“Now you are being very bad to me!” Farwe was extremely hurt. She held her belly. “This is very bad.” Her tone was mournful. “This is a Quarrel. Yes, you have made this a Quarrel.”
“Yes!” N’ati said, with satisfaction. “This is a Quarrel. Good! Now you know what you have to do.”
“That boy, Hiffaru, who will be my new-son, will Quarrel for me,” Farwe said, and her face cleared. She almost forgot to look solemn and serious, such was the pleasure she felt in reminding everyone again that the son of the Wai Wai would someday be coming to live in her cave.
“Paa!” N’ati spit again and turned her back. Of course her son, Sonte, would Quarrel for her. She didn’t have to say it.
The next day, after the morning rains, the Quarrel took place in a clearing Zan hadn’t seen before, where nothing but a kind of low yellow grass grew. Almost everyone came for the Quarrel, forming a rough circle, inside which the two boys faced one another.
“Hiffaru, who will be my new-son, will Quarrel for me,” Farwe chanted, stepping forward.
“Sonte, my son, will Quarrel for me,” N’ati chanted in reply. She stood with her arms crossed over her breasts, very calm, her eyebrows raised scornfully.
The boys approached each other slowly, standing tall, chins high, buttocks tightened, arms folded. Hiffaru was taller than Sonte, well built. The crumpled side of his face with its tiny sunken, lidless eye was like a shatteringly wrong note in an otherwise perfect piece of music. The boys paced forward purposefully, and for a moment, Zan, standing with Burrum, thought neither would stop in time to prevent those jutting chins from smashing together. Then, no more than a foot apart, they stopped.
The crowd was silent. The boys eyed each other. The silence grew, stretching taut as the skin of a drum. Then: “Aiiiiieeee,” Hiffaru sang, a wailing, nasal cry like a call to prayer. A shiver passed through the crowd. “Aiiieee, I am here to Quarrel with you,” he chanted. “That woman, Farwe, who will be my new-mother, is pleasant. She came to give greetings, she came from her hearth to N’ati’s hearth.” His voice rose and fell. “N’ati made her feel so bad,” he sang. “She called Farwe a big wasp who stings and flies away. She threw down her spittle at Farwe’s feet!”
“That is true,” Farwe cried excitedly. “Hiffaru says what is true.” She was very gay and excited and kept pinching Zan’s arm.
Now it was Sonte’s turn to relate his version of the disagreement. “Aiiieee,” he chanted back, his voice heavier, less pleasing and melodic than Hiffaru’s.
“N’ati, my mother, helps everyone. She is such a good woman, she thinks nothing of herself. She has no man to comfort her. Farwe came to her cave to say bad things, to upset her.”
And Hiffaru answered, chanting, “Your mother, N’ati, made Farwe’s belly hurt with sadness. This is so!”
Sonte swung his head in Hiffaru’s face. “Farwe did not come to Yano’s birthing,” he chanted. “Why did Farwe not come when her mother’s mother was the sister of my grandfather’s mother?”
“That is so,” someone in the crowd called. “Yes, Farwe ought to have gone to Yano’s birthing.”
“Oh, let them Quarrel,” Farwe said, giving Zan’s arm another little nip.
When the previous day’s disagreement had been thoroughly gone over in every aspect, the insults began. They were mild enough at first. “You are like a child who eats snot,” Sonte chanted.
“Your eyes are like frogs’ eggs,” Hiffaru replied.
Both boys were tense, tight-jawed, and serious as they circled one another, forcefully chanting their insults. Zan couldn’t help taking sides; of course she wanted Sonte to win! He and Hiffaru were like prize fighters, dancing around one another, feinting, jabbing, then suddenly—a serious punch!
“May the Diwaddi bird excrete on your head!”
“May snakes cross your path!”
The insults became heavier. “The sight of you is like a white worm who crawls into the stomach and makes me ill,” Sonte chanted, scowling.
“I hear you talking, and I know your tongue will rot like a dead tree,” Hiffaru chanted. His voice was becoming hoarse.
Louder and louder they chanted. The crowd urged them on, hands slapping appreciatively against bare thighs for an especially well-put insult.
“May your anus burn like fire.”
“And your penis curl like a leaf fallen from its branch.” They circled one another, faces screwed up, heads thrust forward, words exploding between them.
