Looking for Mrs Dextrose (4 page)

It didn’t, so I moved the subject on. “Why did you come here, to Mlwlw, Livingstone? There’s a story in
The Lost Incompetent
…”

He chuckled. “That old cobblers. Wilson Niff an’ the Sodastream wee, yeah? I’m s’posed to ’ave been so upset that Niff don’t notice his beer’s my
carbonated pee, I take off to anuver continent? Cam on, son! God love old ’Arry – I can never tell if ’e believes ’is own stories. No. I’ll tell you why I came
’ere. It was supposed to be an ’oliday. ‘See the Jungle – Cheap’. ’Arry’d arranged it. I turn up at the docks, ’e ain’t there. Should I go
wivaht ’im? Seemed daft not to. Long story short, I end up ’ere.”

“So the Niff story isn’t true?”

Quench roared with laughter. “What do you fink nah you’ve seen ’Arry? ’Is ’ole system’s shot to shit. I don’t even remember a Wilson Niff.”

“Then his book…”

He stopped walking. “Look. I don’t mean to do ’im dahn, Pilsbury. Put it this way: I’d be prahd if old ’Arry was my Dad. Well, maybe not prahd. Not the way ’e
is nah. ’Ang on, let me start again, this ain’t comin’ aht right. Look. I’ve known ’Arry longer than I care to remember. And we’re mates. Always ’ave been,
always will be. An’ that says it all. Right? There’s more to ’im than ’e lets on. I swear to you. That man’s been arahnd the block a few times, ’e’s got
stories. An’ if they ain’t all funny stories, or interestin’, ’e spins ’em, y’know? So ’is book, it’s true in parts. Uver bits ’e exaggerates
and uver bits is complete bollocks. ’S fair enough, ain’t it? Like, if you wrote down your life story – ’ow dull would that be?”

“Cheers.”

He slapped his forehead. “I’m sorry, son, I didn’t mean it like that! I’m sure you’ve ’ad a really interestin’ life.”

“Not really.” There was no escaping it.

“No? Oh.” He started walking again. “Better get a move on, eh?”

Mlwlw’s main drag in daylight was like nothing I had ever experienced. Individual buildings concocted from wood with palm fronds as roof material, raised up off the
ground a couple of feet on stilts, I imagined as protection against the torrential rains when they finally came. Boy, could I have killed for a cool drenching.

Behind the buildings, the forest loomed: a sense of chlorophyll and insects on too many legs.

There were clothes lines stretched across the roadway, from which Western-style clothing hung. Shorts and T-shirts, socks and pants, in vibrant colours. “Today’s wash day,”
explained Quench, as if he’d read my thoughts.

Through the odd open doorway I glimpsed adults busying themselves inside, among the shadows. One lady came out onto her porch and waved; when I returned the greeting, she made it clear it was
Quench she had been waving to.

Out on the dry-dirt road a few children, cropped-haired and lithe with muscle, ran around in shorts and Manchester United tops, kicking a football. They stopped playing and stared at me as we
walked past.

Quench hailed them in the local tongue and they began to follow us, dancing in our wake and laughing, until the barkeep turned around and told them to, “Leave it aht, lads.” They ran
off.

We were on a mission. It felt good.

By the time we had left the village behind, the persistent animal calls that had kept me awake at night no longer troubled me. Instead they drifted into the background, like
the sound of traffic back in England.

Where vegetation had been cleared away for the development of the village, the sun had felt oppressive. As the dwellings dwindled the trees began to take over, their broad-leafed foliage forming
a high canopy, casting welcome shadows about the ground.

The smells were of vegetation and earth, rammed up singed nostrils by heat. Something about the sensation seemed strange, and it took a while to realise why: there was no pollution here, only
unbastardised nature.

Vines slithered up pole-straight trunks, taking the shortest route from seed to sun, and often I found myself double-taking, checking for snakes. If there were one creature’s path I most
feared crossing, it was that of the serpent. I had only ever seen them on television, but that was enough: generally featuring a fool in shorts holding one by the tail, chatting to camera, while
the writhing beast lunged, hoping to inject said fool with enough venom to make his head turn black and fall off.

