Forest of the Pygmies (10 page)

They traveled north for most of the day. The tireless men never varied the rhythm of their paddles, not even in the hottest part of the day, when their passengers were half fainting. Since there was no pause for lunch, they had to be content with crackers, bottled water, and a small amount of sugar. No one wanted sardines; the thought of them turned their stomachs.

About midafternoon, when the sun was still high in the sky but the heat was relenting slightly, one of the Bantu men pointed to the shore. The canoes stopped. Here the river split into one wide arm that continued north and a narrow channel to the left that led into thick undergrowth. At the entrance to the lesser channel stood something that looked like a scarecrow. It was a life-size wooden statue garbed in raffia, feathers, and strips of hide. The mouth of its gorilla head was open, as if uttering a gruesome scream. Two stones were fitted into the sockets of the eyes. The trunk was studded with nails, and the head was crowned with an incongruous bicycle wheel that served as a kind of sombrero, from which swung bones and dried hands that may have been monkeys' paws. The figure was surrounded by other equally frightening dolls and animal skulls.

“Those are satanic witchcraft dolls!” cried Brother Fernando, making the sign of the cross.

“They
are
a little uglier than the saints in Catholic churches,” Kate replied sarcastically.

Joel and Alexander focused their cameras on them.

The terrorized Bantus announced that this was as far as they were going, and although Kate tempted them with more money and cigarettes, they refused to continue. They explained that that macabre altar marked the border of Kosongo's territory. Beyond that lay his domain, and no one entered without his permission. They added that there was a track through the forest that they could follow and reach the village before nightfall. It wasn't very far, they said, only one or two hours, and they would be able to follow the trail by looking for trees slashed by machete. The Bantus drove the noses of their canoes onto the bank and without waiting for instructions began throwing bundles to shore.

Kate paid them part of what they were owed and, with her bad French and the help of Brother Fernando, managed to communicate that in four days they were to come pick them up at this same spot. At that time they would be given the rest of the money and a bonus in cigarettes and canned peaches. The Bantus accepted with fake smiles, stumbled away, climbed into their canoes, and shot off as if pursued by demons.

“What eccentric men!” Kate commented.

“I'm afraid we'll never see them again,” Angie added, worried.

“We had better start before it gets dark,” said Brother Fernando, slinging his knapsack onto his back and picking up a couple of the duffels.

T
HE TRACK THE
B
ANTUS HAD
referred to was invisible. The terrain was a quagmire strewn with roots and branches, where feet often sank into a soft pudding of insects, leeches, and worms. Huge rats as big as dogs scurried away at the group's passing. Fortunately, they were wearing boots to midcalf, which at least protected them against snakes. It was so humid that both Alexander and Kate chose to take off their befogged glasses, while Brother Fernando, who saw almost nothing without his, had to clean his lenses every five minutes. In that lush vegetation it was nearly impossible to locate the trees that had been slashed by machetes.

Once again Alexander felt how the tropical climate drained the body and produced a profound indifference in the soul. He missed the clean, invigorating cold of the snowy mountains he climbed with his father and loved so much. He knew that if he felt overwhelmed, his grandmother must be on the verge of a heart attack, but Kate rarely complained. She was not disposed to be defeated by age. She said that people betray their years when they get bent over and make old person sounds: coughing, hawking, creaking, moans. Which was why she always stood very erect and stifled any senior noises.

The group practically felt their way forward as monkeys rained down projectiles from the trees. They had a general idea about the direction they should be heading in, but no notion of how far they were from the village. They suspected even less the kind of reception that awaited them.

They walked for more than an hour, but they made very little headway; this was not terrain in which you could hurry. They had to cross through more than one swamp with water up to the waist. In one of them, Angie took a false step and screamed when she realized that she was sinking in quicksand and that her efforts to free herself were futile. Brother Fernando and Joel held one end of a rifle and she grabbed onto the other end with both hands, and in that way was pulled to firm ground. In the process Angie let go of the duffel she was carrying.