“You excrete poison stools!”
“Your piss is green and stinks!”
“May the Anouch’i visit you in every dream.”
“May all your children be sons.”
“May the water you drink pour out of your ears!”
“May the food in your mouth turn to stones!”
As abruptly as it had started the Quarrel was over. Sonte moved away first, turning his back to Hiffaru to show he was through, that his anger for his mother was used up, his capacity for insult worn out. In a moment he turned around again and he and Hiffaru clasped each other’s right shoulders so that their arms crossed. Then Farwe and N’ati were brought together. Facing each other, they touched foreheads for an instant without speaking. It was over. The crowd stirred and laughed, and began to talk.
“Is that all?” Zan asked Burrum. It was strange how let down she felt, while Burrum appeared to be totally exhilarated by the experience, running back and forth, talking and laughing and calling to friends.
“Now the Quarrel is finished and my belly is satisfied,” N’ati said loudly. And Farwe, not to be outdone, agreed quickly, “Yes, the Quarrel is over. I want to give you something,” she added, and taking off one of her shell necklaces she laid it graciously over N’ati’s head. Sonte put his arms around his mother and hugged her and the two of them left with their relatives and friends. Others surrounded Farwe who spoke of how well Hiffaru had Quarreled for her. But Hiffaru himself did not stay. He walked away, speaking to no one. As he passed Zan, the tiny eye buried deep in his skull gazed at her, and she was startled to see that his eye was brown, severe, and steady, exactly like his mother’s eyes.
Chapter 22
In the wet dawn, when dew glistened on every leaf, Diwera was searching the forest for the Hauka B’Mawa, a huge, hairy white spider whose bite was fatal. She had risen early from her sleep to begin the search, leaving the cave while Hiffaru and Akawa still slept. She was hunting these spiders to make a paste for a wound in Goah’s thumb, a wound that festered and did not heal. It had come from Meezzan’s Nii’uff.
Diwera’s daughter, Akawa, had seen it happen. Goah had asked Meezzan for Nii’uff. Meezzan said, “No.” Goah’s brother, Hakku, teasing, had pushed Goah, as he often did, saying, “Take Nii’uff, brother. Are you frightened? Is your belly crying like a little child at night? Brother, I want to see you take Nii’uff.” Before anyone could stop him, Goah had snatched Nii’uff by its shining tongue.
Thus, perhaps in anger, Nii’uff had sliced Goah’s thumb, cut through flesh to bone. There had been much blood, and Hakku had cried as if it were his thumb that lay open and bleeding. Akawa had packed the cut with fresh leaves of the Hamoia bush. “I could think of nothing else,” she said.
Diwera, concealing her pleasure over Akawa’s healing knowledge, had nodded briefly. “You did well, daughter. Those little leaves will make the wound heal quickly.” She had gone herself to see the boy and been satisfied that she could have done no better than Akawa. That had been many days ago. She raised one hand, fingers spread wide. Then the other hand. So many days! By now the wound ought to have healed, yet it did not. It festered, swollen and smelling of death. The boy’s mother said her son did not sleep at night, but raved in pain.
This was why Diwera was out early in the wet forest, hunting for the Hauka B’Mawa, calling softly to bring the spiders to her. As she searched, she had many things on her mind, and in one way or another all came back to Meezzan. In her head she heard the sounds of Meezzan
’s strange language and, with a sour click of her tongue, she recalled hearing some of these same unpleasant sounds from the mouth of the little boy, Lishum, and the girl, Ai’ma. But it was not only the children who copied Meezzan. She had taught the young people a game in which they pushed and shoved, snatching the melon from one another, throwing it toward some thing called “Ba’sus.” Diwera found it difficult, if not impossible, to understand such a game. It was played without singing, where one called out in a loud ugly voice and ran around without sense, afterward shouting Meezzan’s words, “Aii’wun, Aii’wun!”
