The Sky And The Forest (26 page)

If Nadini had ever been in any legal way the wife of Ura she was his widow now, from the moment that Mali's club had thumped upon Ura's skull. The child ought certainly to die. And yet? The same argument applied as before, regarding unnecessarily calling the attention of people to any human weaknesses Loa might have. And he had given his Word regarding the necessity of repeopling the town. He could not come to a decision about it at the moment. To save himself the trouble of further thought on the point he turned to Lanu, squatting silently at the side of the house. Lanu had said not a word, he had kept in the background all this time; if he was not awed at the spectacle of his father reassuming his divinity he was at least impressed by it to the point of silence.

“My son,” said Loa, “we must find you a wife. You are ready for one.”

“Yes, Father -- Lord.”

“This little axe of so much power was once yours. I made a present of it to you. Do you remember?”

“Yes, Lord.”

It was the axe that had shaped bows and arrows for them in the forest, which had cut creepers for them, which had hacked a way for them through thickets. And many an evening Lanu had squatted sharpening it on a smooth stone. Yet despite his familiarity with it Lanu had to admit to himself the likelihood, if not something stronger than likelihood, that it was an axe of great power. And this father of his, whom he had known to howl with terror at the lightning, who was perfectly capable of walking past an obvious mushroom without seeing it, was yet Loa who sat on a tripod stool and gave forth his Word. For that matter, he was the same Loa who had led them back across the whole world, through the unknown forest, back to the town. It was a complex theological problem for a half-grown boy. And there was something else worrying him to which he could not help referring, so that he raised the subject abruptly.

“Do you think all is well with my mother?” asked Lanu.

“Your mother?”

Loa was naturally taken by surprise by the question. He had had so much on his mind that there had simply not been any room for Musini, not even for the Musini who had shown her devotion to him during the hungry pursuit of the slavers' column, the Musini whose capture he had once deplored so bitterly, for whom he had gladly risked his own life. He had forgotten all about Musini even while he had dealt with the problem of Musini's twins.

“I expect all is well with her,” said Loa, reassuringly. “When the food comes I will send and find out.”

Lanu nodded a little gloomily. He was aware that during the period immediately following the birth of a child a woman was peculiarly susceptible to the attacks of devils and to the poisonings and enchantments of rivals and enemies, so that she not infrequently died. Lanu did not want Musini to die, even though he knew it was unmanly to care a rap about the fate of a mere woman. And Loa eyed him with actually something of apprehension. Lanu was destined to become a god like himself -- would, one of these days, after the inconceivable but inevitable moment when Loa went to join Nasa and his other ancestors, actually be the principal god. It was not going to be easy to initiate Lanu into the secrets of being superhuman, at a time when Loa himself had the gravest doubts about his own divinity, and of course stronger doubts still about Lanu's. Loa looked down the street at the busy mortals going hither and yon about their business, and told himself with a twinge of regret that he was of the same flesh that they were. He was aware of a slight inclination to think something quite different, to allow his recent feats to persuade him that he was, really and truly, a being on a higher plane than theirs, but his newfound reaction did not permit it. He had learned the truth as a hungry slave, when he had shared a forked stick with Nessi, when he found out that the kurbash hurt him. Loa, when he thought about all this, was a little like a character in fiction of whom he had never heard and never would -- Gulliver at the moment of realization that he was of the same species as the Yahoos.

Loa knew, too, that most likely the ideas of those people down the street regarding his divinity would be a little changed at least. Somewhere at the back of their minds must linger the memory that he had once been led off as a slave. They all knew that he had fought hand to hand with Soli. It would be a ticklish business still to claim the moon for his sister, and to maintain that it was his summons that brought her back each month from the embraces of the river. It could be done -- only Musini and Lanu knew that he had not troubled to summon her once during all these months -- but it might not be easy. The people's blind acceptance of the notion of his divinity must be at an end, along with his own. Instead of going along happily in an unchanging and unquestioning world he would have to evolve a policy which would make a god of him despite the doubters. He had already taken a few steps in this direction when, for instance, he had ordered the impalement of Ura, and when he had given forth his Word on the subject of Musini's twins. There would be a lifetime of it before him, and after that a lifetime of it before Lanu.

