Scorpion Soup (2 page)

‘Where are they, the savages?’ I asked.

‘Deep in the jungle,’ came the reply.

After a great many deviations, the vessel docked at a ramshackle port. I descended the gangplank onto the quay, the name of a mythical creature filling my head and my mouth. With no idea how to proceed, I followed the bales of bibles destined for savages.

There is no feeling quite so contrary as arriving in a foreign land, with no grasp of language or etiquette. The heat was the first thing that hit me, dead straight between the eyes.

The bales of bibles were unloaded by sweat-drenched stevedores and hauled in fits and starts towards that terrible seething undergrowth.

And I followed them.

The missionary bought a bottle of home-made liquor, quaffed it down, and thanked God for protecting him.

‘Pray to the Lord so that you, too, might be blessed,’ he said caustically. ‘Neglect the Saviour, and the Angel of Death will be your shadow.’

Draining the bottle, he reeled about.

‘The jungle…’ he said after a long pause, rolling the word off his tongue as if it were a bitter olive, ‘it will swallow you whole, devour you, crush your bones to dust.’

We progressed on wagons and on mule carts, on hollowed-out logs, and skiffs, until at last the precious cargo was unloaded on the banks of a great russet-brown river. It was all murky and warm like bathwater left through a long sultry afternoon, and it stank of both life and of death.

The missionary drank another bottle of liquor.

Then another… and declared that the Word of the Lord would be the salvation of the savages.

I asked him again where they were, the savage peoples of whom he spoke so often and with such trepidation. Raising a fist out before him, he pointed at the trees.

‘They live on the Mountains of Medusa,’ he said.

With no other plan having presented itself, I tagged along, in the hope that the savages would in turn lead me to the elusive Capilongo.

A team of porters were hired.

The bibles and supplies having been laden onto their backs, we set out from the river and into the canopy.

After a few minutes of staggering under loads, we found ourselves in a fearful realm of nature. The towering trees reminded us of our frailty. The creepers and the vines tripped us, the chorus of unfamiliar sounds haunting each step.

The missionary kept the porters content with a ration of dates in honey. But it soon ran out. When it did so, he resorted to a whip.

Any man who refused to pull his weight was lashed to the bone.

Each night we slung hammocks, squeezed water from oversized tubular flowers, and we prayed.

The missionary prayed that the bibles would reach the savages, and I prayed that I would find the Capilongo, smite it, and return to my master with its skin.

The porters had never ventured into the undergrowth before. They spent their lives down at the river and said that only a madman would wish to trek towards the hinterland. When I asked them about the Mountains of Medusa, they seemed to shake with fear. Then, one morning, the missionary and I awoke to find ourselves alone.

The porters had absconded, and they had taken the supplies with them. The only thing they left was the bibles. We called out, our voices lost in the trees.

‘We can try and retrace our steps to the river,’ I said limply.

The missionary spat at the idea. He opened one of the boxes and removed half a dozen of the bibles. They were well bound in indigo buckram with silver lettering down the spine.

‘The savages need the Word of the Lord,’ he said firmly, ‘and so I will go on.’

‘You will die,’ I replied.

The missionary smiled at my remark, smoothed a hand down over his grey beard and said,

‘The Lord is my protector and my guide.’

With that, he turned on his heel and moved boisterously into the undergrowth, clutching an armful of the holy books.

I stood there in silence for a long time, unsure of what to do. There would have been safety in numbers, but the missionary was hell-bent on suicide. Without food or equipment, he had no hope of survival, with or without the Word of the Lord.

Standing there, the jungle encroaching around me, I was suddenly overcome with a vision. In my mind’s eye I glimpsed a great and unwieldy creature with the snout of a pig and the feathers of a bird. Poised erect on two feet, taller than a man, it appeared to have a very singular presence. As I watched the hallucination, the creature, what I supposed to be the Capilongo, opened a leather bag, removed a book, and began to read.

I blinked, and the vision was gone.

