Bones of the River (13 page)

“Bones, sir?”

Hamilton looked round resentfully at the vacant chair.

“Curious,” he said. “He’s usually waiting on the mat for the post. Just now he is learning accountancy through a correspondence course, and that makes him keener.”

Lieutenant Tibbetts, known by all and sundry, from His Excellency the Administrator to the least clerk of the district, as “Bones,” took correspondence courses as a hypochondriac takes physic. They were mostly of American origin, and they emanated from colleges which, although they occupied only one small room on the nineteenth floor of important buildings, did not hesitate to print pictures of the whole of those important buildings on their notepaper. They also awarded diplomas and degrees that were imposing and grand. Bones, after three years of frenzied study, was a Doctor of Law (University of Tuxedo), a Graduate of Science (Ippikosh University), a Fellow of the Incorporated Society of Architects (of Elma, III.), and Master of Dramatic and Cinematographic Art (Spicy’s College of Dramaturgy, Sacramento, Cal.).

“Maybe,” said Hamilton thoughtfully, “this course will teach him to add. The last returns we rendered to HQ have been returned twice because Bones mixed the hundreds with the thousands.”

“Ham! Ham! Dear old officer!”

It was the voice of Lieutenant Tibbetts, alternately shrill with excitement and hoarse with pride, and it came from outside. Hamilton got up and walked to the door, Sanders following.

Bones was standing before the broad steps, an angular figure in white, his big topee pushed back from his streaming forehead, one skinny arm extended stiffly.

“Jumping Moses!” gasped Hamilton. “Where did you get that?”

Straining at a lead wound round and round the extended hand of Bones, was the largest and ugliest bulldog he had ever seen. It was white save for a smear of black that ran across its face. Its teeth were bare, its bow legs planted determinedly, and its stub of tail quivered ecstatically.

“Bought it, old boy! Had it sent out by a jolly old pal of mine. Ah, naughty, naughty Hector!”

Hector had suddenly leapt about and was confronting Bones, his lips curled back, a strange green light in his eyes.

“Hector, Hector!” reproved Bones. “Naughty, naughty old bow-wow. Yes, you is! You’se a naughty old bow-wow!”

The naughty old bow-wow made a menacing noise.

“Now, now!” said Bones soothingly, and stooped to pat the bullet head. Hector watched the approach of the hand with suspicion and doubt, but apparently was prepared to submit to the caress.

Then: “Snap!”

Bones leapt back with a yell. “Naughty, naughty!” he squeaked. “You bad, savage, naughty boy. Ugh! I’m ashamed of you!”

Hector bared his teeth and seemed crouching for a leap.

“You’d never think, dear old Ham,” beamed the proud owner, standing at a respectful distance, “that a ferocious old johnny like Hector was as gentle as a jolly young baby?”

“I shouldn’t: what the dickens are you going to do with him?” asked Hamilton.

“Train him, dear old thing. In three months Hector will be carrying my stick and standing to attention. Up, Hector! Watch him, Ham! Most wonderful intelligence, dear old sir. Watch him stand on his hind legs – taught him in five minutes! Up, Hector!”

Bones snapped frantic fingers above the bull pup’s head, but Hector did no more than leer at him and make a mental calculation. Could he get those fingers if he jumped? Reluctantly he decided he couldn’t, and closed his eyes wearily.

Hamilton was looking at the dog. “I don’t think I should call her Hector, Bones,” he said drily. “Helen of Troy would be more respectful,” and Bones gaped.

“Is he a she, dear old thing? Bless my dear old life! So he is. Hi, Helen! Up, Helen!”

But not even her changed status affected the dozing Helen, and in the end Bones tied her to the verandah rail and went in to breakfast.

“I got him as a surprise for you, dear old Ham,” he said. “Your birthday coming along – how the dear old years spin round!”

“If you think you’re going to pass that savage beast on to me – think again!” said Hamilton firmly. “My birthday was celebrated two months ago, as you know.”

“Christmas coming along,” said Bones pleadingly. “You’re not going to turn down dear old Santa Claus, Ham?”

Sanders, a silent and an amused observer, intervened.

