The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots

by Tamar Myers

  As Jonathan Pimple’s blood turned to the thickness of sap, and while at the same time he felt no strength in his legs, still he could hear quite clearly the words exchanged between the two people he had followed there. But it was upon hearing these—both in his mind and in his heart—that the sap in his veins hardened into something clear and brittle, akin to glass.

  “Behold,” said Cripple, “I hold nothing against this man Jonathan Pimple. He is pleasant enough—for a Mupende. For truly, the ugliness of his mouth, with all his teeth filed into points, is just that: ugly. It is not hideous. It is not like the face of a white.”

  “You truly find us that hideous?” the priest asked.

  “Truly, truly,” Cripple said.

  “For your information, Baba, I find that extremely insulting. I do not think that I will ever figure you Africans out.”

  “E, nor will we ever understand you.”

  “Touché, madame—but please forgive me. Do you speak French, Baba?”

  “Oui, monsieur. I am an uneducated heathen woman, but I am not an ignorant woman. Au contraire, I can both understand and speak that most unpleasant tongue of yours.”

  “I beg your pardon! French is considered by many to rank among the most beautiful-sounding languages in the world.”

  “E, I suppose that is so, if one enjoys the sound of old men clearing their throats in the morning.”

  A squeal of laughter escaped Jonathan Pimple’s lips, startling him to be sure; but judging by their response, the pair that he was spying on was even more surprised.

  “Who is it?” the priest called. “Who is there?”

  “He is behind that tall stone,” Cripple cried. “I saw something move.”

  “Perhaps it is just a bird stirred up by all the commotion out there.”

  “As one stirs the birds, one can also stir up the dead. I am telling you, priest, this was no bird.”

  “Listen, I do not have time for superstitions, for there are no ghosts. Tell me more about the man, Jonathan Pimple. He who once was a cannibal.”

  “Aiyee! How you could know such a thing?”

  “Because he told me; that is why! The man felt a compulsion to confess—but that comes as no real surprise to me. The Bible says, ‘Be sure your sins shall find you out.’ ”

  “You are like the Protestant missionaries, priest. You speak always in riddles.”

  “Woman,” the Catholic priest said, “you have offended me.” To Jonathan Pimple’s ears the priest had sounded just like a lion, although Jonathan had never heard an actual lion—just the imitation of one.

  “I speak only the truth,” Cripple said, “and I do not pass a basket around to those who wish to hear it.”

  Such was far from the truth, of course, for Jonathan Pimple knew that in her capacity as a wise woman, and interpreter of dreams, the witch doctor’s wife always extracted payment of some kind, be it francs, poultry, or perhaps brightly colored fabric from the Portuguese-owned shops on the road to Luebo.

  “I will let that comment pass,” said the priest, “because my holy book tells me to turn the other cheek. Of course, this is something you savages cannot possibly understand. Nevertheless, I must know the following: was Jonathan Pimple able to identify the white man who was eaten? By his name, I mean? And if Jonathan Pimple was such a small boy as he claims, how can he be sure that the man was a Roman Catholic priest?”

  Despite the fact that he was shivering with fear, Jonathan Pimple began to burn with rage. This priest is too clever, Jonathan Pimple told himself. Had this white man been a small Mupende boy and forced to have lived through such an experience, he might not be asking this question. A memory such as this: first, the events that led up to the abduction of the priests, and then second, the killing and eating of the one—these were not the sort of memories that faded.

  “Kah!” said Cripple, sounding greatly annoyed. “What manner of conversation do you suppose I had? I did not ask him if he enjoyed eating hot chilies with his priest stew.”

  “What?” the Catholic priest said, not at all comprehending. “I made no mention of chili peppers.”

  “Priest, you said that if I answered a few questions about this man, you would give me a ride to the Missionary Rest House. Surely my employer waits there for me now, like a wounded gazelle. I am, after all, just a helpless crippled woman.”