“I lost my pack!” Angie cried when she saw it sinking into the mud.

“That's of no consequence, miss; what matters is that we got you out,” Brother Fernando replied.

“What do you mean, no consequence? My cigarettes and my lipstick are in there!”

Kate heaved a sigh of relief. At least she wouldn't have to smell Angie's delicious tobacco any longer; the temptation was getting unbearable.

They stopped by a small pool to rinse off a little, but they had to resign themselves to mud in their boots. In addition they had the uncomfortable sensation that they were being observed from the impenetrable growth.

“I think someone's spying on us,” Kate said finally, unable to bear the tension any longer.

They formed a circle, armed with their reduced arsenal: Angie's revolver and rifle, one machete, and a pair of knives.

“May God protect us,” mumbled Brother Fernando, a prayer that was escaping his lips more and more frequently.

After a few minutes, human figures as small as children cautiously emerged from the thicket, the tallest no more that four and a half feet tall. They had yellowish brown skin, nappy hair, wide-set eyes, short legs, long trunks and arms, and flattened noses.

“These must be the famous forest Pygmies,” said Angie, greeting them with a wave.

They wore only minimal breechcloths, except for one whose tattered T-shirt hung to below his knees. They were armed with spears, but they weren't raised threateningly; rather, the men were using them as walking staffs. Two of them were carrying a net rolled onto a pole. Nadia realized that it was identical to the net that had trapped the gorilla where their plane had come down, many miles away. The Pygmies answered Angie's greeting with confident smiles and a few words in French; then they launched into uninterrupted chatter in their own tongue, which no one understood.

“Can you take us to Ngoubé?” Brother Fernando interrupted.

“Ngoubé?
Non! Non!
” the Pygmies exclaimed.

“We have to go to Ngoubé,” the missionary insisted.

The man in the T-shirt seemed to be the one best qualified to communicate, because in addition to his limited vocabulary in French, he knew a few words of English. He introduced himself as Beyé-Dokou. Another Pygmy pointed to him and said that he was the
tuma
of their clan, that is, the best hunter. Beyé-Dokou quieted him with a friendly push, but from the satisfied expression on his face he seemed proud of the title. The other men started laughing uproariously, loudly teasing and making fun of him. Any hint of vanity was viewed badly among the Pygmies. Beyé-Dokou sank his head between his shoulders, embarrassed. With difficulty he explained to Kate that they should not go near the village because it was a very dangerous place; they should leave as quickly as possible.

“Kosongo, Mbembelé, Sombe, soldiers,” he repeated, and his face reflected his terror.

When the travelers insisted that they must go to Ngoubé at any cost, and that it would be four days before the canoes returned to pick them up, Beyé-Dokou seemed very worried. He consulted for some time with the other men and finally he offered to lead them by a secret route through the jungle back to the place they had left the plane.

“They must be the ones who set the trap,” commented Nadia, motioning to the net the two pygmies were carrying.

“And it seems that the idea of going to Ngoubé doesn't suit them at all,” commented Alexander.

“I've heard that they are the only humans able to live in these swamps. They move through the jungle by instinct. It may be best for us to go with them, before it's too late,” said Angie.

“We're already here, and we will continue to Ngoubé. Wasn't that what we agreed?” asked Kate.

“To Ngoubé,” Brother Fernando repeated.

With eloquent gestures the Pygmies made clear their opinion about the folly of that move, but finally they agreed to guide them. They set down their net beneath a tree, and without further ado took the duffels and knapsacks from the foreigners, threw them over their own shoulders, and started off at a trot through the ferns, so fast that it was nearly impossible to keep up. They were very strong and agile. Each of them was carrying more than sixty pounds, but it didn't hinder them in the least; the muscles of their arms and legs were like reinforced concrete. As the
International Geographic
crew panted along, near fainting from fatigue and heat, the Pygmies, without the least effort, ran with short little steps, feet pointed out like ducks and jabbering all the way.

