The Book of the Heathen (32 page)

Neither of us spoke for a few moments. We looked out together over the empty parade ground. Women pounded grain somewhere beyond the wall, and the double rhythm of their drumming came to us like a heartbeat.

‘I had been sick for ten days,' he said unexpectedly. He took back his hand.

I looked at him, but he had already half turned himself away from me.

‘What was it?' I asked him.

‘It makes no difference. The symptoms of these things are invariably the same. Who knows? Perhaps yellow fever, perhaps dysentery. I took what medicines I had. Imagine your own recent suffering.'

‘But you were alone and lost, unsought.'

‘I was never lost. I had gone to the confluence of the Lomami and Pitiri for a purpose.'

‘To hopefully witness an act of cannibalism?'

‘To witness it at the very least.'

‘Then what? Are you saying you hoped to go further – to
participate
in it?'

‘I can't answer you honestly, though I suspect that was always my unconfessed and uncertain intention. You might say circumstances made that decision easier for me to make. I suppose you – particularly you, James – might even say I was conspired against in my enthusiasm, my need to know. As you know, it has always been the abnormalities and not the divinities of men that have fascinated me.'

‘What circumstances?'

‘When I woke one morning I found I was in the company of three men. I imagined at first they were there to strip me of my belongings. This was on the banks of the Pitiri.'

‘Where you were eventually found.'

‘Where I was eventually found. I recognized them immediately by their markings and their stature: they were Aruwimi, renowned for their cannibalism, a long way from their usual haunts, but Aruwimi savages all the same. I tried my best to communicate with them, but other than acknowledge my presence, they made no attempt to approach me closer or to take anything from me. One of them even gave me clear water to drink. I offered him what little I had with me, but nothing I possessed was of any interest to him. I believe he communicated something of my plight to the others, neither of whom made the slightest advance on me. Perhaps if I had been more in control of my senses, then I would have feared them more.

‘All three men were naked and with their faces painted red, and all were anointed with rancid tallow: black lines around their eyes and mouths. They came and went in and out of the forest, but always returned to the same place, and it occurred to me then that they were waiting for something or someone, a rendezvous.

‘As I recovered further and felt something of my strength returning, I tried to communicate more with them. The two hitherto silent ones started to approach me. They brought me fruit. They caught fish in the river which they ate raw. One of them caught a small snake, which he skinned alive and then chopped up and ate while each of its cut lengths was still flexing in spasms in his hands. He approached me with a small piece and I ate it. I chewed it as little as I could – my mouth was raw even then – and after swallowing it I swear I could feel its movement, its dying throes in my stomach. I vomited shortly afterwards, so I imagine I lost most of what I had eaten.' He raised a hand to his throat at the memory.

‘Did it never occur to you that these men might have considered you a prize catch and that they were waiting to decide what they might do with you?'

‘At first I believed it possible. But they could easily have killed me where I slept. Or perhaps it is true what is said about white flesh being repulsive to them. I don't know. My impression was still that they were waiting for someone. Why, otherwise, would they stay so close to the river? And why would one or other of them be endlessly watching for the arrival of a boat? No, I was only an unwelcome interloper, a chance find.

‘After three, possibly four, days of this, I sensed a growing excitement among them, a new urgency. Now all three of them stood at the water's edge and searched. I tried, of course, to ask them who or what they were expecting, but either they did not understand me or they refused to tell me; I suspect the latter. And in all that time they constantly re-applied their paints, attending meticulously to each other's faces.'

‘And did someone come?'

‘A canoe. Late one afternoon.' He cleared his throat, still a painful thing for him.

It was plain to me that he did not want my interruptions, that what he was telling me set an unstoppable pace of its own.

‘A canoe. In which sat the feather-gatherer with small bundles of his wares. Some cages of live birds, but mostly their snapped-off wings and tails and heads to save space. At first I thought the man was alone, and that perhaps these three others either had their own hidden birds and feathers to trade with him, or were collecting something from him.'

His pause now was a long one.

