Lord Tyger (8 page)

Ras was balked this time and many times. Yet it was when Wilida was most watched and most encaged that he was able to be with her.

Between his twelfth and fourteenth year, he spied on many circumcision ceremonies of the boys at thirteen and the clitoris-cutting rites for the girls of twelve. Both rituals were supposed to be secret; they were enacted in the jungle near the foot of the eastern hills. No women were allowed near the place for the boys and no men near that for the girls. Any unauthorized person caught spying would have been torn to pieces by the nails and teeth of the outraged men or women.

But Ras had no trouble observing either ceremony from positions high in trees or in bushes very close to the participants
and behind the guards' backs. He became familiar with the words of incantation and song, with the ritualized gestures, the sawing off of the foreskin and the cutting of the skin on the shaft to cause great scars and with the severing of the clitoris tip.

He saw no sense in either rite; he hurt with the victims; he became enraged when Sutino, his playmate, was infected as a result of the circumcision and died in agonies two weeks later.

And he could not imagine why any boy would submit willingly to a practice that would make him only a half man for the rest of his life, a half man before he became a man. The children explained to him that it was the custom. Bigagi, who survived the cutting, ripping, and sawing, never told Ras how he felt about the custom. Unless the spear thrown at Ras was comment enough.

A year after Wilida and two of her friends had been initiated into womanhood, they were placed in bamboo cages hung from the branches of trees about a mile from the village. Here each in her own cage, within sound but not sight of the other, they lived for six months. Old women stood guard and fed and bathed them once a day when they lowered the cages and allowed the girls to step out for a few minutes. The old women gave them counsel day and night--enough to last them for the rest of their lives.

Ras, listening, learned more about the Wantsos than he dreamed could exist.

Once every four days, the girls' mothers visited them and, squatting under the cages, shouted news and gossip. At other times, other women also visited them. The girls were, however, mostly lonely, miserable, and scared. The leopards prowled
beneath the cages or sometimes came up onto the branches and dropped down on the cages and tried to reach through the bars. The girls screamed then, and the old women guards--safe in their huts on the ground--screamed at the leopards.

Ras felt sorry--and also furious at times--because Wilida was being treated so cruelly. But he lost much of his fury when he found that the situation, though bad for the girls, was good for him. And in some ways it was also good for the girls. When he was sure that the old women were barricaded in for the night, he would climb the tree and go on all fours out along the branch. And after calling softly to Wilida so that she would not think he was a leopard, he would slide down one of the thick grass ropes from which the cage hung. He would untie the door and swing into the cage.

Wilida was very happy to see him because she had someone to talk to, to make love to, to keep her warm, to protect her from the leopards. She lost some of his company, however, when she mentioned how lonely the other girls were. Thereafter, he spent a night now and then with Fuwitha and Kamasa. At the same time, he was also meeting some of the women in the bushes or even sneaking into the village for meetings under the floors of the houses.

His parents were worried at this time about him because he was so pale, seemed to be losing some weight, and had dark bags under his eyes--"like little bats of weariness sleeping upside down, hanging onto his lower eyelids," as Yusufu said.

And so Ras found the six months of encagement for the girls a happy time for him. But when he was told by Wilida that this would soon be over, he became unhappy again. Moreover,
Wilida would be married to Bigagi at the end of the year. Between now and then she would remain in her mother's house, continuing the work necessary for the household. Then she would be placed in the bridal cage on the islet just west of the village, and Bigagi would take up his vigil outside her cage. After two nights and a day, the wedding would be held.

Ras begged her to go off with him to his country. She would be happy there--he swore it.

She refused to go. Yes, she loved him, but she also loved her parents, her people, her village. She would die if she had to leave them.

But Ras could still see her and talk to her and now and then make love to her. That is, if he had time and energy to spare for her, she added sarcastically.

Ras replied that he did not want to see her under such conditions. He wanted to live freely with her. And if she would leave with him, he would promise never to visit any of the Wantso women.

Wilida continued to say no. The time came when he quit pleading. He also gave up his fantasies of carrying her off. She meant it when she said that she would die if she were cut off from the tribe.

Nevertheless, he was angry, and he could not quite surrender her. When Wilida had been put in the bridal cage and Bigagi had taken his post before her, Ras had been driven to come out into the open--although at a distance--to taunt the Wantso men. He had to do it; he was hoping that something would happen to cause him and Bigagi to tangle, so that he could kill Bigagi. At the same time, he did not want this.

He also wanted to kill Wilida, and he did not want to kill her.

Now he had been driven off and was hiding behind a bush and thinking about swimming to the islet when night came, subduing Bigagi, and making love to Wilida, whom he would kill afterward, he was so angry with her.

Nightfall came... The noise was a far-off, fluttering sound, like a bat's wings in the night. It quickly became louder and then became a chuttering, as of a spear being whirled around and around until the cutting of the head through the air chopped off the air in chunks. Chut-chut-chut. And beneath the chuttering was a deeper, roaring sound that presently became so loud that it almost smothered the chuttering.

It was the Bird of God, and the Bird would soon be above him.