The arrival of the women with bowls of food diverted his untrained mind from its colossal struggles with these problems.

“Baked plantains in oil,” said Loa, peering at the contents of a bowl.

Lanu merely smacked his lips, plunged in his hand, and stuffed his mouth. After months of forest food it was good to come back to town food, to the food to which he had been accustomed all his life.

“Go, Nadini, and ask if all is well with Musini,” said Loa.

Lanu watched her departing form with anxiety -- the arrival of the food had only momentarily diverted his mind from the subject of his mother. Loa filled his own mouth; it was pleasant to feel the good red oil trickling down his chin, to stuff himself full, to know that there was more food than even he could eat to be obtained merely by a shout to Nadini and Subi. But Loa was a man who had once believed himself to be a god, and no man who has gone through that mental change-over can accept unquestioning the thought of the permanence of anything. These plantains and this tapioca tasted excellent, but Loa made himself remember the days when he turned with loathing from bananas and tapioca, when the thought of a continuous diet of bananas and tapioca, however ample, had revolted him. Those days would come again. He shot an exploratory glance at Lanu, who at that moment was engaged in wiping out the residual oil from a nearly empty bowl with his fingers and then sucking them noisily. Nadini's return delayed his opening of the subject he had in mind.

“All is well with Musini, Lord,” said Nadini. “She sleeps, and the -- the children lie at her side.”

Nadini showed momentary difficulty in concealing her ingrained disgust when she had to mention the revolting subject of twins, but Lanu's face lit up with a broad smile at her news.

“You may go,” said Loa to Nadini, and, when she was out of earshot, he turned back to Lanu and to the subject he had in mind.

“Do you remember,” he asked, slowly, “those fish that we ate on the day that we took the canoe?”

He said the strange word, the word that had disappeared utterly from the vocabulary of the town, with hesitation and difficulty, but Lanu rolled an understanding eye at him.

'“Well do I remember them,” he said. “There were others that Musini and I ate when we were in the pen in that town. They were good. As good as meat.”

“With canoes,” went on Loa, “you could get for us more fish perhaps from the river?”

He said “you” advisedly and with slight stress, and the form of address he used was chosen with all the nicety of which he was capable -- not the form used by a god to a mortal, nor that used by a parent to a child, but that of a superior person to one hardly his inferior. He wanted Lanu to assume certain grave responsibilities because, vague though the plans were which were forming in Loa's mind, they were plans he did not believe himself capable of putting into execution himself.

“I do not know how to catch fish or how to kill them,” said Lanu, but he was not being merely obstructive. Loa could see that he was receptive enough to the new idea.

“You do not,” Loa agreed. “But there are men in towns beside the river who do. Twice we have seen men catching fish in the river.”

“That is so,” said Lanu. He was willing to be helpful, but he could not grasp yet what Loa had in mind.

Loa was not sure himself, for that matter. Neither his mind nor the vocabulary in which he thought were adapted for logical thinking. The actual formulation of plans was a difficult step beyond the vague aspirations which a whole series of experiences and emotional disturbances had stirred up within him. Theoretical thinking was something that was almost beyond him, especially when he was thinking about something quite foreign to his ordinary life. What Loa really had at the back of his mind was to divert his people's minds from domestic politics by a series of wars of aggression, but the vocabulary at his disposal did not allow him to phrase it as briefly as that, nor in twenty times that number of words. He could only feel the need and grope his way towards expressing it, both to himself and to Lanu. Besides, he was moved by pure ambition as well, and in addition to that by a whole series of other motives, most of them simple enough in themselves, but adding up to a complexity that utterly entangled him. He wanted revenge in general upon a world which had treated him so ill; he wanted revenge in particular on certain individuals and communities; and he wanted, too, to exercise himself, and provide himself with outlets for his activity, now that he was back in a world which could be utterly tranquil at a time when his recent experiences had stirred him up so that the prospect of tranquillity was quite distasteful to him.