‘And then I saw that there was another bundle on the floor of his canoe. The man was alarmed by my unexpected presence and at first he refused to come to the shore. But the others shouted some reassurance to him and eventually he came. It seemed to me that the four men were already acquainted. The boatman showed no sign of fearing the cannibals, and remained more wary of me than of them. I tried to speak to him, to determine if he too was Aruwimi, but he dashed at me and struck me with the club he carried. He, too, was as naked as they were. I thought at first one of my three reluctant companions might defend me or tell him to stop, particularly as I had imagined they had shown some solicitude towards me.'

‘And did they?'

‘No. They watched him as he continued to beat me and they laughed at what he did and called out to him, encouraging him to even greater violence. I passed out after several minutes of this – there were often long delays between the blows while he circled me – and when I came round I saw that the four men were sitting together and that they had lit a fire on the high part of the bank. I lay still and quiet, watching them. They smoked and drank from gourds the feather-gatherer gave to them. By then – I reckoned it to be early evening – he too was painted red. Whatever it was they drank must have been potent, for I saw that they were often retching and sick, and that they did this where they sat, making no effort to move back to the river or away from the fire.'

‘Another of their liquors,' I said.

‘I imagined so at first. But I realized afterwards that what they were doing was purging themselves, that it was some part of their ritual, and it occurred to me, despite my beating, how fortunate a position I so suddenly found myself in, that I was witnessing the very thing I had set out to find.'

‘They were going to eat human flesh? Whose? Did it not even cross your mind that you were—'

‘The bundle in the boat was the body of a small girl.'

‘A girl.'

‘Or at least I imagined it was a body, that she was already dead, but when the feather-gatherer returned to retrieve what lay there, I saw that the child was still alive, that she was trussed and gagged and paralysed with fear and by the understanding of what was happening to her.

‘I must have made some involuntary noise at seeing her, because at the same moment she was uncovered, the three others turned to me. I raised my arms to cover my head, but this caused them only to laugh. No-one came to me. Instead, they occupied themselves by smothering the mound of their fire with leaves. This caused the few remaining flames to produce an immense amount of smoke, which drifted low over the river and through the trees, and which hung in a dense pall above us, a low roof beneath which we sat. Only where it floated across the water did this show any sign of clearing. I remember choking on it as it blew around me before rising. They laughed at this, too, and I saw that they were damping down the blaze to contain and increase its inner heat.

‘The feather-gatherer picked up the girl by a rope which ran the length of her curved back, tied between her neck and her ankles, as though he were lifting a small suitcase from the canoe. She struggled at being picked up like this, but she was so securely bound that it had little effect. He brought her closer to the fire and threw her down there. I imagined her age to be seven or eight, but it was difficult to be certain because of how she was tied and contorted. I knew that she was still a young child by the thinness of her limbs. She was considerably paler than any of the men, another tribe completely.' He paused again and took several deep breaths.

‘The feather-gatherer told Hammad she was his daughter,' I said.

‘I know. Nash told me. An interesting sequence, wouldn't you say: the feather-gatherer told Hammad, who told Nash, who told me.'

‘Is it true? Was she his child?'

‘I doubt it. I imagine she was someone he had taken in a raid and kept alive solely because he believed he might sell her.'

‘Do you believe Hammad told the man to say she was his daughter?'

‘It would certainly add weight to the case against me.'

‘But why? What does Hammad hope to gain by it?'

He turned to look at me for the first time since he'd started talking. ‘A year ago, I might have said your naïvety did you credit, James.'

I acknowledged this in silence.

He waited.

‘Go on,' I said.