For seven days and nights I waited there at the same spot, the emerald canopy pressing ever closer, hunger gnawing at my ribs. I survived by squeezing water from the tubular flowers, and by eating the berries of the low shrubs that were common on the forest floor. I might have retraced my steps down to the river, but I had no idea in which direction it lay.

Something inside me was telling me to wait.

So I did.

And then, on the seventh night, the vision came again.

This time, the Capilongo was not reading, but smoking a pipe, staring into the embers of a dying fire. As I watched, he narrowed his eyes, and he whispered:

‘Dear apprentice, I know you are watching me. And I am waiting for you.’

Then, as if answering my unspoken question, he added:

‘Follow the golden bird.’

At dawn next day, I was woken by the shrill sound of a tiny bird, no bigger than a hummingbird. It was hovering beside my face, as if it were hoping to gain my attention. Rubbing my eyes, I saw that it wished for me to follow it. I jumped up and, before I knew it, was running through the jungle in pursuit of the golden bird.

I chased and chased, the tangle of vines and twisted branches hampering each footstep. The little bird seemed to understand that I was an unfamiliar visitor to its jungle. Floundering about clumsily, I wished for wings to take to the air as he. From time to time, he would hover beside me, allowing me to catch my breath, before hurrying on.

By the night of the first day I reached a glade of empty ground.

Pinned out in the centre of it was the headless body of a man. Even before I had drawn near, I had guessed its identity. For all around it were torn pages, the Word of the Lord.

I buried the missionary under a pile of flat-sided stones, and read a passage from Genesis over him. I ought to have had fear, because his head was missing – chopped off I imagined by savages.

But, for the first time since my departure from Toledo, I had hope.

Through three more days I chased the golden bird, until the air became cool and free from the insects that plagued my waking hours. I crouched on the banks of a little stream, chewed a handful of berries, and fell back with surprise.

Standing over me was the Capilongo.

‘Excuse me for startling you,’ he said in a polite voice.

I breathed in hard, choking in surprise.

The Capilongo reached down and offered me his hand. It was soft, covered in chocolate-brown feathers.

‘I saw you in a dream,’ I said.

‘And I saw you,’ the Capilongo replied, ‘and I know why you have come.’

Glancing at the ground, I mumbled the word ‘duty’.

‘Before you kill me,’ said the Capilongo, ‘please do me the honour of dining with me. You see, I have very little chance to make intelligent conversation.’

I agreed readily. After all, it was the least I could do.

The creature led me to a cave behind the stream. It was gigantic, carpeted in scented moss, and illuminated by shafts of natural light. Arranged down the middle was a long banquet table, at which two places had been laid at one end.

Welcoming me to his home, the Capilongo ushered me to the head of the table, and clapped his hands.

Nothing happened, not for a moment at least.

Then, slowly, an army of sloths slipped from the shadows, their long curved arms laden with dishes and plates.

We dined on wild fruits, the seeds of which looked like cut diamonds, on slivers of raw blue meat, and on a kind of jelly that smelled of frogs. The sloth servants ferried one dish after another to the table.

I asked if there were savages living near. The Capilongo looked up sharply.

‘There is a tribe up in the mountains,’ he said, reaching for a segment of fruit. ‘They live on the brains of their vanquished foes. The skulls are stored beneath the ground in vats, pickled for months in the juice from the lowreeh tree.’

‘Do they hunt Capilongos?’ I asked.

My host sniffed.

‘I am pleased to report that they do not,’ he said.

Before I could reply, the Capilongo reached down and picked up a knife. An assassin’s dagger of sorts, it had a sharp point and a long, straight shaft. He turned it carefully so that the blade was held in his fingers, the hilt pointing towards my chest.

‘Capilongos have two traditions,’ he said in a kindly tone. ‘The first is always to assist a guest in anything he might require. The second is to entertain an assassin before he carries out his duty. This knife is sharp enough to stab me easily in the heart, or to slit my throat, whichever you prefer. But, before you dispatch me,’ said the Capilongo earnestly, ‘I would ask that you permit me a small indulgence.’