Diwera knew it was because of Meezzan’s powers that the young people copied her, learning her games and her words. And there was a deep ugly feeling in Diwera’s belly that it was because of Meezzan’s powers, too, that so many bad things were happening to the People. Goah’s wound. And the rains. In Diwera’s memory, the rains had come harder and stayed longer than ever before. The red flowers were blooming in the forest, the time for the Sussuru was near, but still the rains came every day. Often fires were smoky and bedding damp. But worst of all was old Nabrushi, who had lost his footing while climbing an Aspa tree for nuts and had fallen and broken a leg. No one, not even among the First Old Ones, could remember when someone had last fallen from an Aspa tree, which had great wide branches like a mother’s arms. It was said by some that a huge bird had flown out of the sky, a kind of bird that Nabrushi had never seen before, and thinking it had come to peck out his eyes he had leaped away from it and fallen to the ground.
The old man had crawled up the mountain in great pain, his face covered with cold sweat, his injured leg dragging. He had collapsed on the ground in front of Farwe’s cave. She had sent for Diwera who, grabbing the injured leg with both hands, had pulled with all her strength to straighten the broken bone. That old man, Nabrushi, had groaned and cried in his pain. Diwera had bound sturdy sticks tightly together, one next to the other, put them on the leg, and wrapped all with fresh strips of bark. The men had carried old Nabrushi back to his own hearth, where now he lay, still in pain, his old bones clicking like branches in a wind.
Diwera pressed her lips together. So many bad things. Too many bad things! She came upon a tumble of rocks and, kneeling, called the white spiders to her. She had ready in her hand a little peeled stick with which she would hold down the spiders so she could seize them safely without being bitten. If she were careless or stupid when gathering the Hauka B’Mawa, she would die in great agony.
“Psss . . . whee . . . psss . . . she called softly. But the spiders hid themselves from her. She sucked liquid from the stem of a plant, and continued her search. Her feet took her to Meadow-with-Watering-Hole. “Ssss!” She blew out her breath in chagrin. That she had come this far without finding what she sought!
Then, across the meadow, she saw Meezzan rising from the ground, as if rising out of Diwera’s troubled thoughts. Leaning her head against a boulder, the girl pounded on it with both hands. Though the wind blew her words away from Diwera, she knew the girl was calling on her spirits, chanting one of her harsh songs. Aiii, she had heard about Meezzan’s coming here to a big rock where she put on her strange garments, lay on the ground curled like a child with her eyes closed, and called out to the spirits! Yes, Diwera had heard all this, but now for the first time she saw it for herself.
Head down, the girl came toward Diwera through the high grasses and flowers. Though agitated by her thoughts, Diwera sang out a courteous greeting. Like a startled animal, Meezzan jerked her head up, eyes opened wide, lips parted. Then she smoothed her face and returned the greeting.
“Are you not lonely so far from the caves, without friends or companions?” Diwera asked.
“You, too, are alone,” Meezzan said.
Diwera nodded impatiently. She was the Wai Wai. The Wai Wai did not go with others, as everyone else did. But neither did this girl. Sometimes she appeared to be like any other girl, but Diwera was not misled.
When she had first come among the People, Meezzan had not known even how to feed herself from earth and the waters. Yes, she had learned much from Burrum and the other young ones, but what had she done before for food and drink? Perhaps she had no need of these things. Diwera shivered.
“What do you do there? What do you sing?” she said, pointing toward the rock where she had seen the girl ceremoniously pound her hands.
“I go there, so that—I want to go to my home,” Meezzan said, using the word for caves. But Diwera understood.
Like Niben, that young man from so long ago, from her grandmother’s grandmother’s time, the girl surely came from Beyond-the-Mountains. But had she made her way alone over mountains that reached into the very sky itself? So many unanswered questions! Now, Diwera was determined to have some answers.
“Meezzan! What is it like in your place? Do all the people have frek’ulls?”
“Oh, no! Some have skin like yours. Some have skin that is black, some have skin that is red, or yellow.”
She takes me for a fool, Diwera thought, but still she remained courteous and calm. “Where is Nii’uff? Do you not have Nii’uff with you?”
The girl shook her head. Her face changed, something passed over her eyes like a cloud through the sky. “It is at the cave,” she said slowly. She rubbed her arms, although it was still warm; the rains had not yet come this moming. “Is Goah better?”
Diwera gave her a measuring look. “His wound is very bad. It is green and smells foul. He cries in the night from his pain. Why did Nii’uff bite him?”
“He took it,” Meezzan said. “I told him no, but he took it.”
