The Dutch Wife (13 page)

At six o’clock, darkness dropped like a stone. The only light came from the campfire and the red glow of the circle of smouldering vegetation around the travellers. They all lay down to sleep on bamboo mats as the campfire died. Thomas, on his back, could see an astonishing array of stars, flickering and alive, as though he were looking down on a great city at night. He was exhausted and wanted to sleep, but the angry whine of mosquitoes around his head kept him awake. Whenever the whining momentarily stopped, he knew they were pumping their fever into him. He would slap at them and try to protect his face by covering it with his arm, till he feared he was suffocating himself.

The night passed slowly. Thomas felt the ground beneath him slowly breaking his bones. But he must have dozed, for suddenly, it was dawn, the sun peering down at him through its bloodshot eye. The mosquitoes had gone and the air was cool. Now he could have slept soundly, but the islanders were awake and had lit the fire to reheat that awful soup. Soon it was time to go.

THEY WERE WALKING NOW
into increasingly thick jungle. The ground was beginning to rise and Thomas had to lean forward slightly as he walked, breathing hard, unused to such exertion. He could see Macphee panting along ahead of him, an aureole of cigarette smoke around his head to keep off the insects. As the day became hotter, the climbing was just one more torment in a sweaty hell that was home to a million leeches and mosquitoes and wasps.

After what seemed like miles of steady climbing, Thomas’s legs were so tired he thought he couldn’t go on. He was just about to tell Macphee this when all at once the whole party stopped. The thick jungle was very silent and the islanders were peering nervously around them into the gloom. The lead paddler said something to Macphee and pointed up into a tree ahead of them. There, hanging by its feet from a leafless bough, Thomas could see a dead bird with a chain of glossy bright shells around its bedraggled neck.

The paddler spoke nervously to Macphee for a while. They seemed to reach some agreement.

“That’s it,” Macphee told Thomas. “They won’t go any farther. They’ll wait for us here till we get back.” He pointed at the bird. “That’s a Hupu warning.”

“What does that mean?” said Thomas.

“The Hupu—they’re a mountain tribe,” said Macphee. “They have a reputation for not being too friendly to these coastal islanders. I don’t blame them for not wanting to go on.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly.

– 7 –

MACPHEE AND THOMAS WENT ON ALONE
. They were making their clumsy passage up through a thicket of ferns as big as trees when the silence around them was shattered by loud croaking noises, as though they’d disturbed a den of giant bullfrogs. There was also a distinct jingling, as though of bells.

“Stand absolutely still!” said Macphee.

The ferns on either side of them parted and through the gaps came a dozen of the most ferocious-looking men Thomas had ever seen. Their bloodshot eyes were circled with red paint, their faces striped with white. What made them look even more frightening were the long wooden beaks attached to their noses, from which came the croaking noises. They were quite naked and carried sheaves of thin spears.

Thomas could see what had caused that jingling sound. Some of the warriors had bells, like small cattle bells, dangling from rings attached to the pouches of their genitals.

The croaking became deafening. A warrior stretched out his hand and touched the sleeve of Thomas’s shirt. Thomas winced and wanted to run away.

“Don’t do anything to annoy them,” Macphee said.

The warriors examined the travellers closely, then began ushering them out of the grove of giant ferns till they came to a beaten path through the jungle. They were urged along this for about a mile and finally arrived at an extensive clearing.

Another large crowd of beaked warriors, similarly painted, appeared, all croaking noisily. They escorted Thomas and Macphee through a gate in a high fence into a village of thatched huts. Hundreds of naked women and children, beak-less but painted the same ferocious way as the warriors, greeted them. The air was full of one giant
C-R-O-A-K
.

Thomas was terrified, wishing he’d never come on this awful journey.

The croaking stopped. Thomas thought his ears had been damaged, for at first he could hear nothing. But after a few seconds, from the direction of a large hut whose doorway was framed by dozens of skulls—some of them were human—he could make out the twittering of birds. Through this doorway, a old man emerged. His face was painted like the others but he had no beak, nor was he naked. Instead, he wore a long multi-coloured cloak that seemed to vibrate as he moved. He looked at the travellers for a moment, then raised his arms and let out a loud squawk.