  “What,” said the priest, “you? Baba, you are no more helpless than a young man with six strong legs, for behold, you have the tongue of Satan, and you would be quite capable of charming any one of these dead men to rise from his grave and carry you on his back to the house of that Protestant whore.”

  It was then for the first time that the Catholic priest performed the simple miracle of igniting the battery torch, such as is also sold in the Portuguese shops to those who have a month’s salary with which to part. He shone the bright circle of light on the ground before his feet, and then without even saying shala bimpe (stay well), as is the custom, he passed on through to the other side of grove where the whites buried their dead.

  By now Jonathan Pimple’s fear had grown worse, if that can be believed. With one of their own color no longer present, now the spirits of the dead would doubtless turn their attention to him. The witch doctor’s wife, he reasoned, was protected by the strength of her husband’s buanga—his ritual charms. So powerful, so all consuming was Jonathan Pimple’s fear, that he could not control his voice. His throat opened on its own account and out poured the loud shrill scream of a girl not yet old enough to start her menses. At the same time it was very much akin to the scream of the female wildcat when she has been mated, the very second that the male dismounts.

  Afterward, when it was too late to save face, Jonathan Pimple realized that the answering scream came from the little crippled woman, she by the same name: Cripple—she who was the witch doctor’s wife. The sound of her high-pitched screams propelled Jonathan Pimple forward and into action. His legs remembered their purpose and he began to run, and he did not stop until he was home. There he collapsed in his chair by the hearth.

  The following morning Their Death discovered the cold, lifeless body of Jonathan Pimple. He was still sprawled across his chair. How tragic, everyone said, that poor Jonathan Pimple had died quite alone. This could be said with certainty because it was known that the entire village had been gathered on the side of the hill, below the place where the whites were buried.

  Because Jonathan Pimple had yet to be baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, his eternal soul stood no chance of ascending into the real heaven. But one must be a pragmatist, nasha? So the next afternoon, Jonathan Pimple, wrapped in a palm fiber mat, was buried by a Protestant lay minister, a man with a sixth-grade education, having studied at the Mennonite mission at Mutena near the Angola border.

  This, then, is the truth that Jonathan Pimple would have others believe. Why should it not be so? Did it not serve the best interests of many people—his people? For too long the black man had been told that his ancient traditions, the ones handed down by his mother’s brother and his mother’s uncle, these were all of no value. Instead, the Bapende were supposed to accept the beliefs of the white man, a truly arrogant race who came from a place where no Mupende had been, and which was supposed to lie across a lake so large that one could not see to the other side. When the black man asked whether a lake this size could exist, he was told he must believe this simply because the white man said it was true.

  Yet when the Bapende tried to share their beliefs with the whites, the Europeans and Americans both laughed. These foreigners called the tribal traditions superstitions, and they laughed at the Bapende view of the spirit world. They preached at the people, telling them that if they did not ask the white man’s idol to forgive their wrongdoings, then they, the Bapende, would be burned alive in a great torture pit. Meanwhile the white man would be permitted the opportunity to gaze down upo
n this suffering from a place of comfort and luxury. This wonderful place was called diulu. Heaven. New missionaries often mispronounced this word, so that it sounded like dulu, which means nose, and thus is not quite the same.

  It had always puzzled Jonathan Pimple how it could be that the Christian God, who was supposed to be a spirit, was desirous of a large compound with many houses in it. Furthermore, it was said of this God that he did not have sexual relations with women, nor did he use the bush, or even eat in the conventional manner. Yala! Such claims repel, rather than attract, converts!

  E, Jonathan Pimple had had no real intention of becoming a Roman Catholic; there had just been a couple of things he had need of clarifying. When he died, the night of that great storm, his mind was very much clearer than it had been in a very long time.

  Chapter 25

  The Belgian Congo, 1935

  Jonathan Pimple was taken, along with men from many tribes, to a place that even the imagination could not go without the head as its companion. It was called a city, and the name of this one was Belle Vue. Since no words can properly describe this place, no further description shall be given here, other than to say that there was a Belgian side and a Congolese side, and the great Kasai River divided the two.