Wondering what it was, I nodded.

‘Of course.’

‘Would you mind me regaling you with a story? Think of it as an entertainment, a parting gift.’

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. But, delighted at having arrived at my quarry so easily, I accepted.

The Capilongo clapped his hands and the sloth servants cleared the plates.

When the serving dishes were gone, an elderly sloth glided over to the table. Between his upturned hands was held a salver, a bottle of aged jungle brandy upon it. When two glasses of the tawny liquid had been poured, the Capilongo lit his pipe and his tale began:

There was once a kingdom in the Horn of Africa where all the men were brave, and all the women were beautiful. Surrounded by desert, it was a land of great abundance and verdure. The grass was the colour of crushed emeralds, the flowers dazzling pinks, reds and blues; and the air crystal clear.

At one end of the land there was a mountain capped all year round with blinding white snow and, at the other, a forest impenetrable and dark – the Forest of Empty Souls.

There was no king, because the people had found over centuries that they did better without a leader. The last king had passed away without issue, and it was then that the citizens decided they didn’t have any need of a monarch at all.

When there was a matter to be dealt with or decided, they went to a pool in the palace, a pool filled with toads. And, with great reverence, they consulted the toads.

Although no one in the kingdom could speak the language of the toads, they found that the creatures seemed to understand what they were being asked. Through twitches of their wart-covered bodies, and through croaking, the amphibians managed to make their feelings known.

Now, in the kingdom there was a special shrine. There was no religion as such, yet the shrine was worshipped night and day, and revered like nothing else.

A thousand and one steps crafted from porphyry led up to the central chamber. Each morning and each night it was rinsed with tears gathered from the populace.

As there was no sadness, or very little indeed, the people grew a special kind of onion, the mere hint of which made their eyes stream with tears. Enormous fields of these onions were grown by the farmers, for the sole purpose of rinsing the steps of the sacred shrine. The women would take it in turns weeping into miniature silver buckets, which were taken ceremoniously to the steps at dusk and at dawn.

As for the shrine, the interior walls were fashioned from pure gold, embossed with the images of toads at play. Deep inside, beyond a golden screen of filigree, lay a simple chamber. And in the chamber was a plinth, on which stood a cedarwood box, the colour of walnuts, all cracked with age.

No one in the kingdom had ever seen the contents of the box. It’s not that they didn’t want to, rather that they were so fearful that no one had ever dared to open it.

From time to time children, as they drifted to sleep, would ask their mothers what was in the shrine.

The answer was always the same:

‘There is a box, my dear.’

‘But what’s in it?’

Every mother in the land always gave the same reply:

‘Never you mind. Go to sleep now and leave it at that.’

One day, a boy of about eight or nine found that he couldn’t stop thinking about the box.

His name was Mittle-Mittle, which meant Good-hearted in the language of the kingdom. He begged and begged, and he begged and begged, but his mother refused to reveal anything more than she knew – that in the sacred shrine was a box, a box the colour of walnuts, all cracked with age.

Disgruntled at getting a less than satisfactory answer to his question, Mittle-Mittle decided to venture to the shrine and have a look for himself.

The next morning, when all other little boys were huddled over their desks in school, Mittle-Mittle slipped unnoticed through the streets, passed the Toad Palace, and scampered up the great long staircase, just as it had been deluged in a rinsing of fresh tears.

The guards didn’t notice the boy because they wore special helmets which made seeing anything shorter than themselves very difficult indeed.

With care and on tiptoes, Mittle-Mittle zigzagged his way through the gold-walled chambers, until he came to the room in which the box was kept.

At that very moment, his mother was chopping onions and blinking into a silver bucket, quite unaware that her favourite son was up to no good. But the last thing on Mittle-Mittle’s mind was his mother, and the part she played in the tradition of the land.

As he entered the chamber in which the box was kept, the boy wiped a hand down over his mouth, and glanced around carefully, making certain he wasn’t about to be caught. No one seemed to be watching, and so, very quietly, he crept forwards until he was standing beside the box.