4

BIRDS THAT BURN

The Bird of God had always been around. It nested on top of the black stone pillar soaring from the middle of the lake and reaching almost to the sky. Days would pass, sometimes months, and Ras would wonder if perhaps it would never come back. Then he would hear the faint chop-chop-chop of its rotating wings, and it would appear out of the sky. It would become larger, stop to hover above the pillar, and would sink out of sight to its hidden nest.

Days and sometimes months would pass. One day Ras would hear the chop-chop-chop. He would run down to the shore of the lake unless he happened to be swimming or in his dugout. Up the Bird of God would rise, high, higher, and it would fly over the cliffs, the edge of the world, and disappear into the sky.

Ras sometimes saw the Bird of God fly inland. If he were out in the open, he would see the Bird approach him. At first he used to run away into the forest to hide. Later, he would stand
up, holding his spear, and wait for it to come nearer. He never did this, though, unless he had a good chance to run for shelter if he were to be forced to run.

Sometimes, the Bird of God hovered over him so close that he could see a man in its belly. Twice, he saw two men in its belly.

"Those are not men but angels," Mariyam, his mother, would reply to his questions. "Igziyabher sends his angels to ride in the belly of the Bird to observe you. They are to report on whether or not you have been a good boy."

Igziyabher was God, Allah, Dio, or Mungu, depending upon which language his parents were speaking at the time. Ras usually thought of God as Igziyabher, because that was the name his mother had first spoken and most often used.

"Mother, if Igziyabher wants to find out if I am good, why does He have to send angels to look for Him? I thought you said that He can see everything from where He sits on the Seat of Glory?"

Mariyam always had an answer, even when she contradicted herself, which was frequently.

"He sends angels to give them something to do, O son. They don't work but sit at God's feet and sing all day and night in praise of Him. But angels like to take a vacation now and then, and they are very happy to ride around in the belly of the Bird and watch over the creatures."

Once Mariyam had said that the angel inside the Bird was being punished for sassing God. The Bird had swallowed him up, and was slowly digesting him with the acids of its belly. The angel was being eaten alive by the acids and would suffer until he dissolved. Then Igziyabher would take the pieces of meat and
bone of the angel and put them back together. The angel would be a new angel then and would no longer sass God.

This had been told shortly after Ras had snarled at his mother. She had beaten him with a whip made of hippo hide. Ras had stood silently, trying to keep from smiling at her. The whip had hurt somewhat, but she was tiny, with little strength. Besides, she had not been snapping it as hard as she could. Afterward, she had wept because she had drawn blood twice from his back.

She had smeared ointment over his back and then had wept some more.

"You have such a golden skin, son, it hurts me to mar it. When I first held you in my arms, you were a pink baby, beautiful, beautiful, with large, dark gray eyes, and with the smile of a newly born angel. Now, your skin is darker, kissed with the sun, smooth as the polished tusk of an elephant."

"Maybe so, maybe so, here and there," Ras had said. "But I would not worry about several more scars, especially such tiny ones. I have a hundred scars. This shoulder is puckered up because of the leopard that almost killed me before I killed him. The tip of this ear bears the tooth-mark of Wilida, who loves me so much she wants to eat me up."

Mariyam had screamed and grabbed the whip and begun laying it on him. Ras had run away, laughing, though she had threatened to stake him out on an ant hill if he did not come back and take his rightful punishment.

"I have told you and your father has told you, too, a thousand, thousand times, stay away from those Wantso girls! Igziyabher will catch you with them some day, and then He will
plunge you forever into the fires of hell!"

Hell, according to one of her stories, was the cavern at the other end of the world. There was an opening to it where the river ran into it.

"But I thought you said that Igziyabher was at the end of the world?"

"And so I did, empty-head. But He sits on high beyond the cavern of hell, and a soul must go through hell first before he can get to heaven."

"And when is Igziyabher coming to see me, His favorite child, if I am to believe you? Is He afraid of me?"

"He is afraid of nothing! Why should He be afraid? Do you think He is stupid enough to create beings who would harm Him?"

"There are many stupid things in this world," Ras had said. "I think that he should have given more thought before He made this world."

"Do not blaspheme, O son! He may hear you and come down to face you, and the glory of His being would make you curl up and smoke away, like fat left too long on the pan."

"I would tell Him a few things and perhaps pull that long white beard of His."

Mariyam had put her hands to her ears and moaned and rocked back and forth. "Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Surely you will suffer the pains of hell!"

"The boy has great spirit," Yusufu said. "He is afraid of nothing."

Now, this morning, as Ras started to walk across the plain toward home, he saw the Bird of God for the first time in so
many weeks he could not count them. The sun had risen above the mountains by the breadth of his hand. The bird was so far away that he could not hear its wings. Nor would he have seen it if it had not reflected the sun. Thereafter, by straining his eyes, he could catch it now and then, especially since it flashed three more times.

Suddenly, another great bird appeared. It was closer to him, so he could hear its roar and see its outline. It flew from the sky as if the sky were a blue skin with a blue pimple that had burst and shot out a black knot of corruption. It startled him and even sickened him. For a moment, he thought that Igziyabher had sent another bird out to finally punish him for his deeds and his loud, boastful words.