  In those days it was possible to get back and forth between the two sides via a ferry, a wooden platform lashed atop four large dugout canoes. However, there was, at the time of Pimple’s arrival, a war being fought in the faraway lands of the white men, and it was rumored that a bridge connecting the two sides of the river would be critical in providing necessary materials for that war. So it was that Pimple was put to work helping to build what was surely the most impressive bridge in all of Kasai Province, and quite possibly it was the most impressive bridge in all the Belgian Congo, maybe even in the entire world—for who could possibly know how far the world extended?

  One day Jonathan Pimple overheard two other men speaking Kipende and hurried over to them as soon as he was able, which was as soon as the gong had sounded signaling the end of the workday.

  “Brothers,” he said, “I too am a Mupende.”

  At first the men looked surprised, and then their looks grew angry. “Do you joke at our expense?” one asked.

  “No, I would not do so, for we are brothers.”

  Then one man pulled a knife from the waistband of his shorts and held it up to Jonathan Pimple’s chin. “Listen to me, stranger; there are large crocodiles that lie in wait at the bottom of these waterfalls. It would be my pleasure to feed you to these beasts.”

  Jonathan Pimple did not flinch. “Truly, brothers, I do not understand your hostile reaction,” he said.

  The knife blade was lowered the distance of a thumbnail. “A Mupende’s teeth are filed, as are yours, but he does not speak with a Bajembe accent,” the knife wielder said.

  “E,” Jonathan Pimple said, “you have spoken the truth; my Kipende accent is atrocious. You see, I was captured as a small boy by a raiding party, and then sold to a very fat Mujembe. My master was a cruel man who forbade me to speak anything but his language. He threatened to cut out my tongue if I so much as uttered one word in my native Kipende.”

  “I once heard of a very fat Mujembe,” said the man with the knife. “This fat man was said to possess many slaves because he could barely manage to walk. It was said that even to use the bush, this man had to be carried. Tell me, where does he live?”

  “He does not live, brother, for the soldier who brought me here shot this man in the stomach. It was my pleasure to watch him die.”

  “Yala!” cried the other man.

  “Tell me,” said the knife wielder, “how is it that you persuaded a proper Mushilele to perform the teeth-filing ceremony on you, one with the accent of a Mujembe?”

  “Because, brother, I was able to persuade this man that I was the son of the great Bapende chief—Chief Nyanga-Yanga.”

  The two men stared at Jonathan Pimple, their eyes bulging like those of a great carp, one that has been dead two days in a stagnant pool of water.

  “Surely he did not believe you!” The man with the knife had puffed his chest out in order to appear larger, and he was breathing hard. He smelled of hate and anger.

  “Eyo, it was not hard to convince him, for indeed I was telling the truth. After all, no ordinary boy would confess to being born one of twins.”

  Upon hearing these words the other man appeared extremely agitated. “What was the name given you as an infant?”

  “I was given the name Tshishi.” Torment. “For I was the boy who stole the leopard’s spots.”

  Chapter 26

  The Belgian Congo, 1958

  Amanda Brown now knew what it was like to be in love. Despite the devastating destruction of the bridge that stood as the symbol of his country’s sovereignty over the local peoples, Pierre’s only thought seemed to be for her. The powerful OP and his mousy wife, the voluptuous and seductive Madame Cabochon, the maddeningly influential Roman Catholic cleric—all these people seemed to take a backseat in Pierre’s eyes as soon as the battered blue truck jerked to a full stop.

  Although they were still many hundreds of yards away from the Missionary Rest House, that rather significant fact did not affect Amanda’s progress one whit. Captain Pierre Jardin simply scooped her up in his strong arms and, with the agility of a goat, scrambled over rocks the size of washing machines. In no time at all, he had her at the front door. There, much to Amanda’s surprise, they were met by the head houseboy, Protruding Navel.

