The Sky And The Forest (25 page)

“Mali,” said Loa. “Famo. Peri.”

The three young men whom he addressed anxiously awaited his commands.

“Come and stand here,” said Loa, indicating the space immediately in front of him.

They came, in some trepidation. A great hush fell on the waiting crowd. Loa ostentatiously kept it waiting. He shifted his position on the stool, apparently in search of greater comfort, but actually so that he could swivel round towards Ura. He had Ura in sight now, and was able to watch any move he might make. He repeated the young men's names without deigning to look round at them; automatically the dignified mode of address, of a great superior to one vastly inferior, came to his tongue -- he had hardly employed it for months towards Musini and Lanu. The young men stood tense.

“What I shall tell you to do, do it instantly,” said Loa.

The crowd sighed nervously, and the young men stood poised.

“Take hold of Ura!” roared Loa, suddenly, flinging out his arm.

There was a flurry in the crowd. Mali, quicker off the mark than the other two, headed the rush into the crowd, but Ura had reacted slowly, taken completely by surprise. No one knows what he might or might not have done, for even before Mali reached him the people on either side of Ura had laid hold of him.

“Bring him out here!” roared Loa, with an imperious gesture, and they led him to the open space, beside Soli's corpse.

They held his arms, and Mali took away his bow and his arrows.

“So,” said Loa. “This is Ura. This is the man. Lift his face up to the sun so that we can see him better.”

Mali put his hand to Ura's chin and forced his head back. Ura blinked with the sun in his eyes, but he made no motion of resistance, paralyzed by the suddenness of all this. Loa stared at him, and then looked round at the crowd. There was no need for haste; a dignified slowness would be more | impressive. Over there stood Nadini; she was looking at her new husband with anxiety in her face, and Loa was torn with jealousy. He had never cared specially for Nadini, but it was a dreadful, an unprecedented thing for a man to take a wife of the god's without her being given to him as a great favour and a great condescension, in the most formal manner. Loa had intended to mention all this, but sudden prudence dried up the words in his throat. There was nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by calling public attention to the fact that Loa might have mortal motives. It would be far more impressive to be incomprehensible, to offer no explanation for what he was going to do. For one speech he substituted another.

“My father, whose name no one may utter save myself, must have a new attendant. Nasa and his fathers await you, Ura.”

The crowd sighed again, but Ura said nothing. This was inevitable death, and the lethargy of death was already upon him. Ura might be said to be the first convert to the renewed cult of Loa's divinity. Mali, anxious to be helpful, looked down at the big ceremonial axe which still lay beside the dead hand of Soli, but Loa ignored the hint. He gave his orders for the preparation of the first stake of impalement ever heard of in his town. He remembered well -- too well -- the methods used by the Arab raiders to strike terror into the hearts of their captives. The town listened in surprise, with a buzz of comment, when Loa finished speaking; and they watched the preparations with deep curiosity. A simple beheading or strangulation was nothing new to them, but this was. The first sound Ura uttered after his arrest was a shriek of agony, but it was not the last, not nearly the last.

Loa stole a glance at Nadini from under his brows; her hands were clasped with the intensity of her emotion as she watched Ura's writhing’s. Well and good. Then he looked about him with growing distaste. He had never much liked this end of the town.

“There is a curse upon this spot,” he announced. “Not even that” -- with a glance at Ura dying on the stake -- “nor that” -- with another glance at Soli's corpse -- “can quite take the curse away.”

Here Soli had sat in judgment on his tripod stool; it was not policy that was dictating Loa's words as much as bitter prejudice.

“Tomorrow, Famo,” went on Loa, “you will put a fence round this spot, from over there, round there, to there. No foot will tread on this earth. The bushes and the trees will grow here. And until the fence is made, let no one trespass upon this ground.”

He rose from his stool; half a gesture from him was sufficient to make a woman standing near him pick up the stool to carry it after him. The crowd parted to let him through, and tumbled on their faces as he walked past them, Nadini too.

“Come with me, Nadini,” said Loa, as he walked by her.

