Tefuga (18 page)

I didn't really have time to look 'cos the villagers all stopped what they were doing and came to meet us. Such smiles! Quite different from when we were on tour. A bit nervous still, tho', I could see. “Strong spirits” all round. It must have been a tiny village if this was everyone, just two old dodderers, five splendid women, two of them with babies, and some boys. No grown men apart from the dodderers, in fact the “headman”—tho' the Kitawa don't really have headmen—seemed to be a woman. For a moment I'd thought she was Femora Feng, though I'd never got a proper look at her—me pretending to paint and her cowering down below the river-bank—and anyway what was she doing so far from home? So I hadn't been surprised when she'd introduced herself as Atafa Guni.

That's a good old Kiti name. It comes in one of Elongo's stories about the Woman who Tricked the Lion. She was perfectly lovely, absolutely typical Kiti, only more so, with the wide, honest face and the proud walk and the glossy skin. The others all respected her, waited to see what she would say, and so on.

After a bit the women shooed the lads off to work in the gardens. They looked sulky, but went. I guessed the women must be their “aunts”, like Femora Feng and Elongo, so the lads had to do what they were told. The old men sat down in front of one of the huts, three of the women went back to the hut they'd been mending, and I stayed with the other two. Atafa Guni wanted to take me into her hut but I decided the women building would make an interesting subject, so I set up my parasol and easel in the open and told her to come with me. Elongo tethered Salaki, then went and joined the old men.

Soon as I really looked at the village I saw it must have been much larger once. There were only four or five good huts, the mended ones. The others were more or less completely ramshackle, and I could see where more huts must have once been, only they'd fallen right down. Anyway, there were just about enough people for the good huts, so that made sense. Still, it was something to talk about. I wanted to put the two women at their ease, 'cos I could feel how nervous they still were.

“Why are the huts empty?” I said. “Where are all the men?”

“The thorn trees have eaten up the gardens,” said Atafa Guni. “Not many people can live here now. The men must go a long way to find food.”

“It is sad,” I said.

“Elongo Sisefonge says we must teach you women's talk,” she said. She obviously didn't want to talk about the village. It was silly of me to have asked—if our house started rotting round us I know I'd be snappy with nice kind visitors who came and told me what a pity it was. So we started straight into the lesson. It wasn't as difficult as I'd expected, apart from some special tones, things like when a woman asks a man a question, or when an “aunt” is giving orders to the lad in her hut about what he's got to do—that was a tricky one to get right. I had to stop painting while I practised, and I don't suppose I shall ever need to use it! Otherwise it was just words, most of them about the things that happen to us 'cos of being a woman which I can't imagine myself ever wanting to have a conversation about—in fact, I don't even know the English for some of them! That's the other side of being open and easy about s**. I'm not sure I'd like it to go that far.

Soon I was thoroughly enjoying myself, practising words and chatting a bit and painting away. One nice thing, there weren't nearly as many flies as there usually are round a village. I was wondering whether this was anything to do with women being cleaner than men when suddenly my eye was hooked by one of the women building the hut. She was on a ladder—just a pole with cross-pieces lashed to it—with a loose bundle of thatch on her shoulder. Something special about her pose. I shouted to her not to move. She stopped, exactly right, and soon as I started to sketch her in I saw what it was—there's a painting, Italian I should think, of dead Jesus being carried down from the cross, a man on a ladder, the body drooping over his shoulder just like that. That sort of eye-echo is rather exciting, and I was so busy concentrating on getting it down that I didn't realize for several minutes at least that it wasn't just the woman on the ladder staying beautifully still—it was everybody! Dead silence, not even the work-chant of the lads in the gardens. Creepy.

I thought for a mo it was 'cos they didn't know who I'd been talking to when I called out, so they'd all frozen. (I'd called pretty loud.) Then, I don't know how, I understood it wasn't that at all. I looked at Atafa Guni.

“Why are you afraid?” I said.

She looked at the other woman—her name was Manonka—and back at me. She made up her mind and drew a deep breath.

“We do not cry with loud voices,” she said. “We walk on small paths. We make no smoke. The toes are hidden.”