Beyé-Dokou told them more about the three persons he had mentioned before: King Kosongo, Commandant Mbembelé, and Sombe, whom he described as a terrible sorcerer.

He explained to them that King Kosongo's feet never touched the ground, because if they did, the earth trembled. He said that the king's face was always covered, so no one would see his eyes. Those eyes were so powerful that a single glance could kill from afar. Kosongo never spoke to anyone, because his voice was like thunder: It deafened people and terrorized animals. The king spoke only through The Royal Mouth, a person from his court who had been trained to survive the power of his voice and whose task it was also to taste his food, to prevent the king's being poisoned or harmed by black magic through what he ate. The Pygmy warned them always to keep their head at a level lower than the king's. The correct procedure was to fall facedown and crawl in his presence.

The tiny man in the yellow T-shirt described Mbembelé by aiming an invisible weapon, firing, and falling to the ground as if dead; also by making thrusts with his spear and acting as if he were hacking off hands and feet with a machete or axe. The pantomime could not be clearer. He added that they should never contradict Mbembelé, though it was obvious that the one of the three he feared most was Sombe. Just the name of the sorcerer sent the Pygmies into a state of terror.

The path was not visible, but their small guides had traveled it many times and they had no need to consult the marks on the trees. They passed a clearing in the thick growth where there were other voodoo dolls similar to the ones they'd seen; these, however, were a
reddish brown, like iron oxide. As they came closer, they could see that the color came from dried blood. All about the dolls were piles of garbage, animal carcasses, rotted fruit, hunks of cassava, and gourds holding various liquids, perhaps palm wine and other liquors. The stench was unbearable. Brother Fernando crossed himself, and Kate reminded the frightened Joel that he was there to take photographs.

“I hope the blood came from sacrificed animals, not humans,” the photographer murmured.

“Village of ancestors,” said Beyé-Dokou, pointing to the narrow path that started at the dolls and disappeared into the forest.

He explained that they'd had to make a long detour to reach Ngoubé in order not to pass through the lands of the ancestors, where the spirits of the dead wandered. It was a basic rule of safety: Only a fool or a lunatic would venture there.

“Whose ancestors are they?” Nadia inquired.

Beyé-Dokou struggled to understand the question, but finally with Brother Fernando's help he got the idea.

“Ours,” he clarified, pointing to his companions and using gestures to indicate that the spirits were short.

“Do Kosongo and Mbembelé also stay away from the ghost village of the Pygmies?” Nadia insisted.

“Nobody go there. If the spirits are disturbed, they take revenge. They enter the bodies of the living, they control they will, they cause sickness and suffering, sometimes death,” Beyé-Dokou answered.

The Pygmies motioned to the foreigners that they must hurry, because the spirits of animals also come out at night to hunt.

“How do you know if it's the ghost of an animal, not just an ordinary animal?” Nadia asked.

“Because ghost don't have smell of animal. Leopard that smell like antelope, or serpent that smell like elephant, is ghost,” he explained.

“Then I guess you need a good sense of smell, or else have to get real close, to tell the difference,” Alexander joked.

Beyé-Dokou told them that at one time they hadn't been afraid of the night or the spirits of animals—only those of their ancestors—because they'd been protected by Ipemba-Afua. Kate wanted to know if that was some god, but he corrected her misimpression; he was referring to a sacred amulet that had belonged to their tribe since time immemorial. The way he described it, they understood that it was a human bone that contained a never-ending powder that cured many ills. They had used the powder more times than they could count and through many generations, and it never ran out. Every time they opened the bone, they found it filled with the magical substance. Ipemba-Afua represented the soul of their people, they said; it was their source of health, strength, and good fortune for the hunt.

“Where is it?” asked Alexander.

The Pygmies told them, with tears in their eyes, that Ipemba-Afua had been seized by Mbembelé and was now in Kosongo's power. As long as the king had the amulet, they had no soul; they were at his mercy.