“Are there snakes in Mlwlw?” I asked Quench, already fearing the response.

“Sure,” he replied. “The locals go an abaht the bang-bang viper – packs enough poison to fell a rhino. Watch aht for that one!”

I glanced around, paranoid. “What’s it look like?”

“Y’know, I never fort to ask! Don’t worry ’baht it, Pilsbury. Them’s more scared of you than you is of them.”

Were that true, I wondered how they functioned on a daily basis.

After about half an hour we reached the Shaman’s hut, in a clearing set back from the vague path we had been following. It was cylindrical in shape with a conical roof, all natural
materials. Coconuts hung from its eaves.

It struck me suddenly that all the animals had become silent, their cackles and caws replaced by an eerie whistling that came from within the hut.

Quench sensed my unease. “Nuffing to worry abaht,” he said. “’E’s more of a mystic than a witch doctor. Jus’ let me do the talkin’. Come on.”

As we were about to enter through the hanging-reed curtain that formed the door, I yelped and stumbled backwards. “Those… those coconuts. They’re not coconuts. Aren’t
they… shrunken heads?”

Horrible, leathery, pocket-sized heads, with dark hollows for eyes and mouths that moaned in silence – perhaps a dozen of them – hung by their gathered hair, greeting visitors like
pickled ghouls.

“Don’t take no notice of them,” said Quench. “’E buys ’em in from up-river. They’re just for show. ’E’s quite the showman, the
Shaman.” He chuckled at his own sense of poetry.

Against my better judgement I entered the hut, wondering when to commence grovelling. At once the weird whistling stopped.

In the light of the lofted door I caught sight of two figures seated against the far wall, one man-sized with perhaps a tall hat; the other, much smaller, appeared to be sitting on the taller
man’s knee. As the curtain dropped behind me the image fell into gloom. I felt Quench’s arm around my shoulders, pressing me down, and we dropped to our knees. There I stayed, listening
to my own breathing, uncertain. The smell of the dry-earth floor mingled with something acrid, seeming to emanate from a pot hanging over a dwindling fire across the way. Fresh sweat joined stale
sweat under my top.

I waited for someone to speak. No one did.

Then I heard movement. The Shaman and his colleague had risen. Padding feet approached, slowly. Something touched my shoulder from behind and I flinched, barely containing a squeal. Next the
other shoulder, then the same two light taps came from in front of me, as dark shapes passed by. I suspected I was being circled and anointed with a stick.

On the third circuit the movement stopped and at once a hideous apparition took shape just inches before me in mid-air: a countenance of rotting stumpy teeth and burning widened eyes, with thick
white stripes, like a tiger’s markings, dragged across glowing dark flesh.

I flung myself backwards, exhaling my fear, and would have fallen head-first out of the door had I not missed it and cracked the back of my skull against a wall.

“Hahaha!” went the apparition.

Then I realised: it was the larger of the two figures – the Shaman, no doubt – shining a pocket torch under his chin.

Oh yes, very effective, very funny, I thought, part pissed off, part petrified. If this little ritual were for my benefit, it was working.

Next, a blind was lifted at the rear of the hut and sunlight flooded the space, the sudden glare causing me to shield my eyes. The figures now sat illuminated from behind, drenched in shadow.
Even in such awkward lighting I could tell there was something odd about the smaller fellow. The way he sat, bolt upright like a meerkat, back on the Shaman’s lap.

The Shaman spoke, in a language that was all deep consonants and contorted tongue, rising and falling, the effect not that dissimilar to the sound of a didgeridoo. I glanced toward Quench for
advice, but he remained kneeling, head bowed.

The smaller figure’s head turned to face me. “I an great Shaman son,” he said. “He not skleak your tongue so I translate thor you his great oo-ords… his great
skeakings… things he say. Stek ford.”

What did he mean, “Stek ford?” And something about the voice. So unnaturally pitched, and strangulated. Though my senses were disoriented by the entire experience, something was
niggling at the back of my mind.