Yes, he took your power and thus he was hurt, Diwera thought, and involuntarily she took a step backward, away from the girl. Never before had she known or conceived of anyone with greater powers than her own. The spirits had powers, but one might live a lifetime and never see the spirits. If they did make themselves visible, then it was only for their own purposes, and they soon disappeared again.
“Where is your home?” she asked Meezzan in a deliberate tone. “Where is your place that you came from before you lived with the People?”
The girl twisted her shoulders. Diwera saw that the question made her uneasy. Frowning and looking aside, Meezzan scratched her arm. “My cave—my home—it is far away.”
“Yes, Beyond-the-Mountains,” Diwera agreed. “Why do you not return?” How good it would be if the girl left the People! The thought brightened Diwera immediately. She put her hand on Meezzan’s shoulder. “Do you not want to see your own people?” she said in a warm, encouraging voice. “If the journey is far, we will give you a tantua filled with good food.”
“I want to return. Yes! I try, but—” The girl pointed to the rock in the middle of the field, then down toward the earth, straight into the earth. “I must go back to my home from there. It is not easy.”
“What are you saying? Do you take me for a foolish woman!” Fear, like white worms, crawled into Diwera’s belly. Had the girl sprung from the earth itself? From spirits unknown? Beings who lived below the ground? “Tell me how you came here,” she demanded. “Tell me how you will leave!”
“I want to tell you,” Meezzan said, “but—I cannot. It is so hard. You are the Wai Wai of the People, I know this.” She still spoke haltingly, like a child. “You help the sick. You give them herbs. Burrum says that you are wise. She must be right. You are the wise person, but—I cannot tell you how I can go to my home!” Her face became red and swollen, but she did not cry, her eyes stayed dry, and she broke into a gabble of incomprehensible sounds. Her own language, full of harshness and hard snapping sounds. Diwera felt bruised by the deluge of strange words and she wanted to cover her ears against them.
“Meezzan!” Diwera put all the weight of her position and authority into the one word. And the girl abruptly stopped speaking. She was trembling. For a moment Diwera almost felt pity for her. Then the girl broke free of Diwera and ran into the forest. This rudeness shocked Diwera to her senses. No, no, no
, the girl was not of the People! Moon following moon following moon, she had been among the People and still she had not learned their good ways. She would never learn them! Why should she? Her powers protected her!
Distracted and upset by the tide of her thoughts, Diwera turned into the forest to continue looking for the poisonous white spiders. She had not gone too far when she heard a low whistle. High above her, among tumbled rocks, two snakes, each bigger than a man, slowly flowed along the ground, their heads raised. They were whistling. Their enormous bodies were black with shining white spots. “Mother Olima,” Diwera whispered. These snakes had white frek’ulls on their black bodies, while Meezzan had black frek’ulls on a white body. And where did these snakes come from, if not from beneath the earth? As Meezzan did.
“Mother Olima,” Diwera whispered again. The snakes glided on, their heads raised, whistling. Diwera remained still until they were out of sight, but even then, still hearing their whistling, she could not move. At last the whistles died away. Breath rushed into her lungs. She raised her head and sniffed the air. Soon the rain would begin. She felt dazed, as if awakening from a long sleep. She went on, still looking for the spiders.
In a grove of white trees, she came to a huge fallen tree, moss-covered, the roots rearing like enormous fingers into the air. This tree had been there, in this grove, forever. It was said that Miiawa often came there to rest. This was Miiawa’s grove. The trees were bigger and more beautiful than any others. The trunks, white and pale green, rose smooth and straight into the sky. The leaves, like Wind, moved softly, speaking together. Placing a handful of long white Ripari tubers on the great broad trunk of the fallen tree, Diwera called, “Here is a gift for you, Miiawa. I, Diwera, leave this food. Eat it, Miiawa, and when I return, I will bring you another gift. This is true. You may believe this.”
Calmer in her mind, she went on her way. As the first spatter of rain pebbled the ground, she found a nest of white spiders. She wrapped each spider she caught in a separate leaf, then put all the little packets of leaves into one big Piishanii leaf, wrapping it tightly with vine and holding it well away from her. Should even one spider free itself, it would spin a glistening, trembling thread and be upon her in moments.
Saturday, the Twelfth of October Page 14