Suddenly, in some miraculous way, hundreds of fragments of the cloak rose into the air. Thomas realized with astonishment that they were actually small birds, and that the cloak was made of netting upon which they’d been perched. They fluttered around the man’s head, screeching and cheeping.

He made another squawking sound and the little birds descended again and settled noisily on the strings of his cloak. He was like a nesting tree on legs. Now he came towards the strangers with mad, red eyes.

At that point, Macphee put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Don’t worry!” he shouted above the clamour of the birds. He opened his knapsack and pulled out a bottle of whisky. He held it out towards the bird man, who smiled horribly and took the bottle from him. He then pointed at Thomas and called out something to the crowd. Everyone laughed loudly—hearty, delighted laughter. The warriors began to untie their beaks, and they and the women and children seemed to relax.

“They were laughing at how scared you looked,” Macphee told Thomas. He too was looking at ease now. The bird man again said something to him, and they talked for a while and laughed. Then the bird man, clutching his bottle, went back into his hut.

“He’s the Shaman,” Macphee told Thomas. “He was asking me how effective the paint-job was. He says it’s a new design and they even frightened each other with it. I told him it was quite scary. And he wanted to know how the dead bird in the tree worked. I told him it frightened the men from the coast out of their wits. He liked that.”

Thomas naturally felt quite foolish. “So it’s all a game?” he said. “You mean it’s like Hallowe’en?”

“Well, there’s one big difference,” said Macphee. “If we hadn’t really looked scared, they’d have been insulted. Then they might just have decided to kill us anyway.”

THAT NIGHT A SPECIAL FEAST
of roast wild boar and pineapple was held for the visitors. They squatted around a big fire in the village square along with the rest of the tribe.

“The main course might easily have been us,” Macphee said as they began eating.

Thomas wasn’t sure he meant that seriously, for the Hupu were so friendly. They’d promised to give a display of their skill when the feast was over, to make up for having frightened him. Thomas, accordingly, ate well and drank several coconut shells of palm wine.

After the feast, everyone moved to another part of the village and hunkered down in the moonlight on an area of well-beaten earth before a hut with a woven curtain. As they sat waiting, there was a general buzz of excited conversation, of anticipation. To Thomas, it was like a night at the theatre in some great city—except that this was a remote island in a primal jungle with the mosquitoes beginning their nightly rampage. The theatre lighting consisted of a few smouldering torches, a huge moon and a dazzling array of stars. The audience, of course, was unlike any he’d ever seen in a theatre: an assembly of naked men, women and children, their faces still painted horribly.

The Shaman arrived last. His cloak was laden with his birds, silent now, settled down for the night. He gave a signal and the woven curtain was pulled back.

Thomas, his head dizzied by the palm wine, concentrated on the scene before him.

He had expected a performance but saw instead, on a bamboo platform, an exhibit of a dozen figures carved with amazing skill. They seemed to represent a battle scene from some tribal war. Some were balanced on one leg, or were arched over backwards in the act of falling. Others were shrinking from the blow of an axe or an enemy spear. Others were half leaping in the air as if they were striking the foe.

Thomas couldn’t help admiring the extraordinary skill of the carvers who had managed to instill into these inanimate figures such an impression of energy and vitality—he thought it must be comparable to the great sculptures made by the masters of the Renaissance period.

Then the figures moved. He couldn’t believe his eyes at first. It was as though he were standing in an art gallery, admiring some statue, and saw it move. What he had thought were carvings were actually living Hupu warriors.

For the next half hour these warriors on the stage went through an astonishing variety of postures, many of them so difficult that Thomas couldn’t imagine how the human body could maintain them for any length of time. The audience watched with obvious appreciation of the skill involved, pointing and whispering comments to each other.

At last the Shaman gave a final signal and the warriors on the stage immediately relaxed, breathing deeply, massaging their strained muscles. The audience shouted its approval, the Shaman’s little birds awoke and shrieked and the curtain was drawn.

THOMAS GOT TO HIS FEET NOW,
with everyone else. He was stiff from squatting on the ground, and that made him admire all the more the ability of the Hupu performers. According to Macphee, they practised the art from childhood, the way children elsewhere practised baseball or football.

