Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  Watengu gave the sign to advance and the party moved forward again, making a wide sweep to cut across the line of their quarry’s advance. They made their way down and across the ravine and halted on the same side as the elephants, a little way in front of them. Four or five faint game-tracks, barely discernible, coiled among the thick undergrowth and creepers. At the first such path they came to, Watengu halted. He gazed towards the hidden elephants with all the deadly concentration of a hunting leopard tautening its muscles for a spring. The tall trees grew thickly here. Selecting one whose branches swept across and above the track he handed his thia to the man behind him, grasped a hanging liana, and in an instant ran up the trunk, nimble-footed as a monkey. The dark glossy leaves above him did not stir. He clambered out on to a branch until he was poised above the game-track, and reached down for his thia. He lay down at full length on his belly along the branch, his dark skin and cloak invisible in the sheltering foliage, his thia ready by his side.

  The other seven hunters moved on. Each man concealed himself in a similar way on a branch that stretched above a game-track, so that the hunters formed a line strung out across the bank of the ravine. Each man gripped his thia, that held death in its barbed tip, and relaxed his muscles until he seemed to blend in shape and colour with the branch. The furry hyraxes sleeping in the crevices of the trunk did not know of his presence and the bright-eyed parrots, at first disturbed by his arrival, returned to their perches among the leaves.

  6

  Without warning the web of bated sound spun over the treetops was scattered by a sudden roll of drums. The noise surged like distant thunder over the forest, obliterating the faint protests of startled creatures. It ceased, to give way to shouts; and then began again, insistent and undisciplined. Only the eight motionless figures on the branches were undisturbed, knowing that their colleagues had begun the drive. Spread out in a crescent moon formation behind the elephants and beating with clubs upon stiff, dried cows’ hides as they marched, they were driving the startled beasts along the side of the ravine.

  As the crashing of heavy feet grew closer, the men on the branches gathered themselves together and raised their right arms, gripping their thias, so that each point was poised above a path. The noise approached until it filled their ears and flowed in waves along their quivering nerve-threads. The foliage of trees in the throat of the ravine shook violently; and in another moment a big stone-grey shape burst through a thicket, dodging swiftly towards Watengu’s tree. The hunter saw its huge, outstretched, stiff ears, its waving trunk, its small roving eye, and in another instant its broad wrinkled neck was beneath him. The crashing, suddenly, was all around; the elephant seemed to be making directly for him, an enormous engine of vengeance, bearing down on his flimsy shelter to trample and destroy.

  At the moment that it slid beneath the branch he thrust downwards with all his strength, like a strong man breaking ground with the digging-stick, and sunk the head of the thia between the elephant’s shoulders. It gave one mighty squeal of anger and plunged forward along the narrow track. Behind it followed four other elephants, three cows and a calf. They passed so swiftly that they were gone before Watengu had recovered his balance on the bough.

  He dropped quickly to the earth and stood immobile, listening. The beaters had ceased to belabour their cow-hides and there was a moment of silence, as if all the animals of the forest waited without drawing breath for the verdict of fate upon the elephant. Then it came—a long, shattering scream that tore the silence from the hillsides and echoed faintly from indifferent hills beyond: the last futile protest of a living creature against the uncomprehended finality of death.

  As the scream faded the hunters’ muscles relaxed and voices called backwards and forwards among the trees. The forest was suddenly filled with people running, shouting, and laughing with joy. The elephant was dead before they reached him. He lay on his side like a mighty boulder, his legs thrust out stiffly, one of his long white tusks half buried in the soft ground. The haft of Watengu’s thia was gone, but its barbed iron point was deeply embedded in the elephant’s neck. The hunter’s aim had been true, his arm strong; and the poison, freshly brewed, had done its work.

  7

  Within a few moments of its discovery, figures were swarming over the dead beast like ants over a scrap of fat. The death of an elephant was an occasion of ecstasy among the Athi. A mountain of exquisite food had appeared; in an instant seed-time, cultivation and harvest had flashed by and left a lavish crop, ready for the eating, of the greatest delicacy that the stomach of man could savour.