Yes, that's what she said, the exact words. I didn't understand at all. I thought it must be one of the funny Kiti riddles Elongo's sometimes told me, where the riddler talks about something like an egg in a roundabout way and the guesser has to try and work out what it is. But I wanted to get the last few bits of the woman on the ladder right before my eye forgot them, so I dabbed away. All of a sudden it came to me. Toes. Counting. Just like the mistake Lukar and the Bangwa Wangwa kept making about counting the men in the villages when we were on tour. If it was a mistake. 'Cos Atafa Guni seemed to be telling me that this village (its name is Jabu, which just means “Near river”) wasn't counted
on purpose
. They were frightened because I'd shouted and they were supposed to keep quiet all the time.

I looked at Atafa Guni. She was watching me with huge eyes. The other woman was absolutely terrified. The ones in the village had started moving again, but now they'd stopped and were watching, not straight but out of the corners of their eyes.

“Who must not hear your voices?” I said. “Who must not find your paths or see your smoke?”

“It is the White Man.”

Of course. It had to be. First sight you think you could hide hundreds—thousands—of natives in that bush, but it would only work for a few days 'cos of them having to get water,
and
there'd have to be only one or two people looking for them,
and
the hiders would have to know when the seekers were coming. Well, that's just what happens! The D.O. says he's coming to do a tour, where and when and how long, and he tells them all to get ready. Which they do! But the Hausa absolutely
must
know. Not just 'cos there's more of them, but the important ones have their own districts which they're supposed to look after under the N.A., with their own servants there all the time. Perhaps you could hide one or two natives from them, but not whole villages. Goodness! (I'd stopped painting by now. Ideas were coming at me in a rush, not making nearly as much sense as what I've just written.)

“Who orders you to hide?” I said.

“It is the horsemen.”

“Kama Boi?”

She didn't answer at once. She looked at the other woman, then at the ground, then back at me.

“The servants of Kama Boi came to us. They carried his word in their mouths.”

Manonka made a little whimpering noise. I thought she was going to get up and run away, but Atafa Guni put out a hand and touched her wrist and she was quiet again. It gave me time to clear my wits a bit.

“There are finger villages and there are toe villages, then?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And the White Man must see only the finger villages?”

“Yes.”

“And the finger villages pay the White Man's tax?”

“They pay two taxes. The White Man comes and counts some men and says what must be paid as his tax, and when he has gone the servants of Kama Boi come again and count all the men and take more tax. If we cannot pay they take our children to work on their gardens.”

(I'm writing all this down much less muddled than it was. I had to ask lots more questions. She didn't like it. She kept almost making up her mind to stop answering and then deciding now she'd got so far she might as well go on.)

“The men hide when the White Man comes? Why do they not hide also when the servants of Kama Boi come?”

“Who can hide from Kama Boi?”

Manonka actually looked over her shoulder when Atafa Guni said that, as tho' she expected to see KB there, huge and scowling, like a thunder-cloud.

“What about the toe villages?” I said. “They pay tax to the servants of Kama Boi but no tax to the White Man?”

“Yes.”

“When I was at Tefuga I spoke with a woman called Femora Feng,” I said.

I saw Manonka jump at the name and try and look away, but Atafa Guni didn't seem surprised.

“I have heard her name,” she said.

“She told me of a village in the north to which the servants of Kama Boi came, and burnt the huts and killed the men and took the others away. Is the story true?”

“It is spoken of.”

“What was the name of the place?”

“I do not know. It is far away.”

“Did the servants of Kama Boi do this because the village refused to pay the tax?”

“It is spoken of.”

“Was it a toe village?”

“It is spoken of.”

“Why did no one come to the White Man and say that this was done?”

I expected her to tell me what Elongo had said to Mr de Lancey when I was painting him fishing, about it being too much of a risk for any of the Kitawa to complain. But she looked at me with her brown clear eyes and said “It is forbidden.”

(That's not strong enough—it's a special word, magical, as tho' there's a terrible curse on doing whatever you mustn't, which is really going to happen only you don't know what it is.)

“But you have told me.”

“You are not a White Man.”