‘The man who had dropped her by the fire removed her gag and she screamed. I knew by her voice that I was close in my guess of her age. This screaming only served to increase the pleasure of the four men. They were still smoking and drinking and vomiting, and occasionally one of them threw up on the girl, or emptied some of their milky liquor over her. You can imagine how this also added to their pleasure. They were beyond control of themselves, literally out of their senses with their stimulants and purges, and for the first time I began to fear for my own safety. I knew that my pistol was still in my satchel and that it remained loaded. I felt its outline against the wet canvas, convincing myself that if one of them did come to me with the intention of doing me harm, then I would at least be able to shoot either him or myself. If they could treat a small child in such a way and derive such great pleasure from it, then I was in no doubt what they might afterwards do to me. I pushed myself upright until, though still sitting, I was supported between the high roots of the tree beneath which I sat.

‘Then they began to pull the leaves from the fire, inspecting the ashes beneath, encouraged by what they saw there. They took branches and spread these glowing embers over a wide area. The girl resumed her screaming at seeing this, and having let her continue for several minutes, the feather-gatherer then went to her and kicked her violently in the face, concussing her briefly and silencing her.

‘When she came round her nose and mouth were bleeding and she began to sob convulsively. This seemed to offend the men less than her screaming and she was allowed to go on while they attended to their fire. I could see that they were close to being ready, that they had driven themselves to the pitch of their excitement.

‘Throughout all this, I found myself mesmerized by what I was seeing. Do you see, I was perhaps the first Englishman to witness this ritual from start to finish? Perhaps I even contributed to their excitement, to whatever perverse pleasure they took in what they were doing. Imagine that, James, I was participating – not willingly, perhaps, and with no true understanding of the part I played – but I was
there,
I was
watching,
I
wanted
to watch, I
wanted
them to go on doing what they did. It was what I had gone in search of, what I had found.'

‘No!' I shouted, unable to stop myself. ‘No, it wasn't; not that. You were ill, you were unable to be anywhere
except
where you were, unable to do anything
except
witness whatever they performed in front of you. You were no part of it, no
part
of it.'

He allowed me to finish before going on. Everything I said he had known I would say.

‘But what did I imagine I was doing there in the first instance?' he asked. ‘How did I imagine I was going to find what I went in search of and yet remain detached from what I saw?'

I shook my head in despair at his reasoning. ‘Go on,' I said.

‘They dragged her closer to the fire and started to untie her ropes. They released her feet first, and the girl, perhaps imagining she might still escape her fate, attempted to run from them, dashing only a few yards before stumbling and falling and being caught and dragged back to them.

‘Then, with her hands and neck untied, they passed her from man to man, prodding and squeezing her like the meat she was to them. The feather-gatherer pretended to bite into her arm and then collapsed with the laughter this occasioned. Another of them kicked her feet from under her and then stood with his foot on her back, pressing her small naked body to the ground as though she were some trophy he had just acquired. They played with her like this for a further hour.

‘I tried several times to intervene – though this amounted to nothing more than shouting out to let them know that I was still watching them – but this had no effect on them other than to cause them to shout back at me and taunt me, helpless as I was to divert them from their course. One of them even brought the child close to me and swung her from side to side by holding her arms and lifting her off the ground. She cried out at the pain of this, and the man holding her made it clear to me that
I
was the cause of that pain, that my attempt to intervene had prolonged the child's suffering. I covered my eyes to let him know I understood him, and he dropped her beside me and she landed awkwardly across my legs. She was again crying almost continuously. I felt her grab my leg and then be pulled from me, her head striking the ground as she was dragged away.

‘Back at the embers, another of the men, the man who had previously attended to me, gave a cry and I saw that this was a signal to begin. They gathered together. One of them took a long blade from among the bird-cages in the canoe. The girl was held by two of the men now, each holding an arm and a leg and stretching her until her limbs were pulled straight, and presenting her to the man with the blade. She fell silent at her first sight of this and began gasping, convulsing with fear. I imagined he would plunge it into her heart, or perhaps slit her throat and that she would be killed quickly. But he did neither of these things, and instead he started a drunken dance around the stretched child, jabbing at her so that only the very tip of the blade pierced her, opening up wounds, and then drawing the edge of the blade back and forth over her, scoring lines into her back and chest and thighs, and again drawing blood while doing her no mortal harm. I screamed at them again, but they paid me no mind.