The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots

by Tamar Myers

  Cripple loved it when Their Death read to her aloud from his books, when he would take her along on his mental journeys, but as of late he had begun to read at an exceedingly slow pace. Like a snail his eyes moved across the page. The problem was that the source for these special books, the ones that were capable of taking Their Death and Cripple on journeys far beyond Kasai District, this source was no longer available to Their Death.

  If one guessed that the source had been a bookstore or a library, one could not have been further from the truth, for such a thing did not exist at Belle Vue—certainly not for the Congolese. No, the source had been a white man, a Belgian, but he had come to no good.

  This Belgian supplier of books, who was also the postmaster, admitted to having another man as one would have a woman—if one could imagine such a thing. But that was not all; this man also attempted to steal a very large diamond from Their Death’s hand. The only thing that prevented this from happening was that Their Death wears a very strong potion around his neck. The heathens claim that this potion is even stronger than the luhingu fetish of the dead man called Jesus that the Roman Catholics wear around their necks.

  “Their Death,” Cripple said again, “even as this boy, Huckelbelly Finn, and his Lulua friend, Niggelo Yimma, must tie up their watercraft for the night, so must we stop with our story, because we are surely about to receive visitors. Even now they enter our compound.”

  And it was so. A moment later six sodden heads, atop six dripping bodies, crowded around the fire, each vying for a position that offered warmth without smoke. Although strictly speaking that could not be said of the baby, Amanda, as he was too young to be vying for anything except for a position at his mother’s breast. However, his mother, Second Wife, did enough shoving and pushing for the two of them. Cripple had to remind herself that her sister wife was ever so much younger than herself; otherwise, she might have been rightfully cross at the sight of a mother treating her own children so badly.

  It was difficult enough just to lay eyes on the woman she had once regarded as competition for her husband’s affection. Eyo—truly, now that Cripple was heavy with child, the fire of envy that had once burned within her belly with so much intensity was now squelched. And with the child growing within her, it would be nice to have help with the work after the baby was born. However, the past two months without a sister wife and five children underfoot had ranked among the happiest in Cripple’s life. Cripple would have liked few things more than to order Second Wife and her pushy brood back into the rain, and back to their uncle’s village where they ultimately belonged. The only thing she wanted more than that was Their Death’s happiness.

  Their Death, as usual, could sense when she was thinking about her competition. “Brings Much Happiness,” he said, naming his oldest daughter, “have you noticed your Elder Mother’s difu?” He meant, of course, her stomach.

  The girl, whose hair was a tight sponge still streaming water, leaned around a younger brother to get a better look at Cripple. The already wet boy got even wetter, whereupon he slapped his sister. Although Brings Much Happiness was only nine years old, the child had passed across the threshold that separates little girls from big girls, and big girls, she knew, could not slap their brothers. Brothers were male, and one did not hit a male. Those who must ask why were either stupid and with broken jaws, or they were dead.

  “Kah!” the girl cried when at last she could discern the bump that had grown in Cripple’s belly during her absence. “Is my Elder Mother with child?”

  “She is with a large fish,” Cripple said.

  The children all snickered, even Brings Much Happiness.

  “Do not joke about this,” Their Death said sternly. “In my practice I once put a curse on a woman, telling her that the child would be born without limbs like a snake, and it would have scales and a forked tongue.”

  “Aiyee,” Second Wife said. “Their Death, dare you tell us if the child did indeed emerge as a snake?”

  Their Death poked the fire, prolonging the drama. “E, I will tell you.”

  The children shivered, and it was not from the cold. Sometimes Their Death went too far in his storytelling. Scaring little ones was not the purpose of his job.

  “Enough,” Cripple said. “You,” she said to Second Wife, “help take off their clothes and hang them on the smoking rack. And you,” she said to Their Death, her tone softening—both out of deference and devotion—“try to find some dry firewood from the stack up under the south eave.”

  Second Wife’s dark eyes seemed to lock on Cripple’s for just long enough to make the smaller woman uncomfortable. Although Cripple hated confrontations, she knew that it was vital for her unborn child that she maintained her position as Number One Wife.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Only that it is good to be home.”

  “E,” Cripple grunted. Yes.

  “You have been a most generous friend, Cripple. We laugh and we cry.”

  “There is no need to express gratitude, for we are sisters, are we not?”

  Their Death smiled happily when he heard this. It was too bad then that he obediently went out to search for dry firewood and did not hear Second Wife speak what was really on her mind.

  “There is a new saying written on the walls of Luluabourg,” she said, sounding conspiratorial—like a true sister might sound.

  “Tell me!” Cripple said eagerly.

  “They say that a woman who works outside the family compound should not eat food prepared in her absence, lest it be poisoned.”

  “Baba!” cried Brings Much Happiness. Mother! But it was Cripple whom her thin arms embraced, not Second Wife.

  “It is also written,” Second Wife said, “that she who relies on another woman to wash her clothes might die from the bite of a snake that has been tucked deep inside a sleeve or a pant leg.”

  “Yala,” shouted Oldest Boy, whose fear of snakes was unmatched by anyone in all of the Belle Vue workers’ village.