Here was Musini, crouching subserviently, and yet not keeping still. Her shoulders were heaving, and she was writhing as she knelt.

“How is it with you, Musini?” asked Loa.

Musini lifted a face that was apprehensive with pain and wet with sweat.

“Lord,” she said. “Lord -- I -- I -- “

Another twinge of pain cut her words off short, for her time had come upon her. Loa stirred the woman next to her with his foot.

“Who are you? Maku? Then, Maku, attend to Musini. Call for any help you may need.'‘

Loa walked on up the street, with Nadini and Lanu and the three young men following close behind him and the rest of the town -- save those who lingered to watch Ura's agonies -- streaming after them in loose formation, like the nucleus and train of a comet. Nadini's baby still lay in the shade of the eaves of the house here, and Loa, pausing to look round him, looked meaningly at it, amused at the instant reaction of Nadini's clasped hands. Whim, or mercy or policy, or satiation with blood, led Loa to take no further action, to issue no further order, but to pass on.

“There,” he said to Peri, pointing, “there, tomorrow, you will build my house. It is to be long and high and wide.”

“Yes, Lord,” said Peri.

“Meanwhile in that house there will I sleep tonight. See to it.”

Another gesture was sufficient to the woman bearing the stool to put it down outside the doorway, but Loa did not take his seat on it. He was no longer sitting in judgment, he was abandoning for the time his official capacity and retiring into privacy. He squatted in the shade of the eaves of the house.

“You, Nadini, can keep the flies from me. You others may leave me. No. You -- “ He glanced up at the woman who had been carrying the stool -- “you shall stay too. Whose wife are you?”

The woman shrank back embarrassed; she tried to speak but stuttered.

“Speak!” ordered Loa, but still she hesitated. “Speak, and no harm will come to you. Whose wife are you?”

“I am the wife of no one, Lord. I -- I was the wife of him whose name I cannot speak. Of him whose arm you cut off, Lord.”

There was a horrified moment, for it was the worst of bad luck for a mortal to say the name of, or even to allude to, someone who was dead. But Loa was unembarrassed.

“I cut off more than his arm,” he said with a chuckle. “As a widow I shall give you in marriage again. See to it that you speak to me about it later on.”

The world was very good. He was home again, he was a god once more. And this woman was well set up and handsome, he reflected, looking her over.

“What is your name?” he demanded.

“Subi, Lord. My father was of the family of Ko.”

“That is so,” said Loa, meditatively; he ran his eye over Subi again, and then turned to look at Nadini. A distant shriek from Ura came to his ears. It crossed his mind that now he might order Ura to be slain, to put an end to his sufferings, but he decided against it, at least for the moment. Life was good.

But here came an interruption. Several people were hastening towards him, but the urgency of their advance died away as they neared him, and when they were within speaking distance they began to hang back, each trying to leave speech to the others.

“What is it?” asked Loa.

There was further hesitation, but the others shoved Maku forward, the elderly woman whom Loa had ordered to attend upon Musini.

Loa looked at her and waited for her to speak, but she could not bring herself to do it.

“What is it?” asked Loa, much more testily.

In the annoyance in his voice there was an echo, a subtle reminder of the stake of impalement, of the execution axe. Maku gulped and forced herself to announce the bad news. She at least was convinced of the arbitrariness and supreme power of the god Loa, for, innocent herself, she feared the wanton fate of a bearer of ill tidings.

“Musini, Lord.”

“Well, what of Musini?”

“Lord, she has given birth. To two children. Lord.”

The others wailed in sympathy; Loa heard Nadini behind his shoulder draw in her breath sharply. The birth of twins was the worst of ill omens. People might think, as they always did in similar cases, that while Loa was the father of one of the children some devil was the father of the other. But this superstition was not the root of the matter. The consternation caused by the birth of twins was much more a matter of unreasoning fear. It was an unlucky thing to happen, the unluckiest thing there was, much more unlucky than even such a serious thing as seeing a monkey on the ground to the left, or touching the lintel of a door with one's head. Twin children must always be slain to avert calamity. It was quite deplorable that this should have happened on the day of Loa's return, to Loa's own wife.