“Go on!” hissed Quench.

“Go on, what?” I hissed back.

“Step forward!”

I had to remind myself why we were there – Dextrose’s crazed sketch – having become more concerned about remaining sane. What could I say that might resemble
decorum? How did one even address a shaman?

I rose and walked forward. The closer I approached the shamanic duo, the more I could make out. The Shaman himself was dressed in a skirt-type garment made of animal skin, into which
multi-coloured beads had been stitched in seemingly random shapes. His torso was bare, his nipples both run through with an ivory hook, and he had a pot belly. Garlands of dried leaves hung around
his neck. His face, painted with those white stripes, looked haggard but hard. He wore a conical hat, like a wizard’s, with sun and moon designs set in beading, another of his precious
shrunken heads hanging from its peak.

And… Bugger me, if my suspicions about his son weren’t correct.

“Hmmn!” went the Shaman, thrusting out his hand.

“See!” translated his son.

Among the shafts of sunlight I saw the Shaman’s bony index finger held out towards me. Running through it appeared to be a bloody nail; however, the red-paint job was poor and there was no
blood on the digit itself, which was a dead giveaway. In fact, I’d once bought the same ‘Nail Through Finger!’ trick as a child.

The Shaman quickly withdrew his hand into his lap and returned it with a flourish, his now nail-free finger miraculously ‘healed’.

“Klowerthul nagic!” declared the son.

“Sorry?” I said.

“’E means ‘powerful magic’,” Quench explained from the back.

“I see. That is powerful magic indeed,” I lied. “Listen. Would you mind if I had a quick word with my friend?”

The Shaman started. The boy regarded his father then me, and his mouth dropped open, incredulous.

I didn’t bother waiting for their answer.

“Who’s the nutter with the ventriloquist’s dummy?” I hissed in Quench’s ear.

“Be careful what you say!” he hissed back. “That’s the top dog round ’ere you’re talkin’ abaht.”

“With the lame nail-through-the-finger trick?”

“Well it fools everyone else.”

“Did it fool you?” I snorted.

He changed the subject. “’Ow did you spot the dummy?”

“What, you mean his son made of wood?”

“Wood, yeah.”

“Wearing a monocle, top hat and three-piece suit?”

“That’s right.”

“You did know it was a dummy?”

“Course! After a little while.”

We debated very hastily the point of continuing with the plan, while the Shaman sat mumbling with his son in tongues, clearly put out. I was all for
leaving, until Quench pointed out that if we quit now we only had Dextrose to fall back on. It was a deal clincher.

Bar my dignity, I had nothing to lose. And how many times during my travels had that remained unscathed and intact? I was reminded mercifully briefly of my abduction on Emo Island, by the madman
Borhed and his minions, when to win my freedom I had been obliged to choose the winner of an ‘Insect Race to Death’. And I had actively cheered on a dung beetle.

I returned to the Shaman and knelt (playing along). “Great Shaman, I wish for your wisdom.”

His son spoke: “You hath angered great Shaman. Thery dangerous. Cun closer. Oo-otch!”

The Shaman beckoned me forward with a bony finger until I was within a metre of his face. His lips were terribly chapped and the madness resulting from power danced in his eyes.

He held out the palm of his hand – the one that wasn’t up his son’s bum – between our two faces. On it was laid a small pile of brown powder. He looked at it, looked at
me, and leered, all fucked teeth and gum disease. Then he blew it in my face.

Immediately I sniffed, sniffed again, then could not hold it back. As I sneezed violently, I ducked just in time to avoid covering the Shaman in snot.

Sneezing powder.

“Klowerthul nagic!” declared the son.

At that range I could see his daddy’s lips move.

I showed the Shaman Harrison Dextrose’s sketch, which had become rather limp in my sweat-drenched back pocket. He studied it closely, turning it this way and that, as
Quench and I had done previously.

Eventually he said something in that didgeridoo language of his.

I addressed the dummy. “What’s he saying?”

“He say there is klace where the cattle klay thootgall.”

The Shaman and wooden boy both stared at me.