  No, that’s not exactly what happened: Mama would scarcely believe the truth when she wrote her, and Papa would certainly disapprove. The front door to the Missionary Rest House was unlocked, as no missionary ever locked his or her doors (there not even being locks on the doors), so Pierre merely pushed his way in. The electric was still not on, of course, and no lanterns had been lit, but by then the moonlight was strong enough that one could literally have read in bed.

  One certainly didn’t need nearly that much light to see that Protruding Navel was dressed in one of Amanda’s very best frocks. The servant was slight in build, only half a head taller than she was, so that her bright yellow, “just in case” party dress with the full-circle taffeta skirt fit him remarkably well. The cheeky fellow had even gone so far as to stuff something in the bosom area because, truth be told, he had a remarkably feminine shape. The funny thing was that, had he been wearing a wig or head covering of some sort, Protruding Navel could have passed for a woman—but an African woman in the latest Rock Hill fashion.

  “W-wewe!” Amanda said. You! It wasn’t even an accusation.

  “Mamu,” Protruding Navel said, “you must take this dress to the woman in the village who sews for the whites. The middle portion here”—he patted his midriff—“will not fit my wife for she has given birth to four children and the fifth has now taken up residence inside her.”

  Amanda felt her feet touch the floor, and she was gently pushed into a living room chair. It was a useless gesture of concern on Pierre’s part, because Amanda bounded back up like a weighted punching bag.

  “Protruding Navel,” she shouted. “What are you doing in my diyeke?”

  The head housekeeper smiled indolently. Yes, even indoors, because of the moonlight she could see him smirk.

  “It is not yours, Mamu.” This he said with a toss of his small, round Bena Lulua head; indeed, was that not their chief racial characteristic?

  “What do you mean by it is not mine? Of course it is! Everything in this house is mine!” She had to stop herself from adding that even he, Protruding Navel, was hers—in a manner of speaking, of course.

  “Because, mistress, when the great day of independence comes, all that belongs to the oppressor shall be ours.”

  “That is a lie! Where did you hear such rubbish?”

  The man in the yellow frock stiffened, transfigured into a bizar
re mannequin, like one she had chanced to see in a Charlotte shop window when her parents had gotten lost driving back from the circus, and they’d found themselves in the colored part of town.

  Amanda had been in the Belgian Congo only a few months and already there was talk of expelling all the whites. That wasn’t fair! More important, surely that couldn’t be God’s plan for her. How did the Lord expect her to atone for the deaths of the innocent people whose lives had been stolen, all because she and some fellow Winthrop College classmates had recklessly decided to drive to Gaffney, South Carolina, while drunk one night?

  “There is a great prophet in the village now,” Protruding Navel said. “Have you not heard, Mamu? E, but I am sure that you have. This prophet is none other than our new headman. He knows these things because he is both a Kibanguist and a Communist who has studied in Russia. Unlike other Communists, he preaches that it is not necessary to give up one’s beliefs, especially if they are traditional.”

  Amanda could not deny that she’d inherited a bit of a temper from the Brown side of her family, and she could feel the ire in her rising now from the tips of her toes like floodwaters. Soon she would choke and drown on her rage if she didn’t open a sluice gate. At the same time she felt the firm, yet somehow gentle, restraining hand of Captain Pierre Jardin, the young Belgian who had been born and raised in the Congo, and who understood the locals far better than she ever would—even if independence for the Congo never came to pass, and she were to die an eighty-year-old virgin, still on the mission field.

  How was it that Pierre, who was not a Christian but a Roman Catholic, was at the same time a far better Christian than she was? This was one of the first questions she would pose to the Lord when she got to heaven. And why was it, anyway, that Catholics were excluded from heaven when they also believed in the saving blood of Jesus? Was it just because they prayed to Mary on the side? If that was the only reason, then did that mean that all the so-called Christians who lived prior to the Reformation were also doomed to spend eternity in hell? Of course this was just cracking open the theological door, because then what about all the people who lived before the time of Jesus?