of deep satisfaction clearly visible to the eye, he exclaimed:
"Just as I thought – you are the incarnation of Af-Balloon, God of the Sun, the one hope of this sinful generation and the light of generations to come! Command whatever is in your heart – we shall gladly obey…"
Predictably, the first order I issued touched directly on the man with the hanky-sized poncho. I ordered his immediate release.
At this, some of my enthusiastic acolytes frowned momentarily, but on raising questioning eyes to the Chief and meeting his steady gaze, they regained their elation at once and sped away, releasing poncho-man and by means of some restrained encouragement, forcing him to stand before me.
"I heard, I heard!" he cried in a guttural voice, "My congratulations! You passed all their crazy tests, bowed your proud head to their primitive customs!"
"It’s thanks to their ‘primitive customs’ that you’re going to find yourself a free man today!" I berated him soundly with all the severity that I could muster – not, incidentally, the kind of severity that is easily ignored. And at once I added:
"Which of all the civilized nations of the world would set free a man who indiscriminately slaughtered their sons and daughters, their womenfolk, the very young and the very old, to sell their skulls to the enemy, at a dollar a skull, to get rich that way?"
A heavy silence fell between us. Poncho-man’s crooked features contorted grotesquely, his hands shook.
"Is it…" he mumbled suddenly, "…true what you’re saying?" And he added hastily: "You say I’m free to go, walk out of the Indian camp just like that, without anyone doing me harm?" And perhaps for the first time in his life, in the course of his heavy mumbling, the two halves of his face conformed to each other and the sardonic expression was erased completely, as if it had never been.
"Absolutely true!" I declared. I turned to the Indians who were quietly dancing around me, in a mood that was all restrained enthusiasm and repressed jubilation, with repeated prostrations and emphatic expressions of reverence.
"Get him his horse and his mules – and let him go!" I went on to order, to the astonishment of my audience in general and poncho-man in particular, over my success in acquiring such fluency in the Indian language in such a short period of time. From my point of view there was nothing remarkable about this, and certainly no occasion for surprise. As everyone knows, I was born a polyglot – by which I mean, if someone initiates a conversation with me in any language, Chinese, Persian, Martian – my outstanding brain will immediately grasp the fundamental principles on which the language is based and learn it with lightning speed, down to the correct pronunciation – as if this were my mother-tongue.
The surprise passed and the obedient Indians hurried away to fetch poncho-man’s horse and mules. Needless to say – without their former cargo.
He refused to believe his eyes. He remained so, wrapped up in his silence, trembling in every limb. Suddenly he jumped on the horse, saddled and ready, and took off at frantic speed, as if escaping from a gang of bandits intent on shedding his blood, leaving his mules behind.
It was not long before poncho-man turned into a tiny dot, just visible against the line of the horizon, now ablaze with the glowing, slanting rays of sunset. And then, to the surprise of all of us, my surprise and the surprise of the Indians beside me, silently watching what was happening – the dot began growing bigger again before our eyes, at the same breakneck speed with which it had previously receded and grown smaller. Before long a cloud of dust told us that poncho-man had met his mules that were trailing after him and was now dragging them with him on his way back. The dust had barely subsided when the runaway stood facing me – panting heavily, sweating, ingrained with dust and looking subdued.
