Dance of the Dwarfs

by Geoffrey Household

  The walk home tired and exasperated me more than any of distances I had covered going to and from the ridge. If I kept to the cool darkness I was continually zigzagging through trees; if I took to the open llano I was baked by that intolerable ball of fire. No wonder the llaneros never dismount! All the way there was something bothering memory, connected with my observations of this unique mustelid; yet I could not pull it up to the surface.

  It was simply a difference of size which was preventing instant association. I got at it by way of the badger. I had not missed the parallel of the tremendous jaw, the supporting crest of bone and the vulnerable nose. The badger took me back to cold, green England: to Rendcomb where their habits have been closely studied and thus to Rendcomb Agricultural College where I was invited to give a couple of lectures on soil survey in the tropics. In the senior common room after dinner I settled down with a zoologist whose name I forget. He was an authority on small mammals, particularly European mammals, and he gave it as his opinion that of all the carnivores — with the possible exception of man — the most courageous, the most savage, the most tenacious in the chase was the stoat; and like the weasel and the polecat it killed for the sake of killing.

  He was full of stories of the stoat. Cornered, it would unhesitatingly attack and spring to the height of the waist. One would be wise to grab it quickly off one’s coat, at the expense of a badly bitten hand, before it reached the throat. He was doubtful if it ever hunted in pack — the smaller weasel undoubtedly did — but farm hands and even reliable gamekeepers had stories of meeting half a dozen stoats in sunk lanes or on woodland paths and getting out of there quick with the little bodies — another point of resemblance — looping along behind.

  Both stoat and weasel live in thick cover and use it cunningly. They come out only to hunt or for curiosity. To satisfy curiosity they all sit up to see over obstacles. They kill by seizing the prey at the back of the skull, the teeth penetrating the brain.

  This mustelid appears to be on the least specialized line of descent, from which the badgers and the otters have branched off. I wish I knew whether the stoat also hunts downwind. I believe the lion is the only carnivore which does. One animal gives its scent and so drives the prey straight into an ambush laid by another. The killing of Tesoro shows that the mustelids use this trick, but with an important difference. The prey is selected and then relentlessly followed till it drops. The second animal, if not chasing, moves about and gives its scent from various angles to reinforce panic and to ensure that the game does not run straight.

  Scent, however, is only an auxiliary. When the wind veered to the west and Tesoro bolted, I am certain there was no mustelid to the east to send him off in a circle. For one thing, the country was becoming too open for them in daylight; for another the wind was too changeable for any planning. Tesoro could have bolted for the llano. He did not. I could have taken the line I knew in the forest. I did not. No, there is more to it than scent. One must also remember that in thick forest there is rarely any wind at all.

  This singling out of the chosen quarry, the refusal to go off on the trail of any other and the uncontrollable panic of the hunted together add up to what I have called the Declaration of Intent. It is possible that the musk glands release molecules which act directly on the nervous system. That sounds decently material and scientific, but begs too many questions. A more promising line of investigation is the “superstitious” fear. I have experienced it. I know how it inhibits the inborn mechanism of self-preservation as well as the sense of direction. At that level of consciousness I am not an expert in tropical agriculture; I am a hunted mammal.

  The rabbit resembles me sufficiently for it to be a primitive working model in the laboratories. The rabbit which the stoat selects runs straight to start with, then in a circle. Finally it squats down and squeals. Whether it takes to burrow or cover or the open it cannot escape and gives the impression of knowing it. Only long observation of this Colombian mustelid and its tiny relatives could confirm my tentative theory: that a certain quality of fear can operate at a distance, and that this enables the mustelid to hunt in the way it does.

  That brought me, while I plodded on through the heat, to the question: what is fear? It is not fear of death. The rabbit and Tesoro can have no knowledge of death. Fear is nothing but a chemical change in the organism directed towards keeping itself in a fit state to breed other organisms. But that may be putting the cart before the horse. The adrenalin is secreted after the fear. Leave it at this — fear is an unreasoning, instinctive order to run.