Misdoubting his own executive ability, he desired to assert himself through the medium of Lanu.

“When we killed those men,” he said, laboriously, “when we took their canoe to cross the little river, you wanted to keep the boat. Do you remember?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“You thought you might go down the river in it.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And I said that when we reached home you might have a boat of your own.”

“Indeed yes, Lord. I remember that.”

“There are towns here, towns like ours, except that they are close to the river and their people use boats and eat fish.”

“Musini and I were captured by such people,” said Lanu. “You got us out of their cage. Lord.”

“That is right. We could find such a town again. We have only to go seek along the riverbank. You could go with the men from here, and at night, when the town is asleep, you could go into it with the men. With spears and with axes, you could kill those people who tried to fight against you. The others you could fasten in forked sticks, if you wished to. Some of the women we could have as wives, to raise up more children for us who would fight for us when they grew up. And the men -- they would know about boats. They would know how to make boats. They would know well how to make boats go upon the water. They would know how to catch fish. You could make them show you how to do these things. You could make them do these things for you.”

“Lord,” said Lanu, “all this might well be done.”

He said it with amazement, a new revelation opening up before him. No physical miracle that Loa might have performed could have impressed Lanu as much as this speech. Lanu would not have been as excited if Loa had stood the little axe on end and made it dance of its own volition. Lanu lived in a world where one did not inquire into the causes of things very deeply; an axe might dance, a tree might talk, just as branches moved in the wind or a river chuckled and gurgled. What Loa was proposing to do was something startlingly different. It was as if he had pulled aside a series of veils which had hitherto enclosed Lanu, revealing amazing new landscapes, all well within reach. The pang of pleasure which Loa experienced when he saw Lanu's admiring reaction to his suggestion was deeper than anything Loa had felt before. He was thoroughly aroused now.

“The men would make many boats for us,” he said. “Not one boat, but many. Not little boats, like the one in which we crossed the river, but big boats.”

“Like the one which captured Musini and me,” said Lanu. “Boats with many men.”

“Yes,” went on Loa. “Many large boats, so that many many men could go in them. All the men in this town. In boats they could go far.”

“Indeed they could,” said Lanu. “I would lead them far.”

“So you would. There would be no town that could stand against us.”

“We would come by the river,” said Lanu. “We would step on shore in the darkness close to the town. No one would know we were near. We would kill them. We would take all they had. We would drive them to the boats and bring them back here.'‘

Lanu slapped his thigh in his excitement, as the new prospects revealed themselves in growing detail. Neither Lanu nor Loa was at all aware of how much they were indebted for these ideas to the Arab slave raiders. Every new conception -- revolutionary, all of them -- had its origin in their recent experiences. The fundamental one, of attacking people who had done them no harm, was due to the example of the Arabs. The plan of the night surprise, even the idea of slavery, were from the same source. There was something, perhaps, of originality in Loa's idea of sea power, of building up a naval strength on the river as a ready means of dominating other people, but even that really found its beginnings in what Loa had seen on the beach at the Arab slave depot. Intense experiences, working on simple minds that had long stagnated, were producing violent reactions.

“You can go out soon,” said Loa. “You can take with you one or two men, and you can seek along the river for a town. You can look at it well and secretly. Then you can come back and all the other men will be ready to go with you.”

“And the spears and the axes?” asked Lanu.

Loa paused to consider the question of munitions of war. There used to be some spearheads of iron in the town which probably still existed. There must be many axes; the whole culture of the town depended on the steel-edged axe which could fell trees and clear the forest for the planting of bananas and manioc. If Litti the worker in iron had not survived the raid -- and Loa could not remember seeing him today -- some of his family and trade must still be alive. They could make spearheads and axes; Loa scowled a little as he thought that under pressure they could make them much faster than they had done in the old happy-go-lucky days. Most men could make bows, and the women could be put to work braiding bowstrings. Somebody would have to be detailed to make a fresh supply of arrow poison. Loa turned back to Lanu to debate another new conception, that of the mobilization of the nation for war.