I almost laughed at the childishness of it. I'm glad I managed to keep a straight face, 'cos suddenly I thought, No, I am not a White Man. I am not. How extraordinary. I share more with this black savage who I'll probably never meet again than I do with dear Ted, who I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. She was sitting on the ground beside me, half in and half out of the shade of my parasol. I reached out with my left hand and took hers where it lay across her glossy naked thigh. She understood at once and gripped it with her strong clean fingers. She looked straight into my eyes.

“Yes,” I said. “I am your friend. I will help you.”

“I will tell you my dream,” she said. “I have seen this dream seven times. It comes from the ancestors. I see a black horse. It stands among the huts. Its legs are the trunks of trees. The breath of its nostrils is the thunder-cloud. It tramples to and fro. Its hooves break the cooking-pots. Its hooves trample the huts. It sucks the spirits out of the men so that their strength is gone. Their spears fall from their fingers. They are afraid. Then I see a white thing. It rides the horse and maddens it. The white thing is a great termite. But now I see a second white thing which rides beside the first. It is a termite also, but it has the face of a woman. And now it arches itself up and is great and wise, and it leans forward and bites the terrible horse in the neck, so that the horse falls down and dies. This is my dream, which the ancestors send me.”

Oh, lor, I thought. Me? I mean, it was obvious what her dream meant, soon as you remember the Kitawa say the Hausa are really horses and the white people are really termites. The Kitawa pay a lot of attention to dreams—Elongo's stories are full of them, and I suppose if you take your dreams seriously you start dreaming things that matter. Anyway she was still holding my hand and still looking into my eyes, eager and searching, but before I could think what to say she spoke again.

“So now you will kill Kama Boi,” she said.

I'm afraid she felt my hand go limp, and understood. It was awful. It simply didn't seem fair to pretend.

“I cannot kill Kama Boi,” I said.

She and Manonka looked at each other. They were appalled. They started to get up.

“Wait,” I said. “Perhaps I can do something. I will try. I cannot kill Kama Boi, but perhaps I can cause him to be sent away, far away, across the river, and he will never come back.”

“He cannot cross the river,” said Atafa Guni. “It is forbidden.” (Same word.)

“I will do it if I can,” I said. “I promise.”

They didn't believe me. Everything had gone wrong—I could see that—and they wanted me to go. No point in finishing the painting. Elongo must have been watching 'cos soon as I started cleaning my brushes he came over to help me pack up. No real smiles this time when we said good-bye, and when I took a last look over my shoulder I saw that the women had come down from their thatching and the boys were running back from the gardens to gather round Atafa Guni and hear what I'd said.

I was pretty dumpish at first. It was roasting hot. Salaki didn't like it at all, so after a bit I called a halt and we rested under some trees and had something to eat. I tried to get more out of Elongo about what Atafa Guni had told me, but he kept saying he didn't know, and he was obviously terribly unhappy about being asked, so I gave up. Then I started thinking what I should do. The obvious thing was tell Ted, but I knew it wouldn't work. He would tackle KB about it, and then he would insist on taking KB, or one of his courtiers, out to Jabu to check what Atafa Guni had told me and she'd be much too frightened to say anything. Really I wanted to tell Mr de Lancey without telling Ted, but I couldn't think how.

It was still too hot to move on and it struck me I ought to have something to show Ted as the results of my expedish so I set up the easel and did Elongo, with Salaki out beyond in the pale flat dusty glare. Out of darkness, into light. Only a few flecks and mottles through the leaves. It was difficult, so I couldn't think about much else, which was good, 'cos all of a sudden I saw an answer. I suppose I'd been half-thinking about the other picture, the women thatching, and not being able to show it to Ted 'cos he'd want to know where it was, and then thinking I'd really like to show it to Mr de Lancey so I could ask about the Crucifixion picture the woman had reminded me of, and then, out of nowhere, that was the answer. I'd send the picture to Mr de Lancey to ask about that, and put in a chatty bit about the village, and it being not on the census. I'd have to be careful not to say too much, so it was just chat. Of course, he'd know and I'd know but we'd have to pretend—that's v. important. The picture of Salaki and Elongo went really well, one of my best, so I thought that was a good sign.