Maku screamed when Loa, thinking about all this, forgot to take his eye off her. She was sure that she was destined at the least to the stake of impalement, and she flung herself grovelling on the ground before him, her face in the dirt.

“Oh, stand up, stand up!” roared Loa. “Listen to what I have to say.”

They rose, whimpering, dust caking on the sweat of their faces and bodies. Loa was having to think with extravagant speed. He felt in his bones that it would be bad policy to admit that Musini's twins portended evil, and with that feeling well established inside him he was able to free himself from thraldom to the superstitions attendant on the event. He had done without so many forms and ceremonies in the last months, and survived their absence, he had had so many beliefs shaken by his past experiences, that once a reasonable argument could be advanced on the other side he was willing to believe even that there was nothing ominous about the birth of twins. But he could not present such a revolutionary theory to his people. If he laughed at one superstition, might they not laugh at another -- at the theory, for instance, that Loa was more than mortal? He must do better than that; he must wring some advantage out of this most unfortunate occurrence.

“What are the children?” he asked, more to gain time to think than for any other reason.

“Boys, Lord. Both boys,” replied Maku, unable to keep out of her voice some of her surprise that Loa should ask a question so irrelevant to the issue.

“So,” said Loa.

His struggle to think logically was reflected in his face, so that the onlookers believed they saw the workings of a spirit within him. He walked through the crowd of onlookers, which parted before him, and sat himself with the dignity the occasion demanded upon his stool.

“This is the Word of Loa,” he began, slowly, using the ancient formula which gave his words so much weight that it was the direst blasphemy to debate them. “Musini has given two sons to Loa. Sons they are and sons they will be. Let everyone be thankful for this gift. They will be mighty men, killers of elephants and leopards. As they walk down the street each person will touch another on the elbow and will say ‘See, there walk the two sons of Loa.' Musini will give them milk, and if she has not sufficient it will be a fortunate woman who will share her duty. For this is the day of the return of Loa from another world, and all that happens on this day is good.”

His audience was staring at him, almost unbelieving. The point had to be made clearer, and Loa was warming to his work.

“I return after these many days,” said Loa. “And what do I find? Where I left ten people there are no more than five. Where are the young men and the young women? Many, many children are needed to replace them. Here are the first two that Loa brings out of his abundance. See you to it, you women, that you do likewise.”

The novelty of such a suggestion sent a tremor through his audience.

“Soli, whose name I alone may speak, would have killed these children. But where is Soli? He lies dead. The broad axe of so much power was useless in his hands before this little axe in mine.”

Another shriek from Ura in the distance came as Loa paused for breath, and he flung out his hand in the direction of the sound.

“Ura is waiting to bear the message to Nasa. He waits impatiently. Mali!”

At his call Mali came forward, with head low in the presence of Loa speaking the Word of Loa.

“Lord?”

“Go you to Ura. Take with you a club, a club of iron or a club of wood. Say to Ura: ‘To Nasa may you now go. Impatiently you wait. Bear with you this message to Nasa. Loa has returned to his town and brought the two boys who later will be men and who will serve Nasa.' Then when Ura has heard the message he is to bear, you will strike him on the head with your club. You will strike him with all the strength you have, so that he will go quickly on his way. Mali, have you heard the Word of Loa?”

“I have heard, Lord.”

“Then go. And you others have heard the Word of Loa. Go!”

They went, subdued and impressed, for the Word of Loa still carried weight. Loa heard two more screams from Ura, and then no more. He quitted the stool and went back to the shade of the eaves. He was content; the great heat of the day was over and here in the shade was almost a pleasant coolness.

“Nadini! Subi!” he said. “Bring me food. Food for Lanu and myself.”

They glanced at each other, each of them exercising their minds over what they would serve him.

“Hurry!” said Loa.

“Yes, Lord,” said Nadini. “What may we bring you?”

“Food, I said!” roared Loa. “Food! Baked plantains in oil -- tapioca -- give me food and not words.”

“Yes, Lord,” said Nadini, and she and Subi hastened away.