  Hunters and beaters joined together in a dance of triumph around the fallen prey. A song was raised in praise of Watengu, whose thia had found its mark; of the hunters who had known where the elephants would pass; of the beaters who had driven them to the right spot, the smith who had made the thia-head sharp and true, and the Athi in general, who were so brave and skilful that even elephants, chiefs of the forest, were brought low.

  All the men of the Athi homesteads were soon gathered around, the elders laughing and rubbing their stomachs in anticipation. Their impatience curtailed the dance. Masheria shouted to the young men that he was hungry and could not wait. Watengu thereupon leapt with a great spring on to the back of the elephant and plunged his sword into the flesh of the loin. Then the others drew their swords and knives and fell upon the warm, bleeding flesh with the lust of soldiers wild with victory and loot. Hunks of raw flesh were hacked away and soon, from eyes to toes, the Athi men were red and sticky with blood. Each man carved his chunk, ran to one side, and cut off smaller portions with his sword, plunging his face into the warm flesh and tearing with his teeth at the juicy tissues.

  Matu, who stood with the other boys watching the scene, felt great amazement and some disgust. Meat was always roasted brown on the end of sticks, or grilled over a fire. It was unknown, obscene, to eat it in any other way. Here were men who behaved like animals—like vultures, or the unclean hyena. He understood now why the Athi were at once despised and feared by other men.

  In a few hours the orgy of greed was over. The gorged men sheathed their swords and wiped blood from their bodies with leaves. The next step was to build shelters around the carcase to sleep in, for no one would leave the spot, except to take meat to his wife, until the last scrap of elephant was eaten. By nightfall, low shelters of sticks had been erected all around the trampled circle, and a ring of fires surrounded the carcase. Everyone was in the highest spirits. Such good fortune had not come to the Athi for a long while.

  Matu lingered on, unable to bring himself to return to his temporary home. The proceedings repelled and yet fascinated him. When the sun dipped over the black tree-tops and cold stole down from the mountain he crouched by a fire next to Masheria, and watched great slabs of flesh roasting on the grid above the flames. This, at least, had more decency about it. The meat was being cooked as if it had come from a ram. All around stood calabashes in which thick yellow fat had been collected.

  The smell of roasting meat tickled Matu’s stomach and brought water into his mouth. He had eaten nothing all day, and his stomach cried out for food. He watched Masheria spear a particularly succulent hunk with the tip of his sword, and chop off a big mouthful. He could hardly bear it; his hands twitched with anxiety to reach out for a scrap. Presently Watengu’s son came up, carrying a sac of blood made from the elephant’s intestine, as thick as a man’s thigh.

  “I return now to our homestead, brother,” he said to Matu. “It is nearly dark and I am hungry. Come with me.”

  Masheria looked up at the boy and handed him a small piece of meat.

  “Eat this, then, if you are hungry, grandson,” he said.

  Watengu’s son ate the meat greedily. Masheria’s twinkling eyes came to rest on Matu’s pinched face. He saw the boy swallow twice and lick his lips hungrily. He took another piece of meat off the grid and handed it over.

  “Satisfy your hunger, also, grandson,” he said. “He who is
in need is not shy.”

  Matu could resist no longer. He buried his teeth in the delicious hot meat, chewed it eagerly, and gave himself over to enjoyment of the strong, unfamiliar flavour. It was not until later, after the evening meal in the hut of Watengu’s wife, that thoughts of shame and dread for the thing he had done swarmed into his mind, like rats in a granary, to torment him.