  One would not mock the lad if only they knew that at the age of four he had been bitten by a mildly poisonous variety of tree snake that had caused him a great deal of discomfort by blocking his airways, and that he had nearly died. At any rate, despite the fact that Cripple’s arms were quite full, and Oldest Boy was ten years old and thus very nearly a man, he still managed to wedge himself into his Elder Mother’s embrace.

  Everyone knows that little children are like baby monkeys and will imitate whatever they see. Still, it must have been difficult for Second Wife to watch Baby Amanda and the other two children try to follow their older siblings’ example. One must give credit to Second Wife for holding her tongue as much as she did, and of course Their Death cannot be blamed for laughing as hard as he did when he returned to find his entire family—but for Second Wife—clumped together like a swarm of bees around his beloved.

  “What is it?” Their Death asked before throwing down the wood.

  “The children thought they heard a leopard,” Cripple said.

  “Is that so?”

  “Eyo, Tatu,” they chorused.

  Their Death laughed.

  “But, Tatu,” Brings Much Happiness said, “one does not hear a leopard; it hears us. Also, leopards hate the rain even more than we do.”

  “E, you are a clever girl,” Their Death said, and he laughed again.

  “Too clever,” Second Wife said.

  “How is that?” Their Death asked.

  Second Wife would not answer his question easily; nor would Cripple. It worried Cripple that their eldest daughter might be made to pay for the fact that she had been born with a pleasing nature and utterly without guile. Perhaps such people did indeed make good Christians, but they did not make good heathens, and in the dangerous world of today, one needed every advantage just to survive.

  Madame Cabochon despised interruptions of a
ny kind. It wasn’t because she possessed an impatient personality; au contraire, Madame Cabochon was really quite agreeable. It was simply the fact that people who interrupted were by and large rude, and circumstances that necessitated interruption were invariably unpleasant. Case in point, no sooner had the drunken headman stumbled out into the rainy night than the entire house shook.

  “Bombs!” cried Hélène Fabergé as she slipped out of sight under the table.

  “Get up,” her husband, Monsieur OP, said. “Don’t be such an ass. This isn’t Brussels; it’s the Congo. And this isn’t 1944; it’s 1958—the age of Sputnik!”

  “No, no!” The poor woman was hysterical.

  There, you see what a war can do to someone? If only Monsieur Cabochon has been home to witness that, instead of being at the company club getting drunk yet again. That’s all anyone ever did in Belle Vue when they weren’t working, and some did it when they were working—this is to say, tip back a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, or Black. Anyway, Monsieur Cabochon might have been be just half German, but he had a full-blooded Nazi heart, and Colette Cabochon hated him as much as she hated interruptions.

  And since Madame Cabochon despised bullies even more than she despised interruptions, she kicked Monsieur OP on the shins as best she could. Too bad she was wearing sandals.

  “It felt like an earthquake to me,” the American girl said.

  Handsome Pierre Jardin wasted one of his perfect smiles on her. “Do you have many earthquakes in Stone Hill?”

  “I am from Rock Hill—Rock Hill, South Carolina. The earthquake I felt was in California.”

  “I too have experienced earthquakes,” the monsignor said, dabbing at the corners of his moist, full lips with a heavily starched and crisply ironed serviette. He rose to his full magnificent height and then casually tossed the serviette on the table. “Mesdames et messieurs,” he said, “it is unsafe to stay indoors during an earthquake. Come, we must go outside.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the OP snarled.

  You see? He was an impossible little man. It was no wonder that all his employees hated him. It was too bad that Marcel Fabergé was hiding some exotic ethnic secret behind his hard-bitten features, because Colette Cabochon didn’t harbor a racially biased bone in her body. In fact, she’d given up her virginity at age fifteen to a light-skinned mulatto in Coquilhatville in a short-lived and ill-advised love affair that might well have cost the married father of three his life. If only the OP could be . . .

  “Mamu! Mamu!”

  It was her cook. The poor fellow was so terrified he’d forgotten to speak French. Lucky for him she knew Tshiluba.

  “I am already gone, Mamu,” he said. Nakuya.

  I am already gone. It was a construct that never failed to amuse anyone who had not been born to the language. Its meaning, however, was deceptively simple: I’ve already stepped outside—if only in my head—so don’t try to call me back in, if even just for one more task.

  “Wait!” she yelled through cupped hands. “Stop!”

  Both time and guests seemed to freeze in place until at last the cook stepped into the room. Whereas normally Colette would have expected to see the man scowling from ear to ear, so frightened did he look now that she instantly felt as if she were abusing her authority.

  “S’il vous plaît,” she said, “tell me why it is that you wish to leave so suddenly.”

  “Mamu, it is the Island of Seven Ghost Sisters.”

  “What about the island?” Colette said.

  The cook glanced wretchedly at the monsignor before answering in perfect, although heavily accented French. “It was predicted that the spirits of the seven women would rise together and begin to dance in unison, and when that happened, a piece of the island would break away and that they—the seven women—would ride it back to their village landing.”