  Panic so overwhelming that the animal does not run but sits trembling and takes what is coming is as familiar to man as the rabbit. He cowers before the man-eater, the earthquake and unendurable shelling. Although so powerful, ingenious and bloodthirsty an ape is never helpless, the instincts of self-preservation are inhibited. He sits. He turns no more his head. He pulls the blanket over it.

  Somewhere there is the key to the behavior of stoat and rabbit. I still think the adjective “superstitious” helps. Fear of the unseen is the most inhibiting of all. But how are we aware of the unseen, unheard, unscented? Pure imagination. I disagree, but accept it for the sake of argument with myself. However it gets us no farther towards knowledge of the receiving mechanism.

  I got in, dead tired, just before dusk. Chucha rode down the creek to meet me, leading Estrellera. She said that she knew I needed another horse to carry a deer. A rationalization of her awareness that I did indeed want a horse. How close we are!

  I told her that Tesoro had been killed by a puma, that I had shot it but too late. Somehow I had to account for my distress. She cried, Indians are very fond of pets, and to her Tesoro was the prize pet. Then she comforted me like — like what? A dear daughter, perhaps, who understands every elemental emotion and does not look beyond.

  [ Evening ]

  She set her heart on coming with me to see Tesoro, and I could not refuse. I felt reasonably sure that the wounded mustelid would have deserted the open woodland and taken refuge in deep cover. So I mounted her on. Estrellera and myself rode the broader Pichón. He’s a good, solid, old stick, but he too tried to tear down the corral.

  Since I had got up early this morning, urgently written up the record of yesterday, and then dozed off, it was nearly eleven when we started instead of the regulation hour of six. I badly wanted the skin or at least the head of the mustelid intact, but it couldn’t be helped. I haven’t a bloody great gang of coolies to carve up my specimen, preserving the bones for a museum and the hide for my living room — where the lizards, the rats and the ants would get it however much Mario and I salted it. In the rainy season I should probably find a couple of trees growing through it as well.

  As we rode south, much more slowly than yesterday, Chucha began to search for the truth of my daylong absences. At home she was too dutiful to reveal her fears, but now we were on a joint expedition and bound together by sorrow for Tesoro. Dutiful. Well, not quite that. She is so free to ask questions and be answered that she lays off the subjects such as our future and dwarf-hunting which are exclusive to me. Tactful, perhaps. Or is she afraid of the answers?

  “You are always thinking of them, Ojen,” she said.

  “It could be that there are five minutes in the day when I do not think of you.”

  “Last night in your sleep you were calling for your machete. I got up and gave it to you, but your hand did not want it.”

  “I suppose I had cut down what I was dreaming about.”

  “Did they kill Tesoro? You must swear to me.”

  “I swear to you that a beast killed Tesoro. You will see it.”

  I hoped to be able to pass off the mustelid as a puma, though it was remarkably uncatlike except for the fangs. After all, she had never seen a puma, wild or in a zoo, and Indian legend makes it a far more formidable animal than it really is.

  I need not have been anxious. When we arrived, the vultures were competing with the ants. Tesoro was a red ruin
. Chucha still wanted to touch him but I would not let her. There was such a phalanx of red predator ants spread over him that the exposed muscles of loins and back seemed to be moving. If she went too close the little devils would be all over her arms and legs in a second.

  The ants had not found the other carcass, but the birds had. When I came up, two tayras who had been making a meal of their larger cousin gave me a dirty look and slowly removed themselves. They are omnivorous and harmless and have the same air of independence as the badger. They had scratched away my covering of brushwood and let in the vultures.

  The mustelid was much the worse for wear and could pass as a light-colored puma. Even so Chucha was puzzled. She thought that a puma had longer legs, she said, and she was sure that it had a longer tail. I replied that my first shot had hit the tail and cut it off. An incredibly unlikely fluke, but a good enough story for anyone who had never handled a gun. What was left of the tip of the tail was red and raw.