  The Athi men stayed for seven days by the elephant, eating, on and off, from sunrise to sunset, and beyond. Vultures hovered continuously overhead and flies settled in dense buzzing clouds over the putrefying flesh. Matu went there once, but the stench of the decaying meat was too much for him. Gradually white bones appeared as the flesh, seething with maggots, fell away. The elephant became like a leaf attacked by caterpillars, with spine and ribs alone intact, and the rotting substance between hanging in shreds from the framework. The Athi grew bloated and sodden, their bellies were full to bursting like over-ripe fruit, and their eyes were dull and heavy. From time to time they took meat to their wives, who stewed it in the big pots. Watengu’s wife ground no millet and sorghum and there was nothing else to eat, so Matu had perforce to take the meat every day. Although it was full of flavour and after the first day no longer tough, he ate it with reluctance, and it tasted like earth in his mouth; for he feared that what he was doing would bring a thahu from which he would sicken and perhaps die.

  8

  After the elephant hunt Matu’s thoughts returned more and more to his own mother, and to Mahenia’s homestead. The open, sun-flooded shambas, the song of the cultivators, the sound of banana fronds creaking softly in the valleys beneath deep clouds, the dry, friendly smell of goats—all seemed suddenly desirable to him; and fears that he would never see them again began to gnaw like borer-beetles in his heart. Gradually he came to hate the forest, with its cold dark dampness, its vast mysterious depths where no sunlight penetrated, and the moaning of winds in its branches. Often, at night, he dreamt of his mother; and then he awoke cold with panic, thinking of trapped animals he had seen caught in pits and struggling hopelessly to escape back to their native thickets.

  Watengu’s wife heard him crying in the night, and when the men came back from the elephant feast, gorged and smelling of corruption, she told Masheria. The old man nodded his head gravely and said:

  “He shall go back to his father, for I can tell that he has no wish to become like us, to join the Athi.”

  Soon after that an Athi who had been down to Karatina market to sell a buffalo hide—much sought after for making shields—returned with an exciting piece of news. A party of the tall bearded strangers known as Wathukumu had come from the south-east and made a camp two days’ journey away. They had many people with them, and animals carrying loads on their backs. They had sent messages ahead to say that if any men had elephant tusks, they would buy them for goats, beads, wire, and a soft material for making clothes.

  As soon as this news arrived, a council of the Athi was held to debate whether any tusks should be offered to the strangers. Although Wathukumu had visited the country before, little was known of them, save that they were very rich. The object of their visits was always the same: to buy elephant tusks. These they carried away on the backs of men, none knew where, or for what purpose; some said they were used as drinking-horns by a race of giants. The arrival of the ivory traders heralded an influx of alluring beads and bright wire, and so was usually welcomed; but on this occasion it was rumoured that a party of cannibals had disguised themselves as Wathukumu and sent false messages to entice the Athi out of the forest in order to kill and roast them for food. Masheria doubted this, and offered to go first by himself, accompanied only by his son and by two women who would carry down a single tusk. If he was not killed, but given goats, they would know that the Wathukumu were genuine and would take down the other tusks that had from time to time been buried in the forest.

  The Athi agreed to this plan. A few days later Masheria and Watengu started out with a tusk carried on the shoulders of their wives. Matu went with them; but he felt no elation. He was not sure whether he was to be taken home or to be given to these people called Wathukumu, perhaps to be killed and eaten like a ram. Still, it was no good worrying, and perhaps when they reached the shambas and left behind the forest with all its evils he would be able to escape.

  The birds of excitement sang in Matu’s head when he stepped out of the forest and stood at last on the borders of the land he knew. The pastures, starred with white clover, glowed with a vigour and a freshness that he had never seen in the sombre forest. There, on the steep hillside beyond, was the familiar red of turned earth, the tender green of sprouting plants, and the pale glow of a hut’s roof, like a golden crest on the head of a crane. To his ears came the gentle sound of goats’ bells and the distant rattle of empty gourds on the back of a woman going to draw water.