“It is something of a coincidence that your lady friend should have arrived today, Bones – by the way, I should keep Helen locked up whilst Fobolo is here…”

*  *  *

Running from the great river is a stream, so small and so covered by weed and elephant grass that only a few men knew the secret of its course. Therefore is it called “No river-One River,” or, more intimately, N’ba, which is an abbreviation of ten words signifying “The-River-that-the-N’gombi-found-and-the-Isisi-lost.” Which is a name of reproach, for the Isisi are riverain folk, and the N’gombi are forest people who are so unwise in the ways of water that, when they fall into the river, they make a noise that sounds like “glub glub!” and drown.

Cala cala
in those days when Lieutenant Tibbetts was a comparative newcomer to the river, there lived at the end of this river of no appearance, and at the place where it drains the big lake, a man whose name was Fobolo. He was a rich man with many huts and many wives, and two and twenty young children. Of all men of the N’gombi people he was most respected and feared, for his father, Kulaba, had been a very wise man and was skilled in the way of poisons, and many inconvenient people lay in shallow holes on the islands, troublesome no more, because of the bitter foods they had taken from their wives’ hands. These they had eaten, and had died, and their wives had girded their flanks with green leaves, and had stamped and strutted ceremoniously through the village in the Death Dance.

Kulaba grew rich and taught his son Fobolo his mysteries, such as how a certain blue flower may be boiled and the drippings of its steam collected; and how the bulb of an ugly weed might be mashed and its juice disposed of. And such things.

Fobolo listened attentively, and one night he went out into the forest and found a little flowering weed that has a strong and unpleasant perfume. The flowers of these he collected, and stewed them until the water was all boiled away, and then he took the mess and made a small ball of it. That night his father had pains in the stomach and died, and Fobolo took all his wealth and his younger women, and went to the edge of the lake to enjoy the reward of his experiment, praising all the time the wisdom of his father, who had said “this weed that grows flowers is death
mongo
.”

So he became more powerful in the land than chiefs and headmen, and even the little kings came to him secretly and took away with them the messes he brewed. For kings have enemies.

About Fobolo’s huts grew the huts of his kinsmen, and of stray fishermen who, having no village of their own, were drawn into communion by the magnet of Fobolo’s greatness.

Fobolo was gaunt and tall and greedy. Wealth bred in him a desire for wealth. Though his deeply dug stores were filled with ivory teeth and rubber, and under the floor of his hut were many thousands of brass rods, and salt and other treasures were stacked tight in his huts, he sought new means of profit.

On a cold, clear morning, when only the stars were hot in the sky, a woman in the house of the Akasava king went shivering into the open with a blanket about her shoulders. She knelt before the dead fire and blew at the ashes until the air was filled with snowy specks, and when she had coaxed the fire to a proper redness and had set a pot upon it and filled that pot with water and corn, she went to carry food to the king’s dogs. They did not greet her with thin yelps, nor tear frantically at their grass-walled compound at the sound of her feet.

There was a silence that was strange and alarming. As she stood peering into the void, the stars went out in the sky and the sun shot up and she saw in the light the dogs were gone, and went, coughing and sobbing in terror, to the king’s hut.

“O shameful and ugly woman,” said the king, naked and blinking in the light to which he had been called, “did I not give to your care my fine dogs, and now they are gone?”

“Lord,” she whimpered, “last night I gave them water and dried fish, and they were happy, one putting out his tongue at me, and all moving their tails from side to side, which is the way dogs speak.”

Ten minutes later a well-beaten woman howled her misery, and the
lokalis
of the city were drumming the news of the great steal.

It would seem that N’Kema the king was not the only loser. For the chief of the Isisi village, which lay on the other bank of the river, came paddling furiously to the Akasava beach and stalked into the presence of the king.

“Lord king, there is sorrow in my stomach that I should tell you this: last night came your young men to my village and took from me two beautiful fat dogs that were ready for the marriage feast of my own son. And these dogs were each worth five and five bags of salt.”

Forcibly and with violence did the king deny the charge.

“It seems, little chief that, having stolen my dogs, you come to me with a lie that your dogs are taken. If I had lived in the days of my fathers before Sandi came, I would cut out your tongue and give your body to the ghosts. But now I will go to Sandi and tell him, and he shall put iron rings and chains on your legs according to his law.”