  There was no trophy, nothing worth carrying home except Tesoro’s saddle and tack. We rode back lazily, keeping to the scattered shade on the edge of the llano while Chucha babbled happily but not altogether at random. She managed to bring the conversation back to dwarfs again.

  What islands we are! I doubt if any woman understands the deep loneliness to which men condemn themselves. They think it a moroseness and that our silence in some way disparages them as inferior creatures. We are merely away. The business of the island is briskly proceeding, but all around it is sea and no boat. Women cannot ever accept that there is no boat. Chucha does accept it as a rule, thereby making our relations so deliciously easy.

  “Ojen, have you talked to the dwarfs yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Are they afraid of you?”

  “Probably.”

  She thought over that unsatisfactory answer and then asked me what weapons they had.

  “Only magic.”

  “What can they do?”

  “Nothing, if one feels no fear.”

  “They will never work for you,” she said. “The rains are coming and we shall all be busy again. We do not need them, Ojen, so let us leave them alone.”

  It was the first time I ever heard her use that proprietary “we.” I love the confidence it shows. Which of us am I going to betray?

  I agreed to leave them alone and I shall keep my word. Now that I know what it is that dances, there is no more point in exposing myself on that abominable ridge. If the remaining mustelid recovers, the flowing creek will limit its movements. I have read somewhere that it takes a thousand years to establish an instinctive fear of man, but I think the lesson should be sufficient to instill caution, so long as there are enough peccary and tapir on its home ground to satisfy the hunger of a duende.

  This evening clouds are drifting past the moon for the first time since early December.

  [ May 14, Saturday ]

  Sun again. One greets it as an old friend whose energy is intolerable but whose absence leaves one irresolute. The first great blobs of rain splashed down at dawn yesterday, puffing the dust like charges of shot. One solid silver-edged cloud was being chased to the northwest by the main fleet, with only two hand’s breadths of blue sky between them. Then our closed, black world boiled over and rolled with thunder, hit after hit landing on the infinite target of the llano and one on the main building, which fortunately did no damage.

  A terrifying storm. I expected a more gradual onslaught of the rains. We have had nine inches in twenty-four hours. At one time the garden was a lake between walls and we all paddled about trying to close the inlets of the irrigation channels.

  The marshes overflowed suddenly when the natural dam of mud and decayed vegetation disintegrated. I was in time to see the bore, three or four feet high, tear up the underlying silt and go roaring down the bed of the creek at the speed of a galloping horse — a tremendous skewbald of brown and white. Behind it the creek spread out till it was nearly up to the rubbish dump, and I began to wonder what we should use for a boat if the stream reached the estancia. It didn’t. It settled into a great river half the size of the Guaviare and is now going down, leaving behind a band of alluvium where in three days I shall see a flicker of green and in a week a carpet of grass as thick as English turf.

  Our adobe walls have collapsed in a dozen places and would not keep out an agouti, let alone duendes. But the mustelids will never visit us again, assuming that such a drought as this occurs only once in a dozen or more years. Then their cubs might. But, walls or no walls, the experimental station will be secure so long as my successors — if there are any — keep up the rules which Mario has always obeyed and never understood. How right he was never to cross the garden at night and to see that windows were barred or shuttered, and all doors locked!

  I have a new Chucha. She has done her best to be a Child of the Sun, but I suspect she is more at ease in the downpour of the Upper Amazon where she was brought up, and takes it for granted that human beings should live in a hot bath, decently wet between the blasts of sunshine. Indecently wet would be more like it. She ought to go stark naked. Her combination of one provocative, soaked garment and pathetic drowned-kitten relaxation invites immediate attention. I noticed that even old Mario was affected. So did Teresa — and told him to come in and mend the roof.