  Wanjeri dropped an armful of sweet potato tops when she saw him, screaming in shrill terror that she had seen a spirit; for she believed that a leopard had taken her son, and she had mourned for him as dead. When she realised that he was not a spirit at all she was so delighted that she forgot to rebuke him for his behaviour. She was so angry with Masheria, however, that she threatened to take Matu to her own father’s that very night, and refuse to return to her husband, if the old Athi was given hospitality in his brother’s homestead. Mahenia was worried, for he could not refuse to shelter his own brother, and he feared the Athi curse; but old Masheria chuckled, nodded, and said that he did not wish to stay. He had heard that the Wathukumu were already camped near at hand, on a tongue of ridge that jutted back into the forest between two streams.

  That night he was the guest of the tall, bearded strangers, who wore soft robes as white as the tusk he had brought to sell. Next day the tusk was bartered. Masheria knew the rate, which did not change: ten goats for each length of tusk from finger-tip to elbow. It was a good tusk, and he received sixty goats, which would be divided amongst all the hunters who had slain the elephant. He drove away his flock in safety, feeling well satisfied with the transaction. He would claim two extra goats, he decided, as a reward for his courage in going alone to deal with the dangerous Wathukumu.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Dancers

  1

  WASERU was away nearly two months. His family began to grow anxious, for Meru was not more than five or six days’ journey; and the fathers of the girls who had gone on the expedition came frequently to Mahenia’s homestead to ask for news. Some were heard to mutter that the whole project had been ill-advised and foolhardy, and that Mahenia would be to blame if it had met with disaster.

  And then, one day, Waseru came, striding ahead of the caravan to bring news of its safe return. He dug his spear into the ground outside the entrance with a flourish of the arm and called loudly to his father and his wife. One glance at his face told them that he had been successful. Mahenia ran forward to greet him with affection and relief and Wanjeri stood there smiling, and said:

  “Is all well? Have you brought back many goats to pay for your sons’ wives, so that we shall be poor no longer? “

  “All is well,” Waseru said. “I have travelled far—very far indeed—and I have brought goats : yes, and more. You will see.”

  There was a great stir along the ridge as the word of the party’s approach went round. Young married men left the honey-barrels they were adzing and the granaries they were weaving in the compounds; elders even deserted their beer-drinks; and all converged upon Mahenia’s huts to hear the news. Soon the caravan came into sight, climbing slowly up the steep hill from the river. Those assembled to greet it stared with amazement and joy at a great flock of goats that jostled ahead like a river in spate. It was a huge flock, bigger by far than anyone had dared to hope; a positive flood of goats. All eyes were fixed so intently upon them that they barely noted the surprising existence of an extra member of the caravan—a slim young girl, uncircumcised, who walked with downcast head behind Ngarariga, her feet dragging wearily al
ong the road.

  A silence fell as the party approached Mahenia’s homestead, for the mind of every man was filled, as a lover’s with the image of his loved one’s features, with the magnificence of the goats.

  When greetings were over, Waseru strode up and down in the midst of a ring of listeners, brandishing a club, and recounted his adventures in a loud, ringing voice, with a wealth of detail and many pauses for dramatic effect. This was the moment of his triumph, to be enjoyed to the full. The audience punctuated his tale with cries of astonishment and suspense, and sometimes with shouts of praise for his courage and resource.

  The story was a long and stirring one. They had found Meru, as they expected, in a state of famine: the granaries empty as gourds taken by women to the river at evening, the children’s bones dry as maize stalks after harvest, and full-fed hyenas prowling boldly round the compounds at night. They had traded their millet for goats at highly advantageous rates; and a leading elder with six wives, at whose village they had slept, had offered one of his uncircumcised daughters for two sacks of grain. “It is indeed more painful for me to hear my children crying out for food and to watch them wither before my eyes like uprooted weeds,” he had said, “than to see them depart forever to dwell among strangers. In your country there is much food; that I have seen with my own eyes; your granaries are full as the stomachs of pigeons after a millet sack has broken in the path. Therefore, take one of my daughters, and let her become your own; and when she marries the bride-price will be yours entirely.” So Waseru had chosen a thin but shapely girl, nearly ready for circumcision, whose name was Ambui; the Kikuyu women had spoken kindly to her and given her food, and she had returned with them to become Waseru’s daughter.