Now, one of the Hupu warriors led the two visitors out of the village and along a pathway through the jungle. A hut was visible in the moonlight a hundred yards away. The warrior signalled them to go on but he himself went back to the village.

As Thomas and Macphee approached the hut, they were assaulted by an awful smell, like a million rotting fish.

“It’s from there,” said Macphee, pointing to a large tree beside the hut. “They call it a Stink Tree. The smell’s from its fruit.”

Thomas, bloated from the food and the palm wine, felt like vomiting. At first he thought the fruit of the Stink Tree had to be the black, pendulous objects in its boughs. But some of them began to flutter as the travellers came near.

“Bats,” said Macphee. “They’re safe hanging there. The smell keeps snakes away.” Then he pointed to some kernels that looked like white nuts on the path. “Those are the fruit—try not to step on them.” He toed one of them gently and from it, amid the general smell, arose the stench of something long dead.

Thomas gagged. “I can’t stay here!” he said.

“You’ll get used to it,” said Macphee. “Anyway, it’s the best place to be at night in the jungle. Even the mosquitoes don’t like it. The smell seems to get into your blood and they’ll leave you alone for a full day after this.”

“But why can’t we stay in the village?” Thomas said.

“It’s another taboo, in case hostile spirits are hiding in us,” he said. “Rowland would probably say it’s quite practical and protects them from diseases brought up from the coast.”

The hut itself was quite clean inside. They stretched out on the dirt floor and Macphee lit a cigarette. The smell of the smoke was very faint.

Thomas couldn’t help noticing the absence of the usual mosquito whine around his head. As he lay there, he had to admit he was even becoming a little used to that astounding stink. In fact, under it he thought he could detect a certain sweetness. By the time he fell asleep, he was breathing it in without reserve.

THEY LEFT THE HUT EARLY
the next morning. It was raining, as it seemed always to be in the mornings. They were half protected from the rain by the canopy of leaves. No one was awake in the Hupu village, only some dogs barked. As they continued on their way, Thomas Vanderlinden was very thirsty and wanted to drink from a brown torrent that skirted the path.

“Don’t,” said Macphee, and he held out a bottle of liquor from his bag. “Have some of this.”

“But it’s water I need,” said Thomas, tempted by the stream in spite of its off-putting colour.

Macphee shook his head. “The palm wine’s making you silly,” he said. “Believe me, a hangover’s better than a Guinea Worm any day of the week.”

That awful image was the best argument possible, so Thomas put up with his thirst.

AFTER ABOUT AN HOUR’S WALKING,
the terrain gradually became flatter. As Macphee had promised, the mosquitoes seemed to have no interest in them at all after their night under the Stink Tree, and that was a relief. Then they came across a coconut grove. Macphee showed Thomas how to split the nuts for their milk.

By late afternoon the jungle had thinned out, and eventually they emerged from it entirely into an area that seemed once to have been cultivated, though the fields were now overgrown with tall, wild grasses. The rain, now they were in the open, was quite heavy again.

“We won’t have to put up with it for long,” said Macphee.

Soon they were walking on a beaten track in the red dirt, and after a while, a pathway of crushed stone. They followed it and rounded the corner of a low hill. A hundred yards away Thomas saw a building that looked quite modern.

“There it is,” said Macphee. “Rowland’s place. It used to be a Medical Centre.”

It was a wooden bungalow with a shingled roof, and it was surrounded by an elegant verandah in the colonial style. Some dogs barked. Three people were sitting on the verandah awaiting the arrival of the visitors.

– 8 –

THOMAS VANDERLINDEN,
approaching the bungalow, was very curious about the man he was about to meet. But he made himself walk slowly, lagging a little behind Macphee.

Two scrawny brown dogs leapt down and ran across a stretch of bristly lawn to meet them, barking but wagging their tails in an unthreatening way. They sniffed at each of the visitors, then led them up the three steps of the verandah to the house, where a man and two women were sitting in high-backed rattan chairs. The man, who’d been reading, put his book on the floor and got up to meet the visitors. He gently helped down a black cat that had been curled on his shouders.