  At the same time Chucha has developed a wild gaiety. She reminds me of a child on its first visit to the seaside. Bucket and spade and impulsive kisses. It could be that she feels not only the joy of the rains but also the glorious freedom of her lover from all these weeks of idiocy. My job is to make a ton of wheat grow where now there is only one palatable tuft of grass for a bullock, not to dispute the forest with animals to which the Lord gave such outstanding power and beauty — though I can’t say as much for their habits.

  Somehow one expects the sun to be less fiery after the rain, but of course it is not. The llano steams. Chucha’s garment dries to comparative respectability in twenty minutes. The mud crusts very quickly and can be treacherous as thin ice. I must ride up and see how far the marshes now extend to the north and what temporary streams are running into them. Seen from the Mother and Child I expect to find the llano all striped with blue and silver, for the water level must be too high to be hidden by the shallow folds.

  The floods will soon go down and then be stationary for four months, fed by daily rains. I ought to make a swimming pool for Chucha on one of the minor soak-aways of the marsh. Or it could easily be done by damming the creek when the level is stabilized. Now, how on earth could I have written that? Proof of how swiftly one can throw off an obsession when the environment changes! To dam the creek is something which never must be allowed.

  [ May 15, Sunday ]

  It is time the Government replaced Pedro. The Intendencia must know by now that he has vanished and ought to have sent someone along who could take my evidence. But, to be fair, why should they give a damn for a back end of beyond with ownerless cattle and ownerless men? Apart from the incalculable results of rotgut working on a horseman’s pride — much as it did in sixteenth-century Europe — our life is peaceful, hostility between human beings being pointless when we are all isolated in a hostile environment. The Intendencia knows very well that we govern ourselves by mutual consent with a minimum of murder, and that any emergency will have settled itself long before uniforms and the law arrive.

  Chucha and I set out early and rode up the east side of the marshes. The ground was too soft for her to come to any harm, so I let her have her first all-out gallop. Estrellera easily beat Pichón over five furlongs and showed a ladylike pride. Chucha, the darling, was ecstatic.

  The marshes have not broadened as much as I expected, but the water has inundated three or four miles along the line of a slight depression which was hardly perceptible in the drought. From the Mother and Child we saw four llaneros riding round the head of the flood, their course marked by white flecks of water from the pools instead of eddies of dust. As soon as they sighted
us, they galloped towards us. They were Alvar, Arnoldo — in his capacity of temporary headman — a fellow called Vicente who was a particular friend of Pedro’s and a fourth who rides the country far beyond Santa Eulalia and is only known to me by sight.

  They greeted us with proper solemnity and were particularly formal with Chucha who has acquired my social status. These indispensable ceremonies over, they were eager to know if I had seen any other riders and burst into their story. Vicente told it; Arnoldo threw in a few proverbs from time to time; and Alvar cursed.

  On Friday morning at the height of the storm three guerrilleros in the usual jeep, bristling with arms, had splashed into Santa Eulalia and taken refuge under the first solid thatch they came to. The men were all out on the llano, weather or no weather, riding round the frightened herds, and there was hardly anybody in the settlement but the women and Arnoldo. Arnoldo made the unwelcome visitors as comfortable as he could and continued his work — a marked discourtesy — pretending that he did not know who they were.

  When the men and horses, sodden and cold, began to drift in at dusk, they did not dismount and surrounded the jeep. I suppose there were about a dozen of them, upright in the saddle, patient as Indians, watching with the veiled eyes of ceremonious killers. The partisans demanded cattle. According to Vicente, none of the llaneros had replied, either refusing or accepting. It must have been obvious to the jeep party that these were men of a different breed from their submissive mountain peasants, and that bloodshed meant nothing to them.

  The guerrilleros quickly regained the jeep. With all that firepower concentrated on their semicircle, the llaneros had at least to produce some words. They agreed to drive another bunch of cattle to the foothills of the Cordillera, though they had no intention whatever of doing so. Machine-gunning from the air had put more fear of God and the Government into them than a hundred men on the ground.