  “Yes, I am familiar with this heathen legend,” snapped the monsignor. “Get on with it, boy! And speak French, so that the new OP and his wife may also understand.”

  Boy? Although her parents had called their servants “boy,” Colette did not. It wasn’t because she was a bleeding-heart liberal, either, as the Americans would say. By and large Congolese servants were grown men, or at least older teenagers, often married, who had achieved the rank of manhood in their tribes and, as such, deserved respect.

  Cook’s name was Tshiabo, which means Born-After-Much-Groaning. The look he gave the monsignor signified that he knew his place. Colette, however, who was familiar with her employee’s (and dare she believe, friend’s?) features, and the way he held his mouth, could see that he was going to great lengths to mask a simmering rage.

  “Master,” said Born-After-Much-Groaning, “a large piece of the Island of Seven Ghost Sisters has broken away in this storm. Even now it floats downstream to the bridge. If you step out onto the magnificent verandah of my mistress’s house, then you might yet see some of it sail by. It is said that when it reaches the great waterfalls of Belle Vue—known to us simply as Mai Manene—it will take the bridge over the falls with it.”

  “This is outrageous,” the OP roared. He reminded Colette of the American cartoon character Steamboat Willie that she had seen many times as a cinema short—well, he would be Willie, if you gave the mouse a lion’s voice. The Consortium better face it: sooner rather than later, this little man was not going to work out at all.

  “That bridge was built by American engineers,” Captain Jardin said. “It can withstand anything. Dancing maidens are not going to tear it down, I assure you.”

  The house shook again. Perhaps the maidens were trying to prove Pierre wrong—or perhaps it was an earthquake. What difference did it make? Madame Cabochon was not going to spend another second listening to silly suppositions. She fumbled about for her golden sandals, and not finding them instantly available, ran barefoot from the dining room and out onto the wraparound verandah.

  She was just in time to see a tree the size of a freighter bob past on the boiling red current. It was no longer raining, and already the cloud cover was rolling back to reveal a sky illuminated by a blaze of celestial lights. Without the competition supplied by electricity, the starlight would have been bright enough to give Colette a rare, unimpeded nighttime view of the Island of Seven Ghost Sisters, except that the island was no longer there!

  “C’est vrai, c’est vrai!” she shouted.

  “What is true?” The monsignor was the first to reach her. She felt his strong arm around her shoulder and wished that she could crumble in his arms, like she had seen women do in the cinema.

  Instead, Colette shrugged off the caring arm of her childhood friend before anyone else could see them and pointed due south. She would play the part of the strong heroine in her own film.

  “There! In the middle of the river, we should be seeing a line of inky blackness that is the forest on the Island of Seven Ghost Sisters. You can always see it when the stars are out, or when the moon is full, but tonight—tonight, look! Nothing! Just water and more water. It’s like the whole island has been washed away.”

  “This is incredible,” the monsignor said.

  By then they had been joined by everyone in the dinner party, which of course meant that the swarthy little OP was there with his ill-formed opinions. “I’ll wager that it wasn’t even a proper island,” he said, “but one of those floating hyacinth rafts that I read about in the papers. Apparently they can be dense enough to support vegetation.”

  “Let us not speak of dense things,” the American girl said in her clumsy French. “Anyone can see that the Island of Seven Spirits is real.”

  A thrill ran up Madame Cabochon’s spine. Oui, the girl was not exactly ugly, and therefore she was competition, but she was also interesting. There were so few things of interest at Belle Vue these days that didn’t involve politics and the pending implosion of the colonial world into which she’d been born.
The arrival of an American rabble-rouser—what did they call them in the South—Rebels? Well, at least one good thing had come out of her dinner party.

  “The word is ghosts, mademoiselle,” the OP’s wife said. “Not spirits.”

  “Thank you for your correction, madame,” the American said. “I did not know the word. However, I do know that the island is real. My housekeeper has been there.”

  “What?” The question was voiced by many, for it was common knowledge that the island was the domain of large Nile crocodiles and angry mother hippos.

  The American was not shy when called upon; Madame Cabochon would give her that.

  “Cripple—that’s the assistant housekeeper I was telling you about—well, she is a heathen,” the American said.

  “A heathen,” Madame Cabochon said, relishing the word. If only one had the choice to be a heathen! Ah, think of the fun!

  “You should fire the woman,” the monsignor said. “Her beliefs could contaminate the rest of your staff.”

  Madame Cabochon tried not to smile. “Contaminate? Do you mean like an infection?”

  “Oui.”

  “Go on with your story, Amanda,” Pierre said softly.

  “Uh—when my housekeeper was a girl, just about to become a woman, she was taken to this island in a boat along with many other girls. There they were kept for many months and taught dances that were sure to drive men into madness.”

  “This is madness,” Monsieur OP said.

  “Amanda,” said Pierre gently, “do you mean ‘insane with desire’?”

  “Yes, that is it! Thank you.”

  “Alors,” snorted the OP, “perhaps she should say so!”

  “We used to hunt hippos out there during the dry season,” the monsignor said, sounding wistful. “It became a rite of passage for every white boy growing up here at Belle Vue.”