Sanders at that time was on the
Zaire
, making a tour of inspection, and to him they went and with them four smaller chiefs of the neighbourhood who had suffered loss. And small comfort they received.

A few months later, the youngest wife of N’Kema was seen by his favourite daughter, Militi, who was the apple of the king’s eye, speaking with a lover in the forest. And Militi carried word to her father, hating the woman who had replaced her mother in favouritism.

“This woman of yours has a quiet man,” she said, and told him things that a woman of fourteen would not have understood had she been white.

N’Kema took his youngest wife by the nape of her neck and flogged her with a strip of hippohide – which hurts.

In his absence on a hunting trip, the wife found her way through the hidden river and came to Fobolo’s village.

“I see you, wife of N’Kema, the king,” greeted Fobolo, standing on the beach as she landed.

“I see you, Fobolo: I have a riddle for you.”

“No man understands riddles better than I,” said Fobolo. “Tell me this, and I will give you an answer.”

“When the young she-leopard claws,” said the woman, giving him her mystery, “must you wait for the scratches to heal and then go forth and be clawed again?”

“My answer to your riddle is this,” said Fobolo, who had solved such enigmas before, “that it is better that the leopard should die that he will claw no more.”

This clawing leopard was a popular illustration in a land where the favour of men is shown by a ring of brass, and their displeasure is scored deeply on the shoulders of their women.

Whilst Fobolo went into his house, the woman wandered along the beach. And she came at last to a compound on the wooded promontory where there were many dogs. And two at least she recognised.

She went back to the beach before Fobolo’s hut, and after a while he came to her empty-handed.

“Woman,” he said, “this is in my mind. That little leopards may die and nobody shall speak. But if the leopard be great, then shall everybody speak and say, ‘Last night this leopard was alive: today he is dead,’ and then Sandi will come and there will be a palaver and perhaps a woman who talks, and Fobolo’s hut will be fire and he will be a ghost in the trees. Therefore, go back to your leopard and let him scratch.”

Shamelessly he retained the present she had brought him.

The wife of the king went home sick with fright, and that night when her husband returned she told him a lie.

“Lord, this day I went fishing through the River-that-the-N’gombi-found, and there I saw Fobolo with many dogs. And of these there were two which were like the fat man dog Cheepi that you loved.”

It was the very worst luck for all concerned that Bosambo, paramount chief of the Ochori, should have taken into his head the idea of paying a state visit to the Isisi king at that particular moment. N’Kema, with two war canoes, had put out from his beach
en route
to recover his stolen dogs, when Bosambo’s flotilla swept into sight round the bend of the river. With Bosambo were fifty excellent spearsmen, for the chief of the Ochori was by no means certain that the invitation which the Isisi had extended to him was purely disinterested.

At the sight of Bosambo’s painted canoes, N’Kema and his fellows stopped paddling, for Bosambo was notoriously a creature of Sandi, and it was essential for N’Kema’s peace of mind that his affair with the dog-stealer should be settled without publicity.

He had hoped that the canoes would pass, but Bosambo was a man with very keen eyesight.

“I see you, N’Kema,” he boomed as his canoe drew alongside the others. “Is there war or peace in this land, that you go out with your young spearsmen?”

“Bosambo, I came out to meet you, for, as you know, the people of the Akasava love you. And besides, I am going to the Great Lake to fish.”

“It seems to me,” said Bosambo, “that I see many shields at the bottom of your canoes. Now, tell me this, N’Kema: do men fish with shields?”

Whereupon Mr N’Kema, who lacked the natural gift of lying, spoke frankly of the outrage which had been committed, and of his desire to execute summary justice upon the robber.

“I will see this Fobolo,” said Bosambo instantly. “And be sure, N’Kema, that justice will be done. For, as you know, we men of the Ochori do not eat dogs; therefore it is certain that we shall return all we find.”

N’Kema knew this to be true. For some extraordinary reason, to the Southern Ochori people dog meat was taboo.

“But, Bosambo,” he protested, “how may you know which are my beautiful dogs if I am not there to call them by loving words, and tell you that this is mine and this is not mine?”